Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 05 (8 page)

Amanda thought for a moment, while the moon continued to play peekaboo with the clouds.

"I'd better go back to Foralie tonight, after all," she said. "Eachan will have to know this, in case he has to take over. Lexy—anything else?"

"Nothing, Amanda, really. Just off-duty talk"

"All right. I want this listening to go on—only at night, though, after the town and the cantonment's settled down. Ramon, will you stay on top of that? And also make sure neither Lexy or anyone else goes into the cantonment area. Past the outer line sentries is all right, if they know what they're doing. But not, repeat not, into the cantonment streets; and never into the huts, themselves. There's more here than just your personal risk to think about, Lexy. It's our whole world, and all of us, at stake."

Silence.

"All right, Amanda, we'll take care of it," said

Ramon. "And we'll get word to you if anything breaks."

"The necessary thing," said Amanda, "is letting me know if there's any word of Cletus getting here. All right. I'll see you tomorrow evening."

She lifted her skimmer on minimum power to keep the sound of its motors down and swung away in the direction of Foralie. Had she been unfairly hard on Lexy? The thought walked through her mind, unbidden. It was not an unfamiliar thought, nowadays; Betta, Melissa, Lexy… a number of them evoked it in her. How far was she justified in expecting them to react as she, herself, would? To what extent was it right of her to expect a future Amanda to react as she would?

No easy answer came to her. On the surface it was unfair. She was unfair. On the other hand there were the inescapable facts. There was the need that someone, at least, react as she did; and the reality that what she required of them was what experience had taught her life required of them all. Forcibly, she put the unresolved problem once again from her; and made herself concentrate on the imperatives of the moment.

Mid-morning of the following day she lay in tall grass, high on a slope, and watched the train that was the escort of Dow deCastries, winding up through the folds of the hills toward Foralie. Around her were the members of Ramon's team. The train consisted of what looked like two platoons of enlisted men, under four officers and Dow himself, all sliding over the ground in air-cushion staff cars, with a heavy energy rifle deck-mounted on every car but the one occupied by Dow. The vehicles moved with the slowness of prudence, and there were flankers out on skimmers, as well as two skimmers at point.

'They'll reach Foralie in another twenty minutes or so," Ramon said in Amanda's ear. "What should we do about getting runners in to Eachan and Melissa?"

"Don't send anyone in," Amanda said. "Eachan will come out to you if he wants contact. Or maybe Melissa will. At any rate, let them set it up. Tell them I've gone to look at the situation generally throughout the district. I need to know what the other patrols sent out are doing."

She waited until the train had disappeared over the ridge toward which it had been heading, then slid back down into the small slope behind her, where her skimmer was hidden.

"You're folly powered?" asked Ramon, looking at the skimmer.

"Enough for non-stop operation for a week," said Amanda. "I'll see you this evening, down above the cantonments."

The rest of that day she was continually on the move. It was quite true, as she had told Dow, that it would take her a week to fully cover the homesteads of the Foralie district. But it was not necessary for what she had in mind to call at every homestead, since she had a communications network involving the teams and the people in the homesteads themselves. She needed only to call at those few homesteads where she needed personal contact with such as the medical personnel or such as Tosca Aras, invalided home and anchored in his house by age and a broken leg. Tosca, like Eachan, was an experienced tactical mind to whom the rest could turn in case anything took her out of action.

In any case, her main interest was in the patrols Dow had sent out. Eachan, watching with the scope on the Foralie rooftop, reported two had gone out the evening before and this morning another four had taken their way on different bearings, out into the district. In each case they seemed to be following a route taking them to the homesteads of a certain area of the district on a swing that looked like it might last twenty-four hours, and at the end of that time bring them back to Foralie Town and their cantonments.

"They don't seem to be out looking for trouble," Myron Lee, Ancient for one of the other teams, said to Amanda as they stood behind a thicket, looking down on one of these patrols. Myron, lean to the point of emaciation and in his fifties, was hardly any stronger physically than Amanda, but radiated an impression of unconquerable energy.

"On the other hand," he went on, "they didn't exactly come out unprepared for trouble, either."

The patrol they were watching, like all the others Amanda had checked, was a single platoon under a single commissioned officer. But its personnel were mounted on staff cars and skimmers, as the escort for Dow had been; and in this case, every staff car mounted a heavy energy rifle, while the soldiers riding both these and the skimmers carried both issue cone rifles and sidearms.

"What have they been doing when they reach a homestead?" Amanda asked.

"They take the names and images of the people there, and take images of the homestead, itself. Census work, of a sort," said Myron.

Amanda nodded. She had been given the same description whenever she had asked that question about other patrols. It was not unusual military procedure to gather data about the people and structures in any area where a force was stationed—but the method of the particular survey seemed to imply that the people and buildings surveyed might need to be taken by force, at some time in the future.

By evening she was back behind the ridge overlooking the meadow holding the cantonments. Lexy, Tim and Ramon had been waiting when she got there. They waited a little longer, together, while twilight gave way to full dark The clouds were even thicker this night; and when the last of the light was gone, they could not see each other, even at arm's length.

"Go ahead," Amanda said to the two youngsters. "Remember, word of Cletus, or any word of what's going on in town, are the two things I particularly want to hear about."

There was the faintest rustle of grass, and she was alone with Ramon.

A little over an hour later the two team members were back

"Nothing much of anything going on," Lexy reported. "Nothing about Cletus coming. They'd like some news themselves about how long they're going to be here and what they're going to do. All they say about the town is that it's dull—they say what good would it be if they could go in there? There's no place to drink or anything else going on. They did mention an old lady being sick, but they didn't say which one."

"Berthe Haugsrud's the oldest," said Ramon's voice, out of the darkness.

Amanda snorted.

"At their age," she said, "anyone over thirty's old. All right, we'll meet here again and try it once more, tomorrow night."

She left them and swung east to the Aras homestead, to see if the district's single physician, Dr.

Ekram Bayar,
who
had been reported there, had heard word of any sick in Foralie Town.

"He's gone over to Foralie," Tosca Aras' diminutive daughter told her. "Melissa phoned to say Betta was going into labor. Ekram said he didn't expect any problems, but since he was closer than any of the medicians, he went himself. But he's coming back here. Do you want to phone over there, now?"

Amanda hesitated.

"No," she said. "I've been staying off the air so that whatever listening devices they've got down in the troop area can't be sure where I am. I'll wait a bit, here. Then, if he doesn't come soon, you could call for me and find out how things are."

"You could take a nap," said Mene.

"No, I've got things to do," said Amanda.

But she ended up taking the nap. Mene called her awake on the intercom at what turned out to be an hour and a half later and she came in to the Aras sitting room to find Tosca himself up, with his broken leg stretched out stiffly on a couch, and both Mene and Ekram with the old general, having a drink before dinner.

"Amanda!" Mene said. "It was a false alarm about Betta."

"Uh!" Amanda found a chair and dropped heavily into it. "The pains stopped?"

"Before Ekram even got here."

Amanda looked across at the physician, a sturdy, brown-faced thirty-year old with a shock of black, straight hair and a bushy black mustache.

"She probably doesn't need me at all," he said to Amanda. "I'd guess, she'll have one of the easier births on record around here."

"You don't know that," said Amanda.

"Of course I don't know," he said. "I'm just giving you my opinion."

It came to her suddenly that Ekram, like herself and everyone else, had been under an emotional strain since the invasion became a reality. She became aware suddenly of Tosca stretching out an arm in her direction.

"Here," he said. He was handing her a glass.

"What's this? Whisky? Tosca, I can't-"

"You aren't going any place else tonight," he said. "Drink it."

She became conscious that the others all had glasses in their hands.

"And then you can have dinner," said Tosca.

"All right." She took the glass and sipped cautiously at it. Tosca had diluted the pure liquor with enough water so that it was the sort of mixture she could drink with some comfort. She looked over the rim of her glass at the physician.

"Ekram," she said. "I had some of the team children listening outside the cantonments. They reported the soldiers had been mentioning someone— an old woman, they said—was sick in town…"

"Berthe." He put down his glass on the coffee table before the couch on which he sat, his face a little grim. "I should go down there."

"No," said Tosca.

"If you get in there, they may not let you out again," said Amanda. "They'll have military medicians."

"Yes. A full physician, a lieutenant colonel—there for the benefit of this Dow deCastries more than for the troops, I'd guess," Ekram said. "I've talked to him over the air. Something of a political appointee, I gather. Primarily a surgeon, but he seemed capable, and he said he'd take care of anyone in town when I wasn't there. He expects me to be available most of the time, of course."

"You told him
you
had your hands fall up here?"

"Oh, yes," Ekram gnawed a corner of his moustache, something he almost never did. "I explained that with most of the mothers of young children being upcountry right now…"

He trailed off.

"He accepted that, all right?"

"Accepted it? Of course, he accepted it. I hope you realize, Amanda—" he stared hard at her, "it's not my job to ignore people."

"Who're you ignoring? Berthe? You told the truth. You've got patients needing you all over the place, up here."

"Yes," he said.

But his gaze was stony. It went off from her to the unlit, wide stone fireplace across the room and he drank sparsely from his glass, in silence.

"I'll have dinner in a few minutes," said Mene, leaving them.

With dinner, Ekram became more cheerful. But by the following morning the phone began to ring with calls from other households relaying word they had heard in conversations with people still in the town, of now two or three of the older people there being ill.

"Not one of the ones who're supposed to be sick has called," Mene pointed out over the breakfast table.

"They wouldn't, of course. Noble—yes, damned noble, all of them! All of you. I'm sorry, Amanda—" he turned stiffly to Amanda. "I'm going down."

"All right," said Amanda.

She had meant to leave early, but she had stayed around, fearing just such a decision from Ekram. They would have to give, somewhat. But they need not give everything.

"All right," she said again. "But not until this evening. Not until things are shut down for the day."

"No," said Ekram. "I'm going now."

"Ekram," said Amanda. "Your duty's to everyone. Not just to those in the town. The real need for you may be yet to come. You're our only physician; and we may get to the equivalent of a field hospital before this is over."

"She's right," said Tosca.

"Damn it!" said Ekram. He got up from the table, slammed his chair back into place and walked out of the kitchen. "Damn this whole business!"

"It's hard for him, of course," said Tosca. "But you needn't worry, Amanda."

"All right," Amanda said. "Then I'll get going."

She spent the day out, tracking the patrols. In one or two instances, where the sweep
was
the third through a particular area, the majority at least of the soldiers in a particular patrol were those who had been out on the first sweep—not only to her eyes but the sharper observation of the team members who had been keeping track of those patrols. She watched them closely through a scope, trying to see if there were any signs of sloppiness or inattention evident in the way they performed their duties; but she was un-able to convince herself that she saw any.

She had a good deal more success, with the help of the team members, in identifying patterns of behavior that were developing in the way they made their sweeps. Their approach to a household, for one thing, had already begun to settle down to a routine. That was the best clue that the line soldiers had yet given as to their opinion of the dangerousness of those still left in Foralie district. She found herself wondering, briefly, how all the other districts in all the other cantons of the Dorsai were doing with their defense plans and their particular invaders. Some would have more success against the Earth troops, some less— that was inherent in the situation and the nature of things.

She sent word to the households themselves, to the effect that the people in them should, whenever possible, do and say the same thing each time to the patrols so as to build a tendency in these contacts toward custom and predictability.