“I was hoping they might be so close that Clero would not have the time to find the number of men he needed,” Eavamon answered, his sigh so clear it should have caused a flicker in the orange light.
“Unfortunately that’s more than enough time, especially if he has relay riders watching the capital, which I’m sure he does. He’ll know they’re coming and he’ll be prepared.”
“He may know they’re coming, but if he doesn’t care about them he won’t be prepared,” Dameron said, the words slow and thoughtful.
“Is that supposed to mean something?” the invisible Eavamon asked while Valdon gave Dameron a look that said the same thing.
“It means that Clero won’t care about the Escort if he thinks Bellna has already left with mercenaries,” Dameron said, his face and voice both announcing his grin. “He’ll be too busy chasing the mercenary group to care about an Escort that miraculously missed them.”
“With a decoy!” the Eavamon voice crowed, enjoying the idea as much as Dameron. “A decoy ought to be easy to arrange!”
“Not as easy as all that,” Valdon said, taking his turn at wet-blanket throwing. “Don’t forget about the Natha gatherings in 9’s territory. How are we supposed to reach a suitable decoy?”
“You can’t tell me every female fighter we have is in on that,”
Dameron protested, an edge of impatience to his voice. “Get busy and start checking, and give me some choices. With almost a week to work in we’ll be able to pull this off, but only if we get going immediately. Eavamon, let me know if you hear anything else, no matter how insignificant it is, and start preparing the leak that will tell Clero Bellna has left secretly with mercenaries. Don’t release it until I give you the word, but have it ready.”
“Will do,” Eavamon agreed already sounding thoughtful. “I’ll also get in touch with Grigon and have him begin preparing a way to keep Bellna away from those mercenaries and around for the Escort. He’ll need the time.”
“He probably will,” Dameron said with a nod he seemed to think the absent Eavamon could see. “We’ll call you if we need anything else, but right now it’s up to us. Base out.” he flipped off the orange light, then turned his head. “Valdon, get on that search fast. I want that information as soon as the files can be programmed.”
He turned away from the console without seeing Valdon’s preoccupied nod, the big man having already settled in front of what was probably a computer terminal. Dameron was heading for the door I was standing beside, deep in thought, and wouldn’t have seen me even if I’d been dressed in flashing sun-sign. I had no interest in being left behind as a permanent wall post, so I accepted the risk of being run down and stepped directly in his path. The commander stopped short, frowned at me for a minute or two without recognition, then memory flashed briefly in his eyes. he took my arm and led me out of the room, then waited for the door to slide closed again behind us before giving me an apologetic look.
“I’m sorry that took so long, but we have a crisis,” he said, trying hard to really look sorry. “At least you got to see something of the way we operate. Did you find it interesting?”
“Oh, yes, very,” I nodded, keeping my tone solemn. “I get a real kick out of being in the true thick of things. You said my ship was this way?”
“Your ship,” he echoed, not doing well with hiding his impatience at the thought of being distracted from his crisis. “That’s right, we were going to your ship, weren’t we?” I could almost see his mind going clickety-clickety-click behind his eyes, but be was obviously the type who considered business before visitors. he made up his mind fast, apparently feeling no guilt over the decision. “I can’t take the time for that now,” he admitted, giving me the bad news without flinching. “Once I have this problem squared away we can program your course computer, and I promise it will be the first thing I do.”
“The first thing after a planetary week’s worth of waiting?” I asked, trying not to sound as boorish as I was feeling. he and his people had saved my life – but I’d been looking forward to going home. “You won’t mind my wandering around here alone and – amusing – myself?”
His expression changed at that, just the way I’d wanted it to, but the semi-panic he must have been feeling didn’t push him in the direction I was hoping for. He pasted a friendly expression on his face, took my arm again, then started guiding me up the corridor in our original direction.
“You know, now that you mention it, I think it might interest you more if you knew exactly what we’re in the middle of,” he said, sounding as if he were selling magazines. “Let’s get comfortable in my office, and I’ll fill you in.”
“There’s an old saying about interesting times,” I commented, not letting him hurry me as fast as he wanted to. “Suppose you give me your coordinates and the proper quadrant and I do my own programming?”
“You may remember what I said about not wanting you too overburdened with unnecessary information,” he said, glancing down at me as he put a little more muscle into his hauling. “The coordinates of this base come under the heading of unnecessary.”
“Suppose I offer to close my eyes?” I suggested, but only to be annoying. Dameron would have to enter his location in my ship’s computer in order to program the proper course back to the Federation, but he could always build in an automatic forget order once destination was reached which would remove the information. A program like that could not be tampered with without purging it completely or ruining it enough to be useless; telling me the coordinates would negate the entire effort. he snorted under his breath at my suggestion, not even bothering to comment or refuse, and we continued to the end of the corridor.
The last room on the left turned out to be Dameron’s, and the door slid aside to show a rust and blue combination that would have deafened me in a week if I’d had to use it regularly. There was a squarish but comfortable-looking chair standing to the right of a low block of plastic or metal, what was probably a computer terminal to the right of the chair, and a couple of lump chairs in front of the block-hair-terminal arrangement. All around the walls were filled shelves, gaps here and there allowing the hanging of various somethings including very clear photographs of unpeopled landscapes.
The lighting level brightened up from dim as soon as we entered, and Dameron guided me to the second lump chair before trying to ease me down into it. I put my right leg slightly behind me and locked the knee, assuming what was almost standard attack-defense stance, and the good commander found he couldn’t do much against it. he would have had to knee me in the middle to get me to bend, and he wasn’t prepared to go quite that far.
“You’ll find the background a lot more comfortable to listen to if you do it sitting down,” he said, turning away as if leaving me erect had been his original idea. “If nothing else, it will fill the time until-”
His words broke off as his attention was captured by the supposed computer terminal, which was signaling for his attention. He hit a key that sent symbols of all sorts scurrying across the screen, giving him information that he absorbed as fast as it came. It took two or three minutes before he had it all, and then he flipped it back to blank while muttering under his breath.
“I take it the news wasn’t particularly good,” I observed, watching him drop into the squarish chair with a preoccupied look. “More headaches to add to the ones you already have?”
“Just an added dimension to the existing ones,” he answered with a sigh, breaking out of the preoccupation. “It seems Valdon was right: every one of our female fighters is committed to post 9’s territory, and we’d have to use a scoutship to reach them – if we knew exactly where they were. They’re involved with the barbarians and the barbarians are on the move, and we can’t just walk in there and politely ask to speak to one or two of our girls. We can’t settle the crisis in Narella by creating a new one in Natha.”
“You know, I’ve heard it said that the best way to thi is to occupy your hands and attention with something that has nothing to do with your problem,” I remarked, folding my arms as I looked down at him.
“The subconscious gets it all settled for you, and you’ve accomplished two things instead of one.”
“You don’t give up, do you?” he rejoindered, amused. “This isn’t the sort of problem my subconscious can do anything about. It may turn out to need something on the order of a miracle. Are you going to make me get a crick in my neck from looking up at you while I talk?
These details take some telling.”
I could see from the sparkle in his dark eyes that his amusement had increased, but I wasn’t sharing any of it. he wasn’t going to be working on my course computer unless I threatened his life, and probably not even then. he struck me as the sort who would die in his tracks rather than let himself be forced into something he’d decided against, even if the decision was temporary. I looked up at the blue ceiling in defeat as I shook my head, then turned to the lump chair I’d refused earlier. I’d listen to his damned story, then start working on him again once it was over.
“You have my neck’s grateful appreciation,” he chuckled as he watched me sit, trying not to sound too victorious. “I’ve also heard it said that you can solve a problem by explaining the situation to someone else aloud, so don’t think of this as wasting time. Think of it as giving me some help in return for the help I’ll be giving you.”
He grinned outright at that, probably thinking he was backing me into a corner of guilt-riddled gratitude, but he had to be forgiven for the mistaken belief. he just didn’t know me very well – but he would learn.
“The area we’re primarily concerned with right now is called Narella, after Naro, its current king, the fourth in his line,” Dameron began, leaning back comfortably in his squarish chair. “Narella is the most advanced country on this continent, and although we’re not ignoring the other countries, this is where we’re concentrating our efforts.
Here’s what the country looks like.”
He reached over to tap a series of keys on his terminal, and suddenly the block of metal or plastic on his other side was no longer blank.
The side facing me lit up to show a map of sorts, heavy lines surrounding an area that was divided up into six sub areas of varying sizes.
“King Naro rules the country, but he has five princes governing different parts of it under him,” Dameron continued, looking at the top of the block, which was out of my line of vision. “The eastern-most area is his own domain, and larger than any of the other five.
His capital city Naridon is here, near the western border.”
A black dot appeared on the map, roughly halfway between the northern and southern boundaries, just as Dameron put a finger on the top of the block in what would be the same place if he had a view of the map in front of him. The block seemed to be a repeater screen of middling complexity, and not the limited desk area I had originally guessed at.
“The political situation in Narella is no different from any other primitive area – and too many so-called civilized ones,” the lecture went on. “Naro is a really good king, not terribly despotic, more fair-minded than you would expect, a crafty leader, a capable military commander, and a man willing to consider intelligent advice.
he runs the country to suit himself, but he understands that the better off his people are, the more he can demand in taxes and levies. Despite the fact that Naro is making life profitable and pleasant for his princes as well as himself, some of them would prefer seeing another king on the throne, namely one of their number.
“The leader of the most well organized opposition is Prince Clero, a man we know more about than we care for. He’s not nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is, has the support of the others through fear, and indulges in brutality just for the fun of it. Giving him advice is like spitting before you know what direction the wind is coming from: you only find out after you do it whether or not it was a good idea. Re’s a paranoid who suspects everyone of plotting against him, and we lost two agents before we were able to adopt a lower profile in his keep. His lands are here.”
Black dots circled the second most westerly division as Dameron’s finger moved around a section on the top of the block. Not counting the king’s lands, the area was second largest of the rest, the section to the west of it being a third again its size.
“This Clero sounds like a real charmer,” I said, studying the map.
“Why don’t you arrange for a fatal accident and be rid of him?”
“Have you ever tried to reach a paranoid in high position?” Dameron asked with a serious snort. “We might be able to justify a move like that to Absar Central, but even if we could we’d still have to be able to do it without using anything of our more advanced technology.
If I authorized taking Clero out any other way, I’d spend the rest of my career on Absar, listing the thousand best reasons why I should have the same thing done to me. We’re here to help these people by guiding them, not by taking them over.”
“Then why are you working so hard against Clero?” I asked, raising my eyes to Dameron’s face. “If you don’t have the right to stop him by killing him, it could be argued that you don’t have the right to stop him at all. Maybe he’d make a better king than Naro in spite of your opinions to the contrary.”
“We’re not discussing unsupported opinion,” Dameron snapped, with a frown. he didn’t realize I was needling him on purpose, playing devil’s advocate to get even for the lecture he was forcing me to sit through. “We’re discussing carefully documented evidence that supports the contention that Clero is a dangerous psychopath who would have the country in ruins in less than two years. Even if you dismissed everything else, his views on the slave trade should be enough to prove the point.”
“The slave trade?” I echoed, suddenly seeing Radman’s face flash across my mind. “He’s a slaver?”
“Not directly, no,” Dameron answered with a head-shake, his face grim and his voice nearly a growl. “He just gives slaving his whole-hearted support, and patronizes the trade regularly and eagerly. he buys male slaves and works them to death without looking at them twice; he wouldn’t care if it was his own grandfather who had been enslaved. Female slaves he looks at more than twice, especially the very young ones. Some of them have been sold to the slavers by their fathers, some were stolen when they weren’t watched carefully enough; he never questions their origins when he buys them. After he buys the