Childe Cycle - The Spirit of Dorsai Part 2

"All right, Bhak," said Amanda. "I'm just doing what I'm asked. Did the young ones and their Ancients get out of town?"

He sobered.

"Piers sent them out two days ago," he said. "You didn't know?"

Amanda shook her head.

"I've been busy with Betta. Why two days ago?"

"Evidence they were out before we heard any Earth troops were coming." He s.h.i.+fted his broom back into his hand. "If nothing had happened it would have been easy to have called them back after a few days. If you need me for anything, Amanda-"

"I'll ask, don't worry," she said. It would be easier at any time for Bhak to fight, than wait.

The kukri in its curved sheath still lay on his mantelpiece. "I've got to get on to the town hall."

She lifted the skimmer on the thrust of its fans. Their humming was loud in the quiet street.

"Where's Betta?" Bhak raised his voice.

"Foralie."

He smiled again.

"Good. Any news of Cletus?"

She shook her head and set the skimmer off down the street. Turning on to the main street, past the last house around the corner, she checked suddenly and went back A heavy- bodied girl with long brown hair and a round somewhat bunched-up face was sitting on her front step. Amanda stopped the skimmer, got out and went up to the steps. The girl looked up at her.

"Marte," said Amanda, "what are you doing here? Why didn't you go out with the other boys and girls?"

Marte's face took on a slightly sullen look "I'm staying with grandma."

"But you wanted to go with one of the teams," said Amanda gently. "You told me so just last week"

Marte did not answer. She merely stared hard at the concrete of the walk between her feet.

Amanda went up the steps past her and into the house.

"Berthe?" she called, as the door closed behind her.

"Amanda? I'm in the library." The voice that came back was deep enough to be male, but when Amanda followed it into a room off to her right, the old friend she found among the crowded bookshelves there, seated at a desk, writing on a sheet of paper, was a woman with even more years than herself "h.e.l.lo, Amanda," Berthe Haugsrud said. "I'm just writing some instructions."

"Marte's still here," Amanda said.

Berthe pushed back in her chair and sighed.

"It's her choice. She wants to stay. I can't bring myself to force her to go if she doesn't want to."

"What have you told her?" Amanda heard the tone of her voice, sharper than she had intended.

"Nothing." Berthe looked at her. "You can't hide things from her, Amanda. She's as sensitive as... anyone. She picked it up-from the air, from the other young ones. Even if she doesn't understand details, she knows what's likely to happen."

"She's young," said Amanda. "What is she-not seventeen yet?"

"But she's got no one but me," said Berthe. Her eyes were black and direct under the wrinkled lids. "Without me, she'd have n.o.body. Oh, I know everyone in town would look after her, as long as they could. But it wouldn't be the same. Here, in this house, with just the two of us, she can forget she's different. She can pretend she's just as bright as anyone.

With that gone..."

They looked at each other for a moment.

"Well, it's your decision," said Amanda, turning away.

"And hers, Amanda. And hers."

"Yes. All right. Goodby, Berthe."

"Goodby, Amanda. Good luck"

"The same to you," said Amanda, soberly. "The same to you."

She went out, touching Marte softly on the girl's bowed head as she went by. Marte did not stir or respond. Amanda remounted the skimmer and drove it around the further corner, down the main street to the square concrete box that was the town hall.

"h.e.l.lo, Jenna," she said, stepping into the outer office. "I'm here to be sworn in."

Jenna Chalk looked up from her desk behind the counter that bisected the front office.

She was a pleasant, rusty-haired woman, small and in her mid-sixties, looking like anything in the universe but the ex-mercenary she once had been.

"Good," she said. "Piers has been waiting. I'll bring the papers and we'll go back-"

"Still here?" said Amanda. "What's he doing waiting around?"

"He wanted to see you." Jenna slid her hands into the two wrist-crutches leaning against her desk, and levered herself to her feet. Leaning on one crutch, she picked up the folder before her on her desk and turned, leading the way down the corridor behind the counter that led toward the back of the building and the other offices there. Amanda let herself through the swinging gate in the counter and caught up.

"How is he?" Amanda asked.

"Worn out-a little easier since the sun came up," said Jenna, hobbling along. Her bones, over the years had become so fragile that they shattered at a touch, and her legs had broken so many times now that it was almost a miracle that she could walk at all. "I think h.e.l.l let himself risk some medication, after he sees you take over."

"He didn't need to wait for me," said Amanda. "That was foolish."

"It's his way," said Jenna. "The habits of seventy years don't change."

She stopped and pushed open the door they had come up against. Together they entered and found the ma.s.sive, ancient shape of Piers propped up in a high-backed chair behind the wide desk of his office.

"Piers," said Amanda. "You didn't need to wait. Go home."

"I want to witness your signing-in," said Piers. Talking was still difficult for him, but Amanda noted that his breathing did seem to have eased slightly with the sunrise, in common asthmatic fas.h.i.+on. "Just in case the troops they drop here decide to check records."

"All right," said Amanda.

Jenna was already switching on the recording camera eye in the wall. They went through the ritual of signing papers and administering an oath to Amanda that gave her the official t.i.tle of Mayor of Foralie Town, which would be a cover for her secret rank of district commander.

"Now, for G.o.d's sake, go home!" said Amanda to Piers when they were done. "Take some of that medicine of yours and sleep."

"I will," said Piers. "Thank you for this, Amanda. And good luck My skimmer's out back.

Could you help me to it?"

Amanda put one hand under the heavy old man's right elbow and helped him to his feet.

The years had taken much of her physical strength, but she still knew how to concentrate what she had at the point needed. She piloted Piers out the back way and helped him into the seat of his skimmer.

"Can you get down, and take care of yourself by yourself when you get home?" she asked.

"No trouble," Piers grunted at her. He put the skimmer's power on and it lifted. He glanced at her once more.

"Amanda."

"Piers." She laid a hand for a second on his shoulder.

"It's a good world, Amanda."

"I know. I think so, too."

"Goodby."

"Goodby," said Amanda; and watched the skimmer take him away.

She turned back into the town hall.

"Marie's still here," she said to Jenna. "I guess, we'll just have to let her stay, if that's what she wants."

"It is," said Jenna.

"Are there any others still around I don't know about?"

"No, the young ones are all gone-and their Ancients."

"Have you got a map for me?"

Jenna reached into her folder and came out with a map of the country about Foralie Town, up into the mountains surrounding. Initials in red were scattered about it.

"Each team under the initials of its Ancient," Jenna said.

Amanda studied it.

"They're all out in position, now, then?"

Jenna nodded.

"And they're all armed?"

"With the best we had to give them," Jenna said. She shook her head. "I can't help it, Amanda. It's bad enough for us at our age, but to give our young people hand weapons and ask them to stop-"

"Do you know an alternative?" said Amanda.

Jenna shook her head again, silently.

"An aircraft's due to pick me up from the pad here in three-quarters of an hour," Amanda said. "I'll be checking the situation out around the town otherwise, between now and then.

Just in case I don't get back here before we're hit, are you going to have any trouble convincing the invaders that I'm a Mayor and nothing more?'

Jenna snorted.

"I've been clerk in this town hall nine years-"

"All right," said Amanda. "I just wanted to put it in words. If the troops they send in won't billet in town, try and get them to camp close in on the up-river side."

"Of course," said Jenna. "I know. You don't have to tell me, Amanda. Anyway, there shouldn't be much trouble getting them there. It's a natural bivouac area."

"Yes. All right, then," Amanda said. "Take care of yourself, too, Jenna."

"We both better take care of ourselves," said Jenna. "Luck, Amanda."

Amanda went out She was on the airpad, waiting, when a light, four-place gravity aircraft dropped suddenly out of the blue above and touched down lightly on the pad. A door swung open. She went forward, carrying her single piece of luggage and climbed in. The craft took off. Amanda found herself seated next to Geoff Harbor, district commander of North Point.

"You both know each other, don't you?" asked the pilot, looking back over his shoulder.

"For sixteen years," said Geoff. "h.e.l.lo, Amanda."

"Geoff," she said. "They bringing you in for this meeting, too? Are you all ready, up there at North Point?"

"Yes. All set," he answered both questions, looking at her curiously above his narrow nose and wedge-shaped chin. He was only in his forties, but twenty years of living with the aftereffects of ma.s.sive battle injuries had given his skin a waxy look "I -was expecting Eachan."

"Eachan was asked by Cletus Grahame to hold himself ready for something else," said Amanda. "Piers took charge and I just replaced him this morn-ing."

"Asthma getting him?"

"The pressure of all this thing pushed him into an attack, I think," said Amanda. "Have you met this Arvid Johnson, or the other one-Bill Athyer?"

"I've met Arvid," said Geoff "He's what Cletus Grahame's now calling a 'battle op'-a field tactician. Athyer's a strategist and they work as a team-but you must have heard all this."

"Yes," said Amanda. "But what I want to know is some first-hand opinions on what they're like."

"Arvid struck me as being d.a.m.n capable," said Geoff. "If they work well together, then Bill Athyer can't be much less. And if Cletus put them in charge of the defense here...

but you know Cletus, of course?"

"He's a neighbor," said Amanda. "I've met him a few times."