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experienced mercenaries in Kensie Graeme's forces. For the Exotics, in
obedience to their principles, would hire no drafted troops or soldiers who
were not in uniform of their own free will.
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Meanwhile I had heard no word from the Blue Front. But by the time two weeks
had gone, I had my own connections in New San Marcos, and at the beginning of
the third week one of these brought me word that the jeweler's shop in Wallace
Street there had closed its door, had pulled its blinds and emptied the long
room of stock and fixtures, and moved or gone out of business. That was all I
needed to know.
For the next few days, I stayed in the vicinity of Jamethon Black himself,
and by the end of the week my watching him paid off.
At ten o'clock that Friday night I was on a catwalk just above my quarters
and under the sentry-walk of the walls, watching as three civilians with Blue
Front written all over them drove into the square, got out and went into
Jamethon's office.
They stayed a little over an hour. When they left, I went back down to bed.
That night I slept soundly.
The next morning I got up early, and there was mail for me. A message had
come by spaceliner from the director of News Services back on Earth,
personally congratulating me on my dispatches. Once, three years before, this
would have meant a great deal to me. Now I only worried that they would decide
I had made the situation here newsworthy enough to require extra people being
sent out to help me. I could not risk having other news personnel here now to
see what I was doing.
I got in my car and headed east along the highway to New San Marcos and the
Exotic Headquarters. The Friendly troops were already out in the field;
eighteen kilometers east of Joseph's Town, I was stopped by a squad of five
young soldiers with no noncom over them. They recognized me.
"In God's name, Mr. Olyn," said the first one to reach my car, bending down
to speak to me through the open window at my left shoulder. "You cannot go
through."
"Mind if I ask why?" I said.
He turned and pointed out and down into a little valley between two wooded
hills at our left.
"Tactical survey in progress."
I looked. The little valley or meadow was perhaps a hundred yards wide
between the wooded slopes, and it wound away from me and curved to disappear
to my right. At the edge of the wooded slopes, where they met open meadow,
there were lilac bushes with blossoms several days old. The meadow itself was
green and fair with the young chartreuse grass of early summer and the white
and purple of the lilacs, and the variform oaks behind the lilacs were fuzzy
in outline, with small, new leaves.
In the middle of all this, in the center of the meadow, were black-clad
figures moving about with computing devices, measuring and figuring the
possibilities of death from every angle. In the very center of the meadow for
some reason they had set up marking stakes-a single stake, then a stake in
front of that with two stakes on either side of it, and one more stake in line
before these. Farther on was another single stake, down, as if fallen on the
grass and discarded.
I looked back up into the lean young face of the soldier.
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"Getting ready to defeat the Exotics?" I said.
He took it as if it had been a straightforward question, with no irony in my
voice at all.
"Yes, sir," he said seriously. I looked at him and at the taut skin and clear
eyes of the rest.
"Ever think you might lose?"
"No, Mr. Olyn." He shook his head solemnly. "No man loses who goes to battle
for the Lord." He saw that I needed to be convinced, and he went about it
earnestly. "He hath set His hand upon His soldiers. And all that is possible
to them is victory-or sometimes death. And what is death?"
He looked to his fellow soldiers and they all nodded.
"What is death?" they echoed.
I looked at them. They stood there asking me and each other what was death as
if they were talking about some hard but necessary job.
I had an answer for them, but I did not say it. Death was a Groupman, one of
their own kind, giving orders to soldiers just like themselves to assassinate
prisoners. That was death.
"Call an officer," I said. "My pass lets me through here."
"I regret, sir," said the one who had been talking to me, "we cannot leave
our posts to summon an officer. One will come soon."
I had a hunch what "soon" meant, and I was right. It was high noon before a
Force-Leader came by to order them to chow and let me through.
As I pulled into Kensie Graeme's Headquarters, the sun was low, patterning
the ground with the long shadows of trees. Yet it was as if the camp were just
waking up. I did not need experience to see the Exotics were beginning to move
at last against Jamethon.
I found Janol Marat, the New Earth Commandant.
"I've got to see Field Commander Graeme," I said.
He shook his head, for all that we now knew each other well.
"Not now, Tam. I'm sorry."
"Janol," I said, "this isn't for an interview. It's a matter of life and
death. I mean that. I've got to see Kensie."
He stared at me. I stared back.
"Wait here," he said. We were standing just inside the headquarters office.
He went out and was gone for perhaps five minutes. I stood, listening to the
wall clock ticking away. Then he came back.
"This way," he said.
He led me outside the back between the bubble roundness of the plastic
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buildings to a small structure half-hidden in some trees. When we stepped
through its front entrance, I realized it was Kensie's personal quarters. We
passed through a small sitting room into a combination bedroom and bath.
Kensie had just stepped out of the shower and was getting into battle clothes.
He looked at me curiously, then turned his gaze back on Janol.
"All right, Commandant," he said, "you can get back to your duties, now."
"Sir," said Janol, without looking at me.
He saluted and left.
"All right, Tam," Kensie said, pulling on a pair of uniform slacks. "What is
it?"
"I know you're ready to move out," I said.
He looked at me a little humorously as he locked the waistband of his slacks.
He had not yet put on his shirt, and in that relatively small room he loomed
like a giant, like some irresistible natural force. His body was tanned like
dark wood and the muscles lay in flat bands across his chest and shoulders.
His belly was hollow and the cords in his arms came and went as he moved them.
Once more I felt the particular, special element of the Dorsai in him. It was
not even the fact that he was someone trained from birth to war, someone bred
for battle. No, it was something living but untouchable-the same quality of
difference to be found in the pure Exotic like Padma the OutBond, or in some
Newtonian or Cassidan researchist. Something so much above and beyond the
common form of man that it was like a serenity, a sense of conviction where
his own type of thing was concerned that was so complete it made him beyond
all weaknesses, untouchable, unconquerable.
I saw the slight, dark shadow of Jamethon in my mind's eye, standing opposed
to such a man as this; and the thought of any victory for Jamethon was
unthinkable, an impossibility.
But there was always danger.
"All right, I'll tell you what I came about," I said to Kensie. "I've just
found out Black's been in touch with the Blue Front, a native terrorist
political group with its headquarters in Blauvain. Three of them visited him
last night. I saw them." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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