It was still only a fraction as bright as the filtered daylight had been, but already it was bright enough so that they could see to travel, and that brightness would perhaps double, since at least four of Newton’s five moons should be in the night sky.
“Let’s move,” said Cletus. A couple of minutes later, he and Athyer, packs on back, were once more jog trotting upon their route.
The peep-map, when Cletus consulted it by its own inter-illumination, now showed a black line paralleling the red line of their indicated route for a distance of a little over thirty-one miles from their starting point. In the next nine hours of nighttime traveling, interrupted only by hourly rests and a short meal break around midnight, they accomplished another twenty-six miles before the setting of most of the moons dimmed the light once more below the level of illumination at which it was safe to travel. They ate a final, light meal and dropped off into five hours of deep slumber on the thick needle bed of the forest floor.
When Cletus's wrist alarm woke them, the chronometer showed that over two hours of daylight had already elapsed. They arose, ate and moved on as soon as possible.
For the first four hours they made good progress—if anything, they were traveling even a little faster than they had the day before. But around noon they entered into an area of bog and swamp thick with plants of the big, flesh-colored leaf, and something new called parasite vines, great ropes of vegetation hanging from the low limbs of the trees or stretching out across the ground for miles and sometimes as thick as an oil drum.
They were slowed and forced to detour. By the time night fell, they had made only an additional twenty miles. They were barely one-third of the distance to the rendezvous point below Watershed, nearly one-third of their time had gone, and from now on fatigue would slow them progressively. Cletus had hoped to cover nearly half the distance by this time.
However, the peep-map informed him that another twenty miles would bring them out of this boggy area and into more open country again. They had their brief supper during the half hour of darkness, and then pushed on during the night. They reached the edge of the bog area just before the moonlight failed them; they fell, like dead men, on the needle carpet underfoot and into slumber.
The next day the going was easier, but exhaustion was beginning to slow their pace. Cletus traveled like a man in a dream, or in a high fever, hardly conscious of the efforts and wearinesses of his body except as things perceived dimly, at a distance. But Athyer was running close to the end of his strength. His face was gray and gaunt, so that the harsh beak of his nose now seemed to dominate all the other features in it, like the battering-ram prow of some ancient wooden vessel. He managed to keep the pace as they trotted, but when they slowed to a walk, his foot would occasionally go down loosely and he would stumble. That night Cletus let them both sleep for six hours after the evening meal.
They made less than sixteen miles in the hours of moonlight that remained to them, before stopping to sleep again for another six hours.
They awoke with the illusion of being rested and restored to full strength. However, two hours of travel during the following daylight found them not much better than they had been twenty-four hours before, although they were traveling more slowly and more steadily now, portioning out their strength as a miser portions out the money for necessary expenses. Once again, Cletus was back in his state of detachment; his bodily suffering seemed remote and unimportant. The feeling clung to his mind that he could go on like this forever, if necessary, without even stopping for food or rest.
By now, in fact, food was one of the least of their wants. They paused for the midday meal break and forced themselves to swallow some of the rations they carried, but without appetite or sense of taste. The ingested food lay heavily in their stomachs, and when darkness came neither of them could eat. They dug down to the base of one of the flesh-colored leafed plants to uncover the spring that was bubbling there, and drank deeply before dropping off into what was now an almost automatic slumber. After a couple of hours of sleep, they arose and went on under the moonlight.
Dawn of the fourth day found them only half a dozen miles from the rendezvous point. But when they tried to get to their feet with their packs on, their knees buckled and gave under them like loose hinges. Cletus continued to struggle, however, and, after several tries, found himself at last on his feet and staying there. He looked around and saw Athyer, still on the ground, unmoving.
“No use,” croaked Athyer. “You go on.”
“No,” said Cletus. He stood, legs stiff and braced, a little apart. He swayed slightly, looking down at Athyer.
“You’ve got to go on,” said Athyer, after a moment. It was the way they had gotten in the habit of talking to each other during the last day or so—with long pauses between one man’s words and the other’s reply.
“Why did you come to the Dorsai?” asked Cletus, after one of these pauses.
Athyer stared at him. “You,” said Athyer. “You did what I always wanted to do. You were what I always wanted to be. I knew I’d never make it the way you have. But I thought I could learn to come close.”
“Then learn,” said Cletus, swaying. “Walk.”
“I can’t,” said Athyer.
“No such thing as can’t—for you,” said Cletus. “Walk.”
Cletus continued to stand there. Athyer lay where he was for a few minutes. Then his legs began to twitch. He struggled up into a sitting position and tried to get his legs under him, but they would not go. He stopped, panting.
“You’re what you’ve always wanted to be,” said Cletus slowly, swaying above him. “Never mind your body. Get Athyer to his feet. The body will come along naturally.”
He waited. Athyer stirred again. With a convulsive effort he got to his knees, wavered in a half-kneeling position, and then with a sudden surge lifted to his feet, stumbled forward for three steps and caught hold of a tree trunk to keep from going down again. He looked over his shoulder at Cletus, panting but triumphant.
“When you’re ready to go,” said Cletus.
Five minutes later, though Athyer still stumbled like a drunken man, they were moving forward. Four hours later they made it to the rendezvous point, to find Swahili and Arvid, together with perhaps a fifth of the rest of the men due to arrive at this point, already there. Cletus and Athyer collapsed without even bothering to take off their backpacks, and they were asleep before they touched the needle-carpeted ground.
21.
Cletus awoke about midafternoon. He felt stiff and a little lightheaded, but rested and extremely hungry. Athyer was still sleeping heavily, like a man under deep anesthesia.
Cletus ate and joined Swahili and Arvid.
“How many of the men are in?” he asked Swahili.
“There’re twenty-six who haven’t shown up yet,” answered Swahili. “We got most of the rest in during the next hour after you got here.”
Cletus nodded. “Good,” he said. “Then they should be slept up enough to operate by twilight. We’ll get busy right now with the ones that are already rested. The first thing we need is a vehicle.”
So it happened that a Brozan truck driver sliding on his airjets down the single fused-earth highway leading into the small mining town of Watershed unexpectedly found his way barred by half a dozen armed men in gray-blue uniforms, each with a small blue and white flag of the Advanced Associated Communities stapled over the left breast pocket. One of these, a tall officer wearing a circle of stars on each shoulder tab, stepped up on the foot-rest entrance to his cab and opened the door.
“Out,” said Cletus, “we need this truck of yours.”
Two hours later, just before sunset, that same truck drove into Watershed from a highway that had been strangely unproductive of traffic during the last 120 minutes. There were two men in the cab without caps on and they drove the truck directly to the headquarters of the small police detachment that had the duty of keeping law and order in the mining town.
The t
ruck pulled into the parking compound behind the police headquarters, and a few moments later there was the sound of some disturbance within the headquarters itself. This, however, quietened, and a few moments later the fire siren above the police headquarters burst to life with a whooping like that of some mad, gigantic creature. It continued to whoop as the townspeople poured out of their houses and other buildings to find the town surrounded and the streets patrolled by armed soldiers with blue and white flags stapled over the left breast pockets of their uniform jackets. By the time the sun was down, Watershed had awakened to the fact that it was a captured community.
“You must be crazy! You’ll never get away with it!” stormed the manager of the stibnite mines when, with the mayor of the town and the head of the local police contingent, he was brought into Cletus’s presence at police headquarters. “The Brozan Army’s headquartered at Broza City—and that’s only two hours from here, even by road. They’ll find out you’re here in a few hours, and then—”
“They already know,” Cletus interrupted him, dryly. “One of the first things I did was use your police communications here to announce the fact that we’ve taken over Watershed and the mines.”
The mine manager stared at him. “You must be crazy!” he said at last. “Do you think your five hundred men can stand up to a couple of divisions?”
“We may not have to,” said Cletus. “In any case, it’s no concern of yours. All I want you and these other two gentlemen to do is to reassure the local people that they’re in no danger as long as they keep off the streets and make no effort to leave the town.”
There was a note in his voice that did not invite further argument. With a few additional half-hearted attempts at protest, the three officials of Watershed agreed to make a joint community call over the local phone system with the reassurance and warning he had asked them to deliver—following which, he had them placed under guard in the police headquarters.
It was in fact less than two hours before the first elements of the Brozan Army began to arrive. These were flying transports loaded with troops who quickly ringed the village at a distance of about two hundred yards inside the edge of the forest surrounding the town. Through the rest of the night, other troops, heavy weapons and armored vehicles could be heard arriving. By dawn, Swahili and Cletus concurred in an estimate that close to a division of Brozan soldiery, bristling with everything from belt knives to energy weapons, enclosed Watershed and its two hundred occupying Dorsai troops.
Swahili was in good humor as he handed the field glasses back to Cletus, after making his own survey of the surrounding forest area. They were standing together on top of the communications tower, which was the tallest structure in the town.
“They won’t want to use those heavy weapons indiscriminately, with all these local people on hand,” said Swahili. “That means they’re going to have to come in on foot—probably all around the perimeter at once. I’d guess they’ll attack inside the hour.”
“I don’t think so,” answered Cletus. “I think they’ll send someone in to talk, first.”
He turned out to be correct. The surrounding Brozan troops did nothing for the first three hours of the morning. Then, toward noon, as the cloud-veiled sun over Newton was heating the northern landscape, a command car flying a white flag slowly emerged from the shadows of the forest and entered the town from the highway. It was met at the perimeter of Watershed by soldiers instructed in preparation for this meeting, and it was escorted by them to the police headquarters. There, a small, spare general in his early sixties, flanked by a round man perhaps ten years younger and wearing a colonel’s insignia, dismounted and entered the headquarters building. Cletus received them in the office of the commander of the police detachment.
“I’m here to offer you surrender terms—” The general broke off, staring at Cletus’ shoulder tabs. “I don’t recognize your rank?”
“Marshal,” Cletus answered. “We’ve shaken up our table of organization and our titles on the Dorsai, recently. Marshal Cletus Grahame.”
“Oh? General James Van Dassel. And this is Colonel Morton Offer. As I was saying, we’re here to offer you terms of surrender—”
“If it was a matter of sending surrender terms, you’d hardly have needed to come yourself, would you, General?” Cletus broke in. “I think you know very well that there’s no question of our surrendering.”
“No?” Van Dassel’s eyebrows rose politely. “Maybe I should tell you we’ve got more than a full division, with a full complement of heavy weapons, surrounding you right now.”
“I’m aware of that fact,” said Cletus. “Just as you’re completely aware of the fact that we have something over five thousand civilians here inside our lines.”
“Yes, and we’re holding you strictly accountable for them,” said Van Dassel. “I have to warn you that, if any harm comes to them, the liberal surrender terms we’re about to offer you—”
“Don’t try my patience, General,” interrupted Cletus. “We hold those civilians as hostages against any inimical action by your forces. So let’s not waste any more time on this nonsense about our surrendering. I’ve been expecting you here so that I could inform you of the immediate steps to be taken by the Advanced Associated Communities with regard to Watershed and the mines. As you undoubtedly know, these mines were developed on land purchased from Broza by the Advanced Associated Communities, and Broza’s expropriation has since been ruled illegal by the international court here on Newton—although Broza has seen fit until now to refuse to obey that court’s order returning the mines to the Advanced Associated Communities. Our expeditionary force has already notified the Advanced Associated Communities that the mines are once more under their proper ownership, and I’ve been informed that the first contingents of regular AAC troops will begin to arrive here by 1800 hours, to relieve my command and begin to function as a permanent occupying force…” Cletus paused.
“I’m certainly not going to permit any such occupying forces to move in here,” said Van Dassel, almost mildly.
“Then I’d suggest you check with your political authorities before you make any move to prevent them,” said Cletus. “I repeat, we hold the townspeople here hostage for the good behavior of your troops.”
“Nor am I willing to be blackmailed,” said Van Dassel. “I’ll expect notification of your willingness to surrender before the next two hours are up.”
“And I, as I say,” answered Cletus, “will hold you responsible for any hostile action by your command during our relief by the regular troops from the Advanced Associated Communities.”
On that mutual statement, they parted politely. Van Dassel and his colonel returned to the Brozan troops encircling the village. Cletus called in Swahili and Arvid to have lunch with him.
“But what if he decides to hit us before the relieving troops get here?” asked Swahili.
“He won’t,” said Cletus. “His situation’s bad enough as it is. The Brozan politicians are going to be asking him how he allowed us to take over Watershed and the mines here in the first place. He might survive that question, as far as his career is concerned—but only if there’re no Brozan lives lost. He knows I understand that as well as he does, so Van Dassel won’t take chances.”
In fact, Van Dassel did not make any move. His division surrounding Watershed sat quietly while his deadline for surrender passed, and the relieving forces from the Advanced Associated Communities began to be airlifted in. During the following night, he quietly withdrew his forces. By the following sunrise, as the newly landed AAC soldiery began to clear an area of the forest outside the town and construct a semipermanent camp for themselves, there was not a Brozan soldier to be found within two hundred miles.
“Very well done indeed!” said Walco, enthusiastically, when he arrived at Watershed with the last of his own troops and was ushered in to the office Cletus had taken over in the police headquarters building. “You and your Dorsais have done a marvelous job. You can m
ove out any time now.”
“As soon as we’re paid,” said Cletus.
Walco smiled, thinly. “I thought you might be eager to get your pay,” he said. “So I brought it along with me.”
He lifted a narrow briefcase onto the desk between them, took out a release form, which he passed to Cletus, and then began to remove gold certificates, which he stacked on the desk in front of Cletus.
Cletus ignored the form and watched coolly as the pile of certificates grew. When Walco stopped at last, and looked up at him with another broad smile, Cletus did not smile back. He shook his head.
“That’s less than half of what our agreement called for,” Cletus said.
Walco preserved his smile. “True,” Walco said. “But in the original agreement we envisioned hiring you for a three-month term. As it happens, you’ve been lucky enough to achieve your objective in less than a week and with only a quarter of your expeditionary force. We figured full combat pay for the whole week, however, for the five hundred men you used, and in addition we’re paying you garrison scale not only for the rest of your men for that week but for your whole force for the rest of this month as well—as a sort of bonus.”
Cletus looked at him. Walco’s smile faded.
“I’m sure you remember as well as I do,” said Cletus, coldly, “that the agreement was for two thousand men for three months, full combat pay for everybody during that period—and no pay at all if we weren’t able to deliver the stibnite mines to you. How many men I used to make that recovery, and how long I took, was my concern. I expect full combat pay for three months for my entire command, immediately.”
“That’s out of the question, of course,” said Walco, a little shortly.
“I don’t think so,” said Cletus. “Maybe I should remind you that I told General Van Dassel, the Brozan commander who had us encircled here, that I was holding the civilian population of Watershed hostage for his good behavior. Perhaps I should remind you that I and the men I brought here with me are still holding these people hostage—this time for your good behavior.”