by Greg Bear
Five older men and several women, heads wrapped in cloth against the smoke, pushed their belongings on a makeshift cart through brick and xyla rubble.
I hid in the half open doorway of a hollowed-out building to avoid a straggling line of young men and women, not knowing whether they were soldiers; they crossed along an east-west street, shouting encouragement to each other. A few carried electric lanterns.
By the glare of one lantern, I recognized a face—Keo, one of Lenk's assistants, following close on the line. I called out his name and he jerked around, then raised the lantern and spotted me in the doorway.
“Olmy! Fate's breath,” he said. “You're still alive! We were sure you'd all have been killed when the attack started.” He shouted at the retreating backs of the young men and women, “Hold on!” They turned and clustered around us, the whites of their eyes showing like startled deer, breathless, at once frightened and cocksure.
“What's happening?” I asked.
“Where's Salap?” he asked in return.
I did not want to waste time by explaining. “Is the town taken?”
Some of the young people shook their heads. Several laughed nervously, milling like dogs. I counted heads and sexes: eight men, five women.
“Not yet,” Keo said. “There's an action up around Sun Road. Lots of resistance. Beys was back at sea—missed our ships—but swung around to the northern side of the peninsula, landed troops. They're moving back into the town now, to replace the soldiers who went to the western peninsula. A diversion. Lenk's auxiliaries—we're all auxiliaries now—grounded a small ship there and burned some houses and buildings. I didn't know about this—” Keo's chest jerked. He was hyperventilating in his nervousness. “Randall told us ... before he left, and ... about you...”
“Is Shirla with Lenk?”
Keo's face fell. “The woman? No,” he said. “She and Randall were taken by Brion's police two days ago, just after you and Salap left with Brion.”
“We have to go,” shouted one of the young men, an apprentice sailor from one of the schooners to judge from his clothing. He confronted me. “Whoever you are, we can't stay here clacking teeth—we have to report if there are any troops coming around to the east of town.”
“That's true,” Keo said, clearly uncomfortably with leadership.
“He's the Hexamon man,” a young woman said, peering at me curiously. Dirt and sweat streaked her lean face and she seemed stupid with fear and excitement. “He was on Khoragos. He's the one they've been talking about.”
I hardly heard all this. My thoughts raced, trying to think of where they might have taken Shirla. She could still be back at the lake, hidden in the buildings within the old seed-mother palace.
“I've been out in the harbor, and there's no action to the east—not yet,” I said. “But there could be a contingent of troops back at the lake. Beys might use them to pinch us all ... Where are his steamships?”
“North of the peninsula, the last we saw.”
Clearly, Beys's most likely plan—the best plan under the circumstances—sketched itself in my head. He had landed the soldiers traveling with the ships in the north, perhaps two companies of well-trained men and women, a fair force under the circumstances, but not enough to have much impact. Troops at the old palace could number in the hundreds. If the town had been lightly defended—concentrating the troops in Beys's ships and around Brion's quarters—then that was likely all Beys had to work with, a few hundred troops. The rest would be working Tasman and Elizabeth's Land.
“How many soldiers does Lenk have?”
Keo stared at me, uncertain, sweating in the lantern light. Stars poked through drifting patches of smoke. The shelling had stopped for now. “You're a soldier from the Hexamon,” he said. “Who are you for?”
“Not for Brion,” I said. “I need to find Shirla ... and you need to secure the town. As you said, I'm a soldier—I have a lot better training than Lenk, and probably better training than Beys.”
I could almost see the outline of Keo's thoughts. He had been put in command of these young men, but he had no military education—few coming to Lamarckia had. They would make a haphazard force at best. I had no idea of the level of their strategic planning—clearly, Beys had been unprepared for anything like this, but he was likely to put together an effective defense soon. Keo was smart enough to see this.
“Lenk didn't confide in us until the last,” he said. “We have maybe six hundred volunteers.”
“Seven or eight companies,” I said.
“Lenk has them ordered differently, I think.”
“Who's his general?”
“He designed the operation. Fassid helped.”
I shook my head in disgust. Keo started to defend Lenk's expertise, but I cut him off. “You have to set up a strong defense in the eastern part of town. At least two hundred troops. Beys will almost certainly deploy the forces at the lake. Do you have a radio?”
“Yes,” Keo said. One of his men, little more than a boy actually, lifted a small box. “Not a lot of range, unfortunately.”
The young men and women clustered around us, no longer protesting. I felt a queasy exhilaration.
Here, among amateurs, going up against a butcher who was sly at best, I could be useful. Lenk's soldiers occupied the cape and headland in strength, Keo said. To the north and west, positions had not yet been consolidated.
“I need five of these good soldiers,” I said. “We should split into two groups.”
“I have a map ... of sorts,” Keo said, lifting a cloth satchel and pulling out a small, folded piece of paper. He spread it out in the lantern light. It was an original sketch in pencil and ink, and supplied more detail to what I had seen from the harbor, in particular charting the roads through the silva from Naderville to the lake. The Citadel area was not shown.
“We can use it. You take one group and keep watch on the eastern edge of the town. I'll take my five, and we'll reconnoiter the silva between Naderville and the lake. For now, tell Lenk's commanders—or Lenk himself, whoever's in charge—that he needs to post at least one hundred well-armed men to meet you at the edge of town.”
“I don't think we have one hundred well-armed men,” Keo said. “Not that we can spare.”
What had seemed a major coup in the beginning was looking more and more uncertain. No masters, only children. “Don't tell Beys that,” I said. I picked the five who seemed most fit and enthusiastic, and Keo's group and mine ran in two lines along the street, until we came to a clearing beyond the last of the houses. Beyond lay the cliff edge of the thicket silva and the dark holes of two tunnel roads.
“Good luck,” Keo told me.
I felt incredibly alive, and very, very stupid.
28
We made our way down Sanger Road, through a thicket tunnel. Sanger was one of two parallel roads the map showed going to the lake. The tunnel lights had gone out; we probed ahead with a lantern. I expected to meet a contingent of Beys's troops at any time.
The nighttime thicket was still. We walked down the tunnel road for thirty minutes, then emerged under a brilliant star-rich sky, the double oxbow rising in the east. A few lights flickered ahead. We were in a broad clearing, once perhaps a farm area, now barren fields. The road crossed the field toward another thicket, perhaps a kilometer off, and entered another tunnel at that point. I guessed the Citadel lay about two kilometers beyond.
I did not know the palace grounds thoroughly; we could easily get lost.
A small young woman named Meg, with a smooth dark face and wide eyes, kept close to me. She carried one of the three guns Keo had been willing to spare. “This is going to be rough, isn't it?” she asked.
“Probably,” I said.
“Do you know where we're going?”
“I've been there.”
“And you say there are a lot of soldiers.”
“Meg worries for us all,” said the oldest male, a tall, stooped fellow of twenty-five named Broch.
/> “There are a lot of soldiers,” I said. “But we're going to avoid them. We don't want to fight; we want to learn things.”
“How?” Meg asked, licking her lips and staring ahead of us, at the wall of the next stretch of thicket silva.
“We're going to hide between the tunnel openings. That is, the five of you are. I may take one with me. I'm going on to the old palace. Soldiers will likely come through one or both of the two tunnels. You can see both roads from where you'll hide. If they appear before I get back, we send the fastest runner—”
“That's Youk,” said Meg, pointing to a small, slender woman with fawnlike features.
“Youk,” I said, “You run ahead of the soldiers, and report to Ser Keo. He'll give warning with his radio.”
“What if they use trucks?” Youk asked.
“Then we'll change our plans. But the troops will probably be on foot.” From what I had seen, Beys had concentrated all their vaunted technology where it would be highly visible. I doubted that they had many more transports or tractors than Calcutta.
“What will you do?”
“I'm going to the old palace,” I said again. “The Citadel.”
“You keep saying ‘palace'... What kind of palace?” Rashnara, the shortest male, asked.
“It's where Brion lives,” I said. No need to explain further.
Closing on the opening to the next tunnel, we cut away from the road catercorner toward the thicket wall between the north and south openings. I stumbled once and Youk helped me to my feet. The ground was hard and chalky and had not been plowed for months, perhaps a year. We hugged the thicket, backs against the smooth outer trunks of the arborids that intertwined to make a flat dark wall.
“Why did Ser Keo turn us over to you?” Meg asked.
“We're not supposed to ask that kind of question,” Broch said.
“It's a good question,” I said. “Always ask questions.”
“Why, then?” Meg asked. We were about fifty meters from either road. We could see the pavement of each road clearly enough, thin lines of lighter gray against the gray-black soil.
“A friend of ours told him I had been a member of Hexamon Defense once.”
Broch sniffed in the dark. “Are you that old?”
“No,” I said. “Not so very old.” Not much older than these kids, I reminded myself.
“So what does that mean?” Meg persisted.
I saw something block out stars and looked up. Balloons floated across the night sky. One dropped its trailing tentacles onto the field, scraping them across the dirt barely twenty meters from where we squatted.
“What is that?” asked Olivos, a short, bristle-headed man with a brushy beard. Youk stood to run out and investigate, but I grabbed her arm.
“It's from the interior,” I said. “A new kind of transporter.” I stood and looked down at them. “Ser Broch, you have a gun. Will you come with me?”
“You're asking, not ordering?” Broch said, incredulous.
“Yes, because what I have to do is partly personal.”
Broch stood. “You worked in Way Defense?” he asked.
“A long time ago.”
“I'll come,” he said.
“If we're not back in two hours, you can assume we've been captured,” I told the rest. “Meg, you're in charge.”
“Thank you, I think,” Meg said. “Does anybody have a watch?”
Nobody did.
“Count, then,” I said.
Broch and I walked north to the Godwin road and stood in the middle of the stone slab and gravel pavement, staring into the tunnel's impenetrable darkness. We had no lantern. The tunnel was quiet, except for the sound of dripping water. “Let's go,” I said.
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
“See what the troops are up to, and rescue a friend,” I said. “If they're still there at all.”
“You think they might have come by water?”
“Not if they're smart. The harbor belongs to Lenk for the time being.” It seemed likely Beys would try to retake the harbor. I hoped we could be back before that happened. “We're not going to talk while we're in the tunnel, okay?”
Broch nodded.
“Brush your hand against the left side. I'll stay to the right.”
We walked for fifty meters in complete darkness. The air was getting thick and smelled stale. Broch coughed and apologized in a whisper. Whiffs of an ammonia-like smell, tangy and very unpleasant, met us farther down the tunnel. Sounds from above filtered down to us: rustling, shifting. With some relief, we came to the end of the tunnel and stood in a field. A few lights gleamed across the field, electric lanterns bobbing to and fro, and we heard subdued voices.
From the west, more explosions and the distant pop of cannon. I guessed we were at the northern end of the lake, west of the Citadel. I could barely make out the black shapes of buildings. A light came on in a distant window. A voice called out, and the light was quickly extinguished.
“Brion's soldiers,” Broch whispered, standing close beside me.
“They could be evacuated civilians,” I said. “We don't know yet.”
I doubted anyone would see us if we cut across to the right, where the silva massed again as a solid wall. With a few words and gestures, I made our route clear, and we set out across a flat, empty field that had never been plowed.
“Give me your gun,” I said.
“Why, Ser?”
“Do you want to have to kill someone?”
He handed me the gun. It was a heavy, short-barreled rifle of simple design.
We followed the line of the thicket slowly, trying to keep on our feet over the uneven ground. A shape sprawled across the dirt a few meters in front of us, a black blur in the star-lit darkness. I thought for a moment it was a human body, but it gave off a thick ammonia smell. I bent over it briefly and saw a tangle of limbs, a long cylindrical body, sharp digging barbs around its tail. My neck hairs tingled. It was a dead scion. Nothing had come to pick it up and take it away. This was the smell of death on Lamarckia. The closeness in the tunnel had also been death.
“Fate and Breath,” Broch said. “What is it?”
“A scion,” I said. “It's dead.”
“Why don't cleaners come and get it?”
“Things are changing,” I said. We edged around it. I had little doubt it was one of the thicket's mobile scions, so seldom seen outside the tangle of arborids. The thicket silva, after tens or hundreds of millions of years, was being told to die.
In buildings to our left, we heard footsteps and voices, orders given. Soldiers were getting organized. I heard snatches of conversation. “...We'll get them in a vice at Jalipat...” “They're fools. Blood-thick fools.” “Who's got the squadron radio?”
So these were the troops, comprised of most of the old palace's guards and security. I could not judge how many there were; at least a hundred.
“Form up,” a loud, authoritative female voice said. “West in ten minutes.”
I stopped and Broch bumped into me. “Hear that?” I whispered very softly in his ear. He nodded. “That's what we need to know. Run back and tell the others to report this to Ser Keo.”
“You're not coming with me?” he asked. He was clearly unhappy at the thought of going back alone; unhappy, also, I surmised, at the thought of going back down the strange-smelling tunnel. “I thought you needed me.”
“I needed you for this. It's time,” I said. “You have your duty. I'm going to find my friends.” I handed him the rifle. “Take this with you. I hope I won't need it.”
Broch hesitated for a moment, backed away with arms folded, then dropped them by his sides, turned and walked into the darkness. He skirted the dead scion and I could no longer make him out in the darkness.
Somehow, I had contrived to be alone again. I had always preferred working alone, even in Way Defense. I wondered if one's life history was the result of world-lines collapsing in response to simple force of character. The dil
emma had not been solved in a thousand years of human philosophy.
I walked quietly and quickly between two buildings. A single moon rose and cast some extra light. That was not good. I tried to stay in deeper shadow wherever possible. I had to be within a hundred meters of the old palace complex.
I entered a courtyard through a narrow open corridor. A fountain in the center of the courtyard threw a steady ribbon of water into the air, splashing and chuckling to itself. Staying close to the wall, my feet scuffing lightly on a gravel-covered walkway, I passed a line of doors and darkened windows, through another corridor. A few lights danced in an alley between the courtyard and a wall. I flattened myself against the wall and felt large, smooth round stones: the old palace. The lights—two men gripping lanterns—moved past the entrance to the alley.
If whoever was in charge felt the situation was desperate, and Brion was no longer here, this area might be almost deserted.
In a couple of hours, dawn glow would begin lighting the sky. I followed the curve of the ancient stone wall for fifty or sixty meters before reaching a gate. Three men stood by the gate, talking softly in the darkness. I pitched my voice to just the right volume and tone of concern.
“Excuse me. Don't be alarmed. Ser Frick—”
All three guns instantly pointed at me, and I heard three simultaneous snick-clacks as rounds were chambered.
“I'm one of Brion's guests. I'm not armed. Ser Frick left me in a boat at Naderville.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Olmy,” I said.
“Frick isn't here,” the tallest guard said, a bulky shadow with a gravelly voice.
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“We don't have any instructions about you.”
“Ser Brion told me to come back here on the water, but the boat was destroyed ... I had to walk. It was frightening.”
“You were with Brion?” the gravel-voiced guard asked.
“I've heard about you,” another guard said, and they conferred in whispers for a moment. “You went with Frick and Ser Brion ... didn't you? Where did you go?”
“Up the canal,” I said.
