But they could not have been informed ahead of time; not only because of the unlikelihood of anyone connected with Rukh's Command in this effort being a traitor, but because if the Militia had known, they would of course have been set up around the sites of both raids. It would have been far easier to take the members of the Command that way than to pursue them into the foothills.
The only possible conclusion was that they had been on standby—and that the driver had been correct. They had been on standby for the single purpose of capturing Hal; and only one man could set such a large effort in motion for that purpose. Bleys Ahrens must now be sure that he was on Harmony. The tall Other Man must have seen to it that the Militia, planet wide, had been made acquainted with Hal's face; and the Militia officer called Barbage must have recognized Hal and reported seeing him after he had escaped following the ambush of the Command in the pass.
Now Rukh and the rest were being seriously hunted. Because of him. What it amounted to, in the end, was that what the driver had shouted after him had been no more than the literal truth.
Chapter Twenty-five
Drawing lines with a stick in the dirt at his feet to echo the estimated paths of travel of the teams, and the Militia truck units in pursuit of them, Hal came to the conclusion that at his best possible speed he could reach the rendezvous only after the rest had arrived there. But that would still be before the Militia would be dangerously close. He put the viewer back into his pack, erased the lines he had drawn in the earth, and took both a line of sight and a compass heading on the position of the rendezvous, ahead of him in the foothills below.
He began his journey.
He had come a long way back toward good general physical condition in his time with the Command; but he was still not in training for what he might once have done in the way of covering the ground, even back as a fifteen-year-old on Earth. Then, even laden with pack and weapon, he might have chosen to run the whole distance—not at any great speed, but at a steady jog that would have eaten up the kilometers between him and his destination.
As it was, he started out at a fast, smooth walk that was the next best way of covering ground in a hurry. He had had little sleep the day before and he had been up all night. The first two kilometers were work; but by the end of that time his body had warmed to the effort and his mind had moved into the necessary state of mild trance in which he could, if necessary, continue moving until he dropped without really taking conscious note of his fatigue.
This state once achieved, he effectively abandoned the effort of his travel to the automatic machinery of his body and let his mind go off on its own concerns.
Primary among these now was the fact that his presence in the Command was dangerous to it and its members. Treading on the heels of that fact was that Bleys had now located him, and was clearly ready to go to large efforts to lay hands on him. The best assumption from this was that Bleys, at least—and probably the Other Men and Women as a whole—had concluded that he could be dangerous to them. The effort made to find him on Coby might have indicated only something as small as curiosity on Bleys' part. But what was happening now seemed to indicate more than that.
He was conscious of a feeling of being rushed. He had gone to Coby only to hide out until he was grown enough to protect himself; and until he had a chance to make up his mind as to the specifics of what he wanted to do—with regard to the Others, and to his own life. Now, they were threatening to lay their hands on him and he still did not know how he should fight them, let alone conquer them. His conscience stirred and accused him of letting time slip by these four years, of living in a childish illusion of unlimited time available, until it was too late to decide what had needed to be done from the beginning.
The territory he was passing through was open, for the most part, and his speed was undiminished by the need to go around natural obstacles in his path. From time to time he either took advantage of an open space that gave him a view of the land lower down, or climbed a tree that would offer the same prospect. On his first survey of this kind, he had seen only one of the three Militia vehicle columns out in plain view on a Way. The other two he had to search for; but eventually, he found their vehicles parked and the troops inside them presumably on foot, already penetrating into the hills.
The column that had been still in motion on the Way when he looked the first time had been the column furthest forward, the one that had obviously been intended to cut into the foothills ahead of the fleeing Command. At his second look, this column also had parked, at a point short of being level with the rendezvous; and the Militia in it had taken to the woods. The point from which they had done so reassured him that he would reach the rendezvous, himself, at least a couple of hours before they would be far enough into the wood to cross a trail left by any of the teams on their way there. However, any trails they did cross would be impossible to miss. It was not possible to run donkey trains through an open forest without making it clear even to an untrained eye that they had passed.
He was tempted to step up his pace. But his teaching had been to look ahead in instances like this; and it was plain that merely reaching the Command would not mark the end to his working day. He kept, therefore, to the same steady walk, and let his mind go back to the problem of Bleys' pursuit of him and the question of what his own actions should be under the circumstances.
He was still working with this problem when he finally walked into the temporary camp at the rendezvous site. The day had gone while he had been travelling, and there was no more than a couple of hours of sunlight left. He had been holding fatigue at bay until this moment; but the sight of the tents already set up, the sounds of evening activity and the cooking smells that had gone before to draw him into the camp made him suddenly aware of the weariness in his legs and body.
"Howard!" called Joralmon, spotting him as he walked in. "We were beginning to worry about you!"
Joralmon got to his feet from the cone rifle he had disassembled and spread out before his tent on a cloth for cleaning. He came toward Hal, followed by everyone else close enough to hear the words, and free enough to break off what they were doing.
Hal waved them aside.
"Where's Rukh?" he asked. "I need to talk to her."
Hands pointed. Hal went on toward a tent at the far end of the camp, the others falling back as he turned from them, and paused just outside its closed front flap.
"Rukh?" he called. "It's Howard. I've got to talk to you."
"Come in, Howard."
Her voice was clear and strong from within the tent and he pushed his way in to find her seated on a camp chair at a temporary table that had a map spread out upon it, and Child sitting opposite her. They both looked up at him.
"What is it?" asked Rukh, her eyes on his face.
"Three units of Militia are after us," he said. "I saw them from higher up, after I dropped off the driver of our truck at his cabin."
He told them what he had seen, and what he had estimated.
"Two hours before they cut our trail?" Rukh frowned. "But how close are they likely to cut it? How much time from then until they find us?"
"No telling," said Hal.
He leaned over the map, which showed the foothills beyond Masenvale and pointed with his finger as he talked. "Figuring their travel time through the woods to give them a maximum distance by the time it took me to get here, I drew an arc to cut the trails of our teams, getting here, and the arc cut the closest of the trails almost right here at the rendezvous. But that's looking at the best they'd be able to do. Where they'll really cut one of them depends on the angle to our line of travel, on which they came into the woods. Straight in, at a ninety-degree angle to the Way where they left their vehicles parked, it'd take them two hours to cross one of our trails. At more than ninety degrees, it'd take longer, but then they'd be headed back the way they came, which isn't likely. At a more acute angle, it'd also take them longer, to reach the trail—but they could strike it right on top of us
, here."
Rukh picked up a ruler, set its markings to the scale of the map before them, and measured the distance between the points Hal had indicated.
"Perhaps a third more time to cross our trail at this point here," she said, thoughtfully, while Child bent his harsh visage above her moving hands. "A maximum of forty minutes beyond the two hours you figured, Howard. It'll take us at least half an hour to break camp and get on our way; and we won't be ready to travel properly, at that. But there's no choice."
She looked across at Child.
"James?"
He shook his head.
"No choice." He looked grimly at Hal. "Thou hast done well, Howard."
"I just happened to be in the right spot at the right time," Hal said. "If I hadn't driven that truck driver to his cabin, I'd never have had a chance to see what was coming after us."
"Then we move," said Rukh. "James, would you get people started?"
Child rose and went out.
"Howard," said Rukh, "go with him and help."
He stood where he was.
"If I could mention something—" he began.
"Of course." Her dark eyes considered him. "You've been coming as fast as you could all day to bring word to us. Forget trying to help. Get half an hour's rest while the packing's going on. Sleep some if you can."
"That wasn't what I was going to say." He rested one hand on the back of Child's empty camp chair. Suddenly his weariness was overwhelming. "I ought to tell you we ran into a road block on our way to the gathering point. It had to have been set up ahead of time. The man who drove us was right in what he said back at the Mohler-Beni farm, when he said I was a danger to you all. The road block had been set up to look for me. That's also why these three units were waiting and could be right on top of us after the raid."
She nodded, still looking at him.
"The point is," he said, with effort, "the man was right. As long as I'm with you, I'm drawing all their attention to this Command. Maybe if I leave, I can draw them off."
"Do you know why they'd be hunting you?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"I'm not sure. All I know about the Others, directly, is what I told you of what happened at my home. I'm guessing it's Bleys Ahrens, their Vice-Chairman—the tall one of the two that were there that day my tutors were killed—who wants me. But exactly why is another question. At any rate, I think I ought to leave."
"You heard James at the farm," Rukh said, quietly, "when that man suggested it. The Commands have never abandoned their own people."
"Am I really one of those people?"
She looked at him.
"You've lived and fought with us. What else?" she said. "But if you want a further reason, think a moment. If they want you badly enough to mobilize the Militia across a countryside, do you think they'd simply let go the Command you were associated with—particularly when that Command had just pulled off two raids within their city limits?"
He did not answer.
"Go rest, Howard," she said.
He shook his head.
"I'm all right. I'll just get something to eat."
"Get Tallah to give you something you can carry along and eat as we move," Rukh said. "Then lie down. That's an order."
"All right," he said.
He got bread and bean-paste from Tallah, ate part of it, rewrapped the rest, put it in his pack and lay down. It seemed that he barely blinked his eyes before he was being shaken awake. He looked up groggily into the face of Jason.
"Howard—time to move," Jason said. He offered Hal a steaming cup. "Here, the last of the coffee."
Hal drank the hot liquid gratefully. It was not really coffee, even as Harmony knew it, but a variform of a native plant that had been tamed to make a brewable hot drink. But the sour gray liquid contained a certain amount of chemical stimulants; and by the time he was on his feet with his pack on his back and his rifle in hand, he was ready to move.
The Command travelled as rapidly as the terrain and the donkeys would permit, in the two hours that remained to them before darkness. When the ground became obscure under their feet, Rukh called a halt; and Hal went forward from his position with the donkeys at the tail of the Command to talk to her.
"Going to camp?" he asked.
"Yes," her voice came out of the blur that was her face, not more than arm's length from him.
He looked up at the sky, which was overcast, but lightly.
"The moon'll be up later on," he said. "And the clouds may blow clear from time to time. If we could keep moving we could put a much safer distance between us and that Militia unit. In the daytime, without donkeys to slow them up, they'll begin to gain on us."
"We'll be out of their district by noon tomorrow," said Rukh. "No Militia unit ever follows beyond its own district limits unless it's in a running fight. We ought to be able to stay ahead of them until we're in the next district; and while they get a unit after us from the local Militia there, we ought to be able to lose them."
"Maybe," he said. "In any case, if you want to keep going, there's a way."
She did not say anything for a second. Then—
"What?"
"There're ways of reading the ground even when it's as dark as this," he said. "It was part of my training; and I think I can still do it. We could rope the Command together, in effect, with me in the lead; and if the sky clears and the moon comes out, we can keep going the rest of the night. If we stop, and spread out to sleep, we won't get going again until dawn."
There was silence from her still figure and invisible face.
"Even with you to lead," she said, "how's that going to keep the rest of us from stumbling over ground we can't see?"
"At the very least," he said, "I can steer us around things in our way and pick out the more level surfaces to walk on. It works, believe me. I've done it back on Earth."
Another short silence.
"All right," she said. "How do you want the Command roped together?"
It took a full hour to get everyone lined up and connected. Hal made one last tour up and down the line, reminding each one he passed to keep slack in the line connected to the person just ahead. Then he took the lead and started out.
There was nothing in what he was doing that ordinary training could not have developed in anyone. His ability to see his way was based on a number of things, chief of which was the fact that even woods-wise people like the members of the Command instinctively raised their gaze to the relative brightness of even a heavily overcast sky when going through the night-dark outdoors, and lost part of the perception they could have maintained by keeping their eyes adjusted to the darkness at ground level.
What he made use of beyond this was a near-hypnotic concentration of attention on the ground just ahead, reinforced by a similar concentration of his ordinary powers of scent, hearing and balance, to read as much as possible of what was underfoot with these senses as well. All this had been honed by field practice during those early years of his. In fact the largest part of his skill in this was owed to that practice alone. The one danger in what he did was that of running into something above ground level that his downcast eyes had not seen; and to protect himself against this he carried a staff vertically before him, its upper end above his head and its lower end at mid-calf height.
In the beginning of that night trek, the progress of the Command was painfully slow. In spite of his warnings, individuals along the line allowed the rope between them and the person ahead to tighten, with the result that when either of them stumbled or fell, the other was occasionally dragged down as well; and the progress of the whole line halted. But gradually, as with any other physical activity, the members of the Command began to pick up the tricks that made this sort of night movement practical. The falls and the inadvertent stops came less often; and their speed increased. The forward movement of the Command became less like a drunken snake-dance through the dark, and more of a purposeful travelling.
But their spe
ed of straight-line movement was still nothing to be proud of. Back on Earth, practicing this technique with Malachi in the lead and three trained helpers, plus equally trained pack animals, Hal and the others had made almost as good time as they might in broad daylight. Here, the donkeys adjusted to the means of travel faster than the humans in the line, not being cursed with human imaginations and the tendency to guess. But overall, improvement was slow. Rukh, directly behind Hal, was one of the quickest to learn the necessity for a slack line, but there were others, like the woman behind her, who continually forgot.
Hal himself passed quickly into a state of concentration that effectively blanked out everything but his immediate task; and as the evening wore on, the intermediary of his conscious mind cut out entirely. He moved through a maze of perception, navigating through the dark without questioning the impulses that sent him one way or another; almost unconscious of the constant stream of warnings and information about the ground under his feet that he uttered as he went, for the benefit of Rukh behind him, so that there was a steady feed of verbal signals being passed rearward from person to person in the line.
With the waxing of the night hours, the thin new moon rose behind the clouds and the night winds freshened. Breaks in the cloud cover began to come more often; and, even when they did not break, the clouds were thinner, permitting more light to reach the ground. To these changes, Hal paid no conscious attention. He was not even aware of his own ground speed picking up and the progress of the line behind him improving as the illumination of the earth before him improved. He was long past ordinary fatigue, into adrenaline overdrive. He had forgotten his body entirely; and nearly forgotten his senses, as direct instruments of that body and mind. He lived in a universe of varying shades of gray and black; and he swam through that universe, forgetting everything else. Time, the goal toward which he progressed, the reason for progressing, all these were lost to him. Even the thought of those things he turned aside from, as physical obstacles, was forgotten. He turned right and left as he went without understanding why he turned; knowing only that this was his purpose—to move in this careful and intricate fashion, indefinitely.
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