The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Twenty

Moments later, Rukh and the attackers who had been coming directly up the mountainside at the Militia position emerged on the ridge. The shouting and the whistling of the cones had dwindled and now fell silent. The members of the Command gathered rifles and equipment from the fallen enemy and returned to the ridge below. There were no prisoners. Apparently neither the Militia nor the Commands took prisoners unless there was a need to question them. The officer that had escaped when Hal had distracted Child-of-God's attention was not recaptured. Possibly, thought Hal, some of the other Militia might have made good their escape. The Command had neither the time nor the energy to pursue fugitives.

Fourteen of the donkeys had been killed by the cone rifle fire or were so badly injured that they had to be destroyed. Their loads were distributed among packs on the backs of the members of the Command. When they were ready to move again, only Rukh and Child-of-God were not carrying packs.

There were some three hours of light left before sunset. Carrying their dead and wounded, they travelled only an hour and a half before making camp; but this was enough to bring them considerably down and out of the mountain pass and into a foothill valley very like that in which they had been camped when Hal and Jason had first joined them. As soon as they had set up their shelters, a burial service was held in the red light of the sunset for those who had been killed, followed by the first food of the day since they had broken camp that morning.

After the meal, Hal went to help Jason stake out and care for the donkeys that still remained to them. He was busy at this when Rukh appeared.

"I want to talk to you," she said to Hal.

She led him away from the camp, up the bank of the small stream by which they had camped, until they were out of earshot of Jason, and therefore of everyone else in camp. As he followed her, he found himself caught up again by the particular awareness she evoked in him; and her difference from everyone else he had ever known. There was a unique quality about her, and it chimed deeply off the metal of his own inner differences. It was not because he and she were alike, he thought now; because they were not. It was that the common factor of individual uniqueness drew them together - or, at least, drew him powerfully to her.

At last she stopped in a small open space by the stream bank and turned to face him. The twilight was still bright enough so that her face appeared to stand out with a strange three-dimensional solidity. It came to him that, if he only had the ability, he would like to carve her in dark metal as she stood now, facing him.

"Howard," she said, "you and this Command are going to have to come to terms."

"The Command?" he said. "Or Child-of-God?"

"James is the Command," she said, "just as much as I am and every working member of it is. The Command can't survive if those in it don't follow orders. No one gave you any order to attack the Militia position on your own, with only a needle gun that would hardly shoot."

"I know," he said, bleakly. "I learned about orders, and the need for obedience to them, so early that I can't remember not knowing it. But the same man who taught me those things also taught me that, when necessary, you do what needs to be done."

"But what made you think you'd have a chance of doing anything, armed like that, and alone?"

"I've told you about myself, how I was raised," he answered. He hesitated, but it needed to be said. "I never fired at a living person in my life before today. But you have to face something, you and the Command. I'm probably better trained for something like we've just been through than anyone here, except you or Child-of-God."

He stopped. She said nothing, only watched him. He saw the black-clad soldiers again in his mind's eye - laughing and firing down on the lower ridge.

"I was operating by reflex, most of the way," he said. "But I didn't try anything I didn't know I could do."

Surprisingly, she nodded.

"All right," she said. "But tell me - how did you feel when it was all over? How do you feel now?"

"Sick," he said, bluntly. "I was numb for a while, after. But now I just feel sick - sick and exhausted. I'd like to go to bed and sleep for a month."

"We'd all like sleep," she said. "But we don't feel the sort of sickness you feel - any of us, except you. Have you asked your friend Jason how he feels?"

"No," he said.

She looked at him silently for a long moment.

"I killed my first enemy when I was thirteen," she said. "I was with my father's Command when it was wiped out by the Militia. I got away, the way that officer got away from you today. You've never been through that sort of thing. We have. Combat skills alone don't put you above anyone in this camp."

He looked down at her, feeling strangely adrift in the universe. She should be carved, he thought, not in metal, but in some dark, eternal rock - and he suddenly remembered the image of the rock on the hillside with which he had fought the attempt of Bleys Ahrens to control him, in the detention center.

"I suppose you're right," he said, at last, emptily. "Yes… you're right."

"We're what we have to be - first," she said. "After that we're what we are, naturally. James is what he was born into - and what he has to be now. You've got to understand both aspects of him. There's no other way if you're going to fit in as a member of this Command. You've got to understand him both as he is, and as he has to be - to be my lieutenant. Can you do that, Howard?"

"Hal," he corrected her without thinking.

"I think," she said, "for all our sakes, I'd better go on calling you Howard."

"All right." He breathed deeply. There is no anger - there is no sadness - there is no corrosive emotion, he heard Walter the InTeacher saying, once more, in his mind - where there is understanding. "Yes, you're right. I should understand him. So, I will try."

He smiled at her, to reassure her.

"You'll have to succeed," said Rukh. She relaxed. "But, all right, now that that's settled - you did a great deal for us, today. If we hadn't had your attack on the right of the Militia line, neither James' party nor mine might have won through. And if we'd failed, the enemy would only have had to come down at its leisure and kill those of the Command who were still alive. There's that, and the fact you helped get us a number of good cone rifles and supplies. Under the circumstances, I'm going to let you trade that needle gun in for one of the rifles we just got."

He nodded.

"And," she said, "I think it's time you knew as much as the rest of the Command about what we're about to do."

"Jason said to ask you," he said. "I thought it was better to wait until you were ready to tell me, yourself."

"He was right," Rukh said. "Briefly, from the point where we are now, on this side of the mountains, we're committed. Down on the interior plains there's more of us in the Commands than there are Militia available to hold us down. So they settle for watching key points as well as their personnel allows. There's a dozen routes out of these mountains on to the plains. We had a fifty-fifty chance of being challenged, whichever one we took. But now that we've gotten past one of their patrols, we'll be pretty well left alone, as long as they don't know what we're up to."

"Tell me something," said Hal. "I know the lack of heavy technology makes aircraft not easy to come by and expensive as well, out here on the Younger worlds. But surely these Militia must have some spotter planes - light aircraft - that could find us, or at least help find us, from the air, even after we're down on the plains?"

"They do have," said Rukh. "But they haven't many. They're machines made of wood and cloth that can't take very rough weather - that's to begin with. And the jealousy between Militia outfits means that a unit that has a plane isn't too eager to lend it out to another unit. Fuel isn't easy to come by. Finally, in any case, even if they get one or more craft into the air looking for us, the plains are heavily treed; and we do our travelling under cover ninety per cent of the time. The other ten per cent of the time, when there is no cover, we move in the dark hours when we can't be seen. You must have noticed that, yourself."

"I have," said Hal.

"What this all adds up to, as I say," Rukh went on, "is that now, once we've made it past that one patrol, we can expect to be pretty well left alone unless we do something to draw Militia attention to us. Remember, their first responsibility remains to act as government police arm, not only in the country-side but in the cities; and the requirements of the cities in that area draw off most of their personnel."

"All right," said Hal. "I believe you. What's the Command up to, then? You were just going to tell me."

She hesitated.

"There's a certain limit to how much information I can give you, even now," she said, frankly. "The identity of our target, for example, has only been known to a few - "

"On the way to your camp where I first met you," he said, "I heard Hilary and Jason saying something about a Core Tap power plant."

She shook her head, a little wearily.

"I remember now," she said. "Jason reported you overhearing that. The point is, Jason himself shouldn't have known. Hilary's different, but Jason… well, as long as you know that much you might as well hear all the rest of it."

She took a deep breath.

"We Commands," she said, "are only the spearheads of opposition to those controlled by the Others. We'll be experimenting with the makings we've collected. We'll practice making fulminating mercury out of it; then when we've got the technique worked out, we'll pass the information along to sympathizers like Hilary, who'll make more fulminating mercury with which we'll later fuse and explode the fertilizer. A kilogram of that will set off tons of oil-soaked nitrate fertilizer. We hope to collect the fertilizer itself from a farming area storage plant we'll be raiding on the plains; and it should be enough to destroy the Core Tap the Others are using to power the construction area for interstellar ships on this North Continent."

"Won't any fertilizer storage plant be in the heart of a town?" Hal asked.

"Not quite in the heart of," she answered. "But definitely in town limits. As a distraction, at the same time we attack the plant we'll rob a metals bank in the same town. Our people can use any metal we can get away with, if we can just smuggle it back through the mountains to the coast; but the bank raid's still only a cover operation for the fertilizer raid, not vice-versa. After we've got the fertilizer, we'll set fire to the storage area, and hope the destruction will hide the fact we've taken some of their supply."

"I see," said Hal, the back of his mind at work with the necessary tactics of such an operation.

"The local Militia unit," said Rukh, "will only chase us until we're out of their district - unless they suspect what we've really been after. If they do that, they may guess we're up to something bigger than a metals' robbery; in which case they'll put out the word and all the Militia Districts will be actively hunting us instead of just the one with the fertilizer plant. Which may make collecting our explosive in its finished form a little difficult."

"I can see that," he said, quietly.

"But, with a lot of luck, we'll blow up and block the shaft of the Core Tap, then outrun the alarm that'll be raised for us after that, and make it back into the mountains with enough of us still alive to carry on as a separate Command. But if our luck's anything less than good, we won't make it back to the mountains; and if anything goes wrong, we'll be wiped out and fail to wreck the Core Tap."

"Don't your people in this part of the continent depend on the power from that Tap to farm and live?"

"Yes." She looked him in the eye. "But so do the Others depend on it for a spaceship fitting-yard, the only one in this northern hemisphere. If we blow it, they'll have to switch all their plans to use the one on South Continent - which is smaller and logistically less practical."

"You're paying a very high price just to put a spoke in their wheels, aren't you?" he asked.

"All prices are high," she said.

The light that had lingered in the sky was going swiftly, now. Over them, a full moon had been above the horizon for a couple of hours already; but in the brighter sky it had been hardly noticeable. Now, the first breath of a night wind moved about them, chilling them lightly. In the dimness Rukh's face was still perfectly visible, but remote, as if the oncoming dark had emphasized her isolation, not only from him but from everyone else in the universe. Deeply moved, suddenly, for reasons he could not explain to himself, on impulse he put a hand on each of her shoulders and bent forward to look down closely into her face. For a second their eyes were only inches apart, and unthinkingly, his arms went around her and he kissed her.

For a split-second he felt her shock and surprise, then a fierce response came, pressing her against him. But a second later she had put her hands on his upper arms and pushed him back from her with a strength that startled him.

She let go of him. In the near-darkness they looked at each other.

"Who are you?" she said, in a hard voice, so low he could hardly hear her.

"You know who I am," he answered. "I've told you."

"No," she spoke in that same low voice, staring at him, "you're more than that."

"If I am," he said - they were like two people trapped by a spell - "I don't know it."

"You know it."

She stared at him for a moment more.

"No," she said, at last, "you really don't know it, do you?"

She stepped back, away from him.

"I can't belong to anyone," she said; and her voice seemed to come almost from a remote distance. "I'm a Warrior of the Lord."

He could think of nothing to say.

"You don't understand?" she said, at last.

He shook his head.

"I'm one of the Elect. Like James," she said. "Don't you know what that means?"

"One of my tutors was an Elect - originally," he said, slowly. "I understand. It means far more than that. It means you're certain of Heaven."

"It means you've been chosen by God. I do what I must, not what I want." Her face was all but lost now in the dimness; and her voice softened. "Forgive me, Hal."

"For what?" he said.

"For whatever I did."

"You didn't do anything." His voice roughened. "It's me."

"Perhaps," she said. "But it's also me. Only - as long as I have the responsibility of this Command, I can't have anything else."

"Yes," he said.

She reached out and touched his forearm. He could feel the pressure of her fingers and he imagined that he could feel the warmth of her hand, even through the rough thickness of his shirt sleeve.

"Come along," she said. "We still have to talk to James, you and I."

"All right," he answered. She turned and they went back through the woods, close together but careful not to touch each other.

They found Child in his own single-person shelter near the center of the camp. He was apparently just ready to go to bed; and in the light of the lamp hanging from the main rib of the shelter his face looked deeply lined and much older than Hal had seen it appear, before. At their appearance in the entrance, he got up from the sleeping sack he was spreading out.

"I'll come," he said.

He stepped out of the shelter and they backed away to let him emerge. Outside, the pinned-back flap of the entrance spilled just enough light into the night so that they could see each other's faces without making them out in any detail.

"James," said Rukh. "I've talked to Howard, and I think he understands now what we're up against, out here."

Child-of-God looked at Hal, but said nothing. Remembering his promise to try to understand the older man, Hal fought back the instinct to bristle that came at the sight of the dark shadow pools that hid the other's eyes, turning in his direction.

"Also, since he's to be credited with helping us gain a number of cone rifles in good condition, I've promised him one of them."

Child-of-God nodded.

"And I've told him in full what our plans are for the next few weeks."

"Thou art in command," Child said. He had turned to face her as she spoke of the rifles. Now the blur that was his face swung back to Hal. "Howard, I am thy officer. From now on, wilt thou obey?"

"Yes," said Hal.

He was bone-weary. The other two must be, also. They said nothing more. He looked from Rukh to Child. They stood at three points of a triangle with space between them.

"If that's all, then," said Hal. "I'll be getting back to my shelter. Good night."

"Good night," said Rukh, from where she stood.

"We are in God's hands," said Child, unmoving.

Hal turned and went. There was no community fire that night, and once he turned his back to the light the camp was lost in darkness. But it was always laid out the same pattern; and as he moved into the darkness his eyes began to adjust until the moonlight was enough to show him the way. He got back to his shelter and found it with the hanging lamp within on its dimmest setting - a glowworm gleam barely illuminating the cold, curving walls of the shelter, once he was inside.

In his bedsack, Jason slept heavily. Hal undressed in silence, turned off the lamp and crawled into his own sack. He lay on his back staring up into the darkness, trapped between sleep and waking. In his mind's eye he replayed the climb up the chimney, his reconnaissance of the Militia position. He saw again the Militiaman in the first nest being slapped on the back by his comrade, and laughing. He pressed the firing button of the needle gun and saw the three men fall. He threw the rigged cone rifles into the enemy nests. He watched the rifle of Child come around to point at the Militia officer, and again he knocked it aside…

He saw Rukh, turning to face him in the twilight…

He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to sleep, but for once his mind and body would not obey. He lay there, and the ghosts of three old men came out of his memory and stood around him in the darkness.

"It was his first time," Malachi said. "He needed her."

"No," said Walter the InTeacher, "our deaths were his first time. And there was no one there for him then."

"When we were killed, it wasn't like this," said Malachi. "This time it was his doing. If he's not to go down and down from here until he drowns, he needs help."

"She cannot help him," said Obadiah. "She is at God's will, herself."

"He'll survive," said Walter. It was one of those rare occasions when the Exotic was the hardest of the three. "He'll survive without anyone if he has to, without anything. That part of him was in my care; and I promise you he will survive this, and worse."

"Unless thou art wrong," said Obadiah, harshly.

"Unless is not permitted," said Walter, softly. "Hal, you're not sleeping only because you're choosing not to sleep. All things, even this, are subject to the mind. What can't be mended has to be put aside until some time when it can, if ever. What did I teach you? Choice is the one thing that can never be taken from you, right down to the moment of the ultimate choice of death. So, if you want to lie awake and suffer, do so; but face the fact that it's something you're choosing to do, not something over which you've got no control."

Hal opened his eyes and made himself breathe out deeply; and found that he was exhaling through teeth clamped tightly together. He made his jaw muscles relax, but still he lay, staring up into darkness.

"I can't," he said at last, aloud.

"You can," said the ghost of Walter, calmly. "This, and more."

It was like trying to unclench a fist held tight so long that it had forgotten any other attitude, coupled with the deep fear of what might happen to the hand, once it was open, unarmored by tension and bone. But at last the knot within him unwound. The walls of the small, close room he had come to occupy in his mind fell apart, and the universe opened up around him once more.

He slept.