Bleys tried to focus on the river, as Henry said. The calmness of the flowing water brought him some feeling of peace after watching the Soldier rolling down the slope. Gradually he began to concentrate on its movement, again noticing the half-submerged bits of flotsam on its surface, now occasionally including an entire small tree or a section of dead tree trunk. Perhaps, part of his mind thought idly, there had been some sort of landslide farther up the river; and the debris from it was only now reaching the bridge.
In fact, Bleys now saw there were a number of larger pieces of wood, and even small whole trees, coming downriver at the moment. Unexpectedly, there was a momentary brief, small flash of light from one.
He did not connect this with the sound of a weapon firing from the bridge or the return fire from the advancing Soldiers. Suddenly his mind became more alert as he woke to a suspicion. He reached automatically for the goggles on his forehead, then dropped his hand. There was no telescopic power built into these lenses.
Bleys continued to focus as best he could on the larger floating pieces, as these came closer. His searching was finally justified by the sight of a human face and the thick barrel of a power rifle; both barely above water and among the branches of a fairly good-sized young tree, whose needle-bearing branches spread out on the water’s surface. As he looked, the barrel winked again, and this time he identified the power rifle sound with the wink.
He turned to stare at Henry, who gave his momentary, quick quirk of a smile, with just the upward corners of his lips, that in Henry was what might be as much as a belly laugh from another man.
“A full advance team,” Henry said.
Bleys stared back at the river. Now other large pieces of the floating raw timber were close to the upper side of the bridge itself, and he was able to pick out those that had Soldiers with them, all of them with the barrels of power rifles barely showing above the surface. They were firing from the water up against the underside of the upper section of freeway.
They would be aiming at the bottoms of the power shelters above, where the spaceport-bound trafficway had been pierced.Would these underneath shelter parts be armored? Probably not, Bleys thought. Or, if so, only lightly; to protect against power-gun fire that might carry through the surface of the trafficway and still have energy to expend, coming in at an angle against that part of the fire-shelter out of sight from above.
“Four? Five?” Beside him, Henry was addressing his wrist control pad; and a moment later there came back two small voices, answering separately. “Six in place.” “Seven in place.”
“Ready all,” said Henry.
Bleys’s attention was still on the water and the faces and gun barrels he had discovered among the floating parts of trees. The river was indeed moving much faster than it appeared. The first of those he saw in the water had ceased to shoot and, already had begun to pass from sight under the edge of the bridge’s lower trafficway, as seen from Bleys’s point of view.
Bleys had been holding his breath, waiting for the return fire that should come against them from the fire-shelters above.
“They’re better than shooting-gallery targets, down in the river there,” he muttered.
“No,” Henry said.
In fact, as Bleys strained his eyes to see beyond the bridge to where the water surface again became visible, the trees and parts of trees that were appearing on the other side seemed to show no sign of anyone with them.
After a moment, Bleys identified a particular tree trunk to which he was positive he had seen one of the water-bound Soldiers clinging; and definitely no one was with the floating wood now.
Of course—Henry would have foreseen the fact they would be easy targets in the. water; and he had sent them down the river anyway, knowing that the people in the fire-shelter would not fire back—could not return fire to begin with—because their hastily-thrown-up shelters had only a single opening for their weapons—in front, toward the shore where the approaching Soldier skirmishers were now almost to that point where the trafficway left land and began to travel on the bridge.
“So, Bleys,” Henry said, “you weren’t that far out. We couldn’t tunnel to them or fly through the air, but we did attack from an unexpected quarter—and that’s what you were really thinking of.”
“Those Soldiers who floated down,” Bleys said. “They’re getting off under the bridge?”
“Yes.” Henry nodded. “I’ve got some others of our people there, tending a rope stretched across-river, its ends out of sight among the trees under the bridge, and the bight of the rope just down under the water, out of sight. Another advantage of being here first. The rope will give teams One and Two something to catch hold of and pull themselves to shore on. They’ll be coming out on the far bank; and when they’re all out, they’ll move up to support the attack of teams Six and Seven, who have been waiting in cover, beyond the far end of the bridge.”
Bleys nodded. He felt empty and useless.
Henry’s whole battle plan was clear now. In his mind’s eye, Bleys saw the wet Soldiers from the river gathering, climbing the bank to just underneath the spaceport-to-city trafficway, and waiting. He imagined the Soldiers of teams One and Two waiting out in the trees. Henry was speaking again into his wrist control pad, but Bleys was not really listening.
The overall picture was still oddly unclear. It was as if the transparent shell that had continued to be about Bleys had now also closed around his thoughts, so that they were compressed; and he had only the mental equivalent of tunnel vision. His mind worked as usual when he focused down on some particular segment of their situation; but his customary grasp of a whole range of factors, that he was used to dealing with easily, was not with him.
So strange that he should feel removed and apart this way; while, at the same time, other thoughts were reminding him that he had found he himself could be deadly, with the Militia officer on Harmony and when he had actually killed the Cassidan who had been sent to kill him.
Strangely, there was still something unreal about that moment in which Bleys’s arms and hands had seemed to move of their own will. It was hard to think of the man in the dark as a real and living person. But the Soldier rolling over and over on the ground had been real.
But the present remained unreal. Not like a nightmare so much as a dream. A dream without flavor and color; something he would rather put from him and forget, but could not. At the same time he knew it to be part of reality; and reality stretched ahead along an inevitable path that he had known for a long time—he simply had not known that it would affect him like this, once he was on his way down it.
“—We should be getting back,” Henry was saying…
…Bleys broke free of his thoughts and suddenly was back on the cliff. The scene before him had become utterly quiet. A group of human figures—Soldiers of God only— were standing upright at the near end of the bridge, and another group on the ground beyond its far end, obviously waiting.
Bleys seemed to have fallen out of touch with events and time for a period, at least long enough for the whole business of their winning their way over the bridge to be wound up and concluded.
“Yes,” he said to Henry, automatically answering the last words he remembered hearing. Turning, he followed the older man back off the edge of the cliff, through the trees, into the region where Alpha Centauri B’s reddish morning light now filtered down through the branches above in rays and patches, so that it was easy to see their way without the goggles.
Chapter 36
Bleys had expected the feeling of a transparent shell about his thoughts to clear when he was back with the others and away from the bridge. It did not. He carried it into the limousine again, together with a heaviness that was almost a physical pain, all through him.
The limousine flew on, roughly a meter and a half above the pavement of the passing lane of the deserted trafficway. He did not speak to any of the others, and none of them—Dahno, Toni or Henry, who was now riding with them—spoke to h
im.
They talked amongst themselves in low voices, and so detached was Bleys’s mind that he only heard their talk as low murmurs in his ear. Kaj Menowsky spoke to him once, and he felt the medician’s fingers taking his pulse; but he did not answer, and Kaj did not insist on a response.
From there until some vague point later was lost time. Ideas unconnected with what had passed through Bleys’s mind a moment before followed earlier thoughts in no pattern or sequence. It was a little like moving at random through a completely furnished, ready-to-live-in house, that was empty of other people and also completely unfamiliar; so that he wandered from room to room through unexpected doorways, finding everything different all the time, and no area having any particular importance.
Bleys came out of this state at some unmeasured time later, as the limousine abruptly began to decelerate. He glanced automatically into the viewscreen. There were the other carriers, coming to a stop behind the limousine on what was plainly a service road, running along just outside a six-meter-high wire fence that clearly guarded the edge of the pad.
Bleys started to rise from his chair to leave the limousine, but Henry—seated on one of the movable seats facing him—waved him back down.
Bleys sank back in his seat. Henry turned to Kaj.
“Kaj Menowsky,” he said. “We’re going in now—”
“Why here, particularly?” asked Toni.
Henry glanced at her briefly. “We could go in anywhere. Here, we’re as close to our ship as possible. The point is they know we’re here; they just didn’t know this was where we’d stop and go through the fence. We can’t do that anyway without setting off alarms. It doesn’t matter. Favored’s less than a kilometer from where we are at the moment; though we’ll probably go double that distance, dodging for cover from behind one spaceship to another as we cross the pad.”
“Why should we dodge?” Kaj asked. “Wouldn’t it be faster to go straight?”
Henry explained, “According to Interworld Conventions, each of those ships is officially the territory of the world it belongs to. It would be a violation of sovereignty for the Newtonians to go through them—or even damage them accidentally—in hopes of getting us. So we can use them for cover.”
“I see,” Kaj said.
“Yes,” Henry said. “We’ll start, riding as few vehicles as can carry everybody, but we’ll probably have to abandon them shortly and split up in groups. Our Team leaders and sub-Team leaders have smoke guns, which we’ll use to hide us as we make our run between the ships. We can also use them to hide which group Bleys is with, since it’s him they really want. The rest of us don’t count, except for being in their way. I’m telling you this to give you necessary background. Now, everybody out!”
They followed Henry out through the door on the far side of the limousine, next to the fence. Bleys was last out and, stepping down onto the uneven ground, he stubbed a toe and stumbled slightly. Dahno’s hand caught him by the elbow and steadied him.
Henry and Kaj were suddenly in front of him.
“How are you?” Kaj asked sharply.
“I’ve got a headache, and I haven’t slept for two days,” Bleys said.
“Nothing else?”
“If there was—”
“Never mind all this.” Henry’s voice cut coldly across both of theirs. “Bleys, how much strength have you got? Can you do everything you’d usually do?”
Answering Henry was a different matter.
“I’m probably not in top shape. No.” Bleys said.
“Yes,” Henry said. He turned to Kaj. “Medician, you’re to give Bleys the strongest stimulant you safely can, whatever will keep him as close to peak performance as possible, for the next hour or so.”
Kaj Menowsky’s face altered—only slightly, but the alteration was noticeable.
“No. It would be the worst thing for him right now.”
“If we don’t get him to that spaceship alive,” said Henry, “it won’t matter whether the last medicine he had was the worst thing for him or not. He’ll need to run for his life. He may have to fight for his life. For that he needs strength. All the strength he normally has, and then some.”
“Still—” Kaj was beginning when Henry interrupted him.
“There’s something else,” he said. “If I’m killed or badly wounded before we reach the ship, who’s going to lead my Soldiers? There’s only one other here I’ve trained them to follow without question. Bleys. Leaderless, no one here may reach Favored. If you won’t help Bleys right now, you may have all the lives around you on your conscience.”
“What about Dahno Ahrens?” Kaj asked. “Or Antonia Lu?”
“Not my best sport,” Dahno said lightly. Toni said nothing, but she looked at Kaj and did not need to speak.
“Toni, forgive me,” Henry said. “I don’t doubt that in some ways you’re the next best qualified to lead. But Dahno shares something with Bleys. Because of his size, he’s easy to see. And that’s a help to my Soldiers. It also means he shares Bleys’s disadvantage of being easier to target than the rest of us. But the aim is to get Bleys to the ship alive, even if no one else gets there. We can’t do that and protect Dahno at the same time. But if Dahno’s put out of action, my Soldiers will turn to you.”
He looked at Dahno. “Meanwhile, if Bleys and I go down, it’ll be up to you, Dahno.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Dahno said.
“Medician?” Henry said, for Kaj still had not reached for the small case he had been carrying with him since he stepped into the limousine for the first time. Now, however, he did. He searched in it for a minute with one hand and came up with a small, stubby blue-white cylinder. He was already in front of Bleys. He reached forward and pressed the cylinder against the back of Bleys’s right hand.
Bleys felt something like the light touch of a finger. Then the cylinder was taken away and tucked out of sight again in the bag of tools.
“Give it fifteen minutes,” Kaj said.
“Toni, you go with Team Two. The closest one forming there. Dahno, Team Three, next over,” Henry ordered.
He raised his voice to the Soldiers, now all standing outside their cars.
“All right!” He raised his voice. “All teams, move out as planned. Team One, follow our van.”
They all moved. Bleys found himself on the wide front seat of a broad van; seated next to a door with Henry beside him on his left and the driver of the van at Henry’s left. Clearly determined to stay close, Kaj was in the body of the van just behind him. There was access from there to the front seats, through an entrance apparently built for people not more than a meter and a half tall.
But Bleys did not want him to come forward. Whatever Kaj had given him, whatever had been in the little stubby blue-and-white metal cylinder, was already beginning to take effect, and he felt as if he was waking up from a confused nightmare. His mind was sharpening, and his body was coming alert with energy and strength.
“Go!” Henry said to his wrist control pad. Somewhere behind them, a power rifle blasted twice, vans from among the convoy of vehicles that had brought them here drove through a wide gap in the fence on to the pad, Soldiers not only inside them but clinging to their tops and outsides wherever there were handholds.
Gazing through the transparency of the van’s forward wall, which would have been a simple glass windshield on a poorer world like Association or Harmony, Bleys could see the broad expanse of the pad. It was almost uncomfortably bright now, under a large sun, high enough in the sky so that its reddish tint was effectively invisible.
Across this wide, flat space, the parked spacecraft looked closer together than Bleys remembered. Now, with his mind coming awake again, he was thinking to some purpose.
“Henry.” Bleys turned his head to look as he spoke. The calm face next to him turned to meet his, and he was suddenly aware of the smell of sweat from the driver. There was no such tension-odor about Henry. He was as quiet and serene as if they were all going
on a picnic. “Henry, just how will the Soldiers react if anything happens to you?”
“They’ve been told to look to you. No hesitating,” said Henry. “Also, you know Carl Carlson?”
“He’s the older Soldier with our group—Team,” Bleys said. “Tall, thin, clean shaven? I know him.”
“He’s in this van, in the back,” Henry said. “He knows my plans. He’ll be close to both you and me. In case anything happens to me, he’ll answer your questions if he can. Also, he’ll fill you in on what I’ve told him about covering this last stretch to the spaceship. Don’t ask him about that now. Keep your mind clear, and don’t worry him until it’s necessary.”
Their van was past the fence and weaving among the parked spacecraft already.
“I don’t see any signs of opposition yet,” said Bleys, looking ahead on the pad. It seemed to stretch to the horizon; but the true horizon, he saw, was hidden by other spacecraft.
“When it shows up, they could be coming at us from all directions,” Henry said. “But we ought to be able to cover maybe half the distance before they can get any opposition to us here. When we do, we abandon the vehicles and start splitting up into different groups.”
“Could the Newtonians have put pressure on the standby crews of the parked craft, to call them the minute anyone sees us?” Bleys asked.
“Have to locate us first,” Henry said. “Remember, there are thousands of craft here in this one parking area. Also, there’s no reason any crew would do that for them. In fact, I think any request like that is not allowed, either, according to the Conventions.”
They were passing between two very closely parked spacecraft now. There was as little as thirty meters between them. The other vans of their Team were behind them. A single chimed note sounded simultaneously in the wristpads of Henry, the driver, and others in the van’s body behind them. The van stopped suddenly.
“Out!” Henry ordered. “Team Two’s hit opposition.”
Toni. Bleys moved his mind resolutely away from any thought of her. They were all getting out of the van, and the vans behind them were emptying too.