"Several," I said.
"Then you've run into what I'm talking about While the wild animal's young, it's cuddly and tame; but when it grows up, the day comes it bites or slashes at you without warning. People talk about that being part of their wild nature. But it isn't. Humans change just exactly the same way. When anything young grows up, it becomes conscious of itself, its own wants, its own desires, its own moods. Then the day comes when someone tries to play with it and it isn't in a playing mood - and it reacts with 'Back off! What I want is just as important as what you want” And all at once, the time of its being young and cuddly is over forever."
"Of course," I said. "That happens to all of us."
"But to us - to our people - it happens too late!" she said. "Or rather, we start life too early. By the age of seventeen on the Dorsai we have to be out and working like an adult, either at home or on some other world. We're pitchforked into adulthood. There's never any time to take stock, to realize what being adult is going to turn us into. We don't realize we aren't cubs any more until one day we slash or bite someone with out warning; and then we realize that we've changed - and they've changed. But it's too late for us to adjust to the change in the other person because we've al ready been trapped by our own change."
She stopped. I sat, not speaking, waiting. From my experience with this sort of thing since Else died, I assumed that I no longer needed to talk. She would carry the conversation, now.
"No, it wasn't Kensie I was talking about when I first came in here and I said the trouble is you don't know someone else until too late. It's Ian."
"Ian?" I said, for she had stopped again, and now I felt with equal instinct that she needed some help to continue.
"Yes," she said. "When I was young, I didn't understand Ian. I do now. Then, I thought there was nothing to him - or else he was simply solid all the way through, like a piece of wood. But he's not. Everything you can see in Kensie is there in Ian, only there's no light to see it by. Now I know. And now it's too late."
"Too late?" I said. "He's not married, is he'"
"Married? Not yet. But you didn't know? Look at the picture on his desk. Her name's Leah. She's on Earth. He met her when he was there, four years ago. But that's not what I mean by too late. I mean - it's too late for me. What you heard me tell Kensie is the truth. I've got the curse of the first Amanda. I'm born to belong to a lot of people, first; and only to any single person, second. As much as I'd give for Ian, that equation's there in me, ever since I grew up. Sooner or later it'd put even him in second place for me. I can't do that to him; and it's too late for me to be anything else."
"Maybe Ian'd be willing to agree to those terms."
She did not answer for a second. Then I heard a slow intake of breath from the darker darkness that was her.
"You shouldn't say that," she said.
There was a second of silence. Then she spoke again, fiercely
"Would you suggest something like that to Ian if our positions were reversed?"
"I didn't suggest it," I said. "I mentioned it."
Another pause.
"You're right," she said. "I know what I want and what I'm afraid of in myself, and it seems to me so obvious I keep thinking everyone else must know too."
She stood up.
"Forgive me, Corunna," she said. "I've got no right to burden you with all this."
"It's the way the world is," I said. "People talk to people."
"And to you, more than most." She went toward the door to the balcony and paused in it. "Thanks again."
"I've done nothing," I said.
"Thank you anyway. Good night. Sleep if you can."
She stepped out through the door; and through the window wall I watched her, very erect, pass to my left until she walked out of my sight beyond the sitting room wall.
I went back to bed, not really expecting to fall asleep again easily. But I dropped off and slept like a log.
When I woke it was morning, and my bedside phone was chiming. I flicked it on and Michael looked at me out of the screen.
"I'm sending a man up with maps of the interior of Gebel Nahar," he said, "so you can find your way around. Breakfast's available in the General Staff Lounge, if you're ready."
"Thanks," I told him.
I got up and was ready when the bandsman he had sent arrived, with a small display cube holding the maps. I took it with me and the bandsman showed me to the General Staff Lounge - which, it turned out, was not a lounge for the staff of Gebel Nahar, in general, but one for the military commanders of that establishment. Ian was the only other present when I got there and he was just finishing his meal.
"Sit down," he said.
I sat.
"I'm going ahead on the assumption that I'll be de fending this place in twenty-four hours or so," he said. "What I'd like you to do is familiarize yourself with its defenses, particularly the first line of walls and its weapons, so that you can either direct the men working them, or take over the general defense, if necessary."
"What have you got in mind for a general defense?"
I asked, as a bandsman came out of the kitchen area to see what I would eat. I told him and he went.
"We've got just about enough of Michael's troops to man that first wall and have a handful in reserve," he said. "Most of them have never touched anything but a handweapon in their life, but we've got to use them to fight with the emplaced energy weapons against foot attack up the slope. I'd like you to get them on the weapons and drill them - Michael should be able to help you, since he knows which of them are steady and which aren't. Get breakfast in you; and I'll tell you what I expect the regiments to do on the attack and what I think we might do when they try it."
He went on talking while my food came and I ate. Boiled down, his expectations - based on what he had learned of the Naharese military while he had been here, and from consultation with Michael - were for a series of infantry wave attacks up the slope until the first wall was overrun. His plan called for a defense of the first wall until the last safe moment, destruction of the emplaced weapons, so they could not be turned against us, and a quick retreat to the second wall with its weapons - and so, step by step retreating up the terraces. It was essentially the sort of defense that Gebel Nahar had been designed for by its builders.
The problem would be getting absolutely green and excitable troops like the Naharese bandsmen to re treat cool-headedly on order. If they could not be brought to do that, and lingered behind, then the first wave over the ramparts could reduce their numbers to the point where there would not be enough of them to make any worthwhile defense of the second terrace, to say nothing of the third, the fourth, and so on, and still have men left for a final stand within the fortress-like walls of the top three levels.
Given an equal number of veteran, properly trained troops, to say nothing of Dorsai-trained ones, we might even have held Gebel Nahar in that fashion and inflicted enough casualties on the attackers to eventually make them pull back. But unspoken between Ian and myself as we sat in the lounge, was the fact that the most we could hope to do with what we had was inflict a maximum of damage while losing.
However, again unspoken between us, was the fact that the stiffer our defense of Gebel Nahar, even in a hopeless situation, the more difficult it would be for the Governors and William to charge the Dorsai officers with incompetence of defense.
I finished eating and got up to go.
"Where's Amanda?" I asked.
"She's working with Padma - or maybe I should put it that Padma's working with her," Ian said.
"I didn't know Exotics took sides."
"He isn't," Ian said. "He's just making knowledge - his knowledge - available to someone who needs it. That's standard Exotic practice as you know as well as I do. He and Amanda are still hunting some political angle to bring us and the Dorsai out of this without prejudice."