"What other ways?"
"I can't think of any," I said. "I'm out of suggestions - which is probably why I was never considered for anything like Amanda's job, in the first place."
"As a matter of fact, there are a number of other possible solutions," Padma said. His voice was soft, almost pedantic. "There's the possibility of bringing counter economic pressure upon William - but there's no time for that. There's also the possibility of bringing social and economic pressure upon the ranchers; and there's the possibility of disrupting the control of the revolutionaries who've come in from outside Nahar to run this rebellion. In each case, none of these solutions are of the kind that can very easily be made to work in the short time we've got."
"In fact, there isn't any such thing as a solution that ran be made to work in time, isn't that right?" I said, bluntly.
He shook his head.
"No. Absolutely wrong. If we could stop the clock at this second and take the equivalent of some months to study the situation, we'd undoubtedly find not only one, but several solutions that would abort the attack of the regiments in the time we've got to work with. What you lack isn't time in which to act, since that's merely something specified for the solution. What you lack is time in which to discover the solution that will work in the time there is to act."
"So you mean," I said, "that we're to sit here tomorrow with Michael's forty or so bandsmen - and face the attack of something like six thousand line troops, even though they're only Naharese line troops, all the time knowing that there is absolutely a way in which that attack doesn't have to happen, if only we had the sense to find it?"
"The sense - and the time," said Padma. "But yes, you're right. It's a harsh reality of life, but the sort of reality that history has turned on, since history began."
"I see," I said. "Well, I find I don't accept it that easily."
"No." Padma's gaze was level and cooling upon me. "Neither does Amanda. Neither does Ian or Kensie. Nor, I suspect, even Michael. But then, you're all Dorsai."
I said nothing. It is a little embarrassing when some one plays your own top card against you.
"In any case," Padma went on, "none of you are being called on to merely accept it. Amanda's still at work. So is Ian, so are all the rest of you. Forgive me, I didn't mean to sneer at the reflexes of your culture. I envy you - a great many people envy you - that in ability to give in. My point is that the fact that we know there's an answer makes no difference. You'd all be doing the same thing anyway, wouldn't you?"
"True enough," I said - and at that moment we were interrupted.
"Padma?" It was the general office annunciator speaking from the walls around us with Amanda's voice. "Could you give me some help, please?"
Padma got to his feet.
"I've got to go," he said.
He went out. I sat where I was, held by that odd little melancholy that had caught me up - and I think does the same with most Dorsai away from home - at moments all through my life. It is not a serious thing, just a touch of loneliness and sadness and the facing of the fact that life is measured; and there are only so many things that can be accomplished in it, try how you may.
I was still in this mood when Ian's return to the office suite by the corridor door woke me out of it.
I got up.
"Corunna!" he said, and led the way into his private office. "How's the training going?"
"As you'd expect," I said. "I left Michael alone with them, at his suggestion. He thinks they might learn faster without my presence to distract them."
"Possible," said Ian.
He stepped to the window wall and looked out. My height was not enough to let me look over the edge of the parapet on this terrace and see down to the first where the bandsmen were drilling; but I guessed that his was.
"They don't seem to be doing badly," he said.
He was still on his feet, of course, and I was standing next to his desk. I looked at it now, and found the cube holding the image Amanda had talked about. The woman pictured there was obviously not Dorsai, but there was something not unlike our people about her. She was strong-boned and dark-haired, the hair sweeping down to her shoulders, longer than most Dorsais out in the field would have worn it, but not long according to the styles of Earth.
I looked back at Ian. He had turned away from the window and his contemplation of the drill going on two levels below. But he had stopped, part way in his backturn, and his face was turned toward the wall beyond which Amanda would be working with Padma at this moment. I saw him in three-quarter's face, with the light from the window wall striking that quarter of his features that was averted from me; and I noticed a tiredness about him. Not that it showed anywhere specifically in the lines of his face. He was, as always, like a mountain of granite, untouchable. But something about the way he stood spoke of a fatigue - perhaps a fatigue of the spirit rather than of the body.
"I just heard about Leah, here," I said, nodding at the image cube, speaking to bring him back to the moment.
He turned as if his thoughts had been a long way away.
"Leah? Oh, yes." His own eyes went absently to the cube and away again. "Yes, she's Earth. I'll be going to get her after this is over. We'll be married in two months."
"That soon?" I said. "I hadn't even heard you'd fallen in love."
"Love?" he said. His eyes were still on me, but their attention had gone away again. He spoke more as if to himself than to me. "No, it was years ago I fell in love. . ."
His attention focused, suddenly. He was back with me.
"Sit down," he said, dropping into the chair behind his desk. I sat. "Have you talked to Kensie since break fast?"
"Just a little while ago, when I was asking around to find you," I said.
"He's got a couple of runs outside the walls he'd like your hand with, tonight after dark's well settled in."
"I know," I said. "He told me about them. A sweep of the slope in front of this place to clear it before laying mines there, and a scout of the regimental camp for whatever we can learn about them before tomorrow."
"That's right," Ian said.
"Do you have any solid figures on how many there are out there?"
"Regimental rolls," said Ian, "give us a total of a little over five thousand of all ranks. Fifty-two hundred and some. But something like this invariably attracts a number of Naharese who scent personal glory, or at least the chance for personal glory. Then there're per haps seven or eight hundred honest revolutionaries in Nahar, Padma estimates, individuals who've been working to loosen the grip of the rancher oligarchy for some time. Plus a hundred or so agents provocateurs from outside."
"In something like this, those who aren't trained soldiers we can probably discount, don't you think?"
Ian nodded.
"How many of the actual soldiers'll have had any actual combat experience?" I asked.
"Combat experience in this part of Ceta," Ian said, "means having been involved in a border clash or two with the armed forces of the surrounding principalities. Maybe one in ten of the line soldiers has had that. On the other hand, every male, particularly in Nahar, has dreamed of a dramatic moment like this."
"So they'll all come on hard with the first attack," I said.
"That's as I see it," said Ian, "and Kensie agrees. I'm glad to hear it's your thought, too. Everyone out there will attack in that first charge, not merely determined to do well, but dreaming of outdoing everyone else around him. If we can throw them back even once, some of them won't come again. And that's the way it ought to go. They won't lose heart as a group. Just each setback will take the heart out of some, and we'll work them down to the hard core that's serious about being willing to die if only they can get over the walls and reach us."