“Judas!” the major exclaimed. Even the Indian grunted as if he had taken a belly blow. “No, they couldn’t. We’d have known.”
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow. It hooted across cold rocks.
“There are plenty of forest trails,” Danielis said. “Infantry and cavalry could use them, if they’re accustomed to such country. And the Cats are. Vehicles, wagons, big guns, that’s slower and harder. But they only need to outflank us, then they can get back onto Forty and Fifty—and cut us to pieces if we attempt pursuit. I’m afraid they’ve got us boxed.”
“The eastern slope—,” said Jacobsen helplessly.
“What for? Want to occupy a lot of sagebrush? No, we’re trapped here till they deploy in the flatlands,” Danielis closed a hand on his saddlehorn so that the knuckles went bloodless. “I miss my guess if this isn’t Colonel Mackenzie’s idea. It’s his style, for sure.”
“But then they’re between us and Frisco! With damn near our whole strength in the north—”
Between me and Laura, Danielis thought.
He said aloud: “I suggest, Major, we get hold of the C.O. at once. And then we better get on the radio.” From some well he drew the power to raise his head. The wind lashed his eyes. “This needn’t be a disaster. They’ll be easier to beat out in the open, actually, once we come to grips.”
The rains which fill the winter of the California lowlands were about ended. Northward along a highway whose pavement clopped under hoofs, Mackenzie rode through a tremendous greenness. Eucalyptus and live oak, flanking the road, exploded with new leaves. Beyond them on either side stretched a checkerboard of fields and vineyards, intricately hued, until the distant hills on the right and the higher nearer ones on the left made walls. The freeholder houses that had been scattered across the land a ways back were no longer to be seen. This end of the Napa Valley belonged to the Esper community at St. Helena. Clouds banked like white mountains over the western ridge. The breeze bore to Mackenzie a smell of growth and turned earth.
Behind him it rumbled with men. The Rolling Stones were on the move. The regiment proper kept to the highway, three thousand boots slamming down at once with an earthquake noise, and so did the guns and wagons. There was no immediate danger of attack. But the cavalrymen attached to the force must needs spread out. The sun flashed off their helmets and lance heads.
Mackenzie’s attention was directed forward. Amber walls and red tile roofs could be seen among plum trees that were a surf of pink and white blossoms. The community was big, several thousand people. The muscles tightened in his abdomen. “Think we can trust them?” he asked, not for the first time. “We’ve only got a radio agreement to a parley.”
Speyer, riding beside him, nodded: “I expect they’ll be honest. Particularly with our boys right outside. Espers believe in non-violence anyway.”
“Yeah, but if it did come to fighting—I know there aren’t very many adepts so far. The Order hasn’t been around long enough for that. But when you get this many Espers together, there’s bound to be a few who’ve gotten somewhere with their damned psionics. I don’t want my men blasted, or lifted in the air and dropped, or any such nasty thing.”
Speyer threw him a sidelong glance. “Are you scared of them, Jimbo?” he murmured.
“Hell, no!” Mackenzie wondered if he was a liar or not. “But I don’t like’em.”
“They do a lot of good. Among the poor, especially.”
“Sure, sure. Though any decent bossman looks after his own protectees, and we’ve got things like churches and hospices as well. I don’t see where just being charitable—and they can afford it, with the profits they make on their holdings—I don’t see where that gives any right to raise the orphans and pauper kids they take in, the way they do: so’s to make the poor tikes unfit for life anywhere outside.”
“The object of that, as you well know, is to orient them toward the so-called interior frontier. Which American civilization as a whole is not much interested in. Frankly, quite apart tn the remarkable powers some Espers have developed, I often envy them.”
“You, Phil?” Mackenzie goggled at his friend.
The lines drew deep in Speyer’s face. “This winter I’ve helped shoot a lot of my fellow countrymen,” he said low. “My mother and wife and kids are crowded with the rest of Village in the Mount Lassen fort, and when we said good-by we knew it was quite possibly permanent. And in the past I’ve helped shoot a lot of other men who never did me any personal harm.” He sighed. “I’ve often wondered what it’d be like to know peace, inside as well as outside.”
Mackenzie sent Laura and Tom out of his head.
“Of course,” Speyer went on, “the fundamental reason you—and I, for that matter—distrust the Espers is that they represent something alien to us. Something that may eventually choke out the whole concept of life that we grew up with. You know, a couple weeks back, in Sacramento I stopped in at the University research lab to see what was going on. Incredible! The ordinary soldier would swear it witchwork. It was certainly more weird than ... than simply reading minds or moving objects by thinking at them. But to you or me it’s a shiny new marvel. We’ll wallow in it.
“Now why’s that? Because the lab is scientific. Those men work with chemicals, electronics, subviral particles. That fits into the educated American’s world-view. But the mystic unity of creation ... no, not our cup of tea. The only way we can hope to achieve Oneness is to renounce everything we’ve ever believed in. At your age or mine, Jimbo, a man is seldom ready to tear down his whole life and start from scratch.”
“Maybe so.” Mackenzie lost interest. The settlement quite near now.
He turned around to Captain Hulse, riding a few paces behind. “Here we go,” he said. “Give my compliments to| Lieutenant Colonel Yamaguchi and tell him he’s in charge till we get back. If anything seems suspicious, he’s to act at his own discretion.”
“Yes, sir.” Hulse saluted and wheeled smartly about. There had been no practical need for Mackenzie to repeat what had long been agreed on; but he knew the value of ritual. He clicked his big sorrel gelding into a trot. At his back he heard bugles sound orders and sergeants howl at their platoons.
Speyer kept pace. Mackenzie had insisted on bringing an extra man to the discussion. His own wits were probably no match for a high-level Esper, but Phil’s might be
Not that there’s any question of diplomacy or whatever. I hope. To ease himself, he concentrated on what was real and present—hoofbeats, the rise and fall of the saddle beneath him, the horse’s muscles rippling between his thighs, the creak and jingle of his saber belt, the clean odor of the animal—and suddenly remembered this was the sort of trick the Espers recommended.
None of their communities was walled, as most towns and every bossman’s Station was. The officers turned off the highway ..and went down a street between colonnaded buildings. Side streets ran off in both directions. The settlement covered no great area, though, being composed of groups that lived together, sodalities or superfamilies or whatever you wanted to call them. Some hostility toward the Order and a great, many dirty jokes stemmed from that practice. But Speyer, who should know, said there was no more sexual swapping around than in the outside world. The idea was simply to get away from possessiveness, thee versus me, and to raise children as part of a whole rather than an insular clan.
The kids were out, staring round-eyed from the porticos, hundreds of them. They looked healthy and, underneath a natural fear of the invaders, happy enough. But pretty solemn, Mackenzie thought; and all in the same blue garb. Adults stood among them, expressionless. Everybody had come in from the fields as the regiment neared. The silence was like barricades. Mackenzie felt sweat begin to trickle down his ribs. When he emerged on the central square, he let out his breath in a near gasp.