"Ah," said the doctor without noticeable interest. The turret's yellow, low-intensity lighting was on as Clargue searched the database for the command that would turn Hoodoo from a vehicle into a fighting vehicle.
Lamartiere was letting the screens' own dim ambiance provide the only illumination for the driver's station. He could have slept beside the tank if he'd wanted to, setting an audible alarm to warn him of motion; but so long as Clargue was working, Lamartiere preferred to be alert also.
He got out of the hatch and slid to the ground. The smooth iridium hull reflected starlight well enough to show him in silhouette. Marie stepped from the basket and said, "I brought you some food and water. Bread and vegetable stew—we're vegetarians here. But it's fresh and hot."
Lamartiere took the pole from her. He'd eaten as much as he wanted earlier in the evening. The pounding drive had left him too run down to be really hungry, and it was even an effort to drink though he knew his body needed the fluids.
"Hot food, Doctor," he called. "Want to come out, or shall I bring it in to you?"
"Perhaps in a while, Denis," replied Clargue's voice with a hint of irritation. "I will run this sequence before I stop, if God and the world permit me."
Lamartiere set the buckets on the ground and squatted beside them; the tank's armor slanted too sharply to use it as a ledge. "Thanks," he said to Marie as he took one of the pair of bottles from the left-hand basket. The loaf in the other one smelled surprisingly good.
"Government radio says they're launching an attack on Goncourt," Marie said as she sat across from him. "I don't know whether that's true or not."
The bottle contained water with just enough lemon juice to give it flavor. Lamartiere drank, let his stomach settle, and drank more.
"The other is goat's milk," Marie said. "I've come to enjoy the taste."
"I didn't know about Goncourt," Lamartiere said as he lowered the bottle. "I didn't think to listen to the commercial bands. That would explain why nobody's contacted us the way they were supposed to. To tell us what the fuck we're supposed to do!"
"What are you going to do?" the woman asked quietly.
Lamartiere shrugged. He broke off a piece of bread and dipped it into the stew. "We won't stay here much longer," he said. He wished he had a real answer to the question, but he wished a lot of things.
"We have our own garden inside the walls," Marie said. "We buy the grain for the bread, though. It's the main thing we do buy."
"We're just making things worse," Lamartiere said. He was glad for someone to talk to, to talk at. "The government was wrong and stupid to say that unless you did what the Synod said you weren't a citizen, you were only a taxpayer. But this war has made things so much worse. Me stealing Hoodoo has . . . got a lot of people killed that didn't have to be. Including my sister."
Marie shrugged. "I don't know who's right," she said. "I never did. It's easier to see who's wrong, and in the Boukasset that's pretty much everybody with a gun. Pretty much."
She stood. "I'll take back the containers in the morning," she said. "People like you and me can't change anything."
To her back Lamartiere said, "I changed things when I stole this tank, Marie. I changed things when I drove it here and put you all in danger. I want to start changing things for the better!"
Hoodoo's warning chime sounded. Lamartiere was climbing the bow slope before he was really aware of his movement. Consciously he viewed the tank more as Purgatory than as shelter, but he'd dived into the driver's compartment so often recently that reflex sent him there at the first hint of danger.
He brought up the fans before he checked to see what movement the sensors had found; he brought up the gunnery screen also, even though the weapons were more easily controlled from the fighting compartment where Dr. Clargue was. Clargue was the rebellion's best hope to decipher Hoodoo's coded systems, but Denis Lamartiere was far the better choice to use the tank's weaponry.
An air-cushion jeep carrying a single person was coming out of the hills three kilometers west of the shrine. Its headlights were on.
So far as Lamartiere could tell, neither the vehicle nor the driver carried a weapon. He was using 100:1 magnification, as much as he trusted when coupled with light enhancement. Anything higher was a guess by the AI, and Lamartiere preferred his own instincts to machine intelligence when his life depended on it.
"What do you want me to do?" Clargue asked over the intercom.
"Close your hatch and warn me if anything happens," Lamartiere said. "This guy is too harmless to be out at night if he didn't have a hell of a lot lined up behind him."
"There's no one else in the direction he came from," Clargue reported. "I'll continue to monitor the sensors, but otherwise I'll not interfere with your business."
After a brief mental debate, Lamartiere raised his seat to await the visitor with his head out of the hatch. Clargue would warn him if Hoodoo's electronics showed a danger that unaided eyes would miss.
After hesitating again, he cut the drive fans back to their minimum speed. A normal idle sent ringing harmonics through the surrounding air. To talk over that level of background noise, the parties would have had to shout. Shouting triggered anger and hostility deep in people's subbrains, even if consciously they would have preferred to avoid it.
If there'd been two figures in the jeep, Lamartiere would have guessed they were Heth and Stegner, Hoodoo's original crew. He'd seen the mercenaries at the Lystra River, observing the battle from a similar vehicle. He supposed they were hoping to steal back their tank.
At this point he'd have rather that they'd driven Hoodoo aboard a starship and lifted for Beresford, 300 light-years distant, the way they'd planned to do. Then Lamartiere wouldn't have had to make decisions when all the alternatives seemed equally bad. It was too late to go back, though.
The jeep halted ten meters from Hoodoo's bow. The driver shut off his turbine and stood. "May I approach you, Mr. Lamartiere?" he asked. His voice was cultured but a little too high-pitched. "Or is it Dr. Clargue?"
"I'm Lamartiere," Lamartiere said. "And you can come closer, yeah."
The man walked to the tank, moving with an easy grace. Lamartiere heard the winch squeal once more, then stop. Marie must have reached the battlements, but he didn't look up to be sure.
"My name is Alexis de Laburat," the man said. He was a slim, pantherlike fellow with a strikingly handsome face. His left cheek bore a serpentine scar and there was a patch over that eye. "I've come alone and unarmed to offer you a business proposition."
"I've heard about your business," Lamartiere said, more harshly than he'd intended. He was remembering what Marie had told him. "No thanks. And I think you'd better go now."
"I was born a Mosite and fought in the rebellion," de Laburat said. "I rallied to the government and fought for it when I saw the rebellion was doomed to fail; so did the other men under my command. But what I'm offering now, Mr. Lamartiere, is peace."
De Laburat's fingers toyed with the tip of his neat moustache. "As well as enough money to keep you and the doctor comfortably on any world to which you choose to emigrate. Obviously you can't stay on Ambiorix unless you join me, which I don't suppose you'd care to do."
"I told you, we have no business with you!" Lamartiere said.
The Rallier shook his head. "Think clearly," he said. "I know you're a clever man or you'd never have gotten this far. The Council wouldn't be able to use this tank, even if you were able to get ammunition for it. The rebellion is over. Goncourt will fall within the week. Though the Council will probably relocate to some cave in the hills, they'll control nothing at all."