“No trickery, I hope, Corson! Otherwise your collar—”
“None of us is armed,” Corson interrupted. “Except myself.”
“No weapons,” a technician confirmed.
“Good,” Veran said. “So you found out how to convince them, up there in the future. I approve of efficiency, Corson. Perhaps even they felt themselves touched by ambition. Advance the first rank. And tell them to take their hoods off so I can get a sight of them.”
Everyone in the camp had gathered behind him, except the pickets on guard duty. Corson noted with satisfaction that the men seemed less alert, less rigidly organized than when he saw them for the first time. Weeks of inactivity on Uria had taken their toll. It was not so much that discipline had slipped as that the atmosphere had changed. Corson’s practiced eye picked out the almost imperceptible evidence: one soldier who had hooked his thumbs in his pockets, another placidly sucking a little metal tube.
He strained to identify by their security collars the members of Veran’s personal bodyguard. He counted just under a dozen of them.
He uttered a single meaningless command. The front rank advanced. Veran made a sign. The defensive wire ceased to glow. Two soldiers rolled a section of it aside. Veran seemed to have lost all suspicion. But Corson knew how crafty the warlord’s mind was. He would not let anyone enter the camp without checking for himself.
After a pause, the second rank followed the first, and the third, and the fourth, their clothing making a rustling sound. Corson shouted another order. He was sure no one in the camp had guessed the true nature of these recruits. They were all tall, and their loose-cut military overalls hid the shape of their bodies. At his voice, in a unison movement, the first rank threw back their heads and let their hoods slip down.
Now there was no sound, not even footfalls or the brushing of cloth on cloth, except for the distant whistling and grunting of a pegasone having a dream.
In the camp someone stifled a sneeze, or a laugh. Then someone else began to shout.
“Women! They’re only women!”
“There are two thousand of them,” Corson said with deliberation. “They are strong and obedient.”
Veran did not react. His head did not turn by the least fraction of a degree. Only his eyes moved. He studied the faces of the women. Then he bent his gaze on Corson.
“Strong and obedient,” he echoed.
Yonder in the camp the men had started to fidget, leaning forward, craning their necks, their eyes popping from their sockets.
“Well,” Veran said without raising his voice, “you can just take them back where they came from.”
An unarmed soldier, who must have been off duty, jumped the fence at a point where it had not been rolled aside, and headed toward the women at a run. One of Veran’s personal guards took aim at him, but Veran struck the gun aside. Corson understood and admired his quick thinking. He was afraid, but he wasn’t showing it. He hoped this was a trap, that the soldier would fall into it and his fate would serve as a lesson to the others.
But this was no trap, or at least not of the kind he was hoping for. When the soldier was halfway to the women, Corson uttered a key word, clearly but quietly. He did not want the men in the camp to mistake what he said for an order to attack.
The front rank undid their overalls and took a half pace forward. The garments slid to the ground. They wore nothing else. They stood among the tall dense grass, haloed by the sunlight. Their hair fell around their shoulders and over their breasts. They scarcely moved but for their slow deep breathing, and kept their empty hands open, palms to the front.
There was a sort of roar from the camp, not a cry or a call, but a dull groan like a monstrous bellows, a unison gasp from hundreds of lungs.
A score of soldiers rushed forward. Others dropped their guns and gave chase, uncertain whether they were running after the others to bring them back or because they were afraid of getting there last. One of Veran’s guards made to open fire, but his neighbor pushed him off balance. Some of the soldiers took the precaution of breaking the power packs on their weapons before likewise making for the women.
Corson had thought of saying something, addressing the soldiers over Veran’s head despite the risks. But it was no longer necessary. The camp was emptying. Veran was fighting his own men. Bodies fell. Someone was trying to reactivate the perimeter fence, not without trouble, for it was blinking on and off. Clearly Veran was still trying to avoid more than minimal bloodshed. But he had no one around him now except his personal guards. A few other men, demoralized, were fighting with little enthusiasm.
It looked as though Veran was going to give in; Corson saw him raise his hand. The shots grew fewer. Then night came down. It swallowed up women, camp, soldiers, and all.
Irresolutely Corson took a few steps backward. Then he dropped to the ground. Veran had played his master card, the light-inhibitor. Now perhaps he would turn his guns loose at random on the neighborhood of the camp. Corson tried simultaneously to burrow into the earth and to crawl away. Over the muffled uproar that filled the darkness he heard the sound of a footfall. He rolled over, folded into a ball, straightened like a spring, jumped up, almost lost his balance, struggled to retain it while flailing the air with his hands.
A grip on his arm spun him around. An arm tilted back his chin and crushed his throat. He heard Veran pant in his ear.
“You fooled me, Corson. You were tougher than I thought. I could kill you for getting me in a mess like this! But I’m leaving you the key—the key to your collar. Think of the others.”
Something fell between Corson’s feet. The grip relaxed. His skull seemed to swell up as though it would burst. He dropped on all fours, gasping for breath. Somewhere in the darkness behind him Veran was running into the forest, in search of the pegasone Corson had not taken the trouble to hide. Corson heard him shout in a mocking voice half muffled by the inhibition field, “I’ll get back on my feet, Corson! You’ll see!”
There came the fierce howl of a heat beam, shrunk by the field to a wasp-like buzz. Corson ducked. Eyes closed, he waited. Smells rose to his nostrils: smoke, burning wood, scorching meat. Beyond his lids the universe glowed.
He opened his eyes. Day had returned. Still in a crouch, he looked around. More than a hundred of the women had been killed, and a score of soldiers. A dozen more would never be good for anything again. Part of the camp was in flames.
Rising, he turned in the direction of the forest and saw what remained of Veran. The pegasone had vanished.
Veran had played his last card, and lost. He had managed to get himself killed in two ways at once. The heat beam—possibly aimed at him—had touched him just as he was mounting the pegasone. A fraction of a second earlier the beast, alert to the danger, had shied through time without caring what was nearby. It had taken half of Veran with it, and his light-inhibitor.
Somewhere in the universe, Corson thought, there must be a pegasone drowning in night and silence, struggling in unfathomable darkness at the bottom of a well which no energy could reach until the inhibitor’s power pack ran out or until it managed to shake off the device during one of its frantic time leaps. But why should Veran have taken his pegasone, when his camp was full of the beasts? Then Corson realized. He must have wanted access to the memory of that particular pegasone, to find out how and by whom he had been outwitted.
He trod on something. Bending down, he retrieved a little flat blade of blackened metal with a square notch at one end. He raised it to his neck and engaged the collar in the notch. No result. He began to turn the collar slowly. His hands shook and he almost had to stop. A block of ice exploded in his guts. Sweat poured into his eyes. The capillaries in his suit, overloaded, ceased to keep his back and armpits dry. He was suddenly very thirsty.