"Take it to her," he ordered. He lifted his head and called across to Amanda. "Be careful with it, ma'm."
"I will be," said Amanda.
She received the rifle, powered up the skimmer and slid off through the fringe of trees around the pad.
She took her way toward the downriver side of town. As she went, the sudden throb of the engines in the manufactory erupted on her ear. She smiled, but she was suddenly conscious of the prevailing wind in her face. Sweating, she asked herself, at your age? She turned her scorn inward. Where was all that talk of yours to deCastries about having outlived fear?
She swung through town and around by the river road past the dump. The manufactory stood, noisily operating. There was no Coalition uniform in sight outside the building and the side looking in her direction was blank of windows. She stopped her skimmer long enough to walk back into the brush and retrieve the energy handgun she had hung on the tree. Then she remounted her skimmer and headed upslope, out of town.
Her mind was racing. Dow had intimated he would head out to Foralie homestead yet this afternoon. Which meant Amanda herself would have to go directly there to get there before him. She had hoped to come in there with evening, and perhaps even stay overnight to see how Betta was doing. Now it would have to be a case of getting in and out in an hour at most. And, almost more important, either before or after she reached there, she had to reach the team which was holding the territory through which Dow and his escort would pass.
Who was Ancient for that team? So many things had happened so far this day that she had to search her memory for a moment before it came up with the name of Ramon Dye. Good. Ramon was one of the best of the Ancients; and, aside from the fact that he was legless, strong as a bull.
Thinking deeply, she slid the skimmer along under maximum power. She was burning up a month's normal expenditure of energy in a few days, with her present spendthrift use of the vehicle; but there was a time for thriftiness and a time to spend. Of her two choices, it would have to be a decision to contact Ramon's team first, before going to Foralie. Ramon's team would have to send runners to the other teams, since even visual signals would be too risky, with the Coalition troops at Foralie town probably loaded with the latest in surveillance equipment. The more time she could give the runners, the better.
It was a stroke of bad luck, Dow's determination to send out patrols and go so immediately to Foralie himself Bad on two counts. Patrols out meant some of the troops away from the immediate area of the town, at all times. It would have been much better to have them all concentrated there. Also, patrols out meant that sooner or later some of them would have to be taken care of by the teams - and that, while it would have to be faced if and when it came, was something not good to think about until then. There would be a heavy load thrown on the youngsters - not only to do what had to be done, but to do it with the coolheadedness and calculation of adults, without which they could not succeed, and their lives would be thrown away for nothing.
She reminded herself that up through medieval times, twelve- and fourteen-year-olds had been commonly found in armies. Ship's boys had been taken for granted in the navies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But these historical facts brought no comfort. The children who would be going up against Earth-made weapons here would be children she had known since their birth.
But she must not allow them to guess how she felt. Their faith in their seniors, well-placed or misplaced, was something they would need to hang on to as long as possible for their own sakes.
She came at last to a mountain meadow a full meter high with fall grass. The meadow was separated by just one ridge from Foralie homestead. Amanda turned her skimmer into the shade of a clump of native softwoods on the upslope edge of the meadow, below the ridge. On the relatively open ground beneath those trees she put the vehicle down and waited.
It was all of twenty minutes before her ear picked up - not exactly a sound that should not have been there, but a sound that was misplaced in the rhythm of natural noises surrounding her. She lifted her voice.
"All right!" she called. "I'm in a hurry. Come on in!"
Heads emerged above the grasstops, as close as half a dozen meters from her and as far out as halfway across the meadow. Figures stood up; tanned, slim figures in flexible shoes, twill slacks strapped tight at the ankle and long-sleeved, tight-wristed shirts, all of neutral color. One of the tallest, a girl about fifteen, put two fingers in her mouth and whistled.
A skimmer came over the ridge and hummed down toward Amanda until it sank to a stop beside her on the ground. The team members, ranging in age from eight years of age to sixteen, were already gathering around the two of them.
Amanda waited until they were all there, then nodded to the man on the other skimmer and looked around the closed arc of sun-browned faces, sun-bleached hair.
"The invaders are here, in Foralie town," she said. "Coalition first-line troops under a brigadier and staff, with Dow deCastries."
The faces looked back at her in silence. Adults would have reacted with voice and feature. These looked at her with the same expressions they had shown before; but Amanda, knowing them all, could feel the impact of the news on them.
"Everyone's out?" the man on the other skimmer asked.
Amanda turned again to the Ancient. Perched on his skimmer the way he was, Ramon Dye might have forced a stranger to look twice before discovering that there were no legs below Ramon's hips. Strapped openly in the boot of his vehicle, behind him, were the two artificial legs he normally used in town; but out here, like the team members, he was stripped to essentials. His square, quiet face under its straight brown hair looked at her with concern.
"Everybody's out but those who're supposed to be there," said Amanda. "Except for Marte Haugsrud. She decided to stay with her grandmother."
Still, there was that utter silence from the circle effaces, although more than half a dozen of them had grown up within a few doors of Berthe. It was not that they did not feel, Amanda reminded herself; it was that by instinct, like small animals, they were dumb under the whiplash of fate.
"But we've other things to talk about," she said - and felt the emotion she had evoked in them with her news, relax under the pressure of her need for their attention. "DeCastries is taking an armed escort with him to Foralie to wait for Cletus; and he's also going to start sending out patrols, immediately."
She looked about at them all.
"I want you to get runners out to the nearest other teams - nothing but runners, mind you, those troops will be watching for any recordable signalling - and tell them to pass other runners on to spread the word. Until you get further word from me, all patrols are to be left alone; completely alone, no matter what they do. Watch them, learn everything you can about them, but stay out of sight. Pass that word on to the homesteads, as well as to the other teams."
She paused, looking around, waiting for questions. None came.
"I've made an agreement with deCastries that I'll bring all the teams and all the able adults in from the homesteads to Foralie Town, to be told the rules of the occupation. I've told him it'll take me at least a week to round everyone up. So we've got that much time, anyway."
"What if Cletus doesn't come home in a week?" asked the girl who had whistled for Ramon.
"Cross that bridge when we come to it," said Amanda. "But I think he'll be here. Whether he is or not, though, we've still got the district to defend. Word or orders from Arvid Johnson and Bill Athyer is to be trusted only if it comes through someone you trust personally - pass that along to the other teams and homesteads, too. Now, I'm going on up to Foralie to brief them on Dow's coming. Any questions or comments, so far?"