Another cloud obscured the moon. Lexy's voice came unexpectedly out of the darkness.
"Why?"
"For one reason, because an hour later you may wish you had. For another, learn never to challenge automatically. No one's that good. Sit on your impulse until you know everything that's likely to happen when you act on it."
Silence out of the darkness. Amanda wondered whether Lexy was filing the information she had just received in the automatic discard file of her mind, or - just possibly - tucking it away for future reference.
"Now," Amanda said. "Anything else? Any talk of plans? Any talk of Cletus being on the way here?"
"No," said Lexy. "They did talk about relocation, after Cletus is tried back on Earth. And they even said something about changing the name of our planet. That doesn't make sense."
Amanda breathed deeply.
"I'm afraid it does," she said.
"Amanda?" It was Ramon asking. "I'm not sure I follow you."
"DeCastries tried to give me the impression that this whole invasion was designed only to arrest Cletus and take him back to Earth to stand trial. I let him think I went along with that. But of course they've got a lot more than that in mind, with the expense they've gone to here. What they really want to do is bury the Dorsai - and everyone in uniform wearing that name. Obviously what they've planned is to use Cletus' trial as a means to whip up Earth sentiment. Then, with a lot of public backing, they can raise the funds they'd need to spread our people out on other worlds, and give this world a new name and a new breed of settler."
Amanda thought for a moment, while the moon continued to play peekaboo with the clouds.
"I'd better go back to Foralie tonight, after all," she said. "Eachan will have to know this, in case he has to take over. Lexy - anything else?"
"Nothing, Amanda, really. Just off-duty talk"
"All right. I want this listening to go on - only at night, though, after the town and the cantonment's settled down. Ramon, will you stay on top of that? And also make sure neither Lexy or anyone else goes into the cantonment area. Past the outer line sentries is all right, if they know what they're doing. But not, repeat not, into the cantonment streets; and never into the huts, themselves. There's more here than just your personal risk to think about, Lexy. It's our whole world, and all of us, at stake."
Silence.
"All right, Amanda, we'll take care of it," said
Ramon. "And we'll get word to you if anything breaks."
"The necessary thing," said Amanda, "is letting me know if there's any word of Cletus getting here. All right. I'll see you tomorrow evening."
She lifted her skimmer on minimum power to keep the sound of its motors down and swung away in the direction of Foralie. Had she been unfairly hard on Lexy? The thought walked through her mind, unbidden. It was not an unfamiliar thought, nowadays; Betta, Melissa, Lexy… a number of them evoked it in her. How far was she justified in expecting them to react as she, herself, would? To what extent was it right of her to expect a future Amanda to react as she would?
No easy answer came to her. On the surface it was unfair. She was unfair. On the other hand there were the inescapable facts. There was the need that someone, at least, react as she did; and the reality that what she required of them was what experience had taught her life required of them all. Forcibly, she put the unresolved problem once again from her; and made herself concentrate on the imperatives of the moment.
Mid-morning of the following day she lay in tall grass, high on a slope, and watched the train that was the escort of Dow deCastries, winding up through the folds of the hills toward Foralie. Around her were the members of Ramon's team. The train consisted of what looked like two platoons of enlisted men, under four officers and Dow himself, all sliding over the ground in air-cushion staff cars, with a heavy energy rifle deck-mounted on every car but the one occupied by Dow. The vehicles moved with the slowness of prudence, and there were flankers out on skimmers, as well as two skimmers at point.
'They'll reach Foralie in another twenty minutes or so," Ramon said in Amanda's ear. "What should we do about getting runners in to Eachan and Melissa?"
"Don't send anyone in," Amanda said. "Eachan will come out to you if he wants contact. Or maybe Melissa will. At any rate, let them set it up. Tell them I've gone to look at the situation generally throughout the district. I need to know what the other patrols sent out are doing."
She waited until the train had disappeared over the ridge toward which it had been heading, then slid back down into the small slope behind her, where her skimmer was hidden.
"You're folly powered?" asked Ramon, looking at the skimmer.
"Enough for non-stop operation for a week," said Amanda. "I'll see you this evening, down above the cantonments."
The rest of that day she was continually on the move. It was quite true, as she had told Dow, that it would take her a week to fully cover the homesteads of the Foralie district. But it was not necessary for what she had in mind to call at every homestead, since she had a communications network involving the teams and the people in the homesteads themselves. She needed only to call at those few homesteads where she needed personal contact with such as the medical personnel or such as Tosca Aras, invalided home and anchored in his house by age and a broken leg. Tosca, like Eachan, was an experienced tactical mind to whom the rest could turn in case anything took her out of action.
In any case, her main interest was in the patrols Dow had sent out. Eachan, watching with the scope on the Foralie rooftop, reported two had gone out the evening before and this morning another four had taken their way on different bearings, out into the district. In each case they seemed to be following a route taking them to the homesteads of a certain area of the district on a swing that looked like it might last twenty-four hours, and at the end of that time bring them back to Foralie Town and their cantonments.
"They don't seem to be out looking for trouble," Myron Lee, Ancient for one of the other teams, said to Amanda as they stood behind a thicket, looking down on one of these patrols. Myron, lean to the point of emaciation and in his fifties, was hardly any stronger physically than Amanda, but radiated an impression of unconquerable energy.
"On the other hand," he went on, "they didn't exactly come out unprepared for trouble, either."
The patrol they were watching, like all the others Amanda had checked, was a single platoon under a single commissioned officer. But its personnel were mounted on staff cars and skimmers, as the escort for Dow had been; and in this case, every staff car mounted a heavy energy rifle, while the soldiers riding both these and the skimmers carried both issue cone rifles and sidearms.
"What have they been doing when they reach a homestead?" Amanda asked.
"They take the names and images of the people there, and take images of the homestead, itself. Census work, of a sort," said Myron.
Amanda nodded. She had been given the same description whenever she had asked that question about other patrols. It was not unusual military procedure to gather data about the people and structures in any area where a force was stationed - but the method of the particular survey seemed to imply that the people and buildings surveyed might need to be taken by force, at some time in the future.
By evening she was back behind the ridge overlooking the meadow holding the cantonments. Lexy, Tim and Ramon had been waiting when she got there. They waited a little longer, together, while twilight gave way to full dark The clouds were even thicker this night; and when the last of the light was gone, they could not see each other, even at arm's length.
"Go ahead," Amanda said to the two youngsters. "Remember, word of Cletus, or any word of what's going on in town, are the two things I particularly want to hear about."