There was the faintest rustle of grass, and she was alone with Ramon.
A little over an hour later the two team members were back
"Nothing much of anything going on," Lexy reported. "Nothing about Cletus coming. They'd like some news themselves about how long they're going to be here and what they're going to do. All they say about the town is that it's dull - they say what good would it be if they could go in there? There's no place to drink or anything else going on. They did mention an old lady being sick, but they didn't say which one."
"Berthe Haugsrud's the oldest," said Ramon's voice, out of the darkness.
Amanda snorted.
"At their age," she said, "anyone over thirty's old. All right, we'll meet here again and try it once more, tomorrow night."
She left them and swung east to the Aras homestead, to see if the district's single physician, Dr.
Ekram Bayar, who had been reported there, had heard word of any sick in Foralie Town.
"He's gone over to Foralie," Tosca Aras' diminutive daughter told her. "Melissa phoned to say Betta was going into labor. Ekram said he didn't expect any problems, but since he was closer than any of the medicians, he went himself. But he's coming back here. Do you want to phone over there, now?"
Amanda hesitated.
"No," she said. "I've been staying off the air so that whatever listening devices they've got down in the troop area can't be sure where I am. I'll wait a bit, here. Then, if he doesn't come soon, you could call for me and find out how things are."
"You could take a nap," said Mene.
"No, I've got things to do," said Amanda.
But she ended up taking the nap. Mene called her awake on the intercom at what turned out to be an hour and a half later and she came in to the Aras sitting room to find Tosca himself up, with his broken leg stretched out stiffly on a couch, and both Mene and Ekram with the old general, having a drink before dinner.
"Amanda!" Mene said. "It was a false alarm about Betta."
"Uh!" Amanda found a chair and dropped heavily into it. "The pains stopped?"
"Before Ekram even got here."
Amanda looked across at the physician, a sturdy, brown-faced thirty-year old with a shock of black, straight hair and a bushy black mustache.
"She probably doesn't need me at all," he said to Amanda. "I'd guess, she'll have one of the easier births on record around here."
"You don't know that," said Amanda.
"Of course I don't know," he said. "I'm just giving you my opinion."
It came to her suddenly that Ekram, like herself and everyone else, had been under an emotional strain since the invasion became a reality. She became aware suddenly of Tosca stretching out an arm in her direction.
"Here," he said. He was handing her a glass.
"What's this? Whisky? Tosca, I can't-"
"You aren't going any place else tonight," he said. "Drink it."
She became conscious that the others all had glasses in their hands.
"And then you can have dinner," said Tosca.
"All right." She took the glass and sipped cautiously at it. Tosca had diluted the pure liquor with enough water so that it was the sort of mixture she could drink with some comfort. She looked over the rim of her glass at the physician.
"Ekram," she said. "I had some of the team children listening outside the cantonments. They reported the soldiers had been mentioning someone - an old woman, they said - was sick in town…"
"Berthe." He put down his glass on the coffee table before the couch on which he sat, his face a little grim. "I should go down there."
"No," said Tosca.
"If you get in there, they may not let you out again," said Amanda. "They'll have military medicians."
"Yes. A full physician, a lieutenant colonel - there for the benefit of this Dow deCastries more than for the troops, I'd guess," Ekram said. "I've talked to him over the air. Something of a political appointee, I gather. Primarily a surgeon, but he seemed capable, and he said he'd take care of anyone in town when I wasn't there. He expects me to be available most of the time, of course."
"You told him you had your hands fall up here?"
"Oh, yes," Ekram gnawed a corner of his moustache, something he almost never did. "I explained that with most of the mothers of young children being upcountry right now…"
He trailed off.
"He accepted that, all right?"
"Accepted it? Of course, he accepted it. I hope you realize, Amanda - " he stared hard at her, "it's not my job to ignore people."
"Who're you ignoring? Berthe? You told the truth. You've got patients needing you all over the place, up here."
"Yes," he said.
But his gaze was stony. It went off from her to the unlit, wide stone fireplace across the room and he drank sparsely from his glass, in silence.
"I'll have dinner in a few minutes," said Mene, leaving them.
With dinner, Ekram became more cheerful. But by the following morning the phone began to ring with calls from other households relaying word they had heard in conversations with people still in the town, of now two or three of the older people there being ill.
"Not one of the ones who're supposed to be sick has called," Mene pointed out over the breakfast table.
"They wouldn't, of course. Noble - yes, damned noble, all of them! All of you. I'm sorry, Amanda - " he turned stiffly to Amanda. "I'm going down."
"All right," said Amanda.
She had meant to leave early, but she had stayed around, fearing just such a decision from Ekram. They would have to give, somewhat. But they need not give everything.
"All right," she said again. "But not until this evening. Not until things are shut down for the day."
"No," said Ekram. "I'm going now."
"Ekram," said Amanda. "Your duty's to everyone. Not just to those in the town. The real need for you may be yet to come. You're our only physician; and we may get to the equivalent of a field hospital before this is over."
"She's right," said Tosca.
"Damn it!" said Ekram. He got up from the table, slammed his chair back into place and walked out of the kitchen. "Damn this whole business!"
"It's hard for him, of course," said Tosca. "But you needn't worry, Amanda."
"All right," Amanda said. "Then I'll get going."
She spent the day out, tracking the patrols. In one or two instances, where the sweep was the third through a particular area, the majority at least of the soldiers in a particular patrol were those who had been out on the first sweep - not only to her eyes but the sharper observation of the team members who had been keeping track of those patrols. She watched them closely through a scope, trying to see if there were any signs of sloppiness or inattention evident in the way they performed their duties; but she was un-able to convince herself that she saw any.
She had a good deal more success, with the help of the team members, in identifying patterns of behavior that were developing in the way they made their sweeps. Their approach to a household, for one thing, had already begun to settle down to a routine. That was the best clue that the line soldiers had yet given as to their opinion of the dangerousness of those still left in Foralie district. She found herself wondering, briefly, how all the other districts in all the other cantons of the Dorsai were doing with their defense plans and their particular invaders. Some would have more success against the Earth troops, some less - that was inherent in the situation and the nature of things.
She sent word to the households themselves, to the effect that the people in them should, whenever possible, do and say the same thing each time to the patrols so as to build a tendency in these contacts toward custom and predictability.
It was mid-afternoon when a runner caught up with her with a message that had been passed by phone from homestead to homestead for her, in the guise of neighborly gossip.