She remembered that, now, as she sat in this house with only two lives presently stirring between its walls. No - three, with the child waiting to be born, who would be having dreams of her own, before long. How old had she herself been when she had first dreamed of running the wind?
That had been a very early dream of hers, a waking dream - also invoked as she was falling asleep. So that with luck, sometimes, it became a real dream. She had imagined herself being able to run at great speed along the breast of the rolling wind, above city and countryside. In her imagination she had run barefoot, and she had been able to feel the texture of the flowing air under her feet, that was like a soft, moving mattress. She had been very young. But it had been a powerful thing, that running.
In her imagination she had run from Caernarvon and Cardiff clear to France and back again; not above great banks of solar collectors or clumps of manufactories, but over open fields and mountains and cattle, and over flowers in fields where green things grew and where people were happy. She had gotten finally so that she could run, in her imagination, farther and faster than anyone.
None was so fleet as she. She ran to Spain and Norway. She ran across Europe as far as Russia, she ran south to the end of Africa and beyond that to the Antarctic and saw the great whales still alive. She ran west over America and south over South America. She saw the cowboys and gauchos as they once had been, and she saw the strange people at the tip of South America where it was quite cold.
She ran west over the Pacific, over all the south Pacific and over the north Pacific. She ran over the volcanos of the Hawaiian islands, over Japan and China and Indo-China. She ran south over Australia and saw deserts, and the great herds of sheep and the wild kangaroos hopping.
Then she went west once more and saw the steppes and the Ukraine and the Black Sea and Constantinople that was, and Turkey, and all the plains where Alexander marched, his army to the east, and then back to Africa. She saw strange ships with lug sails on the sea east of Africa, and she ran across the Mediterranean where she saw Italy. She looked down on Rome, with all its history, and on the Swiss alps where people yodeled and climbed mountains when they were not working very hard; and all in all she saw many things, until she finally ran home and fell asleep on the breast of the wind and on her own bed. Remembering it all, now that she was ninety-two years old - which was a figure that meant nothing to her - she sat here, light years from it all, on the Dorsai, thinking of it all and drinking tea in the last of the moonlight, looking down at her conifers.
She stirred, pushed the empty cup from her and rose. Time to begin the day - her control bracelet chimed with the note of an incoming call.
She thumbed the bracelet's com button. The cover over the phone screen on the kitchen wall slid back and the screen itself lit up with the heavy face of Piers van der Lin. That face looked out and down at her, the lines that time had cut into it deeper than she had ever seen them. A sound of wheezing whistled and sang behind the labor of his speaking.
"Sorry, Amanda," his voice was hoarse and slow with both age and illness. "Woke you, didn't I?"
"Woke me?" She felt a tension in him and was suddenly alert. "Piers, it's almost daybreak You know me better than that. What is it?"
"Bad news, I'm afraid…" his breathing, like the faint distant music of war-pipes, sounded between words. "The invasion from Earth is on its way. Word just came. Coalition first-line troops - to reach the planet here in thirty-two hours."
"Well, Cletus told us it would happen. Do you want me down in town?"
"No," he said.
Her voice took on an edge in spite of her best intentions.
"Don't be foolish, Piers," she said. "If they can take away the freedom we have here, then the Dorsai ceases to exist - except for a name. We're all expendable."
"Yes," he said, wheezing, "but you're far down on the list. Don't be foolish, yourself, Amanda. You know what you're worth to us."
"Piers, what do you want me to do?"
He looked at her with a face carved by the same years that had touched her so lightly.
"Cletus just sent word to Eachan Khan to hold himself out from any resistance action here. That leaves us back where we were to begin with in a choice for a Commander for the district. I know,
Betta's about due-"
"That's not it." She broke in. "You know what it is. You ought to. I'm not that young any more. Does the district want someone who might fold up on them?"
"They want you, at any cost You know that," Piers said, heavily. "Even Eachan only accepted because you asked someone else to take it. There's no one in the district, no matter what their age or name, who won't jump when you speak No one else can say that. What do you think they care about the fact you aren't what you were, physically? They want you."
Amanda took a deep breath. She had had a feeling in her bones about this. He was going on.
"I've already passed the word to Arvid Johnson and Bill Athyer - those two Cletus left behind to organize the planet's defense. With Betta as she is, we wouldn't have called on you if there was any other choice - but there isn't, now - "
"All right," said Amanda. There was no point in trying to dodge what had to be. Fal Morgan would have to be left empty and unprotected against the invaders. That was simply the way of it. No point, either, in railing against Piers. His exhaustion under the extended asthmatic attack was plain. "I'll be glad to if I'm really needed, you know that. You've already told Johnson and Athyer I'll do it?"
"I just said I'd ask you."
"No need for that. You should know you can count on me. Shall I call and tell them it's settled?"
"I think… they'll be contacting you."
Amanda glanced at her bracelet. Sure enough, the tiny red phone light on it was blinking - signalling another call in waiting. It could have begun that blinking any time in the last minute or so; but she should have noticed it before this.
"I think they're on line now," she said. "I'll sign off. And I'll take care of things, Piers. Try and get some sleep."
"I'll sleep… soon," he said. "Thanks, Amanda."
"Nonsense." She broke the connection and touched the bracelet for the second call. The contrast was characteristic of this Dorsai world of theirs - sophisticated com equipment built into a house constructed by hand, of native timber and stone. The screen grayed and then came back into color to show an office room all but hidden by the largeboned face of a blond-haired man in his middle twenties. The single barred star of a vice-marshall glinted on the collar of his grey field uniform. Above it was a face that might have been boyish once, but now had a stillness to it, a quiet and waiting that made it old before its time.
"Amanda ap Morgan?"
"Yes," said Amanda. "You're Arvid Johnson?"
"That's right," he answered. "Piers suggested we ask you to take on the duty of Commander of Foralie District."
"Yes, he just called."
"We understand," Arvid's eyes in the screen were steady on her, "your great-granddaughter's pregnant - "
"I've already told Piers I'd do it." Amanda examined Arvid minutely. He was one of the two people on which they must all depend - with Cletus Grahame gone. "If you know this district, you know there's no one else for the job. Eachan Khan could do it, but apparently that son-in-law of his just told him to keep himself available for other things."
"We know about Cletus asking him to stay out of things," said Arvid. "I'm sorry it has to be you - "
"Don't be sorry," said Amanda. "I'm not doing it for you. We're all doing it for ourselves."
"Well, thanks anyway." He smiled, a little wearily.
"As I say, it's not a matter for thanks."
"Whatever you like."
Amanda continued to examine him closely, across the gulf of the years separating them. What she was seeing, she decided, was that new certainty that