"Goodby, Amanda. Good luck"
"The same to you," said Amanda, soberly. "The same to you."
She went out, touching Marte softly on the girl's bowed head as she went by. Marte did not stir or respond. Amanda remounted the skimmer and drove it around the further corner, down the main street to the square concrete box that was the town hall.
"Hello, Jenna," she said, stepping into the outer office. "I'm here to be sworn in."
Jenna Chalk looked up from her desk behind the counter that bisected the front office. She was a pleasant, rusty-haired woman, small and in her mid-sixties, looking like anything in the universe but the ex-mercenary she once had been.
"Good," she said. "Piers has been waiting. I'll bring the papers and we'll go back - "
"Still here?" said Amanda. "What's he doing waiting around?"
"He wanted to see you." Jenna slid her hands into the two wrist-crutches leaning against her desk, and levered herself to her feet. Leaning on one crutch, she picked up the folder before her on her desk and turned, leading the way down the corridor behind the counter that led toward the back of the building and the other offices there. Amanda let herself through the swinging gate in the counter and caught up.
"How is he?" Amanda asked.
"Worn out - a little easier since the sun came up," said Jenna, hobbling along. Her bones, over the years had become so fragile that they shattered at a touch, and her legs had broken so many times now that it was almost a miracle that she could walk at all. "I think hell let himself risk some medication, after he sees you take over."
"He didn't need to wait for me," said Amanda. "That was foolish."
"It's his way," said Jenna. "The habits of seventy years don't change."
She stopped and pushed open the door they had come up against. Together they entered and found the massive, ancient shape of Piers propped up in a high-backed chair behind the wide desk of his office.
"Piers," said Amanda. "You didn't need to wait. Go home."
"I want to witness your signing-in," said Piers. Talking was still difficult for him, but Amanda noted that his breathing did seem to have eased slightly with the sunrise, in common asthmatic fashion. "Just in case the troops they drop here decide to check records."
"All right," said Amanda.
Jenna was already switching on the recording camera eye in the wall. They went through the ritual of signing papers and administering an oath to Amanda that gave her the official title of Mayor of Foralie Town, which would be a cover for her secret rank of district commander.
"Now, for God's sake, go home!" said Amanda to
Piers when they were done. "Take some of that medicine of yours and sleep."
"I will," said Piers. "Thank you for this, Amanda. And good luck My skimmer's out back. Could you help me to it?"
Amanda put one hand under the heavy old man's right elbow and helped him to his feet. The years had taken much of her physical strength, but she still knew how to concentrate what she had at the point needed. She piloted Piers out the back way and helped him into the seat of his skimmer.
"Can you get down, and take care of yourself by yourself when you get home?" she asked.
"No trouble," Piers grunted at her. He put the skimmer's power on and it lifted. He glanced at her once more.
"Amanda."
"Piers." She laid a hand for a second on his shoulder.
"It's a good world, Amanda."
"I know. I think so, too."
"Goodby."
"Goodby," said Amanda; and watched the skimmer take him away.
She turned back into the town hall.
"Marie's still here," she said to Jenna. "I guess, we'll just have to let her stay, if that's what she wants."
"It is," said Jenna.
"Are there any others still around I don't know about?"
"No, the young ones are all gone - and their Ancients."
"Have you got a map for me?"
Jenna reached into her folder and came out with a map of the country about Foralie Town, up into the mountains surrounding. Initials in red were scattered about it.
"Each team under the initials of its Ancient," Jenna said.
Amanda studied it.
"They're all out in position, now, then?"
Jenna nodded.
"And they're all armed?"
"With the best we had to give them," Jenna said. She shook her head. "I can't help it, Amanda. It's bad enough for us at our age, but to give our young people hand weapons and ask them to stop - "
"Do you know an alternative?" said Amanda.
Jenna shook her head again, silently.
"An aircraft's due to pick me up from the pad here in three-quarters of an hour," Amanda said. "I'll be checking the situation out around the town otherwise, between now and then. Just in case I don't get back here before we're hit, are you going to have any trouble convincing the invaders that I'm a Mayor and nothing more?'
Jenna snorted.
"I've been clerk in this town hall nine years - "
"All right," said Amanda. "I just wanted to put it in words. If the troops they send in won't billet in town, try and get them to camp close in on the up-river side."
"Of course," said Jenna. "I know. You don't have to tell me, Amanda. Anyway, there shouldn't be much trouble getting them there. It's a natural bivouac area."
"Yes. All right, then," Amanda said. "Take care of yourself, too, Jenna."
"We both better take care of ourselves," said Jenna. "Luck, Amanda."
Amanda went out
She was on the airpad, waiting, when a light, four-place gravity aircraft dropped suddenly out of the blue above and touched down lightly on the pad. A door swung open. She went forward, carrying her single piece of luggage and climbed in. The craft took off. Amanda found herself seated next to Geoff Harbor, district commander of North Point.
"You both know each other, don't you?" asked the pilot, looking back over his shoulder.
"For sixteen years," said Geoff. "Hello, Amanda."
"Geoff," she said. "They bringing you in for this meeting, too? Are you all ready, up there at North Point?"
"Yes. All set," he answered both questions, looking at her curiously above his narrow nose and wedge-shaped chin. He was only in his forties, but twenty years of living with the aftereffects of massive battle injuries had given his skin a waxy look "I -was expecting Eachan."
"Eachan was asked by Cletus Grahame to hold himself ready for something else," said Amanda. "Piers took charge and I just replaced him this morning."
"Asthma getting him?"
"The pressure of all this thing pushed him into an attack, I think," said Amanda. "Have you met this Arvid Johnson, or the other one - Bill Athyer?"
"I've met Arvid," said Geoff "He's what Cletus Grahame's now calling a 'battle op' - a field tactician. Athyer's a strategist and they work as a team - but you must have heard all this."
"Yes," said Amanda. "But what I want to know is some first-hand opinions on what they're like."
"Arvid struck me as being damn capable," said Geoff. "If they work well together, then Bill Athyer can't be much less. And if Cletus put them in charge of the defense here… but you know Cletus, of course?"
"He's a neighbor," said Amanda. "I've met him a few times."
"And you've got doubts about him, too?"
"No," said Amanda. "But we're trying to make bricks without straw. A handful of adults with a force of half-grown teenagers to knock down an assault force of first-line troops. Miracles are going to have to be routine, and nothing's so good we shouldn't worry about whether it's good enough."
Geoff nodded.
A short while later they set down on the airpad outside the island government center at South Point. A lean, brown-skinned soldier wearing the collar tabs that showed Groupman's rank - one of the staff of a dozen or so combat-qualified Dorsai that Arvid Johnson and Bill Athyer had been allowed to keep for their defense of the planet - was waiting for them as they stepped out of the aircraft. He led them to a briefing room already half-full of district commanders from all over the island, then turned to the room at large.