We finished unloading the truck.
“Well, take care of yourself,” I said to Orrin and turned away.
I was perhaps five steps from him, headed back toward where I had hidden the jeep, when I heard him call me.
“Mr. Despard—”
I turned to find him right behind me.
“I—thank you,” he said.
“Nothing to thank me for,” I answered. “I enjoyed the workout. I suppose I’ll be seeing you around?”
“Sure,” he said—and then, more strongly, added, “Sure. You will!”
“Good.”
I turned and went. I had gotten a good echo from him, like the unblurred ring of uncracked metal when you tap a bronze vase with a fingernail. I went back to the jeep, got behind the wheel, and after a moment’s thought headed on into City Hall.
But there was no one around when I got there. Even the typists were not at their desks. I looked at my watch and saw it was just after ten in the morning. Coffee break time, perhaps. I went out, got back in the jeep and headed back up toward the summer palace, enjoying the bright day, the sight of the buildings and people I passed, as if the whole world was something marvelous invented yesterday that I had never seen before.
When I got to the summer palace there were eight vehicles of various kinds parked in the parking area. As I climbed out of the jeep, Bill came out of the door with a rush.
“There you are,” he said. “We’ve been looking all over for you. The Empress is on her way. We just got word.”
26
We were not surprised to see the helicopters ignore the town and head directly toward the summer palace. There were three of them, all the size of aircraft I had flown in between airports like LaGuardia and Kennedy in New York. They could each hold at least thirty people comfortably.
We stood in the parking area and watched them come—a baker’s dozen of us, including the Old Man and Porniarsk. There was nothing much else we could do. Our advance warnings from the communities farther west had earlier confirmed the fact that Paula Mirador, the Empress, was indeed moving toward us with at least five hundred armed bodies (about one-third of them women) plus three .155 millimeter howitzers. She had apparently merely passed through these other communities, pausing just long enough to accept their formal submissions on her way. Wisely, no one had tried to oppose her, and we ourselves were hardly in a position to do so, even though we were probably the strongest single social unit between our territory and the Rockies.
According to her usual battle plan, which our scouts had confirmed, she had the main body of her troops standing off just over the horizon, with the VTOL transports ready and waiting. The howitzers were with them, ready to be moved in close to pound flat any property we owned before the troops followed to mop up any still-living defenders. It was a strong military argument she proposed.
We had not given in to it—yet. Our town was evacuated, except for a half-dozen fortified positions with .50 caliber machine guns, hidden among the buildings. These, if they survived the artillery, could make it something less than a picnic for the troops advancing on the wreckage. Whether the Empress knew about our machine guns was a question. She apparently knew a good deal about us, but possibly not the full extent of our weapons and supplies.
The rest of our noncombatants were scattered, back in the hills, with a light force to guard them and weapons of their own, as well as enough food and other basic supplies to last a year. She could not hunt them all down, even if she wished to spend the time trying. Aside from all this, there were three more heavy machine guns and gun crews camouflaged and dug in to cover this parking area from the surrounding rocks and trees—and one other machine gun nest hidden inside the palace. Even if she were bringing as many as sixty or eighty soldiers in her helicopters, it would not be a wise idea for her to simply try and make the thirteen of us prisoners by head-on force.
But of course all this was beside the point. She did not really want to waste trained people and ammunition on us, any more than we wanted to fight a small war with her. She and we were both lining up our resources face-to-face for a bargaining session. The helicopters sidled in, looking very dramatic against the blue sky with its few patches of high clouds, and settled to earth with a good deal of noise and raised dust.
The doors of the two furthest from us opened, and uniformed men with rifles and mortars and a couple of light machine guns jumped out and set up a sort of perimeter, facing the surrounding country. They did not, however, move too far away from their planes and seemed to be making the point that they were there to protect the helicopters and themselves primarily.
After they had settled down, there was a wait of two or three more minutes, then the door to the helicopter closest to us opened, the steps were run down, and a dozen men and women in civilian clothes came out to range themselves like an honor guard in a double line ending at the foot of the steps.
Another brief wait, and a single figure came out. There was no doubt that this was Paula Mirador, even if the rest of the proceedings had been designed to leave any doubt. I stared, myself. I had not seen anything like this since before the time storm; nor had any of us, I was willing to bet. We had grown so used to living and dressing with practicality and utility in mind that we had forgotten how people had used to wear clothes, and what sort of clothes they might wear.
Paula Mirador was a page out of some ghostly fashion magazine, from her dainty, high-heeled, cream-colored boots to an elaborately casual coiffure. She looked like she had just walked out of a beauty shop. In between was a tall, slim woman who only missed being very beautiful by virtue of a nose that was a little short and a little sharp. -Besides the boots and the warm brown hair of her coiffure, she wore a carefully tailored white pants suit over an open-throated polka-dotted blouse, with the wide collar of the blouse lying over the collar of the suit. A grey suede shoulderbag with an elaborately worked silver clasp hung from one shoulder.
She took my breath away—and not by virtue of her band-box perfection alone. Her hair was not that blonde, her face was not that perfect, but something about her rang an echo of Swannee in my mind.
She walked down the steps, not looking at us yokels, and gazed around at the general scenery, then said something to one of her civies-dressed attendants, who popped to and turned away to peel off an escort of eight armed troopers to come toward us.
Once upon a time, I would have credited the attendant with a prior knowledge of what I looked like, seeing him come directly towards me, alone. Lately, however, I had begun to realize how much the way in which human beings instinctively position themselves gives out signals. The group pattern of those standing around me amounted to a sign with an arrow pointing to me and the words here is our leader.
At any rate, the envoy, a round-faced young man in his mid-twenties, who looked something like a taller version of Bill, came up within a dozen feet of me and stopped. His troopers stopped with him.
“Mr. Despard?” he said. “You are Mr. Despard, aren’t you, sir? I’m Yneho Johnson. The Empress would like to speak to you. Will you follow me, please?”