“What’s the other side like?” I asked.
“Mountaineering cliff—there’s heavy weapon emplacements cut out of the rock there, too, and reached by tunnels going clear through the mountain,” Michael answered “The ranchers spared no expense when they built this place. Gallego thinking. They and their families might all have to hole up here, one day.”
But a few moments later we were on the poured concrete surface of a vehicle pool. The three of us went back into the body of the bus to rejoin Padma; and Michael let us out of the vehicle. Outside, the parking area was abnormally silent.
“I don’t know what’s happened—“ said Michael as we set foot outside. We three Dorsai had checked, instinctively, ready to retreat back into the bus and take off again if necessary.
A voice shouting from somewhere beyond the ranked flyers and surface vehicles, brought our heads around. There was the sound of running feet, and a moment later a soldier wearing an energy sidearm, but dressed in the green and red Naharese army uniform with band tabs, burst into sight and slid to a halt, panting before us.
“Sir—“ he wheezed, in the local dialect of archaic Spanish. “Gone—“
We waited for him to get his breath; after a second, he tried again.
“They’ve deserted, sir!” he said to Michael, trying to pull himself to attention. “They’ve gone—all the regiments, everybody!”
“When?” asked Michael.
“Two hours past. It was all planned. Certainly, it was planned. In each group, at the same time, a man stood up. He said that now was the time to desert, to show the ncones where the army stood. They all marched out, with their flags, their guns, everything. Look!”
He turned and pointed. We looked. The vehicle pool was on the fifth or sixth level down from the top of the Gebel Nahar. It was possible to see, from this as from any of the other levels, straight out for miles over the plains. Looking now we saw, so far off no other sign was visible, the tiny, occasional twinkles of reflected sunlight, seemingly right on the horizon.
“They are camped out there; waiting for an army they say will come from all the other countries around, to reinforce them and accomplish the revolution.”
“Everyone’s gone?” Michael’s words in Spanish brought the soldier’s eyes back to him.
“All but us. The soldiers of your band, sir. We are the Conde’s Elite Guard, now.”
“Where are the two Dorsai Commanders?”
“In their offices, sir.”
“I’ll have to go to them-right away,” said Michael to the rest of us. “Outbond, will you wait in your quarters, or will you come along with us?”
“I’ll come,” said Padma.
The five of us went across the parking area, between the crowded vehicles and into a maze of corridors. Through these at last we found our way finally to a
large suite of offices, where the outward wall of each room was all window. Through the window of the one we were in, we looked out on the plain below, where the distant and all but invisible Naharese regiments were now camped. We found Kensie and Ian Graeme together in one of the inner offices, standing talking before a massive desk large enough to serve as a conference table for a half-dozen people.
They turned as we came in—and once again I was hit by the curious illusion that I usually experienced on meeting these two. It was striking enough whenever I approached one of them. But when the twins were together, as now, the effect was enhanced.
In my own mind I had always laid it to the fact that in spite of their size—and either one is nearly a head taller than I am—they are so evenly proportioned physically that their true dimensions do not register on you until you have something to measure them by. From a distance it is easy to take them for not much more than ordinary height. Then, having unconsciously underestimated them, you or someone else whose size you know approaches them; and it is that individual who seems to change in size as he, or she, or you get close. If it is you, you are very aware of the change. But if it is someone else, you can still seem to shrink somewhat, along with that other person. To feel yourself become smaller in relationship to someone else is a strange sensation, if the phenomenon is entirely subjective.
In this case, the measuring element turned out to be Amanda, who ran to the two brothers the minute we entered the room. Her home, Fal Morgan, was the homestead closest to the Graeme home of Foralie and
the three of them had grown up together. As I said, she was not a small woman, but by the time she had reached them and was hugging Kensie, she seemed to have become not only tiny, but fragile; and suddenly— again, as it always does—the room seemed to orient itself about the two Graemes.
I followed her and held out my hand to Ian.
“Corunna! “ he said. He was one of the few who still called me by the first of my personal names. His large hand wrapped around mine. His face—so different, yet so like, to his twin brother’s—looked down into mine. In truth, they were identical, and yet there was all the difference in the universe between them. Only it was not a physical difference, for all its powerful effect on the eye. Literally, it was that Ian was lightless, and all the bright element that might have been in him was instead in his brother, so that Kensie radiated double the human normal amount of sunny warmth. Dark and light. Night and day. Brother and brother.
And yet, there was a closeness, an identity, between them of a kind that I have never seen in any other two human beings.
“Do you have to go back right away?” Ian was asking me. “Or will you be staying to take Amanda back?”
“I can stay,” I said. “My leave-time to the Dorsai wasn’t that tight. Can I be of use, here?”
“Yes,” Ian said. “You and I should talk. Just a minute, though—“
He turned to greet Amanda in his turn and tell Michael to check and see if the Conde was available for a visit. Michael went out with the soldier who had met us at the vehicle pool. It seemed that Michael and
his bandsmen, plus a handful of servants and the Con-de himself, added up to the total present population of Gebel Nahar, outside of those in this room. The ramparts were designed to be defended by a handful of people, if necessary; but we had barely more than a handful in the forty members of the regimental band Michael had led, and they were evidently untrained in anything but marching.
We left Kensie with Amanda and Padma. Ian led me into an adjoining office, waved me to a chair, and took one himself.
“I don’t know the situation on your present contract—“ he began.
“There’s no problem. My contract’s to a space force leased by William of Ceta. I’m leader of Red Flight under the overall command of Hendrik Gait. Aside from the fact that Gault would understand, as any other Dorsai would, if a situation like this warranted it, his forces aren’t doing anything at the moment. Which is why I was on leave in the first place, along with half his other senior officers. I’m not William’s officer. I’m Gault’s.”
“Good,” said Ian. He turned his head to look past the high wing of the chair he was sitting in and out over the plain at where the little flashes of light were visible. His arms lay relaxed upon the arms of the chair, his massive hands loosely curved about the ends of those chair arms. There was, as there always had been, something utterly lonely but utterly invincible about Ian. Most non-Dorsais seem to draw a noticeable comfort from having a Dorsai around in times of physical danger, as if they assumed that any one of us would know the right thing to do and so do it. It may
sound fanciful, but I have to say that in somewhat the same way as the non-Dorsai reacted to the Dorsai, so did most of the Dorsai I’ve known always react to Ian.
But not all of us. Kensie never had, of course. Nor, come to think of it, had any of the other Graemes to my knowledge. But then, there had always been something—not solitary, but independent and apart— about each of the Graemes. Even Kensie. It was a characteristic of the family. Only, Ian had that double share of it.
“It’ll take them two days to settle in out there,” he said now, nodding at the nearly invisible encampments on the plain. “After that, they’ll either have to move against us, or they’ll start fighting among themselves. That means we can expect to be overrun here in two days.”