“I’m sorry I startled you,” Lock said, wheezing slightly. He kept his voice down, though the only privacy in the encampment was that of exhaustion. There were sleepers or would-be sleepers within arm’s length of Meyer in all directions. “You were calling out and I was afraid . . .”
“Was I?” Meyer said. “Oh hell. Hell.”
Bezant had no moon. Lights in the camp and a few dying fires gave the air a soft presence that didn’t really illuminate the occasional standing figure, guards and people picking their way among the sleepers.
Some of the trees were phosphorescent. They stood as pastel ghosts among their night-black fellows, blue and pink and a yellow that was nearly white.
“I’m sorry,” Lock repeated. He shifted as if to stand up.
Meyer caught his hand. “I didn’t know I was making a racket,” she said. She closed her eyes to remind herself. The steel walls of the plenum chamber shrank down on her at once, even though she was awake and knew she lay in a clearing.
She pulled the civilian toward her again. “What?” he said. “What?”
“Don’t fucking talk,” Meyer said. She slid open her shirt’s pressure closure with the side of her hand. “Don’t fucking talk.”
She kept her eyes open, on his, as she kissed him.
Horgen was on guard. Caius Blohm stood at the edge of the opening where she wouldn’t see him if she happened to look back at the ship.
Blohm wasn’t at the opening because he didn’t trust Horgen’s alertness. He just wanted better commo reception than he could get farther within the metal hull.
The humid air blurred the stars. The few bright enough to show through it were smears, not points. There was no breeze, but the forest sighed softly as it grew and planned.
Blohm’s visor echoed images from the helmets of strikers with the column. He combed one at a time through the helmets of the camp guards, seeing each remote viewpoint in full fidelity rather than masking it over his own surroundings as a double image.
His fifth try was Dancey watching the east edge and the barricaded inlet track. Mrs. Suares sat nearby, stroking the hair of one of the younger boys. The other children lay around her. Mirica was curled in a fetal ball. Her back trembled as she sobbed.
Blohm continued to watch the distant image until he heard a buzz from within the compartment. Horgen was waking Foley to take over the guard shift.
Blohm switched his visor off remote and lay down. He moved with the silence of a vine growing.
The Axe
The clearing was nearly circular and thirty feet across. Blohm paused. This was the first stretch of forest he’d seen that was naturally open to the sky.
The sky, bright but overcast, wasn’t of much interest. The ground cover was something else again. Tawny five-foot swordblades grew as tightly as grass on a putting green.
“I think we better go around,” he said. “That stuff’s too thick to go through. If the edges aren’t sharp, then there’s something worse wrong with it.”
He didn’t have to use intercom or raise his voice. For safety the squad was closed up as much as possible. Abbado’s people knew very well that while Blohm’s helmet database was copied into theirs, that didn’t give them the scout’s instinct for aspects of the landscape they glimpsed for the first time.
“Roger,” Abbado said. “We’re within a hundred yards of the predicted target. I don’t see much sign of a village.”
Abbado got along better in the forest than Gabrilovitch did. Both sergeants viewed the vegetation as an enemy, but the fact didn’t particularly bother Abbado. To him, enemies were something a striker fought or avoided; it didn’t matter whether they had bark or pale gray skins.
Gabe found the forest’s malevolence unnatural, even supernatural. Imagination made Gabrilovitch a good scout, whereas Abbado’s two-valued logic—kill it or run—had struck Blohm as simple-minded during the year and a half he’d known the man.
Close contact under the present circumstances gave Blohm a different view of the line sergeant. Abbado was simple but not stupid. By ignoring questions that couldn’t be answered Abbado handled dangerous situations, and he was able to lead strikers with him. Abbado’s squad followed not only because of their sergeant’s courage but because they accepted his logic.