Heads nodded.
She went off to the center of the house, hunting comp, located it, a sorry little machine pasted with grocery notices and unexplained call-numbers. She keyed in, called the house in Newhope, the number she had arranged for emergency.
“Jim?” she called. And again: “Jim!”
There was no response.
Her hand began to shake on the board. She clenched it and leaned her mouth against it, considering in her desperation how far she could trust Itavvy or Dain or anyone else in ITAK. “Jim,” she said, pleading, and swore.
There was still no response. JIM, she keyed through, to leave a written message, STAND BY. EMERGENCY.
She put the next one through to Isan Tel’s estate, where a few managerial azi kept the fiction of a working estate, unsupervised azi and a horde of guard. STAND BY. EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY.
And a third one to the Labour Registry. EMERGENCY, TEL CONTRACT. PLEASE STAND BY.
None used her name. She dared not. She rose and took two of the men with her, walked out past Merry’s unit to the road, and up it to the place where they had left the Warriors. They were there, fretting and anxious. “All safe,” she told them. To each she gave two pieces of the dried fruit, which they greatly relished. “I need one-unit to stay with me, two for a message,” she said.
“Yess,” they agreed, speaking together.
“Just tell Mother what’s happened. Tell her I’m coming to Newhope, but I’m slow. I need help, blue-hive azi, weapons. Fast.”
There was an exchange of tones. “Good,” one said. “Go now?”
“Go,” she said; and two darted off with eye-blurring speed, lost at once in the night and the hedges. The other remained, shadowed her with slow-motion steps as she and her guards returned to the house.
“Merry,” she said, when she had come to his group, where they huddled on the porch, tired men with rifles braced on knees toward the azi barracks. Merry gathered himself up, haggard, the light from the door showing darkly on his wounded cheek, his blond hair plastered with sweat and dust. “One of the two of us,” she said hoarsely, “has to get the truck back after those men. You’ve land-sense. Can you do it? Are you able to? I need you back; I rely on you too much.”
Pride shone in the azi’s eyes. “I’ll get back,” he said; she had never imagined such a look of intensity from stolid Merry. It approached passion. Such expression, she saw suddenly, rested not alone in his face, but in those of others. She did not understand it. It had something to do with the tapes, she thought, and yet it was no less real, and disturbed her.
“Truck ought to be in the equipment shed. Watch yourselves, walking around out here. We think we’ve accounted for everyone. I haven’t had time to check comp thoroughly.”
“I need three men.”
She nodded; Merry singled out his men and left for the side of the house. She stationed Warrior by the side of the porch by the other azi and left them so, limped up the steps and into the house, giving only a glance to the captive betas. Her legs shook under her, adrenaline drained away. She sank down and wiped her face with her hand.
“Get a water-container,” she told one of the azi. And to the beta, “ser, is there a key for that vehicle?”
“By the door.”
She looked and saw it hanging. “Take that to Merry,” she told the azi. “Take a bit of that dried fruit too. There’ll be at least some can appreciate it.”
The azi gathered up the items and left, came back again; distantly there was a moaning of an engine, that turned off where the road would be: Merry was on his way.
“True that the shuttle crashed?” the beta woman asked.
Raen nodded. “Broken limbs in plenty, sera. And dead. We had a hundred men aboard that ship.”
The betas’ faces reflected compassion for that.
“I’m sorry,” Raen said, “for breaking in. It’s necessary. your names, seri? I’d rate you compensation if it were safe. It’s not, at the moment.”