“Forget any ideas of a breakout west from the Rockies. They’ve as good as closed the ring. This is the last act, right here. Or something has to change pretty drastically somewhere.”
“Nothing from Sacramento?” Cade asked.
Gerofsky shook his head. “Not much from the West Coast at all. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean. Orders are to hold out with maximum effort. I don’t know what with, though. Our air support is practically nonexistent. They still have satellite cover. We’re like ducks in a barrel.”
Cade didn’t reply. Nyarl, stirred by the talking, sat up, rubbed his eyes, mumbled something incomprehensible, and began removing frosty wrappings from his equipment. Behind him, Marie was coming across from the kitchen, carrying a metal lid as a tray for steaming coffee mugs. Slowly, the scene around them was coming to life. Troops began appearing out of the ground to congregate around spots dispensing heat and breakfast. Some tanks away to the right were moving out from their parking area. A jeep scuttled by busily below, raising a train of dust. But beneath the appearances of calm ran an undercurrent of tension everywhere, waiting for the first shocks and rolls of thunder that would signal the opening assault at the front. Or would it begin as a sudden saturation from the sky by some unknown form of destruction?
Marie arrived and passed the coffees around, setting one down by Nyarl. Davis joined them from the far side of the dividing parapet. Gerofsky repeated for their benefit what little news there was.
“Nothing on what’s happening in China?” Davis inquired.
“I’m not even sure there still is a China,” Gerofsky said.
Davis watched Nyarl laying out components and checking them into pockets in his various carrying cases. “What’s the point, Nyarl?” he asked. “Whatever you get, who’s ever going to see it? LA might not be there.”
“I’ll see it through to the end. It’s what Luodine would have wished.” Nyarl thought, then added, “Terran sentiment. I thought you’d understand.”
The sound of jets flying low came from far away to the left. Heads turned, but the aircraft were out of sight. A lot of birds were aloft and making agitated noises, disturbed by all the unfamiliar activity. A loud hailer somewhere back over the hill was reciting something in a monotone unintelligible at the distance. As Cade watched, a field radar sited near the top of the rise to command the forward approaches tilted to maximum elevation, probing directly above.
Marie moved closer to Cade as he stood, warming his hands around the mug. “You finally look the part—a soldier,” she told him. “There was a time when I’d never have believed it.”
Cade glanced at the automatic rifle he’d been given, standing propped against the parapet next to where he had slept. Marie and Gerofsky had shown him what the various knobs and catches were for, but he had never gotten around to actually firing it. Some soldier!
He gazed back out over the terrain. “You know, now and again you find yourself wondering how it will be in the end . . . when it’s checkout time. You hope that when it happens it won’t be too drawn-out and messy. I never imagined anything like this: stuck on some mountainside in Colorado, in a place I’ve never heard of.” He shrugged. “You’d have thought that after the life I’ve lived, I could have managed something with a bit more style, wouldn’t you? You know, lots of friends at the funeral, big speeches. . . .”
“I thought all that really mattered was that we were together,” Marie reminded him.
He turned, and looked at her, checking himself. Then he put an arm around her and drew her close. “Yes. A pity we won’t be able to do a hell of a lot with it. . . . But I’m glad it worked out in the end. Do you always do things in such roundabout ways?”
“Why just me? You got here via China too, as I recall.”
Cade pulled a face, couldn’t argue, nodded, and conceded the point. “And Australia,” he said, as if that somehow made a difference. He stared moodily for a while, content with the feel of Marie pressing against him. “It was a shame about Mike Blair. He shouldn’t have put off going over there to work with Krossig. They were getting into such great ideas on what life ought to be about trying to understand. . . .” Cade motioned briefly with the hand holding the coffee mug, indicating nothing in particular. “Instead of whatever it is we’re blowing each other up over. As if any of it mattered . . .”