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supposed to land about midnight tonight, in two transports. But not here.
They'll land at their bivouac area over east about thirty miles; a landing
site has been marked out there for the ships."
"I see. I'll want a vehicle and driver then, at about 19.10 hours local. I'd
like to see them come in."
Trevelos nodded. "Of course," he said, and waited for Varlik to leave.
"I'd like you to make the arrangements now," Varlik said, "so I'll be here if
there are any questions, or if there's anything I need to know."
Again Trevelos nodded, and murmured a code into his communicator. Again a
tinny voice responded. Trevelos spoke.--
"This is Lieutenant Trevelos, Information Officer. I want a field vehicle at
media accommodations at 19.10 hours tonight. It will pick up a Mr. Varlik
Lormagen, a newsman, and transport him to the mercenary bivouac site. The
driver will have to know how to get there, and where media accommodations is."
The tinny voice spoke briefly.
"Good. That'll be fine. At 19.10." He hung up and looked at Varlik. "It's all
arranged. You took me by surprise. We hadn't realized that anyone off command
lines had been informed about this."
"And I hadn't realized you didn't know," Varlik replied. "I guess we surprised
each other. Thank you very much for your help."
He started back to media accommodations on foot. Mercenary bivouac area. Odd,
he thought, how the command here seems to feel about the T'swa. They hadn't
wanted them in the first place, and getting them regardless, were putting them
thirty miles away, apparently with no accommodations. Were the reasons Voker
had given him all the reasons there were?
Probably, he decided. The military command mind didn't need good reasons. It
could be arbitrary, it could be very spiteful, and it was in a position to
exercise and enforce both, especially on a planet twenty-six days from home.
It was 120° in the nonexistent shade, a breath-stifling heat that had the
sweat oozing again before he'd walked a fifth of the four hundred yards there.
After supper he'd shower and lie down, he decided, sleep if he could. It
promised to be a busy night, and there was the matter of adjusting to the
short days here, and the short hours.
PART TWO
The Tswa
CHAPTER TEN
A rapping drew Varlik out of sleep, and he sat up abruptly.
"Come in," he called. He got off the cot, wearing fatigues but barefoot. His
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alarm clock looked reproachfully at him. Apparently he'd forgotten to set it
-a hell of a way to start. A corporal, husky and square-faced, stood in the
short hallway looking in, and gestured at the rectangle of notepaper Varlik
had taped to the door.
"Mr. Lormagen?"
"That's right. Come in. What's your name, corporal?"
"Duggan, sir."
"Sit down, Corporal Duggan." Varlik motioned to one of the two folding chairs.
"What do your messmates call you?"
"Pat, sir. Short for Patros."
"Pat it is, then. Mine's Varlik."
Varlik pulled on his boots and pressed them snugly closed, snapped his
recorder on his belt, slung his video camera under his left arm, slipped the
band of his visor-like viewer over his head, then left with the corporal. The
night felt strange to him, unreal, like one of the occasional dreams he had of
being back in the army in some impossible situation or other. Outside, the air
reminded him of a hot pool-
-all right for sitting in. The vehicle was an uncooled hovercar with the top
and windows retracted. The corporal held the door for him, Aside from their
headlamps, almost the only lights in camp were at the few locations where work
went on at night-motor pools, the hospital, and, of course, Army Headquarters.
The perimeter, about a mile outside the encampment itself, was a barbed wire
fence, tall and silent; outside that, accordion wire; and beneath the ground,
string mines, no doubt. String mines, at least. A concrete and earth
blockhouse stood by the steel-bar gate, which a guard opened for them while
others no doubt watched from the blockhouse. Presumably there were other
blockhouses at intervals around the camp.
Then they were out, accelerating across the prairie, the treated travelway
giving way to the prairie's loose dry soil. A trail of dust rose with their
passage. Here the way was only barely marked, as if a reaction dozer had
scraped a minimal scalp across the grassland, careful to displace as little
soil as possible-almost as if it had backed, dragging its blade behind. At
intervals stood marker rods, slender, chest high, catching the headlight beams
on reflective surfaces.
The air was still hot, the temperature surely well over a hundred, Varlik
decided, and he wondered if the nights here were long enough to allow much
cooling. The air that swirled about them seemed hotter, in a way, than it had
in stillness outside the hut. But it wasn't really oppressive, not with the
sun's fierce rays departed. A
person could adapt to Kettle, he thought, at least at 52° north latitude.
"What do you think of the camp's defensive perimeter, Pat?" he asked. "Is it
adequate? Or is it even necessary?"
Duggan answered without taking his eyes off the cone of their headlights.
"You'd need to ask the general about that, sir, or one of his staff. But one
thing you ought
to be warned about-don't go trompin' around outside the fence. You're likely
to lose a leg, all the way to your windpipe. And that's if someone don't shoot
you first. The gooks on this part of the planet have been pacified for three
hundred years, damn near, and from what I've heard, they've never been known
to join together in anything. But it looks to me like the brass isn't taking
anything for granted."
He drove in silence for a minute or so before saying anything more. "And we
may not see them, but there's security patrols flying around over the country
in light scouts, with scanners and ultra-aud. There's probably one of 'em [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]