Yamba and his friends hate us enough as it is for what we’ve done. If we turn our back on the first major crisis—a crisis which our coming here has helped to precipitate—we lose virtually all of our influence in Ziarat. That would be fatal. This is our problem even more than Ziarat’s, and we have to solve it.”
“So what kind of force do you propose taking into the desert?” inquired Madoc. “Half a dozen commandos—or a small army?”
Remy adjusted the veil that masked the lower part of his face. Then he moistened his lips with his tongue.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “We’ll have to make plans back in Ziarat. I think Yerema will want to lead this one himself.”
Doon, meanwhile, had put the field glasses back to his eyes and was staring into the distance—not to the east, where the er’kresha had disappeared, but to the south.
“Riders,” he said, passing the binoculars back to Remy. “They’re ours.”
Remy had no difficulty in picking out the approaching men, riding Calvar beasts at a gallop. That didn’t augur well for their reasons. The animals brought by the Calvars from Omer, which Remy thought of for the sake of convenience as “horses” though they were not of Earthly stock, were bred for endurance and for the ability to work well in desert conditions, not for fast speed over short distances. They were longer in the leg and faster than the indigenous species that filled the same ecological and cultural niche, but they were usually ridden hard only in a fight or a pursuit.
One of the riders was a veir, the other a siocon—both were trusted men within Yerema’s private army.
Remy waved a signal to the approaching men, and the veir, Subala, waved back. The two slowed their mounts appreciably, and Remy jumped from the top of the rock into the saddle of his own horse, which shied uneasily at the shock of his abrupt arrival. Doon got down and mounted in a more conventional manner, and the three rode back the way they had come toward the rough desert trail. They met the riders at the bottom of the shallow slope, where the road—such as it was—led away across the coarse sandy soil toward Ziarat.
Iasus Fiemme, the siocon, handed Remy a folded piece of paper. Remy got down before opening it, and the alien also dismounted. “The news was transmitted from Pir by radio,” said Fiemme. “It’s several days old now. We picked it up in a small village three hours to the south.”
Remy read it through, and then looked pensively at the siocon. The other was a fraction taller than he, but seemed very spare and gaunt by comparison with Remy’s stocky figure. Though Remy’s skin had been burned dark brown by the sun there was still a contrast in coloring, for the siocon’s brown skin had an odd bluish tint. His bald head carried a series of lateral ridges, and his eyes were very dark, protected from the morning sun by a natural shield which had evolved in the sioconi from a nictitating membrane owned by one of their distant ancestor species. He was, of course, veiled against the fine corrosive dust, but his veil was dyed to match the color of his skin. The sioconi and the er’kresha were members of the same species, but the er’kresha were, on average, considerably shorter and more bony in the features.
“We’ve got enough trouble as it is,” said Remy, “without this. What does Yerema suggest we do about it?”
“He wants you to ride north and meet them,” answered Fiemme. “Help escort them to Ziarat. Find out what they’re here for. I’m to come with you. Subala will take your report back to Yerema now, so that he can consider the matter of what to do about Belle Yella.”
“Those instructions came verbally, along with this?” said Remy, holding up the paper.
“That’s right,” replied Fiemme.
“I suppose he realizes that I might not exactly be welcome with these people? I am a deserter from the human army, when all is said and done.”
To that Fiemme made no reply.
“What is it?” asked Doon, leaning forward from the saddle as he tried to catch a glimpse of the paper. It would have done him no good—the message was written in the language of the clans.
“A ship from Omer docked at Pir some days ago,” said Remy dourly. “It was carrying Calvar trade goods, and also half a dozen wagons, an assortment of horses and something like twenty humans, mostly soldiers. They’re heading for Ziarat with a Calvar caravan.”
“Doesn’t exactly sound like an invasion force,” said Doon. “Wagons and horses instead of lorries and tanks. Must be figuring on a long stay with no support from home. Why didn’t Command fly them over?”
“I don’t know,” said Remy.
“Maybe more recruits for the cause?” suggested Madoc.
“On the other hand,” said Remy, “they may have come to arrest us all and take us back for trial.”
“They’ve never made a habit of chasing deserters,” Madoc pointed out, though with some unease in his voice. “It’s never been policy—not worth the trouble. They’ve always worked on the theory that if people want to go native they can.”
“Well,” said Remy, “we could find out. The caravan can’t be more than a day’s ride north of here. Yerema wants me to find out what they’ve come here for. You want to come? Or would you rather ride south with Subala?”
“Do they have any women?” asked Doon.
“It doesn’t say.”
“I’ll ride with you anyhow.”
“Me too,” said Madoc. “Why not? They’re hardly likely to shoot us down on sight.”
Remy folded the piece of paper and put it carefully away into his pocket. Then he swung himself back up into the saddle. Remy remembered the last time that he had seen army uniforms, during the last months of what Command Haidra referred to in its communications as “the pacification.” The real purpose of the operation had been to bring the civilian veich who had settled in Omer under the direct control of a human governing council whose job was to make sure that their surplus wealth went to a good cause—the human war effort. Remy had done his own bit toward the pacification through a long year of police work interrupted by occasional skirmishes. In ten years since his desertion he had frequently recalled all the key incidents of that year—his first real encounter with the war. The fighting which he had done after the first landing on Haidra had been brief, and he had seen no direct action except for having to defend the troop ships against aerial attack with the aid of a laser cannon. That had seemed to him to be a very impersonal mode of combat. The pacification had been different.
“All right,” he said, when Iasus Fiemme had mounted. “We’d better move on. Subala—you ride with us for a couple of miles and I’ll tell you what to report to Yerema. There isn’t much to add to what he already knew we’d find.”
He turned his mount to face north, and urged it into a slow walk.
On the ships, he remembered, Command Interstellar made a point of spreading slogans through the troops to help their thinking run along the right grooves. You can’t escape the war, said one of those slogans. There isn’t any world big enough to be a bolt-hole.
So much for military philosophy.
CHAPTER THREE
Justina
