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fomenting anything - you know what the Law's like).
The prospect of action gladdened me. I wasn't really in favour of the tough
line, although I admitted its potential, but I really did need something to
do.
Another time, another place, I could maybe have sat down and waited forever,
lying in a hammock drowsing in the sunlight. But Rhapsody dressed exclusively
in black, and sitting here was
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far too much like sitting in a coffin. Lying down was a declaration of intent
to die. I
needed something to occupy me, body and soul.
Something other than the wind.
A life of my own. I'd already had a taste of eternal death -two years of it on
Lapthorn's Grave, where there was nothing to do except stand that bloody cross
up two or three times a day. Well, the cross was down now, no doubt, and it
would stay down forever.
And that's how and why I became Rhapsody's public enemy number one.
11
Right from the start I was plagued by the suspicion that the boss wasn't cut
out for his job. It all seemed horribly familiar. Nick delArco was a good guy
but he was no starship captain. Bayon Alpart was the natural leader of his
band, but he was operating on a scale that he couldn't handle. You can't just
a hero, or a gangster, or a revolutionary, be or a tough guy. You have to have
the qualifications. They don't hand out bits of paper for those things even in
the weirdest of academies. But the bits of paper are all fakes anyhow. The
qualifications are inside you, but they don't just grow there - they have to
be put there.
Bayon didn't really know what he was doing or how he was going to do it. But
he couldn't admit that, because he was the boss and bosses can't doubt. Maybe
I shouldn't cry too loudly, because I probably couldn't have done any better.
I didn't have the qualifications either. But that still didn't make me happy.
I couldn't question his strategy, his intentions, his methods or his chances.
There was no obvious road to where we wanted to go. And it was his party. I
was only along for the ride. An extra card in his hand, an extra weapon for
his fight. The fact that he was a local boy who knew only the Rhapsody angle
and I was a worldly-wise citizen of the galaxy was only a fact, not an
argument. He had the greater subjectivity; I had the greater objectivity.
There was no way of knowing which talent might solve the problem. I had no
real kick. I was one of the gang and that was it. No hero, no war leader, no
expert. I had to play my role from behind.
Frankly, I was scared. Things could go wrong. And when things go wrong during
gun-toting operations, people can get hurt.
Very hurt. Personally, I don't like guns. I
volunteered not to carry one (we had more men than guns). But I didn't imagine
that would make it any less likely that I'd get shot if the bullets and the
beams actually started to fly.
The first difficulty we had to cope with, of course, was gaining access to the
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grotto without giving advance warning or having to cope with any extra bother
en route.
Naturally enough, we didn't have a map. Most civilisations are flat and can be
mapped flat. Rhapsody wasn't and couldn't. The problem of approach and access
was a problem in three-dimensional geometry and dispersion. The grotto, of
course, was only a single point on a single line. It was the intersections of
the other lines which disobeyed good two-
dimensional sense.
The problem was simple. We wanted to preserve a way out without conceding the
opposition a way in. The disposition of sixteen men to achieve this end
required very difficult thinking. I couldn't get near it. All that had to be
trusted to Bayon's judgement.
He did try to explain, but it was pointless, and I had to tell him so. I knew
a bit about arterial and venous shafts, about towers and showers, and about
the anatomy of alveolar systems. But only a bit. The pattern of tunnelling
imposed by the necessity for supporting the rock was beyond me, and I didn't
know the territory involved.
The outcasts had spent the whole day in stockpiling food and water. Their
raiding expedition must itself have been a strategic masterpiece. They had
stolen enough gruel to last sixteen of us a week. There was less water than
would last us half that long, but the area we intended to command included
several sources - and there was always the additional chance that the cave we
intended to take contained water.
I wondered what was going on back at the capital, in the meantime. Had the
council made a decision? If so, then we might be sticking our heads in the
lion's mouth. If the booty was already committed to Sampson, he and his crew
would be quite prepared to shoot their way in to claim it, and the Churchmen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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