“Here is where we are going — the apes are thickest in this direction, and we will make a fine harvest, I must hope,” the addition of the formal, polite phrase coming somewhat oddly in the midst of the spare, direct language he was using. He went on to arrange with the two other levy-lords how the three hundreds were to be deployed, how signals and other communications, supplies, medical attention, and other essential but (to the Tarnisi) essentially boring matters were to be arranged. The arrangements consisted largely of leaving all such non-combatant duties to a Pemathi servants’ levy, as was customary.
Later, for a long time later, the events of the campaign seldom left Tonorosant’s mind. He had only to close his eyes at night to see them once again unfold, unroll, unravel, unreel. Until the time came when something screamed and seemed to batter on his mind with bloody fists, crying out,
I am not Tonorosant! I am Jerred Northi! These things did not happen to me!
I
will not think of them and I will not have them thought!
Night vision became nightmare, and the man who lay sweating and struggling, the man with two minds and two memories, dreamt that he awoke to find himself Jerred Northi and only him once more — in body as well. At this point, though with slow, dreadful difficulty, as one who extricates himself from a fearful grip, he forced himself fully, really awake. He lay there, composing his mind. It was better, he concluded — far better — to dream of undesired things which yet had been, than of things which could not be —
— yet.
The concave shells of the floats were bobbing gently as they got aboard, bright and scarlet shells, humming faintly with the great power of their incredibly small steam motors — a concession to foreign technology which no Tarnisi had ever been known to oppose.
“Keep those shields full up,” Lord Losacamant warned. “We won’t need that much speed for the wind resistance to make that much difference — in fact: too much speed, and we’ll do nothing but overshoot our marks. We haven’t come all this way to do that. This hundred will keep my words in mind, I must hope.”
Line after line, group after group, hundred after hundred mounted up to the designated altitude, then moved off in different directions to the assembly coordinates. And there they hovered, three great, long lines of them, drawn up in one great triangle. Then they dropped. Then they began to move. An observer, strategically situated, would have seen the scarlet triangle drawing in, inwards, ever in upon itself, diminishing in area. Those upon the ground probably would not have noticed the geometrical niceties of the arrangement: how the lines grew tighter as they grew shorter, the spaces between each craft forever diminishing. Those upon the ground had never heard of geometry, had probably never so much as traced a rough triangle with a stick in the rough dust. All that they saw and heard, all that they could know, was that punishment was soaring through the sky.
That death was coming through the sky.
At length the time came and the signal was given and the lines ceased their absolute and supra-humanly beautiful rigidity (“ … beauty bare … ,” some ancient one had called geometry). Within no limits other than his own safety and that of his fellows, each floater was now free to do that which had brought him here. The stones thudded, the rocks rattled, all as before; as before, the voices howled — But no more than that was as before. There was no element of surprise now, and, besides, the shields were up. The Volanth fled, they ran for their lives, they sped along the ground, they leaped and bounded along for all the world as though they did not know that there was nowhere to go.
“Hold fire; contact only,” was the signal for the first phase.
Contact!
A delicately understated word … . There was here, too, a matter of mathematically calculable precision — arithmetic, though, and
Later, for a long time later, the events of the campaign seldom left Tonorosant’s mind. He had only to close his eyes at night to see them once again unfold, unroll, unravel, unreel. Until the time came when something screamed and seemed to batter on his mind with bloody fists, crying out,
I am not Tonorosant! I am Jerred Northi! These things did not happen to me!
I
will not think of them and I will not have them thought!
Night vision became nightmare, and the man who lay sweating and struggling, the man with two minds and two memories, dreamt that he awoke to find himself Jerred Northi and only him once more — in body as well. At this point, though with slow, dreadful difficulty, as one who extricates himself from a fearful grip, he forced himself fully, really awake. He lay there, composing his mind. It was better, he concluded — far better — to dream of undesired things which yet had been, than of things which could not be —
— yet.
The concave shells of the floats were bobbing gently as they got aboard, bright and scarlet shells, humming faintly with the great power of their incredibly small steam motors — a concession to foreign technology which no Tarnisi had ever been known to oppose.
“Keep those shields full up,” Lord Losacamant warned. “We won’t need that much speed for the wind resistance to make that much difference — in fact: too much speed, and we’ll do nothing but overshoot our marks. We haven’t come all this way to do that. This hundred will keep my words in mind, I must hope.”
Line after line, group after group, hundred after hundred mounted up to the designated altitude, then moved off in different directions to the assembly coordinates. And there they hovered, three great, long lines of them, drawn up in one great triangle. Then they dropped. Then they began to move. An observer, strategically situated, would have seen the scarlet triangle drawing in, inwards, ever in upon itself, diminishing in area. Those upon the ground probably would not have noticed the geometrical niceties of the arrangement: how the lines grew tighter as they grew shorter, the spaces between each craft forever diminishing. Those upon the ground had never heard of geometry, had probably never so much as traced a rough triangle with a stick in the rough dust. All that they saw and heard, all that they could know, was that punishment was soaring through the sky.
That death was coming through the sky.
At length the time came and the signal was given and the lines ceased their absolute and supra-humanly beautiful rigidity (“ … beauty bare … ,” some ancient one had called geometry). Within no limits other than his own safety and that of his fellows, each floater was now free to do that which had brought him here. The stones thudded, the rocks rattled, all as before; as before, the voices howled — But no more than that was as before. There was no element of surprise now, and, besides, the shields were up. The Volanth fled, they ran for their lives, they sped along the ground, they leaped and bounded along for all the world as though they did not know that there was nowhere to go.
“Hold fire; contact only,” was the signal for the first phase.
Contact!
A delicately understated word … . There was here, too, a matter of mathematically calculable precision — arithmetic, though, and
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