He’d suspect, Alec knew. But they’d stay far enough from his other radio equipment so that he wouldn’t be able to monitor their calls.
The truck slipped and groaned through the night, bearing the radio equipment and all of Alec’s men. They got back safely outside Douglas’ perimeter and then pushed on for another whole day before Alec tried to call the satellite station.
When he finally made contact, the voice that crackled in his earphones was totally incredulous.
“We thought you were dead or…”
“Or gone over to Douglas’s side?”
“Well…”
“Never mind,” Alec said. “Get word to Kobol that I want to see him or his representative as soon as he can get someone up here. There’s much planning to do. I’ll stay in touch with you at least every other day and relay instructions on where to find me.”
“Yessir. I suppose you want to be patched through to the settlement, and speak to your mother?”
Without an eyeblink’s hesitation, Alec answered, “No. I can’t afford to keep broadcasting that long. My transmission might get picked up. Relay this message to her: Tell her that I’m fine and we’ll soon have accomplished our mission.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s everything.”
Chapter 25
Kobol sent Jameson. He arrived within two weeks of Alec’s first radio call.
“How did you get here so quickly?” Alec wondered.
Jameson smiled in his eagle-fierce way. “There are lots of boats down in Florida. And plenty of fuel for them, too. They make the fuel from seawater—electrolyze the hydrogen and then freeze it down to a liquid.”
“I didn’t know that level of technology still existed on Earth,” Alec said.
“The old civilian spaceport is still there,”
Jameson explained. “Nobody bothered to bomb it.”
“So there are scientists there.”
“A few. Some engineers. They needed our help, though, otherwise they would’ve been overrun by barbarians.”
“And you came by boat all this way?”
Jameson nodded tightly. “Up the old inland waterway to Delaware Bay, then up the Delaware River. Scooted past Philadelphia as fast as we could—it’s still pretty radioactive. When we ran out of river we trekked overland, and here we are.”
Alec and Jameson were standing on the brow of a small hill, sheltered from the wind by a stand of white-barked birches. Their limbs were still gaunt and snow still covered most of the ground. But the Sun was shining out of a perfectly blue sky and warmth was returning to the land. Alec could hear trickles of melting water running beneath the snow. Soon the streams would be rushing noisily again.
“What’s Kobol doing down there?” Alec asked.
“He’s putting together an army. A real army.”
Jameson spread his hands outward for emphasis.
“Thousands of men. He’s recruiting them from the locals. They’ve got four shuttles landing supplies and weapons almost every day now: lasers, trucks, heavy stuff.”
“Thousands of men? Four shuttles?”
With a grim nod, Jameson answered, “The Council’s decided that the only way to get the fissionables is to smash Douglas once and for all. So they’re giving Kobol everything he wants. There must be more able-bodied lunar men in Florida now than there are left in the settlement.”
“Everything he wants?” Alec echoed. “Kobol’s not in command; I am!”
“You might find that point a little difficult to get across. The official verdict was that you were killed or captured. The rumor was that you’d joined Douglas.”
“They’re both wrong,” Alec insisted. “I was named commander of this mission and I’ve never been relieved of command, no matter what Kobol says or thinks.”
“He’s not going to be pleasant about that,”
Jameson warned.
Alec looked at him, thought a moment, then said, “All right, there’s no sense arguing about it here and now. We’ll have to settle it between us when he gets here.”
Jameson looked unconvinced, even slightly amused.
“I assume Kobol has some plan worked out for getting his thousands of troops here?”
“Indeed he does,” Jameson said. “He’s been studying terrestrial meteorology and he’s come up with the irrefutable observation that it’s warmer in the southern areas—where he is—than it is up here in the north.”
“So?”
“So his plan is to follow the advance of springtime right up the countryside. He’s already started to move northward, out of Florida and into some lovely swamplands the natives call Georgia. As the warm weather advances northward, Kobol plans to advance his men along with it, adding new recruits along the way.”
“More men?”
“That’s right,” Jameson said. “He says that nothing succeeds like excess.”
“He stole that. It’s a quotation from history.”
Jameson’s stern face showed surprise. “Really? He’s been strutting around like he thought of it himself. But no matter who said it first, I think he’s right. The more men we have, the more raiders and barbarians will want to join us. And the bigger the army we have to face Douglas, the easier it’ll be to beat him.”
Alec scuffed a toe on the snowbank where they stood. “It won’t be easy to keep an army like that together. Those people aren’t going to march more than a thousand klicks and maintain discipline. Why should they?”
“Some of them will. Maybe a lot of them will. Kobol’s promised them all the loot and women they can carry, once they’ve beaten Douglas.”
Alec finally understood. And thought of Angela.
“So we can expect Kobol’s army to reach here just about the time the spring mud’s dried and it’s easy to move across country,” Alec summarized.
“That’s his plan.”
“The timing’s going to be important. He’s got to arrive here just as the travelling turns good again. We’ve been able to survive so far because it’s been more trouble for Douglas to hunt us down than we’re worth to him. But when the travelling gets easy again, I don’t think we can last very long. If Kobol waits a week or so too long, we could be dead when he gets here.”
“I know.”
Alec asked, “But does he?”
For a moment Jameson did not answer. His bird-of-prey expression was as emotionless as he could make it. Finally he said, slowly, “He understands your situation, and he’ll get here in time. He wants to marry your mother and gain full control of the Council through her. He won’t let you get killed. Not that way, at least.”
Strangely, his words neither surprised Alec nor upset him. He hasn’t told me anything I didn’t already suspect.
“All right,” Alec said quietly. “It’s vital that Kobol and I meet face to face before his troops get here. I’ve got a nearly complete picture of Douglas’s defenses. In another two weeks I’ll fill in the few gaps in the information. Even with a big army, he’ll need that intelligence.”
“I know,” Jameson said, a bit stiffly. “He sent me to get that information from you.”
Alec shook his head. “No. I’ll talk to Kobol and no one else.”
Jameson said nothing, gave no hint of what he felt.
“It’s more than relaying information on the defenses,” Alec tried to explain. “There’s the entire question of strategy… how we’re going to attack Douglas. If you carry back the data I’ve amassed, Kobol will set up his battle plan before he gets here. That could be disastrous.”