He had seen no sign of Cee, however, by the time he had retrieved the sandals. Instead of putting them on immediately, he gave in to the temptation to move with unusual care closer in to where Onete would be sitting, and after a few moments he came within sight of the spot and saw her.
Cee was indeed with her, standing directly in front of Onete, and, it looked to Hal, well within reach of Onete if the latter had wished to reach for the girt. As Onete had said, however, she plainly had no intention of doing so, and Cee apparently now trusted her in this, because she stood relaxed before the grown woman, almost as if they were in casual conversation - as perhaps they were, in one fashion or another.
It occurred to Hal suddenly that, if only there were the materials up on the ledge to fashion a quick-acting tranquilizer of the kind used to immobilize wild game, he could easily have delivered it at the point of a dart or arrow, into the little girl, from his present position or one like it. With the proper sort of tranquilizer, Cee would never know what had hit her until she woke up in the women's section of one of the dormitory buildings, with Onete still with her.
She might react strongly to finding herself enclosed, but Onete's presence would be reassuring, and if the worst came to the worst, it might be better than leaving her here for the soldiers to discover and catch.
Of course, in argument against doing such a thing there was the fact that even a large contingent of soldiers might not be able to catch her - which they would probably try to do before they tried shooting her. If she could get away from Hal and Amanda, these Occupation troops were not going to find her easy to deal with. Then, once they had shown any sign of doing such things, she would make it a point to keep out of their sight.
Hal faded back from the clearing where Onete and Cee still confronted each other. When he was a safe distance away, he put on his sandals and made his last sweep of the ground at the bottom of the cliffs. Then he returned through the entrance under the boulder, up to the ledge. Amid was at work in his office, with a tray holding some crumbs of bread and the remnants of some sort of vegetable stew in a bowl perched precariously on the corner of a table otherwise piled with papers. "I'll take that back to the kitchen when I go, shall I?" asked Hal, nodding at the tray after knocking on the office door and accepting Amid's invitation to come in. "What'? Oh, that. Yes, thank you. Sit down," said Amid, looking up from the plans for an additional log building - one which would be in between the dormitories and his reception building in size. "What did you see'? And what did you think? You're back earlier than I expected." "It didn't take as long as I'd have thought, either," said Hal, sitting down.
He told Amid about the hanged madman and about his idea for possibly tranquilizing Cee and bringing her up to the ledge that way.
Amid looked uncomfortable. "I'm sure Artur and Onete won't like the idea," he said. "Even if we could do it. Oh, I don't doubt you could creep up close enough on her to get a dart or something into her, but even I don't like to imagine how Cee'd feel, waking up locked in one of our small bedrooms, even if Onete was with her." "It's just a suggestion," said Hal. "Then there's the problem of the tranquilizer itself. We've got a number of drugs in the clinic here, of course, but..."
"I know," said Hal. "As I say, it was just a suggestion." "Well, well, I'll talk to our pharmacist and if anything like that's possible, maybe you'd be willing to make the suggestion yourself to Artur and Onete. They and we could sit down and discuss the chances of it working." "I'd be glad to," said Hal. "All right, then," said Amid, "as soon as we all have some free time at the same moment. I can call in Artur at any time, but Onete's still down below, isn't she?" "Yes," said Hal. "And you're about to take your turn at the circle?" "I could put that off." "No need to, particularly since we have to wait for Onete to get back up here."
Amid sighed, a sigh that was more than a bit weary, pushed away from him the plans he had just been examining, and sat back in his chair. "Well," he said, "now, about the matter I wanted you to look into down there. When do you think the soldiers might come out here? And what might they do when they actually come?"
CHAPTER 22
"I can't begin to give you even guesses by way of answers," said Hal, "until I get some information. How many soldiers are there in the garrison'? Have you any idea how many of those would be free enough from other duties to make up a search party large enough to comb the district out here'? Do they have a tracker among them?" "Tracker?" Amid frowned. "Someone who can tell whether people have been moving through wild country like that below us by reading sign - recognizing part of a footprint, or what a broken branch means, and so forth." "Ah! I see," said Amid. "I don't know if they have or not." "There must have been other searches, in this district and others. Did they ever use anyone like that to try to locate the people they were hunting?" "Not to my knowledge," said Amid. "No, I'm sure they didn't. In fact I doubt they've got someone like that. It would be common knowledge if they did." "If it isn't, it only means they've got no one outstanding in that sort of ability," said Hal. "it doesn't necessarily rule out the fact that some of them may be a little more knowledgeable about the woods and quicker to notice a footprint or other sign, that's open and obvious. For example, there'll be no hiding the fact that Onete's been sitting in that little clearing for some weeks now, and meeting Cee there." "No. I've been worrying about that, but I don't know anything that could be done to erase the marks of their being there. Do you?" "I haven't been able to think of anything so far," said Hal. "I'm particularly concerned - not merely for Cee, but for the Guild as a whole," said Amid. "We've been safe until now up here, but there's no getting around the fact that if they find the entrance under the boulder and follow it up, they'd have us all in a trap." "No weapons up here, I suppose?" Hal asked. "Here?" Amid looked at him sternly, "Certainly not. We're Exotics! I suppose you could count Old Man's sword as a weapon, if he'd let someone else use it that way. He won't hurt anything or anyone, himself." "Too bad," said Hal. "The soldiers would be very vulnerable, climbing up here after they got past the boulder. For all practical purposes they'd have to come single file. With even a few weapons, you might be able to ambush the whole party on the way up and take them prisoner. Of course you'd have the problem of what to do with them, once you'd captured them. I take it for granted you wouldn't be able to bring yourselves to murder them in cold blood, even if some of them have done just that, effectively, to people like that insane man down the road." "No, we wouldn't hurt them, of course," said Amid. "And as I say, we've no weapons, anyway. Is there any way we could take them prisoner, if we had to, without weapons?" "I'd strongly advise against trying it," said Hal. "The Guild members probably outnumber any search party that'd be sent by at least two to one. But barehanded against soldiers like that-"
He grinned. "Now, if you were all Dorsai," he said. "Or even true, faith-holding Friendlies..." "Please," said Amid, "let's be serious." "Serious is that you simply can't afford the search party's discovering the entrance under the boulder." "Yes." Amid frowned down at the drawing on his desk for a Moment, then raised his eyes again to meet Hal's. "Only about five of all the Guild members even know it," he said, "but besides the boulder that's there beside the opening now, we long ago cut a second piece of rock of the right kind into the necessary rectangular shape and buried it just beside the boulder. The spot where it's buried has been grown over, since, just like the other spot near it that holds a block and tackle and levers for moving the block. We can fit it into the opening and it'll look, and feel, like part of the cliff behind the boulder. In fact, the block's got weight and mass enough so that even a couple of searchers - and there isn't room under the boulder for more than two at a time - couldn't push it backward and out of their way by hand, even if they suspected it of blocking a way through. But there's no reason they should." "Very good!" said Hal. "What it means, of course," said Amid worriedly, "is that once it's in place they can't get in, but we can't get out, except for those who know enough about mountain climbing to go down the open rock face. We've got a few who could do it. Not that we'd want to get out while there're soldiers down there." "You're vulnerable to being seen from above," said Hal. "I know the brush you've got growing on the roofs of the buildings and the rest of the camouflage hides the fixed elements of what you've brought to this ledge. But a satellite in orbit looking directly at this area on its scope, or even a ship in orbit, could see people moving about if they made the effort-the circle, for example, always has people in it, and even if it was empty you'd have to cover the worn area of ground with something. And with all that, even if you knew they might look, and hid everything and kept everybody inside, a close study by an expert of a picture taken of the ledge in daytime would find evidence of human occupation here." "You're telling me we're going to be found, eventually," said Amid unhappily. "Only if they look. As long as none of them ever think of the possibility of your being up here, you can last forever. That's why making sure they don't find anything below to make them think of it is crucial." "Yes," said Amid. The deep wrinkles of his forehead were even deeper than usual. "I know. We'll talk some more with Onete about what that Elian from Porphyry told her. He may have said something that would give us more information about the character of the search party, how large it might be, when it might come - and information about the garrison troops generally, their number and so on. Meanwhile I'll also try to locate anyone else among the members who's talked to someone from Porphyry lately, and if they've got anything of value to tell you, I can bring them in to talk to you. Meanwhile, you were going to walk in the circle today, weren't you? You might as well go ahead and do that. You won't mind if I interrupt your walking if I feel I need to talk to you before you stop of your own accord?" "Of course not," said Hal. "Anything I get mentally occupied with there, I can always get back into at a later time." "Good. "