Dressed, he left his room and headed on his customary route toward the lip of the ledge and the sunrise to come. Not yet - the understanding. Only a dragon.
It was still full, moonless dark outside and the air was not merely chill, but icy, with that greatest coldness that comes just before dawn. The soldiers would not be leaving Porphyry until after the sun was well up. They would not even be coming into view of the lookouts above them on the mountain for several hours yet and there was nothing more in the way of preparations that could be made. Meanwhile, it would be reassuring for the Guildmembers to see him following his normal pattern of activity, as if the danger now threatening was not all-important. The ledge had originally had its trees cut so as to provide corridors for people to move about, shielded from overhead observation. But there was no need to follow those corridors yet with the sun not yet risen.
Like all the other Guild members, now, Hal had come to know the layout of the ledge in darkness the way he knew his own room with the lighting off. He went toward his usual position near the front edge of the ledge but chose a spot a little way from it, under a tree that would hide him when the sun had risen. He sat down in lotus position.
In a little while the sky began to lighten, and shortly after, like a carven figure emerging out of darkness, he saw Old Man, already there and similarly seated, under a tree a few meters away. They bowed to each other and then directed their attention toward the sunrise that was coming.
The day lightened the landscape around and below them, and Hal's mind once more slipped off into the scene of himself, seated like this in the Guildhouse of the far future, completed of polished stone. He sat beside a pool now rimmed with polished granite, in which fish swam and waterplants floated their white flowers.
Once more he searched out a plant close to him, with its white blossom, on one petal of which was a drop of dew, that might catch the light as the sun rose.
He found a dewdrop, and again this morning, it did. Once more, as the light was suddenly reflected from the speck of water, for a fraction of a second he felt the closeness of the understanding he sought here, but had not yet grasped. It was all but within his reach....
But he could not close upon it. As the sun pushed more of itself into visibility above the far mountains, and regretfully, he returned to the needs of the moment. He exchanged bows again with Old Man and, like the other, rose. They went their separate Ways under the shelters of the corridors of trees.
Hal's way led him by force of habit toward the kitchen of his dormitory-building number two. He was a good third of the way toward it, his mind full of how close he had come to some sort of understanding, back during the sunrise, when older habit caught up with him again and he turned away.
It was old Dorsai training. Clean body and clean clothes the morning of a battle - and no breakfast. To miss one meal was unimportant. But to have the stomach empty might be helpful, in case of body wounds. Also there was the feeling - possibly an illusion, but he like others had felt it nonetheless - that the mind was keener and more awake on an empty stomach, just as he would not have thought of eating just before watching a sunrise or walking in the circle.
He went instead to Amid's reception building, sure that in spite of the early hour, he would find the older man there. There, Amid was indeed, sitting at a table surface between the fireplace and the front door, set up in the space vacated by a number of the chairs that had been pushed back against the wall. Spread out on the table surface was a map of the immediate jungle area, from directly below the cliffs holding the ledge to where the road past the former madman's place turned into a trail.
The map had evidently been printed up from data records in sections, and fused together into one large sheet, overnight. On it, at Amid's right elbow, sat a table-model scope with a permanently exposed, 30-millimeter-square screen. The sight of it made Hal automatically reach to his waist to check that he had his own, 10-millimeter-square field scope folded up and hooked on there. It was. "Hal!" said Amid, looking up as Hal came toward the table. "I'm glad you came directly here from watching the sun come up - but, wait, you haven't had breakfast yet?" " I'll have something later," said Hal. "Don't forget to eat - that's what they're always telling me, and at your age you need the fuel for your energies more than I do," said Amid. "Hal, look at this map. Will you show me the way you think the soldiers will do their searching?"
Hal came up to the table surface beside him. "As I told you yesterday," said Hal, "they'll come up the road, here, to the end of the trail. There, they'll drop off a couple of soldiers to set up a post, unless the officer in charge of the search is lazy or for other reasons decides to set up his own headquarters there. Either way, there'll be some of them there, in direct phone contact with their headquarters back in Porphyry. "The rest ." His right index finger traced routes on the map. "... will probably continue on as two separate, equal units, to the two center points of equal halves of the area to be searched. Once at those center points each unit will set up secondary headquarters, under the command of sub-officers, keeping at least a couple each of the soldiers with them. My guess is that one alternative then is that the soldiers of each unit will be sent out to form a skirmish line at the farthest extent of their part of the territory, and make a sweep through it until they meet the skirmish line of the other unit coming from the farthest extent of their territory. If by the time they meet they've found nothing, they'll travel back together to the head of the trail and withdraw to Porphyry. That's unless their plan is to break up into smaller units." "Yes. I see," said Amid, nodding. "Now what about them breaking up into even smaller units?" "It's equally possible," said Hal. "An alternative, once the secondary posts have been set up, is that they'll divide the soldiers not kept at the secondary headquarters into, say, five-person units. These units will then be sent out to search a specific piece of the territory that's to be examined by that particular sub-group. In short, the original search party will still divide into two equal units, but then the two units will each divide again into a number of smaller units, each with the responsibility of examining a small part of the total territory to be searched. Those small parts will probably be defined for them by specific coordinates on their maps, which we can learn by watching how they move." "And which way do you think they'll do it?" "I've no way of knowing," Hal said. "The choice'll be made on the basis of what kind of soldiers they are and what kind of officers they've got over them. For example, if the officer in command is afraid his sub-officers are going to lie down on the job once they're out from under his eye, he or she may prefer the skirmish line. On the other hand, if the commander's in good control and/or the sub-officers are responsible and have good control of the soldiers under them, the commander may prefer the individual group method as being more likely to make a close and careful examination of the area they're assigned to search." "How long should it take them to get into position to search?" Amid asked. "Probably, judging from what I've seen and what I've heard about them, they'll take ail of today just to set themselves up," said Hal. "Yes..." Amid rubbed his hands together worriedly. "I suppose we've nothing to fear, really, until tomorrow. I was wondering whether to send word to block the entrance yet." "Any time. I'm a little surprised you haven't done it before now," Hal said. "There's none of the Guild people off the ledge, are there?" "No, no Guild people," said Amid. He looked up at Hal. "But Artur hates to see that block go into place. You understand."