Briefly, what he would now need to hypnotize the soldiers into believing, must be an ever greater distortion of what had actually taken place here in the forest.
He turned, went out of the hutment, and across to the group that was now strapping Artur securely onto his stretcher. A little off to one side, the drugged soldiers sat or lay still, watched by the other four bowmen, and a little beyond these were Cee, Onete and Old Man. Old Man's hand still rested on the back of Cee's neck. But it lay there with an appearance more like that of a comforting gesture, than a calming one. Onete's lips were moving steadily as she spoke to Cee, who in her turn was utterly unmoving and unanswering, but listened to the grown woman as if fascinated.
Hal reached the group by the stretcher. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm going to have to make use of Artur before you carry him away. If he's ready to be moved, follow me. I want to bring him into the hutment on the far right where the officer in command was sleeping. Calas?" "Right here," answered Calas, emerging from the crowd. "Come along," said Hal. "I want to talk to you as we go. After Liu and the Urk, who'd be in charge of these soldiers?" "Who? Probably him," said Calas as they walked toward the hutment. He pointed to a square-bodied, middle-aged man with thin, tousled hair on a round head, sitting beside his sleeping sack and staring at nothing. "He's a supply corporal, and theoretically he wouldn't command force-soldiery. But he's the senior in rank, and besides, he's one of the headquarters clique, one of the bunch that runs things and you keep in good with, if you know what's good for you. His name's Harvey. He'd take command here if Liu or the Urk couldn't. He'd like doing that - but it's not likely-"
He stared at Hal abruptly. "Or is it?" "Yes," said Hal bluntly. "They're both dead." "Dead?" Calas stopped in his tracks, then had to run to catch up with Hal, who had not paused. "Cee got to them," Hal said.
"She did?" Calas broke into a smile. "How?" The stretcher bearers, also close enough to hear this, turned their heads at Hal's blunt statement. But he did not answer. They continued to stare, to the point where they almost missed the entrance to the hutment at which they were aiming, before finally carrying the stretcher through it. "So, as a result, we've got a problem on our hands," Hal went on. They were now inside the hutment that had been Liu's. Hal stood aside to let the bearers set down on the floor the still unconscious Artur. "Take him off the stretcher," Hal directed them. "I want him laid, face down, sprawled out on the floor as if he'd fallen trying to reach Liu on his cot. When you're done with that, go to the hutment next door, dress the body of the Urk in his uniform, sidearm and all - find the power pistol - and carry him in here on the stretcher. " "Calas," said Hal, as soon as they had gone out, "how well could you imitate Liu's voice? I don't mean you'd have to be good enough to fool anyone under ordinary conditions, close up, but I need a shout or two, supposedly from him, to back up what I'm going to hypnotize the rest of the soldiers into believing. Did Liu have some particular way of speaking that was his alone? Everyone does, and most soldiers can imitate their officers' mannerisms." "He had a high voice and a snappy, snotty way of talking," said Calas. "I think I could come up with something like it, if I'm to be yelling from inside the hutment here, where they can't see me and the hutment'll probably mess up the way his voice'd sound, some. " "Good," said Hal, "what I want you to yelI is an order from Liu to the Urk to shoot. The idea will be that Artur's somehow gotten loose in here." "Good," said Calas. "I can do that standing on my head. Anyway, I like the idea of Artur getting loose in here with the two of them. Or, I would if Artur would have actually done anything to them, even if he did get free."
CHAPTER 29
"Good," said Hal, in his turn. He moved to the cot and began propping Liu's head up on the pillow beneath it, so that his throat was visible. The body was beginning to cool further, but still had not stiffened. He took the officer's pistol belt from its perch over the back of the bedside chair that held the rest of the man's clothes, and laid it on the seat of the chair, so that the power pistol in its holster was lying, flat, with the pistol butt next to the bed.
He stretched out the man's arm and curled the dead fingers around the butt of the weapon, half drawing it from its holster. He chuckled, with a rueful edge to the chuckle. "What's the joke, Friend?" Calas's voice asked behind him "Only," said Hal - turning to face the former soldier "the fact I'd just been thinking earlier that our plans for all this had gone off perfectly this time, exactly as we made them, up on the ledge. That was before I found Liu and the Urk had been killed - and everything had to be changed." "You've got a different idea now?" asked Calas.
There was no doubt in the smaller man's voice. Clearly, he had complete confidence that whatever might have come up, Hal could adjust their plans to take care of it. "I had it in mind to arrange things so that the two of them would take their troops home. Their report would be that both Artur and Cee had died under questioning. But that it was pretty clear from what they said that there was no one else living up here. They would have reported that they'd buried the bodies, the way they buried the soldiers that Artur'd have been blamed for killing earlier, then simply gave up and went back to the garrison. "
And now?" prompted Calas. The stretcher bearers came in with the dressed and armed body of the Urk. "Put him down just inside the entrance flap to the left," Hal told them. "As I was just telling Calas, we've had to change plans. Now when I hypnotize those soldiers out there I'm going to have to convince them that everybody killed everybody else. A taller story by quite a bit. Two dead soldiers, even a dead underofficer's one thing. A dead commissioned officer's something else - at least as far as paperwork is concerned. Their headquarters is going to be grilling these soldiers for details - that's right, take the Urk off the stretcher and pull him up so he's not quite alongside Artur. Now turn him nearly all the way over on his face, so that you can't see the front part of his body."
They did as he said. "All right," said Hal, when they were finished. "Now, roll the stretcher up around its poles and lay it along the wall of the hutment, behind the cot, so it can't be seen. In a moment I want the rest of you to go out and join the others guarding the soldiers. Send someone to me at once if any of them show signs Of coming out of their drugged state."
He knelt beside the unconscious form of Artur. "Oh. Also," he said, raising his head to look back over his shoulder at the stretcher bearers, "one of you go out and get me a length of the rope they had him tied up with. About a meter's length'II do."
The bearers looked at each other, and the one nearest the door went out. When he came back with the rope, Hal took it, tied Artur's hands gently together behind his back with one end of the rope. "Anyone got a knife?" he asked, still kneeling beside Artur.
Calas and one of the stretcher bearers were the only ones with such items, Hal opened each of them in turn and tried the edge of the blade on his thumb. He chose Calas's. With it, he made various cuts all around the rope in an irregular circle, severing only the top strands. He pulled these cuts apart and cut deeper, pulling on the rope as he did so, so that when at last it parted, it showed a ragged end. "There," he said, winding the rest of the rope around the central pole that upheld the hutment and had been mechanically driven deep into the packed earth under it. He left protruding about as much rope as would make one turn around the pole, with the ragged-looking end projecting into the air. "There," he said. "That should look more like someone broke the rope with sheer strength, rather than its being cut. I think, under hypnosis, I can make them believe someone as big as Artur could do that." "He probably could have," said Calas, accepting his knife back.