Hal shook his head. "Have someone tie you with your hands behind you using ordinary string, sometime, and see if you can break it to get loose," he said. "if you've a length of it between you and what you are tied to, so you can snap the cord with a sudden jerk, you might be able to break it. If there's no play in it, I think you'll probably find you can't break even that. But it doesn't matter. I think under hypnotic suggestion we can make the soldiers believe Artur did it with this rope."
He stood up. "Now," he said, "everybody out, except for Calas and one of you. Calas can use whoever stays with him as a messenger, if he needs to send me word of something. Come on."
He led them back out into the night and the bright overhead lights of the camp. A slow, damp breeze-a herald of dawn -had begun to blow. They had probably less than an hour before they would be able to see each other's faces without the artificial lights.
The prisoners were still either sitting or lying motionless, still under the effect of the drugged arrows. "Set them up," Hal told the Guild members. "Including the two who were on watch and sitting at the table. Add those two to the back line of the others. I want them all sitting up with their backs to the hutments. "
The Chantry Guild people went about setting up the resistless soldiers. Most of those they handled stayed put in an upright position, once placed in it, with their legs crossed. A few were overweight enough or tight-jointed enough that they needed support to hold that position. In such cases, a Guild member sat down with his or her back against the soldier who could not balance himself.
Meanwhile, Hal had been going down the line of men. There were two lines, since that was the way the sleeping sacks had been laid out on the ground. He squatted in front of each one in turn and spoke to the relaxed, apparently unhearing, man before him for a few minutes until he evoked an answer to the question "Do you hear me?"
At a "yes," he moved on to the next one in line. It took him nearly half an hour to get all of them to answer him. When, however, he had gotten a response from the last one in the front line, he turned to the closest Chantry Guild member, a slim, almost fragile-looking girl of eighteen, with a sudden dazzling smile that came without warning and invariably seemed to change her completely. Her name was Kady and she was one of Onete's picked group of expert night foragers. "I'd like you to go to Calas now, in the hutment over there," Hal said to her. Her smile flashed in agreement. "Tell him that when you pass the signal to him, he's to call out in his best imitation of Liu's voice. What he's supposed to shout is "Shoot, Urk! Now! Shoot him!"
Hal repeated the words to be shouted, slowly. "Now," he said to Kady, "you repeat them back to me." "Shoot, Urk!" said Kady, in a thin, clear voice. "Now! Shoot him!' "Good,': said Hal. "You make Calas repeat it back to you, that same way, to make sure he's got it correctly. Then step outside and keep your eyes on me. When I wave, you stick your head back inside and tell him to shout. You've got all that?" "When I see you wave at me I make Calas repeat 'Shoot, Urk! Now! Shoot him!' " said Kady. "Then, what do we do?" "I'll take care of the rest of it," said Hal. "You two leave the hutment and back off. Repeat that for me." "Calas and I leave the hutment after he shouts and we leave the rest to you," she said. "Right," Hal replied, "you're perfect."
She smiled again, and went toward the hutment. Hal himself turned back and walked around to face the two lines of seated soldiers, who now all sat facing the still dark jungle beyond the clearing lights.
His eyes picked out the man named Harvey, who was one of those able to sit upright, cross-legged, without any support at his back. He had a strong-boned face, softened by fat, and the bulge of his stomach was enough to reach between his crooked legs almost to the ground in front of him, leaning forward as he was, and probably helped counterbalance any tendency he had to fall backward. He would have looked pleasant and ineffective if it had not been for the hardness of feature under his facial fat.
On Hal's first pass along the seated lines, asking the individual soldiers if they could hear him, Harvey had been the single individual to whom Hal had said anything more. He had suggested then that Harvey might have to take on a position of decision for all the rest. With the others, he had merely made sure that he had fixed their attention hypnotically upon him and upon what he was going to tell them. "Listen to me, all of you, now," he said, raising his voice. "You've all been asleep until just now,"
He paused to remember something. He had asked the two men who had been on watch duty what their names were, and for a moment he had misplaced those names among the thousands of others tucked into his memory. "All of you have been asleep," he went on, almost immediately, "even Bill Jarvis and Stocky Weems, who were on watch. That drink they had earlier tonight must have gotten to them. In any case, you were all asleep until just now. Isn't that right? Answer - yes! " "Yes," muttered the two lines of men. "You knew when you went to sleep that your force-leader, Liu, and the Urk were still at work in Liu's hutment questioning both the little girl and the big man you all took prisoner," Hal went on. "But you paid no attention to that until just now, when something woke you all. What woke you?"
He waited for a long moment of silence. "I'll tell you what woke you," he said. "You heard a yell from the Urk, as if he was hurt or frightened. You don't remember what he said, but you do remember what you heard after that yell had woken you. You all remember that, don't you? Say 'yes' if you remember."
"Yes," said the seated men, again. "That's right," said Hal. "From that moment on, you all remember everything, just as it happened, or as it was told to you. That's so, isn't it? Say 'yes,' if you remember." "Yes. " "You won't remember me or any of these other unfamiliar men and women you've seen here tonight. You'll forget that anyone was here but your own fellow soldiers and officers. Say 'yes.' " "Yes," intoned the soldiers like a ragged, impromptu choir.
Hal walked forward among them until he stood before Harvey, in the second rank. He turned to the man on Harvey's right. "You can't see me, or hear what I say to Harvey. You won't remember me at all, either from earlier or now. Say 'yes., "Yes," said the soldier.
Hal turned to the man on Harvey's left, repeated his words and got another "yes" for answer. Hal turned his attention back to Harvey, squatting down so that he was almost face to face with the fat man wearing the corporal's tabs on the gray collar of his uniform. He spoke to Harvey, using a voice pitched so low that the two soldiers on either side would have had trouble hearing him even if they had been listening. "Harvey," Hal said, "you hear me, don't you?" "Yes," answered Harvey. "You won't remember about this conversation, any more than you'll remember seeing me or anyone but your own people and the two prisoners," said Hal. "You'll do this because I tell you to, but also because it'll be in your own best interests to forget. If you forget you'll get all the credit for getting these soldiers back to headquarters, yourself."
Harvey smiled, but the expression of the rest of his face did not change. "In just a minute or two," Hal said quietly, "something is going to happen. None of the rest of the soldiers out here know it's going to happen, but you've been expecting some trouble of this kind to crop up from the moment you saw Liu and the Urk planned to question that very large, strong man, all by themselves, in one of the hutments, without a couple of the armed soldiers standing guard. You knew he was dangerous because he killed two men with his bare hands while he was being captured. But of course, it wasn't your place to say anything to the Urk or the force-leader, so you didn't. But that's why you've been ready to take charge of things if some kind of trouble does crop up. Isn't that right?"