"If she hadn't pushed it, they wouldn't have given you that name?"
She grinned again.
"Otherwise no member of this family would've risked giving a child that name."
A timer chimed from the cooking surface and she got up to take care of something.
"Everything's ready," she said.
Hal got to his feet, turning toward the dining table in the still-unlit room.
"No," she said, glancing back over her shoulder at him at the scrape of his chair legs on the floor. "We'll eat in here, since there's just the two of us. Sit down. I'll bring things."
He sat down again, pleased. The kitchen was more attractive to him at this moment than the dim room with the long dining surface that must have been capable of feeding a dozen people or more.
"That's quite a table in there," he said.
"Wait until you see the one at Graemehouse," she said, carrying dishes to the table. She got the food brought and arranged and sat down herself. "I'll fill a plate for you to start you out since you won't know any of these dishes. Eat what tastes good, and tell me what you think. As far as the size of the table goes, when there's a contract to be estimated, even tables like that can be all too small."
She passed the laden plate to him, and started to fill one for herself from the dishes between them.
"You don't understand?" she said.
"Contract estimating takes space?" said Hal.
"It takes space to work with the sub-contractors," she answered. "A large military contract could take a week and more to put together; and during that time everyone's living with it around the clock. Try some of the red sauce on the fish, there."
Hal did.
"Suppose," she said, resting her elbows on the table, "someone like Donal Graeme had been asked by a local government on Ceta if he'd put together a force to take military control of some territory that's currently under dispute; and hold it while its true ownership is negotiated between that government and the other claimants. He'd first sit down and make a general plan of how the job might be done and what he would need to do it - troops, transport, housing, weapons, medical, supply units… and so forth."
Hal nodded.
"I see," he said.
"Do you? Well, having made his own preliminary, general estimate, he'd then call other individuals, or even families, from around the Dorsai, with whom he may have worked in the past, and whose work he'd liked; and ask each of them if they'd consider working under him on the contract on which he was currently putting together a bid. Those who did would come to Foralie and they'd all sit down together, take his general plan and break it down into particulars. On the Dorsai, every officer is a specialist. We Morgans, for example, tend to be primarily field officers with infantry experience. One or more of us, for example, might take the part of Donal's plan that called for infantry in the field and look at it from the standpoint of what they'd need to do that part of the overall job. They'd tell Donal what they thought would work and what wouldn't, in that area, and how much it would require and cost to do that part successfully. Meanwhile, the other specialists would be working with other parts of the plan… and so it'd eventually all be put together; and Donal'd have the hard figures of what it would cost him to fulfill the contract."
"Not simple," said Hal.
The food - everything he tasted - was very good. He found himself eating steadily and hungrily as he listened.
"Not even as simple as I make it sound, actually," said Amanda. "The fact is, that whole process I just told you about would have to be gone through twice, at least. Because the first figures they'd come up with would have been arrived at according to orthodox military practices; and what that would give them would only be what any responsible mercenary commander would have to charge as a bottom figure - just to break even. But then, once they had that - the competition price - they'd sit down and begin to come up with unorthodox ways of cutting the expenses they'd just figured, or ways of achieving their objective faster, until they'd end with a total that would both underbid any competitor and allow them a profit that made it worth their while to take the contract. It'd take a week or more with the pressure on each specialist there to pull rabbits out of his or her hat; and each bright new idea that was produced could force everyone else to adjust and refigure."
"I see," said Hal, "and all this took place on the dining table?"
"Ninety per cent of it," said Amanda. "The table'd be piled halfway to the ceiling with maps, schematics, sketches, models, gadgets, notes… and, occasionally, food - when they'd call a break long enough to eat. And all that's only the business use for a large dining room table. It's also the place where the whole family gets together, and family decisions are made. But that's enough talk of tables. What's your preference at this one? The fish, or the mutton?"
"I can't tell you. Both." Hal came very close to answering with his mouth full.
"That's good," said Amanda. "Just help yourself, then."
"Thank you. You're really a remarkable cook."
"Growing up in a house with a lot of people to feed every day, anyone gets good at cooking."
"I suppose…" Hal thought for a second of his own solitary childhood. "You said the Morgans were here even before the Graemes? How did the Morgans happen to come to the Dorsai?"
"The first Amanda," this Amanda said. "She's the answer to most questions about the family. She came from Earth in the early days when emigration to the newer worlds first became practical; and when everyone was leaving, or thinking of leaving, to make a new society somewhere."
"What made her come to the Dorsai?"
"She didn't, at first. Her husband died shortly after they were married. His parents had power and credit; and by pulling legal strings they got her young son away from her. She stole him back, and left Earth so that they couldn't get him again. She emigrated to Newton and married a second time. When her second husband died, Jimmy - the boy - was half-grown. She took him and came to the Dorsai. She was one of the first permanent settlers on this world - the very first in this area. When she came, Foralie Town was only a sort of transitory tent-city headquarters for the out-of-work mercenaries, who were camping out in the hills around here, until they could get taken on by some outfit…"
Hal ate and listened, only occasionally asking questions. It was a strange, dark unrolling of the years that she described for him; the hard times and the hard world gradually producing a people to whom honor and courage were as necessary tools for the making of their living as plow and pump might be to settlers elsewhere - a people shaped by their own history, until it finally began to be said of them, over a hundred years ago, that if they chose to fight as a unit, not all the military forces of the other worlds combined could stand against them.
It was a flamboyant statement, Hal thought now with a part of his mind, listening to Amanda. In the end, numbers and resources could not be withstood in the real universe; and against the military strengths of all the other settled worlds, combined, those of the Dorsai would not be able to win - or even hold out very long. But an odd, small truth within the statement remained. Given that the Dorsai could not win in such a confrontation, it might still be correct to say that the worlds combined would always be slow to test their strength against them. For though the fact that the Dorsai could not win or survive such a test was undeniable, the fact that they would fight against any odds, if attacked, was certain.