"I've told you about myself, how I was raised," he answered. He hesitated, but it needed to be said. "I never fired at a living person in my life before today. But you have to face something, you and the Command. I'm probably better trained for something like we've just been through than anyone here, except you or Child-of-God."
He stopped. She said nothing, only watched him. He saw the black-clad soldiers again in his mind's eye - laughing and firing down on the lower ridge.
"I was operating by reflex, most of the way," he said. "But I didn't try anything I didn't know I could do."
Surprisingly, she nodded.
"All right," she said. "But tell me - how did you feel when it was all over? How do you feel now?"
"Sick," he said, bluntly. "I was numb for a while, after. But now I just feel sick - sick and exhausted. I'd like to go to bed and sleep for a month."
"We'd all like sleep," she said. "But we don't feel the sort of sickness you feel - any of us, except you. Have you asked your friend Jason how he feels?"
"No," he said.
She looked at him silently for a long moment.
"I killed my first enemy when I was thirteen," she said. "I was with my father's Command when it was wiped out by the Militia. I got away, the way that officer got away from you today. You've never been through that sort of thing. We have. Combat skills alone don't put you above anyone in this camp."
He looked down at her, feeling strangely adrift in the universe. She should be carved, he thought, not in metal, but in some dark, eternal rock - and he suddenly remembered the image of the rock on the hillside with which he had fought the attempt of Bleys Ahrens to control him, in the detention center.
"I suppose you're right," he said, at last, emptily. "Yes… you're right."
"We're what we have to be - first," she said. "After that we're what we are, naturally. James is what he was born into - and what he has to be now. You've got to understand both aspects of him. There's no other way if you're going to fit in as a member of this Command. You've got to understand him both as he is, and as he has to be - to be my lieutenant. Can you do that, Howard?"
"Hal," he corrected her without thinking.
"I think," she said, "for all our sakes, I'd better go on calling you Howard."
"All right." He breathed deeply. There is no anger - there is no sadness - there is no corrosive emotion, he heard Walter the InTeacher saying, once more, in his mind - where there is understanding. "Yes, you're right. I should understand him. So, I will try."
He smiled at her, to reassure her.
"You'll have to succeed," said Rukh. She relaxed. "But, all right, now that that's settled - you did a great deal for us, today. If we hadn't had your attack on the right of the Militia line, neither James' party nor mine might have won through. And if we'd failed, the enemy would only have had to come down at its leisure and kill those of the Command who were still alive. There's that, and the fact you helped get us a number of good cone rifles and supplies. Under the circumstances, I'm going to let you trade that needle gun in for one of the rifles we just got."
He nodded.
"And," she said, "I think it's time you knew as much as the rest of the Command about what we're about to do."
"Jason said to ask you," he said. "I thought it was better to wait until you were ready to tell me, yourself."
"He was right," Rukh said. "Briefly, from the point where we are now, on this side of the mountains, we're committed. Down on the interior plains there's more of us in the Commands than there are Militia available to hold us down. So they settle for watching key points as well as their personnel allows. There's a dozen routes out of these mountains on to the plains. We had a fifty-fifty chance of being challenged, whichever one we took. But now that we've gotten past one of their patrols, we'll be pretty well left alone, as long as they don't know what we're up to."
"Tell me something," said Hal. "I know the lack of heavy technology makes aircraft not easy to come by and expensive as well, out here on the Younger worlds. But surely these Militia must have some spotter planes - light aircraft - that could find us, or at least help find us, from the air, even after we're down on the plains?"
"They do have," said Rukh. "But they haven't many. They're machines made of wood and cloth that can't take very rough weather - that's to begin with. And the jealousy between Militia outfits means that a unit that has a plane isn't too eager to lend it out to another unit. Fuel isn't easy to come by. Finally, in any case, even if they get one or more craft into the air looking for us, the plains are heavily treed; and we do our travelling under cover ninety per cent of the time. The other ten per cent of the time, when there is no cover, we move in the dark hours when we can't be seen. You must have noticed that, yourself."
"I have," said Hal.
"What this all adds up to, as I say," Rukh went on, "is that now, once we've made it past that one patrol, we can expect to be pretty well left alone unless we do something to draw Militia attention to us. Remember, their first responsibility remains to act as government police arm, not only in the country-side but in the cities; and the requirements of the cities in that area draw off most of their personnel."
"All right," said Hal. "I believe you. What's the Command up to, then? You were just going to tell me."
She hesitated.
"There's a certain limit to how much information I can give you, even now," she said, frankly. "The identity of our target, for example, has only been known to a few - "
"On the way to your camp where I first met you," he said, "I heard Hilary and Jason saying something about a Core Tap power plant."
She shook her head, a little wearily.
"I remember now," she said. "Jason reported you overhearing that. The point is, Jason himself shouldn't have known. Hilary's different, but Jason… well, as long as you know that much you might as well hear all the rest of it."
She took a deep breath.
"We Commands," she said, "are only the spearheads of opposition to those controlled by the Others. We'll be experimenting with the makings we've collected. We'll practice making fulminating mercury out of it; then when we've got the technique worked out, we'll pass the information along to sympathizers like Hilary, who'll make more fulminating mercury with which we'll later fuse and explode the fertilizer. A kilogram of that will set off tons of oil-soaked nitrate fertilizer. We hope to collect the fertilizer itself from a farming area storage plant we'll be raiding on the plains; and it should be enough to destroy the Core Tap the Others are using to power the construction area for interstellar ships on this North Continent."
"Won't any fertilizer storage plant be in the heart of a town?" Hal asked.
"Not quite in the heart of," she answered. "But definitely in town limits. As a distraction, at the same time we attack the plant we'll rob a metals bank in the same town. Our people can use any metal we can get away with, if we can just smuggle it back through the mountains to the coast; but the bank raid's still only a cover operation for the fertilizer raid, not vice-versa. After we've got the fertilizer, we'll set fire to the storage area, and hope the destruction will hide the fact we've taken some of their supply."
"I see," said Hal, the back of his mind at work with the necessary tactics of such an operation.
"The local Militia unit," said Rukh, "will only chase us until we're out of their district - unless they suspect what we've really been after. If they do that, they may guess we're up to something bigger than a metals' robbery; in which case they'll put out the word and all the Militia Districts will be actively hunting us instead of just the one with the fertilizer plant. Which may make collecting our explosive in its finished form a little difficult."