was beginning to be noticeable in the Dorsai around Cletus. There was something about Arvid that was as immovable as a mountain.
"What do you want me to do first?" she asked.
"There's to be a meeting of all district commanders of this island at South Point, at 0900 this morning. We'd like you here. Also, since Foralie's the place Cletus is going to come back to - if he comes back - you can expect some special attention; and Bill and I would like to talk to you about that. We can arrange pickup for you from the Foralie Town airpad, if you'll be waiting there in an hour."
Amanda thought swiftly.
"Make it two hours. I've got things to do first."
"All right. Two hours, then, Foralie Town air-pad."
"Don't concern yourself!" said Amanda. "I'll remember."
She broke the connection. For a brief moment more she sat, turning things over in her mind. Then she rang Foralie homestead, home of Cletus and Melissa Grahame.
There was a short delay, then the narrow-boned face of Melissa - Eachan Khan's daughter, now Cletus' wife - took shape under touseled hair on the screen. Melissa's eyelids were still heavy with sleep.
"Who - oh, Amanda," she said.
"I've just been asked to take over district command, from Piers," Amanda said. "The invasion's on its way and I've got to leave Fal Morgan in an hour for a meeting at South Point. I don't know when or if I'll be back Can you take Betta?"
"Of course." Melissa's voice and face were coming awake as she spoke. "How close is she?"
"Any time."
"She can ride?"
"Not horseback Just about anything else."
Melissa nodded.
"I'll be over in the skimmer in forty minutes." She looked out of the screen at Amanda. "I know - you'd rather I moved in with her there. But I can't leave Foralie, now. I promised Cletus."
"I understand," said Amanda. "Do you know yet when Cletus will be back?"
"No. Any time - like Betta." Her voice thinned a little. "I'm never sure."
"No. Nor he, either, I suppose." Amanda watched the younger woman for a second. "I'll have Betta ready when you get here. Goodby."
"Goodby."
Amanda broke contact and set about getting Betta up and packed. This done, there was the house to be organized for a period of perhaps some days without inhabitants. Betta sat bundled in a chair in the kitchen, waiting, as Amanda finished programming the automatic controls of the house for the interval.
"You can call me from time to time at Foralie," Betta said.
"When possible," said Amanda.
She glanced over and saw the normally open, friendly face of her great-granddaughter, now looking puffy and pale above the red cardigan sweater enveloping her. Betta was more than capable in ordinary times; it was only in emergencies like this that she had a tendency to founder. Amanda checked her own critical frame of mind. It was not easy for Betta, about to have a child with her husband, father and brother all off-planet, in combat, and - the nature of war being what it was - the possibility existing that none of them might come back to her. There were only three men at the moment, left in the house of ap Morgan, and only two women; and now one of those two, Amanda, herself, was going off on a duty that could end in a hangman's rope or a firing squad. For she did not delude herself that the Earth-bred Alliance and Coalition military would fight with the same restraint toward civilians the soldiers of the younger worlds showed.
But it would not help to fuss over Betta now. It would help none of them - there was an approaching humming noise outside the house that crescendoed to a peak just beyond the kitchen door, and stopped.
"Melissa," said Betta.
"Come on," Amanda said.
She led the way outside. Betta followed, a little clumsily, and Melissa with Amanda helped her into the open cockpit of the ducted fan skimmer.
"I'll check up on you when I have time," Amanda said, kissing her great-granddaughter briefly. Betta's arms tightened fiercely around her.
"Mandy!" The diminutive of her name which only the young children normally used and the sudden desperate appeal in Betta's voice sent a surge of empathy arcing between them. Over Betta's shoulder, Amanda saw the face of Melissa, calm and waiting. Unlike Betta, Melissa came into her own in a crisis-it was in ordinary times that the daughter of Eachan Khan fumbled and lost her way.
"Never mind me," said Amanda, "I'll be all right. Take care of your own duties."
With strength, she freed herself and waved them off. For a second more she stood, watching their skimmer hum off down the slope. Betta's farewell had just woken a grimness in her that was still there. Melissa and Betta. Either way, being a woman who was useful half the time was no good. Life required you to be operative at all hours and seasons.
That was the problem with a talisman-name like her own. She who would own it must be operative in just that way, at all times. "When someone of that capability should be born into the family, she could release the name of Amanda, which she had so far refused to every female child in the line. As she refused it to Betta for this child. And yet… and yet, it was not right to lock up the name forever. As each generation moved farther away from her own time, it and the happenings connected with it would then become more and more legendary, more and more unreal…
She put the matter for the thousandth time from her mind and turned back to buttoning up Fal Morgan. Passing down the long hall, she let her fingers trail for a second on its dark wainscotting. Almost, she could feel a living warmth in the wood, the heart of the house beating. But there was nothing more she could do to protect it now. In the days to come, it, too, must take its chances.
Fifteen minutes later, she was on her own skimmer, headed downslope toward Foralie Town. At her back was an overnight bag, considerably smaller than the one they had packed for Betta. Under her belt was a heavy energy pistol on full charge and in perfect order. In the long-arm boot of the skimmer was an ancient blunderbus of a pellet shotgun, its clean and decent barrel replaced minutes before by one that was rusted and old, but workable. As she reached the foot of the slope and started the rise to the ridge, her gaze was filled by the mountains and Fal Morgan moved for the moment into the back of her mind.
The skimmer hummed upslope, only a few feet above the ground. Out from under the spruce and pine, the highland sun was brilliant. The thin earth cover, broken by outcroppings of granite and quartz was brown, sparsely covered by tough green grasses. The air was cold and light, yet unwarmed by the sun. She felt it deep in her lungs when she breathed. The wine of the morning, her own mother had called air like this, nearly a century ago.
She mounted to the crest of the ridge and the mountains stood up around her on all sides, shoulder to shoulder like friendly giants, as she topped the ridge and headed down the further slope to Foralie, now visible, distant and small by the river bend, far below. The sky was brilliantly clear with the hew day. Only a small, stray cloud, here and there, graced its perfection. The mountains stood, looking down. There were people here who were put off by their bare rock, their remote and icy summits, but she herself found them honest - secure, strong and holding, brothers to her soul.
A deep feeling moved in her, even after all these years. Even more than for the home she had raised, she had found in herself a love for this world. She loved it as she loved her children, her children's children and her three husbands - each different, each unmatchable in its own way.
She had loved it, not more, but as much as she had loved her first-born, Jimmy, all the days of his life. But why should she love the Dorsai so much? There had been mountains in Wales - fine mountains. But when she had first come here after her second husband's death, something about this land, this planet, had spoken to her and claimed her with a voice different from any she had ever heard before. She and it had strangely become joined, beyond separation. A strange, powerful, almost aching affection had come to bind her to it. Why should just a world, a place of ordinary water and land and wind and sky, be something to touch her so deeply?