"If you'll take seats - " he announced. The district commanders sorted themselves out on the folding chairs facing a platform at one end of the room. A minute or so later, two men came in and stepped up on the platform. One was Arvid Johnson. Seen at full-length he was a tower of a man, with blond hair that in this artificial light looked so pale it seemed almost invisible. The unconquerability of him radiated to the rest of them in the room. The man beside him was of about the same age, but small, with a heavy beak of a nose - what Amanda had learned to call a "Norman nose", when she had been a little girl. His eyes swept the room like gun muzzles.
The small man, Amanda thought, must be Bill Athyer, the strategist At first glance, Bill might have appeared not only unimpressive, but sour - but Amanda's swift and experienced perceptions picked up something vibrant and brilliant in him. Literally, without loosing whatever painful and inhibiting self-consciousness and self-doubt he had been born with, he must somewhere have picked up the inner fire that now shone through his unremarkable exterior. He was all flame within - and that flame made him a strange contrast to the cool, almost remote competence of Arvid.
"Sorry to spring this on you," Arvid said, when both men were standing on the platform and feeing the audience. "But it seems, after all, we can't wait for the district commanders who aren't here yet. We've just had word that whoever's navigating the invasion ships is either extremely lucky or very good. He's brought them out of their last phase shift right on top of the planet. They're in orbit overhead now and already dropping troops on our population centers."
He paused and looked around the room.
"The rest of the Dorsai's been notified, of course," he said. "Bill Athyer and myself with the few line soldiers we've got, are going to have to start moving - and keep moving. Don't try to find us - we'll find you.
Communication will be known-person to known-person. In short, if the word you get from us doesn't come through somebody you trust implicitly, disregard it."
"This is one of our strengths," said Bill Athyer, so swiftly, it was almost as if he interrupted. His voice was harsh, but crackled with something like high excitement. "Just as we know the terrain, we know each other. These two things let us dispense with a lot the invader has to have. But be warned - our advantages are going to be of most use only during the first few days. As they get to know us, they'll begin to be able to guess what we can do. Now, you've each submitted operational plans for the defense of your particular district within the general guidelines Arvid and I drew up. We've reviewed these plans, and by now you've all seen our recommendations for amendations and additions. If, in any case, there's more to be said, we'll get in touch with you as necessary. So you'd probably all better head back to your districts as quickly as possible. We've enough aircraft waiting to get you all back - hopefully before the invasion forces hit your districts. Get moving - is Amanda Morgan here?"
"Here!" called Amanda.
"Would you step up here, please?"
With Bill Athyer's last words, all the seated commanders had gotten to their feet, and she was hidden in the swarm of bodies. She pushed her way forward to the platform and looked up into the faces of the unusual pair standing there.
"I'm Amanda Morgan," she said.
"A word with you before you leave," said Bill. "Will you come along?"
He led the way out of the briefing room. Arvid and Amanda followed. They stepped into a small office and Arvid shut the door behind them on the noise in the hall, as the other commanders moved to their waiting aircraft.
"You took command of the Foralie District just this morning," Bill said. "Have you had any chance to look at the plans handed in by the man you replaced?"
"Piers van der Lin checked with several of us when he drafted them," Amanda said. "But in any case, anyone in Foralie District over the age of nine knows how we're going to deal with whoever they send against us."
"All right," said Bill. Arvid nodded.
"You understand," Bill went on. "In Foralie, there, you'll be at the pick-point for whatever's going to happen. You can probably expect, if our information's right, to see Dow deCastries himself, as well as extra troops and a rank-heavier staff of enemy officers than any of the other districts. They'll be zeroing in on Foralie homestead."
The thought of Betta and the unborn child there was a sudden twinge in Amanda's chest.
"There's no one at Foralie but Melissa Grahame and Eachan Khan, right now," she said. "Nobody to speak of."
"There's going to be. Cletus will be on his way back as soon as the information we're invaded hits the Exotics - and I think you know the Exotics get news faster than anyone else. He may be on his way right now. Dow deCastries will be expecting this. So you can also expect your district to be one of the first, if not the first, hit. Odds are good that you, at least, aren't going to get home before the first troops touch down in your district. But we'll do our best for you. We've got our fastest aircraft holding for you now. Any last questions, or needs?"
Amanda looked at them both. Young men both of them.
"Not now," she said. "In any case, we know what we have to do."
"Good." It was Arvid speaking again. "You'd better get going, then."
The craft they were holding for her turned out to be a small, two-place high altitude gravity flyer, which rocketed to the ten-kilometer altitude, then back down toward Foralie on a flight path like the trajectory of a fired mortar shell. They were less than half an hour in the air. Nonetheless, as they plunged toward Foralie Town airpad, the com system inside the craft crackled.
"Identify yourself. Identify yourself. This is Outpost Four-nine-three, Alliance-Coalition Expeditionary Force to the Dorsai. You are under our weapons. Identify yourself."
The pilot glanced briefly at Amanda and touched the transmit button on his control wheel.
"What'd you say?" he asked. "This is Mike Amery, on a taxi run from South Point just to bring the Foralie Town Mayor home. Who did you say you were?"
"Outpost Four-nine-three, Alliance-Coalition Expeditionary Force to the Dorsai. Identify the person you call the Mayor of Foralie Town."
"Amanda Morgan," said Amanda, clearly, to the com equipment, "of the household ap Morgan, Foralie District."
"Hold. Do not attempt to land until we check your identification. Repeat. Hold. Do not attempt to land until given permission."
The speaker was abruptly silent again. The pilot checked the landing pattern for the craft. They waited. After several minutes the order came to bring themselves in.
Two transport-pale, obviously Earth-native, privates in Coalition uniforms were covering the aircraft hatch with cone rifles, as Amanda preceded the pilot out on to the pad. A thin, serious-faced young Coalition lieutenant motioned the two of them to a staff car.
"Where do you think you're taking us?" Amanda demanded. "Who are you? What're you doing here, anyway?"
"It'll all be explained at your town hall, ma'm," said the lieutenant. "I'm sorry, but I'm not permitted to answer questions."
He got into the staff car with them and tapped the driver on the shoulder. They drove to town, through streets empty of any human figures not in uniforms. With the emptiness of the streets was a stillness. On the north edge of the town, on the upslope of the meadow which Amanda had mentioned to Jenna, Amanda could glimpse beehive-shaped cantonment-huts of bubble plastic being blown into existence in orderly rows - and from this area alone came a sound, distant but real, of voices and activities. Amanda felt the prevailing wind from the south on the back of her neck, and scented the faint odors of the fresh riverwater and the dump, carried by it, although the manufactory itself was silent.