She turned and ran up the steps into the house. The door slammed behind her. Cletus was left to silence and the empty, growing light of the pale dawn sky, unreachable overhead.
11
"Well, Colonel," said Bat, grimly, "what am I supposed to do with you?"
"The General could put me to use," said Cletus.
"Put you to use!" They were standing facing each other in Bat's private office. Bat turned in exasperation, took two quick steps away, wheeled and stepped back to glare up at Cletus once more. "First you make a grandstand play up by Etter's Pass, and it pays off so that you collect about five times as many prisoners as you had men to collect them with. Now you go out for a midnight picnic with the Navy and come back loaded with guerrillas and supplies bound for Bakhalla. Not only that, but you take a civilian along with you on this Navy spree!"
"Civilian, sir?" said Cletus.
"Oh yes, I know the official story!" Bat interrupted him, harshly. "And as long as it's a Navy matter, I'm letting it ride. But I know who you had with you out there, Colonel! Just as I know that wooden-headed young character, Linet, couldn't have dreamed up the idea of capturing those motor launches full of guerrillas. It was your show, Colonel, just like it was your show up at Etter's Pass!... And I repeat, what am I going to do with you?"
"In all seriousness, General," said Cletus, in a tone of voice that matched his words, "I mean what I say. I think you ought to put me to use."
"How?" Bat shot at him.
"As what I'm equipped to be - a tactician," said Cletus. He met the glare from under the general's expressive brows without yielding, and his voice remained calm and reasonable. "The present moment's one in which I could be particularly useful, considering the circumstances."
"What circumstances?" Bat demanded.
"Why, the circumstances that've more or less combined to trap the Military Secretary of the Coalition here on Kultis," Cletus replied. "I imagine there's little doubt, in the ordinary way of things, that Dow deCastries would be planning on leaving this planet in the next day or two."
"Oh, he would, would he?" said Bat "And what makes you so sure that you know what a Coalition high executive like deCastries would be doing - under any circumstances?"
"The situation's easily open to deduction," answered Cletus. "The Neulander guerrillas aren't in any different situation than our Alliance forces here when it comes to the matter of getting supplies out from Earth. Both they and we could use a great many things that the supply depots back on Earth are slow to send us. You want tanks, sir. It's a safe bet the Neulander guerrillas have wants of their own, which the Coalition isn't eager to satisfy."
"And how do you make that out?" Bat snapped.
"I read it as a conclusion from the obvious fact that the Coalition's fighting a cheaper war here on Kultis than we are," said Cletus, reasonably. "It's typical of Alliance-Coalition confrontations for the past century. We tend to supply our allies actual fighting forces and the equipment to support them. The Coalition tends merely to arm and advise the opposition forces. This fits well with their ultimate aim, which isn't so much to win all these minor conflicts they oppose us in but to bleed dry the Alliance nations back on Earth, so that eventually the Coalition can take over, back there where they believe all the important real estate is."
Cletus stopped speaking. Bat stared at him. After a second, the general shook his head like a man coming out of a daze.
"I ought to have my head examined," Bat said. "Why do I stand here and listen to this?"
"Because you're a good general officer, sir," said Cletus, "and because you can't help noticing I'm making sense."
"Part of the time you're making sense... " muttered Bat, his eyes abstracted. Then his gaze sharpened and he fastened it once more on Cletus' face. "All right, the Neulanders want equipment from the Coalition that the Coalition doesn't want to give them. You say that's why deCastries came out here?"
"Of course," said Cletus. "You know yourself the Coalition does this often. They refuse material help to one of their puppet allies, but then, to take the sting out of the refusal, they send a highly placed dignitary out to visit the puppets. The visit creates a great deal of stir, both in the puppet country and elsewhere. It gives the puppets the impression that their welfare is very close to the Coalition's heart - and it costs nearly nothing. Only, in this one instance, the situation's backfired somewhat."
"Backfired?" said Bat.
"The two new guerrilla thrusts that were supposed to celebrate deCastries' visit - that business up at Etter's Pass, and now last night's unsuccessful attempt to infiltrate a good number of men and supplies into the city of Bakhalla - have blown up in the Neulanders' faces," Cletus said. "Of course, officially, Dow's got nothing to do with either of those two missions. Naturally we know that he undoubtedly did know about them, and maybe even had a hand in planning them. But as I say, officially, there's no connection between him and them, and theoretically he could leave the planet as scheduled without looking backward once. Only I don't think he's likely to do that now."
"Why not?"
"Because, General," said Cletus, "his purpose in coming here was to give the Neulanders a morale boost - a shot in the arm. Instead, his visits have coincided with a couple of bad, if small, defeats for them. If he leaves now, his trip is going to be wasted. A man like deCastries is bound to put off leaving until he can leave on a note of success. That gives us a situation we can turn to our own advantage."
"Oh? Turn to our advantage, is it?" said Bat. "More of your fun and games, Colonel?"
"Sir," answered Cletus, "I might remind the General that I was right about the infiltration attempt through Etter's Pass, and I was right in my guess last night that the guerrillas would try to move men and supplies down the river and into the city - "
"All right! Never mind that!" snapped Bat. "If I wasn't taking those things into consideration I wouldn't be listening to you now. Go ahead. Tell me what you were going to tell me."
"I'd prefer to show you," answered Cletus. "If you wouldn't mind flying up to Etter's Pass - "
"Etter's Pass? Again?" said Bat. "Why? Tell me what map you want, and show me here."
"It's a short trip by air, sir," said Cletus, calmly. "The explanation's going to make a lot more sense if we have the actual terrain below us."
Bat grunted. He turned about, stalked to his desk and punched open his phone circuit.
"Send over Recon One to the roof here," he said. "We'll be right up."
Five minutes later, Cletus and Bat were en route by air toward the Etter's Pass area. The general's recon craft was a small but fast passenger vehicle, with antigrav vanes below its midsection and a plasma-thrust engine in the rear. Arvid, who had been waiting for Cletus in the general's outer office, was seated up front in the copilot's seat, with the pilot and the vessel's one crewman. Twenty feet behind them, in the open cabin space, Bat and Cletus conversed in the privacy provided by their distance and lowered voices. The recon craft approached the Etter's Pass area and, at Cletus' request, dropped down from its cruising altitude of eighty thousand feet to a mere six hundred. It began slowly to circle the area encompassing Etter's Pass, the village of Two Rivers and the two river valleys that came together just below the town.
Bat stared sourly at the pass and the town below it, nestled in the bottom of the V that was the conjunction of the two river valleys.
"All right, Colonel," he said. "I've taken an hour out of my day to make this trip. What you've got to tell me had better be worth it."
"I think it is," answered Cletus. He pointed at Etter's Pass and swung his fingertip from it down to the town below. "If you'll look closely there, sir, you'll see Two Rivers is an ideal jump-off spot for launching an attack through the pass by our forces, as the first step in an invasion of Neuland."