"Not yet," said Eachan. "We can hold them off awhile yet."
"Hold them off?" The room seemed to waver and threaten to rotate dizzily about Cletus' burning eyes. "You won't have to hold them off. I mean it's all over. We've won."
"Won?"
As if through a gathering mist, Cletus saw Eachan staring at him strangely. A little clumsily, Cletus made it to the nearest chair and sat down.
"Tell Marc not to let them up to the top of the bluffs unless they surrender," he heard himself saying, as from a long way off. "You'll see."
He closed his eyes, and seemed to drop like a stone into the darkness. Eachan's voice reached down after him.
"... Medic, here!" Eachan was snapping. "Damn it, hurry up!"
So it was that Cletus missed the last act of the battle at Two Rivers. From the moment of the Neulanders' momentary panic at being attacked by the Dorsais under Cletus' direction, trouble began to beset the six thousand soldiers from Neuland. It took them better than half an hour to restore order and make themselves ready to move forward upon the town again. But all that time the river level, raised by the work of Wefer's Mark V's, had been rising. Now it was up over the knees of the Neulanders themselves, and fear began to lay its cold hand upon them.
Ahead of them were certainly more Dorsai troops than they had been led to expect. Enough, at least, so that the Dorsais had not hesitated to mount an attack upon them. To go forward might cause them to be caught in a trap. Besides, to go forward was to go into steadily deepening water. Even the officers were uncertain - and caution suggested itself as the better part of valor. The word was given to withdraw.
In orderly manner, the two halves of the Neuland invading force split up and began to pull back along the river flats down which they had come. But, as they backed up, in each case, the width of the flat narrowed and soon the men farthest away from the bluff found themselves stumbling off into deeper water and the current pulling them away.
As more and more Neuland troopers were swept out into the main river current, struggling and splashing and calling for help, a new panic began to rise in the ranks of those still standing in shallow water. They began to crowd and jostle to get close to the bluff. Soon their organization began to dissolve. Within minutes, soldiers were breaking away from the ranks and beginning to climb directly up the bluffs toward the safety of high ground overhead.
But it was at this moment that Marc, following Cletus' earlier written orders, gave the command to his Dorsais lined up along the top of the bluff to fire down into these refugees from the rising waters... And it was all over but the shouting.
They did not even have to call on the Neulanders to surrender. The panic-stricken colonists in uniform from over the mountains beyond Etter's Pass threw away weapons and began climbing the slope with their hands in the air, at first only a few, then mobs. By the time the sun was touching the western horizon, more than six thousand soldiers - as it was later to turn out, better than 70 per cent of Neuland's army - sat huddled together as prisoners under the guns of their Dorsai guards.
But Cletus, still unconscious, knew none of this. Back in a room of the Dorsai HQ in Two Rivers, a prosthetic physician flown up from Bakhalla was straightening up from his examination of Cletus' swollen left knee, his face grave.
"How is it, Doctor?" asked Eachan Khan, sharply. "It's going to mend all right, isn't it?"
The physician shook his head and looked at Eachan soberly. "No, it isn't," the physician said. "He's going to lose the leg from just above the knee."
16
"Prosthetic knee and ankle joints - in fact, prosthetic lower limbs," said the physician, patiently, "are really excellent. Inside of a couple of months after you've adapted to the prosthetic unit, you'll find yourself almost as mobile as you were before with that limp. Of course, no one likes to face the thought of an amputation, but - "
"It's not the thought of an amputation that worries me," interrupted Cletus. "I've got things to do that require two flesh and blood legs. I want a surgical replacement."
"I know," answered the doctor. "But you remember we ran tests on you and you've got an absolute level of rejection. All the evidence is that it's a case of psychological, not physiological, rejection. If that's the case, all the immune-supressant drugs on the list can't help you. We can graft the leg on but your body's sure to reject it."
"You're sure it's a case of psychological rejection?" said Cletus.
"Your medical history shows you have a uniformally successful resistance to hypnosis, even under ordinary drugs," the doctor answered. "We find that kind of resistance almost always in people who exhibit psychological rejection of grafted organs, and whenever it's found we always - without exception - have psychological rejection. But just to put it to the test, I've brought along one of the new synthetic parahypnotic drugs. It leaves you conscious up to safe levels of dosage, but it absolutely anesthetizes volition. If you can resist hypnosis with that in you, then the resistance is below the levels even psychiatry can reach. It's probably a genetic matter. Do you want to try it?"
"Go ahead," said Cletus.
The doctor fastened the band of a hypnospray around Cletus' forearm, with the metered barrel of the drug poised above a large artery. The level of the liquid in the barrel of the spray was visible. Resting his thumb and little finger on Cletus' arm on either side of the band, the doctor placed the top of his forefinger on the spray button.
"I'll keep asking you your name," he said. "Try not to tell me what it is. As you continue to refuse, I'll keep stepping up the dosage level. Ready?"
"Ready," said Cletus.
"What's your name?" asked the doctor. Cletus felt the cool breath of the hypnospray against the skin of his forearm.
Cletus shook his head.
"Tell me your name?" repeated the doctor.
Cletus shook his head. The cool feeling of the spray continued. Slightly to his surprise, Cletus felt no light-headedness or any other indication that the drug was working on him.
"Tell me your name."
"No."
"Tell me your name... "
The questioning continued and Cletus continued to refuse. Abruptly, without warning, the room seemed filled with a white mist. His head whirled, and that was the last he remembered.
He drifted back into a weariness, to find the doctor standing over his bed. The hypnospray was unstrapped from his arm.
"No," said the doctor, and sighed. "You resisted right up to the point of unconsciousness. There's simply no point in trying a transplant."
Cletus gazed at him almost coldly. "In that case," he said, "will you tell Mondar the Exotic Outbond that I'd like to talk to him?"
The doctor opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it again, nodded and left.
A nurse came to the door. "General Traynor is here to see you, Colonel," she said. "Do you feel up to seeing him?"
"Certainly," said Cletus. He pressed the button on the side of the bed that raised the head section, lifting him up into a sitting position. Bat came in the door and stood beside the bed looking down at him; his face was like a stone mask.
"Sit down, sir," Cletus said.
"I'm not going to be here that long," said Bat.
He turned about to close the door of the room. Then he turned back to glare down at Cletus.
"I've just got two things to tell you," he said. "When I finally smashed the door open on the arms locker in your office and got a gun to shoot the hinges off the door, it was Sunday afternoon, so I made sure I got secretly out of town and phoned Colonel Dupleine quietly, before I made any fuss. You'll be glad to hear, then, there isn't going to be any fuss. Officially, I had a slight accident Friday afternoon a little ways outside of Bakhalla. My car went off the road. I was knocked unconscious and pinned in it. I wasn't able to get out until Sunday. Also, officially, what you did up at Two Rivers in capturing those Neulanders was done at my orders."