The Spirit of Dorsai by Gordon R. Dickson

Author:Gordon R. Dickson [Dickson, Gordon R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780441778034
Google: Y5dwygAACAAJ
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Published: 1979-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Interlude

The voice of the third Amanda ceased. In the still mountain afternoon there were no other sounds but •the hum of some nearby insects. A little breeze sprang up, and was gone again.

With her words still echoing in his mind, Hal thought of the struggle she had been speaking of, that early Dorsai fight to stay free of Dow deCastries; and its likeness to the present fight on all the worlds, to resist the loss of human freedom to the Other Men and Women—those cross-breeds from human splinter cultures such as that on the Dorsai itself. This present fight in which he and the third Amanda were both caught up.

“What happened inside Foralie?” he asked. “Inside the house, I mean, after Arvid Johnson and Bill Athyer with their men went inside? What happened with Cletus and Dow—or were they just able to take over with no trouble?”

“Something more than no trouble,” she said. “Swahili was there, remember, and Swahili had been a Dorsai. But Eachan Khan killed Swahili when Swahili let himself be distracted for a second and Arvid and Bill were able to control the situation. Dow had a sleeve gun of his own, it turned out. He hurt Cletus, but didn’t manage to kill him. In the end it was Dow who was shipped back to Earth as a prisoner.”

“I see,” said Hal. But his first question had immediately raised another one in his mind.

“How was that other business worked?” he asked. “That Coalition trick of having a contingent of well soldiers up there at Foralie after they’d seemed to have been rotated down into the area of town? Where did they come from, the soldiers Amanda found wait-

ing , and ready to fight, in the vehicle park?”

“You remember the military physician had phoned Dow deCastries the night before,” Hal’s Amanda said. “He was a political appointee himself and he knew General Amorine was another. Besides Amorine was sick himself from the nickel carbonyl vapors. The military physician knew that taking his suspicions to Amorine would simply have meant Amorine arresting Ekram and trying to force some kind of answer out of him—and the military doctor was only too aware of what it would be like for him to face alone a situation where everybody was dying. So, he went directly to Dow, instead.”

“I don’t understand what that would have to do with it …” Hal frowned.

“Dow had been getting the reports from other areas. A thousand different things were going wrong in a thousand different places with his occupation forces; and, next to Cletus, he had the best mind on the planet.” She paused to look at him. “Don’t underestimate what Dow was.”

“I didn’t intend to.”

“What he saw,” Amanda said, “was that, for all practical purposes, his occupation of the Dorsai had failed. But he could still, with some luck, grab Cletus and take him off-planet as a prisoner—or at the worst, get away himself. This, if he had military control in this one district alone.”

“And he

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