Part 3 (1/2)

Ten years of peace and prosperity and laughter lulled me. Ten years when the worst thing that happened was the night the weather planner went out and we had to put out ancient smudgepots among the trees. When the worst thing that happened was the fear that little Margaret's fever would never break and Isabelle and Ricky and I kept running to the stream for snow melt to cool her. When the worst thing was Gwain Thacher leaving Emily and their four children and running off with Elisa Chase.

And so, when the first attack came, I was not prepared.

They were not the Enemy I had fought in mankind's wars. Those were things I could hate without reservation and identify without thought. This enemy was our own, a force of thirty humans in a rustbucket of a s.h.i.+p that landed out in the Abbey's cornfield.

s.h.i.+ps didn't land in Camelot valley. They were directed to Dover Port, where they were properly vetted and the trade delegations sat full time to regulate prices. The warehouses with the surplus wool and fine lace, the elegant pottery and ironwork and gla.s.s, crowded the edge of the Port. Strangers never came so far as town, and we didn't want them.

At first we thought this must be a s.h.i.+p in distress. Why else would they land in a cornfield, killing off an acre of crops? And out where it was inconvenient and there was nothing to do and no trade items waiting for their cargo bays.

The monks were the first to arrive, and then a few of us farmers. A large number of young people who should have been tending sheep and milking cows and making cheese gathered quickly, glad of any excuse from their ch.o.r.es. We waited for a long time, and finally the bell called the monks to their chapel, before the hatch opened and the visitors came down.

I should have known. By that time I should have realized that the rustbucket was up to no good, that any s.h.i.+p that wouldn't open up to the clean air and the monks' good ale was trouble waiting. But, as I said, after ten years my instincts were dulled and my memories reduced to bad dreams, and I had wanted it that way.

So when the hull seals opened and the first of them appeared and jumped to the ground in surplus a.s.sault suits, armed with a motley collection of power rifles, needlers and laser sticks, I was as shocked as any Camelot native who had never seen these weapons before. There were at least twenty of them, blast s.h.i.+elds in battle-ready over their faces and weapons pointing at the small crowd.

They looked nothing like the military I had left. The a.s.sault suits were patched with a blinding array of colors, the weapons looked worn and dirty. No commander in my time would have held rank for long with this crew to show for it. And the one who came out last was the sloppiest, his a.s.sault suit covered with long ribbons that blew loose ends to the breeze.

One of the girls nearby giggled. ”He looks like a Maypole,” she whispered to a friend. The giggles spread rapidly through the group.

”We want your wool, and also your cider and a case of the Abbey's brandy,” the maypole said, rasping. I couldn't tell if the voice was real or on distort through the helmet's speakers. ”And whatever jewelry you have. You have some nice silver work here, I've heard. I want it here, piled up right on this spot, by sundown.”

”Man's crazy,” one of the farmers muttered. ”Twenty against all of us? h.e.l.l.”

The maypole must have heard that. He signalled to one of the anonymous attackers holding a power rifle. The single weapon blasted through the group and Gavin Fletcher and Gwynneth Jones lay smoking dead on the young green corn.

”Now, I didn't want to do that,” the maypole announced. He sounded somewhat pleased. ”But now that we know we can't trust you, we're going to have to collect for ourselves. For protection, you understand. You pay the tax and we protect you.” He laughed unpleasantly.

I wanted to kill them there where they stood. A tax? This was outright robbery. This was something I had left behind, escaped when the final doc.u.ments were sealed making me a citizen of Camelot. This was something I could not accept.

I wanted to kill them. But I turned and ran back to my house, to Isabelle singing while she kneaded the bread, to Ricky carefully tending the vegetables and reciting his times tables. To Margaret, who toddled after her mother and pulled the loaf pans down off the table.

When I was twenty-two and received my commission in Command, I would have done anything rather than run. When I was twenty-two I didn't have a family to protect, a family that immediately overrode any of the old catchwords like courage and honor and pride.

I got to the house and hustled Isabelle and the children into the root cellar. It was strong and well-built, and the door overhead was heavy. Then I gathered up what we had, the few pieces of jewelry and a pitcher that had been my grandmother's and the silver worked frame of the picture of Isabelle in her wedding dress.

I took them all and piled them at the door. And when the anonymous trooper showed up with a laser stick and his blast s.h.i.+eld down, I handed it over without words. All I could think of was to get him out of the house before he heard Margaret cry. Before Ricky decided to run upstairs and help out. I had never known so much fury, and so much fear.

The thief took my small pile without so much as a glance, threw it all into a sack already half full with the goods of other households down the road, and left. I watched him go, raging at his back. Pirates. Thieves. I had never hated our alien Enemy half so much as I hated these humans who threatened my community, my family.

I waited until the rag-tag colors on the a.s.sault suit disappeared before I opened the cellar door.

”What was that?” Isabelle asked, shaken.

I told her about the s.h.i.+p and Gavin and Gwynneth.

She shook her head slowly. ”Geoffery, I know you left the war behind you. But you know things, you and your refugee friends, that we don't. We've never had to fight on Camelot before. I think, maybe, it is time to remember.”

She stroked my cheek with her work-rough hands, her large dark eyes soft and full of sorrow. Not fear, but sadness that I would have to bring back what I had fought so hard to forget.

That evening everyone stayed in at their own hearths, watching for the strangers to leave. The next day I didn't want to go out far from the house, from the children. If one of those blast-s.h.i.+elded troopers came back, I wanted to be there to make sure he died or left, but that Ricky and Margaret were safe. And so I was sitting in the doorway sharpening my pruning axe when Frederick came by.

”'Lo, Jazz,” he said. I winced. I had left that name ten years ago. Jasper was not a real Camelot name, and all immigrants were encouraged to take on names that were ”appropriate.” I had become Geoffery. And Fidel Castanega had become Frederick Case.

But Fidel and I, when I was still Jazz-for-Jasper, had served together in the 1st Battalion of the Dinochrome Brigade, in Command Status. Talking to the great hulks of the Mark x.x.x Bolos who had been, in their own strange way, friends as well as comrades. Fidel and I went way back, but we never talked about those days now.

Frederick Case was a cabinetmaker, the best in three counties. Just as he had been one of the best psychotronic techs in the Brigade. Even now, when he had renounced his past as thoroughly as I had renounced mine, he was sometimes called in to fix the simpler psychotronic machines that Camelot owned.

He never charged for the job, either. ”You pay me to make something out of wood,” he'd say. ”You want to pay me, you commission something nice, some of those harp-back chairs or maybe a linen press. Haven't made a linen press in a while. But to do this, no, everybody helps out the way they can. Let's just let it ride.”

I'd actually heard him say it just that way on two occasions. And he never called me Jazz. Never. He respected my desire to live in the present as much as he respected his own.

”So, Jazz, you hear the news? That d.a.m.ned pirate said that he was coming back in three months for harvest,” Frederick said. His face was dark red and his hands were clenched. ”You hear that? We have to do something, old buddy.”

I hadn't heard and the thought of it made me want to kill something right there. Like that maypole guy. He would do for a start.

”So what can we do?” I asked. ”Organize a patrol of us who remember how from the old days?”

Frederick nodded. ”I kind of thought of that. We're having a meeting down at the church tonight, after supper. And since you were an officer, Jazz, you'd be a natural at it.”

I shut up for a while. Sure I'd go. But I hadn't ever commanded men. I never drilled with power rifles, not that we had any on Camelot anyway. I never was infantry. I only knew Bolos, and they were a far cry from Camelot.

After six weeks it was hopeless. Frederick and I had spent every evening with the Volunteer Force down in the town square. Three hundred men, young women and a few adolescent boys had managed to learn to throw kitchen knives and did close order drill with rakes. They couldn't hold off the pirates for three seconds.

”What we need is guns,” old Edward Fletcher said at the meeting after church. ”We need power rifles as good as theirs, and laser sticks. Otherwise we might as well just all slit our throats with our ploughblades.”

There was a sudden cheering in the pews. Even the monks nodded sagely to each other. ”Real weapons,” the priest said, calling for order, ”are going to cost money. And since the raid we don't have any.”

”We'll raise it,” old Edward countered. ”Because we might as well roll over and die if we don't.”

The priest called me and Frederick and William Yellowhair and Thomas Blacksmith, who had all once served in the alien wars far away, up to the front and held a little meeting of our own.

”If we had the weapons could we hold off the pirates?” the priest asked. He was another Camelot native and had never seen a real fight in his life.

Not one of the four of us said anything for a full fifteen seconds. Finally Thomas took the diplomatic approach. Thomas had always been very good at that, as General Bolling's aide-de-camp. ”Well,” he said slowly, ”we surely can't even think of trying if we don't have any real weapons. Though no guarantee we can even find a decent supply of power rifles, let alone laser sticks. And if we found a supply I'm not sure we could afford them. But like we are, Old Edward is right. We might as well roll over and play dead straight off, because we don't have a chance in h.e.l.l. Begging your pardon, sir.”

The priest didn't even notice. ”Well, then,” he said briskly. ”We'll see about some funds. I believe that the Abbey has some stashed away, an old donation they've been saving for an emergency. If we managed some cash, would the four of you be willing to go out and act as agents, and try to bring back whatever we can use to save ourselves?”

Frederick and I looked at each other. We exchanged glances with William and Thomas, who had once been Bill Solestes and Tyrone X. Then the four of us nodded together.

After all, we'd discussed it among ourselves, sitting at a table in William's alehouse after a drill on a rainy day. We knew we needed something more serious than pitchforks and hog slaughtering knives.

”Happy to go, padre,” William said. ”We'd all agreed, anyway. But I don't think you quite understand just how much this is going to cost us. And then there's the matter of using it well enough to make a difference.”

The priest shrugged. ”We do what we can. We'll pray for you here, and maybe G.o.d will help us find a solution we had not considered.”

I never thought that praying alone did all that much good. But the next day the priest arrived with what looked like a couple thousand credits worth of silver coins and candlesticks and a gold plate that had been buried under the Abbey apple press.

”Not nearly enough,” Frederick sighed, and I agreed, but we didn't have any choice. Maybe the praying would help. I figured I'd been on Camelot way to long.