Patriots

"Then I'm going to turn this over to Elector Daniels," Yerby said. "He'll explain what's going on and what we need to do about it."

He handed off the mike to the Quelhagen official. Daniels didn't have as powerful a voice as the frontiersman, but he was a polished speaker and better used to using a PA system to a large audience. He gestured in broad, rhetorical flourishes as he explained the history that led to Zenith surveyors arriving at Dagmar's.

"They're going to want to bring just as many people to Greenwood as the Zeniths do," Mark said to Amy in a low voice. Daniels's discussion was nothing new to the pair of them. "They won't regrant tracts already settled, but it won't make any difference to how the planet goes."

"Quelhagen doesn't claim to be the government of Greenwood," Amy replied. "If we get a government of our own and pass settlement restrictions, there's nothing the investors can do except obey them."

Mark started to say something. What he was going to say was "The Alliance will never let Greenwood control immigration itself. That'll be under Paris control."

Amy already knew that. Amy was talking about rebellion against the Atlantic Alliance.

Mark pretended to be watching the crowd of intent faces. The assembly was the biggest entertainment Greenwood had ever seen. Even the folk who didn't care what the Elector was saying were excited to be present at the event.

"The Alliance doesn't have any soldiers to speak of anywhere in the Digits," Amy said, making her position flatly certain. She looked at Mark until he turned and met her eyes. "Even on Kilbourn and Dittersdorf."

"There's ten billion people in the Atlantic Alliance," Mark replied. He didn't want to think about rebellion. War was crazy, uncivilized.

"Most people live on Earth because that's where they want to be," Amy said. Her expression got harder, muscle by muscle, with every word. "They don't want to come to Greenwood, and they don't want to fight."

Mark shrugged. His skin felt hot. He wondered if Amy thought he was a coward.

He wondered if he was a coward.

Daniels had finished describing the investors' willingness to defend Hestia grants in court; he gave the mike back to Yerby. The frontiersman looked out over the assembly for a moment without speaking.

"All right," Yerby said. He wore his green jacket and a cap with a feather a foot long. Even without that he was half a head taller and twice as broad across the shoulders as the Elector, though the latter wasn't a small man. "I guess everybody here knows how we ran the surveyors off of Dagmar Wately's land last week. If we just do that by getting a gang together each time a Zenith ship lands, they're going to call us bandits. We need to organize as militia so we're legal. You all see that?"

There was a confused rumble from the crowd. A man in front took a microphone from an attendant and boomed over the PA system, "Are you telling us you figure to run this militia, Yerby Ba

Half the crowd went silent, but there was a chorus of cheers scattered across the area.

Yerby stood arms akimbo till the shouting quieted. Then he raised the microphone again and said, "No, Zeb Randifer, I'm not telling you that. If you all think there's somebody who'd do a better job than I'd do, then I want you to pick him. But I'll tell you two things."

Yerby paused, gri

Any reply Randifer might have made was lost in the thunderous laughter of the entire crowd. Randifer had friends in the gathering, but a joke that made Mark blink in amazement-it was a joke, wasn't it?-was just the thing to win over a thousand frontiersmen of both sexes.

Yerby let the noise settle before raising the microphone again. "The other thing's this," he said. "If you do pick me to lead you, you'd better be ready to obey. Because you will obey. I won't warn you again."

The crowd dissolved into a low-pitched roar. Everyone was talking with the two or three people nearest. Some folks gestured violently. Mark saw a number of fights break out, but they didn't last more than a few punches.

Mark looked at Yerby Ba

But Yerby had a fire in him that was as uncommon here as it would have been on Quelhagen.

The noise muted to the point that Dagmar Wately could be heard bellowing into a microphone, "All right, all right. Let me say this, will you?"

Two men helped the stocky woman clamber to the top of the wall. Mark gave her a hand.

"I guess most of you know me," Dagmar said. "Those that do, you know I don't like worth a damn what I'm going to say now."

She waved a hand toward the platform without looking away from the crowd, "Ba

The crowd shouted savage agreement. Mark, his arm around Amy, yelled until his throat was raw.

12. Legal Process

"My name's Zebulon Randifer," the frontiersman mumbled to Mark at the table Blaney had set up in the Spiker's courtyard. "I got tract NK-twenty-five and about three hundred square miles of NL-twenty-five to the center of Blue River. I got a flashgun but the battery needs replacing. It don't hold a charge more than maybe an hour."

Mark keyed the information into his hypnagogue/viewer. The Spiker was the repository for settlement records for a large portion of the main continent, but Randifer's tract was to the north, in the Wanker's Doodle database. There was no reason the information couldn't have been combined; Mark intended to do just that as soon as he got to the Doodle and patched his unit to the repository server. For now, though, he could only note the location and add it to the map when he had one.

Randifer had a cloth cap, which he repeatedly took off, twisted in his hands, and replaced. He was stone bald. Mark didn't know if the frontiersman was embarrassed because of Yerby's joke during the assembly or if the sight of Amy recording the sign-up was making him nervous.

"And what kind of communications do you have?" Mark asked.

"Huh?" said Randifer. "Oh, I got a radio in my cabin. Tania Dolen flew over and told me about this meeting, though, because the damned thing was on the blink and I couldn't hear nothing."

Mark and Amy had come up with the checklist. In fact, it was Amy who suggested that Yerby do more than file in his head the names of those willing to "join the militia." So far as Yerby was concerned, the whole business was simply a legal fiction. He'd intended to operate exactly that way he had at Dagmar's: sound an alarm from high in the air to get the greatest coverage, then pile on. That the next attempted landing might be anywhere on the planet didn't concern him.

"Thank you, Mr. Randifer," Mark said. "Next?"

He'd processed almost a hundred and there were still two hundred people, mostly men, in line waiting to be enrolled. Others at the assembly might come to a summons also. Mark didn't have a clue as to how these frontiersmen's minds would work in a crisis, though he hadn't noticed many people on Greenwood unwilling to get into a fight.

The woman behind Randifer was looking up at the sky. The whole line snaking out the gate turned man by man to watch a dirigible crawling twenty feet in the air toward the courtyard to land.

"Hey, you danged fools!" a man shouted up. "Not here! Go out in the field!"