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Kulu Royal Marines had landed upriver and established a beachhead for a full invasion force: all the locals who resisted had been executed. The Ivets had welcomed the marines, betraying colonists who resisted. Supplementary: Lalonde was going to be incorporated into the Kulu Kingdom by force. (Pure crap, people said, why would Alastair II want this God-awful shit-tip of a planet?)
The Tyrathca farmers had suffered a famine and they were eating humans, starting with Aberdale. (No, not possible. Weren’t the Tyrathca herbivores?)
Waster kids from Earth had stolen a starship, and after zapping the sheriff’s surveillance satellite they’d landed to help their old gang mates, the Ivets.
Blackhawks and mercenary starships had banded together; they were invading Lalonde, and they were planning on turning it into a rebel world which would be a base for raiding the Confederation. Colonists were being used for slave labour to build fortifications and secret landing sites out in the jungle. Ivets were captaining the work parties.
Two things remained reasonably constant amid all the wild theorizing. One: colonists had been killed by Ivets. Two: Ivets were heading/helping the revolt.
Durringham was a frontier town, the vast majority of its population scraping their living with long hours of hard labour. They were poor and proud, and the only group which stood between them and the bottom rung were those evil, workshy, criminal, daughter-raping Ivets; and by God that’s where the Ivets were going to stay: underfoot.
When Candace Elford’s sheriffs started to recruit deputies for the posse, tension and nervousness was already gripping the town. Seeing the posse actually assembling down at the port, confirming there really was something going on upriver, tipped unrest into physical aggression.
Darcy and Lori were lucky to miss the worst of the mayhem. On Lalonde they acted as the local representatives for Ward Molecular, a Kulu company that imported various solid-state units as well as a lot of the electron-matrix power cells which the capital’s embryonic industries were incorporating into an increasing number of products. The Kulu connection was an ironic added touch to their cover; the deeply religious Kulu and the Edenists were not closely allied in the Confederation. Edenists were not permitted to germinate their habitats in any of the Kingdom’s star systems, which made it unlikely that anyone would think of them as anything other than loyal subjects of King Alastair II.
They handled their business from a long wooden warehouse structure, a standard industrial building with an overhanging roof, and a floor which was supported on raised stone pillars a metre above the muddy gravel. Built entirely from mayope, it was strong enough to resist any casual break-in attempt by the capital’s slowly increasing population of petty criminals. The single-storey cabin which they lived in sat in the middle of a half-acre plot of land at the back, which like most of Durringham’s residents they used to grow vegetables and fruit bushes.
Warehouse and cabin were situated on the western edge of the port, five hundred metres from the water. The majority of nearby buildings were commercial premises—sawmills, lumber-yards, a few forges, and some relatively new cloth factories, their bleak ranks broken by streets of cabins to accommodate their workers. This end of town had stayed the same for years. It was the eastern end and long southern side which were expanding, and no one seemed keen to develop out towards the coastal swamps ten kilometres down the Juliffe. Nor were there any farms to the west; the raw jungle was less than two kilometres away.
But their proximity to the port did put them on the fringe of the trouble. They were in the office at the side of the warehouse when Stewart Danielsson, one of the three men who worked for them, came barging in.
“People outside,” he said.
Lori and Darcy swapped a glance at the agitation in his tone, and went to see.
There was a loose progression of men from the nearby factories and mills heading towards the port. Darcy stood on the ramp outside the big open doorway at the front of the warehouse; there was a work area just inside, where they would pack orders and even perform repairs on Ward Molecular’s simpler units. Cole Este and Gaven Hough, the company’s other two employees, had both left their benches to join him.
“Where are they all going?” Lori asked. And why do they look so angry?she addressed darcy on singular engagement.
“Going down to the port,” Gaven Hough said.
“Why?”
He hunched his shoulders up, embarrassed. “Sort the Ivets out.”
“Bloody right,” Cole Este mumbled sullenly. “Wouldn’t mind going on that posse myself. The sheriffs’ve been recruiting deputies all morning.”
Damnation, trust this town to think with its arse,darcy said. he and lori had only been told about the quallheim counties revolt by one of their contacts in the Land Allocation Office the previous evening. Those bloody sheriffs must have been shouting the news about Schuster.“gaven, stewart, let’s get these doors shut. we’re closing for the day.”
They started to slide the big doors shut, while Cole Este stood on the ramp, grinning and exchanging a few shouted comments with the odd person he knew. He was nineteen, the youngest of the three workers, and it was obvious he wanted to join the crowd.
Just look at the little idiot,lori said.
Easy. We don’t involve ourselves, nor criticize. Prime rule.
Tell me about it. They’ll kill the Ivets down in the transients’ dormitories. You know that, don’t you?
Darcy slammed the bolt home on the door, and locked it with a padlock keyed to his finger pattern. I know.
“You want us to stay?” Stewart Danielsson asked dubiously.
“No, that’s all right, Stewart, you three get off home. We’ll take care of things here.”
Darcy and Lori sat in the office with all but one of the windows shuttered on the inside. A partition with a line of tall glass panes in wooden frames looked out over the darkened warehouse. The furniture was basic, a couple of tables and five chairs Darcy had made himself. A conditioner whirred almost silently in one corner, keeping the atmosphere cool and dry. The office was one of the few rooms on the planet that was actually dusty.
Once is acceptable,lori said. Twice is not. Something strange is happening in Schuster County.
Possibly.darcy put his maser carbine on the table between them. The solitary shaft of sunlight shining through the window made the smooth grey composite casing glimmer softly. Protection, just in case the riot spread back through the town.
They could both hear the distant growl of the crowd down in the port; the newly arrived Ivets being hunted down and killed. Beaten into the mud with makeshift clubs, or gored by baying sayce to the sound of cheers. If they looked through the window at an angle they would be able to see boats of all sizes sailing hurriedly out of the circular polyp harbours for the safety of the water.
I hate Adamists,lori said. Only Adamists could do this to one another. They do it because they don’t know one another. They don’t love, they can only lust and fear.
Darcy smiled, and reached out to touch her, because her mind was leaking a longing for the reassurance of physical contact. His hand never bridged the gap. An affinity voice with the power of a thunderstorm roared into their minds.
ATTENTION INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVES ON LALONDE, I AM LATON. THERE IS A XENOC ENERGY VIRUS LOOSE IN THE QUALLHEIM COUNTIES. HOSTILE AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. LEAVE LALONDE IMMEDIATELY. THE CONFEDERATION NAVY MUST BE INFORMED. THIS IS YOUR ONLY PRIORITY NOW. I CANNOT LAST LONG.
Lori was whimpering, her hands clutching at her ears, mouth frozen open in a horrified wail. Darcy saw her dissolve under a discharge of chaotic mental images, each of them bright enough to dazzle.
Jungle. A village seen from the air. More jungle. A little boy hanging upside-down from a tree, his stomach sliced open. A bearded man hanging upside-down from a different tree, lightning flaring wildly.
Heat, excruciating heat.
Darcy grunted at the pain, he was on fire. Skin blackening, hair singeing, his throat shrivelling.
It stopped.
He was prone on the floor. Flames in the background. Always flames. A man and a woman were leaning over him, naked. Their skin was changing, darkening to green, becoming scaled. Eyes and mouth were scarlet red. The woman parted her lips and a serpent’s forked tongue slipped out.
His children were crying all around.
Sorry, so sorry I failed you at the last.
Father shame: ignominy that extended down to a cellular level.
Leathery green hands began to run across his chest, a parody of sensuality. Where the fingers touched he could feel the ruptures begin deep below his skin.
NOW DO YOU BELIEVE?
And voices, audible above his agony. Coming from within, from a deeper part of his brain than affinity originated. Whisperers in chorus: “We can help, we can make it stop. Let us in, let us free you. Give yourself.”
WARN THEM, CURSE YOU.
Then nothing.
Darcy found himself curled up on the mayope planks of the office floor. He had bitten his lip; a trickle of blood wept down his chin.
He touched himself gingerly, fingers probing his ribs, terrified of what he would find. But there was no pain, no open wounds, no internal damage.
“It was him,” Lori croaked. She was in her chair, head bowed, hugging her chest, hands clenched into tight fists. “Laton. He’s here, he really is here.”
Darcy managed to right himself into a kneeling position, it was enough for now, if he tried to stand he was sure he’d faint. “Those images . . .” Did you see them?
The reptile people? Yes. But the power in that affinity. It . . . it damn near overwhelmed me.
The Quallheim Counties, that’s where he said it was. That’s over a thousand kilometres away upriver. Human affinity can only reach a hundred at most.
He’s had thirty years to perfect his diabolical genetic schemes.her thoughts were contaminated with fright and revulsion.
“A xenoc energy virus,” Darcy muttered, nonplussed. What did he mean? And he was being tortured, along with his children. Why? What is going on upriver?
I don’t know. All I know is I wouldn’t trust him, not ever. We saw images, fantasy figures. He’s had thirty years to construct them, after all.
But they were so real. And why reveal himself? He knows we will eliminate him whatever the cost.
Yes, he knows we will come in force. But with that affinity power he could probably compel even a voidhawk. It would allow himself and his cronies to spread through the Confederation.
It was so real,darcy repeated numbly. And now we know he is so powerful we can guard against him. It makes no sense, unless he really has run into something he can’t handle. Something more powerful than he.
Lori gave him a sad, almost defeated look. We need to know, don’t we?
Yes.
They let their thoughts flow and entwine like the bodies of amorous lovers, reinforcing their strengths, eliminating weaknesses. Gathering courage.
Darcy used a chair as support, and pulled himself up. Every joint felt ponderously stiff. He sat heavily and dabbed at his bitten lip.
Lori smiled fondly, and handed him a handkerchief.
Duty first,he said. We have to inform Jupiter that Laton is here. That takes precedence over everything. We’re not due a voidhawk visit for another couple of months. I’ll see Kelven Solanki and request he sends a message to Aethra and the support station out at Murora immediately, his office has the equipment to do that direct. The Confederation Navy would have to be told anyway, so it might as well be now. He can also include a report in the diplomatic flek on a colonist-carrier ship that’s heading back to Earth. That ought to cover us.
And after that we go upriver,lori said.
Yes.
“Next!” the sheriff called.
Yuri Wilkin stepped up to the table, keeping the leash tight on his sayce, Randolf. Rain pattered on the empty warehouse’s roof high above his head. Outside the open end, behind the sheriff, the yellow-brown polyp crater of harbour five was returning to a semblance of normality. Most of the boats had returned after their night on the river. A work crew from one of the shipyards were surveying the fire-ravaged hull that was bobbing low in the water. Some captain who hadn’t been fast enough to cast off when the rioters came boiling along the polyp in search of Ivets.
The smell of burnt wood mingled with more exotic smells from the stored goods that had caught fire in several warehouses. The flames shooting out of the doomed buildings had been tremendous, even Lalonde’s rain had taken hours to extinguish them.
Yuri had milled around watching along with the rest of the rioters last night, mesmerized with the destruction. The flames had lit something inside him, something that felt joyful at the sight of a young terrified Ivet reduced to a bloody chunk of unrecognizable meat beneath the crowd’s clubs. He had yelled encouragement until his throat was hoarse.
“Age?” the sheriff asked.
“Twenty,” Yuri lied. He was seventeen, but he already had a reasonable beard. He crossed his fingers, hoping it would be enough. There were over two hundred people waiting behind him, all wanting their chance now the sheriffs had started recruiting again.
The sheriff glanced up from his processor block. “Sure you are. You ever used a weapon, son?”
“I eat chikrows every week, shoot them myself. I know how to move around in the jungle OK. And I got Randolf, trained him all by myself, he’s an ace baiter, knows how to fight, knows how to hunt. He’ll be a big help upriver, you get two of us for the price of one.”
The sheriff leant forwards slightly, peering over the edge of the table.
Randolf bared his stained fangs. “Killl Ivezss,” the beast snarled.
“OK,” the sheriff grunted. “You willing to take orders? We don’t need people who aren’t prepared to work in a team.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Reckon you might, at that. You got a change of clothes?”
Grinning, Yuri twisted round to show him the canvas duffle bag slung over his shoulder; his laser rifle was strapped to it.
The sheriff picked a vermilion-coloured deputy’s badge from the pile beside his processor block. “There you go. Get yourself down to the Swithland and find a bunk. We’ll swear you in officially once we’re underway. And muzzle that bloody sayce, I don’t want him chewing up colonists before we get there.”
Yuri rubbed the black scales between Randolf’s battered ears. “Don’t you worry about old Randolf, he ain’t going to hurt no one, not till I tell him to.”
“Next!” the sheriff called.
Yuri Wilkin settled his hat firmly on his head, and headed for the sun-drenched harbour outside, a song in his heart and mayhem in mind.
“Gods, I’ve seen some rough planets in my time, Joshua,” Ashly Hanson said. “But this one takes the biscuit. There isn’t even anyone at the spaceport who wanted to buy copies of Jezzibella’s MF album, let alone a black-market distribution net.” He took a drink of juice from his long glass, it was a purplish liquid with plenty of ice bobbing around, some aboriginal fruit. The pilot never touched alcohol while the Lady Macbeth was docked to a station or in a parking orbit.
Joshua sipped his glass of bitter, which was warm and carried a punch almost as strong as some spirits he’d tasted. At least it had a decent head.
The pub they were drinking in was called the Crashed Dumper, a wooden barnlike structure at the end of the road that linked the spaceport with Durringham. Various time-expired spaceplane components were fastened up against the walls, the most prominent a compressor fan from one of the McBoeings that took up most of the end wall, with a couple of the fat blades buckled from a bird impact. The pub was used by spaceport staff along with the pilots and starship crews. It was, allegedly, one of the classier pubs in Durringham.
If this was refinement, Joshua didn’t like to think what the rest of the city’s hostelries must be like.
“I’ve been on worse,” Warlow growled. The bass harmonics set up vibrations on the surface of the brightlime in his bulbous brandy glass.
“Where?” Ashly demanded.
Joshua ignored them. This was their second day in Durringham, and he was starting to worry. The day Ashly had flown them down there had been some sort of riot next to the river. Everything had shut down, shops, warehouses, government offices. Spaceport procedures had been minimal, but then he suspected they were always like that on Lalonde. Ashly was right, this was one massively primitive colony. Today had been little better; the Governor’s industrial secretary had put him in touch with a Durringham timber merchant. The address turned out to be a small office down near the waterfront. Closed, naturally. Enquiries had eventually traced the owner, Mr Purcell, to a nearby pub. He assured Joshua a thousand tonnes of mayope was no problem. “You can’t give it away down here, we’ve got stocks backlogged halfway up the Juliffe.” He quoted a price of thirty-five thousand fuseodollars inclusive, and promised deliveries could start to the spaceport tomorrow. The wood was a ridiculous price, but Joshua didn’t argue. He even paid a two thousand fuseodollar deposit.
Joshua, Ashly, and Warlow had gone back to the spaceport on their hired power bikes (and the rental charge on those was bloody legalized robbery) to try to arrange for a McBoeing charter to ship the wood up to Lady Mac . That had taken the rest of the day, and another three thousand fuseodollars in bribe money.
It wasn’t the money which bothered him particularly; even taking Lalonde’s necessary lubrication into account the mayope was only a small percentage of the cost of a Norfolk flight. Joshua was used to datavised deals, and instant access to anybody he wanted via the local communication net. On Lalonde, where there was no net, and few people with neural nanonics, he was beginning to feel out of his depth.
When he had ridden back into town in the late afternoon to find Mr Purcell and confirm they had a McBoeing lined up, the timber merchant was nowhere to be found. Joshua retreated to the Crashed Dumper in a dark mood. He wasn’t at all sure the mayope would even turn up tomorrow; and they had to leave in six days to stand any chance of securing a cargo of Norfolk Tears from a roseyard merchant. Six days, and he didn’t have any alternative to mayope. It had seemed such a good idea.
He took another gulp of his bitter. The pub was filling up as the spaceport staff came off shift. Over in one corner an audio block was playing a ballad which some of the customers were singing along to. Large fans spun listlessly overhead, trying to circulate some of the humid air.
“Captain Calvert?”
Joshua looked up.
Marie Skibbow was dressed in a tight-fitting sleeveless green stretch blouse, and a short pleated black skirt. Her thick hair was neatly plaited. She was carrying a circular tray loaded with empty glasses.
“Now this is what I call improved service,” Ashly said brightly.
“That’s me,” Joshua said. Jesus, but she had tremendous legs. Nice face too, ever so slightly wiser than her age.
“I understand you’re looking for a cargo of mayope, is that right?” Marie asked.
“Does everybody in town know?” Joshua asked.
“Just about. A visit from an independent trader starship isn’t exactly common around here. If we weren’t having all this trouble with the Quallheim Counties and the anti-Ivet riots you’d be the most gossiped over item in Durringham.”
“I see.”
“Can I join you?”
“Sure.” He pushed out one of the vacant chairs. People had tended to avoid their table, it was one of the reasons he’d brought Warlow down. Only someone who was stoned out of his brain would try and tangle with the amount of boosted muscle the old cosmonik packed into his giant frame.
Marie sat down and fixed Joshua with an uncompromising gaze. “Would you be interested in taking on an extra crew-member?”
“You?” Joshua asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have neural nanonics?”
“No.”
“Then, I’m sorry, but the answer’s no. I have a full complement anyway.”
“How much do you charge for a trip?”
“Where to?”
“Wherever you’re going next.”
“If we can acquire a cargo of mayope, I’m going to Norfolk. I’d charge you thirty thousand fuseodollars for passage in zero-tau, more if you wanted a cabin. Starflight isn’t cheap.”
Marie’s air of sophisticated confidence faltered slightly. “Yes, I know.”
“You want to leave pretty badly?” Ashly asked sympathetically.
She dropped her gaze and nodded. “Wouldn’t you? I lived on Earth until last year. I hate it here, I’m not staying no matter what it costs. I want civilization.”
“Earth,” Ashly mused whimsically. “Lord, I haven’t been there for a couple of centuries. Wouldn’t call it particularly civilized even back then.”
“He’s a time hopper,” Joshua explained as Marie gave the pilot a confused look. “And if you hate this place as much as you say, then Norfolk isn’t where you want to go either. It’s strictly a pastoral planet. They have a policy of minimal technological usage, and the government enforces it pretty rigorously from what I hear. Sorry.”
She gave a small shrug. “I never thought it would be that easy.”
“The idea of signing on with a ship is a good one,” Ashly said. “But you really need neural nanonics before a captain will consider you.”
“Yes, I know, I’m saving up for a set.”
Joshua put on a neutral expression. “Good.”
Marie actually laughed, he was being so careful not to hurt her feelings. “You think I waitress for a living? That I’m a dumb waster girl saving up tips and dreaming of better days?”
“Er . . . no.”
“I waitress here in the evenings because it’s the place the starship crews come. This way I get to hear of any openings before the rest of Durringham. And yes there are the tips, too, every little helps. But for real money I bought myself a secretarial job at the Kulu Embassy, in their Commercial Office.”
“Bought a job?” Warlow rumbled. His sculpted dark-yellow face was incapable of expression, but the voice booming from his chest diaphragm carried a heavy query. People turned to look as he drowned out the ballad.
“Of course. You think they give away a gig like that? The embassy pays its staff in Kulu pounds.” It was the second hardest currency in the Confederation after fuseodollars. “That’s where I’m going to get the money to pay for my neural nanonics.”
“Ah, now I see.” Joshua raised his glass in salute. He admired the girl’s toughness—almost as much as he admired her figure.
“That, or the deputy ambassador’s son might get me off,” Marie said quietly. “He’s twenty-two, and he likes me a lot. If we married then obviously I’d go back to Kulu with him once his father’s tour was over.”
Ashly grinned and knocked back some of his fruit juice. A suspect grumble emerged from Warlow’s chest.
Marie gave Joshua a questioning glance. “So. Do you still want your mayope, Captain?”
“You think you can get me some?”
“Like I said, I work in the Commercial Office. And I’m good at it, too,” she said fiercely. “I know more about this town’s economic structure than my boss. You’re buying your cargo from Dodd Purcell, right?”
“Yes,” Joshua said cautiously.
“Thought so; he’s the nephew of the governor’s industrial secretary. Dodd Purcell is a complete screwup, but he’s a good partner for his uncle. All official tenders for timber go through the company he owns, except it’s actually his uncle’s, and all it consists of is an office down at the port. They don’t actually own a yard, or even any timber. The LDC pays through the nose, but nobody queries it because no lower quotes ever make it past the industrial secretary’s office. All that happens is Purcell contracts a real lumberyard to supply whatever project the LDC is paying for; they do all the work while he and uncle cream off thirty per cent. No effort, and all profit.”
Warlow’s chair creaked alarmed protests as his bulk shifted round. He tilted the brandy glass to his mouth aperture, the brightlime surged out, almost sucked down into his inlet nozzle. “Smart bastards.”
“Jesus,” Joshua said. “And I’ll bet the price goes up tomorrow.”
“I expect so,” Marie said. “And then again the day after, then it will become a rush order to meet your deadline, so you’ll have to pay a surcharge.”
Joshua put his empty glass down on the stained table. “All right, you win. What’s your counter-offer?”
“You are paying Purcell thirty-five thousand fuseodollars, which is about thirty per cent over the odds. I’m offering to put you in touch with a lumber-yard direct, they’ll supply the wood at the market rate, and you pay me five per cent of the difference.”
“Suppose we just go to a lumber-yard direct now you’ve told us what’s happening?” Ashly asked.
Marie smiled sweetly. “Which one? Are you going back to the Governor’s industrial secretary for a list? Once you’ve picked one, do you know if it was burnt down in the riots? Where is it, and how do you get to it? Parts of this town are very unhealthy for visitors, especially after the riots. Does it have that much mayope in stock or is the owner stringing you along? What are you going to use to transport it out to the spaceport? And how much time can you spend sorting all that out? Even a relatively honest lumber-yard owner is going to catch on that you’ve got a deadline once you start fretting because you haven’t got permits and procedures smoothed out in advance. I mean, God, it took you almost a day to hire a McBoeing. Bet you didn’t buy energy for it either, they’ll hit you for that tomorrow. And when they scent blood it’ll be Purcell all over again.”
Joshua held up a warning hand to Ashly. Nobody at the spaceport had mentioned energy for the McBoeing. Jesus! On a normal planet it would be part of the charter; and of course he couldn’t use his neural nanonics to access the contract and run a legal program check because his copy of the fucking thing was printed out on paper. Paper , for Christ’s sake. “I’ll deal with you,” he told Marie. “But I only pay on delivery to orbit, and that includes your fee. So you’re going to have to clear all those obstacles you mentioned out of our way, because I don’t pay a single fuseodollar once those six days are up.”
She stuck out her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation Joshua shook.
“We’re sleeping in my spaceplane, seeing as how it has the only functional air-conditioner on the entire planet,” he told her. “I want you there at seven o’clock tomorrow morning ready to take us to this lumber-yard of yours.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” She stood and picked up her tray.
Joshua pulled a wad of Lalonde francs from his jacket pocket and peeled a few off. “We’ll have the same again, and have a large one yourself. I think you’ve just earned it.”
Marie plucked the notes from him and stuffed them in a side pocket on her skirt. She gave them all a ludicrously sassy twitch with her backside as she walked off to the bar.
Ashly watched her go with a lugubrious expression, then drained his juice in one gulp. “God help that ambassador’s son.”
Darcy and Lori spent the day after the riots preparing for their trip. There was Kelven Solanki to brief on the situation, and their eagles Abraham and Catlin to take out of zero-tau, equipment to make ready. Above all, they had to find transport. The harbour-master’s office had been damaged in the riot, so there was no list available of the boats in dock. In the afternoon they sent the eagles skimming over the polyp rings searching for something they could use.
What do you think?darcy asked. abraham was turning lazy circles over harbour seven, his enhanced retinas providing an uncluttered image of the boats moored up against the quays.
Them?lori exclaimed in dismay.
Have you found someone else?
No.
At least we know we can bully them with money.
The port still hadn’t recovered from the riot when they made their way down to harbour seven first thing the next morning. Huge piles of ashes which used to be buildings were still radiating heat from their smouldering cores, giving off thin streamers of acrid smoke. Long runnels of mushed ashes meandered away from their bases, sluiced out by the rain; they had coagulated under the morning sunlight, looking like damp lava flows.
Gangs of workers were raking through the piles with long mayope poles, searching for anything salvageable. They passed one ruined transients’ warehouse where a stack of cargo-pods had been pulled from the gutted remains, the warped composite resembling surrealistic sculptures. Darcy watched a forlorn family prise open a badly contorted marsupium shell with deep scorch marks on the oyster-coloured casing. The infant quadruped had been roasted in its chemical sleep, reduced to a shrivelled black mummy. Darcy couldn’t even tell what species it was.
Lori had to turn away from the empty-faced colonists scrabbling at the pods’ distorted lids, shiny new ship-suits smeared with dirt and sweat. They had come to Lalonde with such high hopes, and now they were faced with utter ruin before they’d even been given a chance at a life.
This is awful,she said.
This is dangerous,darcy replied. They are numbed and shocked now, but that will soon give way to anger. Without their farmsteading gear they can’t be sent upriver, and Rexrew will be hard pushed to replace it.
It wasn’t all burnt,she said sorrowfully. The afternoon and evening of the riot there had been a steady stream of people walking past the Ward Molecular warehouse carrying pods and cartons of equipment they had looted.
They walked round harbour seven until they came to the quay where the Coogan was moored. The ageing tramp trader was in a dilapidated state, with holes in its cabin roof and a long gash in the wood up at the prow where it had struck some snag. Len Buchannan had only just managed to get out of the harbour ahead of the rioters, flinging planks from the cabin walls into the furnace hopper in his desperation.
Gail Buchannan was sitting in her usual place outside the galley doorway, coolie hat shading her sweating face, a kitchen knife almost engulfed by her huge hand. She was chopping some long vegetable root, slices falling into a pewter-coloured pan at her feet. Her eyes fastened shrewdly on Darcy and Lori as they stepped onto the decking. “You again. Len! Len, get yourself out here, we’ve got visitors. Now, Len!”
Darcy waited impassively. They had used the Buchannans as an information source in the past, occasionally asking them to pick up fleks from assets upriver. But they had proved so unreliable and cranky, Darcy hadn’t bothered with them for the last twenty months.
Len Buchannan walked forward from the little engineroom, where he’d been patching the cabin walls. He was wearing jeans and his cap, a carpenter’s suede utility belt hanging loosely round his skinny hips, with only a few tools in its hoops.
Darcy thought he looked hungover, which fitted the talk he’d heard around the port. The Coogan had hit hard times of late.
“Have you got a cargo to take upriver?” Darcy asked.
“No,” Len said sullenly.
“It’s been a difficult season for us,” Gail said. “Things aren’t like they used to be. Nobody shows any loyalty these days. Why, if it wasn’t for us virtually giving our goods away half of the settlements upriver would have starved to death. But do they show any gratitude? Ha!”
“Is the Coogan fit to be taken out?” Darcy asked, cutting through the woman’s screed. “Now? Today?”
Len pulled his cap off and scratched his head. “Suppose so. Engines are OK. I always service them regular.”
“Of course it’s in tiptop shape,” Gail told him loudly. “There’s nothing wrong with the Coogan ’s hull. It’s only because this drunken buffoon spends all his time pining away over that little bitch-brat that the cabin’s in the state it is.”
Len sighed irksomely, and leant against the galley doorframe. “Don’t start,” he said.
“I knew she was trouble,” Gail said. “I told you not to let her on board. I warned you. And after all we did for her.”
“Shut up!”
She glared at him and resumed slicing up the cream-white vegetable.
“What do you want the Coogan for?” Len asked.
“We have to get upriver, today,” Darcy said. “There’s no cargo, only us.”
Len made a play of putting his cap back on. “There’s trouble upriver.”
“I know. That’s where we want to go, the Quallheim Counties.”
“No,” Len Buchannan said. “Sorry, anywhere else in the tributary basin, but not there.”
“That’s where she came from,” Gail hissed venomously. “That’s what you’re afraid of.”
“There’s a bloody war going on up there, woman. You saw the boats with the posse leaving.”
“Ten thousand fuseodollars,” Gail said. “And don’t you two try haggling with me, that’s the only offer you’ll get, I’m starving myself as it is. I’ll take you up on my own if Lennie’s too frightened.”
If that’s starvation, I’d like to see gluttony,darcy said.
“This is my boat,” Len said. “Made with my own hands.”
“Half yours,” Gail shouted back, waving the knife at him. “Half! I have a say too, and I say Coogan is going back to the Quallheim. If you don’t like it, go and cry in her skirts if she’ll have you. Drunken old fool.”
If this is the way they carry on, they’ll kill each other before we get out of the harbour,lori said. she watched len staring at the burnt-out sections of the port, his brown weathered face lost with longing.
“All right,” he said eventually. “I’ll take you to the mouth of the Quallheim, or as near as we can get. But I’m not going anywhere near the trouble.”
“Fair enough,” Darcy said. “How long will it take us at full speed?”
“Going upriver?” Len closed his eyes, lips moving around figures. “Without stopping to trade, ten or twelve days. Mind, we’ll have to moor in the evenings, and cut logs. You’ll have to work your passage.”
“Forget that,” Darcy said. “I’ll have some firewood delivered this afternoon, enough to get us there in one go; we can store it in the forward hold instead of a cargo. And I’ll spell you at night, I don’t need much sleep. How long travelling like that?”
“A week, maybe,” Len Buchannan said. He didn’t seem terribly happy with the idea.
“That’s fine. We’ll start this afternoon.”
“We’ll take half of the money now, as a deposit,” Gail said. A Jovian Bank disk appeared from nowhere in her hand.
“You’ll get a thousand now as a deposit, plus five hundred to buy enough food and water for three weeks,” Lori said. “I’ll pay another two thousand once we leave the harbour this afternoon, two more when we get to Schuster, and the sum when we get back here.”
Gail Buchannan made a lot of indignant noise, but the sight of actual cash piling up in her disk silenced her.
“Make sure it’s decent food,” Lori told her. “Freeze dried, I’m sure you know where to get stocks of that from.”
They left the Buchannans bickering and went on to a lumber-yard to arrange for the logs to be delivered. It took an hour longer than it should have done to get their order sorted out; the only reason they got it at all was because they were regular customers. The yard was frantically busy with an order for a thousand tonnes of mayope. The laughing foreman told them a lunatic starship captain was planning to carry it to another star.
They were going to make Joshua Calvert’s deadline. Marie Skibbow couldn’t keep the thought out of her mind. It was mid-afternoon, and she was sitting up at the bar in the nearly deserted Crashed Dumper having a celebratory drink. What she really felt like doing was singing and dancing, it was a wonderful experience. All the contacts she’d meticulously built up over the last few months had finally paid off. The deals she put together had clicked into place all the way down the line, smoothing the way for the wood to get from the lumber-yard into orbit with minimum fuss and maximum speed. In fact it had turned out they were being limited by how fast Ashly Hanson could load the foam-covered bundles into the Lady Macbeth ’s cargo holds. The starship only carried one MSV, which imposed a two hundred and fifty tonne per day restriction. The pilot simply couldn’t work any faster; and not even Marie could obtain a MSV from Kenyon, which was the only other place they were in use within the Lalonde star system. But even so, they should have the last bundle loaded tomorrow, a day before the deadline.
Her Jovian Bank disk was burning like a small thermal-induction field in her sawn-off jeans pocket. Joshua had paid her on the nose, every McBoeing flight that lifted off the spaceport’s metal grid runway saw another batch of fuseodollars added to her account. And he’d given her a bonus for arranging the lorries. The drivers were taking colonists’ farmsteading gear from the spaceport down to the harbour and returning half-empty; it didn’t take much organization or money to fix it so they brought the mayope with them when they came back. That way Joshua saved money on an official contract with the haulage company that owned them.
Her first major-league deal. She sipped her iced brightlime, enjoying the bitter taste as it went down her throat. Was this how millionaires felt every day? The total satisfaction which came from tangible accomplishment. And all the famous merchant names in history must have started with a first deal like this, even Richard Saldana, who founded Kulu. Now there was a thought.
But there weren’t many opportunities for deals this big on Lalonde. She simply had to leave, that goal had never changed. The money from the deal would be a hefty slice towards the eighteen thousand fuseodollars she needed for a basic set of neural nanonics. Joshua would probably pay her an overall bonus as well. He was honest enough.
Which brought her to the real question of the day: whether or not she was going to go to bed with him. He had certainly asked her often enough over the last four days. He was handsome, if a trifle gaunt, with a good-looking body; and he must be talented after all the girls he’d been with. An owner-captain under twenty-five years old, it would surely run into hundreds. Especially with that grin. He must practise it; so sexy. She rather liked the notion of what they’d be capable of doing to each other if they flung off every inhibition. There had been rumours back at the arcology about the prowess of people geneered for spaceflight, something to do with enhanced flexibility.
And if she did—which she probably would—he might just take her with him when he left. It really wasn’t a possibility she could afford to ignore. After Norfolk he said he was planning on returning to Tranquillity. That habitat was premier real estate, superior even to Earth and Kulu. I’ve already whored my way down the river; whoring to Tranquillity would hardly be a hardship after that.
The Crashed Dumper’s door creaked open. A young man in a blue and red checked shirt and long khaki shorts walked in, and sat down at the other end of the bar. He never even glanced at Marie, which was odd. She was wearing her sawn-off jeans and a dark-orange singlet, long limbs on show. His face looked familiar, early twenties, ruggedly attractive with a neatly trimmed beard. His clothes were new, and clean, made locally. Was he one of Durringham’s new generation of merchants? She’d met a lot of them since she got the job at the embassy, and they were always keen to talk while they waited for Ralph Hiltch, her boss.
She pouted slightly. There, if she had neural nanonics she’d have no trouble placing the name.
“Beer, please,” he told the barkeeper.
The voice fixed him, it just took a moment for her incredulity to die down. No wonder she hadn’t recognized him to start with. She went over to him.
“Quinn Dexter, what the bloody hell are you doing here?” He turned slowly, blinking at her uncertainly in the pub’s filtered light. She held back on a laugh, because it was obvious he didn’t recognize her either.
His fingers clicked, and he smiled. “Marie Skibbow. Glad to see you made it to the big city. Everybody wondered if you would. They didn’t stop talking about you for a month.”
“Yeah, well . . .” She sat on the stool next to him as he paid for his beer from a thick wad of Lalonde francs. That wasn’t right, Ivets didn’t have hard cash. She waited until the barkeeper went away then dropped her voice. “Quinn, don’t tell people who you are. They’re killing Ivets in this town right now. It’s pretty nasty.”
“No problem. I’m not an Ivet any more. I bought myself out of my work time contract.”
“Bought yourself out?” Marie had never known you could do that.
“Sure,” he winked. “Everything on this planet is financially orientated.”
“Ah, right. How did you buy it? Don’t tell me dear old Aberdale started being successful.”
“No, not a chance, it never changed. I found some gold in the river.”
“Gold?”
“Yes, a nugget you wouldn’t believe.” He held up his hand, making a fist. “This big, Marie, and that’s the honest truth. So I kept going back, there was nothing ever as big as that first one, but I built up quite a little hoard. They thought it must have washed down from the mountains on the other side of the savannah, remember them?”
“God, don’t remind me. I don’t want to remember anything about that village.”
“Can’t say I blame you. First thing I did was get out. Sailed straight down the Juliffe on a trader boat; took me a week and I got ripped off by the captain, but here I am. Arrived today.”
“Yeah, I got ripped off too.” Marie studied her glass of brightlime. “So what’s happening upriver, Quinn? Have the Ivets really taken over the Quallheim Counties?”
“It was all news to me when we docked this morning. There was nothing like that in the offing when I left. Maybe they’re fighting over the gold. Whoever owns the motherlode is going to be seriously rich.”
“They’ve sent a load of sheriffs and deputies up there, armed to the teeth.”
“Oh, dear. That doesn’t sound good. Guess I’m lucky I got out when I did.”
Marie realized how hot she had become in the last couple of minutes. When she glanced up she saw the fans had stopped spinning. Bloody typical, right when the sun was at its zenith. “Quinn? How are my family?”
“Well . . .” He pulled a sardonic face. “Your father’s not changed much.”
She lifted her glass level with her face. “Amen.”
“Let’s see; your mother’s OK, your brother-in-law is OK. Oh yes, Paula’s pregnant.”
“Really? God, I’ll be an aunt.”
The Tyrathca farmers had suffered a famine and they were eating humans, starting with Aberdale. (No, not possible. Weren’t the Tyrathca herbivores?)
Waster kids from Earth had stolen a starship, and after zapping the sheriff’s surveillance satellite they’d landed to help their old gang mates, the Ivets.
Blackhawks and mercenary starships had banded together; they were invading Lalonde, and they were planning on turning it into a rebel world which would be a base for raiding the Confederation. Colonists were being used for slave labour to build fortifications and secret landing sites out in the jungle. Ivets were captaining the work parties.
Two things remained reasonably constant amid all the wild theorizing. One: colonists had been killed by Ivets. Two: Ivets were heading/helping the revolt.
Durringham was a frontier town, the vast majority of its population scraping their living with long hours of hard labour. They were poor and proud, and the only group which stood between them and the bottom rung were those evil, workshy, criminal, daughter-raping Ivets; and by God that’s where the Ivets were going to stay: underfoot.
When Candace Elford’s sheriffs started to recruit deputies for the posse, tension and nervousness was already gripping the town. Seeing the posse actually assembling down at the port, confirming there really was something going on upriver, tipped unrest into physical aggression.
Darcy and Lori were lucky to miss the worst of the mayhem. On Lalonde they acted as the local representatives for Ward Molecular, a Kulu company that imported various solid-state units as well as a lot of the electron-matrix power cells which the capital’s embryonic industries were incorporating into an increasing number of products. The Kulu connection was an ironic added touch to their cover; the deeply religious Kulu and the Edenists were not closely allied in the Confederation. Edenists were not permitted to germinate their habitats in any of the Kingdom’s star systems, which made it unlikely that anyone would think of them as anything other than loyal subjects of King Alastair II.
They handled their business from a long wooden warehouse structure, a standard industrial building with an overhanging roof, and a floor which was supported on raised stone pillars a metre above the muddy gravel. Built entirely from mayope, it was strong enough to resist any casual break-in attempt by the capital’s slowly increasing population of petty criminals. The single-storey cabin which they lived in sat in the middle of a half-acre plot of land at the back, which like most of Durringham’s residents they used to grow vegetables and fruit bushes.
Warehouse and cabin were situated on the western edge of the port, five hundred metres from the water. The majority of nearby buildings were commercial premises—sawmills, lumber-yards, a few forges, and some relatively new cloth factories, their bleak ranks broken by streets of cabins to accommodate their workers. This end of town had stayed the same for years. It was the eastern end and long southern side which were expanding, and no one seemed keen to develop out towards the coastal swamps ten kilometres down the Juliffe. Nor were there any farms to the west; the raw jungle was less than two kilometres away.
But their proximity to the port did put them on the fringe of the trouble. They were in the office at the side of the warehouse when Stewart Danielsson, one of the three men who worked for them, came barging in.
“People outside,” he said.
Lori and Darcy swapped a glance at the agitation in his tone, and went to see.
There was a loose progression of men from the nearby factories and mills heading towards the port. Darcy stood on the ramp outside the big open doorway at the front of the warehouse; there was a work area just inside, where they would pack orders and even perform repairs on Ward Molecular’s simpler units. Cole Este and Gaven Hough, the company’s other two employees, had both left their benches to join him.
“Where are they all going?” Lori asked. And why do they look so angry?she addressed darcy on singular engagement.
“Going down to the port,” Gaven Hough said.
“Why?”
He hunched his shoulders up, embarrassed. “Sort the Ivets out.”
“Bloody right,” Cole Este mumbled sullenly. “Wouldn’t mind going on that posse myself. The sheriffs’ve been recruiting deputies all morning.”
Damnation, trust this town to think with its arse,darcy said. he and lori had only been told about the quallheim counties revolt by one of their contacts in the Land Allocation Office the previous evening. Those bloody sheriffs must have been shouting the news about Schuster.“gaven, stewart, let’s get these doors shut. we’re closing for the day.”
They started to slide the big doors shut, while Cole Este stood on the ramp, grinning and exchanging a few shouted comments with the odd person he knew. He was nineteen, the youngest of the three workers, and it was obvious he wanted to join the crowd.
Just look at the little idiot,lori said.
Easy. We don’t involve ourselves, nor criticize. Prime rule.
Tell me about it. They’ll kill the Ivets down in the transients’ dormitories. You know that, don’t you?
Darcy slammed the bolt home on the door, and locked it with a padlock keyed to his finger pattern. I know.
“You want us to stay?” Stewart Danielsson asked dubiously.
“No, that’s all right, Stewart, you three get off home. We’ll take care of things here.”
Darcy and Lori sat in the office with all but one of the windows shuttered on the inside. A partition with a line of tall glass panes in wooden frames looked out over the darkened warehouse. The furniture was basic, a couple of tables and five chairs Darcy had made himself. A conditioner whirred almost silently in one corner, keeping the atmosphere cool and dry. The office was one of the few rooms on the planet that was actually dusty.
Once is acceptable,lori said. Twice is not. Something strange is happening in Schuster County.
Possibly.darcy put his maser carbine on the table between them. The solitary shaft of sunlight shining through the window made the smooth grey composite casing glimmer softly. Protection, just in case the riot spread back through the town.
They could both hear the distant growl of the crowd down in the port; the newly arrived Ivets being hunted down and killed. Beaten into the mud with makeshift clubs, or gored by baying sayce to the sound of cheers. If they looked through the window at an angle they would be able to see boats of all sizes sailing hurriedly out of the circular polyp harbours for the safety of the water.
I hate Adamists,lori said. Only Adamists could do this to one another. They do it because they don’t know one another. They don’t love, they can only lust and fear.
Darcy smiled, and reached out to touch her, because her mind was leaking a longing for the reassurance of physical contact. His hand never bridged the gap. An affinity voice with the power of a thunderstorm roared into their minds.
ATTENTION INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVES ON LALONDE, I AM LATON. THERE IS A XENOC ENERGY VIRUS LOOSE IN THE QUALLHEIM COUNTIES. HOSTILE AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. LEAVE LALONDE IMMEDIATELY. THE CONFEDERATION NAVY MUST BE INFORMED. THIS IS YOUR ONLY PRIORITY NOW. I CANNOT LAST LONG.
Lori was whimpering, her hands clutching at her ears, mouth frozen open in a horrified wail. Darcy saw her dissolve under a discharge of chaotic mental images, each of them bright enough to dazzle.
Jungle. A village seen from the air. More jungle. A little boy hanging upside-down from a tree, his stomach sliced open. A bearded man hanging upside-down from a different tree, lightning flaring wildly.
Heat, excruciating heat.
Darcy grunted at the pain, he was on fire. Skin blackening, hair singeing, his throat shrivelling.
It stopped.
He was prone on the floor. Flames in the background. Always flames. A man and a woman were leaning over him, naked. Their skin was changing, darkening to green, becoming scaled. Eyes and mouth were scarlet red. The woman parted her lips and a serpent’s forked tongue slipped out.
His children were crying all around.
Sorry, so sorry I failed you at the last.
Father shame: ignominy that extended down to a cellular level.
Leathery green hands began to run across his chest, a parody of sensuality. Where the fingers touched he could feel the ruptures begin deep below his skin.
NOW DO YOU BELIEVE?
And voices, audible above his agony. Coming from within, from a deeper part of his brain than affinity originated. Whisperers in chorus: “We can help, we can make it stop. Let us in, let us free you. Give yourself.”
WARN THEM, CURSE YOU.
Then nothing.
Darcy found himself curled up on the mayope planks of the office floor. He had bitten his lip; a trickle of blood wept down his chin.
He touched himself gingerly, fingers probing his ribs, terrified of what he would find. But there was no pain, no open wounds, no internal damage.
“It was him,” Lori croaked. She was in her chair, head bowed, hugging her chest, hands clenched into tight fists. “Laton. He’s here, he really is here.”
Darcy managed to right himself into a kneeling position, it was enough for now, if he tried to stand he was sure he’d faint. “Those images . . .” Did you see them?
The reptile people? Yes. But the power in that affinity. It . . . it damn near overwhelmed me.
The Quallheim Counties, that’s where he said it was. That’s over a thousand kilometres away upriver. Human affinity can only reach a hundred at most.
He’s had thirty years to perfect his diabolical genetic schemes.her thoughts were contaminated with fright and revulsion.
“A xenoc energy virus,” Darcy muttered, nonplussed. What did he mean? And he was being tortured, along with his children. Why? What is going on upriver?
I don’t know. All I know is I wouldn’t trust him, not ever. We saw images, fantasy figures. He’s had thirty years to construct them, after all.
But they were so real. And why reveal himself? He knows we will eliminate him whatever the cost.
Yes, he knows we will come in force. But with that affinity power he could probably compel even a voidhawk. It would allow himself and his cronies to spread through the Confederation.
It was so real,darcy repeated numbly. And now we know he is so powerful we can guard against him. It makes no sense, unless he really has run into something he can’t handle. Something more powerful than he.
Lori gave him a sad, almost defeated look. We need to know, don’t we?
Yes.
They let their thoughts flow and entwine like the bodies of amorous lovers, reinforcing their strengths, eliminating weaknesses. Gathering courage.
Darcy used a chair as support, and pulled himself up. Every joint felt ponderously stiff. He sat heavily and dabbed at his bitten lip.
Lori smiled fondly, and handed him a handkerchief.
Duty first,he said. We have to inform Jupiter that Laton is here. That takes precedence over everything. We’re not due a voidhawk visit for another couple of months. I’ll see Kelven Solanki and request he sends a message to Aethra and the support station out at Murora immediately, his office has the equipment to do that direct. The Confederation Navy would have to be told anyway, so it might as well be now. He can also include a report in the diplomatic flek on a colonist-carrier ship that’s heading back to Earth. That ought to cover us.
And after that we go upriver,lori said.
Yes.
“Next!” the sheriff called.
Yuri Wilkin stepped up to the table, keeping the leash tight on his sayce, Randolf. Rain pattered on the empty warehouse’s roof high above his head. Outside the open end, behind the sheriff, the yellow-brown polyp crater of harbour five was returning to a semblance of normality. Most of the boats had returned after their night on the river. A work crew from one of the shipyards were surveying the fire-ravaged hull that was bobbing low in the water. Some captain who hadn’t been fast enough to cast off when the rioters came boiling along the polyp in search of Ivets.
The smell of burnt wood mingled with more exotic smells from the stored goods that had caught fire in several warehouses. The flames shooting out of the doomed buildings had been tremendous, even Lalonde’s rain had taken hours to extinguish them.
Yuri had milled around watching along with the rest of the rioters last night, mesmerized with the destruction. The flames had lit something inside him, something that felt joyful at the sight of a young terrified Ivet reduced to a bloody chunk of unrecognizable meat beneath the crowd’s clubs. He had yelled encouragement until his throat was hoarse.
“Age?” the sheriff asked.
“Twenty,” Yuri lied. He was seventeen, but he already had a reasonable beard. He crossed his fingers, hoping it would be enough. There were over two hundred people waiting behind him, all wanting their chance now the sheriffs had started recruiting again.
The sheriff glanced up from his processor block. “Sure you are. You ever used a weapon, son?”
“I eat chikrows every week, shoot them myself. I know how to move around in the jungle OK. And I got Randolf, trained him all by myself, he’s an ace baiter, knows how to fight, knows how to hunt. He’ll be a big help upriver, you get two of us for the price of one.”
The sheriff leant forwards slightly, peering over the edge of the table.
Randolf bared his stained fangs. “Killl Ivezss,” the beast snarled.
“OK,” the sheriff grunted. “You willing to take orders? We don’t need people who aren’t prepared to work in a team.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Reckon you might, at that. You got a change of clothes?”
Grinning, Yuri twisted round to show him the canvas duffle bag slung over his shoulder; his laser rifle was strapped to it.
The sheriff picked a vermilion-coloured deputy’s badge from the pile beside his processor block. “There you go. Get yourself down to the Swithland and find a bunk. We’ll swear you in officially once we’re underway. And muzzle that bloody sayce, I don’t want him chewing up colonists before we get there.”
Yuri rubbed the black scales between Randolf’s battered ears. “Don’t you worry about old Randolf, he ain’t going to hurt no one, not till I tell him to.”
“Next!” the sheriff called.
Yuri Wilkin settled his hat firmly on his head, and headed for the sun-drenched harbour outside, a song in his heart and mayhem in mind.
“Gods, I’ve seen some rough planets in my time, Joshua,” Ashly Hanson said. “But this one takes the biscuit. There isn’t even anyone at the spaceport who wanted to buy copies of Jezzibella’s MF album, let alone a black-market distribution net.” He took a drink of juice from his long glass, it was a purplish liquid with plenty of ice bobbing around, some aboriginal fruit. The pilot never touched alcohol while the Lady Macbeth was docked to a station or in a parking orbit.
Joshua sipped his glass of bitter, which was warm and carried a punch almost as strong as some spirits he’d tasted. At least it had a decent head.
The pub they were drinking in was called the Crashed Dumper, a wooden barnlike structure at the end of the road that linked the spaceport with Durringham. Various time-expired spaceplane components were fastened up against the walls, the most prominent a compressor fan from one of the McBoeings that took up most of the end wall, with a couple of the fat blades buckled from a bird impact. The pub was used by spaceport staff along with the pilots and starship crews. It was, allegedly, one of the classier pubs in Durringham.
If this was refinement, Joshua didn’t like to think what the rest of the city’s hostelries must be like.
“I’ve been on worse,” Warlow growled. The bass harmonics set up vibrations on the surface of the brightlime in his bulbous brandy glass.
“Where?” Ashly demanded.
Joshua ignored them. This was their second day in Durringham, and he was starting to worry. The day Ashly had flown them down there had been some sort of riot next to the river. Everything had shut down, shops, warehouses, government offices. Spaceport procedures had been minimal, but then he suspected they were always like that on Lalonde. Ashly was right, this was one massively primitive colony. Today had been little better; the Governor’s industrial secretary had put him in touch with a Durringham timber merchant. The address turned out to be a small office down near the waterfront. Closed, naturally. Enquiries had eventually traced the owner, Mr Purcell, to a nearby pub. He assured Joshua a thousand tonnes of mayope was no problem. “You can’t give it away down here, we’ve got stocks backlogged halfway up the Juliffe.” He quoted a price of thirty-five thousand fuseodollars inclusive, and promised deliveries could start to the spaceport tomorrow. The wood was a ridiculous price, but Joshua didn’t argue. He even paid a two thousand fuseodollar deposit.
Joshua, Ashly, and Warlow had gone back to the spaceport on their hired power bikes (and the rental charge on those was bloody legalized robbery) to try to arrange for a McBoeing charter to ship the wood up to Lady Mac . That had taken the rest of the day, and another three thousand fuseodollars in bribe money.
It wasn’t the money which bothered him particularly; even taking Lalonde’s necessary lubrication into account the mayope was only a small percentage of the cost of a Norfolk flight. Joshua was used to datavised deals, and instant access to anybody he wanted via the local communication net. On Lalonde, where there was no net, and few people with neural nanonics, he was beginning to feel out of his depth.
When he had ridden back into town in the late afternoon to find Mr Purcell and confirm they had a McBoeing lined up, the timber merchant was nowhere to be found. Joshua retreated to the Crashed Dumper in a dark mood. He wasn’t at all sure the mayope would even turn up tomorrow; and they had to leave in six days to stand any chance of securing a cargo of Norfolk Tears from a roseyard merchant. Six days, and he didn’t have any alternative to mayope. It had seemed such a good idea.
He took another gulp of his bitter. The pub was filling up as the spaceport staff came off shift. Over in one corner an audio block was playing a ballad which some of the customers were singing along to. Large fans spun listlessly overhead, trying to circulate some of the humid air.
“Captain Calvert?”
Joshua looked up.
Marie Skibbow was dressed in a tight-fitting sleeveless green stretch blouse, and a short pleated black skirt. Her thick hair was neatly plaited. She was carrying a circular tray loaded with empty glasses.
“Now this is what I call improved service,” Ashly said brightly.
“That’s me,” Joshua said. Jesus, but she had tremendous legs. Nice face too, ever so slightly wiser than her age.
“I understand you’re looking for a cargo of mayope, is that right?” Marie asked.
“Does everybody in town know?” Joshua asked.
“Just about. A visit from an independent trader starship isn’t exactly common around here. If we weren’t having all this trouble with the Quallheim Counties and the anti-Ivet riots you’d be the most gossiped over item in Durringham.”
“I see.”
“Can I join you?”
“Sure.” He pushed out one of the vacant chairs. People had tended to avoid their table, it was one of the reasons he’d brought Warlow down. Only someone who was stoned out of his brain would try and tangle with the amount of boosted muscle the old cosmonik packed into his giant frame.
Marie sat down and fixed Joshua with an uncompromising gaze. “Would you be interested in taking on an extra crew-member?”
“You?” Joshua asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have neural nanonics?”
“No.”
“Then, I’m sorry, but the answer’s no. I have a full complement anyway.”
“How much do you charge for a trip?”
“Where to?”
“Wherever you’re going next.”
“If we can acquire a cargo of mayope, I’m going to Norfolk. I’d charge you thirty thousand fuseodollars for passage in zero-tau, more if you wanted a cabin. Starflight isn’t cheap.”
Marie’s air of sophisticated confidence faltered slightly. “Yes, I know.”
“You want to leave pretty badly?” Ashly asked sympathetically.
She dropped her gaze and nodded. “Wouldn’t you? I lived on Earth until last year. I hate it here, I’m not staying no matter what it costs. I want civilization.”
“Earth,” Ashly mused whimsically. “Lord, I haven’t been there for a couple of centuries. Wouldn’t call it particularly civilized even back then.”
“He’s a time hopper,” Joshua explained as Marie gave the pilot a confused look. “And if you hate this place as much as you say, then Norfolk isn’t where you want to go either. It’s strictly a pastoral planet. They have a policy of minimal technological usage, and the government enforces it pretty rigorously from what I hear. Sorry.”
She gave a small shrug. “I never thought it would be that easy.”
“The idea of signing on with a ship is a good one,” Ashly said. “But you really need neural nanonics before a captain will consider you.”
“Yes, I know, I’m saving up for a set.”
Joshua put on a neutral expression. “Good.”
Marie actually laughed, he was being so careful not to hurt her feelings. “You think I waitress for a living? That I’m a dumb waster girl saving up tips and dreaming of better days?”
“Er . . . no.”
“I waitress here in the evenings because it’s the place the starship crews come. This way I get to hear of any openings before the rest of Durringham. And yes there are the tips, too, every little helps. But for real money I bought myself a secretarial job at the Kulu Embassy, in their Commercial Office.”
“Bought a job?” Warlow rumbled. His sculpted dark-yellow face was incapable of expression, but the voice booming from his chest diaphragm carried a heavy query. People turned to look as he drowned out the ballad.
“Of course. You think they give away a gig like that? The embassy pays its staff in Kulu pounds.” It was the second hardest currency in the Confederation after fuseodollars. “That’s where I’m going to get the money to pay for my neural nanonics.”
“Ah, now I see.” Joshua raised his glass in salute. He admired the girl’s toughness—almost as much as he admired her figure.
“That, or the deputy ambassador’s son might get me off,” Marie said quietly. “He’s twenty-two, and he likes me a lot. If we married then obviously I’d go back to Kulu with him once his father’s tour was over.”
Ashly grinned and knocked back some of his fruit juice. A suspect grumble emerged from Warlow’s chest.
Marie gave Joshua a questioning glance. “So. Do you still want your mayope, Captain?”
“You think you can get me some?”
“Like I said, I work in the Commercial Office. And I’m good at it, too,” she said fiercely. “I know more about this town’s economic structure than my boss. You’re buying your cargo from Dodd Purcell, right?”
“Yes,” Joshua said cautiously.
“Thought so; he’s the nephew of the governor’s industrial secretary. Dodd Purcell is a complete screwup, but he’s a good partner for his uncle. All official tenders for timber go through the company he owns, except it’s actually his uncle’s, and all it consists of is an office down at the port. They don’t actually own a yard, or even any timber. The LDC pays through the nose, but nobody queries it because no lower quotes ever make it past the industrial secretary’s office. All that happens is Purcell contracts a real lumberyard to supply whatever project the LDC is paying for; they do all the work while he and uncle cream off thirty per cent. No effort, and all profit.”
Warlow’s chair creaked alarmed protests as his bulk shifted round. He tilted the brandy glass to his mouth aperture, the brightlime surged out, almost sucked down into his inlet nozzle. “Smart bastards.”
“Jesus,” Joshua said. “And I’ll bet the price goes up tomorrow.”
“I expect so,” Marie said. “And then again the day after, then it will become a rush order to meet your deadline, so you’ll have to pay a surcharge.”
Joshua put his empty glass down on the stained table. “All right, you win. What’s your counter-offer?”
“You are paying Purcell thirty-five thousand fuseodollars, which is about thirty per cent over the odds. I’m offering to put you in touch with a lumber-yard direct, they’ll supply the wood at the market rate, and you pay me five per cent of the difference.”
“Suppose we just go to a lumber-yard direct now you’ve told us what’s happening?” Ashly asked.
Marie smiled sweetly. “Which one? Are you going back to the Governor’s industrial secretary for a list? Once you’ve picked one, do you know if it was burnt down in the riots? Where is it, and how do you get to it? Parts of this town are very unhealthy for visitors, especially after the riots. Does it have that much mayope in stock or is the owner stringing you along? What are you going to use to transport it out to the spaceport? And how much time can you spend sorting all that out? Even a relatively honest lumber-yard owner is going to catch on that you’ve got a deadline once you start fretting because you haven’t got permits and procedures smoothed out in advance. I mean, God, it took you almost a day to hire a McBoeing. Bet you didn’t buy energy for it either, they’ll hit you for that tomorrow. And when they scent blood it’ll be Purcell all over again.”
Joshua held up a warning hand to Ashly. Nobody at the spaceport had mentioned energy for the McBoeing. Jesus! On a normal planet it would be part of the charter; and of course he couldn’t use his neural nanonics to access the contract and run a legal program check because his copy of the fucking thing was printed out on paper. Paper , for Christ’s sake. “I’ll deal with you,” he told Marie. “But I only pay on delivery to orbit, and that includes your fee. So you’re going to have to clear all those obstacles you mentioned out of our way, because I don’t pay a single fuseodollar once those six days are up.”
She stuck out her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation Joshua shook.
“We’re sleeping in my spaceplane, seeing as how it has the only functional air-conditioner on the entire planet,” he told her. “I want you there at seven o’clock tomorrow morning ready to take us to this lumber-yard of yours.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” She stood and picked up her tray.
Joshua pulled a wad of Lalonde francs from his jacket pocket and peeled a few off. “We’ll have the same again, and have a large one yourself. I think you’ve just earned it.”
Marie plucked the notes from him and stuffed them in a side pocket on her skirt. She gave them all a ludicrously sassy twitch with her backside as she walked off to the bar.
Ashly watched her go with a lugubrious expression, then drained his juice in one gulp. “God help that ambassador’s son.”
Darcy and Lori spent the day after the riots preparing for their trip. There was Kelven Solanki to brief on the situation, and their eagles Abraham and Catlin to take out of zero-tau, equipment to make ready. Above all, they had to find transport. The harbour-master’s office had been damaged in the riot, so there was no list available of the boats in dock. In the afternoon they sent the eagles skimming over the polyp rings searching for something they could use.
What do you think?darcy asked. abraham was turning lazy circles over harbour seven, his enhanced retinas providing an uncluttered image of the boats moored up against the quays.
Them?lori exclaimed in dismay.
Have you found someone else?
No.
At least we know we can bully them with money.
The port still hadn’t recovered from the riot when they made their way down to harbour seven first thing the next morning. Huge piles of ashes which used to be buildings were still radiating heat from their smouldering cores, giving off thin streamers of acrid smoke. Long runnels of mushed ashes meandered away from their bases, sluiced out by the rain; they had coagulated under the morning sunlight, looking like damp lava flows.
Gangs of workers were raking through the piles with long mayope poles, searching for anything salvageable. They passed one ruined transients’ warehouse where a stack of cargo-pods had been pulled from the gutted remains, the warped composite resembling surrealistic sculptures. Darcy watched a forlorn family prise open a badly contorted marsupium shell with deep scorch marks on the oyster-coloured casing. The infant quadruped had been roasted in its chemical sleep, reduced to a shrivelled black mummy. Darcy couldn’t even tell what species it was.
Lori had to turn away from the empty-faced colonists scrabbling at the pods’ distorted lids, shiny new ship-suits smeared with dirt and sweat. They had come to Lalonde with such high hopes, and now they were faced with utter ruin before they’d even been given a chance at a life.
This is awful,she said.
This is dangerous,darcy replied. They are numbed and shocked now, but that will soon give way to anger. Without their farmsteading gear they can’t be sent upriver, and Rexrew will be hard pushed to replace it.
It wasn’t all burnt,she said sorrowfully. The afternoon and evening of the riot there had been a steady stream of people walking past the Ward Molecular warehouse carrying pods and cartons of equipment they had looted.
They walked round harbour seven until they came to the quay where the Coogan was moored. The ageing tramp trader was in a dilapidated state, with holes in its cabin roof and a long gash in the wood up at the prow where it had struck some snag. Len Buchannan had only just managed to get out of the harbour ahead of the rioters, flinging planks from the cabin walls into the furnace hopper in his desperation.
Gail Buchannan was sitting in her usual place outside the galley doorway, coolie hat shading her sweating face, a kitchen knife almost engulfed by her huge hand. She was chopping some long vegetable root, slices falling into a pewter-coloured pan at her feet. Her eyes fastened shrewdly on Darcy and Lori as they stepped onto the decking. “You again. Len! Len, get yourself out here, we’ve got visitors. Now, Len!”
Darcy waited impassively. They had used the Buchannans as an information source in the past, occasionally asking them to pick up fleks from assets upriver. But they had proved so unreliable and cranky, Darcy hadn’t bothered with them for the last twenty months.
Len Buchannan walked forward from the little engineroom, where he’d been patching the cabin walls. He was wearing jeans and his cap, a carpenter’s suede utility belt hanging loosely round his skinny hips, with only a few tools in its hoops.
Darcy thought he looked hungover, which fitted the talk he’d heard around the port. The Coogan had hit hard times of late.
“Have you got a cargo to take upriver?” Darcy asked.
“No,” Len said sullenly.
“It’s been a difficult season for us,” Gail said. “Things aren’t like they used to be. Nobody shows any loyalty these days. Why, if it wasn’t for us virtually giving our goods away half of the settlements upriver would have starved to death. But do they show any gratitude? Ha!”
“Is the Coogan fit to be taken out?” Darcy asked, cutting through the woman’s screed. “Now? Today?”
Len pulled his cap off and scratched his head. “Suppose so. Engines are OK. I always service them regular.”
“Of course it’s in tiptop shape,” Gail told him loudly. “There’s nothing wrong with the Coogan ’s hull. It’s only because this drunken buffoon spends all his time pining away over that little bitch-brat that the cabin’s in the state it is.”
Len sighed irksomely, and leant against the galley doorframe. “Don’t start,” he said.
“I knew she was trouble,” Gail said. “I told you not to let her on board. I warned you. And after all we did for her.”
“Shut up!”
She glared at him and resumed slicing up the cream-white vegetable.
“What do you want the Coogan for?” Len asked.
“We have to get upriver, today,” Darcy said. “There’s no cargo, only us.”
Len made a play of putting his cap back on. “There’s trouble upriver.”
“I know. That’s where we want to go, the Quallheim Counties.”
“No,” Len Buchannan said. “Sorry, anywhere else in the tributary basin, but not there.”
“That’s where she came from,” Gail hissed venomously. “That’s what you’re afraid of.”
“There’s a bloody war going on up there, woman. You saw the boats with the posse leaving.”
“Ten thousand fuseodollars,” Gail said. “And don’t you two try haggling with me, that’s the only offer you’ll get, I’m starving myself as it is. I’ll take you up on my own if Lennie’s too frightened.”
If that’s starvation, I’d like to see gluttony,darcy said.
“This is my boat,” Len said. “Made with my own hands.”
“Half yours,” Gail shouted back, waving the knife at him. “Half! I have a say too, and I say Coogan is going back to the Quallheim. If you don’t like it, go and cry in her skirts if she’ll have you. Drunken old fool.”
If this is the way they carry on, they’ll kill each other before we get out of the harbour,lori said. she watched len staring at the burnt-out sections of the port, his brown weathered face lost with longing.
“All right,” he said eventually. “I’ll take you to the mouth of the Quallheim, or as near as we can get. But I’m not going anywhere near the trouble.”
“Fair enough,” Darcy said. “How long will it take us at full speed?”
“Going upriver?” Len closed his eyes, lips moving around figures. “Without stopping to trade, ten or twelve days. Mind, we’ll have to moor in the evenings, and cut logs. You’ll have to work your passage.”
“Forget that,” Darcy said. “I’ll have some firewood delivered this afternoon, enough to get us there in one go; we can store it in the forward hold instead of a cargo. And I’ll spell you at night, I don’t need much sleep. How long travelling like that?”
“A week, maybe,” Len Buchannan said. He didn’t seem terribly happy with the idea.
“That’s fine. We’ll start this afternoon.”
“We’ll take half of the money now, as a deposit,” Gail said. A Jovian Bank disk appeared from nowhere in her hand.
“You’ll get a thousand now as a deposit, plus five hundred to buy enough food and water for three weeks,” Lori said. “I’ll pay another two thousand once we leave the harbour this afternoon, two more when we get to Schuster, and the sum when we get back here.”
Gail Buchannan made a lot of indignant noise, but the sight of actual cash piling up in her disk silenced her.
“Make sure it’s decent food,” Lori told her. “Freeze dried, I’m sure you know where to get stocks of that from.”
They left the Buchannans bickering and went on to a lumber-yard to arrange for the logs to be delivered. It took an hour longer than it should have done to get their order sorted out; the only reason they got it at all was because they were regular customers. The yard was frantically busy with an order for a thousand tonnes of mayope. The laughing foreman told them a lunatic starship captain was planning to carry it to another star.
They were going to make Joshua Calvert’s deadline. Marie Skibbow couldn’t keep the thought out of her mind. It was mid-afternoon, and she was sitting up at the bar in the nearly deserted Crashed Dumper having a celebratory drink. What she really felt like doing was singing and dancing, it was a wonderful experience. All the contacts she’d meticulously built up over the last few months had finally paid off. The deals she put together had clicked into place all the way down the line, smoothing the way for the wood to get from the lumber-yard into orbit with minimum fuss and maximum speed. In fact it had turned out they were being limited by how fast Ashly Hanson could load the foam-covered bundles into the Lady Macbeth ’s cargo holds. The starship only carried one MSV, which imposed a two hundred and fifty tonne per day restriction. The pilot simply couldn’t work any faster; and not even Marie could obtain a MSV from Kenyon, which was the only other place they were in use within the Lalonde star system. But even so, they should have the last bundle loaded tomorrow, a day before the deadline.
Her Jovian Bank disk was burning like a small thermal-induction field in her sawn-off jeans pocket. Joshua had paid her on the nose, every McBoeing flight that lifted off the spaceport’s metal grid runway saw another batch of fuseodollars added to her account. And he’d given her a bonus for arranging the lorries. The drivers were taking colonists’ farmsteading gear from the spaceport down to the harbour and returning half-empty; it didn’t take much organization or money to fix it so they brought the mayope with them when they came back. That way Joshua saved money on an official contract with the haulage company that owned them.
Her first major-league deal. She sipped her iced brightlime, enjoying the bitter taste as it went down her throat. Was this how millionaires felt every day? The total satisfaction which came from tangible accomplishment. And all the famous merchant names in history must have started with a first deal like this, even Richard Saldana, who founded Kulu. Now there was a thought.
But there weren’t many opportunities for deals this big on Lalonde. She simply had to leave, that goal had never changed. The money from the deal would be a hefty slice towards the eighteen thousand fuseodollars she needed for a basic set of neural nanonics. Joshua would probably pay her an overall bonus as well. He was honest enough.
Which brought her to the real question of the day: whether or not she was going to go to bed with him. He had certainly asked her often enough over the last four days. He was handsome, if a trifle gaunt, with a good-looking body; and he must be talented after all the girls he’d been with. An owner-captain under twenty-five years old, it would surely run into hundreds. Especially with that grin. He must practise it; so sexy. She rather liked the notion of what they’d be capable of doing to each other if they flung off every inhibition. There had been rumours back at the arcology about the prowess of people geneered for spaceflight, something to do with enhanced flexibility.
And if she did—which she probably would—he might just take her with him when he left. It really wasn’t a possibility she could afford to ignore. After Norfolk he said he was planning on returning to Tranquillity. That habitat was premier real estate, superior even to Earth and Kulu. I’ve already whored my way down the river; whoring to Tranquillity would hardly be a hardship after that.
The Crashed Dumper’s door creaked open. A young man in a blue and red checked shirt and long khaki shorts walked in, and sat down at the other end of the bar. He never even glanced at Marie, which was odd. She was wearing her sawn-off jeans and a dark-orange singlet, long limbs on show. His face looked familiar, early twenties, ruggedly attractive with a neatly trimmed beard. His clothes were new, and clean, made locally. Was he one of Durringham’s new generation of merchants? She’d met a lot of them since she got the job at the embassy, and they were always keen to talk while they waited for Ralph Hiltch, her boss.
She pouted slightly. There, if she had neural nanonics she’d have no trouble placing the name.
“Beer, please,” he told the barkeeper.
The voice fixed him, it just took a moment for her incredulity to die down. No wonder she hadn’t recognized him to start with. She went over to him.
“Quinn Dexter, what the bloody hell are you doing here?” He turned slowly, blinking at her uncertainly in the pub’s filtered light. She held back on a laugh, because it was obvious he didn’t recognize her either.
His fingers clicked, and he smiled. “Marie Skibbow. Glad to see you made it to the big city. Everybody wondered if you would. They didn’t stop talking about you for a month.”
“Yeah, well . . .” She sat on the stool next to him as he paid for his beer from a thick wad of Lalonde francs. That wasn’t right, Ivets didn’t have hard cash. She waited until the barkeeper went away then dropped her voice. “Quinn, don’t tell people who you are. They’re killing Ivets in this town right now. It’s pretty nasty.”
“No problem. I’m not an Ivet any more. I bought myself out of my work time contract.”
“Bought yourself out?” Marie had never known you could do that.
“Sure,” he winked. “Everything on this planet is financially orientated.”
“Ah, right. How did you buy it? Don’t tell me dear old Aberdale started being successful.”
“No, not a chance, it never changed. I found some gold in the river.”
“Gold?”
“Yes, a nugget you wouldn’t believe.” He held up his hand, making a fist. “This big, Marie, and that’s the honest truth. So I kept going back, there was nothing ever as big as that first one, but I built up quite a little hoard. They thought it must have washed down from the mountains on the other side of the savannah, remember them?”
“God, don’t remind me. I don’t want to remember anything about that village.”
“Can’t say I blame you. First thing I did was get out. Sailed straight down the Juliffe on a trader boat; took me a week and I got ripped off by the captain, but here I am. Arrived today.”
“Yeah, I got ripped off too.” Marie studied her glass of brightlime. “So what’s happening upriver, Quinn? Have the Ivets really taken over the Quallheim Counties?”
“It was all news to me when we docked this morning. There was nothing like that in the offing when I left. Maybe they’re fighting over the gold. Whoever owns the motherlode is going to be seriously rich.”
“They’ve sent a load of sheriffs and deputies up there, armed to the teeth.”
“Oh, dear. That doesn’t sound good. Guess I’m lucky I got out when I did.”
Marie realized how hot she had become in the last couple of minutes. When she glanced up she saw the fans had stopped spinning. Bloody typical, right when the sun was at its zenith. “Quinn? How are my family?”
“Well . . .” He pulled a sardonic face. “Your father’s not changed much.”
She lifted her glass level with her face. “Amen.”
“Let’s see; your mother’s OK, your brother-in-law is OK. Oh yes, Paula’s pregnant.”
“Really? God, I’ll be an aunt.”