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Dahybi’s face lost its narcotic expression, and he squinted out of the window. “This is it?”
“This is it.”
“It looks like a field with a couple of houses in it.”
“Don’t yell that kind of comment about, for God’s sake. Here.” He datavised a copy of the etiquette program over. “Keep that in primary mode. We don’t want to annoy our benefactor.”
Dahybi ran through some of the social jurisprudence listed in the program. “Bloody hell, I think Lady Mac fell through a time warp to get here.”
Joshua rang for the steward to carry their cases. The etiquette program said the man should be tipped five per cent of the ticket price, or a shilling, whichever was the larger sum.
Colsterworth Station consisted of two stone platforms, covered with broad wooden canopies supported by ornate wrought-iron pillars. The waiting-room and ticket office were built from red brick, and a row of metal brackets along the front wall were used to hold big hanging baskets full of bright flowering plants. Appearance was a priority to the stationmaster; the scarlet and cream paintwork was kept gleaming the whole year round, brasswork was polished, and his staff were always smartly turned out.
Such persistence had paid off handsomely today. He was standing next to the heir to Cricklade herself, Louise Kavanagh, who had remarked how nice it all looked.
The morning train from Boston pulled in slowly, and the stationmaster checked his watch. “Thirty seconds late.”
Louise Kavanagh inclined her head graciously at the stout little man. On her other side William Elphinstone shuffled his feet impatiently. She silently prayed for him not to make a complete mess of things. He was so impetuous at times, and he looked totally out of place in his grey suit; field working clothes were much more apposite on him.
For herself, she’d carefully chosen a pale lavender dress with puff sleeves to wear. Nanny had helped to pleat her hair into an elaborate weave at the back of her head which ended in a long pony-tail. Hopefully the combination would give her a suitably dignified appearance.
The train halted, its first three coaches taking up the entire length of the platform. Doors banged open noisily, and passengers started to climb down. She straightened her back to get a better look at the people emerging from the first-class coach.
“There they are,” William Elphinstone said.
Louise wasn’t entirely sure what she’d been expecting, although she was pretty sure in her own mind that starship captains were wise, serious, and mature responsible men, perhaps a bit like her father (except without the temper). Who else would be entrusted with such a fearsome responsibility? What a captain did not look like, even in her most fantastical dreams, was a young man with strong regular features, six foot tall, wearing a smart, exotically stylish uniform that emphasized his powerful build. But there was the silver star on his shoulder, plain for all the world to see.
Louise swallowed hard, tried to remember the words she was supposed to say, and stepped forwards with a polite smile in place. “Captain Calvert, I’m Louise Kavanagh; my father apologizes for not being here to greet you in person, but the estate is very busy right now and requires his full attention. So I’d like to welcome you to Cricklade myself, and hope you enjoy your stay.” Which was almost what she’d rehearsed, but there was something about enjoying his train journey which had been missed out. Oh, well . . .
Joshua took her hand in an emphatic grip. “That’s very kind of you, Louise. And I must say I consider myself most fortunate that your father is so occupied, because there simply cannot be a nicer way of being welcomed to Cricklade than by a young lady as beautiful as yourself.”
Louise knew her cheeks would be colouring, and wanted to turn and hide. What a juvenile reaction. He was only being polite. But so utterly charming. And he sounded sincere. Could he really think that about her? Her discipline had gone all to pieces. “Hello,” she said to Dahybi Yadev. Which was so dreadfully gauche. Her blush deepened. She realized Joshua was still holding her hand.
“My starflight engineering officer,” Joshua said, with a slight bow.
Louise recovered, and introduced William Elphinstone as an estate manager, not mentioning he was only a trainee. Which he should have been grateful for, but she got the distinct impression he wasn’t terribly impressed with the starship captain.
“We have a carriage laid on to take you to the manor,” William said. He signalled to the driver to take Joshua’s bags from the steward.
“That’s really most thoughtful of you,” Joshua told Louise.
Dimples appeared in her cheeks. “This way.” She gestured to the platform exit.
Joshua thought the waiting carriage looked like an oversized pram fitted with modern lightweight wheels. But the two black horses moved it along at a fair clip, and the ride over the rutted track was comfortably smooth. There hadn’t been much to Colsterworth, it was a rural market town with very few industries; the countryside economy revolved around the farms. Its houses were mostly built from locally quarried stone with a bluish tinge. Doors and windows were almost always arched.
When they rode down the busy High Street, pedestrians nudged one another and glanced over as the carriage went by. At first Joshua thought they were looking at him and Dahybi, but then he realized it was Louise who drew their attention.
Outside Colsterworth the rolling countryside was a patchwork of small fields separated by immaculately layered hedges. Streams wound down through the gentle valleys, while spinneys clung to the rounded heights and deeper folds. The wheat and barley had already been harvested, he saw. Plenty of haystacks were dotted about, steeply sloping tops netted against the expected winter winds. Tractors were ploughing the stubble back into the rich red soil before drilling the second crop. There would be just enough time for the stalks to ripen before the long autumn and winter seasons began.
“You don’t have any proscription against power tractors, then?” Joshua asked.
“Certainly not,” William Elphinstone replied. “We’re a stable society, Captain, not a backward one. We use whatever is appropriate to maintain the status quo, and give people a decent standard of living at the same time. Using horses to plough every field would be pure drudgery. That’s not what Norfolk is about. Our founders wanted pastoral life to be enjoyable for all.” To Joshua’s ears he sounded defensive, but then he had been on edge since they’d been introduced.
“Where does all the power come from?” Joshua asked.
“Solar cells are sufficient for domestic utilities, but ninety per cent of the electricity used for industry and agriculture is geothermal. We buy in thermal-potential fibres from the Confederation and drill them three or four miles down into the mantle. Most towns have five or six heat shafts; they’re virtually maintenance free, and the fibres last for a couple of centuries. It’s a much neater solution than building hydro dams everywhere and flooding valleys.”
Interesting how he said Confederation, Joshua thought, almost as if Norfolk wasn’t a part of it.
“All this must seem terribly cumbersome to you, I expect,” Louise said.
“Not at all,” Joshua answered. “What I’ve seen so far is admirable. You should visit some of the so-called advanced worlds I’ve been to. Technology comes with a very high price in terms of society, they have dreadful levels of crime and vice. Some urban areas have decayed into complete no-go zones.”
“Three people were murdered on Kesteven last year,” Louise said.
William Elphinstone frowned as if to object, but let it pass.
“I think your ancestors got your constitution about right,” Joshua said.
“Hard on people who are sick,” Dahybi Yadev observed.
“There aren’t many illnesses,” William Elphinstone said. “Our lifestyle means we’re a very healthy people. And our hospitals can cope with most accidents.”
“Including cousin Gideon,” Louise said slyly.
Joshua pressed down on a smile as William Elphinstone gave her a curtly censorious look. The girl wasn’t quite as meek as he’d first supposed. They were sitting opposite each other in the carriage, which gave him a good opportunity to study her. He had thought that she and William pain-in-the-arse Elphinstone were an item, but judging from the way she virtually ignored him it didn’t seem too likely. William Elphinstone appeared none too happy with the cold-shoulder treatment, either.
“Actually, William isn’t being entirely honest,” she went on. “We don’t catch diseases because most of our first-comer ancestors were recipients of geneering before they settled here. It stands to reason, on a planet which deliberately excludes the most advanced medical treatments it’s wise to protect yourself in advance. So in that respect we don’t quite match up to the simplistic pastoral ideal. You probably couldn’t have built a society as successful as Norfolk before geneering; people would have insisted on continuing technical and medical research to better their lot.”
William Elphinstone made a show of turning his head and staring out over the fields.
“Fascinating idea,” Joshua said. “You can only have stability once you’ve passed a certain technological level, and flux is the natural order until that happens. Are you going to take politics at university?”
Her lips depressed fractionally. “I don’t think I’ll be going. Women don’t, generally. And there aren’t many universities anyway; there’s no research to be done. Most of my family go to agricultural colleges, though.”
“And will you be joining your relatives there?”
“Maybe. Father hasn’t said. I’d like to. Cricklade is going to be mine one day, you see. I want to be more than just a figurehead.”
“I’m sure you will be, Louise. I can’t imagine you as just a figurehead for anything.” He was surprised at how earnest his voice had become.
Louise cast her eyes down to see she was knotting her fingers in her lap in a most unladylike manner. Whatever was making her babble like this?
“Is this Cricklade now?” Joshua asked. The fields had given way to larger expanses of parkland between the small woods. Sheep and cattle were grazing placidly, along with some xenoc bovine-analogue that looked similar to a very hairy deer, with fat legs and hemispherical hoofs.
“We’ve been riding through the Cricklade estate since we left town, actually,” William Elphinstone said snidely.
Joshua gave Louise an encouraging smile. “As far as the eye can see, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can see why you love it so much. If I ever settle down, I’d want it to be in a land like this.”
“Any chance we can see some roses?” Dahybi Yadev asked loudly.
“Yes, of course,” Louise said, suddenly brisk. “How dreadfully remiss of me. Cousin Kenneth said this was your first time here.” She turned round and tapped the driver on his shoulder. The two of them exchanged a few words. “There’s a grove beyond the forest up ahead,” she said. “We’ll stop there.”
The grove took up ten acres on a northern-facing slope. To catch the suns, Louise explained. It was marked out by a dry-stone wall that was host to long patches of moss-analogue which sprouted miniature pink flowers. The flat stones themselves were often crumbling from frost erosion; little attempt had been made at repairs except in the worst sections of subsidence. In one corner of the grove there was a long barn with a thatched roof; moss had clawed its way into the reeds, loosening the age-blackened bundles. New wooden pallets stacked with what looked like thousands of conical white plant pots were just visible through the barn’s open doorway.
Still, dry air magnified the grove’s placid composure, adding to the impression of genteel decay. If it hadn’t been for the perfectly regimented rows of plants, Joshua would have believed the grove had been neglected, simply treated as a hobby by an indulgent landowner rather than the vital industry it was.
Norfolk’s weeping rose was unarguably the most famous plant in the Confederation. In its natural state it was a thornless rambling bush that favoured well-drained peaty soil. But when cultivated and planted in groves it was trained up wire trellises three metres high. The jade-green leaves were palm sized, reminiscent of terrestrial maples with their deep serrations, their tips coloured a dull red.
But it was the flowers which drew Joshua’s scrutiny; they were yellow-gold blooms, twenty-five centimetres in diameter with a thick ruff of crinkled petals hugging a central onion-shaped carpel pod. Each plant in the grove had produced thirty-five to forty flowers, standing proud on fleshy green stems as thick as a man’s thumb. Under Duke’s unremitting glare they had acquired a spectral lemon-yellow corona.
The four of them walked a little way down the mown grass between the rows. Careful pruning of the bushes had ensured that each flower was fully exposed to the sunlight, none of them overlapped.
Joshua pressed his toe into the wiry grass, feeling the solid earth. “It’s very dry,” he said. “Will there be enough water to fill them out?”
“It never rains at midsummer,” Louise said. “Not on the inhabited islands, anyway. Convection takes all the clouds up to the poles; most of the ice-caps melt under the deluge, but the temperature is still only a couple of degrees above freezing. It’s considered frightfully bad luck if it even drizzles here in the week before Midsummer’s Day. The roses store up all the moisture they need for fruition in their roots during springtime.”
He reached up and touched one of the big flowers, surprised by how stiff the stem was. “I had no idea they were so impressive.”
“This is an old grove,” she said. “The roses here are fifty years old, and they’re good for another twenty. We replant several groves each year from the estate’s nurseries.”
“That sounds like quite an operation. I’d like to see it. Perhaps you could show me, you seem very knowledgeable about their cultivation.”
Louise blushed again. “Yes, I do; I mean, I will,” she stammered.
“Unless you have other duties, of course. I don’t wish to impose.” He smiled.
“You’re not,” she assured him quickly.
“Good.”
She found herself smiling back at him for no particular reason at all.
Joshua and Dahybi had to wait until late afternoon before they were introduced to Grant Kavanagh and his wife, Marjorie. It was an opportunity for Joshua to be shown round the big manor house and its grounds, with Louise continuing her role of informative hostess. The manor was an impressive set-up; an unobtrusive army of servants was employed to keep the rooms in immaculate condition, and a lot of money had been spent making the decor as tasteful as possible. Naturally enough, the style was based prominently on the eighteenth-century school of design, history’s miniature enclave.
Thankfully, William Elphinstone left them, claiming he had to work in the groves. They did, however, meet Genevieve Kavanagh as soon as their carriage drew up outside the entrance. Louise’s young sister tagged along with them for the entire afternoon, giggling the whole time. Joshua wasn’t used to children that age, in his opinion she was a spoilt brat who needed a damn good smack. If it wasn’t for Louise he would have been mighty tempted to put her over his knee. Instead he suffered in silence, making the most of the way Louise’s dress fabric shifted about as she moved. There was precious little else to absorb his attention. To the uninitiated eye the estate beyond the grounds was almost deserted.
Midsummer on Norfolk was a time when almost everybody living in the countryside helped out with the weeping rose crop. The travelling Romany caravans were in high demand, with estates and independent grove owners competing for their labour. Even school terms (Norfolk didn’t use didactic laser imprints) were structured round the season, giving children time off to assist their parents, leaving winter as the principal time for studying. As the whole Tear crop was gathered in two days, preparation was an arduous and exacting business.
With over two hundred groves in his estate (not counting those in the crofts), Grant Kavanagh was the most industrious man in Stoke County during the days leading up to midsummer. He was fifty-six years old; modest geneering had produced a barrel-chested physique, five feet ten inches tall, with brown hair that was already greying around his mutton-chop sideboards. But a lifetime of physical activity and keeping a strict watch on what he ate meant he retained the vigour of a man in his twenties. He was able to chase up his flock of junior estate managers with unnerving doggedness. Which, as he knew from sore experience, was the only way of achieving anything in Stoke County. Not only did he have to supervise the teams which went round the groves setting up the collection cups, but he was also responsible for the county’s bottling yard. Grant Kavanagh did not tolerate fools, slackers, and family sinecurists, which in his view described a good ninety-five per cent of Norfolk’s population. Cricklade estate had run smoothly and profitably for the last two hundred and seventy years of its distinguished three-hundred-year existence, and by God that superb record wasn’t going to end in his lifetime.
An afternoon spent in the saddle riding round some of the rosegroves closest to the manor, with the eternally enduring Mr Butterworth accompanying him, did not put him in the best frame of mind for trotting out glib niceties to dandies like visiting starship captains. He marched into the house slapping dust from his riding breeches and shouting for a drink, a bath, and a decent meal.
Having this red-faced martinet figure bearing down on him across the large airy entrance hall put Joshua in mind of a Tranquillity serjeant—only lacking the charm and good looks.
“Bit young to be skippering a starship, aren’t you?” Grant Kavanagh said when Louise introduced them. “Surprised the banks gave you the loan to fly one.”
“I inherited Lady Mac , and my crew made enough money in our first year of commercial flying to make the run to this planet. It’s the first time we’ve been, and your family turned somersaults to give me three thousand cases of the best Tears on the island. What criteria would you judge my competence by?”
Louise closed her eyes and wished herself very, very small.
Grant Kavanagh stared at the utterly uncompromising expression of the young man who had answered him back in his own home, and burst out laughing. “By Christ, now that’s the sort of attitude we could do with a hell of a lot more of around here. Well done, Joshua, I approve. Don’t give ground, and bite back every time.” He put a protective arm around both his daughters. “See that, you two rapscallions? That’s what you’ve got to have to run commercial enterprises; starships or estates, it doesn’t matter which. You just have to be the boss man each and every time you open your mouth.” He kissed Louise on her forehead, and tickled a giggling Genevieve. “Glad to meet you, Joshua. Nice to see young Kenneth hasn’t lost his touch when it comes to judging people.”
“He puts together a tough deal,” Joshua said, sounding unhappy.
“So it would seem. This mayope wood, is it as good as he says? I couldn’t shut him up about it when he was on the phone.”
“Yes, it’s impressive. Like a tree that’s grown out of steel. I brought some samples with me, of course, you can have a look for yourself.”
“I’ll take you up on that later.” The manor’s butler came into the hall carrying Grant’s gin and tonic on a silver tray. He picked it up and took a sip. “I suppose this damned Lalonde planet will start charging a premium once they know how valuable it is to us?” he said in a disgruntled tone.
“That depends, sir.”
“Oh?” Grant Kavanagh widened his eyes with interest at the humorously furtive tone. He let go of Genevieve, and patted her fondly. “Run along, poppet. It looks like Captain Calvert and I have something to discuss.”
“Yes, Daddy.” Genevieve capered past Joshua, giving him a sidelong glance, and breaking into giggles again.
Louise showed him a lopsided grin as she started to walk away. She had seen the other girls at school do that when they wanted to be coquettish with their boys. “You will be joining us for dinner, won’t you, Captain Calvert?” she asked airily.
“I imagine so, yes.”
“I’ll tell cook to prepare some iced chiplemon. You’ll like that; it’s my favourite.”
“Then I’m sure I’ll like it too.”
“And don’t be late, Daddy.”
“Am I ever?” Grant Kavanagh retorted, enchanted as ever by his little girl’s playfulness.
She rewarded them both with a sunlight smile, then skipped off across the hall tiles after Genevieve.
An hour later Joshua was lying on his bed, fathoming the mysteries of the planet’s communication system. His bedroom was in the west wing, a large room with en suite bathroom, its walls papered with a rich purple and gold pattern. The bed was a double, with a carved oak headboard and a horribly solid mattress. It required very little imagination on his part to picture Louise Kavanagh lying on it beside him.
There was a phone on the bedside table, but the impossibly antique gadget didn’t have a standard processor; he couldn’t use his neural nanonics to datavise the communication net control computer. It didn’t even have an AV pillar, just a keyboard, a holoscreen, and a handset. He did think that Norfolk had written a wonderfully realistic Turing program into the exchange’s processor array to deal patiently with requests, until he finally realized he was actually talking to a human operator. She patched him into the geostationary relay satellite circuit and opened a channel to Lady Macbeth . What the call must be costing Grant Kavanagh was an item he managed to put firmly at the back of his mind. Humans operating a basic computer management routine!
“We’ve unloaded a third of the mayope already,” Sarha said; the link was audio only, no visual. “Your new merchant friend Kenneth Kavanagh has hired half a dozen spaceplanes from other starships to ferry it down to the surface. At this rate we’ll be finished by tomorrow.”
“Great news. I don’t want to sound premature, but after this run is over it looks like we’ll be coming back here to finalize that arrangement we were kicking around earlier.”
“You’re making progress, then?”
“Absolutely.”
“What’s Cricklade like?”
“Astonishing, it’s enough to make a Tranquillity plutocrat jealous. You’d love it.”
“Thanks, Joshua. That really makes me feel good.”
He grinned and took another sip of the Norfolk Tears his thoughtful host had provided. “How are you and Warlow coping with the maintenance checks?”
“We’ve finished.”
“What?” He sat up abruptly, nearly spilling some of the precious drink.
“We’ve finished. There isn’t a system on board that isn’t as smooth as a baby’s bum.”
“Jesus, you must have been working your arses off.”
“It took us five hours, grand total. And most of that was spent waiting for the diagnostics programs to run. There’s nothing wrong with Lady Mac , Joshua. Her performance rating is as good as the day the CAB awarded us our spaceworthiness certificate.”
“That’s ridiculous. We were so glitch prone after Lalonde we were lucky to get here at all.”
“You think I don’t know how to load a diagnostics program?” she asked, her voice sounding very tetchy.
“Of course you know your job,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “It just doesn’t make a lot of sense, that’s all.”
“You want me to datavise the results down to you?”
“No. You can’t, anyway; this planet’s net couldn’t handle anything like that. What does Warlow say, is Lady Mac up to a CAB inspection?”
“We’ll pass with flying colours.”
“OK, I’ll leave it up to the pair of you what you do.”
“We’ll get the inspectors up here tomorrow morning. Norfolk’s CAB office only runs stage D checks in any case. Our own diagnostics are stricter than that.”
“Fine. I’ll call tomorrow for an update.”
“Sure. ’Bye, Joshua.”
Tehama asteroid was one of the most financially and industrially successful independent industrial settlements in the New Californian star system. A stony iron rock twenty-eight kilometres long and eighteen wide, tracing an irregular fifty-day elliptical orbit within the trailing Trojan point of Yosemite, the system’s largest gas giant, it had all the elements and minerals necessary to support life, barring hydrogen and nitrogen. But that deficiency was made good from a snowball-shaped carbonaceous chondritic asteroid, one kilometre wide, which had been nudged into a fifty-kilometre orbit around Tehama in 2283. Since then its shale had been mined and refined; hydrogen was combined with oxygen to produce water, plain and simple; nitrogen underwent more complex bonding procedures to form useable nitrates; hydrocarbons were an essential. They were all introduced to the caverns being bored out of Tehama’s metallic ore, producing a habitable biosphere capable of supporting the increasing population.
By 2611 there were two major caverns inside Tehama; and its small companion had been reduced to a sable lump two hundred and fifty metres wide, with a silver-white refinery station, almost as large, clinging to it barnacle-fashion.
The Villeneuve’s Revenge jumped into an emergence zone a hundred and twenty thousand kilometres away, and began its approach manoeuvres. After months tending the starship’s ageing, failure-prone systems, Erick Thakrar was grateful for any shore time. Shipboard life was one long grind, he’d lost count of how many times he’d falsified the maintenance log so they could avoid CAB penalties and keep flying. There was no doubt about it, the Villeneuve’s Revenge was operating dangerously close to the margin, both mechanically and financially. Genuine independence was proving an elusive goal; Captain Duchamp was in debt to the banks to the tune of a million and a half fuseodollars, and charters were hard to find.
Some small part of Erick felt sorry for the old boy. Commercial starflight was a viciously tough business, a tightly woven web of large cartels and monopolies that resented the very existence of independent traders. Starships like the Villeneuve’s Revenge forced the major carrier fleets to keep their own prices down, reducing profits. They retaliated with semi-legal syndicates in an attempt to lock out small ships.
Duchamp was an excellent captain, but his business acumen was highly questionable. His crew was loyal, though, and Erick had heard enough stories of past missions to know they had few qualms about how they earned money. If he wanted to, he could have had them arrested within a week of coming on board—neural-nanonics recorded conversation was admissible evidence in court. But he was after bigger prizes than a worn-out ship with its loser crew. The Villeneuve’s Revenge was his access code to whole strata of illegal operations. And it looked like Tehama was going to be the start of the game.
After docking at the asteroid’s non-rotating axis spaceport, four crew members from the Villeneuve’s Revenge descended on the Catalina bar in the Los Olivos cavern, the first to be dug, a cylindrical hollow nine kilometres long and five in diameter. The Catalina was one of the spaceport crew bars, with aluminium tables and a small stage for a band. At three in the afternoon, local time, it was almost dead.
The bar was a cave drilled into the cavern’s vertical cliff-face endwall, one of thousands forming an interconnected cave city, producing a band of glass windows and foliage-wrapped balconies that encircled the base of the endwall. Like an Edenist habitat, nobody lived on the cavern floor itself, it was a communal park and arable farm. But there the resemblance stopped.
Erick Thakrar sat at an alcove table near the balcony window with two of his shipmates, Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, and their captain, Andrй Duchamp. The Catalina was near the top of the city levels, giving it a seventy-five per cent gravity field, and a good view out into the cavern. Erick wasn’t impressed by what he could see. The axis was taken up by a hundred-metre diameter gantry, most of which was filled by the thick black pipes of the irrigation-sprinkler nozzles. It was ringed at two hundred and fifty metre intervals by doughnut-shaped solartubes that shone with a painful blue-white intensity. They lacked the warm incandescence of an Edenist habitat’s axis light-tube, which was dramatically illustrated by the plants far below. The cavern floor’s grass shaded towards the yellow, while trees and shrubs were spindly, missing their full complement of leaves. Even the fields of crops were hungry looking (one reason why imported delicacies were so popular and profitable in all asteroid settlements). It was as though an unexpected autumn had visited the tropical climate.
The whole cavern was cramped and clumsy, a poor copy of a bitek habitat’s excellence. Erick found himself thinking back to Tranquillity with nostalgia.
“Here he comes,” Andrй Duchamp muttered. “Be nice to the Anglo , remember we need him.” The captain came from Carcassonne, a die-hard French nationalist, who blamed the ethnic English in the Confederation for everything from failed optical fibres in the starship’s flight computer to his current overdraft. At sixty-five years old his geneered DNA maintained his physique in the lean mould which was the staple criterion of the space adapted, as well as providing him with a face that was rounded all over. When Andrй Duchamp laughed, everyone in the room found themselves smiling along, so powerful was the appeal; he had the same emotional conviction as a painted clown.
Right now he put on his most welcoming smile for the man sidling anxiously up to the table.
Lance Coulson was a senior flight controller in Tehama’s Civil Astronautics Bureau; in his late fifties, he lacked the political contacts necessary to gain senior management ranking. It meant he was stuck in inter-system tracking and communications until retirement now; that made him resentful, and agreeable to supplying people like Andrй Duchamp with information—for the right price.
He sat at the table and gave Erick Thakrar a long look. “I haven’t seen you before.”
Erick started recording his implant-enhanced sensorium directly into a neural nanonics memory cell, and ordered a file search. Image: of an overweight man, facial skin a red tinge of brown from exposure to the cavern solartubes; grey suit with high circular collar, pinching the neck flesh; light brown hair, colour-embellished by follicle biochemical treatments. Sound: of slightly wheezy breathing, heartbeat rate above average. Smell: sour human sweat, beads standing out on a high forehead and the back of chubby hands.
Lance Coulson was nerving himself up. A weakling ruffled by the company he kept.
“Because I haven’t been here before,” Erick replied, unyielding. His CNIS file reported a blank, Lance Coulson wasn’t a known criminal. Probably too petty, he thought.
“Erick Thakrar, my systems generalist,” Andrй Duchamp said. “Erick is an excellent engineer. Surely you don’t question my judgement when it comes to my own crew?” There was just enough hint of anger to make Lance Coulson shift round in his seat.
“No, of course not.”
“Excellent!” Andrй Duchamp was all smiles again; he clapped Lance Coulson on the back, winning a sickly smile, and pushed a glass of Montbard brandy over the scratched aluminium slab to him. “So what have you got for me?”
“A cargo of micro-fusion generators,” he said softly.
“So? Tell me more.”
The civil servant rolled the stem of his glass between his thumb and finger, not looking at the captain. “A hundred thousand.” He slid his Francisco Finance credit disk across the table.
“You jest!” Andrй Duchamp said. There was a dangerous glint to his eyes.
“There were . . . questions last time. I’m not doing this again.”
“You’re not doing it this time at that price. If I had that kind of money do you think I would be here crawling to a tax-money leech like you?”
Bev Lennon put a restraining hand on Duchamp’s shoulder. “Easy,” he said smoothly. “Look, we’re all here because money is tight, right? We can certainly pay you a quarter of that figure in advance.”
Lance Coulson picked up his credit disk and stood up. “I see I have been wasting my time.”
“Thank you for the information,” Erick said in a loud voice.
Lance Coulson gave him a frightened look. “What?”
“That’s going to be enormously useful to us. How would you like to be paid? Cash or commodities?”
“Shut up.”
“Sit down, and stop fucking about.”
He sat, checking the rest of the tables with twitchy glances.
“We want to buy, you want to sell,” Erick said. “So let’s stop the drama queen tactics, assume you’ve shown us what a tough negotiator you are, and we’re all shitting bricks. Now what’s your price? And be realistic. There are other flight controllers.”
He overcame his agitation for just long enough to shoot Erick a look of one hundred per cent hatred. “Thirty thousand.”
“Agreed,” Andrй Duchamp said immediately. He held out his Jovian Bank disk.
Lance Coulson gave a last furtive glance round before shoving his own disk in Andrй’s direction.
“Merci , Lance.” Andrй’s grin was scathing as he received the datavised flight vector.
The four crewmen watched the civil servant retreating, and laughed. Erick was congratulated for calling the other man’s bluff, Bev Lennon fetching him half a litre of of imported Lьbeck beer.
“You had me panicking!” the wiry fusion specialist protested as he dropped the tankards down on their table.
Erick took a sip of the icy beer. “I had me panicking.”
It was going well, they accepted him, reservations (and he knew some still had them) were fading, breaking down. He was becoming one of the lads.
Along with Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, the ship’s node specialist, a brawny two-metre-tall bear of a man, Erick spent the next ten minutes talking trivia while Andrй Duchamp sat back with a blank expression reviewing the vector he had just bought.
“I don’t see any problem,” the captain announced eventually. “If we use a Sacramento orbit to jump from we can rendezvous any time in the next six days. Fifty-five hours from now would be the ideal . . .” His voice trailed off.
Erick turned to follow his gaze. Five men wearing copper-coloured one-piece ship-suits walked into the Catalina bar.
Hasan Rawand caught sight of Andrй Duchamp as he was about to sit at the bar. He tapped Shane Brandes, the Dechal ’s fusion engineer, on the side of his arm and flicked a finger in the direction of the master of Villeneuve’s Revenge . His other three crew-members, Ian O’Flaherty, Harry Levine, and Stafford Charlton, caught the gesture and turned to look.
The two crews regarded each other with mutual hostility and antagonism.
Hasan Rawand walked over to the window booth table, his crew right behind him. “Andrй,” he said with mock civility. “So nice to see you. I trust you have brought my money. Eight hundred thousand, wasn’t it? And that’s before interest. It has been seventeen months after all.”
Andrй Duchamp gazed straight ahead, his hands cupping his beer tankard. “I owe you no money,” he said darkly.
“I think you do. Cast your mind back; you were carrying plutonium initiators from Sab Biyar to the Isolo system. Dechal waited in Sab Biyar’s Oort cloud for thirty-two hours for you, Andrй. Thirty-two hours in stealth mode, with freezing air and iced food, pissing into tubes that leaked, not even allowed a personal MF player in case the navy ships picked up its electronic emission. That’s not nice, Andrй; it’s about as close as you can get to a Confederation penal colony without being shot down to the surface in a drop capsule. We waited for thirty-two hours in the stinking dark for you to show so we could take the initiators in, doing your dirty work for you and carrying all the risk. And when we got back to Sab Biyar what did I find?”
Andrй Duchamp grinned round at his own crew, trying to brazen it out. “I’m sure you’ll tell me, Anglo .”
“You went to Nuristan and sold the initiators to one of their naval contractors, you Gallic shithead ! I was left trying to explain to the Isolo Independence Front where their nukes had gone, and why their poxy rebellion was going to fail because they hadn’t got the fire-power to back up their demands.”
“You can show me the contract?” Andrй Duchamp asked mockingly.
Hasan Rawand glared down at him, lips compressed in rage. “Just hand over the money. A million will see you clear.”
“To hell with you, Anglo filth. I, Andrй Duchamp, owe nobody money.” He stood up and tried to barge past the Dechal ’s captain.
It was the move Erick Thakrar was waiting for and dreading. Sure enough, Hasan Rawand shoved Andrй Duchamp back in the booth. The back of the older captain’s knee struck a seat which almost tipped him off balance. He recovered and launched himself at Hasan Rawand, fists flying.
Desmond Lafoe rose to his feet drawing a frantic gasp from Ian O’Flaherty when his size, weight, and strength became apparent. Huge hands reached forward, and Ian O’Flaherty was jerked off his feet. He kicked out wildly, toecap striking Desmond Lafoe’s shin. The giant merely grunted, and then threw his victim across the room. He landed awkwardly on one of the aluminium tables, his shoulder taking the brunt of his momentum before he crashed down backwards onto a pair of chairs.
Erick felt a hand close around the neck fabric of his ship-suit. It was Shane Brandes who was hauling him out of the booth; a forty-year-old with a bald head and small gold earrings, smiling with ugly anticipation. The unarmed combat file in Erick’s neural nanonics went into primary mode. His instinctive thought routines were superseded by logic-based patterns, calculating inertia and intent with an ease surpassing any kung fu master. Nanonic supplement boosted muscles powered up.
Shane Brandes was surprised how easy it was to pull his opponent out of the booth. Gratification became alarm when he kept on coming. Shane had to backstep to keep balance, his own neural nanonics assuming command of his mass positioning. He cocked a fist back to smash into Erick’s face, only to have a nanonic warning blare in his mind as Erick’s forearm swung up with incredible speed. His punch was blocked, arm chopped painfully to one side. A furious kick to Erick’s groin—his knee nearly fractured from the impact of the counter-kick. He reeled to one side, banging into Harry Levine and Bev Lennon, who were locked together.
Erick slammed an elbow into Shane’s ribs, hearing bone break. He let out an agonized grunt.
The unarmed combat file said that speed was essential, take out your opponent as soon as possible. His neural nanonics analysed Shane’s movements, the half twist as he clutched at his ribs, bending over. The motion was projected two seconds into the future. Interception points were computed. A list materialized in his consciousness, and he selected a blow that would cause temporary incapacitation. His right leg shot out, booted foot aiming for a patch of empty air. Shane’s head fell into it.
A threat assessment sub-routine shifted his peripheral senses into priority focus. Andrй Duchamp and Hasan Rawand were still battering away at each other on the side of the booth’s table. Neither was inflicting much damage in the confined space.
Harry Levine had got Bev Lennon into a head lock. The two of them were on the floor, squirming round like theatrical wrestlers, sending chairs spinning. Bev Lennon sent a flurry of elbow jabs into Harry Levine’s stomach, attempting to knock his navel into his spine.
Stafford Charlton obviously had a boosted musculature. He was standing in front of Desmond Lafoe, landing blow after blow on the big man, arms moving with programmed efficiency. He had almost doubled up from the pain, his right arm hung limply, the shoulder broken. Blood ran out of his flattened nose.
Ian O’Flaherty rose behind Desmond Lafoe, berserk loathing contorting his face, a pocket fission blade in his right hand. With his enhanced retinas on full amplification, the yellow haze emitted by the activated blade dazzled Erick for an instant. The threat assessment sub-routine activated the defensive nanonic implant in his left hand. A targeting grid of fine blue lines flipped up across his vision. A rectangular section flashed red, and wrapped itself around Ian O’Flaherty, adapting to his movements like elastic thread.
“Don’t!” Erick Thakrar shouted.
Ian O’Flaherty had already raised the blade high above his head when the shout came. In his wired state he probably wouldn’t have obeyed even if he heard. Erick saw the muscles in his lower arm begin to contract, the knife quivered as it started on its downward slash.
The neural nanonics program reported that even with boosted muscles Erick couldn’t reach Ian O’Flaherty in time. He made his decision. A small patch of skin above the second knuckle of his left hand dilated, and the implant spat out a dart of nanonic circuitry, barely as large as a wasp stinger. It struck the bare skin of Ian O’Flaherty’s neck, penetrating to a depth of six millimetres. The fission blade had already descended twenty centimetres towards Desmond Lafoe’s broad back. As soon as it sensed it was buried inside the flesh, and its momentum was spent, the dart sprouted a fur of microscopic filaments. They quested round on a preprogrammed search pattern for nerve strands, tips wriggling between the close-packed honeycomb of cells. Ganglions were located, and the sharp filament tips forced their way through gossamer membranes sheathing the individual nerves. At this time the knife had descended twenty-four centimetres. Ian O’Flaherty’s right eyelid gave an involuntary twitch at the small sting from the dart’s entry. The dart’s internal processor analysed the chemical and electrical reactions flashing along the nerves; it began to broadcast its own signal into the brain. His neural nanonics detected the signal at once, but the circuitry was powerless to help, it could only override natural impulses originating from within the brain.
Ian O’Flaherty had brought the blade thirty-eight centimetres down towards Desmond Lafoe when he felt a million lacework rivulets of fire igniting inside his body. The blade fell another four centimetres before his muscles were convulsed by the besieging deluge of impulses. His nerves were burning out, overloaded by the nanonic dart’s diabolical signal, ordering the massive uncontrolled release of energy along each strand, a simultaneous chemical detonation inside every neuron cell.
Breath rasped out of his wide mouth, aghast eyes looking round the room in a final plea for life. His skin turned red, as if afflicted by instant sunburn. His muscles lost all strength, and he toppled limply onto the floor. The fission blade skittered about, shaving flakes of rock from the floor whenever it touched.
No one else was fighting any more.
Desmond Lafoe gave Erick a puzzled, pain-filled glance. “What . . .”
“This is it.”
“It looks like a field with a couple of houses in it.”
“Don’t yell that kind of comment about, for God’s sake. Here.” He datavised a copy of the etiquette program over. “Keep that in primary mode. We don’t want to annoy our benefactor.”
Dahybi ran through some of the social jurisprudence listed in the program. “Bloody hell, I think Lady Mac fell through a time warp to get here.”
Joshua rang for the steward to carry their cases. The etiquette program said the man should be tipped five per cent of the ticket price, or a shilling, whichever was the larger sum.
Colsterworth Station consisted of two stone platforms, covered with broad wooden canopies supported by ornate wrought-iron pillars. The waiting-room and ticket office were built from red brick, and a row of metal brackets along the front wall were used to hold big hanging baskets full of bright flowering plants. Appearance was a priority to the stationmaster; the scarlet and cream paintwork was kept gleaming the whole year round, brasswork was polished, and his staff were always smartly turned out.
Such persistence had paid off handsomely today. He was standing next to the heir to Cricklade herself, Louise Kavanagh, who had remarked how nice it all looked.
The morning train from Boston pulled in slowly, and the stationmaster checked his watch. “Thirty seconds late.”
Louise Kavanagh inclined her head graciously at the stout little man. On her other side William Elphinstone shuffled his feet impatiently. She silently prayed for him not to make a complete mess of things. He was so impetuous at times, and he looked totally out of place in his grey suit; field working clothes were much more apposite on him.
For herself, she’d carefully chosen a pale lavender dress with puff sleeves to wear. Nanny had helped to pleat her hair into an elaborate weave at the back of her head which ended in a long pony-tail. Hopefully the combination would give her a suitably dignified appearance.
The train halted, its first three coaches taking up the entire length of the platform. Doors banged open noisily, and passengers started to climb down. She straightened her back to get a better look at the people emerging from the first-class coach.
“There they are,” William Elphinstone said.
Louise wasn’t entirely sure what she’d been expecting, although she was pretty sure in her own mind that starship captains were wise, serious, and mature responsible men, perhaps a bit like her father (except without the temper). Who else would be entrusted with such a fearsome responsibility? What a captain did not look like, even in her most fantastical dreams, was a young man with strong regular features, six foot tall, wearing a smart, exotically stylish uniform that emphasized his powerful build. But there was the silver star on his shoulder, plain for all the world to see.
Louise swallowed hard, tried to remember the words she was supposed to say, and stepped forwards with a polite smile in place. “Captain Calvert, I’m Louise Kavanagh; my father apologizes for not being here to greet you in person, but the estate is very busy right now and requires his full attention. So I’d like to welcome you to Cricklade myself, and hope you enjoy your stay.” Which was almost what she’d rehearsed, but there was something about enjoying his train journey which had been missed out. Oh, well . . .
Joshua took her hand in an emphatic grip. “That’s very kind of you, Louise. And I must say I consider myself most fortunate that your father is so occupied, because there simply cannot be a nicer way of being welcomed to Cricklade than by a young lady as beautiful as yourself.”
Louise knew her cheeks would be colouring, and wanted to turn and hide. What a juvenile reaction. He was only being polite. But so utterly charming. And he sounded sincere. Could he really think that about her? Her discipline had gone all to pieces. “Hello,” she said to Dahybi Yadev. Which was so dreadfully gauche. Her blush deepened. She realized Joshua was still holding her hand.
“My starflight engineering officer,” Joshua said, with a slight bow.
Louise recovered, and introduced William Elphinstone as an estate manager, not mentioning he was only a trainee. Which he should have been grateful for, but she got the distinct impression he wasn’t terribly impressed with the starship captain.
“We have a carriage laid on to take you to the manor,” William said. He signalled to the driver to take Joshua’s bags from the steward.
“That’s really most thoughtful of you,” Joshua told Louise.
Dimples appeared in her cheeks. “This way.” She gestured to the platform exit.
Joshua thought the waiting carriage looked like an oversized pram fitted with modern lightweight wheels. But the two black horses moved it along at a fair clip, and the ride over the rutted track was comfortably smooth. There hadn’t been much to Colsterworth, it was a rural market town with very few industries; the countryside economy revolved around the farms. Its houses were mostly built from locally quarried stone with a bluish tinge. Doors and windows were almost always arched.
When they rode down the busy High Street, pedestrians nudged one another and glanced over as the carriage went by. At first Joshua thought they were looking at him and Dahybi, but then he realized it was Louise who drew their attention.
Outside Colsterworth the rolling countryside was a patchwork of small fields separated by immaculately layered hedges. Streams wound down through the gentle valleys, while spinneys clung to the rounded heights and deeper folds. The wheat and barley had already been harvested, he saw. Plenty of haystacks were dotted about, steeply sloping tops netted against the expected winter winds. Tractors were ploughing the stubble back into the rich red soil before drilling the second crop. There would be just enough time for the stalks to ripen before the long autumn and winter seasons began.
“You don’t have any proscription against power tractors, then?” Joshua asked.
“Certainly not,” William Elphinstone replied. “We’re a stable society, Captain, not a backward one. We use whatever is appropriate to maintain the status quo, and give people a decent standard of living at the same time. Using horses to plough every field would be pure drudgery. That’s not what Norfolk is about. Our founders wanted pastoral life to be enjoyable for all.” To Joshua’s ears he sounded defensive, but then he had been on edge since they’d been introduced.
“Where does all the power come from?” Joshua asked.
“Solar cells are sufficient for domestic utilities, but ninety per cent of the electricity used for industry and agriculture is geothermal. We buy in thermal-potential fibres from the Confederation and drill them three or four miles down into the mantle. Most towns have five or six heat shafts; they’re virtually maintenance free, and the fibres last for a couple of centuries. It’s a much neater solution than building hydro dams everywhere and flooding valleys.”
Interesting how he said Confederation, Joshua thought, almost as if Norfolk wasn’t a part of it.
“All this must seem terribly cumbersome to you, I expect,” Louise said.
“Not at all,” Joshua answered. “What I’ve seen so far is admirable. You should visit some of the so-called advanced worlds I’ve been to. Technology comes with a very high price in terms of society, they have dreadful levels of crime and vice. Some urban areas have decayed into complete no-go zones.”
“Three people were murdered on Kesteven last year,” Louise said.
William Elphinstone frowned as if to object, but let it pass.
“I think your ancestors got your constitution about right,” Joshua said.
“Hard on people who are sick,” Dahybi Yadev observed.
“There aren’t many illnesses,” William Elphinstone said. “Our lifestyle means we’re a very healthy people. And our hospitals can cope with most accidents.”
“Including cousin Gideon,” Louise said slyly.
Joshua pressed down on a smile as William Elphinstone gave her a curtly censorious look. The girl wasn’t quite as meek as he’d first supposed. They were sitting opposite each other in the carriage, which gave him a good opportunity to study her. He had thought that she and William pain-in-the-arse Elphinstone were an item, but judging from the way she virtually ignored him it didn’t seem too likely. William Elphinstone appeared none too happy with the cold-shoulder treatment, either.
“Actually, William isn’t being entirely honest,” she went on. “We don’t catch diseases because most of our first-comer ancestors were recipients of geneering before they settled here. It stands to reason, on a planet which deliberately excludes the most advanced medical treatments it’s wise to protect yourself in advance. So in that respect we don’t quite match up to the simplistic pastoral ideal. You probably couldn’t have built a society as successful as Norfolk before geneering; people would have insisted on continuing technical and medical research to better their lot.”
William Elphinstone made a show of turning his head and staring out over the fields.
“Fascinating idea,” Joshua said. “You can only have stability once you’ve passed a certain technological level, and flux is the natural order until that happens. Are you going to take politics at university?”
Her lips depressed fractionally. “I don’t think I’ll be going. Women don’t, generally. And there aren’t many universities anyway; there’s no research to be done. Most of my family go to agricultural colleges, though.”
“And will you be joining your relatives there?”
“Maybe. Father hasn’t said. I’d like to. Cricklade is going to be mine one day, you see. I want to be more than just a figurehead.”
“I’m sure you will be, Louise. I can’t imagine you as just a figurehead for anything.” He was surprised at how earnest his voice had become.
Louise cast her eyes down to see she was knotting her fingers in her lap in a most unladylike manner. Whatever was making her babble like this?
“Is this Cricklade now?” Joshua asked. The fields had given way to larger expanses of parkland between the small woods. Sheep and cattle were grazing placidly, along with some xenoc bovine-analogue that looked similar to a very hairy deer, with fat legs and hemispherical hoofs.
“We’ve been riding through the Cricklade estate since we left town, actually,” William Elphinstone said snidely.
Joshua gave Louise an encouraging smile. “As far as the eye can see, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can see why you love it so much. If I ever settle down, I’d want it to be in a land like this.”
“Any chance we can see some roses?” Dahybi Yadev asked loudly.
“Yes, of course,” Louise said, suddenly brisk. “How dreadfully remiss of me. Cousin Kenneth said this was your first time here.” She turned round and tapped the driver on his shoulder. The two of them exchanged a few words. “There’s a grove beyond the forest up ahead,” she said. “We’ll stop there.”
The grove took up ten acres on a northern-facing slope. To catch the suns, Louise explained. It was marked out by a dry-stone wall that was host to long patches of moss-analogue which sprouted miniature pink flowers. The flat stones themselves were often crumbling from frost erosion; little attempt had been made at repairs except in the worst sections of subsidence. In one corner of the grove there was a long barn with a thatched roof; moss had clawed its way into the reeds, loosening the age-blackened bundles. New wooden pallets stacked with what looked like thousands of conical white plant pots were just visible through the barn’s open doorway.
Still, dry air magnified the grove’s placid composure, adding to the impression of genteel decay. If it hadn’t been for the perfectly regimented rows of plants, Joshua would have believed the grove had been neglected, simply treated as a hobby by an indulgent landowner rather than the vital industry it was.
Norfolk’s weeping rose was unarguably the most famous plant in the Confederation. In its natural state it was a thornless rambling bush that favoured well-drained peaty soil. But when cultivated and planted in groves it was trained up wire trellises three metres high. The jade-green leaves were palm sized, reminiscent of terrestrial maples with their deep serrations, their tips coloured a dull red.
But it was the flowers which drew Joshua’s scrutiny; they were yellow-gold blooms, twenty-five centimetres in diameter with a thick ruff of crinkled petals hugging a central onion-shaped carpel pod. Each plant in the grove had produced thirty-five to forty flowers, standing proud on fleshy green stems as thick as a man’s thumb. Under Duke’s unremitting glare they had acquired a spectral lemon-yellow corona.
The four of them walked a little way down the mown grass between the rows. Careful pruning of the bushes had ensured that each flower was fully exposed to the sunlight, none of them overlapped.
Joshua pressed his toe into the wiry grass, feeling the solid earth. “It’s very dry,” he said. “Will there be enough water to fill them out?”
“It never rains at midsummer,” Louise said. “Not on the inhabited islands, anyway. Convection takes all the clouds up to the poles; most of the ice-caps melt under the deluge, but the temperature is still only a couple of degrees above freezing. It’s considered frightfully bad luck if it even drizzles here in the week before Midsummer’s Day. The roses store up all the moisture they need for fruition in their roots during springtime.”
He reached up and touched one of the big flowers, surprised by how stiff the stem was. “I had no idea they were so impressive.”
“This is an old grove,” she said. “The roses here are fifty years old, and they’re good for another twenty. We replant several groves each year from the estate’s nurseries.”
“That sounds like quite an operation. I’d like to see it. Perhaps you could show me, you seem very knowledgeable about their cultivation.”
Louise blushed again. “Yes, I do; I mean, I will,” she stammered.
“Unless you have other duties, of course. I don’t wish to impose.” He smiled.
“You’re not,” she assured him quickly.
“Good.”
She found herself smiling back at him for no particular reason at all.
Joshua and Dahybi had to wait until late afternoon before they were introduced to Grant Kavanagh and his wife, Marjorie. It was an opportunity for Joshua to be shown round the big manor house and its grounds, with Louise continuing her role of informative hostess. The manor was an impressive set-up; an unobtrusive army of servants was employed to keep the rooms in immaculate condition, and a lot of money had been spent making the decor as tasteful as possible. Naturally enough, the style was based prominently on the eighteenth-century school of design, history’s miniature enclave.
Thankfully, William Elphinstone left them, claiming he had to work in the groves. They did, however, meet Genevieve Kavanagh as soon as their carriage drew up outside the entrance. Louise’s young sister tagged along with them for the entire afternoon, giggling the whole time. Joshua wasn’t used to children that age, in his opinion she was a spoilt brat who needed a damn good smack. If it wasn’t for Louise he would have been mighty tempted to put her over his knee. Instead he suffered in silence, making the most of the way Louise’s dress fabric shifted about as she moved. There was precious little else to absorb his attention. To the uninitiated eye the estate beyond the grounds was almost deserted.
Midsummer on Norfolk was a time when almost everybody living in the countryside helped out with the weeping rose crop. The travelling Romany caravans were in high demand, with estates and independent grove owners competing for their labour. Even school terms (Norfolk didn’t use didactic laser imprints) were structured round the season, giving children time off to assist their parents, leaving winter as the principal time for studying. As the whole Tear crop was gathered in two days, preparation was an arduous and exacting business.
With over two hundred groves in his estate (not counting those in the crofts), Grant Kavanagh was the most industrious man in Stoke County during the days leading up to midsummer. He was fifty-six years old; modest geneering had produced a barrel-chested physique, five feet ten inches tall, with brown hair that was already greying around his mutton-chop sideboards. But a lifetime of physical activity and keeping a strict watch on what he ate meant he retained the vigour of a man in his twenties. He was able to chase up his flock of junior estate managers with unnerving doggedness. Which, as he knew from sore experience, was the only way of achieving anything in Stoke County. Not only did he have to supervise the teams which went round the groves setting up the collection cups, but he was also responsible for the county’s bottling yard. Grant Kavanagh did not tolerate fools, slackers, and family sinecurists, which in his view described a good ninety-five per cent of Norfolk’s population. Cricklade estate had run smoothly and profitably for the last two hundred and seventy years of its distinguished three-hundred-year existence, and by God that superb record wasn’t going to end in his lifetime.
An afternoon spent in the saddle riding round some of the rosegroves closest to the manor, with the eternally enduring Mr Butterworth accompanying him, did not put him in the best frame of mind for trotting out glib niceties to dandies like visiting starship captains. He marched into the house slapping dust from his riding breeches and shouting for a drink, a bath, and a decent meal.
Having this red-faced martinet figure bearing down on him across the large airy entrance hall put Joshua in mind of a Tranquillity serjeant—only lacking the charm and good looks.
“Bit young to be skippering a starship, aren’t you?” Grant Kavanagh said when Louise introduced them. “Surprised the banks gave you the loan to fly one.”
“I inherited Lady Mac , and my crew made enough money in our first year of commercial flying to make the run to this planet. It’s the first time we’ve been, and your family turned somersaults to give me three thousand cases of the best Tears on the island. What criteria would you judge my competence by?”
Louise closed her eyes and wished herself very, very small.
Grant Kavanagh stared at the utterly uncompromising expression of the young man who had answered him back in his own home, and burst out laughing. “By Christ, now that’s the sort of attitude we could do with a hell of a lot more of around here. Well done, Joshua, I approve. Don’t give ground, and bite back every time.” He put a protective arm around both his daughters. “See that, you two rapscallions? That’s what you’ve got to have to run commercial enterprises; starships or estates, it doesn’t matter which. You just have to be the boss man each and every time you open your mouth.” He kissed Louise on her forehead, and tickled a giggling Genevieve. “Glad to meet you, Joshua. Nice to see young Kenneth hasn’t lost his touch when it comes to judging people.”
“He puts together a tough deal,” Joshua said, sounding unhappy.
“So it would seem. This mayope wood, is it as good as he says? I couldn’t shut him up about it when he was on the phone.”
“Yes, it’s impressive. Like a tree that’s grown out of steel. I brought some samples with me, of course, you can have a look for yourself.”
“I’ll take you up on that later.” The manor’s butler came into the hall carrying Grant’s gin and tonic on a silver tray. He picked it up and took a sip. “I suppose this damned Lalonde planet will start charging a premium once they know how valuable it is to us?” he said in a disgruntled tone.
“That depends, sir.”
“Oh?” Grant Kavanagh widened his eyes with interest at the humorously furtive tone. He let go of Genevieve, and patted her fondly. “Run along, poppet. It looks like Captain Calvert and I have something to discuss.”
“Yes, Daddy.” Genevieve capered past Joshua, giving him a sidelong glance, and breaking into giggles again.
Louise showed him a lopsided grin as she started to walk away. She had seen the other girls at school do that when they wanted to be coquettish with their boys. “You will be joining us for dinner, won’t you, Captain Calvert?” she asked airily.
“I imagine so, yes.”
“I’ll tell cook to prepare some iced chiplemon. You’ll like that; it’s my favourite.”
“Then I’m sure I’ll like it too.”
“And don’t be late, Daddy.”
“Am I ever?” Grant Kavanagh retorted, enchanted as ever by his little girl’s playfulness.
She rewarded them both with a sunlight smile, then skipped off across the hall tiles after Genevieve.
An hour later Joshua was lying on his bed, fathoming the mysteries of the planet’s communication system. His bedroom was in the west wing, a large room with en suite bathroom, its walls papered with a rich purple and gold pattern. The bed was a double, with a carved oak headboard and a horribly solid mattress. It required very little imagination on his part to picture Louise Kavanagh lying on it beside him.
There was a phone on the bedside table, but the impossibly antique gadget didn’t have a standard processor; he couldn’t use his neural nanonics to datavise the communication net control computer. It didn’t even have an AV pillar, just a keyboard, a holoscreen, and a handset. He did think that Norfolk had written a wonderfully realistic Turing program into the exchange’s processor array to deal patiently with requests, until he finally realized he was actually talking to a human operator. She patched him into the geostationary relay satellite circuit and opened a channel to Lady Macbeth . What the call must be costing Grant Kavanagh was an item he managed to put firmly at the back of his mind. Humans operating a basic computer management routine!
“We’ve unloaded a third of the mayope already,” Sarha said; the link was audio only, no visual. “Your new merchant friend Kenneth Kavanagh has hired half a dozen spaceplanes from other starships to ferry it down to the surface. At this rate we’ll be finished by tomorrow.”
“Great news. I don’t want to sound premature, but after this run is over it looks like we’ll be coming back here to finalize that arrangement we were kicking around earlier.”
“You’re making progress, then?”
“Absolutely.”
“What’s Cricklade like?”
“Astonishing, it’s enough to make a Tranquillity plutocrat jealous. You’d love it.”
“Thanks, Joshua. That really makes me feel good.”
He grinned and took another sip of the Norfolk Tears his thoughtful host had provided. “How are you and Warlow coping with the maintenance checks?”
“We’ve finished.”
“What?” He sat up abruptly, nearly spilling some of the precious drink.
“We’ve finished. There isn’t a system on board that isn’t as smooth as a baby’s bum.”
“Jesus, you must have been working your arses off.”
“It took us five hours, grand total. And most of that was spent waiting for the diagnostics programs to run. There’s nothing wrong with Lady Mac , Joshua. Her performance rating is as good as the day the CAB awarded us our spaceworthiness certificate.”
“That’s ridiculous. We were so glitch prone after Lalonde we were lucky to get here at all.”
“You think I don’t know how to load a diagnostics program?” she asked, her voice sounding very tetchy.
“Of course you know your job,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “It just doesn’t make a lot of sense, that’s all.”
“You want me to datavise the results down to you?”
“No. You can’t, anyway; this planet’s net couldn’t handle anything like that. What does Warlow say, is Lady Mac up to a CAB inspection?”
“We’ll pass with flying colours.”
“OK, I’ll leave it up to the pair of you what you do.”
“We’ll get the inspectors up here tomorrow morning. Norfolk’s CAB office only runs stage D checks in any case. Our own diagnostics are stricter than that.”
“Fine. I’ll call tomorrow for an update.”
“Sure. ’Bye, Joshua.”
Tehama asteroid was one of the most financially and industrially successful independent industrial settlements in the New Californian star system. A stony iron rock twenty-eight kilometres long and eighteen wide, tracing an irregular fifty-day elliptical orbit within the trailing Trojan point of Yosemite, the system’s largest gas giant, it had all the elements and minerals necessary to support life, barring hydrogen and nitrogen. But that deficiency was made good from a snowball-shaped carbonaceous chondritic asteroid, one kilometre wide, which had been nudged into a fifty-kilometre orbit around Tehama in 2283. Since then its shale had been mined and refined; hydrogen was combined with oxygen to produce water, plain and simple; nitrogen underwent more complex bonding procedures to form useable nitrates; hydrocarbons were an essential. They were all introduced to the caverns being bored out of Tehama’s metallic ore, producing a habitable biosphere capable of supporting the increasing population.
By 2611 there were two major caverns inside Tehama; and its small companion had been reduced to a sable lump two hundred and fifty metres wide, with a silver-white refinery station, almost as large, clinging to it barnacle-fashion.
The Villeneuve’s Revenge jumped into an emergence zone a hundred and twenty thousand kilometres away, and began its approach manoeuvres. After months tending the starship’s ageing, failure-prone systems, Erick Thakrar was grateful for any shore time. Shipboard life was one long grind, he’d lost count of how many times he’d falsified the maintenance log so they could avoid CAB penalties and keep flying. There was no doubt about it, the Villeneuve’s Revenge was operating dangerously close to the margin, both mechanically and financially. Genuine independence was proving an elusive goal; Captain Duchamp was in debt to the banks to the tune of a million and a half fuseodollars, and charters were hard to find.
Some small part of Erick felt sorry for the old boy. Commercial starflight was a viciously tough business, a tightly woven web of large cartels and monopolies that resented the very existence of independent traders. Starships like the Villeneuve’s Revenge forced the major carrier fleets to keep their own prices down, reducing profits. They retaliated with semi-legal syndicates in an attempt to lock out small ships.
Duchamp was an excellent captain, but his business acumen was highly questionable. His crew was loyal, though, and Erick had heard enough stories of past missions to know they had few qualms about how they earned money. If he wanted to, he could have had them arrested within a week of coming on board—neural-nanonics recorded conversation was admissible evidence in court. But he was after bigger prizes than a worn-out ship with its loser crew. The Villeneuve’s Revenge was his access code to whole strata of illegal operations. And it looked like Tehama was going to be the start of the game.
After docking at the asteroid’s non-rotating axis spaceport, four crew members from the Villeneuve’s Revenge descended on the Catalina bar in the Los Olivos cavern, the first to be dug, a cylindrical hollow nine kilometres long and five in diameter. The Catalina was one of the spaceport crew bars, with aluminium tables and a small stage for a band. At three in the afternoon, local time, it was almost dead.
The bar was a cave drilled into the cavern’s vertical cliff-face endwall, one of thousands forming an interconnected cave city, producing a band of glass windows and foliage-wrapped balconies that encircled the base of the endwall. Like an Edenist habitat, nobody lived on the cavern floor itself, it was a communal park and arable farm. But there the resemblance stopped.
Erick Thakrar sat at an alcove table near the balcony window with two of his shipmates, Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, and their captain, Andrй Duchamp. The Catalina was near the top of the city levels, giving it a seventy-five per cent gravity field, and a good view out into the cavern. Erick wasn’t impressed by what he could see. The axis was taken up by a hundred-metre diameter gantry, most of which was filled by the thick black pipes of the irrigation-sprinkler nozzles. It was ringed at two hundred and fifty metre intervals by doughnut-shaped solartubes that shone with a painful blue-white intensity. They lacked the warm incandescence of an Edenist habitat’s axis light-tube, which was dramatically illustrated by the plants far below. The cavern floor’s grass shaded towards the yellow, while trees and shrubs were spindly, missing their full complement of leaves. Even the fields of crops were hungry looking (one reason why imported delicacies were so popular and profitable in all asteroid settlements). It was as though an unexpected autumn had visited the tropical climate.
The whole cavern was cramped and clumsy, a poor copy of a bitek habitat’s excellence. Erick found himself thinking back to Tranquillity with nostalgia.
“Here he comes,” Andrй Duchamp muttered. “Be nice to the Anglo , remember we need him.” The captain came from Carcassonne, a die-hard French nationalist, who blamed the ethnic English in the Confederation for everything from failed optical fibres in the starship’s flight computer to his current overdraft. At sixty-five years old his geneered DNA maintained his physique in the lean mould which was the staple criterion of the space adapted, as well as providing him with a face that was rounded all over. When Andrй Duchamp laughed, everyone in the room found themselves smiling along, so powerful was the appeal; he had the same emotional conviction as a painted clown.
Right now he put on his most welcoming smile for the man sidling anxiously up to the table.
Lance Coulson was a senior flight controller in Tehama’s Civil Astronautics Bureau; in his late fifties, he lacked the political contacts necessary to gain senior management ranking. It meant he was stuck in inter-system tracking and communications until retirement now; that made him resentful, and agreeable to supplying people like Andrй Duchamp with information—for the right price.
He sat at the table and gave Erick Thakrar a long look. “I haven’t seen you before.”
Erick started recording his implant-enhanced sensorium directly into a neural nanonics memory cell, and ordered a file search. Image: of an overweight man, facial skin a red tinge of brown from exposure to the cavern solartubes; grey suit with high circular collar, pinching the neck flesh; light brown hair, colour-embellished by follicle biochemical treatments. Sound: of slightly wheezy breathing, heartbeat rate above average. Smell: sour human sweat, beads standing out on a high forehead and the back of chubby hands.
Lance Coulson was nerving himself up. A weakling ruffled by the company he kept.
“Because I haven’t been here before,” Erick replied, unyielding. His CNIS file reported a blank, Lance Coulson wasn’t a known criminal. Probably too petty, he thought.
“Erick Thakrar, my systems generalist,” Andrй Duchamp said. “Erick is an excellent engineer. Surely you don’t question my judgement when it comes to my own crew?” There was just enough hint of anger to make Lance Coulson shift round in his seat.
“No, of course not.”
“Excellent!” Andrй Duchamp was all smiles again; he clapped Lance Coulson on the back, winning a sickly smile, and pushed a glass of Montbard brandy over the scratched aluminium slab to him. “So what have you got for me?”
“A cargo of micro-fusion generators,” he said softly.
“So? Tell me more.”
The civil servant rolled the stem of his glass between his thumb and finger, not looking at the captain. “A hundred thousand.” He slid his Francisco Finance credit disk across the table.
“You jest!” Andrй Duchamp said. There was a dangerous glint to his eyes.
“There were . . . questions last time. I’m not doing this again.”
“You’re not doing it this time at that price. If I had that kind of money do you think I would be here crawling to a tax-money leech like you?”
Bev Lennon put a restraining hand on Duchamp’s shoulder. “Easy,” he said smoothly. “Look, we’re all here because money is tight, right? We can certainly pay you a quarter of that figure in advance.”
Lance Coulson picked up his credit disk and stood up. “I see I have been wasting my time.”
“Thank you for the information,” Erick said in a loud voice.
Lance Coulson gave him a frightened look. “What?”
“That’s going to be enormously useful to us. How would you like to be paid? Cash or commodities?”
“Shut up.”
“Sit down, and stop fucking about.”
He sat, checking the rest of the tables with twitchy glances.
“We want to buy, you want to sell,” Erick said. “So let’s stop the drama queen tactics, assume you’ve shown us what a tough negotiator you are, and we’re all shitting bricks. Now what’s your price? And be realistic. There are other flight controllers.”
He overcame his agitation for just long enough to shoot Erick a look of one hundred per cent hatred. “Thirty thousand.”
“Agreed,” Andrй Duchamp said immediately. He held out his Jovian Bank disk.
Lance Coulson gave a last furtive glance round before shoving his own disk in Andrй’s direction.
“Merci , Lance.” Andrй’s grin was scathing as he received the datavised flight vector.
The four crewmen watched the civil servant retreating, and laughed. Erick was congratulated for calling the other man’s bluff, Bev Lennon fetching him half a litre of of imported Lьbeck beer.
“You had me panicking!” the wiry fusion specialist protested as he dropped the tankards down on their table.
Erick took a sip of the icy beer. “I had me panicking.”
It was going well, they accepted him, reservations (and he knew some still had them) were fading, breaking down. He was becoming one of the lads.
Along with Bev Lennon and Desmond Lafoe, the ship’s node specialist, a brawny two-metre-tall bear of a man, Erick spent the next ten minutes talking trivia while Andrй Duchamp sat back with a blank expression reviewing the vector he had just bought.
“I don’t see any problem,” the captain announced eventually. “If we use a Sacramento orbit to jump from we can rendezvous any time in the next six days. Fifty-five hours from now would be the ideal . . .” His voice trailed off.
Erick turned to follow his gaze. Five men wearing copper-coloured one-piece ship-suits walked into the Catalina bar.
Hasan Rawand caught sight of Andrй Duchamp as he was about to sit at the bar. He tapped Shane Brandes, the Dechal ’s fusion engineer, on the side of his arm and flicked a finger in the direction of the master of Villeneuve’s Revenge . His other three crew-members, Ian O’Flaherty, Harry Levine, and Stafford Charlton, caught the gesture and turned to look.
The two crews regarded each other with mutual hostility and antagonism.
Hasan Rawand walked over to the window booth table, his crew right behind him. “Andrй,” he said with mock civility. “So nice to see you. I trust you have brought my money. Eight hundred thousand, wasn’t it? And that’s before interest. It has been seventeen months after all.”
Andrй Duchamp gazed straight ahead, his hands cupping his beer tankard. “I owe you no money,” he said darkly.
“I think you do. Cast your mind back; you were carrying plutonium initiators from Sab Biyar to the Isolo system. Dechal waited in Sab Biyar’s Oort cloud for thirty-two hours for you, Andrй. Thirty-two hours in stealth mode, with freezing air and iced food, pissing into tubes that leaked, not even allowed a personal MF player in case the navy ships picked up its electronic emission. That’s not nice, Andrй; it’s about as close as you can get to a Confederation penal colony without being shot down to the surface in a drop capsule. We waited for thirty-two hours in the stinking dark for you to show so we could take the initiators in, doing your dirty work for you and carrying all the risk. And when we got back to Sab Biyar what did I find?”
Andrй Duchamp grinned round at his own crew, trying to brazen it out. “I’m sure you’ll tell me, Anglo .”
“You went to Nuristan and sold the initiators to one of their naval contractors, you Gallic shithead ! I was left trying to explain to the Isolo Independence Front where their nukes had gone, and why their poxy rebellion was going to fail because they hadn’t got the fire-power to back up their demands.”
“You can show me the contract?” Andrй Duchamp asked mockingly.
Hasan Rawand glared down at him, lips compressed in rage. “Just hand over the money. A million will see you clear.”
“To hell with you, Anglo filth. I, Andrй Duchamp, owe nobody money.” He stood up and tried to barge past the Dechal ’s captain.
It was the move Erick Thakrar was waiting for and dreading. Sure enough, Hasan Rawand shoved Andrй Duchamp back in the booth. The back of the older captain’s knee struck a seat which almost tipped him off balance. He recovered and launched himself at Hasan Rawand, fists flying.
Desmond Lafoe rose to his feet drawing a frantic gasp from Ian O’Flaherty when his size, weight, and strength became apparent. Huge hands reached forward, and Ian O’Flaherty was jerked off his feet. He kicked out wildly, toecap striking Desmond Lafoe’s shin. The giant merely grunted, and then threw his victim across the room. He landed awkwardly on one of the aluminium tables, his shoulder taking the brunt of his momentum before he crashed down backwards onto a pair of chairs.
Erick felt a hand close around the neck fabric of his ship-suit. It was Shane Brandes who was hauling him out of the booth; a forty-year-old with a bald head and small gold earrings, smiling with ugly anticipation. The unarmed combat file in Erick’s neural nanonics went into primary mode. His instinctive thought routines were superseded by logic-based patterns, calculating inertia and intent with an ease surpassing any kung fu master. Nanonic supplement boosted muscles powered up.
Shane Brandes was surprised how easy it was to pull his opponent out of the booth. Gratification became alarm when he kept on coming. Shane had to backstep to keep balance, his own neural nanonics assuming command of his mass positioning. He cocked a fist back to smash into Erick’s face, only to have a nanonic warning blare in his mind as Erick’s forearm swung up with incredible speed. His punch was blocked, arm chopped painfully to one side. A furious kick to Erick’s groin—his knee nearly fractured from the impact of the counter-kick. He reeled to one side, banging into Harry Levine and Bev Lennon, who were locked together.
Erick slammed an elbow into Shane’s ribs, hearing bone break. He let out an agonized grunt.
The unarmed combat file said that speed was essential, take out your opponent as soon as possible. His neural nanonics analysed Shane’s movements, the half twist as he clutched at his ribs, bending over. The motion was projected two seconds into the future. Interception points were computed. A list materialized in his consciousness, and he selected a blow that would cause temporary incapacitation. His right leg shot out, booted foot aiming for a patch of empty air. Shane’s head fell into it.
A threat assessment sub-routine shifted his peripheral senses into priority focus. Andrй Duchamp and Hasan Rawand were still battering away at each other on the side of the booth’s table. Neither was inflicting much damage in the confined space.
Harry Levine had got Bev Lennon into a head lock. The two of them were on the floor, squirming round like theatrical wrestlers, sending chairs spinning. Bev Lennon sent a flurry of elbow jabs into Harry Levine’s stomach, attempting to knock his navel into his spine.
Stafford Charlton obviously had a boosted musculature. He was standing in front of Desmond Lafoe, landing blow after blow on the big man, arms moving with programmed efficiency. He had almost doubled up from the pain, his right arm hung limply, the shoulder broken. Blood ran out of his flattened nose.
Ian O’Flaherty rose behind Desmond Lafoe, berserk loathing contorting his face, a pocket fission blade in his right hand. With his enhanced retinas on full amplification, the yellow haze emitted by the activated blade dazzled Erick for an instant. The threat assessment sub-routine activated the defensive nanonic implant in his left hand. A targeting grid of fine blue lines flipped up across his vision. A rectangular section flashed red, and wrapped itself around Ian O’Flaherty, adapting to his movements like elastic thread.
“Don’t!” Erick Thakrar shouted.
Ian O’Flaherty had already raised the blade high above his head when the shout came. In his wired state he probably wouldn’t have obeyed even if he heard. Erick saw the muscles in his lower arm begin to contract, the knife quivered as it started on its downward slash.
The neural nanonics program reported that even with boosted muscles Erick couldn’t reach Ian O’Flaherty in time. He made his decision. A small patch of skin above the second knuckle of his left hand dilated, and the implant spat out a dart of nanonic circuitry, barely as large as a wasp stinger. It struck the bare skin of Ian O’Flaherty’s neck, penetrating to a depth of six millimetres. The fission blade had already descended twenty centimetres towards Desmond Lafoe’s broad back. As soon as it sensed it was buried inside the flesh, and its momentum was spent, the dart sprouted a fur of microscopic filaments. They quested round on a preprogrammed search pattern for nerve strands, tips wriggling between the close-packed honeycomb of cells. Ganglions were located, and the sharp filament tips forced their way through gossamer membranes sheathing the individual nerves. At this time the knife had descended twenty-four centimetres. Ian O’Flaherty’s right eyelid gave an involuntary twitch at the small sting from the dart’s entry. The dart’s internal processor analysed the chemical and electrical reactions flashing along the nerves; it began to broadcast its own signal into the brain. His neural nanonics detected the signal at once, but the circuitry was powerless to help, it could only override natural impulses originating from within the brain.
Ian O’Flaherty had brought the blade thirty-eight centimetres down towards Desmond Lafoe when he felt a million lacework rivulets of fire igniting inside his body. The blade fell another four centimetres before his muscles were convulsed by the besieging deluge of impulses. His nerves were burning out, overloaded by the nanonic dart’s diabolical signal, ordering the massive uncontrolled release of energy along each strand, a simultaneous chemical detonation inside every neuron cell.
Breath rasped out of his wide mouth, aghast eyes looking round the room in a final plea for life. His skin turned red, as if afflicted by instant sunburn. His muscles lost all strength, and he toppled limply onto the floor. The fission blade skittered about, shaving flakes of rock from the floor whenever it touched.
No one else was fighting any more.
Desmond Lafoe gave Erick a puzzled, pain-filled glance. “What . . .”