Jeff laughed as he added a dollop of strawberry jam to his bread, enjoying the gentle hint of cleavage Annie's high-waisted dress offered. When she stood, she was nearly as tall as he, and the local dresses hid more than they revealed. With her standing thus, it was not easy keeping his eyes level. After a quick glance down that only broadened her smile,
he returned to the morning's ripostes.
"The only fairy folk I've seen today is in front of me. And I haven't the foggiest idea how the market is doing, since the ancient place I'm staying in is not on the net."
"Our rooms are not ancient, Jeffrey Sterling." Annie swatted him with her dishcloth. Jeff might have wished for another response, but Mulroneys did not kiss Sterlings.
"They are low-tech," he insisted around a bite of bread.
"You have your own facilities, your own shower. And the bed is firm and new."
And solitary
, he did not add. "With no net link, not even a television, it's like something out of an ancient story, a prison cell for solitary confinement, woman." There: He did get the "solitary" in there.
"Well, man, if you wanted all those technological baubles, you might have stayed in Richland." Annie's words came fast and well practiced. Still, she left off the unkindest cut, "where you belong." Annie always had. Maybe she sensed what Jeff had learned early in life, that the third child of a family like the Sterlings did not belong anywhere. He had no place, nor ever would have one—unless he found one for himself.
Introspection could not be allowed to delay his retort. Jeff grinned at Annie. "But who in Richland would serve me my morning tea with such a fetching smile?"
"Man, if you take me scowl for a smile, you're more blind than me ma says you are." Said scowl grew wider, adding dimpled shadows to offset the milk white of her complexion. The temptation to steal a kiss grew. He stuffed the rest of the bread in his mouth to stifle it. Sterlings took what they wanted—if they were Vicky or Mark. Last born learned quickly that everything worth taking was took. At least in Richland. Now, out here in the foothills, that was another matter. Maybe.
"Maybe there is something wrong with my eyes," he agreed. He opened his map case and pulled out a stack of pictures. They were in order, all but the last. It was the newest, and it didn't fit. Annie came around the counter to stand beside him, so close her warmth and scent nearly overpowered him. He kept his hands on the pictures. If he didn't, they'd be around her waist. That, at least, would answer one question. Would she slap him, like a good Mulroney girl should, or kiss him, like he dreamed of?
"I don't see anything wrong," she said.
He swallowed the lump in his throat her nearness brought. "These are pictures of the front range, made eight years ago by my brother's survey team."
"And weren't they a hard bunch." Jeff knew the stories, and saw the blond-haired seven-year-olds running with the other kids. The good Catholic mothers were seeing that Jeffrey did penance for Mark's sins.
The story of my life?
"I took this batch yesterday," Jeff said, laying his own three panoramic shots out below his brother's.
"There's the Great One." Annie's fingers lightly danced from one set of pictures to another. A thrill went up Jeff's spine, as if her fingers were touching him. "There's Our Lady with her two big breasts." There was nothing puritan about the farmers, not with their big families. They just kept to themselves. Or kept Jeffrey Sterling out. "Something's missing," Annie muttered, puzzle replacing her smile without removing one
bit of her loveliness.
"Maybe it's just the angle." Jeff suggested the only answer he'd come up with.
"No. Where's that peak?" she asked, her eyes returning to his as if to find the missing mountain there.
"Do you have a name for that one? The missing one."
She shook her head, dark curls inviting his touch. "It is just a wee one. We don't have names for every one."
"Then where'd it go?"
Giving her head a final shake, Annie turned for the kitchen.
"There are some things me ma says we are not meant to know. I'll get your lunch pail."
Jeff watched Annie go, wanting very much to know the feel of her touch. Wanting to spend the day exploring her mountains and valleys. He gulped down another piece of bread.
The Caretaker of the Nature Preserve felt the mountain-top go, though bothered no more than a carbon-based life might be by a cut hair. The mountain was there in one moment of awareness and gone the next. It did, however, cause the Caretaker to marvel. He could not find in memory when a Displacer had last been used. But it was not its purpose to keep track of such things. Then again, it was difficult these days for the Caretaker to remember just what was its purpose.
It was supposed to protect the flora and fauna of a specific area. Over the years, what with erosion, that area was only dimly marked by its pattern recognition system. And since there was so little to do since the Three went away, and fewer visits by repair units from the Central Font of All Knowledge, the Caretaker had gotten a bit slipshod in its work.
All that had changed recently. Three hundred orbits ago a new group of Sentients arrived. Not one of the Three, it had puzzled the Caretaker. Unlike those who came long ago, these had a need to remake their surroundings in ways the Caretaker could not help them in. Indeed, they had disrupted the Caretaker's coverage by the way they turned the earth and dug in it. The Caretaker had been unsuccessful in all its efforts to connect with them. Understandable, since it was only the Caretaker, not the Font of All Knowledge.
Only when it tried to pass along to the Font of All Knowledge the interesting challenge of these new Sentients did the Caretaker notice that it was no longer in contact with the Center. It had sent off a slow messenger to the Center and done what a Caretaker could to help these new ones adjust to their time in this wonderful nature.
These creatures had provided the Caretaker with many new experiences. For one thing, they did not leave—not after a while, at least. For another, they brought forth more of themselves. They ignored the tools easily available to them and instead made other, simpler ones. If the Caretaker could have shrugged, it would have. Now the strange new ones had used a Displacer. Were they ready to learn how to use all that the Caretaker could make available to them?
Three
A WEEK LATER, Ray frowned as he buckled into a seat in the shuttle's passenger bay. He still knew too damn little about this planet. Behind him, Mary commanded ten marines under Cassie, her second, and ten midshipmen under Kat-all in full battle kit.
With luck, by nightfall the middies would be in an orgy of data acquisition and the marines would be ordering beers in whatever passed for bars dirtside.
Without luck-well, that was what the battle kit was for.
Not that M-6 rifles would do all that good against something that leveled mountains. No more had gone missing, but the one still held his attention. Ray glanced at the reader in his hand. He cycled it to a report one middie had circulated quietly among her friends, one of whom had passed it along to someone who'd passed it to enough people that Ray ended up with a bootleg copy.
On approach, routine checks included a planet's atmospheric reflective value. Two days after the mountain vanished, someone reran that check. Santa Maria's value was up just enough to account for the distribution, worldwide, of as much dust as you got from one pulverized mountaintop. Whether it took two days to circulate the dust or one second, Ray didn't care. The power to do either was a lot more than Ray wanted to argue with The human population of this planet was indeed concentrated along the east coast of the small south continent. The sky eyes pinpointed three major cities, a dozen towns, and were still counting villages. About half the population, estimated at six to twelve million, was serious into spreading out. The other half was focused in the urban areas. The scatter pattern was puzzling. Most colonies spread out from the better landing areas, following rivers and other encouraging land features. Not this place. People had headed in all different directions.
"Maybe they don't like each other," Kat had shrugged as she handed Ray the report, then answered her own question. "Can't be that. We've spotted these balloon things, they're called blimps, crazy name. Anyway, they have regular blimp traffic between the major cities and most medium-size ones. There's one small blimp that runs back and forth on no schedule between the third-largest city and this place up north with the big dam. The farmers seem to have done most of the spreading out. Maybe the soil can't take too many years of planting. I guess we'll have to ask 'em."
The shuttle dropped away from
Second Chance,
heading for a small village they'd studied thoroughly. It looked quiet, was a good distance from the center of everything . . . and closest to the vanished mountain. If anyone knew the situation here, somebody in that burg ought to. At least Ray hoped so.
Jeff Sterling stood knee-deep in the middle of the stream, swishing a pan of bottom sand around as he dripped acid into the water. The pan's contents glittered in a kaleidoscope of colors he studied through assay goggles. Yep, there was metal here: copper, iron, zinc, gallium, chromium, nickel, and, of course, silicon. Every metal needed to build a high-tech civilization. It was just hard to build much when the metals were in such minute quantities. He upended the pan in disgust. Everything here, and nothing. The story of his life.
A double peal of thunder brought his head up to an empty blue sky; no storms were expected this week. Still, this far back into the foothills, you had to be careful. A downpour far upstream in the morning could send a flash flood charging down to ruin your whole afternoon. No clouds, either out on the plains or visible over the mountains. Two thunders, close together. It meant something; danged if he could remember what. He took two steps toward the bank where Old Ned sat under a tree, keeping an eye on the horses. Not much for talking, but he'd taken Jeffs money and good care of the animals.
Out of the side of his eye, Jeff saw the contrail begin. Contrail! That was the word! It was in the old stories he'd read because it was better to study than tell Father or Mother he had nothing to do. At nine, they'd actually put him to work in the mines for a day. There'd been other nine-year-olds there. They'd kept their distance after the foreman shouted his name the first time. At least the foreman shouted at Jeff; he had a leather belt for the other kids. That night Jeff dragged himself home and went to bed, too exhausted for supper. Next morning, he was studying before his tutor arrived.
The tales from the Landers' years were written dry, but there was excitement behind every word. And they included space shuttles dropping down from the
Santa Maria.
They left white trails in the sky, like a thin bead of clouds. And they made double sonic booms. Above Jeff, the contrail headed east, headed for his sister or brother, away from him. Jeff shook his head wryly. So what else was new? Then the contrail began to turn. Maybe they wouldn't end up in sis's lap. "Ned, my horse."
A shuttle couldn't land in these hills. A town like Hazel Dell might draw them. Hell, Jeff didn't care; a shuttle was headed down. Wherever it went, he was going.
Nikki glanced at the sky when she heard the thunder, but didn't quit hoeing her row of corn, beans, and melons. Ma had not been as understanding as Nikki had hoped last week when she and Daga came racing home well after dark. Da had been in a mood. Without looking up from the new plates he was glazing for the public room, he'd said, "You work the fields every day for the next month." Ma hadn't said a word in Nikki's defense. Maybe if Nikki had been her usual self, she would have found a way to get Ma and Da talking and herself off the hook. After watching a mountain vanish, just vanish, Nikki had been at a loss for words. She still was.
However, thunder offered a chance for rain on a hot, dusty day. You couldn't work the fields in the rain, but the sky above Nikki was blue. Pure blue, no clouds at all, about what to expect in high summer. As Nikki bent back to her work, a streak of white caught her eye. She looked back up. "What's that?" a boy next to her asked.
"Don't know," a man answered.
"Like nothing I've ever seen," a grandma added, leaning on her hoe and watching the lengthening white line that was a cloud but not a cloud. If Grandma felt it a sight worth watching, Nikki couldn't get in trouble watching, too. She rested on her hoe; there was a lot of talk among the grown-ups, but nobody had any idea what it was. As the line got closer, Nikki could make out something at the tip, no bigger than a pinhead. Then the pinhead quit making clouds. It circled lower.
"Isn't it flying, like a dirigible?" a man said. He'd been to the big cities and claimed to have actually flown on one.
"It doesn't look like one," another man said.
"Yeah, but it's flying. What else could it be?"
Nobody had an answer. Now Nikki could hear a shriek like something Grandma said banshees made. But what was coming down looked too solid to be out of a story.
"It's going to land," the know-it-all announced.
Nikki came to the same conclusion at about that time. Some folks headed back for the
village. Nikki found Daga at her side.
"Let's go see what it is," Daga suggested.
"I'm not going anywhere with you. Try Emma or Willow."
"They're not talking to me."
"I shouldn't either. You're no fun anymore."
"Bet whatever that isll be fun, and I didn't find it. How much trouble can I get you into when even grandmas are going?" Nikki knew she should tell Daga to go jump in a lake, get lost, do anything. Instead, she dropped her hoe and was off.
* * *
Ray cycled the view on his reader through the shuttle's cameras. The flight deck was breathing ship's air and off-limits to anyone who touched this planet. Matt was adamant; until the landing party completed six weeks' quarantine, the ship and ground crew were a world apart.
The village was estimated at about a thousand people. Intermingled with the houses were vegetable gardens. Farmed plots grew larger the farther out from town until some of them were long enough to land a shuttle, assuming the ground would take the weight. Sensors said it would. The pilot was making her own check.
"Radar says it's solid and even. Good pasture. Strap in tight, folks, I'm setting this thing down. Give me full flaps, and then some." The shuttle lined up and began its final approach. At twenty meters, the pilot cut power. Ray had suggested that, not wanting to scorch the crop he was landing on. The pilot readily agreed. "Don't much want a grass fire under my belly, either."
The shuttle settled lightly, bounced, and decided to stay. The pilot went light on the brakes, taking her time rolling to a halt. Ray stood, arranging his gray civilian suit around himself. Mary went down her security detail, marines and middies, eyeing them like a mother hawk, making final adjustments to their gear. Nothing brought her to a halt. Back with Ray, she saluted. "Teams ready, Colonel."
"Deploy them, Captain."
They would surround the cooling shuttle and make sure no rubberneckers singed their fingers. The marines went out with quick strides and professionally disinterested faces. The middies would have been more impressive if they'd done less rubbernecking themselves. Well, Ray had brought them to learn.
As Ray laboriously negotiated the passenger compartment, a breeze from the rear hatch filled it. Heat off the cooling shuttle mingled with a warmth laden with sun and baked earth and growing things. At the top of the stairs, he paused. Four kilometers away were the stone and wattle houses of the village. Dirt paths led from it. Close in were green crops that looked like corn. In front of him, a greenish gold crop stood twenty centimeters or so tall, waving like the sea in the gentle wind. Behind the shuttle, deep tracks in the earth marked its passage.
People were coming from all around, in ones and twos, fives and tens. Some carried hoes or other farm implements, using them more as walking sticks than as weapons. Draping his right cane over his elbow, Ray latched on to the stair rail and started down,
one step at a time.
Mary stood at the halfway mark. "Need a hand, sir?"
"I can take care of myself." Ray tried to keep the snarl out of his voice. The woman who had crippled him nodded, and looked out over the gathering crowd. She did not move, and he had no doubt she'd catch him if he faltered. Part of him agreed with her actions; the mission could ill afford him breaking something. Another part of him, the man who'd led combat apes, snapped and snarled, but Ray kept that under control.
When he was within three steps of her, Mary started down slowly. "Folks look nice enough. I've had the troops sling arms. No need to look more intimidating than we have to."
To their right, a small kid, hardly more than a toddler, broke through the crowd and headed straight for the shuttle, a mother in hot pursuit. The kid didn't look tall enough to reach the still-cooling craft, but then again, tiny legs like hers should not have been so fast. With a laugh, Kat swooped down and grabbed her. The child wrapped herself in giggles, oblivious to having made the first contact in three hundred years between Santa Maria and the rest of humanity. The middie tossed the little one up lightly once, then handed her off to her mother.
Mother applied a swift swat to a diapered rump that caused more indignation than pain. When the child responded with a heartbroken sob, the mother promptly gave the little one a breast to suck. The child relaxed into feeding, and mother and child disappeared into the crowd.
Ray grinned. He could just picture his future daughter or son bolting for the shinny new thing, and Rita facing down armed troops to get her little one back. Still grinning, he reached the bottom step.
Facing him was a short, round, balding man accompanied by a shorter, not-o-round woman with flaming red hair only slightly streaked with silver. He wore a homespun shirt and pants. She sported a multicolored, high-waisted dress that held her breasts firmly in place. The two weren't all that different from those around them; still, their stance and place gave Ray a strong sense that they spoke for the rest. Clearing his throat, he swallowed the last of the baby-inspired grin and gave the speech he'd been working on.
"Hello. I am Raymond Longknife, Minister of Science and Exploration"—he modified his title to fit its present reality— "for the sovereign planet of Wardhaven, member of the Society of Humanity. As such, I greet you in their name and in peace."
Across from him, the man put his hands on his hips. "And isn't it about time you found us?" Behind him, people nodded agreement, laughed, and continued gawking at the lander.
Ray had heard worse imitations of an old Earth Celtic brogue, but not many. Before he could answer, a tall, thick tree of a man stepped out from the crowd.
"And who's paying for me crop?" With one hand he swept a wave toward the lander's tracks and all the people tramping about. With the other, he formed a fist.
Beside Ray, Mary's fists closed. Kat edged closer, ready to launch her tiny self at a man twice her height and five or six times her bulk. The crowd was dead quiet.
"And what would be fair pay?" Ray asked.
"Oh, a pound of copper would be fine payment, fine payment indeed," the big man laughed. Ray decided he did not like that laugh. He was rapidly developing a dislike for the man. Half a kilo of copper was nothing to Ray; still, the man's demand was clearly intended to be outrageous.
"Go long with ya, man." The woman in the leadership pair slapped lightly at the big man's arm, in that way women have of defusing a situation men are likely to fight over. "For a pound of copper, the good man could buy the village. Big Sean, don't shame us."