But Monica is wrong about something else: I didn't just sit down and starve. All my time in survival sports paid off. The Robinsons had left a pile of trash just on our side of the property line. (That figures.) At a glance you might not think there was much worthwhile: a hundred kilos of botched gold fittings, an organic sludge pond that made me want to puke, and-get this-a dozen cutter blades. So what if they've lost their micrometer edge? They're still sharp enough to cut a hair lengthwise. They're about half a kilo each, single diamond crystals. I lashed them onto wood hafts. I also found some shovels on a pile of rock ash in town.
I remembered the large carnivores we spotted coming in. I f they're still around, they're lying low. After a couple of weeks, I was beginning to feel safe. My traps worked, though not as well as on a sport trip; the wildlife hasn't recovered from the Peacer rescue. Just as we'd planned, the south gallery of the house was left out of stasis. (Remember how you thought it hadn't aged enough?) It's all naked stone, stairs and towers and halls, but it makes good shelter-and parts are easy to barricade.
I didn't remember how long the lookabout would last, so I decided to hit you over the head with my message. I lashed a frame between the trees at the bottom of the great stairs. I spread bark across the framework and used wet ash to spell HELP in letters three meters high. There's no way it could be missed by the monitor on top of the library. I had the sign done a good week ahead of time.
Day ninety was worse than waiting for the judge's call in arbitration. No day ever seemed so long. I sat right by my sign and watched my reflection in the bobble. Lelya, nothing happened. You aren't on a three-month flicker, or the monitor isn't watching. I never hated my own face as much as I did that day, watching it in the side of the bobble. ¯
Of course, Marta had not given up. The next pages described how she had built similar signs near the bobbles of all the advanced travelers.
Day 180 just passed, and the bobbles still sit. I cried a lot. I miss you so. Survival games were fun, but not forever.
I've got to settle down for the long haul. I'm going to make those billboards sturdier. I want them to last at least a hundred years. How long can I last? Without health care, people used to live about a century. I've kept my bio-age at twenty-five years, so I should have seventy-five left. Without the databases I can't be sure, but I bet seventy-five is a lower bound. There should be some residual effect from my last medical treatment, and I'm full of panphages. On the other land, old people were fragile, weren't they? If I have to protect myself and get my own food, that could be a factor.
Okay. Let's be pessimistic. Say I can only last seventy-five years. What's my best chance for getting rescued?
You can bet I've thought about that a lot, Lelya. So much depends on what caused this catastrophe-and all the clues are on your side of the bobble. I've got ideas, but without the databases I can't tell what's plausible. ¯ She went on to list the string of unrelated errors that would be necessary to leave her outside and all the autons inside, and to change the flicker period. Sabotage was the only possible explanation; she knew that someone had tried to kill her.
I'm not lying down to die. I can't think technical anymore, but Ill bet you still have a fairly short flicker period. Besides, we have gear lots of other places: at the Lagrange zones, the West End mines, the Peacer bobble. With luck, there will be lookabouts in the next seventy-five years. And didn't we leave autonomous devices in realtime in Canada? I think there's a land bridge to America in this era. If I can get there, maybe I could make my own rescue.
So most of the time, I'm optimistic.
But suppose I don't make it? Then I'm the murder victim, and some kind of witness, too. Even though you'll never get Fred's record of the Robinsons' recruiting party, you'll hear about it elsewhere. That's the only clue I have.
Don't let them break up our settlement, Lelya. ¯
SEVEN
The morning of the Monica Raines interview did not begin well. Wil was still asleep when the house announced that Della Lu was waiting outside.
Wil groaned, slowly rising from the unpleasant dreams that haunted his mornings. Then he realized the time, and the day. "Sorry, sorry. I'll be right down." He rolled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom. Who had decided on this early start, anyway? Then he remembered it had been himself; something about time zones.
Even downstairs, he was still a bit foggy. He grabbed a box lunch from the kitchen. The bright colors on the package were advertising fifty million years old. When Korolev said she was providing twenty-first-century support, she meant it. The autofactories were running off the same programs as the original manufacturers. The effect was more weird than homey. He tucked the lunch into his shoulder bag along with his data set. Something in the back of his mind was saying he should take more; after all, he was going a third of the way around the world today. He shook his head. Sure, and he'd probably be back in five hours. Even the lunch was unnecessary. Wil gave final instructions to the house and stepped into the morning coolness.
It was the sort of morning that should change the ways of light owls. Green loomed high around the house, the trees ;listening damply in the sun. Everything felt clean and bright, rust created. Except for the birds, it was quiet. He walked across the mossy street toward Lu's enclosed flier. Two protection devices-one from Yel‚n and one from Della-left their posts above his house and drifted along with him.
"Hey, Wil! Wait a minute." Dilip Dasgupta waved from his house, fifty meters down the road. "Where are you going?"
"Calafia," Brierson called back.
"Wow." Rohan and Dilip were both up and dressed. They jogged down the road to him.
"This part of the murder investigation?" said Dilip.
"You look awful, Wil," said Rohan.
Brierson ignored Rohan. "Yeah. We're flying out to see Monica Raines."
"Ah! A suspect."
"No. We're still fact-finding, Dilip. I want to talk to all the high-techs."
"Oh." He sounded like a football fan disappointed by his team's hard luck. A few days earlier, the disappointment would have been tinged with fear. Everyone had been edgy then, guessing that Marta's murder might be the prelude to a massive assault on the settlement.
"Wil, I mean it." Rohan was not to be sidetracked. "You really looked dragged out. And it's not just this morning, so early and all. Don't let this case shut you off from your friends. You gotta mingle, Wil.... Like, this morning we're going on a fishing expedition off North Shore. It's something the Peacers organized. That Genet fellow is coming along in case we run into anything too big to handle. You know, I don't see why governments got such a bad name. Both the Peacers and the New Mexicans aren't much different from social clubs or college fraternities. They've been real nice to everybody."
"Yes, and face it, Wil, we're starting new lives here. Most of the human race is tied up in those two groups now. There are lots of women there, lots of people you'd like to know."
Brierson grinned, embarrassed and a bit touched. "You're right. I should keep up with things."
Rohan reached up to slap him on the shoulder. "Hey, if you get back in the afternoon, you might have the Lu person drop you off at North Shore. I bet there'll still be something going."