“Well,” Dloan said, “technically they do, but the calls get transferred to the Security Franchise and they come to investigate the source.”
“Yes, Dloan,” Sharrow said. “Thank you.”
“I could signal the submarine,” Feril said. It tapped its chest. “I have a communicator; it’s not long range, but it need not utilise the phone frequencies. I could communicate with the submarine even when it is underwater, if it comes within a few kilometres.”
“Could you get in touch with it now?” Miz asked.
“I suspect not,” the android admitted.
“What about the Solipsists?” Dloan said. “Maybe they don’t realise who we are.” He looked at Sharrow. “We could try radioing them.”
She shook hear head. “Somehow, I think they know exactly who we are,” she said. “Anyway, it’s not worth breaking silence.”
“Oh, come on,” Miz said, poking at the fire with a branch. “The Franchise people can’t have missed that performance.” He nodded in the direction of the wrecked ATs, smouldering on the shore a hundred metres away through the trees. “They’re probably on their way in now to pick us up.”
“Of course,” Dloan said, “they might just nuke us instead.”
Sharrow glared at him.
“So do we hike to whatever’s at the end of the fjord, or what?” Zefla said.
Sharrow nodded. “We’d better, or Elson and his boys’ll get there first.”
She took the two bike dials from her satchel. “Still pointing that way; range is down to just under a hundred klicks. If the maps were right and these are accurate, whatever they’re pointing at is at the head of the fjord.” She put the dials away again. “Or was.”
“Pity we lost the maps,” Dloan said, flexing his leg.
“Actually,” Feril said, holding up one hand tentatively. “I have remembered the map of the area.”
“Oh yeah?” Miz looked sceptically at the android. “So how far is it to the end of the fjord?”
“Hugging the coast, approximately eighty-nine kilometres,” the android told them. “Though there are a couple of sizeable rivers to be forded.”
“Two days in and two back.” Dloan said.
“If I may say,” the android began. They looked at it. “I could perhaps get there and back in about twenty hours.” It looked round them, then made an almost bashful shrugging motion.
“So Feril could scout ahead,” Zefla said. “But what do we do when the rest of us get there?”
“If we find the Lazy Gun,” Sharrow said, “we just make a phone call. When the Franchise forces come in to investigate, we take whatever they arrive in; aircraft probably.”
“Just like that?” Zefla said.
“We will have a Lazy Gun,” Miz said, grinning.
“And if the Gun is not there?” Feril asked.
Sharrow looked at the android. “Then we think again.” She picked up a length of branch and threw it into the smoking heart of the fire.
They kept near the edge of the trees as far as possible, ten metres or so from the shore. The interior of the forest was very quiet. The only noise they heard over those first few hours, while the early winter light faded gradually around them, was that of rushing water in the tumbling, rock-strewn streams they crossed, and the sound of branches and twigs breaking underfoot.
The floor of the forest was covered with old trees and rotting trunks; trees were tilted and canted at various angles, producing tangles they had to walk round. Clearings made by fallen trees bristled with new growth and afforded them glimpses of the grey and darkening sky.
“Kind of disorganised, isn’t it?” Miz said to Sharrow, ducking under a fallen trunk raised off the ground by the bowed trees nearby. “I thought forests were just trunks and a nice soft carpet of-shit!” The hood on his jacket snagged on a branch and almost pulled him off his feet. He released it and glared at Sharrow before continuing. “Trunks and a nice soft carpet of needles.”
She ducked under the trunk. “Those were plantations, Miz,” she told him. “This is forest; the real thing.”
“Well, it’s damn messy,” he said, brushing rotten wood out of his jacket hood. “Might as well be back in the fucking Entraxrln.” He looked around. “We’d have had a hard time getting through this lot with the ATs, anyway; might have had to stick to the shore, sats or not.” He slipped on a root hidden in the ground cover of needles and fallen twigs and staggered. He shook his head. “Fucking Solipsists.”
Sharrow smiled.
They camped when the light got too dim for them to see properly; they had two sets of nightsight glasses, but two people would still have to have gone without, and they couldn’t have travelled very quickly. They were anyway tired after only a couple of hours walking; they found a level area next to a stream, hidden from the other side of the fjord by the bank, and decided to stop there.
Sharrow changed the dressing on her cut hand. Dloan worked out how to pitch the thin emergency tent. Zefla looked for wood to make a fire. Miz sat on a stone and started unlacing his boots. His feet were sore; he’d been hobbling for the last half hour.
Feril put wood down by the circle of stones it had set in place, then attempted to help Dloan with the tent until the man shooed it away. It came and squatted near Miz.
“Damn boots,” Miz said, struggling to untie the laces. They seemed to have become tighter after they’d got wet. He’d thought the boots looked great in the store in Quay Beagh; really chunky and rugged and outdoorsy, in hide and with real laces, like something out of an ancient photograph, but now he was starting to wish he’d gone for a more modern pair with memory foam inserts, heater elements and quick release buckles. Of course, he hadn’t chosen his boots thinking he was actually going to be doing much walking in them.
“Don’t suppose you have this problem,” Miz grunted, glancing at the android as he pulled at his laces.
“Not really,” Feril said. “Though I do have pads on my feet that have to be replaced every few years.” It looked at its feet.
“What a fucking Fate-forsaken place,” Miz breathed, looking around the dark enclosure of trees.
Feril looked around. “Oh, I don’t know,” it said. “I think it’s rather beautiful.”
“Yeah,” Miz said, trying to tease one lace out from under another. “Well, maybe you see things differently.”
“Yes,” the android said. “I suppose I do.” It watched Zefla dump a load of wood onto the ground by the fire and then heap pieces into the centre of the stone circle. She used her laser pistol on low power and wide beam to dry and then ignite the twigs; they burned smokily.
“Hey,” Miz said to the android, looking embarrassed. “My fingers are getting cold. Could you give me a hand here?”
Feril said nothing as it came over to kneel before Miz and untie his bootlaces.
They sat round the fire in the black darkness of a deep forest under thick overcast, four hundred kilometres from the nearest sunlight-mirror footprint, street light or headlamp. They chewed on emergency army rations. They had enough for perhaps two more days.
“We’ll catch something tomorrow,” Miz said, chomping on a foodslab, looking round at the others, their faces seemed to move oddly in the flickering orange firelight. He nodded.
“Tomorrow we’ll shoot something big and have a proper roast, real meat.”
“Yuk,” said Zefla.
“We haven’t seen a damn thing so far,” Sharrow told him.
“Yeah,” Miz said, wagging the half-eaten foodslab at her. “But there must be all sorts of big game in these mountains. We’ll find something.”
“Excuse me,” Feril said from the top of the river bank, a couple of metres above them. Its metal and plastic face looked down at them, glinting in the firelight. It had volunteered to keep watch while they ate.
“Yes, Feril?” Sharrow said.