“What I believe is an inflatable boat has just left the far shore; it is heading this way.”
Dloan reached for the machine gun and stood up. He slipped on a pair of nightsight glasses.
“How far away is it?” Sharrow asked.
“A hundred metres or so out from the far shore,” Feril said.
“Let’s take a look,” Sharrow said.
They trooped down to the trees facing the shore, Dloan leading Zefla and Sharrow leading Miz, who tripped a couple of times on his undone laces. They lay on the ground; with the nightsights zoomed on infrared Sharrow and Dloan could just see the heat signature of the people in the inflatable.
Dloan found a boulder and rested the machine gun on it, its barrel pointing at nearly forty-five degrees.
“Should just about have the range,” he said. “Better get back,” he told the others, “just in case they have something that can home in on this.”
They fell back a little into the trees.
Dloan fired a dozen or so rounds, filling the night with sound and light; Sharrow had to turn the sights away, the fire was so bright. There were no tracers in the shells, but when she looked back she could see the tiny sparks of the bullets in the nightsights for about half their arcing journey over the fjord. As they cooled they disappeared.
“Just over them and to the left,” Feril called out.
Dloan adjusted his aim then fired again. They heard the sound of the gun echoing off mountains and cliffs far away.
A clatter and a snicking sound announced Dloan was changing magazines.
“Still a little to the left,” Feril said.
Dloan fired once more. Sharrow saw no alteration in the furry-looking image in the sight.
“Yes!” Feril said.
Dloan paused, fired again. “Right! To the right!” Feril shouted as Dloan fired. The gun fell silent.
“I believe they are in difficulties,” Feril said.
Sharrow watched the hazy image in the nightsight change; it grew smaller and eventually, after a minute or so, there was just the hint of a few tiny heat sources in the water.
“Their craft has sunk,” Feril announced. “They appear to be swimming back to shore.”
“Good shooting again,” Sharrow told Dloan.
“Hmm,” he said, sounding satisfied.
He came back up from the shore. Sharrow turned to go as Dloan passed them, then saw the android still staring at the far side of the fjord. She checked the glasses but ail they showed were the same few indistinct heat-glows against the grey clutter of the fjord’s cold waters.
She watched the android for a few moments. It didn’t seem to notice her. “Feril?” she said.
It turned to her. “Yes?”
“What is it?” she asked.
Miz made a tutting noise and took Zefla’s hand, to follow her following Dloan back to their camp.
“Oh,” the android said, after the briefest of pauses. It glanced back out to the dark waters. “I was just thinking; given that there appeared to be eight or nine people in the inflatable, and only seven are swimming back to shore, and what could well be one or two bodies are floating where the boat went down…” It turned to face her again. “… I believe I have just been party to a murder; two murders, perhaps.”
She was silent. The android looked back out to the water again, then back at her.
“How do you feel about that?” she asked.
It made a shrug. “I am not sure yet,” it said, sounding puzzled. “I shall have to think about it.”
She inspected its image in the nightsight.
This close up, people in a nightsight glowed vibrant and gaudy and obvious. The android was a vague light-sketch in comparison, its body only fractionally warmer than its surroundings.
“I’m sorry,” she said eventually.
“What for?” it asked her.
“Involving you in all this.”
“I was delighted to be asked,” it reminded her.
“I know,” she said, “but still.”
“Please, don’t be,” it told her. “This is all… extremely interesting for me. I am recording much of what has been happening recently at maximum saturation for later replay, enjoyment and analysis. I get to do that very rarely. It is novel. I am having fun.” It made a human gesture with its hands, lifting them briefly, palms up, from the sides of its body.
“Fun,” she said, smiling slightly.
“In a sense,” Feril said.
She shook her head, looking down at the faint, seeping warmth of the forest floor.
“Shall I make my reconnoitring expedition?” the android asked. “Shall I go to the head of the fjord?”
“Not yet,” she said. She turned to look at the weak, almost transparent signature of their fire’s column of rising smoke, thirty metres away in the forest. “I’d like you to keep watch tonight, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” it said. Feril turned to look back at the fjord again. “You are worried that they still have another boat and may try to repeat the apparent attack we have just thwarted.”
“Exactly,” she smiled. “Spoken like one of the team.” She laughed lightly. “Well, sort of.”
Feril drew itself back a little. “Thank you,” it said. It nodded up the slope. “I shall keep watch from there, where I can see the fjord and the immediate vicinity.”
They walked that way. The android turned and sank down on its haunches at the point it determined gave it the best sight lines. “Ah ha,” it said.
She looked too.
There were two fires burning on the other side of the fjord; two tiny, hard-yellow specks vibrating in the granular darkness. She took the nightsights off and could still just see them from the side of her eyes.
She put the sights back on. “They’ve made more distance than we have,” she said.
“About three kilometres,” Feril said.
“Hmm,” she said. “We still have one heat-seeking missile left. We could give them an unpleasant good-night present.”
“Indeed,” Feril said. “Though the fires could be decoys.”
She watched the distant fires. “How far have they got to walk to the end of the fjord?”
“One hundred and nine kilometres,” Feril said. “There are two small fjords off the main one on their side.”
“Though they probably still have an inflatable.”
“Yes; they could use that to ferry themselves across the mouths of the side-fjords, though it might be vulnerable to attack with the machine gun.”
“Hmm,” she said, and yawned. “Oh well. Speaking personally, it’s time for bed.” She looked down into the hollow where the small tent lay inflated. It was supposedly comfortably two-person and could take three at a pinch. It was fit for four only if everybody was on very friendly terms indeed.
“Oh,” she said. “Would you like a gun while you’re on guard?”
“I think not.” Feril watched her yawn again. “Good-night, Lady Sharrow,” it said. It sounded very formal.
“Good-night,” she said.
Cenuij sat in the burning truck, looking baleful and sighing a lot. The flames and the exploding ammunition didn’t seem to harm him. He was cradling something in his arms wrapped in a shawl. She recognised the shawl; it was one of the family’s birthing shawls. She had been wrapped in that when she’d been a baby, as had her own mother, and hers before her… She wondered where Cenuij had got it, and worried that the baby inside the shawl might be harmed by the flames of the burning truck.
She shouted to Cenuij but he didn’t seem to hear her.
When she tried to move round the burning truck to look into the shawl and see who the baby was, Cenuij moved as well, swivelling and hunching up so that his shoulder hid the infant.
She threw something at him; it bounced off his head and he turned angrily; he threw the shawl and what it held straight at her and she put out her arms to catch it as the shawl unwrapped itself from the flying bundle and fell to the flames. It was the Lazy Gun she caught.
The shawl burned brightly in the wreckage, then lifted and rose flagrantly into the sky like a lasered bird.