"If you stink up our den with your bitter leaves again," Magdalena said softly, without looking up from her comm, "I will suffocate you while you sleep and draw out your intestines for my cubs to tease with their claws."
The pilot looked aggrieved. "I've my religious rights, Mags! You can't just…"
Anderssen made a face at Parker and pointed towards the balcony. "Worship your smelly god later, outside. I've news – our groundside contact showed up."
"At the packleader's den?" Maggie's ears rose slowly. "Or afterwards?"
"Here's what I know," Gretchen said, crossing her legs. "The Honorable Company stringer here is the Imperial Legate's wife, Greta Petrel. She's tight with the attachй in charge of antiquities and neither of them can stand the Tetzcocoan expedition leader. So…when attachй Soumake hears about something interesting, Petrel drops a note to the head office via diplomatic channel from the Legation. Nice and secure. She'll get a finder's fee from the Company banked straight to an AnГЎhuac account."
Anderssen shook her head slowly. "She has a nice house. An expensive house. Entertaining so lavishly must cost a fortune… Like us, she needs the quills tomake ends meet. Her ends are just…more costly than ours. She must have arranged our 'chance encounter' at the Legation so she could scope me up close. Tonight we had cakes and tea and she told me where the 'device' is. Maggie, do you have a local geodatabase up?"
The Hesht flashed two rows of needlelike teeth. "Of course!"
"In the city of Takshila, there is a ruin called the House of Reeds."
Magdalena hunched over her screen for a moment. "Rrrrr…not a ruin, hunt-sister. A living temple or monastery – there is a report here, from a Hussite missionary named Lynch who passed through the city several years ago. He says:
The House of Reeds is the most ancient structure in Takshila. Some say it is the most ancient structure still standing on all Jagan. From a distance, the hill is rumpled and gray, seemingly filled only with ruins. There are few windows or doors to be seen, for the denizens of the benighted place spend their lives in heathen practices which would not stand the light of day. A reputable local guide informs me they are called the mandire which in the local dialect (more convoluted and difficult, I admit, than the plain-spoken Parusian) means 'those who are relentless.' Their charge is the protection and contemplation of an artifact of unknown provenance known as the kalpataru – the heavenly tree giving that which you desire.
Gretchen raised an eyebrow, looked to Parker, who was still sulking, and then back to Magdalena. "A heavenly tree? Is there a description? Did this preacher actually see the artifact?"
The Hesht shook her head, long mane rustling. "There are no other entries. This is not a local datasource."
"Typical." Parker made a snorting sound. "Probably a trash disposal. Bet he heard about it while he was in bed with some -"
Gretchen shushed the pilot and handed Magdalena the datapak. "Here's everything the Company has on the House, the mandire and the kalpataru. Load it into all of our comps. I've train tickets, too, so tomorrow – Parker, listen to me – we need to find the train station and see how much baggage we can take with us."
The pilot nodded, though he didn't seem pleased.
"Maggie – is there any kind of local datanet we can query for more information about these priests?"
The Hesht shook her head mournfully. "I fear not, hunt-sister. This entire kaaasha-shaan suffered a catastrophic failure – one involving the profligate use of atomic weapons – six or seven hundred years ago. There are notes in what passes for an Imperial historical archive indicating a sophisticated world-net existed before the last collapse. But now? The natives just reinvented rotary-wheel counting-cards."
"Are you sure?" Anderssen unfolded from her mat and paced to the window. Outside, the storm continued to belch rain into the streets, hiding everything behind a wall of fog and mist. "There are relay towers on some of the higher buildings…"
"A voice network." Maggie tapped her earbug. "The Imperial Development Board for Barbarous Planets is financing a city-level network for personal use. Very old technology, cheap, reliable and easy to deploy – every kit and caboodle has one." The Hesht's tongue flashed in amusement. "Once all the relays are built, a world-net will creep up out of the grass…but there's nothing now."
Parker was frowning, which drew an inquiring eyebrow from Gretchen. "Didn't they have a communications network before the Empire showed up?"
"They had a post office," Maggie said, flat black nose wrinkling in disdain, "before you monkeys arrived. Paper letters delivered twice a day to each den in the city, once a day out in the country."
The pilot's disbelief was plain. "Not even a telephone? That's stupid. You can make a telephone with two cans and some string!"
"There are telephones," the Hesht snapped, "but they're restricted to central offices in each town or city – no private lines – and you have to stand in line, breathing everyone's -"
"Not string…shielded copper wire or optical thread," Gretchen interrupted thoughtfully. "Even a voice-only residential network would require thousands of kilometers of cable. Millions for the whole planet…"
The Hesht flicked her ears at Parker and sniffed loudly. "My hunt-sister pays attention."
"Sure…sure…I remember." Parker frowned at the dirty carpet as ifit had begun to chew on his boot. "They don't have any ready sources of iron or copper or tin – all used up thousands of years ago. I get that – but if that's the case – then anything made of metal should be pretty costly, right?"
Anderssen nodded. "So?"
"So, why was I able to buy these for next to nothing down in the souk?" Parker knelt, rolling open the dusty carpet with a deft movement. There was a rattling clank and four gleaming metallic shapes were revealed under the cloth. Gretchen hissed in alarm, and then her eyebrows drew together in concentration. Each weapon was held in place by a strap sewn to the carpet. Rows of pockets between each rifle held ammunition magazines.
"Automatic rifles? Imperial issue? You bought these in a public market?"
Parker nodded, catching her eye with a worried glance.
"I went out this afternoon," the pilot said, running a hand over the nearest rifle. "Looking to catch the lay of the land, find some smokes, get Maggie the latest malinche – you know, the usual. Didn't scare up anything on the main streets, but then I found the edge of the market district and decided to see what was for sale in the back alleys."
Parker spread his hands, indicating the guns. "Off the boulevards, things are a little different than you'd expect. Hundreds of dark little streets lined with shops. Arcades three and four stories high filled with music and smoke and little bakeries. Cafйs. A farmers market a kilometer long and two wide. And anything you might want to buy. These I found in a street of – it's hard to describe – but travel supplies, I guess: gangs of bearers to carry your bags, luggage, tents, these horned riding lizards, everything you'd need for a journey. And guns – lots of guns."
"How much did these things cost?" Gretchen's lips thinned to a sharp line. She glared at the pilot. She didn't care much for guns, not on the job. Any girl growing up in the high timber on New Aberdeen learned to shoot when she learned to walk, but that didn't mean she liked them. Having weaponry around meant there was an easy way to solve disputes – and Anderssen had teased enough bones out of the ground without putting them there too.
"Fifty quills the lot." Parker didn't smile. "These are military surplus submachine guns – they've makers' stamps from some factory on Kiruna. They're a knockoff of an old KV-45B rifle used during the last war. Super reliable. Takes a standard Imperial 8mm round. Won't jam up or rust in this drippy weather…"