“He would get there eventually. Your testicles could be kept alive and producing spermatozoa for a very long time. It is the next best thing to having your entire living body to provide the genetic material. I suspect Baris thought it unlikely he could get away with that. He’d never get you off-planet without your consent. This way he also corners the market.”
“You know an awful lot about what Baris wants.”
Hirald looked at him very directly. “How is your hand?”
Snow looked down at the stump. He unclipped the covering and pulled it off. What he exposed was recognisably a hand, though deformed and almost useless. The covering had been cleverly made to conceal it, to make it look as if the hand was missing.
“It will be no different from its predecessor in about six solstan months. I intended to walk out of one water station without a hand, then into another station with a hand and a new identity.”
“What about your albinism?”
“Skin dye and eye lenses.”
“Of course you cannot take transplants.”
“No… I think you should explain yourself.”
“The people I work for want the same as Baris; your genome.”
“You’ve had opportunity…”
“No, they want the best option; you, willingly. I want you to gate back to Earth with me.”
“Why?”
“You are regenerative. It is the source of your immortality. We know this now. You have known it for more than a thousand years.”
“Still, why?”
“We have managed to keep your secret for the last three hundred years, ever since it was discovered. Ten years ago, a mistake was made and the knowledge was leaked. Now many organisations know about you, and what you represent; whoever can decode your genome has access to immortality, and through that access to wealth and power unprecedented. Baris is one who would like this. He was the first to track you down. There will be others.”
“You work for Earth Central.”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t it be better just to kill me and destroy my body?”
“Earth Central does not suppress knowledge.” Hirald smiled at him. “You should be old enough to understand the futility of this. It wants this knowledge disseminated so that it cannot cause damage, cannot put power into the hands of the wrong people. The good it would do is immense also. The projections are that in ten years a treatment could become available to make anyone regenerative, within limits.”
“Yet prior to this it kept a lid on things,” said Snow, an old hand at spotting discrepancies like this.
“It guarded your privacy. It did not suppress knowledge. Not suppressing knowledge is not equal to seeking it out.”
“Is Earth Central so moral now?” wondered Snow, then could have kicked himself for the stupidity. Of course Earth Central was. Only human beings and other low-grade sentients could become corrupt, and Earth Central was the most powerful AI in the human polity. Hirald, noting his discomfiture, did not answer his question.
“Will you come?” she asked him.
Snow looked to the wall of the tent as if looking out across the rock field.
“This requires thought, not instant decisions. Two days should bring us to my home. I will… consider.”
Draped in chameleon cloth the hover transport was indistinguishable from the surrounding dunes. Inside the transport Jharit shuffled a pack of cards and played a game men like he had played in similar situations for many centuries. His wife, Jharilla, slept. Trock was cleaning an antique revolver he had picked up in an auction at the last water station. The bullets he had acquired with it standing in neat soldierly rows on the table before him. Canard Meck was plugged in, trying to pick up information from the net and the high-speed conversations the runcible AI had with its subminds. The call came as a relief to all of them but her; she resented dropping out of that world of perfect logic and pure clarity of thought back into the sweat-stink of the transport.
“I am Baris,” said the smiling face from the screen.
Coming straight to the point Jharit said, “You have the information?”
“I have,” said Baris, his smile only slightly less, “and I will be coming to join you for the final chase.”
Jharit and Trock exchanged a look.
“As you wish. You are paying.”
“Yes, I am.” The Merchant’s smile was gone now. “Turn on your beacon and I will join you within the hour.”
“How are you getting out here?” asked Canard Meck.
“By AGC of course,” said Baris, turning to look towards her.
“All AGCs are registered. The AI will know where you are.”
Baris flicked his fingers at this, and his face assumed a look of contempt. “No matter. We will continue from your position to… our destination, in the transport.”
“Very well,” said Canard Meck.
Baris waited for something more to be said, and when nothing was, he gave a moue of disappointment. The screen blanked.
The Merchant arrived in a fancy repro Macrojet AGC. He climbed out dressed in sand fatigues and was followed by two women dressed much the same. One of them carried a hunting rifle and ammunition belts. The other carried various unidentifiable packages. Baris struck a pose before them. He was a handsome man. Not one of the four reacted to this foolish display. They knew that anyone who had reached the Merchant’s position was no fool. Jharit and Jharilla looked at him glassy eyed. Trock looked at the rifle. Canard Meck looked briefly at one of the women, took in the imbecilic smile, then back to the Merchant.
“Shall we be on our way then,” she said.
Baris shook his head and still smiling he clicked his fingers and walked to the transport. The two women followed him as obediently as dogs. The four came after: hounds of a different breed.
Out of the rock field reared the first of the stone buttes, carved by wind-blown sand into something resembling a statue of something manlike sunk up to its chest in the ground. In the cracks and divisions of its head, mica and quartz glittered like insectile eyes. Snow led the way to the base of the butte where slabs of the same stone lay tilted in the ground.
“Here,” he said, holding his hand out to a sandwich of slabs. With a grinding, the top slab pivoted to one side to expose a stair dropping a short distance to the floor of a tunnel. “Welcome to my home.”
“You live in a hole in the ground?” said Hirald with a touch of irony.
“Of course not. Follow.”
As they climbed down the slab swung back across above them and wall lights clicked on. Hirald noted that the tunnel led under the butte and had already worked things out by the time they reached the chimney with its rails pinned up the side and the elevator car. They climbed inside the car and sprawled in the seats ringing the inside, looked out the windows as it hauled them up the chimney cut through the centre of the butte.
“This must have taken you some time,” said Hirald.
Snow said, “The shaft was already here. About two hundred years ago I first found it. Others had lived here before me, but in rather primitive conditions. I’ve been improving the place ever since.”
The car arrived at its destination and they walked from it into a complex of moisture-locked rooms at the head of the butte. With a drink in her hand Hirald stood at a polarised panoramic window and looked out across the rock field for a moment, then returned her attention to the room and its contents. In a glass-fronted case along one wall was a display of weapons dating from the twenty-second century and at the centre of this a sword dating from some pre-space age. Hirald had to wonder. She turned from the case as Snow returned to the room, dressed now in loose black trousers and a black open necked shirt. The contrast with his white skin and hair and pink eyes gave him the appearance of someone who might have a taste for blood.