Sebasten-Januarias turned to face the* tall man weaving his way through the tables, warning him off with a stare. “I might be, Uncle Cass, if you don’t screw up the deal.”
The tall man laughed without anger—he was three-quarters drunk, Heikki saw—and fetched up against the bar, his hand fumbling for the bell. Sebasten-Januarias turned back to her with an apologetic grimace.
“My friends call me Jan.”
“Good enough,” Heikki said, and stood. “I’ll expect you at—” She hesitated then, remembering local traditions, and compromised between Loop and Precinct custom. “—at eight evening, at the corporate hostel in Lowlands proper. All right?”
“I’ll be there,” Sebasten-Januarias said, and stood with her. Heikki did not look back, unexpectedly pleased with her choice.
She settled herself back in the ‘cat’s cab, glancing at the side and rear mirrors. Nothing moved in the sweltering shadows except the trio at work in the repair shed, bending oblivious over a ho-crawl’s opened fan housing. She engaged the engines and swung the ‘cat slowly back around toward Lowlands’ center.
The ‘cat had a fairly up-to-date communications block mounted in the forward panels. Heikki eyed it for a moment, dividing her attention between its controls and the road ahead, then felt one-handed in her pocket until she had found Alexieva’s card. She inserted that into the machine’s read-slot, and touched keys until the voiceline menu showed faint against the ‘cat’s windscreen. She touched more keys, and was rewarded at last by the three-toned chime of a standard secretarial program. She exchanged codes and a message with it, expecting it to file the information and close down, but to her surprise the machine chimed again.
“Dam’ Heikki,” a flat synthetic voice said abruptly. “Dam’ Alexieva requests the favor of a personal meeting, at map coordinates JP89.332II12N, as soon as possible. If that meets with your approval.”
Heikki reached for the map controls. The coordinates were on the north side of the city, probably an hour’s drive beyond the Limit. She sighed, but triggered the communications console again. “I can reach those coordinates in—” She glanced again at the map display. “—seventy-nine minutes. I would be glad to meet with Dam’ Alexieva at that time.”
There was another, shorter pause, and the secretary answered, “That would be ideal. Dam’ Alexieva will be expecting you then.”
This time, the air filled briefly with static before the console’s overrides shut off the speakers. Heikki adjusted the map so that the route pointer showed on the windscreen, then fingered the communications keyboard until she reached the hostel’s concierge program. Djuro and Nkosi had not yet returned, the urbane artificial voice informed her; she left a brief message explaining where she was going and asking Djuro to check Sebasten-Januarias’ references, and to ask about Alexieva’s reputation, then switched off the machine.
It took slightly less than the projected time to work her way around the city to the road indicated by the map. The map’s ghostly arrow steadied in her windscreen, directing her down a metalled road that ran almost as straight as the arrow itself. This part of Iadara had been settled for almost as long as First Town, she knew, but she had rarely ventured out in this direction when she was younger, keeping either within the Limit, or riding crew somewhere deep into the wayback. It was unfamiliar land, an unfamiliar kind of land, farmland of sorts, but far more diversified than on most other worlds, the fields patched and banded in a dozen different shades of green and yellow. The farm buildings were crammed into what she assumed were the least fertile sections of the property, lowlying, cramped buildings whose walls were covered with gleaming white insulfoam panels. The roofs were bright with solar panels, so that the most distant, houses flamed like stars against the green land.
The guidance arrow flashed sharply against the windscreen, and a string of translucent letters trailed across the plastic beneath it: destination approaching. Obediently, she adjusted the throttle, slowing the ‘cat almost to a walking pace, and looked around warily. She was almost exactly in the center of a cultivated area, one set of buildings just visible in a stand of trees a kilometer or two to the north, another, more distant, sprawling across an expanse of some low-growing vegetable. The arrow swung abruptly to the left. Heikki started to swing the control yoke, and stopped, looking for the road. It took her a moment to realize that the machine really was pointing to the rutted dirt track between the two fields. She grimaced, adjusted the ‘cat’s tracking, and turned cautiously onto the ill-made road. For a few minutes, the towering fronds of neocale hid everything to either side, and then the road turned sharply, to end in a dusty turnaround enclosed by thickly growing hedges. Another fastcat was parked there, next to an ancient treaded cultivator with a digging bar cocked up over its rear cowling like the tail of some enormous insect. Heikki pulled her ‘cat to a stop next to the other, and pulled the canopy release. The roof folded back, whining a little in protest, and she pushed herself up until she was sitting on the back of the driver’s seat, bracing herself against the top of the windscreen.
From that vantage point, she could see into the next field, beyond the hedge that marked its border. Several people were at work there, and a standard-model robosurveyor was trundling busily along an invisible guideline. Heikki raised a hand to wave, unsure if anyone was even looking in her direction, and saw one of the distant figures put a hand to its mouth. A moment later, the nearer of the other two—a wiry shape barely distinguishable as female at this distance—turned and waved back, then beckoned to her companion. They spoke for a moment, and then the woman started toward the turnaround.
“Dam’ Heikki?” she called, as soon as she was within earshot.
“Yes. Dam’ Alexieva?”
“We’ve only got one more baseline to do,” Alexieva shouted. “Would you mind waiting?”
Heikki shook her head, and then, realizing the gesture was probably not readable at a distance, called back, “No, take your time.”
Alexieva lifted a hand in acknowledgement, and turned away. Left to herself, Heikki leaned forward against the windscreen, watching the robot move across the field. At some point in the morning, the sky had clouded over, but the change had been so gradual she had not noticed. Now, however, the wind was picking up, tossing little swirls of dust across the turnaround. To either side, the neocale dipped and rose with the breeze. Heikki frowned slightly, and glanced to her left, toward the southeast. Sure enough, a bank of clouds was rising there, not as heavy as the previous day’s storm, but still impressive. I hadn’t realized it was afternoon already, she thought, and in the same moment realized belatedly that she was hungry. After a moment’s thought, she searched her belt pockets until she found a crumpled ration bar, and ate it without really considering the too-sweet taste. The robot was moving in short arcs now, and she glanced at the sky again, hoping Alexieva would finish before the storm broke.
The first of the storm clouds were almost directly overhead when Alexieva recalled her robot and lifted a hand to wave the others in. She paused at the edge of the field to give some last-minute instruction to her people, then pushed through the hedge and came to stand at the fastcat’s side. Heikki looked down at her, seeing the other woman’s fine dark hair stir in the wind.
Alexieva pushed the loose strands out of her eyes, frowning slightly. “Dam’ Heikki. I’m glad you were able to see me now.”
“No problem,” Heikki answered absently. Alexieva was a small, sun-weathered woman, dressed despite that in trousers and a worn shirt that left her back and wiry arms mostly exposed. There was nothing at all remarkable about her, except her lightless eyes. They were brown, Heikki thought, but darkly intense, and marked at the corners with fine wrinkles: not the eyes of someone who compromised easily.