"Well, Yerby's going to put in a package system," Mark said to soothe her. He didn't disagree with Amy, but he didn't see any point in getting worked up about what couldn't be changed.
A woman peered closely at the recorder and began hammering at the keypad to get it to play another song. "Apartment House Heart" continued, but the singer's rich tenor voice shifted upward into a cheeping falsetto.
"Amy dear," Jesilind said, "this is a frontier. You can't expect people to be as delicate as the residents of a settled world like you're used to on Kilbourn."
"Did you look at the downwind side of the Spiker when we took off in the blimp?" Amy said bitterly. "There's a stockyard there. People drive herds to the port and slaughter them as outgoing cargo. They just let the blood and waste drain into the river."
"Yeah, I saw that," Mark agreed unhappily.
"Regrettable no doubt," said Jesilind, "but folk living so close to the edge of raw nature have no surplus for civilized amenities. Why, they can't even afford to pay a medical man properly."
"Hey, lookee there!" bellowed a man standing on the upper deck of the house. "Look east!"
He pointed. The bright lights directly above him threw the harsh shadow of his outstretched arm across the dancers in the courtyard. "There's aircars coming! Zeniths coming back, I'll bet you!"
A good score of the Greenwoods hopped the low courtyard wall and trotted-sometimes staggered; a lot of Bannock whiskey had gone down the hatch-toward the vehicles in which they'd come. Folk hadn't brought guns into a neighbor's compound, but most had come armed when they answered Dagmar's appeal. Those hunting weapons were strapped to the flyers' decks or racked in the cabins of dirigibles.
Apart from that, the crowd didn't appear to be much concerned. People moved to where the house and other structures didn't block their view of the oncoming cars.
Mark hopped down and offered a hand to Amy. Dr. Jesilind had vanished into the house. Perhaps it would have been better to say that except for him the crowd didn't appear to be much concerned.
"Let's find Yerby," Amy said. "I saw him dancing."
The aircars approached a hundred feet in the air. Their multicolored running lights glittered like Christmas ornaments, and a great floodlight in the bow of each vehicle slanted its beam down onto the treetops.
"They're so quiet," Amy murmured as she led Mark through the milling guests.
"I guess they are," he agreed. It hadn't occurred to him that the ducted fans' muted whine was in any way unusual. The racket made by the rented car on Dittersdorf would have been unthinkable on Quelhagen or Earth. Kilbourn, for all the Bannocks' talk of the planet being built-up and civilized, obviously didn't have strict ordinances against noise pollution.
The cars hovered above the compound. Downwash from their powerful fans swirled dust and light objects. Folk moved naturally to the edges of the courtyard and let the vehicles settle.
Yerby was coming out of the house when Mark and Amy met him. He'd put on a green cloth coat with fur lapels. The fabric shimmered and sparkled in the light. Mark didn't recall ever in his life having seen an uglier garment.
"Hey Yerby!" a man called. "What do you want us to do?" Forty others muttered agreement.
"Yerby, the aircars are Quelhagen manufacture," Mark said. He shouted to be heard. He had to push a man away to keep the press of locals from blocking him.
Yerby gestured the crowd aside and put his big arms protectively around the shoulders of his sister and Mark. "Thank you, lad," he said. "I'd have guessed they were Zeniths. Well, anybody's welcome at my house if he knows how to behave. Let's us go talk to them."
The cars were big eight-person enclosed vehicles. There were built on similar chassis, but one of them had utilitarian appointments while the other was a limousine. The latter had panels of inlaid wood and its metalwork was plated with wavy bands of gold and platinum. Metal itself hadn't been of any particular value since space travel brought asteroids within reach, but workmanship like this aircar's had never been cheap.
The plain vehicle's doors popped open first. The first three men to exit wore beige uniforms. They trotted to the limousine to open the doors. Four guards in Quelhagen business dress followed the flunkies. They held fat, two-handed weapons of some sort. Their initial intention was probably to look tough. Mark grinned to see their bravado wilt when they took in the frontiersmen-and women-surrounding them; The guards looked like boats ringed by rocky cliffs.
"'Tain't polite to carry a gun into another fellow's place unasked," Desiree Bannock said, stepping up to the nearest guard. She had a voice that would cut glass. "Where were you raised, anyhow?"
She seized the gun. The man holding it resisted. Desiree kneed him between the legs. "That's the spirit, Desiree!" another woman shouted drunkenly.
Desiree tossed the gun into the vehicle and eyed the other guards. They quickly obeyed the unspoken demand.
A fussy-looking official got out of the front of the limousine while two men and a woman of obvious wealth were handed from the back by the uniformed servants. The official said-to Yerby; when Yerby was present, he was the focus of most attention, "my principals have come to meet with Mr. Yerby Bannock. Please have the goodness to summon him."
"If your principals can't speak for themselves, they came a danged long way for nothing, didn't they?" Yerby said. The official wore a little round-brimmed hat. Yerby tweaked it down over the man's eyes and turned to the wealthy folk. "You lot are from Quelhagen, I hear. Who are you?"
The trio looked nonplussed. One of the guards started forward. A Greenwood put a hand on the guard's shoulder, swung him around, and offered him a jar with six ounces of raw whiskey.
"Madame, gentlemen," Mark said with a crisp nod, "you'll appreciate that Quelhagen caste distinctions are out of place on Greenwood." He smiled. He could hear his father in his mind, forming the words that Mark only had to speak. "Furthermore, you realize that you've intruded uninvited on a man's home and at the very least owe him a prompt explanation."
"I'm Elector Daniels," said the man who appeared to be in his late fifties. "This is Ms. Macey-"
The woman bobbed her head in formal politeness. The Macey family's various branches accounted for up to ten percent of Quelhagen's net planetary worth.
"-and Mr. Holperin." Holperin was a little older than Daniels. He had a nose like a knife blade and steel-hard eyes. "We landed two days ago at Wanker's Doodle and came to here to meet Mr. Bannock when we heard reports of today's events."
"They couldn't have come from the Doodle in no more time than that!" a Greenwood said in amazement. Wanker's Doodle was the community four hundred miles to the northwest of the Spiker. It was the only other port on Greenwood with both a full-sized magnetic mass and an automated ground-control transponder for hands-off landings.
Mark knew that aircars like these could have made the run in an hour and a bit if the drivers pushed, as they surely had. The trio must have brought the vehicles with them. The cost would be enormous, but it bought the Quelhagens a mobility unmatched by anybody else on the planet.
"Well, you met me," Yerby said. He stuck his thumbs under his waistband and stood with his arms akimbo. He wasn't exactly being hostile, but he wanted the outsiders to be very clear of his superior status.
Mark glanced at the crowd around him. He'd only been on Greenwood a few days, but he didn't feel like an outsider. To the local people he was Yerby Bannock's friend, and that was as honorable a status as any on a planet where equality was the universal religion.
These folk from Quelhagen must have thought they'd just arrived in Hell's waiting room, though. The Greenwoods were rough men mixed with a few women who could only told apart by their lack of beards. All of them had been drinking; most were drunk by Quelhagen standards, and a fair number of those closest were armed. The locals were dressed crudely (or outlandishly, which was even worse to the muted taste of Quelhagen aristocrats), and the overhead lighting threw harsh shadows across their faces.