“Me neither,” she agreed.
“You’re the anthropologist. What do you think the survivors will be like if we run into them?”
“Basic, I would expect,” she replied. “Still, it’s only been a few generations. In another century they will be that much more disconnected, and after that even more, until the old days are myths and gods and devils not understood by humans and there will be a total acceptance of a low-tech existence. At this level, though, if they’ve kept together as cohesive groups, they still should have a clear idea of who they are and where they came from. They’re probably living half off the land and half off remaining stocks of food and goods in ruins below. Beyond being mere refugees, but still gathering whatever is needed and clinging to the old ways as much as possible.”
“I wonder,” he responded.
“If you think it’s different, why ask me?”
He stood and walked to the edge of the trees to where he had a clear view of the sky. “Come here, if you can, and look up. Just look. Don’t concentrate, don’t focus, just relax and gaze.”
She was curious enough to come over to him and do as he said. At first she saw nothing but bright stars and planets and the half-illuminated Achilles, and she was just about to give it up as some kind of bad joke and go back and sit down when something came into view. At first it was only slight, and faint, and not really there. She tried focusing on it but it seemed to be almost hiding from her. Still, it was strange enough to persevere, and, in a few minutes of not fighting it or chasing it with her eyes, she managed to see it.
A really thin, wispy series of lines, almost like a grid, far up in the sky. Too faint to really get a handle on, but definitely there.
“I see it!” she exclaimed. “But what am I seeing?”
“I don’t know. It’s been measured on occupied worlds before, and signatures taken, but I had no idea until I made the rounds there that it was something you could see, at least from the ground. I think it’s how they keep watch over things. Some kind of energy beams that create a grid and which can somehow be used to monitor relatively small areas of the planet, or at least the continent. I don’t remember it on the island, so it might well be just here. I don’t think they care much about the rest of the place, only where they can grow their weird giant flowers.”
“You mean they might be able to see us?”
“Possible, but I doubt it. I even doubt if they could tell us from the survivors that they surely know are here. It explains why nobody builds campfires or cooking fires, though. They might give off enough of a heat signature to be picked up. Probably bring out the equivalent of the Titan Fire Department. Can’t have any grass or forest fires ruining their precious plants. But if everything they do is toward growing those things, and so far all we know about them suggests that it is, then that kind of system can also be used to maintain everything environmentally to make them prosper and keep the surrounding local vegetation in check as well. Ever have a garden?”
“No. Like most folks I’m a city person.”
“Well, you often have to fertilize it and water it and spray it for bugs and other threats and do all sorts of things to make sure it grows right. Thunderheads reach many kilometers into the sky, far beyond local weather levels. Right through that, whatever it is. What better way to mix what they want and spray it all over the place than via the storms? Notice that the bugs definitely are fewer. Sure, it’s only trillions, not gazillions, but there’s some effect after the rain.”
“What are you suggesting? That they mix some chemicals in the rain and that’s why we’re itching?”
“Maybe. Maybe they make what they need as it passes through that grid, and they can localize things as well. Think about rust. Just take something that’s mostly iron and add water. Add a little salt and you kill a lot of vegetation. Clearly they didn’t do that, but I wonder what they did do?”
It was not a cheerful thought.
In the light of morning, there didn’t seem to be much out of whack, though, and both for the time quickly forgot the worries.
Socolov still didn’t want to talk about what was eating at her, but she had at least warmed to the rest, particularly Harker, and things seemed to be getting into a normal routine. The discovery that the rain came like that every night at just about the same time, though, made for a threatened mutiny until N’Gana agreed to rotate the guard slots so that, at least two out of three times, everybody could get a straight sleep with only the second watch suffering.
Still, about five days and, by the small pedometer on N’Gana’s ankle about sixty-five kilometers toward their goal, it began to be clear that something was going very wrong with their supplies.
It had been happening gradually enough that they’d been able to dismiss as expected the things that either didn’t work or didn’t hold up, but now, after almost a week on the planet’s surface, the damage was becoming impossible to avoid.
It had started with the increasing reactions they all had to something that caused large-scale rashes and itching over even the covered parts of their bodies. At first it seemed like some kind of allergic reaction, although Father Chicanis insisted that he had known nothing like this in the past. Now, though, it was becoming clear from the fabrics that were slowly but definitely coming apart that something was almost literally eating the best materials modern chemistry could produce, and it was this reaction that was causing the fierce rashes.
The clothing, not to mention the sleeping bags, packs, and more, was almost literally decomposing.
“At this level we’re gonna be naked and without any supplies in two days,” Mogutu commented.
Harker nodded. Even some of the containers were showing signs of dissolving, like salt blocks under running water. You couldn’t see it happening, but it clearly was nonetheless.
“I don’t think it’s in the air,” Harker commented. “I think the damage is being done by that rain. It started a reaction that eventually ran its course at this point. But it’s going to rain again, bet on it, every night just after sunset, and there’s not much shelter we can take against it.”
“Never mind the theorizing,” N’Gana responded. “The real question is, what didn’t get at least a little of the treatment? Our boots have lost their gloss but mine, at least, seem to be holding up.” So saying, he bent down to fix the upper part of the laces, and the laces came apart in his hands as if they were a hundred years old. “Then again,” he muttered, “maybe they’re just a little tougher stuff.”
“The gun works and barrels look fine, but the stocks are having a hard time of it,” Mogutu noted. “My watch still works. Looks fine, in fact. But you can see some early dissolution in the band, same as on the others.”
“My communion set is unharmed,” Father Chicanis noted. “And I have cloths used in some rites that got soaked, yet they don’t seem to be any worse for wear.”
Harker got it. “Real cloth, Father?”
“Yes, cotton and wool, I think.”
“And the communion set. That box is real wood?”
“Why come to think of it, yes it is! Bless my soul! Whatever it is likes all natural things but doesn’t like things made by people.”
“Makes sense,” N’Gana noted. “The watches, gun barrels and the like are metal. So are the bullets, so they’ve come through. This is just great! One week here and we’re facing becoming defenseless prisoners of the elements! What’s worse, we now don’t know if there is anything left underground. This—this stuff has had ninety years to seep down as far as it can get!”