Abraham saw a ragged line of smoke staining the sky ahead. A village cooking pit, judging by the shape and colour: shed certainly had enough practice over the last few days to recognize one. She consulted her bitek processor block, and the visualization of the Zamjan eclipsed the image from the eagles. A vast four-hundred-kilometre river in its own right, the broad tributary was the one which the Quallheim emptied into. Inertial guidance coordinates flicked round. The village was called Oconto, founded three years ago. They had an asset planted there, a man by the name of Quentin Montrose.
Lori,darcy called, I think theres another one, youd better come and have a look.
The visualization withdrew into the bitek processor. Im on my way.she opened her eyes, and looked out through the nearest slit in the side of the rickety cabin wall. All she could see was the grizzled water being lashed by the squall. Warm droplets ran along the inside of the roof, defying gravity before they plopped down on the cots where she and Darcy had spread their sleeping-bags. There was more room now a third of the logs had been fed into the insatiable hopper, but she still had to squirm out through the Buchannans cabin and the galley.
Gail was sitting at the table on one of the special stools that could take her weight. Packets of freeze-dried food were strewn across the greasy wood in front of her. What would you like tonight? she asked as Lori hurried past.
Doesnt matter.
Thats typically thoughtless. How am I supposed to prepare an adequate meal for people who wont help? It would serve all of you right if I was to do nothing but boiled rice. Then youd all moan and complain, Id be given no peace at all.
Lori gave her a grimace-smile and ducked through the hatch out onto the deck. The fat woman disgusted her, not just her size, but her manner. Gail Buchannan surely represented the antithesis of Edenism, everything her culture strove to distance themselves from in human nature.
Rain was pelting down on the little wheel-houses solar-cell roof. Darcy and Len Buchannan were inside, hunched against the drops which came streaking in through the open sides. Lori dashed the four metres round to the door, drenching her loose grey jacket in the process.
Itll be over in a minute, Darcy said. Up ahead, the end of the steel rainclouds was visible as a bright haze band surmounting the river and jungle.
Wheres the boat? she asked, screwing her eyes against the stinging rain.
There. Len raised a hand from the wheel and pointed ahead.
It was one of the big paddle-boats used to take colonists upriver, slicing imperiously through the water towards them. It didnt pitch about like the Coogan , its greater mass kept it level as the wavelets broke against its side and stern. Smoke streamed almost horizontally from its twin stacks.
Dangerous fast, that is, Len said. Specially for these waters. Plenty of foltwine about; catch a bundle of that in the paddle and shell do her bearings a ton of damage. And were heading into the snowlily season now as well, theyre as bad as foltwine when they stick together.
Lori nodded briefly in understanding. Len had pointed out the thin grasslike leaves multiplying along the shallow waters near the shores, fist-sized pods just beginning to rise above the surface. Snowlilies bloomed twice every Lalonde year. They looked beautiful, but they caused havoc with the boats.
In fact Len Buchannan had opened up considerably once the trip started. He still didnt like the idea of Lori and Darcy steering his precious boat, but had grudgingly come to admit they could manage it almost as well as himself. He seemed to enjoy having someone to talk to other than his wife; he and Gail hadnt shared ten words since they cast off from Durringham. His conversation was mostly about river lore and the way Lalonde was developing, he had no interest in the Confederation. Some of the information was useful to her when she took the wheel. He seemed surprised by the way she remembered it all. The only time hed gone sullen on her was when she told him her age, he thought it was some kind of poor-taste joke; she looked about half as old as he did.
The three of them watched the paddle-boat race past. Len turned the wheel a couple of points, giving it a wide passage. Darcy switched his retinal implants up to full resolution and studied the deck. There were about thirty-five people milling about on the foredeck; farmer-types, the men with thick beards, women with sun-ripened faces, all in clothes made from local cloth. They paid very little attention to the Coogan , apparently intent on the river ahead.
Len shook his head, a mystified expression in place. That aint right. The Broadmoor ought to be in a convoy, three or more. Thats the way them paddlers always travel. Captain didnt call us on the radio neither. He tapped the short-range radio block beside the forward-sweep mass-detector. Boats always talk out here, aint so much traffic as you can ignore each other.
And those werent colonists on the deck, Darcy said.
The Coogan pitched up hard as the prow reached the first of the deep furrows of water which the wayward Broadmoor produced in its wake.
Not going downriver, no, Len said.
Refugees? Lori suggested.
Possibly, Darcy said. But if the situation is that bad, why werent there more of them? He replayed the memory of the paddle-boat. It was the third they had encountered in twenty hours; the other two had steamed past in the dark. The attitude of the people on deck bothered him. They just stood there, not talking, not clustered together the way people usually did for companionship. They even seemed immune to the rain.
Are you thinking the same as me?lori asked. She conjured up an image of the reptile people from Latons call, and superimposed them on the deck of the Broadmoorrain running off their green skin without wetting it.
Yes,he said. Its possible. Probable, in fact. Some kind of sequestration is obviously involved. And those people on board werent behaving normally.
If boats are carrying the sequestrated downriver, it would mean that the posse on the Swithland have been circumvented.
I never expected them to be anything other than a token, and a rather pathetic one at that. If this is a xenoc invasion, then obviously they will want to subdue the entire planet. The Juliffe tributaries are the only feasible transport routes. Naturally they would use the riverboats.
I cant believe that anyone with the technology to cross interstellar space would then be reduced to using wooden boats to get about on a planet.
Human settlers do.darcy projected an ironic moue.
Yes, colonists who cant afford anything better, but a military conquest force?
Point taken. But theres an awful lot about this situation we dont understand. For a start, why invade Lalonde?
True. But to return to the immediate, if weve already penetrated the incursion front, do we need to go on?
I dont know. We need information.
We have an asset in the next village. I suggest we stop there and see what he knows.
Good idea. And Solanki will have to be informed about the aberrant river traffic.