Where the heck is Schuster County?lori asked.
Darcy queried the bitek processor in his block; a map of the Juliffe’s tributary basin bloomed in his mind. Schuster County glowed a soft amber, a sprawling area, roughly rectangular, clinging to the side of the Quallheim River, one of the hundreds of tributaries. Like Nico said, way upriver. Over a thousand kilometres; it’s an area they’re just opening up for settlement.
It could be some kind of big animal. A kroclion, or even something the ecological analysis crew didn’t find.
Maybe.darcy couldn’t bring himself to believe that. “So what was the rumour about it, Nico? What are people saying?”
“Not much, not many people know. The Governor wanted it kept quiet, he was worried about stirring up trouble with the Tyrathca farmers, there’s a group of them on the other side of the savannah which borders Schuster County. He thought they’d get the blame, so the county sheriff hasn’t made an official report. The homesteads have been listed as abandoned.”
“When did this happen?” Lori asked.
“Couple of weeks back.”
Not much to go on,lori said.
It’s remote enough. The kind of area he’d go to.
I concede that. But what would he want with some hick farmers?
Insufficient data.
Are we going to go and check?
Check what? That the homesteads are empty? We can’t go gallivanting off into the jungle over a couple of families who have broken their settlement contract. Goodness, if you stuck me out there in the middle of nowhere, I’d want to run away.
I still say it’s odd. If they had been ordinary malcontents, the local sheriff would have known about it.
Yes. But even if we did go, it would take us two or three weeks to reach Schuster County. That means the trail would be well over a month old and cold. How good are you at tracking trails like that through a jungle?
We could take Abraham and Catlin out of zero-tau, use them to scout the area.
Darcy weighed up the options. Abraham and Catlin, their eagles, had enhanced senses, but even so sending them off without even a reasonable idea of where their quarry might be was pointless. They could spend half a year covering Schuster County alone. If they had more operatives he might have sanctioned it, but not with just the two of them. Covering Lalonde’s immigrants was a long shot, acting on one piece of dubious information nearly forty years old: that Laton had bought a copy of the original ecological assessment team’s report. Chasing off into the hinterlands was completely out of the question.
No,he said reluctantly. We’ll keep them for when we have a definite scent. But there’s a voidhawk due from Jospool in a month, I’ll ask the captain for a complete survey of Schuster County.
OK, you’re the boss.
He sent the mental image of a grin. They had worked together for too long for rank to be anything other than nominal between them.
“Thanks for mentioning this,” Darcy told Nico Frihagen.
“It was useful?”
“Could be. We’ll certainly show our appreciation.”
“Thank you.” Nico Frihagen smiled thinly and took another gulp of beer.
He is a disgusting oaf,lori said.
“We’d be even more grateful if you let us know of any more disappearances,” Darcy said.
Nico Frihagen cocked his beer tube in his direction. “Do my best.”
Darcy picked up another registration card. The name Marie Skibbow was printed along the top; an attractive teenage girl smiled rebelliously at him from her hologram. Her parents were in for a few years of hell, he decided. Outside the grimy window, thick grey clouds were massing on the western horizon.
The road linking Durringham to the spaceport was a broad strip of pinkish rock chippings slicing straight through the thick jungle. Father Horst Elwes marched towards the capital as best he could with his swelling feet rubbing what felt suspiciously like blisters on both heels. He kept a cautionary eye on the clouds accumulating above the gently waving treetops, hoping the rain would hold off until he made it to the transients’ dormitory.
Thin spires of steam drifted out of the chippings around his feet. The narrow gorge between the trees seemed to act as a lens for the sun, and the heat was awesome. A carpet of bushy grass was besieging the edge of the road. Vegetation on Lalonde certainly was vigorous. Birdsong filled the air, a resonant chittering. That would be the chikrows, he thought, reviewing the didactic memory of local conditions which the Church had given him before he left Earth. About the size of a terran pheasant, with bright scarlet plumage. Eatable, but not recommended, the artificial memory informed him.
There wasn’t much traffic on the road. Battered lorries rumbling to and from the spaceport, carrying wooden crates and ancient-looking composite cargo-pods, some loaded up with homesteading gear. The spaceport crews riding power bikes with broad, deep-tread tyres, tooting their horns as they sped past, the men shouting at the girls. Several horse-drawn carts trundled by. Horst stared with unashamed delight at the big creatures. He’d never visited his arcology’s zoo back on Earth. How strange that the first time he should meet them was on a planet over three hundred light-years from their birthworld. And how could they stand the heat with such thick coats?
There were five hundred members in Group Seven, of which he was included. They had all started off down the road in a tightly packed group following the LDC officer, chattering brightly. Now, after a couple of kilometres, they had become well spread out, and subdued. Horst was close to the rear. His joints were already creaking in protest, and the need for a drink was rising sharply. Yet the air was so moist. Most of the men had shrugged out of their jump suit tops and T-shirts, tying the arms around their waist. So too had several of the women. He noticed that all the locals on power bikes were in shorts and thin shirts; so was the LDC officer leading them, come to that.
He stopped, surprised by the amount of blood pounding away in his cheeks, and gave the seal catch at his neck a full ninety-degree twist. The front of his jump suit split open to reveal his thin powder-blue T-shirt, stained a shade deeper by sweat. The lightweight silk-smooth garment might be ideal for shipboard use, and even in an arcology, but for dealing with raw nature it was ridiculous. Somebody must have got their communication channels fouled up. Surely colonists hadn’t been arriving dressed like this for twenty-five years?
A little girl, about ten or eleven years old, was looking up at him. She had that miniature angel’s face of all young children, with straight shoulder-length white-blonde hair, gathered into two pony-tails by small red cords. He was surprised to see she was wearing sturdy ankle-length hiker boots, along with baggy yellow shorts and a small white cotton top. A wide-brimmed green felt hat was tilted back sharply. Horst found himself smiling down at her automatically.
“Hello, there. Shouldn’t you have got on the bus back at the spaceport?” he asked.
Her face screwed up in indignation. “I’m not a baby!”
“I never said you were. But you could have fooled the development company officer into giving you that lift. I would have done it, if I had the chance.”
Her eyes darted to the white crucifix on his T-shirt sleeve. “But you’re a priest.”
“Father Horst Elwes, your priest, if you are in Group Seven.”
“Yes, I am. But claiming a lift would have been dishonest,” she persisted.
“It would have been sensible. And I’m sure Jesus would understand.”
She grinned at that, which made the day seem even brighter to Horst.