‘It guarded your privacy. It did not suppress knowledge. Not suppressing knowledge is not equal to seeking it out.’
‘Is Earth Central so moral now?’ wondered Snow, then could have kicked himself for the stupidity. Of course Earth Central was. Only human beings and other low-grade sentients could become corrupt, and Earth Central was the most powerful AI in the human polity. Hirald, noting his discomfiture, did not answer his question.
‘Will you come?’ she asked him.
Snow looked to the wall of the tent as if looking out across the rock field.
‘This requires thought, not instant decisions. Two days should bring us to my home. I will
. . consider.’
Draped in chameleon cloth the hover transport was indistinguishable from the surrounding dunes. Inside the transport Jharit shuffled a pack of cards and played a game men like him had played in similar situations for many centuries. His wife, Jharilla, slept. Trock was cleaning an antique revolver he had picked up in an auction at the last water station. The bullets he had acquired with it stood in neat soldierly rows on the table before him. Canard Meek was plugged in, trying to pick up information from the net and the high-speed conversations the runcible AI had with its subminds. The call came as a relief to all of them but her; she resented dropping out of that world of perfect logic and pure clarity of thought back into the sweat-stink of the transport.
‘I am Baris,’ said the smiling face from the screen.
Coming straight to the point Jharit said, ‘You have the information?’
‘I have,’ said Baris, his smile only slightly less, ‘and I will be coming to join you for the final chase.’
Jharit and Trock exchanged a look.
‘As you wish. You are paying.’
‘Yes, I am.’ The Merchant’s smile was gone now. ‘Turn on your beacon and I will join you within the hour.’
‘How are you getting out here?’ asked Canard Meek.
‘By AGC of course,’ said Baris, turning to look towards her.
‘All AGCs are registered. The AI will know where you are.’
Baris flicked his fingers at this and his face assumed a look of contempt.
‘No matter. We will continue from your position to. . our destination, in the transport.’
‘Very well,’ said Canard Meek.
Baris waited for something more to be said, and when nothing was he gave a moue of disappointment. The screen blanked.
The Merchant arrived in a fancy repro Macrojet AGC. He climbed out dressed in sand fatigues and was followed by two women dressed much the same. One of them carried a hunting rifle and ammunition belts. The other carried various unidentifiable packages. Baris struck a pose before them. He was a handsome man. Not one of the four reacted to this foolish display. They knew that anyone who had reached the Merchant’s position was no fool. Jharit and Jharilla looked at him glassy eyed. Trock looked at the rifle. Canard Meek looked briefly at one of the women, took in the imbecilic smile, then back to the Merchant.
‘Shall we be on our way then?’ she said.
Baris shook his head and still smiling he clicked his fingers and walked to the transport.
The two women followed him as obediently as dogs. The four came after: hounds of a different breed.
Out of the rock field reared the first of the stone buttes, carved by wind-blown sand to resemble a statue of something manlike sunk up to its chest in the ground. In the cracks and divisions of its head, mica and quartz glittered like insectile eyes. Snow led the way to the base of the butte where slabs of the same stone lay tilted in the ground.
‘Here,’ he said, holding his hand out to a sandwich of slabs. With a grinding, the top slab pivoted to one side to expose a stair dropping a short distance to the floor of a tunnel. ‘Welcome to my home.’
‘You live in a hole in the ground?’ said Hirald with a touch of irony.
‘Come and find out.’
As they climbed down the slab swung back across above them and wall lights clicked on.
Hirald noted that the tunnel led under the butte and had already worked things out by the time they reached the chimney with its rails pinned up the side and the elevator car. They climbed inside the car and sprawled in the seats ringing the inside, looked out of the windows as it hauled them up the chimney cut through the centre of the butte.
‘This must have taken you some time,’ said Hirald.
Snow said, ‘The shaft was already here. About two hundred years ago I first found it.
Others had lived here before me, but in rather primitive conditions. I’ve been improving the place ever since.’
The car arrived at its destination and they walked from it into a complex of moisture-locked rooms at the head of the butte. With a drink in her hand Hirald stood at a polarized panoramic window and looked out across the rock field for a moment, then returned her attention to the room and its contents. In a glass-fronted case along one wall was a display of weapons dating from the twenty-second century and at the centre of this a sword dating from some prespace age. Hirald had to wonder. She turned from the case as Snow returned to the room, dressed now in loose black trousers and a black open-necked shirt. The contrast with his white skin and hair and pink eyes gave him the appearance of someone who might have a taste for blood.
‘There’s some clothing there for you to use if you like, and the shower. No problem with it cycling. There’s plenty of water here,’ he told her. Hirald nodded, placed her drink down on a glass-topped table, and headed back into the rooms Snow had come from. Snow watched her go.
She would shower and change and be little fresher than she already was. He had noted with some puzzlement how she never seemed to smell bad, never seemed dirty.
‘Whose clothing is this?’ Hirald asked from the room beyond.
‘My last wife’s,’ said Snow.
Hirald came to the door with clothing folded over one arm. She looked at him questioningly.
‘She killed herself about a century ago,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘Walked out into the desert and burnt a hole through her head. I found her before the crab-birds and sand sharks.’
‘Why?’
‘She grew old and I did not. She hated it.’
Hirald had no comment to make on this. She went to take her shower, and shortly returned wearing a skin-tight body suit of translucent blue material, which she did not expect to be wearing for long once Snow saw her in it. Snow was occupied though; sat in a swivel chair looking at a screen, he was back in his dust robes, his terrapin mask hanging open. She walked up behind him to see what he was looking at. She saw the hover transport on the sand and the two women pulling a sheet over it. The Merchant Baris she recognized, as she recognized the four hired killers.
‘It would seem Baris has found me,’ said Snow, his tone cold and flat.
‘What defences does this place have?’
‘None, I never felt the need for them.’
‘Are you sure they are coming here?’
‘It seems strange that he has chosen this particular rock field on the whole planet. I’ll have to go and settle this.’