‘I tracked the hunting group. Of course I would come here. I’m a cat. Save for the chickens people imported here, these big mothers are the only birds anybody’s found in this world …’
Oliver looked their way. He had noticed the cat, though hopefully he hadn’t heard her speak. He grinned and called softly, ‘Hey, kitty. So you found the nest? Well, this is a world where the birds chase the cats, so you’d better take care.’
Lobsang picked up Shi-mi. ‘Oh, she will,’ he said. ‘She will.’
Nikos said, ‘I think it’s clear, Dad.’
Oliver listened for a while, peered around in all directions. ‘OK. Quick and careful.’
Nikos got to his feet, loped across the clearing to the nest, and after a final glance around he reached into the nest with both arms and extracted an egg. It was maybe two feet long from end to end, and obviously heavy. He bundled this into netting, slung it over his shoulder, and made his way back to his father.
Oliver helped his son bind up the egg tighter, and smiled at Lobsang and Agnes. ‘This will make one hell of an omelette. But we’re not doing this for the food. You can see that these birds nest on the ground. Every so often we find a nest like this, where the bird has roamed too close to our campsites and hunting grounds for comfort. Gotta keep them away from the kids. So we remove the egg, and with any luck the mother wanders away too. No problem, unless—’
Nikos pushed his father’s head down. ‘Unless the bird catches us,’ the boy whispered.
Now, crouching down as deep as she could, Agnes saw movement in the deeper forest, between the trees: a figure taller than a human walking on two tremendous legs, with a boulder of a body, a strong neck, a powerful beak. Surprisingly small wings were covered with iridescent blue feathers. The bird was a hunter itself, evidently; it was treading astonishingly quietly, round eyes above that cruel beak inspecting the undergrowth, the low branches.
‘So,’ Agnes murmured, quietly enough for just Lobsang and Shi-mi to hear, ‘when the furballs come out to hunt the insects, this comes out to hunt the furballs.’
‘That looks like a gastornis,’ the cat said softly. ‘A predatory flightless bird of the Palaeocene—’
‘Hush,’ Lobsang said. ‘I don’t want to know about it that way. We’ve come to live in this world, remember, not to study it.’
Shi-mi said, ‘And thereby denying the reality.’
That surprised Agnes. ‘Denying what? What reality?’
‘I too have had trouble sleeping, Agnes. As if the day is too short, subtly. And getting shorter.’
Agnes, startled, said, ‘Too short? What could that possibly mean?’
But Shi-mi would say no more.
Now the bird had passed out of sight, evidently unaware as yet of the tampering with its nest. Silently Oliver and Nikos got to their feet, lugging the net with the egg, and started to make their way back out of the forest, gesturing for Agnes and the others to follow.
Lobsang got up. Agnes had no choice but to follow him.
12
IN THE SHADOW of a half-built liquid hydrogen plant, shielded from the intense Miami sun, Stan Berg was playing poker with a few construction workers.
In the year 2056, two years after the arrival of Lobsang and Agnes at New Springfield, Stan was sixteen years old. The purpose of this community, a much transformed Miami West 4, was to construct a space elevator, a ladder to the sky. But the construction of the Linsay beanstalk had been held up for weeks now. There was pretty much nothing to do. And so, at a table full of LETC stalk jacks twice his age or more – some ostentatiously wearing their hard hats even though they hadn’t worked for days – Stan played steadily, folding when necessary, winning consistently.
Rocky Lewis, the same age as Stan and his friend, or rival, from childhood, was standing back with a few others, watching the game for lack of anything better to do. Some of the audience leaned on home-made placards that protested about the latest lay-offs and delays.
And Rocky watched uneasily as the shards of spacecraft-hull ceramic that were being used as chips piled up in front of Stan.
The other players were starting to notice. Rocky had seen it all before. Their expressions were turning from kind of patronizing about the smart kid, to resentful at getting beat out hand after hand, to suspicious about some kind of cheating. The dealer was a young, slim guy in a tipped-back homburg hat who Rocky knew only as Marvin – not a worker here, as far as Rocky knew he was some kind of professional gambler – and he was becoming watchful too. Rocky knew that Stan wasn’t cheating. It was just that he was so damn smart. Stan said he liked games of bluff like poker, in fact, because unlike chess, say, there was no simple, logical way to get you through to victory from a given starting point; subtler qualities of the mind were needed.
But there was nothing subtle about the expression on the face of the guy sitting next to Stan, to his right, as yet again his chips were swept away to land up in front of Stan.
As Marvin cautiously began another hand, Rocky crouched down and plucked his friend’s sleeve. ‘Hey, buddy. Maybe we should get out of here.’
‘What for?’
‘Umm, you know. School stuff.’
‘School’s out today.’
That was true, the teacher had failed to turn up again, but these other characters wouldn’t necessarily know that. Stan was supremely bright but capable of making basic mistakes in situations like this. ‘Come on.’ Rocky stood up. ‘Cash in your chips.’
But the guy to the right reacted to that by grabbing Stan’s arm with a fist like a claw hammer. ‘You’re not going anywhere, you little prick. Not with my dough in your back pocket.’
The other players froze. Rocky was relieved that there were no hands reaching under the table for concealed weapons; these were space industry workers, not movie gangsters. But one or two of the spectators on the fringe of the crowd stepped away from trouble with pops of displaced air, elusive flickers at the edge of Rocky’s vision.
Rocky said, ‘Let him go. Listen, he’s one of you. He’s an apprentice, like me. His parents work for LETC – both of them.’
‘So maybe they taught him to work the cards, huh?’
The dealer, Marvin, held up his hands. ‘Folks, please. We’re just having a friendly game here.’ He eyed Stan. ‘I know he’s no cheat. He’s too smart to cheat. And he’s too smart to need to cheat. Face it, Alexei, he’s just a better player than you. It happens.’
Somehow these bland words, blandly delivered, cooled the situation, Rocky saw. Marvin seemed to have a kind of natural authority, like an adult stepping into a circle of squabbling kids; you calmed down automatically. Rocky had observed that the Arbiters, local amateur peacekeepers, could be like that too.
But still the guy, Alexei, was steaming. ‘He’s a dumb punk kid is what he is.’ He was still holding Stan’s arm, and squeezing harder.
Stan, however smart, was small, dark, slim for his age, and he wouldn’t be strong enough to break away. His teeth clenched as the grip became painful. Rocky held his breath. This could still end badly for Stan. He heard muttering about calling in an Arbiter.
But then somebody shouted out, ‘Hey! They got a kobold! Over by the oh-two plant. Come see …’
The crowd around the table started to break up and make for the fresh morsel of entertainment. Marvin grabbed back his cards. ‘Keep your chips, folks, you can settle up between yourselves when you’re ready.’
Rocky took the chance to drag Stan’s arm out of Alexei’s grip, and pulled his friend to his feet. ‘Now let’s get out of here.’