“He told me you were coming,” he said. “Asked me to keep an eye on you. Don't know if I can do much in that direction. And you appear capable of looking after yourselves. What do you know about the Great Ghost? Have you been here before?”
“Only round the edges,” said Rosalind, “with Professor Rykermann, as Hon… as Vaemar will tell you.”
“Most of us only know it round the edges,” Marshy said. “Do you know what you're looking for?”
“Life in the center. New life,” said Vaemar. “And anything else worth studying. New ecological relationships, for example. Urrr.” His ears betrayed the equivalent of a human frown of concentration as he spoke.
“You are… abstractly curious?”
“Yes.”
“Umm… I see.” There was a flicker of a new expression in the man's bleak old face. “I was there just after the Liberation. Everything dead. The water still covered with floating carrion. It made me sick and I've seldom been back. But I suppose nature's tidied the place up in its own way now.”
“That's what we want to measure,” said Anne von Lufft, her face and voice full of eagerness. “The extent to which the center is being re-colonized.”
“Can't you do it with satellites?”
“Not in enough detail,” said Hugo Muller. “Some of the life-forms are small. And satellites are expensive. There's no substitute for being on the ground.”
“That's the right answer,” said Marshy. “Also, I suppose, there's not much thesis-fodder to be had from satellite readings.”
“We're only third-years,” said Toby Hill. “They're not big theses.”
“But they might lead to big theses,” said Marshy. “What do you want an old swamp-hermit to do for you?”
“Tell us about Grossgeister,” said Swirl-Stripes.
“That would take eight minutes or eight lifetimes.” He touched a button and a map was thrown up on one wall. “You know its center is an ancient meteor crater, like Circle Bay itself. Or in this case, more than one crater. The bigger islands are mainly remnants of ancient ring-walls. It's big. No one knows it all. You can't even map it by satellite because satellites can't tell all that's land and all that's shallow water, or see through overhanging forest. Peat burns under the surface in places and makes smoke and steam. A lot of the boundaries between land and water can't be defined, anyway. Many of the channels and marshlands and smaller islands change. In the wider waters the currents build up sand bars and tear them down.
“There are stretches like a great river of vegetation, miles wide and a couple of inches deep. It's fed by rivers and by the sea and by underground springs. Part of it's shallow, part of it's fresh, part of it's deep, part of it's salty from the sea. There are wide stretches of open water. Men who have lived in it longer than I have perished, without modern navigation aids or smart boats, only a short way from home, lost in channels and islands that all look exactly like each other. Nobody's ever known everything that lives—or lived—in it.
“Humans have always fossicked round the edge of Grossgeister, but in the three hundred years we've been on this planet, we've never tamed it. We've hunted in its margins and its creeks ever since the first explorations—but from the first day we've had a feeling it was also hunting us. Your kzin Sires”—he told Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes—“never took much interest apart from the military aspects—of course you like to hunt dry-footed.”
“We can conquer water,” said Swirl-Stripes.
“You know that the heart was cooked out of it. The kzinti used the heat-induction ray when a particularly troublesome gang of Wascal Wabbits took refuge there. Then, during the Liberation, a big kzin cruiser was shot down. It came down slowly, and there were survivors who went on fighting for a while. The hulk's still there, as far as I know. I suggest you leave it alone. I take it you've had basic ROTC training and know better than to monkey with any weapons or propulsion systems… I see you have your own weapons.”
“Of course. We know there are many dangerous life-forms. We have had instructions.”
“Never forget it. When the kzin ship went down, the crew abandoned it when they had fired the last of the ready-use ammunition that they could reach at the circling fighters and took to the swamp. They were a big crew, even after their battle losses, but their number was smaller by the time they got to this island. I'm talking about fighting kzinti, well-armed. You have maps, compasses, GPS?”
“Yes, and motion-detectors and autoguards for our camp. And a field autodoc. Telephones, of course.”
“Don't rely on autoguards. And see here—” He showed the skull of a crocodilian on the shelving. “See those teeth? Bigger than yours, young kzinti, and a lot bigger than the rest of you can muster. Doc or no doc, you'll be a long way from help if you strike trouble.”
“We've got telephones and rockets,” said Rosalind.
“If you have problems, don't be backward about using them! I'll come if I pick anything up.”
“Thank you.”
“We all help each other in the Swamp. And the abbot is an old friend of mine. He says to help you, and I owe him… Look there.”
They stared down at a thing like a Persian carpet of lights moving through the water beyond the window, a couple of feet below the surface.
“It's beautiful,” said Anne.
“There are a lot of bioluminescent forms. That's something fairly special to show up in daylight. There are still endless wonderful things in Grossgeister, as well as dangerous ones. Night in the swamp can be something to see. If there are no natural lights I have my own.” He touched a switch and submerged lamps illuminated the water beyond the window. “As you know, the biodiversity of this planet is thought to owe a great deal to the frequency of meteor-strikes. One can watch the life-forms passing down there for hours, and always something new. I'd make a feeding-station there, but I'm afraid the big carnivores would take it over.
“But to return to the danger, which I think is what the good Father wished me to impress upon you: there are about three hundred humans living in the margins of this swamp. People who know it relatively well. Some are second- or third-generation swamp-folk. In the last year at least fifteen have disappeared. And others in previous years. One here, one there. Don't ask me how, or why. Just watch out.”
“Were they wearing locators?” asked Rosalind.
“No. These are swamp-folk, not ROTC. They live in the marshes because there they are left alone. A lot of people don't like government, and if you suggested they carry an implant so government could track them they'd not take kindly to the idea. Even for their own good. We're a contrary bunch who hang on the skirts of the Great Ghost…
“Don't forget,” he went on, “we're relatively close to well-populated areas here. But a lot of this planet is wild. And things can come in from the wild.”
“Then why do you live here?” asked Anne. “There's plenty of drier land available.”
“Very simple. I love it. Like the other swamp-folk, perhaps I'm not too partial to government. And with modern medicine available again I needn't fear damp in my joints.”
Not to mention the retainer you get for keeping an eye on things, thought Vaemar. Including things like me. I think your antipathy to government may be a little selective. Yet he also felt that, at one level, the old human was telling the truth.
“The dangers?”
“My Hero, young as you are, I see you have a few scars and ears already. What is life without danger? Even some of us monkeys know that as a question.”
“Have these disappearances been plotted?” asked Vaemar. He was grinning, the reflex to bare the teeth for battle.