Probably. Though simple compared to the least of living things, the atmosphere is complex enough to be chaotic. The instabilities that allowed so small a nudge to reshape a hurricane's destiny made predictive certainty unattainable. The unsureness extended around the globe and ahead through time. Moreover, on any path it took the cyclone was bound to pass over some works of humankind and machinekind.
In the event, it veered slightly from the desired track, and one of the larger buoyant islands had to ride out the passage of a quadrant.
Everywhere on the broad curve of their domain, Lahui Kuikawa were celebrating for day after festive day. The dream would come true! Even in those indifferent to Mars, even in the remotest of the Keiki Moana, tribal pride flamed up for fireworks to proclaim to the night sky. Wanika Tauni and Fenn had left Mdldlo for a private revel that might last weeks and take them far. They happened to be on Waihona Lanamokupuni when the hurricane struck.
At no time were they in any real danger. The island was unsinkable. Its flotation centers self-stabilizing, flexibly and durably linked, sensors and servos and their computers a webwork throughout, all superstructures integral with the whole, it responded to the forces upon it like a single gigantic organism. The only harm done was to gardens and parks. Decks rolled, but slowly and easily through just a few degrees. The rampant energies did set metal athrob, a deep pulsing that went on up into flesh and bones, while the roar and shriek of wind did fill the air with rage. In their cabin, which directly overlooked the sea, Fenn and Wanika felt themselves engulfed by wildness.
He stood for a long time staring out the viewport. Murk surrounded him, for he had turned off the light and the world outside was blind with foam and spray. Glimpsewise he saw the ocean, gone white, where waves went tremendous, their manes sheeting off into froth. The spectacle took him, he was lost in it, one with it, his thoughts as tumultuous and his innermost being as savage.
Finally he grew aware of Wanika touching his arm.' Peering down into the gloom, he saw her lips move, but he could not make out what she said. He recalled that she was his friend. Reluctantly, he stepped over to the room controls and adjusted them. The ceiling came aglow. Countervibration damped the clamor to a low hammering and skirl.
"Whoof!" he said.
She smiled shakily. "That's better. The noise was hurting my ears."
"Huh? Why didn't you stop it sooner, then?"
She gestured at the viewport, where now he could see only the flung water that sluiced across its exosurface. "You were enjoying it, weren't you? As part of the whole show."
"Well," he said, taken aback, "well, that was, uh, sweet of you, but—What were you trying to tell me?''
"Nothing. I asked if you might not be hungry. It's been a long time since breakfast."
"Hunh!" he grunted. "I'd forgotten all about food." It did not occur to him till afterward to wonder what state she might be in. His glance strayed back to the storm. "I was thinking I could go outside. What a romp."
"No!" Appalled, she seized his arm. "You could be killed! A flying piece of debris, a gust knocking you overboard—"
He grinned, not very humorously. "The risk would be the main attraction."
"Risking your whole future in space?"
He needed a short span to assimilate that. "A point," he agreed. "A good point." He sighed. "All right, I'll stay indoors. You're a wise woman."
She smiled again. "Not really. Only a caring one."
He had no ready response, and they stood in awkward silence until she added, "You see, I would like to keep you while I can."
Half abashed, he got out: "Yes, we've had fun, haven't we? More than fun. You've done a lot for me, Wanika. For the project."
She hung her head. The black locks fell down to hide her face. "Which is going to take you away, Fenn."
"Not necessarily. And not forever."
"We'll see what happens."
Does she have Kinna in mind? he wondered. In death's name, why?
Not that she had ever said anything much about the Martian girl. Rather, she had taken to noticeably ignoring the messages that went oftener and oftener between planets—as if they might be something intimate, or as if it weren't any business of hers whatever they held. An illogical resentment joined the emotions the weather had been evoking in him.
Wanika looked up again, brightening. "But nothing special will happen for months and months yet, will it?" she said. "We'll have all that time before things are ready for you to go."
Fenn turned his eyes back to the hurricane.
"You won't be bored, I promise you." A tiny laugh rippled. "I'll see to that. We've this whole Earth to explore together, aikane."
The darkness in him boiled up. He clenched his fists and muttered a curse.
"What is it?" He heard the alarm in her voice.
"What you said," he replied, still glaring outward. "About things being ready for me to go .back to space. I thought, 'If only He'o were coming along.' I'd been thinking about him, how he'd have sported in those waves—" His throat contracted.
"Yes." He barely heard her. When he looked her way, he saw a glimmer of tears.
The sight calmed him a little, though it was an iron calm in which he realized vaguely that he ought to be gentler with her. Well, he would, later, later. "The murderer's not been caught yet, has he?" Fenn asked quite quietly and quite unnecessarily.
"No."
"That means he probably never will be, unless—And if the police do, somehow, he'll only go to a comfortable institution where they'll try to reform him."
"He'o would have wanted that," Wanika said.
"Would he?" Fenn threw at her.
She had no answer. She too remembered the old sea hunter, the old fighter.
Fenn nodded. "Yes, I do now have some months at leisure. Time for tracking Pedro Dover down."
The storm yelled.
16
HIS SEARCH BROUGHT Fenn back to the Foresters of Vernal.
Most of it he had conducted sitting before a screen, along the multitudinous channels and the world communications system and sounding the depths of its database. He thought of calling Georghios on Luna and requesting full access to police records, but decided not to compromise the chief. That was also wise from his own viewpoint, considering what his intention was. His knowledge of procedures enabled him to find nearly all the information he wanted by himself, and to deduce the rest.
Detectives had established that Pedro Dover left the Moon and got off the ferry at Port Kenya. There he disappeared from sight. Perhaps a member of his Gizaki cult met him and spirited him away; perhaps he simply took a public conveyance to a prearranged rendezvous. Inquiry turned up a likelihood, not a certainty, that he was briefly seen in Cantabria, but if so, that was the end of the spoor. He would not have stayed there, conspicuous in a thinly populated and clannish region. Nor was it plausible that any household would take him in and keep him hidden for any long time. He must have gone elsewhere.
No more did he draw his citizen's credit. With the system on the watch, every such transaction would have instantly pinpointed his location. Was he using a false identity? To set one up was a difficult and precarious venture, and must be done far in advance. Registering an imaginary birth demanded a conspiracy among several of the people who would normally be involved, plus somebody with the skill to devise a genome map and other physical characteristics. Then further entries into the database must be made year by year, about education and health services and whatever else a child ordinarily went through—their absence would draw attention—until the fictitious person reached adulthood and entitlement to his/ her allowance. The police satisfied themselves that the Gizaki lacked the resources and patience for this. In fact, the organization had scarcely been in existence long enough.
Thus Pedro Dover was living on cash. In itself that would attract no particular notice. People quite often made minor payments in ucus, more convenient than entering a credit transfer. Sometimes a payment was large, for the
sake of privacy, usually because the buyer or seller was ashamed. Gizaki members could slip Pedro Dover notes and coins, or they could send the money to a temporary address of which he notified them. However, this could not be very regular or very dependable, nor amount to much. Surely he earned most of his keep, maybe all, as an itinerant odd-jobber. Though not common, such individuals were not extraordinary either, especially in certain of the societies on Earth.
Where, then? The psychological profile taken when he was detained for assault showed he was no linguist. His rant from the arcade had been recorded for him. Lacking fluency, he would be conspicuous in any area that was not Anglophone.
Searchers drew blank in his native Australia. It had been unpromising anyway: a thoroughly modern land of robotic industries, residential communities, recreational parks, and nature reserves. He had always been a misfit there. Probably that was why he fell into dangerous foolishness and eventually departed.
The same applied to New Zealand. Other islands and enclaves were too small. He could get his face changed. Preparations to have that done had doubtless been part of the murder plot. But he would obviously be an outsider. Investigators found only a few such in those places, all innocent.
That left only North America, more or less above the thirty-fifth parallel—the polity of Vernal. It looked hopelessly large and diverse. The police had too much else to do. Having ransacked the easiest possibilities without result, they put an alert in the net and suspended their efforts.
After all, they reasoned, Pedro Dover was presumably unable to do any further harm, and he could presumably not stay lost to them forever. The sensors were countless in locales public and private, everywhere from transport terminals and taxi vehicles to homes and shops whose owners wanted the added security. It would be remarkable if, in the course of a decade or two, none of them got a good enough look at him to register a likely identification and notify the nearest constabulary. A countenance could readily be altered, but not an entire body, build and gait and mannerisms and every other somatic clue.
Besides, his profile strongly suggested he never intended to end his days as an indigent wanderer. It wasn't compatible with his towering self-importance. He had done his deed to fix himself in the minds of his cultmates as a man of action, a man of power. He would plan on lying low until the mounting terrorism he anticipated began to break down the civilization he hated. Then he would emerge to take his rightful place as a leader of the glorious revolution.
This implied that he would be in intermittent contact with fellow Gizaki, if only to keep his name before them. They were under surveillance. An opportunity might come to set a trap.
Not that he greatly mattered—a sick person in need of treatment, a tiny piece of urifinished business. Soon the name of Pedro Dover was well-nigh forgotten, except by Fenn. · ·
Bleak winter sunlight streamed into the room. It glowed on wood floor and paneling, cast shadows from furniture also wooden and handmade, shone off hammered brass and polished ceramic, found a shelf and brought into relief the carven figurine of a moose, emblem of the Thistledew community. Glancing out an old-style window, Fenn saw other houses in the same ancient style and a street dark between the banks of snow that had been cleared from it. Beyond them he glimpsed the frozen lake on which the village fronted and the evergreen wilderness in which it nestled. The window seemed to violate thermodynamics and radiate cold, but the room was comfortable, with an aroma of brewing coffee.
He turned his eyes back to the couple with whom he sat. Man and wife, they were getting along in years but rangy, leathery, marked by lifetimes spent mostly outdoors. Both were simply clad in local fashion; shirt, trousers, belt holding pouch and sheath knife. However, around Rachel's neck hung the badge of the office to which she had been elected, mayor and magistrate of the township. Lars bore no insignia. Like every adult Forester, he had the title of caretaker; but mainly he cultivated a patch of ground, fished, hunted, and occasionally guided a tourist or a sportsman through the woods.
"Well, welcome," he repeated himself in his archaic Anglo dialect. "Good to see you again. It's been way too long." Fenn had called ahead, then come directly after setting his volant down on the parking strip nearby.
"It has," Fenn agreed. "I've been busy."
"We haven't heard from Birger either," Rachel said. "How is he?"
"All right," Fenn answered. Memories washed through him, times he had been here as a boy with his father, a time or two afterward by himself, and at last the—not exactly breach, but the father's unspoken displeasure when the son left Luna, and only a few curt communications since then. "He's married again, did you know?" To a woman who had had her own quota of offspring.
"Good," Rachel said. "We were sorry to learn he'd broken up with your mother." The coffee was ready. Fetching it afforded her a chance to drop the subject. As she set a cup down on the table for Fenn, she gave him a close look and observed, "You've changed quite a lot."
"I've been in new places," he said. "Mostly off the Moon."
She nodded. "I can see that."
"I hope you still like our whiskey," said Lars.
Fenn grinned. A little of the hardness melted inside him. "I'm sure I will."
Lars got a bottle and tumblers, and they all settled down to talk. "Where're you living these days?" he asked.
"The Pacific Basin," Fenn replied. "I'm with the La-hui Kuikawa. Not a sworn-in member, but associated." They could have found that out if they chose to. Plenty of items had registered in the public database in the course of events. Besides, he didn't want to lie to them unless he absolutely must.
"And you've come straight from there to us, in the dead of winter?''
Rachel smiled. "Maybe he's after a change. How long can you stay, Fenn? Nobody else is at the inn; you'll have your pick of quarters. Everybody will be glad of a new face that isn't just an image in a phone screen."
"I'm afraid I'm on business. I'll flit already tomorrow." Fenn decided he could better forward his mission if he showed more warmth. "But it is good to be back. I'd forgotten how good it is."
True. This woodland lacked the scenic grandeur of Yukonia, but it gave the same sense of freedom and life, the same spaciousness, from the Rockies to the Alleghenies, from southern prairie to northern tundra. The Foresters who had scattered their little settlements and isolated steadings throughout it were practically a polity to themselves within the Vernal Republic, keeping to folkways bequeathed them by ancestors whose lifespans had filled centuries. Their stubborn selfhood always pleased him.
Of course, he thought wryly, it was an independence made possible by the outside world, cybercosmic technology, citizen's credit, basic needs met as freely, in effect, as the need for air and sunshine. A bit of extra income from providing services for visitors didn't hurt. Equally of course, the independence was on sufferance. Preserves like this existed for the sake of ecological and climatic balance. Not many humans were supposed to be in one at any given moment, and dwellers were supposed to look after its well-being. If ever they failed, robots and sophotects would replace them.
"I hope I can return later and stay awhile," Fenn continued. How rapturously Kinna would enjoy it. Daydream, daydream.
"If you do at this same season, we'll give you some new experiences," said Lars. "Snowshoeing, ice fishing—and solstice, yes, winter solstice is a big festival for us."
"He knows, I'm sure," Rachel said.
"But he's never done it, like his dad." To Fenn: "And we don't encourage outsiders to come in and record our doings for virtuals."
Fenn nodded. Like the Lahui, this whole society valued its privacy. Leading a tenderfoot around was not the same thing as becoming a show.
"He knows that too," Rachel chided. "Let's not waste attention span on it. What are you after right now?"
Fenn tautened. The prepared words marched forth. "I'm trying to get in touch with a man. I think he may be somewhere in your country."
"Who is he?"
"I don't know what name he's using, but here's a picture." Fenn took a datacard from his pocket and offered it to her. Rising, she went over to a terminal and inserted it. Pedro Dover's image appeared, reproduced from the sequence the Lunar police took when he was arrested. Full-length, it paced back and forth as he had been ordered to do._The projection moved in on his head. At sight of the thin face, hatred rose up into Fenn's mouth. It tasted of blood.
"N-no, I don't recognize him," Rachel said, and Lars added, "Nor I."
"He may have changed his appearance," Fenn told them,
"Grown a beard or something?" Rachel keyboarded to play with the image, different cuts of hair and whiskers, extra weight plumping the features out. "Nada."
"Biosculp is possible," Fenn said. Rachel flicked the set off, removed the card, and peered at him as she returned it. "What do you want him for?"
"Sorry, that's confidential. Let's just say he and I have an urgent matter to discuss."
"Hm." She sat down again, still considering him. "You haven't posted a 'For favor, contact me,' then," said Lars.
"No, he wouldn't have responded," answered Fenn. It would only have warned him. "So he's in hiding?" Fenn shrugged. "Sorry," he repeated. "I did hear from your dad, a spell ago, that you'd quit the police. Are you back with them?"
"No, this is personal."
"What made you think he might be here?" asked Rachel.
"Not precisely here," Fenn said. "Somewhere in the region, a community small and out of the way, where people don't gossip with the outside."
Even in Thistledew they didn't, he thought. Not really. More and more.'the Foresters too were feeling alienated from the Synesis, hostile to its pervasiveness. Birger had once told him, in confidence, while they were still close to one another, that rumors of births exceeding two children per parent were well-founded. A lonely cabin, a secret midwifing, a failure to register the infant, and who would know? Basic schooling hereabouts was private, and few of the schools tied their records into the general database. Certain medical people were similarly inclined. On reaching adulthood, persons like that couldn't draw citizen's credit if they didn't want to reveal themselves, unless perhaps sometimes tricks were played that involved not reporting a death. But money could be shared around or inconspicuously earned. No individual needed a great deal of it when everyone lived simply and mostly off the land, often more so than was quite legal. Neighbors who knew, or who suspected, wouldn't spill anything to the authorities. That would get them ostracized. Foresters didn't want any constables but their own coming in and maybe seeing what else they were up to.
The Fleet of Stars Page 20