Kekkonen and Roy de Kantzow joined them. “Frosting good to see you, Simon,” The Deacon said
“Nervous?” Beetje asked
De Kantzow shook his head “Old Frippie used to say, 'Yea. though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear because I don't plan letting the frosters know I'm here.'“
“That’s pretty close to what Frippie used to say,” Kekkonen explained, “although his rhyme scanned better.”
Beetje looked around. “Major Aichi said that two of his men were going.”
“Yeah, those are Aichi's buggers over there. Nikoskelainen hurt his frosting arm. so Colonel Hans decided to send them instead.” De Kantzow shook his head. “They'll probably get caught straight off.”
“They're moles, too,” Gordimer explained “Of ourse, being a mole isn't easy. People know the place where they live. It’s like trying to hide in somebody's bedroom-they notice if something isn't right”
Kekkonen laughed. “DeKe and I were moles once upon a time. Amphtiles and Afrikaners aren't real smart, so Colonel Harjalo used to send out fighting patrols to keep us awake. No. 2 platoon found us once. They said they were pouring fuel alcohol down the hole, the miserable, lying scum. It took me thirty seconds to realize what was trickling in my shoes wasn't alcohol.”
Cognizant of Alariesto's paternal glare, Gordimer wandered off to finish up. Beetje whispered, “Is there some problem with Major Aichi's men?”
Kekkonen lowered his voice. “'They're good kids, but they barely know the basics. We all have at least two specialties--I have tracking, dog handling, and medical. DeKe has sniping, demolition, and aerial resupply.”
“Colonel Hans made me frosting requalify in everything,” de Kantzow mourned.
“We all know jungle, and quite a few of us know xeric, which is desert.” Kekkonen shrugged “Aichi's boys have never even seen a jungle. Hope they do okay.”
From the other side of the cubicle, Thys Meiring, another lizard, said, “Hey, grandfather, show Simon your s-mortar.” A ripple of mild laughter accompanied the remark.
“Is that what you plan to carry?” Beetje asked.
“DeKe doesn't think a silenced submachine gun is rugged enough.” Kekkonen patted his own affectionately. “He carries an s-mortar stuffed with fléchette rounds, with a sniper’s rifle in his bergen.”
“I want something that’ll fire dipped in pig shit,” The Deacon explained tersely.
Kekkonen laughed, his soft brown eyes shining. “With an s-mortar, the propellant charge you need to kick fléchettes out at a reasonable velocity is hell on the weapon as well as your arm. Three fléchette rounds is maybe too much of a good thing.”
”With fléchettes, what I hit goes down,” de Kantzow ex- plained. .
“With fléchettes, what you hit usually has sunshine showing through it,” Kekkonen retorted.
De Kantzow slipped away to help a trooper with his bergen, and Beetje murmured without thinking, “I'm glad DeKe decided to come, but all the same, it seems a little horrible that he left his wife like that.” Appalled at what he had just said, he put his hand to his mouth.
Kekkonen took Beetje's sleeve and unobtrusively steered him out into the corridor. “I suppose I should explain before you say something.” He spared a glance back over his shoulder. “Do you
know The Deacon's Wife? She's kind of an idiot. A looker, but really kind of dumb. We warned DeKe about that You can imagine the good it did.”
”Not a great deal,” Beetje said, recalling similar advice.
“Less. DeKe won't say much, of course, but the two of them had been having their fights, and DeKe is pretty self-sufficient; he just ignores people if they try to fight when he's not in the mood. Anyway, Lara-that’s her name--started feeling ignored, which of course she was, so when she began shopping her troubles around and her friends stopped listening, she started sharing them with one of the neighbors. He was about her age and not much smarter, so I suppose one thing led to another.”
”DeKe must have been deeply hurt,” Beetje reflected.
“Not especially,” Kekkonen confided, “but the two of them weren't real discreet, and after everybody started talking, she felt so guilty she treated DeKe like dirt and the neighbor lost his head. He was sure DeKe was going to come around and break him in half, so he bought a gun and barricaded his house until his wife got fed up and threw him out.”
“Oh, dear.” Beetje tried to maintain a straight face.
“I suppose the guy would have felt better if DeKe had gone and winged him or something, but shooting people for frivolous civilian reasons would have hurt Jan Snyman's feelings--DeKe likes Jan a lot more than he lets on; he kind of took Jan under his wing when Jan was just a kid--and besides, the police would have confiscated his rifle. He really loves that rifle.”
“I see.”
“He's happy to be here now, but he's pretty sore about the whole thing and maybe a little embarrassed.” Kekkonen shrugged. “To tell the truth, your coming by to wish us luck means a lot to him. One or two of your scientists seem to think we're going on vacation.”
“Eh?”
Kekkonen stared down the corridor. “If the naturales suspect we're there, how long it takes them to hunt us down will tell the Variag something.”
“Kalle, you shouldn't say things like that!”
The gentleness in Kekkonen's eyes frightened Beetje. “Hey, Simon, everybody dies sometime.”
PROTECTED BEHIND ARMORED GLASS, VERESHCHAGIN AND SEKI watched from the tiny, cramped observation platform overlooking Zuiho's shuttle bay--a tiny extravagance in so large a ship--as the shuttle transporting the reconnaissance teams awaited takeoff. “It is time,” Seki said.
Zuiho's captain agreed. Almost as he finished speaking, taped music played out over the ship's intercom and died away.
“Such mournful music,” Seki exclaimed as the haunting bugle notes ceased.
“It is the Krakow 'Hejnal,' “ Vereshchagin responded. “Kokovtsov asked Captain Yamawaki to play it to commemorate Stanislaus Wojcek, who completed half a mission.”
“Please excuse me?”
“He was shot down by ground fire during the second rebellion,” Vereshchagin explained patiently, “which is half a mission.”
“Yes, I see. The second rebellion.” Seki looked at him oddly. “May Iask you why you rebelled?”
Vereshchagin fixed his eyes on the shuttle below. “I once heard an Iranian story about a running fox. To the man who asked why he was running, the fox said, 'The people of the town are conscripting camels.' 'But you are a fox,' the man said, to which the fox replied, 'There is no justice there, so they would take me if someone said I was a camel.' On Suid-Afrika, the Imperial Security Police and the director of a company called United Steel-Standard saw rebels to be punished, but all I saw were foxes, and the uniform I was wearing shamed me.”
He stared as the hangar doors opened and the shuttle glided forward. “A few months from now, ask me if I see camels or foxes.”
Landing Day [4-wind Rain 13]
DIPPING INTO THE PLANET’S ATMOSPHERE, THE SHUITLE LEVELED out about thirty kilometers above the surface of the main continent. As the clamshell doors opened up in back, twenty four men and twelve equipment bundles spilled out and began falling.
Breathing oxygen from a small sack, de Kantzow pulled his arms and legs in to speed up his descent for the first twenty kilometers or so and watched the planet’s surface gradually rise to meet him through the night-vision lenses in his face shield.
He glanced up to check the position of the equipment bundle he was responsible for, using the transmitter strapped to his wrist to adjust the bundle's tiny paravanes. De Kantzow had to land the bundle close enough to eliminate the discomfort of searching potentially hostile countryside for a hundred kilos of missing toys-but not too close. From de Kantzow's point of view, the only thing worse than landing a bundle on his head would be living through the experie
nce and having the rest of the battalion find out.
He patted the hard plastic case strapped to his chest. The dog inside whimpered. “It’s okay, Dolly,” he murmured in a soft voice he rarely used on people. Suspended in her harness inside the padded case, the dog barked appreciatively.
At four-tenths of a kilometer, de Kantzow popped his parachute and the chute on the bundle. Although Senior Quartermaster Sergeant Vulko Redzup had personally looked over the photos with a microscope and hadn't spotted so much as a log buried in the thin vegetation, de Kantzow methodically began examining the field below for obstructions.
Two minutes later. he landed uneventfully on reasonably solid ground, took his roll, and bounced to his feet, rubbing the soreness out of his muscles. He took a deep breath, mercifully fil
tered by the mask he was wearing, and rolled his chute. A few seconds later, he began walking downwind. As the heat of the day radiated from the baked soil underfoot, the circuitry in de Kantzow's battledress uniform began cooling him, reducing his need for water. Kalle Kekkonen was sorting through the equipment bundle when he arrived.
“How's Dolly?” Kekkonen demanded.
De Kantzow patted the case gently. “How's the frosting projector look?”
“Looks okay to me,” Kekkonen replied, examining the item.
De Kantzow nodded. The geopositioning device on his belt read a signal from Jankowskie's ship overhead, and he used it to check their position. He said in a mildly surprised voice, “You
know, we're actually where we're frosting supposed to be. The frosting road is a kilometer east of here.”
Kekkonen grinned.
They redistributed the equipment, stuffing their chutes inside the equipment bundle. Pulling tiny bicycles out of their bergens, they snapped the wheels in place, and with Kekkonen precariously balancing the equipment bundle behind him, they rode away, the faint hum of the bicycles' tiny alcohol-fueled engines almost inaudible in the darkness.
The little bicycles were made from the same lightweight composite materials that formed a Cadillac's armor and weighed less than a kilogram. Helped along by the motor, in an evening, a skilled rider like de Kantzow could cover thirty kilometers cross-country without undue effort, an important consideration in extended operations. With freeze-dried rations and the fuel alcohol in their bergens, de Kantzow and Kekkonen were as mobile and self-sufficient as infantrymen could be.
Stopping at a pond, they weighted the bundle with stones and watched it sink. “Ready?” de Kantzow asked.
Kekkonen shook his head and pointed to some small creatures splashing around in the shallows. De Kantzow uttered a thoroughly blasphemous oath and began patting down his pockets. “You bring a dip net?”
Kekkonen grinned. Removing his gloves, he waded knee-deep into the water and gently cupped his hand under one of the small swimmers. He quickly brought up his free hand to keep the animal from escaping. “It’s all in the wrist.”
The Deacon pronounced another thoroughly blasphemous oath as he produced a bag for Kekkonen's find. They carefully obscured their footprints and left.
Eleven minutes later, they reached the road. Cautiously watching for traffic, they set up a projector and screen to broadcast Dr. Seki's videotape.
“Okay, the delay is set. The thing will start broadcasting in twenty minutes,” Kekkonen said cheerfully in a whisper.
“If the first frosting truck doesn't knock it over.”
Kekkonen kicked at the road surface. “Funny kind of road. It almost feels like porcelain.”
“Use your frosting knife to pry a piece loose and we'll see what it looks like in the morning.”
“Hey, DeKe!” Kekkonen pointed to a thin rail, seventeen or eighteen centimeters square, that snaked along parallel to the road and almost unnoticeable in the darkness about three and a half meters above the ground. Round supports spaced every twenty meters or so held it aloft.
De Kantzow rubbed his chin. “What do you frosting make of it?”
“I'll bet it’s a power line. Those little things on top of the supports must be insulators. Think we ought to get a sample of that, too?”
Filthy DeKe stared at him in disgust. “You ever try cutting into a frosting power line someplace else?”
“No, that’s a good way to get fried,” Kekkonen said artlessly, then laughed, realizing what he had said.
De Kantzow pointed one long finger at him. “You frosting get yourself killed, not only does Colonel Hans piss on me from a great height, but I also got to lug your anemic carcass around.”
He stared up at the putative power line. 'The frosting eggheads can think. on it That’s what we frosting pay them for.”
Inside her case next to his chest, Dolly whimpered. De Kantzow opened it and reached inside to pat her. “It’s okay, girl. The hard part’s over. Now, we'll go find some place to eat and go potty.”
Kekkonen grinned. “How come you don't talk to me as nice as you talk to our dog?”
“You frosting aren't as good at what you do.”
TO THE SOUTHWEST NEAR THE DELTA, DENYS GORDIMER AND BLAAR SCHUUR were busy putting the finishing touches on a hide site on the crest of a high, barren ridge line. Their hole, wedged into the thin topsoil and framed with plastic tubing, was a little over two meters long and eighty centimeters wide. The “village” or “town” or “estate” they were observing was about two kilometers distant, clearly visible through the high-powered, wideangle telephoto lens peeping out of the front
“I'll set out the sensors so we don't get any unexpected guests,” Gordimer offered.
Preoccupied with sculpting the surface of the hide to make it indistinguishable from the suuounding landscape, Schuur merely nodded. “See if you can find a spring.”
Unlike the “lizards” like de Kantzow and Kekkonen, “moles” were expected to remain stationary, observing one location for weeks at a time. Suid-Afrika's Karoo, where Gordimer and Schuur had spent considerable time, was mostly dry, and as they both knew, a spring nearby would obviate the need to choose between shaving in the tea or making tea from shaving water. Even among recon troopers, not everyone was cut out to be a mole. The strain of remaining motionless in a coffin-sized hide in hostile country for a day--or days--at a time was hard on many people.
“I still think I'd make a better lizard,” Schuur confided.
His partner grinned. “As Colonel Hans likes to say, 'Thousands at his bidding speed. And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest: They also serve, who only stand and wait.' “
Schuur flipped a pebble at him. “University dropout. Go find water.”
TWO HOURS BEFORE SUNRISE, SECTION SERGEANT MARKUS ALARIESTO SKIDDED to a stop and looked at his partner, Superior Private Chris Heunis. '“This spot looks good. We got enough samples?”
Heunis dismounted and used his submachine gun to flip over a stone. He nudged a small invertebrate with an indeterminate number of legs into a plastic vial, which he sealed securely. “We got dirt, all kinds of plant matter and creepy crawlies, and a few broken artifacts. I make our haul about three kilos.”
“That’s plenty.” Alariesto reached into the side pocket on his bicycle and pulled out a small square of plastic. Unfolding it into a transparent balloon, he booked it to a plastic cylinder of pressurized helium and inflated it rapidly.
“Three point one seven kilos,” Heunis said crisply, packaging his bundle. “I'll set the transmitter to start signaling when it gets three kilometers up.”
“Hope there isn't too much of a breeze up there.” Alariesto looked up. “Coconut won't like having to chase it down.”
As the planet’s inhabitants measured time, it was the fourth of nine days of “wind,” in the thirteenth year of “Rain.”
In Orbit, HIMS Zuiho [5-wind Rain 13]
HANS COLDEWE JOINED VERESHCHAGIN ON ZUHIO'S BRIDGE TO study the face of the planet below. “All twelve teams have ported in, Anton. So far no serious problems. We set up two of the t
hree projectors. The third one seems to have landed hard, and I told Salchow to abandon it. Most of the active teams have collected samples, and I'm ready to send Kokovtsov to pick them up. That should be enough to keep the scientists happy for a day or two.”
“And the relay node?”
Coldewe nodded. “It’s up and running, and Esko thinks that our transmissions are secure. The first pictures came through about half an hour ago.”
Vereshchagin turned his head. “I had forgotten just how hard it is, to send them off, and wait.”
L-Day plus 5 [9-wind Rain 13]
IN THE VALLEY OF THE GREAT RIVER, FlELDS FOR A FOOD CROP NICKNAMED THE “WATER POTATO” fitted one into another in a mosaic of shapes and colors. While seedlings in some fields barely pricked their way through the water’s surface, adjacent fields shone an iridescent bluish green, the plants springing from the water in regimented lines, each a precise distance from the next. From above, the bold, brown lines of the ditches looked like scrawled handwriting as they carried silty, chocolate-brown wa ter released from the dams upriver. Thatched stone shelters for tools dotted interstices where the dikes joined.
Schuur elbowed Gordimer. “Siesta time's almost over. Get the camera ready.”
From their hide on the mountain, the two had noticed patterns in the activities of the inhabitants of the village in the great valley below. Rolling on his stomach, Gordimer rubbed his eyes.
“If they do the upland fields again, see if you can get a clear shot of the harrow before it starts kicking up dust,” Schuur urged. Although the vehicle was awkwardly put together by Earth standards, with the engine mounted directly under the steering column and the driver perched on top, Schuur, farmborn, knew harrowing when he saw it.
Gordimer obediently rested the video camera on his shoulder and adjusted the telephoto lens. “Why do they have two ponds?”
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