Thin smoke from the furnace’s leaky iron stack made her eyes water. She blinked furiously, staring at the village they were approaching, then ahead to the west. She made up her mind, and walked forward.
Gail Buchannan was sitting at the side of the wheelhouse, her scraggly hair tied back, coolie hat casting a shadow over her knitting needles. She had knitted and sewed her way down the whole length of the river from Aberdale.
“Where do you think you’re going, lovie?” the huge woman asked.
“My cabin.”
“Well, you make sure you get back out here in time to help my Lennie with the mooring. I’m not having you slacking off while he has work to do. I’ve never known anyone as lazy as you. My poor husband works like a mechanoid to keep us afloat.”
Marie ignored the obloquy and brushed past her, ducking down into the cabin. She had turned a corner of the cargo hold into a little nest of her own, sleeping on a length of shelving at nights after Len had finished with her. The wood was hard, and she’d repeatedly knocked her head on the frame during the first week until she got used to the confined space; but there was no way she was going to spend the night lying in his embrace.
She stripped off the colourless dungarees she used on deck, and pulled a clean bra and a T-shirt from her bag where they had lain throughout the voyage. Feeling the smooth synthetic fabric snug against her skin brought back memories of Earth and the arcology. Her world, where there was life and a future, where Govcentral gave away didactic courses, and people had proper jobs, and went to clubs, and had a thousand sensevise entertainment channels to choose from, and the vac trains could take you to the other side of the planet in six hours. Black tropical-weave jeans with a leathery look finished the change. It was like wearing civilization. She picked up the shoulder-bag, and went forwards.
Gail Buchannan was hollering for her as she slid the bolt on the toilet door. The toilet itself was just a wooden box (built from mayope so it could take Gail’s weight) with a hole in the top; there was a stack of big vine leaves to wipe with. Marie knelt down and prised the bottom plank off the front of the box. The river gurgled by a metre below. Her two packets were hanging below the decking, tied into place with silicon-fibre fishing-line. She cut the fibre with a pocket fission blade and stuffed the two polythene-wrapped bundles into her shoulder-bag. They were mostly medical nanonic packages, the highest value-for-weight-ratio items the Coogan carried; she’d also included some personal MF players, a couple of processor blocks, small power tools. A hoard that had been steadily built up over the voyage. The shoulder-bag’s seal barely closed around them.
Gail’s voice was reaching hysteria pitch by the time Marie got back to the galley and gave a last look round the wooden cell where she had spent an eternity cooking and cleaning. She took down the big brown clay pot of mixed herbs, and tugged out a thick wad of Lalonde francs. It was only one of the various bundles Gail had secreted around the tramp trader. She stuffed the crisp plastic notes into a rear pocket, then, on impulse, picked up a match before she went out on deck.
The Coogan had already pulled up next to the jetty and Len Buchannan was busy tying one of the cables to a bollard. Gail’s face had turned a thunderous purple below her coolie hat.
She took in Marie’s appearance with one flabbergasted look. “What the hell do you think you’re doing dressed like that, you little strumpet? You’ve got to give Lennie a hand loading the meat. My poor Lennie can’t shift all those heavy carcasses by himself. And where the hell do you think you’re going with that bag? And what have you got in it?”
Marie smiled her lazy smile, the one her father always called intolerably indolent. She struck the match on the cabin wall.
Both of them watched the phosphorus tip splutter into life, the yellow flame biting into the splinter of wood, eating its way along towards her fingers. Gail’s mouth dropped open as realization dawned.
“Goodbye,” she said brightly. “It’s been so nice knowing you.” She dropped the match into the sewing box at Gail’s feet.
Gail screeched in panic as the match disappeared under her scraps of cotton and lace. Bright orange flames licked upwards.
Marie marched off down the jetty. Len was standing by the bollard ahead of her, a length of silicon-fibre rope coiled in his hands.
“You’re leaving,” he said.
Gail was shouting a tirade of obscenities and threats after her. There was a loud splash as the precious sewing box hit the water.
Marie couldn’t manage the blasй expression she wanted. Not in front of him. There was a curious look of dismay on the skinny old man’s face.
“Don’t go,” he said. It was a plea, she’d never heard his voice so whiny before.
“Why? Was there something you didn’t have? Something you forgot to try out?” Her voice came close to breaking.
“I’ll get rid of her,” he said desperately.
“For me?”
“You’re beautiful, Marie.”
“Is that it? All you’ve got to say to me?”
“Yes. I thought . . . I never hurt you. Never once.”
“And you want it to go on? Is that what you want, Len? The two of us sailing up and down the Juliffe for the rest of our days?”
“Please, Marie. I hate her. I want you, not her.”
She stood ten centimetres away from him, smelling the fruit he’d eaten that morning on his breath. “Is that so?”
“I have money. You would live like a princess, I promise.”
“Money is nothing. I would have to be loved. I could give everything of myself to a man who loved me. Do you love me, Len? Do you really love me?”
“I do, Marie. God, I do. Please. Come with me!”
She ran a finger along his chin. Tears were welling up in his eyes.
“Then kill yourself, Len,” she whispered thickly. “For she is all you have. She is all you’ll ever have. For the rest of your life, Len, you’re going to live with the knowledge that I am always beyond you.”
She waited until his tragi-hopeful face crumpled in utter mortification, then laughed. It was so much more satisfactory than kneeing him in the balls.
There was a wagon loaded with silage trundling along the main dirt track, heading west. A fourteen-year-old boy in dungarees was driving it, giving occasional flicks on the big shire-horse’s reins. Marie stuck out her thumb, and he nodded eagerly, overawed eyes goggling at her. She clambered aboard while it was still moving.
“How far to Durringham?” she asked.
“Fifty kilometres. But I’m not going that far, just to Mepal.”
“That’ll do for a start.” She sat back on the hard wooden plank seat, the jolting wheels rocking her gently from side to side. The sun was boiling, the swaying was uncomfortable, the horse stank. She felt wonderful.
The gigantea was over seven thousand years old when Laton and his small band of followers arrived on Lalonde. It was set on a small rise in the land, which pushed its three-hundred-metre-plus length even further above the surrounding jungle. Storms had frayed and broken the tip, resulting in a bulbous knot of snarled twigs with tufts of leaves sticking out at odd angles. Birds had turned this malformed pinnacle into a voluminous eyrie, pecking away at it over the centuries until it was riddled with a warren of holes.
When it rained, water would clog in the gigantea’s thick fuzzy leaves, their weight pushing the downward-sloping boughs even closer towards the fat bole. Then for hours afterwards droplets would sprinkle down, drying the gigantea out from the top, the boughs slowly rising again. Standing on the ground below was like standing under a small, powerful waterfall. The last traces of soil had been washed away from under the boughs several millennia ago. All that remained was a solid undulating tangle of roots, extending outwards for a hundred metres, slimed like seaside rocks at low tide.
Laton’s blackhawk had brought him to Lalonde in 2575. At that time there were less than a hundred people on the planet, a caretaker squad looking after the landing site ca
mp. The ecological assessment team had completed their analysis and left; the Confederation inspection team wasn’t due for another year. He had obtained a classified copy of the company report; the planet was habitable, it would gain the Confederation’s certification. There would be colonists eventually; dirt poor, ignorant, without any advanced technology. Given his own particular designs on the future, it would be a perfect culture to infiltrate.
They had landed in the mountains on Amarisk’s eastern side, twenty humans and seven landcruisers loaded with enough luxuries to make exile bearable, along with more essential stocks: small cybernetic manufacturing systems, and his genetics equipment. He also had the blackhawk’s nine eggs, removed from its ovaries and stored in zero-tau. The blackhawk was sent to oblivion in the fierce blue-white star; and the little convoy started to batter its way through the jungle. It took them two days to reach the tributary river which would one day be called the Quallheim. Three days’ sailing (the landcruisers had amphibious fuselages) brought them to Schuster County, a territory where the soil was deep enough to support the giganteas. Jungle again, and half a day later he found what must surely be the largest gigantea specimen on the continent.
“This will do,” he told his fellowship. “In fact, I think it is rather appropriate.”
The branches were still shedding their weight of water from the earlier rain when Clive Jenson led Quinn Dexter onto the slippery coils of the gigantea’s roots. There was a perpetual twilight under the huge shaggy boughs. Water pattered down, forming runnels that gurgled and sucked their way around the intestinal tangle below his feet.
Quinn resisted the impulse to hunch his shoulders against the big drops splashing on his head. Spores or sap—something organic—had curdled with the water, making it tacky. It was cool in the shade, the coolest he’d ever been on Lalonde.
They neared the colossal bole. The roots began to curve up to the vertical, wooden waves crashing against a wooden cliff. Between the thick cords were dark anfractuous clefts five times his height, tapering away to knife-thin fissures. Clive Jenson stepped into one. Quinn watched him disappear round a curve, then shrugged and followed him in.
After five metres the floor became level and the walls widened out to a couple of metres, the coarse mat of fibre which passed for the gigantea’s bark giving way to smooth bare wood. Carved, he realized. God’s Brother, he’s cut his home into the tree. How much effort has gone into this?
There was a glimmer of light up ahead. He walked round an S-bend, and into a brightly lit room. It was fifteen metres long, ten wide, perfectly ordinary except for the lack of windows. Pegs on one wall held a row of dark green cagoules. Gigantea wood was a pale walnut colour, with a widely spaced grain, making it look as though the walls were built from exceptionally broad planks. There was a desk, like a long bar, running down one side, that had been carved from a single block. A woman stood at the far end of it, watching him impassively.
Quinn broke into a slow grin. She looked about twenty-five, taller than him, with black skin and long chestnut hair, a petite button nose. Her sleeveless amber blouse and white culottes showed off a full figure.
A flicker of distaste crossed her face. “Don’t be disgusting, Dexter.”
“What? I never said a word.”
“You didn’t have to. I’d sooner screw a servitor housechimp.”
“Do I get to watch?”
Her expression intensified. “Stand still, don’t move, or I’ll have Clive dissect you.” She picked a sensor wand off the desk.
Still grinning, Quinn lifted his arms out, and let her run the wand around him. Clive stood to attention a couple of metres away, perfectly still, as if he was a mechanoid construct that had been switched off. Quinn tried not to let it show how much that bothered him.
“So how long have you been here?” he asked.
“Long enough.”
“What do I call you?”
“Camilla.”
“OK, Camilla, that’s cool. So what’s the story here?”
“I’ll let Laton tell you.” Her tongue was pushed into her cheek. “That’s if he doesn’t just decide to incorporate you like Clive here.”
Quinn threw a glance at the stationary man. “One of the colonists from the Schuster homesteads?”
“That’s right.”
“Ah.”
“Your heart rate is high, Dexter. Worried about something?”
“No. Are you?”
She put the wand back on the desk. “You can see Laton now. You’re no danger; two implants and a whole load of attitude.”
He flinched at the mention of implants. There went his last advantage, tiny though it had been. “Got me this far, hasn’t it?”
Camilla started to walk towards the door. “Getting in is the easy part.”
There was a broad spiral staircase leading up through the bole. Quinn caught glimpses of corridors and rooms. A whole level was given over to a large pool-cum-spa. Steam was thick in the air, men and women were lounging about in the water or on various ledges; one was lying flat on a slab being given a massage by a middle-aged woman with an empty expression he was beginning to recognize. He realized what was missing: some people were laughing, but nobody was talking. Servitor housechimps scurried down corridors on mysterious errands; they were about a metre and a half tall, walking with an almost human gait, their golden fur well groomed. When he looked closely he saw they had proper feet rather than the paws of their Earth-jungle ancestors.
God’s Brother, those are Edenist constructs. What the fuck is this?
Camilla took him down a corridor that looked no different to any other. A door opened soundlessly, a thick wooden rectangle with some kind of synthetic muscle as a hinge.
“Lion’s den, Dexter; in you go.”
The door closed as silently as it had opened. Inside was a large circular space with a vaulted ceiling. The furniture was a severe minimalist style: a glass-topped desk with metal legs, a dining table, also glass topped, two settees facing each other; every piece arranged to put a maximum amount of distance between them. One section of the wall was a vast holographic screen with a view of the jungle outside. The camera was well above the treetops, showing an unbroken expanse of leaves; steamy scraps of cloud drifted in meandering patterns. An iron perch, three metres high, stood in the centre of the room. On it was the kestrel, watching him intently. Two people were waiting, a man seated behind the desk and a young girl standing beside the settees.
Laton rose from behind the desk. He was one of the tallest men Quinn had ever seen; well muscled, with cinnamon-coloured skin, looking like a tan rather than natural pigmentation, a handsome, vaguely Asian face with deep-set grey-green eyes and a neat beard, ebony hair tied back in a small pony-tail. He wore a simple green silk robe, belted at the waist. His age was indeterminable, over thirty, less than a hundred. That he was the product of geneering was in no doubt.
This was the presence Quinn had looked for when Clive Jenson had pulled off his chameleon-suit hood. The invincible self-assurance, a man who inspired devotion.
“Quinn Dexter, you’ve caused quite a stir among my colleagues. We have very few visitors, as you can imagine. Do sit down.” Laton gestured to a royal-purple settee where the girl was waiting. “Can we get you anything while you’re here? A decent drink? A proper meal, perhaps? Dear old Aberdale isn’t exactly flowing with milk and honey yet.”
Quinn’s instinct was to refuse, but the offer was too tempting. So bollocks if it made him look grasping and inferior. “A steak, medium rare, with chips and a side salad, no mustard. And a glass of milk. Never thought I’d miss milk.” He gave Laton what he hoped was a phlegmatic smile as the big man sat down on the settee opposite. Out-cooling him was going to be a major problem.
“Certainly, I think we can manage that. We use starscraper food-secretion glands, modified to work from the gigantea’s sap. The taste is quite passable.” Laton raised his voice a degree. “Anname, see to that, would you, please.”
The girl gave a slight, uncertain bow. She must have been about twelve or thirteen, Quinn thought, with thick blonde hair coming down below her shoulders and pale Nordic skin; her lashes were almost invisible. Her light blue eyes put Quinn in mind of Gwyn Lawes in the moments before his death. Anname was one very badly frightened little girl.
“Another member of the missing homestead families?” Quinn guessed.
“Indeed.”
“And you haven’t incorporated her?”
“She’s given me no reason to. The adult males are useful for various labour-intensive tasks, which is why I kept them on; but the young boys I had no requirement for at all, so they were stored for transplant material.”
“And what were your requirements?”
“Ovaries, basically. I didn’t have a sufficient quantity for the next stage of my project. It was a situation which the homestead females were fortunately able to rectify for me. We have enough suspension tanks here to maintain their Fallopian tubes in a fully functional state, thus ensuring they keep dropping their precious little gifts into my palm each month. Anname hasn’t quite matured enough for that yet. And seeing as how organs never really prosper in tanks, we allow her to run around the place until she’s ready. Some of my companions have become quite fond of her. I even confess to finding her moderately tolerable myself.”
Anname flashed him a glance of pure terror before the door opened and let her out.
“There’s a lot of bitek at work here,” Quinn said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were an Edenist.”
Laton frowned. “Oh dear. My name doesn’t register amongst your memories, then?”
“No. Should it?”
“Alas, such is fame. Fleeting at best. Of course, I did achieve my notoriety a considerable number of years before you were born, so I suppose it’s to be expected.”
“What did you do?”
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