Conquistador

by S. M. Stirling

  Now, this is more like being on an op, Tom thought. The No Biscuit had made its rendezvous with the yacht neatly enough. One to pilot, one to come aboard the Sea-Witch and impersonate Adrienne… complicated!

  The Sea-Witch pitched slightly as it lay with its nose into the wind blowing from the shore; the sunset was fading sternward, a smudge of red along a horizon fading from green to deep night blue. He could see the outline of the San Pedro hills to the southwest and the mountains behind Malibu—the place where Malibu was FirstSide—to the north. There was enough light from the stars, a frosted multitude that faded only around the one-quarter moon—more stars than he was used to seeing FirstSide except in the most remote desert wilderness.

  The No Biscuit floated half a hundred yards away, and the inflatable boat shuttled between them. Adrienne’s cousin Irene came over the rail with a grin that was more than a little like hers, ready to take her place in the masquerade.

  “This is like the story about the wolf, the sheep and the cabbage,” the younger woman said. “Good luck, Cuz.”

  “Enjoy the islands, Cuz,” Adrienne replied. “Try to act like me.”

  “I don’t know if I’m up to that, but I’ll do my best—it ought to be fun trying!”

  Their gear went over the side in a net, hung from a cable on the long boom; crewmen held the rubber boat close to the yacht with boathooks. Tom followed, pulling his night-sight goggles down; the rope was harsh against his palms as they went over the side. A low, muted throb came from the schooner’s diesel, enough to cover the muted hum of the outboard; Tom took charge of that, since he’d had a fair bit of boat training, and the vibration surged up his hand and forearm as he opened the throttle wider and twisted the tiller to bring the inflatable around and away, settling on an eastward course toward the black outline of the land. The Sea-Witch turned westward as soon as they’d cast free, her bow coming about to the northwest and her sails rising with a rattle of winches and a flapping of sheets that turned taut as they caught the wind. The schooner heeled over and began to pick up speed; the seaplane remained quiet, pitching gently on the waves—it would stay there until the Sea-Witch was well away.

  “This heading,” Adrienne said, settling in beside him on the rearmost bench and holding out a digital compass with a faintly glowing display.

  The flat bottom of the inflatable struck the water, slapping it as they picked up speed. Their destination was a little north of where the Los Angeles River ran into the sea; here and now the stream reached salt water well to the north of the Palos Verdes hills, along the course of what he’d known as Bellona Creek. And “course” was a misnomer, since the river wandered through a broad ill-defined zone of wetlands and swamps all the way to the ocean; on the coast everything between Santa Monica-that-wasn’t and Palos Verdes was seaside swamp, saltwater or brackish marsh, miles of it. More stretched between those hills and the site of Long Beach. Even in high summer the scent from the land was damp, smelling of those vast wetlands.

  “And on FirstSide it’s a dry concrete ditch,” Tom murmured, and heard Adrienne chuckle beside him.

  Spray struck his face, cool and tasting of iodine and salt; he wiped his night-vision goggles with his sleeve and peered ahead. An endlessness of reeds rustled to the southward; now that the mudflats were covered by the high tide, but this shallow-draft boat could go almost anywhere. Tully called to him a moment before he saw it himself; a blinking light, so faint that it would have been invisible to unaided vision. White sand gleamed nearby, where higher land rose northward.

  Tom’s teeth showed in a fighting grin. The pretense was over, and the mission was about to begin.

  Tom brought the inflatable in quickly, running the bow up as far as he could on the wet sand. Then he jumped over the side of the rubber boat and held it as the waves thumped it against the ground and small tumbling ripples of foam hissed around his feet. The others followed, and the four of them grabbed the rope loops along its sides and ran it higher, up onto the sloping surface of the beach. He looked around; as best as he could tell, they’d landed right on target—around the southern part of Palisades Beach, near where the Santa Monica Pier was FirstSide, at the westward end of Colorado Avenue. A sandstone cliff stood inland a couple of hundred yards, low here but rising to the north; off that way he could just glimpse a few lights burning in the night, a large sprawling house or small village.

  He felt a moment of disorientation; the geography was the same, but he was used to seeing this spot in a blaze of lights—some of the most expensive housing in the United States was within a mile or two, and a few miles north were the condos of Malibu, not to mention the meganecropolis that stretched from here to San Diego and inland to the edges of the Mohave. The smell was entirely different, sea salt and iodine, beach wrack crunching underfoot, the silty mud of the huge marshes to the south.

  The feeling of weird dislocation wasn’t as bad this time. I’m getting used to it, he thought grimly.

  “We’re right on the place they filmed Baywatch,” Tully said reverently, and Sandra giggled. “And thereabouts is the carousel they used in The Sting….”

  “Roy,” Tom said, with warning in his voice. It was scarcely the time to indulge one’s old-movie fixation.

  The other man chuckled quietly and subsided, shrugging. They all went down to one knee beside the inflatable, unslinging the rifles they wore across their backs and scanning the darkness through their night-sight goggles. They gave good vision, but it wasn’t quite like normal sight—there was a bright, slight flatness to their surroundings that made it harder to judge distances. Adrienne pushed hers up and used a pair of powerful binoculars instead for a moment. He recognized the instrument from the square, molded look and the digital controls on the top; it was a cutting-edge FirstSide military model, with automatic light compensation and a built-in range finder. The GPS system wouldn’t work here, of course.

  “Right on target,” she said quietly. “That’s the Versfelds’ home place—Hendricksdorp, their equivalent of Rolfe Manor or Colletta Hall.” She pointed to the lights, shining from around the curve of the bay and a little inland, just beneath the deeper darkness of the mountains.

  “Nobody but Versfeld’s people will be wandering around here—and Piet can talk his way past them. Better to keep out of their way, of course.”

  “Speaking of the devil,” Tom said.

  The cliff sloped down to ground level nearby. A horse whickered quietly from that direction, and several men came toward them—two tall men, and a slighter one of average height; he could hear the crunch of their boots in the sand. A little closer, and he could recognize the gorilloid shape of Piet Botha. The younger man beside him resembled him enough to be his son, and almost certainly was. And Henry Villers. The black man was standing a bit aside from the Afrikaners, and there was something in their body language that spoke of strained politeness all around.

  My sympathy is underwhelming, Piet, Tom thought. I’ll work with you, but I don’t have to like you.

  Like the four from the sea, the three men waiting for them were dressed in Commonwealth militia uniform—stone-gray bush jacket and trousers of tough cotton drill with plenty of accordion-pleat pockets and leather patches on elbows and knees, and a floppy-brimmed jungle hat; the outfit faded into the background well. They also wore the webbing harness, which seemed to be based on the Israeli design, one he’d always envied: broad belt with adjustable lacing and many carrying attachments, padded straps over the shoulders, and load-bearing pouches in the small of the back. Tom was willing to bet that the designer had suffered through a couple of campaigns in the sort of stuff rear-echelon types thought up for field men to wear.

  “Miss Rolfe,” Botha said; she nodded acknowledgment.

  Adrienne and Sandra kept watch with rifles ready; the men slung their weapons, bent in unison and lifted the boat, with Botha and Tom opposite each other at the rear, where the boxes were stacked. It wasn’t all that heavy itself, but the crates of weapons and g
ear weighed more than twice what any of them did, even Tom or the still more massively built Piet. The soft sand made for bad footing, and it churned under their feet as they panted upslope; he leaned away from the weight, teeth fixed in a grimace of effort and sweat stinging his eyes. The going went easier as they came to rock and dirt held by coarse dry grass; they were all sweating, but the night was pleasant, no more than sixty degrees and with a fresh breeze off the water that made it seem cooler.

  “Here,” Botha said, indicating a deep pit about the size of a grave; a pick and shovel leaned against a boulder near it.

  Thank you, O taciturn man of the veld, Tom thought sardonically.

  They lifted the cargo free and stacked it, then deflated the boat with a hiss and smell of synthetic-tinged air. He and Tully rolled it into a compact bundle, stuffed it into the predug hole, slid the silenced outboard engine into a tough canvas sack and dropped that in as well. A few minutes’ work buried the whole under sand and tumbled rock; he stopped and carefully memorized the lay of the land, turning in a complete circle and taking a bearing on conspicuous landmarks as best he could in the dark. He noticed that the others did likewise, in their different ways—it was appallingly easy to lose something completely, in trackless country, even if you knew the general location.

  I’m glad everyone seems to know their business, Tom thought, as they carried the boxes up a narrow pathway to the crest of the higher ground inland; he slung two on his shoulders and trotted easily under the hundred and eighty pounds of weight.

  This wasn’t like an op in the Rangers, where he was working with people he’d spent years beside and whose strengths and weaknesses he knew inside out. He and Roy had been together long enough in the SOU to develop an instinctive rapport too. Depending on so many relative strangers made him a little nervous, but there was nothing he could do about it except hope they’d shake down quickly.

  The younger Afrikaner went up the slope and returned with a string of mules. Sandra came forward and the two of them oversaw the loading; Adrienne and Botha cut stalks of brush and went back down the beach, sweeping over their footprints. A normal night’s breeze would obliterate most traces that didn’t remove, and a few days would take care of the rest. While they were about it Tom went a little into the thick brush and crouched on guard with his back to a small sycamore tree; what he could see of the landscape was a lot more densely grown than he’d expected, the vegetation dry and dusty enough in high summer, but plenty of it, ranging from knee level to more than his six-three of height.

  “And it’s noisy,” he murmured to himself, relaxing into a hunter’s absolute stillness that let all sounds in, only his eyes moving, and his chest as he breathed.

  He could hear the beat and hiss of the waves as the tide went out, like the heartbeat of the world when you were near the shore. There were plenty of insects, too; not many mosquitoes, thank God, since there wasn’t a freshwater swamp close by. But a fair swarm of other types, chirping and rustling and buzzing and shrilling and hopping and flying through the darkness. He moved his head occasionally in a slow arc, because the goggles cut off peripheral vision, and more than once he saw a bat twisting through the air in pursuit of some bug or other. There were birds in plenty—nightjars, and he saw a great horned owl whip by at only twice head-height, swerving and jinking like a fighter plane and intent on something inland; then he heard the harsh scream-click-hiss of a barn owl not too far away. A couple of black-tailed jackrabbits passed him, hopping and then landing and coming erect with their tall ears swiveling like radar dishes; one landed near enough for him to reach out and touch it if he’d wanted to. It gave a bulge-eyed double take and a squeal as it realized there was a human at arm’s length, and thumped the earth in alarm before it tore off.

  Can’t be easy to be small and tasty, he thought.

  Something larger went through the brush a hundred feet to his north; he couldn’t tell exactly what and didn’t care to guess, not in the crazy mixed-up ecology John Rolfe’s importations had produced, but whatever it was it snorted as it caught their scent and crashed off. A coyote went yip-yip-yip and howled occasionally, answered by others across the huge stretch of wilderness—but then, song-dogs had survived here even when it was all built solid; they were as adaptable as humans, and nearly as clever.

  Farther away something gave a grunting moan in the night, an ooorrrrghhh… ooorrrrghhh… ooorrrrghhh… that built up to a throaty roar. He recognized it then, more from the MGM logo at the beginning of movies than anything else—the territorial roar of a lion, announcing its claims to the world and any other male thinking of horning in on its pride of females.

  Face it, he thought, grinning silently, and breathing deeply to take in the scents of sea air, dry satchet-smelling herbs and dusty earth, this is as close to paradise as a man like me is going to get. Lots of space, lots of animals, just enough civilization to visit when you want a book or a good dinner or a movie or a cold beer.

  The thought of going back permanently FirstSide, back to crowding and itchy madness and a world so empty of life, was getting increasingly repellent.

  Plus I think I’m in love, and that it’s mutual. If only John Rolfe weren’t such a ruthless son of a bitch… well, for now he’s my son of a bitch. Got to admit he’s one gutsy and smart son of a bitch, too. I don’t like everything he’s done by a long shot, but it’s impressive that he’s been able to do it. He took that one wild chance and ran with it.

  Something crackled behind him and to the right, very faintly. Tom spun before the sound was finished, the weapon in his arms coming up to his shoulder in a perfect three-point aiming position even as he threw himself prone. The leveled rifle probed the darkness as his finger took up the slack on the trigger.

  More than one man had died because they assumed someone Tom’s size had to be slow. Assumptions were nearly as deadly as bullets, and much more popular.

  “You fast, not just big, Tall Man,” a thickly accented voice said. “Listen good, too.”

  “Hello,” Tom said dryly as a wiry brown form rose from the brush; the dark skin was about as good at melting into the background as his fatigues.

  Kolo nodded wordlessly and slipped the polished shaft of his tomahawk back into a loop at his belt, then turned and trotted away through the darkness—making a lot more noise this time; you could move silently through this wilderness of dried stalks and crunchable vegetation, or quickly, but even someone like the Indian tracker couldn’t do both. Behind the spot he’d occupied another figure rose—Jim Simmons, with a scope-sighted rifle cradled in his arms.

  “Sorry,” the Scout said; they shook hands. “We just got here, and Kolo likes a joke. Also he’s annoyed that this trip means he can’t get back to visit his wife and family.”

  Tom looked at the sycamore he’d been squatting under. “Yah, you betcha, life is hard—and he was going to put the tomahawk into that tree just over my head, wasn’t he?”

  He pushed the night-sight goggles up on his forehead; it was a strain if you wore them too long. Simmons shrugged ruefully, his teeth white in the darkness.

  “You know the really funny thing?”

  “No, what?” Tom said.

  He’d been around Roy Tully long enough to know an appeal for a straight line when he heard it. He didn’t mind; Simmons was the most likable of the men on this trip, after Roy. Just about the only one besides Henry Villers who was simpatico at all, in fact—possibly it was because they were in the same line of work and were both men of the wilderness by choice. The smaller man went on:

  “The local Indians didn’t use tomahawks before we got here. Some Families idiot back in the early days evidently gave them the idea, probably because he’d read Last of the Mohicans too many times and thought that Injuns just weren’t proper Injuns unless they chucked hatchets about with bad intent, and took scalps. Incidentally, the local tribes didn’t do that either—not this side of the Sierras—until it was suggested to them.”

  Tom winced. “Ji
m, did you ever get the feeling that John Rolfe and his friends turned this place into a theme park of perverted romanticism run amok?”

  The Scout grinned. “All the time. I like it that way. It may be a playpen, but it’s our playpen, by God.”

  They went back to the mules, and Botha and his son Schalk—the name gave Tom a bad feeling, but hell, the two men had been partners for a long time before Schalk van der Merwe went rogue—led them to the rest of the caravan.

  If I ever have a son, I’ll probably name him Roy, after all.

  It was surprising how much space ten mules and fourteen-odd horses took up; quadrupeds were bulky. Sandra introduced him to his horses, two big cobby roans; he fed them lumps of sugar and pieces of dried fruit, and did the appropriate horse-language blowing in the nostrils in greeting. The women and the smaller men were on mounts that looked like they had a good bit of Arab in their bloodlines, which was just what you wanted for a desert expedition… except that breed tended to be small, and asking one to carry two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle, bone and gristle was a bit unfair.

  To his relief, he wasn’t expected to pull the spare horse along on a leading rein, or help with the mules. Those had been trained to follow each other on a long looped arrangement, and Sandra would be chivvying the horse herd along cowboy-style; he noticed the two Boers and Simmons keeping an eye on her as they moved out in a loose column of twos on what was probably more a game trail than a track made by men. It couldn’t be easy, even though the horses wanted to stay close to each other and to their human protectors in the predator-smelling darkness. He also noticed the men relax—a little—as it became apparent that she was good at what she did.

  Adrienne rode knee to knee with him. He leaned over close enough to murmur, “Lot of boars wandering around here—male chauvinist variety,” he said dryly.

  “Tell me about it,” Adrienne said; he thought he detected a trace of bitterness under the mordant humor. “Do you have any idea of how irritating it is when the best you can get is to be treated like an honorary man? And if you think Jim’s bad, you should see what the older generation is like. Fast cars and feminism are the only good points about FirstSide.”