Nathaniel offered Sylvia the basket.
“They smell good.”
He hoped they tasted equally good.
The souffle was fishy, but the extra tomato herb sauce helped disguise it, although he didn’t finish everything, unlike Sylvia, who left none of the pasta.
“It was all very good.” Nathaniel offered the twenty pound New Avalonian note to the server.
“It usually is,” said the gray-haired woman as she made change with the oblong, off-red Avalonian notes and several coins. “We do hope you’ll come again.”
“Thank you,” said Sylvia softly.
“Good food is nourishment for the soul,” he added.
A nod, and the server slipped back toward the kitchen.
“You remember what Stapleson-Mares said about Elizabeth’s?” he asked, leaving the gratuity. All Avalonian planets retained the antique tradition, except it was more than a tradition, since it really represented the server’s pay.
“Oh…that the food was plain.”
“Did this strike you as plain?” He rose.
She shook her head with a smile as she slipped gracefully out of the chair.
“Does that mean he didn’t want us here?”
“I don’t know. I think it meant he was angry at you. Mostly, anyway.” Sylvia tilted her head slightly in a pensive gesture.
Nathaniel could accept the anger, but he still wondered, even as his eyes lingered on Sylvia’s profile, then toward the street outside.
Thwonkkkk! Nathaniel turned toward the sound of the horn.
Bagot waved from where he was parked in the shade across the empty street. “Here, sirs!”
Nathaniel looked both ways out of habit, but the street was empty of traffic. A hundred meters south of Elizabeth’s he saw a uniformed figure, or a guard of some sort, in a bright blue uniform, walking briskly around the corner.
“What are you thinking?” asked Sylvia.
“Oh, I couldn’t say. More of a feeling, but I can’t place it. There’s something…” He shook his head and followed her to the car.
“Might we see the piers?” asked the Ecolitan as he closed the rear door and settled himself in the back next to Sylvia.
“Anywhere you say.”
A circular drive fronted the harbor, a drive constructed of heavy-duty permacrete and wide enough for three of the heavy ag-lorries side by side. But the sole vehicle in sight was theirs.
Bagot pulled up the groundcar in an empty carpark lot overlooking the water at the foot of the center pier. The R-K piers were just that—three stone piers jutting out into the gray waters of the harbor. Each pier was less than a hundred meters long and not more than twenty wide.
Nathaniel stepped out into the damp heat and swallowed—hard—at the humidity and the acrid odors that swirled around him. He immediately turned and studied the streets behind him.
Three of the wide permacrete highways fanned out away from the harbor drive. As far as he could see, all were empty. Yet the pavement around the harbor bore the signs of hard usage.
Was Artos on a downhill economic slide—or were they missing something? And why had the study been commissioned? He turned back and let his eyes turn toward Sylvia. At the northern-most pier were two long barges. The eastern one, closest to the open sea, appeared half-loaded with plastic crates and containers. For a time Nathaniel studied the synthplast-hulled barges.
Then, Sylvia nodded abruptly and began to walk out on the empty center pier before her, datacase in hand. Nathaniel followed.
She paused at the end of the pier and glanced back north again. “That’s heavy equipment of some sort.”
“It could be.”
“Look at how high the second one rides compared to the first. Yet the cubage of the cargo isn’t that great.”
“It could be processing equipment.”
“It could be.”
“You don’t think so.”
“No…but it’s only a feeling.”
“Let’s walk over there.”
They got halfway down the north pier before two men bearing antique slug-throwers appeared.
“Hold it, you two!” ordered the shorter man. He wore a maroon singlesuit with a plastic badge on the chest bearing the emblem of a long-horned bull and the initials R-K.
“What is the difficulty?” asked Nathaniel.
“This pier’s closed.” The stocky man gestured with the rifle.
“We were only observing. We are conducting an economic study—”
“The pier’s closed—study or no study.”
“This isn’t a public pier?”
“Friend…you and your lady better go someplace else. This belongs to R-K. You want to look around—I need an authorization from Sebastion or George. No authorization, no look-see. That’s it.”
“As you wish.” Nathaniel inclined his head and turned to Sylvia. “Shall we depart for more hospitable climes?”
“And none of your fancy words, outie.”
The Ecolitan glanced at the slug-thrower. While he doubted the stocky man could have stopped either Sylvia or him, there wasn’t much point to pressing the issue. So he nodded again.
He could feel the eyes on their backs all the way down the pier.
“Score one or more for your feelings,” he murmured.
“You were itching to teach him some manners.”
“I thought about it—but only for a moment. No percentage in it.”
Bagot stood by the groundcar as they returned. “That Gershon—he’s a nasty one.”
“Gershon? Was he the short one?”
“That’s him. Jem took him apart in school. Gershon tried to club him down from behind. Jem didn’t take to that.” Bagot smiled. “Gershon limped for years.”
“Well…I can understand your brother’s feelings,” said Nathaniel, opening the rear door for Sylvia. “We might as well get moving, onto another aspect of infrastructures.”
From the piers, they headed out past the Blue Lion toward the industrial facility the driver had mentioned. Both used their datacases for detailed notes.
The area was exactly as described, Nathaniel reflected on the way back to the Guest House—a fusactor power plant, lots of electrical distribution towers, and a dozen fabrication facilities of various shapes and sizes, all housed in structures built of grayed hydrocarb-based plastics.
The highway back to the Guest House was lined with synde bean fields as well, younger plants than those they had seen earlier, and seemingly of the more purple variety. The Ecolitan frowned, but said nothing, just watching until Bagot brought the car to a halt outside the Guest House.
“We’ll see you in the morning,” noted Nathaniel.
“Yes, sirs.” Bagot nodded.
“You were quiet,” Sylvia noted as they walked through the late afternoon heat toward the Guest House door.
Nathaniel blotted his forehead again with the overlarge kerchief. “I was thinking. I’d really like to study those figures we didn’t get—the energy usage ones.”
“They’d only be for transportation.”
“But they’d tell a great deal.” He paused and looked around the foyer of the Guest House—empty as usual.
Back in his room, after washing away the grime from his face and hands and sweeping the room with the detector, Nathaniel set the datacase on the table.
He slipped the tiny vidimager into the slot in the side of the datacase and called up the images, comparing one set of green-leaved beans to another. Different—subtly different, but different. Was that significant, or just good agricultural practice in having different variants available?
The bean plants with the narrower leaves and darker shade seemed smaller. Did that mean they were an older variant? He wanted to shake his head. Instead, he flicked through the other images while appearing to riffle through the flimsies in the case in search of something.
There was a rap on the door.
“Yes?” Nathaniel closed the datacase, stood, and walked to
the door.
“Professor? There’s a linkcall from Chief Walkerson for you.”
The Ecolitan opened the door.
A sandy-haired woman stood there, holding two red folders. “And these were dropped off for you as well.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ll have to take the call below.”
“I’ll be right there.” He stepped toward the connecting door, rapped, and peered into Sylvia’s room.
“What was that?” Sylvia looked up from the table and her datacase.
“There’s a call from the Port Chief. I’m headed downstairs to take it. You might look at the…material…in my case while I’m gone. Also we got folders from the hydrocarb facility.”
She raised her eyebrows, then nodded. “I’ll look at both.”
“Good.” He went back to the half-open hallway door, stepped out and closed it behind him, and followed the Artosan woman down to a small room off the front foyer, a room containing little more than a desk and two chairs.
“Right there.” She pointed to the utilitarian gray unit on the corner of the desk.
Nathaniel sat and faced the screen where Robert Walkerson waited.
“Ecolitan Whaler…I’d heard from Bagot that there had been a little problem at the hydrocarb facility. Are you two all right?”
“We’re fine. These things happen.” Especially around me. “I was sorry that our escort was killed. Most sorry.”
“They’ve had problems out there before, Ecolitan. I’m sure it had nothing to do with you.”
“I would hope not. Still…it was most distressing.” Nathaniel bobbed his head up and down. “Most distressing.”
“I am sure the accident was just that. They’ve had more than a few at the facility. More than a few.” Walkerson flashed a smile across the screen. “How are you doing with your study?”
“Just beginning. A good study is not done in a few days. And then we must cross-check the data and the correlations. Then…but you do not wish to hear about academic details.”
“You can tell me about them tomorrow, if you wish.” Walkerson paused. “There’s a small get-together tomorrow night. It might do you and your…associate good to meet some of the locals you wouldn’t run across otherwise. Nineteen hundred at the Blue Lion—the Unicorn Room. Not too formal.”
“The best we have?” asked Nathaniel.
“People will understand…”
“We have formal greens.”
“Good-oh.”
“By the way, could you lend us the use of a flitter?” asked Nathaniel. “For the day after tomorrow?”
“The day after tomorrow?”
“We have an invitation to visit the Reeves-Kenn operation.”
“You must be special. Not many get those. Well…with our little get-together and his invitation, you’ll be meeting most of those of import on Artos.” Walkerson laughed briefly, then pulled at his whisker-shadowed chin. “I don’t have many pilots right now.”
“I am qualified in most flitter classes and types.”
“Are you…I suppose you are, or you wouldn’t be here. It’s a Welk-Symmons, old model, like the Empire’s twelve twenties.”
“I can handle that, but, if you would feel better I will stop by tomorrow for a check ride with your people.”
“That might be better…I couldn’t say what the differences might be between our old vibrator and what you’ve piloted.”
“Nine hundred?”
“That would be good. I’ll have Jersek expecting you. Do you need any gear?”
“Helmets, or headsets.”
“We can take care of that. Good luck, and let me know—or let Bagot know. He’ll certainly relay any messages.”
“Thank you.”
After the screen blanked, Nathaniel headed back up to his room.
Sylvia sat at his desk, looking through the case. She smiled. “What did he want?”
“To express his concerns and to see how we were doing.”
A minute headshake greeted his not-quite-sardonic words.
“Also to invite us to show off our most formal wear at a small party for the local elite tomorrow evening.”
“You must have been impressive.”
Nathaniel shook his head. “He wants us to meet someone.”
“But he doesn’t want to say so?”
Nathaniel nodded. “So I took the opportunity to request a flitter for our trip out to visit George Reeves-Kenn.”
“He wasn’t too enthusiastic?”
“No. He said he was short of pilots, and I offered my own services for us. I’ll have to get a check-out tomorrow morning.”
“Is it wise?” she asked.
“Probably not, but I trust me flying more than I trust others.”
“We don’t have to go…”
Nathaniel raised his eyebrows.
“Not by flitter.”
“If anyone’s serious, all it would take would be a large lorry running over our groundcar, and no one would notice. Sabotaging a flitter would at least have a higher visibility.”
Sylvia nodded slowly, then asked more loudly, “Are you ready to eat?”
His stomach growled. “I think I am.”
She smiled. “I heard that.”
Except for the serving woman—the same woman who had knocked on the door to tell Nathaniel about the linkcall—and them, the dining area was empty.
“Strange…”
Sylvia nodded. “There’s more support for visitors than visitors. Unless it’s a seasonal thing.”
“It could be.”
The serving woman in the green-and-maroon tunic bowed slightly as they neared the only table set for dining. “Beef stew this evening, professors.” She straightened, and then inclined her head. “And a good stew it is.”
“Thank you.”
Nathaniel waited until the server had departed before saying, “Tomorrow, we should eat at the Blue Lion.”
“You think the ambience…?”
“I need a better feel. It’s lovely here, but we’re isolated.”
“That’s not an accident, either.”
The sandy-haired server returned with wilted salads, followed by the stew. Nathaniel had to admit that the stew beef was more tender than some gourmet steaks he had enjoyed in many locales. The local lettuce of the salad tasted more like algae than algae.
They ate quietly, and Nathaniel found his thoughts flitting from one thing to another. Comparatively high-volume roads led to an almost empty port. A largish hotel for a backwater planet had an empty carpark. A relatively modern hydrocarb processing facility had a record of accidents—and one just happened to occur when they visited. A “plain-food” restaurant had anything but plain food.
“You’re thinking.”
“Yes. I’d rather not say…yet. I’d like your thoughts after another day or two when we can compare notes. Don’t want to influence your opinions.”
“That makes sense.” Sylvia paused. “The stew was good.”
“Far better than the salad.”
They both laughed softly.
No one was in the front hall or lounge as they walked back upstairs and to their rooms in the dim light of twilight. Nathaniel opened the door to his room, ears alert, but the room was empty, and the detector, as usual, registered no activity.
Sylvia closed the door. “I know we didn’t do that much besides look at things and take notes, but I am tired. And you need some rest before you do whatever you need to do with that flitter tomorrow morning.”
“It’s just a check-out.”
“I just need some time to myself. I’ll see you in the morning.” She paused, her hand on the connecting door to her room.
“All right.” He forced a smile. Still…she probably did need to be alone. They were spending almost every waking moment together, and there was probably such a thing as too much togetherness.
He flicked on the lights in his room, then sat down in front of the table that held the datacase. S
omeone had fumbled with it, but not opened it. He nodded, and touched the entry points.
He had some reviewing and some thinking to do.
Later, much later, Nathaniel slipped through the connecting door and into the bed.
“What—”
He covered Sylvia’s mouth, and whispered, “Shhh…. I’m not up to anything nefarious, but we need to talk, and I’m not sure that eavesdropping isn’t what’s going on, rather than electronic surveillance.”
“Oh…it strikes me as a convenient…”
“Sylvia…”
“I’m just teasing,” she murmured. “You are so serious, and this is humorous, if you think about it.”
Nathaniel had been too aware of her warmth and desirability to think about too many things simultaneously, but, with her words, he had to laugh softly. He couldn’t get close to her romantically, and here he was in her bed.
“We’ve had two ‘accidents’ in as many days,” he murmured, “and someone is watching everything we do.”
“Are they watching us? Or are they watching for whoever’s after us?”
“I don’t know, but I think you’re right.” Nathaniel touched her shoulder, as if to hug her.
“Careful…”
“There aren’t many groundcars, but they’re more fuel efficient than flitters. It’s as if the permacrete highways are more like a heavy-duty transport system with all those big ag-lorries, but the numbers of lorries aren’t enough to justify the investment,” he pointed out softly, almost nuzzling her ear.
“Careful there.” Sylvia inched back from him ever so slightly. “You’re right about those highways, from what we’ve seen so far. There are five that come into Lanceville.”
“And they have had heavy use.”
“Do you think they were loading military equipment on the barge?”
“I don’t think so. I’d guess, if I had to, that it was heavy industrial equipment.”
“But Bagot was talking about how little real industrial equipment there was on Artos.”
“That he had seen…”
“Oh…but why?”
“I don’t know. There was also something that waitress said that bothered me.”
“About the Ecolitan greens? You said it had been a long time—”
“Exactly. Well before her time. But a waitress wouldn’t make that up. It’s a big Galaxy…but I don’t know anywhere else where they wear greens beside Accord.”
Ecolitan Prime (Ecolitan Matter) Page 33