“Got some fish in there, but we can’t catch ’em yet. Too many heavy metals to eat. Some day, they say.”
The two Ecolitans nodded.
“Seen enough?” asked Jem. “We ought to head back.”
Sylvia and Nathaniel exchanged glances. He nodded. “Fine with us.”
As they rode back toward the rise that held the ranch house and the flitter, Nathaniel studied the cropped grass, noting the absence of bushes and competing vegetation, trying not to shake his head.
The air was still, and the sun hotter yet. Nathaniel blotted his forehead several times more as Pokey followed the other two mounts back.
“I haven’t seen anything like a cattle processing plant.” The Ecolitan glanced at the stone walls of the ranch house and then at the long stone barn that finally appeared above them. “Is that in Lanceville?”
“Hardly. George doesn’t like things outside the spread, not unless it’s crops.”
“But…”
“George likes his views.” Jem laughed. “Everyone knows that. Not much to the plant, but I can show you. We’ll go this way.” He turned his mount westward.
The three circled the base of the rise that held the main house until they entered a swale between the long ridgelike rise and a much smaller hill.
“That’s it.” Jem gestured to his left and grinned.
A permacrete strip, wide enough for a lorry, if not much wider, ran down from the top of the rise and through the swale where Jem had reined up and then to a heavy lorry dock set in the side of the lower hill.
“Under the hill?” asked Nathaniel.
“It makes sense,” said Sylvia. “George likes his views. So he built the processing plant under an artificial hill.”
“Not just the plant, professor,” Jem added. “The slaughterhouse and everything.”
Sylvia grasped the antique saddle horn, leaned toward Nathaniel, and murmured. “Not another word about underground stuff.”
“All right,” he said amiably.
She lurched in the saddle for a moment before managing to straighten up.
“Careful there, miss…I mean, professor.” Jem shrugged. “That’s pretty much it. I mean, the grasslands go forever, but all you’ll see is more grass and more steers and the river. ’Sides, I need to get you back to the main house.” The rover flicked the gray’s reins.
After a moment, with a last look at the hill that concealed a processing plant, the two Ecolitans followed.
George Reeves-Kenn was waiting as the three rode up to the barn area from where they had started.
Nathaniel eased himself out of the saddle, wondering if he might not have been in better shape if he’d walked or run. Sylvia descended with more grace and less obvious stiffness.
“How did you like it?” Reeves-Kenn grinned.
“It’s awesome,” admitted Sylvia.
“Impressive. Most impressive,” added Nathaniel, massaging his backside slightly. “Most impressive is the skill to ride horses.”
“It takes some doing, but you can learn. Jem there—he’d never seen a horse up close, and he rides like he was born to it.” The rancher nodded. “Ready to eat?”
“I could manage that,” said Sylvia.
“I also.”
The dining room was at one end of the long stone house, with the entire north wall comprised of tinted glass. A single table was set for three people, all three places on one side, facing northward and looking out.
Reeves-Kenn nodded toward the center place. “The rose between two thorns.”
“Sometimes I feel thorny…but thank you.” Sylvia took the center place, and all three sat.
“We don’t get outworlders here at Connaught that often. They take a look at Lanceville, the fusactor system, the harbor, and the hydrocarb processing plant, maybe Sebastion’s marine farms and assimilators, and they think they’ve seen Artos.” The white-haired rancher handed the basket of still-warm bread to Sylvia. “This is Artos.” He gestured toward the hillside below the expansive glass windows, toward the grass-covered ground, and the river, and the desert in the distance to the northeast.
“It’s beautiful in a stark way.” Sylvia took a chunk of bread and passed the basket to Whaler.
“Your family had much to do with creating Artos as it is now, I understand,” offered Nathaniel, breaking off a chunk of the crusty bread.
“Most folks choose to forget that, Ecolitan. We’re just inconvenient leftovers now that the synde beans and the marine projects have taken off. Blood-mare! It was the credits from luxury beef that kept us going. Now, they talk as if beef…” George shook his head. “They don’t know what sort of gene-tinkering it took. Too much arsenic and other stuff in the land and grass. How do you get steers that can ingest it and still produce edible beef?”
“It took some doing, I’m sure,” Nathaniel offered, taking some of the warm bread. He had the feeling he was going to be sunburned, maybe brightly burned. He reached for the water.
“Doing? The gene-plan alone was more than ten million.”
An older woman stepped across the dining room with a green platter that she eased onto the center of the green linen.
“Thank you, Estelle.”
Estelle nodded.
“Try these. Marinated beef. Guarantee you’ve never tasted better—even if I raised the steers.”
Nathaniel waited for Sylvia, then helped himself. He cut a piece, then chewed slowly. If anything, the marinated beef strips were even more tender and tasty than the steaks and stew served at the Guest House. “They represent the best I have tasted.”
“Me, too.”
“Told you so. Can’t raise this in a tank.” The rancher took another mouthful before speaking. “What did you think of the Unformed Desert?”
Nathaniel looked at Reeves-Kenn’s weathered face.
“That’s what they call the badlands between here and Lanceville.” The grower shook his head. “My grandsire—he said he could recall when most of Artos looked like that.”
Nathaniel thought the rancher was stretching. Planoforming was a far longer and more arduous process. But he nodded. “It makes you think.”
“Think? No one thinks anymore.” The rancher snorted. “The environauts in Camelot think that ranching takes too much land, and that all of this should be left and allowed to develop naturally. Naturally—there’s not a damned thing natural about any of it. We built it. The redistributionists think we’re dinosaurs, and want us to become extinct quietly, so they can give every soul in the commonwealth his thirty hectares. No one remembers that we’re the ones whose fathers and forefathers lived in domes and choked on ammonia and…” He stopped and offered a sheepish grin. “I get too upset about this. I’m sure you don’t want to hear a diatribe.”
“It’s interesting, and part of Artos,” Sylvia answered.
The three ate quietly for a time, the only interruption that of Estelle replacing the empty basket with another one—again full of hot and fresh bread.
“According to your rover, you have a well-integrated facility here,” said Nathaniel. “It appears most modern, yet there are those who find you less than enthused about technology.”
“Folks think that technology means change, that you have to do something just because you can or because it’s a shade cheaper.” Reeves-Kenn shook his head. “Look at Jem. He’s a first-class rover, and a horse is better than any flitter or scooter for what he does. But we put high-tech survival packs on every horse, and we use the latest technology in slaughtering and packing. I believe in being the master of technology, not its slave. Those idiots in Camelot—all they want to know is what sort of tech-transfers you can develop and what kind of transstellar credit you can develop. I was talking about Jem. He rides a horse, and his brother pilots flitters and groundcars. Ought to be room for both, but you can’t have both if you break up the big spreads.”
“Why not?” asked Sylvia. “Doesn’t everyone say you can?”
“They don’t know
what they’re talking about. Smaller bean growers—take them—they have to share mechs, pool transport—all that means more technology. That means a bigger tech base. To support a bigger tech base means growing more hydrocarb sources and more tech-transfers. More hydrocarb crops means plowing under the grasslands, because no one wants to go through what my grandfather did—they just want to take the results. They’ll do that over my dead body.” The rancher snorted. “Not that it will come to that. But all those tech-transfers mean more metal drops, or deep coring, and those cost. To pay those off requires more emphasis on technology—and then Artos’ll be trapped, just like New Avalon is. Once you get on that spiral, you never get off.”
“Such has occurred on more than a few planets—that the Institute has seen.” Nathaniel sipped the cold water, realizing that he’d effectively stuffed himself, and pushed back his plate fractionally, to remind himself not to eat more than anything. He probably felt stuffed because there hadn’t been any vegetables or greens either.
“How did you folks escape that?” George refilled his water glass.
“Luck—and isolation—and a war that left most systems reluctant to trade high-tech concepts.” The Ecolitan shrugged. “We had to limit technology to interstellar transport and the directly related infrastructure. By the time we escaped that need, the cultural patterns were established.”
“We haven’t had that kind of luck. Doesn’t look like we will, but I guess we’re the type of folks that have always had to make their own.” He paused. “Would you like some tea?”
“No, thank you,” said Whaler. “Not another item could I eat. It was all delicious…but…”
“Absolutely,” added Sylvia. “If I ate like this every day, I’d look like your steers.”
“Never, professor. Never.” The rancher’s leathery face cracked in a grin.
“I think not either,” said Nathaniel.
Sylvia shook her head. “You’re both kind, but I know better.”
“I suppose you need to go, and I need to get back to checking on a few things.” The rancher glanced at Sylvia, then rose.
So did the Ecolitans.
“Lovely view,” said Sylvia as they walked from the dining room.
“It is. I’d like to keep it.”
“Do you think changes are occurring that rapidly?” asked Whaler.
“Quicker than that. That Landis-Nicarchos fellow is buying up Lanceville faster than folks can sell, and they’re moving to ConTrio. But what will they do there when their money runs out? Come back and work in whatever tech-slavery he’s got set up? Or push for more welfare? That means you run a tech surplus, and you can’t do that without metals mining and more hydrocarb growth.” The rancher shook his head as he held the outside door.
“That amount of credits has to come from somewhere,” pointed out Sylvia.
“They do. No one’s said, but some come from Camelot, some from the Federated Hegemony, and he’s promising the politicos in Camelot that he’ll buy out the low-interest long-term development bonds in return for concessions.”
“Is there any…documentation,” asked Nathaniel, stepping around a small water spigot that fed a low trough.
“Of course not. He’s too smart for that, but it’s what he’s doing.”
“Without some form…”
“I know. I know.” A note of weariness crept into Reeves-Kenn’s voice. “Other than that…how will this visit affect your report?”
“Everything affects our report.” Nathaniel laughed.
“Everything,” added Sylvia, “including outstanding marinated beef.”
“I hope so. Hate to lose all this. Hate to see my grandchildren lose it and have Artos turn into a miniature of the rodent-mill in Camelot.”
Nathaniel picked up one of the red survival kits beside the shed. “Might we borrow this?”
“You can have it. We can spare that.” Reeves-Kenn grinned. “Call it a souvenir. Call it a reminder that you have to master technology, not let it master you.”
Nathaniel nodded. He agreed with the beef grower’s points, but felt that there was more left unsaid—a great deal more.
As Sylvia strapped herself in place, Whaler walked around the flitter, then pulled out the step brackets and climbed up to check the gearbox and rotor—and the control links. From what he could tell nothing had been touched.
He opened the turbine cover, trying not to shake his head. He couldn’t see that anything was out of place, but that, unfortunately, didn’t mean much. While he knew spacecraft systems from at least a cursory maintenance point of view, his understanding of internal combustion turbine systems was more limited.
The ducts to the antitorque difusor were clear—a malfunction there would be great fun!
The remainder of the craft’s preflight seemed normal, and he strapped himself in and began the preignition checks. After he finished them, he lit off the first turbine. The power system registered normal. Then he brought the rotors on line, and, after a wave toward Reeves-Kenn, lifted the flitter into a hover, checking all the indicators and systems again before beginning a true liftoff run.
As the craft swept over the cattle herd and eased into a climbing turn to the northeast, Whaler’s eyes went to the permacrete highway to the north, the stretch that was arrow-straight for nearly four kilos and twice as wide as any other stretch.
Then he swallowed. Because of the hills, the prevailing winds would almost always be out of the south. The damned highway was nothing but a shuttle runway—or it could be. Was he getting too suspicious?
He took another look, first at the artificial hill that held the processing plant. He swallowed and took the flitter into a wide circle of the main complex.
“Sylvia…look at the hills around the house.”
“I’m looking.” After a moment, she added, “I’m not a geologist, but that pattern doesn’t look normal. He’s got a lot hidden there, and I thought he might, if you recall…”
“You were right. But what?” He eased out the vidimager and took a series of shots. They’d probably end up blurred, but he had to try.
“It could be anything. Supplies, a tech-transfer facility, an armory…who knows?”
At the end of the single circle, he straightened the flitter on a heading of one zero five, not quite a reciprocal of the outbound course line, then leveled off. “What did you think about George Reeves-Kenn?”
“Gracious…defensive about being a beef-grower…or rancher…very handsome, I’d bet, when he was younger. A good host, even for an Avalonian.”
“The more handsome the host, the dearer the reckoning…”
“Cynical. If you react like that…I won’t tell you.”
He turned his helmet toward the copilot’s seat, then grinned back as he saw the smile beneath the tinted face shield.
Beneath the flitter, the Unformed Desert scrolled past, the same wasteland of unchanging rock and sand, rock and sand.
Even as he checked airspace, orientation, and instruments, Nathaniel could feel all sorts of inchoate thoughts swirling through his mind. Reeves-Kenn seemed both straightforward and somehow deceptive, but the Ecolitan couldn’t quite put his finger on anything specific, only on a feeling—and he hated relying just on feelings, especially when they had to produce a hard-copy report.
Abruptly, the pilot cocked his head, listening.
Thwop, thwop…thwop, thwop, thwop…
The rotors sounded normal, but the faintest screeching had surfaced beneath the roaring whine of the turbines. His eyes went to the antique engine instruments, catching the slow rise in EGT and the fractional power loss off the left turbine.
He kept listening.
A second faint screeching added its supra-audible noise to the first, and the second EGT began to inch upward, matching that of the first turbine. A quick or casual scan of the instruments would reveal neither—not for a while.
He looked out across the midplateau desert—they were nearly seventy kilos from the Reeves-Kenn s
pread, with another sixty to go before they reached the river by the shuttle port. He began to ease slightly more power into the rotors, trying to calculate the trade-offs. If the damage were calculated, he’d need the altitude.
There was no way they’d be able to cross forty or fifty kilos of desert in midsummer—assuming that they could walk away from the wreck that was about to occur.
Should he set it down? He shook his head. The rotors were fine, and so were the control links. Sabotaging those would have been too obvious, and too easily detected by the most cursory of preflights. So that meant a fire on touchdown or flare.
He wasn’t sure about the form of the sabotage, but he had an idea that the turbines would seize rather abruptly, and the key to their survival lay in his shutting them down just before they seized—and not being in the driest part of the badlands.
From what he recalled…he eased the craft into a gentle turn to bring it onto a west-northwest heading.
“Isn’t Lanceville that way?” asked Sylvia.
“We may be having some mechanical trouble, and, if we do, I don’t want to set down in the middle of this wasteland.”
“Accidental trouble, or assisted trouble?”
“If it’s accidental, it’s all too convenient.” He cocked his ears again, straining. Was the abrasive whine louder? He shook his head. How could he tell? “Lock your harness. We’re going to lose power, and when we do, we’re going down fast.”
“Locked.”
“Good.” He scanned the terrain below, noting each possible landing site, hoping for hard and flat rock. Sand was too uncertain, and could conceal too much, though he’d take sand over sharp rocks.
“We’ll need to clear the cockpit as soon as the rotors stop. Can you make sure you take that desert kit?”
“I’ve got it here.”
The Ecolitan kept scanning the instruments and looking westward toward what he hoped was a darker gray—the river and the planoformed lands that bordered it. The flitter continued to gain altitude slowly, as Nathaniel tried to calculate the strain and altitude trade-offs, as the river neared imperceptibly.
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