“It’s beautiful up there,” she said, “but it looks cold, too. Unforgiving.”
“It’s all that,” Terson agreed. They lapsed into silence again until a shooting star flashed across the sky. A dull orange trail remained against the darkness for an instant before fading away. Virene squeezed his elbow.
“I’ll never look at one of those the same way again.”
“Still thinking about it?”
“All the time. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since we got back.”
“I didn’t know that,” Terson said. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Worrying is silly.”
“Not silly,” Terson said. “Pointless. I could trip going down the stairs in the morning and break my neck just as easily.”
“Terson,” she sighed, “do you really think that’s what I want to hear right now?”
“Sorry; no,” he said. “Remember who you’re talking to.”
“Life would be much simpler if men would learn to read minds,” Virene said.
“Make do with what you’ve got,” Terson suggested. His wife did not pick up the banter. She moved his hands down to her belly and clasped her own over them.
“I want to get our contraception reversed,” she said. “I want to apply right away—today.”
“Isn’t this kind of sudden?”
“We might have to apply three or four times,” she explained. “I need a part of you to keep, if anything ever happens. I want it to be your baby.”
“You think they’ll actually let us reproduce?”
“It’s random,” she replied. “You know that.”
“Then how’d your parents manage to have so many kids?”
Virene turned toward him, resting her head against his chest. “They’re lucky,” she said, “and so am I.” She made love to him with purposeful intensity when they went back to bed. Terson obliged her willingly, though unable to match her ardor, and afterward held her until her breath fell into the rhythm of sleep.
Terson did not drop off so easily.
He felt the small, fan-shaped pattern of subcutaneous contraceptive implants on the inside of Virene’s upper arm that she’d carried since the onset of puberty. Terson possessed a set of his own: three thin, two-centimeter-long capsules identical to hers except for the chemical they leaked into his bloodstream. It was another small detail they’d neglected to mention when they shoved the papers at him for signatures. It didn’t seem significant at the time; a minor procedure far less invasive than a vasectomy and easily reversible, though the penalties for doing so without proper authorization were stiff. The penalties for unauthorized fertility were not foremost in his mind, anyway.
The implants were seen as a rite of passage to native Nivians, an acknowledgement of adulthood and sexual license, whether or not an individual chose to exercise that license. Nivians were surprisingly chaste in that regard compared to the wanton rutting that Boss Hanstead’s hired hands pursued on every trip into Windstone. The ubiquitous specter of mortality on Algran Asta seemed to spur the instinct to spread genetic material whereas the conditions on Nivia sought to suppress it.
Repression, it seemed to Terson, was the less desirable end of the continuum. He could not understand, at first, why small children were seen in public so rarely, or why those with them tried so obviously to insulate themselves from their neighbors. The sight of pregnant women or infants was unheard of, as if parenthood was some kind of stigma.
The reality was entirely the opposite, he now knew. Parenthood was highly valued but it was also dangerous. Terson likened it to carrying a jug of whisky through a crowd of thirsty drunks: everyone wanted it and a certain percentage was willing to do anything to take it or at the very least prevent others from having it.
Winning the reproductive lottery left the woman with two choices: safety or freedom. Most hid their condition from everyone, including friends and family, for as long as possible and cloistered themselves the moment secrecy failed, sacrificing careers and most outside contact until the child was old enough to enter school.
Terson didn’t want Virene limited to those choices and the fact that she would have to make them pointed out a grave Nivian hypocrisy: how could a society demand a standard of behavior from him that it could not enforce among its own people to prevent violence against its most vulnerable members?
His conscience would not permit him to leave her alone in such circumstances, without even the support of her damnable family, but he knew that she would not permit him to sacrifice his chosen profession on the alter of her wishes.
Terson did not look forward to the day of that confrontation.
God’s Saucer: 2709:04:36 Standard
Cormack MacLeod knelt beneath the cargo sled playing a flashlight beam across the craft’s once-smooth undercarriage. The surface was gouged and creased beyond normal wear and tear; several of the scrapes looked deep enough to cast doubt on the integrity of the sheathing, a serious matter given the necessity of operating in low pressure and toxic atmospheres.
The front third of the port repeller unit had broken loose from its mounts and shifted several centimeters inward where the retractable taxi gear had apparently caught it during extension and damaged it further. Cormack found the remains of a tree branch as big around as his wrist jammed cross-wise between the top of the repeller and the undercarriage. He pried it loose and crawled out to confer with the supposed owner.
“Not a lot of trees hereabout,” Cormack commented as he handed over the incriminating evidence.
The big spacer rolled the thirty-centimeter stick over and over in his fingers for several moments. “I got no idea where this came from.”
“A tree,” Cormack explained.
The spacer’s face turned red and he studied the object at length for several more seconds, unable to concoct a suitable explanation, and finally crossed his arms behind his back, transferring it out of site in a clumsy attempt to conceal it. “So you can fix it?” he asked of the sled.
“Aye, no problem there. Have to overlay and bond new sheathing. Repeller ain’t hard to get if I can’t rebuild this one—expensive, either way. When ye need it back?”
“Tomorrow.”
“This time next week, if I work on her straight through,” Cormack grinned. “I charge overtime.”
The spacer looked skyward, rubbing the back of his neck. “Just great! Okay; I’ll have the money when I pick it up.”
“Two-thirds, up front,” Cormack corrected.
“Fine,” the spacer groaned. “Will you take an electronic transfer?”
“Absolutely,” Cormack nodded. “This against a ship’s account, then?”
“No!” he exclaimed hurriedly. “Personal.”
“Alright.” Cormack flipped to a fresh sheet in his tattered work order book. “What name?”
“Ben Grogan,” the spacer mumbled.
“Ship and account code?”
“I told you this is personal,” Grogan snapped.
“Aye, an’ your ship’ll know if ye got credit t’cover it,” Cormack explained patiently, “unless ye got a planet-side account ye want t’draw against?”
“No, okay, I understand. Ladybird. Five oh eight eight three oh six. Can you make the charge read kind of vague?”
“Aye. ‘Materials an’ services rendered’ or some such suit ye?”
“I guess so. You, ah, don’t need inside, do you?”
Cormack shook his head. “Not unless ye want me to test her ahead o’time.”
“No, that’s fine. I’ll do it when I pick it up,” Grogan said with visible relief. He left the vehicle parked in Cormack’s compound and departed on foot.
Cormack waited until the spacer was out of sight before he broke the lock encryption and climbed in to take a look around. Based on what he saw of the cockpit the sled had been hard used but well maintained. A few personal items protruded from seatback pouches in the passenger compartment below, but nothing worth stealing. Moving af
t, he opened the hatch leading to the cargo compartment where he found three banks of large, self-contained cold storage units full of bush meat.
The spacer was poaching, as Cormack already suspected, but it wasn’t a case of a crewman running amok with his ship’s equipment for personal gain and trying to hide the damaged of some misadventure. The freezers and the alterations necessary to mount them indicated a long-term operation, suggesting it was a bone fide endeavor blessed by the Ladybird’s captain.
None of this really surprised Cormack. God’s Saucer lay only a couple of hours away from the Great Northern Preserve, a heavily forested region of several hundreds of millions of square kilometers taking up most of the Alpha continent’s northern half. The pickings were rich for those willing to chance a lethal encounter with the EPEA and transient spacers frequently took advantage of the opportunity to smuggle bush meat to the Belt where it sold for extraordinary prices.
The morality of the issue didn’t interest Cormack in the least; the financial rewards for exposing an organized poaching operation, however, were substantial. There was no hurry, though. The Ladybird wasn’t going anywhere without her wayward son or the sled.
Besides, it was in Cormack’s best interest to complete the work he’d been hired to do and collect the pay for it before he turned them in.
FIVE
Beta Continent: 2709:05:01 Standard
“Sir, good to see you again!” Stan McKeon grasped Hal’s hand firmly. They stood in the base’s cavernous landside entrance, amid the bustle of sailors and vehicles. “I hear you’ll be with us a while.”
“Looks that way,” Hal conceded. His father had always been amazed at McKeon’s ability to ferret the most unlikely information out of the Minzoku’s colloquially tangled grapevine. Though not Family, McKeon was a trusted agent in charge of the expatriates’ physical security who’d lived on Nivia for over twenty years, married a pair of Minzoku women, and never requested or accepted a transfer in all that time.
“It’ll grow on you,” McKeon assured him.
He tossed Hal’s bag into the cargo compartment of his squat armored ORV and held open the passenger door while Hal boarded. The housing of a high-output nuclear battery separated the two front seats by an arm’s span. Conduit vanished into the floor, feeding the independently powered electric motors at each wheel. A gunner’s chair hung from a turret mount between and slightly behind the front seats. McKeon chirped his siren as the vehicle accelerated silently toward the exit.
Outside they turned south, away from Tessaoua. The vehicle hardly swayed as it crossed ruts and potholes in the primitive roadway. The road turned west gradually, winding up through the low coastal mountains. McKeon skirted a short convoy of Minzoku trucks at the summit. “That should be the salvage they’ve brought up so far,” he told Hal.
Their destination hove into view on the opposite side. Unofficially, the Fort was the oldest permanent settlement on Nivia. It stood on the crest of a hill, surrounded by a wall of native stone ten meters high, spaced evenly with watchtowers and gun emplacements. None of the structures therein rose above the height of the wall except an array of satellite dishes and antennas near the center. Three fences of increasing voltage ringed the wall, with land mines in between.
The Fort housed nearly six hundred offworlders, including families. It contained a hospital as well equipped as any Federal facility, a commissary, and any number of recreational endeavors. It once housed Minzoku domestic servants as well, until an uprising orchestrated by a tiny cadre of Minzoku officers thirty-five years before. The poorly executed coup was destined to fail, but the loss of life would have been significantly higher if not for a timely warning from Den Tun.
Hal’s father suspected Den Tun of being involved in the plot himself and informing on his co-conspirators only to eliminate a powerful rival. The old man would have joined his colleagues in the killing fields had he not assumed leadership of his people so quickly.
From that day on the Minzoku were forbidden to enter the Fort and the compound went “dry” in regard to the carnal pleasures some of the Onjin indulged in. An aggregate of drinking houses and brothels sprang up around the Fort, inevitably named Sin City, and later the shops and homes of more legitimate means. McKeon’s siren chirped constantly as the car cruised through the de facto town.
The road ended at a well-defended portcullis. One of the guards made a cursory visual inspection and waved them through, a sign of sloppy security had Hal not already been aware of McKeon’s subtle all’s well signal.
“The department heads are at the command post,” McKeon said. “Den Tun’s update should arrive with the salvage.”
They parked in the shadow of a satellite dish. Computers maintained a constant link with the geosynchronous satellites monitoring the quadrants where the Family operated. Artificial images of virgin forest and coast, based on minute to minute changes in weather, temperature, and season replaced the real data in black-box components in the satellites themselves, components manufactured and installed by a subsidiary controlled by another Syndicate family. If necessary, they could conjure up images of weather or ocean conditions inclement enough to alter the course of any gaijin vessel or aircraft that might venture near. Direct observation from orbit was countered by an efficient blackout system that could be implemented in seconds. Every major facility was equipped with cold-smoke generators that produced convincing ground fog. If all else failed, the expatriate’s arsenal could prevail against anything short of nuclear detonation or orbital bombardment.
Sergio Cirilo, a distant cousin and Deputy Administrator of the outpost, met them at the entrance. “Welcome back,” he said soberly. “I wish the circumstances were different, but it’s always a pleasure.”
“Likewise,” Hal replied unenthusiastically. Sergio was a handsome man by anyone’s standard, a blood member of the Family by both parents, a distinction Hal could not claim. Sergio had been born on Nivia and long aspired to become Chief Administrator. The aspiration had been cruelly crushed when Hal’s father assumed the title. Time had tempered his bitterness, and he accepted his position as site chief. Sergio had developed another aspiration, one that depended significantly on Hal.
“I hope you’ll join us for dinner this evening,” Sergio suggested. “I have some minor matters to discuss, since you’re here, and Tamara is off duty tonight.”
“I’ll do my best,” Hal said noncommittally, “but you understand you have my full confidence, just as you had my father’s.”
“Of course. The department heads are waiting in the conference room.”
The assembly stood as they entered. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” Hal said as he took his place at the head of the conference table, “please be seated. Sergio, could you bring us up to date?”
“As most of us are already aware, the shuttle carrying our last shipment suffered a massive malfunction short of reaching orbit. Map, please.” A holographic globe materialized in the air above the table. Red tracings showed the shuttle’s path. “It survived reentry and impacted here, about twenty-five hundred kilometers off the coast. The wreckage is scattered over three kilometers at a depth of five hundred fathoms and salvage is underway. A small quantity is already on its way back.”
A dashed line split off the shuttle’s arc. “The crew ejected here and landed about three hundred kilometers from the mainland. A civilian boat picked them up, but none survived.”
“Any word as to the cause of the crash?”
“Not yet. The Federal authorities are reviewing Space Traffic Control tapes and radar images, but without the flight data recorder they’ll probably write it off as unsolved. The first EPEA boats to arrive had a skirmish with the Minzoku and consider a recovery operation too dangerous.”
“Anything that could cast suspicion on the cargo’s source?” Hal asked.
“No, sir. The material went through our front in Saint Anatone. Unfortunately, most of it went up on the same shuttle.”
Hal tha
nked him and turned to the other department heads. “Now, how much can we reasonably expect to recover intact?”
“That depends,” said Erin Nowatchik, the head biochemist. “The shipment was hardened against vacuum, not external pressure. I’d give each container a fifty-fifty chance of leakage or rupture. Some components of the shipment won’t be harmed by ocean water, some will be. Some can be recovered through reprocessing, if it did get wet. It’s not worth speculating on; we’ll have to see what we get.”
“I want a running report as it comes in,” Hal said. “The delay is going to cost us, even if we recover everything. Derner, I need to talk to you.”
The metallurgist slowly resumed his seat while the others filed out.
“The Old Lady got your request for reassignment,” Hal said. “She sent it back down to me, where it should have started in the first place. Care to explain why you went over my head?”
Derner crossed his arms defensively. “You didn’t approve the last one.”
“You didn’t give me sufficient justification to.”
“The Old Man would have,” Derner blurted. The metallurgist shrank in on himself as soon as he uttered the words.
So we’ve come around to that, Hal thought. The Old Man’s death had come without warning. Hal never expected to be thrust into the heart of the business so soon and neither had anyone else, obviously.
“I’m sorry,” Derner stammered, “I didn’t—”
“If you have a problem with my decision, you tell me to my face,” Hal said. “Go behind my back again and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
Derner’s face grayed. “I understand.”
Having settled the issue, Hal’s voice took on a friendlier tone. “Why do you want a reassignment? You’ve been heavily involved in our production of optical semiconductors and earned top bonuses for the past ten years.”
Derner took a moment to adjust. “I came on board as a researcher,” he said. “We were trying to develop a monoisotopic semiconductor through molecular beam epitaxy. Granted, we didn’t get anywhere, but I think the refinements I brought to our first-stage production warrant my request.”
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