by neetha Napew
Them he would certainly protect, would he not?” Lenvec nodded. ‘They will see to it that he is willing to leave when next you land.”
“Am I to transport them there?”
“By no means. That would put Zainal on his guard. When is the next mass transportation scheduled?”
Lenvec consulted his wrist unit. ‘In twenty-two days.”
“Choose the men . . ‘ ‘A female, too, sir, if I may suggest it. He’s been a long time without . . . companionship.” ‘An excellent notion,’ and Perizec grinned back at his son.
You have someone in mind?” Lenvec nodded. ‘They will all be rewarded.” He reached to the files and methodically began stacking them in order as he continued speaking. ‘This must be completed as expeditiously as possible. I have told the Eosi that Zainal was sent on a special assignment and is unaware of their need of him. We have been granted a respite, but their anger will fall on us all if we do not present him within a reasonable period of time.” Lenvec nodded. Since Zainal had been acceptable to the Eosi, there had been no need for Lenvec to be presented. Nor would he wish to be accorded such an Eosi ‘honour’ since he knew exactly what that entailed. However, he might yet find himself the substitute, if Zainal did not present himself. The honour of the family was at stake. Failure to comply with an Eosi demand brought disaster and disgrace to every blood relation.
“Keep me informed, Lenvec,’ Perizec told his son by way of dismissal.
As Lenvec saluted formally, pivoted smartly and left the office, Perizec began to consider how to punish the stupidity of a mere freighter crew who had presumed to place an Emassi among transported dissidents. He enjoyed deciding on the exact and perfect punishment for their presumption and shortly was able to issue the necessary orders. Once the rumour was circulated, few Tudo or Drassi would dare to repeat such treatment, no matter what the cause. That this abrogated one of the main tenets of Catteni discipline did not bother Perizec. But then his rank had some privileges, and he exercised all frequently.
As he was supposed to do, the Deski immediately informed the camp leader what he had heard on the height above Camp Rock.
“You heard a ship come down?” Worrell asked, rubbing his face hard in an effort to comprehend what Coo was telling him.
“Come down,’ Coo said, nodding vigorously, ‘not big. Not you-zoo-al,’ he added, struggling with the syllables.
“Not usual?” Worrell repeated, while Coo nodded with a Deski-style grin which Worrell was now accustomed to. ‘You mean, not a Drop?” Coo shook his head and then nodded, to be sure he was understood.
Worrell sighed with relief. The damned Catteni had speeded up their deposits of Colonists’ over the past month to the point where there was barely time to assimilate each new delivery.
“No Drop. No long down. Come,’ and Coo gestured with his thin, oddly-knuckled digits, swooping them down to close with his other hand, then pause briefly before elevating it again. ‘Go.
Soft.” And now he put a hand to his ear and pretended to listen hard.
Instantly Worrell began to fret. His nickname ‘Worry’ was less a contraction of his surname and more a description of his chief trait.
“A quick Drop, then. A few people at the most. Only what kind?” he asked himself more than Coo. ‘Nearby?” ‘Not near-near.” Coo dropped his head, orienting himself, then shifted his feet slightly to the right so that he was facing due north. The Deski ability to know where they were was an extremely useful trait on Botany. They could get themselves back to the main settlements, like Camp Ayres Rock, from any point so that it had become practice to include at least one Deski in every scouting expedition.
Now Coo extended both long, doublejointed arms, kept the right one facing due north and angled his left arm almost due west. ‘There. Not near-near.” ‘Really?” Worry rose and patted Coo’s bony shoulder. “Real good, Coo. Thanks.”
“Good job done?”
“Beaus job, Coo.” Worrell turned up the light so that he could see the map hung on his wall. Much of the continent it represented was still blank but, over the past few wintry months, details had been added by scouting teams. ‘If we’re here, Coo,’ and Worrell put his finger on the cave system of Camp Rock, ‘how far west?” Coo extended his head towards the map on a neck that seemed elastic, put one digit on the Camp and then slid it in the appropriate direction. ‘No more far.” ‘Really?” Worrell felt anxiety bloom in his gut. The point Coo had indicated was where Zainal and his team had met the scout ship: the one sent to take him back to his duties as a Catteni Emassi. ‘Thanks, Coo. You’d best get back on duty.”
“I got’ And the Deski slipped quietly from the room.
Worrell glanced briefly at his time-piece. Dawn was too far away for him to send a squad to check the landing site. The night-crawlers would be all too eager to catch anything that travelled above ground. Not even a large team, stamping heavily, would escape those winter-hungry denizens.
Then Worrell chuckled to himself. If Catteni had indeed landed someone for some purpose . . . like getting in touch with Zainal again . . . they’d have had a welcome they didn’t expect.
“Serve ‘em right, too,’ Worrell said, though he was not by nature a vindictive man. In a considerably more cheerful mood, he returned to his bed and went soundly back to sleep.
Worrell would like to have had Zainal to send down to investigate the reported landing, but he and Kris Bjornsen were out with their team on another long scouting trip: looking for more caves, barns or rocky terrain to house the settlers continuously supplied them by the Catteni. So he sent for Mic Rowland, one of the Fifth Drop group. He’d been a stunt-man for the movies and could be trusted to observe, be discreet and get himself and a team out of trouble. Worry told him about the late-night landing, and where Coo had thought the ship had touched down.
“If a Deski said it landed there, we’ll find some signs.” Mic was far too accustomed to working with all-sorts, as he called them, not to appreciate talent wherever it was found.
“Even scout ships leave a stench behind them,’ Worrell agreed.
“Take a party of those newbies with you. Give ‘em a chance to hunt.”
“Sure thing,’ Mic said with a businesslike nod.
Worrell grinned when he saw Rowland tag the first five people in the breakfast line whose new-looking coveralls marked them as the latest Drop. He did let them eat first before he took them off.
Worrell knew the trip would do them good. So many got to Botany still full of their Earthside sabotage activities, and how many Cats they’d injured or killed and other kinds of derringdo? so that they needed to be taken down a few pegs to the realities of Botany. Fortunately, more were adapting well to the new world than Worry would have expected.
What caused the Australian - and the other Camp managers - concern, was the indisputable fact that the Catteni were making more frequent deposits of dissidents. Zainal had been surprised too and had suggested, slyly, that it was because Earth was showing far more rebellion than any other race the Catteni had subjugated. So there were more rebels to be exiled. So far the colony had been able to absorb both quantities and alien species, though they had followed Zainal’s suggestion to let the belligerent and uncooperative Turs go off on their own in the small groups in which they arrived. However, the population of Botany had risen from the original Drop of 572 to nearly 9,000.
Worrell worried all day over what Mic Rowland would find. He also widened the perimeter guard in case of infiltration, warning them vaguely that someone had seen Turs prowling about. It was possible, in Worrell’s view of human frailties, that even some specimens of Mankind could have been brain-washed into cooperating with their Catteni masters and would try to slip into the colony to cause trouble. That actually made more sense to him than a secret landing of Catteni, since they would be instantly noticed. So far Zainal remained the only one of his race resident on Botany. And he had barely escaped being killed that first day which was fortunate since he had pro
ved so helpful in the early Drop, and ever since: even to rejecting a chance to leave.
Mic Rowland returned with enough game to justify the hunt.
Dismissing his weary group, he caught Worrell’s glance, jerked his head towards Worrell’s office on the height and moved quickly to join the Camp manager there. He dropped the rocksquats with the cooks, but not the sack in his right hand.
Once they were private, Mic upended the sack on the table and grinned at Worrell’s surprise.
“Boots?”
“That was all that was left. And not the same sort they issued us,’ Mic said, ‘much better made. And this.” He took from his chest pocket a very thin plate about seven centimetres long and maybe two thick. ‘I’d say it was a comunit, or some sort of call device. Maybe even an implant. I rubbed the gore off.” Then he picked up one of the boots which was scored as if something hot, or very strong, had twined around it, leaving deep grooves. He twisted the heel and the whole lower part of the shoe swivelled free, showing a compact kit of small tools, embedded in the material of the thick sole. ‘There’s something in each boot.” He picked up the smallest pair and opened the sole of one, revealing its contents to Worrell. ‘This looks like a drug injector.” He opened the other, which contained two small vials. ‘And the drugs.” ‘Drugs? Yes, well, I’ll give that stuff to Dane.” Worrell counted eight boots in an effort to defuse his mounting anxiety. “Dropped a team, did they? To do what?” Though he had an awful suspicion his first guess might prove correct. Would Mic know?
Mic shrugged. ‘You been here longer. An educated guess would be they were after Zainal.” When he caught Worrell’s sharp look, he grinned. ‘I heard. Damn few would have stayed if they had a chance to leave.”
“Hmmm. No other . . . remains?”
Mic shook his head. ‘Some bits of metal, probably from whatever they were wearing, but even Catteni material is edible to the crawlers.
Boots are just a touch too tough for ‘em.” And he flicked his fingers at one. ‘Big mothers wore ‘em. Big even for Catteni. They have goon squads, too.” ‘One pair is much smaller. Would they have sent a woman with them?” Mic shrugged. ‘Who knows what Catteni will do?” He closed his lips on whatever he had been about to add and shrugged again.
Worrell could very well imagine what had been left unsaid.
Before his deportation, he had seen enough of the higherranking Catteni women to know that Kris Bjornsen was a lot betterlooking than the best of them. Many disapproved of her liaison with Zainal but no-one, other than Dick Aarens, had the gall to complain or dispute it.
“Thanks, Mic. Did the others notice?”
“Couldn’t fail to, not with those empty boots scattered around. I don’t think the newbies noticed that the footwear isn’t the same stuff we have. So I’m reporting a missing patrol to you.
Right?” ‘Too right,’ Worrell said, ‘and I trust you rammed home the lesson?” ‘Never miss an opportunity like that, Worry.” And Mic left with a big grin on his face.
Worrell made a mental note that Mic was ready for more responsibility. First he dialled Zainal’s team number for them to report in, then he got in touch with Chuck Mitford.
“Well, put ‘em in a safe place, Worry,’ Mitford said, ‘until either Zainal or I can have a look-see. Just give the medical junk to Dane; he might know what it is and maybe have a use for it.
I suppose you better send those tools down here to Narrow for the engineering types. They could use some high-quality stuff despite some of the new items they’ve been able to turn out recently. I’ll have to figure out a way to explain their . . . ah . . .
acquisition.” He contradicted himself a moment later. ‘I don’t have to explain anything, do I?”
“Sure don’t, Sarge.”
Worrell grinned at the comment. In one of the recent drops there had been several ax-admirals, ax-generals and assorted other brass, most of whom - when they had had a chance to recover from the trials of their journey - were quite willing to refer respectfully to Mitford as ‘Sergeant’. Most . . . and those who didn’t soon learned how much was owed that ‘sergeant’, or found themselves settling into perhaps less amenable camp sites. No-one - except someone on sick call - shirked assigned duties, and everyone took a turn at hunting, preparing food, sentry and whatever other duty they were thought capable of managing. When he hadn’t anything else to fuss about, though, Worrell worried that some sort of high-level executive-type consortium might try to bounce Mitford out of his current eminence. Of course, if Mitford decided on his own hook to step down, that had to be entirely his option. So far, Mitford’s management - and he had listened to suggestions from just about everyone in the first couple of Drops - had worked pretty damn well.
“Sarge, should we worry about human infiltrators?” he asked, hoping to have such a notion knocked down.
Mitford’s snort made the diaphragm of the portable phone vibrate and Worrell began to relax.
“Not unless they can run faster than a crawler can grab. And if there were four Catteni, they’d have been heavy enough on those big feet of theirs to have alerted every scavenger four fields over.” There was a brief pause. ‘Worry, you don’t actually believe any human being would work with the Catteni, do you?” ‘There’ve been traitors, renegades, spies, quislings in every war, Sarge. Why not this one?” Mitford cursed briefly, but colourfully. ‘You could be right.
Damn it! Only why send in infiltrators by special delivery? You could as easily send ‘em in a regular Drop. Anyway, why mess us up? Zainal says the Catteni prefer colonies to prosper so they can come in and take over when one gets going wells Pause.
“Furthermore,’ and Mitford’s tone was adamant, ‘they’ll have their work cut out for them if they try that tactic on my planet.” Nor would anyone dispute Mitford’s use of the possessive pronoun.
“We’d be with you four hundred percent, Sarge.”
Another brief pause. ‘I’ll tell Easley we’d better be double careful checking IDs on the next Drops. Right?” With that he cut off, leaving Worrell not quite as anxious as he had been: no-one was going to take over ‘my planet’. He grinned at the outrage in Mitford’s voice. Scouts had come across the remains of several rough camps in the hills, above the level the night scavengers inhabited, and the skeletons of those who hadn’t survived. But everything was much better organized now, especially the Drops. Peter Easley, former personnel manager of a huge international firm, had been responsible for that. His second morning on Botany, he sought Mitford out and made suggestions on how to simplify, speed up in-flow, and how to catch the signs of those still in trauma and needing counselling. He’d deferentially organized additional men and women experienced in crowd control and personnel handling, and passed on recommendations of other specialists that Mitford might want to interview himself. Mitford turned the whole problem of Drops over to Easleyand the complexity of Resettlement - another of Easley’s sensible recommendations to Yuri Palit, previously a UN resettlement manager for displaced persons. There were now enough degree engineers, aviation and production line mechanics and inventor-types to keep Aarens from getting cocky while speeding up their output.
With enough hand-held communication units available, scouting teams could report in to Mitford on any unusual occurrences, as Worrell had just done, and the sergeant had actually been able to keep ‘business hours’.
“I’ll get enough time yet,’ Mitford had recently confided to Worrell on a trip through Camp Rock to Camp Silo, ‘to lead a recon group myself.” ‘Is that what you’d really like to do?” Worrell had asked, since it was the first time he’d ever heard something akin to a complaint from the man.
“All this brand-new world, and everyone else is getting to see it first!” Mitford had flung up his hand in frustration. ‘Well, I get closer to it all the time.” Then he’d grinned. ‘And I get less and less paperwork to do.” So now Mitford had more time to spend on organizing the teams and sending expeditions in every direction, trying to l
ocate more bases, especially to replace Camp Rock which was established just above a deep gorge that showed the scars from centuries of spring flooding. Zainal and Kris Bjornsen were on just such a scouting mission now, hoping to find a site that was not an installation of the Mech Makers’ or the ‘Farmers’, as many people were beginning to call them because of the agricultural emphasis of the planet.
Worrell packed the boots back into the sack, but he peered more closely at the plate. There did seem to be round indentations on one end: possibly touch points. He counted nine - as many as a numeric pad, and was sorely tempted, but decided against any whimsical experimentation. He’d sent out the recall sequence and Zainal and Kris should be back in a few days.
**
· The team were at that time in a state of exultation, for they had managed to complete a difficult ascent up an irregular cliffmass and now looked down into a long valley that bore no traces of the neatness which typified the land the Mech Makers farmed.
Their ascent had been a quick decision, prompted by certain anomalies that both Zainal and Whitby, the mountaineering expert of the team, had noticed. The first was a stream bubbling vigorously from what seemed like a solid rock-face.
Investigating, they found the stream had bored a channel through the stony barrier.
