Directly below where they stood was a perfectly circular crater lake that had bitten slightly into the northern wall, resulting in a crescent cliff. A small island rose out of the center, like the back of some slumbering marine giant. At its highest it could only have been a few meters above the surface of the lake. A few trees grew around the edges, their sun-bleached roots struggling for purchase among the boulders.
There was a simple structure in the middle of the island: five columns of black-and-white fluted marble that supported a wide arched stone roof. Underneath it were two tiers of circular stone seating that could probably hold about twenty people. The whole thing did look distinctly Hellenistic.
A gravel path led away from it to a small wooden jetty. An identical jetty had been constructed on the shore of the lake opposite. A rowboat was tied up to the end.
"That's it?" Ntoko asked.
"Yes," Duane Garcia said.
The sergeant scanned his helmet sensors around. The path in front of them switchbacked down the risky slope. In several places, where the drop was sheer, the villagers had built handrails. Seventy meters below, the path wound into the dense forest again to emerge by the jetty.
"Okay, we've seen enough." Ntoko turned around and started walking back to the wool center. The other Skins went with him.
Lawrence remained on the top of the ridge. He still had that feeling that the villagers were having them on somehow. The rain was easing off now, boisterous clouds rolling away to the south, retreating from Mount Kenzi's imposing bulk. He requested a full-spectrum sensor sweep from his suit AS and targeted the temple. Nothing registered. There was no electromagnetic activity down there. No heat. It was just inert stone. Large gray-and-white birds flapped sedately through the air, their reflections keeping pace on the still black water.
"Hell."
As his sensors shifted their focus back, he was mildly surprised to see Duane Garcia was still waiting for him. "Checking on me?"
"Certainly not. It's a difficult path back, and there are several forks. We wouldn't want you to get lost."
Lawrence chuckled as they started walking. "Funny, I'd have said that was exactly what you wanted to happen."
Duane Garcia acknowledged the gibe with a slight grin. "I admit your arrival here is not the most welcome visit we've ever had. But I really don't want you having a genuine accident out here, if for no other reason than I doubt your commanding officer would believe it was an accident."
"True enough. Can I ask you something?"
"Certainly."
"Where's your jail?"
"A jail? I'm sorry, we don't have one."
"So in a settlement of at least six hundred people, there are no sinners. Sounds like paradise."
"I'm afraid not. We do have miscreants, of course, every community does. It's just that we don't believe in incarceration as a form of correction or punishment. Other penalties are applied. Restrictions, both physical and material."
"Humm. For the record, I don't believe all this Zen bullshit you people are selling the captain. This whole community is way too nice. Normally, by the third generation, any community founded around a single principle has developed a lot of dissenting voices."
"You have seen the way we live. There is little here to complain about. And if you do, you are free to leave."
"Nope. I still don't buy it."
"You're very adamant about that. Why?"
"I was born a third-generation colonist myself. I know all about the resentment directed toward obsolete restrictive ideals."
"That might just be you. Or perhaps our ideals are more appealing than those of your homeworld."
"Touchй." But I still know you're hiding something, he thought.
Captain Lyaute decided that it was safe for the patrol to stay in the village for the night. The villagers clearly didn't represent the kind of threat evident in Dixon.
Families were temporarily evicted from various A-frame houses to make way for the squaddies. Lawrence was billeted with Ntoko, Amersy and 435NK9's latest recruit, Nic Fuccio. Their A-frame was one of those overlooking the central park where the convoy vehicles were drawn up. Five comfortable bedrooms, three bathrooms, a lounge, study, reception room, dining kitchen, a family room full of toys; all arranged in a T-shape. As he walked through it, Lawrence thought about some middle managers from Z-B he knew whose apartments were a lot more cramped. He claimed a bedroom with a big sliding glass door and stripped off his Skin. The bulky suitcase of field-support equipment extruded eight umbilical cords, and he plugged them into the suit. Blood and other fluids began to cycle through the flaccid synthetic muscle.
A warm shower washed off the blue dermalez gel, and he dressed in an olive-green sweatshirt and gray shorts to join his housemates on the balcony. Amersy had already found the drinks cabinet and mixed a jug of some lemon-based cocktail. Lawrence went for a can of Bluesaucer. The beer tasted better than it ever had down in Memu Bay.
He hadn't realized it before, but the village was situated on a gentle slope. Half of their A-frame was supported on thick wooden stilts to keep it level. From the balcony they could see out over a broad shallow valley where the forest formed an unbroken dark blue-green cloak.
"Do we ever get any runaways, Sarge?" Nic asked as he settled back in a cushioned sun lounger.
"No. We're too obvious. Why, you thinking of it?"
Nic gestured round the clearing. Eight of the convoy's squaddies remained in Skin, guarding the trucks and jeeps. It was an easy duty. The kids were hanging around the vehicles, with the Skins letting them sit in the driving seats. Several girls had appeared, in their teens or early twenties. Lawrence was sure they hadn't been around before. He would have remembered. Like the tourists at Memu Bay, they didn't wear much, T-shirts or halter tops, and shorts. From his angle, most of them looked cute to beautiful. They belonged perfectly to the idyll image. The duty Skins were very busy talking to them.
"Got to admit," Nic said. "It's tempting. I can see myself living like this once I've earned a big enough stake."
"I couldn't," Lawrence said.
"Why the hell not? A place like this, you've got everything you could possibly need. Hey, I wonder if they go in for that trimarriage lark? Country folk always stick with the original traditions longer than the townies."
Ntoko chuckled and pushed his cocktail glass toward the tall, healthy girls gathered round a jeep. "Two of them together would finish you off, man."
"There are worse ways to go."
"This whole living with nature in the forest crap is a dead end," Lawrence said.
"Whoa there, the man's got a bug jammed up his ass." Nic laughed. "What could be wrong with this, Lawrence? Do a couple of hours' work each day, then spend the rest of the time lying about drinking and screwing. Look at 'em. They're all smiling, none of them are stressed. They know they're on to a good thing."
"I've seen this kind of setup before. It appeals to us because we see it as a break from our job. But you can't live like this for eighty years. You'd die of boredom after six months."
"Oh hell," Amersy groaned. "Here we go, the starship captain speech again. We're all meant for higher things."
"It's true," Lawrence insisted. "This kind of existence contributes nothing to the human experience. It's a retreat for people who can't handle modern society. And the irony is, they're utterly dependent on that society. Villages like this rely entirely on the industrial products made down in the city."
"That's always been the way, Lawrence," Ntoko said. "Different communities live different lives and produce different things. Trading between them generates wealth. Centuries ago it was different nations; now we've evolved microcosms of that, with communities that are going down highly specialized routes. This kind of lifestyle wasn't possible before modem communications and transport. These villagers are as much a development of our society as Memu Bay is."
"They're dreamers who need a good dose of reality to wake up and take part in what the rest of us a
re building."
The sergeant raised his cut crystal glass to the sinking sun. "Well, this is the kind of dreaming I like. Now have yourself another beer and chill out, Lawrence."
"Yes, Sarge." Lawrence grinned and fished round in the icebox. A group of children walked past the end of the house's garden. They yelled something unintelligible, and Lawrence waved back. Places like this, he conceded, did have their uses. He'd never managed to relax quite this much before on Thallspring, not even clubbing down on the marina.
If he could just work out what was wrong with Arnoon... Which was when he saw one of the children, a boy, slip his hand into one of the bushes that marked the boundary of the garden. His fingers slithered casually through the chubby blue-green leaves and found one of the fruits hanging within. It was a smallish globe, with a satin orange sheen. He plucked it with an easy twist of his hand and bit into it. Juice dribbled down his chin.
"I knew it!" Lawrence hissed. "Did you see that?"
"See what?" Ntoko asked.
"He's eating fruit. Real fruit. Off a bush. They're all bloody Regressors."
Ntoko frowned at the boy over the rim of his glass. "You sure?"
"I saw him."
"Filthy habit."
"Fancy making your kids do that."
Nic pulled a face at the liquid slopping around the bottom of his own glass. "Hey, you don't think they've given us any, do you?"
"They'd better not have," Amersy growled.
Lawrence slumped back down in the sun lounger again.
He felt a lot happier now that he'd discovered the village's dirty little secret. I knew nothing was this perfect.
The fridge in the A-frame's kitchen had been filled with food ready for them to cook. He made a mental note to check the packaging that tonight's meal came out of. Thank Fate there weren't any animals grazing around the A-frames. At least the villagers weren't that twisted. They ate out on the balcony, microwaving pork barbecue ribs and baked potatoes. Nic even mixed up a couple of TexMex sauces from some sachets he found. Each of the packets had unbroken Memu Bay food refinery seals. Dessert was double-chocolate-chip ice cream.
They sat in the loungers, watching the sun going down behind the huge mountains. The village was dipped in shadow from late afternoon onward. Twilight lasted at least a couple of hours, silhouetting the peaks against a luminous amethyst-and-gold sky. Stars began to shine early on, twinkling brightly through the cold, thin air above the mountains. Eventually, the Milky Way blazed like a fat comet's tail across the night.
Lawrence wasn't really drunk when he went to bed, although he'd had just enough beer to keep his thoughts buzzing. He slept fitfully, waking every few minutes to twist and turn, thumping his pillow. About one o'clock in the morning, he heard the scream.
It was cut off almost immediately. For a moment he thought it might have been the confused end to some dream. Except he thought he'd been awake now for a quarter of an hour.
He lay there, wide-awake alert. It had been a female scream, he was sure of that. Now that he concentrated he could hear some kind of scuffling. Footsteps on wooden stairs. Another cry, muffled this time.
Lawrence came off the bed fast, snatching up a pair of interface glasses. He slipped them on and told his bracelet pearl to give him their light amplification function. The glasses didn't have a particularly advanced capability, certainly nothing like his Skin sensors. But they showed him the darkened bedroom, pulling it into focus with sparkling blue-and-gray tones. He slid the broad patio door open and went outside onto the veranda. His room was facing away from the village clearing, looking along the line of A-frames. Stars glared down on the village, banishing shadows.
A girl, maybe eight or ten years old, was running around between the A-frames. She was barefoot, wearing only a baggy white nightshirt. Her legs and knees were streaked with mud and grassmoss juice. He could see tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Jacintha," she called, then sobbed again. "Jacintha, please, where are you? Jacintha."
Lawrence jogged down the narrow steps from his veranda, asking Fate that Jacintha was her cat, or some other pet.
The girl saw him coming and cowered back. "Please, don't hurt me. Please."
Caught in the silver rain of starlight, she looked just like his sister Janice. She must be twenty-one... Fate no, twenty-two, now. I wonder what she's doing?
He held his hands out toward the little girl. "It's okay, nobody's going to hurt you. I just want to know what's going on. Can you tell me?"
She took a couple of paces away from him. "Nothing. Nothing's happening."
"Well, now, I'm not so sure, I heard a shout. Was that Jacintha?"
"I don't know."
"Listen, er... I'm called Lawrence. Can you tell me your name?"
She sniffled loudly. "Denise."
"Okay. Denise. That's a nice name. So are you going to tell me who Jacintha is?" He was looking round, trying to spot any motion in the village. Several A-frames still had their lights on: he could see the windows glowing around the edges of the curtains, as if they'd been bordered in neon. The convoy vehicles were dark outlines in the middle of the clearing. He could see a couple of Skins standing guard. The fact that they weren't showing any interest in him and the girl made him edgy.
"She's my sister," Denise said.
"Okay. How old is she?"
"Seventeen."
Lawrence swore under his breath. He had a pretty good idea what was happening now. Damn Captain Lyaute for his lack of discipline, and damn Z-B, too, for employing lowlifes as its squaddies. "Tell me, Denise, did somebody take her away?"
"Yes," Denise said meekly. "We were all sleeping together in Paula's home." She pointed at one of the A-frames. Lawrence could see several young faces pressed against one of its windows, staring out at him.
"Go on."
"Two of you came and said they wanted to ask her some questions. That it was about state security. They said she had to go with them."
"Where? Did you see where they all went?"
"Not really. It was this way, though."
She was pointing along the row of houses. And the scream he'd heard must have been fairly close. "Were they in Skin? You know, the big dark suits?"
"No."
"Good." Lawrence started running in the direction she was pointing. "Now you just wait here."
Denise hesitated, her lips quaking.
"You'll be fine." Indigo script scrolled down his glasses, giving him the convoy's current security status. It was level seven, no alerts or irregularities. He told his bracelet pearl to open a link to Ntoko and wake him. There was no light on anywhere inside the first A-frame as he ran past. The second A-frame had one window illuminated. Lawrence dashed up onto the balcony. Three squaddies were inside, sitting around a table playing cards.
The third A-frame had a light on. Its curtains were shut tight. Lawrence took the balcony stairs two at a time, heedless of the slippery dew under his bare feet. He could hear a murmur of voices from inside. The tight, guttural syllables that came from harsh, expectant men.
He pulled the wide patio door open and shoved the curtain aside. It was just as he was expecting. The girl, Jacintha, was lying on the floor, her long T-shirt pulled up round her neck, a pathetic, terrified expression on her face. Three squaddies stood around her: Morteth, Laforth and Kmyre—all from Platoon 482NK3. Laforth already had his trousers off, exposing his erection. Standing between the girl's ankles, he was using his feet to shove her legs farther apart.
All three of them turned to face Lawrence. Their shock and guilt twisted into relief when they realized it was one of their own.
"Jesus, Newton," Laforth spat. "What the fuck is the matter with you?"
"Close the goddamn door," Morteth said.
Lawrence pushed his glasses up so that Jacintha could see his face. "Have they raped you?" he asked.
She shook her head quickly. "No." Her voice was almost a squeak.
"Okay, come with me." He held a hand
out and beckoned.
Kmyre stepped between Lawrence and Jacintha, put his hands on his hips and smiled challengingly. "This is our prisoner, Newton. Now either join in or fuck off."
Lawrence could smell the liquor on his breath. "Don't you get it, fuckhead? This is over. Finished. Understand?"
"How can this be over? We haven't started yet, buddy."
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