"Santa Chico's cut off," Edmond said. "Everyone knows that."
Lawrence shook his head. "I was on Thallspring before I went to Santa Chico. This must have happened thirty, forty years ago, maybe even longer. Back when credit meant something to Santa Chico."
"All right," Amersy said. "I can accept that it's theoretically possible for the Arnoon villagers to have trees that produce terrestrial food. But where did the money come from?"
"Two possibilities," Lawrence said. "The first is they're exiles. A group of billionaires setting up a colony inside a colony. Essentially, they're self-sufficient—that's where the food trees come in. They have a high standard of living, which they support by quietly buying in all the consumer goodies that a relatively advanced world can provide. The problem I have with this idea is billionaires don't live like that. You don't work your ass off amassing that kind of fortune and then spend it on some forest idyll community. Earth is their element, with its stock markets and stakes and boards."
"So what's the other possibility?" Odel asked.
"That Arnoon began exactly the way they said it did. A group of honest people looking for a quiet life who harvested willow webs for a living. They start their community, establish some decent tenets to live by. Then suddenly they find something valuable. Fabulously valuable. This is the mother-lode of all motherlodes, here. What do they do? If they tell the rest of their world, everyone will want a piece of the action. Arnoon Province is developed and industrialized. Their way of life will be wiped out. So they decide to spend it on safeguarding that good quiet life they've got for themselves.
"A few of them buy passage to Earth on a Navarro house starship. Then fly on to Santa Chico. Several years later, when the gene blending has been accomplished, they come back the same way. After that, it's easy. They can expand their population without the local authorities knowing about it, because they have an independent food supply. Buying in every civilized luxury is relatively easy; they set up a couple of wholesale companies down here in Memu Bay, maybe another in the capital. They're fronts so they can send the products up to the plateau without anyone knowing."
"How did they know about Santa Chico?" Amersy asked. "We damn well didn't until after we landed."
"We didn't know how far they'd carried the modifications," Lawrence said. "We knew about the modification project. It was the big difference that the settlers were so proud of. Santa Chico was not going to be colonized the same way as every other planet. They made that very clear right at the start and went out of their way to advertise the fact. Even on Amethi I'd heard of Santa Chico."
"All right, maybe you did, but a bunch of willow web farmers?"
"They had datapool access and money. It's a wonderful combination; it always gets you what you want in the end."
"I don't believe hundreds of people can keep a secret that big for so long. One of them would come down into Memu Bay and blow his wad in a marina club. Word would leak out."
"Nobody knows about them," Lawrence said. "So the secret has been kept. Simple logic."
"I don't see how."
Lawrence didn't know what else to say to convince him. You couldn't dispute the plain facts.
"Hey, Sarge," Karl said. "What do you reckon this motherlode is?"
"That's where it gets interesting. The survey satellites never came up with anything on the plateau other than the bauxite. So, geologically speaking, it's got to be something that shouldn't be there, an anomaly. Expand on Arnoon," he told the desktop pearl AS. The picture flowed. Snow-capped mountains rippled up as the focus shifted past them. Huge tracts of forest swept by until the AS centered on a valley with a circular lake. There was a small island in the middle. "I saw this, too, when I was there last time. I didn't recognize it then, because you don't often see these all covered in trees and grass."
"Oh, my goodness," Odel murmured. "It's a crater."
"You got it. And it's impact, not volcanic. That island is the central peak. A chunk of some asteroid or comet hit the plateau a few thousand years ago, maybe less. The cliff on the west side is still almost sheer. There's been very little movement or erosion since it happened."
"So what hit it?" Karl was leaning forward, staring intently at the pane.
"I'm betting on metal," Lawrence said. "A near-solid lump of it. That would survive the flight through the atmosphere, and the impact. It also gives the Arnoon villagers something to mine."
"What kind of metal?" Karl wanted to believe. Manna from heaven mixed in with a great treasure hunt. He was buying in heavily.
"I don't know for sure, but it's got to be one of the precious ones. Gold, platinum. Or maybe I'm wrong, and it was an ordinary carbonaceous chondritic that fused into diamond from all that heat and pressure during the impact."
Karl slapped Odel's shoulder. "You hear that? There's a diamond mountain in them there hills, and it's all ours."
Odel gave him a pitying look.
"Maybe it's there," Lawrence said. "And that's what you've got to decide. By yourselves. I need to know if you're in or out. All I know for certain is there's evidence of a lot of money up on that plateau, and there's an impact crater in the same place. To me that's more than coincidence, but I can't guarantee anything."
"What sort of proposition are you offering, Sergeant?" Odel asked.
"Equal share for everyone who goes up there with me. We also have to pay off my contact and a spaceplane pilot."
"How do we get there?" Amersy asked.
"We've been assigned a hinterland patrol, leaving oh-eight-thirty tomorrow. Estimated duration two days."
"Jesus." Amersy gave a surprised, slightly troubled grin. "That's some contact you've got. Our assignments come out of Zhang's office."
"I've been planning this for a while" was all Lawrence said. Even now he wasn't about to trust anyone else with Prime.
"Man, we're covered," Lewis said as his smile broadened. "We're going to be up there on an official mission. And the villagers are going to be the last people to protest about some private asset realization. They can't let on they had anything worth taking in the first place." He looked at Lawrence in admiration. "Fucking-a, Sarge. Count me in."
They all turned as Hal began his loud grunting. "I'm. With. Sarge," he ground out. "Need. Money. To. Be. Better. Not. Live. Like. This."
Edmond patted his friend. "It's okay, man. You get a share anyway."
"Actually, if we go we have to take him with us," Lawrence said. "There's nobody here to give him the kind of care he needs. He can ride in the back of the jeep."
It surprised them, but they didn't object.
"I'm on for it," Karl said. "Fucking Z-B. If there's really any of that metal up there, I can walk away from the bastards."
"Sign me up," Odel said.
"Me too," Edmond agreed.
"You're not leaving me behind," Dennis said.
"Congratulations," Amersy said. "That makes it a full set."
Denise had managed to keep her emotions in check for so long now, she'd almost forgotten they were there, squatting at the back of her mind. She'd told herself her immunity from distraction was due to the d-writing she'd undergone; that objectivity and rationality had been installed along with all the other enhancements. The news about Josep had exposed that for the self-deception that it truly was. Ray had called her an hour after he was supposed to have left the spaceport, saying he hadn't reported in. Then his Prime started intercepting heavily encrypted messages flashing between the spaceport and the East Wing of the Eagle Manor, where Z-B's intelligence staff had set up office. Several of them referred to "the prisoner"; they covered requests for personnel and equipment, mainly from the medical department.
"They're getting ready to interrogate him," Ray said.
Denise fought hard to suppress the dismay that had risen from nowhere. "Do you mean torture?" she asked levelly.
"No, it'll be drugs and brain scans. That's why they want the medical people."
"Can you get him out?
"
"I don't even know for sure where he's being kept, yet, but I'm pretty sure it's the spaceport. They disconnected it from the datapool fifteen minutes ago. Which gives us a problem in trying to track down his physical whereabouts inside. And even if I did, it would take time to retrieve him. He'll be under the heaviest guard they have. Denise... I don't think I'll be able to get him out and safeguard the mission as well."
"I see."
"He knew that. You and I both knew this was a possibility, too. We've always accepted this risk."
"Yes." Stick to the mission, she told herself. "So now what? Do you think you can get hold of a key?"
"I'll have to wait and see. I need to know where they caught him, and if they have any idea what he was doing at the spaceport. That's what I don't understand, Denise, how the hell did they catch him? We know their security, there was nothing left to chance when we planned this out."
"Another Dudley Tivon," she said. "A random event. Someone caught him red-handed."
"Then why wasn't there any kind of alert? If anyone does anything against Z-B's interests they send up a barrage of red rockets. This time, without Prime intercepting their communications I would never even know they'd taken anyone prisoner."
"So what do you think?"
"The way it was done, the fact he never managed to load a warning into the datapool, I'd say they were waiting for him."
"They can't have been, Ray! That would mean they know about us."
"Yeah. Not a nice thought, is it?'
"I don't believe it. There has to be another explanation. There has to."
"I don't want to believe it, either. But we can't afford to ignore it, not now."
"Ray, we have to get a key for one of the Xianti flights. Without that, we've failed."
"Not yet we haven't, not by a long way."
"If you can't get him out..."
"I know. He'll never let them discover what he's become, nor what he was doing. At least we have that option."
"Do you want me to come to Durrell?"
"No. If I can salvage this I need you to be ready where you are. I'm going to have to consider my next move very carefully. I think we underestimated Z-B from the start. If that's the case we may even have to abandon the mission altogether."
"No!"
"Face it, Denise. We're not looking good right now. In any case, Z-B will be back in another decade or so. We can try again then."
"All right."
"It's not over yet. I'll keep monitoring the situation here and review my options. I'm trying to establish a link to the spaceport. We should know within twenty-four hours."
Denise managed a sad little smile. "That's when we were supposed to be on our way."
"Yeah. I'll call you as soon as I have anything new."
After that, Denise didn't go to the school. She left a message for Mrs. Potchansky, claiming a stomach bug, then told the house's Prime-augmented AS to filter calls. She knew she wouldn't be able to face the dear old woman, not even over a visual link.
It was the first time the rented bungalow had felt truly empty without Ray and Josep. Her head slowly filled with strange notions as she wandered along the hall. That she should go back to Arnoon Province where she'd be safe. Or fly to Durrell anyway, and rescue Josep. That this whole mission had been a mistake.
None of these thoughts are relevant, she told herself crossly. That didn't stop them from breeding.
Denise looked at the door to Josep's room, not quite sure why she was standing outside it. He hadn't gone in for much in the way of personal decoration—a desk, a couple of dark green leather chairs, which she thought were pretty awful. The bed was a double. Naturally. He'd hung a big sheet screen over half of the opposite wall, so he could lounge around on the mattress and watch the shows. In its inactive mode the screen showed a picture of Mount Kenzi taken on a cloudless, sunny day, rugged snowcap shining bold against the pale turquoise sky. She turned the handle and went in. When he'd taken off for Durrell he'd left the room in a shambles—the quilt crumpled up at the bottom of the bed, sheet rucked; several pairs of swimming trunks were shoved under the bed. T-shirts that he'd worn when teaching his tourists were thrown into a heap on one of the chairs, still smelling of seawater. Towels had been dropped on the floor. A set of his gills were slung over the back of the desk chair.
Despite everything else Denise had to do over the weeks following the invasion, she'd tidied up both the boys' rooms. Clothes and towels were gradually put into the washing cabinet. The mess sorted out. She'd even found two pairs of panties and a bra under Josep's bed—they had also been washed. The quilt had been folded neatly on the foot of the bed. Their little domestic robot had vacuumed the carpet, dusted round and polished the broad window that looked out over the back garden.
Even spruced up like this, the room belonged to Josep. There were tears in her eyes, which she wiped away savagely with her knuckles. She sat down on the edge of the bed, a hand stroking the mattress. When she closed her eyes it was easy to see him. Memories of him as a stupid little boy up at Arnoon. Growing taller and more serious as the years wound on. Emerging from the d-writing, mature and confident, his dedication to the mission easily as strong as hers. Then down here in Memu Bay. Devilish and happy, growing into a decent, attractive young man. All those fabulous girls he'd brought back to the bungalow, ending up here on this bed.
She'd never slept with him or Ray. Instead they'd shared what amounted to a brother-sister relationship, caring and respectful, with plenty of teasing thrown in, housemate pranks.
Was I being stupid? Should I have just leaped at him? Stolen the precious time we had? Or were we both scared of how deep and serious it would become if we started?
Irrelevant now. Just an exercise in what if, and painful self-recrimination as the prospect of total failure dawned. She hated herself for thinking such things. But the memories wouldn't let her stop.
The message package from the underground cell arrived late in the morning. Prime programs installed in various data-pool nodes ensured it stayed below the horizon of Z-B's monitors. Not even dataflow logs recorded its routing.
Denise was curled up on Josep's bed when the bungalow's AS accepted the message and delivered it direct to her d-written neuron cells. The pillow was damp around her cheek. She'd been crying.
Misery became plain annoyance as she reviewed the message. It was from a cell group in Harkness, one of the smaller suburbs almost on the edge of Memu Bay's moat of terrestrial vegetation. They'd barely been active since the occupation. Scrawling a few slogans on walls. Storing equipment and crude weapons for the more active units in Memu Bay itself. But Harkness was stretched along the eastbound wing of the Great Loop Highway—a very strategic location given their mission. The main purpose in recruiting the cell was so that they could keep the road under observation. And they'd just fulfilled their principal function.
The package was a report that two Z-B jeeps had passed through town, heading down the Great Loop Highway out toward the hinterlands.
Denise felt a flash of resentful anger that the imbeciles in the cell had screwed up and bothered her. Especially right now. Another emotion surge she could do without.
There were no jeeps. The Prime she'd inserted into Z-B's headquarters network reviewed their deployment schedules. And something like a convoy of Skins on their way out to the hinterlands would have been tagged as immediate priority. She would have known within seconds of Ebrey Zhang's office posting the duty.
The Prime operating within the bungalow automatically correlated the new information. There was a patrol scheduled to travel round the hinterlands today.
Reflex muscle action made Denise sit up fast She queried the patrol assignment.
Prime confirmed it.
She loaded another query, asking why Prime hadn't warned her about the assignment.
For software as powerful as Prime, the answer was a long time coming. Several milliseconds. Her Prime hadn't been aware of the patrol before
because the assignment hadn't come through Zhang's office. Something else had inserted it into the schedule, and done so in a way that shielded it from registering on any monitor routine. The Prime was sending out thousands of subtle trawlers through the surrounding architecture, trying to locate the origin. One of the probes encountered another Prime lurking inside Z-B's AS.
Within the electronic universe the two quasi-sentient software systems regarded each other passively. Attempts at infiltration and subversion were impossible. They were equals.
"Another Prime?" Denise squawked in shock.
Fallen Fragon Page 64
