Ecolitan Prime (Ecolitan Matter)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “You make it sound like the Hailshams have a commercial empire.”

  “They do have some ties there.”

  Nathaniel smiled, then turned abruptly and stepped back over to Durward Hailsham. “I say. I’m Nathaniel Whaler, from Accord, you know. Chief Walkerson was telling me that you must be the local construction magnate.”

  Hailsham swallowed. “Scarcely a magnate, professor. Artos is barely large enough for a small permacrete facility and the equipment to lay it.”

  “We’re looking into infrastructure economics—you might have heard about our study—and permacrete supports highways, which are infrastructure.”

  “I suppose they are.” Hailsham eased back a step.

  Nathaniel stepped forward, just into the edge of Hailsham’s personal space. “You produce permacrete for other things?”

  Hailsham looked at Nathaniel blankly.

  “There isn’t much other use,” admitted the square-faced second man. “I’m Keiffer DeSain.” He chuckled. “If Durward is a permacrete magnate, then I’m…I guess you’d have to call me the local piping magnate.”

  “Do you produce large diameter piping for water? I’d imagine you must, with so little ground water,” pressed the Ecolitan.

  “We have worked with Durward to produce some two-meter permacrete conduit for the Jier Project, but it’s mostly water piping—some for commercial uses here and on ConTrio. You don’t realize how big even a small continent is until you get contracts for hundreds of kilos of pipe for houses or irrigation projects.” DeSain laughed. “I’ll dream about pipes until I die, even if I never extrude another one.”

  Nathaniel turned back to Hailsham. “You have heavy equipment?”

  “Not enough. And what I have is ancient. Making permacrete’s the easy part. Transporting and laying and fusing it is where the problems are. You need tech-template equipment and metal…and we’re always short of that.”

  “Always…there is something in short supply. Economics is the study of such shortages. There is an old saying—whatever be not there is rare.” Nathaniel turned back to DeSain. “The piping—do you use Sir Hailsham’s permacrete for other than huge water conduits?”

  “No. It’s too heavy for most applications. We mostly use hydrocarbon synthetics.”

  “You make your own feedstocks—or purchase them from the facility?”

  “I wish I had my own feedstocks.” DeSain shrugged. “But that takes credits and grower contracts—or fertile land—which also takes credits. We purchase from R-K and make do.” He offered a tight smile. “That’s all anyone can do anywhere, I’d guess.”

  “So it is. So it is.” Nathaniel offered his own smile. “If you would not mind, gentlemen, we would very much like to discuss your contributions to the infrastructure of Artos and what you see as the planet’s future needs. Perhaps Professor Ferro-Maine and I might visit you at your facilities in the days ahead?”

  “Ah…,” began Durward Hailsham.

  “Fine with me,” said Keiffer DeSain with a short laugh. “I’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know about piping.”

  “Thank you both for your patience and forbearance.” Nathaniel bowed, and eased away, to catch Walkerson blotting his forehead. The Ecolitan suppressed a grin and pulled out another of his overlarge kerchiefs. “Ah…it is warm, and I see I am not the only one who finds it so.” He could sense Sylvia’s concealed amusement and refrained from looking directly at her.

  “A bit warm. A bit warm,” conceded the port official. “Over there is Detsen Oconnor.” Walkerson lifted his left hand toward a clean-shaven, brown-haired man in a dark blue jacket and shorts. “He’s fond of you folks from Accord.”

  “And he is?” asked Sylvia.

  “The head of the government biomonitoring laboratory. Very important, you understand. We’re not that far out of planoforming.”

  “Of course.”

  Oconnor turned even before the three reached him. “Ecolitans. I recognized the uniforms. Good to see you.”

  “We’re pleased to meet you, sir,” said Sylvia.

  “Fine work you people do. I keep abreast of all the journals out of Accord. I even did a seasonal residency at the Institute after I got my doctorate. Years ago…too many years ago, but I do my best to keep in touch. Dr. Hiense and I still trade abstracts, and he was most helpful when…oh, he’s been helpful so many times, I’d be foolish to single out one instance.” Oconnor beamed over his long nose at Sylvia. “Are you as good economists as your ecologists are?”

  “Probably not,” said Sylvia with a grin, “but we try. Professor Whaler is well known for his infrastructure work. I’m not.”

  “Ah…it all ties together. You cannot have a working economy without a working ecology, and there’s a deplorable tendency to avoid biodiversity in post-planoforming situations. I keep pushing for it, but the growers keep telling me ‘output, Detsen, output.’” The monitoring official snorted. “Output—as if they’d have any output at all with a monoculture approach—”

  “Mostly synde beans for the hydrocarbon plants?” asked Nathaniel.

  “First, it was luxury beef, and then there was the furor over the albaclams because the algae detritus—”

  “Fascinating, I’m sure, Detsen,” interjected Walkerson. “Would you mind terribly, however, if I spirited the Ecolitans away for a moment? I’ll bring them back later…but a number of people…”

  “Quite so.” Oconnor smiled warmly at Sylvia and then at Nathaniel. “You must send me a copy of your study. I’m asking now, because I always forget. Hazards of the profession, you understand. So much to watch, and so little time. You won’t forget, will you?”

  “You’ll get a copy,” promised Whaler.

  “So good of you.” Oconnor bowed. “I’m in the harbor building of the ministry.”

  The Ecolitans followed Walkerson back in the direction of the food table, and Nathaniel paused to take another small sip of the too-sweet Kenward.

  “Ah, the Ecolitans!” exclaimed a blond-and-white haired, lanky figure. Beside Jimson Sonderssen, a thin-faced man in long gray trousers and a matching formal cutaway, piped in red, bowed from the waist.

  “You will not mind that we…intruded upon your…occasion, Port Authority Chief?”

  “Your expertise in such matters is well known,” said Walkerson stiffly.

  “Let us not be too curt, especially before the lovely Professor Ferro-Maine.” Sonderssen bowed again.

  “The noted agricultural technology factor from the Federated Hegemony, Jimson Sonderssen.” The Port Chief inclined his head but barely.

  “My thanks.” Sonderssen smiled, and turned. “My friend, Fridrik VonHalsne, my counterpart in the Conglomerate,” announced Sonderssen. “He says little, at least in any of the Anglo-derived tongues.”

  “Pleased am I to meet you,” said Nathaniel ponderously in Fuardian.

  For a moment, VonHalsne did not speak. Finally, he replied in Fuardian, “You have the better of me. Not many on Artos speak Fuard.”

  “Not from Artos am I. Do you claim Tinhorn as home?”

  Sylvia’s eyes flicked from Whaler to Sonderssen. Beside her, Walkerson smothered a frown.

  “No. I was born on Perugonia, although I live, when I’m not in the field, on the outskirts of Tinhorn.” The Fuard inclined his head. “You are far from Accord.”

  “Where our studies take us…that is where we must go. What is your expertise—that of hydrocarbon plants? Or grains?”

  “I…must attend to all those.”

  “Especially the beans and the legumes, would I not imagine,” said Nathaniel, more slowly than he could have responded.

  “Fridrik knows them all,” said Sonderssen in English with a laugh. “If it grows, he knows it.”

  “My friend, Jimson, he knows far more than I,” protested the Fuard in his own language.

  “You both know a great deal,” interposed Walkerson. “And I am sure that you will have more time to display that knowledge to t
he Ecolitans in the future. This is a social occasion tonight.”

  “But of course.” Jimson Sonderssen bowed. “A pleasure to see you both again.” He extended a card. “It has my local office.”

  Nathaniel pocketed the card.

  The Fuard bowed silently, and both agricultural factors eased away.

  “No sense of propriety, those two. None at all.” Walkerson straightened his formal jacket.

  “Robert,” said Vivienne Evanston, appearing at Sylvia’s elbow, “you must let me insist. I promised to introduce the Ecolitans to Kennis.” The blond woman with the sparkling eyes and animated face turned to Sylvia. “That’s Kennis Landis-Nicarchos. Kennis, you know, owns most of Lanceville, even the Blue Lion and the fusactor power concession,” offered Vivienne, leading them toward the tall, slender red-haired man dressed in a deep blue outfit of formal jacket and shorts, with a pale blue ruffled shirt. “He is one of our leading lights.”

  “Great lights cast often equally great shadows.” From his first glance, Nathaniel didn’t care for the industrialist, not that he could have said why, but he’d come to trust his feelings. About people, intuition was often far better than reason, probably because it was based on whole-body intangibles and not just facts.

  “You, too, have a forthright wit,” said Vivienne with a bright smile, “and a discerning eye.”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “Not I. I am a man with a blunt wedge for wit.”

  “You are too modest, professor.” Vivienne turned. “The Ecolitans, Kennis. You said you wanted to meet them.” Vivienne offered a smile and a head-bow.

  “Kennis Landis-Nicarchos, at your service.” The local industrialist, taller than Nathaniel, bowed deeply to Sylvia.

  “Enchanted.” Sylvia smiled politely.

  “I am the enchanted one. I had no idea that such attractive Ecolitan professors existed, and an economist yet.”

  “Nathaniel Firstborne Whaler, and I am most pleased to meet you, Sir Nichos-Landarchos.” Nathaniel offered a deep bow. “You must be most fond of blue.”

  “A failing, I must admit.” Kennis turned back to Sylvia. “I could easily become fond of gray.”

  Nathaniel suppressed the simultaneous urges to grin and break the redhead’s knees. “Gray is most becoming, especially upon the discerning.”

  “How did you become an economist?” the industrialist asked Sylvia. “Such a prosaic title…”

  “I found that there was far more substance in economics than met the eye,” said Sylvia.

  “A woman of imperial substance. That I like.”

  “Kennis always knows what to say,” added Vivienne. “And he is so charming. Everyone finds him delightful.”

  Nathaniel refrained from differing. The term “imperial” hadn’t been lost on him, or the message. He glanced around the Unicorn Room, noting that the numbers had slowly shrunk. The two men in gray had vanished, as had Sonderssen and the Fuard and the Governor General.

  “Now…Kennis…you’ll have to relinquish your attentions for now,” suggested Walkerson. “The professor has others to meet.”

  “I hear and obey.” The industrialist bowed, then flashed a white-toothed smile at Sylvia. “Until we meet again…and we will.”

  Walkerson guided them away from both Kennis and Vivienne. “Next you should say a few words to Laurence, there. He manages the Artos operations of the Bank of Camelot.”

  The three stopped before a round-faced man with a short white goatee.

  “Professors Whaler and Ferro-Maine, Laurence. The Ecolitan infrastructure specialists.”

  “Laurence Karl-Abbe, pleased to meet you.” The banker smiled. “We actually have some numbers, and if you’d like to stop by in the next few days, perhaps I could assist your study.”

  “You’re most gracious,” offered Nathaniel.

  “I should be. We share a common plight. No one is totally comfortable with either economists or bankers. Do you know why we turn off the climate control in the bank after customer hours? Because reptiles don’t need it.” He gave a belly laugh.

  “Do you know why losing a hand represents total disability for an economist?” countered Nathaniel. “Because he can’t say, ‘On the one hand…’”

  “Enough…” said Sylvia with a forced laugh.

  Walkerson shook his head sadly.

  Nathaniel barely managed to retain the last names and faces as they circled the room and spoke and made small talk. Abruptly, he found himself clutching an empty wineglass and looking around a nearly deserted Unicorn Room.

  “There,” said Walkerson, in a self-satisfied tone. “I’ve gotten you properly introduced to almost everyone who is anyone in Lanceville, and your jaunt tomorrow should take care of the rest.”

  “I take it that this was the creme de la creme?” asked Sylvia.

  “Precisely.”

  “Thank you. It’s not the sort of thing we could have managed,” Nathaniel said.

  “My pleasure.” Walkerson bowed. “My pleasure.”

  Nathaniel managed to avoid rolling his eyes, at least until they were outside the Blue Lion.

  Bagot had the groundcar waiting for them. “The Guest House, sirs?”

  “Please,” offered Nathaniel, his eyes and detector scanning the area and both coming up empty.

  He slumped into the rear seat beside Sylvia, shaking his head. “Receptions are worse than interviews.”

  “Because no one says much? And tiptoes around everything?”

  “Putting together a study is a puzzle. You need numbers, but the numbers you get aren’t usually the right ones. So you have to combine and analyze, and then everyone faults your methods. The people you talk to come in two kinds: those who are in charge—and they either don’t know the details or won’t say—and those who aren’t, and they’re afraid to tell you anything. So we dance around asking questions designed so that any answer will provide some information, and they dance around trying to provide as little as possible, unless they have an axe to grind, and that means the data is skewed, and we have to figure out how before we can use it.”

  “You are cynical.”

  He sighed. “Sometimes.”

  The foyer of the Guest House was vacant.

  “Do you have this feeling that people are avoiding us?” asked Sylvia as she started up the stairs. “It’s as though we have to be acknowledged, but that we’re not people, not really.”

  “The way I felt in my audience with the Emperor when I first arrived on Old Earth.”

  “Was it that bad?”

  He nodded.

  “You never mentioned that.”

  “Outsiders are treated that way most places. It’s nothing new.” He opened the door to his room, but heard or saw nothing unusual. The bed was turned back, the draperies drawn, and the light on the bedside table on.

  Nathaniel closed the door and paced across the room, noting that, once again, his case was not precisely where he had left it and that the closet door was fractionally ajar.

  “More surveillance?” murmured Sylvia.

  “To be expected.”

  “What did you think of Walkerson’s little gathering?”

  “Two things of interest,” mused Nathaniel. “The gathering was almost a teaser of sorts, and those present were mostly male, and Chief Walkerson did not have his wife with him—or a feminine companion.”

  “Neither did Kennis.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “I could be very jealous…except you’re free to make your own choices and you didn’t seem terribly interested in him—as interested as he was in you.” He paused. “I also enjoyed your comment about a warm welcome. Interestingly, there was no reaction.”

  “Kennis wasn’t really interested in me. He also didn’t seem to notice when you scrambled his name. For most men, that would merit at least a quiet correction. He was more interested in delivering that message that said he knew who I was and feeling out whether I’d be interested in him.”r />
  “Another indication that we’re part of a setup, but no indication of who actually created it.”

  “You don’t have any idea?”

  “He’s not in any of the background material. He’s not Avalonian, and not Imperial. We can ask around.” Nathaniel frowned. “I didn’t like him, even before he started flirting.”

  “He doesn’t feel quite right. His come-on was too strong, and that bothered me.”

  “Good.”

  “Oh, Nathaniel…” Her lips brushed his cheek, then touched his lips, and her arms were around his neck. After a long kiss, she eased back. “You offer so much more than he does.”

  “He owns most of Lanceville,” responded Nathaniel with a wry tone. “I own the clothes on my back, some few securities, and a little in savings.”

  “I’m not after possessions. You should know that.” Sylvia frowned. “You said the gathering was a teaser.”

  “I didn’t expect much more. The political heads of organizations seldom reveal much. You have to look at numbers, or count traffic or power lines. There were always hints about things here and there, but Walkerson was clever enough to let the hints surface, but never to let us hear the rest. And his forthright wife…?” The sandy-haired Ecolitan spread his hands.

  “They have wives—a rather hidebound and traditional society, I gather. But she wasn’t there.”

  “Exactly.” Nathaniel glanced toward the connecting door, still ajar. “We’d better check your room.”

  “You won’t find anything.”

  “Probably not…just like we’re not finding anything with our study.” He slipped through the door to find her room a mirror of his—empty, the bed covers turned, draperies closed, and bedside light on.

  He looked up from the detector as Sylvia eased back beside him. Her fingers squeezed his free left hand.

  “I much prefer you.” Then her arms went back around his neck.

  XIV

  A HIGH HAZE covered most of the sky, and the hot wind, bearing fine grit and bringing the odor of hydrocarb fuel and dust, blew out of the south. Nathaniel studied the waiting flitter.