“Pay’s not everything,” Sebasten-Januarias retorted. “I make enough to live on, and I like being my own boss.”
“Are you able, then, to make enough money outside the company?” Nkosi began, and waved his hands in apology. “I am sorry, that was rude. I have no right to pry.”
Sebasten-Januarias shrugged. “No problem. I do all right.” He gave a lopsided smile, its self-awareness robbing his words of bravado. “When you’re the best around, you get work. Besides—” He hesitated for an instant, then looked straight at Djuro, defying him to laugh. “If ever I get to go off-world, I want to have the freedom, not be tied down by some contract.”
“A very wise decision,” Nkosi agreed. “I did much the same myself.”
Heikki glanced at Djuro, lifting an eyebrow in question, and saw the little man nod in return. Nkosi saw it as well, and said, “Heikki, I think you must do it, you should hire him.”
“I intend to,” Heikki answered. “If you’re willing, Jan.”
Sebastaen-Januarias nodded slowly. “You were offering half the union scale, plus an eighth of any bonuses?”
It was not precisely a question, but Heikki answered anyway. “That’s right.”
“Then I’ll accept—assuming the contract doesn’t have any surprises, of course.”
“I’ll flip it to you in the morning,” Heikki said. “If you can give me a number.”
Sebasten-Januarias fumbled in the pockets of his enormous coat, and finally produced a crumpled slip of paper. “This’ll reach me. It’s at the field.”
“Good enough,” Heikki said. She reached across to switch off the minisec, saying as she did so, “If it meets with your approval, I’d like to talk to you about our search plans. Can you come by tomorrow at one?”
“I’ll be there.” The young man nodded.
“Good,” Heikki said, and pocketed the minisec. The service robot trundled forward as she did so, and she waved it away. Only when the dinner was over and Sebasten-Januarias had left in an ancient fastcat did she wonder why the young man had not bothered to get himself a computer linkup of his own. Probably doesn’t want to pay Lo-Moth any more than he has to for power, she decided. Everything in FirstTown runs off the company grid. You don’t even know if he does live in FirstTown, a small voice whispered, at the back of her mind. She pushed it aside, and reached into her belt for the card that controlled the lift. The lobby was very empty, most of the corporate functionaries having left long before; even so, she lowered her voice a little as she ran the card across the sensor face.
“What did you think of him?”
“I like him,” Nkosi said immediately. “I can work with him, that is quite certain. I think this will be fun.”
Oh, wonderful, Heikki thought. She had been on other jobs when Nkosi had had fun with his work. “Sten?”
“He seems to have more sense than most,” Djuro said. “He’ll do.” He saw Heikki’s grin and added, “All right, he’ll more than do. I’m pleased.”
“Good enough,” Heikki said. “Then we’ll settle with Alexieva in the morning, and see if we can’t schedule a first overflight for—say, the day after tomorrow?”
Djuro nodded. “We can do that.”
“Right, then,” Heikki said, and punched open the door of the suite. She was more tired than she had expected, she realized belatedly, and had all she could do to stifle a jaw-cracking yawn. A light was flashing on the monitor cube. She glared at it, then manipulated the controls to transcribe the message to a storage disk unheard. “I’ll deal with it in the morning,” she said, when Djuro raised an eyebrow. “It’s bound to be Alexieva’s bid.” She closed her bedroom door behind her without waiting for an answer.
When she ran the disk the next morning, however, the message proved to be from FitzGilbert instead. Heikki leaned back behind her workboard, a cup of the hostel’s excellent coffee in her hands, and stared at the face projected on the media wall. She ran the message again, then a third time, and then sat staring at her empty screen.
“I take it that wasn’t Alexieva’s bid?”
Heikki turned, to find Djuro standing in the doorway, a cup of tea in one hand and a fresh message block in the other. “No,” she said, and triggered the message again. “Somebody from Tremoth Astrando’s on planet, and I’m summoned to a meeting.”
“With a strong suggestion that you’d better have a team put together for this person,” Djuro agreed. He held up the message block. “This is Alexieva’s bid. It’s good for us, on the low side, but not unreasonably so. Somebody really wants her on the team, Heikki.”
“You noticed that,” Heikki said, rather sourly. She took the message block from Djuro, plugged it into the workboard’s socket, but let the data reel by without really looking at it. “What do you think, Sten?”
“I don’t like it,” Djuro said bluntly. “I don’t think you should hire her if she were the last guide on planet.”
“That’s really reassuring,” Heikki muttered. She glanced again at the figures, and said, more loudly, “But if not her, who? The other names I’ve unearthed are strangely uninterested, or at best don’t answer my call. Lo-Moth wants me to have a full crew picked out and hired—and I can see why, it gives Tremoth less chance to interfere in what’s Lo-Moth’s affair. And, of course, I don’t want to take the chance of anybody interfering with me.”
“You’re going to hire her, aren’t you?” Djuro asked. His tone was unreadable, and Heikki glanced warily at him.
“I don’t see that I have any other good choices. Alexieva is at least supposed to be the best.”
“That’s true enough.” Djuro did not sound convinced.
“If I offer a provisional contract,” Heikki said slowly, her fingers moving with sudden decision across her workboard, “and she accepts it, then I can say to FitzGilbert, and to this person from Tremoth, yes, I’ve got my team picked out, thank you very much, and I don’t need any help from you. And I can still dump her if it doesn’t work out.”
“It could work,” Djuro said, and sighed. “I think you’re being a little paranoid about Tremoth, Heikki. Why should they interfere?”
Heikki looked at him and said nothing. The little man sighed again.
“All right. You’re the boss, Heikki.”
Heikki nodded. “I won’t be able to be here to meet Jan. Can you and Jock handle that? Where is Jock, anyway?”
“Asleep.”
“Oh.” Heikki glanced at her workboard, already displaying the bones of a provisional contract, and ran her hand across the shadowboard beside it to throw a set of program menus onto the media wall. “All right. We should be getting some weather and course simulations that I asked FitzGilbert to run. I’m also getting Ciceron to run the same set, just to see how they compare. When those arrive, you and Jock go over them. I’ve made some preliminary notes, which are in the files, but I’d appreciate anything you two can come up with. Talk to Jan, too, see if he can add anything. I’m going to work on this contract.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” Djuro answered, and disappeared.
Heikki grimaced at her screen, and settled herself in for a long morning’s work. She finished preparing a provisional contract and flipped it to Alexieva’s mailcode, then copied her earlier simulations into another transfer file and dispatched that to Ciceron. The meteorologist came on line himself an hour or so later to discuss fees; they haggled for almost half an hour before settling on the usual rate for his sort of work. Nkosi appeared briefly, left the disk of rental contracts on the desk, and vanished again. The simulations results arrived from Lo-Moth—the corporate technicians confirmed her general conclusions, Heikki saw with some satisfaction, but had made some minor changes. She logged those, then tied her console into Lo-Moth’s main library. As she’d expected, there was a set of survey-satellite photos of the most likely area of the massif—raw data, mostly, only a few frames processed around the time of the crash in a vain search for the wreck. She pulled up a program of her own, and
set it searching through the accumulated material, looking for changes in the forest cover that might signal a crash clearing. The program produced nearly three dozen possibilities, but after several hours’ work with her own battery of programs, she was able to narrow the possibilities to six. She skimmed through her final compilation once, then left the disk for Djuro, and headed for the workbay and her fastcat.
The trip to Lo-Moth’s main headquarters took her back out through town, outside the Limit on the spaceport side. This was crysticulture country on a grand scale, the scrubland fading into glittering sand as it approached the distant bay. Sifters moved across the shifting ground, following courses marked by brightly colored flags. Their massive scoops grabbed up the first ten centimeters of topsoil, funneling it into electrostatic screens where the usable minerals were separated from the surface impurities, which were vented from chutes at the sides of the machines. The land in the wake of the sifters looked darker, almost tarnished. Heikki shook away the image almost angrily: the next good blow— and there would be one, at least one within each planetary year; that was a certainty, given Iadara’s weather— would stir the darkness back into the sand, drive the sea up onto the land until it reached the edge of the scrub and even beyond, churning the loose soil until it was fit to be harvested again.
The road curved north a few kilometers further on, leaving the sands behind. The land showed scrub growth again, low-growing, fleshy-leaved plants that gave way quickly to the lusher growth of the plains. There were houses now, attached to the road by newly-metalled turn-offs, ostentatious single dwellings screened from the road and from the neighboring dozen-unit complexes by carefully tended screens of highgrass. This was mostly corporate land, and corporate housing; between the settlements, sunlight flamed from the mirror-bright walls of the enormous crystal sheds. Neilenn had been right, Heikki realized. Production had doubled or tripled, at the very least, since she had last been on planet.
Lo-Moth’s headquarters complex lay at the heart of a little town, its streets and open parks laid out with a studied irregularity that was more artificial than the corporate rigidity it sought to avoid. Heikki swore to herself as she worked her way through the maze, damning all architects and city planners, but at last fetched up at the entrance to the headquarters complex. The securitron on duty at the main gate informed her blandly that she was expected, and gave her the guide frequency that would take her into the executive parking bay. Heikki thanked him with equal blandness, and let the flashing arrow in the windscreen guide her around and then through the cluster of towers. The mirrored glass cylinders reflected her fastcat back at her, and then reflected its reflection; she looked away, dizzied, and concentrated on the guiding arrow.
Neilenn was waiting for her in the parking bay, his hand running nervously over the electronics pad set into the high collar of his ‘pointer-style jacket. Heikki swore again, silently, glancing down at her own too-casual dress, but composed herself to greet him with ‘pointer courtesy.
“Ser Neilenn, it’s good to see you.”
“And you, Dam’ Heikki,” Neilenn answered, unsmiling. “If you’d come with me?”
Heikki’s eyebrows rose, but she allowed herself to be led through the tangle of corridors, each one embellished with plates of half-grown crystal—slag crystal, flawed in the earliest stage of growth, useless but beautiful—and brightly polished metal. They passed through a plant-and-stream lobby, and then followed a circular stairway up to the next level. Glancing back, Heikki was suddenly aware of shapes, people, and security devices, concealed among the greenery. And why should they be watching me? she wondered. There were a dozen obvious answers, most of them having to do with corporate politics, and she didn’t like any of them.
“Dam’ Heikki.” Neilenn came to a stop beside a brass-paneled door, one hand resting on the security box set into the wall beside it. “Dam’ FitzGilbert is waiting for you.”
“Thank you,” Heikki said, and could not keep a certain tartness from her voice. She drew herself up, wishing once again that she were wearing something other than her four-paneled shift and high boots that were her usual exploration gear, but put aside that fear instantly. It would do her no good to arrive feeling inferior—that was a lesson she had learned long ago, and learned too well to forget now. Neilenn touched buttons on the panel, and the door slid back. Heikki took a deep breath, and stepped into air suddenly chill. She shivered in spite of herself, and glanced around quickly. FitzGilbert, standing beside a massive executive desk, greeted her with a strained smile. She seemed to be feeling the cold, too, Heikki thought; the other woman was wrapped in an incongruously heavy jacket that was trimmed with some sort of feathery fur. Then she saw the stranger, sitting at the desk, broad shoulders broadened further by the cut of his expensive jacket. He was sweating visibly, despite the chill. Used to a colder climate, Heikki thought, but did not speak.
FitzGilbert cleared her throat, and took a step forward. “Ser Slade, this is Gwynne Heikki, of Heikki-Santerese, the salvage company we’ve hired to try and clear up this mess. Dam’ Heikki, this is Daulo Slade, a troubleshooter for our parent company.”
Heikki murmured a polite response, trying to keep her face expressionless. Troubleshooters were just what their title implied, the people who solved problems for the mainline, Loop-based corporations—except that most troubleshooters’ idea of solving a problem was to create other problems for other people.
“Dam’ Heikki.” Slade had risen to his feet at her approach. Light glinted from a pin clipped to his lapel: a green circle marked with three gold “R”s. A Retroceder? Heikki thought. Damn, he must be good, if Tremoth’s willing to tolerate that visible an eccentricity. Slade stood now, frowning slightly, the expression barely raising a line on his rounded face. “Heikki. That name’s familiar.”
Heikki’s stomach contracted. Galler, she thought, but kept silent, looking at the big man with an expression as innocent as she could make it.
“That’s it,” Slade said, “I had a publicity liaison, oh, not long ago, whose name was Heikki. Galler Heikki.” The frown vanished, to be replaced by an enormous and unsettling smile. “Would he be any relation of yours, Dam’ Heikki?”
“No,” Heikki said, instinctively and irrationally, and in the next instant could have bitten her tongue for that stupidity. There was no point in lying; records were too good, and too easily checked, to make it worthwhile denying Galler. She hesitated, looking for some way to recover the situation, and Slade shrugged.
“I see. Not that it matters. Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
“Certainly,” Heikki said, and FitzGilbert stirred again.
“Ser Mikelis planned to join us if we could raise the main link. Shall I see if communications has managed it yet?”
“I doubt they have,” Slade said, pleasantly enough, but with an edge that stopped FitzGilbert in her tracks. “The plant has been down since yesterday, and—forgive me, but your technicians don’t seem to be very efficient in their repairs.”
“We could use more up-to-date equipment,” FitzGilbert murmured, and Slade smiled again.
“I see the shoemaker’s child still goes barefoot.”
FitzGilbert flushed, barely restraining some profane retort. Slade’s smile widened, and he turned his attention to Heikki. “Now, Dam’ Heikki, please forgive me for being blunt, but I haven’t much time to spend on planet. Would you mind my asking your plans for the recovery of our matrix crystal?”
“Not at all,” Heikki answered, and was pleased with the academic detachment of her own voice. “I brought our—the firm’s—best technician with us, and a senior pilot with whom we’ve worked in the past. We’ve hired a local pilot and guide as well, for back up—”
“If you don’t mind,” Slade interrupted. “Could you perhaps just give me a summary?”
“Whatever you want,” Heikki said, suppressing her own annoyance. “We’ve run some simulations of the latac’s course, and have mapped out an area for a
preliminary aerial search. We’ve pulled in satellite data on the area—standard orbital survey material, both from before and after the crash—and have identified six possible sites. Once we’ve found the wreck, and I think the odds are that we will find the crash site within that preliminary area, then we’ll either bring in equipment to analyze the wreck in situ or we’ll fly out the remains and look at it here in Lowlands.”
“I assume Lo-Moth has already run this sort of program,” Slade said. “What makes you think you can find anything new?”
Heikki suppressed an angry answer only with an effort. “Because this is what I do for a living. Look, I have either modified or have had written half a dozen programs that look through your raw data for the few trivial bits of information that will help me find what I’m looking for. Once those programs are running, I have to make decisions within the program—what it’s looking for, whether a certain variable that meets the search parameters really is relevant or just noise—and I make those decisions based on twenty years’ experience. Your people don’t have the experience or the programs to do what I do.”
Slade nodded again, oblivious to her anger. “What would cause you to decide to remove the wreck from the crash site? I would have thought an oil-site analysis would be far more valuable.”
“Any number of factors,” Heikki answered, fighting for control, and in the same breath, FitzGilbert said,
“Orcs.”
“Orcs?” For a moment, Slade looked puzzled. “Oh. Your resident hominid.”
His tone was faintly contemptuous, and Heikki struggled to keep her own voice steady. “That’s the most likely reason we’d want to move the remains. If the site were awkward for any other reason, though, I’d move— after obtaining a full holographic record, of course.”
“Of course.” Slade sounded almost bored now. “Tell me, do you think this is a matter for internal affairs?”
“He means, was it sabotage,” FitzGilbert interjected.
“I have no idea at this point,” Heikki answered.
“You must have made some assumptions,” Slade murmured.
Mighty Good Road Page 13
