Brinkley droned on. “Listen, I’ve got a medkit in the car. We’ll put a compress on those nicks. They’re not too deep. Day or two and you won’t even feel ’em-”
And Brinkley still droned on. “Yep; we’ll have you fixed up good as new. And we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. To the extent that’s possible, of course. Sure don’t want folks like yourself taking home bad reports. Hey, who’d you say you work for?”
“I didn’t.”
Brinkley had walked a step ahead, was trying to catch Caine’s eye. “Of course, I understand if you can’t say who you work for. We get that all the time. A lot of covert ops passing through. Every once in a while, our pilots have to ferry super spooks into or out of the bush. Incognito commandos, I call ’em.” Brinkley smiled wider, seemed to be expecting a sign that Caine appreciated his clever nomenclature.
Caine just kept walking, kept his eyes on the low skyline of the settlement, and kept hoping it was big enough to get lost in for a while. Long enough, at least, to decide his next move. From all appearances, the mission had been compromised-so what should he do? Call it busted and catch a shuttle to the next outbound shift-carrier?
No: not acceptable. Even if there hadn’t been any lives depending on the success of his mission, retreat was simply not an option. The next shift-carrier wasn’t due to leave for at least three weeks. And even if he could hop on one this very second, what would stop an assassin from following him? So retreating only made him an easier target.
Meaning, by process of elimination, that he had to drop out of sight until he could come up with a better strategy. And if he couldn’t “get lost” in the colony itself, then in the jungle-which, ironically was the source of the reports he’d been sent to investigate.
Brinkley nudged his elbow. “C’mon, you can tell me. They sent you here to find
Caine forced his face to remain unsurprised as he echoed, “What do you mean, ‘find
Brinkley looked over his shoulder furtively-even though the closest person was still over a hundred meters away. He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “You know;
Caine smiled, but thought:
Brinkley was still looking expectantly at Caine. Who stumbled over the requisite lie he should have told readily: “I’m-I’m here to investigate reports that the Colonial Development Combine has been breaking the local resource exploitation laws.” It wasn’t a complete lie, but it had sounded-and felt-awful.
Oblivious, Brinkley was pouting. “Well, I guess it’s more important to investigate CoDevCo than a bunch of fool rumors about xeno-chimps. Hell, it’s about time the Commonwealth did something about the Euros’ high- handed corporate partners. You out here from the States?”
Again, Caine couldn’t utter the easy lie, the easy “yes.” Instead, he muttered, “Not directly.”
“Have a good trip?”
“Sure. A bit long, though.”
Brinkley nodded. “Yeah, a six-month trip from Earth is a long haul. Seems a shame, too. You look up in the sky at night and you think, ‘that should be a fast, straight run.’”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Look at the night sky while you’re here. Locate Alpha Centauri-you’ll find it crowding Omicron Ursa Major, like a bright new eye in the head of the bear. Sol is there, too-right behind Alpha Centauri. So, as seen from this system, all the major green worlds are pretty much on a straight line: here, Alpha Centauri, Earth. It could be two hops-ten weeks-to Earth, if the Wasserman drive only had a little more shift range.”
Brinkley nodded back, then jerked his head toward the hydrogen-burning Rover now only ten meters away. “C’mon; let’s get out of the heat.”
Downport had the look of a well-established paramilitary compound: a lot of high-quality prefab; about a dozen permanent buildings; twice that number in various phases of construction. Neatly stacked rows of modular containers radiated out from several cruciform warehouses. Vehicles were plentiful, worn but well maintained, a smattering of new ones mixed in. The people had the same look: a bit worn, but fit and active, always on the move, dressed in practical, loose-fitting tan and khaki trail clothes, all wearing hats-sombreros, ten-gallons, panamas, outbacks-according to taste or cultural origin. Always in pairs or larger groups, always talking, always immersed in their purpose. Rapid expansion, American style. But it still wasn’t a city, or even a town: certainly nothing which could swallow you up and conceal you. So this was not a place in which Caine could elude an assassin for more than a few hours.
Brinkley resumed his stream-of-conscious narration, nodding proudly around him as he drove. “We’ve got about eighty-nine thousand settlers on Dee Pee Three, now. Mostly from Earth. A lot of Amexicans. Good workers. Hey: I don’t mean anything by that. They’re just good workers, y’know? Lot of new buildings going up, lot of new settlers coming in. A lot heading into the frontier, though. Some pretty feisty animals out there. Some of them are good eating. I mean, that’s what they say. But you never heard that from me. I’ll tell you, though, it can get pretty tiresome, eating the same old prepackaged meals.”
Caine glanced at the outre foliage that was peeking over the surrounding roofs. “So the wildlife here is edible?”
“Some, but it’s hard to know which animals are safe to eat, or rather, which parts of them. Easy to make a mistake. Some of the bigger animals make the same mistake with us. But they’ll try just about anything once.”
Just great. The jungle didn’t sound like a very good hiding place either.
Brinkley hadn’t paused for breath. “So it’s pretty dangerous in the brush. Hey: if you’re going in there, you’ll want a gun. Nothing too fancy, mind you. But I can lend you something better than the museum pieces the Neo- Luddites use.”
“Thanks: I’d appreciate that.” But Caine didn’t hear his own words; he was busy confronting a grim deduction.
And, paradoxically, that meant his only remaining option was to head directly towards his enemies. Downing had provided him with the means of exerting considerable political leverage over the Colonial Development Combine, more commonly referred to as CoDevCo. So if they had sent this morning’s sniper, Caine could probably compel them to back off-but only if he could get close enough to talk privately with CoDevCo’s local leadership, to strike an unspoken bargain that would give him the safety of an equally unspoken cease-fire.
Caine felt himself sink into-and then past-the odd calm that arises after accepting a course of action that might end in one’s own death. “Mr. Brinkley, have any of your personnel catalogued the wildlife, examined their physiology, anatomy?”
The silence that ensued was not promising.
“You have a staff xenozoologist, right?”
“Uh-we have a xenobiologist: same thing?”
“Not exactly. Listen: didn’t you have a zoologist by the name of”-Caine scanned down his palmtop-“by the name of Janel Bisacquino on your staff?”
“Oh, yeah, sure-but she shipped out four months ago. Science guys from further down the Big Green Main pulled rank and got her transferred to Zeta Tucanae.”
