Lydian’s concentric grid. Silver-shaded housing was now erupting across the long curving blocks; bungalows whose walls and roofs had been flatpacked together in giant containers that could be assembled by a minimum number of bots. The larger civic buildings were also modular, clipped together to sprawl across the ground. Nothing was over a single storey high. Why bother? Land here cost next to nothing, and vertical assembly was an additional expense.
Lydian’s purpose, like a hundred other towns springing up across Jevahal, was a transport and market centre for the homesteads that were busy converting the plains to arable country. Soon there would be a railway for the prefabricated station already built on the western side; the tracks were only three hundred kilometres away now, and coming closer at the rate of two kilometres a day. With them would come a whole new level of prosperity. Concrete foundations for the grain silos were laid ready, with their metal load pins marking circular outlines where the giant cylinders would dominate the town’s skyline for decades to come.
Like a smaller version of the capital, it was supposed to receive the busloads of recently arrived settlers and ship them out across the eternal plains to their new lives. Paula had seen several roads radiating out from Lydian during the hypersonic’s approach, a simple spiderweb pattern of concrete that gradually devolved into thick dirt tracks. She hadn’t noticed much traffic on them.
The local Farndale office provided a marque12 Land Rover which they drove into town. Governor Charan was waiting in his territory administration building, the largest structure in Lydian.
‘No disrespect, Investigator,’ was his opening line, ‘but you weren’t what I was expecting the board to send me.’
‘And the last thing you wanted,’ she concluded for him.
Charan shrugged eloquently. He was one of Farndale’s senior political managers; two years out of rejuve which gave him the appearance of a healthy twenty-five-year-old. His build was large, emphasizing the image of a no-nonsense administrator who was accustomed to dealing with the kind of real physical problems which pioneer territories always threw up. He wasn’t going to waste his time with corporate bullshit. ‘Frankly, I don’t see what you can do,’ he said levelly. ‘I’ve got a whole herd of Onid kicking the crap out of my homesteaders, and they’re tough families.’
‘Just one herd?’ Paula queried. That wasn’t quite how Wilson had pitched it.
‘So far. They’re running loose somewhere over towards the Kajara Mountains, and that’s rugged country. Lot of valleys and forests, which gives the vermin plenty of space to hide. Maybe you can work out where their refuge is, track them down somehow. That hypersonic you came in on, does it have area denial weapons?’
‘No,’ Gary Main said hurriedly. ‘It’s an executive passenger jet.’
‘Then I’m sorry but you’re wasting my time as well as yours. I have a situation here which needs resolving, and fast.’
‘Violence isn’t the answer,’ Paula said.
‘So much you know,’ Charan snapped. ‘You’ve been here twenty minutes. Not even that old biology guy, Dino, has offered me anything worthwhile, and he’s been out there well over a week now. Look, again, no offence, but if the board isn’t going to help I’m going to put together a posse and issue them with some heavy-duty weapons. Something that’ll finish this permanently. I can’t afford other herds turning rogue on me.’
Paula shot Gary Main a look. ‘Who’s Dino?’
‘Bernadino Paganuzzi,’ Charan said. ‘He was working over in the capital when it hit the fan. Turned up right after the first few attacks.’
‘Why?’ Paula insisted.
‘He was part of the original xenobiology team that classified the Onid as non-sentient,’ Charan explained. ‘Went off after the herd ten days ago, saying he was going to try and find out what’s got them stirred up. Hasn’t been in touch since. Probably got himself bodylossed, silly old sod. Looked like he was due a rejuve a decade ago.’
‘I’d better get after him, then,’ Paula said, quietly enjoying the annoyance spasming across Charan’s face.
‘Investigator, as near as we can make out there’s over two hundred of them in that herd. You might want to consider some back-up. Why don’t I assemble the posse, and you can lead them. That way if there is no nice and quiet solution you’ll be in a place when you can eradicate the herd for us. With all your experience, you’d make a perfect commander for this kind of operation. Everyone respects you.’
‘I’ll be coming with you,’ Gary said as they left the governor’s office. ‘That was part of my brief.’
‘No,’ Paula said. ‘I need you here to keep Charan contained. The first thing he’s going to do now he knows the board isn’t sending his marshals is put together that posse, officially or otherwise. You outrank him, and you’ve got Wilson’s ear on this. Your job is to give me the clear space I need to work the case.’
‘Case?’ Gary asked as they left the administration block behind.
‘Case,’ Paula confirmed. She pushed her shades on against the hot sunlight. ‘As the Governor said, something agitated the Onid. People are the only new factor in their environment. One way or another, we’re to blame. We’ve done something wrong. That makes it a case.’
Communication was poor outside Lydian. There was no uniform planetary cybersphere, only small individual nets serving each settlement. Twenty miles from town her connection to the local nodes was operating on minimal bandwidth. Thirty miles and her OCtattoos could barely maintain a link to the primitive relay towers that had been put up. Not that there were many of them. The five com platforms Farndale had placed in geostationary orbit were basic antennae, providing little more than a guidance function; they were still waiting for upgrades to supply universal coverage. Out here it was emergency signals only. If you were lucky.
The Land Rover trundled on up into the higher rugged ground to the east of town. To start with the homesteads were a brochure image of what frontier life should be, neat silver-white bungalows surrounded by lush fields with their first crop a lustrous dusting of emerald green atop the rich loam. Then after thirty-five miles the enzyme-bonded road ran out. The vehicle’s drive array advised her to take manual control as the ground beneath the tyres turned to stony dirt. Her e-butler sent an acknowledgement, and the steering column slid out of its recess. She gripped it tight, her fingers making contact with the i-spots. OCtattoos on her skin completed the link, connecting her nervous system directly to the drive array.
She tried to keep going at thirty miles an hour, but more often than not she was crawling along at fifteen or twenty as the suspension lurched about on the rough surface. It had been a while since she’d driven manually, and her implanted memory skill was slightly foggy. Her main concern was the horsebox she was towing, which sought any opportunity to fishtail about behind her. Homesteads were still visible, bungalows identical to those in town, set back a good mile from the road on either side. For the first hour she watched tractorbots ploughing up the pale red-green grasslands in big neat squares. Wide craters of ash illustrated where clusters of trees used to be.
After a while the dirt track bled away to ordinary grassland. Tall marker posts stretched along ahead, strobes flashing weakly under the afternoon sun. Trees were prevalent on the rolling landscape again. The lumber clearance crews were among the first to retreat when the Onid went rogue. Native vegetation had gloomy green leaves suffused with maroon veins, darkening them down further. Trees shaded close to black. Thick clumps of willow- equivalents overhung small streams, with larger hardwood spinneys colonizing hollows with their flaky trunks packed close to present an impenetrable fence to any animals larger than a terrestrial dog.
By now, human activity had dropped off altogether. The homesteads strung out along the marker line were uninhabited. Expensive tractorbots were parked outside, motionless. It had an uncomfortable resonance with the Lost23 worlds, abandoned so fast possessions were discarded without thought. Finally, all she saw were big cargo containers dropped off in the middle of the wild, their contents unpacked and unassembled.
Sixty miles from town, Paula stopped the Land Rover. The horse Charan had found her was called Hurdy, a chestnut-coloured mare he promised was gentle with novice riders. Paula deliberately hadn’t told him that she’d spent a lot of her early childhood on ponies and horses at her parents’ home out in the countryside. Sure enough, Hurdy was skittish and bolshie until she got the saddle on and mounted up. Then the mare realized that Paula knew what she was doing, and didn’t try to assert herself any more.
