Besides the antaniae, there were at least three species of plant life deadly to man, the Tranzitrees, the Progressivines, and the Bolshiberries. All of these, pleasant to gaze upon and sweet to eat, produced a toxin not dissimilar in its effects to C. Botulinum. This toxin was particularly insidious in that it affected only higher forms of life. Thus, domestic herd animals could, if not carefully kept from doing so, consume the fruit of those plants, build up the toxin in their systems, and deliver highly fatal doses to man.
It was surmised that both the antaniae and the deadly plants had been genengineered expressly to be dangerous to intelligent life. Certainly, casualties among early settlers to the planet had been horrific enough, as evidenced by such place names as Desperation Bay, in Lansing State, in the Federated States, 'Gagandie,' in Wellington (a city founded and christened by Australian thought-criminals whose country on Old Earth had not been given a settlement area of its own), and '
With the arrival of man had come all of man's domestic animals and food crops, from horses to goats and from wheat to blueberries. Additionally, many species endangered on Old Earth had found, or been given, a home and a new lease on life on Terra Nova.
However, when man had first come they had discovered that Terra Nova had already had an abundance of life so endangered that it had already become extinct on Old Earth. This accounted for the presence of Jinfeng's subspecies of archaeopteryx, or 'trixies,' as well as beasts of land and sea from saber tooth tiger to carcharodon megalodon.
* * *
'What happened to the father?' Carrera asked. Breeding Jinfeng had been a pet project for some years, he'd even imported several males to the
'You know males,' Arti said, sardonically. 'Once he'd had his fun he bugged off. I think he hangs around the solar tower. At least, I've seen Jinfeng winging it in that direction, from time to time, the shameless little hussy.'
The solar tower, more properly the solar chimney, was an extremely tall reinforced concrete structure, with an enormous circular greenhouse off center and down slope from its base, towering three-quarters of a kilometer above the island's dominant terrain feature, Hill 287. An enormous circular concrete tunnel running up the slope of the hill connected the greenhouse with the base of the tower. Heated air running through the thing turned turbines that provided all the island's power needs, and to excess, for the fifty-thousand men and women of the Legion plus the families. The top of the tower was perpetually shrouded in mist.
There were several others in the Republic of Balboa, all built at Legion expense and to Legion profit, that provided whatever of the nation's electric needs the hydroelectric dams did not. Moreover, the towers sold their electricity eastwards towards neighboring Santa Josefina. Carrera had never given orders to cut electric power either to the Tauran occupied Transitway or the rump government in Old Balboa City. Though he'd never explained it to anyone, his rationale had been,
'He also comes by here, sometimes,' Arti continued, 'mostly for free eats. At least, I
Casa Linda, Balboa
Two turbaned guards stood outside the conference room. Two others were within. There were always that many, or more, for when the boy slept two of them slept on thin cushions to either side of his bed while two more stood awake and watching, arms in hand, their pale green, gray, and blue eyes barely blinking.
They did other things, too, those guards. Hamilcar Carrera-Nunez, eldest child of Patricio and Lourdes, was already a crack shot, could fight with fist, dagger or lance, at least within his weight class, or even a bit above it, and could ride like the wind. The guards seemed to take a personal pride in passing on the lessons learned by their tribe of nearly three thousand years of combat on two planets.
Despite the guards' surpassing paranoia where his safety was concerned, Hamilcar was not in the conference room for safety's sake. Rather, he had learned to hijack the computer to play wargames from the Legion's educational programs on the conference room's big Kurosawa screen. On that screen now, thousands of electronic shadows were dying as a young student of the art of war swung in his flanks onto the opposing exposed flanks and smashed his cavalry into the computer enemy's rear.
Hamilcar knew, because his father had discussed it with him, that within a year, a year and a half at most, he would be going to Pashtia on his own—or, rather, with his company of guards—to grow some in ways the local schools could never teach. He suspected that it had more to do with getting him someplace comparatively safe than it did with furthering his education. Not that Pashtia was precisely safe, or perhaps ever would be. But there he would be guarded by hundreds, really thousands, of fanatics, every one of whom from the chief down to the least little girl milking a goat would eagerly die to prevent anything from happening to 'Iskandr, avatar of God.'
'Which is nonsense,' the boy muttered aloud, his fingers sending a recall command to his light cavalry. 'I'm not an avatar of any god. I'm just eight years old. With maybe some skills and knacks. And a slight resemblance to a nearly three thousand year old image on a gold plate in a dusty cave somewhere in Pashtia.'
On the big screen, trapped shadows, nearly eighty thousand of them, continued to die.
From the island, the sea today might as well have been an expanse of blue painted glass, with waves drawn on. Close in, one could see that the waves were real enough, but very gentle. They rolled in to a smooth sandy beach, dominated by a hill with a couple of natural caves in its face.
