the Guild,' she said.
'Not us. Not this time.'
'Do you think maybe some hunters with some highly unusual talents have joined the Riders?' she ventured.
'That would be the simplest explanation, but I'm inclined to doubt it.'
She shivered. 'What if someone really has discovered an alien lab filled with infernal devices?'
'I'm not sure if an entire lab has been uncovered, but it sure looks like someone found a couple of very interesting alien gadgets. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened.'
'A few months ago there were reports in the press about some kind of parapsych medical instrument that was discovered in the rain forest. It's being used on an experimental basis to treat hunters who have been severely psi-burned.'
'They're getting good results, too,' Fontana said. 'Takes someone with a special talent for rezzing the device, but it works.'
'A door has been opened down here in the jungle, hasn't it?' she said quietly. 'If one alien machine has been found, it's only reasonable to assume that more may have been discovered or will be.'
'Yes.'
'But what about the disappearances of the homeless men? And the juice dealing in the Quarter? My intuition tells me that they're all connected, but I can't see how.'
'I agree, there's some kind of link.' He was silent for a moment. 'One thing interesting came out of Jake's file.'
'You mean aside from the fact that the last six months of his service records were missing?'
'Aside from that. Jake can work, or, rather, could work, ghost river energy. The rivers are a major problem down here. Hunters who can handle them are valuable.'
'Any chance you'll find out what Jake was doing during the last six months of his professional career?' she asked.
'Ray is piecing it together. He'll identify and talk to people who worked with Jake. Eventually we'll get the answers.'
'Unless all of the men who worked with him during those last six months are on the list of those who disappeared,' she said.
'Even if that were the case, there are still all of the members of the exploration teams that Jake accompanied. Trust me, if someone was going around kidnapping a lot of pricey scientists and para- archaeologists, it would have been noticed.'
'True.'
'Ray came up with something else that may or may not be important. A hunter named Cal Wilson was killed in a jungle accident about six months back. Turns out he was one of the men assigned to the UEX venture.'
'You have to admit that UEX keeps coming up in this thing.'
'Yes,' he said. 'It does.'
Silence fell again. Sierra listened to the sounds of the night-darkened jungle. She was tired, but she knew she was too highly rezzed to sleep.
After a while, Fontana spoke out of the shadows. 'Tonight when I carried you upstairs to bed, you said something.'
'Did I?' She smiled a little. 'I have to admit that things became a bit of a blur after you poured the brandy down my throat.'
'You said that I was like everyone else in your family.'
She winced. 'I didn't mean to insult you. Being an aggressive, goal-oriented, talented overachiever isn't necessarily a bad thing.'
'That's not what I meant.'
'What did you mean?' she asked, baffled now.
He looked at her very steadily. 'I'm not like everyone else in your family, and we both know it.'
'You're going to try to argue that you aren't an aggressive, goal-oriented, talented overachiever? That's a difficult position to defend, given the facts, isn't it?'
'You know what I mean. We both know I'm not the kind of man your family expects you to marry.'
'Ah, so we're back to that, are we?'
'I overheard that conversation with your mother, remember? She was horrified because you'd married a Guild man.'
'You overheard one side of that conversation. If you'd heard both sides, you would know that Mom was horrified because I'd gotten myself into a Marriage of Convenience. People in my family don't do MCs.'
'Everyone in your family goes straight into a fullblown Covenant Marriage, is that it?'
'When they find the right person, yes.'
'That's a little risky, isn't it?'
'Mistakes are uncommon,' she said quietly.
'Neat trick.' He looked coldly amused. 'How are they avoided?'
'Mostly, people in my family rely on professional matchmakers. It's an old tradition that dates back to our ancestors on Earth.'
He frowned. 'Your family has always used matchmakers?'
'For generations. But our matchmakers are a little different.'
'How?'
'They're all psychic.' She smiled. 'You could say they have a special talent for the work.'
'How in hell did you all find psychic matchmakers?'
She looked at him. 'It's a family secret. If I tell you, you have to promise to keep it.'
His mouth quirked a little at the corner. 'One thing I'm good at, sweetheart, is keeping secrets.'
'Yes, I know. Okay, here goes. Ever heard of an old Earth group called the Arcane Society?'
'It's an old-world legend. I came across it when I did some research on my own talents. It was supposed to have been a secret organization of people who had paranormal talents.'
'The Arcane Society really did exist on Earth.'
He watched her closely. 'And?'
'And a lot of my ancestors were members. They came through the Curtain along with all the other colonists two hundred years ago. They brought their matchmakers with them. We've continued a lot of the old traditions.'
'You've
'Yes. For a lot of reasons, we keep a very low profile.'
'Son of a ghost,' he said softly. Then he laughed. 'I've married a woman who has more secrets than a Guild boss.'
'The odd thing is, no one thought we would need the Society after we came through the Curtain, at least, not after psychic talents started appearing in the population here on Harmony. But it soon became clear that some things hadn't changed. People like us who possessed unusual or very strong psychic talents that were not associated with alien psi or accessed with amber faced the same problems on this world that they had on Earth.'
'People get nervous around you?'
'Or else they think we're charlatans and con artists. Worse yet, some people want to turn psychics into money-making stage acts. So, yes, the organization continues to exist.'
'What about Pemberley? Were the two of you matched by your Society's matchmakers?'
'Yes.'
'So they aren't infallible?'
'No,' she said. 'They aren't infallible. What I'm trying to tell you is that my family is a little different. We understand what it is to be different. It's true that at this point they don't know you. Naturally they've got questions and, as I explained, they don't approve of MCs. But they judge people as individuals, not according to where they went to school or their social connections.'
