finally succeeded in grabbing hold of the fish. “You do realize that thanks to our sanctions they haven’t got a defensive system which can even fart loudly?”
“She won’t get far,” Monica said. “Not with this Laton scare closing down all the starship flights.”
“You hope!” Pauline staggered off towards the waterline with her wriggling burden.
Monica clambered to her feet and brushed the sand off her clothes, shaking it out of her hair. She looked down at the lanky Edenist. “Dear me, CNIS entrance standards have really gone downhill lately.”
He grinned weakly. “Yeah. But you know she’s right about Mzu. The good doctor had us all fooled. Clever lady. And now there’s going to be hell to pay.”
She put her hand under his shoulder and helped him up. “I suppose so. One thing’s for certain, there’s going to be a mad scramble to catch her. Every government is going to want her tucked away on their own planet in order to safeguard democracy. And, my new friend, there are some democrats in this Confederation I don’t ever want to find her.”
“Us, for instance?”
Monica hesitated, then gave her head a rueful shake. “No. But don’t tell my boss I said that.”
Samuel watched the two agents on horseback galloping across the beach toward them. Right now he couldn’t even remember which services they belonged to. Not that it mattered. In a few hours they’d all be going their separate ways again. “Damn, Tranquillity really was the only place for her, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Come on, let’s see if these two have got anything for your wrist. I think that’s Onku Noi on the second horse. The Imperial Oshanko mob are always loaded down with gadgets.”
According to his neural nanonics’ timer function it was high noon. But Chas Paske wasn’t sure how to tell any more. There hadn’t been any fluctuation in the red cloud’s lambent emission since he started walking— hobbling, rather. The black and red jungle remained mordantly uninviting. Every laboured step was accompanied by the incessant hollow rolls and booms of thunder from high above.
He had managed to splint his leg, after a fashion: five laths of cherry oak wood that stretched from his ankle to his pelvis, lashed into place by ropy vines. The thigh wound was still a real problem. He had bound it with leaves, but every time he looked it seemed to be leaking capacious amounts of ichor down his shin. And it was impossible to keep the insects out. Unlike what appeared to be every other living creature, they hadn’t abandoned the jungle. And devoid of other targets, they massed around him—mosquito-analogues, maggot-analogues, things with legs and wings and pincers that had no analogue. All of them suckling at his tender flesh. Twice now he’d changed the leaves, only to find a seething mass of tiny black elytra underneath. Flies crawled round his skin burns as though they were the only oases of nourishment in a barren world.
According to his guidance block he had come two and a half kilometres in the last three hours. It was hard going through the virgin undergrowth which lay along the side of the river. His crutch kept getting snagged by the thick cords that foamed over the loam. Slender low-hanging branches had a knack of catching the splint laths.
He picked the small wrinkled globes of abundant vine fruit as he went, chewing constantly to keep his fluid and protein levels up. But at this rate it was going to take him weeks to get anywhere.
Durringham was his ultimate goal. Whatever resources and wealth existed on this misbegotten planet, they resided in the capital. Scouting it had been his team’s mission. He saw no reason to abandon that assignment. Sitting waiting to die in the jungle wasn’t a serious option. Recovery and evacuation was obviously out of the question now. So, there it was, an honourable solution; one which would keep him occupied and motivated, and, should he achieve the impossible and make it, might even accomplish something worthwhile. Chas Paske was going to go down swinging.
But for all his determination he knew that he was going to have to find an easier way to travel. The medical program was releasing vast amounts of endocrines from his implants, analgesic blocks had been thrown across a good twenty per cent of his nerve fibres. Boosted metabolism or not, he couldn’t keep expending energy at this rate.
He accessed his guidance block and summoned up the map. There was a village called Wryde fifteen hundred metres downstream on the other bank. According to the LDC file it had been established nine years ago.
It would have to do.
He plucked another elwisie fruit, and limped on. One advantage of the thunder was that no one would hear the racket he made ploughing through the vegetation.
The light was visible long before the first of the houses. A welcome gold-yellow nimbus shrouding the river. Snowlilies glinted and sparkled with their true opulence. Chas heard a bird again, the silly surprised warble of a chikrow. He lowered himself in tricky increments, and started to slither forward on his belly.
Wryde had become a thriving, affluent community, far beyond the norm for a stage one colony planet. The town nestled snugly in a six-square-kilometre clearing that had been turned over to dignified parkland. It was comprised of large houses built from stone or brick or landcoral, all of them the kind of elegantly sophisticated residence that a merchant or wealthy farmer would own. The main street was a handsome tree-lined boulevard, bustling with activity: people wandering in and out of the shops, sitting at the tables of pavement cafйs. Horse- drawn cabs moved up and down. An impressive red-brick civic hall stood at one end, four storeys high, with an ornate central clock tower. He saw some kind of sports field just outside the main cluster of houses. People dressed all in white were playing a game he didn’t know while spectators picnicked round the boundary. Close to the jungle at the back of the park, five windmills stood alongside a lake, their huge white sails turning steadily even though there was very little breeze. Grandiose houses lined the riverbank, lawns extending down to the water. They all had boat-houses or small jetties; rowing-boats and sailing dinghies were moored securely against the sluggish tide of snowlilies. Larger craft had been drawn up on wooden slipways.
It was the kind of community every sane person would want to live in; small-town cosiness, big-city stability. Even Chas, lying in muddy loam under a bush on the opposite bank, felt the subtle attraction of the place. By simply existing it offered the prospect of belonging to a perpetual golden age.
His retinal implants showed him the sunny, happy faces of the citizens as they went about their business. Scanning back and forth he couldn’t see anyone labouring in the pristine gardens, or sweeping the streets; no people, no bitek servitors, no mechanoids. The nearest anyone came to work was the cafй proprietors, and they seemed cheerful enough, chatting and laughing with their customers. All generals and no privates, he thought to himself. It isn’t real.
He accessed the guidance block again. A green reference grid slipped up over his vision and he focused on a jetty at the far end of the town’s clearing. The block calculated its exact coordinate and integrated it into the map.
When he checked his physiological status, the neural nanonics reported his haemoglobin reserve was down to half an hour. His metabolism wasn’t producing it with anything like its normal efficiency. He ran through the guidance block’s display one last time. Half an hour ought to be enough.
Chas started to crawl forwards again, easing himself down the muddy slope and into the water like an arthritic crocodile.
Twenty minutes later he judiciously parted a pair of snowlilies and let his rigid moulded face stick up out of the water. The guidance block had functioned flawlessly, delivering him right beside the jetty. A trim blue-painted rowing-boat was pulling gently against its mooring two metres away. There was nobody anywhere near. He reached up and cut the pannier with his fission blade, grabbing the end as it fell into the water.
The boat started to drift with the snowlilies. Chas dropped below the surface.
He waited as long as he dared. The neural nanonics’ physiological monitor program was flashing dire warnings of oxygen starvation into his brain before he risked surfacing.
Wryde was out of sight round a curve, although the ordinary light which clung to its rolling parkland was spilling round the trees on the bank. When he looked at his prize it had changed from the well-crafted skiff he had stolen to a dilapidated punt that was little more than a raft. Tissue-thin gunwales, which had been added in what must have been a surreal afterthought, were crumbling like rotten cork before his eyes. They left a wake of dark mushy dust on the snowlilies.
Chas waited a minute to see if any other drastic changes were going to occur. He rapped experimentally on the wood which was left. It seemed to be solid enough. So with a great deal of effort, and coming dangerously near to capsizing, he managed to half-clamber, half-roll into the shallow bottom of the boat.
