Heikki looked at him in some surprise, an old anger stirring in spite of herself. Twenty years ago, that admission—that acknowledgement, that claim of kinship—would have meant so much more, would have made such a difference…. She killed the thought, and forced herself to smile again at Neilenn. “I told you, I grew up here. I ran with a lot of Firster kids then.”
Neilenn nodded, clearly a little embarrassed by his own unprofessional behavior, and stooped to follow the off-worlders into the passenger compartment. Heikki ducked into the well, settling herself comfortably on the narrow bench seat at Dael’s side. The Iadaran gave her a companionable smile, his hands already roving across the simple controls as he adjusted power plant and brakes.
“All secure back here,” Neilenn’s voice said from the overhead speaker, and an instant later, Djuro said, “I’m still not comfortable about the tow, Heikki—”
“The tow’s all right,” Heikki answered. “Our crates should be secure against rain, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” Djuro answered, but he did not sound fully appeased.
Dael grinned, and eased a lever backward. Gears groaned, a deep sound of metal against metal, and engaged. The ho-crawl juddered forward, bucking once as its wheels jolted onto the metalling of the main road.
Heikki leaned back against the worn padding, staring out the windscreen at a landscape at once strange and painfully familiar. Many of the old landmarks were gone— Goose Green, for one, the old spacers’ bar, no longer flaunted its string of gaudy show lights along the main highway. Instead, its lowlying, barrel-roofed building had been replaced by a series of sleek towers, many bearing the logos of Precincter shipping firms. A.T. Leigh’s was gone, too, but the Good Times Chandlery had actually expanded, a third—or was it the fourth? —flat-paneled khaki-colored prefab wing jutting out from behind the sand-scarred main building. But the land was just the same, sandy here on the edges of crystal country, bound in place by the ground-growing native clingvines and by more deliberate plantings of imported feather grasses. The latter grew in clumpy stands, man-high or a little taller, a few stalks already sprouting the plumes that would eventually spread their fluffy, pale-pink seed a little further into the relatively fertile midlands between Lowlands and the upthrust central massif.
The road swung wide to avoid a sand wallow, its edges marked by frayed, oncered warning flags whose thin poles were bent into graceful arcs by the still-rising wind. The ho-crawl was pointing inland now, so that she could see the first trees of the midforest, the nearest perhaps two hundred meters from the roadbed, a gnarled, low-growing chaintree with oily, almost-black leaves. Beyond the forest, the mountains of the massif were no more than a smudge on the horizon, indistinct as smoke. That was where the latac had gone down, somewhere up beyond those hills, on the plateau of the ‘wayback, and she was conscious of a faint, almost pleasant excitement, contemplating the job ahead.
“I was sorry to hear about your da,” Dael said, and Heikki recalled herself to the immediate surroundings.
“Me, too. I suppose accidents happen—but that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Especially not so soon after your mother died.” Dael kept his eyes on the road ahead, and the clouds that had almost reached the zenith. “I looked for you at the funeral.”
Heikki knew she blushed, and was annoyed by her own reaction. There was no reason to be ashamed, none at all, but still she found herself answering the unspoken question. “I was on Embros, off the main net, when it happened. They—the local authorities—weren’t able to contact me until it was too late. He was buried before I could find a ship going off-world.”
Dael nodded sympathetically. “That happens, too, but it’s a shame.” There was a silence, and then he said, “Do you hear anything from Galler, these days?”
Heikki bit back the sudden pulse of anger. Dael of all people should know better than to ask that question…. She kept her voice steady only with an effort of will. “Who?”
“So it’s still like that, is it? Well, your business, not mine.”
“Yes,” Heikki said, and saw Dael’s quick sidelong glance, half of apology, half of sympathy. They were silent again, for longer this time, neither quite knowing what to say to the other. There was nothing between them but their work, Heikki thought, sadly, and shook her head at her own longings. If that’s all there is, she told herself, then make use of it. She glanced at the instrument panel to be sure the intercom was off. “Listen, Dael, you know—or you’ve heard—what I’m here for.”
“I’ve heard.” Dael glanced sideways again, but this time his expression was unreadable.
“What’s the talk? What are people saying?”
“They’re saying a lot of things,” Dael answered, “and damn few of them make good sense.” Heikki waited, and after a moment the Iadaran sighed. “Of the sensible ones. They say the wreck should’ve been found a long time ago. They say it’s a bit late to be calling in experts, when the crew’s probably dead and eaten. They say the Widows and Orphans is planning to sue for the heirs, that’s what they say.”
“So there’s no talk that the crew might’ve been in on a hijack,” Heikki said, interested, and Dael shrugged.
“Not in my hearing, anyway. But then, nobody would talk like that, not while I was around, not even if it was true and half FirstTown was snickering up their sleeves at the company. I work for the company now, and they don’t forget it.”
And they don’t let you forget it, either, Heikki thought.
She said aloud, “It’s still interesting to hear. Thanks, Dael.”
The wall of clouds had passed the zenith, and the first layers were already overspreading Iadara’s sun. The light curdled, became sickly, unnatural, tinged with a yellow-green like an old bruise, and then the heavier clouds reached the disk and the sunlight vanished completely, as though a switch had been thrown. Lightning, a distinct and jagged line, forked through the sky above the city’s clustering buildings; the thunder was drowned in the growl of the ho-crawl’s engine. Heikki frowned and leaned sideways a little, looking out the side window so that she could see beyond the skyline. The city buildings dwindled there to nothing, a few low domes mingling with the scrub and grass. On the horizon, a stark line showed between the trailing edge of the storm and the clear sky beyond. Heikki’s frown deepened, and Dael said, a new, worried note in his voice, “Switch on the U-met console, will you?”
Heikki did as she was told, finding the familiar inset screen-and-keyboard without difficulty. Even as she keyed it on, Neilenn’s voice crackled in the intercom speaker.
“Dael? What’s the weather doing?”
“Channel five’s the metro-port now,” Dael said, to Heikki, ignoring the voice from the passenger compartment. Heikki nodded, and touched keys to tune the machine properly. The screen glowed and displayed a rough map of the city and the port and the roads between them; a moment later, a second image, this one the ghostly, multicolored reflection of the clouds overhead, was superimposed on the brighter map. Two sections of the clouds glowed brighter, yellow, and Dael spared them a few seconds study before he answered the intercom.
“Nothing yet, just potential.”
“Good,” Neilenn said. “Keep me informed.”
“Right,” Dael answered, but the intercom was already off. He glanced again at the console display, then forced his attention back to the road.
“I’ll watch,” Heikki said, and the other nodded, not taking his eyes from the road ahead. Heikki fixed her eyes on the shifting display, watching with some alarm as one of the two yellow spots grew brighter. The local weather station was monitoring the winds in the clouds above, highlighting areas that could produce the dangers— tornadoes, wind shear, devastating hail—for which Iadara was infamous. The pattern stayed steady, bright yellow but not yet shading into the red that would mean real danger, and began to drift off to the south, fading a little as it went. Heikki allowed herself a small sigh of relief, a sound that was drowned in a crack of thunder that seemed to come from directly overhead. She blinked, and the rain poured down.
“That’s that, then,” Dael said, raising his voice to be heard over the rush of water.
Heikki nodded—the rains usually signaled the passage of the storm’s most dangerous phase—and leaned back against the cushions. Outside the windscreen, the rain swept in almost solid sheets across the roadway. Dael slowed the ho-crawl, fighting to see between the blasts of wind-driven water. Lights flared on the control panel as the remotes kicked in and faint lines appeared, projected on the windscreen: a directional grid, and then the linear
