weapon is pretty easy to spot. I don’t want any particularly unsavoury armaments released to the Confederation at large.” And if it was an enemy’s weapon that destroyed the Laymil habitats I want to know before I decide what to tell everybody.
Chapter 15
Night had come to Durringham. It brought with it a thick grey mist which flowed down the slushy streets and over the mouldering roof slats, depositing an unctuous coating of droplets in its wake. The water filmed every exterior wall until the whole city was glistening darkly, droplets running together and dribbling off the eaves and overhangs. Doors and shutters were no protection, the mist penetrated buildings with ease, soaking into fabrics and condensing over furniture. It was worse than the rain.
The Governor’s office was faring little better than the rest of the city. Colin Rexrew had turned up the conditioning until it made an aggravated rattling sound, but the atmosphere inside remained obstinately muggy. He was reviewing satellite images with Terrance Smith and Candace Elford, Lalonde’s Chief Sheriff. The three big wall- screens opposite the curving window were displaying pictures of a riverside settlement village. They showed the usual collection of shambolic huts and small fields, large piles of felled trunks, and stumps which played host to ears of orange fungi. Chickens scratched around in the dirt between the huts, while dogs roamed free. The few people captured by the camera were dressed in dirty, ragged clothes. One child, about two years old, was completely naked.
“These are very poor images,” Colin Rexrew complained. Most of the edges were blurred, even the colours appeared wan.
“Yes,” Candace Elford agreed. “We ran a diagnostic check on the observation satellite, but there was no malfunction. The images from any other area it views are flawless. The satellite only has trouble when it’s passing over the Quallheim.”
“Oh, come on,” Terrance Smith said. “You can’t mean that the people in the Quallheim Counties can distort our observation, surely?”
Candace Elford considered her answer. She was fifty-seven, and Lalonde was her second appointment as chief sheriff. Both senior appointments had been won because of her thoroughness; she had worked her way up through various colony planet police services, and harboured a kind of bewildered contempt for colonists, who, she had discovered, were capable of damn near anything out in the frontier lands. “It’s unlikely,” she admitted. “The Confederation Navy ELINT satellites haven’t detected any unusual emissions from Schuster County. It’s probably a glitch, that satellite is fifteen years old, and it hasn’t been serviced for the last eleven years.”
“All right,” Colin Rexrew said. “Point noted. We don’t have the money for regular services, as you well know.”
“When it breaks down, a replacement will cost the LDC a lot more than the expense of proper triennial maintenance,” Candace Elford countered.
“Please! Can we stick with the topic in hand,” Colin Rexrew said. He eyed the drinks cabinet longingly. It would have been nice to break open one of the chilled white wines and have a more relaxed session, but Candace Elford would have refused, which would make it awkward. She was such an uncompromising officer; one of his best though, someone the sheriffs respected and obeyed. He needed her, so he put up with her rigid adherence to protocol, counting his blessings.
“Very well,” she said crisply. “As you can see, Aberdale has twelve burnt-out buildings. According to the sheriff in Schuster town, Matthew Skinner, there was some kind of Ivet disturbance four days ago, which is when the buildings were razed. The Ivets allegedly murdered a ten-year-old boy, and the villagers set about hunting them down. Supervisor Manani’s communication block wasn’t working, so an Aberdale villager visited Schuster the day after this murder, and Matthew Skinner reported it to my office. That was three days ago. He said he was riding to Aberdale to investigate; apparently most of the Ivets had been killed by that time. We heard nothing until this morning, when Matthew Skinner said the disturbance was over, and the Aberdale Ivets were all dead.”
“I disapprove of vigilante action,” Colin Rexrew said. “Officially, that is. But given the circumstances I can’t say I blame the Aberdale villagers, those Ivets have always been a mixed blessing. Half of them should never be sent here, ten years’ work-time isn’t going to rehabilitate the real recidivists.”
“Yes, sir,” Candace Elford said. “But that’s not the problem.”
Colin Rexrew brushed back tufts of his thinning hair with clammy hands. “I didn’t think it would be that simple. Go on.”
She datavised an order into the office’s computer. The screens started to display another village; it looked even more impecunious than Aberdale. “This is Schuster town itself,” she said. “The image was recorded this morning. As you can see, there are three burnt-out buildings.”
Colin Rexrew sat up a little straighter behind his desk. “They had Ivet trouble, too?”
“That is the curious thing,” Candace Elford said. “Matthew Skinner never mentioned the fires, and he should have done, fires like that are dangerous in those kinds of communities. The last routine satellite images we have of Schuster are two weeks old, the buildings were intact then.”
“It’s pushing coincidence a long way,” Colin Rexrew said, half to himself.
“That’s what my office thought,” Candace Elford said. “So we started checking a little closer. The Land Allocation Office divided the Quallheim territory up into three counties, Schuster, Medellin, and Rossan, which between them now have ten villages. We spotted burnt-out buildings in six of those villages: Aberdale, Schuster, Qayen, Pamiers, Kilkee, and Medellin.” She datavised more instructions. The screens started to run through the images of the villages her office had recorded that morning.
“Oh, Jesus,” Colin Rexrew muttered. Some of the blackened timbers were still smoking. “What’s been happening up there?”
“First thing we asked. So we called up each of the village supervisors,” Candace Elford said. “Qayen’s didn’t answer, the other three said everything was fine. So we called up the villages that didn’t show any damage. Salkhad, Guer, and Suttal didn’t answer; Rossan’s supervisor said they were all OK, and nothing out of the ordinary was happening. They hadn’t heard or seen anything from any of the other villages.”
“What’s your opinion?” Colin Rexrew asked.
The chief sheriff turned back to the screens. “One final piece of information. The satellite made seven passes over the Quallheim Counties today. Despite the shoddy images, at no time did we see anybody working in any of those fields; not in any of the ten villages.”
Terrance Smith whistled as he sucked air through his teeth. “Not good. There’s no way you’d keep a colonist from his field, not on a day with weather like it has been up there. They are utterly dependent on those crops. The supervisors make it quite plain from the start, once they’re settled, they don’t get any help from Durringham. They can’t afford to leave the fields untended. Remember what happened in Arklow County?”
Colin Rexrew gave his aide an irritable look. “Don’t remind me, I accessed the files when I arrived.” He transferred his gaze to the screens, and the image of Qayen village. A black premonition was rising in his mind. “So what are you telling me, Candace?”
“I know what it looks like,” she said. “I just can’t believe it, that’s all. An Ivet revolt which has successfully taken control of the Quallheim Counties, and in just four days, too.”
“There are over six thousand colonists spread out in those counties,” Terrance Smith said. “Most of them have weapons and aren’t afraid to use them. Against that, there are a hundred and eighty-six Ivets, unarmed and unorganized, and without any form of reliable communication. They’re Earth’s junk, waster kids; if they could organize something like this they would never be here in the first place.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I said I don’t believe it. But what else could it be? Someone from outside? Who?”
Colin Rexrew frowned. “Schuster’s been a problem before. What . . .” He trailed off, requesting a search through the files stored in his neural nanonics. “Ah, yes; the disappearing homestead families. Do you remember, Terrance, I sent a marshal up to investigate last year. Bloody great waste of money that was.”
“It was a waste of money from our point of view because the marshal didn’t find anything,” Terrance Smith said. “That in itself was unusual. Those marshals are good. Which means either it was a genuine case of
