“That’s all?” It hardly seemed an adequate explanation to Sam. He was of a mood to be belligerent about it, and only common sense and long experience as a Topman, who had learned more by listening than talking, kept him quiet.
“Isn’t that enough? It’ll keep some of us busy for some little time.”
Sam couldn’t let it alone. “Did the initial Clearance Teams find any kind of field? I mean, nobody objected to the settlement being put here in the first place, did they?” The idea that some carelessness might have taken place only increased his feelings of annoyance. He took a deep breath and controlled himself.
The med-tech was getting a little annoyed herself, and her snappish tone reflected that fact. “Topman, nobody had any reason to. We’ve called up everything available from the Archives and found nothing. Nobody found anything strange at this site except for the thing itself.”
Sam growled wordlessly.
She went on, waving her finger at him. “Since it was sacred to the Owlbrit, the decision was made high-up not to bother the thing except to test for radioactivity or harmful emanations, and there weren’t any. By the time the last of the Owlbrit died, your village seemed to have adopted the God as a mascot, and Central had more important things to deal with than investigating some animal, vegetable, or mineral which wasn’t bothering anyone, which might resent being investigated, and which was, so far as we knew, a unique phenomenon. Until ten days ago, nobody found anything weird about anything.”
Sam shrugged, his best approach to an apology.
The tech sighed. “Speaking of weird, I understand you buried a body elsewhere than in the approved burying ground. That’s a public health matter, and it ought to be reinterred.”
Sam vaguely remembered Birribat had been buried, but he couldn’t remember who had done it, or exactly where, and after a brief and aimless search for the grave, the health people gave up on that.
“You think we’re over the worst?” Sam asked the woman in charge finally, having run out of everything else to ask.
“You’ve been mourning,” the med-tech said. “The psy-techs say the whole settlement had all the symptoms of grief. Even though you didn’t know what you were mourning about, that’s what you were doing. It’s pretty much over, I’d say. The biologists are pissing themselves for not having investigated earlier, but except for that everything is on its way to normal.”
The medical person could be forgiven. She spoke as medical people have often done, out of a habit of authority and reassurance, in a tone that admitted of no doubt or exceptions or awareness of human frailty. She was, as many medical people have always been, dead wrong.
• • •
• First time visitors to Hobbs Land, at least those who came on official business, were usually subjected to an orientation session conducted by someone at Central Management. Production Chief Horgy Endure often got stuck with the duty since he did it very well, even though he called his presentation, with stunning unoriginality, “All About Hobbs Land.” On a particular morning not long after the death of Bondru Dharm (which Horgy had had no responsibility toward and had, therefore, ignored), he had a group of five to instruct: two engineers from Phansure (Phansuri engineers being as ubiquitous in System as fleas on a cat, and as itchy, though rather more benign) as well as the latest trio in Horgy’s endless succession of female assistants, three lovelies from Ahabar, not one of whom was actually brainless. The engineers, specialists in robotic design, were going out to Settlement One to meet with Sam Girat, and the lovelies were staying at Central Management to learn what Horgy could teach them. Two of them had already had a sample and longed for more.
Horgy had gathered the five of them in the Executive Staff Room around an information stage, which he had programmed to display eye-riveting visuals concurrent with his well-practiced oral presentation. Horgy enjoyed orientations. He liked the sound of his own voice, which was rich and warm and did not belie the sensual curve of his lips.
When they gathered, the stage was already showing a neat model of the System, the three tiny inner planets twirling in their orbits, then Thyker, Ahabar, the Belt, and finally Phansure. The truncated model included all of the occupied worlds and most of the occupied moons but not the outer planets, which didn’t fit the scale and weren’t important for orientation anyhow. When Horgy cleared his throat, the model gave way to actual holography of the Belt as taken from a survey ship, skimming past Bounce and Pedaria and a few of the other fifteen-thousand Belt worlds, the stage pointing out, unnecessarily, that though some of the Belt worlds were settled, some were merely named, while others were only numbered and not even surveyed yet. Belt worlds were tiny to smallish, by and large, a few with native life, some with atmosphere of their own, some with atmosphere factories, many of them with great light-focusing sun-sails behind them, gathering warmth to make the crops grow, farm worlds for the System.
“This world we now call Hobbs Land,” said Horgy, watching it swim up on cue, a tannish-green blob with an angular darker green belt, blue at its poles, fishbone striped by wispy clouds slanting in from the polar oceans to the equator, “was mapped and sampled by the unmanned survey ship, Theosphes K. Phaspe, some sixty lifeyears ago. About twenty years later, when the relative orbits of Phansure and the newly mapped planet made the attempt economically feasible, Hobbs Land was optioned for settlement by Hobbs Transystem Foods, under the direction of Mysore Hobbs I.”
“Mysore One died last year,” said the older of the two Phansuris to one of the lovelies. “Marvelous old man, Mysore. Mysore Two’s running things now.”
Horgy smiled acknowledgement without missing a beat. “Transystem headquarters on Phansure sent a settlement ship with parts
