exactly what the carved bits of wood were meant to be but he recognized a shrine when he saw it. ‘You’re probably blaspheming against their gods, or something, just by being here. We should move.’
The girl turned to follow his line of sight. ‘Oh, that,’ she said with a complete lack of interest.
‘You don’t think much of it?’ Rico said.
The other student, a young man, spoke for the first time.
‘We have the greatest respect for their religious practices,’ he said: smooth, calm,
‘But… but we know they’re a load of superstitious bygoner nonsense,’ Rico said with a friendly, baffled smile. The student chuckled, a bit strained after his shock but trying at sophistication.
‘Well, of course, we know that…’
‘Don’t have a lot of respect for them, then, do you?’ said Rico, leaving the student stranded by the abrupt turn.
‘Where were you, anyway?’ the girl demanded. ‘You’re meant to be protecting us.’
‘Are you dead?’ said Rico.
‘No, but…’
‘Then what’s the problem?’
‘Our sensors misinterpreted the threat,’ Su said quietly. ‘With all this biomass around us they can get confused.’
‘I’m suing the College when we get back!’
‘Fine.’ Su finally lost patience. ‘We’ll leave you here. As for the moment, your friend’s laziness nearly cost him his life, and you three’s disregard for bygoner sensitivities probably provoked the attack in the first place. As Senior Field Op, I’m abandoning this mission. When your friend can walk, the three of you are coming with me. Rico, round up Onskiro and the rest and rendezvous at the recall point.’
‘I love you when you’re angry.’ He quickly touched a knuckle to his forehead when Su glared at him. ‘Right away, ma’am.’
There was the usual disorientation as the shadows of the fourteenth-century Brazilian rainforest faded out and the lightly glowing walls of the transference chamber appeared around them. It was a hollow sphere with a floor provided by a carryfield that sliced it in half. The top hemisphere in which they stood could have held fifty adults. Even experienced transferees like Rico and Su always needed a moment to collect themselves, remember where they were and what they were doing.
Rico was amused to see looks of relief on the faces of some of the students, which they tried to hide, when it finally dawned on them that they were back home. He knew they were slaves of their conditioning. The past was officially a nasty, dirty place where people had no social preparation and were cruel and mean to each other, as recent events had shown. For these poor sods, Rico thought, when the past was compared and contrasted with the controlled environment of an ecopolis, coming back to the Home Time was like returning to the womb.
And that was why the authorities were happy to let the impression abide. For Rico, on the other hand, returning to the Home Time was more and more depressing every time he did it.
Su was discharging the last of her duties. ‘All of you, shut your eyes until I tell you to open them.’ They all did so, and felt the warmth of the decon field flow around them, making them safe for reentry into the Home Time. ‘You can open them now. Place your specimens in those containers there, please, for scanning… Thank you. I now declare this excursion to be over. Walk slowly through the exit…’
They were the last two to leave. Like Su, Rico held up his arm and touched the ‘release’ icon that appeared there. By his elbow a small flap of skin appeared, which he took between thumb and forefinger and pulled. There was a tingling as the computer disengaged from his nervous system and what looked like the skin of his forearm peeled away, leaving the real skin reddened but healthy beneath it. His arm was shaved but still he winced as it snagged on a couple of budding hairs.
‘Thank you for the trip, Register,’ Su said as they walked out of the chamber and into the huge, multi-tiered vault of the transference hall.
‘My pleasure, Op Zo,’ said a friendly voice out of the air.
‘But before you go…’ said another voice behind them. Rico groaned beneath his breath, and they turned to face the red-outlined symb projection that had appeared in the middle of the room. The eidolon showed a short, squat man: Rico had heard him called ‘Toad Face’ and had never understood the epithet, until he had actually seen a toad on a field trip. Then he had understood perfectly.
‘Supervisor Marlici,’ said Su, taking the initiative as senior partner. ‘What can we do for you?’
‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ Marlici said. He had full, wet lips which, Rico reflected, seemed made to quiver with indignation. It was the state in which he usually saw them. ‘No beating about the bush, no prevarication. I’ve received a formal complaint from the office of the Commissioner of Correspondents about you, Op Garron, and by extension, you, Op Zo. Well?’
‘May we know the substance of this complaint?’ Su asked.
‘The complaint,’ Marlici said, ‘is that Op Garron bothered the Acting Commissioner in the late Commissioner Daiho’s apartment this morning. I won’t go into details –’ he smiled thinly — ‘but the words 'absurd speculation' and 'grotesque fantasies' were heard to be uttered.’ Rico’s cheeks began to burn. ‘None of this would be my concern, of course, if you were off duty, but at the time you were on duty. I’m consumed with curiosity as to what you were doing in the Commissioner’s suite, and why Op Garron impersonated a Security Op, and why you, Op Zo, let him. Well?’
Something inside Rico snapped and he took a step forward. ‘This is—’
Su put a hand on his arm. ‘We were there on official business, sir,’ she said.
‘Re-ally?’ Marlici seemed to enjoy drawing out the word. ‘Do tell me how, when I knew nothing of it.’
‘Rico?’ Su said. Rico breathed deeply, twice, before answering.
‘On my last but one field trip,’ he said, ‘I failed to download all the information I had stored in my field computer. I needed to get the computer back. When I asked for it, I learned it had been signed out again.’
‘You think you have a special right to equipment?’ said Marlici. Rico suspected that his explanation was sounding far too reasonable and Marlici was determined to find fault somehow.
‘I don’t recall saying that, sir,’ he said. ‘It had been signed out again by Commissioner Daiho. I tried to contact him so that I could copy the data over. He wasn’t available but the Register arranged things with his household so that we could go there and retrieve the computer ourselves. Which we did, and met the Acting Commissioner.’
‘I see.’ The smile had left Marlici’s face the moment Rico mentioned the Register. What the Register chose to do was not subject to the whims of any Supervisor. However, Marlici rallied quickly. ‘And impersonating a Security Op?’ Su opened her mouth. ‘I was addressing Op Garron,’ he said.
‘I identified myself as Op Garron,’ Rico said. ‘I said nothing about Security.’ He tried not to smile. Two points down: Marlici was running out of ammunition. ‘Now, sir, if you’ll excuse us…’
‘One moment. The last thing.’
‘Theories, sir?’ Rico said with reluctance. Su was looking at him and very slightly shaking her head.
‘Apparently you speculated as to whether the agravs were sabotaged.’
‘I did not!’ Rico exclaimed. ‘I just said—’
‘Op Garron,’ Marlici said, ‘you’re a Field Operative. You escort away parties upstream. You are a hired gun, you are not a detective and you don’t pursue your paranoid delusions on College time, is that understood? And you, Op Zo, as senior partner should know better than to let this… this spoo—’
Marlici caught himself, though Rico was wishing him on.
‘Individual,’ said Marlici — and Rico thought,
