The Reaches

entered the open area, pushing through the saw-edged leaves with chitin-clad ease.

'Wait!' Gregg said. 'Shouldn't you take your, your sash off?'

The Molt's triangular head turned almost directly backward though his torso didn't move. 'Any human observer will think I'm a supervisor, Mr. Gregg,' he said. 'A thousand years ago, his ancestors would have thought the same.'

Guillermo resumed his swift progress toward the Federation equipment. Gregg sighted on the nearer vehicle, but his laser's 1.5x scope didn't provide enough magnification to tell whether the driver was a Molt or perhaps a Rabbit.

It hadn't occurred to him until Guillermo spoke that all the aspects of Molt-human interaction had been set before the Collapse. The thought made him a little queasy. He had a vision of eighty generations of Stephen Greggs sighting their flashguns toward treetops full of defiant warriors. .

'The Dalriada's truly a first-class ship,' Piet Ricimer murmured as the three men watched Guillermo from the forest-edge undergrowth. 'I suppose it's my cousins' way of making apology for the business when the Hawkwood landed. Though after that ordeal, nobody could blame Alexi for wild talk.'

'I wanted to call him out!' Adrien snarled.

Neither of the older men spoke. Had the Mosterts bothered to respond, they would have sent servants to beat the pup within an inch of his life-or beyond. Betaport would have applauded that handling of lower-class scum who insulted his betters by claiming the right of challenge.

A red film lowered over Gregg's eyes. He pointed the flashgun toward the ground. He didn't want an accident because his trigger finger trembled.

Guillermo jumped off the cultivator he'd mounted and returned toward the waiting humans. The vehicle had never paused in its slow progress across the sorghum.

'Frankly, I did my cousins an injustice,' Piet continued. 'I expected them to, well, ignore that they'd been mistaken. Instead, well-I couldn't have hoped for a finer ship than the one they provided. I'd hoped to involve more of the. . upper levels of the nation in this expedition than I've done. But that will come next time.'

'Sometimes people come through when they come right up against it,' Gregg said. 'I'm glad your cousins did.'

His voice was hoarse. He coughed, as if to clear his throat.

Guillermo rejoined them. The Molt's chestplate pumped with exertion, sucking and expelling air from the breathing holes along the lateral lines of his torso. 'They'll meet us tonight,' he said.

'Those will?' Adrien asked. 'The workers?'

'Not them,' his brother explained. 'Their kindred, who've escaped and hide along the Mirror. The only food available is what's grown here on the plantations, so I was sure that there'd be contact between free Molts and the slaves.'

He nodded toward the Peaches to start the party walking back. 'I want to understand the Mirror better before I make final plans. That means I need someone to guide me through.'

30

Benison

Coye waggled Gregg's booted foot to awaken him before going on to each next man in the lean-to and doing the same. Gregg pulled his helmet on as he got up. He was already fully dressed, with the flashgun sling over his right arm.

The sky was faintly pale where it could be glimpsed through the foliage, but it did nothing to illuminate the forest floor. Even the featherboat's off-white hull was easier to sense than see in the first moments of wakefulness.

Gregg was stiff in odd places. The bed of springy boughs had seemed comfortable when he lay on it, but it had locked his body into one posture as the thin pad over the Peaches' decking hadn't done during the voyage. His sinuses were stuffy from pollen, either native or drifting from the nearby plantation.

And he was afraid. Clambering up the side of the featherboat was good for the fear. The massive solidity of the Peaches' hull soothed Gregg in a fashion that the personal weapon he carried could not.

In the hatchway Leon, who'd shared the watch with Coye, whispered to Piet Ricimer. Clipped to the coaming was the sonic scanner, another piece of hardware purchased with the profits of Mostert's disastrous voyage. Rather than magnifying sounds for the operator to classify, the scanner plotted an ambient and indicated changes above that baseline on a screen. It didn't tell the operator what a sound was, but it gave volume and vector.

Gregg glanced at the readout. He lay across the hull beside the hatch and aimed his weapon toward the line of peaks which the scanner had noted-footsteps or brush rustling past an oncoming body.

Ricimer laid his left hand across the eyepiece of the flashgun's sight. 'Guillermo's out there,' he whispered. 'He's meeting them.'

'Sirs?' the Molt called in a clear voice. 'Our friends are here. We're coming in.'

Gregg glimpsed the movement of several bodies. Faint light bloomed. Three strange Molts accompanied Guillermo. One of them brought a phosphorescent twig out of the pot which had covered it. In this near-total darkness, the bioluminescent sheen was as good as a magnesium flare.

The strange Molts were noticeably bulkier though not taller than Guillermo. One carried a breechloader, while the others had one-armed 'bows' similar in design to those the Venerians had faced on Punta Verde.

Piet Ricimer swung his legs over the hatch coaming and jumped to the ground in front of the Molts.

'This is K'Jax,' Guillermo said, dipping both forelimbs toward the rifleman in a gesture of respect. 'I have told him that you need a guide through the Mirror.'

'Why?' said K'Jax. His eyes and those of his fellows tracked quickly across the humans facing them, hesitating minutely at each weapon they noted.

'Because I need to know more about the Mirror in order to determine how best to take from the Federation the wealth belonging to all persons,' Ricimer replied calmly. Gregg noted that his friend had left his rifle in the featherboat. 'Wealth which the Feds claim as their own.'

'So you want us to be your servants,' K'Jax said flatly.

The Molt leader spoke unaccented English, but his intonations were as mechanical as those of a synthesizer. By contrast, Guillermo's voice couldn't be told from that of a human except that the Molt clipped his labials slightly.

'I want you to be our allies,' Ricimer said. 'The Feds are your enemies as well as ours. We can provide you with weapons. A few now, more after we're successful and return-though that will be sometime hence, perhaps as much as a year. But I will return.'

K'Jax clucked. 'I am the chieftain of Clan Deel,' he said. 'They burned my limbs when I would not work for them. I fled as others have fled.'

The Molt leader glanced around, at his silent fellows and the forest which surrounded him. He had a look of rocklike solidity, a soul that could be pulverized but never changed in essence.

'If they let us grow our own crops,' K'Jax continued, 'we would ignore them. When we clear fields, they find us and attack, and they hunt us with planes. So we raid their fields. We kill them when we can. One day we will kill them all.'

His chitinous fingers caressed his Federation breechloader, designed for human hands but adaptable to those of a Molt.

K'Jax clucked again. The sound was that of a repeater chambering the next round. 'If you're the enemy of the Federation, human,' he said, 'then you don't have to pay me or mine for our help. When do you want to pass through the Mirror?'

'Now?' said Ricimer.

'Now,' K'Jax agreed. He and his fellows turned.