Ecolitan Prime (Ecolitan Matter) (37 page)

“That amount of credits has to come from somewhere,” pointed out Sylvia.

“They do. No one’s said, but some come from Camelot, some from the Federated Hegemony, and he’s promising the politicos in Camelot that he’ll buy out the low-interest long-term development bonds in return for concessions.”

“Is there any…documentation,” asked Nathaniel, stepping around a small water spigot that fed a low trough.

“Of course not. He’s too smart for that, but it’s what he’s doing.”

“Without some form…”

“I know. I know.” A note of weariness crept into Reeves-Kenn’s voice. “Other than that…how will this visit affect your report?”

“Everything affects our report.” Nathaniel laughed.

“Everything,” added Sylvia, “including outstanding marinated beef.”

“I hope so. Hate to lose all this. Hate to see my grandchildren lose it and have Artos turn into a miniature of the rodent-mill in Camelot.”

Nathaniel picked up one of the red survival kits beside the shed. “Might we borrow this?”

“You can have it. We can spare that.” Reeves-Kenn grinned. “Call it a souvenir. Call it a reminder that you have to master technology, not let it master you.”

Nathaniel nodded. He agreed with the beef grower’s points, but felt that there was more left unsaid—a great deal more.

As Sylvia strapped herself in place, Whaler walked around the flitter, then pulled out the step brackets and climbed up to check the gearbox and rotor—and the control links. From what he could tell nothing had been touched.

He opened the turbine cover, trying not to shake his head. He couldn’t see that anything was out of place, but that, unfortunately, didn’t mean much. While he knew spacecraft systems from at least a cursory maintenance point of view, his understanding of internal combustion turbine systems was more limited.

The ducts to the antitorque difusor were clear—a malfunction there would be great fun!

The remainder of the craft’s preflight seemed normal, and he strapped himself in and began the preignition checks. After he finished them, he lit off the first turbine. The power system registered normal. Then he brought the rotors on line, and, after a wave toward Reeves-Kenn, lifted the flitter into a hover, checking all the indicators and systems again before beginning a true liftoff run.

As the craft swept over the cattle herd and eased into a climbing turn to the northeast, Whaler’s eyes went to the permacrete highway to the north, the stretch that was arrow-straight for nearly four kilos and twice as wide as any other stretch.

Then he swallowed. Because of the hills, the prevailing winds would almost always be out of the south. The damned highway was nothing but a shuttle runway—or it could be. Was he getting too suspicious?

He took another look, first at the artificial hill that held the processing plant. He swallowed and took the flitter into a wide circle of the main complex.

“Sylvia…look at the hills around the house.”

“I’m looking.” After a moment, she added, “I’m not a geologist, but that pattern doesn’t look normal. He’s got a lot hidden there, and I thought he might, if you recall…”

“You were right. But what?” He eased out the vidimager and took a series of shots. They’d probably end up blurred, but he had to try.

“It could be anything. Supplies, a tech-transfer facility, an armory…who knows?”

At the end of the single circle, he straightened the flitter on a heading of one zero five, not quite a reciprocal of the outbound course line, then leveled off. “What did you think about George Reeves-Kenn?”

“Gracious…defensive about being a beef-grower…or rancher…very handsome, I’d bet, when he was younger. A good host, even for an Avalonian.”

“The more handsome the host, the dearer the reckoning…”

“Cynical. If you react like that…I won’t tell you.”

He turned his helmet toward the copilot’s seat, then grinned back as he saw the smile beneath the tinted face shield.

Beneath the flitter, the Unformed Desert scrolled past, the same wasteland of unchanging rock and sand, rock and sand.

Even as he checked airspace, orientation, and instruments, Nathaniel could feel all sorts of inchoate thoughts swirling through his mind. Reeves-Kenn seemed both straightforward and somehow deceptive, but the Ecolitan couldn’t quite put his finger on anything specific, only on a feeling—and he hated relying just on feelings, especially when they had to produce a hard-copy report.

Abruptly, the pilot cocked his head, listening.

Thwop, thwop…thwop, thwop, thwop…

The rotors sounded normal, but the faintest screeching had surfaced beneath the roaring whine of the turbines. His eyes went to the antique engine instruments, catching the slow rise in EGT and the fractional power loss off the left turbine.

He kept listening.

A second faint screeching added its supra-audible noise to the first, and the second EGT began to inch upward, matching that of the first turbine. A quick or casual scan of the instruments would reveal neither—not for a while.

He looked out across the midplateau desert—they were nearly seventy kilos from the Reeves-Kenn spread, with another sixty to go before they reached the river by the shuttle port. He began to ease slightly more power into the rotors, trying to calculate the trade-offs. If the damage were calculated, he’d need the altitude.

There was no way they’d be able to cross forty or fifty kilos of desert in midsummer—assuming that they could walk away from the wreck that was about to occur.

Should he set it down? He shook his head. The rotors were fine, and so were the control links. Sabotaging those would have been too obvious, and too easily detected by the most cursory of preflights. So that meant a fire on touchdown or flare.

He wasn’t sure about the form of the sabotage, but he had an idea that the turbines would seize rather abruptly, and the key to their survival lay in his shutting them down just before they seized—and not being in the driest part of the badlands.

From what he recalled…he eased the craft into a gentle turn to bring it onto a west-northwest heading.

“Isn’t Lanceville that way?” asked Sylvia.

“We may be having some mechanical trouble, and, if we do, I don’t want to set down in the middle of this wasteland.”

“Accidental trouble, or assisted trouble?”

“If it’s accidental, it’s all too convenient.” He cocked his ears again, straining. Was the abrasive whine louder? He shook his head. How could he tell? “Lock your harness. We’re going to lose power, and when we do, we’re going down fast.”

“Locked.”

“Good.” He scanned the terrain below, noting each possible landing site, hoping for hard and flat rock. Sand was too uncertain, and could conceal too much, though he’d take sand over sharp rocks.

“We’ll need to clear the cockpit as soon as the rotors stop. Can you make sure you take that desert kit?”

“I’ve got it here.”

The Ecolitan kept scanning the instruments and looking westward toward what he hoped was a darker gray—the river and the planoformed lands that bordered it. The flitter continued to gain altitude slowly, as Nathaniel tried to calculate the strain and altitude trade-offs, as the river neared imperceptibly.

An almost subsonic vibration began to shake the fuselage, but not the rotors—a sure sign that the vibration was coming from the turbines.

Abruptly, the EGTs pegged, and a sheering sound lashed through the cockpit. Even before the sound vanished, along with the sound of the turbines, Nathaniel had dumped all the pitch off the rotors, and dropped the nose, aiming due west—for a slightly inclined sheet of what seemed to be rock.

As the flitter dropped abreast of his hoped-for landing site, he eased the craft into a slight bank, trying to keep the flitter in balance to stretch every meter of altitude.

“Too fast,” he muttered to himself. “Slow…ease it back…check the altitude.”

Two more red lights blazed on the panel—fire lights.

“Easy…”

At a hundred meters, he leveled the nose, and at thirty, brought back the nose and pulled full pitch, then flattened the flare as the flitter’s sickening drop slowed.

“…tail straight…”

The ground still seemed to rise too quickly, and he could see small jagged edges in the rocky plain. The smell of hot metal and smoke was seeping into the cockpit as he pulled full collective, trying to milk the last bit of lift from the slowing rotors.

Thudddddd…Clunnkkkkk…

As the flitter swayed on the uneven, rocky ground, one hand went to the overhead rotor brake, while the other slashed along the electrical switches.

He unfastened his own harness, and when he could see the front blade quiver to a halt, he slid back the door and grabbed the kit from under the seat, not knowing what was in it.

“Run! Straight ahead! Get behind that hump!” His feet were pumping as he stumbled out of the cockpit.

Sylvia was in front of him and opening space between them.

They both half-crouched, half-skidded behind the low line of boulders, Sylvia first.

Whoooshhh!

Even from behind the small outcropping, he could feel the heat wash across the air above them, but he just lay on his back gasping. “Out of shape…can’t believe…”

“Give…me…some…credit…” She gasped back.

“Lots…wasn’t talking about you.”

As he lay there, he opened the kit he’d pulled from beneath the seat, reading the label. “Emergency pilot supplies…” he murmured, “New Avalon military issue.” He looked through the items. A plastic flask of water—that would help, as would the floppy sun hat. He set the desalinization kit aside and pocketed the three-shot miniature stunner, as well as the pencil flare set. That might have other uses.

Finally, he rolled over and peered out. The flitter’s intense initial fire-burst had subsided to a mere roaring fire. “Are you up to a short fifteen kilo walk?”

Sylvia sat up and brushed the short dark hair off her damp forehead. “I assume it’s necessary?”

He gestured back at the burning wreckage. “I doubt that the locator beacon is operating, and there isn’t a satellite surveillance system. Besides, do we wish to accept the hospitality of those most likely to find us?”

“When you phrase it that way…which direction?”

“That way.” He pointed west.

“Isn’t Lanceville in the other direction?” She shook her head. “I’m an idiot. So is a lot of sand.”

“Fifty kilos, give or take a few.”

“And you figure how many going west?” asked Sylvia.

“Ten in the sand, four or five beyond that.”

“I was getting out of shape anyway. I would complain about eating too much.” She adjusted the desert kit into its pack form and shouldered it.

Nathaniel did the same with the supply kit.

The hills weren’t that high or steep, not to the eye, but they had crossed only half a dozen before Sylvia stopped, panting. “My legs ache already.”

“Mine, too. More CO
₂
in the air. System has a harder time flushing out wastes,” said Nathaniel in between deep, heaving breaths.

They looked back to where a thin line of smoke circled into the cloudless green-blue sky.

“No one is looking yet.”

“Not yet. They wouldn’t want to find survivors. That would be embarrassing.”

“Then we’d better keep moving.”

“Try to avoid the sand…takes too much effort.”

“Fine with me,” Sylvia answered over her shoulder, as Nathaniel struggled to catch up.

Having more mass also had its disadvantages, he reflected as he finally drew even with her, trying to keep his feet from sinking into the deeper sand.

That was the pattern—three or four small hills and a rest, then three or four more.

After several dozen hills, Nathaniel found himself squinting—because the sun was hanging just above the western horizon. “Where…did…the…day…go?”

“Happens…when…you’re having…a good…time.” Sylvia panted as she stopped at the hill crest.

He offered her his water bottle, taking out the kerchief and blotting his forehead. Forest lord, late afternoon or not it was hot! The sun hat helped, but not a lot.

“Why…the…the flitter?”

“Because,” Nathaniel glanced at the low hill beyond the one where they stood, “they were doing double duty—crippling Walkerson’s resources and getting us.”

“Who? The smaller growers? Kennis What’s-his-name? Or…it isn’t the Empire…”

“Probably not, but who knows?” He laughed, and the sound was harsh because his throat was dry, despite the water. “It’s almost as complex as New Augusta. Let’s go. We need to reach the river. They’ve got boats there. Maybe we can get a ride to Lanceville.”

“How far to the river?”

“Another eight kays—that’s a guess.”

A faint
thwop-thwop-thwop
echoed across the stillness of the Unformed Desert. Both turned back east, toward the dark spot in the sky.

Sylvia took a deep breath. “We’d better get moving.”

Nathaniel nodded. “They shouldn’t see us from here, but we’d better keep an eye—and ear—out for them.”

By the time he finished and took a deep breath, he had to hurry to catch up with Sylvia.

“N
OW WHAT?” ASKED
Sylvia, water dripping down her face, a face Nathaniel knew was red like his, although seeing the sunburn was difficult in the late twilight as they knelt by the edge of the river.

He splashed his face again, with water that smelled slightly medicinal. Iodine in the water, or some other trace? The background infopaks had said the waters were fishable and swimmable, but how fishable and swimmable? Jem had said the fish weren’t edible. He shrugged. “The road’s on the other side, and I don’t see any bridges. We could rest, and then swim across.”

“It’s deeper than it looks.”

“Any other ideas?”

“We could follow it for a while. We certainly won’t die of thirst or dehydration now.”

“We can rest for a bit,” he said, walking toward one of the larger of the small willow trees and sitting down with his back against the trunk.

“I could…stand a rest.” Sylvia sat down almost beside him. After a moment, she asked, “Is it always like this with you?”

“What…like the flitter? No…sometimes it’s dull. I remember one time when all I did was sit in an orbit station and scan screens and dump data into a matrix to determine technology-transfer trade patterns.” He laughed. “For two standard months.”

“Were most of your ‘consulting’ assignments like that?”

“No. Most are like this. We never get the easy ones. The Institute charges too much. So…” He shrugged.

“I’m tired.”

“Me, too.”

From the darkness and quiet came the sound of insects, and the gurgle of the river, and even the rumbling of a groundlorry on the distant highway.

Nathaniel jerked awake, realizing he must have dozed off.

A set of reddish lights seemed to float on the river. He squinted, trying to make out the shapes, then staggered up, putting a hand out and steadying himself on the willow trunk. Every muscle in his body seemed to protest as he touched Sylvia’s shoulder and made his way toward the most solid section of the bank.

“Hello…the riverboat…”

The lights veered slightly toward the shore.

“Can you give some stranded travelers a lift?” he yelled.

“If you can get aboard, you’re welcome to the ride,” came back a scratchy voice. “I’ll slow the pack, but that’s all I can do.”

The two Ecolitans dashed through the knee-deep water, splashing in all directions, then bounced through the deeper water, and finally swam to the dark hull of the barge, feeling their way along the hull until they found a ladder. Sylvia half-vaulted, half-climbed onto the barge, while Nathaniel levered himself up after her, scraping his forearm in the process.

“Just walk along the catwalk there. It’ll take you back to the cross-plank,” called the gravelly voice from the dark shape of what seemed a pilot house. “You all on board?”

“We’re on,” said Nathaniel, dripping and glad for the first time that it was summer and not cold.

The barge bucked slightly, and the sound of the engines dropped to a purr.

Sylvia led the way aft, across the catwalk, and then up to a raised and covered pilot house. A handful of instruments glowed in reddish light.

“Anna-Marie FitzReilly,” said the square-faced, gray-haired woman at the wheel. “Guess I qualify as the master or whatever of this putt-boat and barge assembly.” Her eyes never left the river or the instruments. “You two look like soaked muskrats. There’s stuff in the locker, if you want to change till yours dries. Won’t take long, not in summer.”

“Thank you. I’m Sylvia Ferro-Maine, and this is Nathaniel Whaler. We’re from Accord, and we’re doing an economic study—”

“On that side of the river?”

“We walked out of the desert.”

“The desert? Walking out of the desert? Not much economics in that, is there?”

“We had a little trouble with our flitter,” Nathaniel said.

“Good thing you didn’t get caught too far in. Lots of suckholes there.”

“Suckholes?” Nathaniel felt stupid, as though he were off balance and reacting too late. Then…wasn’t he?

“Suckholes…big holes covered with powdery sand. You step on the edge and down it all does, sucks you down so far no one ever find you. There are little ones, too, I hear, but folks don’t worry about those.”

“You were right about the sand,” said Sylvia.

“How about lucky?”

“You still didn’t say what you were doing out there. New Avalon send you?” FitzReilly’s eyes narrowed.

“No. We’re professors at the Ecolitan Institute. The Institute is being paid to do the study, and we were the lucky ones chosen.”

“What’s to study?” snorted the boat pilot, easing the wheel slightly to starboard, her eyes remaining on the river.

“Infrastructure, things like power sources, highways, harbors…barges, I suppose, except nothing we had on background mentioned barges.” Nathaniel cleared his throat. “You don’t have a comm set of some sort, do you?”

“Me? You got to be kidding, professor. This is a low-budget operation. Besides, just what could a set do? In a real emergency, someone could get here with a groundcar or a flitter—most of the time the road’s within a few kilos of the river, sometimes closer.”

Nathaniel looked at the covered bins in the barge. Then he grinned. “Well…you’re part of the transport infrastructure. Mind if we hitch a ride back to the Lanceville area and interview you along the way?”

“I’m not going anywhere. Just stop talking when I tell you. There’s a tricky part of the big bend in a while.” She eased the wheel slightly.

“What do you carry?”

“Beans—synde beans. What else is there on Artos? Falfamut is fodder or plowed under. Maize is for the aristos. Lorry garden stuff—there’s not enough.”

“It seems that all the big groundlorries carry beans,” ventured Sylvia.

“We do the little growers,” growled FitzReilly. “They got a co-op thing, store their crops until they get a barge full. Synde beans don’t spoil that quick, but it’s usually only a few days anyway. Most live way south of that aristo plaything they call a spread or a ranch or whatever. Barging is cheaper than selling to the freelance haulers, and R-K costs more than that ’cause they want to drive out the smaller ones. My husband and me—we sell to R-K, and they’re pretty fair—that’s because we haul all their precious beef—the live ones—down to the harbor. Guess groundlorries upset their digestion.”

“You don’t hear much about the smaller growers.” Nathaniel stifled a yawn.

“Why would you? No one cares for them. The Reeves-Kenn people are scared they’ll find some way to take their spread. Rumor is they won’t let them near the place. The tech-transfer crowd doesn’t bother them, but doesn’t see much future for ’em.”

“What about the marine farms?”

“That’s a black hole. Always promising cheap protein, but it’s mostly algae. Personally, I think old George Reeves-Kenn just shovels credits at his little brother so as to keep Sebastion off his cattle lands. Quiet now…wait till we get round the bend.” FitzReilly turned the wheel deftly, checking the riverbanks, a dim set of green-and-red lights, and the instruments. Her left hand flicked across the throttles, and the purr of the engines rose to a muted roar, then dropped back to a louder purring.

Nathaniel glanced around the pilot house—stark plastic, utilitarian, with nothing in it but the basic instruments, and the high-back stool behind the wheel where FitzReilly sat.

Once the barge and push boat straightened out below the bend, the pilot nodded in the red-lit dimness. “So what else you want to know?”

“What’s the capacity of the barge?”

“Close to six hundred tonnes, but that’s mass, not cubage. A load of beans like this runs maybe four hundred tonnes, and that’s all I’d want to take most times with the draft. Big harvest times, we’ll run both barges.”

Nathaniel tried to wrestle with the numbers mentally—perhaps the equivalent of well over 150,000 litres in hydrocarb fuel equivalents, or had he misplaced a decimal? He rubbed his forehead. “How long does the run take?”

“Two to three days. Josh and I alternate,’ cause one of us has to run the depot.”

“Three runs a week.”

“Sometimes.”

“All beans?”

“Except for a beef run or two. They pay all right, but we do that to keep R-K off our backs.”

Nathaniel wanted to shake his head. The
small
growers were shipping the equivalent of more than half a million litres of synde bean oil feedstock a standard week. Then…it really wasn’t that much if the oil were the energy supply basis for everything except fusactor-powered electricity. Even with all its alternative power sources, Accord used something like a half-million barrels of hydrocarb feedstocks a day.

“You’re carrying a lot of value for them.”

“They’re supposed to trust R-K or the gouging haulers?”

“Any of this ever come to violence?”

“Not so far, but it’s gotten uglier in the last few years. Attacks on the growers’ small hauling van. Some of the small growers got stunners and slug-throwers—smuggled in somehow, and they’re not cheap.”

“You think George Reeves-Kenn knows that?”

“He has to. He knows damn near everything. More high-tech stuff hidden in that simple ranch house of his than in most of Lanceville, and he plays at being a poor dumb grower trying to hang on to his heritage.” The pilot snorted.

“You’re not painting a cheerful picture.”

“What is…that’s what is. We’re trying to make a living and make Artos a better place, but sometimes you got to wonder.”

“You mean,” said Sylvia, “why people always think that the other side won’t bring in heavy weapons, too.”

“Haven’t seen any of those, but I wouldn’t bet against it if this keeps up.”

Nathaniel took a deep breath.

“I’ve talked too much, and you look beat, professor.”

“He’s had a long, hard day,” said Sylvia.

“Get some rest. The blankets are in the locker over there. I’m not going anywhere. You have more questions when you feel better, you know where to find me.” FitzReilly laughed. “Be midday before we get to the dock at Lanceville, and you won’t sleep that long once the sun’s up.”

Sylvia tugged at Nathaniel’s elbow. He just stood there, trying to concentrate.

She went to the locker and pulled out two blankets, then returned. “We need some rest. Now.”

“Be more comfortable below here in front,” suggested the boat captain. “Use the pallets hung there.”

“Thank you,” offered Sylvia, taking Nathaniel’s hand.

He followed her down the short ladder to the main deck. The two Ecolitans sat on the two pallets, wrapped in rough synthfibre blankets, listening to the gurgle of the water past the hull, and the hissing chirps of some unknown insects.

“Tired…” mumbled Sylvia.

“So am I.”

“This whole business is exhausting. I thought Impies were unpopular, but Ecolitans seems even less welcome. Around here anyway.”

“Around anywhere. We’re pretty impartial, and no one likes that.” Nathaniel yawned again, “In fact, it’s hard to figure why anyone really wants this study. It’s almost like…I don’t know…”

“As though people were using it to flush out everyone else?” suggested Sylvia.

“Something like that…I guess.” He yawned.

“We’ll think about it later.” Sylvia blinked her eyes, then stretched out.

“As if we had much choice,” he muttered to himself, letting his eyes close, knowing he’d missed more than a few questions and hoping he could dig them up when he was rested and could think.