Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (8 page)

Roget stopped where Green Drive South ended at Riverside Parkway West—on the west side of the Virgin River. It scarcely deserved to be called a river. While the reddish clay, sandbars, and low vegetation of the riverbed varied from a good fifty to a hundred meters wide, the water itself was less than three meters wide, and certainly less than a meter in depth in most places. It was the largest watercourse between the Colorado River and Reno. No wonder the old American republic had left the place to the Saints.

For several moments, Roget looked at the thin line of water that effectively bordered the east and southeast of St. George. Generally, building was limited to the ground inside the borders of the Virgin River and the Santa Clara wash, which had once been a stream of some sort. Then he leaned the bike against the low sandstone wall that marked the edge of the protected area of the riverbed and studied the ground.

Several minutes passed before he determined the approach to the water that would disturb the vegetation the least. He walked north almost forty meters. There he walked along a line of mostly buried black lava, and then picked his way from rocky point to rocky point until he stood on a flat boulder that overlooked the water. He flicked out the microfilament probe and let the stream flow over and around it until the monitoring unit flashed. Then he stored the data and retracted the probe.

After carefully retracing his steps back to where he had left the bike, he looked back out over the river. He certainly hadn't seen any sign of gross thermal or other pollution, but the master systems would compare the water temperatures and composition to the river's environmental profile, once he returned and linked the monitor to the system. He continued to study the riverbed for several minutes longer, but nothing changed, and there was no one nearby. To the north he thought he'd seen a heron, or some sort of crane, but he wasn't certain.

Roget took the bike and rode southward down Riverside Parkway West. He didn't want to go through the process of riding back to the tram station, folding the bike, going two stations, then unfolding the bike, and riding back out east and south again. It wasn't that hot yet.

The parkway wound more than he'd realized. He rode close to five klicks before he reached the second monitoring point, just east of where River Road ended at the parkway. Reaching the water was easier there because there was a nature overlook.

Just as he had finished his monitoring and was walking back to his bicycle, a group of youngsters appeared. They were escorted by a young woman—a teacher, Roget thought.

“Good morning,” he said politely.

“Good morning,” she replied with a smile.

After he had passed the group, behind him, he heard the teacher.

“Who was that, class?”

There were various answers, all politely framed, before the woman's voice replied, “He's an environmental monitor. You can tell by the white uniform and the monitoring unit at his belt. He was checking the river. That's to make sure everything is as it should be.…”

Roget mounted the bike and rode farther westward on the parkway and then continued south until he reached the point where the dry Santa Clara wash joined the river—close to another six klicks. There he repeated the monitoring process.

After he finished, he took a long swallow from the water bottle at his waist and looked out to the south. It was still hard to believe that the blistered expanse of red clay and sand, dotted with scattered cacti and occasional tufts of some sort of desert grass, had once held thousands of dwellings and other structures. Or that hundreds of thousands of Saints—as many people as some main Federation locials—had populated the area. That had been before the wars and the Reconstruction, of course. St. George hadn't been funded for reconstruction by the Federation. All the work done in the area had been by Saint volunteers, and the Federation had only grudgingly accepted the environmental results, and only because the outcome had been to keep the Saints, who had been a quiet but destabilizing factor in the fall of the American republic, somewhat more isolated. That wasn't exactly what the briefing materials had said, but Roget had read between the lines.

He replaced the water bottle, then checked the monitor for the map and coordinates of the other sites he needed to check and verify. Three of the shops were north and slightly west of him along Bluff Street, in the area reserved for commerce. He was getting hot, and he decided to ride the bike to the south station and let the tram carry him north to the station closest to the southern-most shop on his list.

The station turned out to be only a quarter klick or so from the river, but he found himself sharing the rear car with fifteen youngsters—all about ten—being chaperoned by two large and jovial-looking young men. Yet none of the seventeen said a word during the time Roget was on the tram. He was almost relieved when he carted his bike off at the platform on the corner of Main and 600 South.

From there he rode the bike three blocks west to Bluff Street and found himself right beside his destination. Ken's Cleaners was a small shop set at the south end of the block. The stucco finish was a pale bluish white, rather than plain white, and the door was set on the southwest corner of the building, looking out on the street corner, rather than in the middle of the building facing Bluff Street. Through the tinted thermal-conversion windows, Roget could only see the untended counter. He leaned the bike against the side of the building and then walked back eastward alongside it, flicking on the atmospheric sampler and tabbing the results so they'd be linked properly. Then, halfway back along the side of the building, he extended the microfilament used for air sampling and flicked it as high as he could, swinging it over the top of the low structure. He walked to the rear of the building and repeated the process.

Then he paused. He could hear a low mechanical rumbling, almost a groaning, coming from inside the back of the cleaners. Some sort of mechanical problem, he thought. He could feel the excess heat from the building. That much heat meant excess energy use or poor insulation or malfunctioning equipment or some combination of those factors. Those weren't his problems, for either his overt or covert job.

As he turned, he saw two older men standing in the thin band of shade cast by the building across the side street from him. Both wore white shirts—but long-sleeved—and dark trousers. He smiled politely, then turned and began to walk back toward Bluff Street.

“… hecky-darn monitor … snooping round … worse than the DTs, if you ask me … tell by the all white … not really proper…”

“… ChinoFeds ought to have more to do than bother small businesses…”

“… bother everyone now and again … why they're ChinoFeds…”

ChinoFeds? Roget thought that epithet had vanished a millennium ago, and his ancestry certainly had no Sinese in it. Even the apparently meticulous genealogy records kept on virtually all Noram citizens would have proved that. The briefings had mentioned rumors that the Saints had even kept tissue samples of prominent deceased Saints, but those had never been confirmed. And St. George certainly didn't look like a technology center, but more like it had been frozen in time a millennium ago.

Roget kept a pleasant expression on his face. What so many people refused to accept was that, when thousands of small businesses in thousands of towns and cities all exceeded the limits, the results on the environment could be significant. That attitude had been the principal cause of the deterioration of the old United States. Everyone had thought that they could question any authority and that they could do what they wanted because what they did didn't matter. In the end it had, and by then it had been too late.

He completed his readings and returned to the bike. He pedaled north in the bike lane for another three blocks, where he stopped in front of the next commercial establishment on the list—Santiorna's. The shop looked to cater to Saint women. While the fabrics on the mannequins were flashy enough, the cut of the garments, and especially the lengths of the skirts, were conservative. The other fact was that there were actual garments displayed, rather than holographic images. Was that because of the Saint culture … or because of the cost of power?

Roget knew that power costs were far higher in rural areas and in smaller towns and cities. The higher costs of power, indeed of living, were designed to reflect the true impact of development on the environment as well as to discourage movement from the metroplexes and contained locials. Location pricing and transportation costs of certain energy-intensive goods effectively limited their use away from the metroplexes and locials. By implementing that pricing and adding geometric pricing for incremental energy usage, as well as a few other regulatory and pricing devices, the Federation had minimized population migration. In effect, the more desirable the location, the higher the cost of living there and the fewer personal amenities effectively allowed, except at exorbitant costs. Federation citizens could have personal luxuries or the luxury of open space, but not both.

He set the bicycle in the corner stand and then walked toward the shop, checking the monitor. Unlike Ken's Cleaners, Santiorna's displayed no possible causes of excessive energy usage, even when he made his way to the end of the block and walked up the alley. He could sense eyes on him as he did so, but no one actually appeared. When he returned to Bluff Street and the front of the buildings, he saw two young women walking south toward him. When they saw the white monitor's uniform, they immediately stepped inside what looked to be a craft shop.

At that moment, Roget took another look at the business between the craft shop and the apparel outlet. DeseretData read the sign, with a design next to the name that incorporated two interlocked Ds. Why was the name familiar?

He nodded as he recalled. DeseretData was Brendan B. Smith's establishment. Just on an off chance that Smith might have something to do with the anomaly attributed to Santiorna's, Roget took out the monitor and tabbed in an entry for DeseretData. Then he scanned the front of the shop and used the air sampling microfilament. After that, he walked back around to the alley and took readings there.

He walked back to his bike, then paused as several small lorries drove silently by, followed by a brilliant yellow coupe that whined almost imperceptibly. He followed the coupe for all of a block, even as it pulled away from him, before he realized that he was getting hungry.

The iron grilles and pseudo-aged stucco of the Frontier Fort caught his eye. He angled the bike off the street, dismounted, and walked it through the drawn-back iron gates into the shaded courtyard. There was a rack that could hold four bikes. One other bike was locked in place. Roget set the bike there and walked to the door and then inside the restaurant. Inside was notably cooler, but not chill. The hum of conversation filled the space. Close to half of the twenty or so tables were taken. That surprised Roget because he'd heard no sound when he'd been out in the courtyard.

Good insulation, he decided.

The hostess was a smiling, slim, but weathered and older woman, dressed in an old American-style pioneer ankle-length black skirt and a high-necked cream lace blouse. “Just you, sir?”

Roget nodded.

“This way.”

He followed her to a small table near the north wall. She handed him a printed menu. He hadn't ever seen one of those.

“We're out of the lamb, but there's a venison stew for the same price. Jessica will take your order.”

Roget decided to try the stew and ordered it and a pale lager, almost absently, when the round-faced and blond Jessica arrived. Then, while he waited for the venison, he intensified his implants and listened to various conversations taking place.

“… monitor … what's he doing here?”

“… don't know … don't care…”

“… this one's a young fellow … liked the other one…”

Roget wasn't all that young, but to the weathered older man, he probably looked that way.

“That's because you never saw him.”

“… young Joseph wants a Temple wedding…”

“… problem with that?”

“… Dad doesn't have a recommend…”

“… his fault … think blessings come free…”

The venison wasn't bad, especially with the new potatoes, but for all his listening, Roget couldn't say that he'd picked up a hint of anything. He hadn't expected to, but one could always hope.

After he left the Frontier Fort, feeling refreshed and cooler, Roget pedaled to the nearest tram station, where he wheeled the bike onto the first car, folded it, and stowed it. Then he rode the tram to the town center station, where he changed to the east-west tram and let it take him back out to the Green Springs station.

The next two hours consisted of repeating his first round of monitoring of the Virgin River. Then he took the tram back to the town center station. From there he rode the bicycle north and uphill, crossing St. George Boulevard, turning two blocks west, and finally coming to a stop outside the first residence unit. It was actually a guesthouse called the Seven Wives Inn. To Roget, the name sounded more like an opera, something like
Bluebeard's Waiting Room,
a classic Grainger chamber work dating back to before the fall of the west, and one of the few still performed, perhaps because it had a certain atonality that appealed to the Sinese.

Unlike the stucco-walled stone or block dwellings that dominated St. George, the inn—or at least the original on which the now-ancient replica was based—had high gables and a sharply pitched roof with reddish-yellow brick walls … and more wood than Roget had seen anywhere else in St. George—even more than the replica of the house of the Great Prophet—set less than a hundred meters away at an angle across the old wide street. The Great Prophet's house had tall trees. That suggested that the Saint church organization had obtained waivers for the water necessary to keep them alive.