Promised Land (5 page)

On one condition.

Even that was better than we had expected, from Charlot's point of view. Instead of only one of us being able to join the search, they would accept two of us. I stress that this was better from Charlot's point of view. Not from mine. Charlot nominated Eve, and—of course—me.

Captain
Eve. And Crewman Grainger.

I knew it was going to be a bad trip.

If either of us thought
that Commander Hawke's capitulation meant that things were destined to go our way, then we were quickly disillusioned. Under pressure, the children of the
Zodiac
permitted us to land. Under pressure, they agreed to mount a search for the people landed by the
White Fire
(the ship itself, of course, had taken off again, and I never expected to hear from her—it's easy enough to change a name and get new papers). Under pressure, they let us join in. All very nice. We appreciated it. Until we found out what their idea of a full-scale search was.

There were two of us. There were also two of them. They were called Max and Linda. They hated each other. Linda was a member of the
Zodiac
crew. She was nominally our liaison officer—to help us in our dealings with the Anacaona. She was supposed to be an anthropologist. She was a nice person, and about as useful as Eve, which wasn't very.

Max was a Family man—he bore the name of two of the most influential of the
Zodiac
's twelve eugenic units. He was what passed for the Law on Chao Phrya. He wasn't really a policeman—more a kind of fake Texas ranger. His function seemed to be more concerned with making sure that we weren't about to indulge in any subversive activities while we were treading on the sacred soil than rendering us any effective assistance.

We didn't meet Max and Linda until we'd been taken a safe distance away from the port. They didn't want us complaining to Charlot. We weren't allowed our own medical supplies. The Chao Phryans were bent on turning the whole thing into a farce. Charlot's threats had made them shift their ground, all right. But all the bluster had confirmed their absolute determination to make things as difficult as humanly possible while still yielding to our perfectly legal demands.

I was dead sure that I didn't want to go walking around in any jungles under the conditions which the
Zodiac
people were insistent upon, but there was damn little I could do. Eve handled the protests which we distributed liberally almost every minute of the first day we were down, but she got absolutely no change at all. They were doing all they could, and they were doing all we had asked them to do. Take it or leave it.

I would have left it. Eve took it. She thought it was best to try, no matter how poor they insisted on making our chances. I had to take the orders. I knew I could look after myself, and probably after Eve as well, but I wouldn't have bet good money on our chances of success.

Oddly enough, I don't think either of our two indigenous compatriots was in on the big joke. They seemed to take it one hundred percent seriously. They didn't like us, but they were willing to get along with us, and they were honestly optimistic about our chances.

‘Don't worry,' said Linda. ‘It's only a matter of time. These people can't hide from the Anacaona, wherever they are. The forest people will find them.'

The theory was all very fine. But could we count on the help of the Anacaona? After all, both of the people we were looking for were Anacaona. Why would the forest people give them up to us?

But Linda was most definite about that. ‘You don't know the Anacaona,' she told me. ‘We can be absolutely sure of their co-operation.'

‘How come?' I wanted to know.

‘The Anacaona always co-operate,' she told us. She didn't know why, and she couldn't explain it. But she was sure.

Linda Petrosian was about twenty-eight standard years, with dyed silver hair and strong, well-shaped features. She was very handsome, as befitted someone descended from a population which had been eugenically controlled for nineteen generations. She was a devout believer in the Promised Land. She was devoted to the soil and the air and everything that grew or walked on Chao Phrya. She loved it all, because it was hers. Charlot had led me to believe that the crew might be a step back from the ultimate possessiveness of the Families, simply by virtue of the fact that they had a tradition of control over the
Zodiac
story. But Linda's commitment, at least; was no less for that. If anything, she was more fanatical—or prejudiced, since she wasn't violent about it—than I would have expected after a full century plus of life on the surface. She was certainly more dedicated than Max Volta-Tartaglia. Perhaps it was because the crew had the tradition of organisation and responsibility that they clung harder to the prop of faith.

Linda was supposed to be an expert on the Anacaona, but well before the time I set eyes on my first native I knew that she was a very inexpert expert. She loved the Anacaona, honestly and genuinely, but any concept of the Anacaona as a self-contained and self-ordained cultural species was quite beyond her. The Anacaona, so far as she was concerned, were a part of the Promised Land. They had properties and characteristics. She knew a lot about them, but it was all descriptive. She knew no why or how. All her knowledge of the Anacaona wasn't worth a damn, so far as I could see. She was perfectly happy to see them freed from slavery, but she had no conception whatsoever of why New Rome had insisted so urgently that they should be freed. She thought it was because slavery was cruel. She thought that the Anacaona ought to be educated and allowed to take a proper place in the culture of the Promised Land. Human culture. In her own way, she was just as bent on cultural genocide as the landfall generation had been. Only she was killing them with kindness. Her most treasured ambition was to turn the Anacaona into fake human beings with an appropriate depth of devotion and love for the Promised Land.

I could almost like and admire Linda Petrosian, except for the fact that she was not sane.

I could never have liked Max Volta-Tartaglia, any more than he could ever have liked me. He was a practical man. He knew that the universe was a lot bigger than any miserable plot of Promised Land. He knew that the stars weren't just lights in the sky and that they couldn't be treated as such. He hated New Rome and New Alexandria and all outworlders, but he knew that someday his world was going to have to come to terms with them, and he saw no point in remaining wilfully blind to the fact. He didn't want to open the planet, but he did favour an end to vain stupidity and diplomatic farce. He wanted to deal with realities. If only his attitude to the selfsame realities hadn't been so ludicrously and implacably hostile he might have made a lot of sense. As it was, he was a great big pain in the neck. He was amenable to argument and rationality, but he wore the chip on his shoulder as if it was a medal, and he was an out-and-out bastard.

Eve compared him to me a couple of tunes. She could have been just a little bit right, in some respects, but not in the important ones. I am, above all else, a capable man.

Max wasn't.

Time passed very quickly on Chao Phrya. The days were only seventeen hours long. But we were forced to waste so much of that time that my patience was very badly frayed before we had even started on our search.

I found out all of what I've set down so far concerning Max and Linda in a very short space of time. Eve and I were forced to live virtually in their pockets, and they hardly stopped talking for the first three days. They took great pains to explain themselves, and greater pains to explain that they were in no way apologising for themselves or for the attitude that their superiors were taking in handling our problem. They had a genuine desire for us to understand their part in the scheme of things. But they didn't seem to be in any particular hurry to get on with the scheme of things.

Nobody seemed to give any consideration at all to the fact that a little girl had been abducted. Nobody considered that there might be any urgency. The
Zodiac
people were concerned only about us, not at all about the purpose of our mission.

To tell the truth, I found time to wonder about what kind of trouble, if any, the girl might be in. It was very difficult to make any kind of sense out of this supposed crime. It must have taken a great deal of money to set up, and there seemed to be no obvious profit in it for the woman concerned. Baby-snatching is an old crime, of course, but this was a very big baby, and the mechanics of the thing were all wrong. The escape from New Alexandria had been carefully planned. Otherwise, it could never have succeeded.

We began our journey from the port in a jeep. We had only a packsack apiece, so little had we been allowed to bring with us from the
Swan
. We transferred from the jeep to a train, which took us to the capital. I expected to be transferred to some faster form of transport there, so as to get us to the theatre of operations with all due speed, but that was far too optimistic.

For a start, there
was
no faster form of transport available. The Chao Phryans had only short-range planes, and they were all operational at the frontier of
Zodiac
civilisation. A long way away.

On top of that, the
Zodiac
people had no intention of letting us begin our long journey at once. There were formalities. Lots of them. The only time I was ever glad that Eve was along was while we were kicking our heels in the capital. She had to handle the formalities. They must have threatened even her placid temper.

The capital city had been established, naturally enough, on the spot where the
Zodiac
came down. It was one great big showplace. We saw the
Zodiac
and a lot more. We weren't allowed to miss out. The last thing we wanted to be doing was sightseeing, so that was the first thing they made us do. All the while they assured us that there was no trouble, that they were only trying to make things easier, that matters in the forest were well under control, that we could rely on the Anacaona.

Naturally, we complained bitterly. We tried bluff in the same style as Charlot. We ranted and we threatened. But they had made the crucial move when they had restricted Charlot to the ship and refused to let us use our own call-circuit. We weren't big enough to cut any ice. I often wondered what they were telling Charlot about our progress, or lack of it. Probably nothing but inconsequentialities. What could he do but wait, unless he had something definite to complain about?

By the time we actually left the capital (by train) and made tracks toward the forest where the
White Fire
had come down, the Chao Phryans must have had time to check with New Rome. They must have found out more or less where they stood. I don't know how sure they were of their own situation, but they sure as hell didn't give us any better treatment than we'd already come to expect. On the other hand, they didn't leave us to rot in the capital while they did everything themselves. They let us carry on.

The train carried us for one day, and then we took a hovercraft. We covered a lot of miles, travelling all night as well as all day. But it was not until noon of our sixth day (local) on Chao Phrya that we finally reached the edge of the
Zodiac
Families' colonial surge, and actually got a sight of the edge of the rain forest.

We rested that afternoon in a kind of half-town, half-camp. There were more Anacaona around than humans. The Anacaona were still doing a lot of the construction work, though slavery had been abolished forty years before. I wondered how much they were being paid.

Max pointed at the high line of colour which marked the horizon. ‘That's it,' he told me. ‘Your ship came down somewhere in there. The Anacaona will have picked up anybody who got off. All we have to do is get to the Anacaona.'

‘How do we do that?' I wanted to know. I felt sure there had to be another catch.

‘Easy,' he said. ‘We'll pick up a couple of the tame goldens to guide us. It shouldn't take more than a week.'

‘A
week
?' I protested. ‘How come?'

‘We have to walk,' he said.

‘What's wrong with the hovercraft?'

‘No good in the jungle.'

‘What about helicopters? You do have helicopters here, don't you?'

‘Oh yeah,' he said, ‘we have helicopters here. But they're no good in the jungle either. Can't see through the canopy from up top. Besides which, the Anacaona can only guide us along the floor. They wouldn't know what to make of it from upstairs.'

I didn't know whether he was giving me real answers or whether he was still being difficult for the sake of it. I didn't really care. It came to the same thing in the end. If Max said we walked, then we walked. No argument.

Unlike some people, I don't exactly feel naked without a gun. On the other hand, I didn't exactly relish the thought of tramping around in a jungle for a week or more without any kind of protection. Max had a gun, of course, and a call circuit, and a medical kit. But Max wasn't what I called protection. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw a feather into a headwind. The prospect of what was to come was far from enchanting.

Linda spent the afternoon talking to the Anacaona, looking for information about the search and trying to persuade individuals to act as guides. Apparently, everyone knew about the
White Fire
coming down, and they also knew where. Anybody and his cousin could have taken us to the spot, but that wasn't quite what we needed. We wanted to find two people, not a patch of burnt ground. Most of the natives didn't know anything at all about the forest nomads—they'd been brought here as a labour force by the colonists. But Linda was nevertheless confident that we could find exactly what we needed in the Anacaon village.

While Linda was handling her end of the operation Max found other things to do as well, and for much of the time Eve and I were at a loose end. It was a familiar feeling.

‘How much longer is it all going to take?' Eve wanted to know.

‘Max reckons a week yet before we find them' I told her. ‘Figure another week to get back home. Then refigure in standard instead of this local quicktime. It still comes to a fair number of days'