“God, don’t remind me. I don’t want to remember anything about that village.”

“Can’t say I blame you. First thing I did was get out. Sailed straight down the Juliffe on a trader boat; took me a week and I got ripped off by the captain, but here I am. Arrived today.”

“Yeah, I got ripped off too.” Marie studied her glass of brightlime. “So what’s happening upriver, Quinn? Have the Ivets really taken over the Quallheim Counties?”

“It was all news to me when we docked this morning. There was nothing like that in the offing when I left. Maybe they’re fighting over the gold. Whoever owns the motherlode is going to be seriously rich.”

“They’ve sent a load of sheriffs and deputies up there, armed to the teeth.”

“Oh, dear. That doesn’t sound good. Guess I’m lucky I got out when I did.”

Marie realized how hot she had become in the last couple of minutes. When she glanced up she saw the fans had stopped spinning. Bloody typical, right when the sun was at its zenith. “Quinn? How are my family?”

“Well . . .” He pulled a sardonic face. “Your father’s not changed much.”

She lifted her glass level with her face. “Amen.”

“Let’s see; your mother’s OK, your brother-in-law is OK. Oh yes, Paula’s pregnant.”

“Really? God, I’ll be an aunt.”

“Looks like it.” He took a swig of his beer.

“So what are you going to do now?”

“Leave. Get on a starship and go, some planet where I can start over.”

“There was that much gold?” she asked.

“Yeah, that much, and then some.”

Marie thought fast, weighing up her options. “I can get you off Lalonde by tomorrow afternoon, and not back to Earth either, this is a fresh planet the captain is heading for. Clean air, open spaces, and a rock-solid economy.”

“Yeah?” Quinn brightened considerably. The overhead fans began to turn again.

“Yes. I have a contact in the ship, but I charge commission for introducing you.”

“You really landed on your feet, didn’t you?”

“I do OK.”

“Marie, there weren’t any girls on the boat down the river.”

She wasn’t sure how he had suddenly got so close. He was pressed up beside her, and his presence was sending fissures of doubt straight through her self-confidence. Something about Quinn was monstrously intimidating, verging on menacing. “I can help there, I think. I know a place, the girls are clean.”

“I don’t want a place , Marie. Dear God, seeing you sitting there triggered all those memories I thought I’d put behind me.”

“Quinn,” she said laconically.

“You think I can help it? You were every Ivet’s wet dream back at Aberdale, we’d spend hours talking about you. There’d be fights over who got on the work detail to your homestead. I did, I got it every time, I made bloody sure I did.”

“Quinn!”

“You were everything I could never have, Marie. Damn Christ, I worshipped you, you were perfection, everything that was right and good in the world.”

“Don’t, Quinn.” Her head was spinning, making her dizzy. What he was saying was crazy, he’d never even noticed her when he walked in the Crashed Dumper. It was so hot, the sweat was running down her back. His arm went round her, making her look into fevered eyes.

“And now here you are again. My very own idol. Like God gave me a second chance. And I’m not giving up this chance, Marie. Whatever it takes, I want you. I want you, Marie.” Then his lips were on hers.

She was shaking against him when he finished the kiss. “Quinn no,” she mumbled. He tightened his grip, squashing her against him. His chest felt as though it was carved from rock, every muscle a steel band. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t pushing him away. But she wasn’t, the thought was inconceivable.

“I’m going to make it so good you’re never going to leave me,” he said in a frantic whisper. “I’m going to make you see I’m the one for you, that there is no one else in the whole galaxy who can replace me. I’m going to take you from this atrocity of a planet when I go; and we’re going to live somewhere sweet and beautiful, where there isn’t any jungle, and people are happy. And I’m going to buy us a big house, and I’m going to make you pregnant, and our children are going to be so lovely it hurts to look at them. You’ll see, Marie. You’ll see what true love can bring when you give yourself up to me.”

There were tears in her eyes at the terrible wonderful words. Words that spoke out every dream she owned. And how could he possibly know? Yet there was only desire and yearning in his face. So maybe—please God—just maybe it was true. Because nobody could be so cruel as to lie about such things.

They leant together as they stumbled out of the Crashed Dumper, the pair of them drunk with their own brand of desire.

The Confederation Navy office on Lalonde was a two-storey structure, an oblong box sixty-five metres broad, twenty deep. The outer walls were blue-silver mirrors, broken by a single black band halfway up, which ran round the entire circumference. The flat roof had seven satellite uplinks covered by geodesic weather casings that resembled particularly virile bright orange toadstools. Only five of them actually housed communication equipment, the other two covered maser cannon which provided a short-range defence capability. The building was situated in the eastern sector of Durringham, five hundred metres from the dumper which housed the Governor’s office.

It was a class 050-6B office, suitable for phase one colonies and non-capital missions (tropical); a programmed silicon structure made by the Lunar SII. It had arrived on Lalonde in a cubic container five metres to a side. The Fleet marine engineers who activated it had to sink corner foundations fifteen metres deep into the loam in order to secure it against the wind. The silicon walls might have been as strong as mayope, but they were only as thick as paper; it was terribly vulnerable to even mild gusts. And given Lalonde’s temperature there was some speculation that warm air accumulating inside might actually provide sufficient lift to get it airborne.

There were fifty Confederation Navy staff assigned to Lalonde: officers, NCOs, and ratings, who ate, worked, and slept inside. The most active department was the recruitment centre, where fifteen permanent staff dealt with youngsters who shared Marie Skibbow’s opinion of their world, but lacked her individual resourcefulness. Enlistment offered a golden ticket offplanet, away from the rain, the heat, and the remorseless physical labour of the farms.

Every time Ralph Hiltch walked through the wide automated entrance doors and breathed in clean, dry, conditioned air he felt just that fraction closer to home. Back in a world of right angles, synthetic materials, uniforms, humming machinery, and government-issue furniture.

A pretty rating barely out of her teens was waiting to escort him from the entrance hall where all the farmboy and —girl hopefuls were queueing in their hand-stitched shirts and mud-stained denim trousers. He opened his lightweight cagoule and shook some of the rain from it as she escorted him up the stairs and into the security zone of the second floor.

Lieutenant-Commander Kelven Solanki was waiting for Ralph Hiltch in his large corner office. A career officer who had left his Polish-ethnic world of Mazowiecki twenty-nine years previously, he was forty-seven: a narrow-faced man with a lean build, several centimetres shorter than Ralph, with thick raven-black hair trimmed to a regular one centimetre. His dark-blue port uniform fitted well, although he’d left the jacket on the back of his desk chair.

Ralph was given a genuinely warm handshake when he came in, and the rating was dismissed. She saluted smartly and closed the door.

Kelven Solanki’s welcoming smile faded considerably as he gestured Ralph to the imitation-leather settee. “Who’s going to start?”

He hung his cagoule on the edge of the settee and leaned back. “We’re on your home territory, so I’ll tell you what I know first.”

“OK.” Kelven sat on the chair opposite.

“First, Joshua Calvert and the Lady Macbeth ; stunning though it appears, he is actually genuine as far as we can make out. I’ve got an inside track: my secretary, Marie, is running a deal for him, so she’s keeping a strong tab on him for me. He’s bought a thousand tonnes of mayope, got himself an export licence, and he’s loading the stuff into his starship as fast as the McBoeing he hired can boost it into orbit. He’s made no attempt to get in touch with any known fence, he didn’t bring any cargo down in his own spaceplane, legal or illegal, and he’ll be gone tomorrow.”

Kelven found he was more interested in the independent trader captain than the situation really required. “He’s genuinely transporting timber to another star?”

“Yes. To Norfolk, apparently. Which, given their import restrictions, isn’t quite as insane as it sounds. They may just have a use for it with their pastoral tech. I haven’t decided if he’s an idiot or a genius. I’d love to know how he gets on.”

“Me too. But he isn’t quite the innocent you think he is. The Lady Macbeth has an antimatter drive unit. And my last general security file update from Avon carried a report that he was intercepted by a navy voidhawk a couple of months back; Fleet Intelligence was convinced he was trying to smuggle proscribed technology. They actually watched the units being loaded into his cargo bay. Yet when the voidhawk captain searched his ship—nothing. So it doesn’t look like he’s an idiot.”

“Interesting. He’s not due to leave until tomorrow, so he might still try something. I’ll keep him under close observation. Will you?”

“I have been keeping a quiet eye on Captain Calvert since his arrival, and I’ll continue to do so. Now, the Quallheim Counties situation. I don’t like it at all. We’ve been reviewing the images the chief sheriff’s observation satellite has been downloading this morning, and the trouble is spreading into Willow West County. There are several burnt-out buildings in the villages, evidence of fighting, and the fields are being ignored.”

“Hell, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, this time Candace Elford has managed to keep it quiet, at least for now. But the sheriffs and supervisors in the Quallheim Counties and Willow West still insist there’s nothing wrong. Those that answer their communication blocks. I think that’s the strangest aspect of this situation; I can’t see the Ivets pointing a laser at their heads all day every day.”

“I find it very hard to believe the Ivets could take over a whole county in the first place, let alone four. Rexrew might be right about an external group being behind it. Were these new Willow West images fuzzed like the last batch from the Quallheim?”

Kelven gave his counterpart a significant look. “Yes, unfortunately they were; and my technical officer can’t work out how it was done. She’s not the greatest electronic warfare expert in the navy, but she says there isn’t even a theory which could account for it. I have to give serious consideration to the fact that Rexrew is right. And there’s something else, too.”

Ralph broke out of his reverie at the tone.

“I have been authorized ”—he emphasized the word—“to tell you that Edenist Intelligence agents believe Laton is still alive, and may be on Lalonde, specifically in Schuster County. They say he contacted them to warn them of some kind of xenoc incursion. They left Durringham three days ago, heading upriver to investigate, but not before they made me contact Aethra to update it on the situation. And, Ralph, they looked worried.”

“Edenist Intelligence is operative here?” Ralph asked. He’d never had the slightest hint.

“Yes.”

“Laton, I think I know the name, some kind of Serpent insurrectionist; but he’s not stored in my neural nanonics files. Probably got him in my processor block back in the embassy.”

“I’ll save you the trouble. His file’s in the computer. It’s not nice reading, but be my guest.”

Ralph datavised the request into the office computer, and sat in a disturbed silence as the information ran through his brain. His training had covered Edenist Serpents, but in a remote, academic fashion. He was used to dealing with mercenaries, blackhawks, smugglers, and devious politicians, not someone like this. The datavise seemed to be pumping cryogenic liquid down his spinal cord. “And the Edenists think he’s on Lalonde?” he asked Kelven, aghast.

“That’s right. They were never sure, but he showed an interest in the place decades ago, so they kept a watch. Now it’s confirmed, he survived the navy assault and came here. According to the agents he called them because whatever is behind the Quallheim disturbances was breaking through his defences.”

“Jesus wept!”

“There is a remote possibility that it was some kind of bluff to attract voidhawks here so he could take them over and get himself and his associates offplanet. But I have to say it’s not likely. It looks like there really is some kind of external influence at work in the Quallheim Counties.”

“The Edenists wanted me to know?”

“Yes. They thought it was important enough to override minor political constraints—their words. They want the First Admiral and your senior Saldanas warned as well as their Jupiter Consensus. Laton by himself would require a major military action, something which can defeat him would probably mean deployment at Fleet level.”

Ralph stared at Kelven Solanki. The navy officer was badly frightened. “Have you told the Governor?”

“No. Rexrew has enough problems. There are over four thousand colonists in the transients’ dormitories who have had their farmsteading gear either burnt or looted. He can’t ship them upriver, and he hasn’t got any replacement gear—nor is he going to get any in the near future. There are three colonist-carrier starships in orbit with their Ivets left in zero-tau; Rexrew can’t bring them down because they’ll be murdered as soon as they step out of the McBoeings. The starship captains aren’t authorized to take them back to Earth. There are still sectors in the east of Durringham where full civil order hasn’t been re-established. Frankly, given the state of the city, we’re expecting widespread civil disobedience within three weeks, sooner if word about the Quallheim revolts spreading downriver reaches town. And with the way those idiot sheriffs leak confidential information, it will. We’re looking at virtual anarchy breaking out. I don’t consider the Governor as someone we can turn to with this information. He’s between the classic rock and a hard place right now.”

“You’re right,” Ralph agreed unhappily. God, why Lalonde? He’d hated the place when it was a seedy backward colony going nowhere. But right now a return to that state would have been a blessing. “I consider it my priority to inform Kulu what’s happened, and what may happen with regards to Laton and these possible xenocs in the Quallheim Counties.”

“Good. I have the legal authority to declare a system-wide emergency and commandeer any available starship. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but I am sending one of my officers up to a colonist-carrier starship and diverting it to Avon. That’s in hand now, the Eurydice finished unloading all its colonists yesterday, it only has about fifty Ivets left in zero-tau. They’ll be transferred over to the Martijn , where they can stay until Rexrew works out what he’s going to do with them. Barring anything totally unforeseen, Eurydice should be leaving within another twelve hours. It’ll carry my report to the First Admiral on a diplomatic flek, with another flek for the Edenist Ambassador on Avon. You can include a flek to Kulu’s mission at the Confederation Assembly.”

“Thank you. Although I haven’t got a clue how to compile a report like that. They’ll think we’re crazy.”

Kelven glanced out at the rain bouncing on the dark rooftops. The simplicity of the scene made the events in the distant Quallheim Counties seem surreal. “Maybe we are. But we have to do something.”

“The first thing our respective bosses will do is send back for confirmation and more information.”

“Yes, I thought about that. We must have that information ready for them.”

“Somebody has to go to the Quallheim Counties.”

“The Edenists are already on their way, but I’d like to send my own team. The marines are itching for the chance, of course. Do you have anyone capable of performing this kind of scout mission? I really think we need to pool resources.”

“I agree with you on that. Hell, I even agree with the Edenists.” And he had to smile cynically at that. “A joint venture would produce the best results. I have a couple of people trained to perform a covert penetration and scout mission. In fact, if you let me have access to the communication circuits on your ELINT satellites I can activate some assets I have upriver, see if they can fill us in on what’s happening.”

“I’ll see you get that.”

“OK, I’ll send my Lieutenant Jenny Harris over to supervise the operation. How were you planning on getting the scout teams upriver?”

Kelven datavised an instruction to the office computer and a wall-mounted screen lit up, showing a map of the Juliffe basin tributary network. The Quallheim Counties showed as a red slash clinging to the southern side of the tributary; Willow West glowed a warning amber to the north-west. The next county along was outlined in black, the name Kristo blinking in white script. “A fast boat up to Kristo County, then horses into the trouble zone. If they left by tomorrow, they ought to arrive around only a day or so after the Swithland and its posse, perhaps even a little beforehand.”

“Couldn’t we airlift them in? I can obtain one of the BK133s, they could be there by tonight.”

“And how would they get about? This is a scouting mission, remember. You can’t take horses in a VTOL, and nothing else can get through that jungle.”

Ralph scowled at the map on the screen. “Bugger, you’re right. Hell, this planet is bloody pitiful.”

“Convenient, though. One of the few places in the Confederation where a thousand kilometres makes a mockery of our usual transportation systems. We’re so used to instantaneous response, it spoils us.”

“Yes. Well, if any planet can bring us back to fundamentals, it’s Lalonde.”

The bundle of mayope trunks on the payload-handling truck had been assembled by the ground crew in one of the spaceport’s hangars. A simple enough job, even for this planet’s meagre cargo-preparation facilities; the trunks were almost perfectly cylindrical, a metre wide, cut to the same fifteen-metre length. Bright yellow straps held them together; ten load pins had been spaced correctly around the outside. Yet so far, two of the bundles had fallen apart when Ashly used the MSV’s waldo arm to manoeuvre them from the spaceplane into the Lady Macbeth ’s hold. The delay had cost them eight hours, and replacement wood had to be ordered and paid for.

Since then Warlow had inspected every bundle before it was loaded into the McBoeing. He’d sent three back to the hangar to be reassembled after he found loose straps, his enhanced audio senses picking up the ground crew’s grumbles when they thought they were out of earshot.

But this bundle seemed satisfactory. The grapple socket plugged into his lower left arm closed around the last loading pin. He braced himself on the truck’s base, and tried to shift the pin. The metal below his feet emitted a hesitant creak as his boosted muscles exerted their carefully measured force. The pin remained perfectly steady.

“OK, load it in,” he told the waiting ground crew. His grapple socket disengaged, and he jumped down onto the rough tarmac.

The truck driver edged the vehicle back under the waiting McBoeing. Hydraulics began to slide the bundle into the lower fuselage cargo hold. Warlow stood beside the spaceplane’s rear wheel bogies, in the shade. His body’s thermal-distribution system had more than enough capacity to cope with Lalonde’s blue-white sun, but he felt cooler here.

A power bike rounded the corner of the hangar and turned towards the spaceplane. Two people were riding on it, Marie Skibbow and a young man wearing a check shirt and khaki shorts. She drew to a halt in front of Warlow, giving the big cosmonik a breezy grin.

Cradles in the spaceplane’s hold started to snap shut around the bundle’s load pins. The truck’s payload-handling mechanism slowly withdrew.

“How’s it going?” Marie asked.

“One more flight after this, and we’ll be finished,” Warlow said. “Ten hours, maximum.”

“Great.” She swung her leg over the bike’s saddle. The young man dismounted a moment later. “Warlow, this is Quinn Dexter.”

Quinn smiled amicably. “Warlow, pleasure to meet you. Marie here tells me you’re heading for Norfolk.”

“That’s right.” Warlow watched the truck drive off back to the hangar; the bright orange vehicle looked strangely washed out. His neural nanonics reported a small data drop-out from his optical sensors, and he ordered a diagnostics program interrogation.

“This could be fortunate for both of us, then,” Quinn Dexter said. “I’d like to buy passage on the Lady Macbeth , Marie said you’re licensed for passengers.”

“We are.”

“OK, fine. So how much is a berth?”

“You want to go to Norfolk?” Warlow asked. His optical sensors had come back on line, the diagnostics had been unable to pinpoint the glitch.

“Sure.” Quinn’s happy smile broadened. “I’m a sales agent for Dobson Engineering. It’s a Kulu company. We produce a range of basic farm implements—ploughshares, wheel bearings for carts, that kind of thing. Suitable for low-technology worlds.”

“Well, you definitely came to the right place when you came to Lalonde,” Warlow said, upping the diaphragm’s bass level, his best approximation of irony.

“Yes. But I think I need to wait another fifty years before Lalonde even gets up to low technology. I haven’t been able to break into the official monopoly, not even with the embassy’s help, so it’s time to move on.”

“I see. One moment.” Warlow used his neural nanonics to open a channel to the spaceplane’s flight computer, and requested a link to the Lady Macbeth .

“What is it?” Joshua datavised.

“A customer,” Warlow told him.

“Give me a visual,” he said when Warlow finished explaining.

Warlow focused his optical sensors on Quinn’s face. The smile hadn’t faded, if anything it had expanded.

“Must be pretty keen to leave if he’s willing to buy passage on Lady Mac rather than wait for his berth on a company ship,” Joshua said. “Tell him it’s forty-five thousand fuseodollars for a zero-tau passage.”

There were times when Warlow regretted losing the ability to give a really plaintive sigh. “He’ll never pay that,” he retorted. If Joshua didn’t always try to extort clients they might win more business.

“So?” Joshua shot back. “We can haggle. Besides he might, and we need the money. The expenses I’ve shelled out on this bloody planet have just about emptied our petty cash account. We’ll be breaking into our Norfolk fund if we’re not careful.”

“My captain is currently charging forty-five thousand fuseodollars for a zero-tau flight to Norfolk,” Warlow said out loud.

“Zero-tau?” Quinn sounded puzzled.

“Yes.”

He glanced at Marie, who remained impassive.

Warlow waited patiently while the spaceplane’s cargo hold doors began to swing shut. His neural nanonics relayed the background chitter of the pilot running through the flight-prep sequence.

“I don’t want to travel in zero-tau,” Quinn said woodenly.

“Got him. Fifty-five thousand for a real-time cabin,” Joshua datavised.

“Then I’m afraid cabin passage will cost you fifty-five thousand,” Warlow recited laboriously. “Consumables, food, environmental equipment maintenance, it all adds up.”

“Yes, so I see. Very well, fifty-five thousand it is then.” Quinn produced a Jovian Bank disk from his shorts pocket.

“Jesus,” Joshua datavised. “This guy has an expense account a Saldana princeling would envy. Grab the money off him now, before he comes to his senses, then send him up on the McBoeing.” The channel to Lady Macbeth closed.

Warlow took his own Jovian Bank credit disk from a small pouch in his utility belt, and proffered it to Quinn Dexter. “Welcome aboard,” he boomed.