Quickening his pace, he reached a main irrigation canal, now almost dry because it wasn’t being used, and, without much hesitation, he jumped down into it and began walking out from the corn and towards fields planted only with a cloverlike crop used to refresh the soil and prevent erosion.
That made it tough, since it meant she’d have to come out of her hiding place in order to keep following him. Nonetheless, this was nonstandard enough behavior that it was worth following up—and reporting.
“Brother John?” she whispered.
“Go, Sister.”
“Alon is in the clear, walking away in a canal.”
“Looks like my boy’s not where he wants to be yet. Stay well back, be careful, but see where he’s going.”
By now, Alon was almost a speck on the horizon, only his bobbing head visible. She decided to step out, first looking at the canal and then reporting, “No problem. It’s wet at the bottom but mostly mud. His tracks are pretty obvious. I’m going to go at a slow pace here. It can’t be all that far—where he’s going, I mean. They never are more than an hour and a half late.”
“Well, my boy’s just turned and gone into a pretty tall wheat field here. This isn’t gonna be easy.”
“Be careful!”
“Yeah, you, too. If this isn’t a still they’re going for, then there’s gonna be one hell of a security stink.”
And maybe the answer to this puzzle, she added to herself. Nothing was going to keep her from finding her man, not now.
“Uh oh!”
“What?” she asked, nervous.
“He’s doubling back! He’s short-cutting directly for you!”
IV: OPPOSITION FROM THE UNDERWORLD
Eve still hadn’t been able to determine just where Alon had vanished, or how, but she was suddenly conscious that she was on a flat area far from any sort of real cover with someone rushing towards her who would not be happy to see her there. The pale yellow camouflage on her robe was fine if she were in the wheat fields or even hidden by the maize, but it kind of stood out on the broad, hard dirt and rock surface. The only practical cover were some low bushes along the irrigation canal, but they weren’t much help since if Gregnar followed Alon’s lead he’d run right down through the ditch and would again be certain to see her. Hoping that the big man wouldn’t expect anybody to be here and, if he suspected he was being observed, he would think only of being followed, she ran as fast as she could as far away from the canal as possible, and, when she felt time had run out, she simply flattened herself on the ground facing the canal.
It was just in time. Gregnar burst from the cornfield about twenty meters from where she lay flat, but she saw immediately that she needn’t have worried. The big man was in a real hurry and didn’t even look around, instead jumping right into the irrigation ditch and running along it, his head comically bobbing up and down as he trotted grimly forward until, at probably the same point that Alon had vanished, there was a crackling sound and then no more bouncing head.
John emerged from almost the same spot Gregnar had in the cornfield and stared. From his angle he’d been able to see the big man run straight along the ditch, and apparently vanish.
Eve got up, quickly brushed the dust off, and made straight for her companion. “You thought I was kidding,” she commented.
Actually, he’d thought that the rookie out for her first real assignment had simply overreacted, but this—this was something very different.
“Security,” he called, mentally opening the comm link.
“OD here. Yes?” It was that damned fool Cordish again.
“Robey here. We have two local men now who have been followed as they went well away from others. I just witnessed one of them go along a canal and suddenly vanish from sight.”
“You probably just couldn’t see him any more because of the angle,” Cordish snapped. “Don’t bother me with this! The Boss is out and roaming around right now and he’s brought his bicycle. Worse, he’s mumbling about borrowing and riding a crindin. Just what we need. Now, if there’s nothing else—”
“I don’t mean I lost sight of him,” Robey responded. “I mean to report that he went through some sort of force field barrier or gate and dematerialized as far as we could see. Toloway had reported another man doing the same earlier.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! These people have nowhere near that sort of technology, and, besides, if they did it would have registered here.”
Robey had just had about enough of the arrogant bastard. “I am recording this for later inquiry,” he told Cordish icily. “I have now reported an anomaly and potential threat to us, the ship, and most particularly to the Doc and our mission. If you choose not to act on it, it is entirely on your head and on your responsibility alone. Is that understood, Brother Cordish?”
It was a risky thing to do, but Robey felt that his first responsibility was to the whole, not to his superiors. He knew that Cordish’s standing orders were to notify the Doc immediately of any problems, particularly of a security nature, and to also act to contain the problem until a decision could come down from on high. Cordish now understood that his neck was the one in the noose; if this developed into anything nasty then the Gates of Hell would be preferable to the Doc’s wrath. On the other hand, if it was trivial, Robey had just made an enemy who would never forget.
Robey was understandably nervous at the latter possibility, but he resented even more that he’d had to go to this length just to get the incompetent son of a bitch to do his job. If Cordish didn’t like taking risks and making decisions, he should never have accepted the job.
“Very well,” Cordish sighed at last, sounding none too pleased. “I’m sending a small tech crew with scanners over to your location. Keep out of sight of the locals until they arrive, and if any of the ones you’ve been following show up, let them leave, hopefully without being aware of you, and remain where you are. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Yeah, right. Will do,” Robey responded. He prayed to himself that this really would be nothing, but there was no way in the world that any kind of high tech system like he’d witnessed should be here, particularly in the hands of these people, and most particularly without being detected.
Neither of the native men reappeared by the time the tech crew showed up, each riding a well-worn but serviceable mag scooter. As with Cordish, they couldn’t believe that this could be anything important and they already had their hands full with routine stuff, but, like Robey, they knew they had to be sure.
The team was a senior technician named Corby and two assistants, Erin and Ruth. Corby was a tall, gangly skeleton of a man, with one of those long faces with a permanently dour, hang-dog expression. He had the biggest hands and longest fingers Eve ever remembered seeing on a human being, but those fingers were so dextrous that they could do things only micromachines were thought to accomplish.
“Girls, I want both monitor cover and security cover on both sides. Ruth, you over there; Erin, you on this side a few meters back of Ruth’s position. Got it?”
They both nodded and picked up small hand-held devices from the scooter’s saddlebags. Corby had a longer device with a complex readout screen in the base and a whole set of lights above. From the base, extending a good half a meter, was a long, smooth gun-metal-gray rod with a pale yellow tip.