A warm shower washed off the blue dermalez gel, and he dressed in an olive-green sweatshirt and gray shorts to join his housemates on the balcony. Amersy had already found the drinks cabinet and mixed a jug of some lemon-based cocktail. Lawrence went for a can of Bluesaucer. The beer tasted better than it ever had down in Memu Bay.
He hadn't realized it before, but the village was situated on a gentle slope. Half of their A-frame was supported on thick wooden stilts to keep it level. From the balcony they could see out over a broad shallow valley where the forest formed an unbroken dark blue-green cloak.
"Do we ever get any runaways, Sarge?" Nic asked as he settled back in a cushioned sun lounger.
"No. We're too obvious. Why, you thinking of it?"
Nic gestured round the clearing. Eight of the convoy's squaddies remained in Skin, guarding the trucks and jeeps. It was an easy duty. The kids were hanging around the vehicles, with the Skins letting them sit in the driving seats. Several girls had appeared, in their teens or early twenties. Lawrence was sure they hadn't been around before. He would have remembered. Like the tourists at Memu Bay, they didn't wear much, T-shirts or halter tops, and shorts. From his angle, most of them looked cute to beautiful. They belonged perfectly to the idyll image. The duty Skins were very busy talking to them.
"Got to admit," Nic said. "It's tempting. I can see myself living like this once I've earned a big enough stake."
"I couldn't," Lawrence said.
"Why the hell not? A place like this, you've got everything you could possibly need. Hey, I wonder if they go in for that trimarriage lark? Country folk always stick with the original traditions longer than the townies."
Ntoko chuckled and pushed his cocktail glass toward the tall, healthy girls gathered round a jeep. "Two of them together would finish you off, man."
"There are worse ways to go."
"This whole living with nature in the forest crap is a dead end," Lawrence said.
"Whoa there, the man's got a bug jammed up his ass." Nic laughed. "What could be wrong with this, Lawrence? Do a couple of hours' work each day, then spend the rest of the time lying about drinking and screwing. Look at 'em. They're all smiling, none of them are stressed. They know they're on to a good thing."
"I've seen this kind of setup before. It appeals to us because we see it as a break from our job. But you can't live like this for eighty years. You'd die of boredom after six months."
"Oh hell," Amersy groaned. "Here we go, the starship captain speech again. We're all meant for higher things."
"It's true," Lawrence insisted. "This kind of existence contributes nothing to the human experience. It's a retreat for people who can't handle modern society. And the irony is, they're utterly dependent on that society. Villages like this rely entirely on the industrial products made down in the city."
"That's always been the way, Lawrence," Ntoko said. "Different communities live different lives and produce different things. Trading between them generates wealth. Centuries ago it was different nations; now we've evolved microcosms of that, with communities that are going down highly specialized routes. This kind of lifestyle wasn't possible before modem communications and transport. These villagers are as much a development of our society as Memu Bay is."
"They're dreamers who need a good dose of reality to wake up and take part in what the rest of us are building."
The sergeant raised his cut crystal glass to the sinking sun. "Well, this is the kind of dreaming I like. Now have yourself another beer and chill out, Lawrence."
"Yes, Sarge." Lawrence grinned and fished round in the icebox. A group of children walked past the end of the house's garden. They yelled something unintelligible, and Lawrence waved back. Places like this, he conceded, did have their uses. He'd never managed to relax quite this much before on Thallspring, not even clubbing down on the marina.
If he could just work out what was wrong with Arnoon... Which was when he saw one of the children, a boy, slip his hand into one of the bushes that marked the boundary of the garden. His fingers slithered casually through the chubby blue-green leaves and found one of the fruits hanging within. It was a smallish globe, with a satin orange sheen. He plucked it with an easy twist of his hand and bit into it. Juice dribbled down his chin.
"I knew it!" Lawrence hissed. "Did you see that?"
"See what?" Ntoko asked.
"He's eating fruit. Real fruit. Off a bush. They're all bloody Regressors."
Ntoko frowned at the boy over the rim of his glass. "You sure?"
"I saw him."
"Filthy habit."
"Fancy making your kids do that."
Nic pulled a face at the liquid slopping around the bottom of his own glass. "Hey, you don't think they've given us any, do you?"
"They'd better not have," Amersy growled.
Lawrence slumped back down in the sun lounger again.
He felt a lot happier now that he'd discovered the village's dirty little secret. I knew nothing was this perfect.
The fridge in the A-frame's kitchen had been filled with food ready for them to cook. He made a mental note to check the packaging that tonight's meal came out of. Thank Fate there weren't any animals grazing around the A-frames. At least the villagers weren't that twisted. They ate out on the balcony, microwaving pork barbecue ribs and baked potatoes. Nic even mixed up a couple of TexMex sauces from some sachets he found. Each of the packets had unbroken Memu Bay food refinery seals. Dessert was double-chocolate-chip ice cream.
They sat in the loungers, watching the sun going down behind the huge mountains. The village was dipped in shadow from late afternoon onward. Twilight lasted at least a couple of hours, silhouetting the peaks against a luminous amethyst-and-gold sky. Stars began to shine early on, twinkling brightly through the cold, thin air above the mountains. Eventually, the Milky Way blazed like a fat comet's tail across the night.
Lawrence wasn't really drunk when he went to bed, although he'd had just enough beer to keep his thoughts buzzing. He slept fitfully, waking every few minutes to twist and turn, thumping his pillow. About one o'clock in the morning, he heard the scream.
It was cut off almost immediately. For a moment he thought it might have been the confused end to some dream. Except he thought he'd been awake now for a quarter of an hour.
He lay there, wide-awake alert. It had been a female scream, he was sure of that. Now that he concentrated he could hear some kind of scuffling. Footsteps on wooden stairs. Another cry, muffled this time.
Lawrence came off the bed fast, snatching up a pair of interface glasses. He slipped them on and told his bracelet pearl to give him their light amplification function. The glasses didn't have a particularly advanced capability, certainly nothing like his Skin sensors. But they showed him the darkened bedroom, pulling it into focus with sparkling blue-and-gray tones. He slid the broad patio door open and went outside onto the veranda. His room was facing away from the village clearing, looking along the line of A-frames. Stars glared down on the village, banishing shadows.