“You must also make haste to collect as much data on the planet as possible: maps, meteorological patterns, climate belts. I am particularly concerned with the latter.”
“Because, as a satellite, it has no axial tilt and therefore no seasons?”
“So you understand, then?”
“I believe so, my Overlord. Without seasonal variation, weather patterns will continue to amplify themselves. The weather could be comparatively constant, but quite severe.”
“Exactly. And therefore, locating optimal habitation zones could be as difficult as it is imperative.”
“I will not fail you in this, my Overlord.”
“No. Of course you won’t.” And he left at a brisk pace.
Harrod became more aware of the pain again, slumped down to both knees.
He felt a hand on his arm, looked up.
The larger of the two helots—a sandy blonde ox with a square, open face—stared down at him. “Why?”
“ ‘Why?’ Why what?”
The helot glanced at the lash. “Why did he beat you so? How did you fail him?”
Harrod surprised himself with a bark of laughter. “I failed him by doing everything he has asked. Since I was born.”
The helot stared down at him, and then, shaking his head, helped Harrod to his feet.
— 11 —
“So are we ready to land?” Bikrut’s tone was impatient.
On an external monitor, Senrefer Tertius Seven stared back at the Overlord and his senior advisors. The angry eyes of multiple hurricanes chased each other—in slow motion, from this altitude—out of the turbulent equatorial ocean belt as they watched.
“I estimate ten days at the earliest, my Overlord. Since the security-protected shuttles have turned out to be far more reliable than the unprotected ones, we are progressing at a pace constrained by the remaining number of Shaddock pilots.”
Bikrut glared but said nothing: he had not wanted to wake any members of that crippled House unless absolutely necessary. Indeed, Bikrut had expressed how convenient it was that the “traitorous devos” were already entombed in cryogenic sarcophagi. But rousing the pilots of House Shaddock had been unavoidable: their shuttles proved vastly superior to, and safer than, the others. Ultimately, without their services, the chances for successful settlement would have been uncertain, at best.
Harrod decided it was best to change the topic swiftly. He thumbed his control unit: charts, graphs, and progress tables sprang up on the smaller monitors behind him. “As you can see, much of the local flora and fauna is ultimately edible, but—as our first samplers’ deaths revealed—very little of it can be consumed without prior processing. Mostly, this means leaching it with common organic acids to break down a variety of mild toxins. Also, in addition to standard collagen, there are a variety of related substances which cause most of the vegetable matter to pass through our tracts too quickly. Leaching dissolves these more troublesome fibrous substances; boiling allows them to be stripped out.”
“And how are the first test settlers doing, otherwise?”
“Quite well, actually, although they had some initial difficulty adapting to the gravity. This suggests that before anyone goes planetside, they should spend three, rather than two, weeks in the rotating habitation pods, which we now have operating full time at one-gee equivalent centrifugal force.”
“And have you identified our landing site?”
Harrod hesitated. “Yes, my Overlord, I have. Or rather, ‘we’ have. But I find myself to be the sole dissenting voice in the study group.”
“Explain.”
Harrod called up a rotating image of the moon on one of the monitors. “As you will note, slightly less than five percent of the satellite’s surface is land, and most of that is clustered in what we have arbitrarily designated as the northern hemisphere. Its many islands are all surface-breaking crests of steep sea-mounts. Their terrain is comprised of forbidding mountains, most rising up along what one might call the ‘spine’ of each separate island. At sea-level, however, most have a tidal shelf and skirt of land that ascends into a fringe of upland forest. There seems to be a reasonable diversity of biota throughout these archipelagos, and initial surveys suggest that while there is little iron, copper and tin deposits are not uncommon.”
“And the other site?”
Harrod slowed and then stopped the globe’s rotation as it centered on a discernible dot in the middle of the huge and unremarked ocean expanses of the southern hemisphere. “This landmass is, you might say, the top of a seamount ‘mesa’ of immense proportions. It is approximately 900 by 600 kilometers in size. Much of its land is flat, and it seems to boast the deepest soils on the satellite. It is a natural site for large-scale agriculture, and its eastern half has a fairly extensive network of rivers, comprised of three separate watersheds, two of which could—one day—be connected by canals, even using primitive construction methods.”
“And so that is the site you recommend, Intendant?”
“No, my Overlord. That is the site uniformly recommended by the rest of the research group.”
“And you choose the scattered islands and archipelagos of the north? Why?”
“My Overlord, the southern continent lies astride a weather belt which, while generally favorable, experiences some considerable meteorological extremes. Also, it has almost no other landmasses nearby. Except for a handful of small, scattered seamount atolls, it is alone in the southern hemisphere.
“In contrast, the islands of the north lay scattered across the many weather bands of that more moderate hemisphere. If we discover that our first site there is not optimal, relocation is quite feasible, using local means. Also, since there are many separate islands, it will be possible to establish widely-separated communities and so ensure that they could not all fall victim to any one disastrous event, such as a tidal wave or sequence of hurricanes. In establishing multiple, smaller communities, we ensure the survival of our race.”
And as he said it, he knew the Evolved executive collective before him had already dismissed his concerns. They would no doubt tell themselves that Intendant Harrod was unduly obsessed with mishaps, was prone to worrying about risks that were phantoms of his imagination, rather than actual dangers.
But the real reason they dismissed his analysis was because Evolveds were not merely given to contention, but sought it out. It was how they exhibited and lived their mandate to dominate. Set down in small, separated settlements, they would have no arena in which to highlight their personal prowess, no neighbors against which to pit their wills. In short, they would insist upon settling together: an eternally bickering pack of would-be tyrants.
Bikrut raised his chin. “A most adequate presentation, Intendant. We will not detain you from your preparation of the next wave of helot settlers. The landing craft are nearing readiness?”
“They are all fully operational, my Overlord. Several are already shuttling down advance supplies for the settlement. Intendant Ackley is organizing that labor most effectively.”
“And so he assures his continued survival. I want you and him to coordinate the dismantling of the command hull’s escape pods beginning next week: their fuel and subsystems will be urgently needed planetside. You may leave.”
And so Harrod did, first exiting the sleek bridge module, then the much bulkier command hull to which it was attached, and heading aft fifty meters along the keel-way of the Ark. Here he slipped through a hatchway coupling cube and emerged into a zero-gee habitation module, reserved for the recently decanted helots. They stood as he entered.
“Intendant,” said their leader with a deep bow. When he straightened, Harrod saw that it was the same one who had helped him up after his scourging. The helot smiled; Harrod returned it reflexively—and thought: Bikrut is right. I lack the domineering hauteur of the Evolved; I can’t be one of them.