"Yes, Yelén raised the same objection. But —"
"Right. You told her Marta had taken all that into account. I'll give you this, Wil. When you feel like it, you're one of the most convincing people I've ever seen — and I've seen some experts.... By the way, I backed you on this. I think Yelén is convinced; she believes Marta was all but superhuman, anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if the killer does, too.
"My point is, I'm on to you," Lu continued. Wil put on an expression of polite surprise. "You saw something in the diary that we didn't. But you don't know much more than what you've said — and you have no clues. Hence this wild-goose chase." She waved at the lands beyond the flier. "You hope you've convinced the killer that you will soon know his identity. You've posted us as targets, to flush him out." It was a prospect she appeared to enjoy.
And her theory was uncomfortably close to the truth. He had tried to create a situation where the enemy would be forced to attack him. What he couldn't understand was the activity around the low-techs. How could hurting them hide the killer?
Wil shrugged; he hoped, that none of this turmoil showed on his face.
Della watched him for a second, her head cocked to one side. "No response? So I'm still on the suspect list. If you die and I survive, then the others will be on to me-and together, they outgun me. You're trickier than I thought; maybe gutsier, too."
The morning passed, slow and tense. Della paid no attention to the view. She was rational enough-and perhaps even brighter than usual. But there was a cockiness in her manner, as if she held reality at a distance, thought it all an immensely interesting game. She was full of theories. It was no surprise that her number one suspect was Juan Chanson. "I know he fired on me. Juan is playing the role of racial protector. He reminds me of the centaur. I think our killer must be like that centaur, Wil. The creature was so trapped by his notion of racial duty that he killed the last survivors. We're seeing the same thing here: murders and preparations for more murders.''
Wil's "search pattern" took them slowly outwards from Peacer Lake. Fifty thousand years before, this had been vitrified wasteland. The jacaranda forests had won it back thousands of years since. Though this forest had not existed in Marta's time, it was much like the ones she had traveled. Wil was seeing the heaven side of the world Marta had described. To the northeast, a grayish band stretched along the border of the forest domain. That must be the kudzu web, killing the jungle and preventing invasion. On the jac side, there were occasional silver splotches, web attacks on non-jacs that had sprouted beyond the barrier. The jacarandas themselves were an endless green sea, tinged with a bluish foam of flowers. He knew there were vast webs there, too, but they were below the leaf canopy, where the spiders' domesticated caterpillars could take advantage of the leaves without shading them out.
Here and there bright puffs of cloud floated above it all, trailing shadow.
Marta had walked many kilometers before finding a display
web. From this altitude, they could see several at once. None was less than thirty meters across. They shimmered in the treetop breezes, their colors shifting between red and electric blue. Somewhere down there was a fossil streambed, the remains of a small river Marta had followed on one of her last expeditions out of Peacer Lake. He remembered what the land looked like then: kilometers of grayness, the water and wind still working to break through the glassy surface. She would have carried whatever food she needed.
Ahead, the forest was splattered with random patches of kudzu. Display webs were scattered everywhere. There was more blue and red and silver than green.
Della supplied an explanation. "Marta's plantings spread outward from her signal line. This is where the new forest meets the old; sort of a jac civil war."
Wil smiled at the metaphor. Apparently the two forests and their spiders were different enough to excite the kudzu reflex. He wondered if the display webs were like animal displays at territory boundaries. The colorful jumble passed slowly below, and they were over normal jacs again.
"We're way beyond Marta's furthest trip in this direction, Wil. You really think anyone's going to believe we're doing a serious search here?"
He pretended to ignore the question. "Follow this line another hundred kilometers, then break and head toward the lake where she got the fishers."
Thirty minutes later they were floating above a patch of brownish green water, more a swamp than a lake. The jacs grew right to the edge; it looked like the kudzu web stretched into the water. Fifty thousand years ago there had been ordinary woodland here.
"What's our defense situation, Della?"
"Cool, cool. Except for the suppressor thing, no enemy action. The NMs and Peacers have buttoned up, but they've stopped shouting accusations. We've discussed the threat with all the high-techs. They've agreed to keep out of the air for the time being, and to isolate their forces. If anyone strikes, we'll know his identity. The bottom line, Wiclass="underline" I don't think the enemy has been bluffed."
There was no help for it, then. "Exactly which way is north, Della?" Damn this flier: no command helmet, no holos. He felt like the inmate of a rubber room.
Suddenly a red arrow labeled NORTH hovered over the forest. It looked solid, kilometers long; so the windows were holo displays after all. "Okay. Back off eastwards from lake.
Come down to a thousand meters." They slid sideways, near in free fall. Most of the lake was still visible. "Give me a gin around the original lake site. Mark it off in degrees." He studied the lake and the blue circle that now surrounded it. "I war to get into the forest about ten klicks from the lake on a bearing
of thirty degrees from north." They were close enough to the forest canopy that he could see leaves and flowers rushing by The cover looked deep and dense. "Are you going to have an problem finding a place to get through?"
"No problem at all." Their forward motion ceased. The were just above the treetops. Abruptly, the flier smashed straight down. For an instant, negative g's hung Wil on h harness. Sounds of destruction were sharp around them.
And then they were through. The spaces beneath were 1. by the sunlight that followed them through the hole they ha punched in the canopy. Beyond that light, all was dark an greenish. Junk was drifting down all around them. Most of was insubstantial. The underweb carried centuries of twigs an insect remains, flotsam that had not yet percolated to the surface. It was coming down all at once now, swinging back an. forth through the light. Some debris-branches, clusters c flowers-was still in the air, supported by fragments of the web More than anything else, Wil felt as if they had sudden? plunged into deep water. The flier drifted out of the light. H eyes slowly adapted to the dimness.
"We're there, Wil. Now what?"
"How well can the others monitor us down here?"
"It's complicated. Depends on what we do."
"Okay. I think the cairn is southwest of us, near the bearing we took from the lake. After all this time, there won't be au. surface evidence, but I'm hoping you can detect the rocks
"And if f you can't, I'll have to think o f something else."
"That should be easy." The flier glided around a tree. The were less than a meter up, moving at barely more than
walking pace. They drifted back and forth across the bearing the sunlight from the entrance hole was lost behind then Della's flier was five meters tall, and nearly that wide, yet the had no trouble negotiating the search path. He looked out the windows in wonder. Much of the ground was absolutely smooth, a gray-green down. That was the top of fifty thousand years' accumulation of spider dung, of leaf and chitin fragments. The abyssal ooze of the Jac forest.