Arkady opened a thermos of tea and handed it back to Ash. She took a swallow. Hot and sweet.
“Do you want to show them anything special?” Arkady asked.
“They want charismatic megafauna and maybe something else. I keep wondering why they hired me. Do they want to write about Venusian culture as well?”
“The replica of America on Ishtar Terra, and the remains of the USSR on Aphrodite Terra,” said Arkady in a genial tone. “It might make a good story. At least they did not ask for mostly naked natives. We don’t have any, except in saunas and swimming pools.”
The city was not large. They were soon out of it and rolling through agricultural land: bright green fields of modified Earth crops. The rain let up though the cloud cover remained. By midafternoon, they reached the forest. The fields ended at a tall wire fence. Beyond were trees. Green, of course. Chlorophyll had evolved only once—on Earth—and been imported to Venus. But the native forest’s green always seemed richer, more intense and varied to her. Purple dotted the ragged foliage of the low bottlebrush trees. The foliage of the far taller lace-leaf trees was veined with yellow, though this was hard to see at a distance.
The trucks stopped. Arkady climbed down and opened the gate, then closed it after the trucks were through, climbed back into the cab, and flipped on the radio. “Large herbivores can break through the fence and do sometimes,” he told the truck in back. “Fortunately for us, they do not like the taste of Terran vegetation, though they can metabolize it. Unfortunately for us, the only way for them to learn they don’t like our food is to try it.”
“Ah,” said Jasper.
“I got images of your opening the gate,” Maggie said. “Bright green fields, dark green trees and you with your AK-47. Very nice.”
The trucks drove on. The road was two muddy ruts now, edged by an understory of frilly plants. The air coming in her partly open window smelled of Venus: rain, mud, and the native vegetation.
Animals began to appear: pterosaurs, flapping in the trees, and small reptiloid bipeds in the understory. Now and then, Ash saw a solitary flower, cone-shaped and two meters tall. Most were a vivid orange-yellow. The small flying bugs that pollinated them were not visible at a distance, but she knew they were there in clouds. Now and then Maggie asked for a stop. Ash had her camera out and did some shooting, but the thing she really wanted to capture—the robot—was invisible, except for the lens head, pushed out a window at the end of Maggie’s long, long neck.
Midway through the afternoon, they came to a river. A small herd of amphibianoids rested on the far shore. They were larger than the street pigs in Venusport, maybe five meters long, their sprawling bodies red and slippery-looking. Their flat heads had bulbous eyes on top—not at the back of the head, where eyes usually were, even on Venus, but in front, close to the nostrils and above the mouths full of sharp teeth.
Maggie climbed out her window onto the flat bed of the second truck. She braced herself there, next to the Pecheneg, and recorded as the trucks forded the river. The water came up to the trucks’ windows, and the riverbed was rocky, but the trucks kept moving, rocking and jolting. Nothing could beat a Ural!
“A gutsy robot,” Arkady said.
Alexandra answered over the radio. “She has four sets of fingers dug into the truck bed, right into the wood. A good thing. I don’t want to fish her out of the river.”
Ash aimed her camera at the amphibianoids as the animals bellowed and slid into the river, vanishing among waves. Maggie was more interesting, but she still couldn’t get a good view.
The trucks climbed the now-empty bank and rolled onto the road. The Leica climbed back into the cab. “Not mega, but very nice,” Maggie said over the radio.
An hour or so later, they reached the first lodge, a massive concrete building set against a low cliff. Vines hung down the cliff, and pterosaurs—a small species covered with white down—fluttered among the vines.
There was a front yard, protected by a tall fence. Once again, Arkady climbed down and opened the gate. The trucks rolled in. Arkady locked the gate behind them. Boris shut down their truck and grabbed an AK-47, climbing down to join Arkady. They looked around the yard, which was full of low vegetation, mashed in places by previous safaris. Nothing big could hide here, but there were always land scorpions.
An AK-47 seemed excessive to Ash. Good boots and stomping worked just as well. But the citizens of Petrograd loved their guns; and there was no question that the experience of crushing a land scorpion, especially a big one, was unpleasant.
Finally, Boris unlocked the lodge’s door, which was metal and so heavy it could be called armored, and went in. She knew what he was doing: turning on the generator, the lights—ah, there they were, shining out the open door—the air, the temp control, the fence.
Baby shifted in his cage. “Want out. Hunt. Eat.”
“Soon.”
“Pterosaur chow is crap,” Baby added.
She reached a finger through the cage’s bars and rubbed his head. His large eyes closed, and he looked happy.
Boris came out and waved.
“All clear,” Arkady called. “The fence is electric and on now. Stay away from it.”
Ash opened the cage. Baby crawled out and rested for a moment in the open window. Then he flapped out, rising rapidly. The small pterosaurs in the vines shrieked. She felt the brief doubt she always felt when she let Baby go. Would he return?
“Did it escape?” Jason asked over the radio.
“He’s going hunting.” Ash climbed down. The air was damp and hot. By the time she reached the lodge, her shirt was wet.
“I want all the food inside,” Arkady said. “Also all the weapons and any personal belongings you want to preserve. The fence will keep most things out, but it’s not one hundred percent secure.”
She put the cage down and went back to help unload the trucks. Irina was a broad, boxlike woman, as solid and useful as a Ural. Alexandra was surprisingly slim and elegant, the chef who’d been a cop and could fieldstrip a Pecheneg. She moved like a dancer, and Ash felt a terrible envy. Did women ever stop feeling envy?
Maggie recorded them as they worked, while Jason took notes on a tablet. Ash felt mildly irritated by this. Couldn’t he help with the boxes? But he was a paying customer and an employee of a famous news source.
Once they were all inside, Boris shut the door, bringing down a heavy bar.
“Bathrooms are down the hall,” Arkady said. “Paying customers go first. Dinner will be in an hour.”
“An hour and a half,” Alexandra said.
“I am corrected.”
When she got back from her shower, Ash noticed that the virtual windows were on, showing the yard, lit now by spotlights. Beyond the fence was the dark forest. A hologram fire burned in the fireplace. Wine and a cheese plate were on a table in front of the fire.
She poured a glass, then went to help Alexandra and Irina with dinner. It was sautéed vegetables and fish from the Petrograd fishponds.
They ate around the fireplace.
“Someone has been here,” Boris said, as they ate.
“It must have been another safari,” Arkady said mildly. “They all have the access code.”
“I checked. No safaris have been this way since the last time we were here, and the security system has recorded nothing. But I know how I arrange canned goods. They are no longer in alphabetic order. I think it’s the CIA.”
“What?” asked Jason, and pulled his tablet out.
“There is a CIA post in the forest,” Arkady said. “They spy on Petrograd, though we’re barely surviving and no danger to the American colony or anyone. We ignore them because we don’t have the resources to confront them. But they are present—and not far from here. Boris might be right. They could have tinkered with the security system. I don’t know who else could have.”