Darcy looked up. Nico Frihagen was Lalondes Immigration Registrar, a grand title for what was essentially a clerk working in the Governors Civil Administration Division. He was in his late fifties, dourly Slavic in appearance, with rolling jowls and limp receding hair. Darcy suspected his ancestors had had very little to do with geneering. The slobbish civil servant was drinking beer from a tube, an offworld brand, no doubt pilfered from some unsuspecting arrivals farmsteading gear. Spaceport staff had a nice racket going ripping off the new colonists. Nico Frihagen was an essential segment of the scam; a list of belongings was included on the colonists registration cards.
That readiness to jam his nose in the trough made the registrar an ideal contact for the Edenist operatives. For a straight five hundred fuseodollars a month, Darcy and his partner, Lori, ran through the new immigrants identification without having to access the colonys civic data store.
Details on the immigrants were sparse, the Lalonde Development Company didnt really care who settled the planet as long as they paid their passage and land registration fee. The company wouldnt declare a dividend for another century yet, when the population had grown above a hundred million and an industrial economy was rising to replace the agrarian beginnings. Planets were always very long term investments. But Darcy and Lori kept ploughing through the data. Routine procedure. Besides, someone might get careless.
Why do you want to know? Has somebody been showing an interest? Lori asked, sitting at the other end of the settee from Darcy. A seventy-three-year-old woman with plain auburn hair and a round face, she looked about half of Nico Frihagens age. Like Darcy she lacked the distinctive height of most Edenists, which made both of them ideal for deep cover work.
No. Nico Frihagen gestured with the beer tube. But youve been doing this for three years now, hell probably for three years before that for all I know. Its not just the money, that doesnt mean much to you people. No, its the time you spend. Thats got to mean youre searching for someone important.
Not really, Lori said. Its a type of person were after, not a specific individual.
Good enough,darcy told her silently.
Lets hope hes satisfied with it,she replied.
Nico Frihagen took a swig of beer. What type?
Darcy held up his personal processor block. The profile is loaded in here, available on a need to know basis. Do you think you need to know, Nico?
No. I just wondered. There have been rumours, thats all.
What sort of rumours, Nico?
Nico Frihagen gazed out of the offices window, watching an Ivet team unloading a McBoeing BDA-9008. Upriver. Some settlers vanished, a couple of homesteads up in Schuster County. The sheriffs couldnt find any trace of them, no sign of a struggle, no bodies; just empty houses.
Where the heck is Schuster County?lori asked.
Darcy queried the bitek processor in his block; a map of the Juliffes tributary basin bloomed in his mind. Schuster County glowed a soft amber, a sprawling area, roughly rectangular, clinging to the side of the Quallheim River, one of the hundreds of tributaries. Like Nico said, way upriver. Over a thousand kilometres; its an area theyre just opening up for settlement.
It could be some kind of big animal. A kroclion, or even something the ecological analysis crew didnt find.
Maybe.darcy couldnt bring himself to believe that. So what was the rumour about it, Nico? What are people saying?
Not much, not many people know. The Governor wanted it kept quiet, he was worried about stirring up trouble with the Tyrathca farmers, theres a group of them on the other side of the savannah which borders Schuster County. He thought theyd get the blame, so the county sheriff hasnt made an official report. The homesteads have been listed as abandoned.
When did this happen? Lori asked.
Couple of weeks back.
Not much to go on,lori said.
Its remote enough. The kind of area hed go to.
I concede that. But what would he want with some hick farmers?
Insufficient data.
Are we going to go and check?
Check what? That the homesteads are empty? We cant go gallivanting off into the jungle over a couple of families who have broken their settlement contract. Goodness, if you stuck me out there in the middle of nowhere, Id want to run away.
I still say its odd. If they had been ordinary malcontents, the local sheriff would have known about it.
Yes. But even if we did go, it would take us two or three weeks to reach Schuster County. That means the trail would be well over a month old and cold. How good are you at tracking trails like that through a jungle?
We could take Abraham and Catlin out of zero-tau, use them to scout the area.
Darcy weighed up the options. Abraham and Catlin, their eagles, had enhanced senses, but even so sending them off without even a reasonable idea of where their quarry might be was pointless. They could spend half a year covering Schuster County alone. If they had more operatives he might have sanctioned it, but not with just the two of them. Covering Lalondes immigrants was a long shot, acting on one piece of dubious information nearly forty years old: that Laton had bought a copy of the original ecological assessment teams report. Chasing off into the hinterlands was completely out of the question.
No,he said reluctantly. Well keep them for when we have a definite scent. But theres a voidhawk due from Jospool in a month, Ill ask the captain for a complete survey of Schuster County.
OK, youre the boss.
He sent the mental image of a grin. They had worked together for too long for rank to be anything other than nominal between them.
Thanks for mentioning this, Darcy told Nico Frihagen.
It was useful?
Could be. Well certainly show our appreciation.
Thank you. Nico Frihagen smiled thinly and took another gulp of beer.
He is a disgusting oaf,lori said.
Wed be even more grateful if you let us know of any more disappearances, Darcy said.
Nico Frihagen cocked his beer tube in his direction. Do my best.
Darcy picked up another registration card. The name Marie Skibbow was printed along the top; an attractive teenage girl smiled rebelliously at him from her hologram. Her parents were in for a few years of hell, he decided. Outside the grimy window, thick grey clouds were massing on the western horizon.
The road linking Durringham to the spaceport was a broad strip of pinkish rock chippings slicing straight through the thick jungle. Father Horst Elwes marched towards the capital as best he could with his swelling feet rubbing what felt suspiciously like blisters on both heels. He kept a cautionary eye on the clouds accumulating above the gently waving treetops, hoping the rain would hold off until he made it to the transients dormitory.
Thin spires of steam drifted out of the chippings around his feet. The narrow gorge between the trees seemed to act as a lens for the sun, and the heat was awesome. A carpet of bushy grass was besieging the edge of the road. Vegetation on Lalonde certainly was vigorous. Birdsong filled the air, a resonant chittering. That would be the chikrows, he thought, reviewing the didactic memory of local conditions which the Church had given him before he left Earth. About the size of a terran pheasant, with bright scarlet plumage. Eatable, but not recommended, the artificial memory informed him.
There wasnt much traffic on the road. Battered lorries rumbling to and from the spaceport, carrying wooden crates and ancient-looking composite cargo-pods, some loaded up with homesteading gear. The spaceport crews riding power bikes with broad, deep-tread tyres, tooting their horns as they sped past, the men shouting at the girls. Several horse-drawn carts trundled by. Horst stared with unashamed delight at the big creatures. Hed never visited his arcologys zoo back on Earth. How strange that the first time he should meet them was on a planet over three hundred light-years from their birthworld. And how could they stand the heat with such thick coats?