“All right,” Colin Rexrew said. “Point noted. We don’t have the money for regular services, as you well know.”
“When it breaks down, a replacement will cost the LDC a lot more than the expense of proper triennial maintenance,” Candace Elford countered.
“Please! Can we stick with the topic in hand,” Colin Rexrew said. He eyed the drinks cabinet longingly. It would have been nice to break open one of the chilled white wines and have a more relaxed session, but Candace Elford would have refused, which would make it awkward. She was such an uncompromising officer; one of his best though, someone the sheriffs respected and obeyed. He needed her, so he put up with her rigid adherence to protocol, counting his blessings.
“Very well,” she said crisply. “As you can see, Aberdale has twelve burnt-out buildings. According to the sheriff in Schuster town, Matthew Skinner, there was some kind of Ivet disturbance four days ago, which is when the buildings were razed. The Ivets allegedly murdered a ten-year-old boy, and the villagers set about hunting them down. Supervisor Manani’s communication block wasn’t working, so an Aberdale villager visited Schuster the day after this murder, and Matthew Skinner reported it to my office. That was three days ago. He said he was riding to Aberdale to investigate; apparently most of the Ivets had been killed by that time. We heard nothing until this morning, when Matthew Skinner said the disturbance was over, and the Aberdale Ivets were all dead.”
“I disapprove of vigilante action,” Colin Rexrew said. “Officially, that is. But given the circumstances I can’t say I blame the Aberdale villagers, those Ivets have always been a mixed blessing. Half of them should never be sent here, ten years’ work-time isn’t going to rehabilitate the real recidivists.”
“Yes, sir,” Candace Elford said. “But that’s not the problem.”
Colin Rexrew brushed back tufts of his thinning hair with clammy hands. “I didn’t think it would be that simple. Go on.”
She datavised an order into the office’s computer. The screens started to display another village; it looked even more impecunious than Aberdale. “This is Schuster town itself,” she said. “The image was recorded this morning. As you can see, there are three burnt-out buildings.”
Colin Rexrew sat up a little straighter behind his desk. “They had Ivet trouble, too?”
“That is the curious thing,” Candace Elford said. “Matthew Skinner never mentioned the fires, and he should have done, fires like that are dangerous in those kinds of communities. The last routine satellite images we have of Schuster are two weeks old, the buildings were intact then.”
“It’s pushing coincidence a long way,” Colin Rexrew said, half to himself.
“That’s what my office thought,” Candace Elford said. “So we started checking a little closer. The Land Allocation Office divided the Quallheim territory up into three counties, Schuster, Medellin, and Rossan, which between them now have ten villages. We spotted burnt-out buildings in six of those villages: Aberdale, Schuster, Qayen, Pamiers, Kilkee, and Medellin.” She datavised more instructions. The screens started to run through the images of the villages her office had recorded that morning.
“Oh, Jesus,” Colin Rexrew muttered. Some of the blackened timbers were still smoking. “What’s been happening up there?”
“First thing we asked. So we called up each of the village supervisors,” Candace Elford said. “Qayen’s didn’t answer, the other three said everything was fine. So we called up the villages that didn’t show any damage. Salkhad, Guer, and Suttal didn’t answer; Rossan’s supervisor said they were all OK, and nothing out of the ordinary was happening. They hadn’t heard or seen anything from any of the other villages.”
“What’s your opinion?” Colin Rexrew asked.
The chief sheriff turned back to the screens. “One final piece of information. The satellite made seven passes over the Quallheim Counties today. Despite the shoddy images, at no time did we see anybody working in any of those fields; not in any of the ten villages.”
Terrance Smith whistled as he sucked air through his teeth. “Not good. There’s no way you’d keep a colonist from his field, not on a day with weather like it has been up there. They are utterly dependent on those crops. The supervisors make it quite plain from the start, once they’re settled, they don’t get any help from Durringham. They can’t afford to leave the fields untended. Remember what happened in Arklow County?”
Colin Rexrew gave his aide an irritable look. “Don’t remind me, I accessed the files when I arrived.” He transferred his gaze to the screens, and the image of Qayen village. A black premonition was rising in his mind. “So what are you telling me, Candace?”
“I know what it looks like,” she said. “I just can’t believe it, that’s all. An Ivet revolt which has successfully taken control of the Quallheim Counties, and in just four days, too.”
“There are over six thousand colonists spread out in those counties,” Terrance Smith said. “Most of them have weapons and aren’t afraid to use them. Against that, there are a hundred and eighty-six Ivets, unarmed and unorganized, and without any form of reliable communication. They’re Earth’s junk, waster kids; if they could organize something like this they would never be here in the first place.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I said I don’t believe it. But what else could it be? Someone from outside? Who?”
Colin Rexrew frowned. “Schuster’s been a problem before. What . . .” He trailed off, requesting a search through the files stored in his neural nanonics. “Ah, yes; the disappearing homestead families. Do you remember, Terrance, I sent a marshal up to investigate last year. Bloody great waste of money that was.”
“It was a waste of money from our point of view because the marshal didn’t find anything,” Terrance Smith said. “That in itself was unusual. Those marshals are good. Which means either it was a genuine case of some animal carrying the families away, or some unknown group was responsible, and managed to cover their tracks to such an extent it fooled both the local supervisor and the marshal. If it was an organized raid, then the perpetrators were at least the equal of our marshal.”
“So?” Colin Rexrew asked.
“So now we have another event, originating in the same county, that would be hard to explain away in terms of an Ivet revolt. Certainly the scale of the trouble argues against it being the Ivets by themselves. But an external group taking over the Quallheim Counties would fit the facts we have.”
“We only have a secondhand report that it was Ivets anyway,” Colin Rexrew said, pondering the unwelcome idea.
“It still doesn’t make any sense,” Candace Elford said. “I concede that the facts indicate the Ivets are getting help. But what external group? And why the Quallheim Counties, for God’s sake? There’s no wealth out there; the colonists are barely self-sufficient. There’s no wealth anywhere on Lalonde, come to that.”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Colin Rexrew said. “Look, I’ve got three river-boats scheduled to leave in two days, they’re taking six hundred fresh settlers up to Schuster County so they can start another village. You’re my security adviser, Candace, are you telling me not to send them?”
“I think my advice would have to be, yes; certainly at this stage. It’s not as if you’re short of destinations. Sending unsuspecting raw colonists into the middle of a potential revolt wouldn’t look good on any of our records. Is there a nearby alternative to Schuster where you can settle them?”
“Willow West County on the Frenshaw tributary,” Terrance Smith suggested. “It’s only a hundred kilometres north-west of Schuster; plenty of room for them there. It’s on our current territory development list anyway.”
“OK,” Colin Rexrew said. “Get it organized with the Land Allocation Office. In the meantime, what do you intend to do about the Quallheim situation, Candace?”