He crouched next to a field ditch and, through his image-intensifier, surveyed the village.
Like many villages on many worlds where there was a surrounding wilderness, this was built at the edge of the river — the low wooden houses huddled together as if for comfort. To one side, large barns clustered, and beyond these projected a jetty to which several skiffs were moored.
There seemed to be some activity around the barns, a couple of women at a well, but little else going on. Ansel clipped the intensifier at his belt then drew his thin-gun. He studied the display on the side of the weapon, grunted his satisfaction, holstered it, then stood and headed on down.
First, he must be polite, he decided. He would ask very considerately after the whereabouts of Kelly. He would find Kelly’s daughter and two sons and ask them if they had seen their father. If it transpired that he was getting no cooperation, he would have to use stronger tactics. This he expected, as the colonists were a cantankerous and ungrateful bunch. When THC
staff had returned here after the hundred years of the Corporate Wars they had discovered the descendants of the original miners lapsed into primitivism. For these people they brought in technology, education, contractual employment with its prospect of wealth and the chance to travel offworld. Their repayment had been a refusal of all contracts, obstinate mulishness, damage claims for the abandonment of their ancestors, and steading claims on land the Company had bought mineral rights to a hundred and eighty years ago. Ansel suspected he might have to get a little rough.
Ansel strolled into the village and down what he supposed must be the main street, to where the two women were standing at the well. As he approached, they took one look at him, hoisted up their skirts and headed towards the barns.
‘Wait,’ Ansel called, but they ignored him.
He calmly walked after them, round a two-storey building with a wide arched doorway through which he could see a scattering of tables and a bar with bottles racked behind. On the other side of this place, he came face to face with the two women, now accompanied by two men. None of these people looked happy to see him.
‘What do you want, Company man?’ asked the elder of the two men.
Ansel studied the bearded face and saw there the obstinacy he had expected.
‘I want Kelly Segre Janssen,’ he said.
‘And why do you want him?’ asked the younger man.
Ansel studied the two men. They both looked to be in their thirties, and as this place was without antiagathic technology that probably was their age. They were infants to him. He appeared to be the same as them, but was twice their age.
‘I would prefer to speak to someone in charge,’ he said.
‘I am the elder here,’ said the bearded one.
Ansel doubted that, but thought he would let it ride for the moment.
‘Okay, it’s a simple enough matter. The Company owes Kelly a substantial sum for information he provided for the Almanac. I’m here to make sure he gets it.’
The two men looked at each other.
‘He’s here to be my father’s good friend,’ said one of the women.
Ansel looked at her. ‘You’re Annette Segre Janssen?’
‘I am.’
‘You’re right — I want to be your father’s good friend.’
She said, ‘You’re here to kill my father because he smuggled cornul fruit aboard the Strine Station and used it to poison the Director and some Company officials.’
Obviously ‘good friend’ meant something different here, Ansel thought, and he stood no chance with subterfuge. He reached for his thin-gun then paused when he heard deliberate movement behind him. Whoever it was, was good. He had heard nothing until then. For a moment he hesitated, then in one motion he drew his gun, squatted and turned. A bright light flung him into darkness.
Ansel woke with his head throbbing and a foul taste in his mouth.
Stunner.
He reached to his belt and found his holster empty. His pack was gone as well. Carefully opening gritty eyes, he stared up at a plasmel ceiling. Underneath him he felt the cold pattern of metal decking.
‘You won’t find your gun, nor will you find any of those other lethal little devices you had concealed about your person, assassin,’ someone said.
Ansel rolled and sat upright. He was in the cargo hold of a small shuttle. Sat on a plasmel crate was a grey-haired man of indeterminate age. He held a stubby pulse-gun pointed casually at Ansel’s face. Ansel felt a sinking sensation in his gut when he recognized the grey uniform the man wore. He was Security — a monitor from Earth Central.
Shit.
‘We’ve been expecting you for some time now. We knew the Company wouldn’t let Kelly’s actions go unpunished. Their sending you here was ill-considered though. They did it before Kelly’s deposition was registered at ECS and before they realized their need to cover up. I would guess that about now, other agents are on their way here to deal with you.’
What the hell is he talking about?
The monitor went on, ‘You’re our evidence. They can claim the symbionts here mutated over the last century, but they can’t claim that of yours.’
While Ansel tried to make sense of that, the back door to the hold slid open and a woman walked in. She had black skin and blue eyes and wore an orange and grey suit. Ansel was struck at once by her assurance and the level calm of her gaze. Like himself she seemed to be about thirty years old. By her air he guessed her to be many times that. In one hand she carried a notescreen and in the other a short-range surgical laser. People of her age took precautions.
‘Have you got it?’ the monitor asked the woman.
‘I have it,’ said the woman. ‘It’s exactly the same so there has definitely been no mutation. It’s a deliberate alteration to the ‘factor’s genome.’
‘The time-scale the same?’
‘Yes: thirty-seven years after implantation. Here, of course, that means thirty-seven years after conception. They’ve got a right to be angry,’ she said.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ asked Ansel.
The woman and the monitor looked at each other.
‘He doesn’t know?’ asked the woman.
‘You think he’d have agreed to implantation if he had?’ asked the monitor.
They both looked at Ansel.
The monitor said, ‘It’s enough for you now to know that THC will want you dead.’
The woman glanced at the monitor then shrugged.
Yeah, right.
Ansel had been with the Company for many years and done a lot for them. He was not the kind they had killed — he was the kind who did the killing.
‘Okay, get up,’ said the monitor.
He sounded angry. Ansel stood up and, as he stretched his legs and arms, the snout of the pulse-gun did not waver from his face.
The monitor nodded towards the door. ‘Out of here.’
The shuttle had been manoeuvred into one of the large barns, which was why Ansel had not seen it from the hill. He followed the woman and the monitor out into orange sunset where the bearded villager and Kelly’s daughter waited. The two of them glanced questioningly at the monitor.