Four more joined him. Two ordered straight orange juice. It cost as much as liquor. They introduced themselves as the Scott brothers, James and Darwin.
"I take it things are slow?" Kevin asked,
"A little," Darwin Scott said. He shrugged massive shoulders. "Snow ghost hunting's a chancy thing. Get a good one and you make money, but you don't always."
"Then what?"
"Then you wait for somebody to stake you," Ajax Boynton said. "You looking to invest some money?"
Renner looked thoughtful. "Truth is, I'd like to own a snow ghost fur and I'd like to shoot it myself. What would it cost me?"
"Five thousand buys a quarter share," Boynton said. "Ten thousand buys forty percent."
"Why-"
"With ten thousand worth of gear we have a better chance of getting a ghost."
"Oh. Plausible."
"Still interested?"
"Sure, if I get to come along."
Boynton looked annoyed. "Hunting ghosts isn't dude work. We lose people."
"You keep saying that. With IR gear, and-"
"And sonar, and the best damn acoustic gear we can come up with," James Scott said, "And we lose people, because it's a long way north, the aurora mucks up electronics. And-"
"And ghosts move fast," his brother said. "They dig in near tree roots, where you can't get a good sonar map. They stay down in the snow so the IR doesn't spot them, And they can swim under snow faster than you can walk. Forget it, Mister."
"Let's see, now. I back you for ten thousand worth of gear, which I leave behind when the ship lifts. A good ghost fur costs...what? Straight from you, no retailer."
Darwin Scott said, "I'd get around twenty thousand."
Renner's sources were accurate. "So call it another twenty thousand when I get back, and call that incentive to bring the greenhorn back alive. Total, thirty thousand." They were trying to maintain poker faces, but he surely had their interest. "Just that, and you keep your sixty percent, but I expect you to indulge yet another whim."
Three men sighed. Renner said, "See, I can't think of any reason not to hunt snow ghosts where I might stumble across some opal meerschaum, too."
Three men were hiding smiles. Ajax Boynton said, "Me neither. If you've got a place in mind, I'll tell you if there are snow ghosts there."
"Let's find a map."
4 Snow Ghost
Have you not seen how your Lord lengthens out the shadow?
He could have kept it motionless if he liked.
Yet We make the sun its pilot to show the way.
al-Qur'an
"Is this wise?" Bury sipped at coffee and examined the map projected on the wall. "It will certainly not be comfortable."
Renner shrugged. "I like comfort. But hey, if I can get a snow ghost fur, it'll sure keep me warm enough."
"So will synthetics, and they are much cheaper. Why the area between the glaciers?"
"Oh, hell, Bury. How do you know Reuben Fox is hiding something but he isn't stealing and can't be bribed? Brains and instinct and technique. It took me all afternoon. We talked. The Scott brothers switched from orange juice to tea ... the Maguey Worm has a magic coffeepot variation. Gilbey makes a liter of tea and then lets the caffeine filter out through the wall. Takes five minutes."
"More Motie influence."
"Right off of your ships, Horace! Anyway I pointed at various parts of the map, all of it in the region where the northern lights play, but that's fairly large. Snow ghosts? Yes. No. Maybe. They'd never live here, they've been hunted out there, my brother got one here a year ago."
"I wish you had a fast-forward switch, Kevin."
"By and by, Boynton said he'd heard opal meerschaum came from under the Hand Glacier. The Scott brothers said it didn't, it had been searched by an uncle or something, and besides, the place had been hunted out of snow ghosts twenty years ago. So I went on pointing, and every place I pointed, the Scott brothers thought I might find a snow ghost there."
"There's something in the Hand. The Mormons know about it and Boynton doesn't. For that matter, it might be opal meerschaum. Under the glacier. You wait till the glacier moves; that's why the market's so sporadic."
"Given the geology I would not be surprised, but what is that to you?"
Renner spread his hands. "One hand, it's cold and miserable. Other hand, the source of opal meerschaum is a big secret, and we're looking for secrets. Gripping hand-" Bury suppressed a shudder. ‘Gripping hand, they're interested. What is Horace Bury after? Opal meerschaum? Something else?"
"And you trust your companions, whom you met in a bar-"
"I had Ruth Cohen check on them. Boynton and the Scott brothers are well known, no trouble with the police except that Boynton gets drunk when he has a good hunt. The Maguey Worm is one of half a dozen places where ghost hunters hang out looking for a. stake."
"Still-?"
"You have a better lead?"
"I have leads. And a different manner of searching." Bury gestured to indicate his travel chair. "Certainly you are better suited to follow this than I am. Kevin, communications will not be reliable in that area. The crew on Sinbad can attempt to keep track of you, but it is not likely they will succeed."
"No guts, no glory." Renner grinned. "Besides, I'll have Boynton and the Scott brothers looking out for me. They each get an extra five thousand if I get back alive. Ten each if I have a snow ghost. What can go wrong?"
The glacier ended in sharp edges bordered in bare rocky ground. The bare spots ranged from a few meters to several kilometers before vanishing into the snow. They flew past a cluster of buildings nestled against the glacier edge. Two buildings stood out, one wide and low, the other taller amid more massive. Mist and steam rose from all the clear-ground areas to the thick cloud cover above them, so that it was hard to see the town,
"Zion," Ajax Boynton said.
"Looks interesting," Renner said. Maybe four thousand population, maybe less.
"For us," Darwin Scott said. "That's one of the True Temples. But there won't be any ghosts near there. No opal meerschaum, either."
"Not there," Boynton agreed. "But that stuff's got to be near here somewhere."
"Why?"
"We know the jade comes from here."
"We know people say so," James Scott said. ‘But I never met anyone who'd found any."
"You have, too," Ajax Boynton said. "Ralph. Ralph... hell, I forget. Came to the Maguey and bought for the house."
"Yeah, and the next day bought a ticket for Tabletop," James Scott said. "I'd forgotten him. Okay, so you can get lucky."
"Never did understand that," Boynton said. "Ralph-Plemmons, that was his name. I didn't know him all that well, but I sure never figured him to leave the Purchase." He looked down at the map display on the flier's navigation screen. "Fifteen more klicks south, then twenty east. I know a good place."
Renner studied the rugged ground below. It rolled with hills, mostly covered with thin forest. Those bumbershoot trees needed a lot of room. The area near the glacier was obscured with mist, but away from it the air was clearer. Brush and treetops thrust up through the snow in the clearings. "Just where do you land?" he asked.
"You land on a lake," Darwin Scott said. He touched the light pen to the area Boynton had indicated. The bush plane banked slightly and changed course. "A shallow lake."
"Why shallow?" Renner asked.
‘Snow ghosts aren't the only things that eat people," James Scott said. "Boynton here lost a partner to a freshwater cecil. You sure this isn't the same lake?"
"Hell, no. I told Brad that lake was too deep," Boynton said.