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labeled
CRAVAT
MICROCONTINENT GRANT
popped up on a second monitor screen. Grant was an isolated blob of land in
the southern hemisphere, no more than six hundred kilometers wide, surrounded
by sprinkles of low islands. Prompted by Karl, the zoom-frame locked onto a
piece of real estate in the microcontinent's heart, magnified, and produced a
three-dimensional topographic display.
Pickle Pothole was gherkin-shaped, about thirty kilometers long and seven
kilometers wide. It was surrounded by lesser blue features, most of them round
lakes with precipitous shores. The terrain height nowhere exceeded two
thousand meters, but it was horrendously irregular, a confusion of abrupt
pinnacles, sharp ridges, and swampy hollows without surface watercourses.
"Eroded limestone," Matt said. "A couple of the larger Cravat continents have
vast solfatara fields belching smoke, hydrogen sulfide, and other filthy muck
that gets swept around the planet, giving it almost permanent smog and
incessant acid rain. Grant and most of the other southern micros are
nonvolcanic, all sedimentary rock. Geologists call the kind of country on this
map karst. It's something like a giant distorted waffle enclosed valleys of
dense forest almost impossible to penetrate via surface routes. The water
mostly flows underground except for the ponds and potholes."
Northwest of Pickle, perhaps twelve kilometers distant, was a site designated
NUTMEG-414
(
MOTHBALLED
). It was one of a handful of similar outposts on the microcontinent, all in a
temporary state of disuse. "Check that out," I told Karl.
The computer obediently reported that Nutmeg-414 was a Rampart collection and
processing
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site, closed down five years earlier after the raw materials were largely
exhausted. While the place was operational, robot pickers had gathered
diseased fruits of the exotic tree
Pseudomyristica denticulata from the surrounding dense jungle. An automated
on-site factory chewed up the rinds and eventually produced cultures of Vector
PD32:C2, a virus useful in genetic engineering. Nutmeg-414 and nine other
mothballed facilities on Grant were tentatively
scheduled to be reopened in two years, after which time the exotic plantlife
would have renewed itself naturally.
Karl said to the computer, "Describe Vector PD32:C2. Include commercial
applications and production statistics."
A mind-numbing blast of scientific jargon, combined with spreadsheets,
appeared. He studied it and shook his head. "PD32:C2 is produced at 327 active
sites on eleven Cravat microcontinents. There are 178 other sites that are on
hiatus. The viral vector has a very broad-
spectrum transferase used principally by terraformers tinkering with the
zygotes of exotic animals. Says here that it's also been proposed for use in
'an experimental human germ-line manipulation procedure.' "
"What do you suppose that means?" Matt said.
"Check it later," I said. The headache was making me irritable, and I could
feel my physical strength seeping out of my boot heels. Damn it all to hell. I
had no time for this sickie shit.
The old man was eyeing me doubtfully. "You all right, son?"
"Fine and dandy. Bring up the last entry from Eve's log."
It was from five and a half weeks ago, and referred in considerable detail to
the Qastt pirate ship with the suicidal Haluk aboard. Eve didn't seem to show
any exceptional interest in the incident, and there was no hint in the diary
that she planned to undertake any unofficial investigation of her own.
"Not much to go on," Matt commented ruefully.
"It's plenty," I corrected her, "when you add my Haluk encounter to the
overall equation."
Karl said, "You're still determined to search for Eve on Cravat?"
"Matt and I will leave tomorrow, first thing. I've got a suitable starship.
We'll drop in unannounced on Bascombe and get him to take us to the pothole.
It's as good a place as any to
start, and Bascombe himself needs to be put through the wringer. Meanwhile,
you carry on here."
"Now wait a minute!" Karl protested. "There's got to be more to this new
outfit of ours than pinning a deputy-sheriff badge on me while you and Matt go
galloping off to the other end of the
Spur. We've got an intelligence-gathering apparatus to set up, new personnel
to approve. To say nothing of deciding .. . direction our internal
investigation of Rampart Central and.. . should take..."
Whoa!
Karl's voice fading. My visual input flickering. Room tilting off plumb.
Something icy blooming behind my breastbone and an iron spike piercing my
right temple. I clutched the edge of the computer console just in time to keep
from keeling over.
Brain says: Stay upright eyes focus pain go away come again some other day
shit shit shit...
Through a blur, Matt Gregoire's face registered shocked understanding. "Why,
you're ill, Helly! You're still recovering from the dystasis treatment, aren't
you? For heaven's sake, sit down." She took one of my arms and Karl grabbed
the other. They drew me back to the easy chairs at the fireplace.
"You push yourself too hard after one of those tank sessions," Karl chided me,
"you'll find yourself back in the hospital. Maybe we ought to postpone the
planning until tomorrow."
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"No, we'll do it now. Tomorrow I'm off to Cravat. Just give me a minute to
regroup." I took
off my hunting coat, rolled up my left shirtsleeve, and selected a fresh fix
from the medicuff. The drugs in the armlet took hold and turned me moderately
bright-eyed again. Karl and Matt were silent. Their expressions said it all.
"I'm okay," I assured them. "The doctor back on Kedge-Lockaby said that this
weakness will pass. The armlet has everything I need to keep me going."
"On Cravat?" Matt said dubiously.
"I've got a great nurse-bodyguard. Wait till you meet him. Now, can we start
making plans?"
During the next three hours we created the new Department of Special Projects.
It would work completely outside Rampart's normal protocols and have its own
independent communications system. Karl rustled up a crew of six savvy,
well-seasoned, indisputably loyal ex-security agents whom I interviewed one by
one on encrypted vidphone. They agreed to report for duty tomorrow.
Three of them, former Internal Security research operatives, would investigate
the vanished pals of Clive Leighton and covertly probe Rampart for other
Galapharma conspirators paying special attention to Zared, Dunne, Rivello, and
their close associates. The other three, retired [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]