Priam's Lens

SEVENTEEN A Long Walk in the Sun

Katarina Socolov had not said a word after they got the supplies from the surviving boat unpacked and divided up. There were now only three backpacks for the five members of the team who could handle backpacks, the Pooka being built for different things. Mogutu took one, Father Chicanis took another, and Harker took the third. The commander of the expedition had not volunteered, and Socolov, though she had trained with a heavy pack, was nonetheless the lightest and smallest of the humans. She also gave no sign of volunteering.

Harker wasn’t sure if it was shock, self-doubt after the rugged landfall, or his own harsh barking at her to do what had to be done that was causing her sudden withdrawal, but for now they had enough of problems that he decided not to push it. Either she’d snap out of it and rejoin the rest of them or she’d break, in which case, in the cold reality of survival in hostile territory, she would become a liability.

She’d been very athletic and very confident, it was true, but she’d still emerged from the ivory tower and thought of this as something romantic, youthful fieldwork upon which to build a career. Most academics had never come face to face with situations in which split-second decisions might cause their own death. It had to be a tough awakening, and they were only starting.

N’Gana looked at his watch. They had already synchronized on the island; now he checked each to ensure that the watches were still in synch at least to the minute. They were; computers might not govern these watches, but they had designed and built them.

“We have at least six more hours of daylight,” he told them, looking and sounding like his old self. “I think we ought to make what time we can. The sooner we get to our objective and retrieve what must be retrieved and get that information up to the others, the sooner we can be concerned with getting back.”

There wasn’t much argument on that score, and while they’d had a trying morning, it felt good to actually be doing something. N’Gana turned to Father Chicanis. “Which way, Father?”

The priest pointed east. “Stay parallel with the coast and not too far inland. Since that was Capri Point back there, it means we’ve got a hundred and fifty or so kilometers to where we need to be, give or take. It will be difficult to get lost if we keep close to the ocean and keep going east.”

“Remember that,” the colonel said to the others. “If anything happens and we become separated, that is the way there, and, from there, the reverse is the way back.” He thought a moment. “Allowing a bit for unforeseeable problems, I would say we have a week’s good walk here. Since I don’t have a backpack I’ll take the point, the sergeant will take the rear. You see or hear anything unusual, or anything helpful for that matter, don’t hesitate. And keep a good lookout for anything edible. We want to save the preserved stuff for when we absolutely have to have it. If humans can exist down here in the wild, then so can we. Father, you know the local and imported plants here, so you’re the one who says what’s edible and what’s not.”

They started walking, and were quickly enmeshed in the tall grass that was two to three meters tall, well over N’Gana’s head. It wasn’t hard to follow the leader in this stuff since he was so large a man and trampled down quite a swath, but this made Harker start thinking about how easy it would be for any enemy to be there in the tall grass, even in force, and remain invisible until it was too late.

“Was it like this when you were living here, Father?” Harker asked the priest.

Chicanis shook his head. “No, not like this. These grasses were pretty well tamed, cut, managed, and in most cases we thought it was plowed up. It’s good protection, but it’s tough finding landmarks. I hope this won’t be the norm all the way.”

“There were some groves of trees going along for some distance not too far inland on the survey photos, if I remember,” Mogutu commented in a low tone that the others readily took up. “They looked like fruit trees of some sort.”

“They were. Tropical fruits, mostly,” Chicanis responded. “They were quite a favorite delicacy in the good old days. There were a number of fruits grown very near the coast because the regular sea breezes gave them added moisture year-round. I don’t know, though, how you’re going to find anything at all down here walking through this. Even I am lost.”

“The colonel’s got a magnetic compass and there’s manual sighting gear adjusted for Helena in my pack,” Harker told him. “Good thing, too, since if it had been in the other boat we’d really be in a fix. The compass is adjusted to true north from its usual east-northeast on this planet, and should be adequate.”

By the end of an hour or so they were all soaked with sweat and feeling the strain of the tropical climate and particularly the hot, humid air. Harker was just about to suggest a break when they stepped out of the grasslands and into a dense forest. There hadn’t been many noticeable in-sects in the grass, but now the very air seemed made of them, and it was nearly impossible to keep themselves from being covered in them. Harker and Socolov both began coughing from having breathed in tiny bugs.

N’Gana came back and called a break. The others couldn’t imagine wanting to linger a single moment in that spot.

“Let’s get back into the grass,” Harker suggested, feeling like his entire face and arms were covered with tiny insects.

“Okay, just inside,” N’Gana responded. “Key to that large tree over there. Drop the packs and remain with them. I’m going to try and knock some of that fruit down, or climb up and get it.”

“I can help,” Father Chicanis volunteered. “Wait until I drop the backpack. No use giving you all the local names for things, but you’ll all like those. Don’t pick up any that have fallen, though. The insects will have pretty well moved in. Most of them don’t touch fruit that’s growing, though. It has a kind of natural defense, even if it was genetically designed.”

“Insects this bad in the old days?” N’Gana asked him.

“Not that I remember, but there were always a lot of them. No big game, no big animals at all, plenty of insects. They aren’t really insects, either, if you examine them closely, but they occupy the same niche. We just called them all bugs. That’s the trouble with tropical climates—what’s great for people is even better for the pests.”

It was clear that people hadn’t been in this area for a very long time, so it was pretty easy to pick enough of the oval-shaped fruit and bring it to the camp by the armload.

“Funny the insects don’t like it over here,” Harker commented, glad to be able to breathe real air.

“Oh, there are plenty in the grass, but they don’t go where they can’t eat. The range of most of those bugs is only a few dozen meters,” Chicanis answered him. “We’ll get some here when we crack open the fruit, but don’t let them bother you. Even if you swallow a few, just think of them as, well, protein. Most aren’t even native. They snuck in with the fruit. The native ones go more for the grasses and do a lot of tunneling.”

“Thanks a lot,” Harker responded. In one brief comment Chicanis had managed to make him paranoid about where he was sitting while also making the swarms even less appetizing to think about.

The one who seemed happiest about the bugs was Hamille. The feathery but serpentine creature opened that huge oval of a mouth and just seemed to inhale the flying bugs as fast as it could. When full, it would sink to the ground and start spitting. Out came tiny forms that looked like berries and others that looked like tiny gemstones that crawled or wriggled.

“The ones spit out are the native bugs, I assume,” Mogutu commented more than asked.

“Yes. Our friend can digest most protein-based bugs and such, even raw meat and what we would think of as carrion, but I think the native bugs are a bit indigestible even for it,” N’Gana replied. “At least Hamille will have the same ease with local cuisine as we, even if we eat different things. That’s good, because half or more of its food was in our lost packs.”

He used the knife to slice open one of the melonlike fruits. It revealed a bright yellow-orange pulp with a core of tiny white seeds. The thing tasted quite sweet and proved very filling. The second one turned out to have some bugs in it and, as it turned out, about one in three of them had a lot of visitors.

“I don’t understand it,” Chicanis said, shaking his head in wonder. “They used to avoid anything on the vine or die.”

“They’re adapting,” Harker responded, a little worriedly. “They’re evolving to meet changing circumstances. Too much grass, food that’s too concentrated.

Those things aren’t the most numerous of the bugs devouring the fruits that fall from the trees. Those silver things with the little pincers seem to be the boss, followed by the round black things with the four legs and the millipedelike critters. These little brown buggers had to adapt or die out.”

“I wonder if perhaps the surviving people might have as well?” the priest asked worriedly.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” N’Gana responded. “Evolution takes a lot longer in us humans. Us—all of us—now, we have these skin flaps and bony plates from running through the genholes for years, but they’re growths, not deformities. They stop when we stop, and most are pretty easily removed. Mental adaptation, now, that’s a different story. We adapted so much to technology we got soft. Very few could do what we’re doing, you know that? We’ve gotten too used to waving our hands and having the machines provide. Anything we want and can’t find, we can synthesize. Anything we need to know we just plug our heads into a net and direct-load from the libraries. Used to be everybody had to read for information. Now nobody even remembers how, at least in general. We get tired of our looks, we drop in a clinic and brown eyes become blue, fat vanishes and is replaced by muscle in a matter of days or weeks, no effort. Nobody walks anywhere anymore.”

“Maybe so,” Father Chicanis said in a slightly dubious tone, “but not everybody. That’s what killed these worlds, of course. Stripped to the basics, only a very small number survived. Perhaps that is evolution. Perhaps the only ones who survived and bred did so precisely because they were either throwbacks or had qualities the others did not that allowed them to survive.”

“Maybe, but if we meet any of ’em I bet they won’t be all that different,” the colonel asserted. “I mean, except for extinction, nothing evolves in as little as ninety years or so, not without artificial help. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

Eyes turned to the silent and sullen anthropologist. All had noticed her silence and somewhat shell-shocked look, but only Harker and Chicanis had been concerned about it.

When she didn’t reply, N’Gana frowned and called, “Doctor Socolov? Kat? You must snap out of this!” When she only vaguely reacted, he walked over and looked down at her. “Doctor, I will put this bluntly, but you must believe that I am not making idle conversation. We cannot afford to have breakdowns or episodes. If you have gone psychotic, you are a liability and we will leave you here. If you are doing this out of some inner angst or too-late self-doubt or whatever, then you are a liability. You went into this with as few illusions as we could manage. If you did not believe us, that is too bad, but if you are not a willing part of this team, then you are a threat to our lives and our mission, as much a threat as those things in the sand. We don’t have time for this, Doctor. Either grow up or walk off into the brush. I want your answer now. I want your response before we pick up and walk another ten kilometers. If you do not react, we will leave you. If you then follow, we will make certain that you cannot.”

“Cut her some slack, Colonel,” Father Chicanis put in, concerned. “She’s been through a lot already.”

“Stay out of this, Father! I am not doing this to be a petty tyrant. I simply wish you, both you and the doctor here, and anyone else who might think otherwise, to consider the cost of our failure. Ask yourselves just how many billions or trillions of lives is she worth? The mission is the only thing that is important here. Anyone who forgets that, or who gets in the way of that, will have to be cut out. There are worlds at stake here! Including hers—and mine.”

She looked up at him angrily, but all she said was, “I’ll come, Colonel. I’m only here because they thought I could help. Just give me some space.”

“I don’t have time for negotiations,” N’Gana responded coldly, then turned and looked straight into the eyes of the priest. “And, Father, this is the absolute last time I will explain a course of action. We don’t have the luxury of that now.”

Harker looked over at Socolov and could not read what she was thinking. He sighed and hoped that she could work it out before things got even stickier. Even though he’d been as harsh as N’Gana in getting her out of the boat, he knew he couldn’t be as cold under conditions like these as the colonel had been. Even so, as a former company commander in hostile territory, he couldn’t find fault with anything the colonel had said, either.

It’s this damned heat and humidity, he thought. And how damned naked we are in just fatigues and boots toting anachronistic old blunderbusses through unknown territory. He missed the combat suit more than he’d thought he would. He would have bet most anything that, underneath, N’Gana and Mogutu wished they had theirs, too.

Maybe slithering along like the Pooka would suit them all better than this incessant walking in the tall and masking grasses.

In point of fact, the imposing creature could move along very rapidly, often outpacing everyone, and this was not lost on N’Gana. Although the Quadulan couldn’t yell and didn’t make a sufficient dent in the grasses to be the forward scout, it was very useful, when strange sounds were heard or when things just didn’t feel right, to be able to send it forward and wait for it to return with information on just what was there. It was unlikely to have any real enemies here save the Titans, and it could lay a trail of its own scent to guide it precisely back to the group.

It was getting very late in the day when the creature returned from one such mission. “Follow to the grove,” it said. “Make camp. Good ground, food, water.”

It was a welcome suggestion, and it turned out to be not ten minutes from where they were.

The grove was clearly an old farm gone wild, with lush fruit trees all lined up for as far as the eye could see right next to bushes bearing large, juicy red and purple fruit. The insects were there, of course; in this climate it was inevitable. Still, they didn’t seem nearly as dense, and it looked fairly comfortable as this world went. There were even several small streams, all with swift-flowing if warm water nearby, possibly a remnant of some early irrigation system.

“Nick of time,” Harker commented to everyone and nobody in particular. “The sun’s about past the mountains. It’s going to be very dark very soon, I think.”

The camp was quickly laid out. Each backpack, once unloaded, became a kind of sleeping bag and the contents were in a series of plastic containers that fit together for maximum compression and easy organization and unpacking. The shortage of sleeping bags was not the disadvantage it seemed. There would have to be someone on guard, and maybe having two up at once wasn’t such a bad idea in this totally alien landscape. Night would be about eleven hours at this time of year and in this latitude; everyone would try to sleep at least six of those hours, maybe even eight, if they weren’t continuous. They ate and drank and washed and relieved themselves mostly in silence; there wasn’t anything more to say. A fire was forbidden, at least for now—at least until they knew why no small fires had ever been picked up by orbital spy satellites tracking the remnants of humanity on conquered worlds.

“Sergeant, you and the good Father here will take the first watch,” N’Gana told them. “Three hours, then you wake up Harker and the doctor and when they get out of their bags, you two get in. Harker, three hours and then you awaken me. I’ll get Hamille up—he tends to be rather nasty when awakened suddenly, but I know how to do it—and we’ll take the final shift. We’ll get you all up a little after sunup and we’ll start breaking camp and get on the march. There is still a very long way to go.”

About an hour after sundown, though, when it was so dark at ground level they could barely see their hands in front of their faces, they could all first hear and then feel the coming of the storms. And when they hit with furious thunder and lightning and great gusts of wind, there was little any of them could do but get wet in the almost impossibly dense downpour or huddle inside the bags. The clothing, boots, and sleeping bags were waterproof, of course, but where there was an opening or something was exposed, it got soaked.

It lasted a good twenty to thirty minutes and seemed like forever. It wasn’t the steady tropical dumping all that time, but it only let up briefly, never stopping, then roared back again. And when it ended, it ended. Five minutes after the last drop fell, the wind was down to next to nothing and the clouds were breaking up and revealing an exceptional, spectacular sky.

Mogutu and Father Chicanis walked around, to be sure that everyone was all right. Everyone was waterlogged, but they were okay.

Neither Harker nor Kat Socolov had been asleep; it was difficult to get comfortable, and the situation was still tense, with more unknowns than knowns about this strange new place. Neither had managed to keep water out of the head end of the sleeping bags, although it took only a couple of minutes to open them up, drain them, and let the inside liner dry out. Everything about and on them would have to air-dry, though you didn’t pack towels on this kind of trip.

Once things settled down, the sounds of the night bugs rose to a crescendo, creating a background that was impossible to ignore. Note to outfitters on future expeditions, Harker thought, feeling a bit miserable. Pack earplugs.

True to the colonel’s schedule, and in spite of the thunderstorm, Mogutu awakened Harker from a less than perfect sleep after what was, by their watches, precisely a three-hour shift, but which seemed to Harker to have lasted, at most, ten minutes. He felt worse than he had riding the keel, and much more vulnerable. Still, he heard Father Chicanis gently waking a probably more miserable Katarina Socolov, and he whispered to Mogutu, “Couldn’t you at least let her sleep?”

“No exceptions,” the sergeant responded. “We have to get into this. It’s not going to get easier, you know. The priest volunteered to take an extra shift for her and I nixed that, too.” He reached down for something that turned out to be a low-gray sealed cup and handed it to Harker. You could suck on it, like a baby bottle, but otherwise it was tight. Harker took a pull and was surprised. “Coffee? Hot coffee?”

“Self heating canister,” Mogutu responded. “No heat signature. We don’t have too many, but I think you and the doc will both need it now.”

In truth, he did, and the taste of the coffee, as military strong and black as it was, energized him a bit. It was still extremely hot and humid, but there were times when caffeine in a hot solution was the only thing that worked and this was one of them. He also checked his pocket, took out a small tablet, popped it into his mouth, and swallowed it. It made the aches and pains go away, at least for a little while.

They didn’t have a lot of those, either.

He felt human enough to be worried about standing a watch with a still truculent Socolov, and wondered what the hell they might do to pass the time.

He made his way over to her, his eyes finally clearing and adjusting to the darkness. At least the moon Achilles, half-full, was up; not a lot of help, but it was better than before. He could see that she, too, had been given a stimulant to drink, as well as Father Chicanis’s rifle. He was a bit better armed; he had Mogutu’s submachine gun. He didn’t like either crude and noisy weapon, but at least with his you only had to aim in the general direction of something to hit it.

She heard him, but said nothing. He decided that the ice had to be broken, lest one or both of them fall over exhausted. “How are you feeling?” he asked in a barely audible whisper.

“Like I was at the bottom of an elevator shaft when the car crashed down on top of me,” she responded in a little louder tone, sounding less than friendly. “I guess I’m not like the macho men of the military, who don’t need sleep or armor or food or anything.”

“Come on over here, away from the others,” he invited. “Just to talk without having them be as miserable as we are. If nothing else, we should get this guard business sorted out before we have reason to shoot somebody or something.”

She couldn’t argue with that, so she followed him perhaps ten meters from the sleepers, a bit inside the grove. The insect noises were still pretty loud, but either they’d died down some or the interlopers were getting accustomed to them.

“Sit down,” he suggested, trying to sound as friendly and nonthreatening as possible. “We don’t have to be uncomfortable yet. If we take turns, at least we won’t wear ourselves out early. That thunderstorm took a lot out of us.”

She did sink down, back against a tree, but said nothing. “You take a pain pill with a stim?” he asked her.

“I took the stim. Maybe you’re right on the pain. I used to go fifteen kilometers with a full pack in the workout rooms, but this is already more tiring.”

“Gravity does it.”

“There was gravity on the ship.”

“True,” he agreed, “but it’s a standardized gravity, just eighty percent of one universal gee unit. That’s been found to be the most comfortable with the least complications for long, cramped voyages. Air pressure is a stock one point seven five kilometers, humidity’s forty percent, air is just exactly so, and it’s always that way. Your body gets used to it. Now, suddenly, we’re on a world that’s at least one standard gee pressure at sea level, with the air extra-dense from eighty to ninety percent or more humidity and a temperature that’s hotter than we’ve been in in quite some time, even this late at night. We’re all feeling it. Even N’Gana is feeling it, probably more than any of us. He’s at least ten years older than any of us.”

“He looks pretty spry to me. So do the rest of you.”

“It was said long ago, in ancient times, by some ancient soldier maybe just back from walking half a world and fighting the whole way, that the trick wasn’t not to feel pain, exhaustion, and all the other ailments. The trick was not to show it, particularly to those below you in rank. I think maybe Mogutu’s probably in the best shape of any of us, and I can tell by how he reacted and how he’s moving that he’s feeling it, too.”

“Then—we’re never going to make it! If it’s this bad now…”

“We’ll make it. It won’t get much easier, but, after a while, it won’t seem to get any worse, either. If we have the willpower to stick out the walk all the way, then by the time we really need to be in top trim, we will be. At least, that’s the theory. Who knows what’s in this brush that might be out to get us?”

“I thought there weren’t any large animals left ”

“There aren’t, or so the good father assures us. But something out here is dangerous—bet on it. Maybe even our own people. And don’t put down plants or insects, either. Some of them can be real killers.”

“Thanks a lot,” she responded sourly. “You’ve given me a lot more confidence.”

“Listen, the biggest threat I can think of right now, assuming nobody knows we’re here, is accidents. Stepping off a ledge, even just off a little path that could twist or break an ankle or snap a ligament. Those more than anything get you.”

“What happens if that does happen? If one of us can’t walk or something?”

“If it can’t be repaired and they can’t keep up, they’ll be left in place with as much provisions and care as we can manage. It’s like the colonel said—no matter how much we suffer, we’re doing this for whole worlds of people. Men, women, children, even furry snakes with tentacles.” He looked around in the darkness. “Speaking of which, I think it’s time one of us made the rounds. I’ll do it first—I have the experience in this. I’m just going to walk completely around the camp at maybe ten, fifteen meters out—a slow circle from here to here around them.”

“What are you looking for?” she asked him.

“Anything unusual. I know that sounds idiotic since we’re on an alien planet, but it’s the best I can do. Always trust your senses and your instincts. If something feels odd or wrong, it probably is. You’re picking up something on a subconscious level, but it’s a survival trait handed down from our ancient ape ancestors no matter what Chicanis says. Just stay here and don’t go to sleep. Just watch and listen, that’s all. I’ll be back shortly, so don’t get so nervous you shoot a hole in me, okay?”

“I—I don’t think I could if I tried,” she answered, but she understood what he meant.

It was an eerie walk, through territory not scouted by daylight first, but he tried to keep the circle manageable, listen and smell as much as look, and to not get himself lost in the portion that was in the grass.

Insects were occasionally biting any skin he had exposed. No worry about alien microorganisms; there had never been one ever discovered that could infect a human, and vice versa. More dangerous in a situation like this were good old-fashioned human viruses and bacteria inevitably imported with the colonists from the first. Those had been known to mutate wildly and evolve in all sorts of bizarre directions in alien environments, and there was no way to inoculate or even breed people to withstand things you hadn’t been able to get samples of for a hundred years.

When he came back around and headed toward her once more, his only impression of the area was that it stank. There was the smell of rotten dead vegetable matter and a kind of excrement-like swamp odor that seemed to permeate the grassland. It hadn’t gotten any better.

“It’s just me,” he called in a loud whisper. “No problems.”

“What’s the password?” she responded in a similar whisper.

He stopped short. “Password? We didn’t say anything about a password!”

“That’s the right password,” she responded, sounding a lot friendlier. “Come on in.”

He went back to the tree and saw that she was standing now. “I started to nod off,” she told him. “I had to stand up.

He understood, but cautioned, “Better stay off your feet while you can in any case. You’ll be on them long enough come daylight.”

“I’m also itching like mad,” she told him. “I don’t know what it is. Either some of these little biters got into my clothes or something else is happening.”

“I’ve got the itches myself,” he said. “I started feeling it when I woke up, but it might have been before. I wonder what material this stuff’s made of?”

“Huh? I dunno. It seems tough and weatherproof enough.”

“It’s designed to be,” he said, “but who knows what the conditions are here now?” He sank down on the ground.

“Huh? There were people here in big cities and bigger farms and factories and such for a couple hundred years. I’d say that Father Chicanis would know if there were any funny things like that.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Helena before the Fall. This is still tropical and still lush, but it’s not the same place Chicanis left. It’s been modified by the Titans. You kind of wonder about that rain. I didn’t itch like this the past two days, only since getting soaked.”

“Me neither,” she agreed.

“You’re the anthropologist. What do you think the survivors will be like if we run into them?”

“Basic, I would expect,” she replied. “Still, it’s only been a few generations. In another century they will be that much more disconnected, and after that even more, until the old days are myths and gods and devils not understood by humans and there will be a total acceptance of a low-tech existence. At this level, though, if they’ve kept together as cohesive groups, they still should have a clear idea of who they are and where they came from. They’re probably living half off the land and half off remaining stocks of food and goods in ruins below. Beyond being mere refugees, but still gathering whatever is needed and clinging to the old ways as much as possible.”

“I wonder,” he responded.

“If you think it’s different, why ask me?”

He stood and walked to the edge of the trees to where he had a clear view of the sky. “Come here, if you can, and look up. Just look. Don’t concentrate, don’t focus, just relax and gaze.”

She was curious enough to come over to him and do as he said. At first she saw nothing but bright stars and planets and the half-illuminated Achilles, and she was just about to give it up as some kind of bad joke and go back and sit down when something came into view. At first it was only slight, and faint, and not really there. She tried focusing on it but it seemed to be almost hiding from her. Still, it was strange enough to persevere, and, in a few minutes of not fighting it or chasing it with her eyes, she managed to see it.

A really thin, wispy series of lines, almost like a grid, far up in the sky. Too faint to really get a handle on, but definitely there.

“I see it!” she exclaimed. “But what am I seeing?”

“I don’t know. It’s been measured on occupied worlds before, and signatures taken, but I had no idea until I made the rounds there that it was something you could see, at least from the ground. I think it’s how they keep watch over things. Some kind of energy beams that create a grid and which can somehow be used to monitor relatively small areas of the planet, or at least the continent. I don’t remember it on the island, so it might well be just here. I don’t think they care much about the rest of the place, only where they can grow their weird giant flowers.”

“You mean they might be able to see us?”

“Possible, but I doubt it. I even doubt if they could tell us from the survivors that they surely know are here. It explains why nobody builds campfires or cooking fires, though. They might give off enough of a heat signature to be picked up. Probably bring out the equivalent of the Titan Fire Department. Can’t have any grass or forest fires ruining their precious plants. But if everything they do is toward growing those things, and so far all we know about them suggests that it is, then that kind of system can also be used to maintain everything environmentally to make them prosper and keep the surrounding local vegetation in check as well. Ever have a garden?”

“No. Like most folks I’m a city person.”

“Well, you often have to fertilize it and water it and spray it for bugs and other threats and do all sorts of things to make sure it grows right. Thunderheads reach many kilometers into the sky, far beyond local weather levels. Right through that, whatever it is. What better way to mix what they want and spray it all over the place than via the storms? Notice that the bugs definitely are fewer. Sure, it’s only trillions, not gazillions, but there’s some effect after the rain.”

“What are you suggesting? That they mix some chemicals in the rain and that’s why we’re itching?”

“Maybe. Maybe they make what they need as it passes through that grid, and they can localize things as well. Think about rust. Just take something that’s mostly iron and add water. Add a little salt and you kill a lot of vegetation. Clearly they didn’t do that, but I wonder what they did do?”

It was not a cheerful thought.

In the light of morning, there didn’t seem to be much out of whack, though, and both for the time quickly forgot the worries.

Socolov still didn’t want to talk about what was eating at her, but she had at least warmed to the rest, particularly Harker, and things seemed to be getting into a normal routine. The discovery that the rain came like that every night at just about the same time, though, made for a threatened mutiny until N’Gana agreed to rotate the guard slots so that, at least two out of three times, everybody could get a straight sleep with only the second watch suffering.

Still, about five days and, by the small pedometer on N’Gana’s ankle about sixty-five kilometers toward their goal, it began to be clear that something was going very wrong with their supplies.

It had been happening gradually enough that they’d been able to dismiss as expected the things that either didn’t work or didn’t hold up, but now, after almost a week on the planet’s surface, the damage was becoming impossible to avoid.

It had started with the increasing reactions they all had to something that caused large-scale rashes and itching over even the covered parts of their bodies. At first it seemed like some kind of allergic reaction, although Father Chicanis insisted that he had known nothing like this in the past. Now, though, it was becoming clear from the fabrics that were slowly but definitely coming apart that something was almost literally eating the best materials modern chemistry could produce, and it was this reaction that was causing the fierce rashes.

The clothing, not to mention the sleeping bags, packs, and more, was almost literally decomposing.

“At this level we’re gonna be naked and without any supplies in two days,” Mogutu commented.

Harker nodded. Even some of the containers were showing signs of dissolving, like salt blocks under running water. You couldn’t see it happening, but it clearly was nonetheless.

“I don’t think it’s in the air,” Harker commented. “I think the damage is being done by that rain. It started a reaction that eventually ran its course at this point. But it’s going to rain again, bet on it, every night just after sunset, and there’s not much shelter we can take against it.”

“Never mind the theorizing,” N’Gana responded. “The real question is, what didn’t get at least a little of the treatment? Our boots have lost their gloss but mine, at least, seem to be holding up.” So saying, he bent down to fix the upper part of the laces, and the laces came apart in his hands as if they were a hundred years old. “Then again,” he muttered, “maybe they’re just a little tougher stuff.”

“The gun works and barrels look fine, but the stocks are having a hard time of it,” Mogutu noted. “My watch still works. Looks fine, in fact. But you can see some early dissolution in the band, same as on the others.”

“My communion set is unharmed,” Father Chicanis noted. “And I have cloths used in some rites that got soaked, yet they don’t seem to be any worse for wear.”

Harker got it. “Real cloth, Father?”

“Yes, cotton and wool, I think.”

“And the communion set. That box is real wood?”

“Why come to think of it, yes it is! Bless my soul! Whatever it is likes all natural things but doesn’t like things made by people.”

“Makes sense,” N’Gana noted. “The watches, gun barrels and the like are metal. So are the bullets, so they’ve come through. This is just great! One week here and we’re facing becoming defenseless prisoners of the elements! What’s worse, we now don’t know if there is anything left underground. This—this stuff has had ninety years to seep down as far as it can get!”

It was Kat Socolov who disagreed now. “If you think I like the idea of parading around all you men stark naked, you’re wrong,” she told them. “Still, I would bet that this stuff doesn’t go down far into the soil, and it probably dissipates shortly if it doesn’t act. Think about it! The Dutchman’s man got to an old security backup station that had to be much closer to the surface than where we’re going! And something kept enough humans alive here to register on satellite scans even though we know they scoured the whole land area before readjusting and replanting. No, if that signal got out, them what we want is still there. Besides, the message said it was. We’re just gonna have to depend more on brawn for protection, that’s all. Now we’ll see how you guys do with only your muscles, huh?”

N’Gana sighed. “Well, then, that’s the way it is. We’ll have to find some fig leaves, looks like, and see what is sturdy enough to make a pack or two for some vital supplies. Maybe there will be some plants whose leaves will be strong enough. We have to retain what we can for a while, even though we know it’s going to run out.” He looked at the melted packs and ripped clothing. “Damn! You’d think the damned Dutchman would have at least mentioned this effect!”

“You’ve got a point,” Father Chicanis told him. “If this were common or usual on Occupied worlds, I think he would have told us. I think that it is probably what trapped his man here. He didn’t expect to wind up naked and defenseless. He was caught just like us. That’s why he couldn’t get out! I do wish that he’d mentioned this in his reports, but, well, maybe this is something local. Something in Helena’s makeup, either original or from our reworking, interacts with whatever they use. It doesn’t seem to bother them or their stuff, so why should they care? Or even notice?”

They did what they could. A few rifles still seemed whole and tested out okay, probably because they’d been in the bottom of one box, with a wooden partition on top of them, and the reaction hadn’t reached them yet. It would eventually unless they could figure out some way to protect the weapons, but at least they had one more day to consider. They also had a good breakfast, since many of the containers were not much longer for this world, either.

The pharmacy and first aid kit needed protection more than anything, though. It wasn’t much, but it was what they had.

“Perhaps when we hear the rains we can wrap it in the cloths,” Father Chicanis suggested. “Maybe doing that, and possibly shielding it with big leaves or maybe burying the whole thing might protect it.”

“Worth a try,” N’Gana agreed. Kat Socolov noted that he really did have huge bodybuilder’s muscles, and Mogutu’s weren’t that bad either, although he was slighter of build and it didn’t show as much. Harker, in fact, was probably the one in as poor condition as any of them, something he ruefully noted. Kat Socolov was no push-over; she’d definitely spent a long time lifting weights. She managed to rig up a basic halter top and reworked some cloth in her personal kit for a bottom, but it wasn’t much and probably wouldn’t last all that long.

Oddly, the boots didn’t seem to be getting any worse; it was only the gloss and the laces. Father Chicanis recognized a native vine that had very tough properties and experimented using thin and stripped lengths for his own laces; it seemed to work. They all agreed that they looked somewhat stupid, but the foot protection was still welcome. In this environment you weren’t sure what you were stepping on until you stepped on it, and nature seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of sharp edges.

On day seven they were still only about halfway to their goal, but they came across what must have been the overgrown remnants of a once grand highway.

Like their equipment, the highway had been mostly dissolved long before, but the concrete and gravel pack underneath remained, as did, curiously, rusted remnants of the control rods and wiring for the magnetic levitation and auto guidance systems.

“The Grand Highway,” Father Chicanis sighed. “From Eden to Olympus. You can see Olympus sometimes from high points around here. Not the mighty one of legend, but the tallest peak in the far range, always snow-covered and mysterious-looking. It’s tall enough to make some of its own weather and obscure itself early on in the day, which is why they named it after the legendary abode of the ancient Greek gods.”

“I’m surprised your church wasn’t upset with all this naming of things after ancient pagan gods,” Harker commented.

“Oh, well, it is a good thing to remember your heritage and where your people came from. That’s not at all blasphemous. That age produced the first great thinkers of what came to be called `western’ civilization, to differentiate it from the east. Geometry and the higher mathematics, much physics, the first great plays—it was quite a time. The only blasphemy would be to worship the old gods, and I’m not even sure many of the Greek thinkers really believed in them, either. They just had no alternatives at that time.”

N’Gana cleared his throat. “Um, Father, interesting history, but where does this road go?”

“It’s on the old maps—oh, yes, I forgot, they’re pretty well dissolved by now. Well, it started in Ephesus, coming out of a kind of ring road around the city, and it extended diagonally across the valley and then went through a tunnel almost sixty kilometers long before it emerged in a glacial valley on the other side. More tunnels, more valleys, and finally it reached all the way to Corinth on the opposite coast. It used to take a few pleasant hours at a steady four hundred kilometers per hour.”

N’Gana was only interested in the Ephesus route. “All right, then, so if we can follow it with this overgrowth it should take us where we want to go.”

“The road was built to hit the big truck farms this region had,” the priest told him. “It isn’t exactly straight. At a guess, we’ll go inland from here to go around the coast range and then to Sparta, and then swing around through the pass and down into the coastal plain and Ephesus.” He sighed. “I wish I had a landmark, something that would tell me where we are now. If I knew that I almost certainly could determine if it would be faster or slower to follow the roadbed.”

“What’s the worst case?” N’Gana asked him. “How much would it add?”

“A day, maybe two, of walking,” Chicanis told him. “Why?”

“It’s still here, that’s why,” the colonel replied. “It makes a decent path to follow. We know that the road goes where we want it to and we know that all the major land obstacles would have been removed except—what’s the name of that river?”

“The River Lethe,” Chicanis replied.

“Yes. That we’ll have to contend with, perhaps using ingenuity this close to the ocean. I don’t expect any bridgeworks will have met any better fate than the road surface or our own gear. Still, this will give us a trail that may make our going a bit easier. We’re already dependent on the land for most of our food; the road connected the truck farms to the cities and towns. We’ll follow it.”

That night the storms were particularly fierce, and the lightning struck close to them many times. Some of the magnetic materials left over from the old road made nice targets for the bolts, something they hadn’t really thought about. N’Gana was firm, though, that they would stick close to the road although not camp exactly on it. They had still not seen much sign of other humans. If the lightning kept them away, all the better, and the walking was much easier than it would have been otherwise.

The eighth night on the mainland, Harker and Socolov drew first watch, which now began after the storm passed. There was virtually nothing left of their fine packs, tough clothing, or anything else. Even the weapons had disintegrated to the point where they were barely scraps of junk metal and wood. Rifle barrels were now truncheons, and very lethal ones, too, if it came to that. Using a leathery leaf from a common wild bush that Chicanis said was one of the few thriving native species of plant left on Helena—that is, not an import by the terraformers—they managed to create pouches and saved a great many bullets. They were metal and were also filled with gunpowder; they had not been affected by the rot and were still a possible weapon if there was time to use them. The knife handles, unfortunately, proved to be of less natural origin. The blades survived, but they were unbalanced and useful mostly for digging or scraping.

The same tough leaf, with the equally strong and common stripped vine, they used to salvage as much of their modesty as they could, mostly out of deference to the anthropologist. Harker discovered her, with a gun barrel as a weapon, sitting on a rock in the darkness. Achilles was now three-quarters full, and there was at least some light to see with. All of them hoped that they’d be well away before a new moon.

She had, he noticed, gone au naturel. So much for her sensibilities, he thought. It was the last defense; they’d all cast off their boots after discovering that a fairly nasty kind of algae started growing inside them and secreting a toxic irritant on the feet. It was inevitable sooner or later anyway, and the sooner they did it, the sooner their feet would toughen. The first day barefoot, though, had been awful, and tonight wasn’t all that much better.

“No fig leaf?” he asked her, sitting down nearby.

“Why bother? We aren’t hiding anything and those things are a joke when you walk.” She gave a slight chuckle. “It’s funny—somehow it doesn’t seem all that risque. In fact, it feels really comfortable in this climate. Besides, I think if I were going to be raped by any of you guys, it would have happened before now.”

“Not once we saw that bodybuilder’s physique,” he responded in the same light tone. “Where’d you get muscle tone like that? Not in a college classroom, I bet. I haven’t seen a woman with muscles that developed since I once saw Bambi the Destroyer coming out of the shower.”

“Bambi the what?” She laughed.

“Her name’s really Barbara Fenitucci. A real Amazon warrior and a Marine to boot. Always picking on the men, always having to prove she could do anything they could do better and in half the time.”

“Sounds interesting. I’ve known a lot of women like that, but, no, I was never in the Marines and I never wanted to be a man, which is sort of what that’s about. I bet she was a service brat. Marines and the like are really driven as kids. No, I spent a lot of time getting this way, and I’m afraid if I don’t do some regular heavy lifting I’m going to lose part of it. It’s a matter of independence. Of being able to do what you want, go where you want to go, and not live in terror of every guy on the street. I did martial arts first—almost everybody does, I think—and got good enough in a couple of useful disciplines, and I kept it up. Then they opened this training and conditioning program at the university where I was working on my doctorate. I gave it a try and liked it. I weighed in at sixty-three kilos and was bench-pressing more than a hundred and forty kilos before I left to board the Odysseus. Fortunately, they had a good and well-equipped gym on board, mostly for the mercenary twins, and I was able to keep it up. I didn’t want to have to worry about being the only female on the trip.”

He made a guess. “And that’s why you were so upset at yourself on landing? All that, and big razor-sharp claws come up and there are monsters under the sand and the only thing you can do about it is listen to the big guy scream at you to run?”

“Something like that. You can’t believe how cocky you get when you have this much of your body developed. I think I’d forgotten what it was like to be terrified, and there I was, all that crap gone to waste. The first crisis on the new world and I froze in fear.”

“Well, I wouldn’t let that get you,” he told her. “What set me apart in that situation was experience, and in Father Chicanis’s case it was knowledge of what was there and a rifle to deal with it. You’ve been good once we got on solid ground, as good as anybody here.”

She smiled. “Thanks. I needed that, I think.”

“Surprised we haven’t run into any of the locals yet?”

“Not really. There aren’t that many for this whole region, and they are widely scattered in groups of perhaps twenty-five to fifty, no more. I’m revising my theories about what they will be like, though, when we do meet them. This corrosive effect, together with ample and well-distributed food, probably means that they are in fact more primitive, more tribal than I’d thought. I’d really like to find them and find out, although without any supplies I have a feeling getting accepted by them will be tough. Dealing with them might be tougher yet. Usually you can bribe your way to at least safe passage, but I’m not sure we’ll have as good a result now as I’d planned. Not unless Father Chicanis is willing to break up our last remaining artifacts.”

“I think he’ll die rather than give up the communion set,” Harker replied. “So—that’s why you’re along? Expert on dealing with primitives by using old established ways and means?”

“Something like that. And I get to be the first in my profession to actually interact with them. It’s a career maker. If, that is, we meet any of them, and if we manage to get off this rock somehow.”

“You think we’re stuck?”

She shrugged. “What’s the boat we left buried back there made of, and how buried does it have to be? Without the boat, how do we get back to the island? Swim forty-odd kilometers of ocean? I’m not sure I’m up to that. I think that poor man who did the Dutchman’s business was in the same fix. That’s why he broadcast.”

“Yeah, but there’s every evidence from the last part of that recording that something was stalking him,” Harker noted. “And since he was never heard from again, that something probably killed him. Who or what was it?”

“Titans? One of the tribes? Who knows? I think we may find out, that’s all.”

“I’m not so concerned about the long-term as the short-term killer,” he told her. “If they can get this lens weapon to work, they’ll eventually be able to land a ship right here and pick us up. If it doesn’t work, we’re back to square one anyway.”

They sat in silence for a while, and her gaze returned to the moon and stars above.

“Still looking for the grid?” he asked her. “In this moonlight, I doubt if it would show up much at all.”

“Oh, it’s there,” she assured him. “I can sense it somehow, more than see it. It plays over me, gets in my head somehow, makes anything but the here and now seem distant, unimportant.”

“I feel something, too, sometimes,” he admitted. “I think we all do, except Hamille, although who can know for sure about it?”

“Hamille isn’t human. This is designed for us, I think,” she responded, still staring at the stars. “I think it’s more than protection and monitoring. I think it messes with minds. Our minds.”

“What kind of effect does it have on you?” he asked, looking away abruptly as her comments fed a healthy paranoia.

“Interesting effects,” she responded enigmatically. “It stirs up parts of me I’d almost forgotten were there. Not strongly enough yet, but we’ll see.”

He got a vague idea she was talking about and around sexual matters, but he didn’t press it. He was still unaffected enough to consider the implications. If they really were exerting some kind of subtle mass stimulation or hypnosis or whatever, then…

Then maybe the Titans weren’t as oblivious to humans as had been assumed.