The Reaches

30

Benison

Coye waggled Gregg's booted foot to awaken him before going on to each next man in the lean-to and doing the same. Gregg pulled his helmet on as he got up. He was already fully dressed, with the flashgun sling over his right arm.

The sky was faintly pale where it could be glimpsed through the foliage, but it did nothing to illuminate the forest floor. Even the featherboat's off-white hull was easier to sense than see in the first moments of wakefulness.

Gregg was stiff in odd places. The bed of springy boughs had seemed comfortable when he lay on it, but it had locked his body into one posture as the thin pad over the Peaches' decking hadn't done during the voyage. His sinuses were stuffy from pollen, either native or drifting from the nearby plantation.

And he was afraid. Clambering up the side of the featherboat was good for the fear. The massive solidity of the Peaches' hull soothed Gregg in a fashion that the personal weapon he carried could not.

In the hatchway Leon, who'd shared the watch with Coye, whispered to Piet Ricimer. Clipped to the coaming was the sonic scanner, another piece of hardware purchased with the profits of Mostert's disastrous voyage. Rather than magnifying sounds for the operator to classify, the scanner plotted an ambient and indicated changes above that baseline on a screen. It didn't tell the operator what a sound was, but it gave volume and vector.

Gregg glanced at the readout. He lay across the hull beside the hatch and aimed his weapon toward the line of peaks which the scanner had noted-footsteps or brush rustling past an oncoming body.

Ricimer laid his left hand across the eyepiece of the flashgun's sight. "Guillermo's out there," he whispered. "He's meeting them."

"Sirs?" the Molt called in a clear voice. "Our friends are here. We're coming in."

Gregg glimpsed the movement of several bodies. Faint light bloomed. Three strange Molts accompanied Guillermo. One of them brought a phosphorescent twig out of the pot which had covered it. In this near-total darkness, the bioluminescent sheen was as good as a magnesium flare.

The strange Molts were noticeably bulkier though not taller than Guillermo. One carried a breechloader, while the others had one-armed "bows" similar in design to those the Venerians had faced on Punta Verde.

Piet Ricimer swung his legs over the hatch coaming and jumped to the ground in front of the Molts.

"This is K'Jax," Guillermo said, dipping both forelimbs toward the rifleman in a gesture of respect. "I have told him that you need a guide through the Mirror."

"Why?" said K'Jax. His eyes and those of his fellows tracked quickly across the humans facing them, hesitating minutely at each weapon they noted.

"Because I need to know more about the Mirror in order to determine how best to take from the Federation the wealth belonging to all persons," Ricimer replied calmly. Gregg noted that his friend had left his rifle in the featherboat. "Wealth which the Feds claim as their own."

"So you want us to be your servants," K'Jax said flatly.

The Molt leader spoke unaccented English, but his intonations were as mechanical as those of a synthesizer. By contrast, Guillermo's voice couldn't be told from that of a human except that the Molt clipped his labials slightly.

"I want you to be our allies," Ricimer said. "The Feds are your enemies as well as ours. We can provide you with weapons. A few now, more after we're successful and return-though that will be sometime hence, perhaps as much as a year. But I will return."

K'Jax clucked. "I am the chieftain of Clan Deel," he said. "They burned my limbs when I would not work for them. I fled as others have fled."

The Molt leader glanced around, at his silent fellows and the forest which surrounded him. He had a look of rocklike solidity, a soul that could be pulverized but never changed in essence.

"If they let us grow our own crops," K'Jax continued, "we would ignore them. When we clear fields, they find us and attack, and they hunt us with planes. So we raid their fields. We kill them when we can. One day we will kill them all."

His chitinous fingers caressed his Federation breechloader, designed for human hands but adaptable to those of a Molt.

K'Jax clucked again. The sound was that of a repeater chambering the next round. "If you're the enemy of the Federation, human," he said, "then you don't have to pay me or mine for our help. When do you want to pass through the Mirror?"

"Now?" said Ricimer.

"Now," K'Jax agreed. He and his fellows turned.

Gregg jumped down from the featherboat. He was pleased and a little surprised to land squarely on his feet without stumbling. The satchel of spare batteries slapped his thigh.

"Leon, you're in charge," Ricimer said. "Guillermo and Mr. Gregg accompany me."

"I'm going too!" cried his brother, stepping forward.

"Adrien," Piet Ricimer said sharply, "you will stay with the vessel and obey Leon's directions."

The bosun tossed a rifle and bandolier from the hatch. Despite the poor light, Ricimer caught the gear in the air.

The Molts paused five meters off in the darkness. Ricimer glanced at them, then said to Leon, "If we're not back in four days, use your judgment. But we should be back."

He strode swiftly after K'Jax with Gregg and Guillermo flanking him. Gregg was glad when the local Molt covered his glowing wand, because only then could they be sure Adrien Ricimer would not be able to follow.