Jem (27 page)

The Saudi whispered to the interpreter at some length. Across the table, Dalehouse hesitated, then got up to extend his hand to Dulla. "Good to see you looking fit, Ahmed," he said.

Dulla touched his hand minimally. "Thank you." He added grudgingly, "And thank you for assisting in returning me to my own camp. I have not had a chance to express my gratitude since."

"Glad to help. Anyway, it's good to see someone from your expedition—we don't see many of you, you know."

Dulla glared. Then, stiffly, "I have come a long way for this meeting. Can we not begin?"

"Oh, hell," said Pontrefact from the head of the table. "Look, mates, the whole reason for this meeting is to try to work together better. We know what a balls-up our masters have made at home. Shall we see if we can do a bit better here?"

Dulla said happily, "Please limit your observations to your own people." It was as he had suspected; the Greasies were going to insult everyone but themselves. Let this West Indian whose grandfather was a ticket collector on the London Underground make a fool of himself if he chose. Not of the People's Republics.

"But I'm in dead earnest, Dr. Dulla. We invited you here because it's clear we are all working at cross-purposes. Your own camp is in serious trouble, and we all know it. The Food people and our own lot are a bit better off, yes. But you don't have a proper doctor, do you, Dr. Dalehouse? Not to mention a few other things. And we can't be expected—that is, we don't have limitless resources either. Under the UN resolution we are all supposed to cooperate and divide the responsibilities. Particularly the science. We undertook the geology, and you can't say we haven't played fair about that. We've done a great deal."

"Indeed so," put in Kappelyushnikov blandly. "Is pure coincidence that most is in personal vicinity and relates primarily to fissionables and to salt domes."

"That is, to petroleum," Dulla agreed. "Yes, I think we are all aware of that, Marshal Pontrefact." How thoughtful of the Fats and the Greasies to begin quarreling among themselves so soon!

"Be that as it may," the chairman went on doggedly, "there's a hell of a lot to be done here, and we can't do it all. Astronomy, for instance. We did orbit a satellite observatory, but—as I am sure you know—it ran into malfunctions. Let me show you something." He got up and moved to a likris screen on the wall. When he had fiddled with it for a moment the crystals sprang into varicolored light, showing some sort of graph. "You've seen our solar generator. This shows the solar input for our power plant. As you see, there are spikes in the curve. This may not seem important to you, but our generator is a precision instrument. It isn't going to do its job properly if the solar constant isn't, well, constant."

Dulla stared in black envy at the graph. That was what he was here for, after all—because he was a specialist in stellar studies! He hardly noticed when Dalehouse put in, "If Kung is acting up, it may mean more to us than a few wiggles in your power supply."

Pontrefact nodded. "Of course it may. We notified this to Herstmonceux-Greenwich with a copy of the tape. They're quite upset about it. Kung may be a variable star."

"Hardly," sneered Dulla. "It is known that a few flares are possible."

"But it is not known how many, or how big; and that's exactly what we need to know. What, if I may say, we confidently expected to know from the astronomical researches that were meant to be conducted by your expedition, Dr. Dulla."

Dulla exploded. "But this is too much! How can one practice astrophysics when one is hungry? And whose fault is that?"

"Certainly not ours, old chap," Pontrefact said indignantly.

"But someone blew up our ships,
old chap.
Someone killed thirty-four citizens of the People's Republics, old chap!"

"But that was—" Pontrefact stopped the sentence in mid-syllable. He made a visible effort to control his temper. "Be that as it may," he got out again, "the plain fact is the work's got to be done, and someone's got to do it. You have the instruments and we don't, at least not until proper telescopes arrive from Earth. We have the manpower, and you evidently don't."

"I beg your pardon. Allow me to inform you of my academic standing. I am director of the Planetology Institute at Zulfikar Ali Bhutto University and have graduate degrees in astrophysics from—"

"But no one's disputing your degrees, dear man, only your fitness to function. Let us send our own astronomer over. Better still, let Boyne airlift your equipment here, where there's better seeing—"

"Certainly not! Not either!"

"I really don't think that's quite fair, do you? We've certainly cooperated in providing food, for instance—"

"Such food! For your people, not for ours: all flour, hardly any rice."

Dalehouse said placatingly, "We'll turn up some rice for you if that's what you like."

"How gracious of you!" Dulla sneered.

"Now, wait a minute, Dulla. We've done our best for you —and we have a couple of complaints of our own, if you want to know. Like shooting at me!"

Dulla grimaced. "That was only Hua-tse's foolishness with fireworks. The People's Republics have already expressed their regrets."

"To whom? The dead balloonists?"

"Yes," sneered Dulla with exaggerated humility, "of course, it is so; we do apologize to your close friends, the comic gasbags. And to yours too, sir, the vermin who dig in the earth and whom you find so useful!"

"If you mean the Creeps," said Pontrefact, his control of his temper wearing thin, "at least we don't use them as litter bearers."

"No! You use them to help you exploit the mineral riches! Is it not true that there has been radiation disease among them?"

"No, it isn't! At least, not here. We did use a few to dig samples for us in other areas, and yes, they did encounter some radiation, but I must say that I resent the imputation that we are exploiting the natives."

"Oh, I am sure you would not do that, Marshal Pontrefact, especially as your own ancestors must have experienced so much of that from the other side, as it were."

"Now, look here, Dulla!"

But Pontrefact was interrupted by the Saudi woman, who said: "I think we should recess for lunch. We have much to discuss, and shouting at each other will not help. Let's resolve to try to do better in the afternoon."

But the afternoon session, if quieter, did not seem very productive to Danny Dalehouse. "At least we got a decent meal out of it," he said to Kappelyushnikov outside the long- house where they had met.

"Is as ashes in my mouth," growled the Russian. "Oh, how many nice things they have here. Not just food."

That was not to be argued. Across from the meetinghouse a new building was going up. A tracked dumpster deposited a scoop of earth into a hopper; the man running it shoved a lever forward, there was a high-pitched whine, and moments later, the sides fell away and the operator lifted out a finished panel of hard brick. The trick was in adding something to the compacted earth as a stabilizer.

"And have you seen what's up on the hill?" asked Harriet with jealousy in her tone. On the slopes above the colony there were terraced rows of green seedlings.
Green!
The Greasies were using banks of incandescent plant lights to grow Terrestrial food!

"Feel like time when I was seventeen years," said Kappelyushnikov. "Kid sailplane pilot, winner of All-Region Height and Endurance Contest, fresh from Nizhniy Tagil, walking down Kalinin-Prospekt first time in life, and oh, my God, how overwhelming was Moscow! Trams, skyscrapers, bookstores, restaurants." He pointed to the plasma column of the solar generator, with its rosette of reflectors around it. "Is daunting, dear friends. No wonder Greasies call us here to issue orders of day. They have muscle to enforce!" He shrugged, then grinned as they rounded the last barracks and saw the little landing field. "Hoy! Boyne!" he shouted. "Come say good-bye to country cousins!"

The Irish pilot hesitated, then came toward them. "Hello," he said noncommittally. "I've just been putting our friend Dulla on a jeep on his way home."

"He didn't seem in a very good mood," Dalehouse observed.

The pilot grinned. "His feelings were hurt, I'd say. He didn't want us to see that he was using Krinpit transportation to get here. You didn't know that? They came up the river by boat, and then the Krips carried him up eight or ten kilometers until we picked him up."

Harriet said spitefully, "He might have been in a better mood if you hadn't gone out of your way to insult him, Dalehouse."

"Me? How?"

"He thought you were making a joke about the fact that so few of the Peeps have survived. His face went all tight."

Dalehouse protested. "I didn't mean anything like that. He's such a thorny son of a bitch."

"Forget," advised Kappelyushnikov. "He is such close friend of cockroaches, let them worry about his feelings."

"Well, I don't understand that either, Gappy. The Krinpit almost killed him."

"Then how is possible they become native bearers for fine Pakistani sahib as he daringly marches through jungle?"

"I can explain that," Boyne said gloomily, "although I can't say I like it. That first Krinpit you and I carried here, Dalehouse, the one that calls itself Sharn-igon? It's mad at all human beings. Apparently its girlfriend, or actually I think it was a boyfriend, died from the first contact with the Peeps, and it just wants to get even. Only its idea of getting even seems to be to make as much trouble for as many human beings as it can. It's raised a hell of a fuss with the Krips near here; we can't make any contact with them at all. I guess it thinks the Peeps are pretty well screwed, so it's willing to help them screw the rest of us. Looks damn bad for the future, if you ask me."

He was walking along with them toward the airstrip, but his manner seemed reserved; he made no eye contact with any of them, and what he said was more of a monologue than a conversation.

Kappelyushnikov said placatingly, "Hey, Boyne, you pissed about something?"

"Me? Why should I be?" But Boyne still did not look at him.

Kappelyushnikov glanced at the others, then back to the pilot. "Hey, Boyne," he wheedled. "We two are members of great interstellar brotherhood of pilotry, should not be pissed at each other."

"Look, it's not you personally," said Boyne angrily. "I got my ass eaten out for lending you chaps the backhoe, not to mention talking a little more openly than I was supposed to about what we were doing here."

"But we're all in this together," Dalehouse put in. "It's like Pontrefact said at the meeting. We're supposed to share information."

"Oh, Ponty's got the right idea, but that's supposed to go both ways. You didn't see fit to mention some of your own little deeds, did you? Like arming the balloonists against the Krinpit?"

"We didn't! I mean, that's my own department, Boyne. We've given them a few simple weapons to protect themselves against the
ha'aye'i,
that's all."

"Well, they've been using them against everything they can catch. Not to mention that business with the Peeps' supply ship."

"That was an accident!" Dalehouse said.

"Sure it was. Same as it's an accident that your plane—" He hesitated, then closed his mouth.

"Come on, Boyne, what are you trying to say?" Dalehouse demanded.

"Nothing. Forget it." Boyne glanced back toward the camp, then said rapidly, "Look, this peace conference was a bust, right? Nothing got settled. And the way things are going— well, I've got a bad feeling. The local Krips are gassing our Creepies in their burrows every once in awhile—that's Peeps' doing, I suppose. The Peep ship gets blown up; you say it's an accident, but the gen says CIA. You're giving the Loonies weapons. And your plane—well, shit, man," he said, glaring at Kappelyushnikov. "I've got eyes. So right now I don't feel like having a heart-to-heart, all right? Maybe some other time. So, so long, and have a nice flight home." He nodded briskly and turned back to the Greasy base.

Kappelyushnikov broodingly watched him go. "I too have bad feeling," he said. "About dear friend and fellow pilot Boyne, too. Questions I would like to ask, but this is not good time."

"I'd like to know more about what they're using the Creepies for," Dalehouse agreed. "And frankly, that bit about our being responsible for the Peeps' accident is beginning to get under my skin. Do you think there's any possibility it could be true?"

Gappy regarded him thoughtfully. "You are very nice person, Danny," he said sadly. "Perhaps you do not wonder enough. Like, do you wonder why Greasies have landing strip when gillicopter lands anywhere?"

"That hadn't occurred to me," Dalehouse admitted.

"Occurred to me," said the Russian. "Just like occurred to Boyne to wonder why strange little hatch dear Gasha rode on is in our plane. You and Gasha look at it, you say, 'Oh, what a nuisance. Cannot understand purpose.' But when pilot looks at it, Boyne or me, we say at once, 'Oh, how strange that aircraft designed for peaceful exploration has built-in bomb bay.' "

Thirty meters below the airstrip, Mother dr'Shee woke with the smell of cyanide in her splayed nose, too faint to be dangerous, too strong to ignore. The Shelled Devils were at it again.

She yipped peremptorily for the brood-member on duty. It turned out to be t'Weechr, the runt of the litter and the one the others saddled with the least attractive jobs—including, she realized justly, attending to the wants of the Mother when she first woke up. There were only seven in this present brood of hers, and all of them male, and none of them the size or the strength or the wit of their father. It was a loose and unsettling time, and it spoiled her temper.

"Food," she ordered harshly. "And drink. And someone to groom me while I am waiting."

T'Weechr said humbly, "There is no one but me, Brood Mother. I will be quick with the food and groom you while you eat."

"And why is there no one?"

"The New Devils are teaching, Brood Mother. All are commanded to be present."

"Tssheee." If dr'Shee had been a human, the sound would have been a grunt, written "Humph" for convenience's sake. But she was not actually displeased, merely fretful; and when t'Weechr returned it was not only with tubers and a shell of water, but there were even some fresh leaves and fruits from Above.