Nicola Griffith - Ammonite

Hostiles. Sometimes she felt like a bit player in one of those old, bad movies about the American West. Only, in this movie, some of her cavalry soldiers were spies, and the good ones left the fort, went into a reservation, and were never heard from again. Perhaps, as in the old movies, they died.

“Stop this,” she said out loud. Her voice sounded small and lonely against the hissing of the rain. She leaned her forehead against the chain-link. Maybe she was lonely, maybe there were spies, but she was not small and she was not helpless. She would find these spies, and she would not let Company use her up and leave her for dead like a broken-winded horse.

Except for the piles of printouts awaiting her attention, the neat chip racks, and the framed hardcopy of her promotion fixed to the wall above the computer, Danner’s mod was as bare as the day she had first come to Jeep. She stripped off her uniform and showered. Halfway through drying herself, she threw the towel on the floor next to the discarded and crumpled uniform.

She did not want anything next to her skin that reminded her of Company.

She sat naked in front of her screen. What was Company, really? A profit-making organization. Whatever the situation, they would make their decisions based on the accounts. Very well.

She pulled up lists of plant and equipment, compared their costs to transportation costs; tried to figure in months of full pay for personnel who did nothing but sit around in decontamination, and added to that the cost of such a facility; weighed all that against Company’s control of public opinion through the media. The answer was clear.

If the vaccine did not work, Company would find it more expedient, more cost-effective, to simply abandon her, her staff, and Port Central. No one would find out: Company controlled the media.

She wondered why she had never understood this before, then realized she had, deep down; just like Marghe, just like Sara Hiam, just like all those Jeep personnel, Mirror and civilian, who were busy decorating their mods, making their own clothes, and weaving beautiful tapestries. Adapting to the realities and necessities of their new home, as she had been: worrying over supplies of suture reels and hypodermic needles, pushing, always pushing to get more communication relays up. Yes, she had known all along.

A new thought struck her. She tapped at the keys for several minutes, then sighed in relief. No. It would cost too much to sterilize the planet as a precaution against the virus. All Company needed to do was destroy Estrade , and that was that, planet sealed. The only question was whether or not they would take off Sara Hiam and the rest of the orbital crew first. They were uncontaminated, but they knew too much.

She set that problem aside for later.

Supposing the vaccine did not work, and Company really did abandon them all.

How would they survive? How would they replenish their food, their clothes, their medicines? The microwave relay satellite would not remain in orbit forever; they would need to find new ways to heat and light their homes. They might even need to build new homes, closer to suitable agricultural sites. And what would they use to make plows, and barrels, and sacks and bottles and plates and shoes and beds and combs?

She stared at the screen, then blanked it. This was not something she could fix in a few hours. This was more, far more, than an exercise in resupply. Marghe was right. To survive here, they needed to be part of the cultural food chain.

First, she needed information on Company and its plans. Information. The only person likely to know more than she did was the spy—or spies. Find them first, proceed from there. After all, the vaccine might still work.

To catch a spy, or a rabbit, or a thief, one needed a trap. To set a trap, she would need assistance. Who could she trust?

The transmissions had been sent eight days ago, from here, Port Central. Eight days ago Letitia Dogias and Lu Wai had been at Holme Valley. They could not have sent them. They might still have had something to do with it, but she dismissed that; she had to trust somebody, sometime. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Dogias was a communications technician, so she would be able to think of ways to track the signal. Both she and Lu Wai often left Port Central for weeks at a time, so any necessary absence would not attract suspicion. Perfect.

She dressed rapidly, returned to the screen.

“Vincio?”

“Ma’am?”

“Please inform Sergeant Lu Wai and Technician Letitia Dogias to meet me here, my mod, in two hours.”

“Yes, ma’am. Are you available to take calls now?”

“Not for two hours. In an emergency, I’ll be at the fencing hall with Private Kahn.”

Ana Kahn was a championship fencer, good enough to give her a workout that should drain the last of the anger from her body. She could not afford anger. For what lay ahead, she needed a clear, focused mind.

Outside, the rain had stopped. Danner strode briskly, leaving bootprints in the wet grass.

THE WINTER CAMP of the Echraidhe huddled under a fast-moving winter sky: fifty or more tents surrounding three animal pens and a thin, ice-rimed spring that ran fifteen yards before disappearing back into the ground beneath the snow. Blue-gray smoke, sharp with the smell of animal dung, trickled from several of the low black tents. One of the tents was much larger than the others. As they rode closer, Marghe could see the roofs sagging with snow. Winding from tent to tent, to stream and corral, paths had been worn through the snow to the mossy grass beneath. In places there was no moss, and Pella’s hooves rang on the iron-hard ground. A windswirl blew snow up off the ground into Marghe’s face.

Two of the pens were empty. A third held a handful of horses standing nose to tail at the far end near a trough that was beginning to scum over with ice. Their breath steamed. The wooden uprights and cross-planks looked dark and old but were fixed together with rope—a temporary structure, like everything else.

Behind an outlying tent, two children played a game with polished bones. Their heads were bare, hair matted and tangled, and one had some kind of rash on her face. Vitamin deficiency, Marghe thought. The ragtag collection of furs, leather, and felt they wore hid their shape and made it difficult to judge their age. When they saw the riders, one hooted with glee, scrambled up, and trotted alongside the Levarch’s stirrup; the other paused to pick up the bits of bone with a chapped hand before running off into the center of the camp, calling out their arrival. People began pushing aside tent flaps, blinking up at the riders. Greetings screeched through the cold air like the cries of hungry birds. Marghe found the sharp vowels and harsh consonants difficult.

The riders slowed to a walk. Their horses were soon surrounded by old women with brown eyes, smiling through their wrinkles; women holding babies and touching passing saddle leather and fur-clad thighs; girls calling up to the riders, grinning.

Many women pointed at her big horse, and children darted out of the crowd to touch her boots. After the silence of the plains, Marghe felt bewildered by the bright eyes and flashing red mouths. I am an anthropologist , she told herself, not a prize of war , and steadfastly returned their curiosity.

Every few feet, a rider reined in by a tent and was surrounded by a knot of family and friends who almost dragged her off her horse and inside. The further they went through the camp, the smaller their group became, until by the time they reached the big tent, the Levarch’s, Marghe, Aoife, Uaithne, and the Levarch herself were the only ones still mounted. Marghe followed Aoife’s lead and reined in Pella to let the Levarch and Uaithne approach the tent alone.