Nicola Griffith - Ammonite

“And?”

“And so as long as we stick something alive on that gig, they won’t know if it’s human or not.”

“An animal?”

“As long as it’s big enough,” Dogias said.

Danner wondered where they could find an animal big enough.

“Would it have to be one large one? How about several small ones?” Lu Wai asked.

“That should do it.”

Danner considered. It could work. They could even pilot the gig up by remote.

The less personnel risked, the better. Tapes of conversation should satisfy audio requirements. Yes, it could work. For the journey up. “What about the rest?”

“How badly do we need the station’s systems?”

“We need them. They control the satellites: our communications and microwave relay, weather information…”

“More than we need the Estrade crew?”

“Personnel come first,” she said firmly to Letitia. Do they ? a little voice whispered. What about Relman ? “Why, what were you thinking?”

“If we rigged the platform to explode a few minutes after the gig took off Hiam and the others, then it’s likely that no one would bother with a complicated check of the gig on its way down on a routine mission. They’ll be too busy trying to find out why the platform blew.”

“There must be a better way.”

“Maybe we could rig some other explosion—maybe one of Estrade ’s OM

vehicles or something.”

Kahn nodded thoughtfully. “That might be possible.”

Danner looked from one to the other. “Any other ideas? No? Right, Kahn and Dogias, I want you to work up the details of what we’ve discussed. Bring them to me by…day after next?”

Dogias and Kahn nodded.

“Good.”

“Ma’am?” Lu Wai asked.

“Yes, Serg—” Danner smiled. “—Lieutenant.”

“What about Relman?”

“Let her go.”

“Ma’am?”

“She’s suffered enough. Confiscate her wristcom, and Cardos’s, and send them off on some make-work mission. As far from here as possible.”

“Cardos is a cartographer.”

“Then have them start mapping the area south and west of here. That should keep them busy for a while, and give Relman time to think. She’s safe enough as long as she can’t communicate with the Kurst .” She stared out of the window. “We need every healthy woman we can get. There’s so much work to be done. We’ll have to prepare for wholesale evacuation of Port Central, in case the Kurst decides to sterilize this area.” Sterilize. How easy it was to use euphemisms.

The sky was solid gray; the snow was still falling.

“I miss the sky,” Danner added, to no one in particular. “The thought of never again seeing a light blue Irish morning above wet green fields makes me want to weep.”

“I like it here,” Dogias said.

“I miss home,” Lu Wai admitted, “but I don’t think we’ll ever see it again.” She touched Letitia’s hand. “This isn’t such a bad place. It could become home.”

Danner suspected that for Lu Wai, home was wherever Dogias was. “And you, Ana?”

“I was born on a station orbiting Gallipoli,” Kahn said. “Earth isn’t home. The place they’d send us if we ever left here certainly wouldn’t be home. This may not be, either, but it’s a good enough place.”

Yes, Danner thought, it may be a good enough place, but how would they live here? And when the dust settled, what would be her place on this new world? She was a military and security commander; all she was good at was giving orders. She knew nothing of communities and the way they worked. She wished Marghe were here; an anthropologist would be invaluable.

“If only we really knew what it’s like to live amongst these people,” she said, frustrated.

Letitia and Lu Wai exchanged glances. “But we do,” Letitia said slowly. “Kind of.

Or, at least, Day does.”

“Day? Officer Day, the one that got rescued from the burn by that skinny native, before the virus hit?” Dogias nodded. “But she’s dead. Isn’t she? The virus.”

“I believe she’s listed as missing, ma’am,” Lu Wai said.

“You mean she’s not dead?” The truth hit her. “You know where she is!”

“Yes.”

The sled hummed next to what was left of the northern perimeter gate as Lu Wai ran it through ground checks. Though it was only midmorning, it was dark enough for twilight; wind drove thick snow almost horizontally through the gloom. Inside her hood, Danner kept her eyes slitted against the flakes and half walked, half ran across the grass to the sled. Dogias was on the flatbed, securing the last of the supply cases.

Danner tapped her on the shoulder. She had to shout over the wind. “Remember, tell her it’s all unofficial. According to the records, she’s still listed as missing, and it’ll stay that way no matter what, unless she wants it different. Tell her anything you think will persuade her, but just get her here.”

“Do my best,” Dogias shouted.

The foul-weather cab hatch slid back and Lu Wai leaned out. “Let’s get going.

The weather will only get worse.”

Dogias jumped down from the flatbed and slid into the front seat; Lu Wai pressed the hatch-seal button, cursed, and began to crank it down by hand.

The sled lifted off the ground with a whine. Snow hissed underneath it and bit at Danner’s ankles.

The sled eased forward, gathering speed. Within two minutes, all Danner could see to the north was snow.

She felt suddenly lonely. Two weeks would be a long time without Dogias’s irreverence—maybe three weeks if the weather got worse. Danner had ordered them to return immediately if there was any problem with communications; it was too dangerous to be out in this weather if they lost touch, or if their SLICs went down.

That made her think of Marghe: no SLIC, no communication, hundreds of miles to the north where the weather, according to Sigrid, was brutal.

She started to walk away from the perimeter. Half-dismantled, and deserted because of the weather, this part of Port Central already looked like a ruin.

Danner split her screen: Nyo on one side, Sara on the other. “Is it, or is it not, possible to move that damned satellite to pick up Marghe’s SLIC?”

“Well,” Nyo said, “we could move it, yes, but we might not be able to get it back.

And that would screw up what comm you’ve got down there.”

“The SLIC might not even be operational,” Sara pointed out.

Danner ignored that. “Let’s just assume that it is.”

“It really wouldn’t be wise at this point,” Sara said. “What would the Kurst think when they saw a satellite being moved? We can’t afford to do anything alarming, nothing that looks like change.”

Hiam was right. Danner would just have to forget Marghe, trust to the representative’s luck and toughness. And the vaccine. When Day got to Port Central, Danner could see if there had been any word through the viajeras on Marghe’s progress. Without Marghe to negotiate trade and friendship between Port Central and the natives, to gain a foothold on this world she would have to rely for now on the personal link between herself and Day, and the natives who had saved her life, Oriyest and Jink. And upon the more impersonal trata agreement between Cassil of Holme Valley and herself as commander of Port Central. And on hope.

Damn small things to base a life, many lives, on.

MARGHE AND LEIFIN were three days traveling through Moanwood to Ollfoss.

Later, Marghe could not have said whether it was a year or no time at all. She remembered little: occasional fractured snapshots of trees that were not quite trees, whose roots were greater around than their crowns or which possessed no crowns at all; musty, sharp smells of small nesting animals; pain in her hands and feet and face. Most of all she remembered one day falling down on the snow-dusted floor of the forest and lying on her back, dizzy, while leaves, or what might have been leaves, whirled around her head. She had laughed aloud, but the forest swallowed her thin bright ribbon of laughter and she quieted as she realized it was she who was the alien here; that the dark and the green around her would remain unaffected by her, could not digest her if it tried. Like cellulose in the gut of a carnivore, she could not be assimilated. Alien.