[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]lean away from her life force. WithPistachio's bridge so tiny, I could sense
everyone present a constant 360-degree awareness but Ubatu's aura was the only
one that bothered me: intensely focused in my direction. Staring at me with
the rapacity of a stalker. I could only read her general feelings, not her
precise thoughts... but she seemed to be assessing my usability, how ripe I
was for exploiting. I doubted that true Vodun was geared toward selfishly
taking advantage of powerful loa; real religions frowned on egotistic playing
with fire. Ifa-Vodun, however (especially Ubatu's version of it), was not a
real religion. It was a cynical diplomatic tool, created by inbred dipshits
who'd dreamed up the totally unfounded notion that high-level aliens might
respond to voodoo.
At least I hoped the notion was totally unfounded. If a creature like the
Balrog could actually be influenced by herbs gathered at midnight and black
rooster sacrifice...
I shifted position to put more distance between me and Ubatu's aura.
"Probe data coming in," Festina said. "Nice clear visuals." She turned a
knob... and Muta appeared on the screen. The first thing that struck me was
color: reds and blues and greens and purples. Every plant had staked out its
own private chunk of the rainbow. Morphologically, all Muta's flora were
ferns wide multilobed fronds with single stems, whether they were tiny
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fiddleheads barely peeking out of the soil, midrange varieties reaching to
knee height/hip height/head height, or broad-leafed giants stretching as tall
as trees but despite the plants' similarity of form, they showed no
commonality in hue. As if each bit of vegetation had been colored by a child
choosing crayons at random.
"What's wrong with the plants?" Ubatu whispered. "Some sort of disease?"
"No," I said. "They're just young. It's a young planet." When she continued
to stare blankly, I elaborated. "This is common on early Mesozoic worlds. The
plants are experimenting, trying to find an optimal color for photosynthesis.
Each species has different pigments, with a slightly different biochemistry
underlying the energy-gathering process. Some colors lead to better results
than others... but at the moment, no single species is so superior it
outcompetes the rest. They're all inefficient by mature Earth standards.
Eventually, some chance mutation will lead to a significant improvement in
energy production for some lucky plant; and that plant will set the standard
all others have to meet."
"And everything will turn green?"
"There's no guarantee green will win. It depends on the composition of the
sun, the atmosphere, the soil, and the usual random wiles of evolution. Maybe
the plants will find some superefficient yellow pigment that's better than
green chlorophyll. Or blue. Or brown. But eventually a shakedown will come,
establishing more uniformity. Twenty million years should do the trick. Then
homogeneity will last until some plant comes up with the idea of sprouting
flowers to attract pollinators. Which will bring back colors again."
"Shush," said Festina. "There's the Unity camp."
While I was talking, the probe sending pictures had moved at high speed
across Muta's terrain. Now the probe was traveling upstream along the
Grindstone River. In the distance, we could see the huts and buildings of Camp
Esteem.
No sign of movement. Not even insects or animals. I glanced at Festina's
console no IR readings that might indicate survivors. On the other hand, there
were obvious heat sources all over: small ones in almost every hut, and larger
ones in the big buildings. Festina zoomed the probe's camera to scan the
building with the largest heat source. A plaque on the front displayed a
pictogram knife, fork, and plate: the standard signage for mess halls. No
doubt the members of Team Esteem could remember which building was their
cookhouse even if it wasn't labeled... but the Unity was famous for flogging
the obvious. They might paint DOG on a pet's forehead just to be thorough.
"If that's the mess hall," Tut said, "what do you bet the heat source inside
is a stove somebody left on?"
"No bet," Festina replied.
"You could smash the probe through a window and see."
"Not just yet." Festina sent the probe on a looping circle of the whole camp.
Still nothing unusual or out of place.
"I don't see corpses," Li said.
"Maybe they've all been eaten," Ubatu suggested. "I mean, by animals and
insects."
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"The Mayday was issued thirty-six hours ago," Festina said. "Local time, that
was early yesterday morning. Pretty fast for scavengers to consume a body,
bones and all."
"Unless," Cohen said, "the scavengers on Muta are more efficient than on
other planets."
"It's possible," Festina told him. "Usually, though, native scavengers work
quite slowly on human corpses. Earth flesh isn't their normal food. It can
even be poison to alien predators. So on average, human meat doesn't get eaten
very quickly on nonterrestrial worlds. Of course, Muta could be the
exception."
A thought struck me. "You said the Mayday came yesterday morning. What time
exactly?"
Festina checked a data display: "7:14 local."
"Then maybe weshould crash the probe through a mess hall window. At 7:14,
everyone on the team would be eating breakfast."
"True," Festina said. "Unity surveyors start breakfast precisely at 7:00 and
end at 7:20."
"Goddamned robots," Li muttered.
"They prefer the term 'cyborg,' " Ubatu told him.
"I prefer the term 'morons.' "
"Now, now," Cohen said more a reflex than a serious attempt to stop the
bickering. Festina, however, was less inclined to put up with such nonsense.
Her aura flared with annoyance.
"Enough!" she said. "Everybody shut up while I work. We've got four probes,
so maybe it's worth sacrificing one to see inside the cookhouse."
Her life force hinted at words she didn't say: if the mess hall was filled
with dead bodies, we'd be off the hook. For the sake of thoroughness, we'd
have to check the other survey camps too; but if one team had been reduced to
corpses, the rest would almost certainly be the same.
In that case, our mission was over. The Unity might want to retrieve the
fallen and determine the cause of death... but that was their business, not
ours. We were strictly here to save survivors. If we couldn't find anyone
alive, we'd file a report and go home.
I knew it wouldn't be that simple. For Explorers, nothing is ever easy.
"All right," said Festina. "I'll send in a probe."
She manipulated the controls, not just setting up the first probe to bash its
way into the mess hall, but bringing a second probe into position to get
footage of the process. The picture on the vidscreen split down the middle:
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