Wine of the Gods 4: Explorers (26 page)

There was q
uite a crowd waiting for them. Two different union with picket signs. Company people, grinning broadly, as they saw the long bulldozed path on the far side of the gate. Gate Authority people, looking relieved. Marooned parties were bad for business. Media, disappointed by the lack of blood.

"Not a word about the drill cores, understand?" Lon looked at the two youngsters, who nodded enthusiastically. "You two did a good job. Ray, you want t
o show them how to set up a startup? I'll talk to the transporter people, then send a recall to the cadre. I'll pop in on Twelve fifty-three and check there, if I can get back soon enough to make the gate."

In the privacy of the Dallas Warehouse he produced the quartz core and handed it to Meese. "I think we should let
Fifty-three cool off. I'll leave a token presence to hold the lease, and bring everyone to check this out."

Meese grunted. "You got a road in and had time to drill cores? I'm black and blu
e from kicking myself for letting Carolina New Ventures foist Jefferson off on us." He turned the core under the bright lights and his hands went momentarily still. "But I may not have kicked hard enough."

"He has an entirely different sort of expertise, sir."

"Humph. How tactful. Should I send him to Fifty-three?" Meese pursed his lips as he held the core up to the light.

"You haven't fired him? Never mind, Union, right?"

"Right."

"Keep him completely away from
Fifty-three. He's pure poison with natives. Try Forty. Make sure he takes lots of hunters and guards. Maybe one of them will accidentally shoot him."

Meese had a b
it of a coughing fit. "I think I'll find a reason to keep him home, or tell Carolina to keep him away from anything we own a part of. We are not impressed with his field abilities. What are your plans?"

"I
need to check Twelve fifty-three, the party visiting the nearest king should be returning about now. Hopefully that went well. I'll decide when I talk to them how many and which people I'll leave there. I authorized Ms. Seabaugh to offer a hospital in exchange for mining rights for the region of the crater. If their king is interested, if the DONA people will also be reasonable, we may manage a sweet deal there."

"Sounds good.
There's something going on there—the Authority has gates scheduled every week—the next one is in five days. Our regular supply gate is in six hours, if you want to go immediately. Get almost everyone back here—the short termers will need to write up reports, if nothing else—that'll give us enough time to decide if we need to keep them longer. You should be back in plenty of time to get that anchor and all the boxes and equipment out of those damned mountains on Twelve-seventeen." Meese glanced at the core and grinned. "I think we'll move your excellent cadre there. You can cherry pick Jefferson's people for an expanded staff, or start cold, your choice."

Lon showed him politely out, then r
eturned to check gate openings. Just time enough to do laundry and order up a transporter for the gate anchor, make a job offer for the movers. Major bonus for the hazardous conditions, include a big winch truck to help them go down some steep slopes . . . He updated the cadre's bulletin board and gave an estimated time for moving to Twelve-seventeen. Scheduled gate times . . . It would take a couple weeks of careful driving to get the anchor out of the mountains, then the rest of the boxes, then the scientists . . .

26
June, 3477

Nowhereistan, Earth

". . . so goody, goody Lon is going to get all the credit for everything."

Florian nodded. Under other circumstances he would have had little tolerance for Jackson Jefferson's self pity. But his own circumstances were dire. There'd been no sign of where the two women spies had gone. "I had that bitch in custody. In hand, damn it. I don't believe this is happening."

Jefferson was too drunk to notice the other man's self abso
rption. "His prospect is a mess too. He's closing it down, most of his cadre are back home on leave. He probably thinks he'll take over my prospect now. Ha! Good luck to him. I should have known he'd trick me into taking the toughest one. And then his had natives. Natives! Ha! Lon was always soft on natives. Remember?"

Florian looked at him, sharply. "Why yes.
I do. And these spies, they could have come from his prospect. Where there weren't supposed to be any natives. Do you know, I believe you and I need to go look that prospect over. I wonder when they have a gate, next?"

Jefferson raised hi
s head. "Early tomorrow." He glanced blearily at his watch. "Today."

Florian drummed his fingers.
"I wonder how much they are leaving behind. Computers full of data, perhaps?"

"I've got the
managerial over ride codes." Jefferson was trying to fight off the alcohol, now. Pity forgotten at the prospect of getting even.

Florian ran his chip
through the order slot and punched in a request for snacks. And water and coffee and nil-o-hol tabs. It was time to sober up. "What do we need, to cross over? I can leave a message for my boss, that I'm following a lead. Requisition a gyp. A couple of laser rifles. We can requisition from the company anything else we need."

Jefferson fumbled through the
gate's site to find the schedule. "Oh four fifteen. Three hours. We need to pack, clean up. I'll wear a company jacket, you wear your Gate Authority uniform. No one will ask a thing." He grimaced at the tablets the waitress brought them, but swallowed one. With lots of water.

The snacks would be along in a few moments, long enough th
at any queasiness had passed. Florian swallowed the pill, took deep breaths and controlled his stomach by will. Then he sighed and relaxed. "All right. No reason we shouldn't go take a look. Check out the natives. Make sure Lon hasn't gone soft and overlooked something important. Like One World Spies."

They had plenty of time to pack, to shower and shave and dress carefully. They drove up to the outbound lanes at the right time, and found that they were the only outbound traffic. The postal office
r looked delighted to see Jefferson's maroon and blue checked jacket and handed over a bag and three large boxes. The ground controller stuck a red flag on the back of the gyp and they headed for the gate. It fogged, cleared, and they drove through. They passed three trucks and four gyps full of people heading the other direction, then circled around and parked in front of the clearly labeled HQ.

Jefferson climbed out of the G
ate Authority gyp and walked in like he owned the place. "Lon, you here?" Nothing, of course.

"Is it a good idea to pretend?"

"The people here don't know squat about Seventeen. Yet." Jefferson walked back out and met a man coming from the mess box halfway.

"Didn't you see him on the other side?" The man stuck out a hand. "George Hicks. What's going on?"

"We had an incident with a One World spy infiltrating the gate complex on Earth. I'm Jackson Jefferson. This is Agent Hastenberg. The Company sent me in since I wasn't contaminated by contact with these suspect natives here. Did you meet them?"

Jefferson wasn't half bad at this Company stuff. They wound up with a complete accounting of the two
friendly men and two adorable children who had run loose through the camp for over a month. It was almost enough to make him sick. But not while eating this delicious dinner.

"Well, we'll bunk in one of the boxes, and I'll look over the reports on the biologists' computers tomorrow. A pleasure meeting you, George. Thanks for dinner."
Florian led Jefferson away, very well satisfied. And very short on sleep. He walked toward the clearly labeled short term barracks. "Tomorrow we'll start digging for some real dirt."

Jefferson balked. "No way do I sleep in the barracks. I'm an impor
tant Company Man. Besides, I'll bet Lon's computer is the last one left in camp." He turned and marched into the HQ box.

There was a second, small bedroom. Florian flopped down on it, thinking he should . . .

In the morning they put away some waffles and fresh fruit, then tackled Lon's computer.

It took less than an hour to realize that the so-called
natives were instead, highly engineered Oners. And then they compared the gene scan the Gate Authority had done on Never Ash. The native girl was her daughter. The hair in the brush was hers.

Florian sat back with a satisfied smile. "Got them. Got them cold."

"Should we go to this city? It's just three or four days away." Jefferson was grinning like a fool.

"No. No, we don't want to make direct contact with the Oners." He remembered
the wall of the conference room, remembered getting up and moving, when he hadn't the faintest intention of doing so. "These people are going to require a more hands off solution. We'll just sit tight until the next gate time, and take all of this back to the Authority Command."

"In a month," Jefferson groused.

Ten days later, at mid-day, he heard the siren on the Anchor as it detected the first tentative dimensional distortion.

George bolted out to turn it on. Florian dashed for the HQ box to grab the evidence. By the time he was back out the door the
gate was already closing.

No m
atter. His boss, with six troopers, was waiting for him.

The guns were all pointed at him.

He stopped uncertainly, waving the chip in his hand. "I got the evidence? Never Ash is from here?" He swallowed. Perhaps dashing off on a drunken impulse hadn't been terribly smart.

***

Never spotted the sudden flash of sun on shiny paint. The Auld Wulf had brought the Earthers from Karista, and dropped them in front of Harry's Tavern.

As she walked down
the street, Scott Meyers released his death grip on the side of the gyp. "I don't think I'll ever get used to that."

Julianne staggered out the passenger-side door. "Three jumps. Very disorienting. How far do you go each jump?"

The god smiled. "As far as I feel like at the moment. Five hundred miles or so, commonly. But it's very tiring without hot spots like the geysers. Tomorrow Harry will do a few long jumps, then Romeau a series of smaller jumps, and by the time we get you to the last geyser, he'll probably make you drive the rest of the way to your camp."

"Five hundred miles?" Roxy looked cross-eyed. "You trying to put drivers out of work?"

The god looked amused. "Only locally. I've been working on setting up a Corridor, which will simplify things. But it takes time."

Roxy figured it was her last opportunity, and managed to get well sloshed on the Tavern's excellent ale. "I checked again, just before we left. The damned statue is either moving, or they've got several of them and they switch them out."

Never shook her head. "They have hundreds, but they're all sitting cross-legged, arms out to hold a platter. That one is the real god, all wrapped up in spells of some sort."

Julianne made a face. "It was disgusting. Obscene."

Roxy nodded. "Not just lolling about on the steps anymore. He was, umm, ready for action. You don't suppose the women use it as a, uh, play toy, do you?"

Never snickered. "Actually they claim some of them get pregnant."

"Oh great. Now I can have nightmares about that." Roxy rolled her eyes.

She avoided nightmares
by seducing the oldest of the boys who helped the old "god" run the inn.  Tivo was probably technically an adult, but he looked so fresh faced and young . . . He brought her early morning coffee (real coffee, from real coffee beans!) and added something that cured her hangover, without all the interesting side effects the Auralian's wine had had.

"Well." She admired his shoulders then got a hold of herself. Between last night and the Cove Island party she could definitely check this
world off her to-fuck list back at the Driver's Center in Nowhereistan. Ha! Let some of the really competitive gals try to get here and find a Native. She'd had, umm, six now? She'd tried for one from each polity at the party. Damn, she hadn't gotten that drunk in
decades.
Last night wasn't even close to how she'd felt.

Never, Question, Lefty and Dydit traveled with the Earthers, back to the last geyser in the canyon. Romeau wished them a safe road and stretched out on the warm rocks to rest for a few hours before heading home.

"Hopefully we can find our horses." Dydit strolled across one of the little bridges in the canyon. When the gyps followed, he swung aboard the first one.

They made it to the base of the ramp before camping. Two days later the Earthers dropped them off at the wagon.

The horses showed up, eager for oats, and the natives hitched them up and headed for home, while the Earthers drove back over the ridge.

6
July, 3477

Dallas
Twelve fifty-three

Special Agent Greeson was thin in a wiry athletic fashion and his gray hair was professionally styled. Today he was wearing an obviously expensive suit. He turned away from Florian and addressed the cook.

"
We've had problems recently with spies infiltrating from the One World. I am Special Agent Greeson."

"
George Hicks. Camp Manager. Yes. The DONA agents told us. Do you think they came from this world?"

"We aren't sure. This
world is one of the possible ones. The . . . very interesting occurrences of two months ago make us wonder if perhaps they haven't found one of our labor recruitment worlds, and started infiltrating through our labor draws. One, or possibly two women got as far as the Native training campus, and then managed to escape. Their scent was what we had the dogs checking. The dogs found nothing, but we're having to consider that their attempt to divert attention from their access world to this one . . . may not have been a ruse. This may have been their infiltration point."

"I see
. The natives we've contacted are a couple a men and two children."

Fl
orian's stomach was threatening ulcers. Soon. He sweated and kept silent. Jefferson, bless his cowardly soul wasn't complicating matters by showing up.

"Where are they, at the moment?"

"They've taken the DONA agents, and some Company linguists and sociologists off to meet their king. They're on their way back, now. It's about a four day trip." George frowned from the gate troops to Florian. "They should be radioing in about an hour, their usual time."

"One of the names they dropped was Nelson Manrique. Unfortunately our information was out of date. We had him listed as an Exstar employee working on Dust Bowl Twelve."

George nodded. "Dallas hired him last year. This is the only world he's been to, since. He's on Earth, right now. On leave until they assign him to another prospect."

The Special Agent f
inally looked back at Florian. "Hastenberg, here has apparently decided to do some investigating of his own. He's been compromised and should have been under observation. This isn't a good indication. Who is here with him? I had reports he was seen with a company man."

"Jackson Jefferson. I figured the agent must have a warrant; Jefferson opened up everything for h
im." George glanced back at the HQ box. "With Lon, Dr. Hackathorn, dealing with the problems on Twelve-seventeen, I figured he was all the company had available to access comps."

Florian
tried to pull himself together. "We have DNA evidence now that the escapee is from here. The natives—one is her husband, another is her daughter."

"Why don't you show me this i
nformation, and then we can radio the DONA expedition and find out where they are."

"Certainly, certainly." He forced himself to walk, not trot anxiously to the
HQ module. He booted the computer and fed in his chip. "They've got a bunch of genetic engineering."

Greeson s
miled at that. "Just what we were looking for."

Jefferson walked out of the bedroom, yawning. He stopped abruptly. "Who are you?"

"Special Agent Greeson." He turned back to the computer. Two of the troops had followed them in, so likely he wouldn't have worried over a gorilla sulking around in the background.

"Gate lag, haven't got my circadian rhythms in sync
yet." Jefferson apparently felt he had to explain sleeping till nearly noon.

No one paid any attention
.

Florian
brought up the gene maps. "This, on the right, is from Never Ash, taken on Earth. On the left, the DNA from a hair brush, here, which is identical to Never Ash's. And then here, the daughter of Never Ash and the putative native, Dudit."

Greeson
nodded. "As incredibly stupid as running off when you were compromised was, you may have advanced the investigation by a few weeks. I rather thought that disaster on Dallas Twelve-seventeen was caused by the spies delaying pursuit."

Jefferson gawped.

"Let's go find them." Greeson turned abruptly and walked out.

In
the communications office, Jefferson turned on the radio and broadcast a brief message. Static. He scowled, then the static redoubled and the computer started decompressing a message.

"Encoding messages? How interesting." Greeson purred, sitting down and concentrating as the message played.

It was still full of static. "Hey, is that you, George? The static's awful. Roxy here. King Rebo suggested that we take our toys and go home, so we'll be in camp tomorrow. The City was just fantastic, and I think we've got the company a good offer."

"What about the infiltrators?" Greeson growled.

"Are the natives with you?" Jefferson sent that back through the computer. The reply came back in a minute.

"Off and on. We've met their wives.
Never and Question. Question and Lefty are expecting their first baby in another few months. The women have apparently taken a good look at Earth and not liked what they saw."

Greeson smiled nastily. "
Never. Yes. And the other female spy had a tubal pregnancy relocated. We should try and meet these two women."

"Can you invite
them all to come visit?" Jefferson sent back.

"The King has sent letters to the Government and to the Dallas Board of Directors. Dydit said they'd be back in a month for the reply.
Who the hell is this?"

"So, they aren't actually all that far away. Excellent. We'll meet them part way." Greeson walked out
of the HQ box, and his troopers brought the gyps around. He climbed in and looked back at them. "Well, get in. You're our guide."

Jefferson must have looked as blank as Florian felt. Greeson turned and looked at George.

George looked at back in exasperation. "Do you have four days of food and water? Not that water's been a problem, here." He walked into the mess box.

Greeson stalked in after him. "I wasn't planning on taking all that much time. We have standard rations."

George handed over a large sack. It smelled like fresh fruit.

"Go n
orth. There's a well used path that starts between the water tower and the blue shed. When the river curves to the east, turn east and cross the ridge. There's a path blasted and filled across. After that, your guess is as good as mine."

The driver put the gyp in gear and took off at more than double the speed
any sensible person would have dared on the barely improved ground. Then he spotted a track worn down to the dirt, and accelerated. Florian held on, trying to keep his teeth from rattling. Three harrowing hours later they found the DONA expedition's camp.

The travelers had fire of
brushy twigs going in a rock lined fire pit. Some sort of sausage was suspended over it.

"Going native?"
Greeson asked.

A good looking woman blushed. "I'm afraid I'm
not very good at campfire cooking."

A man wearing what looked like a Native shirt with Earther pants and boots
walked up and looked uncertainly at the Agent and his troopers. The other six were looking around at them, looking puzzled, and a bit alarmed, as they recognized the Gate Authority uniforms. Two of them were wearing yellow windbreakers with the Department of Native Affairs logo on the left breast.

The DONA pair crossed their arms stubbornly.

Greeson walked over toward them, the troopers spreading out on either side. "Where are the natives?"

"I'm First Contact Agent Jeff Hastings, this is
Agent Ivan Kolnavik. What business is that of the Gate Authority's?"

"We're looking for Oner spies. Your little friends look to fit the role quite well. Right down to their mutated genes."

The other DONA agent snorted. "Sorry, but we've met all their families and friends and King and Councilors. They're the real thing. Not outsiders."

"And any
how, they just came back with us to collect their wagon and horses." A civilian woman frowned her disapproval. "You need to stop thinking of them as primitives. It's interesting how their special abilities have changed the usual progression of industrialization. . ."

Greeson interrupted. "So. They've cut and run."

"Hardly run." Kolnavik frowned at the Agent. "They're heading home. And those horse and wagon things are dead slow. Especially through the grass."

Greeson swung around. "Really? When and where did you last see them?" He glanced at one of the troopers. "Get up on the ridge and take a scan." His gaze came back to Kolnavik.

"Just over the ridge. Eight in the morning. We had breakfast before we crossed the ridge. They went the other way." The civilian gulped. "Who are you? What's going on?"

"Special Agent Greeson. Who are you?"

"Scott Meyers, linguist on contract to Dallas."

"What is going on?"
Hastings frowned at the Gate Agent.

"Apparently the One World has located this
world. These two 'natives' of yours are spies." Greeson gave him a thin smile. "Like as not, those two would have wound up on
our
world, negotiating the conditions for us to import labor from here, and the laborers would have been well salted with spies. Possibly all of them would have been spies."

"I see. We did wonder about a small subset of the people, because of the
traveling
, as they call it. But they're very similar to everyone else. They have the same types. Races, almost." Meyers was frowning. "Well, we've visited an impressive sized city, and the drone aerial pics show larger cities and well established agriculture, so there
are
natives."

"We've been talking to the King of one country, and ambassadors from three others. We've got terabytes of data."
Another civvy sniffed. "I've been studying their financial system. It's not the least bit primitive, although it is conservative."

"I have missives from their Government to ours." Hastings looked down his nose. "And my superiors may or may not share our reports with you. But I need to warn you about these
. . ."

"After I return to
gate camp, you will show me your data. Right now we need to try and intercept these spies. Go back to your gate camp. Now, who knows the ground around here?"

The middle age woman in the Dallas check
ed jacket was bundled into the government gyp before she got her mouth half open. They took off at speed and shot up the slope. They braked abruptly at the top, turned and headed down into the gloom.

***

Never checked over her shoulder, but the gyps weren't visible, even though she could hear their engine noises coming and going as the hills blocked, echoed and amplified the alien sounds. They could travel home from the first hot spring in the Rip. If they pushed the horses a bit, they could make it in five days. But two weeks on grass had made the horses fat, lazy and soft. They'd have to make an early night of it.

Dydit and Lefty
had been dawdling behind, keeping an eye on the Earthers. Now they closed up the distance.

"They're over a couple of hills. Out of sight, and good riddance." Dydit grinned at her
. "This is better, now I can tell that you haven't run off again."

She let the team walk until they'd cooled down, then trotted them again. They drove from known stream crossing to known stream crossing, and in late afternoon she found a reasonable camp and pulled the weary horses to a halt.

She woke in Dydit's arms, the 'I am being hunted' itch strong. He woke when she rose, and muttered something under his breath as he felt it too. "Rise and shine children, Bad Guys on the way."

The horses got a hasty feed as they were harnessed, and they headed out in the predawn. Lefty led on foot until the light brightened, then remounted. The sound of the gyp preceded the machine as it crested the hill behind them. A copy of them split off and galloped away as they paled. Never handed Question the reins, and dropped to the ground. Dydit pulled up next to her and she fed him power to keep up the illusion. "Without a charm to anchor it, I can only throw the illusion about half a mile. Let's just see what their intensions are. I shouldn't be this itchy if they were friendly." He ran a thumb over her knuckles, but his gaze was ahead.

The gyps zipped past them and overtook the galloping illusion. Flashes of light raked the wagon, staying high and then dropped and concentrated on the horses. Dydit's illusions staggered and collapsed, the wagon slewed dangerously then stopped.

"Guess they don't want to talk." The real Dydit pulled power from her, as she reached to touch Storm. Question put her bare feet on both of the harnessed horses, Lefty leaned and grabbed her arm. Dydit threw his awareness out as far as he could reach. A flat where they'd camped on their way south. They jolted forward and were there.