There were times when Warlow regretted losing the ability to give a really plaintive sigh. “He’ll never pay that,” he retorted. If Joshua didn’t always try to extort clients they might win more business.
“So?” Joshua shot back. “We can haggle. Besides he might, and we need the money. The expenses I’ve shelled out on this bloody planet have just about emptied our petty cash account. We’ll be breaking into our Norfolk fund if we’re not careful.”
“My captain is currently charging forty-five thousand fuseodollars for a zero-tau flight to Norfolk,” Warlow said out loud.
“Zero-tau?” Quinn sounded puzzled.
“Yes.”
He glanced at Marie, who remained impassive.
Warlow waited patiently while the spaceplane’s cargo hold doors began to swing shut. His neural nanonics relayed the background chitter of the pilot running through the flight-prep sequence.
“I don’t want to travel in zero-tau,” Quinn said woodenly.
“Got him. Fifty-five thousand for a real-time cabin,” Joshua datavised.
“Then I’m afraid cabin passage will cost you fifty-five thousand,” Warlow recited laboriously. “Consumables, food, environmental equipment maintenance, it all adds up.”
“Yes, so I see. Very well, fifty-five thousand it is then.” Quinn produced a Jovian Bank disk from his shorts pocket.
“Jesus,” Joshua datavised. “This guy has an expense account a Saldana princeling would envy. Grab the money off him now, before he comes to his senses, then send him up on the McBoeing.” The channel to Lady Macbeth closed.
Warlow took his own Jovian Bank credit disk from a small pouch in his utility belt, and proffered it to Quinn Dexter. “Welcome aboard,” he boomed.
Oenone reduced and refocused its distortion field, allowing the wormhole terminus to close behind it. It looked round curiously with its many senses. Norfolk was a hundred and sixty thousand kilometres away; and the contrasting light from two different stars fell upon its hull. The upper hull was washed in a rosy glow from Duchess, the system’s red-dwarf sun two hundred million kilometres away, darkening and highlighting the blue polyp’s elaborate purple web pattern. Duke, the K2 primary, shone a strong yellowish light across the environmentally stabilized pods clasped in Oenone ’s cargo bay from a hundred and seventy-three million kilometres in the opposite direction.
Norfolk was almost in direct conjunction between the binary pair. It was a planet that was forty per cent land, made up of large islands a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand square kilometres each, and uncountable smaller archipelagos. Oenone hung over the only sliver of darkness which was left on the surface; for the approaching conjunction had banished night to a small crescent extending from pole to pole, measuring about a thousand kilometres wide at the equator, almost as if a slice had been taken out of the planet. Convoluted seas and winding straits sparkled blue and crimson in their respective hemispheres, and cloud swirls were divided into white and scarlet. Under Duke’s glare the land was the usual blend of browns and greens, cool and welcoming, whereas the land illuminated by Duchess had turned a dark vermilion, creased with black folds, a harshly inhospitable domain in appearance.
Syrinx requested and received permission to enter a parking orbit from the civil spaceflight authority. Oenone swooped towards the planet in high spirits, chattering happily to the huge flock of voidhawks ahead of it. Three hundred and seventy-five kilometres above the equator a diamante ring was shimmering delicately against the interstellar blackness as twenty-five thousand starships reflected fragments of light from the twin suns off their mirror-bright thermal panels and communication dishes.
Norfolk’s star system wasn’t an obvious choice for a terracompatible world. When the Govcentral scoutship Duke of Rutland emerged into the system in 2207 a preliminary sensor sweep revealed six planets, all of them solid. Two of them were in orbit twenty-eight million kilometres above Duchess; Westmorland and Brenock, forming their own binary as they tumbled round each other at a distance of half a million kilometres. The other four—Derby, Lincoln, Norfolk, and Kent—orbited Duke. It was soon obvious that only Norfolk with its two moons, Argyll and Fife, could support life.
The already cluttered interplanetary space played host to a pair of major asteroid belts, and five minor belts, as well as innumerable rocks which traded stars as their gravity fields duelled for adherents. There was also a considerable quantity of comets and small pebble-sized debris loose in the system. The scoutship’s cosmologist was heard to say that it was almost as though it hadn’t quite finished condensing out of the whirling protostar disk.
One final point against colonization was the lack of a gas giant for the Edenists to mine for He3 . Without a cheap local source of fuel for fusion, industry and spaceflight would be prohibitively expensive.
With this gloomy prognosis in mind, the Duke of Rutland went into orbit around Norfolk to conduct its obligatory resources and environment survey. It was bound to be an odd planet, with its seasons governed by conjunction between the Duke and Duchess rather than its sidereal period: midwinter, which came at a distance of a hundred and seventy-three million kilometres from the coolish primary, was Siberian, while midsummer, at equipoise between two stars, was a time when night vanished completely, bringing a Mediterranean balm. There was no distinction between the usual geographical tropical and temperate zones found on ordinary worlds (although there were small polar ice-caps); instead the seasons were experienced uniformly across the whole planet. Naturally, the aboriginal life followed this cycle, although there were no wild variants from standard evolutionary patterns. Norfolk turned out to have a lower than usual variety of mammals, marine species, and insects. Hibernation was common, in avian species it replaced migration, and they all bred to give birth in the spring. Nothing unusual there. But the plants would only flower and ripen when they were bathed in both yellow and pink light throughout the twenty-three hour, forty-three minute day. That wasn’t a condition which could be duplicated easily anywhere, even on Edenist habitats. It made the plants unique. And uniqueness was always valuable.
The discovery was sufficient for Govcentral’s English State to fund a follow-up ecological assessment mission. After three months classifying aboriginal plants for edibility and taste, midsummer came to Norfolk, and the team hit paydirt.
Oenone slipped into orbit three hundred and seventy-five kilometres above the eccentrically coloured planet, and contracted its distortion field until it was only generating a gravity field for the crew toroid and gathering in cosmic energy. The nearby starships were mostly Adamist cargo vessels, big spheres performing slow balletic thermal rolls; with their dump panels extended they looked bizarrely like cumbersome windmills. Directly ahead of Oenone was a large cargo clipper with the violet and green loops of the Vasilkovsky line prominent on its hull.
The voidhawk was still conversing eagerly with its fellows when Syrinx, Ruben, Oxley, and Tula took the ion-field flyer down to Kesteven, one of the larger islands seven hundred kilometres south of the equator. Its capital was Boston, a trade centre of some hundred and twenty thousand souls, nestling in the intersection of two gentle valleys. The area was heavily forested, and the inhabitants had only thinned the trees out to make room for their houses, almost camouflaging the city from the air. Syrinx could see some parks, and several grey church spires rising up above the trees. The city’s aerodrome was a broad greensward set aside a mile and a half (Norfolk refused to use metric measurements) to the north of its winding leafy boulevards.
Oxley brought the craft in from the north-west, careful not to overfly the city itself. Aircraft were banned on Norfolk, except for a small ambulance and flying doctor service, and ninety per cent of its interstellar trade was conducted at midsummer, which was the only time the planet ever really saw spaceplanes. Consequently, Norfolk’s population were a little sensitive to twenty-five-tonne objects shooting through the sky over their rooftops.
There were over three hundred spaceplanes and ion-field flyers already sitting on the grassy aerodrome when they arrived. Oxley settled three-quarters of a mile from the small cluster of buildings that housed the control tower and aerodrome administration.
The airlock stairs unfolded in front of Syrinx revealing the distant verdant wall of trees, and she saw someone pedalling a bicycle along the long rank of spaceplanes, with a dog running alongside. She breathed in, tasting dry, slightly dusty air with a distinct coppery tang of pollen.
The city’s larger than I remember,ruben said, with a mild sense of perplexity jumbled in with his thoughts.
What I saw looked very orderly, quaint almost. I love the way they’ve incorporated the forest rather than obliterated it.
He raised his eyebrows in dismay. Quaint, she says. Well, don’t tell the natives that.he cleared his throat. “And don’t use affinity too much while you’re around them, they consider it very impolite.”
Syrinx eyed the approaching cyclist. It was a boy no more than fourteen years old, with a satchel slung over his shoulder. I’ll remember.
“They are fairly strict Christians, after all. And our facial expressions give us away.”
“I suppose they do. Does the religious factor affect our chances of getting a cargo?”
“Definitely not, they’re English-ethnic, far too polite to be prejudiced, at least in public.” And while we’re on the subject,he broadcast to his three shipmates, no passes, please. They like to maintain the illusion they have high moral standards. Let them make the running, they invariably do.
“Who, me?” Syrinx asked in mock horror.
Andrew Unwin rode his bicycle up to the group of people standing beside the gleaming purple flyer and braked to a halt, rear wheel squeaking loudly. He had gingerish hair and a sunny face swamped by freckles. His shirt was simple white cotton, with buttons down the front and the arms rolled up to his elbows; his green shorts were held up by a thick black leather belt with an ornate brass buckle. There wasn’t a modern fabric seal anywhere in sight. He glanced at Syrinx’s smart blue ship-tunic with its single silver epaulette star, and stiffened slightly. “Captain, ma’am?”
“That’s me.” She smiled.
Andrew Unwin couldn’t quite keep his formal attitude going, and the corners of his mouth twitched up towards a grin. “Aerodrome Manager’s compliments, Captain, ma’am. He apologizes for not meeting you in person, but we’re chocker busy right now.”
“Yes, I can see that. It’s very kind of him to send you.”
“Oh, Dad didn’t send me. I’m the Acting Passport Officer,” he said proudly, and drew himself up. “Have you got yours, please? I’ve got my processor block.” He dived into his satchel, which excited the dog, who started barking and jumping about. “Stop it, Mel!” he shouted.
Syrinx found she rather liked the idea of a boy helping out like this, walking up to utter strangers with curiosity and awe, obviously never thinking they might be dangerous. It spoke of an easy-going world which had few cares, and trust was prevalent. Perhaps the Adamists could get things right occasionally.
They handed their passport fleks over one at a time for Andrew to slot into his processor block. The unit looked terribly obsolete to Syrinx, fifty years out of date at least.
“Is Drayton’s Import business in Penn Street still going strong?” Ruben asked Andrew Unwin, overdoing his wide I-want-to-be-friends smile.
Andrew gave him a blank stare, then his pixie face was alive with mirth. “Yes, it’s still there. Why, have you been to Norfolk before?”
“Yes, it was a few years ago now, though,” Ruben said.
“All right!” Andrew handed Syrinx her passport flek as his dog sniffed round her feet. “Thank you, Captain, ma’am. Welcome to Norfolk. I hope you find a cargo.”
“That’s very kind of you.” Syrinx sent a silent affinity command to the dog to desist, only to feel foolish when it ignored her.
Andrew Unwin was looking up expectantly.
“For your trouble,” Ruben murmured, and his hand passed over Andrew’s.
“Thank you, sir!” There was a silver flash as he pocketed the coin.