The Last Colony Part 11

"I'm ready to go," Zane said.

"Two quick things," Bennett said to me. "I'm almost done printing most of the data files you were given when we came here, so you can have those in hard copy. I can't print the video and audio files, but I'll run them through a processor to get you transcripts."

"Okay, good," I said. "What was the second thing?"

"I went around the camp with a monitor like you asked and looked for wireless signals," Bennett said. Trujillo raised an eyebrow at this. "The monitor is solid state," Bennett said to him. "Doesn't send, only receives. Anyway, I think you should know there are three wireless devices still out there. And they're still transmitting."

"I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about," Jann Kranjic said.

For not the first time, I restrained the urge to punch Kranjic in the temple. "Do we really need to do this the hard way, Jann?" I said. "I'd like to pretend we're not twelve years old and that we're not having an 'am to, am not' sort of conversation."

"I turned over my PDA just like everyone else did," Kranjic said, and then motioned back to Beata, who was lying on her cot, a washcloth over her eyes. Beata was apparently p.r.o.ne to migraines. "And Beata turned in her PDA and her camera cap. You have everything we have."

I glanced over at Beata. "Well, Beata?" I said.

Beata raised the edge of her washcloth and looked over, wincing. Then she sighed and reapplied her washcloth. "Check his underwear," she said.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"Beata," Kranjic said.

"His underwear," Beata said. "At least one pair has a pouch in the elastic that hides a small recorder. He's got a pin of the Umbrian flag that's an audio-video input. He's probably got it on right now."

"You b.i.t.c.h," Kranjic said, subconsciously covering his pin. "You're fired."

"That's funny," Beata said, pressing the washcloth against her eyes. "We're a thousand light-years from anywhere, we have no chance of ever getting back to Umbria, you spend your days reciting overblown notes into your underwear for a book you'll never write, and I'm fired and I'm fired. Get a grip, Jann."

Kranjic stood to make a dramatic exit. "Jann," I said, and held out my hand. Jann s.n.a.t.c.hed off his pin and pressed it into my palm.

"Want my underwear now?" He sneered.

"Keep the underwear," I said. "Just give me the recorder."

"Years from now, people are going to want to know the story of this colony," Kranjic said, as he fumbled with his underwear from inside his trousers. "They're going to want to know the story, and when they go looking for it, they're not going to find anything. And they're not going to find anything because its leaders spent their time censoring the only member of the press in the entire colony."

"Beata's a member of the press," I said.

"She's a camerawoman camerawoman," Kranjic said, slapping over the recorder. "It's not the same thing."

"I'm not censoring you," I said. "I just can't allow you to jeopardize the colony. I'm going to take this recorder and have Jerry Bennett print you out a transcript of the notes, in very tiny type, because I don't want to waste paper. So you'll have these notes. And if you go find Savitri you can tell her I asked her to give you one of her notepads. One One, Jann. She needs the rest for our work. Then if you need any more you can see what the Mennonites have to say about it."

"You want me to write out my notes," Kranjic said. "In longhand."

"It worked for Samuel Pepys," I said.

"You're a.s.suming Jann knows how to write," Beata mumbled from her cot.

"b.i.t.c.h," Kranjic said, and left the tent.

"It's a stormy marriage," Beata said laconically.

"Apparently," I said. "You want a divorce?"

"Depends," Beata said, raising her washcloth again. "Think your a.s.sistant would be up for a date?"

"In the entire time I've known her I haven't known her to date anyone," I said.

"So that's a 'no,' " Beata said.

"It's a 'h.e.l.l if I know,' " I said.

"Hmmmm," Beata said, dropping the cloth back down. "Tempting. But I'll stay married for now. It irritates Jann. After all the irritation he's provided me over the years, it's nice to return the favor."

"Stormy marriage," I said.

"Apparently," Beata said.

"We must refuse," Hickory said to me. It and d.i.c.kory and I were in the Black Box. I figured that when I told the two Obin that they needed to give up their wireless consciousness implants, they should be allowed to be conscious to hear it.

"You've never refused an order of mine before," I said.

"None of your orders has ever violated our treaty," Hickory said. "Our treaty with the Colonial Union allows the two of us to be with Zoe. It also allows us to record those experiences and share them with other Obin. Ordering us to surrender our consciousness interferes with this. It violates our treaty."

"You could choose to surrender your implants," I said. "That would solve the problem."

"We would not choose to," Hickory said. "It would be an abdication of our responsibility to the other Obin."

"I could tell Zoe to tell you to give them up," I said. "I can't imagine you'd ignore her order."

Hickory and d.i.c.kory leaned in together for a moment, then leaned out again. "That would be distressful," Hickory said. I reflected that it was the first time I had ever heard that word provide such apocalyptic gravity "You understand I have no desire to do this," I said. "But our orders from the Colonial Union are clear. We can't let anything provide easy evidence we're on this world. The Conclave will exterminate us. All of us, including, you two and Zoe."

"We have considered the possibility," Hickory said. "We believe the risk to be negligible."

"Remind me to show you a little video I have," I said.

"We have seen it," Hickory said. "It was provided to our government as well as yours."

"How can you see that and not not see that the Conclave represents a threat to us?" I asked. see that the Conclave represents a threat to us?" I asked.

"We viewed the video carefully," Hickory said. "We believe the risk to be negligible."

"It's not your decision to make," I said.

"It is," Hickory said. "By our treaty."

"I am the legal authority on this planet," I said.

"You are," Hickory said. "But you may not abrogate a treaty for your convenience."

"Not getting an entire colony slaughtered is not a convenience convenience," I said.

"Removing all wireless devices to avoid detection is a convenience," Hickory said.

"Why don't you ever talk?" I said to d.i.c.kory.

"I have yet to disagree with Hickory," d.i.c.kory said.

I stewed.

"We have a problem," I said. "I can't force you to surrender your implants, but I can't let you run around with them, either. Answer me this: Is it a violation of your treaty for me to require you to stay here here, in this room, so long as I have Zoe visit you on a regular basis?"

Hickory thought about it. "No," it said. "It is not what we prefer."

"It's not what I prefer, either," I said. "But I don't think I have a choice."

Hickory and d.i.c.kory conferred again for several minutes. "This room is covered in wave-masking material," Hickory said. "Give us some. We can use use it to cover our devices and ourselves."

"We don't have any more right now," I said. "We need to make more. It might take some time."

"As long as you agree to this solution we will accommodate the production time," Hickory said. "During that time we will not use our implants outside this room, but you will ask Zoe to visit us here."

"Fine," I said. "Thank you."

"You are welcome," Hickory said. "Maybe this will be for the best. Since we have been here, we have noticed she has not had as much time for us."

"She's being a teenager," I said. "New friends. New planet. New boyfriend."

"Yes. Enzo," Hickory said. "We feel deeply ambivalent about him."

"Join the club," I said.

"We can remove him," Hickory said.

"Really, no," I said.

"Perhaps later," Hickory said.

"Rather than killing off Zoe's potential suitors, I'd prefer the two of you focus on helping Jane find whatever it is that's out there pawing on our perimeter," I said. "It's probably less emotionally satisfying, but in the grand scheme of things, it's going to be more useful."

Jane plopped the thing down on the floor of the Council meeting. It looked vaguely like a large coyote, if coyotes had four eyes and paws with opposable thumbs. "d.i.c.kory found this one inside one of the excavations. There were two others with it but they ran off. d.i.c.kory killed this one as it was trying to get away."

"He shot it?" asked Marta Piro.

"He killed it with a knife," Jane said. This caused some uneasy muttering; most of the Council and colonists were still deeply uncomfortable with the Obin.

"Do you think this is one of the predators you were concerned about?" Manfred Trujillo asked.

"It might be," Jane said.

"Might be," Trujillo said.

"The paws are the right shape for the marks we've seen," Jane said. "But it seems small to me."

"But small or not, something like this could have made the marks," Trujillo said.

"It's possible," Jane said.

"Have you seen any larger ones?" asked Lee Chen.

"No," Jane said, and looked over to me. "I've been out on the night watch on the last three days and last night was the first time we've seen anything approach the barrier at all."

"Hiram, you've been out past the barrier almost every day," Trujillo said. "Have you seen anything like this?"

"I've seen some animals," Hiram said. "But they've been plant eaters, as far as I could see. I haven't seen anything that looks like this thing. But then I've not been out past the barrier at night, either, and Administrator Sagan here thinks these are active during the night."

"But she hasn't seen any more of them," Marie Black said. "We're holding off settling because of phantoms."

"The scratches and holes were real enough," I said.

"I'm not arguing that," Black said. "But maybe they were isolated incidents. Perhaps a pack of these animals was just pa.s.sing through several days ago and was curious about the barrier. Once they couldn't get through, they moved on."

"It's possible," Jane said again. From her tone I could tell she didn't think much of Black's theory.

"How much longer are we going to hold off on settling because of this?" Paulo Gutierrez asked. "I've got people who are going insane waiting for us to stop farting around. The last few days people have started getting in each other's faces about idiotic things. And we're running against time now, aren't we? It's spring here now, and we've got to start planting crops and readying grazing fields for the livestock. We've already eaten through two weeks of food. If we don't start colonizing, we're going to be in deep s.h.i.+t."

"We haven't been farting around," I said. "We've been dropped onto a planet about which we know nothing. We had to take the time to make sure it wasn't going to flat-out kill us."

"We're not dead yet," Trujillo said, interjecting himself. "So that's a good sign. Paolo, step back for a minute. Perry is absolutely right. We couldn't have just wandered out into this planet and started setting up farms. But Paolo's right, too, Perry. We're at a point where we can't stay stuck behind a barricade. Sagan's had three days to find more evidence of these creatures, and we've killed one of them. We need to be cautious, yes. And we need to keep studying Roanoke. But we need to get colonizing, too."

The entire Council was staring at me, waiting to hear what I would say. I glanced over at Jane, who gave one of her nearly imperceptible shrugs. She wasn't entirely convinced that there wasn't a real threat out there, but aside from the one dead creature, she had nothing definitive. And Trujillo was right; it was time to get colonizing.

"Agreed," I said.

"You let Trujillo take that meeting away from you," Jane said, as we got ready for bed. She kept her voice low; Zoe was already asleep. Hickory and d.i.c.kory were standing impa.s.sively on the other side of our screen in the administrative tent. They were wearing full body suits made from the first bolt of the newly produced nan.o.botic mesh. The suits locked in the wireless signals; they also turned the Obin into walking shadows. They might have been asleep as well; it was hard to tell.

"I suppose I did," I said. "Trujillo's a professional politician. He'll do that sometimes. Especially when he's right. We do need to move on getting people out of the village."

"I want to make sure each wave of homesteaders has some weapons training," Jane said.

"I think that's a fine idea," I said. "You're not likely to convince the Mennonites, however."

"I have concerns about that," Jane said.

"You're just going to have to be concerned, then," I said.

"They're our knowledge base," Jane said. "They're the ones who know how to operate all the nonautomated machinery and make things without pressing b.u.t.tons. I don't want them getting eaten."

"If you want to keep an extra close watch on the Mennonites, I don't have a problem with that," I said. "But if you think you're going to get them to stop being who they are, you're in for a surprise. And it's because of who they are that they're in a position to save our collective bacon."