“If I’ve read the text correctly,” she resumed as she started down the end stairs, “he claims to have formed a romantic alliance within the tribe. And to have fathered a child.”
A group of Sexburgans chattering in accented Universal were coming up in a cluster around a woman so pale that Adele would have guessed she was an albino, except that her eyes were an icy gray-blue. The Sexburgans all watched the pale woman, but her eyes followed Dorst until she disappeared through the door onto the second floor.
“That can’t be, ma’am,” Dorst said. The outside door was stiff; it resisted Adele until the midshipman hit it, high and low with his palm and bootsole. “Species aren’t interfertile, and for sure animals on two different planets can’t breed.”
“That was my understanding also,” Adele said. Insufficient data could cause mistakes. Certainty about matters where the data were insufficient was a mistake on its face. “On the other hand, I wasn’t there and the writer very possibly was.”
The streets of Spires weren’t lighted, and the sky was dark except for the stars. They were unfamiliar constellations in a manner of speaking, but Adele didn’t know anything about the stars above Cinnabar either. She was a city dweller, and if she’d ever been interested in the night sky she’d have called up a computer projection of it.
“Ma’am?” Dorst said, falling abreast as they started up the street. “Lieutenant Mon’s going to send our jeep south to find the captain and, and the others. It can’t bring them back all at once if there’s a problem, but it’ll take another radio and some medical supplies. Are you going along?”
A ship took off from the harbor. Adele lowered her eyes, shielding them further with her hand as she waited for the plasma’s artificial thunder to subside.
Dorst slipped his goggles into place, watching the liftoff as he strode along. “It’s the Achilles, that’s the yacht that made the fast run from Cinnabar,” he shouted. “Of course, that was nothing to what we did under Captain Leary.”
“I’m sure Lieutenant Mon can find more suitable personnel for a search party on South Land,” Adele said, going back to the previous question. “I intend to learn what I can here about the Captal da Lund and his friends.”
Percussion bands were playing at the upper and lower ends of the street, the tunes syncopating one another. Because Adele was unfamiliar with the local instrumentation, it took her a moment to realize that the counterpoint wasn’t intended. The Strymonian yacht had shrunk to an unusually bright star in the heavens.
“And I think,” she added, “that I’m going to see where the Achilles is off to.”
Dorst looked at her. She shrugged and grinned. “Just a feeling,” Adele said. “An instinct, if you like.”
Chapter Seventeen
The windblown grit didn’t scratch the moissanite visors protecting the faces of the detachment, but bare skin—the backs of Daniel’s hands and his throat above his collar—already felt as though it was sunburned. What was it going to be like a week from now?
Daniel grinned broadly. Well, that was something he could wait a week to learn. Any number of things could happen before then to render present concern empty. Some of the possibilities were even survivable.
“Unit,” he said to key the general channel. “We’ll camp here, down in the swale and out of the wind. Hogg, choose a site for the tent. Vesey, take Matahurd and see if there isn’t water here too. Captain out.”
Daniel took his knapsack off and waited as the crewmen slid over the crumbling bank. The region must get some rain for this dry riverbed and its contributory ravines to exist, but rain must be very infrequent. The hard-stemmed bushes growing to the level of the bank were at least several years old; a downpour as fierce as the ones that had excavated the riverbed would uproot any vegetation present at the time.
When Daniel himself stepped down, the sudden absence of wind was as great a relief as warm shelter after a blizzard. He hadn’t appreciated just how enervating the wind’s cutting pressure was until he’d escaped it—for a time.