Chapter 5
Merde alors! thought Marmion de Revers Algemeine as she looked out the shuttle window at a piebald landscape covered half with mud, half with dirty ice and snow. What have I gotten myself into this time? Oh, well, I promised Whit! No one in their right mind would want Mad Matt to make a unilateral decision on anything, up to and including when people should be allowed to use the sanitary facilities.
Vice-Chairman Matthew Luzon had already started his program,” Marmion suspected, when he insisted that the shuttle pilot divert to the site of “this so-called” volcano the planet was supposed to haveextruded? No, the word was erupted. They were also to swing past the area where Whittaker Fiske and everyone were supposed to have had their senses taken over by this so-distant “sentient” planet.
Marmion rather liked the notion of a planet with a mind of its own. So few people could boast that sort of decisiveness. Especially Mad Matt. She chided herself for using that term: who knew when she might tactlessly blurt it out by mistake? Her tongue sometimes didn’t wait for mental censorship anymore. Did that show she was getting some sense? Or losing what she had?
No, she wasn’t losing an iota of her good sense, she told herself firmly, remembering the fiscal coup she had just contrived with three supposedly moribund technical companies. They’d each had something the others needed, and none of their CEOs had had the sense to compromise an inch in a takeover, hostile or friendly. So, last year, she’d instructed one of her holding companies to buy out all three. Banging the right heads together and leaving the sensible ones in charge had resulted in such a whopping great net profit after taxes that she’d soon have to form yet another holding company to hide that financial triumph. No matter how Mad Mattno, no, no, Matthewboasted of his own recent successes, she’d done better than he had by several billions. But she wasn’t one to brag.
“You can’t really deny that that’s one of the shapes volcanoes assume,” she said, having heard what Matthew was muttering to one of his numerous assistants.
“And, my dear, how ever did you know there are various types of volcanoes? Matthew asked in that smarmy voice of his. His assistants smiled fatuously at him and superciliously at her.
‘Because I have a master’s degree in geology,” she said, smiling sweetly at all of them.
‘But it’s not doing anything now,” Matthew remarked, and pointed out the square window that gave a good view of the “dimple” of the cone as the shuttle circled. Not so much as a wisp of smoke or a belch of ash was visible, but for kilometers around the land was shades of gray from cooling lava or wet, mud-streaked ash.
“If you’ve seen enough, Dr. Luzon,” the pilot said over the intercom, “I’ll proceed to the cave-site coordinates.”
Matthew flicked a hand at one of his assistants, who immediately issued the actual order.
“Are we going to land and investigate the cave, Matthew?” Marmion asked ingenuously.
“I just wanted to orient myself for the purpose of further on-the-spot investigations.”
“Wise.”
He made a big show of peering down at the site when they reached it minutes later. Marmion needed only to confirm that the rocky up thrust of the cliff was visibly a limestone formation and most certainly riddled with caves. Since Whittaker Fiske was unlikely to fall for illusions, much less delusions, she’d take the rest of his report as valid until she had substantial reason to doubt it. Whit was not one to jeopardize either his position with Intergal or his reputation with wild and unprovable statements.
“This is the right place?” Matthew asked, his expression bland, but Marmion knew not to trust that.
“We’re right over the coordinates I was given, Dr. Luzon,” the pilot said. “The stream is visible and the ledge, and my scanner’s picking up the copter footprints on the nearest possible landing surface. Several footprints, and different size copters.”
“Can’t deny the evidence, can we?” Matthew said. “All right. Proceed for an aerial pass over that town that young Fiske mentioned Kil . . something.”