“They appear to take a relaxed attitude toward that sort of thing,” Adele said. She too spoke quietly, though there probably wasn’t any need for it. Across the tree-fringed harbor a barge was unloading containers into a warehouse; that and the waiting vehicle were the only signs of life. “I couldn’t find any customs records. Ships pay a landing fee irrespective of their cargo or even their size—though that may be because none of the ships landing on Tegeli are very big.”
“Daniel, come!” Valentina said, waving. “The boy is waiting to take us to Pansuela House.”
Daniel nodded assent and walked the rest of the way up the path to the car. At his side Adele murmured tartly, “The ‘boy’ is forty if he’s a day. Based on what I’ve found regarding Tegelan society, the Klimovs should find themselves right at home here.”
The driver—who was indeed forty or more, a swarthy, muscular man with flaring mustachios, held the rear door open for them. Daniel suspected the car’s thick sides were floatation chambers. The wheels and their balloon tires were wider than they were high; instead of normal treads they were scooped into a series of curved paddles. Though the vehicle had very low clearance, its muddy underside was obviously intended to skid through muck as the wheels splashed forward.
For all the vehicle’s external size, space within was at a premium. The Klimovs had taken the central pair of bucket seats. There were two more seats in back and an uncushioned bench in front.
As the driver handed Adele into a back seat, Hogg and Tovera conferred under their breath. Tovera stepped in after Adele, seating herself on the rear deck with her legs between the bucket seats; the attaché case was in her lap. Hogg got into the front while the driver stared in puzzlement at Tovera.
“That’s quite all right,” said Daniel as he got in. “We prefer having a servant with us in the back.”
It wasn’t worth arguing about. If Hogg and Tovera had decided it between them, that was most likely the way it was going to be.
“Just drive us to the Pansuelas,” he continued aloud as he pulled the low door out of the driver’s hand and closed it. “How far is it, anyway?”
“Not far, patron,” the driver said, bowing again. He walked around to his door.
“It’s one point seven miles,” said Adele quietly. She started to get out her data unit. “I can show you—”
“No need for that,” Daniel said, smiling. “Though when we have some leisure, if you have a natural history database—”
“Of course,” said Adele, in much the same tone as if he’d asked if she’d remembered to bring a change of clothes. Come to think, it was much more likely that she’d have failed to pack clothes than that she’d neglect information she knew was of interest to Daniel.
“Excellent,” Daniel said as the driver clutched in the diesel engine and turned the car tightly. “This appears to be one of those worlds where nature comes to us.”
They moved off at gathering speed. The road was a dirt causeway, built a few feet up from sea level by mats of plastic sheet-stock anchored by pilings cut from the interlacing trunks of the forest itself. So far as Daniel could tell the region was a tidal flat with no features except for the homogenous forest, but for some reason the road curved back and forth like a snake’s track.
The tires rolled smoothly over the soggy ground, though their thrum was loud enough to prevent normal speech. Sheets of mud and muddy water sprayed out to either side as the car negotiated particularly soft places, but the splashes didn’t soak the passengers as Daniel had expected they would.
He leaned close to Adele’s ear and said, “I see why they were bringing processed fish to the warehouse by barge. Ground transport of bulky goods would be next to impossible, even between points on the same island.”
Adele looked at him and nodded, indicating she’d heard him and understood. Then she went back to whatever she was doing on her data unit, regardless of the car’s motion—indicating that she didn’t care about the difficulties of bulk transport on Tegeli.