“Uh, Colonel, is this relevant?” Lysander asked.
“I think so.”
“It’s all right,” Ursula said. “It was—Oskar Girerd’s sixteenth birthday party. There were about a dozen planters and their sons. Most of the boys were about Oskar’s age. But they all left about midnight.”
“All? No overnight guests?”
“Well, let’s see. There was quite a crowd at breakfast. Supervisors and overseers and—of course. Jonkheer van Hoorn and his son were still there.”
“Supervisors and overseers,” Falkenberg said. “Any military people?”
“I don’t think so—well, there were the Girerds’ own guards. At least that’s who I thought they were.”
“Uniforms?”
She shrugged. “Standard camouflage coveralls. Nothing I’d recognize.”
“Think hard,” Falkenberg said. “Badges? Patches?”
She shook her head. “None I remember.”
“Did any of them wear earrings?”
“Why—well, yes, now that you mention it. Not exactly rings. Cuffs. Two of the security people—”
“Wore bulldog ear cuffs,” Falkenberg said.
“How did you know that?” Lysander began. “Ah. Of course. Barton’s Bulldogs—”
“Was once their official name,” Falkenberg said. “May still be. What would you engrave on a ‘bastard’ earring?” He shook his head. “One or two things puzzle me. Miss Gordon, what was the weather like the day before this party?”
“Terrible. It was one of the last big storms of the harvest season, and it rained all week. We weren’t sure I’d be able to get there.”
Falkenberg typed rapidly. “And more bad weather was forecast.”
“I don’t know. I guess so—”
“I’m not guessing,” Falkenberg said. He gestured toward the data screen. “So. They knew they had exactly one night of good weather for at least several days to come. Still, it seems exceedingly stupid of them to have run the operation with strangers on the premises. Just what were—just how did you come to be invited to that party, Miss Gordon?”
“Colonel, really, I don’t think—”
“Your Highness, Miss Gordon, I am not asking out of idle curiosity.”
“I was—invited—by Jonkheer van Hoorn.”
“Directly?”
“No, sir.” She set her lips. “They bought me for the night from the Hilton.”
“I see. Could—would they do this without consulting the Girerd family?”
“It’s not the way it’s usually done, but it does happen.” She glanced quickly at Lysander and went on. “This wasn’t the first time.”
“Thank you.”
“Colonel—”
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. I had to establish whether the Girerds were incredibly stupid or had no choice in the matter. Miss Gordon, the one thing that surprises me is that you were allowed to leave that house alive.”
“I—” She shivered. “I never thought of that.”
“Doubtless there were reasons. You would have been missed by your employers and—”
“And others,” Ursula finished for him.
“Yes. Well. You may have done us quite a service,” Falkenberg said. He took off his spectacles and turned to Lysander. “Your Highness. Under the circumstances, I suggest that Miss Gordon remain a guest of the Regiment. She might not be safe at the Hilton.”
“But I have to go back!” Ursula protested. “My contract—”
“I doubt you need concern yourself with your contract any longer,” Falkenberg said. “We’ll buy what’s left of it.”
“But—I need the job. Not that it matters, I guess. The Hilton won’t keep a girl who talks about her clients.”
“I think you’ll find no lack of alternatives,” Falkenberg said. “If need be, we can discuss the matter with Governor Blaine.” He stood. “Now, if you’ll both excuse me—”
“Certainly, Colonel.” Lysander stood. As he opened the door for Ursula he heard Falkenberg talking rapidly into the intercom.
XVII
Corporal Tandon heard a faint chirp in his left ear. He touched the control in his breast pocket. “Sarge,” he whispered into his throat mike. “Stand by. Message coming in.”
Sergeant Miscowsky acknowledged with a tiny shrug. He didn’t look around to where Tandon was standing behind him, but went on talking with the village headman. Etienne Ledoux was the blackest man Miscowsky had ever seen. Although clearly past his forties, he had slim hips and a solid barrel chest. He spoke excellent Anglic, sometimes breaking into the Cooney patois to shout something to a villager or make a point with Purdy, then switching back to Anglic without a pause. His voice was musical and surprisingly high. Tough-looking, though, Miscowsky thought. Could have been a good boxer.
“Yeah, we can leave some of the penicillin, no problem,” Miscowsky said. “Fungus powder, too. We carry lots.”
“So do Major Barton’s men,” Ledoux said. He set his tea cup down on the table between them and grinned broadly. “For my people’s sake I am not sorry you both are trying to bribe us.”
Miscowsky grinned back. “And I’m glad we’ve got your nephew with us.”
“Buford was ambitious,” Ledoux said. “Not that this place could do much to keep an ambitious boy.” His grin faded as he surveyed the oblong clearing from the open thatched pavilion where they sat. Miscowsky followed his gaze. Thatch-and-wicker houses stood on two-meter stilts. A long house on a low platform occupied the side of the village square opposite them. There was a well in one corner of the square, and the brick-lined fire pit in the center was surrounded by benches and tables much like picnic tables.
“Looks pretty good to me,” Miscowsky said. “I’ve seen pictures of jungle living on Earth. This doesn’t seem so bad.”
“If you like the jungle it is not bad at all,” Ledoux said. He paused, and Miscowsky thought he seemed to come to a decision. “Sergeant, let me be frank with you. We cannot help you. Whatever your quarrel is with Major Barton, we want no part of it. We hold no title to this land. In truth, we own nothing. We survive because the planters don’t think we’re worth the trouble to evict us—”
“I know,” Miscowsky said. “The Old Man—Cap’n Frazer—told us. Maybe he could talk to the governor about it.”
Ledoux laughed. “You are kind, Sergeant. But I cannot quite believe your governor would make enemies for our sake.”
“Maybe not.” Miscowsky sipped tea. Behind him Corporal Tandon excused himself and went off to the privy behind the long house. “Cap’n Frazer says the governor’s a pretty good guy, though. And the local planters here are already his enemies. They hired Barton.”
Ledoux poured more tea and Miscowsky waited. They’d stressed patience in his training. You don’t ask too many questions on a prison planet, and anyway Purdy had told him most of the story. Ledoux, and Purdy’s father, and some others like them had led a band of time-expired convicts into the jungle, as far from the plantations as they could get and still be able to get back to a road if they had to. By now most of the villagers didn’t need or want anything to do with roads or what was at the end of them; but they’d done too much work, clearing jungle and damming streams, to move on.
Nobody knew how many villages like this existed. Satellite photos said several hundred, but most of those were a lot smaller: two or three families, no more. Purdy said his uncle’s compound was one of the largest, with almost two hundred people, counting the children.
“Heck, a few more years and you folks will outnumber the planters,” Miscowksy said.
He missed Ledoux’s reply. Tandon’s voice spoke in his ear. “Sarge, we’ve got new orders. There’s a plantation about fifty klicks southwest, on the sea. Cap’n wants us to haul ass down there. Top priority.”
Shit fire. Miscowsky visualized the map. Cut straight across the jungle, just about due southwest. No trails mapped. Maybe they’d find one. Have to find something. He gave hand signals to the others. Leave the supplies and get moving, and hope Ledoux didn’t think they were being impolite.
* * *
“Sure ain’t much for a trail,” Miscowsky muttered. “They want somebody up there in a hurry, they’d do better to drop a new team in closer.”
“Cap’n Frazer said they couldn’t do that,” Tandon said. “Regiment thinks they’ll be watching that place real close.”
“What’s up there anyway?” Cloudwalker asked.
“I couldn’t ask, could I? Only transmission we made was a click to acknowledge orders. One thing, we’re supposed to report helicopter traffic, day or night. Break radio silence on that one.”
“Won’t the rebels be waiting for us?” Purdy asked. “I mean, if we can hear headquarters, they can too, right?”
Miscowsky waved to shush them while they went through a thicket. Then the underbrush thinned and it was safe to talk again. “Nope,” Tandon said. “Look, what happens is they send up a chopper so it can see us. Not really see us, but we’re in the line of sight, right? Then they aim a beam where they think we are. When I hear it, I click the set. That sends back a signal they can home in on. They narrow the beam down so it’s no bigger’n ten meters when it gets to us. Anybody wants to listen to that, he’s got to be between us and the chopper. Not much chance of that.”