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  Danner turned a page.

  SEC had not backed their representative; they had approved long‑term settlement. Taishan had fought, taking the issue as high as she could before being given an official warning. Danner frowned. That warning seemed to have knocked the stuffing from Taishan; she had stopped complaining and accepted another post. But just two days before departure she had resigned abruptly.

  Danner looked at the closed face in the picture again. How did it feel to have one’s trained opinion judged worthless? What did it do to one’s self‑esteem? She hoped she would never find out.

  Taishan had become Professor of ET Anthropology at Aberystwyth. The dossier was thorough. It listed her publications: articles on subjects ranging from the evolution of Welsh to the deterioration of kinship allegiance among the population of Gallipoli since reintegration. There were two book‑length works; Danner did not have to read the abstract for one, Uneasy Alliance–SEC As Independent Arbiter?, to guess the subject matter. Also listed were her extracurricular activities (tai chi, chi kung, various biofeedback disciplines), her credit rating (mid‑range), and biographical details of her last lover (no leverage possibilities noted). A note indicated that although her father was a hardline antigovernment activist, Taishan had had little contact with him since the death of her mother several months before recontract. A psychological report made several guesses as to why that might be, but Danner did not put much faith in such things. The important thing about the psych sheet was the fact that they could not come up with enough objections to outweigh Taishan’s qualifications for the job of SEC rep on this kind of world. She had the ability to spend large periods of time alone, an innate belief in herself, a prodigious linguistic talent, and superb physical fitness. She was a flawed SEC tool, yes, but the best they had.

  Danner had never heard of an SEC employee getting a second chance. There again, she did not know of many people who would volunteer to risk their lives for something as abstract as knowledge.

  She turned to the section at the back of the report, “Miscellaneous.” After reading one paragraph, she closed the dossier. There was no reason she needed to know Taishan’s sexual preferences or her personal hygiene habits.

  Her screen chimed and displayed the face of Officer Vincio, her administrative assistant.

  “Representative Taishan is here and wishes to see you at your earliest convenience, ma’am.”

  “Give me two minutes.” She slid the dossier into a drawer. She had time to push her desk against one wall and pull two chairs into a more informal setting around a low table before Vincio rapped on her door and ushered in a tallish, stocky woman with thick, dark hair.

  Danner took her hands in greeting. They were smooth and cool. Her eyes were brown, with a hint of green, but that might have been the light. She chose the chair nearest the door, but seemed relaxed enough.

  “You’re well rested?” Danner asked politely.

  “ Estradekeeps Port Central time.”

  “Of course.”

  The representative wore the plainest clothes available in Company issue: soft trousers in a dark green weave and a loose‑fitting brown padded shirt. No adornment. Danner suspected confidence rather than self‑effacement; it took something to go in search of and requisition stores without help within–she looked at her wrist–two hours of landing on a planet.

  “Is your time limited?”

  Marghe’s tone seemed neutral enough. Danner decided to accept the question at face value. “No,” she said. “Or rather, yes, in a general sense, but this afternoon I’m at your disposal.”

  Her words seemed to run off Marghe’s smooth exterior and Danner felt as though she were facing a mirrored glass ball. She did not have time to waste fencing. She stood up, opened her desk drawer, withdrew the dossier. “This is your file. Here.” She held it out. Marghe hesitated, then took it. “It makes interesting reading, but after just two minutes with you, I feel the psychologists have made some fundamental mistakes.” Marghe turned the file over in her hands without opening it. “They think you’ve come here for the same reason that you don’t visit your father: so that you don’t have to face the reality of your mother’s death. The way they see it, while you’re off Earth, you can believe that everything’s the same back there as it was before.”

  “As you say, they’ve made a fundamental mistake.” The file remained unopened in her lap.

  Vincio tapped on the door. Danner and Marghe were silent as she brought in a tray of refreshments, put it down on the table between them, and left.

  Danner poured steaming saffron liquid into a white porcelain cup and handed it to Marghe. Its scent was delicate, aromatic. “Dap. A local tea. It’s a mild stimulant, weaker than caffeine. It’s a common barter commodity, with, I’m told, a standard value, rather like a currency.”

  Marghe traced the smooth rim of her cup with a fingertip.

  “The pottery was made by one of our cable technicians.” She sipped at her own cup, rolled the aftertaste around her mouth. “It reminds me of dried apricots, though everyone finds something different in it.”

  Marghe took a small sip. “It tastes like comfrey.” She moved the still‑unopened dossier from her lap to the table.

  “I want you to keep that,” Danner said. “I have no use for it.” She got up and retrieved another folder from her desk drawer. “I’d also like you to have this, though on a temporary basis. It’s another security dossier.” She held it out. “The subject is myself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I want you to read it, as I’ve read yours, so that we at least have a basis for communication. I want–” She stood abruptly, crossed to her desk, and keyed her screen to a slowly turning representation of Jeep. “Come here. Look. A whole planet. I’m supposed to oversee the safety of every single human being on this planet, and at the same time lay cables, set up communication relays, initiate geographical surveys. Hard enough. What makes it infinitely harder is the fact that I’m operating on one‑third staffing levels–under a hundred Mirrors and less than three hundred technicians to do the work of over a thousand. More than half my equipment is missing or not functioning properly. Add to that the fact that the social structure here is even more out of whack than usual because every single member of my staff is female, then add to thata virus that might mean none of us ever leaves this place again. ”

  Banner looked at the representative, fresh off the gig. Do you understand? she wanted to say. Do you have any idea what we’re up against? “What all this adds up to is simple. Uncertainty. That might not sound too bad, but what it means is that the rules don’t work here. It means that nothing has to be the way you expect it to be.”

  Marghe poured herself more dap–to buy time, Danner thought. “I can’t just forget everything that’s happened in the past, everything I know.”

  “I’m not asking you to forget. I’m asking you to put aside your wariness, just for awhile. I know what happened to you on Beaver, but this is Jeep. I don’t want to hurt you in any way–just the opposite. I need you to be willing to try. I need you on my side.” Danner had no idea if she was getting through. “Please, read the dossier. I don’t know how else to prove my faith.”

  Marghe had one hand in her pocket. Danner saw the weave of the representative’s trousers move as she clenched and unclenched her fist.

  “Don’t decide anything for now. Just take the dossier with you and think about it this evening.” She opened another drawer in her desk. Disks glittered. ”You’ll need these. Janet Eagan left them for you. Read them, call me in the morning.”

  Marghe walked alongside the ceramic‑and‑wire perimeter of Port Central, trying to think. Somewhere behind the clouds that at this time of year almost always covered Jeep’s sky, the sun was setting, turning the gray over the living mods into a swirl of pearl and tangerine. The evening breeze faltered, then changed direction, hissing through the grass around her ankles. The grass stretched to the horizon, broken only by the occasi
onal low bush with black, hard‑looking stems and pale trails of seed fluff. There were no trees. The location had been chosen for its open aspect: easily defended.

  That was typical of the way a Mirror’s mind worked. Attack, Defend. Advantage. Disadvantage. Always looking for the edge, looking for a lever.

  Three years ago she had walked like this for hours over the hills in Wales, seeking to forget the way her mother had tried to smile as she coughed and coughed and finally stopped breathing. Some new kind of viral pneumonia, they said. She had been sick only three days.

  Walking like this when she was unused to the gravity was not helping at all. It had not helped much then, either. She walked slowly back to her mod.

  It was easy to override the door controls. She sat with her legs sticking out onto the grass and her back warmed by the air streaming from inside. A woman stepped from a mod further down the row and raised a hand in casual greeting. Her hair was still wet from a shower and she wore what looked like a homemade skirt. Marghe waved back, glad they were too far away to speak. The woman walked past the mod with the handmade brick doorway and followed the path around a curve and out of Marghe’s sight.

  She reached down and pulled up a blade of grass. It was a flattened, hollow tube. Cautiously, she put the broken end in her mouth. It did not taste like grass, but she chewed on it anyway.

  Banner’s dossier had not been at all what she had expected. This was no by‑the‑book career officer. Most startling had been the revelation that it had been the young Danner, on Jeep on her first tour of duty as a lieutenant, who was the mysterious Mirror of rumor–the one who had helped Courtivron circumvent SEC and Company corruption and bring the Jink and Oriyest v. Companycase to court.

  Who are you, Danner? Can I trust you?

  She wondered how much Danner knew about the Kurst, and what advice Sara Hiam might give in this situation.

  She sat outside until it was dark. The heaving cloud blurred two moons to a soft silver glow; the third moon was too small to be visible through the overcast. The night was cool and silent–no insects. Two searchlights speared the grass outside the perimeter, and the unlit grass looked black. She wondered what the indigenous population thought of Port Central, and when she would get to see her first native.

  Her muscles ached, from the walking, from the gravity. She went inside where it was warm and went to bed.

  She dreamed that a native spoke to her, but she could not understand, and she stood by helplessly while the native rotted and died of some disease. She buried the pathetic thing, then found a Mirror kneeling by the grave. She knew it was Danner, but when the Mirror flipped up her visor, underneath there was no face.

  Danner agreed to see her before lunch the next day. Marghe dressed slowly and checked her pockets twice for the FN‑17 before she left the mod.

  The cloud cover was heavy and multilayered, shades of slate blue and silver, pearl and charcoal, like a sketch washed with watercolor. The air was cool and spicy. She wondered how long it would take her to adjust to the smell, learn to filter it out of her awareness, just as the filters scrubbed it from the air in her mod. A long time, she hoped.

  Again, Danner served dap in handmade china. Marghe sipped at the hot tea. “On Earth I was promised full support from Company personnel in the field. However, I now understand that you’re seriously understaffed and underequipped. What can you offer me?”

  Danner leaned back in her chair. “Why don’t you tell me your plans.”

  “If there are clues to be found about the origins of these people, their common background, I need to find them. It might help with tracing the origins of this virus. It might also lead to some clues about how these women reproduce. Everything in Eagan’s notes points northward. To Ollfoss.”

  Danner looked down into the cup she held cradled in both hands, resting on her stomach. “One of your team already tried that. She’s believed to be dead.”

  “All the more reason to go up there and find out what happened.”

  Danner sighed. “At this time of year, the weather alone up there will be enough to kill you.”

  “I can’t wait for an improvement in the weather. I only have six months.”

  “You’ll be dealing with more than the weather. The north is isolated. The people you’ll meet there won’t give you any special treatment. They won’t know who you are.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  Danner put her cup down on the table between them. “I’m not happy about you risking yourself like this. You’re being paid to see how well the vaccine performs, not to solve mysteries. If you get yourself killed, we’re no nearer to finding out ifthe vaccine works. No nearer to being home.”

  Marghe remained silent. This was Commander Danner now, not the young lieutenant of five years ago.

  Danner sipped from her cup. “I just don’t understand why you want to do this. I need you here. You could teach us so much about living with these people, what to do and what not to do. You could really help us, but instead you want to hare off north and get yourself killed.”

  “I don’t intend to die.”

  “But in all likelihood that’s what will happen.” Danner leaned forward. “I just want you to understand: I don’t want you to die while you’re my responsibility. I have enough on my conscience. I’ll do everything in my power to help you, but that won’t be much. If you go onto Tehuantepec, I can’t protect you. Do you understand that?”

  “I understand.”

  “And I can’t dissuade you?”

  “No,” Marghe did not dare say anything further. Danner was going to jump, one way or the other.

  They were both silent for a moment. Danner straightened. “Very well. When do you intend to leave?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  Danner went around to her desk and consulted her screen. “If you can wait two days, I have a team–one officer, two civilian technicians–traveling north to a settlement called Holme Valley to install a new communications relay. It will mean an escort for part of your journey. And the community there has had contact with us before. They might be able to help you with more suitable equipment for further travel north than you could find here.” She smiled tightly. “We have only six operational sleds. You can ride one to Holme Valley, but I’m not letting you risk it in the freezing snow of Tehuantepec.”

  On her walk back to her quarters, Marghe tried to figure it all out. Danner was going to let her go. Why? Did she believe the vaccine would not work? Or did she know too much about the Kurstand its intentions? Marghe reflected on this, and on the other things she had learned in the twenty hours since she had landed in Port Central.

  Danner acknowledged that she was hoarding resources; she was laying a communications network as widely as she could, despite conditions. She had told Marghe, bluntly, that a SEC rep could be useful for long‑term relations with the natives. Mirrors were making their own clothes and decorating their mods, like colonists. The Mirrors did not expect to leave Jeep.

  Chapter Three

  MARGHE WOKE FROM a nightmare of drifting off the ground, spinning away from a planet with a gravity low enough to allow the muscle jerk of a sneeze to provide escape velocity.

  The wind had died to a whisper and the night was quiet and inky soft. Dry ting grass scratched against the spun fibers of Marghe’s nightbag as she wriggled onto her back. The cloud cover was thin and veil‑like, allowing tantalizing glimpses of the moons and what might be stars, or satellites.

  She closed her eyes. Meet Jeep, she told her senses, a new planet. One by one she sorted out the Earth smells: the grass‑stained rubber of their shoes; the hot rotor and ozone of the sled; the thin perfume of shampoo and insect repellant; the dyes of their clothes; the metal and plastic of coiled cable. She tuned them out. The rest, the mineral‑rich water vapor in the clouds, the hollow, juiceless ting grass, the sharp chalky soil under her back, was Jeep. Jeep, with its animal musk and light spice. She listened to the wind, and to the faint burrowing
s of unknown insects tunneling around the roots and bulbs and pods of next spring’s flowers: to the breath and heartbeat of another world.

  She opened her eyes again. The cloud cover over the moons had deepened, but even so their light was of a visibly different spectrum. Away from the Earth‑normal artificial illumination of Port Central, her eyes would adjust in a few days. Without looking at her wristcom, she tried to judge how many hours there were until dawn. The twenty‑five‑and‑a‑half‑hour diurnal cycle was just abnormal enough to be confusing. This latitude and time of year meant only eight or nine hours of full daylight; like dusk, dawn would be a lengthy affair. At least the year was shorter; winter would not last as long.

  She listened to the steady breathing of the cable technician, Ude Neuyen, to the double breath of Sergeant Lu Wai and Letitia Dogias, the communications engineer, and wondered how it had been for the first colonists: listening to the breath of someone close by, waiting for the onset of the cough that meant a lover or child was going to die. How had it been–how was it–living on a world without men? From test results, she knew that the first colonists had been adept bioengineers: genetic material from Earth flora and fauna was present in indigenous species, and vice versa. The colonists had created viable crops and livestock. How long had it taken them to find the answer to their own reproductive puzzle?

  From the other side of the sled, Lu Wai or Letitia sneezed and Marghe jumped, then jumped again as a pale seed drift floated by. Here, any movement in the corner of her eye flooded her with adrenaline and slicked her hands with sweat; she could not name or recognize a thousandth of the plants or animals. Or insects. She scratched the bites around her ankles, cursing under her breath as a scab came off and leaked blood. At least the insects she had encountered so far were not dangerous. As far as anybody knew.

  She pushed her nightbag down around her waist to let the light breeze dry her sweat and watched the clouds scudding overhead. Gradually her heartbeat slowed, and her breathing. She slept.