man’s a deserter,” said Garstone to Scapaccio.
“That’s right,” said Remy. “I threw away my stripes.” He pointed behind him at his mounted companions. “This is Doon, and Madoc, and Iasus Fiemme. We make a living trying to keep the roads clear for the benefit of innocent travelers. We don’t always succeed.”
“My name is Cesar Scapaccio,” said the man in front of Remy. “Colonel, Command Kilifi. I’m an archaeologist.”
Remy’s eyes narrowed. “What brings an off-world archaeologist to Azreon?” he asked. “Or to Haidra, come to that?”
“I travel quite a lot,” replied Scapaccio. “Visiting sites of various kinds, mostly to do with the mapirenes. Haidra was once a mapirene world.”
“Thirty thousand years ago.” said Remy. “And there was just a small base—not far from our base in Omer. As I remember, the word was that it was taken out by a particle beam from orbit. Pulverized entirely—not that there was much of it to start with. That doesn’t explain why you’re here in Azreon.”
“I have reason to believe that there was a second base on this world. In the heartland of this continent.”
“The heartland!” Remy made no attempt to mask his astonishment. “You mean Syrene?”
“The area that’s now a desert—that’s correct.”
Remy glanced sideways at Iasus Fiemme, who looked quite impassive. One of the horses ridden by the humans snorted loudly.
“How badly did the er’kresha hit you?” asked Remy, his voice much softer now, with the aggressive edge quite gone.
“We lost four men, including the officer in charge of the platoon. Our doctor is also wounded, though not seriously. I don’t think the other party lost any men at all—the attack was concentrated on our wagons. There were about fifty in the group that attacked us—you can count the dead back in the canyon, if you wish.”
Remy let his eyes roam from Scapaccio’s face to the sergeant’s gun, then to the woman’s face and finally to the huge bulk of the optiman. Then his gaze passed beyond the group to meet the eyes of a newcomer who had come up behind them—the veir with whom Justina Magna had talked.
“They were from one of the hill tribes,” said the veir. “They must have been ahead of us, keeping just clear of the road, heading south. I don’t know where they were going.”
“I think I do,” muttered Remy. Automatically, he made the comment in the same language the veir had used, and Justina Magna looked at him sharply. She was the only one of the humans able to understand it.
“What do you mean?” she asked, also in the language of the clanless.
Remy looked at her, surprised to hear the alien words on her lips. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Justina Magna. I’m a linguist. I’m supposed to be the mission’s interpreter—I learned the languages of Azreon from strangers in Omer. This seemed to be a good opportunity to use and extend my knowledge.”
Remy turned his attention back to Garstone, more to evade the woman’s question than because he had anything to say to him.
“Still a sergeant,” he commented, “after all these years.”
“What are you?” retorted Garstone.
Remy pointed at the giant, and said, “What’s he?”
“My name is Andros,” said the optiman. His voice was surprisingly soft. Remy looked at him more closely. He was over two meters tall, with massive shoulders. Remy noted that he held the machine gun effortlessly, though an ordinary man would have staggered beneath the weight.
“You’re not in uniform,” said Remy calmly, as if that explained the question he had directed at Garstone.
“But I am a soldier,” said Andros. “One of a new breed. A product of genetic optimization. I was nurtured by an artificial placenta, and some would say that makes me an android rather than a man, but my genetic material was human in origin.”
“So the genetic engineering of people is no longer banned by law?” asked Remy, though the answer was obvious enough.
“It was considered to be a logical step in the development of new and more sophisticated fighting units,” said Andros, his musical voice precluding any hint of irony from creeping into his tone.
“And what are you doing here?” asked Remy.
“Gaining experience,” replied the optiman lightly. “There are several hundred of us scattered through this zone—perhaps a dozen on Haidra itself, attached to units of various kinds. As there are very few units on any kind of active service now, it was considered desirable that I should accompany this platoon.”
“I see,” said Remy. He turned back to Scapaccio, and said, “You’d better load up. I think the caravan is just about ready to get moving again. I don’t think there’ll be any more trouble, but the sooner we’re in Ziarat the better. Then we can discuss the matter of your going into the Syrene.”
“I don’t think we ought to take orders from this man,” said Garstone casually to Scapaccio. “In fact, I think we ought to arrest him.”
Remy laughed briefly, without any real humor. “That would be stupid,” he pointed out. “You need me. In fact, you don’t realize how much you need me. I can get you what you need in Ziarat, and I might even be able to get you into the heartland of the Syrene, if that’s really where you want to go. Is that what you want?”
As he spoke the last few words his eyes were fixed on Scapaccio’s face, and he saw there that this was, indeed, what the other man wanted—and it seemed to be something that he wanted very badly.
“I take it,” said Scapaccio dryly, “that you’re for hire.”
“Very much so,” replied Remy.
CHAPTER FOUR
Inside the wagon the bright sunlight was softened somewhat—the sections of the plastic cupola were translucent but not transparent. Their color was yellowish brown, and the light that streamed through them made the faces of those within look distinctly jaundiced.
There were bunks inside the wagon for four people, stacked two on two, with space at head and tail for stacked boxes. Beneath the lower bunks there were fitted drawers. In one of the lower bunks there was a man sleeping. He was under sedation. Ramon Delizia lay on the opposite bunk staring into a microfiche reader, occasionally flicking the control switch with his forefinger. He looked up when Scapaccio climbed in over the tailboard, followed by Remy.
Remy took the sheet from Melcart’s body and inspected his wounded leg carefully, stripping away the dressing with surprising delicacy.
“He’ll do,” pronounced Remy, when he was through. “He’ll be able to keep the bullet in a jar on his desk.”
Scapaccio sighed with relief. “That’s something,” he said. “Of course, it had to be that the one man who ended up needing an operation was the doctor. I doubt if any of us could have
