“Maybe if you’d arrived sooner,” Delizia interposed, “we could have saved Verdi. Justina didn’t quite get around to asking the veich for help while he was still alive.”
Remy shook his head. “The rifles the er’kresha are using are long-bore things with a relatively slow muzzle velocity. Not much range, but the shells don’t need to hit a vital organ to smash you up irredeemably. I’ve seen people hit in the arm die of the shock. The doctor was lucky. The bullet that got him was Calvar-made—stolen or plundered from some siocon farmer near Ziarat and traded halfway across the continent since. That was probably the last round of ammunition he had for it.”
“And that makes him lucky?”
“If he’d stopped the next one,” said Remy, “he’d be dead.”
“I suppose that in time the er’kresha will all have veich weapons,” said Delizia. “After all, if the veich have factories turning out rifles for the sioconi, the sheer mass of the supply will ensure that in the end they’re liberally distributed throughout Azreon.”
“If the band that attacked you had had twice the strength and a more favorable time of day,” said Remy sourly, “they wouldn’t have needed Calvar rifles. They’d have had your guns—automatic rifles that can fire a dozen rounds in a ten-second burst and reload before the other guy can draw breath, grenades, a heavy machine gun and Earth knows what else. The veich show a damn sight more discretion than you do.”
Scapaccio intervened quickly, “I’m surprised that the Calvars can maintain factories turning out weapons like yours,” he said, pointing to the rifle slung across Remy’s shoulder. “There are supposed to be no accessible fossil fuels on this world since the mapirenes stripped it thirty thousand years ago. The sioconi and the colonial veich are supposed to be dependent on a wood-based energy economy as far as metalworking is concerned.”
“They are,” replied Remy. “But the siocon farmers in the south have been persuaded to go in for the right cash crops, including a kind of cane that produces sweet carbohydrates in its core and can be rendered into high-grade charcoal itself. Ziarat’s gradually committing more and more land to that kind of crop because with advice from the veich the yield of the cultivated land in terms of staple crops has been increased four- or five-fold. The next stage will be using the sugars to produce alcohol to drive internal combustion engines. There may be no coal or oil here—at least, none that can be easily extracted—but the veich can still produce a technological civilization, given time. And given the freedom to operate.”
Scapaccio did not respond to the challenge implicit in the last sentence, but went to the head of the bed where Melcart lay and produced a bottle of colorless spirits.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked Remy.
“Why not?” Remy replied.
Scapaccio produced three small tumblers made of clear plastic from the same box that had contained the bottle. He splashed liquid into each of them in a deliberately careless manner, and then passed one to Delizia and one to Remy. Before he could take up his own, the wagon jarred slightly as it hit a rut in the road, and some of it splashed out, though the tumbler did not fall over. Silently, he replaced the lost liquid.
“What makes you think that there was once a mapirene base in the Syrene?” asked Remy casually.
“As you probably know,” said Scapaccio, “there was practically nothing left of the base in Omer. Nothing recoverable. That’s the story all over the known universe. It’s easy enough to figure out that either the mapirenes or the cascarenes held these worlds at one time, but difficult to find out much more. Thirty thousand years is a long time, and most of the sites we know about were blasted out of existence by very powerful weapons. But the products of a technology like that can be very durable—certain aspects of it, anyhow. It’s not too difficult to find what remains of mapirene buildings, and sometimes mapirene machines. Metal casings rust, but they hold their form. Plastics can last almost forever, provided that they aren’t attacked by the wrong kind of bacteria. Here and there, we find relics which tell us a good deal, and sometimes we recover the remains of information storage systems from which a little bit of the information can still be retrieved. We can rarely get all of it—usually a very small fraction—but with the right equipment we can recover some.
“Most of what we find is incomprehensible. Most of what we can understand is useless. But here and there we find something that tells us a little more about the mapirenes. One particular information disc, excavated out of an exceptionally well-preserved site on Kilifi, proved to contain what we think is a reference to a base or installation of some kind here in Azreon. We’re not entirely certain, and what the disc seems to say about the base is confusing and incomplete, but it seemed to us to be worth checking.”
“Us?” queried Remy.
“Ramon and I. Ramon is from Pajilla, where the disc was analyzed.”
“Why would the mapirenes build a base in the middle of a desert?” asked Remy.
“It wasn’t a desert then,” said Delizia. “We found that out when we came to Haidra. The Syrene appears to have been created by men—by lemuroids, that is.”
“And why all this?” asked Remy, indicating the interior of the wagon. “Why didn’t you have Command Haidra drop you on the spot by plane?”
Scapaccio laughed shortly. “Command Haidra has little or no interest in archaeological exploration. They refused to commit any substantial resources to the supply or support of this expedition. We had to finance the trip ourselves. All that Command Haidra would do for us was to give permission for a platoon of soldiers to escort us. Notionally, this is an army expedition, but for all practical purposes, it’s a private endeavor. You know the army, Sergeant Remy...can you imagine Command Haidra giving us their full-scale cooperation for something like this? All that they would do was to promise that if we found anything of military importance, or got into a situation where we needed pulling out, we could call for assistance. We have radio equipment in one of the other wagons which can get a signal to one of the comsats for immediate relay. That was the limit of their generosity. I’m sure the story is familiar.”
“I’m not a sergeant,” replied Remy. “Not any more. You can call me by my name. I don’t have a rank.”
Scapaccio apologized without sounding particularly sincere. There was a moment’s silence. Then Delizia asked, “Are you willing to take us into the Syrene?”
“I’ll take you,” replied Remy. “But I don’t take army paper for payment. For a first installment, I want the guns that came with the men who were killed in the raid, and two cases of ammunition for each gun. You can throw in a case of grenades for good measure.”
Scapaccio met his eyes. “That equipment isn’t mine,” he said levelly. “It belongs to the army.”
“So did I, once,” replied Remy. “What the hell—you’re a colonel, aren’t you? And it’s your expedition. Garstone won’t like it—so tell him to go to hell. What’s he going to do—lay charges against you when you get back?”
“You said the first installment,” said Delizia. “Does that mean there’ll be others?”
“Maybe,” said Remy calmly. “It depends how long you want my services.”
“And what else do we pay you with?” asked Scapaccio.
“I
