Crisis On Doona (17 page)

The radio at his waist crackled. “Todd, where are you? I’ve lost sight of you and I’ve got two more for you to hold for their shots.”

“I’m on the trail behind the apple orchard, Lon,” Todd replied into the radio. The horse snuffled his ear and he pushed him gently away. “I was chasing a pair of yearlings and Lady Megan’s twins. Gypsy got wind of a patch of ssersa back here. I’m uprooting it and bringing it in.”

“Ssersa!” Lon’s voice exclaimed. “Damn, I was sure I cleared the whole place of it. And before it could seed.”

“Never mind. Probably some bird seeded it,” Todd said. “Be with you as soon as I pull it up and catch those yearlings.”

Pulling on the hide gloves from his belt, he yanked the plant up and beat its roots on the ground to dislodge the dirt. Then he squashed it into a ball, which he shoved into his saddle bag. The stink of ssersa sap made Gypsy restless and quite willing to move away from it.

Todd lifted the gelding into a canter. The trail was wide here and the surface firm enough to safely maintain a stiff pace. The colts were well ahead of him but, as he recalled it, there was a grassy meadow up ahead that would certainly cause them to stop and graze.

An eerie scream—like a horse in agony—made him dig his heels into Gypsy’s ribs and they galloped over the breast of the hill. Two of the colts were skittering around the pasture nervously. The third was standing over the fourth, which lay still in a patch of bracken. He whinnied shrilly.

Todd brought Gypsy to a dirt-kicking halt and was out of the saddle at a run to the young horse on the ground. The remaining twin nudged its fallen brother with its nose, puzzled by its unresponsiveness.

“No more games for this lad,” Todd said sadly.

He still had his gloves on, so he turned back the upper lip to see the livid magenta of the membrane. “Poisoned. Damn it. There can’t be more ssersa.” Fearing for the other youngsters in this meadow, he looked all around him, and then at Gypsy, who was standing calmly. Turning back to the dead animal, he opened its lips again and saw what was stuck in the colt’s teeth—the twigs of dried ssersa. Sitting back on his heels, he radioed Lon.

“More ssersa?” Lon demanded disbelievingly. “Where? I cleared that meadow. I know I did.” There was silence and a sigh from the speaker. “Leave it. I’ll get the flyer and bring the corpse in for burning. We can’t even use the hide. The toxins will poison whatever it touches. Todd, there was no mature ssersa in that field, I promise you!”

“Then where did it come from?” Todd said, aggravated. Lon was a good farm manager. If he said he’d cleared ssersa weed, he had!

He remounted Gypsy and rounded up the other two. He had to lasso the mourning colt to get him away from his dead twin but gave him a few feed pellets to make up for the insult. Whooshing the others in front of him, he kept his eyes peeled for any further sign of ssersa. It was an active seeder, like many Doonan plants: so where there was one, there’d be others.

Then, just as he herded the colts over the lip of the ridge, he spotted a burned patch in the grass on the one level place on the entire field: a patch just about the size of a small transport shuttle.

Todd got his charges back to the barn without further incident. Lon examined the three young animals and entered the control numbers in their freeze brands into a hand-held computer unit. Todd saw Robin and Inessa in the paddock, dragging one unwilling horse after another into the chute for inoculations.

“That’s a hundred and forty-three,” Lon said, slapping the last one on the rump as he sent it running into the corral, “counting that poor poisoned colt. I think that’s all we’re going to find. We’ve combed the landscape.”

“Shouldn’t there be more like a hundred sixty?” Todd asked.

“Yeah, should be,” Lon said, scratching his ear with the edge of his comp. “I put in a call to Mike Solinari at the Veterinary Hospital, and the foreman on the Hu spread, just in case any of our animals have hopped the fence.”

“Not bloody seventeen of ’em,” Todd replied grimly.

“With that ssersa you found today, that might account for some, but we haven’t even found any bodies. Not even mda will touch a ssersa carcass.” Lon gave a disgusted snort. “My dad told me that if I can’t hand-pull fields, I deserve to have such losses but, honest, Todd ...”

“Didn’t Hrriss and I spend”—Todd made himself continue despite the pang that the reminder of happier days gave him—“a whole week helping you? But I’ll tell you something else I found—a burn-off mark on that one level spot in the big meadow.”

“A shuttle burn-off?” Lon’s tanned face paled. “There’s been no emergency landing in that section. D’you think ...” He stopped, not liking his own thoughts.

“Rustling does present itself as an explanation,” Todd said, not wanting to believe it either, “especially if there’ve been no bodies found.”

Since Doona’s wealth was its stock, not minerals or mining, rustling was the sovereign crime and punishable by immediate transport to the nearest penal colony. To keep track of all stock, each animal was branded with freeze-dry chemicals as soon after birth as possible: a painless process that left a permanent ID, naming its ranch of origin, breeding information, and control numbers. The brand was unalterable so that it was easy to keep a record of inoculations and vaccinations throughout an animal’s lifetime. It made illegitimate transfer of ownership impossible. It also made rustling—on Doona—an unprofitable occupation.

Despite rigid psychological tests devised by Lee Lawrence, the colony sociologist, sometimes unsuitable personalities slipped through. People eager enough to get off Earth were known to equivocate about their open-mindedness as regards living with aliens, or their willingness to learn and speak an alien language. Their bigotry was generally discovered soon enough to do no lasting harm and they were sent off Doona, either to Earth or to see if they would fit into a totally Human colony.

Other new settlers became overwhelmed by the responsibilities of caring for a whole, stocked ranch, let alone a house set in the midst of more uninterrupted land than anyone on Earth had ever seen. Some could not adapt to the lack of labor-saving devices which were felt to be superfluous or environmentally dangerous. Fossil fuels were avoided, and natural power, windmills, river barrages, or battery cells charged by solar panels supplied what power was required. Some settlers learned to cope, others requested transport back to familiar constrictions.

Those unwilling, or unable, to take responsibility for themselves in a pioneer society posed the worst problem. Sometimes, folk who had been told all their lives what to do couldn’t adjust to making their own decisions. Or, once they realized that behavior monitors had been left behind on Earth, they began acting as if they could behave any way they wanted. And take anything they wanted. Rustlers generally emerged from that group.

“We haven’t had any rustlers for years,” Lon said. “And how could there have been a shuttle landing when we’ve got satellite controllers?”

“Have we got any newcomers from Earth who’ve gone possession crazy? You know that syndrome.”

“How could I forget?” Lon asked grimly, spitting into the dust. “It was my father’s new mares that were stolen. A guy named Hammond did it. I’ve a hard place in my mind for anyone named Hammond. Since then I’ve learned to judge people. I’ve a good record at picking those who won’t make it through their first season.”

“You helping Lee with his testing these days?”

“He has only to ask. Now, let’s double-check the ones we do have so I can send in the brands of those we’re missing.”

Together they checked the withers of each animal that came out of the chute, entering the brand and updating the inoculation record.

“Yeah, we’re seventeen shy. I’ll just send the IDs on to Vet. They’ll forward the list to Poldep. Once the word’s out we’ve done that, we might just find those seventeen missing horses back in their home pastures.”

Squinting at the sky, Todd shook his head. “They might not be on Doona anymore.”

“Oh, come on, Todd. The security satellites would have reported any unauthorized transport in orbit,” Lon said, scornful of that suggestion. “No, we’ll find out where they got stashed on this planet. Might take a while, but we’ll find ’em on Doona.”

Todd did not argue the point now, but he was annoyed that seventeen animals were missing. Seventeen! At the current market price, that was almost half the value of a good farm. Doonan horses were a valuable commodity, not only as transportation and a constant source of fertilizer but for the end product of meat, hide, and bonemeal.

“I’ll look into it, find out if the neighbors have any inexplicable losses, and I can make that report to Poldep.” Even as he spoke, Todd realized he was no longer the person to make reports to Poldep.

“No, I’m farm manager. I’ll make the report,” Lon said, almost too quickly. “I need your help more out here in the pens,” he went on, stumbling to get the words out. “You’ve a longer attention span than those two flibbertigibbets,” he said, nodding toward Todd’s two siblings.

It was obvious that the ranch foreman knew the details of Todd’s house arrest, even if he had the tact not to comment on it directly. Most of the neighbors had radios, so Todd could ask his questions without leaving the ranch. But he could see that keeping his word was going to complicate life considerably.

“I’ll radio them, Lon,” he said quietly. “And thanks.”

“The Reeves have been having a run of bad luck lately,” Lon said stoutly, turning his head to spit in the dust. “I figure you don’t deserve it. Count on me if you need help—off the ranch.”

“Me, too!” said Robin. At eighteen Terran years of age, he was the youngest of the Reeves’ five children. He and Inessa climbed out of the corral as the last of the foals galloped free. “I don’t think I’m grounded. Am I?” He turned wide ingenuous eyes to his brother.

“No, it applies to me.”

“And Hrriss,” Inessa said in a low angry tone, then she turned to Lon. “We’ve put the five that need to be observed in the stable. Don’t think any of ‘em are contagious but they need a bit of hand feeding. So I’m through.”

“Nobody is through until you put the rest of the medicines away and clean out the inoculators,” Lon ordered, shouting down their protests. “And last time I looked that pen hadn’t been mucked out. Hop to it!”

With affected groans, the two young Reeves shouldered the vaccination equipment and staggered dramatically toward the medical outbuilding behind the foreman’s house.

“What a pair of actors,” Todd observed.

“Eh,” Lon said, slapping him on the back. “You and Hrriss were the same at that age.” Then he ducked his head at the ill-chosen reminder and spat again in the dust.

* * *

“Hrriss?” Kelly tapped on the partition of the Hrruban’s room. “Your mother said I’d find you here. Are you very busy?”

“Not too busy to see you,” Hrriss said, and Kelly chuckled at his gallantry. He rose from his computer console and they brushed cheeks affectionately.

“You okay?” Kelly asked, looking him over with sisterly concern. “Do you need anything I could bring in for you?” She knew she’d be stir-crazy if she had to stay in one room too long. How she’d gotten through school on Earth without dropping out had required every ounce of self-discipline she possessed.

“I’m okay,” Hrriss said, but ruined it with a sigh. “I may move about the village, you know. But it is frrrustrating to be restricted. I want for nothing but I will think of something to give you the pleasure of visiting me again.” Then he clamped his lips so tightly that his eyeteeth were visible under the tightly drawn flesh.

“He misses you, too,” Kelly said softly. “And that’s not a message,” she added angrily, “that’s my personal opinion. I’m entitled to speak for myself.”

Hrriss nodded understanding and his muzzle relaxed across his teeth.

“So, what’ve you been doing with yourself?” Kelly asked, hoping that she could carry on some sort of a lighthearted conversation that wouldn’t constantly remind both of them of the third person who should be here and must be nameless and messageless—all for honor!

“A little research into matters of concern to my mother,” Hrriss said, his eyes twinkling. “I have also been monitoring the official zranscripts of the Zreaty negotiations, and sending out correspondence to friends on other colony worlds. I hope to locate someone with contacts among the purveyors of illicit artifacts. If we could find out where the articles found on the
Albatross
were purchased, and by whom, we could prove our innocence.” Hrriss felt a wash of shame every time he thought of the harsh-voiced prosecutors who dismissed his sworn word of honor as meaningless.

Kelly sensed his disquiet. “That’s a damned good idea, Hrriss. In fact, I’m doing a bit of research along those lines myself.” Then she made fists of her hands and frowned angrily. “How anyone could be daft enough to think you and ... to think you could be a pirate and a smuggler is beyond my comprehension. I want you to know that!”

“Thank you,” Hrriss said.

“And I’ll bet no one in this village believes it, either,” Kelly went on, wound up by indignation.

“A Hrruban does not bring disgrace to his Stripe ...”

Kelly rolled her eyes skyward. “You are not in disgrace, Hrriss, any more than Todd is. You’re just ... just pending investigation. You’re sure I can’t get you something?” she asked in a milder tone, rather surprised at her own vehemence. But the idea of an honorable person like Hrriss even thinking the word “disgrace” infuriated her.

“Nothing I can think of,” Hrriss said, dropping his jaw at her energetic defense. He was as much touched as amused by it. “You have already brought me something I appreciate greatly: yourself. Will you please visit again when you may?”

“Of course,” Kelly said, giving him a big hug as she turned to go. “Hang on, Hrriss. This won’t last long.”

* * *

Ken found Emma Sumitral in a research room in the Treaty Center. She was a tall, slim woman of thirty, with large, smoky gray eyes and dark brown hair. She had the same formal carriage as her father the Admiral, which somehow made even the casual smock she was wearing look elegant.