Fuzzy Nation (12 page)

Another moment of silence from Isabel. Then, “No. No, I’m not
absolutely
sure. I’m not saying I am. I need to study them more.”

“All right, then,” Holloway said. “So study them some more. Take your video and make your observations and do whatever it is you need to do. There’s no need for you to rush any of this. Take your time. Take lots of time.”

Isabel snorted. “Enough time for you to become a billionaire, you mean,” she said.

“That would be nice,” Holloway said. “I could very happily live with that.”

“I know
you
could,” Isabel said, and then motioned to the Fuzzys. “But could they?”

“I don’t follow you,” Holloway said.

“This is their planet, Jack,” Isabel said. “If they are sapient, everything we take out of this world is a little less for them to use for themselves. Maybe you’re not aware of how efficient ZaraCorp is at stripping a planet of its easily accessible resources—or maybe you don’t
want
to be aware—but I know. I read the biological impact reports on all the planets ZaraCorp exploits. Some of the first planets ZaraCorp received its E and E charters for are already at depletion levels approaching Earth’s, when it comes to rare metals and minerals. Even common ores are being pulled out of the ground at hugely accelerated rates. That’s just a few decades of work. And ZaraCorp is much better now at doing this than it was even a decade ago.”

Holloway thought of how quickly the camp was springing up at the sunstone seam. He took another swig of his beer and finished it.

“So if they are sapient, even if we waited just a year or two, think of how much less they would have to work with,” Isabel said. “Taken before they can use it for themselves.”

“They’re at the level where they’ve just discovered sandwiches,” Holloway said. “Working a sunstone seam is not high on their agenda.”

“You’re missing the point,” Isabel said. She set down her beer. “The point is
when
they are ready, it won’t be there. That sunstone seam you found is the result of millions of years of heat and pressure. ZaraCorp is going to pull it all out of the ground in a decade, if it takes even that long. And that’s it for the sunstones; the creatures whose bodies made them are extinct. And then there are the other ores and minerals. It’ll take millions of years for the planet to replenish these minerals. Some might not ever replenish at all. What does it leave for them?”

“I get what you’re saying,” Holloway said. “And you’re probably right. I still think you should be sure before you try to claim sapience. Not saying you shouldn’t make the claim. Just saying you should be sure. This is me trying to talk to you as a friend, here.”

“Thanks,” Isabel said. “I know. I’m just thinking, is all. Do you ever stop to think how lucky we are that, in this part of space at least, humans were the sentient creatures who got smart first?”

“It’s crossed my mind,” Holloway said.

Isabel nodded. “Now,” she said, “imagine what would have happened if half a million years ago, some alien creature landed on
our
planet, looked at our ancestors, decided that they weren’t actually people, and just took all the planet’s ores and oil. How far would we have ever gotten?”

Isabel motioned to the Fuzzys, who were now all asleep on the cabin floor. “Seriously now, Jack,” she said. “How far do you think
they’re
going to get once we’re through here?”

Chapter Eleven        

Holloway had two thoughts when the front rotors of his skimmer failed. The first thought was
What the hell?
This was because while having a single rotor crap out was not all that unusual, having two die simultaneously was.

The second thought was
Oh, shit
. This was because Holloway was by himself in the middle of nowhere, and he was about to crash-land on the jungle floor, where something large would almost certainly try to eat him.

Holloway smacked the manual override on the autopilot and jerked up the yoke on the skimmer. He’d worry about getting eaten later. Right now he needed to avoid the crash landing. If he could get the skimmer on the ground without cracking it up, he might be able to get it fixed and get out of there. If he crashed and broke the skimmer, his odds of ending the day partially digested rose astronomically.

Holloway reached along the dash of the skimmer for the pullcords for the emergency rotor engines. All the rotors were driven by the same power plant mid-skimmer, underneath the passenger cabin, and controlled by computer rather than by direct manipulation. But drive shafts wore down and computer hardware and programs degrade over time, two facts that presented real problems when one’s conveyance traveled up to a thousand meters above the ground. In the event of emergency, small motors built directly into the rotors themselves could be engaged. The motors were too small for movement, and their power lasted only a matter of minutes. Their only purpose was to stabilize the craft and allow for an immediate landing.

Holloway grabbed the pullcords for the front rotors and yanked viciously. The pullcords tensed and snapped as the tautened cords yanked the activation pins out of the EREs. If Holloway survived, he’d have to have the EREs recharged and the cables and pins reset. It was one of those things that by manufacturer design was impossible to do by oneself and required a trained and licensed professional. Who would insist on recharging and resetting all the EREs, not just the ones that got used. Holloway would have to spend a thousand credits to have it done, cursing as he did so.

None of which concerned Holloway in the least at the moment. At the moment, he was praying the EREs had held their charge since the last time he had gotten them replaced, more than a year earlier.

They had. The front rotors clicked into default position and sputtered to life. A timer flashed onto Holloway’s info panel; he had two minutes and thirteen seconds to land. Holloway minimized the timer and clicked on his undercarriage cameras, looking for a place to park.

The area, which Holloway had been surveying over the last three days per orders, was heavily forested. He’d been having a difficult enough time getting the skimmer through the forest canopy that he’d been relying on small remote-controlled robots to set the acoustical charges and the data collectors. They had gotten the job done, but took far more time than getting the skimmer down and using the digger/driller built into the vehicle.

But now he didn’t have a choice. He was going to have to go in. Holloway nudged the skimmer forward, using its rear rotors, to a patch of the canopy that looked less impenetrable than every other part of the local canopy. He double-checked his seat restraints and then hit the
EMERGENCY LANDING
button on the dash.

The seat restraints tightened to a breath-shortening degree, and Holloway heard the
pop
as the head restraint inflated and then formfit around his skull, obscuring his vision. Other restraints did the same for his legs and arms. The chair, which generally swiveled, locked in a forward position. Holloway was immobilized; he was now in the hands, so to speak, of the skimmer’s automated systems. Holloway was briefly grateful that he left Carl behind with Isabel and the Fuzzys. It promised to be a rough ride down.

It was. The skimmer lurched sickeningly as it began its rapid but hopefully computer-controlled descent, dropping faster than under gravity alone, using the skimmer’s mass and build strength to snap tree branches when they couldn’t be gotten out of the way of. The jolting of the cabin and the thunderous cracking sound told Holloway there was going to be a pile of lumber when he landed.

Seven meters from the ground, twelve short-burst rockets on the skimmer’s undercarriage blasted on, the thrust of each precisely calculated using the skimmer’s current position to arrest the descent, level the skimmer, and land it more or less gently on the jungle floor. As the thrusters kicked in, Holloway felt the painful tug of his internal organs falling the millimeter or so internally at descent speed before being slowed by the rest of his body. The nerve-rattling thump of the landing informed him that this landing was on the “less” side of gentle rather than “more.”

The seat restraints slackened and the inflatable restraints hissed as they released; the skimmer’s rotor drive shut off. Holloway pulled himself out of his seat and grabbed the infopanel for a status update. The skimmer had registered denting, and the left rear rotor’s maneuvering apparatus was knocked off beam during the landing. If Holloway ever got the skimmer running again, it would be able to provide lift but not forward motion. But overall the skimmer survived. Holloway had landed without crashing.

Holloway registered the fact and then ignored it. Now that he’d landed, he had other things to worry about. He moved through his cabin to one of the large cargo holds, pulled it open, and yanked out the bundle marked
EMERGENCY PERIMETER FENCE
.

“Here we go,” Holloway said to himself. He lowered the top off the skimmer and legged himself over the side.

When one lands on the jungle floor with a skimmer, via crash or otherwise, it makes a terrific racket. Most of the nearby creatures, evolutionarily designed to equate loud noise with predatory action and other dangers, will bolt to get out of the way. But eventually they come back. The ones that are actual predators come back sooner, intuiting in their predatory way that a big loud noise might, when finished, result in some small helpless creature being wounded or slowed down enough for it to be picked off without too much struggle.

What this meant to Holloway was that he likely had two minutes, give or take ninety seconds, to set up the emergency perimeter fence. After that, something large and hungry would definitely be on its way to see what might be for lunch.

Holloway wasted none of that time. He moved quickly, firmly setting six stake poles in a perimeter around the skimmer, extending them to their full two-meter length. That finished, he unrolled the magnetized fence material, feeling it snap into place at each stake. The perimeter was tight around Holloway’s skimmer. The vehicle was large, and the fence not so much.

Holloway clicked the final bit of fence to the first stake, which held the fence’s power source at its base. Once activated, the power source would do two things. It would strengthen the fence by making it one large electromagnet; as long as the stake poles were reasonably secure it would be difficult for anything to pull down the fence. It would also course twenty-five thousand volts of electricity through the fence whenever it registered a contact, frying whatever touched it.

The power source was rated for twelve hours when fully charged. After what happened to Sam Hamilton (and his monkey), Holloway made sure the power source on his emergency perimeter fence was always charged.

Holloway double-checked to make sure the fence was secure, and then pressed the green button to prime the power source. He stood back to wait for the five-second power-up and the hum of the electromagnetic current.

There was nothing.

Holloway glanced down at the power source. An LED was blinking next to the primer button. Holloway didn’t have to read the lettering next to the light to know that it meant the power source was uncharged.

“Oh, bullshit,” Holloway said, out loud. Holloway knew the power source was charged. He’d checked it during his monthly loadout of inventory.

A bit of movement beyond the fence caught Holloway’s eye. He looked up. Thirty yards away a pair of zararaptors were eyeing him back, with a look that signified curiosity, hunger, or both. Holloway, very casually to all outward appearances, walked back from the tight perimeter of his fence, got himself into his skimmer, and then closed it up good and tight. Then he went looking for his shotgun.

A zararaptor was called such not because the creatures reminded anyone of raptor birds, but because they reminded them of those
other
raptors, the smart and predatory dinosaurs that had roamed the earth, thankfully millions of years before humans could be on the menu. Like those raptors, these were reptilian, were obviously carnivorous, and walked bipedaly on powerful legs, which ate up distances on the jungle floor yet were agile enough to leap over and avoid the various obstacles that humans would stumble over. Unlike those raptors, these raptors had blunt, almost feline heads and strong arms that ended with hands featuring opposable digits. Zararaptors could grab at and hold their prey, gripping their limbs so they could not escape fangs.

Upon arrival on Zara XXIII, Holloway and every other new surveyor was made to watch footage of zararaptors attacking and killing unwary humans, in video caught by surveillance cameras, security feeds, and in one case, by a tragically overconfident surveyor himself. That one was the most difficult to watch, in no small part because the surveyor’s blood had spattered up on the lens, obscuring the view. But it brought home the point that human brains, fine though they might be, were no match for the zararaptor’s speed, grip, and teeth.

In the now-covered skimmer, Holloway pretended he wasn’t on the verge of panic and knelt next to the small storage area by his seat. He opened it and fished out his shotgun. It was a small, blunt thing with a short barrel; it’d be useless at anything other than a very short distance. Holloway suspected at the moment it’d be perfect for his situation. He’d purchased it when he arrived on Zara XXIII but had never had to use it. It looked like there was a first time for everything.

He opened the barrel to load in shells and looked into the storage area for the box of ammunition that always lay nestled next to the shotgun.

It wasn’t there. Holloway felt a chill.

There was a metallic rattle outside the skimmer. Holloway looked up at the noise. The zararaptors were at the fence, pulling at it.

The fence.

Holloway suddenly had a crazy and desperate idea, because crazy and desperate ideas were the only things left to him at the moment. He grabbed for his infopanel as one of the zararaptors separated the fence material from the stake posts.