Wine of the Gods 4: Explorers (30 page)

Lon sighed and thumbed a ride back to Nowhereistan with an Army vehicle.

He had enough time to order a few items for Twelve-seventeen, and make the supply run.

24
August 3477

Dallas
Twelve-seventeen

Lon found even the frantic pace of Twelve-seventeen preferable to the situation in Nowhereistan and Twelve fifty-three. He had found a dawn to dusk schedule, all concentrated on geological matters, being orchestrated by the hyperactive Nelson, with Ray trying to provide reality checks. Lon put on the brakes, and made everyone finish up reports before starting new projects and moving to new areas. They were just as busy, but perhaps a bit less frantic.

Ray had
everyone housed, and the camp fully set up.

This time in a defensive circle.

The ultrasonic insect deflectors kept most of the inner circle of the compound clear of the swarming menaces that lay in wait for everyone who crossed the invisible perimeter.

As, of course, they had to do for every gate opening, for collecting samples, for launching the drone mappers and damn near everything else as well.

Taking no chances on an unpleasant surprise this time, Lon had hired a mobile launcher and crew. They shot off two low altitude mapping satellites first thing. No cities, towns or roads. Lots of astroblemes, and a much different effect on the climate. The Mediterranean Sea was a broad straight, open to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean on the east, and in the west a wider straights of Gibraltar hosted a maelstrom as the equatorial current was channeled through its narrowest gap. The current circumnavigated the globe, the Isthmus of Panama having suffered considerably from nearby meteor strikes. The over all sea level was high; there were no ice caps at all.

Twelve-seventeen
, already being called Mosquito Mountain, was a lot wetter than the equivalent location on Earth. A lot wetter.

The
gate was in the equivalent of the Kopet Dag Range, of northern Iran, but these mountains had risen higher and trapped damp winds from the north, off the enlarged Aral and Caspian Seas. The rainfall had resulted in a forested northern slope and the Turan depression was a salt marsh rather than a desiccated salt pan. Large fault zones chopped up the surface in unexpected places, the Himalaya subduction and uplift was more of a strike slip fault.

". . . and the recent hydrothermal phase filled the fault zones with quartz with frequent occurrence of gold with silver and copper the major impurities. Some of the minor impurities, Rhodium and Ruthentium, notably, are extremely valuable, and worth the mining even without the gold."

Trust Nelson to take five minutes to say that.

"Reserve estimates for the gold, from the aerial survey, is in the range of thousands of tons. This puts this region into the same class as South Africa on Earth. I've just started sampling the marshes for alluvial gold, and it's clear that we'll be dredging. I haven't worked up reserve estimates yet, the last samples are still waiting for the lab. I'll have those for you by Wednesday so you can present them to the Board." Even the mosquito bites couldn't make Nelson look any less smug. "The field team may reach the first astrobleme in time for a field analysis. Nickel and so forth are less exciting than gold, but still quite valuable."

"Indeed. Dr. Galina?"

"Yes, sir. As we'd expected, the DNA comparisons
of both plants and animals show the split to have occurred roughly thirteen thousand years ago. There is no evidence of a secondary genetic event thirteen hundred years ago. The species count is low, no doubt still recovering from the extinction event."

"Indeed. Thank you doctor. Any one else? All right, get your equipment requests to me by ten hundred hours Wednesday." Lon dismissed the meeting and stretched long and carefully.
Pity I ever saw Twelve fifty-three. I wish I didn't know, wish I could be sitting here as smugly delighted as any Exploration
Team Leader could be. Because hoping everyone will see the meteors and decide to leave is just naïve. Neither Earth or the One wants to be seen as the one that backed down. If the comets miss—which they probably will—the people will get ground up in between the two superpowers. If a comet hit—will either polity actually try to save them, move them? Yeah—maybe some will be moved to Mining Worlds where they'll be property-less refugees, little better than slave labor.

He turned his mind away from that disaster, and pulled out his note pad. It was time to start planning for the ramp up to major mining operations, or to lease mining rights to other companies. He could report the good news to the Board and get his equipment ordered, and have enough time to possibly find out what was happening on Twelve fifty-three. He should at least have an update from the astronomers waiting for him.

He got up reluctantly and stepped outside. It was hot and steamy. In an hour it would be darkening a bit, and the mosquitoes would be coming. "
Maybe the winter will be nice." One good thing about the Earth's policies toward parallel worlds was the lack of environmental controls on wetlands. He pulled out his notepad and added,
Civil Engineers to drain swamp
.

He had
a gate scheduled for Wednesday. He had the aerial survey under way, Farr was busy making a gravity map. The launcher was ready to return. He'd tell the Board of Directors that they had a record breaking gold find on their hands, then pop into Twelve fifty-three to check on George and the Astronomers. Perhaps it was time to yank it all. Or if the astronomers wanted to stay, arrange six month interval gate times and supplies.

Lon threw himself into finishing reports on everything before he left, surfacing only briefly to catch the two doctors' updated genetic analysis of the Twelve fifty-three natives.

"The whole population is genetically engineered. Even the commoners in the market that Rae touched with a sticky pad." Dee Odessa beamed at her computer. "Taking Dydit Twicecutt as having
close to one hundred percent of the engineering, Lefty has eighty percent. Never has ninety nine point eight, she has one normal X chromosome and one with a unique allele of the gene the others have there, plus something else. Rustle is her daughter—and Dydit's—and she has one hundred percent, Never's allele on one X and Dydit's on the other. Dydit's other child had sixty three percent. Question has a hundred percent, with copies of the men's gene on both her Xes.

"But. Listen up! The rest of the population averaged twenty-six percent. I found one person with only five percent, not one single person with no engineering. This
world was colonized by people with genetic engineering, and there was no indigenous population, or at least none that survived. The non-engineered gene frequencies point to a North Merican Origin."

Dee nodded. "Unless the government is completely wrong about the One, these aren't them.
Everyone is quite sure they had a nuclear war in their past because of the radiation damage in the inactive DNA segments in every One sample we have."

Lon bit his lip. "I see.
They don't match for geographic profiles, and they don't have the history of radiation damage that the Oners have. I'll try to talk sense into anyone I can find, and maybe we can study these guys instead of attack them." He wrote it all up, addressed it to anyone he could think of—Howie was probably so busy campaigning he wouldn't have time to read it, but one could hope. He was the highest government official he knew. It got added to the pile of reports and tons of rock samples he drove back to Nowhereistan.

He caught up on gossip.
The Army was still moving large numbers of troops through the gate. Everyone was talking about war with the One World. Lon shuddered at the thought and decided it might be time to pull his last people out.

He checked with
the Army about gates—daily—and attached himself to an army convoy, arriving about local midnight. He parked at his box and tried to catch up on his sleep. An invasion. A bloody damned
war!

The next morning, three men in army uniforms were chatting with George over breakfast.

The s
ergeant introduced himself. "Damien Malder. I wanted to take a look at anything your natives abandoned."

Lon nodded, recognizing the man from his debriefing who'd explained what a rundown team was. "Well, they always slept out on the hills, so we have very little to show you. They did, in the course of fleeing, abandon their wagon and horses. I don't think anyone's looked at them since."

"I saw the wagon, but we didn't stop. They left their horses as well?"

One of the privates snickered. "Oh, oh. Someone's triggered Damien's secret addiction. Rev up the gyps, we're going to go find some horses."

The sergeant pinned him with a beady eye. "We are going to examine the contents of the wagon. I may find it necessary to examine their motive power as well, but there's absolutely nothing personal about it."

Lon chuckled and gave directions, apologizing for the lack of precision. "No satellite coordinate system, yet."

"There won't be one either." The sergeant shrugged. "The LT said I should tell you lot to expect the rest of the platoon. The Oners are definitely here."

Lon shuddered. "Damn.
The genetic data was so convincing."

"
And that may be the way it is. The Oners sound like outsiders, exploring this world. They've got satellites up, and we're hacking them. The Oners are working with the Auralian Empire. Your socio team says they're all of South Merica and most of Old Mexicao. They're apparently the largest and most populous nation. The Oners will support them in taking over the other countries—if we let them."

"
Well, so much for any chance for a peaceful resolution."

The sergeant nodded. "Not likely.
Pity they won't let us infiltrate first, though. But they want to hit them before they complete the take over, not after."

Time to stop wistful thinking and apply himself to
Twelve-seventeen. There wasn't anything he could do about Twelve fifty-three. Except think, and maybe he could spot some chink, some gleam of a path to safety for the natives. He spoke briefly to the Colonel about the genetics results and the probability of comet impacts, but doubted he'd made an impression.

He put in for the earliest gate time to Twelve-seventeen he could manage, two weeks, and headed for Dallas and the full partners meeting.

He
talked himself hoarse to various stockholders, the directors of three companies, and his own bosses. In between meetings he ordered more boxes, double checked what equipment they'd moved and what needed to be ordered for a couple of secondary sites. Worried about what was happening on Fifty-three. Worried.

And l
istened to all the rumors about a war with the One World.

***

He didn't see Carol the whole time. She was with Howie, frantically traveling from city to city, bucking up the faithful and talking to the undecided. He managed to get in a call to her, before the Twelve-seventeen gate time. "Have fun politicking, I'm going to be enlarging my cadre on the next prospect, so I might get back in three weeks or so. Maybe."

"Oh, I'm sorry your first one didn't work out well. Howie's ahead in the polls, just one more week to survive and he's set for the next six."

"I expect he'll be running for President in six. You should think about running for his seat on the United Earth Council."

He heard her inhale, then sigh. "There are several things I've considered. I should have talked to you about them last year while you were at home most of the time."

He hesitated. Chickened out, again. "I'll support you in anything you want to do."

"You always have, and failed just once. Sorry. That was snippy of me."

"There's still advanced methods, you know. We can afford them now."

Her sigh was loud. "We need to talk. Find a way to find a couple of hours at home. Or we could meet in, oh, Baghdad, so I don't have to put up with all that security nonsense in Nowhereistan again."

"Okay. If I have any time at all on this side, I'll call you." Lon looked apprehensively at the comm as he clicked off.
Good news doesn't need face-to-face.

But at least he should be able to do some solid work, here. No complications needed, thankyouverymuch.

He shepherded his new people and equipment through, set up temporary camps as Ray extended the rough roads and Nelson ran around in some sort of hyper drive, collecting surface samples and coring where those and or the aerial mapping turned up something of interest. Nickel deposits were found in two of three craters checked so far. Aerial mapping had delineated another zone of faults with hydrothermal activity, the corer would go there . . . if they could find or create a route.

Two weeks later he was back in Nowhereistan. He delivered another truck full of geologic samples and requests for more personnel. Kia Farr came back with him to collect her gravity data from Fifty-three. The tense atmosphere around the gate snapped him alert, and he watched the uptight timekeepers pacing, spotted the heavy military presence. The skeleton staff at the warehouse filled him in. Rumors were flying about murdered Special Agents, retaliation, putting the natives in their place. An entire
division
of troops had crossed to some world code named Comet Fall.