Over her shoulder, Caine saw a collage of the fuchsia and indigo blooms. She’s foretelling your extinction. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” commented the robber-baroness as she burned the flowers to ashes and soot . . .
“Now do you see?”
“Sure: Dee Pee Three becomes a new industrial hub. Perfectly placed, too: most of our colonies would be within three shifts of your products.”
“Precisely. Call it corporate greed if you like, Mr. Riordan, but the more quickly we can develop the oil reserves here, the faster and further humanity can expand into interstellar space.”
Oh, so this is your selfless contribution to the glorious future of homo sapiens? I mustn’t laugh . . . so change topic: “Look, I also need to ask about these reports of a possibly intelligent species. Navy thermal imaging detected nocturnal activity, which is highly suggestive of coherent group movement. Significantly, the movement suggests bipedal physiology. There are also reports that dressed stone has been found.”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
“There are those who feel that CoDevCo replaced the Navy survey with one of their own in an attempt to cover up possible environmental obstacles to just this kind of resource exploitation.”
“Oh, so even on other planets, the energy companies are still suspected of ruining habitats, exterminating indigenous species—even intelligent ones?”
“Well, why else would you ignore the Navy survey? That was pretty much a slap in the face to both the Commonwealth and the original EU policy-makers, who assessed the thoroughness of the survey, and voted to accept it. Personally, I’m guessing that the stakes here on Dee Pee Three must be pretty high if CoDevCo is willing to risk that kind of political friction and insult.”
“Well, the stakes certainly are high. However, our operations here haven’t involved any environmental abuse—but you won’t believe me until you’ve seen the evidence with your own eyes.” She crooked a finger. “Follow me.”
And watching her from behind, Caine locked his teeth gently, acknowledging that, despite whom and what she was, a large and libidinal part of him was quite willing to follow her anywhere.
She stopped where the valley floor began its transition into a steep-sided mountain. As Caine approached, she pointed along the leeward base of a granite outcropping. A five-meter line of regular stones—almost invisible in the mossy ground—paralleled the stony tendril of the mountain at a distance of one meter. She smiled. “There’s what we were hiding.”
He looked. “That?”
She smiled more widely. “That, and about three or four others we’ve found like it. Is it an artifact of intelligent life? Unquestionably. But that’s all we’ve got. We haven’t seen any current evidence of a sapient species that could build this. In fact, these are the only such signs we’ve found whatsoever.”
“Have you dated the stones?”
“Not exactly the kind of equipment we carry, and if we had asked for it, there was always the chance that someone would ask why we wanted it. I understand it’s a find of some significance—”
Some significance? Could balance sheets really blind her—or anyone—to the immense implications of it?
“—but we’re being careful not to disturb the sites, and it’s not as though they’re going to disappear. I realize the research they will stimulate is important, but how urgent can it be?” She smiled. “Judging from ruins I saw when I was growing up, I’d say we’re at least ten thousand years too late for the matter to be ‘urgent’ in any practical sense.”
He knew she was watching him carefully behind her vaguely coquettish stare. So Caine made sure that he appeared to be trying to keep his face expressionless—as if he were attempting to suppress disappointment. After a moment, she looked away, evidently satisfied with what she thought she had seen. “Ready to go?”
He nodded, turned without a word, heard her fall in behind him.
As they got near the Rover, he swayed forward slightly, stretched out an arm, caught and steadied himself against the hood.
She was at his side—surprisingly swift—and did not miss the opportunity to put a solicitous hand on his left bicep. “Are you quite well?”
“Yeah. I just feel—a bit faint. The heat—I think.”
“Well, we can always do this another time.”
“No—no, I’ll be okay.”
She looked at him closely. “Very well, but I think we should end early today. Finish up with a visit to the executive pool. It’s wonderfully cool. Soothing.”