Redliners(109)

"I'll be all right," she said with a sharpness that meant at least some of her conscious mind was processing data normally. "Just hold me for a minute longer. It wasn't the military that gave the orders, it was us—the Chief Administrator of the Unity and his aide, God and his blonde aide . . . We made a terrible mistake. We didn't know about the Kalendru and we didn't expect the ship to land in the crater. I didn't assemble the necessary information for my chief."

Lundie's body began to shake again. She was crying. "It all went wrong because I didn't do my job."

"You did your job," Farrell said. He patted her shoulder. He felt awkward because his stinger's muzzle prodded Lundie when he leaned. "There's always shit that nobody knew about, always. You did your job just fine."

"I can stand up now," Lundie said in a small voice. She sniffled.

"That's good," Farrell said, rising and helping her up with him. "We're not out of the woods yet."

Lundie turned her back to him. "You're not angry?" she said.

"No, I'm not angry," Farrell said. He looked at the civilians starting another day's journey toward Christ knew what; clinging to one another, dragging the wreck of their possessions. A striker laughed with an old man, then straightened the straps of the almost empty knapsack across the civilian's shoulders. Some of the marchers were even trying to sing. "Maybe those people are, but I'm not even sure of that."

"I'd better see Jafar," Lundie said. She rubbed her cheek with her hand to hide the blush. "He worries about me."

She met Farrell's gaze squarely. Her eyes were a gray purer than anything else in this jungle. "He worries about everyone, you know. Everyone in the Unity. And he came here."

The column filed out of the encampment; worn civilians under the eyes of troops bristling with weapons. The strikers were faceless with their visors locked down, but they were no longer anonymous to those they guarded. Colonists joked nervously; strikers joked back with coarse, grim affection.

"You know, Tamara?" Farrell said. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to understand what he'd just been told, though he didn't doubt the truth of it. "The hardest thing in the world for strikers to believe is that anybody gives a shit about us. But I guess you've convinced C41, for what that's worth."



"Tractor One," said Esther Meyer's helmet in God's voice, "this is Admin One. Hold up for stragglers at the next suitable location. Sections One, Two and Three, close gaps and halt in place. Sections Four, Five and Six, continue forward until you've regained your proper interval. Out."

Seligman immediately took his vehicle out of gear and raised his helmet visor. "This looks pretty damn suitable to me," he said. "Got anything to drink, Councillor Lock?"

"Water for you and me," Matt said. "Try this canteen, Esther."

Meyer walked forward on the deck, swigging through her open visor. The contents were flavored with whiskey, probably the best bourbon she'd ever drunk in her life. Just enough for taste, but it meant a lot more than that.

Twenty feet ahead of the dozer blade nodded huge flowers on twelve-foot stalks. They grew among the roots of a forest giant. The perfume that oozed from the magenta blooms was musky, enticing. The AI didn't find anything dangerous to humans in the complex scent, but Meyer didn't believe the flowers' only purpose in this jungle was to attract pollinating insects. Maybe they were poisonous to Spooks.

She'd clear it with a grenade before the dozer started forward again. Just in case.

"We're heading toward the center of this crater," Matt said in a quiet voice from just behind her. "We aren't trying to get out any more. I think I know why al-Ibrahimi—or Major Farrell?—changed course."

Matt hadn't asked Meyer about the new course of the past two days. She'd have told him. There wasn't anything that she wouldn't tell him; but because he was so fucking smart he knew better than to ask her. He was the one to keep, which she'd never be able to do . . .

Meyer put an arm around Matt, careful so that her rigid armor didn't hurt him. "The major doesn't make that kind of decision, love," she said. "Especially now."

"The jungle's artificial," Matt said, lacing his arm over hers. He had a stinger again. He'd never be much good with it, but he was trying. "There's a biological control system here in this crater and it's still operating—look at the way threats have been tailored to human metabolisms since we've been here."

Seligman dumped his hard suit's waste container on the other side of the cab. Privacy for bodily functions had gone out the window since the trek began, though there was an attempt to rig a screen around one or two of the pit latrines each time the column halted in the evening.