Major Arthur Farrell scanned at the jungle. If there were a button he could push to turn this whole crater into a glassy desert, he'd do it in an eyeblink.
Night Sounds
"Mr. Blohm?" Seraphina Suares, leading a train of children, said to Sergeant Gabrilovitch.
"That's him," Gabe said, nodding across the minilantern's circle of light. "What is it you need, ma'am?"
Blohm rolled down the sleeve of his tunic without speaking. There was a line of tiny ulcers across the inside of his elbow, but they'd been shrinking in the past hour. His immune booster was handling the microorganisms.
Blohm's body temperature had been elevated by about half a degree ever since 10-1442's hatches opened. His augmented system was fighting off local diseases. The slight fever didn't seem to affect his judgment dangerously. He hoped the same was true for everybody in the expedition, but that wasn't something he could do much about.
The woman met Blohm's eyes. She was too old for any of the six children to be her own. The eldest was probably ten, the youngest no more than two and carried in her arms. She smiled. "Sergeant Kristal said that Mr. Blohm would be responsible for feeding me and the children. She directed us here."
"Oh," Blohm said. He'd removed his equipment belt, but the converter was still in its pouch. "Okay, that was the deal. I . . . What is it you want to eat? Not that you're going to tell much difference."
"I think it's best that we try whatever you planned for yourself," the woman said. "Sit down, children, and be sure to stay on the plastic. Mirica, dear? Won't you sit down?"
A four-year-old with bangs and short dark hair remained standing. Her eyes had the thousand-yard stare that Blohm had seen often enough before—on redlined veterans. None of the kids looked right.
Gabrilovitch looked over the gathering and rose. "Guess you've got it under control, snake," he said. "I'll see you after my guard shift."
Blohm drew on his left-hand glove as he walked to the brush piled at the edge of the clearing the bulldozers had cut for the night. The ground was covered with quarter-inch roofing plastic. It was temperature-stable—bonfires burned in several parts of the camp—and too tough for anything to penetrate overnight, though there was still a danger of shoots or roots coming up between the edges of sheets.
God or the colonist brain trust said that the forest wouldn't be as active after the sun set. Blohm was willing to believe that; but he didn't expect to sleep very soundly the first night, even during the hours he didn't have guard.
"I wasn't expecting, ah, kids," Blohm said. He worked loose a four-foot length of root and sawed it off with his knife. Any organic would work so long as it fit the mouth of the converter. He wasn't sure how much he'd need, but this was a start.
"We're the widow and orphans brigade," the woman said. Her voice was too even for the soul behind it to be calm. "I'm Seraphina Suares. I said I'd look after children who'd been, who'd, you know. I lost my husband when the aircar crashed."
"Ah," Blohm said. He extended the converter's doubly-telescoping base and opened the top flap, focusing on the task with needless concentration. He didn't know why he felt embarrassed. Hell, he'd been an orphan himself; raised by the state in Montreal District.
Mrs. Suares checked the feet of one of the younger boys for blisters. The ten-year-old was changing the infant's diaper. Several of the kids were bandaged though the silent one, Mirica, didn't seem to have received any physical injury. She was about the age of the Spook he'd killed in the doorway at Active Cloak.
Blohm stuck one end of the root into the converter; the box began to hum. He steadied the root with his gloved hand, feeling a faint vibration. Converters dissociated organic material at the molecular level, not by grinding or other mechanical means, but it was as fast a process as combustion.
"I've got it set for chicken and rice," Blohm said. "That seems to do as well as anything. Do you have something to put this in, ah, ma'am?"
"Children, take out your cups and spoons," Mrs. Suares said. "And Mr. Blohm, please call me Seraphina if you can. Is your nickname Snake?"
The children were taking a variety of containers from their little packs. A six-year-old raised an ornate metal mug that had set somebody back in the order of a year's pay for a striker. The mug and the clothes on the kid's back were the only things remaining of his family.
"Hold it here," Blohm said, drawing a cup down to the output spigot. A gush of thick gruel spurted until the child drew back. "Next one, step up. It's not that bad and it's got all the vitamins and whatever."
The bad light was actually an advantage. The flavor of food from the converter could be varied somewhat, but the color was always gray. In daylight, you had to remind yourself you weren't eating wet cement.