“How’re you doing?” he said.

  Harry smiled a little wanly. “I’m sure people pay good money at carnivals for thrill rides not nearly as interesting,” he said. “All the same, I think I’ll choose to walk down the steps when we come back.”

  “Deal,” Rick said. He re-engaged the clutch and they rolled off onto Harbor Street.

  They went up the median street, heading straight for the smoking cone of the volcano. The trike jolted. Rick blamed the jounce on the pavement but he saw three flowerpots fall from the upper-floor balcony of a house farther up the hill. Pedestrians scattered, one of them jumping almost in front of the vehicle.

  Harry leaned close again and said, “Earthshocks. I’d thought of taking a volcano tour but they’ve been cancelled because of the activity. I wonder how safe it is to stay with the volcano like that?”

  “I figure they know what they’re doing,” Rick said as he pulled into an empty lot to the rear of Medlum House. It was being used as a parking lot for ground vehicles of various sorts. There wasn’t a proper usher to guide vehicles to places, but Rick went around to the back of the plot and drove over brush to find a spot.

  When he and Harry had gotten off, Rick bent and removed a pin from the trike. He dropped it into his belt purse.

  “What’s that?” Harry said.

  “It locks the collar joining the kick-starter to the drive shaft,” Rick said. “They can still carry the thing away, but at least they’re not going to drive off with it.”

  The sky was starting to get dim by the time they reached the back door of Medlum House.

  The stairs at the back of the building were lit by an area light on the roof, which left the back tread largely in shadow from the tread above. At the bottom was a greeter with a hand light.

  “Lords Harper and Grenville,” Harry said before Rick could speak. The husky greeter nodded politely, but made no attempt to announce them. He was probably there to shoo away the riffraff; whatever that meant in St. Martins.

  They hopped up the stone staircase arriving at the top a moment behind a heavy couple wearing the bright, loose clothing which seemed the local fashion on Medlum. Another greeter, this time a woman with a tablet on which she jotted names, stood at the doorway.

  “Lieutenants Harper and Grenville,” Rick said. It might have been necessary to be “Lord Grenville” to DaSerta on Quan Loi, but he preferred not to do so here. Lieutenant in the RCN was a very respectable status, all he wanted or should need.

  The greeter made notations on her pad and they passed into a ballroom. There were sconces on both short walls, but most of the light came from glowstrips in the ceiling. They must have been very old because they were weak and had a faint greenish cast.

  Rick stepped out of the doorway and said, “Let’s split up. I’m going to see if any attractive ladies would like to know a dashing young RCN officer better.”

  His initial scan of the room wasn’t encouraging, but as he walked to the refreshment table he saw a slender woman whose black dress would have stood out against the flashy locals if she hadn’t been so petite that she was generally behind someone twice her breadth.

  She’d picked up a glass of faintly pink punch and was looking around with a morose expression. Rick made a beeline for her and when she turned toward him, said, “May I ask if the punch is any good, madam?”

  “It suits me well enough, I suppose,” she said. Her eyes made a detailed survey of his uniform. Her expression didn’t change.

  “Well, I’ll chance it then,” he said with what he hoped was a winning smile. “And from the sound of the music, I gather there’s dancing in the next room. Do you dance, ma’am?”

  She finished her glass and set it on a tray with empties. In a very distinct voice she said, “Not with you.” She turned her back and walked away.

  Well, that didn’t work well, Rick thought. He wondered how strong the punch was. Not as strong as he wanted it at the moment, he guessed, but he tossed off a glassful anyway. He wandered into the dancing room, which turned out to be the other half of the building’s upper floor. A quartet had just finished the finale of a quadrille, and the dancers were drifting off the floor.

  A girl in yellow caught Rick’s eye. She was slender and quite obviously not a local. She’d separated from her dance partner with only a few words, so they didn’t seem firmly attached.

  “Ma’am?” he said, stepping briskly toward her. “I’m Rick Grenville, third lieutenant of the Far Traveller. Might I have the next dance?”

  “It’ll be a polka,” she said, “which is a bit more energetic than I’m feeling up to at the moment. If you’d care to sit one out, I’d be happy of your company. I’m Rachel Pond, and you must be a colleague of Lord Harper, whom I met yesterday.”

  “I am,” Rick said, “but I’m not nearly so elevated a personality. There are balconies off the other room”—he nodded—“and if you’ll permit me, I’ll get each of us a glass of punch to drink there. Does it sound like a plan?”

  “A good one,” Rachel said, putting her hand on Rick’s elbow. “And frankly, I found it a little uncomfortable being with a nobleman. Though Harry was perfectly polite to me.”

  “He’s a nice guy from anything I’ve seen,” Rick agreed as they angled toward the refreshment table. “But we salt of the earth types have our uses too.”

  Not such a bad gathering after all, he thought as he, holding two cups of punch, shepherded Rachel out the side door. Not at all!

  * * *

  I had local women lining up to dance with the gentleman from Xenos wearing a dress suit. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but you’d have thought I was a professional for the enthusiasm they grabbed me for each next set.

  It didn’t do any good to say that I wasn’t from Xenos. Greenslade is in the far northeast; I was either a rural hick or an academic, and no partier either way. So far as women in St. Martins were concerned, I was the height of sophistication.

  I saw Doctor Veil speaking with a group of local men. I hoped they were magnates and that she was making the kind of connections she wanted for her search for the Archaics. So far as I was concerned, I’d rather have been at Orontse on the other side of the island with Joss. I’d rescheduled for this party, so she’d gone on ahead yesterday. Well, tomorrow I’d join her.

  I bowed my way past a gaggle of would-be dance partners and strode toward the refreshment table. I murmured nothings each time someone tried to accost me. My eyes weren’t really focusing on people, though.

  The woman ahead of me at the table turned. We didn’t exactly walk into each other, but she spilled her cup of punch by jerking it sideways to avoid driving it into my chest.

  “Oh!” she said. “I’m so very sorry!”

  “No harm done,” I said. “But can I get you another glass of punch? Which means I’ll have to step past you, of course.”

  She returned my smile and moved aside, putting down the empty. I got one for myself when I replaced hers, then edged toward the side of the room to provide more space around the table. She moved with me.

  “Your dress is from Pleasaunce, unless I miss my bet,” I said. “May I ask what you’re doing on Medlum?”

  “What in heaven’s name am I doing here?” she said, smiling wider. “And yes, the dress is from Pleasaunce, but after my brother Todd’s death and my divorce, I moved here where my father is postholder. I don’t expect to stay long, but I needed to have a calm place where I could think about the future.”

  “I’ve met your father, Mistress Bothwell!” I said. “We’re even related through my mother!”

  “Madame Hergestal,” she said. “But Edwige. And you quite clearly aren’t from St. Martins either.”

  “Well, I’m Harry Harper. Lord Harry Harper if you like, and I’m from Sheet Island on Cinnabar,” I said. “I’m a biologist doing a survey of the biota of Medlum. I’d planned to go to Orontse across the island yesterday, but now I’m suddenly glad that I didn’t.”

  I wondered if there was a place we could go to sit down. Since her father was the postholder, we could probably get somebody to open the lower floor offices.

  “Orontse?” Edwige said. “Goodness. Are you going to the Meridan Spa also?”

  “I’m not going to a spa,” I said. “My understanding is that our hunter has established a base in a fishing village. She’s going out with the boats and sampling the catches as they come in. I’m to deal with local hunters and I hope to go out in the field as well. Officially that’ll be scientific research, but back on Sheet Island they’d probably call it a rough shoot.”

  “Are you here on your own yacht, Lord Harper?” Edwige asked, tilting her head quizzically.

  “No, not on my branch of the Harpers,” I said, laughing. “Possibly my Uncle Ted’s side. I’m officially Lieutenant Harry Harper, RCN; aboard the RCS Far Traveller.”

  “So…,” Edwige said. She didn’t physically move away, but I felt the air between us freeze. “You are Republic of Cinnabar Navy. The Republic of Cinnabar Navy killed my brother at Cacique. I loved Tomi and I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover from his death. I’m still not sure.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said truthfully. I straightened away from her and crossed my hands behind my back. “It was a bad war.”

  I didn’t mention that I’d had three cousins aboard the Fiji, lost with all hands in the First Battle of Cacique.

  “Yes, it was.” Edwige said as she walked away. Over her shoulder she added, “It still is for some of us. I wish you joy of your rough shooting.”

  I stood for a moment. I’d had a momentary urge to say that I wasn’t really a naval officer, and that was true.

  But it wasn’t something I was proud of.

  The RCN had been the Republic’s bulwark against Guarantor Porra’s mad arrogance. I couldn’t claim the real status of Defender of the Republic, but my cousins had, and they had died for it. I wouldn’t implicitly devalue their sacrifice in order to seduce a woman from the losing side.

  Oh, well. I would find Doctor Veil and see if I could be of help to her. That was my duty as an RCN officer, after all.

  * * *

  It had been as long an aircar flight as that first one that brought me from Eastport to Helle, but there hadn’t been any mountains in the way. Because we’d been over the ground at about a hundred feet the whole way, I’d seen a lot of jungle canopy and occasionally clearings, probably as a result of soil conditions.

  I hadn’t seen any animals, though. I didn’t have much hope for what I’d see walking the region either. At least I knew that I was going to need my locator beacon to find my way back to camp if I entered the jungle—as I intended to do.

  The beach was a broad yellowish arc of shells crushed into sand, showing up between the nearly violet sea and the deep green jungle we’d been overflying. The fishermen’s shelters were pole-framed shanties covered by broad leaves. How recently each roof had been repaired showed in how green the leaves were.

  “I’m going to put her down here,” Kent said, bringing us to the ground thirty feet short of the nearest hut. “Closer and I’ll knock over the shanties. This one’s yours—Joss built it for the two of you.”

  The shelter was longer than most of the others but it was constructed the same way. Jungle seedlings grew up toward the light a hundred feet above. Chopped off at the base and bent over they became hoop staves when both ends were thrust into the ground. Joss had tied other poles onto them with withies to make a frame and had covered it with leaves gathered into clumps.

  A boy of six or younger had hopped out of the shelter when our car landed. He stood staring at us. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Harry. Who are you?”

  “I guard the house for Mistress Joss,” the boy said. “Valuable things here!”

  “There certainly are,” I agreed. Irreplaceable, at any rate. The refrigerator for specimens in particular. It was powered by a battery pack and probably would have been worth a great deal on the civilian market in any of Medlum’s scattered settlements. “How do you guard them, sir?”

  The shelter was open at both ends but it wouldn’t be difficult to rip a man-sized hole in the sidewalls either. I looked around. I could see at least a dozen people, a few men but mostly women, in the settlement which straggled along the normal tide line.

  There were a couple of boats drawn up on the beach. Each was fifteen or twenty feet long, undecked but occasionally with a roof of reeds over the central portion.

  “I watch the house!” the boy said. “If anybody steal something, I see them and Miss Joss cuts their balls off! Or their tits if they’re broads!”

  “What if they sail away with what they’ve stolen?” I said, more curious than horrified. It doesn’t suit a biologist to be horrified by the behavior of animals.

  “Miss Joss track ’em down!” the boy said. “You think she wouldn’t?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t bet on it,” I said, “but I’m her friend.”

  “Is one of these the boat Joss went out in?” said Kent from behind me.

  He was looking out to sea. Half a dozen fishing boats like those on the beach were coming toward the shore. The nearest pair were taking their sails in before they grounded while the others stretched back to the horizon.

  I wasn’t sure that the boy was going to answer, but it was unnecessary. When the nearer incoming boat scraped up on shore, Joss leaped from the stern where she’d been standing to raise the bow and splashed through the water to us.

  “Sir!” she called. “We’ve got some unfamiliar fish from three hundred meters down. Usually that depth is barren Henk tells me, but there’s a seamount five miles off shore and it’s got a different biota.”

  “I’ll help you process them,” I said. “And you can fill me in about the region.”

  * * *

  Joss had formal arrangements with three of the boatmen—brothers—working out of Orontse. Each of their boats had a locator beacon in it. She planned to go out with each of them in succession—today was the second.

  When Joss was with a fisherman, she entered the time the net went in and the depth it was lowered to. The fisherman himself could have entered these details but realistically that wouldn’t happen unless she did it. That had been the case on the Goliath also, she said. I could honestly tell Doctor Veil that Joss was earning her keep, though I didn’t think Veil cared so long as the job was getting done.

  The town of Orontse was three long houses on higher ground a half mile to the east. This was the nearest beach to them, but storms were frequent enough here that the fishermen preferred to walk rather than build substantial structures closer to their boats. These shacks along the shore were a matter of a few hours work—and probably less if an entire family worked on the project together.

  While I took and recorded samples of the day’s catch, two aircars and a surface yacht arrived at what was either a separate island or a very distant headland. “Joss?” I said, gesturing to the second aircar.

  “That’s the Meridan Spa,” she said. “It even gets off-planet traffic that flies in from St. Martins. Dunno what they do in a storm, but maybe they have real bunkers there.”

  “Say…?” she added after a moment. “Did you want to go over there? Kent and the car’ve gone back to St. Martins, but a boat goes over every day with fresh fish for the spa. You can ride along and come back the same way.”

  “I’m okay here,” I said. “I like the hammock for sleeping and I’ll like it more when I learn to get aboard without going over.”

  Food at the spa would be fancier and maybe better, but the woman from the village who cooked for us—the mother of the boy who’d been guarding the place when I’d arrived—turned out to be extremely good and the fish even fresher than they got across the bay.

  I could see Edwige Hergestal at the spa, but if that never happened again, it was still too soon. I was sorry she’d lost her brother, but people die in wars. Her brother had enlisted, just as my cousins had. Or I had, if it came to that.

  There are people who need someone to blame when things go wrong. I’ve found avoidance is the best way to deal with them.

  Joss came back with another basket of fish from the boat she’d accompanied. “Do you want to come out with me tomorrow morning?” she said. “Or maybe on one of the other boats?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to go out into the forest tomorrow with my shotgun. I’m not sure I’ll be able to spot anything even with the motion detectors in my RCN goggles, but it’s worth a try.”

  * * *

  Rick pulled the trike half onto the raised portion of the street in front of the Mediation Mission. One back wheel was still in the travel lane, though there wasn’t enough vehicular traffic for it to become a problem.

  The raised curb wasn’t so much a sidewalk for pedestrians as a channel to direct rainwater into the axial street and down into the harbor. St. Martins was as concentrated as an anthill.

  Rachel came out of the mission. Rick took off his commo helmet and waved to her. She looked startled but clicked down the steps to him. The idling diesel was quiet enough to talk over.

  “I didn’t realize you were going to be driving a cyclo,” Rachel said.

  Rick handed her the other commo helmet he’d borrowed and relatched the lid of the cargo box. “Put this on,” he said, “and we’ll be able to talk. Besides there may be stuff dropping outta the sky when we get near the top. Now, hop on behind me and I’ll get outta the road.”

  Rachel pulled the helmet on and found that the internal band adjusted automatically to her head. She got onto the pillion seat by stretching her right leg over and then easing her body carefully to follow. The footboard for the driver extended far enough back for her to use it also.

  “I thought you’d be coming in an aircar,” Rachel said.

  “And park where?” Rick replied. “Besides, the only aircar on the ship is the Bio Section one, and they’re using that right now. They’ve got a sampling team across the island in Orontse. Now, hold on tight and we’ll go see a volcano.”