This one is for Mike Davison. He’s a good friend, a fellow adventurer, and a person you can count on when the stuff hits the fan.

  Chapter One

  CONFIDENTIAL

  Calag Inc. Board Eyes Only

  So by keeping sentient staff to an absolute minimum, and by making maximum use of robotic support systems, the company will minimize expense, maximize profits, and achieve an ROI of at least ten percent. With that in mind I think the board will agree that the negative psychodynamics described by PERSPSYCH STAFF will be more than offset by Calag’s ability to build market share.

  (Excerpted from PRESPERS EYES ONLY MEMO CS/CC-876921.)

  Calag Planet 4782/X

  Rogan awoke to the sound of rain pounding on the plastiform roof. Not the gentle rain that was scheduled to fall each night, but a downpour that could expose vulnerable roots and fill rivers to overflowing. Damn.

  He threw the covers aside, roll ed out of bed, and stood. He had short kinky black hair, a slim body, and a determined chin. He paused to listen for a moment, then strode toward the door. It hurried to get out of the way. The dimly lit hall way, living area, and entryway led out onto the porch. Lightning strobed the distant hills and thunder roll ed as Rogan padded down the steps to the duracrete pad. The rain pelted his naked skin. He touched the com link located under the right corner of his jaw. “Wally? You there?”

  • • •

  Wally, better known to his mother as Walter Prescott Dugan Jr., was in orbit two hundred and fifty miles above the planet’s surface. And, while he wasn’t asleep, he wasn’t exactly awake either. He released .05 cc worth of stimulant into what remained of his bloodstream and waited for it to kick in. “Yeah, I’m here. Where the hell else would I be?”

  Though normally sympathetic, Rogan was in no mood to indulge the cyborg’s taste for self-pity. “It’s raining, Wally. It’s raining hard. What happened?”

  Rogan had been known to drink once in a while, especially when lonely, and Wally wondered if he was sloshed. But a quick check of the instrument package built into Rogan’s house confirmed that it was not only raining, but raining hard. Too hard. Something was wrong. Wally ran a systems check.

  Like most agricultural planets, Calag 4782/X was equipped with a computer-controlled weather system. And, like the systems on most ag planets, it worked about half the time. But that didn’t stop the suits from modeling Rogan’s quotas on the optimistic specs provided by the system’s manufacturer—or bombarding him with nasty memos when production levels dropped—all of which added up to a planetary manager (PM) who stood in the rain and drank too much.

  Wally had been linked to the computer so long he didn’t know which part of his mental capacity was his own and which part belonged to the company’s Systems Group. And it really didn’t matter, since an accident had destroyed his body and reduced him to little more than a brain—which, when combined with the latest in bioelectronics, made good money by living in orbit and supervising the planet’s electromechanical systems.

  Once retrieved and analyzed, the data said it all . The cyborg kept it short. “A hurricane veered off its projected track and brushed the coast two hundred miles east of Chateau Rogan. The good news is that the rain should taper off in an hour or so.”

  • • •

  Rogan held out his hand. Had the rain slackened? He wasn’t sure. Well, nothing could be done till first light. He looked upward and blinked when raindrops hit his eyes. “Thanks, Wally. Sorry if I was a jerk.”

  Wally smiled, or would have had he been equipped with lips. “Forget it. Besides . . . who ever heard of a PM that wasn’t a jerk?”

  Rogan laughed, shivered as a light breeze slid across his skin, and headed for the house. His feet were big, too big, some people said, and water splashed away from them. The house ate him in a single gulp. It was huge and empty. Most of his peers had families, including a mate, two or three kids, and a menagerie of pets. That’s why management built identical six-bedroom mini-mansions on al of their ag planets. It was the kind of one-size-fits-al solution that strategic planners loved. The problem was that the empty rooms served to amplify Rogan’s loneliness. He considered a drink but rejected the idea in favor of lights and music.

  The central computer heard his command, turned the lights up, and triggered a Johnny Cash album. It was hundreds of years old, but the sound was crystal clear. The house comp automatical y passed the sound to Wally, who didn’t enjoy retro music but liked to spy on Rogan. And so it was that the cyborg watched the sun rise over the western hemisphere to the strains of “I Walk the Line.”

  Rogan entered the shower, ordered the water on, and savored the immediate warmth. Then he inched the water temperature up until it was just short of scalding. It was there, under the rush of hot water, that Rogan had some of his best ideas. And, what with an already weak wheat harvest and a rogue rainstorm, he could use some. None were forthcoming, however. So Rogan left the shower cleaner but no wiser. A robot scooted in behind Rogan to scrub the shower down.

  Clothes weren’t a necessity since Rogan was the only human being on the planet and the climate was general y temperate. But he wore some anyway. His usual uniform consisted of a faded University of Nulon T-shirt, blue shorts, and hiking boots.

  In keeping with the rest of the house, the kitchen was enormous. The auto-chef served him a cup of tea and a bagel with cream cheese, the same breakfast he ate every day. Rogan carried the food to the workstation he had established on the kitchen table. The house had a ful y equipped office, but it was lonely in there. The kitchen was warmer and smel ed like food.

  A quick check of his e-mail showed that commodity prices were holding steady, animal protein was up a point, and metals were off a bit. It seemed that the company had named yet another vice president to join the army of executives on the corporate golf course, the competition had announced the release of a new vegetable, and the Nulon Alumni Association wanted a donation. Bull shit, bull shit, bull shit.

  Rogan took a bite of bagel, sipped his tea, and queried his private mailbox. Maybe, just maybe, there had been a reply to his ad. Nothing. Just a cursor blinking on and off. Rogan sighed, ran a check on the weather system, and carried his dishes to the sink.

  • • •

  Up in space and half a world away, Wally shook his nonexistent head. He had read Rogan’s e-mail at the same time Rogan did. The ad was a bad idea and the cyborg was glad that no one had responded to it. He couldn’t say that, of course, not to Rogan’s face, but that’s the way he felt. The last thing he needed was a stranger wandering around, consuming Rogan’s time, and getting in the way.

  Wally ordered one of his minisats to focus a telephoto lens on the front door of the house and waited for Rogan to emerge. The optics were so good that if his friend had a zit, the cyborg would know.

  • • •

  Rogan blinked as he stepped out into bright sunlight. Careful y mowed green grass slid down to meet an artificial lake. Bio-engineered insects skittered across the surface of the water—and occasionally there was a splash as one of the pond’s trout had a snack. None of the fish had reason to fear a hook, since Rogan lacked both the time and temperament to go fishing.

  The air smelled fresh and clean. Rogan took a deep breath and felt his spirits rise. This was the part of the job that he liked the best: roaming the planet and solving the fantastic array of problems that came his way. He touched the link. “So, Wally . . . what’s hot?”

  The cyborg was ready with an itinerary. “I figured you’d want to survey the flood damage off the top. After that you can check on some stranded aniforms, hit the restart button on Harvey 451, and eyebal the apple harvest.”

  Rogan frowned. “Hit the restart on Harvey 451? What the hell for? Send a droid.”

  “Sorry,” Wally replied, “no can do. The idiots in purchasing bought Harveys 450, 451, and 452 at an auction when Nugumi Manufacturing went under. They got ’em cheap—real cheap—but without any mods. So even though the droids were able to fix Harvey 451, it takes a living, breathing bio bod to fire one up. Think of it as job security.”

  Rogan was stil swearing as he cut across the lawn to the duracrete apron and entered the support building. It was cool inside and smel ed of lubricants. A number of transportation options were available to him, including a pair of twelve-foot-tall exoskeletons, three-wheeled ATVs, and a couple of grav trucks, including the beat-up unit he used almost every day.

  Three robots had been assigned to maintain the equipment, and the lead unit came out to greet him. In a fruitless attempt to make the spiderlike machine seem more human, Rogan had named it Bob and spray-painted the name across the top of its otherwise pristine housing. He nodded in the droid’s general direction. “Morning, Bob. How’s it hanging?”

  Like most of the planet’s more complex robots, Bob had the capacity to learn what was important and what wasn’t. Meaningless greetings had no relevance to his duties and were ignored. “Al vehicles are functional. Would you like a detailed report?”

  Rogan walked by and servos whined as Bob turned to follow him. “Thanks, but no thanks. No offense, old buddy . . . but your reports are boring as hell.”

  If Bob was offended, he gave no sign of it and watched impassively as Rogan circled the truck looking for telltale leaks or other problems. There were none.

  So Rogan checked to make sure that his emergency supplies and tools were aboard and properly stowed. Nothing made him more angry than to wind up a thousand miles from nowhere minus a critical tool. The truck was about twenty-five feet long, twelve feet wide, and shaped like a wedge. It could reach an altitude of three hundred feet, cruise at four hundred miles an hour, and carry a five-ton payload. And with an entire planet to supervise, that made the truck the most useful vehicle at his disposal. Sometimes, in order to cope with problems on the far side of the world, he was gone for weeks at a time.

  Rogan palmed the hatch, and heard the whining sound as it opened. The interior had a Spartan feel: a tool belt, a box of spare parts, and two bottles of water occupied the seldom-used passenger seat. There were two bunks aft of that, a cramped lavatory, and a tiny galley.

  Rogan felt around under an old leather jacket and found that the half-empty bottle of Duncan’s Prime was right where he’d left it. Good. He wouldn’t have a drink—not this early—but it was nice to know it was there.

  Rogan ran his eyes over the control panel, started the ignition sequence, and listened as the anti-grav units wound up. They sounded nice and tight. It took thirty seconds for the power board to turn green and another thirty to complete a systems check.

  The hum turned to a steady whine as Rogan taxied out of the support building and into the glare. The canopy darkened to compensate. There weren’t any other aircraft on the planet, but Rogan went through the motions of checking with the air traffic computer before lifting off.

  He eyed the screens arrayed in front of him and waited until all the buildings had dwindled to the size of toys before advancing the throttle. Having approved the coordinates downloaded from Wally, he switched to autopilot.

  It was tempting to place the seat in the reclining position and take a nap, but his quarterly reports were due in three days. Rogan hit the terminal release, pulled the unit over his lap, and entered his access code. The resulting “Good morning, Dan Rogan” appeared in front of Wally as well. The cyborg looked, gave the mentally equivalent of a yawn, and turned his attention elsewhere.

  Rogan leaned back in his chair. “Verbal mode, please.”

  The computer had a soft androgynous voice. “Verbal mode confirmed.”

  “Quarterly reports, page three, harvest totals.”

  A page of closely worded boilerplate flooded the screen, with blanks where the totals and supporting graphics would go. “Find and enter current totals by category.”

  The reply came quickly. “Before or after spoilage, wastage, and loss?”

  Rogan gave the question some thought. His totals should reflect spoilage, wastage, and loss since that was what the company would actually receive and be able to use. But he was running behind his quotas—a fact made worse by the storm—and the higher figure would look better to the suits. Their computers would detect the deception and produce enough exception reports to kill a forest of trees, but the strategy would buy some time—time he needed to boost production.

  Half an hour later, the grav truck slowed and descended toward the ground below. Rogan was partway through a carefully worded response to an interdepartmental interrogatory regarding his “profligate use of fertilizer” when Wally interrupted. “Time to run your corders if you want aerials of the flooding.”

  There were times when Rogan resented the fact that the cyborg spent a lot of time both literally and figuratively looking over his shoulder, but this wasn’t one of them. He could use the aerials to illustrate the extent of the damage and support his request for lower quotas—not to mention the fact that the suits loved flashy reports. That’s why the PMs vied with one another to submit sexy multimedia productions, a competition Rogan detested but was forced to participate in. So he started the truck’s corders and watched his screens. As usual the multi-angle computer-enhanced vid looked better than what he could see through the window.

  The river known as tributary NH/Q17-3514 had overflowed its banks. The water covered a field and threatened to drown the seeds planted there. That was bad, but not as bad as it could have been, since he had taken out some insurance by investing in high-grade AA-1 squash seed. Unlike the cheaper stuff, double-A could sense the low oxy levels associated with flooding and change its own metabolism to compensate. So what had been a risky decision was going to pay off. Would the squash counters give him credit for that? Hell no.

  The grav truck settled onto a mound with a distinct thump. Rogan checked to make sure all systems were on standby and exited the vehicle. The hillock was twenty-five feet higher than the surrounding field and naked of plant growth. There were fifty-seven mounds in all, a fact of which Rogan was well aware. He had even gone to the trouble of referencing the planet’s voluminous terraforming report, only to find that the hillocks had been written off as “an unusual manifestation of glacial scrubbing.”

  The theory sounded reasonable since Calag 4782/X had been an ice world prior to Earth-normal terraforming. But the uniformity of the mounds continued to bother him. In fact he was determined to slice one in half and see what was inside when he found the time.

  At least slightly cheered by the fact that the flooding could have been worse, Rogan reentered the grav truck and took off. The stranded aniforms were the next item on his itinerary and not too far away. By maintaining a low altitude and following a swiftly flowing river, Rogan had little difficulty locating them. The flooding had created a temporary island, and a herd of aniforms had taken refuge there.

  These particular creatures were bovine derived. They were white with black spots and, although heavily modified, still bore a resemblance to the ancient cattle from which they had evolved. But while their heads had a cow-like appearance, generations of bioengineers had transformed their bodies into huge hippo-like protein factories, each having tremendous muscle mass and short, stubby legs—legs that had to do little more than carry them to their food or away from a flood.

  After wandering in among them, Rogan spotted a large female that had suffered a laceration on her right flank during the storm. She was quite docile and made no attempt to escape as he closed the wound and sprayed sealer over it. Then he ordered Wally to send a grav barge loaded with specially formulated feed to the island. Once the water receded, the aniforms would be free to roam.

  Rogan hurried to the truck. It was a one-hour flight to the vast wheat field where Harvey 451 stood dreadfully idle. Rogan used the time to finish his response to the fertilizer interrogatory, lied on Wally’s quarterly fitness report, and checked his off-planet e-mail. There were no replies to his ad.

  The truck slowed and Rogan looked out the side window. The wheat covered more than a thousand square miles of carefully contoured land—land that was supposed to produce part of the six hundred million tons the company expected Rogan to deliver that year. The problem was that he was some two million tons short because of the unrealistically high quotas the suits had given him.

  The unharvested wheat, all of which was common 7.3 or T.aestivum 7.3, was a wonderful golden brown color. Rogan never tired of watching the way it danced in the wind.

  Most of the harvesters were little more than reddish orange dots on the distant horizon.

  Each one had left a mile-wide swath of stubble in its wake, except, that is, for Harvey 451, which stood like a rust-colored island in a sea of amber.

  As he landed, Rogan cursed the idiots who had designed the machine, the fools who had purchased it, and the scumbags who had sent it to his world. As the drive units spooled down, Rogan jumped to the ground and began to wade through the wheat. It swished against his legs and left a coating of dust.

  Harvey 451 stood strong and silent, as much a result of mechanical evolution as the aniforms were of genetic breeding. As Rogan jumped onto the first rung of a ladder and began to climb, he could feel the slight vibration caused by the harvester’s power plant.

  A small eight-legged robot beeped a greeting as the human arrived on deck one. One of four machines permanently assigned to Harvey 451, the droid was equipped for welding and waved a laser-equipped arm toward the human. Rogan nodded politely. “I’m here to activate this monster. Where’s the switch?”

  “You’re here to activate this monster,” the robot chirped agreeably. “The switch is located an inch and half to the right of the emergency shutdown control.”

  Rogan gritted his teeth. “Lead me to the switch.”

  “I will lead you to the switch,” the robot said. “Please follow.”

  The robot walked on tiptoe, its long, spindly legs carrying it along at a pretty good clip, its head rotating in 360-degree circles as it scanned the environment. Rogan followed the machine over a grating-covered walkway, up a vertical ladder, over a bridge, through an access door, up a short flight of stairs, and into a cramped control room. It had been designed for emergency use, so there were no creature comforts, not even a seat.