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him of an old cruise missile, but instead of a warhead it carried a nose unit
bristling with lenses and sensors. Panels were opened to give access for
whatever work Erskine was doing on it. One of the exposed compartments
contained boxes that looked like rations packs. There was also a medical kit,
a stack of folded fabric items, and various tools. What s all this? Keene
asked, gesturing.
Heeland pulled himself closer. One of those ideas that mission planners come
up with, he replied. In this case, probably not a bad one.
Erskine patted the probe s engine cowling affectionately. These babies go
everywhere, and they can get down just about anywhere, he explained. There
are going to be people all over that vacation heaven of a planet down there,
and some of them are going to get hurt, get lost, or otherwise get into some
kind of trouble.
Okay, I get it. Mobile survival units, Keene completed.
Exactly right, Heeland said.
A good idea, Keene agreed. I m actually with the planners for once. So what
have we got?
He leaned over the hatch and began poking around. Food, medical stuff, uh-huh
. . . And these here-a clothing store too?
Survival tent. A few keep-you-warm, keep-you-dry kinds of things. Some good
stretchy boots,
Heeland answered.
And this looks like a Boy Scout kit.
Mend it, fix it-everything but the tool that gets stones out of horses
hooves. I guess they didn t reckon on having any horses.
An automatic and ammo? Who are we starting a war with now?
Heeland shrugged. You never know what you might come up against, I guess.
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It s a phone booth too, Erskine said. That panel at the back-emergency band
link via the airmobile, or direct to satellite.
We like to take care of our customers, Heeland said. Typical Kronian.
Appretiare.
The compad in Keene s tunic pocket beeped. Excuse me, he said, drawing it
out. The caller was Shayle. She looked excited.
Lan, we ve just heard. The African site has been selected. The descent team
is clearing the ground, and the backup crew is preparing to go down now. We ll
be following pretty soon!
That s great! Keene said.
The latest candidate site for a base was located in what had been the area
east of the Great
African Rift, and was now a four-thousand-mile-long peninsula extending south
from the crumpled remains of Iran to a splayed tip formed out of Mozambique
and Madagascar, between the reduced
Indian Ocean and the new ocean forming to the west. The peninsula had been
named Raphta, after a large East African trading center described in Roman
times but never positively identified. As far as could be ascertained, the
area surveyed for the base lay in what had previously been northern
Tanzania. Once tropical parkland, it was now a wilderness of crustal upheaval,
flood-scoured tablelands, and swamps, its climate cooling under the influence
of the new polar region to the south.
Does it mean the base has a name now? Keene asked.
Shayle nodded. Borrowed from the old days. Gallian has decided to call it
Serengeti.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The skies had changed in the course of the last year or so-not that Rakki had
any clear concept of what a year was or why it was important. It was something
that White Head kept track of by marking notches in a piece of bone for every
day that passed. There were still storms and lightning, and winds that brought
cold, sometimes with snow, if they came from the south; rain if from the west;
dry, choking dust from the east. But the sky overhead had lightened and seemed
higher, breaking up at times into patches of gray cloud and streamers moving
against a ceiling that came close to white. In fact, on one or two occasions,
even the ceiling had opened briefly to reveal glimpses of a pale, watery
blueness that Rakki had heard was supposed to exist up there but had never
known whether to believe. Perhaps the flashes he sometime saw in his mind of a
dazzling light in the sky shining down over a world of color and life were
real after all. And yet, strangely, he was unable to recall any details of
that world-of the trees that White Head said had stood high overhead
everywhere, or the places filled with people. Sims said that people s minds
protected themselves by shutting out memories that it would be too painful to
know could never be experienced again. Generally, the air seemed to be colder,
which caused aches in his wounds and in his leg at night.
Even so, the valley was looking greener these days. Slim shoots were appearing
in more places, which the Oldworlders said would one day become trees many
times the height of a man. When
Rakki asked them how long that would take, it turned out-strangely-that none
of them really knew.
He took in the view as he and White Head came over the crest of the ridge,
riding side by side on what White Head called mules ; but at the same time he
said they weren t like real mules, whatever that meant. Being carried on
animals had been widespread in the former times, White
Head said-but the animals they had then were larger and faster, but apparently
were not the cattle that had existed in herds of thousands. Rakki had thought
it strange that they would bother riding animals at all if they also possessed
metal birds that they could fly in. But he had long given up trying to make
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sense of the conflicting and often seemingly contradictory things that
Oldworlders said.
It had never occurred to Rakki that animals might be made to carry people.
With his crooked leg that no longer bent fully, it was his main way of getting
around these days, and his only means of traveling long distances. Sims had
found the mules petrified in a canyon after an earthquake and suggested using
them, initially as a way of moving Rakki more easily. That had been in the
times following Rakki s rescue, over a year ago now. All he remembered was
returning briefly to consciousness as he lay on the rocky ledge where he had
fallen, and then nothing more until a long time after that. He knew the story
only from the things the others told him.
It was White Head who had first grown suspicious after Rakki s departure from
the caves with
Shingral and the others, when he heard Gap Teeth s account of Zomu s warning
to Rakki. From his own observations, White Head had seen signs of too close a
collusion between Zomu and Jemmo to trust Zomu s story. When he learned of how
the result had been to separate Rakki from one of his two staunchest
defenders, he became alarmed that this might have been precisely the
intention.
Convincing Gap Teeth that it was Rakki, not Shell Eyes, who was in danger-and
that in any case he, White Head, would watch over her-he had persuaded Gap
Teeth to set out after the party in order to aid Rakki and Shingral if they
encountered trouble. But before Gap Teeth caught up with them, he had spied
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