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  She had, I noted, echoed precisely Adams’s own private thoughts. “Perhaps,” he admitted grudgingly. “And if it was just you involved I would probably agree. But now you seek to prove that there are smugglers hiding among us; and that the authorities won’t be so willing to ignore.”

  Again, I could sense a private argument about that going on in his thoughts. I probed, trying to pick out a part of that I could use …

  And again, Calandra beat me to it. “And yet, if you prove yourselves cooperative in rooting out these smugglers, won’t that clearly weigh in your favor?” she pointed out.

  “Besides,” I added, “we certainly don’t expect to find smugglers hiding out in your actual settlements, masquerading as Hallo—as members of your fellowships. The fact that you may be sharing a planet with them can hardly be considered collusion.”

  “True,” he sighed.

  For a long minute he continued to gaze into his cup … and abruptly I realized his sense had changed—changed so subtly I hadn’t noticed it happen. Somehow, even as he sat before us, it was as if he no longer was aware of our presence. As if his attention had wandered—

  Or wasn’t there at all.

  I looked at Calandra, tilted my head fractionally toward Adams. She nodded, her own sense growing oddly troubled as she studied him.

  I know a man who fourteen years ago was caught up right into the third heaven …

  It was a scripture that had always intrigued me as a child … but now, faced with something that might very well be similar, I found myself sharing some of Calandra’s uneasiness. It seemed impossible … but could Adams and his group truly have discovered holy ground here?

  “Sorry,” Adams said suddenly. I jumped; again I’d missed whatever transition there might have been. “I was trying to see if God would provide me an answer.”

  I could still sense a great deal of indecision in him. “And … ?” I prompted.

  He shrugged. “Nothing that I can take as guidance. Touching the cloak of His mind is one thing; truly understanding what He is saying is something considerably harder.” He took a deep breath, and I felt some residual tension slowly leave him. Apparently this form of meditation wasn’t exactly easy on its practitioners. “He seems, as usual, to be leaving this decision up to me,” Adams continued. “So tell me: just exactly what is it you want from us?”

  I took a deep breath of my own. “On the way here we spent some time studying the ship’s maps of Spall, and we’ve picked out one area that we’d like to concentrate on.”

  “How big an area?”

  “A few hundred square kilometers.” I read the look on his face and shrugged. “I know: a drop in an ocean. But we’re only two people, and we haven’t got much time.”

  “Yes, I understand. It’s just that—never mind. Please go on.”

  “The target area is about two hundred sixty kilometers southeast of here, about eighty kilometers from your Myrrh settlement—that is one of yours, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “So what you need is transportation to Myrrh; and while there you’ll need a vehicle, power for it, and lodging.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I realize that’s a lot to ask.”

  He waved a hand. “Physical goods aren’t that much of a problem. Would you want a guide, or assistance in the search?”

  “No,” Calandra spoke up firmly before I could answer. “We’d rather do it ourselves.”

  I frowned at her. “Calandra—”

  She turned intense eyes on me. “We’re getting these people involved too much as it is, Gilead. We do it alone, or not at all.”

  It wasn’t a point I could really argue with. “All right,” I agreed, turning back to Adams. “I guess the physical goods will be all we need, then.”

  He nodded slowly. “Those I think we can provide. There’s still one more thing you’ll need, though: time. How much?”

  How much time to search a world? “We’ll take as much as you feel comfortable giving us,” I said honestly. “If you were able to plead ignorance as to who we were—” I shrugged helplessly. “But of course it’s too late for that now.”

  “Not unless they ban the use of pravdrugs tomorrow,” he agreed soberly. “Still, as long as you don’t tell anyone else, I’m the only one they can charge with knowing collusion.” His eyes hardened. “And it will remain that way. Understand?”

  I swallowed, a rush of guilt and shame flooding in on me at the reminder of what I’d done to Kutzko and Captain Bartholomy. They, too, would escape any direct charges of collusion … but it would likely be small consolation to either of them. “I understand very well,” I told Adams evenly. “There’s too much already in the balance for us to want to add to it.”

  The hardness faded slowly from his sense. “I’m glad we agree.” A faint smile twitched at his lips. “Though before you get the wrong impression about us, let me say that I’m glad you were honest with me. No matter what it costs, truth is always preferable to lies.” He took a deep breath, let it out in a long sigh. “I can give you three days. No more.”

  I caught Calandra’s eye. She shrugged, a touch of helplessness in her sense. Three days was horribly short … but then, anything less than a decade would be too short for the task we’d set ourselves. “Whatever you think is right,” I told Adams.

  “I’m sorry I can’t give you more,” he said, genuine regret in his voice. “But in actual fact, I suspect you’ll have even less time than that. Your absence will surely have been discovered by now, and sending your ship out into space isn’t likely to fool anyone for very long. The Pravilo will probably be here by nightfall.”

  Unfortunately, he was probably right. “All the more reason for us to get moving at once,” I said.

  “Agreed. What I think I’ll do is simply give you one of our cars and let you drive yourselves to Myrrh—that’ll save me having to ask one of my people to make the ten-hour round trip, and also keep you from tying up one of Myrrh’s vehicles with your search.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Semi-auto drive, I presume?”

  “Yes, but you won’t have any trouble getting to Myrrh,” he assured us. “We’ve done the trip enough times that we’ve got the best route programmed in.” He got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, then, I’ll go get things started. I’m afraid there won’t be time enough for me to offer you a proper meal, but my kitchen is back that way—please help yourselves to whatever you’d like to take for the trip.”

  “Thank you,” I nodded, also standing up. “We appreciate all your help.”

  For a moment we locked eyes. “I only hope,” he said quietly, “that it’ll be enough.”

  He left, and I looked down at Calandra. “Do you think we can trust him?” I asked her.

  She shrugged slightly. “We don’t really have much choice any more, do we?”

  I grimaced. “Not really.”

  With a sigh, she stood up. “Anyway, the Halloas are probably the least of our worries at the moment. Come on—you heard the man. Let’s go pack up a lunch.”

  Chapter 16

  WE SET OUT FROM Shekinah half an hour later in a mul/terrain that Adams assured us was the best in his small fleet. The vehicle’s exterior was in such bad shape that it made me wince, but the motors ran well enough and the sucon rings seemed to hold their charge without any obvious leakage, so on balance I really had no grounds for complaint. Perhaps, I reflected, eight years among Carillon’s wealth had spoiled me more than I’d realized.

  We headed off, following a barely distinguishable path that looked more appropriate for livestock than for vehicles. Calandra, I could tell, wasn’t in the mood for conversation, and I had no particular reason to try and draw her out. So I got as comfortable as I could in a perpetually bouncing seat, prepared myself mentally for a long five-hour trip, and settled back to watch the landscape.

  It was, I found, a surprisingly interesting landscape to watch. Even the sections of untouched native area we’d seen around Shekinah had hardly been the li
feless desert I’d been expecting, and now I was finding that even that had been relatively sparse.

  Not that any of it was truly spectacular, at least not by normal human aesthetic standards. Most of the plants were a drab bluish or gray-purple in color—clearly based on something other than chlorophyll—and most of them were built low to the ground, with only a few types even as large as a mid-sized bush. But they were numerous enough, and with considerable variety. Idly, I wondered how many of those who so confidently described Spall as a desert had ever actually seen the place.

  “I wonder why the plants are so thin around Shekinah,” Calandra spoke up into my thoughts.

  I shrugged. “I’d guess Adams’s people are doing something to the soil to help their own crops grow—fertilization, or something. Maybe whatever it is interferes with the local flora.”

  “Maybe,” she said slowly. “On the other hand … maybe it’s a result of running fusion drives that close to the surface.”

  I sensed a cautious glint of optimism within her, and saw where she was headed. If the fusion drive was indeed responsible for the thin flora, we might have found a visual sign of human habitation. “What could the mechanism be?” I wondered out loud. “The heat wave from the landing?”

  “Or else perhaps some chemical peculiar to a fusion exhaust,” she suggested. “I wish we had some detailed information on the biochemistry here.”

  “And had a biochemist along to explain what the information meant?” I added dryly.

  Almost unwillingly, she smiled. “That’s a point, I suppose,” she admitted. “Well … maybe someone at Myrrh will know something.”

  I nodded. The Halloas at Myrrh had, after all, been farming this soil for a couple of years now. Hopefully, somewhere along the line they’d taken the time to learn a little about their new home.

  It was almost sunset when the car finally drove us into the center of a small cluster of homes and came to a stop.

  The Myrrh settlement was in many ways a fainter echo of the Shekinah one. Considerably smaller, with a slight feeling of roughness around the edges, it was obviously still in the early stages of its life and development; but obvious too was the fact that it was indeed a true offshoot of the Halo of God. The young man who came out to greet us—a bit shabbier, in a frontier sort of way, than those at Shekinah—had the same underlying sense of peace about him that I’d seen in Adams and his followers.

  “Greetings,” he nodded as Calandra and I got stiffly out of the car. He did a double take as he realized he didn’t recognize us; and then his smile came back. “Sorry—we don’t get many strangers here. What can I do for you?”

  “We’re here to see Shepherd Joyita Zagorin,” I told him, stretching aching muscles. “We’ve got a message for her from Shepherd Adams.”

  “Ah—I should have guessed,” the boy nodded, his smile becoming more of a grin. “I’ve driven the Shekinah/Myrrh road myself—great fun, isn’t it?”

  “Marvelous,” I grunted. “You should go into partnership with a kidney regrowth company—you’d both clean up.”

  “Probably. If you’ll follow me, please … ?”

  “Where is everyone?” Calandra asked as we crossed the open square-like area toward a large meeting-house sort of building.

  “We’re having a common dinner tonight,” he explained over his shoulder, “and many are working on that. The rest are either finishing up the day’s chores or are out meditating.”

  He waved off between two of the buildings, and I saw a group of perhaps half a dozen people sitting a short distance off from the settlement, clearly deep in meditation. “You people certainly take this meditation seriously, don’t you?”

  He didn’t take offense, not even privately. “There wouldn’t be much point in doing it half-heartedly, would there?” he countered.

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  The meeting house was full of busy people and delectable aromas that made my stomach growl. Our guide led us past the large, C-shaped tables to a small room in the back, where a young woman was diligently working with an old computer. She looked up as the youth tapped on the open door. “Yes, Thomaz?”

  “Visitors from Shekinah,” he told her, indicating us.

  “Ah,” she said, rising gracefully to her feet. “Welcome to Myrrh Fellowship. I’m Shepherd Joyita Zagorin; what can I do for you?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised—even in those few seconds Shepherd Zagorin’s twin auras of inner peace and leadership had been clearly evident, had I gotten past my expectations enough to notice. But I hadn’t, and with my embarrassment at missing the signs came an even more embarrassing tongue-tangling. “I—uh—my name is Gilead Raca Benedar,” I managed. “This is Calandra Mara Paquin. I—we—have a message for you from Shepherd Adams.”

  “Who failed to mention my gender?” she asked dryly.

  “Who failed to mention your age,” I corrected, spurred by an urge to explain myself. “In my—admittedly—limited experience, a congregation’s elders have seldom been as young as you are. Particularly in a frontier community like Myrrh.”

  She nodded, and to my relief I could see she wasn’t offended. “In the Halo of God, positions are based on faith and gifts, not seniority or status,” she told me. Her eyes flicked to Calandra, back to me. “From which I take it neither of you is even a prospective Seeker?”

  I caught the sense of the word: the proper name for what we’d been calling Halloas. “No, we’re not,” I confirmed, digging out the envelope Adams had given us. “Perhaps this will explain.”

  She opened the note and read it … and, watching her face, it was clear to me that the situation wasn’t being explained nearly to her satisfaction. A sense of uneasiness began to color her basic calmness, and she took the time to read the note a second time. “I hadn’t caught the significance of your middle names,” she said at last, looking up again and giving us each a brief but probing look. “I’ve never met any Watchers before.”

  “We haven’t met many Seekers, either, if it comes to that,” I shrugged.

  She tapped the paper with her fingernail. “Shepherd Adams would like me to extend Myrrh Fellowship’s full hospitality to you—which, of course, we’re more than willing to do.” She hesitated, searching for a delicate way to ask the indelicate …

  “We can’t tell you any more than Shepherd Adams already has,” Calandra spoke up. “For your own protection as well as ours.”

  Zagorin’s lips compressed momentarily. Shepherd Adams, I gathered, was generally very open with his people, and I suspected it was this unusual secrecy as much as anything else that was disturbing her. “If it helps,” I added, “we ought to be out from underfoot in two or three days and that’ll be the end of it.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. Seeker Shepherd or no, I could see that there was still a strong latent layer of skepticism built into her view of the universe. But at least she was too polite to call me on it aloud. “Well, until then, Myrrh Fellowship and I are at your complete disposal,” she said instead. “Shepherd Adams mentions lodging and power for your car; can I assume the first is the priority at the moment?”

  “Definitely,” I nodded. “I don’t even want to see that car for the next few hours.”

  That got a smile from her. “Yes, I’ve done the Shekinah route myself on occasion. Well, then. Dinner will be in about half an hour; while we’re waiting, why don’t I get your lodging arrangements settled?”

  I glanced at Calandra, read agreement. “Sounds good,” I told Zagorin.

  “All right,” she said, coming out from behind the desk. “Let’s go see what we can turn up.”

  The dinner was well attended, with about a hundred twenty people gathered around the tables, twenty percent or so of them children. Shepherd Zagorin had us seated next to her, an arrangement which enabled her to answer or deflect any awkward questions about what we were doing in Myrrh. The fact that she did so at least twice during the meal showed that, in spite of her own private reserv
ations about us, she was nevertheless willing to trust Adams on this one.

  The food itself was a little startling at first. So far I hadn’t really had an opportunity to sample genuine Solitaran-style cooking, of which I assumed this was a variant, and it was far tangier than I had guessed from its aromas. But it was good enough, once my palate had gotten over its initial shock.

  And as I ate, I took the time to study the Seekers.

  The children were the easiest, of course. Full of energy and mischief-tinged high spirits, with few social barriers yet in place, they were like children everywhere else throughout the Patri and colonies. It brought back to mind Shepherd Adams’s offhanded comment about beginning their meditation training early, and I felt a twinge of concern. Our own Watcher elders had struggled long and hard with the problem of how to instill observational discipline without overloading or even breaking their children’s natural spirits, and I could only hope Shepherd Adams and his people were treading as lightly.

  Especially given the obvious effectiveness of their training on their adult members.

  It was vaguely astonishing. Granted, only a handful of those close enough for me to read showed anything even approaching the degree of inner peace that I’d seen in Adams and Zagorin—the majority, in fact, still showed strong traces of the same tension and low-level despair that we’d sensed down on Solitaire. But even in those the tension was clearly on its way out … and for perhaps the first time in eleven years I found myself actually beginning to relax.

  Eleven years away from the Watchers of Cana settlement—eight of those years immersed in the greed-saturated atmosphere of Lord Kelsey-Ramos’s circle of associates—had almost erased the memories of what a simple, loving community felt like. Here there was no competition for riches or power; no arguments that couldn’t be swiftly worked out between the parties involved; no greed or grasping for things that ultimately didn’t matter. All that mattered to them was each other and God.

  It was like the warm touch of the sun on chilled skin; and I was eagerly soaking it in when Calandra stirred next to me … and as I turned my attention to her the whole comfortable sensation vanished like a soap bubble.