North Wind Read Free

Their guest looked at the ground, embarrassed. There were things he was not supposed to understand. “I think we should be getting back,” Bokr went on, casually. He gave the invalid a smile of mild social apology. “I’m afraid you won’t see the ancient palace today.”
    “Never mind,” replied Goodlooking, automatically. He could only help by joining the charade. “Another time.”
    Panisad the minor trader put an arm around his shoulders he told Goodlooking, earnestly distinct.
    They had all seen the frank murder in the local’s eyes and felt the threat and hatred. Nobody mentioned these things. Someone fetched the droms. Bokr took the invalid in his arms to carry him out of the tomb. Through the trees the shape of the old palace could be discerned, it was so near. Goodlooking knew that he would never see it now. He would not leave the Trading Post again, until the evacuation shuttle—which was surely on its way—came to take him to safety. He would never see these stones again, nor the yellow sun nor the blue sky. Suddenly he was horrified. Had he really wasted such a precious hour, brooding on his neurotic wrongs? But it was too late for regrets. The adventure was over.
    ii
    The Aleutian pipeline ran north to south across the Argolid plain: a regular trace of darker soil, diminishing until it disappeared into conifer plantation. It was part of a pump that was drawing thick foul brine from the gulf of Korinth, and churning out clean seawater at Nafplion to the south. Where it passed near the site of ancient Mycaenae, above the road from Argos to Korinth, Sid Carton was at work, supervised by Maitri.
    Sid was chipping away at a splash of grey concrete that marred the neat dark band. Anti-Aleutian protestors had dug up the channel and poured in a plug of quick-hardening liquid stone, which they had laced with a wide-spectrum bactericide. The technicians at the Trading Post monitored their water-plant constantly, and were unconcerned. Aleutian industrial bacteria could deal with anything the locals threw at them. But Maitri liked to keep his pipeline looking nice.
    The protestors were amateurs. On either side of their plug, the “pipe” of sterile soil that surrounded the bacterial flow was broken. There was every chance that alien micro-organisms had made a break for freedom: an ironic result for the anti-Aleutians. But Sid had seen too much of the reality of so-called Total Quarantine Enforcement to be upset. The living powertools used by the Aleutian artisans had to be kept inside the quarantined compound, and they had no local-style equivalents. Sid was using a hammer and chisel. They were his own. He liked to see himself as a simple, old-Earth handyman. And if something needed fixing in his quarters, he didn’t want aliens nosing around. If you lived with the Aleutians you learned to keep your territory clearly defined. Otherwise they’d be all over you.
    It was hard work. Sweat trickled on his forehead. The film, which he had to wear the same as the aliens, licked it up with a million tickling mouths. He squatted back to scratch the itch. His slickly encased hand dropped, defeated. Quarantine was a pain.
    Maitri dropped into an animal crouch beside him.
    “Let me have a turn.”
    They were half-hearted bipeds, slipping easily and strangely into a four-footed gait. They’d been called man-sized baboons in clothes: it was close enough. The hairless, noseless, muzzle of a super-sentient monster with formidable fangs, leaned cozily by Sid’s shoulder. He was careful not to flinch.
    “No thanks, sahib. Your prestige is my safety. I don’t want some partisan with an antique Kalashnikov to come over the hill, and spot one of the immortal superbeings stooping to manual labor.”
    But the sunburned landscape was empty.
    “No messages at all,” mused the alien, gloomily.
    Ostensibly they were here to chip concrete.