"Still not quite what I thought we were about"

"Being seen up here is what we're about," Ntoko told them. "We're flag-waving, that's all. The hinterlands have to know we're here, and we're real. It happens on every campaign. You send a convoy round all the backwoods settlements to prove they're not immune. If we didn't, places like this would be a haven for refugees and resistance movements. And the way to pay for these convoys is—"

"Is with valuable goods," Amersy finished. "Asset realization in miniature."

"You got it."

Lyaute decided that the convoy wouldn't be spending the night in Dixon. Anger was running on high voltage through the townspeople, and there were too many of those tempting heavy tools available.

When he got back into the jeep, Lawrence watched several Skins from the other platoons stuffing jewelry and household cards into their personal bags.

The convoy camped out on the plain that night, thirty kilometers past Dixon. They got to Stanlake Province the next day, where waterside villages were strung out all along the shores of the lake itself. They harvested strange aquatic weeds for their complex organic compounds, which were used down in Memu Bay's biomedical factories. Assets here were even scarcer than in Dixon. All the villages used solar panels and wind turbines to generate their electricity; there was no fusion plant. Only three of them had a doctor's office—serious patients were taken to Dixon, or air-ambulanced out to Memu Bay. Electronic systems were years out of date. In their raw form, the organic compounds were worthless. Lyaute did check that all of the harvest was being sent to Memu Bay. It was.

They drove on past the lake, deeper into the high plain. On the third day they reached Arnoon Province. Several of the Mitchell peaks were clustered together here, creating deep, meandering valleys between them. Dense forest had colonized the sheltered saddles between the high slopes. Slim curlicues of white cloud poured down from the craggy snow-covered peaks to writhe amid the treetops. The Great Loop Highway led straight through the thickest section of vegetation. Trees and vines blotted out the sun for long periods. Flat tree stumps lined the route where the highway robots had cut the path, with bulbous fans of bright coral-pink fungus growing out of the damp, rotting wood. But not even the robots could cope with the creepers that twined across the gap. Despite the jeep's all-terrain suspension, the journey began to get rough.

"What do this load of hillbillies do?" Kibbo asked as they rocked and shook their way through yet another tunnel of vegetation. Two hours in the cool forest, and they still hadn't seen any sign of human habitation.

"I think they grow tigercotton," Amersy said.

"That's Laeti Province," Lawrence said. "Arnoon collects willow webs. It's a vine that only grows in this forest, similar to wool apparently. They have a load of cybernetic looms that churn out clothes and rugs. The cities pay a premium for it" He grunted at the sudden echoes of memory. Isolated crofters living amid the mountains, selling their crafts to the rich city folk so they could buy the few items necessary to maintain their independence.

Either Great Loop Highway marker posts were being stolen, or the transport office had decided to space them farther apart in the forest. Up in the lead jeep, Ntoko was relying heavily on his inertial guidance and maps uploaded from the Memu Bay Town Hall, which were at least a decade out of date. They kept coming across junctions and forks in the muddy road that simply didn't exist in the old files.

Sometime around midafternoon, Lawrence caught sight of what he assumed to be a willow web. A small jade ball of what looked like tightly packed velvet gossamer was hanging from a high bough by a single sapphire-blue stem. The wood where the end of the stem was attached had swollen to three times the bough's ordinary width. In contrast to the rest of the forest vegetation, which was slick and damp, the furry surface of the ball was completely dry, as if it repelled the alternating deluges of rain and mist that inundated the trees.

They began to appear regularly after that. The first one had been a baby. Some he glimpsed deeper in the trees were as tall as himself, their surfaces mottled with dark lichen and plagued by ordinary creepers. Now that he knew what to look for, he could often see the shriveled stems protruding from distended branches, their ends cut cleanly.

Ntoko had actually driven into the village before he realized it. To start with he thought it was just a broad clearing. Then there were small children racing in front of the jeep, and he slammed the brakes on. Wheels slid on the carpet of wet mossgrass as the children squealed. They stopped, mercifully without hitting anyone. Smiling faces were suddenly surrounding the vehicle, hands waving as excitable young voices chattered.

Lawrence, who admittedly wasn't wearing his safety belt, had been thrown forward into the front seats. He straightened up and scanned his helmet sensors round the clearing. It was like a multiphase image that resolved only when you looked at it in the correct focus. Where before he'd seen trees with drooping branches tangled by vines, there were now wooden A-frame houses with roofs of elaborate reed mats that were obviously still alive. What he'd taken as a random scattering of shaggy bushes were actually compact gardens.

"Holy crap," Ntoko muttered as he climbed down. "This place is like the most perfect camouflage."

"You're thinking military, Sarge," Lawrence said. "This is just the way people like this live." ' "And you'd know all about people like this, space boy."

Adults were emerging from the foliage, or doors, to gather around the convoy's parked vehicles. They hung on to their lively children, waiting expectantly. Captain Lyaute launched into his standard speech about Z-B acquiring ownership of the planet's founding corporation and requiring a dividend. Instead of the anger and resentment rife in Rhapsody and Stanlake, the Arnoon villagers grinned at him, amused by the whole concept. Even putting collateral necklaces on two of them didn't curtail their open derision.

The squaddies started to search the arboreal A-frames. Lawrence began to revise his opinion of the villagers as simple crofters. The inside of the houses were far from primitive. They had electric lighting, and air-conditioning, and running water; kitchens that were fully equipped with every modern convenience, fridges, washing cabinets, microwaves. Lounges that had full AS desktop pearls with large panes and sheet screens to play the thousands of hours of multimedia recordings stored in extensive libraries.

Domestic convenience items aside, it was the decor that impressed him the most. The villagers had put a lot of effort into fashioning their homes according to individual taste. Many of the frames were carved, then painted or bound with willow wool in vibrant primary colors to emphasize curves and textures. Carvings invariably followed the Hindu or Buddhist school, with many-armed gods and goddesses serenely contemplating the village as they sat astride powerful serpentine dragons. Inside the houses mood decoration was favored, with children's playrooms formed inside nests of brash, exciting patterns; lounges came in elegant abstracts or classical ornate, making them cozy and welcoming, bedrooms in cool, subtly blended pastels. He began to wonder how many of the villagers were artisans. Somebody had to take care of the practical stuff.