Unfortunately, now Kenyon was finally in place after its fifteen-year journey from the system’s asteroid belt, Colin doubted he had the budget even to maintain the geological engineering team, let alone pay for exploratory drilling. Transporting new colonists into the continental interior was absorbing funds at a frightening rate, and the first thing an asteroid settlement needed was a reliable home market as a financial foundation before it could start competing on the interstellar market.

“I’ll look into it later,” he told Terrance. “But I’m not making any promises. Somebody jumped the gun on that one by about twenty years. The asteroid industry project looks good on our yearly reports. Moving it into orbit is something you can point to and show the board how progressive you’re being. They know it doesn’t make a dollar while it’s underway. But as soon as it’s here in orbit they expect it to be instantly profitable. So I’m lumbered with the bloody thing while my cretinous predecessor is drawing his standard pension plus a nice fat bonus for being so dynamic while he was in office. The auditors should have caught this, you know. It’s going to be another fifty years before these mud farmers can scrape together enough capital to support high-technology industries. There’s no demand here.”

Terrance nodded, handsome features composed into a grave expression. “We’ve authorized start-up loans for another eight engineering companies in the last two months. Power bike sales are healthy in the city, and we should have an indigenous four-wheel-drive jeep within another five years. But I agree, large-scale consumer manufacturing is still a long way off.”

“Ah, never mind,” Colin sighed. “You weren’t the one who authorized Kenyon. If they’d just stop sending us colonists for six months, allow us to catch our breath. A ship every twenty days is too much, and the passage fees the colonists pay don’t cover half of the cost of sending them upriver. Once the starship’s been paid for the board doesn’t care. But what I wouldn’t give for some extra funds to spend on basic infrastructure, instead of subsidizing the river-boats. It’s not as if the captains don’t make enough.”

“That was something else I wanted to bring up. I’ve just finished accessing the latest schedules flek from the board; they’re going to send us five colonist-carrier starships over the next seventy days.”

“Typical.” Colin couldn’t even be bothered with a token protest.

“I was thinking we might ask the river-boat captains to take more passengers each trip. They could easily cram another fifty on board if they rigged up some awnings over the open decks. It wouldn’t be any different from the transients’ dormitories, really.”

“You think they’d go for that?”

“Why not? We pay their livelihood, after all. And it’s only temporary. If they don’t want to take them, then they can sit in harbour and lose money. The paddle-boats can hardly be used for bulk cargo. Once we’ve repossessed the boats, we’ll give them to captains who are more flexible.”

“Unless they all band together; those captains are a clannish lot. Remember that fuss over Crompton’s accident? He rams a log, and blames us for sending him off into an uncharted tributary. We had to pay for the repairs. The last thing we need right now is an outbreak of trade unionism.”

“What shall I do, then? The transients’ dormitories can’t hold more than seven thousand at once.”

“Ah, to hell with it. Tell the captains they’re taking more heads per trip and that’s final. I don’t want the transients in Durringham a moment longer than necessary.” He tried not to think what would ever happen if one of the paddle-boats capsized in the Juliffe. Lalonde had no organized emergency services; there were five or six ambulances working out of the church hospital for casualties in the city, but a disaster a thousand kilometres upriver . . . And the colonists were nearly all arcology dwellers, half of them couldn’t swim. “But after this we’ll have to see about increasing the number of boats. Because as sure as pigs shit, we won’t ever get a reduction in the number of colonists they send us. I heard on the grapevine Earth’s population is creeping up again, the number of illegal births rose three per cent last year. And that’s just the official illegals.”

“If you want more boats, that will mean more mortgage loans,” Terrance observed.

“I can do basic arithmetic, thank you. Tell the comptroller to shrink some other budgets to compensate.”

Terrance wanted to ask which divisions, every administration department was chronically underfunded. The look on Colin Rexrew’s face stopped him. “Right, I’ll get onto it.” He loaded a note in his neural nanonics general business file.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to look into safety on those paddle-boats some time. Make them carry lifebelts.”

“Nobody in Durringham makes lifebelts.”

“So that’s a fresh business opportunity for some smart entrepreneur. And yes I know it would need another loan to establish. Hell, do we have a cork-analogue tree here? They could carve them, everything else on this bloody planet is made out of wood.”

“Or mud.”

“God, don’t remind me.” Colin glanced out of the window again. The clouds had descended until they were only about four hundred metres above the ground. Dante got it all wrong, he thought, hell isn’t about searing heat, it’s about being permanently wet. “Anything else?”

“Yes. The marshal you sent up to Schuster County has filed his report. I didn’t want to load it into the office datanet.”

“Good thinking.” Colin knew the CNIS team monitored their satellite communications. There was also Ralph Hiltch sitting snugly over in the Kulu Embassy, like a landbound octopus with its tentacles plugged into damn near every administration office, siphoning out information. Although God alone knew why Kulu bothered, maybe paranoia was a trait the Saldanas had geneered into their super genes. He had also heard a strictly unofficial whisper that the Edenists had an active intelligence team on the planet, which was pushing credulity beyond any sane limits.

“What was the summary?” he asked Terrance.

“He drew a complete blank.”

“Nothing?”

“Four families have definitely gone missing, just like the sheriff said. All of them lived out on the savannah a fair distance away from Schuster town itself. He visited their homesteads, and said it was like they walked out one morning and never came back. All their gear had been looted by the time he arrived, of course, but he asked around, apparently there was even food laid out ready for a meal in one home. No sign of a struggle, no sayce or kroclion attack. Nothing. It really spooked the other colonists.”

“Strange. Have we had any reports of bandit gangs operating up there?”

“No. In any case, bandits wouldn’t stop after just a few families. They’d keep going until they were caught. Those families disappeared nine weeks ago now, and there have been no reports of any repetition. Whatever did happen, it looks like a one off.”

“And bandits would have stripped the homesteads of every remotely useful piece of gear, anyway,” Colin mused out loud. “What about the Tyrathca farmers? Do they know anything?”

“The marshal rode out to their territory. They claim they’ve had no contact with humans since they left Durringham. He’s pretty sure they’re telling the truth. There was certainly no sign of any humans ever being in their houses. His affinity-bonded dog had a good scout round.”

Colin stopped himself from making the sign of the cross; his Halo asteroid upbringing had been pretty formal. Supervisors and sheriffs using affinity was something he could never get used to.

“The families all had daughters; some teenagers, a couple in their early twenties,” Terrance said. “I checked their registration files.”

“So?”

“Several of the girls were quite pretty. They could have moved downriver to one of the larger towns, set up a brothel. It wouldn’t be the first time. And from what we know, conditions in Schuster are fairly dire.”