Landon gave a slight smile at this.

The two men were approaching the area of fence Holloway had seen as he circled: Robots on one side of the fence were drilling holes, with the operators on the other side, maneuvering them from small stations bristling with levers. As they approached, Holloway was aware of an increasing sensation that felt like what happened to his ears if he climbed in altitude too quickly in his skimmer. He swallowed hard, to no use.

As Holloway got closer to the operators, he realized that one of them was Aubrey, wearing a ZaraCorp hard hat. Another man stood next to Aubrey’s station; Holloway suspected it was the actual robot operator, politely and silently waiting for Aubrey to get done playing around so he could get back to work.

Landon pulled out a palm-sized infopanel and pressed it. “We’re here,” he said into the panel. From the robot station, Aubrey turned and motioned them over.

“Having fun?” Holloway asked, as they approached. He noticed Landon pursing his lips slightly in disapproval. Holloway had apparently forgotten that he was not supposed to speak until spoken to.

“Fun isn’t the point,” Aubrey said, climbing out of the station. He took off his hard hat. “One day I’ll be running ZaraCorp. Dad always said that it was important for a leader to know what his people do and how they do it, and Grandpa said it to him, and so on. Every Aubrey does a tour of our businesses and tries his hand at the jobs our people do. Gives us a grounding.”

“So twenty minutes with a fence-building robot makes you a better leader,” Holloway said.

“It was a half hour, actually,” Aubrey said, catching the sarcasm and returning it. “And maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t, but even you might agree that coming out and participating in our operations is better than me simply being fed grapes in a country club, waiting for the old man to kick off.”

“When you put it that way,” Holloway said. The ear thing was getting worse. He swallowed again.

Aubrey watched Holloway with interest. “Feels like your ears are plugged, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Holloway said.

Aubrey pointed to a large box on the fence line. “It’s a speaker,” he said. “Turns out zararaptors and other predators here hear higher frequencies than we do, and they hate loud noise. We’re blasting twenty-five-kilohertz frequencies at about a hundred sixty decibels. They hear it and take off running in the other direction.”

“Huh,” Holloway said, and swallowed again.

“Used to be, we’d just shoot the things with automated sentries,” Aubrey said. “But animal rights groups didn’t like that much. Bad for our public relations. We figured we would give this a try.”

“Very humane of you,” Holloway said.

“Cheaper, too, as it happens,” Aubrey said. “But it does have the side effect you’re experiencing. You can’t hear it, but you can feel it, all right. Stay here long enough and you’ll get a migraine. Then you’ll get a nosebleed.”

“Lovely working conditions,” Holloway said.

Aubrey pointed to his ears. “Noise-canceling in-ear headphones,” he said. “Filters out the high end. No headaches.”

“For you, maybe,” Holloway said.

“All the fence workers have them,” Aubrey said.

“Wonderful,” Holloway said. “I don’t.”

“Oh, right,” Aubrey said. “Well, come on, then.” He started walking. Holloway and Landon followed.

“What do you think of the site?” Aubrey asked, as they walked.

“I’m amazed at how quickly you’ve built it up,” Holloway said. “There was nothing here a week ago.”

“I told you this is a priority for us,” Aubrey said. “I commandeered airlifters to bring in the heavy equipment and stole the best crews from other sites. I had people here clearing land the same day you sat in on our meeting. When the site is finished it will be the largest single permanent site we’ll have on Zara Twenty-three. It’ll have to be in order to process that seam you found.”

“I can’t help but notice that you’ve been doing all of this without involving me,” Holloway said.

“Well, it’s—” Aubrey began.

“Exigent circumstances, yes, I know,” Holloway said, and ignored that now both Aubrey and Landon were annoyed with him for his peremptory ways. He had stopped walking; they were far enough from the fence that his ears no longer hurt. “The problem is that exigent circumstances are by their very nature emergent and temporary. What you’re doing here is systematic and permanent. If I’m not involved, then ZaraCorp has a very good case for eventually voiding my claim. I checked both ZaraCorp regulations and Colonial law on the matter. There’s prior case law here: Teppo versus Miller. Teppo lost millions of credits because Miller showed he wasn’t properly involved in the exploitation of his own claim. Now, you may or may not be intending to be pushing me into a Teppo-style situation, but that’s what I see happening.”

Aubrey looked at Holloway for a minute. “God save us from amateur lawyers,” he said, eventually.

“I’m not an amateur,” Holloway said.

“That’s not what the Bar of the State of North Carolina says,” Aubrey said.

“I wasn’t disbarred for not knowing the law,” Holloway said.

“Really,” Aubrey said. “What were you disbarred for, then?”

“It’s not actually important at the moment,” Holloway said.

“You know I can find out,” Aubrey said.

“Then find out,” Holloway said, and nodded toward Aubrey’s assistant. “Have Landon here search it out on the network. It’s a public record; it’s not hard to find. But in the meantime, I want to talk about our situation here, now.”

Aubrey nodded, and started walking again. “Come on, Holloway,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

In a few moments, the three of them were looking at a massive rockfall. It was the part of the cliff Holloway had dropped to the riverbed. Workers and machines were crawling over it. “Look familiar?” Aubrey said to Holloway.

“It’s in a slightly different configuration than I’m used to seeing it in,” Holloway said.

“I’ll bet,” Aubrey said. “It’s going to cost us a couple million credits to clean this up, you know. CEPA regulations require us to return this rockfall area to a pristine state before we can exercise exploit rights. It’s stupid, but that’s Colonial Authority regulation for you.”

“I thought you’d made an ecological exception request,” Holloway said. He noted with a bit of satisfaction that both Aubrey and Landon were surprised he knew this. Good, Holloway thought. Let them wonder what else I know.

“We have,” Landon said, after a second. “But they’re granted rarely, if at all.”

“And in the meantime, we’re on the hook for this expense,” Aubrey said.

Holloway nodded toward the rockpile. “After this fell, I pulled sunstones the size of chicken eggs out of the seam, almost with my bare hands. You’ll probably find enough sunstones in this pile alone to pay for the cost of cleaning this up, and make a profit besides.”

“No doubt we will,” Aubrey said. “But you’re missing the point.”

“Being in the black for cleaning up an ecological mishap is not the point?” Holloway said.

“The point is that you caused this ‘ecological mishap,’ as you call it,” Aubrey said. “Whether we make a profit off it or not, it’s still a black eye for ZaraCorp that you caused to happen.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” Holloway said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Aubrey said. “ZaraCorp has to appear to be attuned to ecological sensitivities, especially since we are requesting an ecological exception for this seam. We have to convince some bureaucrat in a CEPA office a hundred eighty light-years away that we’re going to be careful about the messes we’re going to make, and that we’re going to clean them up after we’re done. What is going to make that argument less than convincing is the fact that the principal surveyor of the seam is someone who rather cavalierly caused an ecological disaster right at the start.”