After nearly two hours in the groundcar, Jimjoy was more than willing to admit that his inadvertent refusal of an Institute flitter had been a terrible choice, not even considering the near assassination. Unhappily, he had not thought that turning down the flitter had meant making a choice between ground and air transport.
For the last sixty minutes the highway had not only continued straight but remained absolutely level, roughly five hundred meters below the highest points on the ridge lines of the mountains to the south. Neither had the vegetation visible from the car changed much, nor the tenor of his desultory conversation with the Ecolitan driver.
He was only relieved that his trip had encompassed less than ten percent of the highway’s length, and hoped that it would not encompass much more. The dull silver of the pavement was boring, engineering masterpiece or not.
“Mera, how much farther? What’s on the other side of the hills to our right?”
“Major, we’re less than ten minutes from the Institute. On the other side of the hills are the grounds belonging to the Institute. Training areas, research farm plots, some specialty forests, all sorts of things like that.”
“Airstrips?” he asked innocently.
“A few, but just for transport and medical emergencies. We’re still pretty thinly populated up here.”
Jimjoy smiled wryly. The cadet, or Ecolitan, or whatever they called senior student types, hadn’t liked the idea of driving him all the way on the ground either and had used the incredible smoothness of the highway to best advantage, moving close to the speed of a slow—very slow—flitter, and well above the recommended speed for a groundcar.
During the trip, they had seen only three or four other vehicles, all slow and bulky cargo carriers with wide tires.
“Steamers,” according to Mera, running on actual old-fashioned external combustion engines.
“Why not?” she had answered his question. “They’re cheap, efficient, nonpolluting, and suited to the road. They represent maximum efficient use of resources.”
The last comment had puzzled the Imperial Major. Accord would not have to worry about resource shortages for centuries, if even then, especially with some of the metal-rich moons circling the fourth and fifth planets in the system. So why were the Accordans so preoccupied with resource efficiency, rather than in building up their manufacturing and technical infrastructure as quickly as possible?
That also scarcely sounded like a colony planning revolt, especially when Mera had pointed out that Accord was attempting to develop the fewest number of mines and mineral extraction sites and was investigating “other” extraction processes.
The young Ecolitan could have been lying, but Jimjoy didn’t think so.
“Other?”
“Biological. You’ll have to get that from the research fellows. They can lead you through the details, Major.”
Jimjoy paid more attention to the outside surroundings again as the groundcar began to slow. He could see a break in the hillside ahead and to the right, as well as a green triangle perched upon a wooden pole beside the road, and set perhaps two meters above the level of the smooth road surface.
“We here?”
“Another few minutes once we leave the Grand Highway.”
“Grand Highway? Thought it was the Ridge Corridor.”
“We’re not quite so prone to take Imperial terminology literally. Besides, what else would you call it?”
Although he shrugged at the young woman’s cavalier references to a great engineering feat, he was a little surprised at her flippant tone with him. Her feelings he could understand. The highway might be a great engineering wonder, but it didn’t exactly appear to be necessary. He decided to push further.
“The Grand Fiasco?”
“Not totally. It does make coast-to-coast surface cargo traffic both practical and economic, so long as you don’t have to factor in the amortization of the construction costs, which we don’t.”
Jimjoy kept his jaw in place. The driver, young as she appeared, had been educated in more than mere ecology, that was certain.
“Economics, yet?”
“If you can’t make something economical, its ecology or engineering doesn’t matter. Except for something like the Grand Highway.”
Jimjoy agreed silently—with reservations—and braced himself when the groundcar slowed as it took the banked curve through the narrow cut in the hill. The steeply sloped sides of the exit road were covered with vegetation, a sure sign that the exit road postdated the highway.
The much narrower road they now traveled did not follow the imperious straight-line example of the Engineers’ masterpiece, but arced around the more imposing hills in wide, sweeping curves, gradually descending.
“How far?”
“Another five kays. Just around that last curve and downhill from there.”
Although he saw one short and low stone wall, Jimjoy noted the general absence of fences, as well as a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar flora. He saw no animals.
“Animals?”
“The Institute research farm is farther west. Most native animals are nocturnal, those that the Engineers left.” While her voice was carefully neutral, that neutrality provided a clear contrast to her previous tone.
“I take it the Institute has questioned the Engineers’ policy of limiting local fauna?”
“That was before our time, and there’s not too much we can do about it, except to modify things to fill in the gaps.”
“Gaps?”
“Ecological gaps. If you need a predator, one will evolve. In the meantime, you discover something else overpopulates its range, usually with negative consequences.
“Here we have the additional problem of fitting in Terran flora and fauna necessary for our own food chain. We don’t need as much as the Imperial Engineers calculated. But they always thought bigger was better.”
Jimjoy listened, but concentrated more on his surroundings as they presumably neared the Institute.
No power lines, often common on developing planets, marred the landscape. Nor did he detect any overt air pollution, not even any smoke plumes. No glints of metal or rusted hunks of discarded machines.
The bluish-tinged trees with the angular leaves had a well-tended look. Interspersed with the native trees he could see Terran-style evergreens, but nothing which looked like T-type deciduous stock.
The Accord-built road, although narrower than the Grand Highway and curving, appeared equally smooth, without a sign of patching or buckling.
“How active is Accord? Geologically?”
“Slightly less than Terra, but the geologists claim that the current era is the most stable in several eons. And a geologic disaster is waiting in a decaying orbit.”
“When does the disaster begin?”
“I understand we have somewhere between twenty thousand and fifty thousand years local.”
Jimjoy caught just a glimmer of a smile as she answered his last question.
Mera had slowed the groundcar evenly as they neared the next curve. Jimjoy tensed, wondering if he were about to be ambushed or whether they were merely nearing their destination.
As the car decelerated to slightly faster than a quick walk, it came around a wide curve and through two cylindrical pillars, one on each side of the road. Each rose five meters and was topped with a bronze triangle set inside a dark metal circle. The dark gray stones were set so tightly that the joints were hairline cracks. No mortar was visible.
Below, in a circular valley, stood the Institute. The placement of the low buildings, the muted greens and browns, and the symmetry of the landscaping all stated that the valley housed an institute. Beyond the buildings, the ground rose to a lake, then to a series of small hills that flanked the lake before climbing into a series of foothills, then into low mountains nearly as high as those whose flanks had been scored by the Grand Highway of the Imperial Engineers.
“Impressive.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. Very powerful.”
“Powerful?”
Jimjoy nodded before speaking. “Tremendous sense of power, of knowledge, of purpose. Especially purpose.”
“So that’s why you’re here.”
“I’m not sure I know why I’m here myself, young lady. Would you care to explain?”
“I shouldn’t have spoken out.”
“No reason to stop now, and besides, your thoughts won’t doom either one of us.”
The driver laughed lightly, uneasily. “No.” Her voice turned more serious. “Not this time. I suppose I do owe you some explanation.” She did not look back at him as she let the groundcar roll down the curving drive toward a circular building at the front of the Institute. “Most visitors make some comment about how rustic the Institute is, or how isolated, or how beautiful. All that’s true, but it’s not why we’re here. You’re the first I know of who instinctively saw—really saw—it as it is.”
Jimjoy wondered if she had shivered or merely shifted position as she completed her admission.
“Are you as dangerous as they say, Major Wright?”
Jimjoy repressed a smile. After more than two hours, Mera had finally used her own admitted weakness as a lever to ask a question to which she had wanted an answer.
“Don’t know who they are. Or what they say. Done some dangerous things, and a lot of stupid things. Probably more dangerous to me than to anybody else. Don’t know how else to answer your question.”
Mera nodded. She pursed her lips, then licked them and looked at the building she was guiding the car toward.
Jimjoy followed her glance, realized that he had seen but a handful of vehicles. He was betting that some of the gentle hills were artificial and housed both aircraft and groundcars.
“Major…”
Jimjoy waited.
“If you’re dangerous to yourself…what you learn here can only make that worse…”
He frowned and opened his mouth to question her observation.
“Here we are, Major. It looks like the Prime himself is here to greet you. That’s quite an honor, you know.”
Jimjoy focused on the silver-haired and slender man in an unmarked forest-green tunic and trousers who was walking from the circular building down the walkway lined with a flowering hedge. The tiny flowers were a brilliant yellow.
Both car and Ecolitan would arrive nearly together.
Jimjoy smiled wryly, briefly.
Mera’s pause on the hilltop overlooking the Institute had been for more than just letting him get a good look at the facilities. He just wondered what other signals he would discover after the fact while he was at the Institute.