Outskirts of Hayyam
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.16 Interstellar
A little over four hours later, Janus was riding in the passenger seat of the buggy while Koni drove. The team’s two buggies were following the elder’s vehicle, and a half-dozen vehicles followed after that. They’d joined the convoy one at a time as they drove through the village until the motorcade was nine cars long.
Janus had gotten three solid hours of sleep; at Mick’s suggestion, he and Lira had taken a sedative cocktail to put them down and a low dose of uppers when they got up. Janus wouldn’t have called himself sharp, but he was alert, and he was functional.
Fury growled and jostled her carrier, turning around restlessly. “I know how you feel,” Janus said, looking back at her.
“Is she all right?” Koni asked.
Janus looked at her, surprised she cared. “She’ll be all right. The treatment schedule Ryler and I came up with worked, and I’ve come up with a more specific dosage that will act faster if it happens again.”
“You think it will?” Koni asked.
Janus nodded. “Ryler was telling me about the system the Pugarian culture was based on, a culture without safety, where your family could starve while others died of hunger, and the only value you had was the last trade you made. What would you do?”
Koni glanced at him before looking back at the road. “I’m not a Pugarian.”
“But you were a mother,” Janus said.
Koni’s hands tightened on the wheel so hard it creaked. “You’re on dangerous ground, Invarian.”
“I know that,” Janus said. He would normally never have thought of bringing up Koni’s family, but the combination of drugs and lack of sleep made him feel like he’d reached a rare moment of clarity. “You know I grew up thinking I would never amount to anything?”
“You were right about one thing.”
Janus scoffed and looked at the Verazlan noblewoman. “It was people like you who made me feel that way, but that’s all right. See, I know you now, Koni Atl-Verazlan-teuctli.”
“Do you?”
Janus sat back in his chair and tugged the straps tight. “I’d have done anything for my little sister. Anything.”
“Then why are you here instead of with your family?” Koni snapped.
“Why do you think I’m here, Koni?” Janus said, resentment scalding him like an oxygen burnoff. “What would you have done if it was your family in this village?”
“I would have done whatever I had to so I could get them out,” Koni said.
“Me, too. And that’s why, wherever those people disappeared, wherever that shipment is, that’s where the purple flowers will be. They’re somebody’s way out.”
***
Coming over a short rise, the thick forest suddenly gave way to a different landscape altogether. The jungle had been cleared away for acres, and within that space was a vast field of lavender, row upon row of purple flowers. There was a single structure near the center of the field, a white, blockish building. “Void take me, there’s a lot of it.”
Koni scoffed but didn’t comment.
The elder pulled over to the side of the road, and Koni pulled in behind him. The rest of the convoy split to either side, and the team and villagers disembarked carrying a variety of weapons, from rifles and pistols to metal rods and farming tools.
“Survivor preserve us,” Lira muttered, looking at the drug farm. “Is walking through that going to turn us into screaming lunatics?”
Janus checked his hazard indicators—green, yellow, yellow. “I don’t think so. Fury was only affected because the flowers had been dried, crushed, washed, and concentrated. That, and she only weighs about 15 kilos.” He looked at the little jungle dragon through the buggy window. “Fury could probably eat a few of these without any change in behavior. I’m going to keep my helmet on and go with full recirc; I’ll pull us out if the pollen starts affecting us.”
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Lira smirked. “So, you’re saying you’ll be fine.”
“Exactly,” Janus said, punching her shoulder in the old duster gesture of acknowledgment. “What I don’t understand is how this farm isn’t being taken over by the jungle. Even a few days should be enough for some of the more aggressive types of vines, creepers, and bamboo to take over parts of the field.”
“It kills the soil,” the elder said, joining them. “That’s the original utility of these plants. They spread slowly without help, and we have to feed them a constant supply of fertilizer and soil treatments. We call them Greed Leaf because they strip the ground bare of nutrients so other plants can’t take root.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t eradicate it,” Janus said, alarmed.
The elder shrugged. “As I said, Emissary, it spreads slowly. We used it to ring our fields with it to be able to farm without paying for Motragi herbicides. The plant protects itself from the jungle, and we used it to protect us from it, too. It was only recently that we noticed a change in the behavior of livestock who ate it.”
“A mutation,” Janus said.
“Exactly,” the elder said with an avaricious grin.
Janus considered that, staring out over the purple fields. He knew adaptation to human exploitation of the rainforest was possible, both in terms of the Chitimacha vines near Cofan but also in terms of Fury’s behavior. His time with the flame dog had started to convince him that Fury was actually an example of acclimatization, not adaptation—the small animal was smart enough to detect patterns of human behavior and modify her own. But it was entirely possible that this plant, which had already shown a capacity for defending itself from the extreme competition of the jungle floor, had developed a response to animal life as well.
But had it developed psychoactive properties to discourage herbivores from eating it or to encourage humans to grow it?
“Is this where people have been disappearing?”
“And my shipment,” the elder said.
Janus took a deep breath. He needed to keep reminding himself that this was the local culture, that it had developed for a reason, and that the elder wasn’t deliberately saying things that made Janus want to punch him.
The group of armed villagers started to move downhill toward the farm’s single building, and Janus gathered his team to follow. He looked at Lira and said, “Can you stay with Fury and the buggies?”
Lira frowned. “Yes, but why me?”
“I don’t know what we’re walking into. If this is a dispute between clan members, I might need a Verazlan judge. If it’s a problem with the farm’s systems, I’m going to need Ryler to back me up. And if we need to shoot our way out…”
Mick patted his rifle and grinned.
“Fine,” Lira said. “Although I don’t appreciate the implication that I couldn’t hold my own in any of those situations.”
“I’m sure you could,” Janus said with a grin. “You’re also my backup. If things go wrong and we can’t get out, I’m going to need both my fire breathers to come rescue me.”
Lira scowled, Mick laughed, Koni tried to hide a grin, and Ryler observed with the intense interest he sometimes did when Janus did something emissary-like. Janus took it as progress. The team was coming together, and whatever was waiting for them down there would be one more step toward them becoming a group of aspirants instead of a gaggle of competing interests.
He needed that. They were going to have to be a cohesive and dense projectile to punch through the wall of opposition their high score would create.
Mick slapped Lira’s shoulder, and Koni gave her a nod.
Ryler fell in at Janus’s side as he turned to head downhill.
The team followed the villagers toward the white building at the heart of the purple fields, expecting trouble, weapons ready.
The elder somehow managed to slip back as they got farther into the abandoned fields. He was near enough to control the advance but far enough that someone else would bear the brunt of an ambush.
As they passed the boundary of the fields, Janus was able to see the way the farm had been set up. The flowers weren’t actually rooted in the ground except at the forest’s edge. The farm was actually row upon row of aeroponic towers loaded with purple blooms. There were between twenty to thirty clusters of flowers on each tower, fed by flimsy clear tubing. The whole array was jury-rigged and slipshod—Janus could see at least five adjustments he would have made to reduce both nutrient loss and maintenance—but it must have cost the village everything it had.
“What do you think?” Ryler asked.
“Aside from the poor design?”
Ryler chuckled. “I know this has to offend the recycling tech in you, but what does the Motragi biologist think?”
Janus kicked himself for not seeing it. “This is all replicable. A Motragi child could duplicate this setup.”
“No, they couldn’t,” the elder said proudly. “These are hybrids. People can and probably will try to steal them, but all they’re good for is a single dose. They’re infertile.”
Janus looked at the elder. He’d thought the man was a money-grabbing merchant, but there was—potentially—a sophistication to the elder’s plan. “What are your plans for expansion?”
The elder’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
Janus shrugged. “As Ryler said, I spent the last year working with the Motragi. I recognize a good commercial opportunity when I see one.”
“You must have heard about the scores,” Ryler added. “An endorsement from the winner of the Trials would go a long way.”
“This isn’t a product most aspirants would put their name behind,” the elder said.
Janus tried to inject as much greed and complicity as he could into his voice. “I think its full potential has yet to be revealed. With the right facilities and the right people looking at it, who knows what profitable applications we might find?”
The elder reminded him of a wild animal faced with a baited trap. The old man had the instincts of a trader who’d been cheating and cheated for decades, but the prize was too tempting to pass up. “If we get through this, Emissary, maybe we’ll have something to discuss.”