Part 33 (1/2)
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start leaving, before long this world will be less than a colony. We've already noticed unusual trouble in hir- ing new specialists.” He looked away, upset and em- barra.s.sed.
”What do you think the reaction of our young peo- ple is going to be? Especially our brightest, away at University? There's no inst.i.tute of higher learning here.
You think they'll want to come back to face oblitera- tion?” He shook his head.
”This has to be stopped, and soon.” How like Hwos.h.i.+en he sounds, Cora thought. ”Too many of our friends have died already.” And business is off, she thought coolly. Then he said something which made her regret her harsh appraisal.
”I understand you've come from the last docking site of Rorqual Towne.” She nodded. ”The a.s.sistant mayor there was my cousin. We've all lost friends or relatives. For all its size, Mou'anui is a tightly knit community, even if our knitting is via satellite. We feel the loss of any of our fellow citizens personally.
But entire towns!”
”Whoever's responsible,” Merced said confidently, ”is a candidate for mindwipe.”
”Mindwipe,” the mayor echoed, nodding slowly. ”If any of us lays hands on the perpetrators of these out- rages first . . .” He left the sentence unfinished, but elaboration was unnecessary. If the inhabitants got to the pirates first, there would not be enough of the outlaws left to reimprint with new personalities.
”Well, they won't find us unprepared!” he said loudly. ”We've nearly eleven hundred permanent resi- dents here, and they all know what their day-status is.
We don't rely just on our automatics. Since the trouble started, we've had people watching the monitors twenty-five hours a day. We go on about our business, but with an eye on each other's backsides.” Cora won- dered if the brave speechmaking was for their benefit or for the mayor's.
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”What's Mataroreva doing?” The portly executive was looking past them, toward the far end of the dock.
”I haven't seen him since last Harvest Holiday.”
Cora turned with the others. Their guide was bent over, conversing with the water. ”We've a pair of orcas with us. He's probably chatting with them.” She noticed he was wearing his translator.
”Drifters or a.s.sociates?” one of the other men in- quired.
”I don't know the precise meaning of those terms,”
Merced said, ”but if you mean do they work with Sam and humans on any kind of regular basis, I'm fairly certain that they do, judging from what we've, ob- served thus far.”
”Very nice,” the enormous lady, H'ua, chirped.
”They're the best early-warning system you can have.
I've always been sorry we've never been able to in- duce one or two to a.s.sociate with Vai'oire.”
Mataroreva rejoined them, confirmed that he had been talking with their black and white companions.
”I was setting them a patrol,” he explained. ”They'll circle the town about a kilometer out. How shallow is the reef you're working?”
”Breaks the surface in some places,” Yermenov said. ”I'm fisheries supervisor for the town, by the way. We're backed up to one end of the reef. It spreads out in a fan shape, more or less, from where we're sitting now. It's hundreds of meters across on the other side of town, expanding to kilometers at its
greatest diameter.”
”What are you thinking of?” Cora asked the pen- sive Polynesian.
”Submersibles. They would be the most effective means of attack. If they're emission-silent or screened, or both, no satellite would detect them. And if they're small enough and fast enough . . .” He shrugged.
”They could be the explanation. The reef here will screen about a quarter of the ocean approach from
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