It wasn’t enough to save them, apparently.

The colonising Martians, when they arrived, didn’t seem to have a problem with the limited terrain. They built intricate, towering eyries directly into the rock of the steepest mountain slopes and largely ignored the small nubs and ledges of land available at sea level. Half a million years later, the Martians were gone but the ruins of their eyries endured for the new wave of human colonisers to gawp at and leave mostly alone. Astrogation charts unearthed in abandoned cities on Mars had brought us this far, but once we arrived we were on our own. Unwinged, and denied much of our usual sky-going technology by the orbitals, humanity settled for conventional cities on two continents, a sprawling multi-islanded metropolis at the heart of the Millsport Archipelago, and small, strategically located ports elsewhere to provide linkage. Tekitomura was a ten-kilometre strip of densely-built waterfront, backed up as far as the brooding mountains behind would allow and thereafter thinning out to nothing. On a rocky foothill, the citadel glowered over the skyline, perhaps aspiring in its elevation towards the semi-mystical status of a Martian ruin. Further back, the narrow mountain tracks blasted by human archaeologue teams threaded their way up to the real thing.

There were no archaeologues working the Tekitomura sites any more. Grants for anything not related to cracking the military potential of the orbitals had been cut to the bone, and those Guild Masters not absorbed by the military contracting had long since shipped out to the Latimer system on the hypercast. Pockets of stubborn and largely self-funding wild talent held out at a few promising sites near Millsport and points south, but on the mountainside above Tekitomura, the dig encampments sat forlorn and empty, as abandoned as the skeletal Martian towers they had been built next to.

“Sounds too good to be true,” I said as we bought provisions in a waterfront straight-to-street. “You’re sure we’re not going to be sharing this place with a bunch of teenage lovebirds and wirehead derelicts?”

For answer, she gave me a significant look and tugged at a single lock of her hair that had escaped from the cling of the headscarf. I shrugged.

“Alright then.” I hefted a sealpack of amphetamine cola. “Cherry flavoured okay?”

“No. It tastes like shit. Get the plain.”

We bought packs to carry the provisions, picked an upward-sloping street out of the wharf district, more or less at random, and walked. In under an hour, the noise and buildings began to fade out behind us and the incline grew steeper. I kept glancing across at Sylvie as our pace slacked off and our steps became more deliberate, but she showed no sign of wavering.

If anything, the crisp air and cold sunlight seemed to be doing her good. The tense frown that had flitted on and off her face all morning ironed out and she even smiled once or twice. As we climbed higher, the sun glinted off exposed mineral traces in the surrounding rocks, and the view became worth stopping for. We rested a couple of times to drink water and gaze out over the shoreline sprawl of Tekitomura and the sea beyond.

“Must have been cool to be a Martian,” she said at one point.

“I suppose.”

The first eyrie crept into view on the other side of a vast rock buttress.

It towered the best part of a kilometre straight up, all twists and swellings that were hard to look at comfortably. Landing flanges rolled out like tongues with slices cut out of them, spires sported wide, vented roofing hung with roost-bars and other less identifiable projections. Entrances gaped, an anarchic variety of oval-derived openings from long, slim, vaginal to plumped-up heart shape and everything between. Cabling dangled everywhere. You got the fleeting but repeating impression that the whole structure would sing in a high wind, and maybe somehow revolve like a gargantuan windchime.

On the approach track, the human structures huddled small and solid, like ugly puppies at the feet of a fairytale princess. Five cabins in a style not much more recent than the relics on New Hok, all showing the faint blue interior light of damped-down automated systems. We stopped at the first one we came to and dumped our packs. I squinted back and forth at angles of fire, tagging potential cover for any attackers and thinking about delivery solutions that would beat it. It was a more or less automatic process, the Envoy conditioning killing time the way some people whistle through their teeth.

Sylvie ripped off her headscarf and shook her hair free with obvious relief.

“Be a minute,” she said.

I considered my semi-instinctive assessment of the dig site’s defensibility.

On any planet where you could go up in the air easily, we’d be a sitting target. But on Harlan’s World, the normal rules don’t apply. Top mass limit on flying machines is a six-seat helicopter running an antique rotor-motor lift, no smart systems and no mounted beam weaponry. Anything else gets turned into mid-air ash. Likewise individual flyers in antigrav harnesses or nanocopters. The angelfire restrictions are, it appears, as much about a level of technology as physical mass. Add to that a height limit of about four hundred metres, which we were already well above, and it was safe to assume that the only way anyone would be approaching us was on foot up the path. Or climbing the sheer drop alongside, which they were very welcome to do.

Behind me, Sylvie grunted in satisfaction and I turned to see the cabin door flex itself open. She gestured ironically.

“After you, professor.”

The blue standby light flickered and blinked up to white as we carried our packs inside, and from somewhere I heard the whisper of aircon kicking in. A datacoil spiralled awake on the table in one corner. The air reeked of antibacterials, but you could smell that it was shifting as the systems registered occupancy. I shoved my pack into a corner, peeled off my jacket and grabbed a chair.

“Kitchen facilities are in one of the others,” Sylvie said, wandering about and opening internal doors. “But most of this stuff we bought is self-heating anyway. And everything else we need, we’ve got. Bathroom there. Beds in there, there and there. No automould, sorry. Specs I ran into when I was doing the locks say it sleeps six. Data systems wired in, linked directly into the global net through the Millsport University stack.”

I nodded and passed my hand idly through the datacoil. Opposite me, a severely dressed young woman shimmered into sudden existence. She made a quaint formal bow.

“Professor Serendipity.”

I glanced at Sylvie. “Very funny.”

“I am Dig 301. How may I help you?”

I yawned and looked round the room. “Does this place run any defensive systems, Dig?”

“If you are referring to weapons,” said the construct delicately, “I am afraid not. Discharge of projectiles or ungoverned energy so close to a site of such xenological significance would be unpardonable. However, all site units do lock on a coding system that is extremely hard to break.”

I shot another glance at Sylvie. She grinned. I cleared my throat.

“Right. What about surveillance? How far down the mountain do your sensors reach?”

“My awareness range covers only the site and ancillary buildings. However, through the totality of the global datalink, I can access—”

“Yeah, thanks. That’ll be all.”

The construct winked out, leaving the room behind looking momentarily gloomy and still. Sylvie stepped across to the main door and thumbed it closed. She gestured around.

“Think we’ll be safe here?”

I shrugged, remembering Tanaseda’s threat. A global writ for your capture. “As safe as anywhere else I can think of right now. Personally, I’d be heading out for Millsport tonight, but that’s exactly why—”