First, just getting there was tedious and expensive, requiring two jumps past red dwarfs and long crawl past a lump of rock in an E-class star system. Then, once you got there, there was nothing to buy, and the poor sods there had nothing to barter with. It certainly wasn’t worth the expense of running containers, let alone cargo ships. A steady stream of relatives, adventure seekers, and speculators now passed to and fro, packed into any available transportation, but it was hard to see how this was going to add up to sufficient economic activity to be of much impact or interest.

Finally, the place was a mess. It certainly was not the Heaven that True Believers of the Pitchfork River True Church on Maxroy’s Purchase claimed it to be. It might be united now—the True Church claimed it was—but if so, that unity had come at a price. Nothing worked, and wrecked military junk was everywhere.

HG’s approach to this chaos was to institute shuttle diplomacy. For reasons unclear to Asach, HG, who felt himself in charge of the mission, insisted initially on “establishing a beachhead” on Maxroy’s Purchase, and “staying in close coordination with” the Commission, in order to “provide orderly reports of progress.” In other words, to suck up to whomever would listen and report whether, in HG’s august opinion, New Utah had been sufficiently impressed by their new economic boom to welcome the Fleet with open arms. From Asach’s view, what this meant in practice was that most of their time was used up tramp steaming across the stars, attending meetings, and planning the next trip, with precious little time focused on The Questions.

Trapped next to The Goon’s coughing, snorting, gouging, yakking, and fidgeting, Asach gave up on work and feigned sleep, admitting full consciousness only once standing in interstellar baggage claim. HG, who earned more money per year than the average laborer would see in a lifetime, refused to shell out five crowns for a porter to wrangle the trio’s luggage. Disinclined to endure late-night scenes, Asach yanked bags stuffed with Horvath’s indefinable lumps of unnecessary gear from the carousel while The Librarian wrestled them onto a trolley. Asach steeled for the remaining trudge to the air taxi depot, to catch the hop to Hand Glacier, while HP checked into a “nice” hotel in downtown Pitchfork River.

Saint George, New Utah, 3049

The fringe of concrete slab construction, hung with sorry laundry gone limp with grey drizzle, was called “Moorstown.” Nobody remembered why. All army barracks have their half-light fringes, their frontier lands suffering from the garish combination of all the worst elements of occupier and occupied. The loutish testosterone haze that inevitably accompanies conscientious and coltish males, made more so by imagining themselves as some brand of muscle-professional (hired heroes, or hired killers) acts as a polarizing lens of masculine aesthetic. Only the garish, the cacophonous, the massive, the aggressively-strapped-to-industrial-workbench-practical survives the filter of breakage and brigandage to compete in their payday marketplace—leaving the inevitable scatter of dusty children and under-, over-, or otherwise malnourished mothers to make what way they can among the swagger, personal weaponry, techno-gadgetry, and nasty-smelling drink.

In Moorstown, their lot was this sad line of postwar pre-fab apartment blocks. There were no gardens, no neat landscaping. The only colors relieving the unremitting grey were bright splashes of bedding, skirts, and bonnets hung from windowsills to air in the pre-dawn breeze.

Marul’s footsteps echoed down the stairwell, and she shivered against the gooseflesh raised by the dirty air. It seeped through her yellow bonnet; fingered her cheap knit cardigan, and blew past in a swirl of dried, muddied leaves. Across the still, she heard jodie calls, echoing like water slapping boat hulls in a foggy harbor. Not that she had ever seen, or would ever see, a harbor.

Troops running in formation had already cleared the main gate and would soon wind their way up the post perimeter, headed toward the last shaggy patch of grazing commons—what was left of a landing safety zone for the old TCM airfield, long since built over into a maze of warehouses attached to a shipping depot. All of what had once stood secreted in a foothill forest belt beyond the city proper was now surrounded by SunRail container yards, FLIVRbahns, and the backwash of immigrant and military housing.

All, that is, except the little patch of commons abutting the post on one side, and across it, at the end of the winding, wide walking path the troops would follow on their morning run, the thin greenbelt along the river’s edge ironically named the Philosopher’s Way. It was doubtful that any philosopher had walked there since Foundation times, when it had connected a vast parkland here to a footbridge crossing the river into the old city.

Marul started as a patch of damp air suddenly magnified a cadence call, as if someone standing not a foot away had shouted inexplicably:

“My old lady was ninety-THREE,”

But the breeze tugged again; the sound dimmed. Her heart pounding, Marul turned toward the commons, eyes steadfastly on her feet, and began trudging in the direction of the distant trees. Every morning she walked this way, part of a long trek toward her uncle Ollie’s stall in the farm market on the edge of the old city. While he met his clients and discussed men’s business over tea, she measured out olives and nuts; fruits and seed pastes; fermented milks and clotted creams. He was a busy man. He provided security guards to everyone, everywhere, and that meant a lot of meetings in these troubled times.

So every morning, Marul rose before the soldiers, prepared her brother’s meals and clothes, laid them out ready for them to speed their way to school, readied herself, dressing in the dark, then began her trudge across the field at half-light in order that she might open the stall, receive and set out the wares, and prepare her uncle’s coffee.

And every morning, every step of that way, she was watched, or directly accompanied, lest she meet some chance encounter that would irretrievably stain family honor. Her little brother, Wayan, took his breakfast perched at the window, half-heartedly tracing the path of her yellow bonnet in the melting frost as she made her way across the field in the weak morning sun. Her cousin Hugo met her on the bridge, riding her on the handlebars of his bicycle if he was in a good mood; scowling and pinching and telling her to hurry and keep up if he was not.

But on days like today, when she was tired and cold and had lingered for just a minute’s extra sleep, she emerged like now, heart in her throat, fear pounding in her ears, tears choking her eyes at the approaching uniform tramp of running feet. For although, for years, she had stopped and smiled and waved at the soldiers who, grinning, waved back as she continued to the bridge while she turned right along the stream bank, last week she had turned thirteen. And with that her father, for no reason that she could see or understand, on hearing from cousin and brother that she had looked full face on the soldiers; had smiled and waved as usual—on hearing that, he had flown into a fury and had slapped her so badly that her face was still mottled purple and green. Screamed at her for a harlot. Pulled her out of school. Made her don the bonnet. Made her work all day, under Uncle’s eye, instead of just helping in the early morning.

She hurried on, determined to make the bridge before they passed her, the stiff grass and battered ground hard and unyielding to the passing of her swishing skirts and rushing feet. The formation pulled closer, feet crunching in unison as they left the pavement for the trackway. She could hear their steamy breathing, a great, puffing dragon of a beast bearing down. She was jogging herself now, trying to stay ahead. Her own feet followed the rhythm as they half-sang, half-shouted: