Investments (8 page)

“Well no,” Terza said, “I’m not. But I feel the same way I felt last time, and I think experience counts in these things.”

“It definitely should,” Martinez said.

Fecundity, he thought. What more could a man want?

*

“The harbor looks a little bare,” Martinez said. He sat, awaiting breakfast, beneath an umbrella on the terrace of the Chee Fishing Club, where he had been given an honorary membership, and where he and Terza were staying. No Fleet accommodation on the ground had been judged worthy of a Lord Inspector, and the only deluxe lodging on the planet were at the club— conveniently owned by Martinez’ father, part of a sport-fishing scheme.

“The commercial fishing boats are out, and the shuttles aren’t coming in any longer,” the manager said. He was a Terran, with a beard dyed purple and twined in two thin braids. He wore a jacket with padded shoulders and of many different fabrics, all in bright tropical colors, stitched together in a clashing melee of brilliant pigment. Martinez hadn’t seen anyone else similarly dressed, and he suspected the manager’s style was peculiar to him alone.

Steam rose as the manager freshened Martinez’ coffee. “Without the shuttles we’ve only a small fishing fleet and a few sport boats,” he said, “though more will come in time. We can build up an enormous fishery here— though we may have to export most of the catch, since everyone here ate nothing but fish for the first year and a half and they’re all sick of it.”

Martinez gazed down a lawn-green slope at three bobbing boats dwarfed by the huge grey concrete quay against which they were moored. Two flew Fishing Club ensigns, and another a private flag, probably that of an official in the Meridian or Chee companies. Across the harbor was the town of Port Vipsania, named after one of Martinez’ sisters, and beyond that, stretching up into the sky, was the cable that ran to geosynchronous orbit and Chee Station.

Port Vipsania, like all the early settlements, was built on the sea, because before the skyhook had gone into operation the previous year, workers and their gear had been brought to the planet in shuttles powered by chemical rockets, shuttles that had landed on the open water and then taxied to a mooring. Supplies, too, had been dropped into the sea in unmanned containers braked with retro-rockets, then towed to shore by workers in boats. The huge resinous containers, opened, also served as temporary shelters and warehouses.

Once the skyhook could bring people and cargo from orbit at much less expense, the shuttles were largely discontinued, though Port Gareth, in the north and as yet unconnected to the expanding rail network, was still supplied by shuttles and containers dropped down from orbit.

A bare three years after the opening of the planet to exploitation, the Chee settlements were growing with incredible speed, fueled by even more incredible amounts of capital. The investment was vast, and as the work had only begun the inflow of capital would have to continue. Lord Mukerji’s work in attracting ceaseless investment was vital, as was the work of many lesser envoys; and of course the work of Lord Martinez himself, raising funds from his own considerable resources.

The resources of a whole planet were more than enough to repay any investment over time, but the scale of the payouts ran in years, and mismanagement and theft were still dangers to the Chee Company. If investor confidence were lost the company could go bankrupt whether it owned a planet or not . . .

“I’d like to see a fleet of boats on that quay,” Martinez said.

“So would I,” the manager said. “The business would be a lot better.” He grinned. “And after all the trouble building that quay, I’d like to see it in use.”

“Trouble?” Martinez asked.

“They shipped down the wrong king of cement for that pier,” the manager said. “They need De-loq cement, that sets underwater and is immune to salt-water corrosion. But they sent down the ordinary stuff, and a special shipment had to be made from Laredo.”

“What did they do with the other cement?” Martinez asked.

“Condemned,” the manager said. “They couldn’t use it. Ah— here’s your breakfast.”

Martinez’ breakfast arrived, a grilled fish needle-sharp teeth, a pair of eyes on each end, and with plates of armor expertly peeled back from the flesh. Martinez’ eyes rose from the fish to Port Vipsania, to the rows of white concrete apartments that held the Meridian Company’s workers.

“Pity they couldn’t find a use for it,” he said.

*

Martinez found that he couldn’t resist the lure of the town his father had named after him. After ten days on Chee, Martinez escaped the endless round of formal banquets and receptions by taking a Fleet coleopter to Port Gareth, north in the temperate zone.

The coleopter carried him over land that was uniform— while the oceans thronged with a staggering variety of fish, life on land was primitive and confined to a few basic types: the only fauna were worms and millipedes, and plants were confined to molds, fungus, and a wide variety of fern, some as tall as a two-storey building.

All of which were going to face stiff competition, as alien plants and animals were being in introduced in abundance. Herds of portschen, fristigo, sheep, bison, and cattle had been landed and allowed more or less to run wild. Without any predators to cull their numbers, the herds were growing swiftly.

Vast farms, largely automated, had also been set up in the interior, upriver from the settlements, or along the expanding railroads. Because no one yet knew what would grow, the farms were simply planting
everything,
far more than the population could conceivably need. If things went reasonably well, the planet could become a grain exporter very quickly and start earning a bit of profit for the Chee Corporation.

Within a couple centuries, it was calculated, the only native plants a person would see would probably be in a museum.

The coleopter bounded over a range of mountains that kept Port Gareth isolated from the rest of the continent, then dropped over a rich plain that showed rivers of gleaming silver curling amid the green fern forest. The coleopter fell toward a green-blue ocean that began to creep over the horizon, and then began to fly over cultivated fields, the sun winking off the clear canopies of the harvesters.

Port Gareth was very possibly outside the mandate of a Lord Inspector, as it contained no Fleet installations, but Martinez had decided that the railroad that would connect the town to the settlements farther south was a matter of state security, and therefore of interest to the Fleet.

The turbine shrouds on the ends of the aircraft’s wings rotated, and the craft began to descend. On the edge of the pad was yet another reception committee.

The coleopter’s wide cargo door rolled open. Martinez took off his headset, thanked the pilot, and stepped out onto the landing pad. The brisk wind tore at his hair. As Alikhan stepped from the coleopter with Martinez’ luggage, the reception committee advanced behind the Lady Mayor, a client of the Martinez family who Martinez vaguely remembered from childhood. She was a Torminel, whose grey and black fur was more suitable to the bracing climate of Port Gareth than to the tropics of Port Vipsania.

In short order Martinez was introduced to the Mayor’s Council, and the local representatives of the Meridian and Chee companies, and then a familiar figure stepped forward from the long, teardrop-shaped car.

“Remember me, my lord?” the man leered.

Martinez could hardly forget. Ahmet had been a rigger on
Corona,
Martinez’ first command. He had spent a considerable portion of the commission under arrest or doing punishment duty; and the rest of his time had been occupied with running illegal gambling games, brewing illicit liquor, and performing the occasional bit of vandalism.

“Ahmet,” Martinez said. “You’re out of the Fleet, I see.”

This was only good news for the Fleet.

“I’m a foreman here on the railroad project,” Ahmet said. “When I heard you were coming, I told everyone I knew you, and asked to be part of the welcoming committee.” With one sleeve he buffed the shiny object pinned to his chest. “I still have the
Corona
medal, as you see. I’ve been assigned as your guide and driver.”

To Martinez, employment of Ahmet in any position of responsibility was proof enough of criminal negligence or worse. But he smiled as stoutly as he could, said “Good to see you,” and was then carried off toward his lodging in the Mayor’s Palace, after which he would endure yet another banquet. He had a healthy respect for himself that some considered conceit, but even so he was beginning to grow weary of all these meals in his honor.

Still, he was pleased to discover a statue of himself in the main square, looking stern and carrying the Golden Orb. He was less pleased to see a pump jack in the overgrown green park behind the statue, its flywheel spinning brightly in the sun.

“What’s that?” he asked. “Petroleum?”

“Yes,” the Lady Mayor said. “We found it close to the surface here— lucky, otherwise we couldn’t have brought it up with the equipment we’ve got.”

“What do you use it for?”

“Plastics. We’ll have a whole industry running here in a few years.”

“How is the railroad progressing?”

The railroad would eventually connect Port Gareth to the south: supersonic trains would speed north from the skyhook, bringing migrants and supplies, and carrying away produce and plastic products for export. The rails were being laid from each end toward a common center, and would meet somewhere in the mountains.

“There were some delays last month,” the Lady Mayor said. “But the track’s still ahead of schedule.”

“Delays?” Martinez said. “There’s nothing the Fleet can do to expedite matters, is there?”

“Very kind, but no. It turned out that the early geologists’ reports were incorrect, or maybe just incomplete. The engineers encountered a much harder layer of rock than they’d expected, and it held up the work for some time.”

Martinez decided that though he didn’t know much about geology, he was going to learn.

Next morning Martinez rose early, took the cup of coffee that his orderly handed him, and called Ahmet.

“I’d like to get up to the railhead,” he said. “Can you do it?”

“Absolutely, my lord.”

“I also don’t want a fuss. I’m tired of delegations. Can we go, just the two of us, with you as my guide?”

Martinez sensed a degree of personal triumph in Ahmet’s reply. “Of course, lord captain! That’s easier than anything!“

The trip to the railhead was on a train bringing out supplies, and Martinez spent the ride in the car reserved for the transport crews. He wore civilian clothes and heavy boots, which he thought disappointed Ahmet, who wanted a fully-dressed military hero to show off to his colleagues. As it was, Martinez had to put up with Ahmet’s loud reminiscences of the
Corona
and the battle of Hone-bar, which managed to imply that Martinez, under Ahmet’s brilliant direction, had managed to polish off the Naxids in time for breakfast.

“That’s when we swung onto our new heading and dazzled the Naxids with our engine flares, so they couldn’t see our supports,” Ahmet said, and then gave Martinez a confidential wink. “Isn’t that right, my lord?”

“Yes,” Martinez said. And then, peering out the window, “What’s up ahead?”

The track for the supersonic train was necessarily nearly straight and quite level. It approached the mountains on huge ramps, built by equally huge machines and pierced with archways for rivers and future roads. Terraces had been gouged into mountains to provide the necessarily wide roadbed, and tunnels bored through solid rock. The gossamer-seeming bridges that spanned distant valleys were, on closer inspection, built of trusses wider than a bus and cables the thickness of Martinez’ leg. The trains themselves, floating on magnetic fields above the rails, would be equipped with vanes that canceled out their sonic shockwave, but even so the tunnels had to be lined with baffles and sound suppressors to keep the mountain from being shaken down.

At the railhead Martinez was treated to a view of the giant drilling machine that bored the tunnel, and the other machines that cleared the rubble, braced the tunnel, and laid the track. The machines were sophisticated enough, and their operators experienced enough, that everyone seemed confident that their tunnel would meet the northbound crews, coming from the other side of the mountain, well ahead of schedule.

“So we can earn that big completion bonus from the Chee Company,” Ahmet grinned. “Isn’t that right, my lord?”

“Good for you,” Martinez said. He waited for a moment alone with Ahmet before he asked the next question.

“Wasn’t there a big delay a month or so ago? Can we stop there on our way back?”

Ahmet gave Martinez a wink. “Let me talk to the engine-driver.”

They took a ride back on a small engine that was shuttling rails to the construction site, and the Lai-own driver was amenable to a brief delay. “Marker 593,” Ahmet told him, and the engine slowed and braked. Ahmet, an electric lantern in his hand, hopped off into the dark tunnel, and Martinez heard a splash.

“Careful, my lord,” Ahmet said. “It’s a bit damp here.”

Martinez lowered himself to the roadbed and followed the bobbing lantern. Upheaval of the mountain range had tipped the geologic strata nearly vertical here. “They called it a pluton, or a laccolith, or something like that,” Ahmet said. “Whatever it is, it’s damn hard. The drill couldn’t get through it. There it is.” He brandished the lantern.