Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [8]
Matthew could see that Vince Solari was just as astonished by this puzzling flood of information as he was. The detective had no immediate follow-up ready, so Matthew was able to step into the breach again. “Are you telling us,” he said, slowly, “that after seven hundred years, we’ve arrived at the only Earth-clone world that any of Earth’s probes has so far managed to locate, but that the colonists you’ve so far managed to land are split right down the middle as to whether or not they want to pull out?”
Frans Leitz shrugged his bony shoulders. “It seems crazy to nearly everyone up here,” he admitted. “But yes, there are a lot of people on the ground who want out, for one reason or another. Mostly, they don’t think the world is anywhere near Earthlike enough. Some are scared because the local humanoids have become extinct—others are worried that if the aborigines aren’t quite extinct, our arrival will tip them over the edge. The bioscientists can’t seem to agree about what will happen to the local ecosphere if we establish a colony here … or, for that matter, to the ecosystems we introduce. This may not be a sludgeworld, some say, but it’s a real can of worms. It’s not easy for me to judge, being ship-born and ship-committed. I’m crew—my future’s here no matter what”
“And what about Shen Chin Che?” Matthew wanted to know. “What does he think?”
The boy’s face had been quite relaxed before, but it became suddenly taut now, and there was a flash of wildness in those eerie eyes. “I don’t know,” he said, guardedly. “He’s not involved in the discussion.”
“Is that because you haven’t woken him up?” Matthew was quick to ask.
“No,” the boy said. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
Matthew had already opened his mouth to ask another question before he realized—belatedly, it seemed—that he might already have asked at least one too many. Frans Leitz might be just a glorified cabin boy, and Nita Brownell a bona fide doctor with a businesslike bedside manner, but that didn’t mean that every word that he and Vincent Solari spoke wasn’t being overheard elsewhere in the ship, and very carefully studied. Matthew had no idea what side he was likely to be on in the ongoing dispute, because he had only just realized that there were any sides, but now he knew that there were, he wondered whether he ought to be careful. Newly hatched into a situation that obviously wasn’t as simple as it ought to be, he might need to get his bearings before showing his hand to interested parties.
He had been awakened, it seemed, to replace the other member of his pair, who had been murdered. However the land lay down on “the surface,” this was a matter of life and death.
It had always been a matter of life and death, from the very first moment he had exchanged polite bows with Shen Chin Che, but Matthew knew that he must not lose sight now of the fact that within the larger matters of life and death—upon which hung the fate of worlds—there were tangled threads upon which his own life dangled. It was not impossible that whoever had wanted Bernal dead might want him dead too—and until he knew why Bernal had been killed, it might be as well to be careful.
“I think we need to see the captain as soon as possible,” Matthew said to Frans Leitz. “In fact, I can’t help wondering why he sent you to talk to us, instead of coming himself.”
“The captain is just as anxious to see you as you are to see him, professor,” the young man replied, blithely ignoring the second part of the statement.