Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [43]
It was luxuriating in the “warm” weather, Wixom decided as she tugged the sealfast of her insulating coat tighter around her neck. Treetrunk had rapidly revealed to its new inhabitants how fecund the frigid northern and far southern climes were. The temperate zone that tracked the equator was home to a correspondingly greater variety of life, of which the gnarter was by no means the most outlandish example.
Another was the hoat, a puma-sized predator that impaled its prey on spikelike teeth that grew horizontally from its expansive mouth and flattened jaws. Alone on the hilltop, she kept a careful eye out for it and its less imposing relations. Treetrunk was far from being tamed, its indigenous life-forms anything but domesticated. That was one of the great joys of settling a new world, she knew. It was one of the reasons that, restless and unmarried, she had traded a comfortable and predictable life as an up-and-coming urban planner on New Riviera for the incertitude of laying out new communities from scratch on Argus V.
The weight of the shocker in her left pocket made her grin to herself. No need for quite so potent a weapon of self-defense on placid, easygoing, semitropical New Riviera. There, unwelcome advances could usually be discouraged by the judicious application of a few sharp words.
Unlimbering her backpack, she unfolded the extensible stabilizing pod and attached the siter to the clip on top. Activated, the unit provided a heads-up display that allowed her to place buildings and infrastructure wherever she wished, creating a virtual community anywhere the unit’s viewfinder was aimed. Warehouses, shuttleport, access roads, communications, water and sewerage, power transmission pylons—everything could be constructed with the touch of a few controls, could be sized to fit and arranged as she preferred without a single spadeful of dirt having to be overturned.
As she began to lay out the access routes from the growing town of Rajput to the proposed suburban extension, she made adjustments for the terrain, utilizing the unit to banish rock and earth that was in the wrong place and move it to where it was needed. As many trees as possible would be spared, but it was not really a major concern. Between the tundra lines, Treetrunk was a solid belt of native forest, and provisions had already been made to preserve the bulk of it in reserves. A renewable resource if properly looked after, its woods would provide income to the colonists in the form of everything from exotic furniture to tourism.
As she contrived the new town the unit recorded those decisions that she wished to convey to the planning board. In so doing she allowed herself room to maneuver, occasionally indulging in personal fancies that she knew the board would disavow. It was a game: She did as she pleased, the board remonstrated with her, and they compromised. In the end she got what she wanted while permitting the board members to believe that they had prevailed in every matter. The ego involved in the repetitive confrontations meant nothing to her: It was the results that mattered. Her psychological skills had contributed as much to her success on New Riviera as had her talent for organizing and planning.
The board would want the power distribution center to go there, she suspected. She moved it six blocks east. After due debate, she would concede the point, thereby allowing herself room to place the observation and restaurant complex exactly where she wanted it. That mattered. She didn’t give two gnarter moans about the location of the power center.
“You are very intense.”
The comment did not cause her to jump out of her skin, but her heart certainly thumped momentarily harder. Whirling, she prepared to unload a choice selection of suitably modified expletives on the head of whoever had snuck up behind her. Thinking she was alone and concentrating on the work at hand, she