Engineman - Eric Brown [30]
"And why are you visiting the Reach, Ms Fernandez?"
"Pleasure. I'm visiting my father."
"His name and address?"
Ella gave him the information.
The official entered the details, then waited. Ella guessed he was cross-referencing the name of her father with a list of the planet's citizens. He read something on the screen, then looked at Ella.
"One minute."
He opened a swing door behind his desk and stepped out. Ella watched him cross to where the uniformed courier was waiting by the exit. They exchanged a hurried, whispered conversation, the courier allowing his gaze to remain fixed on her.
The official returned. "How long do you intend to stay on the Reach, Ms Fernandez?"
Ella shrugged. "Maybe a week or two."
"Where will you be staying?"
"At first in a hotel in Zambique City, then perhaps with my father-"
The official interrupted, "Much of the city is out-of-bounds to off-world travellers, and the country north of the twentieth parallel is off-limits to all non-Reach citizens."
"Why?" Ella asked. "What's happening?"
The official smiled. "Civil unrest in Zambique province," he said. "Oh, and by the way, a curfew is operating on the Reach. Eight till eight, and the patrols have shoot-on-sight orders. If I were you I'd be very careful." He returned Ella's identity card. "I hope you find inspiration for your art on the Reach," he said with barely concealed sarcasm.
Ella plucked her card from his fingers. "Merci, Monsieur. I'm sure I will."
She crossed to where the courier was waiting with the other five travellers. She was aware that she had undergone a more than usually rigorous grilling.
Civil unrest in Zambique province? Somehow she found that hard to believe. And since when had it taken nuclear rocket launchers to quell civil unrest?
The coach ferried them across to the interface. The convoy had long since passed through, and were drawn up in columns on the other side. This time when the coach approached the portal, Ella closed her eyes. The pain hit without warning. Her innards were constricted, and for a fraction of a second it seemed as though her heart might stop. Then she was on Hennessy's Reach and breathing the familiar, heady fragrance of bougainvillea and assorted alien blooms.
The coach carried Ella and the others - among them the military courier from Sanctuary, she noticed - to the terminal, a long, low building with Spanish colonial columns and shuttered windows in the Latin style. She passed through customs, expecting another comprehensive interrogation. This time, however, her identity card was given hardly a second glance. As she strode towards the exit, she was aware of the courier consulting with a knot of security guards. One of them watched her walk from the building. Her presence had been noted.
She halted at the top of the steps, shocked by the scene that greeted her. She recalled the bustle of activity before the 'port on the evening she had left the Reach ten years ago. The forecourt had been packed with the stalls of a night market selling grilled fish and assorted sea-food, fresh fruit - Terran and alien - hot coffee and coca. Music had belted out from the stall-holder's radios, sambas competing with their cries. The scene had been typical of a busy market place on any bustling, agricultural colony planet.
Now the forecourt was deserted. A single, defective street-lamp fluttered light across the empty, pot-holed stretch of concrete. One combustion-engined taxi stood on the rank, its driver sprawled across the front seats, his bare feet protruding from the passenger window. His radio played a tinny rumba, the music lost in the night.
Across the unlighted coast road, the beach extended north for as far as the eye could see. Timber fishing boats, testimony of the planet's backward economy, were drawn up past the high-tide mark. Five kilometres up the coast, Zambique City was a collection of two- and three-storey buildings climbing the hillside around the bay. Even the city looked deserted; in none of the buildings or streets could Ella see a burning light or any