Engineman - Eric Brown [31]
Ella hurried down the steps and approached the taxi-cab. She decided to check the truth of what the official had said about the city being off-limits.
At the sight of her, the driver withdrew his feet from the window and started the engine. "Hotel, senorita?"
She peered in at him. "Can you take me into Zambique?"
The driver made a pained face. "Not possible, senorita. City closed. Military patrols. Local hotel, yes?"
Ella recalled the small town three kilometres down the coast where she'd stayed once with her father. She dumped her bag on the back seat and climbed in beside it. "Do you know the Hotel Santa Rosa, Costa Julliana?"
"Si, senorita. No problem."
She sat back as the car chuntered from the forecourt and headed down the coast road. The driver braked, then muttered something under his breath as the military convoy pulled from the spaceport and moved north. The procession of identically camouflaged jungle-green vehicles passing before them soon became monotonous. Ten minutes later, as the last armoured truck left the 'port, Ella asked in Spanish, "What is the problem? Why all the military?"
The driver glanced at her in the rear-view mirror, smiling sadly. He mimed locking his mouth and throwing the key through the window. "No questions, no answers, no awakenings at two in the morning." He drew a finger across his Adam's apple and made an accompanying gurgling sound in his throat.
"Christ," Ella murmured to herself. She stared out at the fields of rice and the occasional sumptuous villa.
Hennessy's Reach was one of half a dozen planets on the Rim settled almost seventy years ago by colonists from the countries that made up the Latin Federation. Over a period of twenty years, two million citizens from Spain, Mexico and South America had made the journey by bigship to the Reach, and settled on the world's three largest continents. It had never been a prosperous colony, even in the early days when subsidised by the Federation. Twenty years ago, the Danzig Organisation launched a successful economic take-over of the planet - one of over two hundred which had fallen domino-like to the Organisation around the Rim - and since then the economy of the planet had declined still further. The four million inhabitants of the Reach managed to feed themselves, but only just. Ella guessed that the Hennessians had finally had enough, and instigated a rebellion - hard though that was to imagine of a people she remembered as being peaceable and easy-going. She wondered why she had heard nothing of the trouble on any of the news channels back on Earth.
The taxi followed the coast road around the headland. The small fishing town of Costa Julliana nestled in a horse-shoe cove ahead. A few lights burned in the windows of the stone buildings on the hillside, but the main square which fronted the ocean was empty, as was the jetty extending from the harbour wall. Ella recalled the town's inhabitants promenading along the jetty on hot evenings.
The driver was cutting though the square, heading for the continuation of the coast road and the hotel, when Ella saw the statue. She leaned forward. "Stop here!"
"But your hotel, senorita?"
"That's okay. It's not far. I'll walk from here."
She paid him in the local currency she'd bought back on Earth, grabbed her bag and climbed from the taxi. As it started up and u-turned, Ella stood on the cobbles beside a dry fountain and stared across the square.
A hover-truck was parked on the harbour wall, the crane on its flat-bed silhouetted against the sunset. A corps of green-uniformed engineers stood around, regarding the statue. Ella moved forward, then stopped - close enough to see the detail of the towering figure, but not so close that she attracted the attention of the engineers.
She had never seen the statue before - it had certainly been erected since