Strata - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,1

island duty because, well, with a coral island there is not the temptation—’

‘I know.’ Kin thought for a while. ‘Send him over. And her. It’s going to be a busy day, Joel. It’s always like this at the end of a job, people start to play around.’

‘It’s youth. We’ve all done it. With me it was a pair of boots in a coal measure. Not so imaginative, I admit.’

‘You mean I should excuse him?’

Of course he did. Everyone was allowed just one unscripted touch, weren’t they? Checkers always spotted them, didn’t they? And even if one went unnoticed, couldn’t we rely on future paleontologists to hush it up? Huh?

Trouble was, they might not …

‘He’s good, and later on he’ll be great,’ said Joel. ‘Just gnaw one ball off, eh?’

A few minutes later Kin heard the machine’s roar stutter and stop. Soon one of the outer office robots came in, leading—

—a squat fair-haired youth, tanned lobster pink, and a skinny bald girl hardly out of her teens. They stood staring at Kin with a mixture of fear and defiance, dripping coral dust onto the carpet.

‘All right, sit down. Want a drink? You both look dehydrated. I thought they had air conditioning in those things.’

The pair exchanged glances. Then, the girl said, ‘Frane likes to get the feel of his work.’

‘Well, okay. The freezer’s that round thing hovering right behind you. Help yourself.’

They jerked away as the freezer bumped into their shoulders, then grinned nervously and sat down.

They were in awe of Kin, which she found slightly embarrassing. According to the files they were both from colony planets so new the bedrock had hardly dried, while she was manifestly from Earth. Not Whole, New, Old, Real or Best Earth. Just Earth, cradle of humanity, just like it said in their history books. And the double century mark on her forehead was probably something they’d only heard of before joining John Company. And she was their boss. And she could fire them.

The freezer drifted back to its alcove, describing a neat detour around a patch of empty air at the back of the room. Kin made a mental note to get a tech to look at it.

They sat gingerly on the float chairs. Colony worlds didn’t have them, Kin recalled. She glanced at the file, gave them an introductory glare, and switched on the recorder.

‘You know why you’re here,’ she said. ‘You’ve read the regulations, if you’ve got any sense. I’m bound to remind you that you can either choose to accept my judgement as senior executive of the sector, or go before a committee at Company HQ. If you elect for me to deal with it, there’s no appeal. What do you say?’

‘You,’ said the girl.

‘Can he speak?’

‘We elect to be tried by you, Mizz,’ said the boy in a thick Creed accent.

Kin shook her head. ‘It’s not a trial. If you don’t like my decision you can always quit – unless of course I fire you.’ She let that sink in. Behind every Company trainee was a parsec-long queue of disappointed applicants. Nobody quit.

‘Right, it’s on record. Just for the record, then, you two were on strata machine BVN67 on Julius 4th last, working a line on Y-continent? You’ve got the detailed charge on the notice of censure you were given at the time.’

‘Tis all correct,’ said Hendry. Kin thumbed a switch.

One wall of the office became a screen. They got an aerial view of grey datum rock, broken off sharply by a kilometre-high wall of strata like God’s own mad sandwich. The strata machine had been severed from its cliff and moved to one side. Unless a really skilled jockey lined it up next time, this world’s geologists were going to find an unexplained fault.

The camera zoomed in to an area halfway up the cliff, where some rock had been melted out. There was a gantry and a few yellow-hatted workmen who shuffled out of camera field, except for one who stood holding a measuring rod against Exhibit A and grinning. Hi there, all you folks out there in Company Censure Tribunal Land.

‘A plesiosaur,’ said Kin. ‘All wrong for this stratum, but what the hell.’ The camera floated over the half-excavated skeleton, focusing now on the distorted rectangles by its side. Kin nodded. Now it was quite clear. The beast had been holding a placard. She could just make out the wording.

‘“End Nuclear Testing Now”,’ she said levelly.

It must have taken a lot of work. Weeks, probably, and then a