He spoke to the driver in what sounded like Old English, then moved rapidly across the field toward the warehouses in the same strange walk as the other men. As far as Cole could see, he did not bend his knees at all.
Hawkins, also old but frail and stooped, took Cole's bags to the car. When the ecologist tried to follow him he almost fell headlong, then managed a stiff-legged shuffle. Momentarily he longed for the Earth-normal gravity of Belconti and the ship.
They drove past unfenced fields green with vegetable and cereal crops, and fenced pastures holding beef and dairy cattle of the old Earth breeds. It was a typical human ecosystem. Then they passed a group of field workers, and surprise jolted the ecologist. They were huge—eight or nine feet tall, both men and women, all with long hair and some of them naked. They did not look up.
Cole looked at Hawkins. The old man glared at him from red-rimmed eyes and chattered something in archaic English. He speeded up, losing the giants behind a hedge, and the manor house with the palisade behind it loomed ahead.
The great fence dwarfed the house. Single baulks of grassy brown timber ten feet on a side soared two hundred feet into the air, intricately braced and stayed. High above, a flyer drifted as if on sentry duty. Half a mile beyond, dwarfing the fence in its turn, arose the thousand-foot black escarpment of the forest edge.
The manor house huddled in a walled garden with armed guards at the gate. It was two-storied and sprawling, with a flat-roofed watch tower at the southeast corner, and made of the same glassy brown timber. Hawkins stopped the car by the pillared veranda where a lumpy, gray, nondescript woman waited. Cole got out, awkwardly careful in the light gravity.
The woman would not meet his glance. "I'm Flada Vignoli, Mr. Bidgrass's niece and housekeeper," she said in a dead voice. "I'll show you your rooms." She turned away before Cole could respond.
"Let me carry the bags, I need to," he said to Hawkins, laughing uncertainly. The old man hoisted his skinny shoulders and spat.
The rooms were on the second floor, comfortable but archaic in style. The gray woman told him that Hawkins would bring his meals, that Garth Bidgrass would see him in a few days to make plans, and that Mr. Bidgrass thought he should not go about unescorted until he knew more about local conditions.
Cole nodded. "I'll want to confer with your leading biologists, Mrs. Vignoli, as soon as I can. For today, can you get me a copy of your most recent biotic survey?"