Free Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold Page A

gloomy at all times, as nearly as I can tell.”
    Jole’s lips curled up. “I think I can promise you that the subjects of your nascent local democracy experiments will not pursue you onto my Imperial base.”
    “You lie, but I don’t care…” She stared, nonplussed, as they arrived at their destination and stopped.
    “And what do you see here, Cordelia?” Jole gestured broadly around at the two-meter-high stacks of sacks confronting them. The stacks sat in turn on pallets arrayed out for dozens of meters in all directions, like a large-scale model of some geological feature, badlands dotted with mesas and channeled by ravines, except more regular. Zigzagging semi-randomly, Jole led her to the center of the maze.
    “Many, many bags of stuff. Not belonging to me, I point out prudently.”
    “Delivered by the contractor months early—that should have been our first clue—”
    “A contractor, early ? Really? Already your tale begins to resemble some drunken hallucination.”
    He nodded glumly. “Although I haven’t started drinking yet. It was to be the plas mixer for the new runways on the second base, at—is it decided yet?”
    “Gridgrad.” She wrinkled her nose. “The residents may want to give that village a new name after this hits, but that, happily, will not be my problem. Unless they try to name it after Aral and make me come out and give another damned speech.”
    A good near-equatorial location, like Kareenburg, to the net energy benefit of shuttles striking for orbit. Jole was satisfied. At least with that aspect. The fact that the site was a tenth of the way around the planet…“And yet we are far from Gridgrad. Both in terms of time and distance. The earliest projection for starting the dig on the runway foundation was at least another year. Year and a half, realistically.”
    “And yet, I am failing to see the problem. The matrix mix would have had to be hauled from here to there sometime, yes?” She poked doubtfully at a bulging bag. “Unless someone starts a new materials manufacturing plant at Gridgrad awfully soon, which is not a proposal that has yet crossed my desk. Though I expect one will, in due course.”
    Jole shook his head. “The latest high-tech materials innovation, this. Very strong when set, yet resilient under repeated massive impacts, such as landing shuttles. Allowing the engineers to use half the volume and weight, and therefore cost, even at a higher price per ton. Per thousand-ton, for this sort of application.”
    She raised her brows at him, in standard Cordelia-challenge. “It’s plascrete. Lasts for centuries, right? And it’s not as if you’re suffering for storage space. You have square kilometers of empty base, if you want them, Imperially reserved for future barracks and runways. Though I should probably warn you, some Kareenburg developers are already starting to eye them covetously.”
    “Lasts only after it’s mixed and set.” Jole made another broad gesture. “The terms you are missing are ‘latest,’ ‘high-tech,’ and ‘innovation.’ The ingredients of the old-style plascrete are indeed remarkably durable. This crap, however, while lovely when fresh, undergoes chemical deterioration if not mixed with its activator and placed by its best-by date. Which is less than a year from now. How long the manufacturer had this sitting around in their yard is anyone’s guess, but it’s been a while.”
    “Plascrete with planned obsolescence,” she said, in a tone of wry admiration. “Who knew?”
    “Not, unfortunately, the quartermaster officer who let it onto the base last week. Rattled, perhaps, by all the delivery vehicles blocking the main gate, he signed off on the loads without running them past the engineers. The first problem being, of course, that it was not supposed to be delivered here at all, but rather, at Gridgrad-to-be-disclosed.”
    “So they not only shift their dodgy stock, they duck a stiff extra delivery expense. Nice.”
    “