Chapter 21: Survey Results

When Pru and Terry settled in the conference room at the Neo-Tantra home office, Solly was with them. They had timed the meeting so that the people on the scene would have had a night's rest after a hard day's work.

Zahlman's face was the first to appear on the com, followed shortly by Isabella's. Solly began the review.

"We sent a high-level surveillance device over the area of Isabella's coordinates. We also sent in, under cover of night, a miniature eye that can give us good, real-time imaging of what's going on in the ... well, I guess we'll call it the village square. And finally, the eye incorporates a set of scanners that gave us a reading on implant status."

He looked up at Isabella's face on the com. "This is a village of about 100 to 110 people. As far as we can tell, none of them has ID implants or med implants. Not the adults and particularly not the children."

"That's amazing!" Isabella said. "I had no idea."

Solly continued. "Zahlman was able to help me position the eye so that it probably won't be found or noticed, and at any rate, we'll give it a destruct command when we've got all we need.

"As for the high-level scan, we've seen people in the fields around the village, apparently attending to gardening duties, and others out in the surrounding hills. They seem to be hunting. There's plenty of game — goats, stray sheep and smaller game all over the area." Solly looked at Zahlman's image. "Anything more?"

Zahlman nodded. "I've been checking with some of our tribal experts here. The clothes they are wearing are patterned after the Berber tribal dress peculiar to the Ouled Naïl. I've noticed some of the young women spracticing belly dancing, which is what the Ouled Naïl women were known for."

Isabella put in, "There are several pregnant women in the group. One of them looks pretty far along — you might want to get a doctor to check the imaging. None of them looks really healthy; too thin, skin tones don't look right, but maybe that's because they're in the direct sun all the time. Of course, the women are heavily clothed and, most of the time, they wear hijab — headscarves. We got some pictures of them at the well, though, where they were bathing, and I'd say they could use a couple of good meals, at least—especially the pregnant ones. Oh, and at least one of the pregnant ones has two other small children, closely spaced."

Zahlman added, "They don't seem to have guards posted. I see no signatures at night, beyond the goats and the dogs that protect them. Sanitation seems to be outhouses at one end of the village or the other. One is used by men; the other used by women. They do seem to be far enough away from the wells, though.