Third World
Louis Shalako
This Smashwords edition copyright 2014 Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books
Design: J. Thornton
ISBN 9781301779062
The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. The author’s moral right has been asserted.
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Chapter One
She Sure Was Beautiful
Hank tore his eyes off Polly Morgensen and tried to contribute something to the discussion.
She sure was beautiful, though. Her chin came up and she looked his way again. He saw it in his peripheral vision.
It was like an illness with him lately.
“Drifters.” Hank had run across one or two over the years.
They were little better than the nomads, who at least had purpose, following the great herds across the unbroken steppe of Third World’s northern hemisphere. Drifters were just that. Nomads stayed clear of settlement and cultivation, knowing there was plenty of room in the world. They needed open range, good grass and water. Drifters sought many things for many reasons. They tended to gravitate to more settled areas. During harvest, when hands were short, they were more welcome in some places more than others.
“That’s what they say. They’re camping up around Marjorie’s Way.” Red glanced around, but the other shoppers in the general store ignored them. “Word is they’ve been there a while.”
Perhaps the other people had already heard the news. Hank came into town once or twice in a month, usually a Monday but other days as well.
Marjorie’s Way was a notch in the hills just over the eastern horizon, obscured by the tops of barren pines, one of the few introduced species to do well on Third World. On the other side of the hills there was a brackish marsh at the end of a small run-off that brought a few of the indigenous waterfowl in season. After that, the trail petered out into a maze of hunting camps and thin ribbons of water in a vast marsh which had never been properly explored. People thought it went clear to the Blue Mountains. It was possible.
Drifters were often desperate, fleeing the law, debt more often. Sometimes it was young people running away, or just unfortunates looking for a new home someplace else. Hank had never really thought about it, although he had done it himself more than once.
“I see.” Hank Beveridge’s homestead was four kilometres out towards the morning sunrise, in the rolling hills where the true grasslands began.
He had a small river, and had painstakingly tanked up the seeps at the base of the hill where it came down. Hank had a herd of pack, draft and riding animals which he sold in an emergency, or when all else failed. He needed them for the business, or he would have done with only one or two animals. In the off season there was always work or worry.
The men watched a girl, her name was Polly. She and her mother haggled and fussed over a bolt of good red broadcloth. It looked like they were after a few things. Winter was coming and the kids would need shirts and pants and coats for winter, or even school. Polly was a fresh-faced beauty with a hint of a blush in her cheeks, almost as if she was aware of their scrutiny. She had long, straight black hair, with fine pale skin, long curling lashes and big dark eyes looking at everything in the store with an air of serious intent. She stood up straight, and that was one of the things he liked about her. It said much. Out of politeness, Hank took off his most prized possession, a pair of spectacles framed in thin steel wire. He put them in the case to protect them, as they were irreplaceable, and stuck them in his side pocket.
Hank’s purchase wasn’t urgent, but he’d been planning it for some time. Accounts receivable were one thing, and actually collecting them was another. He waited for long months on some accounts. The whole trade was predicated on long turnaround times. When possible, he paid for things in cash, which meant he owed few people and kept what he earned. It took a little foresight, and he had some of that.
Red went on.
“So far no one’s talked to them.” He looked around, but as long as Peltham was busy, he wasn’t going to get any cartridges, which was what he had ostensibly come in for.
Red could kill a half a day in town on three or four errands. The butter and eggs were running out and he didn’t do that on his own little plot, although he did have a respectable vegetable garden. It was something he was good at, and he could at least walk away from it, for a few days at a time, to go hunting or if some kind of work came up.
He sold cabbages and other produce at the end of the year, and Hank always looked him up as turnips and such kept pretty good over the winter. Red waxed them up real good. Red called them Swedes, which was a kind of a joke in these here parts. It really didn’t mean nothing and the few Swedes around took it in good spirit.
Hank studied Polly. Women were as scarce as hen’s teeth around here and she looked to be getting close to marrying age. He thought about it from time to time, her and one or two others. He fantasized about a few other ones, married as they were and so unattainable except in a daydream…at his present age of forty or thereabouts, it was pretty much all fantasy.
Red cleared his throat.
“You’re pretty close to Marjorie’s Way.”
Hank nodded.
“It’s about two and a half kilometres from my place.” It was to the north of his homestead, the sides of the hills and banks were very steep along there.
The valleys ran all east and west.
The hollows were full of scrub and there was no easy way through, so he hardly ever went up there. It was easier to get there from town, as the northeast trail ran through from here. They might even be camped on a corner of his land. Not that it mattered, they could do little harm as the first grass fire season was over and the land was lush and surprisingly damp this year. The odds were they would move on.
Cold grey clouds had dominated the weather for weeks.
Drifters were nothing new. One heard stories of course.
***
“Gentlemen.” The beaming proprietor, Abe Peltham, having made a good sale apparently, stood at the counter beside them.
Cheerful talk came from the ladies, for spending money was always exciting, and the slamming of the front door bore this impression out. Their hard boots thumped on the shaded boardwalk and then they stepped out into a rare shaft of sunlight and started across the rutted, muddy hell that was Main Street. Hank forced his attention back to the counter again.
Putting an elbow down and settling in for a long talk, Red leaned over to inquire as to three boxes of .22 long-rifle cartridges. He always claimed to be able to hit an apple at a hundred yards with the old repeater he owned, but privately Hank doubted it. He hadn’t seen an apple in twenty-five years, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Not since leaving Earth as a boy.
It was just talk. Talk had its pleasures, its temptations, and its uses. More than anything, it was unavoidable. Hank pulled his glasses out and put them on again.
He turned to watch the women cross the street and go into another establishment. Oak River, the town’s name, was a bit misleading as there were no real oaks on the planet, although several of the taller indigenous growths bore some resemblance, at least as far as anyone remembered. Red and Abe would
take a while.
The place had a population of about four hundred. There were a thousand other settlers within a twenty-kilometre radius. There were quite a number in town today, as the conversation droned on behind him.
People moved up and down the street and draft animals, critters mostly but the odd horse as well, stood at hitching rails in front of the hastily-erected and mostly unpainted buildings.
Hank, starved for company and mental stimulation, found it fascinating enough in its own way. Turning, he watched in gentle amusement as Red tried to get Peltham to throw something into the deal.
“Come on, you got to make this worth my while.”
Abe shook his head.
“You know the prices. Besides, you still me owe a little from last month.” He knew it right down to the penny of course.
Poor old Red had been enjoying a run of bad luck, just a little saying he had.
Hank snorted gently in amusement. Part of the charm of the place, he figured. Red probably knew the total tab right down the penny himself.
Red knew when he was beaten and took the shells.
“Can you put that on my bill?” With a nod and a quick grin at Hank, he scooped them up and turned and stalked out of the store.
If he had any cash at all, Hank might find him at the Stub, one of three watering holes and not the best of the bunch. If Hank could see that, so could Peltham.
“Well, don’t that just beat all.” Abe sighed deeply and lifted an eyebrow in Hank’s direction.
“It’s a pretty good bet.”
Abe’s eyebrows rose.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m thinking this will be a bumper year for the hoppers.” They teemed in the grasslands, burrowing in the earth and subsisting on the greenery. “He’ll do all right if he gets out there.”
Every seventeen years they just seemed to go nuts, or so the old-timers said.
In Hank’s opinion their legendary fecundity was to make up for a high mortality rate among the young and newborns. Brownish on top and white on the belly, they were long-haired animals with floppy wrinkled ears. He shot one when he could himself, as they made a good stew, their small size precluding roast or steaks or anything like that. They had extensive colonies scattered at set distances and moved burrows frequently. The thing was to find a fresh group that had never been hunted, a whole colony, and then you could lay in a supply of meat. Properly smoked and salted, it would fetch a good price. Red had the best recipe on the planet for jugging them, or so he said.
Red had been known to do it from time to time, but hunting was always uncertain and had costs, including ammunition.
“Well, I suppose he has to feed himself, at least long enough to be able to pay me back.” Abe bit his lip and then grinned at Hank. “What can I get you?”
Hank had been saving a set amount, month in and month out, for a full year and yet his idea might be crazy, or merely unsuccessful. He was keeping it to himself for just that reason.
Taking a deep breath, knowing that it was bound to cause a certain amount of talk, he placed his order. He could almost justify it. He kept talking as Peltham moved in and out of the back room.
One thing he’d learned was to keep as much twine on hand as possible. It was mostly used for tying bundles of bracken-bush, the pods of which were a prized commodity on the home worlds. The pods were a tart, spicy thickener in a variety of soups and sauces that for the most part he had never heard of, never partaken of, and by the sounds of things, didn’t ever want to try. The leaves were dried and crushed and added to various products in an endless industrial food production chain. Elite chefs on a hundred worlds liked using the pods with the leaves still on the branches for presentation, whatever the hell that meant.
Hank didn’t much like the taste of it himself, and never used it in his own kitchen.
***
Hank wasn’t much for worship. While he had no particular reason not to go, the fact was that he hadn’t been to worship in ten or eleven years. The last time he’d been there, a friend was getting married. Not so much a friend as a cousin, which amounted to the same thing around here. He never really saw them two anymore.
The trouble was, they’d staked out a homestead clear twelve kilometres out on the other side of town and he rarely got up that way. Last he heard, they were doing well enough though. The land was flatter up there, more open, and they were growing fifteen or twenty acres of grain.
The pews in the church were made of piss-elm, an old name for a new cultivar but no one had any other ideas.
Hank looked around for people he knew, politely nodding when he made eye contact with old lady Stern, who in spite of the name was always just a little too friendly and agreeable, laughing too much at the lamest of jokes. Maybe she was just lonely.
A name is a name, but the seat was painfully hard under his butt. It was one of several reminders of why he never came anymore. The room was hot and fliers buzzed loudly in the small windows, letting a dim light in from a sky still a milky, dull bluish colour with the moisture. The air was so thick lately that you could cut it with a knife, bite a chunk off and chew it for a while.
Maybe that was why he never came anymore. Marty, the preacher, was surely one of the most fussy, prim and proper speakers he’d ever heard. He was…he was didactic and pedantic. The old familiar words came harder now, it’s not like you heard them at all anymore. It was clunky as all hell, there was no other way to describe it. There was just a hint of the effeminate in it, although Marty was married and had eight kids, all under twelve years of age.
The thought of this man teaching schoolchildren might in some small way account for their persistent and habitual truancy. It explained a lot. The last guy, Aldwin Notherman, was a lot better but he just up and died one day in the prime of life. It seemed so sad, and his wife and two daughters had moved back to Emerald City, six hundred kilometres to the south.
“Go in God’s name, and with peace and love in your hearts, my brothers and sisters and children of God.”
The words were familiar, but the sigh of collective relief that went through the assembly, as there must have been a hundred-fifty people in there, was a sign that maybe Hank wasn’t the only one that missed poor old Aldwin.
***
“Good morning, Missus Morgensen. Good morning, Polly.”
“Good morning, Hank.” Andrea Morgensen smiled up at Hank, looking distinctly uncomfortable and out of place despite the black suit, looking a bit thin in the derriere but still serviceable, and the wet cowlick that managed to stick up and out in spite of his best effort to keep it down.
His big hands were doing minor damage to the hat he held in his hands. Lucky to have two, this was his best one although he hadn’t worn it in a while.
“Good morning, Mister Beveridge.” Polly looked bright and fresh and perhaps a little younger than her nineteen-and-a-half years.
They stood in a huddle as other worshippers came down the stairs and into the light, getting brighter now as the day wore on. Hank had been at the very back and they were four rows up on the other side, where he had an opportunity to study Polly and wonder a bit, and not just about her either. But he had to wonder at himself as well. Men were fools, or so they said. He wasn’t smiling now, though. Thoughtfully, he put his hat back on. He had never learned to really fake a smile, not when he was scared, anyways.
“With a little luck, we might see some sunshine later on.”
“Oh, that would be lovely.” Polly smiled up at him, making eye contact, but Hank just tried to stand his ground.
He was tempted to bolt and run, that was for sure.
“Hank!”
They turned.
“Hank! It’s good to see you.” Marty, his open face lighting up, beamed at him from the top of the stairs.
He was almost glad to see him, for the sheer interruption. Marty was in his late twenties, with boyish lean features and a fervent faith in his mission, which made up for a lot of failings of
organization. He meant well and took an interest, which was about all that was called for in this neck of the woods.
A bit of a blush crept into Hank’s features, reddened by the outdoors enough to begin with. Marty took the stairs two at a time, possibly as relieved as anyone to be over and done with duty. The other folks were all regulars and Hank realized he probably talked their ears off most any given Sunday. Hank tugged at the brim of his hat and the ladies curtsied awkwardly, the sudden demand taking Polly by surprise by the look of it. He would think more on that later. The reverend was at his side, face wreathed in a smile. Hank was, morally at least, a long-lost brother. The reverend thought in those terms, and while Hank understood what he was talking about, usually, it was an unusually abstract way of looking at things.
“So what’s been happening?” With the wind lifting a long tuft of thin black hair, revealing a good chunk of a prematurely bald skull, Marty took a proprietary grip on Hank’s upper arm.
***
Hank lived in a cabin on a bench overlooking the river that ran through his property. Built entirely with his own hands, he had set up a small sawmill, wheel-driven by a short stretch of white water where it bunched up over a shelf of underlying limestone. Every so often someone would look him up and contract for this and that and the other thing, big beams and the like mostly, although he could cut smaller stock for the right price. The mill had paid for itself within a few years and was easy enough to maintain. It was helpful in combating boredom, and he could bring in money during the winter.
The biggest job was damming the creek, but he’d picked the spot very carefully and there were plenty of boulders available.
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