“They’re going somewhere.”
Ted looked up dismissively and then agreed.
“Yeah—they must smell something down there.”
Hank glanced over. That might be it. The avian creatures, all leathery in the body and naked in the wings, were definitely meat-eaters and probably scavengers. He’d never seen one take a dive after prey. They seemed clumsy and awkward on the ground, where there would invariably be a carcass.
In the air, they were grace personified, with the frontal silhouette v-shaped, and with the wingtips gracefully curled up and the round body set low, braced and supported by the powerful shoulders.
Up close and hopping around on the ground in their stiff, two-legs at once manner, uttering their hisses and croaks as they jockeyed for position and tore at the carrion, they were somewhat less attractive.
There was no denying it, life with Polly could be very good if he could just get on with it.
It was a question of putting it into words, and the timing had to be right.
Worse things could happen to a man than being married to Polly Morgensen.
“Are you going to the dance Saturday night?”
“Huh?” At first Hank didn’t quite catch what he said.
Ted regarded him in a dispassionate fashion.
“If you don’t hurry up and ask her, somebody else surely will.”
Trying not to tense up too much or appear too eager, Hank nodded in agreement.
“I reckon that’s so.”
It was a good idea to invite her, far better than just showing up in the hopes of her being there—and seeing her already occupied with another fellow.
He looked at Ted with new eyes.
“You know what? That’s a darned good idea.”
The worst that could happen was that she might say no. In which case, he would have an answer and it would be time to move on. If she said yes, it opened up new doors for the future. Maybe not promises, but doors to another kind of existence. He had to start somewhere or just forget the whole idea.
The ladies, heads still together but clutching big handfuls of flowers and brightly-coloured weeds approached. Their little gossip session was over. Hank wondered why Emily was paying unusually close attention to him and he blushed a little and very carefully and very correctly assisted Polly up onto Blossom.
How much time had they spent discussing him?
And what was the verdict? It was all a big mystery to Hank Beveridge.
Chapter Eight
On Their Way Again
They were on their way again, with Emily and Ted’s cart disappearing over the brow of the hill and for all intents and purposes winking out of existence.
Hank was again at a bit of a loss for conversation.
“Emily will drop off my flowers on the way home.”
“Ah, it’s good to have friends.” Hank didn’t have too many friends.
Although Red might qualify, he was the sort that a young person like Polly might not find too interesting.
His hands felt sweaty on the reins. Red was sixty-five, Hank just in his early forties. Yet he felt closer to Red than to pretty much anyone else in town. Red was born on the planet. There was some terrible gulf between him and young people these days. They either looked on him with a kind of awe, or a kind of genial contempt.
The neighbour kids were always stealing out of Red’s melon patch, and they had played some awful tricks on him over the years. Hank wondered how he could stand it, especially when things got bad but Red was philosophical. Maybe Hank didn’t love people quite the same way. Yet no man was an island.
“What’s that?” She rose up in her seat and pointed off to the edge of the world.
“Huh.” Hank had been caught flat-footed and foolish-looking, peering off into the dull backdrop where the hills in the east melted into a low mass of seething grey rain clouds.
“Well, I’ll be.” He was about to call her young lady when he caught himself. “You have good eyes.”
Pulling a brass telescope out of his saddlebag, Hank studied the horizon.
He handed it over and she took a long look.
“Nomads!” She chewed her lip, causing a pang of something to go through him.
Her lips were like raspberry wine…her skin like a spring peach. Her long black hair was healthy and thick and he couldn’t stop himself from thinking all the wrong thoughts. Hank took the glass and studied them further.
There was the mass of animals, several different species, the dull blue-black of the local cattle, the taller necks of what were similar to antelope or even caribou, with the ruddy red coats and this time of year, great tufts of lank and dirty wool hanging off the belly and hindquarters…some of the animals were unfamiliar, but the likelihood was that they were all herbivores or possibly omnivores.
He knew a lot of big words, compared to some folks.
He’d never seen a nomad before, so he studied them closely. The slender figures carried long staves, and wore a hooded brown cloak that they probably slept in. They looked to be about average height and build. There were a surprisingly small number of them. No one led the herd. Hank swept the glass carefully across the horizon. There were three men or at least people on the front of the southern flank. Extrapolating from that, there might be at most a dozen or so herders. He wondered if there were more, and if they had carts of their own following behind. Taking the work in shifts made sense. They must have womenfolk about somewhere, otherwise how did they propagate themselves?
“Where are they going?”
“Nowhere in particular.” He lowered the glass. “They follow the herds and the herds follow the grass and the water, or maybe just try and stay ahead of the drought.”
Drought brought fire, from lightning, and human causes, and spontaneous combustion maybe when heaps of dead plants lay in the sun too long.
He considered the implications.
“They started off following the migration routes. Originally, they picked up stray calves, or ate crippled or aged animals.”
One thing led to another. A newborn calf would get separated from its mother and then be hand-raised, the nucleus of a domesticated herd.
They sat their mounts on a ridge clear of the line of march. She was sort of hugging herself, and he felt a kind of curious feeling himself. This was the unknown.
“It’s interesting, normally they don’t pass anywhere near here.” Hank thought it through.
The nomads had adapted to a wandering life and had learned enough to manage the herds and even the grasslands, as it was said they lit the occasional fire to burn off old growth, preventing the spread of forest and fertilizing the soil in time for the next round or the next season. So little was known about them, and here they were within five or six kilometres of town. Perhaps some concern was justified.
The head of the herd passed them now, less than five hundred metres away, down in the bottom of a small valley. Dust, almost unheard of and an unbelievable sight, rose beyond the far hilltop and showed that another bunch must be over there. Indistinct shapes blended into a heaving mass of bawling, bleating mayhem. The smell eventually came to them on the breeze and that was all new too.
The enigmatic figure of the first shepherd passed directly in front of them. He didn’t look up, break step or seem to make any signal or acknowledgement of their presence. The next one was still a half-kilometre behind.
Hank turned to Polly.
“It’s all right. I’m sure—I know damn well they’ve seen us up here.”
She said nothing. The noise of all the animals, bawling cattle, other croaks and grunts, squeals, came from here and there and there wasn’t much to see. Yet it was a memorable thing, and it was only the two of them.
He smiled and engaged her attention with a pat on the forearm, a touch he had done unconsciously at the time but would marvel at later.
“Well, I guess we’ll have a story to tell.”
She nodded soberly.
“I was hopi
ng to see the gorge.” Still, it was better than nothing,
It would take hours for the herd to pass and the gorge, with high rock walls and foaming cataracts, was on the other side of the valley.
It broke the monotony.
Now might be a good time. Hank mustered up his courage. It was better to know at some point, rather than waste one’s life pining.
“I was wondering if you would like to go to the dance on Saturday night.”
Her head swung and her eyes lit up.
“That would be wonderful.”
“Well then, I will come a-calling for you.”
“Sure. How about seven o’clock?”
He agreed that that sounded just fine, his heart pounding in his chest and his tongue suspiciously stiff and wooden all of a sudden. He was having trouble getting enough oxygen into his lungs but he hoped it would pass before she thought of any further conversational gambits.
With a grave nod and a last look at another of the herders traipsing solemnly past on the fringes of the heaving mass of meat, milk and cheese on the hoof, they turned and headed back. Her mother would be missing them by now, and maybe they could have a nice hot cup of tea before he went on home.
***
“Go home, ya lousy screws.” Someone in the back of the place yelled, but it didn’t matter one way or another as they were leaving.
One face in particular, flushed with drink and resentment, caught his eye. The man made a rude gesture of universal significance.
Shapiro’s cheeks reddened but he nodded pleasantly at the proprietor behind the bar.
The fellow was studiously wiping down the countertop which was pretty clean by any standards. The man looked up.
“Thank you.” With a nod, his section of troopers followed him out into the evening gloom.
They’d been very routine patrols, and they had no intelligence so far, and no real problems either.
No one knew anything, or if they did, they weren’t saying. Inordinate persuasion wasn’t in his mission brief. Making a point, showing the flag, exercising sovereignty, all of the preceding was stated or implied in his orders. That and grab some deserters if you can find them.
Hernandez giggled, as relieved as anyone at not finding any action, but he was allowing greater and greater informality, most times. When he was giving instructions, he expected strict attention to all facets of a briefing, no matter how routine or trivial it might seem. Policy was his to make, as he put it.
“Don’t take it too personal, ladies and gentlemen.”
They were patrolling in broad daylight today, showing themselves, being remembered.
Someone snickered in the headset, and he had to agree with that.
A gaggle of small kids of various sizes and ethnic backgrounds followed his small patrol as they headed south towards the hotel along a major thoroughfare, one with wide walkways and a boulevard treed in ornamental Earth types down the middle. Most of the boys and girls had sports or cycling helmets, and they all carried sticks and toy guns at the ready position. Their leader was a real ham, barking out orders and making dramatic hand signals whenever the Imperial troops did anything at all.
Newton had to grin, taking a quick look back, engaging his squad in the best kind of unspoken communication. He gestured and a couple looked rearwards.
There were chuckles and muted sounds in his headpiece. All of their patrols had been routine, the heckling in the last place slightly unusual, in that it wasn’t too expletive-ridden.
It was sobering to discover that they weren’t always well-liked or well-received, but then the local twenty-two man police force probably wasn’t the most popular bunch either. There was always that small minority. It was always the way. People had a few drinks and consequently a few things to say when authority showed up. They were just flexing their muscles, knowing this sort of social humiliation would soon have to pack up and go home. And they couldn’t get away, he thought soberly.
He understood their point, for small as the place was they were taxed just like anyone else and the benefits were likely illusory at best for the average man in the street. But this was the capital. The hinterland would be even worse in terms of taxation versus visible benefits. This was just one more unspoken aspect of the mission.
There was a scattering of footsteps as the pack of little people broke from cover in doorways and alleys behind them, racing past to set up covering positions along the white stone balustrade the hotel affected. A second team of kids raced past the door to secure the next intersection, thirty metres farther on.
Newton Shapiro shook his head at the sheer imagination.
He touched the button on his wrist and spoke to the troops.
“Sure glad I don’t have their energy.”
There were corresponding chuckles and remarks, and while Hernandez and Benson kept talking, pushing his tolerance a little, he let it go as they were right there.
He would be so grateful to get out of the blasted body armor, already tending to stink, on or off the body, and head straight to the showers. After that, it was the bar and a drink.
As far as his own youthful ambitions of commanding troops in the field went, the thought just brought a tired grin at this point.
Chapter Nine
Trooper Cornell Had a Point
“Jesus, H, son-of-a-gun.” Trooper Cornell had a point.
The swarthy son of a Baltimore Jew as he liked to tell everyone, the man probably hadn’t been to the temple in years, not aboard ship anyway. He could swear in eleven different languages and make fun of pretty much every religion you ever heard of.
“Rain. More bloody rain.” The men and women were clustered around the command team in the hotel lobby.
Faber had already poked his head out, and the bus that was to take them to the outskirts of town and the rendezvous with a trucking company was visible through the water-streaked glass of the revolving doors.
“All right, people, listen up.” Faber held up two hands and they all quieted down.
He nodded at Newton.
“Thank you. Soldiers, we’ll be changing transport in a short while, and then we’ll be patrolling out into the countryside.” They stared in rapt attention. “We’ll be on our own, and field regulations apply.”
The outback was something just a little bit different, and they perked right up.
“We won’t likely come back here afterwards, not as far as I can see. Whether our patrol is successful or unsuccessful, time is limited and we’ll be heading straight to the shuttle on our return as we have no prisoners here in lock-up to recover.”
There were one or two nods. They all watched and listened closely. Newton nodded at Faber.
“All right. Saddle up.” Faber, for all of his faults, was competent to bully, cajole, slap and wheedle the people along, as they trooped past and out the front door.
Some of the kids looked up to Faber, Newton saw it instantly, and yet some obviously didn’t.
Faber, as he marched along beside the troops, whirled and beckoned at the hotelier beaming from behind his gleaming counter.
On his cue, three red-vested boys strode forth from a side office hallway and snatched up the luggage as Newton and Ensign Spaulding looked on.
Dave Semanko, oddly uncomfortable with such frivolities, coughed into a cupped hand and gave them a look from behind thin lenses and from under wispy blond eyebrows, which were a perfect counterpunch to the handlebar mustache he had been working on of late.
“Shall we go?”
“It never hurts to put on a show, Dave.”
***
The rain was incessant and heavy, although the command team was at least indoors, inside the cabs. The troops huddled miserably, in dripping ponchos and soaking armor, on wooden bench seats, up high and exposed to the wind in the backs of their two five-ton trucks, six-wheel drive monsters built to exploit a virgin planet. They had set up charging systems for the suit batteries in each truck, but the units could only charge four su
its at once and it took several hours. The suits were heated, but it wasn’t the temperature so much as the constant drenching. His people were on power-saving routine. They had another charger, but it was felt that patching another one into the vehicle electrical system would be pushing their luck.
The cab had a driver’s position, a passenger side seat, plus seating for seven around the back and right side on benches with six-point belts. The belts seemed like overkill until they hit the first few bumps. Behind the driver was open floor space with hold-downs scattered strategically. They had all the troops’ common squad gear indoors, tents and sleeping bags and such, and that was at least something. The terrain must be extreme at times, even away from the mountains and on the plains. There would be gullies and ravines to cross no matter where they went.
Newton’s mind raced. He’d give them a break in a couple of hours, maybe a bit sooner if shelter of adequate size presented itself. They couldn’t all jam into some householder’s front room, not unless it was some dire emergency.
Jackson and Faber had their truck, and he and the Ensign and the rest were comfortable enough in the second vehicle. Let them break the trail and find any hazards first, and in fact their machine only had four troopers on the back. The rest were on Newton’s truck, along with the weapons and most of the supplies. The trucks were big enough and it seemed like a good idea to have a forward scout, one not so heavily loaded.
He made Beth hold back, and let the other vehicle get a good hundred yards out in front of them.
“We’ll have a brew-up. In about two hours or so.” A hot drink would do everyone some good.
She looked over, unsure of what he meant.
“Faber’s got it all worked out, he’s got a clean metal bucket and everything. He says he has some good tea.”
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