Semanko and Spaulding had arranged for a veritable crate full of snacks, crisps and candy bars and chocolate. The troops would appreciate that, Newton thought. It had a hasp and a lock, which was smart.
She refocused on driving, nodding at the idea of tea breaks. It would be at least four or five hours before they got to Burnt Town, which was the first settlement out the northwest road. Its population was said to be about a hundred souls. Sitting on the back of the constantly-lurching vehicles would be extremely wearing after a while.
The northwest road was said to be the best on the planet, at least for the first hundred and fifty kilometres or so. Going by that statement, the roads on the rest of the planet must be sheer hell.
Privately, she wondered if all of this was really worth it.
***
They had their brew-up by the side of the road, with at least Newton feeling some affinity for the breed of soldier, a special type of person, going back generations. Faber impressed him as that sort of fellow. He had it all organized and had thought it through beforehand.
Wars are won by short, wiry men shouldering huge burdens in impossible terrain.
Faber had one bucket, and into that he emptied a bag of sand from a landscape store. Pouring in some gasoline, out of a red plastic can available on a hundred planets, he tossed in a good old-fashioned paper match and their impromptu stove lit up with a whoosh.
“We can carry this in the back corner.” Faber glanced at Shapiro, who nodded. “We’ll lash it to the tailgate.”
“All right.”
In the second bucket, carefully chosen for size, Faber poured in gallons of water from their reserves, lined up in rows in their plain white plastic jerry-cans and tied securely at the front of the truck bed.
The troops brought out their field mugs and Faber was soon doling out tea bags and paper packets of sugar. Having also invested in a half a dozen large coolers, and a couple of big car batteries to power them, Faber had cream, cold milk and everything.
People stood around gabbing, as Jackson, Spaulding and Newton studied the map. Semanko stood by the fire in spite of its noxious smell but there was much damp in the air. The temperature was seventeen degrees Celsius. According to Newton’s notes the climate was equitable, an odd word but he was starting to understand that what it really meant was monotonous.
They were in a patch of forest, which gave only the barest cover. They had stopped at the first intersection they had come to after leaving town. It was a Y-shaped junction, with the pale red clay of the side-road leading off to the right, up a fairly steep grade. It looked not much different than the road they were on, hence the consultation. There was a small clearing under trees maybe eight metres tall, black conifers with limp and feathery branches.
“Giresi’s Corners is only four kilometres up the road.” Jackson, trying to be helpful, thought further. “I don’t see any intersecting road. But it’s a small place, and maybe a good place for someone to hole up.”
Lieutenant Shapiro thought it over. There was likely no one there. The display map indicated maybe fifteen or twenty buildings, all of them small going by the scale. He switched to satellite photos and saw nothing but greenery and a thin , meandering trace that might be the trail.
“I suppose it wouldn’t take long. And there’s nowhere for them to run.” Newton liked it. “All right, why don’t we do that.”
Their progress was surprisingly slow so far. He hadn’t been prepared for that.
They made it two hills in. After knocking down the earthen banks on both sides of a rushing brook, only a foot deep and with flat rocks all over the bottom, a process where all troopers bailed out and set to with entrenching tools and much good-natured cussing, the trucks were driven across with some delay. Newton thought that as a military exercise, it went well enough.
The next hill was all barren white rock, bordered by low growths of what appeared to be similar to antler coral, a light blue with mauve bases.
There were a couple of brief pauses to clear low, overhanging branches. They’d made three hundred metres in the first hour. He shook his head at the knowledge. Unbelievable.
Newton was just beginning to think that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. That was when it got a whole lot worse as Faber in the lead truck crested the hill and when confronted by a heavily-rutted and very swampy stretch, the fool dropped it down a gear and stomped the throttle, hoping to blast his way across.
The speed built quickly and then there was a big brown splash when they hit, and then the crew in the second truck saw them wallowing and side-slipping, with rooster-tails of muck and filth coming up off all the wheels.
The vehicle came to an abrupt halt, going down on the left side about five degrees. The lead truck with its dejected crew had only gotten about fifty metres before bogging down.
When Newton and the others stopped instantly, just over the crest, Faber and his crew were just climbing out the high-side window and trying to get up on the roof of the truck.
Lieutenant Shapiro took the microphone off its hook on the dashboard.
“Mister Faber?”
“Ah…yes, sir?” There was a wave from a figure on the back of the bogged vehicle.
Newton thought carefully about his next words. With a sigh, he asked his question.
“How much cable do you figure we have? Can I reach you from up here?”
Studying the expanse of water-logged roadstead ahead of them, reaching a couple of hundred metres at least before it turned off and was sucked up by small conifers and large indigenous brush, Newton decided he had had enough. The next ridge appeared to be four hundred metres further on. There were six major ridges between here and the village. The elevation change was about twenty-five metres, and then the hamlet was a hundred metres lower. They might have the very devil of a time getting out.
Faber was a long moment in responding.
“We’ve got three, but they’re not very long.” Dead air hung on the speaker as Newton consulted with the men and women in the back of his command vehicle.
He thought the cables were about twenty-five metres in length. They had talked about just this sort of eventuality but clearly Faber hadn’t been listening.
“All right, the people in the back say there are cables back there. We’re trying to sort them out, they’re all tangled. Just sit tight for a minute. I’d rather not go down in there.”
Faber came right back.
“Roger that.”
There were chuckles from the other two. Ensign Spaulding was giving Jackson a driving lesson and Trooper Ozawa was in there as well. Newton was rotating them through one at a time just to break the ice and getting to know each person insofar as that was possible. There wasn’t room in the cab to put everyone indoors and keep the vital electronic gear dry.
Faber’s voice was sardonic on the airwaves.
“I need a volunteer.”
Newton’s people chuckled appreciatively.
One of Faber’s crew jumped off the back end of their machine. He went in right up to his chest and the suit-radio chatter went pretty blue for a minute.
Shapiro shook his head when Jackson’s hand moved to adjust the speaker, probably turning it down a bit for the Lieutenant.
“What the hell—they’ve earned it.”
Jackson gave Spaulding a look and they exchanged a private grin.
Jackson turned and surprised Newton Shapiro.
“We’ll get you properly trained, sir. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
The whole cab broke up at that one, which perhaps was the intention. Newton supposed it could be worse—the water might have been hiding ten metres of quicksand under there and there was something to be said for no reported injuries.
But he was beginning to appreciate the challenges of command, or even just moving around, in a totally alien environment.
The clouds opened up and the fourth brisk shower of the day began as Spaulding snorted and the troopers cursed as they dragged th
eir cables and struggled through the muck to attach them together for towing.
Shapiro was beginning to have a bad feeling about this. There was no way in hell he was going to abandon that truck.
As if sensing his mood, the others just sat watching the action, not saying much until Newton noticed the lone trooper sitting there in the back, all nice and quiet.
“Well, don’t just sit there, Mister Ozawa. Get your ass out there.”
Colouring slightly, Ozawa gave a rueful grin. Putting on his helmet, he unsnapped the side door and promptly did just that.
“Zoom in on that terrain map.”
It was all there in fifteen colours. The washboard effect of gullies and valleys and gorges all lay across their path of travel.
“What are you thinking, sir?” Spaulding’s eyes were upon him.
“Looking at that crap, I wouldn’t even want to walk there.” Yet it was only four more kilometres.
***
Hank didn’t quite know what he was letting himself in for when he asked Polly to the dance.
It was one thing when her eyes lit up and she said she would go.
It was another thing to ride off after saying goodbye to her mother, seeing the tired pleasure on Andrea’s face, and then thinking, thinking, all the way home.
Surely Polly would tell someone, and that was bad enough. Surely she would mention it to her mother, and he wasn’t quite sure if he could ever face her again.
Andrea might think Hank was more suitable for her age, not her daughter’s. The trouble was that Hank wanted to have some kids.
The initial fear had all been about Polly’s rejection. He’d been pretty much expecting it, but she had surprised him. The secondary fears were plentiful, not least of what people might think.
Now Hank had a week to think about things. He gave himself a haircut as best he could, using scissors and the only mirror in the house, removed from the wall of the front room and put up outside where the light was better.
He shaved every day, and spent an inordinate of time checking himself in the mirror. The terrors mounted.
What in the hell would people think?
He’d heard some talk before, about this and that old gomer who couldn’t grow old gracefully and leave well enough alone. Some of them had married up with some very nice wives. People would talk, that was for sure. But the rewards were surely worth it. Polly was as pretty as a peach, not that anybody around here had seen too many of those lately.
He supposed he’d better sneak into town and get himself a new shirt. Tomorrow would be best, for he wanted to avoid small talk if he could—that meant pretty much anybody he might meet.
Hank couldn’t help his feelings, and May-October marriages had worked before. The trouble lay in how to get into one.
It wasn’t the money, it was only a couple of dollars admission, and ten cents a beer after that.
The real problem would be when they entered the door and all those people would turn to look and see who it was. There would be Hank and Polly.
His guts fluttered inside awful fierce whenever he thought about it, which was often even though he was on his second big net by this time. The work was slow, but there wasn’t much else to do so he kept at it.
Poor old Hank was full of surprises these days. Wait until old Red heard about this!
He’d be fit to be tied.
Chapter Ten
Hank Needed a Shirt
As it happened, Hank needed more than just a shirt, and he also had the impression Abe Peltham knew a little more than he was letting on. In all honesty, it probably had been nine or ten years since Hank had bought a shirt, and Peltham wasn’t exactly stupid. None of Hank’s relations had died or anything like that or surely Abe would have heard.
He wasn’t particularly honest either, judging by the prices.
“Ten dollars for the shirt, and fifty cents for the hair gel.”
He probably made that stuff up in the back room. Hank unscrewed the lid as Abe looked on. He had a sniff. It didn’t smell like lard or anything, it was all right, or so he guessed. He had no idea of what he was doing.
Hank wanted one or two things for his kitchen, and the bill went a little higher. Hank resolved to get the hell out of there.
Finally he scraped up the nerve to ask for aftershave, which Abe cheerfully pointed out on the public shelves in the store proper. It must have been sitting there for years and Hank had never noticed it. He knew where the beans were and everything.
Peltham must have been hard up for making change the way his eyes lit up when Hank pulled out a small roll and a few coins. He didn’t ask too many questions and for that Hank was grateful.
Courting was good for business, that would explain it.
Red wasn’t around it seemed, so Hank rode home and settled in with a bottle of Old Chester, the whiskey they brewed up in Capital City. He had a few more days to wait and a lot on his mind, not the least of which was that he wasn’t getting any younger.
Polly preyed on his mind, that was for sure. He was afraid to want her too badly in case she wouldn’t want him. While his mind recoiled from the thought, he had to take it into account at some level. She had every reason to say no to a proposal of marriage, and probably would.
To say that Hank was sick with fear would be accurate. He had this fantastic dream of him and Polly and three boys and a couple of girls…unbelievable. Hank just couldn’t help it.
For some reason, thoughts of his mother, and his father, and he had two sisters and a brother out there somewhere, occupied his mind a substantial portion of the time. There was a bittersweet sadness when he remembered what it was to be a kid, and growing up, and to be part of a family and all. His mom and dad were dead, but he sometimes wondered if any of the others had done anything interesting. Adults at the time of departure, his siblings had stayed on Earth. The tearful scene in the departure lounge, with everyone crying and clinging to one another was still strong in his memory. For his parents, successful enough people in their own way, it was the culmination of the dream of a lifetime. Departure was the worst day of his life…so far.
The thoughts brought nothing but sadness.
He’d never see his brother and sisters again of course, although that hadn’t been his highest priority at the time. Billy Perkins was his best friend back then. He wondered if Billy even remembered him or thought about him from time to time.
Hank was petrified at leaving Earth.
***
They called the area The Land of a Million Lakes, and while there probably wasn’t quite that many, to take the wrong road and end up facing a small and nameless lake became a part of the routine to Newton’s increasing frustration. Everything seemed to take forever on this planet.
Whether using the terrain map or satellite pictures, the lack of man-made features meant it all blended into green mush, only the texture giving a hint as to actual vegetation, with the occasional rock outcrop in grey and the more ephemeral watercourses shown in dotted blue lines.
But the people were something else. Their friendliness, their exuberance astounded him after the austere discipline, the personal and professional reserve he’d lived with for years.
He’d never seen anything like it. You asked someone their name and they started off the tale with their great-grandpa and how he came to be here. They worked their way through aunts and uncles, cousins and nieces and nephews, and finally they came to their own story.
There were three more villages, all uninteresting in their sameness, all empty of anyone the facial recognition software in the helmet viewers could discern, and by the time they got out of each village, Newton was convinced they had met pretty much everybody. Half of the buildings were shacks, there were some small, cozy cabins, definitely in the minority, and they had run across any number of abandoned buildings, rotting away in the moist vegetation, some of them just heaps on the ground.
Everyone had questions. Everyone wanted to meet them or just to talk with them
, to offer the troops drinks and food. They were showered with invitations to stay over, and it was all he and the others could do to fend them off politely.
There was just no way he could have let one or two troops go off with this or that family, nice as pie as they might be. They had a schedule to keep, and more villages and stops along the way. One complication would lead to another, and another. They were desperate for company, and news, and a conversation that they hadn’t already had a hundred times before.
They wanted to hear about the Family, and the Empress and all the things that were going on in the real universe.
He’d never heard that particular term before.
Once Newton mentioned a short stint of duty on Barker’s World, and some guy asked if he’d ever meet Dale Freeman.
As long as they were sticking to the main northwest highway, more of a track strictly speaking, they were making reasonable time and might still achieve their goal, which was a small town called Black Springs about three hundred kilometres from Capital City. At least it had a more imaginative name.
They had just pulled out of Shiloh, which at least had a white-painted board church going for it and a population of six hundred. Time hung heavy on everyone’s hands, but there was nothing he could do about that.
“All right.” Newton let off the microphone button for a moment as he collected his thoughts and waited for the inevitable chatter to calm. “The next stop, eighty k’s up the road is a place called Oak River. Apparently they have a hotel. And a bar.”
“Yay.” The cheers and calls in his headset sounded pretty unanimous.
“In the meantime, we have had, I am pleased to announce, a continuous period of twenty-six hours without any noticeable precipitation.”
Jackson looked over from the driver’s seat.
“I was wondering. Something seemed unnatural.”
Newton snorted and keyed the microphone again.
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