“Because you gave me three bracelets, sir. As well as rings and a pendant. And you said to wear ‘all of them.’ ”
“So I did. Where did this one come from?”
“Hey! That’s not a ruby; that’s me!”
“Looks like a ruby. Here’s another just like it.”
“Unh! Maybe I’d better take my rubies off? So we won’t lose them. Or should we water the mules first?”
“You mean before we eat?”
“Uh . . yes, I guess that’s what I mean, Tease.”
“You’re not speaking very plainly, little Dora. Tell Uncle Gibbie what you want.”
“I’m not ‘little Dora.’ I’m Rangy Lil, the horniest girl south of Separation—you said so yourself. I cuss and I swear and I spit between my teeth and I’m concubine to Lazarus Long, Super Stud of the Stars and better than any six men—and you know damn well what I want, and if you pinch my nipples again, I’m likely to trip you and take it. But I guess we ought to water the mules.”
Minerva, Dora was just plain nice to be around, always. It wasn’t her physical beauty . . which wasn’t that outstanding by the usual criteria in any case—although she was utterly beautiful to me. Nor was it her enthusiastic interest in sharing “Eros”—although she was indeed enthusiastic, ready any time, and always on a short fuse. And skilled at it and got more so. Sex is a learned art, as much so as ice skating or tightwire walking or fancy diving; it is not instinct. Oh, two animals couple by instinct, but it takes intelligence and patient willingness to turn copulation into a high and lively art. Dora was good at it and got better and better, always eager to learn, free of fetishes or silly preconceptions, patiently willing to practice anything she learned or was taught—and with it that spiritual quality that turns sweaty exercise into a living sacrament.
But Minerva, love is what still goes on when you are not horny.
Dora was good company at any time, but the tougher things were, the better companion she was. Oh, she fretted about broken eggs because chickens were her responsibility; she did not complain that she was thirsty. Instead of nagging me to do something about that rooster, she figured out what had to be done and did it—shoved all the hens in with the other rooster, tied the feet of the egg breaker and laid him aside while she moved the partition between the cages, then the smaller rooster was in solitary confinement and we lost no more eggs.
But the truly tough parts lay ahead of us; she did not fret at all during those, or ever turn balky when I did not have time to explain. Minerva, much of the trek was slow death, other parts were sudden dangers that could have been quick death. She was endlessly patient in the former, always kept her head and helped in the latter. Dear, you are awesomely learned—but you are a city girl and you’ve always been on a civilized planet; perhaps I had better explain some things.
Maybe you have been asking yourself: “Is this trip necessary?” —and, if it is, why do it the hard way?
“Necessary—” Having done something a Howard should never do, namely, marry an ephemeral, I had three choices:
Take her to live among Howards. Dora rejected that . . although I would have tried to talk her out of it if she had said Yes. A short-timer alone in a community of the long-lived is almost certain to go into suicidal depression; I had seen it first in my friend Slayton Ford and I’ve seen it many times since then. I did not want this to happen to Dora. Whether the number of her years was ten or a thousand, I wanted her to enjoy them.
Or we could stay in Top Dollar or—the same thing—near one of the villages of that small piece of the planet that was settled then. I almost chose this, as the “Bill Smith” dodge would work for that—for a time.
But only for a short time. The few Howards on New Beginnings—the Magees and three other families as I recall—had all arrived incognito—“masquerade” in Howard jargon—and by simple dodges they could shuffle things around and never be caught at it. Grandmother Magee could “die,” then show up as “Deborah Simpson” on another Howard homestead. The more people there were on the planet, the easier it was to pull this—especially after the fourth wave arrived, all of them cold-sleep cargo and thereby never having gotten acquainted with each other.
But “Bill Smith” was married to an ephemeral. If I stayed around the settled parts, I would have to be most careful to keep my hair dyed—not just on my head but all over my body lest some accident give me away—and then be careful to “age” as fast as my wife did. Worse, I would have to avoid people who had known “Ernest Gibbons” well—most of Top Dollar, that is to say—or someone would see my profile and hear my voice and start wondering, as I had had no chance for plastic surgery or anything of that sort. At other times, when it was needful to change name and identity, I had always changed location as well, that being the oniy foolproof way to do it. Even plastic surgery won’t disguise me very long; I regenerate too easily. I once had my nose bobbed (the alternative seemed to involve having my neck bobbed); ten years later it was just as it is now, big and ugly.
Not that I was too jumpy about being disclosed as a Howard. But if I was going to have to live in masquerade, the more carefully I used these cosmetic tricks, the more Dora’s nose would be rubbed in the fact that I was different from her—different in the saddest way of all, a husband and a wife who ran on very different time rates.
Minerva, it seemed to me that the only way I could give my pretty new wife a square shake was by taking her far away from both sorts of people, long-lived and short, where I could quit pretending and we could ignore the difference, forget it and be happy. So I decided to take her clear out of reach of other people, decided this before we got back to town the very day I married her.
It seemed the best answer to an otherwise impossible situation, but one not as irreversible as a parachute jump. If she got too lonely, if she grew to hate the sight of my ugly mug, I could bring her out to the settlements again, still young enough to hook another husband. I had this in mind, Minerva, as some of my wives have grown tired of me fairly quickly. I had arranged with Zack Briggs, at the same time I had arranged with John Magee to act as factor for Zack—arranged with Zack to ask John what had happened to “Bill Smith” and the little schoolmarm? It was possible that I would need a ride off-planet someday.
But why didn’t I have Zack put us down on the spot on the map I had picked as being our likely place of settlement?—with everything we would need to start farming and thereby avoid a long, dangerous trek. Not risk death by thirst, or by lopers, or the treacheries of mountains, or whatever.
Minerva, this was a long time ago and I can explain only in terms of technology available there and then. The Andy J. could not land; she received her overhauls in orbit around Secundus or some other advanced planet. Her cargo boat could land on any big flat field but required a minimum of a radar-corner reflector to home on, then had to have many metric tons of water to lift off again. The captain’s gig was the only boat in the Andy J. capable of landing anywhere a skilled pilot could put her down, then lift off without help. But her cargo capacity was about two postage stamps—whereas I needed mules and plows and a load of other things.
Besides, I needed to learn how to get out of those mountains by going into them. I could not take Dora into there without being reasonably sure that I could fetch her out again. Not fair! It’s no sin not to be pioneer-mother material —but it is tragic for both husband and wife to find it out too late.
So we did not do it the hard way; we did it the only way for that time and place. But I have never put the effort into a mass calculation for a spaceship at liftoff that I put into deciding what to take, what to do without, for that trek. First, the basic parameter: how many wagons in the train? I wanted three wagons so badly I could taste it. A third wagon would mean luxuries for Dora, more tools for me, more books and such for both of us, and (best!) a precut one-room house to get my pregnant bride out of the weather almost instantly at the other end.
But three wagons meant eighteen mules hauling,
plus spare mules—add six by rule-of-thumb-which meant half again as much time spent harnessing and unharnessing, watering the animals, taking care of them otherwise. Add enough wagons and mules and at some point your day’s march is zero; one man can’t handle the work. Worse, there would be places in the mountains where I would have to unshackle the wagons, move them one at a time to a more open place—go back for each wagon left behind, bring it up—a process that would take twice as long for a three-wagon train as for a two-wagon one, and would happen oftener, even much oftener, with three wagons than with two. At that rate we might have three babies born en route instead of getting there before our first one was born.
I was saved from such folly by the fact only two trekking wagons were available in New Pittsburgh. I think I would have resisted temptation anyhow—but I had with me in the light wagon we drove from Top Dollar the hardware for three, then I spent that extra hardware on other things, bartering it through the wainwright. I could not wait while he built a third wagon; both the season of the year and the season of Dora’s womb gave me deadlines I had to meet.
There is much to be said for just one wagon—standard equipment over many centuries and on several planets for one family in overland migration—if they travel in a party. I’ve led such marches.
But one wagon by itself—One accident can be disaster.
Two wagons offer more than twice as much to work with at the other end, plus life insurance on the march. You can lose one wagon, regroup, and keep going.
So I planned for two wagons, Minerva, even though I had Zack debit me with three sets of ’Stoga hardware, then did not sell that third set until the last minute.
Here’s how you load a wagon train for survival:
First, list everything that you expect to need and everything that you would like to take:
Wagons, spare wheels, spare axles
Mules, harness, spare hardware and harness leather, saddles
Water
Food
Clothing
Blankets
Weapons, ammunition, repair kit
Medicines, drugs, surgical instruments, bandages
Books
Plows
Harrow
Field rake
Shovels, hand rakes, hoes, seeders, three- five- & seventine forks
Harvester
Blacksmith’s tools
Carpentry tools
Iron cookstove
Water closet, self-flushing type
Oil lamps
Windmill & pump
Sawmill run by windpower
Leatherworking & harness-repair tools
Bed, table, chairs, dishes, pots, pans, eating & cooking gear
Binoculars, microscope, water-testing kit
Grindstone
Wheelbarrow
Chum
Buckets, sieves, assorted small hardware
Milch cow & bull
Chickens
Salt for stock & for people
Packaged yeast, yeast starter
Seed grain, several sorts
Grinder for whole-grain flour, meat grinder
Don’t stop there; think big. Never mind the fact that you’ve already overloaded a much longer wagon train. Search your imagination, check the manifests of the Andy J., search the ship itself, look over the stock in Rick’s General Store, talk with John Magee and look over his house and farm and outbuildings—if you forget it now, it’s impossible to go back for it.
Musical instruments, writing materials, diaries, calendars
Baby clothes, layettes
Spinning wheel, loom, sewing materials—sheep!
Tannin & leather-curing materials and tools
Clocks, watches
Root vegetables, rooted fruit-tree seedlings, other seed
Etc. etc. etc. . .
Now start trimming—start swapping—start figuring weights.
Cut out the bull, the cow, the sheep; substitute goats with hair long enough to be worth cutting. Hey, you missed shears!
The blacksmith’s shop stays but gets trimmed down to an anvil and minimum tools—a bellows you must make. In general anything of wood is scratched, but a small supply of wrought-iron stock, heavy as it is, must be hauled; you’ll be making things you didn’t know you could.
The harvester becomes a scythe with handle and cradle, three spare blades; the field rake is scratched.
The windmill stays, and so does the sawmill (surprise!)—but only as minimum hardware; you won’t tackle either one soon.
Books—Which of those books can you live without, Dora?
Halve the amount of clothing, double up on shoes and add more boots and don’t forget children’s shoes. Yes, I know how to make moccasins, mukluks, and such; add waxed thread. Yes, we do have to have block-and-tackle and the best glass-and-plastic lines we can buy, or we won’t get through the pass. Money is nothing; weight and cubage are all that count—our total wealth is what mules can take through that notch.
Minerva, it was lucky for me, lucky for Dora, that I was on my sixth pioneering venture and that I had planned how to load spaceships many years before I ever loaded a covered wagon—for the principles are the same; spaceships are the covered wagons of the Galaxy. Get it down to the weight the mules can haul, then chop off 10 percent no matter how it hurts; a broken axle—when you can’t replace it—might as well be a broken neck.
Then add more water to bring it up to 95 percent; the load of water drops off every day.
Knitting needles! Can Dora knit? If not, teach her. I’ve spent many a lonely hour in space knitting sweaters and socks. Yarn? It will be a long time before Dora can tease goat shearings into good yarn—and she can knit for the baby while we travel; keep her happy. Yarn doesn’t weigh much. Wooden needles can be made; even curved metal needles can be shaped from scraps. But pick up both sorts from Rick’s Store.
Oh, my God, I almost missed taking an ax!
Ax heads and one handle, brush hook, pick-mattock—Minerva, I added and trimmed and discarded, and weighed every item at New Pittsburgh—and we weren’t three kilometers out of there headed for Separation before I knew I had us overloaded. That night we stopped at a homesteader’s cabin, and I traded a new thirty-kilo anvil for his fifteen-kilo one, traded even, with the pound of flesh nearest my heart tossed in for good measure. I swapped other heavy items that we would miss later for a smoked ham and a side of bacon and more corn for the mules—the last being emergency rations.
We lightened the loads again at Separation, and I took another water barrel in trade and filled it because I now had room for another and knew that too heavy a load of water was self-correcting.
I think that extra barrel saved our lives.
The patch of green that Lazarus-Woodrow had pointed out up near the notch of Hopeless Pass proved to be farther away in travel time than he had hoped. On the last day that they struggled toward it neither man nor mule had had anything to drink since dawn the day before. Smith felt lightheaded; the mules were hardly fit to work, they plodded slowly, heads down.
Dora wanted to stop drinking when her husband did. He said to her: “Listen to me, you stupid little tart, you’re pregnant. Understand me? Or will it take a fat lip to convince you? I held out four liters when we served the mules; you saw me.”
“I don’t need four liters, Woodrow.”
“Shut up. That’s for you, and the nanny goat, and the chickens. And the cats—cats don’t take much. Dorable, that much water means nothing split among sixteen mules, but it will go a long way among you small fry.”
“Yes, sir. How about Mrs. Porky?”
“Oh, that damned sow! Uh . . I’ll give her a half a liter when we stop tonight and I’ll serve her myself. She’s likely to kick it over and take your thumb off, the mood she’s in. And I’ll serve you myself, measure it out, and watch you drink it.”
But after a long day and a restless night and then an endless day, they were at last among the first of the trees. It seemed almost c
ool, and Smith felt that he could smell water —somewhere. He could not see any. “Buck! Oh, Buck! Circle!”
The boss mule did not answer; he had not talked all day. But he brought the column around, cornered the wagons, and nudged the lead pair into the V to be unharnessed.
Smith called the dogs and told them to hunt for water, then started unharnessing. Silently his wife joined him, serving the off mule of each pair while Smith cleared the nigh mule. He appreciated her silence. Dora was, he thought, telepathic to emotions.
Now if I were water somewhere around here, where would I be? Witch for it? Or search the surface first? He felt fairly sure that no stream led away from this stand of trees, but he could not be certain without hiking all the downhill side. Saddle Beulah? Shucks, Beulah was worse off than he was. He started unlashing rolled sections of spike fence from the sides of the second wagon. He had not seen a loper for three days, which meant to him that they were three days closer to their next trouble with the beasts. “Dora, if you feel up to it, you can give me a hand with this.”
She made no comment on the fact that her husband had never before let her help erect the kraal; she simply worried about how drawn and tired he looked and thought about the quarter liter of water she had stolen and hidden—how could she persuade him to drink it?
They were just done when Fritz set up an excited yipping in the distance.
Minerva, it was a water hole—a trickle that came out of a rocky face, ran a couple of meters and formed a pool with no outlet. None that time of year, I should say, as I could see where it overflowed in flood season. I could see also plenty of animal sign—loper tracks and prairie goat and more that I could not identify. I had a feeling that there might be eyes on me, and I tried to grow eyes in the back of my head. It was dusky near the spring; trees and undergrowth were thicker and the Sun was getting low.
I was in a dilemma. I don’t know how it happened that one of the free mules had not found this hole as soon or sooner than the dogs; mules can smell water. But mules were certain to be there soon, and I did not want them to drink too fast. Sensible as a mule is, he’ll drink too fast and too much if he is very thirsty. These mules were extremely thirsty; I wanted to watch each one myself, not let one founder.
Time Enough for Love Page 37
