Skid

by Keith Fenwick

“Sietnuoc is situated in the warmer temperate latitudes of Skid. The archaeological site you are approaching is in an area of grassland which extends over much of the continent of Noltrac.”

  “What sort of wildlife does this region support?” Bruce hadn’t seen any large animals, or small ones for that matter, so the answer came as a surprise.

  “Untold millions of large, four-legged creatures inhabit this region in enormous groups. Little is understood about their nutritional requirements and habits.”

  “What they eat you mean?”

  “That is so, and there is no discernible pattern to their movements across the landscape.”

  “Do you know anything useful about these creatures?”

  “No,” the tablet answered as Bruce noticed a cloud of dust rising high into the sky ahead of the aircraft. As they came closer a great herd of animals emerged from under the dust cloud, plodding slowly across the plain.

  “Can we have a look at them?” Bruce pointed downwards.

  Myfair banked the craft and swooped low over the herd. A few of the animals looked up, watched them curiously and then placidly resumed their grazing. Otherwise the aircraft didn’t seem to interest them at all. They looked much like ordinary cattle except for the single horn that protruded rhinoceros-like from their noses. There must have been tens of thousands of them spread out across the plain plodding along a course only known to them.

  “What are these animals called?”

  “We have no name for them. Few Skidians have ever seen one, for they stay away from the cities,” Cyprus said.

  “Brilliant,” mumbled Bruce.

  “Ivops.” The tablet contradicted Cyprus.

  After several more turns and low passes, the craft returned to its earlier course, quickly leaving the slow-moving herd far behind.

  “They don’t need us to find them food,” Bruce said. “There’s heaps on the hoof down there. We’re going to be historians instead. Neat, eh?” Bruce suggested excitedly.

  “Are you sure we could eat those things?”

  “Oh, probably. I’d like to take a closer look at them, though.”

  Almost immediately the aircraft began to lose height again. It swooped over a low hill, banked steeply and landed beside what looked like a wide impact crater of some kind. Peering out the window Bruce saw a large building that seemed to have been built in the bottom of the crater surrounded by a cluster of smaller structures a little like port-a-sheds of more recent construction. Closer inspection revealed that the larger building was well below ground level and at some stage must have been covered by several meters of earth.

  After fumbling with the door catch Mulgoon led them off the aircraft and down a flight of steps cut into the wall of the crater and into the exhumed building.

  “Are there any other buried buildings around here?” Bruce asked Yarad, the only Skidian to inhabit the site, after they had been introduced.

  “We have not discovered any yet,” replied Yarad apologetically. “But we haven’t yet made a full survey of the immediate area.”

  He could have added that this was because Skidians had no interest in their history and never had. As far as the average Skidian was concerned Skid had always been as it was and always would be; there was no past or future, only Skid as it had been since time immemorial. History was a passion that gripped Yarad at least.

  “It might be interesting if you did,” Sue suggested. “There’s no telling what you might find.” Yarad made no reply so Sue continued. “On our planet archaeologists have been able to discover how our ancestors lived.”

  “It is an odd building. Most of it was built below the original ground level, and it is full of many artifacts that mystify us,” said Cyprus.

  “What kind?”

  “These things are difficult to explain,” Cyprus replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “Best that you look for yourself.” He led them down a polished corridor and into what could once have been a reception area or an office of some kind lined with real books, the first and only examples of books made of stiff paper or some kind of laminated plastic that Bruce would ever see on Skid.

  Was it an ancient library then? Four or five books were strewn haphazardly across a table that Yarad had obviously been working at. Against one wall stood a large cabinet with many small drawers in it, which on closer inspection contained thousands of reference cards. Bruce flicked through a few drawers and realized that not only were the cards a record of books stored elsewhere in the building, but also a catalogue for a number of other things also possibly stored there. He was a little stunned to find he could actually read them.

  “What do you make of this, Sue?” Bruce had never spent much time in a library and could make little sense of the catalogue.

  “Maybe this will help,” Yarad suggested, offering Bruce a heavy ledger from the table.

  “Hey, this looks interesting,” said Bruce. “Register of Agriculturally Important Arable Crops and Seed Stocks, Central Disaster Recovery Center Eight,” he read the title aloud, opening the book at random.

  Sue peered over his shoulder as he ran a finger down a page. “What is it?”

  “A list of seeds or something. Look, I don’t believe this. C, cabbage, carrot. Vegetable seeds.”

  “Incredible!” Sue breathed, flicking over some more pages to reveal further lists. “I don’t believe it! How can this be possible?”

  “I have no idea,” Bruce replied. He wasn’t about to dwell on the fact either. Skid was one weird place but perhaps no weirder than earth might be after a few more thousand years of development. “But they must be stored in here somewhere, don’t you reckon?”

  The Skidians looked on silently until Mulgoon asked, “Do you have any understanding of this information?”

  “Oh, yes, it’s a register of seeds which must be stored around here somewhere.”

  “Seeds. What are these seeds? We have not been able to figure this out at all. Could they possibly be weapons of some description?”

  Bruce and Sue looked at each other in astonishment.

  “No, no.” Bruce had a sudden thought. “You know what seeds are for. This is a set-up, isn’t it?”

  “Set-up? Please, I do not understand,” Cyprus replied inscrutably.

  Bruce turned on him angrily. “Don’t play games with me; you brought us here for a reason.” Bruce breathed heavily, collecting his thoughts. “Whether you want to or not, I demand you tell us the full story.” He moved towards Yarad in a manner that could only be described as intimidating, although Yarad was somewhat bigger than Bruce.

  “What are seeds?” he asked Yarad, who was visibly shaken by the force of his outburst. “I’m sure you know.”

  Yarad looked nervously at Mulgoon and Cyprus.

  “Okay, look it doesn’t worry me if you want to play your little games,” Bruce took a stab at what he guessed was the heart of the matter. “I don’t care if you’re running out of food, because I won’t be going hungry.”

  “So you understand our crisis, Bruce, or have some understanding of it at least,” Cyprus said after long silence. It was the first time he had called Bruce by name. “We have continually underestimated your abilities, it seems. Have a good look around. Take all the time you need,” he said generously. “When you are ready we will take you to Toytoo, the leader of our group, who will answer any questions you might have.”

  Thirteen

  It was all so easy, Bruce decided. Too easy? It seemed too much of a coincidence to him that in the space of half an hour he had found an inexhaustible supply of meat on the hoof and a supposedly lost archive that appeared to have been set up with some future ecological disaster in mind. And  even more mystifying  written in a format and language he could understand.

  He was immediately on his guard, and he was reminded of the old saying: ‘If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. But …

  Bruce wasn’t about to dwell on the matter. He was more worried about how he was
going to achieve what they wanted of him and more than a little annoyed that the Skidians seemed to think he was some kind of idiot. He turned to Sue, ignoring the Skidians. “C’mon, let’s have a look round.”

  He stopped in midstride. “What are seeds, Yarad?”

  Yarad glanced at Cyprus, who nodded. “We think seeds might develop into a form of organic material that we might be able to consume. Unfortunately we have not been able to establish the mechanics of this process.”

  In the process of setting up the archive to preserve seeds in case of some future disaster, the founders had not thought to include basic information on how to plant, nurture, harvest and utilize the crops. As animal husbandry was a forgotten science on Skid, so was the husbandry of plants and their preparation for Skidian consumption.

  “So the discovery of this site must raise some interesting issues for you people?”

  Cyprus restrained Mulgoon who might have answered and told the offworlders something they did not need to know. There were, after all, many matters they did not need to be privy to.

  “Few Skidians know of this place, and as Yarad has mentioned, even fewer would be interested.” Cyprus played with his ear lobe distractedly. “As a race we do not plan for the future for we have all we desire; or learn from the mistakes of our past for they were overcome generations ago. Our culture has evolved in this fashion because we want for nothing. What can we learn from history? Nothing.” If Cyprus was aware his comments were totally contradictory he did not show it.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense at all.” Sue looked up from the book she had been leafing through. “Do Skidians think about anything?”

  “It does not pay to think about anything, except how to spend the day. The high council makes all the important decisions on Skid,” he said piously.

  Who does he think he is kidding? Sue thought. She could see Cyprus did not like that state of affairs, even if he believed it to be true.

  “Oh yes, that sounds familiar,” Sue whispered to Bruce, grabbing his arm and leading him off. “They’re just like the three monkeys. See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil  the system is always right.”

  Bruce didn’t really understand what she was on about. “Sounds like some medieval feudal kingdom,” she continued. “Serfs touching their forelocks to the lord of the manor and that sort of thing.”

  “That’s exactly how it seems. But they’re not peasants. Look at their technology. It’s more like a high-tech slavery.”

  Sue looked thoughtful for a moment. “I always thought technological development was supposed to set people free from life’s drudgery. The Skidians might be free from the drudgery of work and the struggle to survive, but they are not free from anything else it seems. This place is a total dictatorship and if anybody steps out of line they get the chop.”

  “Not our problem,” Bruce said, pushing open a door and peering in. “This looks a lot more interesting.”

  Packets of all shapes and sizes filled the room, neatly stacked on shelves, along with canisters of fertilizer and other chemicals. Bruce wished he’d paid more attention to his chemistry lectures so he could work out what to do with the stuff. “Geez, these Skidians must be thick if they can’t make anything of this lot.” He waved around the walls of another tightly packed room. “It’s a bloody gold mine.”

  “For you, maybe,” Sue muttered. She knew little more than the Skidians when it came to growing things. “Don’t you think that there’s something strange about this place? All the information is in a form we can easily understand. Everything?”

  “It had struck me. It’s almost as if everything here had been designed with the likes of us in mind,” mused Bruce. “It’s incredible, almost preordained, don’t you think? It’s enough to make a man think there might be a god after all.” Bruce didn’t really think so, saying god had done it was just a way of explaining what he didn’t understand. It was merely a coincidence, a one-in-a-million coincidence that he was in the right place at the right time. He still felt a little uneasy, despite his flippancy. Too many things about Skid were simply inexplicable or coincidental. Was it indeed coincidence, or evidence of some supernatural intelligence inhabiting the universe? Or just prudent planning by a society that seemed to have lost that art?

  At the end of a short corridor was a set of double doors. He pushed through them and found himself in large room filled with machinery and all kinds of tools displayed like artifacts in a pioneer museum.

  “Where are you?” Sue called, following him in a few minutes later.

  Bruce poked his head up from behind the tractor-like vehicle he had been climbing over, trying to figure out what made it go. “Over here. Look at this stuff, will you?” he said, excitedly. “There’s all sorts here.” He led her around explaining what everything was for, baffling her with bullshit when he wasn’t sure. After half an hour or so of this, Sue was thoroughly bored and suggested they leave. On his way out of the building, Bruce picked up the ledger he’d been looking at earlier and took it with him. He didn’t think Yarad would miss it and didn’t really care if he did.

  Mulgoon and Cyprus were evidently, eager to depart the scene, and all but shoved the two offworlders onto the aircraft when Bruce stopped to have a poke around outside.

  “What about a feed then?” Bruce demanded once they were aboard and the craft was lifting off. “I’m ravenous. What about you, Sue?”

  “Eating is not possible at this time. It is against Skidian custom to consume food while in a moving vehicle, except on long journeys.”

  “Well, let’s land then.” Bruce thought the solution was obvious.

  “But we are running late,” Mulgoon said to silence him. Who in their right mind would want to stop in the middle of nowhere to eat? “There will be ample time for eating later.”

  After a short flight the aircraft landed beside a scruffy looking building the size of an average house, on the city fringe. The place wasn’t untidy in the sense that rubbish lay about outside or that half the windows were broken. It appeared shabby because the grass and shrubbery outside grew unchecked and the building looked as if it could do with a good paint or water blast. It was as if whoever lived there didn’t really care for it.

  Toytoo met the offworlders at the door and ushered them inside. Bruce flopped onto a large cushion placed against the wall of the room. He fidgeted about until he felt comfortable, taking much longer than he needed to after catching the impatient scowl on Toytoo’s face. Toytoo seemed uptight about something. But Bruce was in no mood to be polite.

  After several moments of hesitation, not wishing to commit any cultural indiscretions of her own, Sue sat beside him on the floor.

  “Before we begin our fellowship we will observe the ritual of dipping,” Toytoo explained, as Myfair entered the room bearing a bowl of liquid in one hand and a small saucer-shaped scoop in the other. He placed the bowl on the table.

  Solemnly Myfair dipped the scoop into the larger bowl and passed it to Toytoo, who slurped noisily from it before handing it back to Myfair. Myfair refilled the scoop and passed it to Bruce, who drank the liquid without hesitation. It tasted faintly of cinnamon and must have contained some kind of stimulant because he felt a fleeting buzz, which left him with an insatiable desire for a smoke. He managed to suppress this urge until Sue, with a barely disguised grimace of distaste, and then Myfair had drunk from the scoop.

  When the bowl was empty after several circuits of the room, Myfair pulled out a pouch of agar and offered it to each of them in turn.

  “I don’t, thank you,” Sue said.

  “If you are offered agar it is rude of you to refuse, an offence in our culture. Taking agar is also an intrinsic part of the dipping ceremony.” Ignorant savages, Toytoo thought. Do they not know anything?

  Nevertheless, Sue was not to be shaken from her stand. “I’m sorry but I don’t smoke and, what’s more, I find it offensive that you insist.”

  “You must,” Toytoo urged, growing angry
at the stubborn female.

  “Where I come from, it is most impolite to force alcohol or cigarettes on anyone.”

  “You must conform to our practices and traditions; you are on Skid now.”

  “Not by choice, though,” Sue replied, as if that gave her an excuse to be rude.

  Toytoo was about to say something further, but shook his head instead and from then on steadfastly ignored her. Sue, on the other hand, preened herself at this small victory.

  Talk about not trying to antagonize them, Bruce thought, keeping a firm hold of the agar pouch as it was passed to him.

  “Recently we discovered a viral infection in the plants that produce our food and most of our other consumables,” Toytoo began without preliminaries.

  Hearing this, Bruce allowed himself a satisfied smirk and crowed to Sue, “I told you so.”

  “This virus has been isolated and identified, but up until now we have not been able to develop a strategy to combat it.” Toytoo frowned as though embarrassed that the might of Skidian technology had been crippled by something as insignificant as a virus. “The virus affects 70 percent of our synthetic plants, reducing their output to almost nothing. This means our ability to feed ourselves is extremely impeded,” he continued. He paused to take another cigarette from Myfair who had found another pouch of agar. “Our scientists are working on solutions.” He paused and inhaled deeply and then removed the cigarette from his nostril and tapped a little ash on the floor. “Despite intensive research, we are no further forward in our understanding of the virus or of possible control measures than when we first discovered it. Needless to say, our food stocks are rapidly declining.”

  Bruce started to ask one of the many questions that quickly occurred to him, but Toytoo stalled him with a raised hand. “With no forthcoming solution, or any likely in the immediate future, we are facing a severe crisis. For months now we have been discussing strategies to combat it.” Toytoo surprised Bruce and Sue by spitting on the floor in disgust. “Talk. So much talk! They would talk forever, until our death by starvation becomes fact.”