Skid

by Keith Fenwick

  But only Sue dared tell him, in no uncertain terms, to get lost.

  After being told by her that his intrusions into her space were becoming intolerable, Bruce wandered off with the dogs for an aimless walk across the plain. He was gone most of a day and half the night, until his absence began to worry Sue. Had he taken her irritable snap to heart? Sometimes he seemed bloody-minded enough to simply disappear altogether. Cyprus seemed to think so and was prepared to ensure she was blamed for the loss of a precious resource.

  Punch, Cop and Can were delighted to be finally out and about. They were getting fat and sassy, Bruce noted as they trotted happily about. At times the dogs would trot along happily behind Bruce, then one or two, or all three of them, would scamper off to sniff out some intriguing odor that could only appeal to a dog, piles of dried dung or the odd desiccated carcass.

  Bruce started to really look around the country he was passing across for the first time. Among other things he noted that the sward he walked through seemed to comprise only one or two species of grass, and there were no obvious weeds, which he though was rather odd. There didn’t seem to be many weeds in the garden either. There might be none, he realized, because most of the ‘weeds’ were in fact vegetable plants that had sprung into life from carelessly scattered seeds.

  It was almost as if the entire landscape had been purged of everything that didn’t have some sort of productive use and the productive species were somehow invigorated.

  When it began to get dark he realized he must have been walking aimlessly for hours and was starting to get a little peckish. He had to think for a moment which direction the house but when he turned around, there it was shining like a lighthouse beacon.

  When he arrived back Bruce was surprised by his reception: the relief on the faces of both Cyprus and Sue, and the way Sue scolded him.

  “You might have told me you were going to be late. I’ve had your dinner ready for hours.” She sounded just like his mother again. Perish the thought.

  “It’s probably burnt now!” she exclaimed angrily.

  Sue had worried herself to the point of distraction that Bruce might have taken her irritable snap to heart; his total lack of concern at the worry he had caused didn’t help her mood.

  Bruce just ignored her, oblivious of the turmoil he had caused, and waited for someone to bring him something to eat and drink.

  The next morning Bruce headed off with the dogs in tow in the direction of where Cyprus and his team should be working. Trainees. Huh! he thought. They were worse than useless, spending most of their time lolling about, smoking, and, for all he knew, telling dirty stories. Even after lowering his expectations to almost zero, they didn’t seem to achieve very much.

  It was long past the time when he should have checked on their progress. In a way he didn’t really blame them for their attitude, for like himself they were here against their will. Not that they were probably aware of Skid’s increasingly desperate plight. Bruce wouldn’t be surprised about that either, just as he wouldn’t be surprised if they did know and couldn’t give a stuff one way or the other. So what? He continued thinking somewhat irrationally.

  Still, they were here to work and they had no choice in the matter, just as he himself had no choice, he raged, angrily surveying their efforts to date once he got to the fence line they were supposed to be working on.

  In the days that had passed since their arrival, they had not done as much as Bruce had done by himself in a day.

  “Useless bastards!” he growled with a twinge of guilt, knowing he should have kept a better eye on them. “Cyprus, you’re bloody useless!”

  Cyprus obviously enjoyed his supervisory role, strutting about and giving pointless orders to show the world who was in charge. Nevertheless, he lacked control over his team, due, Bruce was sure, to his reluctance to lead by example. He did not know this was not the Skidian way – when a Skidian was in the company of Skidians who were lower on the social scale, they did the work. Not he. They organized the meals, agar, or whatever while their peers sat around and with a minimum of input, let them get on with it in their own inimitable fashion. The problem was that the ‘trainees’, all scions of the aristocracy, were not sufficiently subordinate to Cyprus for him to have any real authority over them.

  Time, Bruce thought, to teach them a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry.

  Bruce strode purposefully towards the four Skidians, coming up on them totally unawares as they lolled comfortably in the shade of a handy tree.

  “What the bloody hell’s going on?!”

  The dogs, recognizing a tone of voice that heralded trouble for somebody, slunk away as four heads swiveled in surprise towards the source of this unwelcome and unintelligible outburst.

  After a moment or two of silence, Cyprus rose shamefacedly to his feet. He knew enough about Bruce to expect a tantrum of the sort his companions had never witnessed.

  “No excuses, Cyprus!” Bruce exploded, before Cyprus could get a word in to defend himself. “I knew I couldn’t rely on you useless shits to do anything.” He glowered menacingly at the three younger Skidians, who with the cockiness born of ignorance and youth, pretended he was not there.

  Who did this primitive creature think he was? They were Skidians and were not going to be ordered about by someone from one of the universe’s more primitive regions. They grinned and nudged one another. What could he do if they kept on ignoring him?

  “Get up on your feet,” Cyprus demanded. But none of them bothered moving.

  Cyprus shrugged his shoulders sheepishly, and the anger that Bruce had affected until then welled up in his throat. Bruce reached over to the nearest Skidian, grabbed a handful of his shirt and dragged his luckless victim to his feet.

  “Wha …?” Oridor screamed in outrage at such treatment.

  His two companions remained motionless, stunned into inaction by this unheard of act of physical violence.

  “Get a bloody move on,” Bruce hissed, pulling Oridor towards him, neatly stepping aside and then releasing his grip so that Oridor stumbled and fell to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. Bruce gave him a kick up his exposed backside for good measure.

  “You there, hurry up man!” With an alacrity which surprised all of them, Iamot and Laeol, closely followed by Oridor, scrambling to get out of Bruce’s range, busied themselves on the fence line, doing little more than getting in one another’s way in their panic.

  “Bruce,” Cyprus coughed, about to inform Bruce on some of the finer points of Skidian etiquette. Seeing the look in Bruce’s eyes he thought better of it and joined the others on the fence instead.

  Bruce picked up one of the plastic fence posts from the back of the ute and sat on the tailgate, swishing the rod viciously through the air.

  From time to time one of the Skidians would nervously look up from his work, twisting his head around surreptitiously to see if Bruce was watching, with not a word passing between them.

  While Bruce was around the Skidians worked reasonably well, even Cyprus pitched in and gave the others the benefit of his limited experience. Actually, Bruce was quite impressed with the speed in which Cyprus had picked up the essentials of the job. Not that it would ever occur to Bruce to tell him this.

  However, after a while Bruce got bored and frustrated watching the Skidians – their feeble attempts at completing what he considered simple tasks made him tired just watching them.

  “Right!” he said, deciding to leave them to it. “I’m off now. When I come back I want to see the wires up and strained on this stretch of fence and the posts in across the back of the paddock. Okay, Cyprus?”

  Cyprus seemed about to speak, but in the end he just nodded, feeling totally humiliated by Bruce.

  “If not, then …” Bruce slashed the rod through the air above Laeol’s head and the Skidians redoubled their efforts, only succeeding in getting in each other’s way even more. Bruce shook his head sadly as he watched them. Useless, he thought. He didn’t expe
ct much to get done, but at least he’d given them a reasonable target. Five minutes after he left they would be sitting under the tree, telling dirty stories again or whatever else Skidian men talked about. I suppose, he thought, I should stick around and supervise them properly. But he couldn’t be stuffed. He strolled back towards the house wondering what he was going to do for the rest of the day.

  “Hey, I’m hungry!” he yelled as he entered the house, fishing to see what sort of reaction he could get. Fishing. Bruce was sick of fish too. In fact he was just about sick of everything at the moment and decided he’d better find something to spice up his life with. He propped his feet up on the railing around the veranda and rolled himself a smoke.

  “How about a beer, eh?” he called, wondering why Leaf hadn’t responded by now. Bloody useless Skidians. Bruce slouched in the chair and closed his eyes. Bang! Crash! He didn’t bother opening his eyes. Leaf was in the kitchen again. Then he sensed, rather than saw, a figure standing above him.

  “What do you want?” Bruce flinched as he heard a plate being slammed down on the table beside his arm.

  “There’s the last of the meat. Cold. You’d better go and get some more, big white hunter.” Sue scowled derisively as Bruce opened his eyes. “And I don’t approve of your drinking this early in the day. It’s only lunchtime.”

  “Who asked you?” Bruce sat up and appraised the small chunk of cold meat on the plate without a lot of excitement. “Yes Mum, no Mum, three bags full, Mum!” he muttered sardonically.

  “Wait!” Sue grabbed his arm as he attempted to stab the meat with his fork. “We’ve got something else.”

  “Like what?” He didn’t appreciate being mucked about by Sue, when she was in one of these teasing moods that she seemed to think were fun. “Don’t stuff me around; I’m not in the mood.”

  “Leaf!” Leaf appeared carrying a large bowl.

  “Surprise!” Sue exclaimed happily. “Vegetables!”

  “Where?” Bruce asked, making a grab for the bowl.

  “Not so fast, kiddo,” Sue said, pushing him back down into his seat.

  “Geez, woman!” Bruce hated the way she made such a big fuss over everything. Fuming silently he controlled his temper. “What have you got in there?” he asked as sweetly as he could manage. Bloody woman!

  “These,” said Sue, reaching into the bowl and withdrawing a small, purplish fruit. “I don’t know if they’re okay. They’re a bit bitter.”

  “Radishes. Beauty!”

  “Carrots, cabbage and lettuce. We’ve made a bit of a salad with them.” Sue shoveled some of the salad onto Bruce’s plate with a large spoon and then sat beside him.

  “I thought it would be ages before we would be eating this stuff,” Bruce remarked. Shit it grows quickly, he thought. They would be able to feed the people of Skid a hell of a lot quicker than he had ever thought possible. Why it was only … Nah, it couldn’t have been. Could it? They’d only planted the stuff a week or so ago. So that’s why Sue had wanted him out of the garden. Bruce grinned, feeling amazingly happy at the effort Sue had gone to to surprise him like this. He kissed her on the cheek.

  “Great!” he said after a few mouthfuls, cramming the salad into his mouth with his fingers. “Pity there’s no mayonnaise and stuff, cheese and the like,” he added ungratefully.

  “Aren’t you ever satisfied?” She cuffed him playfully.

  “Nah, not really. Hey, I reckon this calls for a celebration,” he said after polishing off the last of the salad. “I can’t wait for things like the peas and potatoes to be ready, so we can have a decent feed. You know, once we have decent food a man could almost get used to this place,” Bruce told Sue, wiping bits of salad from his whiskers.

  “What? You must be kidding!” Sue was startled by how this comment conflicted with everything Bruce had said previously about Skid, and how it jarred with her own feelings.

  “Why not? The weather’s okay, the tucker’s getting better, we’ve got good job prospects,” Bruce chuckled. “Shit, we might as well get used to the idea that we’re going to be here forever.”

  “Don’t remind me, please, Bruce.” No, Sue promised herself. No.

  Bruce gazed at the low hills in the distance; they were no more than a ridge really. A sight that reminded him of home every time he looked in that direction. Then wished he hadn’t. Rather, he wished that he could simply wake up from this nightmare he was living. He wished he could go to bed, wrap himself into a warm cocoon and hide from the world. Or Skid. However, he was old enough to realize things like that didn’t happen. For better or worse he was stuck here whether he liked it or not.

  “Nah, well anyway … here’re the boys back for lunch.”

  The ‘boys’ were by now making their way back to the house in the ute for whatever they had for lunch.

  Iamot, Laeol and Oridor leapt off the back quickly and scuttled away to their quarters as soon as it came to a stop outside the house, anxious to avoid Bruce. Cyprus, who sat majestically behind the steering wheel, climbed out ponderously and approached the house, prepared to admonish Bruce for his unacceptable behavior a little earlier in the day.

  It infuriated Cyprus that the offworlders had been brought to Skid in order to show Skidians how to produce food organically, but here they were instead: not only spending their time drinking and using agar, but breaking every other moral code that Cyprus could think of as well. It wasn’t fair!

  Cyprus felt betrayed by his own leader, by his own colleagues. Why was he left to do all the work? Work of such importance that it was certainly beyond his comprehension to understand why he was doing it in the first place. What the tasks he had been set had to do with producing the organic food that Bruce insisted abounded in the wilderness was still unclear to him. Cyprus still could not understand why they could not simply harvest ivops as the offworlders presently did to satisfy their needs.

  Cyprus was about to inform Bruce in no uncertain terms, as best he was able in the roundabout Skidian way, what he thought of the situation. However, Bruce beat him to the draw and Cyprus found himself unable to articulate the strong statement of dissatisfaction he had planned to deliver concerning their behavior.

  “Sit down, mate!” Bruce welcomed Cyprus onto the veranda with unaccustomed warmth and offered him some agar. “Hey, Leaf! A beer for Cyprus.”

  Cyprus used the agar in the conventional fashion, in silence up the nose. By the time he had finished, having quaffed a few mouthfuls of beer, he had quite forgotten what had so upset him.

  Twenty-six

  Despite the confrontation with his Skidian labor force, the only way Bruce could get any work out of them was by standing over them all the time. This was a largely unsuccessful maneuver as far as motivation went, because as soon as he turned his back they stopped what they were doing and settled down for a sleep.

  “What a pack of bloody useless goons!” he yelled at them, to no effect, resigning himself to the fact that if he wanted to get anything done he’d just have to do it himself. So much for assuming a supervisory role, he thought.

  He threw himself into the fencing work, but his presence had a strange effect on his erstwhile workforce. Rather than stimulating them to greater effort, it merely reduced their output even more. As if they’d expected all along that Bruce, rather than they, should be putting in the most effort. It soon became obvious that Iamot, Laeol and Oridor didn’t even know why they were there and cared even less.

  As far as Bruce was concerned the Skidians were absolutely useless and showed little concern for their own futures. Even Cyprus showed a decreasing interest in what might ensure him a full belly in the future.

  Bruce felt that once he had shown he had no easy solution to their crisis the Skidians lost interest in the whole project, which irked him for he couldn’t believe they could be so short-sighted in their time of need. What most frustrated Bruce was that what he considered important clearly clashed with Skidian perceptions of the situation.

  He foc
used his energy on completing the first stage of his development program, impatient to move on to the next: stocking his model farm. It was becoming an obsession with him, perhaps as an attempt to justify his existence that the project succeed. Not that anyone on Skid, apart from himself, was in a position to make a qualified judgment about what constituted success. Once he was finished, the Skidians could then simply clone farms all over the planet using this initial one as a template, probably almost overnight.

  Bruce was tempted to tell the Skidians to simply start bowling ivops over where they stood to supply themselves with food. But he had a sneaking suspicion that if he did that then the Skidians would simply keep bowling the ivops over until there were none left. He thought it was a much more sensible idea to try to introduce them to the idea of farming and utilizing a resource rather than squandering it in one foul swoop.

  Finally, despite the best efforts of his workforce, Bruce was able to sip a well-earned beer as he looked contentedly down at the plain below the house on the forty paddocks that constituted the first stage of his model farm.

  Ready to start mustering ivops from the plain to stock the farm, Bruce magnanimously gave his Skidian workforce a few days off to go to town and do whatever Skidians did when they got some spare time. Hitching a lift on a freighter that had just disgorged its load at the farm, all four male Skidians made a beeline for Sietnuoc.

  Cyprus carried a report extolling his efforts on Skid’s behalf in the wilderness and some samples for further analysis. Cyprus had been sampling the organic food the offworlders had produced to date. However, nothing short of force-feeding could persuade his three compatriots to try any of the food produced on the farm, despite Bruce’s efforts.