War World: Discovery

by Discovery v2 lit

  The bar would be a great place for customers to congregate, and the rooms in back were small, numerous and perfect for the task at hand. Since Khan wanted to be a silent partner and didn’t want his name on the place given its new purpose,

  Ericas name went up in the window, and a new business was born.

  Miller and Naha met the next night as they had agreed, and the next after that. On the third night, Naha brought an engineer with him, Jonnie Johnson, and also a Mr. Brunet, who had served as the union’s lawyer back on Earth. Another companion, a slender black man who introduced himself as Preacher Jackson, had experience with American Red Cross sheltering and relief operations that they thought would prove useful. They came up with a plan, and more importantly, Miller thought he had an argument and analogy that might breakthrough Castell’s rigid convictions.

  Erica sat in the raised back booth in the bar area of her brothel, and looked over the crowded room with satisfaction. She gave Harry, who sat beside her with a glass of local whiskey in front of him, a smile. He was a tiresome man, prone to brooding and quick to anger, but he was useful, so she had every intention of keeping him around, at least until someone better came along.

  It turned out that her Mr. Khan was married, but watching him when he was around the brothel staff, she had seen his eyes lingering on the younger girls. She had encouraged this interest, sending some of the girls in his direction, and some sweet talking to a CoDo Marine had gotten her temporary use of one of the few digital cameras on Haven. So Erica now had pictures in her purse that would allow her to take sole proprietorship of the business, and be the owner in fact as well as name.

  Erica imagined this as the first of many businesses she would own on Haven. Her years of tricks for money had burned any enjoyment of sex out of her system. She didn’t care for booze, drugs or gambling, and saw too clearly what those vices could do to their victims. She gave Harry a quick peck on the cheek, got up, and started working the crowd.

  A quick hello to an Anaconda Mining engineer, a snap of fingers at a busboy moving too slowly, a request for the guitarist in the corner, leaning into a conversation between one of the girls and a timid John, helping close the deal. She saw the expressions of the people who looked at her, and saw curiosity, lust, fear, affection, but most importantly, respect. She was the center of attention. She had them in the palm of her hand. This was what she wanted.

  Deacon Miller was back in Reverend Castell’s home, with the church leaders arrayed before their leader. Deacon Miller had Jonnie Johnson on one side, and Fineal Naha on his other side, arguing their plan.

  “But sir,” Naha said, “we want to go down the river and work for Kennicott.”

  “I will not,” growled Reverend Castell, “surrender people into slavery, even if they are stupid enough to desire their servitude.”

  “But that’s the point,” interjected Miller. “They don’t have to be slaves, they don’t have to live in the company town. The planetary charter gives you the right to appoint officials to administer towns, and even regions, here on Haven. The miners can build their own town, surround it with farms, start their own businesses, and work for Kennicott only if they want to. The current occupants of their mining camp would have an alternative to their current lives, and could move to the new town if they wanted to. Kennicott would have to offer fair wages to attract workers.”

  Castell fell silent, finally hearing what was being said, and Miller saw that Kev Malcolm was in full understanding, nodding along with the argument.

  Deacon Miller went on. “I know we want to find harmony, and balance, the chord that sustains the peace of the universe. But sometimes, events move more quickly than we would like. We need to adapt our melody, and our harmony, to these new strains, find a counterpoint that leads the tune back toward balance.”

  Miller thought of Moira and her clumsy dance partner. Castell was the clumsy one in this debate, and Miller had to find a way to spin him into the proper position.

  “Countermelodies, eh? Quick tunes?” Castell snorted. “Listening to too much dance music, I think.”

  So much for my clever analogy, thought Miller.

  Castell continued with his questions. How would we get these people downriver?” he asked. “That camp is almost two thousand kilometers away.”

  Now it was Johnson’s turn. “Sir,” he said, “the key to that statement is the word ‘downriver.’ The currents of the Xanadu River will aid us. There are large stands of egg trees upstream from us, on the banks of the Jordan, which grow very tall and straight, and would make excellent rafts. We can use steam launches, burning local wood, to shepherd these rafts down the river. They can pull the rafts, but mostly, they just need to guide them, and let the current do its work. And at the other end, those logs can be used to begin construction of the new settlement.”

  Johnson went on with details of his plans, how much raft space each person would require, how much food would be required, how many trips it would take to transport everyone.

  Deacon Miller entered into the conversation again. “The CoDo charter doesn’t allow us to tax any firms that are licensed for operation directly by them. But we can charge them what are called ‘user fees.’ Maybe a charge per worker that would go to the town, be controlled by the mayor, and used to build schools, roads, other public works and services.” There were some smiles around the circle at the idea of Kennicott providing funds for the public good.

  Castell still looked skeptical. “Who would be the mayor that I appoint?”

  He stared suspiciously at Deacon Miller, who stirred uncomfortably. Could Castell be suspecting him of political aspirations?

  “That, Reverend Castell,” interjected Naha, “would be me. I served on Earth as the democratically elected leader of these miners, and they still show me loyalty. And as you should have noticed in recent days, I have been able to persuade them to go about their tasks in peace. And think about how much more peaceful your town will be when these people move along, and the overcrowding eases.”

  And now it was time for the final point. “And we could offer transportation,” stated Deacon Miller, “to more than just the miners. There are a lot of people in Castell City who do not like our customs, or our leadership. People who follow other religions, bar owners, gamblers and others who might prefer the company of the miners to our own.”

  Castell smiled, and so did Kev Malcolm. Other leaders exchanged glances, smiles and winks. Miller knew the argument had struck home, and the day was won.

  “Of course we’re going to move downriver to the new town, darling,” Erica told Harry, who lay in the bed next to her. She tried to ignore his wandering hands as they groped at her breasts.

  “But we have such a sweet deal here,” Harry complained. Like most men, he couldn’t see past his next meal, his next drink or his next lay. If he did any thinking it wasn’t with his brain.

  “Harry, think about it. The new town is going to have the same mix of sexes as the transport ship, more than three men to every woman. The powers that be are going out of their way to attract the kind of businesses to the new town that they want to get rid of in Castell City. The town here will still be the seat of government, and a trade nexus, but there’s no industry here. The mine work is going to pump cash into the new town like water.

  “It’s gonna be like Vegas down there, and Vegas in the early days, when empires could be made. What’ll be left here will be the boring men who are content to suck down a beer on their way home to their boring wives after a day at their boring jobs.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Harry said, his voice muffled by her breasts. His hand slid between her legs, and she faked a moan, let him climb aboard, and gave in to the inevitable.

  As the days grew colder, Deacon Miller found himself relieved of his other duties, and fully assigned to the “Relocation Project,” as it was dubbed by Kev Malcolm. Be careful what you ask for, he thought, because you may get it.

  He was assigned an area at the end
of one of the transportee mess halls that they partitioned into office space. Paper was piled everywhere, plans for rafts pinned to walls, even a rare laptop computer was assigned for their use. Fliers went out around the town, and the task for the first few days was cataloging who had volunteered for the voyage. The two thousand miners showed remarkable solidarity, with almost everyone opting to leave. And over a thousand residents of Castell City also volunteered. Some, like bar owners, prostitutes and gamblers, saw better opportunities in the mining town, and chafed at the blue laws and interference of the New Harmony Church in the public life of the city. There were women who saw a chance to find a good husband among the many unattached men, there were hunters, farmers, carpenters, people from all walks of life.

  Preacher Jackson, who collected the lists, called them the “huddled masses, yearning to be free.” He began referring to the operation as the “Exodus,” and the “Chosen People,” and despite the resistance of Miller and the other New Harmony Church leaders, those names stuck and stuck hard. All told, there were 3,246 volunteers.

  The Church of New Harmony received a certain amount of supplies and funding to support each load of transportees when they arrived. Some of these resources were set aside to support the new venture, which was, after all, simply a larger version of some of the settlement efforts that had gone on before. And because they perceived this endeavor as a solution to some social issues, they were willing to lend even more support than usual.

  Deacon Millers problem was that this operation was an order of magnitude larger than any previous settlement effort, which created logistical problems that a lot of people didn’t fully appreciate. He organized logging parties first, supported by Church funds. Fortunately, many of the miners were also outdoorsmen, and not strangers to surviving in the wilderness, or swinging an ax. The biggest constraint was not labor, it was equipment, weapons and food.

  But within weeks, reports from the loggers indicated hunting was keeping their parties fed, and that dozens of egg tree trunks were downed, trimmed, and staged on the banks of the Jordan River above town. They were well on track to have hundreds of logs ready by spring. The preacher proved to be a huge boon, organizing the Chosen into 100 person ‘shops,’ each with their own stewards and

  other leadership, disciplinary councils, specialties, tasks and duties.

  Erica beckoned Harry over to her corner booth. “Did you hear?” she asked. “The new Mayor, Naha, is recruiting for a sheriff and deputies to keep order on the rafts, and to set up shop when they get to their new town. You need to apply for one of those jobs.”

  Harry looked at her suspiciously. “You want to get rid of me?”

  “No, silly,” she said with a smile, running her fingers along his thigh “I want you to be a man with power in your own right. Someone I can come to for help if I need it. Think of how much power we will have in the new town if we have a foothold in the government, as well as the bars and brothels.”

  Harry thought about it. He enjoyed the freedom he felt since he had come to Haven, being able to ignore the rules and morals that had held him back on Earth. But he did have to admit, he missed the power to tell people what to do, and the knowledge that if they didn’t, there was a system designed to back him up. And if he had that power, without feeling like he had to toe the line, Erica was right, they were well on their way to ruling this new town. Besides, how many people applying for the new law enforcement positions would actually have a background in police work, and a couple of decades of experience? Harry grinned at Erica.

  “OK,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  “That’s my boy,” said Erica, as another piece of her plan fell neatly into place.

  It was time to hire the vessels they needed for the trip down the river. Deacon Miller, along with Jonnie Johnson, met with a friend of his in Harp’s pub, a steamboat captain named Bob Doyle. He was a Nova Scotia man who liked to play the fiddle when he was in town. It was Doyle who had carried Miller down to the Kennicott camp and back last year.

  “How many boats are available for this venture?” asked Johnson.

  “Well,” said Doyle, “I have my two boats. It’ll have to be the wood burners that you hire, no diesels, since they’ll need to collect fuel from the riverbanks as they go. That leaves maybe seven or eight other boats to choose from. How big are these rafts of yours?”

  Jonny answered, “They’ll be 100 feet by 250 feet. Each will be designed to carry up to 500 people, although it will be pretty crowded for them. I wanted the rafts as big as possible, but not so ungainly that they are unworkable.”

  “Ain’t gonna be easy, that’s for sure,” answered Doyle. “It will take a minimum of two steamboats to control each raft, and you’ll want at least two extra boats on each trip, just in case.”

  “OK,” said Jonny, “then we try to hire eight steamboats, so we can move three rafts per trip. Since we need nine rafts overall, that’ll be three trips down the river. At seven kilometers per hour, about twice the speed of the river current, it would take two hundred and eighty-five hours of travel, and allowing for rest stops, I’m figuring on twenty T-days for each trip, and a similar amount of time for the return of the steamboats for the next trip.”

  “OK,” said Doyle, “I’ll talk to the other skippers. One last question--who’s picking up the bill? The other guys aren’t gonna go for some sort of fly-by-night financing. They’ll want cash upfront for each trip.”

  “That part,” answered Miller, “turns out to be easy. Reverend Castell will hire you out of Harmony church funds.” He grinned. “To be honest, he can’t wait to get this expedition underway.”

  Deacon Miller and Johnson brought this news back to the committee, and with those arrangements behind them, they turned their attention to plans for the new town, temporarily dubbed “Minerstown.” Deacon Miller produced the paperwork he had collected during his recent journey to the Kennicott Mining Camp. From those, they overlaid maps of deeded rights and locations onto a satellite photo of the area. The Kennicott camp was just before a bend where the river turned from west to south--their own settlement would be a couple of miles downriver, just after the bend.

  They began to organize what functions needed to happen first upon arrival, land to clear, crops to plant, structures to build. If they left as soon as the ice began to break up in the spring, they could be downriver in time to plan their first crop in their new home, and once that was in, the barns to store the crops would follow.

  Everyone had an idea what needed to be built first. Brunet, the union lawyer, ended up as organizer for these activities. A certain amount of the construction would be for the common good, and in the beginning, the farms would be communal. Some of the Chosen, such as bar and store owners, were willing to pay for construction. Others were bringing only the clothes on their backs. There were merchants in town who were willing to finance portions of the operation, in return for a share of any profits produced and priority for their own construction projects.

  Brunet put together a plan to accommodate these commercial requests, and came to one of their meetings with a large grin, and an announcement that some of their initiatives were paying enough that they could be used to finance other efforts. There was, however, an argument about one of the patrons for the expedition.

  “But doesn’t this Erica woman run a brothel?” asked Deacon Miller.

  “Yes, probably the fastest growing brothel in Castell City,” answered Brunet. “And I get the impression that if she wasn’t planning to move down river, she would’ve invested in more businesses besides. She’s built up a lot of cash, but she’s saving it, and wants to use it to establish herself in Minerstown.”

  “Is this a business we want to encourage?” asked Preacher Jackson.

  It was Fineal Naha who answered. “One of the aims of this expedition is to draw away from Castell City businesses that don’t fit Harmony philosophies, which includes prostitution, gambling, drinking, drugs. If we discourage those activities, we w
ork against ourselves.”

  Miller blew out his breath and shook his head. “As Mayor, how on Earth, oops, how on Haven, will you control that?”

  Naha grinned. “With great skill,” he replied with his customary flair. When the laughter died down, he gave a more serious answer. “There will be less rules, but we will have rules. Whatever happens between consenting adults is their own business. Physical violence will not be tolerated. Contracts will not be broken once agreed to. No one does anything that adversely impacts their neighbors without providing appropriate compensation. But beyond that, we want to create a society where people do what they wish. As long as this Erica doesn’t abuse her employees, and contributes to the common good, I see no reason not to welcome her.”

  They finally reached consensus on the issue, and the planning committee decided to take her money, but it remained a somewhat uneasy consensus.

  And so the plans and projects continued to take shape. It was an unusual winter for Castell City. Normally, everyone hunkered down for the season, and there was very little activity. But this winter, the overcrowded transportee barracks hummed with activity, and the town hummed with activity. There was a real energy among the miners and other Chosen, something that Preacher Jackson called, “the smell of Hope.”

  Mayor Naha reached across the table and shook Harry’s hand.

  “Congratulations, Mister Davis, you have yourself a job. First Deputy to the Sheriff of Minerstown. We just couldn’t ignore the experience you bring to the job.

  The top job had gone to a former union official named Sorensen, a straight arrow who treated Harry with a bit of suspicion. He wasn’t surprised that Naha had gone for a crony for the top job. But this would work, too. Harry knew how to manipulate bosses, he had done it for years.