by Carol Buhler
“Not to mention his numerous uncles,” Sardon’s eldest son added. “That family has an overabundance of volatile homm.”
Pointing at a particular spot painted to indicate a broad, shallow valley surrounded by oddly rolling hills, I said, “I tried to talk Pete Mason out of choosing that canyon between you and Xagdon’s place, but he was adamant. If trouble comes, that’s where I expect it to start.”
“It already has,” Sardon said with a sigh. “I heard via the reeth that Xagdon’s youngest, that imp Xen, confronted one of Pete’s sons over a spring a few days ago. Nothing came of it but loud words. Fortunately, the reeth-mate convinced Xen to leave things alone. Pete complained to me of the confrontation yesterday. I asked him to inform his family not to argue directly with any of the Xag family, but to bring any problem to me. He said he would.”
Sam’s so called “first officer,” which I took meant second-in-command, Pete Mason, had revealed a wife, nine children ranging from very young to near adulthood, and three other large families that supported his every word. They’d traveled in the deep sleep and once awakened, started to build and expand aggressively, thus provoking Xagdon’s wrath.
“I see.” I felt Sardon’s worry. “Hope he keeps his promise to you. Pete seems to have no concept of getting along. He wants what he wants, and he wants it right now. He’s too close to Xagdon for my comfort.”
“Xagdon is very similar,” Sardon agreed. He indicated his boys leaning over the map with us. “We’re keeping an eye on both families.”
He shifted his attention further south by pulling another map from the stack on a side table. “What do you hear of the building around the Bar and Nan?”
“Same as near you. They’re building homes, cutting up the land, and planting crops—most of which are new to me. They, at least, are working well with the locals—working together as we are with Sam’s group.”
“Good. Hopefully, tensions won’t flare up down there.”
**
Sam wanted to host a celebration as the date one year from their landing approached. Eight cabins formed a ring near the bend in the river and hand-cultivated fields spread broadly around them. They’d named the place Samville and declared it a town.
With our year-round temperature well suited for agriculture, they’d produced what he called a bumper crop. My extended family and I tasted and shared, with a huge number of humans, a host of vegetables and small fruits that were strange, but delicious. He explained in detail that the larger fruit trees they’d started wouldn’t produce for another few years, but the low bushes and plants were thriving.
Jemima, heavy with their first child, supervised the meal from a homemade rocking chair and exclaimed to Korola that she was tired of Sam’s fussing over her. When she, Korola, and the other wives, human and femm, started discussing child rearing concepts, we men and homm left the tables.
The few children present, all don and with Jol in the lead, raced around the small village playing tag. Although there were several babes in arms among the women, no human children were yet ready to rough-house with our hooligans. The village is growing.
Sam and Adam gathered the men and homm to play a game he called horseshoes. We’d learned about the horses of earth, and we knew they were similar in appearance to our reeth-mates, but Aarnyon and I could see nothing we could make use of in the implements we played with—bars of metal bent into U-shapes which we tossed at posts in the ground. Why they were called horse shoes, I had no idea.
We don turned out to be better than the humans at wrapping the metal pieces around the far off post.
As the sun settled below the horizon, everyone sat around sipping something called apple cider, made from the ship’s dried apples, Mama June said. It was wonderful, fruity yet tart. Korola asked if Mama June would teach her how to make it but the woman said they’d used up the stored apples and would have to wait until the trees matured enough to produce.
Sam sighed contentedly. I shared the emotion—feeling it emanate from him and the others around us. Then, he said, “Next week the supply ship is due.”
“What supply ship?” A shiver ran up my spine at what I thought he meant.
“They’re supposed to send a ship to check on us after a year. It will bring more useful equipment, animals in deep sleep, and supplies of things like flour, sugar, salt—things we probably wouldn’t be able to produce within our first year. They’ll be amazed at how well we’ve done here with our communities.”
His satisfaction was evident. I felt anger start to simmer. “Your people will land another ship? On my pasture land?” I tried to hide the irritation I felt but he certainly picked up on it from my tone.
“No. They’ll contact me by radio,” he said placatingly, “and I’ll send them over toward the mountains, on that high, dry plain.”
The serenity of the evening had shattered. “No, you will not!” My words were crisp. “I will tell you where to send them.” Struggling to rein in my fury before I said things that would rupture our previous rapport, I sent word to Aarnyon to warn Sardon that another ship was coming. “I wish you’d mentioned this before now.”
He looked at me with brows raised in surprise. “It won’t be a problem!”
“It might be. We did not know more humans would be coming.” I rose abruptly and, via reeth, called my family together. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, after I’ve consulted with others about this.”
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked. He evidently had no idea of the problems his fellow humans were causing in other areas—whether they purposely did so or it was accidental didn’t matter. Don feelings were being ruffled and this news would not be taken well.
“I’ll talk with you tomorrow.” I strode to Aarnyon, threw myself astride, and as a group, we flew away from the small village to reassemble at the Joe household. Sardon sent word that he was on his way.
4. Expansion
Since we obviously couldn’t stop the incoming supply ship, we demanded that it land near the coast on Cob family land, in an area of steady rainfall, where the ship’s retro-rockets wouldn’t set the plains on fire.
As Sam had expected, the first ship brought animals. More supply ships followed every two years, bringing a flood of “domesticated,” Sam called them, food animals for the expanding human population. More settlers also arrived, not in as great numbers as that first ship had carried, but still adding to the growing “towns.”
Cows, sheep, pigs, and horses soon shared grazing land with our reeth, threatening the new fences with their rapid and seemingly uncontrollable reproduction. Aarnyon and others of his family inspected the creatures closely and denied any similarity at all with horses. “They may look like us, but they’re incapable of understanding or communication—or, obviously, flight. We will not associate with them!”
The humans, however, insisted on seeing our reeth as pets, not equals, which greatly annoyed the reeth leaders. “At least we aren’t considered ‘domestic’ or food.” Aarnyon snorted his disgust, since the supply ships also delivered things called cats and dogs, the human use of which we did not at all understand. Sam had seemed offended when I asked if he ate dog and cat.
The supply ships also provided the settlers with machinery. The first load, twenty large, odd-looking pieces of equipment called extruders were to be distributed throughout the human settlements. Being heavy and mounted on wheels, Sam and his fellows towed them with ground vehicles across the prairie, leaving deep-cut tracks in their wake. I knew those tracks would be impossible to erase and expected outrage from the families affected.
I wasn’t disappointed. They’d crossed a portion of Xagdon’s southern pastures and left many trenches. He was furious but Sardon talked him out of fire-bombing the caravan of extruders headed our way since trenches only spoiled the look of the land, not the functionality.
We’d insisted on the landing site. Little had we known what damage would result as the extruders traveled to their new locations.
S
am was the first to use the thing and invited many of us to watch the demonstration he staged to teach his fellow village leaders. We arrived in Samville a few weeks after the machine’s arrival. Evidently, the apparatus had been folded upon itself when I first saw it. Sam and Adam pointed a long tube projecting from the side of what was now a large holding bin they’d filled with sand, soil and water. He explained that the huge plastic containers arranged alongside contained a binding agent that would mix with the ingredients in the bin to make a solid building material.
He nodded and Jemima, their newborn son in one arm, flipped a switch on the generator. The bin began grinding and clanking. Minutes later a grey substance flowed from the tube. Only then did I realize Sam’s original log cabin had been torn down.
Sam and Adam guided the tube, the substance flowed and solidified almost instantly as they layered the outflow, row after row as if placing bricks or stones like we used to build our homes. Within only a few more minutes, Sam had a solid wall the length of his previous cabin, extending two feet above his head. Jemima shut the machine off, Sam and Adam moved their tip of the flexible tube to the end of the first wall and started extruding a perpendicular wall along what would be the back.
I watched in amazement as within an hour, Sam and his helpers had created a four-room home of solid walls. “It’s easy to cut for the first day,” Sam explained to his audience, “but once it sets for twenty-some hours, it will be as hard as any stone on the planet. Then, it will provide insulation to keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer, as needed.” Following his words with actions, he used the saw we’d seen during tree-felling and cut window openings and two doorways into the outside walls.
“Foal,” Aarnyon said into my head. “With that thing, they could cover the entire Joe holdings in buildings within a year!”
My heart pounding with alarm, I motioned for the various don and reeth to withdraw from the demonstration. Sam had already started on another home before we gathered away from the village.
“They’re going to overrun us if we don’t set new limits!” Sardon’s eyes flashed with the same anxiety I felt. We called for a full meeting of the Speaker’s council, again to be held in Center.
A full month passed before we got all the leaders together at Center. Xagdon opened the meeting raging about the humans encroaching past their allotted boundaries. I tried to tune out his raving while studying the postures and attitudes of other family leaders. A word caught my attention and I snapped back to focus on Xagdon.
“Tractors they call them. They’re cutting more and more fields, plowing and chopping up the top soil, blatantly crossing agreed upon borders, turning the prairie into farm plots.”
“Tractors?” I sent a query to Aarnyon.
He replayed the previous speech via Sardon’s reeth-mate. “It’s a vehicle similar to their ground vehicle. It has big tires and pulls something called a plow that cuts deep into the dirt—much deeper than a human could with a hand tool. It also pulls something they call a disc harrow to break up the big chunks of soil the plow creates. The prairie will never be the same.”
Xagdon was still talking, loudly and forcefully. “That chuten Peter Mason just smiles at me when I protest where he’s cutting up the ground. The only thing stopping me from cutting off his head is Balliard’s warnings of starting a war.”
He glared around at the others and I saw many nodding heads, all leaders from lands just in from the coast. Tractors hadn’t reached Sardon and me yet.
We agreed to a show of force before Sam—who still seemed to be the Head Human. I asked him to call a meeting of the leaders of their various settlements and I escorted most of the Family Speakers from the coast, along with their eldest children, all mounted on their reeth-mates, to Samville. We schemed to arrive late, after the human leaders had settled into the new meeting plaza Sam was extruding in their village. My plan was based on the fact that they hadn’t gotten the roof on yet, therefore the humans would watch us coming from the air, in more numbers than we’d previously allowed them to see at one time.
Sam was conciliatory, as usual, along with most of the others. Pete, however, flatly stated that his city, Petersborough, had grown much faster than he’d anticipated and argued that he had to have more ground to produce enough food for his citizens.
“Your fellow colonists are reporting an abundance.” I strode up to where he was sitting, projecting my aggravation loud and clear. He stood to meet me and the look on his face changed from smug to cautious. I poked him in the chest with my index finger to emphasize my words. “You can set up a trade association or other system to get the food you need from the others of your kind.” I glared into his eyes as he stared upward at me. “You have to stay within the agreed upon boundaries, or you and yours will be leaving on the next supply ship to arrive.” I wanted to make a strong impression on Pete, and on Xagdon, in hopes of maintaining peace for us all.
Pete wanted to push the line. I intended him to understand I was a wall that would not give. He turned away without a word and started a conversation with the man I knew had settled the area south of Petersborough. Xagdon eyed me with approval—the only appreciation I’d ever received from the surly don.
For several years, the trade association among humans worked to our advantage as don families were also able to purchase fresh vegetables from the various communities. Using the small gems one of our families mined in the mountains, we traded among ourselves and with the humans. However, Petersborough buildings continued to spread across that part of the flat lands, just barely outside Xagdon’s domain. Sardon accepted more of an encroachment than I would have, and the other don family close to the growing human city, the Oba, never complained. The Council voted not to move against them to try to contain Pete’s ambitions and apparent greed.
Part II
Dates: Janry, 808 through Mers, 816
Location: Gareeth, middle and south sections of the continent
5. Aggravations and Injuries
The second supply ship was due within the month when Sam came to warn me. “They want our ship back,” he said bluntly.
I fumbled for a moment with the idea. What does he mean? He must have seen my confusion. “They need the ship my people came in on. They’re sending a technical crew to refurbish and make sure it can safely fly back to Earth, and a pilot and crew to take it away on the coming supply run.”
I got it. “It’ll start a prairie fire again.”
“I’m afraid, worse than before. We could shut down the after-burners immediately. They won’t be able to.” He clasped my shoulder, in sympathy, I read from his emotions. “I’ve called our leaders together. We’ll assemble our air-cars and lay down a layer of what fire suppressant we have before they lift off. The coming ship is supposed to bring more. We’ll supply you folks with enough for your panniers along with pumps to spray it with, and we’ll hang around to help until it’s all out.”
“That’s a generous gesture,” I said. He wasn’t smiling. “What’s the problem?”
“The fire suppressant is likely to kill the grass it touches, but at least it can’t spread. It’s an oxygen smothering agent.”
“Kill the grass? For how long?”
He frowned. “At least a year, maybe longer.”
“It didn’t do that when you put out the fire before.” I studied his worried expression. “Why would it this time?”
“We’ll have to put it on pretty thick before the engines start, and then dump more after the ship’s gone. And we’ll be using a more concentrated formula.”
“So I’ll have a huge black spot to stare at for a couple of years?”
Korola joined us, offering fruit juice. During our first Council meeting after the human’s arrival, we’d decided to keep our precious Lareina wine a secret. The Wee family swore they couldn’t produce enough to supply humans as well as don and it was so good, we refused to share. So, today, it was bramberry juice.
“’Fraid so.” Sam said.
>
Korola smiled and asked him why we’d have a black spot out our front window.
“It won’t always be black,” he protested after he’d explained what was coming. “It will just be barren for a couple of years.”
“No way to move the ship so they can lift from somewhere else?” I asked, wanting to find an alternative.
“Any movement will result in fire. So may as well move it only once. The other thing I need to warn you about…” When he paused, I wondered what could be worse. “You know I have no experience with horses, but Adam does—or did. He thinks your ‘friends’ will be afraid of the hissing noise the pumps make and won’t cooperate. He doesn’t want any of you hurt.”
I was on the brink of explaining that wouldn’t be a problem with our reeth when he continued, “So, he’s bringing some for you to practice with.” Korola and I hid our grins and asked him to thank Adam for thinking of us.
Since we had no alternative, we gathered to learn and prepare. Using lake water, we riders practiced with the pumps, learning how to spread the spray—indeed they emitted a loud hissing noise as they operated, but they were definitely more efficient than the old method of dumping we’d used for years.
When I asked Sam if we could keep the pumps, he said, “Yes. We can always make more. One of your folks showed us where to get hematite fairly easily which we can use to make iron for things we need until the supply ships bring us steel.”
That worried me. Had someone led Sam and his men into the mountains? “Which of our folk? Do you remember?”
“Els, or Ils…Something like that.”
“Ylsdon, perhaps?”
“Yes. That’s it. In the foothills around that immense lake to the northwest, there’s an abundant supply of iron-bearing rock. We can mine it easily using our air-cars to blast into the cliff and then transport it back to Samsville for smelting.”
