by Alan Black
Tasso wanted to refuse, but Grandpa always insisted the boy respect his elders. Of course, at the time his grandfather was the only elder around. Listening to the old man’s advice was a hard habit to break. He’d go to Landing City. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d take the little red flitter and go.
Grandpa only used the vehicle a couple of times a year to go to Landing City for the census and on tax day. He’d use the larger farm shuttle every thirteen months to haul their chiamra harvest to the processing plant near the spaceport, making trips until their whole harvest was gone and they had enough cash to get them through to the next harvest.
In the last seven years, Tasso hadn’t been farther from their valley than he could walk in half a day. He knew how to fly the flitter, but he never flew farther than from the barn to the house or down to the stream to give it a wash.
Grandpa expected Tasso to be able to operate, maintain, and repair the flitter. Grandpa expected Tasso to be able to operate, maintain, and repair the shuttle. Grandpa expected Tasso to be able to operate, maintain, and repair the rock jack, the chiamra harvester, the refrigerator, the solar collectors, water well pump and to sharpen his own pocketknife. Tasso sighed in the dark and began reading the flitter manual, committing as much to memory as he could.
CHAPTER 2
TASSO AWOKE with a jolt. He half-expected a jack-o’-lantern to be taking a bite out of his face, but the night was quiet. Not aware of what woke him, he sat quietly and listened. There wasn’t anything in sight, although he thought he heard the hum of an air car. No one would have flown into the canyon at night without landing and running lights, so it must have been his imagination. Besides, with or without lights, no one had flown into the canyon except Grandpa in years.
He checked the time hack on his dataport. Sun-One would rise in a few hours and the night was still too dark to move safely from the ledge. Knowing more sleep would elude him as his normal time to get up was only minutes away, he went back to reading the maintenance and repair manual. Starting again from the beginning, he was thoroughly engrossed in the stabilizer pinion arm rotation maintenance schedule when Sun-One peeked over the canyon rim.
The rays lit the canyon walls, showing off the stark ribbons of geological strata. Tasso knew his grandfather was a prospector at heart. He chose this little valley, not only for its chiamra growth potential, but also because the canyon walls indicated the presence of hope’s crystals. The peculiarly colored canyon wall was a slight indication, but one Grandpa followed with religious enthusiasm.
Those little chunks of super hard crystals were elusive. Their mines were only on half a dozen planets out of the hundreds of settled worlds. No one had ever found hope’s crystals on Saronno but if they did, it would make them wealthy beyond their wildest expectations. Dozens of industries around the known galaxy prized the crystals and, of course, the super wealthy with money to throw away on pretty, black baubles religiously sought after them.
Years ago, Grandpa had borrowed a hand-held resonator and performed a surface scan of the canyon and their surrounding property. He discovered nothing, but the small resonator could only see a short way down through the deep rock. Every thirteen months, between plantings, Grandpa sank an exploratory sample core looking for the blue-grey clay that would reveal the black crystal’s existence. He never discovered anything, but he kept looking.
Grandpa always said hope’s crystals were their hope. The chiamra plants made the valley their home. The little valley between the steep canyon walls brought them health. The graves on this ledge were their hearts. The rays from the early morning Sun-One touched Tasso’s home, his health, and his heart. His hope died with his grandpa. Tasso was glad no one was around to see him cry as he thought of his grandfather. Even Ol’ Ben wasn’t around as he cried for a mother he barely remembered and the grandmother he hardly knew.
Sun-One was high above the horizon before Tasso stirred from his family’s graves. The rumbling in his empty stomach pushed him up onto his feet and drove him home. He hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday’s breakfast. He didn’t want to eat now, no matter how hollow and empty he felt inside. Knowing he had to eat something whether he wanted food or not, he started lunch and while he waited for his light meal to come to a boil, he prepared things for his departure.
Their little house was set deep into the canyon walls, with a thick hatch repurposed from a crashed shuttle as a main door. The only two windows were little more than thin slits cut through the front wall’s rock face. The house was small, having only three small rooms, but it suited them well. Grandpa always said a person didn’t need more than a bed in their bedroom. Tasso’s bed barely fit in his room and his grandfather’s bedroom was only slightly bigger, with a desk and a bed. Of course, there wasn’t room at the desk for a chair, so Grandpa perched on the side of the bed when working at his desk. The main room was a combination kitchen, living, and dining room. The rock floors matched the rock ceiling and complimented their hard-used, handmade furniture. There wasn’t a fireplace. Burning local wood was a spotty proposition because even the smoke from a neo-ironwood tree was toxic.
He disconnected the solar panels, putting shutters over them. He unhooked the pump at the wellhead and stored the vacuum chamber in the barn. He shut down the electronics in Grandpa’s bedroom, putting them all in deep-sleep mode.
The lunch of boiled yapikino meat and potatoes filled his stomach, but did little to fill his insides. He ate slowly even though he knew of a hundred little things he must do before he left for Landing City. He didn’t know how long he’d be gone. He hoped his absence would be short, but if it turned out that he’d be gone until he turned of age, he wanted his home as prepared as possible for his return.
Tasso dumped the last of the yapikino into the garden’s composter. Once cooked, the small rodent-like animal’s meat spoiled quickly and it didn’t fare well when reheated. He put the potatoes and all perishable foodstuffs into their small stasis chamber. He turned off the refrigerator, the stove, and the tankless water heater. He began working through his to-do list, shutting down this, packing that, putting lockout codes there, and bolting this thing closed. Some things couldn’t be prepped for departure. Unless he returned soon, their little gardens would go to weeds, or if his stay in Landing City was long enough, they would just go to seed and have to be plowed under. There were a dozen small patches of garden scattered around the little valley. It would take too much time to weed and water them all.
He emptied Grandpa’s tobacco jar. His grandfather had given up chewing years ago, but the earthen container was where the man kept their spare cash. He counted the coins slowly. There were twenty-five credits. Grandpa had recently sold their last harvest for a hundred credits. He said they were doing well if they could get at least a credit per acre. He paid twenty-five credits on their land tax. Purchasing chiamra seeds for next season’s planting cost another fifty credits. What remained had to stretch the next twelve months until the harvest came in. Tasso knew they weren’t doing as well as Grandpa said. His grandfather hadn’t lied, the old man just had a different standard for doing well than Tasso did.
He tossed a small bag of personal items and spare clothes into the back of the flitter, setting Grandpa’s shotgun on the front passenger seat. He didn’t expect to need the shotgun, but Grandpa always said to carry it because you never expected to need it until you had to have it. Usually, a person was too late to go get it when they did need it.
Having completed his to do list, Tasso looked around the only home he’d ever known. He was sure he’d be back soon and he tried to soak up as much of the feeling of home as he could. He shook his head, clearing it, and climbed into the little flitter. The day was getting late. He knew he wouldn’t get to Landing City before dark, but he didn’t want to wait for another day. One more day would tempt him to disobey his uncle’s demands.
He sent his uncle a text message, letting the man know he was leaving and what time the GPS said he would reach Landing
City. He got back an immediate text with an address. The message felt and looked like a cold automated response.
Tasso set his dataport to record as he pushed the flitter straight up until it hovered over the house. He flew a slow circle around the property. He told himself he was flying around to get the feel of the flitter, but he really knew he was having a hard time leaving home. He was starting to turn toward the city when he spotted Ol’ Ben on the canyon rim.
He knew this jack-o’-lantern was Ol’ Ben by the black rotten-looking spot on the back of its head. The beast screeched at the flitter. Tasso hit the horn, blasting a hoot at the animal. Ol’ Ben screeched back in defiance and raced down the face of the canyon wall as fast as most animals could run on flat ground. The beast stopped at the front door of the house. It screeched at the flitter again and sat down on its bony haunches to lick a paw. Tasso blasted another hoot of the horn, but Ol’ Ben ignored the flitter, refusing to look up.
“Okay. Be that way,” Tasso said. “You keep an eye on the place. I’ll be back soon.” He wouldn’t worry about the animal getting into anything. It’d take military grade explosives to get through the steel front door and the lockouts on the barn would confuse a master locksmith. Grandpa prized his privacy.
Tasso spun the flitter on its axis and headed south. He plugged the Landing City address his uncle had sent him into the GPS. The flight wasn’t a straight-line trip. The router mapped him through the McGrath Pass in the McWithy Range. It skirted around Loch Finnis to avoid extended travel over water and around the Bain Highlands.
Tasso noticed the router mapped him close to the facility that processed their farm produce. He wondered if he could stop by and tour the place. He wanted to see how his chiamra plants became spice, but when he checked the time progress on the map, he realized he would pass by the plant at about three in the morning. He wouldn’t get to Landing City until breakfast. Of course, that was his breakfast time. Grandpa always said city folk didn’t eat breakfast until long after the sun came up.
“Crap!” he said. “I didn’t pack anything to eat or drink for this trip.”
Tasso slaved the autopilot to the GPS map, kicked back from the pilot’s console and stared out of the windows, watching the landscape pass by beneath him. This part of Saronno was rugged territory and a hard land. Grandpa said that was why the Scots settled Saronno, no one else was hardy enough to survive and prosper in such a harsh land. Harsh or not, he was fascinated by the beauty of the planet around him. Sun-One was setting, painting the whole landscape in a battle of bright light and deep shadows. He watched until the deep shadows defeated the light, chasing it away.
Finally, he turned from the window and switched on his dataport. “Crap!” he said glancing at the reader. “Oh, crap! I gotta quit cussing. Grandpa would tan my hide if he heard me talking like this. That’s three ‘craps’ today. No, four.”
He sighed.
Grandpa would say, “Cusswords are the refuge of a weak mind and a limited vocabulary.”
Using cusswords or not, Tasso still didn’t remember where he left off reading the flitter manual. The automatic bookmark showed him exactly which screen was active when the reader shut down, but he couldn’t remember on his own. Again, he could hear Grandpa’s words in his head, “Don’t trust the machine to tell you what you ought to know. That’s the lazy man’s way. It’s not the Menzies’ way.”
Tasso sighed and flipped to the front of the manual. He began again from the beginning. He barely read through chapter four when the flitter bucked, spun 180 degrees and began to fall backwards out of the sky.
CHAPTER 3
“OH CRAP!” TASSO shouted.
The dataport display was frozen over the dash, but he didn’t have time to shut it down. Hitting the switch to turn off the autopilot and grabbing the steering yoke, he slammed the right pedal to the deck and yanked the yoke back. The flitter continued to fall backwards, but his descent slowed. He released the right pedal and pushed the left pedal down as he mashed the power overdrive button under his right thumb on the yoke. The flitter spun around, but it didn’t stop turning. Instead, he turned 360 degrees. He was still going down backwards, but the power overdrive was slowing his descent. The flitter was still going down too fast. He didn’t know what else to do.
He heard his grandfather’s voice in his head, “Don’t just sit there, even if it’s wrong, do something.” Of course, his grandpa said that about everything. Grandpa thought sitting and doing nothing was a sin in itself. “It’s not the Menzies’ way,” he’d say.
Tasso shrugged. He jammed both pedals to the floor. That did nothing. He pushed the yoke forward, trying to push the flitter into a forward dive. He thought it might level him out before he hit the ground. The front end of the flitter pushed down, but it started a forward roll that continued causing the flitter to summersault front over rear.
Tasso watched the rocks below getting closer and closer as the flitter rolled. However, his descent began to slow further. The forward roll offset the flitter’s reverse momentum and the ground stopped rushing at him. He checked the altimeter and found he was only twenty feet or so above weed top level, but he was still flipping ass-end over teakettle.
He watched the ground roll past and disappear, followed quickly by a patch of dark sky. It rolled around again and then the same patch of sky. The whirling was almost as if the little flitter didn’t know whether to crash backwards or face first, so it just spun.
“One more spin and I’m going to toss my cookies,” Tasso said. He saw the patch of sky roll across the window. He shut off the engines with a flick of a finger. He crashed to the ground. Thankfully, he was right side up and the driver’s crash couch cushioned the fall enough that he only had the wind knocked out of him.
The GPS map showed his location as only a few kilometers away from the McWithy Range’s rough terrain, on approach to the McGrath Pass. Any farther and he would have crashed into rock and ravine, instead of landing in a soft field. Well, the field was relatively soft.
The radio popped to life. A male voice blared out of the speakers, “Calling the crashed aircraft at the north end of the McGrath Pass. Respond please.”
“Um … yes?” Tasso asked.
“Are you injured? Do you need emergency medical assistance?” the voice asked in a business like, almost robotic manner.
“No,” Tasso answered, not entirely sure who or what was talking.
“Are you in physical distress? Or are any passengers in physical distress?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” the voice sounded exasperated. “If you don’t know, then get someone who—”
“Shut up, dipwad,” a female voice interrupted. “It says here on the checklist that confusion can be a sign of a concussion. Just read the questions, you moron.”
“You shut up. I got the microphone, not you,” the male replied. “You’re the moron, not me.”
“Um, hello?” Tasso asked.
“Wait a minute,” the male voice said. “I forgot where I was on the checklist. Oh, yeah. Are any passengers in physical dresses? Sorry. I mean physical distress?”
“I’m alone and I’m fine. I am down and my flitter doesn’t appear to have suffered any catastrophic damage.”
“Flitter huh? What kind you got?”
“I am, or was flying a Mifflin-Roberts Model 16A12 Matador.”
“Matador, huh? Those things are as ugly as my little sister, but a tough piece of machinery. What brought you down?”
“Hey!” the female voice interrupted. “I’m ugly, huh? I know where you sleep, cretin. Besides, get back to the checklist. You are supposed to read from the list when responding to a distress call.”
Tasso frowned. “I didn’t send out a distress call. I didn’t have time to.”
The male voice laughed cheerfully, “Your automated transponder is bleeping up a storm out there.”
Tasso slapped his forehead. He would probably know about the autom
ated transponder if he had finished reading the manual. He checked the console and saw a blinking red switch. He flicked it off.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“Well, you shut off the emergency broadcast, but I still get the transponder flashing the signal for a crashed aircraft. Are you still crashed?” the male voice laughed.
“Yep,” Tasso replied.
“Ok, what can we do to help, boyo?”
Tasso shook his head even though he knew the man couldn’t see him. They could be using holo-vision sets if they were on the standard communication gear, but the emergency system was audio only.
Tasso said, “Thank you for asking. I don’t know yet. I have to find out what brought me down. I should be able to get airborne again by myself unless something is hard broke. Then I may need a ride out of here. Can I call you back after I check things out?”
“Ok by me. Sis and I aren’t going anywhere. We’ll hang by the emergency set. There isn’t anything on the tube anyway and we was just playing vid-games.”
Tasso gave a shake of his head. Grandpa would not allow a holo-vision set in the house. He called it a circus for the masses and labeled it a complete waste of time. He had an even lower opinion of playing vid-games and the people who played them. But, Grandpa would have skinned him alive for criticizing someone else’s choices.
“Can I ask who I’m talking to, please?” Tasso asked. “So I know who I’m calling back.”
“You can ask, boyo. Whether I tell you or not, is up to me—”
“You better be polite,” his sister interrupted.
“You better shut up,” the brother said. “Your emergency transponder called me, boyo. Suppose you tell me who you are first.”
Tasso said, “I apologize. I should have introduced myself. This is Tasso Menzies.”
“Tasso? I haven’t heard that name in years. Not since I kicked your butt at that Landing Day picnic. This is Dougall Lamont.”
