Edward Llewellyn - [Douglas Convolution 03]

by Prelude to Chaos (epub)

  Powered by a miniturbine, she had ample take-offs for traps, lines, and trawl. Inside her wheelhouse I could see the display scopes of radar, echometers, fish-finders, and navsat. I myself was no sailor, but like every Trooper in the Special Strike Force I had been taught to handle minicopters, air-cushions, hydrofoils, and light armored fighting vehicles. Even to ride horses. Almost anything that could be used to get a Strike Force section into position to strike. What I saw below me was an example of elegant engineering; a seaworthy hull, an advanced power unit, and the electronic technology of picrochip and minicomp. A boat which a lone helmsman could take through dangerous waters and fog-shrouded seas. A boat fitted to hunt the shoals of fish which were returning to the Bay of Fundy.

  The hymn singing in the Hall rose to a crescendo, dropped to silence, and a few minutes later the population of Sutton Cove began to pour down the steps. Enoch was among the first out, and I stood up, not knowing how he might react to my inspecting his boat. But when he saw me he smiled and came toward the wharf, his daughter at his side.

  “I hope you don’t mind my admiring your boat,” I said.

  “Mind? It’s good to meet an outsider with the eyes to see and the sense to understand!” He stood beside me, looking down at Aurora with the pride of a man who owns something that is both beautiful and useful. “She’s trim! She’s trim! Best seaboat that ever fished these waters. Me and the missus—we’ve taken seven thousand kilos of cod in three hours. Filled her to the gun’ls, we did!” His face clouded. “That was when Vera was alive and fishing. Vera had a nose for the fish.” The cloud passed. “But me and my girl here, we’ve done almost as well at times.” He ruffled Barbara’s hair. “That was afore she got her boat. Now I fish Aurora by myself. Still do pretty good.” He filled his pipe.

  I glanced at the slim girl beside him. “Barbara—you have a boat of your own?”

  She nodded, half resentful of my surprise but too proud of her status to be offended. “There—Sea Eagle—lying at that buoy.” She pointed to a boat somewhat smaller than her father’s but with more radio antennae. “I got her last spring.” “And you fish alone?”

  “Sometimes!” Her father laughed. “But not often. The boys around here, they like to go fishing with Barb. She must have her ma’s nose for the fish—or something!”

  “Daddy!” For a moment she was a typical daughter embarrassed by a father’s idea of humor. Then she looked up the street and frowned. “Here comes Doctor Grenfell—and Baldy’s grabbed her already!”

  “Hush girl!” Her father gave her an affectionate cuff. “Be-eos’ you’ve got your boat young’s no cause to talk like some bad-mouthing oldster.” He smiled and took out his pipe to greet Judith and the Chairman. “It’s good to have you back, Doc. Chuck—that was a right good sermon you gave.”

  ‘Thank you, Enoch. Thank you. The Light shone through me.” He looked at Barbara. “Child, go and light a fire in Mistress Grenfell’s cottage. And stack plenty of wood for the Doctor to use.”

  “Yes sir!” said Barbara, stressing the honorific in a way I would have judged insolent but which seemed to please Yackle. I watched her dart off up the village street, surprised by her instant obedience. Most of the teenagers I had known never obeyed any order instantly until after they’d been through boot camp.

  “You’re going to let me have my mother’s cottage?” Judith looked pleased. “It’s still empty?”

  “We’ve left it vacant, hoping her daughter would return to us. Even after they tried to tell us you were dead the Light told us to expect your return. We never believed those lies the outsiders tell!” He remembered I was an outsider and added hastily, “No offense, Mister Gavin.”

  “No offense taken, Mister Yackle. You’re wise not to believe Administration stories.”

  “Then I’ll go wash up and get rested,” Judith broke in. “We’ve been riding all day.”

  “I sent Prudence and Clara to air the rooms and spread fresh linen,” said Yackle quickly. “And Nora’s dusting and polishing. While they’re making it snug for you, maybe you’ll take a look at my eldest. Bernice has had a nasty cough on her for weeks.”

  “I’ll check Bernice now.” Judith’s face showed her resignation to the cares which descend on a community doctor as soon as he or she reappears. “Gavin, I’ll see you later up at the house. It’s over there—above the cove.” She pointed to a cottage backing, against the cliff, its yard bright with fall flowers. The doors and windows were open and several girls were shaking out rugs and mops, preparing a home for their Doctor. Barbara was trudging up the pathway towards it with a load of kindling.

  “Mister Gavin—-he’ll be staying with you?” Yackle’s voice faltered under Judith’s steady glance.

  “Of course! He arrived with me. Enoch, would you show him around and then bring him up to the cottage.”

  “Be a pleasure, Doc!”

  “But—” Yackle started to say something.

  “You wanted me to take a look at Bernice?” Judith turned away from the wharf.

  “Yes—if you would.” Yackle glanced uncertainly at me, then trotted after Judith toward the largest house on the village street Enoch was refilling his pipe. “Don’t judge Chuck Yackle too hard, Mister Gavin. We need Chuck to remind us of the lighted path. Barb, she’s like all young ’uns. Critical of their elders.” He lit his pipe. “At times she’s right to be critical. At times she’s wrong. She’ll get no smarter as she grows older, but she’ll get more understanding. Leastwise, I hope she does.” He drew, on his pipe, then added, “Though not too understanding.”

  “She does as she’s told. That’s unusual. Most kids these days—too raw to eat and too green to burn.”

  Enoch laughed. “She does as she’s told when what she’s told is sensible. All the youngsters here do as they’re told, when they’re told what’s sensible. It’s the sea that teaches ’em. In a boat you learn not to argue.” He puffed on his pipe and chuckled. “But those kids, they do a lot of things they’re not told. And it’s a good thing for all of us that they do!” I waited for him to expand on that cryptic remark, but he said, “Before I show you around, maybe you’d like a tot of rum? To refresh you after a long day. I keep a bottle in the boat.” “There’s nothing I’d like better,” I said and followed him down the ladder and into the cabin of the Aurora.

  I didn’t see much of the Settlement that day, and when Barbara Bailed us from the wharf it was almost dark. She was waiting at the top of the ladder and gave a disapproving sniff when we joined her. “The Doc sent me to find out what the two of you were doing. Now I know! She’s waiting up at the cottage for Mister Gavin.”

  “And he’s coming right up,” said Enoch jovially. We had actually done more talking than drinking, but this was evidently the kind of community where to smell of alcohol was to be judged intoxicated.

  Judith had already acquired the community attitude. She was standing in the doorway when we climbed up the path. “Enoch! You haven’t changed! But don’t start introducing Gavin to your habits.”

  “Gavin don’t need no introducing!” Enoch chuckled and started back toward the cove, his daughter hovering beside Mm.

  “He’s not drunk!” I protested, following Judith into the cottage. “Neither am I.”

  “He used to be a drinking man. And this isn’t a drinking Settlement.” She inspected me, decided I was reasonably sober, and announced. “I’m going to take a bath. You need one too. I’ll leave you some hot water.” And she disappeared. I heard the sound of a bath being filled. So the Settlement had both electricity and a piped water supply. I had half-expected to be drawing buckets of icy water from a well and heating it in a wood-fired copper.

  I went to warm my hands at the log fire blazing in the large stone fireplace, looking around the living room of Mistress Grenfell’s old home. A snug and comfortable room. The girls Yackle had sent to prepare it for Judith had done a good job. The mahogany table gleamed a rich brown. The silver candlesticks on the mantel, the te
a service on the sideboard, the brass fire-irons, shone in the firelight. A pendulum clock ticked on the wall. Above the fireplace a portrait of Judith as a girl watched me as I wandered round the room. The portrait of a woman—-I assumed she was Judith’s dead mother-—watched me from another wall. If Judith looked like her when she was fifty she would be as beautiful as she was now and a good deal easier to live with. A trace of her mother’s perfume still seemed to linger as did the sense of peace and order she had impressed upon her home.

  I sat down and looked into the fire. The cottage, the whole Settlements was a refuge from the rising chaos of the world outside. After the turmoil of my last few years, after the hectic activity of my whole life, here was a place where I could rest and regain my sanity. I hoped that these Believers would let me stay long enough to do it.

  Judith came from the bathroom, pulling an embroidered robe over her long woolen nightdress, brushing out her golden-aubum hair which now hung to her shoulders and glinted in the firelight. I jumped to my feet and stood staring at her. She looked like a woman from an earlier age. She looked completely feminine. And she had never looked more beautiful.

  But the essential Judith was still there. “If you’re sufficiently sober, Gav—go and get cleaned up!” The disapproval in her voice was an echo of the elderly supervisor in the Pen who had been fond of reminding me to wash my hands before supper.

  My panniers had been brought up from the bike and I had returned, shaved and in a clean shirt, when there was a knock on the door. The visitor was Yackle. He seemed embarrassed to find Judith in her night-dress and robe, although I could not imagine more modest sleeping garments. “We’re having a communal supper tonight. Down at the Hall. We were hoping you’d join us, Doctor.” He glanced at me. “And Mister Gavin too, of course.”

  “Thanks, Chuck. But not tonight. I’m exhausted. There’s food somebody’s kindly put in the larder. I’ll fix us something to eat here.”

  “No need for that! Not for you cooking on your first night home.” He was obviously relieved that he would not have to explain my presence at the feast. “I’ll have the girls bring you up a meal.” He gave me a weak smile and disappeared.

  Judith was wandering round rearranging things, the way a woman does when she moves into new quarters, starting to make the place her own. She ignored me, so presently I asked, “Didn’t Yackle say something about sending up supper?” I was hungry.

  She turned, pushed back her hair, and studied me. She had put on perfume, the first time since I had met her when, she smelt of anything except herself. She had made up her face; something she hadn’t done since distracting the salesman at Hucksters’ Haven and impressing the doorman at the Shera-ton-Ritz. She had never used cosmetics in the Pen and they were forbidden in Sherando.

  “Supper, Gavin? First booze, then food? Is that all you have on your mind?”

  “I had two shots of rum with Enoch and I haven’t had anything to eat all day!” Why was she so jumpy? We had escaped the Feds. We had survived a dangerous journey, made more dangerous by the way she had ridden her Yama. We had been welcomed—at least she had—by the Settlement. We were in comfortable quarters. Yet when I mentioned I was hungry she reacted as if I had insulted her. That’s the trouble with having a female partner on any mission. Single-minded and resolute in the crunch; illogical and unpredictable when out of it.

  Before I could annoy her further there was a knock at the door. Barbara and the boy from the woods had arrived with trays of food. “Supper,” announced Barbara, stepping into the room. “Compliments of Chairman Yackle. George, put that tray over there!”

  George grinned at me, stared open-mouthed at Judith, and put the tray on the sideboard. Barbara started to lay the table with the quick efficiency which seemed to govern all her actions, issuing an occasional command to George. She had just told him to fill the water glasses when Judith took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the door.

  “Thanks, Barbara. We can look after ourselves now. There’ll be lots of time to talk tomorrow, I promise you. George—take her back to the others. And show her how to enjoy herself! Will there be dancing?”

  “If Chairman Yackle approves,” said George.

  ‘Tell him I hope he will. After all, I’m the reason for the gala. And I always thought dancing was the best part.”

  “I’ll pass your message ma’am. Come on Barb!”

  The girl still lingered. “If there’s anything else you want, anything at all, just call me. There’s a scrambled com in that cabinet.”

  “Yes, dear! I remember.” She urged the two youngsters out, closed the door, and turned toward me.

  “A scrambled com?” I asked.

  “Ever the electronics tech!” Judith sighed. “We use a closed CB net here. Better than telephones. You can call anybody within five kilometers of the Cove.” She began dishing up the steaming container of clam chowder which Barbara had brought. “I suppose my only hope is to feed you!”

  We ate in silence for several minutes, then I said, “That kid—she’s Enoch’s daughter all right. But her mother must have been quite something.”

  “Vera was a line woman. Her eldest daughter—Barbara’s sister—is a lot like her. She’s a computer expert somewhere now. But Barbara takes after her grandmother—in looks and character.” The expression on Judith’s face suggested she had not liked Barbara’s grandmother. “She was the first female Captain of an American airliner. So you can guess the kind of woman she was!”

  “Like Barbara will be at forty?”

  “I hope not!” Judith stopped eating and looked into the fire. “Barb doesn’t know it—and you mustn’t tell her—but she’s an example of what Freyer, the geneticist, calls ‘dominant genetic clumping.’ A group of sex-linked genes which are transmitted as a group and surface every few generations in a female offspring.” She looked up from the flames and at me. “High-survival traits—not all of them pleasant!”

  “So if Barbara has any grand-daughters, some of them may look like her?”

  “Daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters! Those traits may not show up as a group for several generations.” “And you don’t approve of them?”

  “I don’t know!” Judith sighed. “Her grandmother was very competent, very single-minded, very ambitious.”

  “To make airline skipper in the nineties she’d have had to be!”

  “She was also completely ruthless.”

  She’d have had to be that too. “Barbara’s strong-minded all right. But I’d say there’s a lot of Enoch in her. And he’s the kindest guy—and the most sensible—that I’ve met for some time. While you and Barbara assumed we were boozing he was actually clueing me in how things are here.”

  “What sort of things?” Judith glanced sharply at me. “Enoch says that Chuck Yackle and most of the Council—all oldsters or midders—think that being out in the boondocks is all the protection the Settlement needs. That they’re not going to be bothered because outsiders believe the woods are still full of unexploded missiles and the sea lousy with mines. That nobody’s going to come and try to loot this place if law and order break down.”

  “Isn’t that true? Isn’t that what the Teacher said? When he told us to settle somewhere isolated and become self-sufficient in essentials?”

  “I don’t know what your Teacher said. But he seems to have talked more sense than most gurus. And ‘self-sufficient’ includes being able to defend yourself.”

  “It won’t come to thatl” Judy returned to her study of the fire.

  “There are weapons here,” I persisted. “We saw some this afternoon. What do you think Barbara and her friends were doing in the woods? Playing cowboys and Indians? They had real guns.”

  “They watch the road. That’s good. But they also hunt. That’s why they were carrying guns.”

  “Do you hunt deer with veralloy-clad bullets?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Judith made an impatient gesture. “I’ve never killed anything
in my life. You said so yourself!”

  “You’ve never killed people. Or deer. But what about rats?”

  “Rats? That’s different. That was in the lab.”

  “So you’re ready to kill for knowledge, but not for meat? And you won’t kill to defend the Faith?”

  “Gavin, quit riding me! I suppose I might. If there was no other way. I’m a doctor, remember? Those kids—”

  “Barbara’s no kid! She’s seventeen, and she has her own boat.”

  “Her own boat?” Judith looked up, startled.

  “She told me she got her ticket last spring. And a boat to go with it. How can a girl of her age get a boat of her own? A fully equipped fishing boat worth God knows how much?” “It’s not hers! It belongs to all of us!” Judith looked back into the fire. “Though once the boat’s been allotted it’s as good as hers for as long as she fishes it profitably.”

  “Profitably? Profitable for who? Her or the Settlement?” “Profitable for both. Sutton Cove isn’t a commune, not like Sherando. We’re a cooperative. Everybody owns an equal share. Like a common stock company. And everybody gets an equal cut of any profits. The people who fish—and that’s all of us at one time or another—earn a share in the catch. Those of us who fish regularly get a boat allotted—if we show we’re good enough. In effect the boat’s ours so long as we can pay the rental and the operating costs. What’s left is our own. The best—the high-liners, men or women, make the most. The others, whether we’re carpenters, or doctors, or mechanics, or any other of the trades we have, get paid for what we do. The teachers and so on get a salary, indexed to what the average fisherman earns. A few don’t work at anything profitable but live on their share in the Settlement’s profits. Basic living with no luxuries. We had a poet like that once. A good poet but a lousy fisherman. He should have stuck to poetry but insisted on fishing. He drowned! He was a sweet guy too!”