Timpani the Ostrich Rancher (Flat Earth)

by David Barron

  A thrilling tale of love, war, and the search for freedom in another Africa. Led by a gentlemen aviator and financed by his lover, the respectable citizens of the Kingdom of Kenya decide to take a preemptive approach to threats against the London Confederation by liberating Reichland Africa. Meanwhile, a lowly rose-quartz man fights his own, more personal, battle.

  Timpani the Ostrich Rancher

  by David Barron

  Copyright 2011

  Published by H2NH

  ‘Ostrich, for leather and feather.’ So read the sign above the windswept ranch house in the African savannah. Flocks of ostriches—the rich black feathers of the males overpowering the drab colors of the females—could be seen in all directions on the vast property, each flock tended by a small army of field hands and all supervised by a pink translucent figure on ostrichback. The Dumortier Ranch was rightly claimed the best-run property in all of the Kingdom of Kenya, and Eugene Dumortier was usually rightly proud to hear that said. But today he had larger concerns, and the several coaches idling outside his house spoke to the scope of those concerns.

  “Gentlemen, we must remember: we are now at war,” he said, a bass voice. A light-skinned man of about forty, Eugene Dumortier was dressed in the simple whites of the African gentleman rancher. But anyone who looked at his trim physique would not be wrong in assuming that he was an active participant in the ranch activities, and not some landed idler.

  “Godsdamn the Germans,” interjected Wren Ja, the Police Commissioner of the area and at the moment the commander of the only body of armed men in the Mombasa area, the mounted policemen. His dark skin was not out of place amongst the rest of the group of gentlemen, although he wore a poorly cut safari suit that was.

  “Hear, that’s a toast. Godsdamn the Germans!” A chuckle ran through the gentlemen, relieving some of the tension, and they all toasted ironically with Jake Bmonc. A young man hailing from the outskirts of the Kenyan nobility, he was a master hunter and threw a wonderful party. He was also the only one in the group with experience in a proper War.

  Eugene Dumortier put his empty glass down (servants refilled the gentlemen’s’ drinks) and spoke (servants withdrew to their posts along the wall) “Unfortunately, we are in a tight spot. Not a man among us thought the Germans would attack the London Confederation, and even so not a man among us thought they’d bother to expand the war down here.”

  “What do they need more of Africa for?” declaimed Wren Ja. The other men nodded and murmured agreement. The brutal occupation of vast swathes of the continent by the Reich was a constant source of refugees into the member-states of the London Confederation. The Kingdom of Kenya, the nearest member-state to German Africa, was the best chance for Africans to escape. But also the most vulnerable to attack.

  “It’s not what they need, it’s what they want,” said Eugene. “They want the whole of Africa so that their slaves can’t escape the plantations and the mines. And of course, they want our plantations and our mines because they’re greedy of how much more profitable we are.” He drained his drink and put the glass down on the table (a servant refilled it).

  “It’s surprising how expensive chains can be,” Jake said. Eugene lifted a glass to him in acknowledgement. It was said that workers in the Kingdom of Kenya were better off even than workers in London, who were under the watchful eye of Queen Victoria herself. Even the lowest refugee from Reichland Africa was granted basic rights under the Charter of London as soon as he stepped into any of the Confederation member-states, but the Kingdom of Kenya had expanded even on those, standing as a beacon of progress ahead of her neighbors. And reaping the rewards of that progress.

  “We need men, we need guns. We need a defense strategy!” wailed Wren Ja.

  “I agree with the first two. But—” started Jake, then sat back to think. The rest of the men watched the man, younger than them in years but much older in experience on the battlefields of Europe. After a long pause (the servants shifting in their posts in the silence), Jake concluded in a quiet voice: “We should attack.”

  “What!” shouted Wren Ja. “Attack? Into Reichland Africa? Three times the size of the London Confederacy—”

  “—but with the same number of fighting men,” Jake cut the police commissioner off quietly.

  “But I don’t see—” spluttered Wren.

  “I do,” said Eugene, and all eyes turned towards him. The man enumerated on his fingers as he spoke: “First, we have a large stockpile of weapons and access to more if we wire Cairo. Second, we have more potential fighting men than anywhere in Africa.” Murmurs of disbelief circulated the table.

  Jake cut them short and shot out two questions in rapid succession. “How many men do you think will volunteer to fight for the Germans? How many men would rush to volunteer if the Kingdom of Kenya were threatened?” The answers were self-evident and directly opposed.

  “Three,” continued Eugene (a servant brought him a glass of water). “We have the advantage over the Germans in that we don’t have to leave a massive garrison behind to keep our own country from revolting. Fourth, we are almost certain to have the support of a majority of the population of German Africa.” He sipped some water while he looked at the faces of the gentlemen around him.

  “Fifth, gentlemen,” he said slowly. “Fifth: We will win. We will win because we can replace our losses—if necessary—from the Kingdom of Kenya and from every single village we liberate from the Germans, while the Germans would have to bring more men from the European and Asian fronts. We will win—” Eugene Dumortier paused for emphasis. “—because the Germans consider these astounding advantages they have given to us to be strengths. And they consider our strengths to be weaknesses.” He sat down.

  The gentlemen sat in stunned silence, digesting this. Years, decades of living in peaceful Kenya without the constant specter of slave revolt and without any serious threats had left them without any way to gauge their strength. But the more they thought about it, the more it made sense and one by one they put up their hands in agreement.

  “I see now,” said Wren Ja, the last man to put his hand up.

  “Then we are agreed,” said Eugene. “Each of you are now officers of the militia and will need to outfit your own company. I propose that Jake Bmonc serve as overall military commander.” The other gentlemen nodded in agreement.

  “I make a counter-proposal that I serve as head of intelligence while Eugene Dumortier serves as the overall commander-in-chief,” said Jake. He looked around and then at Eugene. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” said Eugene. This agreement was echoed around the table. “Police Commissioner, you will continue to be in charge of Home Defense while the expeditionary force penetrates into German Africa.” Wren Ja nodded, trying to keep up. “Questions?” The table was silent. “Then I will inform His Majesty the King of our decision. Thank you, gentlemen.”

  As the gentlemen stood up and made small talk exiting the room to their coaches (the servants cleared off the table and went back to their tasks), Jake winked at Eugene and then vanished out the door. After all the coaches were well away, Eugene Dumortier sat back (a servant brought him a cigar, cut and lit it for him) and blew a smoke ring into the air. That had gone perfectly.

  §

  Boss Timpani sat atop his ostrich mount, watching the men corral the herd for slaughter. This team was mostly new hands, and Timpani didn’t want any time wasted on idlers. Timpani was a Rose Quartz-Man, an automata constructed of the Brazilian mineral and animated with the divine spark, although the spark of which specific divinity was under some debate. Shorter and thinner than the average human in Kenya, the rose quartz-man was a translucent pink wit
h visible strands of fibrous green running throughout those parts of his body not covered by working rancher’s clothing. His face was after the human model, with seven holes of various sizes to accommodate the senses of hearing, smell, and taste respectively. The green fibers were especially thick around these parts.

  “Here now. Careful as you go,” Timpani said in a thick gruff voice. His mouth didn’t move, but the fiber set behind it glowed slightly in time with the syllables. The errant man had gotten too deep into the herd, threatening to spook the hens and putting himself and the rest of the team in danger. If not danger to their lives, at least danger to their time when they’d have to chase the herd down when it bolted across the savannah.

  “Sorry, Boss,” the light-skinned man said, touching a hand to his cap. New hands soon learned respect, or Boss Timpani soon taught them. (“Ever try to fight a man made of solid quartz? And he fights dirty!”) And that’s why he was the foreman of Dumortier Ranch.

  As the team finished herding the ostriches into the pen to await the butchers knife and tanners vat, Timpani saw Eugene Dumortier riding out to inspect the herd. The rose quartz-man took his ostrich into a trot, intercepted and rode beside the ranch owner’s pure-bred stallion. “How goes the round-up, Timpani?” Eugene asked.

  “Four of twelve herds done, soor.”

  “Good, good. Now I have to talk to you about something.”

  “Soor?”

  “I will be going on campaign into German Africa within the month. I want it published about the men that I’m raising a company. They’ll be paid the same as what they’re making here and now, as well as all legitimate spoils.”

  “Soor, you know I can’t write.” And it was true that an odd mental block prevented the Rose Quartz-Men from being able to write, and made reading a special challenge.

  “Have young Joneses do it; he does the accounts doesn’t he?”

  “Yes soor. And who will be in charge while you’re away, soor?”

  “Why, you will be of course!” Eugene assumed that the rose quartz-man’s concrete features hid surprise, and so he continued: “You know I think you’re the most competent foreman in all of Kenya, and the toughest to boot. If the Germans do get through, I don’t want the safety of my ranch in the hands of Wren Ja and his police force.”

  Timpani considered this, sharing most of Eugene’s feelings on Wren Ja along with a few even less complimentary opinions of his own on the police force in general. “Thank you, soor.”

  “No need to thank me, thank yourself. You’ve come a long way from being a refugee from a Portuguese mine. Why, if it weren’t for you, I would have never escaped the Moors and made it here to take possession of the family ranch. I can’t say what—”

  “Please, soor,” interjected Timpani, and Eugene saw they were approaching the men. He had promised never to speak of the Rose Quartz-Man’s past in front of others. He understood why. Too many adventures, too much mystery. It must be hard enough to be an outsider without being an object of suspicion. Liberal Kenya was the best chance Timpani had for acceptance, and Eugene knew he would fight with every sinew…well, with all his quartz to keep it whole.

  “Excuse me, Timpani.”

  The inspection filled Eugene with confidence, so he talked with the team a bit to see for himself how the rest of the men would react to being urged to join the company. As he and Jake had suspected, the results were overwhelmingly positive. Many of the men in the team were, after all, refugees themselves and knew firsthand what would happen if the Germans rolled through Kenya. Eugene realized that he would have to hire some sergeants to keep all these men organized. He’d just have to promote some of the more experienced volunteers. He’d have to ask Jake if he knew any idle hunt assistants who could be persuaded to join up as non-commissioned officers.

  As they were riding back to the main house, Timpani intruded on Eugene’s thoughts: “I suppose, soor, you made Jake your heir?”

  “Please, Timpani,” said Eugene, cheeks reddening as he looked around. But they were alone.

  “Excuse me, soor,” said Timpani, with one of his rare but natural laughs. It sounded like rocks grinding together.

  §

  Two weeks later, Eugene found himself at the head of a motley fighting force. Each of the gentlemen had performed brilliantly, gathering companies and enlisting the assistance of experienced fighters (who seemed to appear out of the mists at the prospect of work more challenging than endless scouting) to train the raw volunteers. Most of the companies contained about seventy-five men, although Lord Pennington had managed to amass near two-hundred men lured by a lucrative signing bonus and a generous per diem out of His Lordship’s deep pockets. Dumortier himself had only attracted about fifty men, but that was because his administrative duties had left him little time for recruiting while the other gentlemen had snapped up the volunteers from his own ranch.

  Nonetheless, Eugene was proud of his company, most still in their dusty work wear. Concerns had been raised about the safety of the black troops were they to fall into enemy hands and the gentlemen had decided that armbands would replace uniforms to mark the men out as soldiers and subject to the laws of civilized warfare. It was the best they could do. The patriotic women stitched the armbands (The Star of Kenya over the Union Jack) and distributed them amongst the men along with the rifles from the armory. As Eugene looked across the expeditionary force, nearly fifteen-hundred strong, he decided he preferred this uniform to any imperial display.

  “We’re not all the same, after all,” he said to himself.

  “What’s that?” asked Jake, who had appeared behind him.

  Eugene turned to inspect his Chief Scout: aviator’s leathers, thick helmet and goggles, an automatic pistol hanging opposite the sword of rank on the man’s belt. “Are your scouts ready to fly, Jake? We need to get a clear picture of what awaits us across the border.”

  “My scouts are always ready to fly. They’ve had a relaxing two weeks whipping these men into shape and training up sergeants to continue the job. Now they’ve got to get back in the air.”

  “You make it sound like they don’t enjoy it,” said Eugene. Jake snorted. “Get in the sky.”

  “Yessir,” said Jake, saluting casually and wearing a young man’s grin. “We’ll have our first reports back thirty minutes after squadron take-off.”

  Eugene Dumortier watched the young man run off to the join his squadron and gave a sigh. Putting extraneous thoughts out of his mind, he turned and raised his sword: the signal for his Army of Kenya to begin its first advance into enemy territory.

  §

  Jake hurried over to the rest of his air scout squadron. Handpicked from the finest mappers and air hunters in Kenya, the men (and two women) were inspecting their rocket gliders with their ground crews. “Let’s get in the air, people!” Jake said as he arrived at the side of his craft: flexible curved wings—constructed of balsa wood with a minimum of metal support to save weight—attached to a fuselage which primarily served to protect the pilot from the large rocket suspended beneath in a quick-release harness.

  The only armament was a small-caliber gatling machine gun with a small belt of ammunition, and it was not advisable to use the machine gun in flight without compensating for the effects of the recoil on the glider’s angle of attack. The range of the scout craft was impressive, and it had the advantage of being silent once the depleted rocket was jettisoned after launch. Yet it took a confident pilot with disciplined reflexes and an athletic physique to keep the delicate craft in the air and glide it in for a landing in one piece.

  Nonetheless, thought Jake as he climbed up the short stepladder to the top of the fuselage, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. And as he lay horizontally in the launch position, securing straps around himself against the coming force of the rocket, he was as happy as he had been the first time he had flown the elegant plane four years ago: a terrifying scouting mission over a European battlefield. He lifted himself against the restraints, checking
the tightness. They held. He nodded to the three man ground crew surrounding his craft and they cleared the rocket glider for launch.

  Finished, the crew leader blew a whistle, echoed almost immediately by the other crews. The only veteran unit of the Army of Kenya was ready for action. Jake looked over at Lisa Rutherford, the other pilot in his wing pair, and flashed her a thumbs-up. The woman, the older and more experienced half of the pair, returned the greeting and then settled into the straps of her craft. Each wing pair would launch in sequence, starting with Jake and Lisa. Jake’s hand hovered over the rocket ignition, the safety removed. Then he heard the crew chief’s whistle again, two short blasts and a long. Before the long whistle was over, Jake had smashed his hand down and the rocket blazed into life.

  The glider raced down the long natural runway of the savannah as Jake maintained control using the stick. He spared a glance over at Lisa as her glider left the ground. A little early for Jake’s comfort, but she knew what she was doing. Seconds later, Jake was ascending with her, clawing for altitude before the rocket expended itself and they were robbed of powered flight. The roar of the rocket was increasing in intensity as it ate through the internal fuel, but the glider was flying faster and faster, higher and higher.

  And then the rocket died and Jake leveled the glider out. He ran up the small green flag that indicated All Good, looked over and saw Lisa doing the same. He looked down to gauge his height: respectable. He could see the ground crews starting to pack up and begin their march after the Army of Kenya and towards the next suitable forward landing site. The first wing pair was soon joined by the rest of the squadron and Jake counted ten more green flags. Good start, he thought. Then he signaled the squadron to drop their expended rockets.

  As their weights fell to earth, the gliders soared on an updraft from the sea into German Reichland.

  §

  The Army of Kenya lost some of its luster during that march along the coast from Mombasa. The companies were composed of men drawn from the hard life of ranchers, but it was a hard life eased by a general freedom from being expected to walk in columns and rows in a straight line for hours on end with only the rocky coast to look at for the men in front and the ever-present dust to eat for the men in back. Even the coast-line and the view of the sea paled after a few days