2240 Coronation of Gerrald Saldana as King of Kulu. Foundation of Saldana dynasty.
New Days Old
Times
Nyvan 2245
New Days Old Times
Amanda Foxon was standing right beside the smooth ebony trunk of the apple tree when she heard the pick-up van’s horn being tooted in long urgent blasts. She dumped the ripe fruit into the basket at her feet, and pressed her hands hard into the small of her back. A sharp hiss of breath stole out of her mouth as her spine creaked in protest.
She’d been out in the southern orchard since first light, seven hours ago. Always the same at the end of summer. A frantic two weeks to get the big green globes picked and packed before they became overripe under the sun’s fearsome summer radiance. The trees were genetically adapted so that they grew into a very specific mushroom shape, the trunk dividing into seven major boughs two and a half metres above ground. Twigs and smaller branches interlaced to form a thick circular canopy of wood which was smothered by fans of emerald leaves. Glossy apples hung from the underside, clustered as tightly as grapes. Providing they were picked early enough their re-sequenced chromosomes would ensure they didn’t perish for months. So every year a race developed to get them to Harrisburg in time. The contract called for the whole crop to be at the warehouse in another eight days; she had sold the futures early in February, anxious for a guaranteed purchase. Possibly a mistake, holding out could have meant a higher price.
If I just had Arthur’s nerve.
Feeling the blood pound heavily through her lowered arms, she walked out from under the shade of the tree. Blake was driving the fruit farm’s ageing pick-up along the switchback track that wound down the side of the broad valley. A plume of dust fountained out from the wheels each time he swung it round a curve. Amanda’s lips set in a hard line of disapproval; she’d warned him countless times about driving so fast. There would be another argument tonight.
‘He’ll turn the damn thing at that speed,’ Jane said.
All of the pickers had stopped to watch the small red vehicle’s madcap approach.
‘Good,’ Amanda grunted. ‘I can collect the insurance, get a decent van with the money.’ She flinched as she realized Guy was giving her a confused look. Her son was only nine; at that age funny was rude jokes and slapstick interactives. Lately, he’d started following Blake round the farm, eager to help out.
The pick-up’s horn sounded again, blatantly distressed.
‘All right,’ Amanda said. She pulled her wide-brimmed hat back on her head, wiping the sweat from her brow. ‘Jane and Lenny, come with me, we’ll go see what the problem is. Guy, could you make sure everyone’s got a drink, please. It’s very hot today.’
‘Yes, Mum.’ He started scampering across the orchard’s shaggy blue-green moss that was Nyvan’s grass-analogue, heading for the sheds at the far end.
‘The rest of you, we’ve got two-thirds of the trees left, and only eight days.’
The remaining pickers drifted back to their trees and the white cartons piled round them. They weren’t the usual group of easygoing travellers who visited the farm for summer. Govcentral’s Employment Ministry was causing them a lot of grief with new taxes and regulations concerning mobile residency permits for their caravans. Then the fishing ports had begun investing in automated plants, cutting down on the manual gutting and packing work available in the winter months. Like many communities, the travellers were beginning to feel pressured. Immigrants from Earth’s diverse cultures were being deliberately compressed into the same districts by the Settlement Ministry, whose officers adhered rigidly to the approved multiethnic amalgamation policy. There were few of Nyvan’s towns and cities free from strife these days, not like the first century when the pioneers shared the challenge of their new world together. Spring and summer had seen a lot of caravans heading along the main road outside the valley, rolling deeper into the continent where Govcentral’s bureaucrats weren’t quite so prevalent.
Blake was still doing fifty when he drove round the stone farmhouse and into the tree-lined back yard. He braked to a sharp halt outside the kitchen’s open stable door.
‘Give me a hand here!’ he yelled.
Amanda, Jane, and Lenny were still under the big aboriginal burroughs trees when he jumped out of the driver’s seat. A pair of legs were hanging over the pick-up’s tailgate. The dark trouser fabric was ripped, slippery with blood.
‘Hell!’ Amanda started to run. The two young pickers were easily faster than her.
The man Blake had brought was in his late twenties, dressed in a green onepiece overall with an elaborate company logo on its breast pocket. A very grubby light-brown waistcoat hung loosely, containing several tool pockets. His skin was dark enough to suggest a Latino ancestry, black curly hair framed a round face with a blunt nose. He wasn’t tall, shorter than Amanda, with swarthy limbs.
Amanda stared in shock at the wounds on his legs, the bloody cloth which had been used to bandage him. ‘Blake, what happened?’
‘Found him just off the main road. He said his horse threw him. I patched him up as good as I could.’ Blake gave Lenny an anxious look. ‘Did I do it right?’
‘Yeah.’ Lenny nodded slowly, his hands moved down the injured man’s legs, squeezing gently. He glanced up at Amanda. ‘This man didn’t fall; these are bite marks. Some kind of dog, I’d say.’
‘Blake!’ Amanda wanted to strike him, or perhaps just banish him from the farm. How could he have been so stupid? ‘For heaven’s sake, what did you bring him here for?’
‘What else was I supposed to do?’ he demanded petulantly.
It wasn’t worth the effort of arguing. Blake would never admit he was wrong about anything. His basic flaw was his inability to learn, to think ahead.
Blake was one of Arthur’s more distant relatives, fostered on her by the rest of the family who were convinced a woman couldn’t run the farm by herself. There are three orchards, they argued, over five hundred trees. Guy’s whole future. You’ll never manage to prune and fertilize and irrigate them properly, not with the other fruit fields as well, and there’s the machinery, too. So Blake had come to live with her and Guy. He was twenty-two, and too quiet to be hot-headed, though he could be astonishingly stubborn. Of course, her biggest mistake was letting him into her bed. He’d interpreted that as some kind of partnership offer to give him an equal say on the way the farm was run. But the nights out here in the countryside were achingly long, and it had been nineteen months since Arthur’s funeral. It wasn’t even the sex she wanted, just the warmth and touch of having him there, the comfort she could draw from a warm body. So far she’d managed to contain and deflect any potential clashes over his new attitude, but this folly could not be overlooked.
‘Well?’ Blake insisted.
Amanda glanced at Jane and Lenny, who were waiting for her to take the lead. The stranger’s blood was dripping onto the hard bare soil of the back yard, turning to black spots.
‘All right. Lenny, stop the bleeding and patch him up as best you can. As soon as he’s conscious again, Blake you drive him over to Knightsville. Leave him at the station or the hospital, whatever he wants. After that he’s someone else’s problem.’
She didn’t dare look at the two pickers in case it triggered a rebellion. Don’t give them the chance to refuse, she told herself. ‘Lenny, you and Blake take his legs, you’ll need to be careful. Jane, help me with his shoulders. We’ll take him into the kitchen, put him on the table. It’ll be easier to treat him there.’
The pickers moved hesitantly, expressing their reluctance through complete silence. Amanda climbed up into the back of the pick-up and crouched down beside the injured man. As she slid her hands under his back ready to lift him up she felt a hard lump inside the waistcoat, larger than a fist. Her hand reached automatically towards it.
The stranger’s eyelids flipped open. His hand caught her wrist. ‘No,’ he grunted. ‘Do what you said. Patch me up. Then I will go. It is
the best for us both.’ He glanced round at the figures clustered over him. A sharp frown appeared as soon as he saw Lenny’s black and silver skull cap.
Jane and Lenny exchanged a knowing glance at that.
‘I cannot help with you crushing my wrist,’ Amanda said levelly. It was everything she’d dreaded: his reaction to the pickers, his injuries, his weapon. What must he have done to have dogs set on him? The thought made her afraid for the first time. He wasn’t an inconvenience any more, he was an active threat, to the farm, to Guy.
Between them, they hauled him into the kitchen. He made no sound during the whole process, not even when one of his legs was knocked against the doorframe. Amanda knew she would have cried out at such pain. Such control made her wonder at what electronic implants he was using. Nerve fibre regulators were not cheap, nor did ordinary citizens have any use for them.
‘I’ll fetch my bag,’ Lenny said, once the stranger was lying on the big old wooden table. He hurried out.
Amanda looked down at the man again, uncertain what to do, his eyes were tight shut again. Even Blake’s confidence had ebbed in the face of such robotic stoicism.
‘If I could have some water,’ the man said huskily.
‘Who are you?’ Amanda asked.
His eyes fluttered open as she filled a glass at the sink.
‘My name is Fakhud. I thank you for bringing me into your home.’
‘I didn’t.’ She handed him the glass.
He took a sip and coughed. ‘I know. But I still thank you. I have many friends in the city, influential friends, they will be grateful to you.’
‘I bet you’ve got friends,’ Jane muttered softly.
‘It’s the bank we need help with,’ Blake said with a dry smile. ‘Those bastards are bleeding us dry with their interest rates. Not just us, all the farms are suffering.’
‘Blake,’ Amanda said. He scowled, but kept quiet.
Fakhud grimaced, and took another sip of the water.
‘What happened to you?’ Amanda asked.
‘I fell from my horse.’
‘And the bite wounds? Lenny said it was probably a dog.’
‘Your pardon, but the less you know of me, the less involved in my affairs you will be.’
‘Sure,’ she said in disgust.
Lenny returned with his bag. He started to stick small sensor disks on Fakhud’s legs.
‘Stay and help Lenny,’ Amanda told Blake. ‘Then come and tell me when he’s ready to leave.’ She and Jane walked out into the heat of the farmyard. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said it so fiercely it was almost a hiss.
Jane sighed. ‘Not your fault.’
‘I can’t believe Blake was so thoughtless. To put you and your friends in this position, it’s . . . it’s . . .’
‘In a way it’s rather admirable, actually. He’s only interested in the farm, getting your fruit picked and the trees pruned and fertilized. Politics, race, and religion aren’t part of the equation for him. That was the whole point of Nyvan, wasn’t it? Our parents came here to escape their past; they wanted a land where they could put all their energies into their farms and their businesses. And your Blake, he’s still living there.’
‘He’s a fool. Times change.’
‘No, time doesn’t change, it just goes backwards. That’s the thing to be sorry for.’
‘I’ll have Fakhud out of here by this evening, whether he’s on his feet or not.’
Jane gave her a sad smile. ‘I’m sure you will.’
‘Will Lenny be able to patch those wounds up? Some of them looked ugly to me.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Lenny completed three years at medical school before we all decided to leave Harrisburg. He’s as good as qualified. And he’s had a lot of experience with the kind of injuries you get from clashing with the authorities.’
‘I can’t believe you were forced out.’
‘Nobody can, until it happens to them. Oh, it’s not that bad, not yet. But we Jews have a long history of persecution we can reference, in fact it is our history. We can see the way Harrisburg is going. Best we leave before it does spiral downwards.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘Tasmal, most likely. A lot of our people have drifted there over the last decade, and to hell with the Settlement Ministry quotas. We’re almost a majority there, the newest of the New Jerusalems.’
‘But that’s on the Dayall continent; it has to be six thousand kilometres away at least.’
Jane laughed. ‘The promised land is never over the next hill. Also our history.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Me and the rest will be OK. We were smart enough to start the journey early. The stubborn ones, those that stay, they’ll be the ones who suffer.’
Amanda glanced round the familiarity of the farmyard. The burroughs trees that waved slowly in the warm breeze were an easy five metres taller than they had been when she was a girl. Over in the eastern corner, the well pump was making its usual clatter as it topped up the cisterns. The red clay tile roof of the long barn was sagging deeper as this year’s growth of purple-flowering joycevine added another heavy layer of branches.
It isn’t just Blake whose mind was closed to the outside, she acknowledged reluctantly. I’m so comfortable here I share the same illusion. The only thing which matters to anyone who lives at the farm is the farm. Until today.
‘You’d better get back to the orchard,’ Jane said. ‘The apples still need picking, nothing’s changed that.’
‘Right.’ Amanda took a last uneasy look at the kitchen door. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Tidy up here.’ Jane was studying the splashes of blood in the back of the pick-up van. ‘I’ll get the hose out and wash away all the traces. Best to be careful. The Harrisburg cops are going to be searching for him, and we don’t know what happened to the dogs.’
Amanda didn’t even feel resentful that she was being told what to do on her own farm. She walked back to the orchard, and told the pickers that Blake had found a victim of a riding accident that Lenny was now treating. They seemed to accept that with only mild curiosity.
It was another hour before Blake came out to tell her Lenny had finished. Jane had done a good job washing away the evidence from the pick-up, which was now parked in its usual place beside the gate. Amanda couldn’t even see any blood spots left on the soil outside the kitchen door, just a big damp patch. Jane was busy tending a small bonfire.
The kitchen had been cleaned, too; it smelt strongly of bleach. Fakhud was sitting in one of the high-back chairs around the table. His blue overalls had been replaced by a faded green T-shirt and black canvas shorts – which she recognized as belonging to Blake. Both his legs were sprayed in pale-yellow bandage foam which had hardened into a tough carapace.
A silent Lenny gave her a brief nod as he walked out.
‘He doesn’t say much,’ Fakhud said, ‘but he’s an excellent medic. I suppose there’s an irony in the situation, him tending me. We’re hardly allies.’
‘You’re humans,’ Amanda said.
‘Ah. Indeed we are. You shame the pair of us, my dear lady.’
‘Well, not for any longer. You’re fit to move, I’d like you to leave now.’
‘Of course. I have imposed too much already.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Blake said. ‘Amanda, you haven’t heard what he’s told me.’
‘Nor do I want to,’ she said wearily.
‘Not about . . . you know, what he does. This is about New Balat itself, the way its society is run.’
‘What about New Balat?’ She rounded on Fakhud. ‘What nonsense have you been filling his head with?’
‘It’s not nonsense,’ Blake snapped. ‘It’s a solution to our financial problems.’
‘You don’t have financial problems,’ she said. ‘I do. The farm does. You do not. Get that quite clear.’
‘All right! But it’s still a solution to your problems. And if you have problems here, the
n so do I.’
‘Start getting a grip on perspective, Blake. I manage this farm just fine, thank you. The money doesn’t come in regularly, because we have seasons. It’s a situation I’ve coped with my entire life. Every farm throughout history has lived like this; we get paid for our crops when they come in and we have to make the money last throughout the rest of the year. A simple expenditure-planning program on the home terminal can see us through without any trouble. Nothing needs to change because some newcomer can’t cope with that. This farm has been here for eighty years, and we’ve managed perfectly well up until now. If it ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it.’
‘The banks are crippling you with their interest rates. They don’t care about families and people. They just want money, they want you to work your fingers to the bone for them.’
‘You’re being simplistic. I make a profit every year. And everybody has to work for a living, even bankers.’
‘But it doesn’t have to be like that. Fakhud says that the New Balat council gives grants to all the farms in their county so they can buy new equipment when they need it and pay workers a decent wage. And their kids have an education paid for by the state, a good education. There are no private schools, no privileged elite.’
‘I’m sure the New Balat council gives out thousands of benevolent grants. But here in Harrisburg’s county we get loans from the bank instead. There’s no basic difference. Only the names change. Our services come from the private sector, your friend’s society is paid for by the state. So what?’
‘It’s fairer, that’s what. Can’t you see that?’
‘No.’
‘They’re not dependent on the profit motive, on greed. That’s the difference. That’s what makes it fair! Their economic policy is controlled by democracy, with us it’s the other way round.’
‘Heaven preserve us. Blake, I’m only going to say this once more. I am not interested. I don’t want to replace our bankers with their bureaucrats, I do not want to switch from paying high interest rates to high taxes. We have a market for the fruit, we have a decent cash flow. That’s all we need. This is a farming family, my only ambition is to keep it ticking over smoothly. I’m sorry if that isn’t enough for you. If you don’t like that, you can go. Besides, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not even in New Balat county.’
A Second Chance at Eden Page 20
