by Geoff Wolak
‘So why aren’t they?’
‘Maybe because they don’t have a future, and they’ve not taken a peek into that future, nor altered their own past. As I said, they’re sending ships to different times, but the start point and the control point seems to be the same.’
‘They’ve lost a great many ships,’ I noted. ‘An expensive pastime for anyone.’
‘Their government must be a dictatorship, or they’d not justify the expense, and the loss of life.’
‘No thoughts about sending a ship back to their past?’
‘They’ve had a small part in the development of the Seethan world, a link to us, so that’s not really and option. We’d need to stop them at a particular time, not earlier. And, for some reason, they’re throwing everything they have at the problem, but with little real understanding of temporal mechanics; I think that may be down to politics.
‘There’s someone in power controlling all this, and making a few bad choices. But whichever way we look at it, they’re at least six years flying time away from us, and we’re six years away from them. They have portal technology, so if we send a nuke they can rewind. My guess is … that the idiot in charge won’t allow any rewinding, because then -’
‘He’d not be the idiot in charge,’ I finished off.
I resumed the mundane, enjoying the summer weather in the embassy garden, and played football with the guards and soldiers, our matches usually very dirty, and not from mud. Balls were squeezed and shins kicked.
The colony on Cuba had finished the road to the oil derrick, and they had uncovered a promenade in Havana, a concrete wall where kids once sat fishing in the sun. Few buildings were structurally sound, but a few old concrete structures had been converted into hostels, the bachelors moving in. At the airfield, we had allocated land to groups of bachelors, hundreds of pigs and cows sent through and duly distributed. Castro would have been proud of what was happening on his island, as the men practised typical Seethan farming commune systems, where the work was shared.
Barter took place, and fish could be swapped for pork or beans. Oil could also be bartered by the communes that ran the oil derrick, and our electric cars were handed over to become taxis, the fares very reasonable. In a move that was well ahead of its time, I developed coins for Cuba, gold coins of various values, and we paid the men with the coins, but would also sell them livestock in return for the coins. A currency had arrived, the Cuban Dollar. And a dollar would buy you a pig, or two chickens, or a three-litre can of oil, or a palm leaf full of fresh fish.
Most things were ten cents, and a hundred dollars was a shit load of money on the island. The Seethan minders handled the central bank, what it was, but most were themselves actively involved in either farming or fishing. If a man wanted land, we gave him land.
With the females having been injected by us, the birth rate was up, around twelve kids per female, and we soon had a crèche, numerous small paddling pools filled with water, Rescue Force staff minding the kids. A few Seethan boys had been employed to help, and they turned out to be good with the babies, the first time the youths had ever seen any.
The colony on Fiji had also produced plenty of young, and we experimented with the kids being raised communally. The men were puzzled and confused at first, but were soon seen taking babies home to look after and to feed, a natural instinct that had been altered by decades of politics. Babies were passed around from man to man, but all of the men showed a reasonable level of care, RF staff on hand just in case.
The first problem hit when men took the babies to the beach. The babies loved the salt water and swam off, several never to be seen again. The RF staff instructed the men not to allow babies into the sea, and issued paddling pools. A large pond was dug out near the main settlement, concrete lined, and filled with fresh water to twelve inches. The men, and their young charges, could now frolic in the water of a hot afternoon.
I had persuaded the Preether to allocate us a few additional females, and I had the selected ladies flown to North Island, New Zealand, where the bachelors were enjoying the beaches. A dozen ladies were serviced by ten keen men each, then hidden and protected by Rescue Force staff.
Whilst the new soon-to-be-indigenous peoples of New Zealand got used to their home, the road south through Kansas had been cleared in many places, work gangs bussed south, often gone for a week at a time. They dug soil off roads, cut up and moved fallen trees, removed glass and bottles from the road, and pressed ever south. From the opposite direction, human volunteers were clearing a settlement at Gladewater, East Texas. Prefab huts had been taken through, along with dozens of tents, as well as the all important electric cars and buses. Teams of humans - RF reconstruction staff and volunteers, edged north slowly, clearing roads towards Kansas.
A separate team dug out old oil wells, the valuable deposits still below the ground, and just in need of pumping. Those pumps were already in place, albeit rusted, and the oil had been shut off around the time of World War Three, or the outbreak of the virus; we would never know. Getting the oil up would be easy enough.
A group of RF staff out exploring found a mass grave, and sent me images. Someone had buried the dead, either dead from the war or dead from the virus. Bleached bones lay scattered on the surface, the bones of thousands of people. Someone had survived long enough to drag the bodies here, maybe the military.
Moving north into west Kansas, camping out each night, the RF explorers eventually fought their way through to Route 35 North, which would be utilised by the Preether from the Dakotas and from Nebraska. A base of operation was established north of Oklahoma City, Wichita having been flattened by a nuke by the look of it.
A few old rusted trucks and buses were pushed aside by our electric buses, or by RF jeeps, the highway cleared. In many places the road lay under soil and dust, but vehicles could drive over that soil and dust if they proceeded carefully.
The Seethan road gangs worked like convicts, and moved along the road shovelling soil at a good pace, often a mile or two cleared every day. Some of the bus gangs would go on ahead and clear a particular obstacle, working backwards. At night they slept in tents or on the bus.
Five weeks after starting the route south, the Preethan President was informed that the road was ready. He allocated bachelors to us, and those men were collected in dated buses for the trip down towards Wichita, where they transferred to the magic electric buses; so clean, and so quiet. The journey took two whole days typically, at least, and the men would stare out of the windows at the scenery. In Gladewater they would be allocated tents or prefab huts, and be assigned to either work gangs or oil gangs.
Minders had been shipped down, police officers, and sixty females. Those females came under the care of Rescue Force, and were protected by the police. Injected, the females were fed very well for several days before any men were let near them.
Unlike the Seether in Cuba, the Preethan minders and police were keeping a tight control, and armed officers patrolled around the camp. Seeing the oil flowing, radios were used by the Preethan minders to call home, a second batch of men dispatched, additional political minders requested - plus further police officers and additional females, but also an additional two hundred soldiers.
And then, a day later, a Preethan bomber landed at a nearby strip, one of their standard twin engine craft that resembled an old German Heinkel. The crew inspected the concrete runway, which had survived well enough, and set-up a happy home. They grabbed work gangs and soon had the runway cleaned up, the workmen directed to start building a base.
Six buses followed that aircraft, although their progress was a lot slower, chugging along for the lengthy journey, and they were all Preethan Air Force staff, mostly ground crews. At the embassy, Henry and I scratched our heads, but we were not overly concerned. Besides, the Seether would be happy if the Preether spread out their military. Still, we puzzled the move.
Seeing the aircraft, our local RF staff began refining oil, small refineries assemble
d from components brought through the portal. Production would not be great, but the Preether didn’t need much. What the newly arrived Preether did now have access to, and might have noticed flying down, was around ten million cattle, the beasts just stood around Texas and grazing, just as many wild horses wandering about. When an RF reconstruction guy mentioned the livestock, I figured I knew what the Preether were after.
I linked in to Jimmy. ‘They’re after the cattle and the horses.’
‘Makes sense; there must be giant herds of wild cattle just wandering around, former domestic stock.’
‘The Rescue Force boys say that the cattle and horses don’t bolt if they get close.’
‘Never seen humans, and they have no predators there. They’re there for the taking.’
‘Will this cause a population boom?’
‘What if it does? You have a world to populate in a hundred years or less, so you’ll need the warm bodies.’
‘This will boost the Preether, but the Seether have plenty of oil in the north,’ I considered.
‘It’s too early to worry about later national identities, but the Seether do win out in the end.’
‘They do?’
‘Yes, because future Pisceans call themselves Seethan.’
I took a keen interest in the new colony in East Texas, and in the organised Preethan move south, receiving reports most every day. Cattle were being rounded up and used to feed the Preethan men and soldiers, and that airfield was growing, wire fences being erected, guards patrolling the wire.
Additional Preethan planes flew down, and additional soldiers were bussed down, even a few armoured cars and military trucks seen to be driven down. Navigation was easy enough, because most of the turn-offs had been blocked, or were overgrown. And the reported tally of Preethan men now based in Texas was close to two thousand, and still growing.
Near Wichita, the small road-side base was growing rapidly, Preethan soldiers now seen to be based there. They were also seen to be erecting fences, huge paddocks created, horses nudged into one, cattle into another. And these paddocks were half a mile across.
A few weeks later I received a report that a line of twenty trucks had been seen carrying cattle north, each truck loaded with six or more unwilling bovine passengers. I was not sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but it was progress.
The Preethans had protested to the Seethans about the football propaganda, secretly annoyed that the Preethan public loved the games. Their own teams were coming along, playing of the game now just about compulsory for soldiers and police officers. We had dispatched football coaches east, and the Preethan standards were reported as being ‘not bad’. Then one morning I smiled at a report, showing Henry. The Preether were building their own stadium. Real progress.
When another five hundred Preethan men were sent south, I became suspicious of what the Preether were up to. Our ambassador to Preether didn’t know what they were up to, and we had been the ones to nudge them south in the first place; we could hardly stop them and demand to know what they were doing. I kept an eye on it, drones permanently over I35, and the traffic flowed freely north and south.
North of Wichita a small town was growing, and a new settlement was being created near Oklahoma City. I consulted Henry.
‘If the Preether move south – after oil and cattle, and we open up oil in Canada,’ I began, ‘then the opposing sides are … far apart.’
Henry nodded. ‘Far apart means that a ground war is certainly less likely in the short term, since most of the skirmishes were around Wyoming, and to do with oil. But it also means that both sides prosper, develop, grow stronger, and ten years down the road decide that they need more land. By then they’ll have better aircraft, and better tanks.’
‘But that gives us ten years or more to play with, and if they do start a conflict I’ll use drones to stop them.’
‘Which,’ Henry pointed out, ‘will alienate them.’
‘Before then I’ll have trade going,’ I firmly stated. ‘Or I would have failed here.’
I linked into Cuba after they had called me, and discovered that four cargo ships had turned up, their crews leaving Cuba via the portal – and not stopping to train anyone in how to captain an old tub; they were on their way to Texas to rebuild another version of America.
I thanked the crews via video link, and sent a note back to Jimmy, asking for volunteers who knew how to handle old tubs, really old tubs. He found plenty of suitable people on 1938-world, since it was at an early date, and retired sailors wishing some adventure duly signed up. They got used to their new floating homes, installed a few modern gadgets to communicate with both each other - and with the humans here, and set sail to test the old tubs.
Admiral Forrestor was now in Texas on Jimmy’s old world, along with his men and their families, accommodation being hurriedly sorted. Their ships here on the Seethan world had been scuttled in deep waters, soon to be new homes for fish and octopus, the hulks laden with unwanted explosives and munitions.
The first thing that our new fleet of old tubs scheduled was to visit a few islands, Jamaica first, where drones had detected a human colony. The tubs reached Jamaica in twenty-four hours, and shore parties hit pristine white sands, no footprints evident. I had insisted they take an RF medic along, and four Marines per ship, just in case, and that case was realised. The shore party beat a hasty retreat, the locals not friendly. The locals only brandished spears, bow and arrows, but they were still a danger. Marines fired at trees and set them alight, the hostiles stopping to wonder just what magic was used.
A ship’s captain linked in to me. ‘Sir, they’re cannibals, hostile and … savages, and … any other suitable adjectives you can think of. They have dead bodies strung up, heads on poles, and all sorts of voodoo stuff going on.’
I took a moment. ‘It bothers me, on several levels, to see humans living like that, especially when I consider that the Seether may one day come across them. We … are the god-like ancestors, not savages.’ I heaved a sigh. ‘Go back, kill the adult males, old women, and capture the rest – but without endangering yourself.’
‘Are you … sure, sir?’
‘Yes, I’m not leaving them there like that. Do you … have any better suggestions, about how they may rejoin mankind?’
‘No, sir, that would be … just about impossible.’
‘So do as I ask. Keep the captives on board, well fed, well looked after, and … try and start to educate them.’
‘Will do, sir. And where do we take them?’
‘To Cuba, and through the portal, but without the Seethan seeing them.’
‘Will do, sir.’
I discussed my order to the captain with Henry. He commented, ‘People practising voodoo and cannibalism … would be hard to integrate on our world. And, if they’re mature, it will very hard to stop them from just killing people in the street. They’d be zoo exhibits, treated like the Antarctic survivors.’
‘Some of those men have been released,’ I commented. ‘About a thousand or more. After being injected they lost the addiction, and a year in the sun mellowed them. Some found religion, others learnt a trade.’
‘And four hundred committed suicide,’ Henry thought he would mention.
‘Some of those suicides were … assisted,’ I pointed out.
‘Ah,’ Henry carefully mouthed.
‘Even after a year they privately expressed a desire to grab a few young girls and kill them. We bugged them.’
‘To quote Mister Silo: we are not short of people.’
In Africa, in the Congo, Steffan Silo and the volunteers were busy clearing roads and laying new tarmac of a hot afternoon. And, oddly enough, a few dozen people had walked out of the jungle, one of the groups a white family alongside a few blacks. Swiss Family Robison had survived in the jungle, and the media on many worlds were suddenly very interested.
The grandfather of the existing alpha male was a doctor and researcher, and he had moved his family and
household staff into the jungle of the Congo when World War Three had broken out. And there they had remained to this day. But according to the family descendants, they had visited local towns years later and found everyone dead. They had grabbed the tinned food and dry foods left lying around, tools and utensils, and returned to the jungle hideout, certain that they were the only ones left alive on the planet. Since the survivors were well-adjusted I had them all shipped out straight away.
A few black families had also walked out of the jungle and met the strangers, food offered and thanks given. Since they were not throwing spears, I had them sent back as well. I then had an idea, and I asked the Preethan about their own prisoners. They admitted to around six hundred men currently locked up, and another three thousand prisoners of war languishing in cells.
Henry and I were staggered by the prisoners, and angered, not least because we should have done something before now. I sent word to the Preethan President that I wished to clear roads in the far east of the country, but that it was very dangerous and dirty work – and could we have the civil prisoners and war prisoners. He did not need to be asked twice.
The prisoners were bussed south, a long and hot journey, the weary men chained together for their uncomfortable but scenic ride. At the end of their journey, the men downbeat and malnourished, they were unchained in front of an open portal, and told to walk through at gunpoint. On the other side I had them fed, given water and low dosage injections, and sent to New Kinshasa, where they stepped through to Steffan Silo. A tented city had been quickly erected, prefab huts sent through, as well as a large supply of food – such as tinned tuna.
