by neetha Napew
The temperature was definitely warming up and bushes were blossoming, spreading a heady smell that the inland breeze wafted down to the Bay area. The agricultural teams had ploughed during their absence, and sowed the fields with seed purloined from the now deserted Bella Vista camp in a special trip of the KDL. As no ship had come to collect what was left of the grain, the KDL did, for the supplies brought across the channel were low.
The silos were swept clean for this year’s storage.
On the continent that had been evacuated, the machines had been ploughing, too, and many of the fields were sown. Some wit among the Aggies set up a competition, one-sided though it was, as to the growth and health of their crops versus the Farmers’ and the resultant yield per acre. The Aggies had already elected to use fields the same size the Farmers had, since the arable land seemed to divide into such sections: another clue that this continent might once have been farmed too. The rustled loo-cows grazed the less desirable fields and the hillsides.
About the time the crops were a good six inches high and thriving, a most unpleasant discovery was made: there were night-crawlers again.
Not many, but enough to know that there was a resurgence of the menace.
Astrid put forward the theory that it was the loo-cows, excreting internal parasites that had a second cycle as nightcrawlers. There were enough to agree with her, but it made for an interesting argument in the evenings and had those with wooden floors in their huts replacing them with thick slate or flagstones. And many of those who had not sited their dwellings moved nearer the better-travelled areas.
No-one walked out at night on any field, and the sentinel positions were either made of stone or set high above the ground on stilts.
This was, however, a very minor setback. Compost heaps were hastily shifted to stone tubs, and the disposal of noxious wastes was no longer a problem. Not that anyone wanted nightcrawlers in a latrine. Since such facilities no longer had to be dug, it became a punishment chore to do the late evening dumps, far enough from the rapidly expanding community to reduce the hazard of night-crawler infestation to the populated areas.
Spring lasted months, but the fine weather assured the Aggies of excellent crops, as good as or even better than what the Farmers were cultivating. The varieties of tubers and pulses occupied half as many fields as the grain crops, and caves were found to store the harvests rather than having to search ever further afield for the edibles. The night-crawlers were not attracted to vegetable matter unless it was mixed with bloody substances, so these crops were not disturbed. The rocksquat compound flourished, and it was discovered that baby rocksquats were far more delicate in flavour and meat than the adults.
Evening classes in various skills were given, although the nights when
Admiral Ray Scott threw his first successful pot, or Bull Fetterman
completed a set of six dining-chairs, and Marrucci managed a creditable
mortise-and-tenon drawer for his chest, remained landmarks in the
assimilation
of the disparate ax-professionals into true Botanicals.
There were failures, as Mitford put it: people who refused to do their share of work, or felt themselves put upon by ‘authority’ to always having to do the less glamorous tasks. Judge Bempechat gave each offender three chances to redeem himself or herself in the eyes of the community. Then the unrepentant had a one-way trip back to the Old Continent where they could fend for themselves, with cup, blanket, knife and hatchet. After the expulsion of the first dozen or so, delinquency reduced significantly.
Once a month, the two valley prisons were visited. The Turs disappeared one by one until the valley was empty. The Catteni eventually put up shelters and, when they asked for supplies like nails, or meat as a change from a fish diet - these were provided. But nothing that could give them any assistance in escaping, though Zainal doubted they would try.
“They are Drassi and Tudo. They have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and that is sufficient.” ‘I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to better conditions,’ Marrucci had said, for he was often in the pilot’s seat in one of the two small airships that did the run. ‘I mean, when you consider we’re damned near city size with our own distillery . .
.” He was hoping to add wine to the spirits and had already been south for the soft fruits as a basis for his ‘cordial’.
“They like it the way they have it now,’ and Zainal shrugged.
“D’you think the Turs did escape?” Marrucci asked.
“Who cares?”
“You gotta point there.” The Tub went regularly to the mines with supplies for the men and women working there, to rotate change personnel and bring back ore. The judge often gave a month’s sentence at hard labour for misdemeanors, and only one ever found mining an enjoyable occupation; he stayed on.
For evening entertainment, those with any talent provided shows, managing to remember enough of a musical comedy or even a play to put on abridged versions or invent dialogue and action to add to what they remembered. Decks of cards were manufactured from the heavy wrappings on stores in the KDL and Baby. The cards didn’t shuffle well, but that didn’t keep the players from betting an hour’s work or a special bit of scrimshaw to make it interesting.
Gold had been found but it was decided - not without heated debate - that barter made a better system for a small community like theirs where everyone was expected to work communityhours, not pay to get out of the labour. Among the diverse trades of the colonists there were several jewellers. They would contract to produce jewellery for those who found gold, and even a few gemstones, and decided among themselves what was fair payment in grams of the metal.
Iri Bempechat had taken on several assistants as legal advisers in disputes, most of which could be settled by compromise.
However, the ax-military personnel formed lower court, but their decisions could be appealed, leaving Judge Bempechat to give the final verdict on an issue.
“We don’t need a formal government,’ Beverly had said one evening when the topic came up again in a mess hall that was more crowded than usual due to an unusually heavy and long fall of rain. (It was the beginning of many such rainfalls which limited themselves to night-times.) ‘Why complicate what has been working rather smoothly?” “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ Mitford called out, and got a good laugh out of the old army axiom.
“We have a form of government, actually, though most of you don’t realize it. We just don’t have elected officials or a nominal head of state. Nor do I believe one is required,’ said Iri, his cultivated and mellifluous voice reaching to the furthest corners.
“Those of us with special expertise have taken on the duties required to ensure peace and tranquillity. Community hours handle public services, such as they are, and the rest of us work where we can be useful and at our previous professions for the most part, even in the limited fashion due to the constraints of supplies. I suppose we should thank our lucky stars that we have so many skills among us.
Practically every walk of life is represented. Our alien associates,’ and he gestured to the Rugarians sitting in their usual group, and the Deskis who were more apt to mix in with humans, ‘have supplemented us in many ingenious ways. I think some of us may have a chuckle, comparing what we used to do with what we’re doing now, but frankly, I think it’s been beneficial as well as instructive. We’re all doing very well indeed. And able, for the most part, to do what we do the way we want to. Certainly without any bureaucratic interferences, and certainly without a thread of red tape.
You don’t know how happy that makes me!’
Good-natured chuckles greeted that sally.
“Why indeed should we fix something that isn’t broken?” he added, raising his hands in appeal.
“Yeah, but what happens to our pleasant utopian dream when the Farmers come?” Balenquah asked, glancing around.
“Leave it to Balenquah,’ an anonymous male voice said.
“W
hat does that mean?” the pilot asked, rising from his chair and staring round, trying to discover the source.
“It means,’ Marrucci said, reaching across the table and hauling Balenquah down, ‘you’re out of order, off course, and being a pain in the arse again. You’re alive, you’re sure kicking, you’re even flying, and if that isn’t better than starving in a Catteni prison for blowing up their freighter, you’re gone in the head.” ‘Don’t say another word,’ Beverly put in from a nearby table, ‘if you want to fly again.” ‘That’s just what I mean,’ Balenquah complained. ‘We need a formal government, so you know who’s got the right to give orders.” “That’s enough out of you, Balenquah,’ said Scott, seconding Beverly’s admonition.
“You’re not an admiral of anything here, Scott,’ Balenquah said.
“Oh, boorrring,’ drawled one of the ‘ladies’ from two tables over. And she yawned ostentatiously, which made the others at her table howl with laughter.
“You are, you know,’ said Marrucci, shaking his head at
Balenquah who had coloured with such open ridicule, ‘a real bore with
all this gloom and doom and I’m obviously,’ now he turned to look at the
‘ladies’ table’, ‘not the only one who thinks
so.”
Balenquah rose, with his right arm cocked but, even before Marrucci could rise to defend himself, Scott had nodded to the man beside him and they had risen, captured Balenquah’s arm and were hustling him out of the mess hall and into the rain.
Add bouncer to my list of new-world occupations,’ Scott said to Beverly as the two returned to their seats.
At their table, Kris found herself sharing a bit of Balenquah’s pessimism. The problem of the Farmers was just beneath the surface of everyone’s thoughts, despite the way most people carried on as if there were not that threat hanging over them.
Zainal kept insisting that the Farmers were benign. He could give no other reason for that than the way this planet had been tended for thousands of years, if the ‘new forest’ of lodge-pole trees was an indication.
“And it has been months since the Balloon was blown up,’ he reminded her as they walked back to their cabin when the rain had stopped. Flagstone pathways had been laid around much of Retreat Bay now, to hinder night-crawlers, although walkers automatically stamped hard every third step.
Kris let Zainal do it for them both as she didn’t like jarring the baby she could now feel move, in little flutters, within her: normal activity at five months. Sarah kept complaining that her little dear kicked like a soccer star, but she was eight months along. By now, almost every female of child-bearing age, including the Deski and Rugarians, was expecting - which meant that Retreat Bay would have a baby boom of 2,103 new souls. Anna Bollinger might have given birth to the first human baby on Botany, but there had since been thirty-four born to women who had been captured pregnant. Now the new crop which had been ploughed on Botany, as someone had remarked in a biblical fashion - were reaching tem. Patti Sue was first, and prideful about producing a son for Jay Greene.
Kris didn’t know which she wanted, apart from being healthy
and not too much resembling its sire. Somehow she couldn’t ask Zainal what his preference would be. And yet, he would act in loco parentis to whatever she produced.
Most of the pregnant women carried on in their speciality as long as possible: and Kris, Sarah and Leila were no exceptions.
In fact they had arguments with the sergeant that he was assigning the team the ‘easy’ trips. So he organized Zainal to take Baby to the smallest continent - really more of a very large island than a continental land-mass - to circumnavigate it, the coastline being the only part that was green.
“Bit like Australia outback,’ Sarah remarked as Zainal guided Baby cries-cross the interior. ‘Like Nullarbor. Nothing for Flicks!
Not even mulga or brush . . . sand and rock,’ she added in disgust.
“Hmmm, yes, I see,’ Joe said, without explaining his cryptic remark as he gazed out the starboard side in the pilot’s compartment.
“Real rock!” He pointed now to a rocky ridge that ran obliquely across below them, like vertebrae, with dips and spires. ‘Dinosaur bones.”
“Hmmm, that’s what they do look like,’ Kris agreed.
Whitby insisted that they land and spend one night at the base of that range, where the spatial maps indicated one of the ore deposits.
“We should know where copper and zinc are, and that’s what’s down there. If the lodes are near the surface, it might be advantageous to take a week or so to work up a cargo.”
So they landed, and it was hot.
“Just like home in the dry,’ Sarah said ecstatically, throwing her arms back, with her gravid belly out and turning her face up to the sun.
“Good way to get sunstroke,’ Joe said as he slammed her reedweave hat on her head. ‘We are not, I repeat, we are not delivering you prematurely in the confines of Baby.” ‘Having a baby in the Baby?” Sarah was off in a fit of the giggles.
Whitby, Leila, Joe and Zainal went off to try and locate the ore, laden with bottles for samples and soil. Sarah and Kris, who found the heat especially enervating, found what shade they could in the lee of Baby by digging out enough soil under the landing vanes to sit on blankets. Kris dozed off while Sarah dragged her hands through the scattered rocks, trying to find interesting ones.
Sarah, too, dozed off, and they were both awakened by the laughter of the returning prospectors. Each carried some sort of dead animal, resembling a large rat.
Kris recoiled when Zainal plunked three brace beside her. The pelts caught her attention because they were mottled in soft sandy shades.
“Camouflage? From what?” she said, venturing to touch the nearest. It was rough with dirt and sand.
“Burrowers,’ Joe said succinctly, ‘but they test edible. We thought we’d give them a try. They eat the insects of which this continent has a multitude. I saw twenty-five varieties and caught,’ he held up several bottles tied together to prevent breakage, ‘only a few for closer examination. You never know what might be useful.” He grinned wickedly. ‘Or tasty. And nutritious.” ‘How would you know?
You never hunted out back with the aborigines,’ Sarah said.
“Neither did you.”
“But I did a paper on the ones the aborigines favour,’ she replied hotly and they were off again.
The desert burrowers - Kris declined to think of them as ‘rats’ were skinned and, after Joe did further tests with the equipment in Baby, were cooked in the galley and served as part of the evening meal.
The flesh was different in texture and taste from anything else that Botany had provided: sort of nutty and sleek. Almost difficult to bite into.
Twilight brought out their natural predators, bat-like creatures who
swooped on long triangular wings from rocky eyries to catch the
burrowers. The cooler air encouraged a different set of insects to
appear, ones that bit and itched and forced everyone to take refuge in
the scout-ship. But not before they saw the desert burrowers in action,
making incredible leaps
into the air to catch their meal on tongues that elongated to make the capture and seeming to disappear from sight the moment they heard bat-wings above them.
“We’ve some like that on ol’ Earth,’ Joe remarked, watching from the scout.
The men were in general pleased with their prospecting and had marked the areas with the blue paint, though Whitby and Joe argued about its durability in the unremitting sun.
“Well, we’ll wear test it good, then,’ Joe said, shrugging. “And we’ve the coordinates anyway.” Zainal made for the coast in the dawn-light the next morning and, keeping Baby at a low altitude, made a touchdown in those spots that looked different. This tropical area displayed fruits and nuts, not unlike citrus and coconut, and samples were gathered of everything, including a different variety of in
sect life.
Kris found the smell of rotting vegetable and fruit unsettling, but said nothing until the reserved Leila murmured a complaint.
“There’re sort of plateaus up ahead,’ Whitby pointed out.
“Maybe cooler up there, with an off-shore breeze to keep the gnats and nits away.” Kris disliked using pregnancy as an excuse to avoid any task, but she was glad enough to let the men rig a shelter of the thick fronded vegetation on a height overlooking a rather lovely white-sanded bay. (On inspection, the white sands contained particularly vicious biting insects, so the charm of the area was considerably diminished and Sarah and Kris could lounge in comfort above that nuisance). There were even smaller fronds to use as fans, and the breezes were cooling and pleasantly scented with whatever was blooming further inland.
Leila took off exploring with Whitby, but she came back with her face and bare arms blotchy with contact to plants they had had to cut their way through.
“The sap which zapped me,’ Leila said as Kris and Sarah washed her arms and face, ‘is very sticky, and Joe is hoping we’ve found a rubber substitute.” ‘The hard way,’ said Sarah in a droll tone of voice. ‘Is this helping?”
r
Leila gave a little sigh. ‘Only as long as the wet’s on me.” ‘What wouldn’t we give for a decent anti-histamine!” Sarah said fervently.
“We’ve chemists enough . . .” said Kris.
“And only the one microscope, which evidently isn’t strong enough to do much, so it’s back to old trial and error.” So, since trial wet compresses helped, more were made of bandage strips in the first-aid kit and wrapped around her arms and laid on her face and neck.