Black Desert

by Peter Francis

  “But you will stay for the wedding?”

  Gowan leaned forward and took her hand. “Of course we will,” she said, then glanced at the Captain.

  “We’d really like that,” he confirmed. “Then we’ll be on our way. There’s a lot to check out on the ship and time coil. Did you ever have any more visits from the government men?”

  “The men in black?” Sarah laughed. “No. I doubt they could find their way back here a second time. Holmgrove has lost a gasoline station and a couple more stores. It is becoming a ghost town.”

  “Only in the medium term,” Lillishenger assured her. “Property values go right back up after the big bank bust is over. Buy property when you can and rent it out meanwhile. Don’t sell till 2025 before the asteroid knocks out the satellites and you can’t even get cable here.”

  “Darn,” said Stiers. “We’ll have to buy a wedding present.”

  “Toaster,” said Ogden.

  “Your mind on food again, Ogden?” said Ramirez. “Sarah and Hugh will be needing a stroller soon enough.”

  “How about a new bed?” suggested Gowan.

  “I’d say they’re managing quite well on the old one,” said the Captain.

  “A washing machine for all the diapers,” said Lillishenger. “Or are we still in that awful pampers phase where people recycle nothing?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Sarah. “Who wants to wash nappies?”

  “Who wants to wash anything?” said Ramirez. “We recycle everything and use it limitlessly.”

  “Then fix me up with one of those,” said Sarah. “Anything for an easy life.”

  Stiers gave it serious thought. “They’re nuclear powered,” he said eventually.

  “Well, we’re in the desert here. We have wind and sun. I would have thought you guys would be able to make us self-sufficient. I was at a ghost town some weeks ago and the old guy there who runs a store had a wind turbine charging a series of batteries to give him full voltage.”

  The Captain thought deeply again. “You’re right,” he said. “We have a few days to arrange something like that. We can fabricate the cells by throwing some of the junk into our 3-D printer and refabricator. It would ensure we are backed up all the way into the future.”

  “I’ll get on it,” said Ramirez, who volunteered a lot these days.

  “I’ll help,” said Ogden.

  “You wouldn’t rather focus on eating?”

  “That snake that bit you must have left some venom inside,” said Ogden.

  “You’re right. We’re all shipmates,” said Ramirez.

  They heard a truck pull up outside and the gates being opened. “That’ll be Hugh,” said Sarah.

  It was. He strolled into the kitchen a few moments later and did a double take as he saw the visitors. “Lummy,” he said. “You’re finally back.”

  “And you’re on four wheels,” said Ramirez.

  “Yes. Sarah has banned me from the motorcycle now I’m to be a dad. She has told you?”

  “We kind of noticed,” said Gowan. “It sticks out a bit.”

  “Yes, of course it does,” said Hugh and smiled with remembered pleasure. “It’s so good to see all of you again. It has been so long.”

  “That’s quite obvious,” said Ramirez looking at Sarah.

  “Not for us,” Stiers reminded Dunfield. “We have to stay long enough to align our chronometers accurately - and for the wedding of course.”

  Although most of the crew spent time aboard Challenger, they also inspected the equipment upon which the ship was based for time travel. They ran the engines up once or twice and checked their rail system for wear and tear. Lillishenger pronounced her judgement. “For the sake of safety we’ll build two replacement guides and rails,” she said. “We’ll have to replace them half way through the journey and again later possibly. Captain, try to keep us above fifty per cent when we’re travelling and up around seventy per cent or above most of the time.”

  “We’ve travelled forwards through time,” said Gowan as if she had just noticed this fact.

  “Not far yet,” said Ogden.

  “But nobody else has done it. We’re the first people to travel both ways.”

  “Let’s hope we’re the last,” said Stiers. “It’s not good for a man.”

  The confinement dome was holding up nicely and the backup generators were looking spic and span. Stiers set teams to work making the building and the house self-sufficient in energy with solar panels and two wind turbines fabricated part on board and part from scrap lying around.

  “We’re turning into a Bangladeshi car workshop,” said Ramirez.

  “Or a Cuban one,” said Dunfield.

  “Oh yes, that Castro is still alive, isn’t he?”

  “You mean he actually dies one day?” asked Hugh.

  “Eventually,” said Ramirez. “Shame he lost Cuba’s biggest export and had to smoke most of them himself.”

  They had mostly finished their work by the time Jenny arrived earlier than expected after Sarah had called her with the news. She looked just as slim and exotic but had a more positive stance as if her life was based on firmer ground. She had a large portfolio of papers which she said she would go through with Stiers and Dunfield to update them on her investments. Lillishenger promised to print out important pointers for the following decade so she could invest with sure knowledge.

  In the end the crew made Sarah and Hugh’s electrical independence their wedding present and followed that by making their toilet fill by captured rainwater which was filtered and fed to their WC. Not that there was much rain but the canisters could hold fifteen hundred gallons between them and were interlinked. Stiers cautioned that in the future, water would become a precious commodity until such time as it was better managed throughout the world. It would take two downpours to store enough for three or months usage of normal flushing. They also constructed storage tanks underground to hold fuel for powering the generators in an emergency. When they had finished, the Captain was happy with the results.

  The wedding was a quiet affair. Sarah’s close family attended as did the crew of Challenger who were introduced with Jenny as friends from different parts of the country. Sarah’s mum was a twinkly-eyed shortish woman who was very proud of her daughter’s pregnancy. He father was tall and a little shy, mumbling his way through the great occasion. The service was held at a local church and was followed, being a Friday, by a trip for lobster tails and ending with a cake and reception at her relative’s house. Jenny must have felt a tad left out because Ogden had the Professor; Sarah had Hugh; and now Ramirez had Junette Gowan. She spent much of the time twinned with Stiers who kept her close and welcome. Gowan nudged Ramirez to spend more time with the girl.

  He went over and chatted to her informally. Jenny said, “Well their honeymoon starts tonight.”

  “They’re not going anywhere, are they?”

  “You know what I mean,” she said and winked.

  “Oh, I get you,” said Ramirez and looked at the bride. “I think you’d have to be a skilled mountain climber to get on top of Sarah.”

  “Don’t be rude.”

  “I’m being practical. I’ll likely say the same thing about you when you’re that size.”

  “If it makes you breathless, tired and gasping for air like it does Sarah, I’ll stay a virgin.”

  “You’re a virgin?” Ramirez’s eyebrows went for a wander around his forehead.

  “Not completely.” She laughed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Don’t you know that when I was single I was expert at deflowering virgins in the gentlest way?”

  “What’s he talking about,” asked Gowan as she joined them.

  “He was offering to deflower me in a kind way,” said Sarah.

  “I did not,” protested Ramirez. “I said, ‘when I was single I…’.”

  “Go on,” said Gowan.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ramirez.

  “It’s lucky you have
me to overlook your faux pax,” said Gowan and the girls giggled at the discomfort of Ramirez.

  Gowan and Ramirez shared a room, leaving Jenny a room to herself. The Professor and Ogden went back to their normal arrangement of sharing but this time Ramirez was too occupied to notice their nocturnal grunting. Stiers, us usual, slept aboard the ship and Dunfield shared his wedding night with whatever mattress space his heavily pregnant wife left him.

  Once the chronometers were synchronised and leap years counted and variations in local time allowed for, Lillishenger was able to give them an exact date and approximate time of day for their next stop in ten years time.

  Running at close to a hundred per cent of the chamber’s ability, Lillishenger calculated they would take a fraction under two weeks to achieve this. Jenny said she would remain until they had left then go back to take care of their business. “You’re so beautiful,” Ramirez told her. “You’ll be married with children of your own next time we see you.”

  “It’s odd to think of you trapped in that dome,” she said.

  “We won’t really be there. We’ll be travelling ahead in time. It does seem fantastic, doesn’t it?”

  “Thank you, Eric, for my dad. And thank you for saving my life the night we met.”

  “If you’d been ugly I may not have bothered,” he replied.

  “Oh yes you would.”

  Dunfield and Stiers had sat around planning for the future regarding the site and what to do with it. The were blessed with not having a shortage of money and they had all been warned about the international bank collapse of 2007 and 2008 in case Challenger was unable to make her rendezvous. Their return was scheduled for 2004.

  “Do we tell them about G.W.Bush becoming President?” Ramirez asked Stiers.

  “He had a nice hat,” said the Captain. “No we’ll leave them some surprises. That will be one of the awful ones, although it wouldn’t harm Jenny to invest in Halliburton.”

  In the event, plans complete, they ate a hearty last meal together and said their goodbyes before the crew returned to their ship and sealed the chamber. They started engines and felt the ship rise by bare millimetres.

  The Captain said, “Engine balance?”

  Ramirez, who had been working on that feature, was pleased when Ogden said, “Totally harmonised.”

  “Well done, Ramirez. Temperatures?”

  “Normal,” said Ogden.

  “Dome stasis?”

  “Well within parameters,” said Ramirez.

  “Let’s go to fifty per cent for ten minutes,” said the Captain and below decks the humming grew. The chronometers moved on.

  “No giddiness,” said Gowan.

  “Nor here,” said Lillishenger. “Good job, Eric.”

  “Going to eighty per cent, ninety…ninetyfive per cent and holding,” said Stiers and appeared to relax. The internal shields increased power to match and with newly balanced engines their journey was smooth enough.

  Ramirez thought how strange it was that they had already moved ahead in time in just these few minutes and that if somebody could see inside the chamber they would not be there.

  The crew spent subsequent days checking and rechecking almost everything while Lillishenger and Ramirez rehearsed and perfected their gun alignments. They ate, talked and slept and the strange air of an unknown journey filled their minds from time to time. Ogden felt like they were in an unfamiliar tunnel, travelling to a place they no longer felt they for certain wished to go. Their recent lives had been relatively peaceful with most of their troubles a century in the future.

  They were even relived of the pleasure of the huge viewscreens as there was nothing to see but blackness – and not that of the black desert of space – but merely the inside of the dome where they were travelling so fast it did not have time to register on the sensors.

  After almost two weeks Stiers felt they trouble-free journey had been been productive. They sat at their holo screens while he gave familiar orders.

  “Cutting to sub-light,” he said. “Check temperatures.”

  “”Normal,” said Ogden.

  “Reduce engines to ten per cent,” he said.

  “Ten per cent,” said Ogden after a few moments.

  “Check our synchronisation date.”

  “Spot on as you promised, Captain,” said Gowan.

  “Set everything to standby. Prepare for final checks and disembarkation,” said the Captain.

  Within a few minutes their progress had halted and they were ready to exit the dome. As Ogden formed a portal, Ramirez said, “There’s still no dust inside the chamber. It’s amazingly airtight.”

  “Is the key still there?” asked Stiers.

  “Still there and still shiny,” said Ramirez. “Maybe we haven’t gone anywhere this time.”

  “We’ll find out,” said Gowan.

  When they were assembled, the Captain took the key and opened the hatch. They stepped through and were met by a young boy standing on one leg and leaning on a crutch.

  “Hi,” he greeted them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Who are you?” asked the Captain.

  “Sean,” he said. “I’m eight years old.”

  “Congratulations, Sean. Do you live here now?” asked Stiers.

  “All my life,” said the boy and leaned on his crutch more securely so he could extend his hand.

  “So…Sean,” said Ramirez then shut up.

  “My parents thought Sean was the closest combination of Sarah and Hugh.”

  “I would have thought that would be Sue,” said Ramirez.

  The boy grinned at him. “My sister is called Sue,” he said. “She’s seven.”

  “So your last name is Dunfield?” said Gowan.

  “Sure it is. I’ve been waiting for you all day. They said you’d be coming. You’d better come up to the house.”

  “Thank you, Sean,” said Gowan. “Have you injured your foot?”

  “No. I only have the one,” the boy said. “I lost the other in an accident playing on the junk out back. We’re setting up to make desert hovercraft and I thought I saw a snake and pulled a heavy piece of metal on top of my foot.”

  “Was it a snake?” asked Ogden.

  “Nah. Just a piece of pipe.”

  “That’s common round these parts,” said Gowan and glanced at Ramirez with a smirk.

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore but the hospital couldn’t save my foot but I still get around okay. I know who you are.” He turned and pointed to them individually. “You’re Captain Stiers, you’re Junette Gowan, you’re Professor Lillybanger…”

  “Close,” she said.

  “That one is Eric Ramirez and the fat one is Ogden.”

  “Fat?” protested Ogden.

  “You must admit you’ve had your mouth on the wrong side of too many English breakfasts,” said Ramirez.

  “I have a slight weight problem.”

  “Maybe you’re too short for your weight,” suggested the boy as they walked to the house.

  “He’s quite correct, Daniel,” said the Professor. “A woman likes to see a man’s pectorals and genitals first when he hoves into sight, not his stomach.”

  “Do you desire me to lose weight?”

  “I’d desire you more if you packed away less food.”

  Ogden stuck his noble nose in the air and followed Sean without saying another word on the subject. Ramirez turned to Lillishenger. “You used to threaten to change my sex if I said anything like that.”

  “I have no intention of allowing him to balloon up to the size of something advertising an RV sale,” she said. “A small hint here and there does no harm.”

  They arrived at the house and the boy led them inside to where Sarah was, as ever, working in the kitchen. She still looked very good despite the extra few pounds around her waist. A huge beam lit her face and she rushed over to hug each of them in turn. “I see you’ve met what used to be my bump last time you were here,” she said.

 
A small girl ran in and tried to look coy and pretty and succeeded in both. “I’m Sue,” she said. “Are you the people who live in the big shed?”

  “We are,” said the Captain and held out his hand. Sue crept over carefully and took it, ready to snatch it back if anything went wrong.

  “Doesn’t it get boring living in there all the time?” she asked.

  “There’s too much to do,” said Stiers.

  “Can I see your home in there?” she pressed.

  “Me too,” said Sean.

  “You’ll have to ask your Mum and Dad,” said Stiers. “But I don’t mind.”

  “Where is Hugh,” asked Ramirez.

  “Out back working on the project you suggested,” said Sarah and turned her attention to the little girl. “Go call your father.”

  “Can’t Sean go?”

  “It’s easier for you. Be grateful for having two good legs.”

  “Okay,” said the girl and rushed off to find her father, her little legs still quite shapeless and unformed. Ramirez thought it amazing that in fewer than ten years time boys would be looking at them lecherously.

  “Go with her,” the Captain instructed Gowan. “Let’s not surprise the man with all of us at once.”

  “Aye, Aye, Captain,” said Gowan and ran to catch the girl.

  “You don’t look any different,” said Sarah.

  “Neither do you,” said Ogden.

  “How long has it been for you – a few weeks? Nine years and two children have taken their toll.”

  “You still look good to me,” said Ramirez. “Hair still fine, breasts a little fuller…”

  “That’s enough,” said Stiers. “These times are a tad more conservative.”

  “What happened to Sean’s foot,” said Lillishenger. “He said a chunk of metal fell on it.”

  “Yes – a year ago. He was helping his Dad out back and climbed where he was told not to. His foot had to be amputated.”

  “I’m not fully up on modern medicine,” said the Professor. “Ramirez knows far more than I do. Can we do anything?”