Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

  “I’m not paying for this twice!”

  “Then we are going to insist you return it to Mr. Djorovich. As you are a subscriber to AS&A, we will make sure we find Mr. Fielder and he will compensate you for your loss. But since you have never acquired proper title to this hammer, you must return it to its owner. When you purchased the hammer without verifying who owned it, you took a risk. This time, it was a bad risk, but rest assured you will be compensated by Mr. Fielder for the trouble he caused you.”

  Giselle was scratching at the parchment as rapidly as she could move her makeshift pencil. Mr. Zhou was still glaring, but was partially mollified by Santiago’s assurances. With a frown that was not entirely skeptical, he produced the mallet in question from a sack at his feet and gave it to Mr. Djorovich.

  “Our agents will track down Mr. Fielder immediately,” Santiago assured him.

  Alistair arrived in time to see the result of the meeting, and Mr. Zhou extended to him his hand as he was walking out.

  “I hope you can find Zachary soon,” said the recent defendant.

  “All efforts will be made.”

  Mr. Zhou nodded and turned to go, but then changed his mind and hesitated on the top of the four steps leading outside.

  “On Earth the police do not even bother to investigate crimes like this. The small ones. The ones they do investigate can take months or years.”

  “And you still don’t get your restitution until you pursue a separate civil suit,” said Alistair. “Meanwhile you pay for the criminal’s stay in prison.”

  Mr. Zhou nodded. “This is good, Alistair. This is very good.” With that pronouncement, he completed his exit.

  No sooner was he gone than Giselle placed herself directly in front of Alistair with a thoughtful expression on her face.

  “What sort of statute of limitations is there for crimes?” she asked.

  “None.”

  “None?”

  “What is the point of a statute of limitations? If someone commits a crime against you and goes a long time without paying for it, that is a reason for them to pay more, not less. In reality a statute of limitations is just a way for a government to cut back on their responsibilities. If a case goes long enough without being solved, the government just forgets about it.”

  “And what about double jeopardy?”

  “A crime is a crime, regardless of whether or not a previous court came to the wrong determination. With a government I suppose I can see the point. It prevents some prosecutor from hounding you from court to court until he gets the verdict he is looking for. But in our system we have to please our customers or lose their business; we have no incentive to retry a case unless there is good reason to believe the wrong verdict was passed the first time. No one would trust us if we behaved unscrupulously, and the other security firms wouldn’t allow their customers to be so treated, and that’s exactly where people would go: to other security firms.”

  Giselle responded only with a nod and a squint of her eyes as she considered what Alistair said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just… curious is all.”

  The Arcabelian beauty, born before Alistair’s grandparents, moved away with her sheaf of parchments. He caught himself watching the outline of her butt underneath the animal skin she wore, somewhere between loin-cloth and skirt. He blinked once to break the trance and turned his attention to Santiago, who was tearing into some bread and cheese where he delivered his verdict moments before. Taking a seat, Alistair gave him a nod promptly acknowledged with a like nod. It was ample communication for them: more praise and encouragement than Santiago required, more thanks than Alistair needed in return.

  “We need to insure our customers,” said the Argentinean.

  “That’s a difficult proposition…” Alistair began as he rubbed at his forehead.

  In response, Santiago reached down into a small bag at his waist and tossed its contents onto the table. The metallic disks, thin and no larger than a man’s eye, clanked together.

  “Darion has minted coins from iron,” Santiago said. “You can bet this currency is going to spread… at least until someone finds gold or silver. We’ll have prices and that means insurance is less of a headache. We need to insure people.”

  Alistair’s eyes were riveted on the handful of coins, and a smile of delight threatened to sprout on his lips. “Money,” he said simply, with relief.

  “Mr. Zhou could have been insured, which means he could have walked out of here already compensated for the theft,” Santiago explained and tossed a chunk of cheese into his mouth. “We could then go after Zachary ourselves. Those men who claimed the shaft… they could take out insurance against another claimant coming for his property. We could—”

  “We can do all sorts of things. I know, Santi. It’s a great idea and we’re going to do it. But we can’t just jump into it. We want to make sure we offer the proper terms. Without actuarial tables, that will be difficult. We also need to see the exchange rates these coins have against everything else. It’s one thing to have coins; it’s another to establish prices.”

  “The one follows the other. As soon as possible we need to offer insurance.”

  “We will.”

  Suddenly, the earth shook.

  Accompanied by a rumble, it rattled everything, from Alistair’s body to the floor beneath him. Alistair rattled down while the floor rattled up while the table rattled sideways, and everything crashed together dozens of times in the space of a few seconds. One moment, he was seated across from Santiago and the next he was staring up at the ceiling. Shaking his head to clear it, he fumbled at the stools around him when the rumbling stopped. He pulled himself up and, as his eyes rose above the surface of the table, saw Santiago was doing the same.

  “What the hell—?”

  “Earthquake,” Santiago said and, without fuss, brushed off breadcrumbs and took his seat again. He bent over to retrieve the coins.

  Taking his own seat at the table, Alistair asked, “How often does it happen?”

  “Once or twice a year,” he said with his head below the table top. He popped back up and deposited the coins on it. “They are not usually too bad. I suppose I would recommend against building over a few stories.”

  “We’re near a fault line?”

  “Maybe. We’re also near a gas giant.”

  “Ah…” Alistair said. “Like Io.”

  “The tidal forces from Srillium can’t be too large or the ocean tides would be enormous. Maybe it’s just a fault line, or maybe Srillium contributes to it. Just like Jupiter does to Io.”

  “Any other geological or climatological occurrences I need to know about?”

  Santiago thought a moment. “We have one or two solar eclipses every year. They last for a few days.”

  Alistair nodded while he considered the new information. “Speaking of insurance…”

  “Speaking of insurance?”

  “That sort of thing is good to know.”

  Chapter 66

  A faraway drone found Alistair’s ears and inserted itself there, like a tiny, incessant drill that eventually lifted him out of slumber. His mind incorporated the noise into his dream, and when he finally passed through the layers of unconsciousness to awareness, it remained as the dream dissipated. Lying on his side, he opened his eyes to the dim pre-dawn light finding its way through the slots in the wall of the communal bedroom. Someone’s foot was inches from his face, the hairy leg it was connected to disappearing under a thin blanket. Gregory had spent the night elsewhere and Miklos was relegated to a separate building, but Taribo and Ryan were there, as was Santiago, whom, for the first time he could remember, Alistair preceded in rising. He rolled onto his back and sat up, focusing his attention on the whirring in the distance.

  With a great yawn, he rose and, less nimbly than he might, stumbled to the staircase and went down to the lower level, his plodding steps making the boards creak but not waking anyone. The air was warm and still an
d nothing moved save him and a thin wisp of smoke that yet rose from the ashes of the previous evening’s fire. Srillium still dominated the western horizon, its ruddy swirls standing out amid the somber grays of the early morning but its power to gently illuminate vastly diluted now that the vanguard light of the sun had arrived.

  He filled a cup with water and sipped from it as he strolled around the grounds, listening to the drone and scanning the sky. The damp grass, beaten down by the many feet that roamed over it, was soft under his bare soles. Shirtless and wearing only what amounted to a loincloth, he turned in circles, still perplexed at what might be making the noise, waiting for something to emerge.

  Downing the rest of his water, he went back to the basin and tossed the cup next to it. He then went to the food stores underneath the hut and produced another loaf of hard bread, wrapped tightly in dried leaves and growing mold on top. The cheese he found was no less moldy, and he spent a few minutes scraping it off before he set the victuals on the table and took his seat on a stool to have his breakfast. His pallet was not pleased by the meal, but his stomach was at least satisfied.

  Cotton seeds, he thought with disgust as his teeth broke the hard bread into crumbly bits. I should have told Henry to bring me garlic. And oregano. And pepper. And sage. And thyme. He accompanied the thoughts with a sigh, and he wondered for a moment what Henry was up to. And how old he was.

  When he finally spotted a black speck in the sky to the west, transiting across the face of Srillium, he came to his feet. It was a distant speck, miles to the west, flying above the ocean, so that even his vision could detect no details, but there was no doubt it was a flying craft, was likely the progenitor of the noise, and was something surely only the Gaians could be in possession of.

  In no more time than it takes an eye to blink, he darted for the stairs and, stomping like a bull, bounded up until he reached the lookout tower. As he passed through the second story he called out, “The Gaians are here!” and Ryan, Taribo and Santiago, jolted awake, started. Once up in the lookout tower, he relocated the speck. The sky was a shade or two lighter than when he had risen, but he discerned no more details. As he watched, the speck finished a transit across Srillium, pulling farther south and framed now by the dark blue sky, almost disappearing in it. Then it described an arc in the heavens until it turned ninety degrees and headed east, towards the island.

  The stairs creaked beneath him as someone from below climbed up. It proved to be Santiago, who stood next to him as he knelt on the bench. His face was a mottled red and white, the skin branded by the folds of the blanket he had lain on, and his hair was a twisted mess on the right side of his head.

  “What’s that noise?”

  Pointing at the black dot in the sky, Alistair replied, “The Gaians.”

  Santiago considered the aircraft. “Why is it making noise? It needs a new CSS.” He was referring to the countercyclical sound suppressor that muffled engine noise.

  “We’ve been found,” said Alistair. He spoke with the grim acceptance of a condemned man.

  The craft accelerated and headed almost directly towards their camp, its drone growing louder every second. Taribo and Wellesley were on their feet one floor below, peering up the stairs and waiting for some kind of explanation. Outside, faces were popping out of doorways and scanning the sky. For a moment, Alistair took it all in, then raised his eyebrows once in an expression of resignation, said, “Well,” but attached no conclusion to it, and turned to descend the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” asked Santiago as Alistair’s head sank below the floor of the tower.

  “There’s work to do. A hovercraft in the sky doesn’t change that. Nothing we can do about it.”

  “Shouldn’t we prepare our defenses?” asked Ryan as Alistair went by the second floor.

  “Preparing our defenses consists of hefting a spear or placing an arrow on a bow string. If that craft is armed it would have about the same effect as an ant attacking an elephant.”

  The last part faded in volume as he reached the bottom of the stairs and left the hut. Men and women were coming outside to gawk. Alistair spied Layla and Gregory leave the women’s lodge together, their hair mussed but their eyes not so full of sleep that the alarm did not show through. Gregory walked with a protective arm over Layla’s shoulder as he looked into the brightening sky. In contrast to the others milling about the common area, Alistair moved like he had a destination. He grabbed an available ax and chopped at a recently felled tree on the outskirts of the camp. A few looked at him questioningly, surprised by the casualness of his behavior, but he took no notice.

  As the craft continued to do loops over and around the island, the novelty wore off and the onlookers came to be convinced by Alistair’s way of thinking. Though conversation was continuous and glances towards the sky abundant, the others eventually realized the flight over their home did not signify a holiday from the demands of the human body. One by one they set about working towards those ends, beginning with breakfast. This further depletion of the dwindling food stores was followed by the day’s labor. A couple of men came to work with Alistair to make fuel for future fires. By this time he was covered in a sheen of sweat, and before long his two companions were in a similar state and the three of them had the tree broken down into manageable logs.

  Alistair gently ran his thumb over the edge of the axe and discovered it had become quite blunt. A quick check of the other two axes led him to the same conclusion. He hoisted the tools in his arms and, carrying them to the hut, dumped them on the ground at the foot of the steps. The sound of them falling caught Giselle’s attention as she sat scribbling at the table.

  “Can you see that these get sharpened?”

  “Will do.”

  At that moment the drone from the hovercraft changed in pitch as it swerved and, slowing to a near stop, came to float directly above them. A shiny silvery color, it was the shape of a triangle with rounded edges and had no discernible features. Alistair gave it a dark look and Giselle rose from the table and came to join him at the bottom of the steps. The engine of the craft was loud enough that Giselle needed to raise her voice to be heard over its hum.

  “Why doesn’t it do something?”

  “It’s probably just scouting. We can expect trouble soon. Have you seen the Gaians before?”

  Giselle nodded. “They sent an emissary to meet with Issicroy a couple times a year. And once I got to watch them destroy a ranch someone built. You see them flying around every so often.”

  “You and I will have to talk, then. I’ll need to know what you know.”

  “I don’t know much.”

  “Every little bit helps.”

  As he left, heading for the path down to the lake, the hovercraft moved away, not yet leaving the island but apparently finished observing their camp. By the time he made it to the bottom, it was somewhere over the north coast and heading towards the mainland. A successful defense will determine whether this little experiment of ours can work or not, he thought as he waded into the cool water. When he made it to a depth that brought the water up to his waste, he spread his arms wide, fell backwards, and allowed the lake to give him a quick bath.

  Chapter 67

  The capacious bay between the two southern peninsulas held four islands, none larger than a square mile, clustering together near the tip of the western peninsula. The water was shallow, consisting of one large sand bar of which the islands themselves were elevated extensions with a layer of soil and vegetation on top. Though a couple islands were as much as two miles off the coast of the peninsula, a tall man could, on a still day, wade out to them and never get his chest wet.

  The four islands had a couple dozen men working on them, breaking up soil with their crude hoes, turning the land into a moist, muddy brown. Already, the largest of the islands was entirely worked over and a handful of men were planting seeds there.

  Wellesley waded out to the largest. He reached the west beach and trudged through t
he sand, passing a couple rafts and, after cresting a small slope marking the edge of the beach, a copse of trees until he was given a view of the interior. There were few trees and the ground was flat so he could see clear to the other side. Skirting the edge of the plowed land, he came to a narrow path of packed earth running through the softer soil and took this to another stand of trees near the middle of the island. Two men were resting in the shade there while the three continued walking the paths, reaching into sacks at their waists and tossing seed into the soil. The two resting men were leaning against a wooden tub surrounded by wooden crates, many of which had been opened, emptied and tossed to the side.

  As Wellesley approached, one of the two rose to his feet. His curly hair was black with a few strands of gray, like his beard. He was dirty from his labors, with dirt and dust caked on his face and darker soil packed under his fingernails, but his eyes shone with a merry glint and his rough lips stretched into a smile as Wellesley drew near.

  “How can we help you?”

  “I’ve been sent for Darion Chesterton.”

  “You found him. Alistair send you?”

  “That’s right.”

  Ryan was standing face to face with Darion now, and the latter grabbed a wooden ladle from the edge of the tub and dipped it into the water it contained. He passed it to Wellesley who eagerly drained the contents, smacking his lips when he was done.

  “Take as much as you like,” Darion offered, and Ryan spooned a few more loads into his mouth. The water was warm, but that mattered little to a thirsty man in clothes soaked with salt water and wet moccasins covered in sand and dirt. Between the ladles of water and the evening breeze sweeping over the island, he started to feel a little refreshed. The grass around the copse of trees swayed and rustled in the wind.