The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  On the second day, Hank Martindale turned to Dick Paine. “I keep expecting to be seasick.”

  “Like this doesn’t remind you of a loco?”

  “Well... a little.”

  “You’re immune now,” Dick told his friend.

  “What do you think, Dick?” Hank asked.

  “Buddy, I saw three of those dralka things the other day, flying high. Big buggers! I keep expecting the movie to end, or least an intermission so I can go get some more popcorn and a coke. It’s tough to realize it’s not going to happen.”

  “Is it just me, or has that girl got the same sort of stones we had when we were her age?”

  Dick laughed. “I never had the kind of balls she has. She breaks her hand, gets it wrapped, hustles to change the plan, and now we’re off in a freaking sailboat that skips over the waves. When I was her age, I got a kick back on a drill that broke my wrist. I spent three days in the hospital before they’d let me go. It hurt like the devil for a month. I know what her friend Linda Walsh went through. I’m not that brave, Hank. I was never that brave.”

  “Yeah, it’s tough to admit that maybe women really are tougher than we are.”

  “Well, that city daughter-in-law of yours was a purely useless sack of shit.”

  Hank nodded. “Dick, we could get killed out here. But... I don’t care what you do, buddy. This is something I’m going to do.”

  “I’ve seen too much,” Dick told him. “Too much war, too much dyin’, too much cryin’. Yet, you know, one thing I hate liberals saying is ‘this is for the children.’ Damn it, Hank, this is for all the children! I have to! This is their future.”

  “And we worry about our part while Andie Schulz and Kris Boyle worry about keeping it for the kids,” Hank told him. “A few weeks ago I’d have laughed and chugged another beer. I’m not laughing, and last night I had to force myself to drink even one damn beer.

  “The fact is, Dick, I think they are more likely to succeed than we will.”

  “We will. I haven’t told her yet, but we’re only going to do one fifteen inch line. Then we’ll do a full gauge. I’ve seen those plans you’re working on for the Mark One steam engine.”

  Hank laughed. “The absolutely no frills version of a steam engine!” He stopped and looked at Dick. “That’s a lot of rail they’ll have to make.”

  “I’ve got a friend in Colorado. They got about two hundred miles of full gauge track that they’ll part with at steel salvage prices. I can get some more if Andie’s willing to part with a little copper.”

  The two men laughed.

  * * *

  The catamaran pulled into the Arvala harbor, having easily outrun the two Sea Fighter ships that had tried to catch them. Andie climbed down on the dock and nodded at Collum. She lifted her hand, still wrapped in a cast. “Sorry, I busted my hand. Greetings, King Collum!”

  “That is what your doctor calls a cast, yes?” Collum asked. “We never thought of something like that until the one you sent us showed us. It works very well.”

  “Yes, but it itches.”

  “So, I’ve heard.” The King of Arvala waved at the ship. “What is this, Lady Andie?”

  “That is your present, King. You and your people are free to copy it. It is very fast before the wind, and quite good tacking into it. Making a larger version will be difficult, but I’m sure your shipwrights will wish to try.”

  “Can we go out in it?”

  Andie waved at the two Sea Fighter ships, now anchored between the catamaran and open water. “You’ll probably have to call them off.”

  King Collum smiled. “Many of the older fighting orders have been given a new spirit, Chain Breakers and Sea Fighters first among them. They have become very diligent, and they are practicing very hard.”

  “You understand that as this ship is now, it’s light and it doesn’t carry much in the terms of passengers or cargo. As I said, making a larger version won’t be easy. But it will spur your people to new ideas.”

  “That it will -- you have already taught us much, Lady Andie!”

  Andie waved to two men that neither Collum nor Melek recognized and introduced them. “These gentlemen are going to build you something like you can’t imagine. Well, actually you will be able to imagine it, because I’m going to demonstrate to you. Let’s go up to the palace.”

  She led the way at a brisk pace, carrying what Hank recognized as a full pillowcase in her left hand.

  There was no doubt that the city was spectacularly beautiful. Hank turned to Dick. “Buddy, did you ever think you’d be doing like those guys on SG-1? Walking through an alien city, Sam Carter leading?”

  Dick laughed. “Can’t say as I ever thought I would. But yeah, Tapping could have taken lessons from Andie!”

  The King said something to Andie and she replied in the language neither of the visitors understood. Andie smiled at them. “They heard my name and wanted to know what you were saying. I’m afraid fiction isn’t a concept these people have. The very thought of telling a direct lie would give them the creeps. They are masters, however, of logic and exact turn of phrase. Be really sure you understand what they are saying, if they start getting vague.

  “So I slightly modified what you said. I told them that you were reminded of another great Earth scientist, and were honored that you’d been given a chance to help out.”

  They arrived at what was clearly a palace, and Andie took her pillowcase bag and put it down on a large table. She grinned at Hank and Dick. “You don’t want to know how long one of Linda’s people spent getting this experiment repeatable.”

  She reached into the bag, felt around and pulled out something that Hank recognized as a toy train engine, one that was powered by winding it up. Then there were cars, then pieces of track.

  The track caught his interest. The rails were inset into rough finished wood.

  Andie assembled the track into a circle about three feet across, and then picked up the engine. “This is called an engine, originally short for ‘steam engine.’ I’ve talked to you before about steam.”

  The King and his councilor nodded. Andie lifted the engine, twisted, and the wheel trucks, one by one, came off, until it was an engine without wheels.

  Andie put the wheelless engine on the rough finished track and then quickly tied a piece of thread between it, and a toy winch.

  “This isn’t supposed to work at first, you understand?” then she said it in the local language. She twisted the little crank and the engine didn’t budge and the thread broke.

  One after another she tried threads, holding them, explaining that each thread was thicker than the last. On the sixth thread, the engine moved a bit, and then the thread broke. The seventh thread survived almost two inches and the eighth was sturdy enough to tug the engine across the rough surface.

  “Wheels,” Andie told them, “as you know, make things much easier. But your wagon wheels go against the ground, and that’s very rough. There can be obstacles... there are many reasons it is hard to pull a wagon, even over a road.”

  She reached down and, one by one, reattached the wheels to the engine. Then she repeated the experiment in reverse, showing that the eighth thread drew the engine easily and without breaking -- right down to the thinnest thread that also drew the engine without difficulty over the rails.

  “King, these rails are a special kind of road, this engine is a special kind of engine, to haul cars on this steel road. King Collum, with engines like this, rails like these -- you could move your entire army -- all twenty-five thousand of them -- from Arvala to the rookery in a week. You could deliver five thousand men a day, south.”

  Collum sucked air. “That is an amazing claim.”

  “The rails have to be built; I will not lie to you, Collum -- this is going to cost a lot. Maybe a ton of gold.”

  Collum blinked. “A ton of -- gold -- you say?”

  “Yes. I realize that is a great deal, but you have to consider how important it would be to be able to
deliver your army that quickly, anywhere along the peninsula. Eventually, you could build such a system throughout all of your lands. One of these trains will be able to cover the distance from here to the rookery in little more than a day; perhaps a day and a half. The men will be rested, having been able to sit the entire journey. You can load much food and equipment on a train and carry it as well. You can mix loads of men and material -- you can be very flexible.

  “If you built a rail line between Arvala and the furthest south city of the western peninsula, you could travel from here to there in three or four days. You -- or your army.”

  Collum looked at Melek, who stared back at his king. “It should take months -- not days. This would mean a very great deal to the army.

  “A ton of gold you say?”

  “Yes, King Collum.”

  “I suppose I could find a ton of gold someplace.”

  “Say the word and they will begin.”

  “Where and when do you want the gold?” Collum told her. She translated for Hank and Dick, who smiled, not sure what the joke was.

  Chapter 31 :: Another Problem

  Robin Williams heard the doorbell ring and almost sighed with relief. It had taken an hour for the police to come! Weren’t they supposed to be very eager to scotch this sort of thing in the bud?

  Robin was a short, overweight young man with a perpetual bad hair day, bad skin and an eternal glower. His brown hair hung in lank clumps, looking for all the world like a yard that hadn’t been watered or mowed in years.

  He looped the wire he’d been fiddling with for the last fifteen minutes around the screw and tightened it. Almost as an afterthought, he spoke up. “Brad, that’s probably the pizza. Could you go pay him? The money’s on the table next to the door.”

  Brad grunted. “Pizza! A little early, but us growing boys gotta eat!”

  Brad Davenport had been talking to Kevin Lewis, both young men bored out of their skulls, watching Robin make the “final” adjustments to the fusor. They were under the impression that they had the adventure of a lifetime ahead of them; they did, but not quite the one they expected, and not as if it was going to be all that long of a lifetime.

  Brad stood up from the control desk and stretched, and Kevin stood as well. Both young men were blonde and athletic, and in Brad’s case, the look actually went with the reality. Brad was the quintessential jock, a bully in grade school, a near-hoodlum in junior high, and finally tamed by a high school football coach who’d promised Brad all the girls he wanted to screw if he behaved. Now Brad was dating the sexiest girl in his freshman English class at the University of Washington at Seattle.

  The two walked out of the garage into the main part of the house, and Robin went over to the door they’d just closed behind them and flipped the hasp over a hook and padlocked it.

  You two, Robin thought, are so brain-dead stupid that they couldn’t think their way of out a maze that consisted of a single straight hallway.

  Robin turned on the fusor and then went to the special control panel that only he knew existed and set the two timers -- one for ten minutes and one for ninety.

  That done, the blue door shimmered into existence, and he stepped through, blithely confident. On the Far Side his supplies were where he’d left them, undisturbed as usual. The sun shone brightly down on the ocean a mile away, the wind sighed softly through the trees, and the tang of the salt air was exhilarating. The Far Side door a few feet away promptly winked out of existence as the pressure switch on the other side of the door leading to the garage activated.

  He took a deep breath, enjoying the medley of sights, sounds and smells. You couldn’t, he thought, ask for more than this. He didn’t know who’d said it -- about revenge being sweetest served cold -- but it was true. In about six minutes, the first timer would reach zero and a switch would close and the full output of the fusor’s electrical generation would flow into the control circuitry, frying it. The police would be upset, they’d call for back up, and above all, they’d call Robin’s parents.

  Revenge is so sweet!

  In third grade, Brad Davenport had beat up Robin three times in three weeks. In sixth grade they had had a boxing tournament in PE, and Brad had pounded Robin to a pulp and then had laughed at him. In eighth grade, Brad had spent two weeks making jokes about Robin’s name. Now, as college freshmen that was nominally all behind them.

  Well, that’s what they thought.

  As for Kevin, he’d picked up on the name thing as well but he had a marginally higher IQ and had gotten bored much faster with the puerile jokes. No, he wanted Robin’s ass. Literally. Kevin was gay and had gone through a period where he’d hit on any guy in pants. Brad’s response had been to punch Kevin in the nose when Kevin had tried it with him, and Robin had spit on him. Eventually Kevin went on to others, but even now in college he was a sexual predator.

  Robin smiled. He also had another complaint about Kevin, the real one that Kevin was going to get his comeuppance for.

  In eighth grade, Robin had found Ellen Reynolds one day, out behind the gym practicing her cheers, in her Pop Warner cheerleader outfit -- a sweater, short skirt and matching shorts underneath it. Ellen Reynolds looked at Robin, gave a sniff and turned away in unfeigned disgust.

  Robin had no idea where the idea had come from, but it had come to him like a bolt out of the blue. He’d made some polite comment, as he came closer, but like always, Ellen ignored him.

  She hadn’t ignored it when he’d kicked her legs out from under her and he’d pulled off her shorts. It was wicked, thinking about it even now. Ellen’s panties had come with the shorts and she had tried to cover herself there on the ground, naked from the waist down.

  “Don’t ever tell anyone about this,” Robin had told her. “Your father works for my father, and my father will fire his ass if I tell him to!”

  Robin had run around the building and tossed the garments on top of a walkway roof, and then hustled back to class. Three days later was a Saturday, and he’d come back with a ladder and had climbed up to retrieve his prizes. Kevin had passed by, saw him and had been curious, and in a moment of overweening pride, Robin had told him.

  The next thing Robin knew, he’d been arrested. The policemen had slapped him around, accusing him of being a rapist, and it had taken his father a week to get the charges dropped.

  Then his father had taken him out in the backyard and beat the living crap out of Robin, promising him worse if he ever attacked another woman again.

  Robin looked at the pile of gear he’d already brought through and grinned. In one of those boxes were Ellen’s shorts and panties. There were other trophies now, as well, mostly underwear. Bras, panties, slips, bathing suit tops and bottoms. More than forty items from twenty-six women. After that first time, he’d never bragged and he’d never been caught.

  He chuckled. About now, the fusor was junk. The cops would call for assistance, they’d call his parents, and above all, they’d keep Brad and Kevin on hand to answer questions. And in eighty minutes they would have a very uplifting surprise, because Robin had buried two entire cases of dynamite underneath the platform for the fusor and it was set to explode then.

  He’d get rid of the evidence, and any means to come after him, some of those bastard cops, Brad, Kevin, and his parents. All at once! Too bad he couldn’t figure out a way to kill one of those bitches at the same time! This was good, but that would have been better.

  He slipped an AK-47 over his shoulder and belted a 9MM pistol around his waist. This had been the greatest achievement of all, and harkened back to another quote. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” He knew who’d said that! Erasmus of Rotterdam!

  The fusor was two months old, not two weeks like he’d told the two gullible fools. He’d come here for the first time two months before and had been exploring carefully ever since. There was a native village, filled with people who looked as human as he was, about two miles away. He’d been bringing supplies here now fo
r most of those two months, and this was the last installment.

  The villagers were mostly simple fisherman, and the most dangerous weapon they had were spears. He’d been careful, moved slowly, and tried not to appear like he was usurping the headman’s power. Instead, one look at the guy’s daughter had confirmed what someone else had said a long time ago -- the fastest way to earn a million dollars is to marry it.

  Elara was cute, cuddly, eager to learn, and anatomically correct, so far as Robin could tell. She certainly responded to sexual stimuli as much as any other girl Robin had ever known.

  He’d made her father, Brukna, a rich man and gave Elara all sorts of gimcrack jewelry and fancy clothes. You can go a long way towards winning a girl’s heart when she thinks a college sweatshirt is hot shit, and Tweety-bird undies are to die for. She didn’t seem to mind his weight or anything else about him, as long as he was the source of such wonderful presents.

  The people here lived in a tropical paradise and had for hundreds of years. They had fish from the sea, fruit from groves of fruit trees, and scratched out some grain here and there in patches. They had some animals the size of pigs that tasted nothing at all like chicken -- they were mouth-watering in fact.

  It was simple, really. He was a rich man here, and he was marrying the boss’s daughter. When the old man kicked off, and Robin thought that would be in a year or two after he’d become a familiar fixture in the village, Robin would take over in a nearly bloodless coup. He had started buying the favor of the people as well, providing a couple of luau-type dinners, both of which he’d supplied with beer and wine, which had been immediate hits.

  They told him they had no real enemies, at least not here. There had been a few hostile tribes in their last place, but it was far across the sea. They had been here for hundreds of years now, and had never seen any others.

  Here he was going to be the boss, he’d have Elara for a while, then grab one of the younger girls and put Elara out to pasture. Sure, the people here lived in grass huts and mostly spent their time talking and drinking the local potent brew, some fermented local fruit. But really, why not? He was a potentate; he could have anything he wanted here, and there was no one to tell him no.