Skid

by Keith Fenwick

  First he dug a hole with a giant spoon by the garden and threaded the end of another metal string through the top of a long pole and connected it to the string around the garden. Then he placed the pole in the ground, so the metal string was several meters off the ground, pushed the ground back into the hole and beat it with the end of his giant spoon. Finally he walked across the space between the wall around the garden and the storage area he called a shed, pulling the free end of the metal string, and attached it to the wall. Walking back to the storage area he connected the metal string, which was now strung tautly above the ground to the device he had earlier attached to the wall.

  What was he doing? Leaf set her bucket down and went over to inspect the connection Bruce had made from the metal string to the fence. She prodded the joint with a finger just as Bruce emerged from the shed.

  “Hey!” Bruce yelled running towards her.

  Bang! Leaf leapt backwards and sprawled untidily on the ground feeling as if she had just received an almighty kick in the ribs. Shakily she pulled herself to her feet, glancing around fearfully for a glimpse of her attacker.

  “You must be careful of these wires now, Leaf because they’re alive,” Bruce explained unhelpfully.

  While he appreciated the usefulness of electric fences to control stock, Bruce lived in fear of receiving electric shocks, an anxiety that dated from the days when his father thought the same and used him as an unsuspecting human electric fence tester. While he preferred to employ a suitable meter, Bruce thought a little more laterally than his father had, which was why the dogs were loose. However, as it turned out he need not have been concerned. Thanks to an unwitting Leaf, at least now he knew the electric fence worked.

  Leaf reached out to steady herself on the fence before he could stop her. Kerthump! This time she felt it even more severely. In a daze she followed Bruce’s advice to get out of the enclosure and retire to her quarters for a rest. She regarded the gate with suspicion, fearful of being attacked again, until Bruce held it open for her. Either that part was not ‘alive’, she thought, or Bruce was immune from the attacks that she decided must come from the metal string. However, how could such a material be alive?

  To the total confusion of the Skidians who scrutinized his every move, suddenly Bruce began to drive posts into the ground at even spaces across the plain. Soon there were intersecting lines of these posts extending over the plain creating more or less regular shaped patterns, the utility of which completely baffled them.

  Once Bruce had completed a line of posts some two hundred meters in length, he started another at right angles to the first, focusing on a preset mark so that this second line would eventually become another section of a square paddock.

  Bruce relished the physical activity, ignoring his aching back and the sweat running into his eyes. Each post was this Skidian or that, and Bruce took great delight in smashing them as hard and as he could, venting his anger and frustration at Skid and all things Skidian in the process.

  He was enjoying himself so much that he didn’t notice the aircraft land silently to one side of him.

  “Greetings.”

  Bruce snapped his head up and swung around, raising the hammer menacingly, then recognizing the voice, he let the hammer slip from his grasp. “Oh. Hi, Cyprus. Toytoo.” Bruce nodded at the third Skidian, trying to remember who he was. Ah yes. One of the headmen, wasn’t he?

  “What can I do you for?”

  Still coming to grips with the idiom of the offworlders, the three Skidians were momentarily confused.

  “Bruce, let me introduce Inel, our esteemed ruler,” Cyprus said, regaining his composure.

  “Gidday!” Bruce automatically extended his hand and then tried to withdraw it without being too obvious. Maybe they don’t shake hands here, he thought. Inel grabbed the proffered hand, vigorously shaking it for much longer than Bruce thought necessary. Each time Bruce tried to withdraw his hand Inel pumped it more vigorously, until Bruce wondered if he would ever get it back.

  “Greetings!” Inel grinned vacantly, making Bruce wonder whether brains were a prerequisite for the top job on Skid.

  “Inel wishes to inspect your progress.”

  “Oh, that’s nice, but I haven’t really started yet.”

  The Skidians seemed particularly patronizing today, Bruce decided. He wasn’t in the mood to let them get away with that.

  “Everything is to your satisfaction, Bruce?” Cyprus asked.

  “Mostly,” he replied.

  Before he could outline his many and varied complaints, Inel said somewhat pompously. “I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the good work you are doing here on Skid.”

  What work? Bruce hadn’t even begun yet, but all he could manage under the gaze of the great man was a muted “Thank you.”

  “Could you explain for us what you are doing here?”

  To Bruce’s surprise, Inel sounded almost interested. Whether it was just the politician in him or whether it was genuine curiosity, Bruce neither knew nor cared. He was delighted that at last some Skidian was showing some real interest in the work he was doing for them.

  “Well,” Bruce scratched his nose reflectively, wondering whether the Skidians would understand anything he said. “There are several sources of organic food that we can easily exploit. However, they will take some time to develop to the extent you will be able to feed many people.”

  “Please, Bruce.” Toytoo shook his head almost in disbelief. “Since you know that our synthofood plants are almost inoperative, this cannot be so.”

  Well what do you expect? Bruce asked himself silently. Bloody miracles? It dawned on him that they did. With a trace of exasperation in his voice, he asked, “Then what was the point of bringing me here then? Your problems simply can’t be solved overnight.”

  “You are supposed to teach us about producing food in the fashion of our ancestors,” Toytoo replied pedantically.

  “To instruct us in the skills that have been lost over time,” Cyprus added, “to produce food organically.”

  “Look, mate,” said Bruce, controlling his temper with great difficulty. “As I’ve already pointed out, there’s heaps of food here. All you have to do is learn how to harvest it.” Bruce waited for a reaction to show that they had understood. Three heads nodded without comprehension.

  “There are the ivops, which you can butcher, that will provide you with meat. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes?”

  “You can grow various crops, a bit like this grass here, and you can probably harvest fish from the sea.”

  “The sea?”

  “Yeah, you know, the sea.” Oh, what had Leaf called it when he had asked her about fish? “Yes, the ‘great salty waters’.”

  “Oh? Really?” Cyprus asked incredulously.

  “Yeah, really!” Bruce replied, hurrying on now that he had their attention. “I am going to develop a model farm here, a prototype plant if you like, that your people can visit and learn from before developing your own farms. Er, organic plants.”

  “Very good. I am pleased with your progress,” announced Inel so gravely, that Bruce almost laughed.

  Then he thought about crying. For that seemed about it, as far as the Skidians were concerned. They began to edge nervously towards their aircraft as if their duty was done and they could now depart the scene in satisfaction. Bruce decided from their collective reaction, or lack of it, that since an instant solution to their problem was not forthcoming, they had in fact lost interest.

  Well, what did they expect? He raged trying to think of a way to rekindle their flagging interest in what he was convinced was their only hope for survival, and for that matter, his own. If they dispensed with the model farm before he had even got it organized, there probably wasn’t much point in keeping him around.

  “Let me show you what I mean,” he said hurriedly, before they had got close enough to their aircraft to ignore him without being obvious about it.

 
The Skidians stopped in their tracks and Inel nodded slightly. Of all the Skidians, only Inel recognized the real extent of the crisis facing his planet and his people and the constraints imposed by culture and tradition preventing them from saving themselves. He was also well aware of the fact that Toytoo and his fellow traveler commoner upstart Cyprus saw the development of the synthofood crisis as a possible way to wrest control of Skid away from him. Not only was he trying to ensure the survival of Skidian culture, he was also having to defend himself from the insidious attacks of Toytoo and his untrustworthy lieutenant Cyprus. Like all the other members of the senate they considered themselves somehow immune from the worst effects of the impending famine and believed that Skid would somehow continue as it had always been.

  What they did not know was that unless an antidote was quickly found for the virus infecting the synthoplants they would run out of food in a few short months.

  Inel alone had access to the ancient archives detailing how his ancestors had lived and outlining the philosophies of his ancestor who had established Skid as it was today.

  A planet whose population were virtual slaves, incapable of fending for themselves, dependent on the state to provide all their comforts. That this uncouth specimen before him might just have the ability to save them, was a depressing indictment of Skidian culture, Inel thought sadly.

  Though given the attitude of those closest to him, Cyprus and Toytoo for example, and their misplaced complacency that the Skidian way was beyond reproach, Inel didn’t hold out much hope that even the remarkable offworlder could save his people from disaster. They just did not have time to initiate the strategies Bruce would propose to salvage more than a small portion of Skid’s population. Still, if they could just salvage a small part of the population there was hope for the future.

  “Okay, in this area here I will enclose some ivops. This area will be an organic, er, factory. Plant, if you like.” Bruce hurried on sensing a flicker of interest from Inel, if not from the others who had assumed studied poses of boredom. “Here a number of the ivops will be allowed to reproduce, while some of their number will be killed to provide meat for eating. A renewable resource, if you like.” Bruce was pleased with the way things were going with his explanation thus far. However, he was unprepared for the resultant indication of the Skidians’ total ignorance in these matters.

  “You will build your plant here then? It won’t be very large.”

  “That would appear to be a sound idea,” Inel added a little more knowledgeably. The proposed plants would result in the undoing of generations of social engineering on Skid by the devolution of people to small, self-reliant communities. Inel wondered whether it was too high a price to pay for saving some of his people. That would be the end of Skid as it had been at the peak of its power and influence and the continued dominion of high-caste Skidians like himself.

  “Let’s go and kill an ivop,” Bruce suggested hoping a practical demonstration might be more to their liking as he sensed he was losing their attention.

  The Skidians seemed almost as relieved as Bruce at this suggestion, vaguely understanding about killing things, if not that ivop meat could readily be eaten.

  Bruce picked the hammer up from the grass at his feet and tossed it onto the ute. It landed with a clang that made the Skidians jump in surprise, a signal to the dogs that it was time to go.

  “Get up!” The dogs wriggled out from under the ute where they had been lying in the shade and scrambled onto the deck. “Let’s go then,” Bruce said urging the reluctant Skidians.

  “On your vehicle? But where do we ride?” Cyprus asked, noting that there was room only for Bruce and Inel in the cab.

  “No worries. You can ride on the back and the old boy can sit with me in the front.”

  “Ha!” Inel clapped his hands together with a satisfied grin. It would be pleasing to see the two upstarts taken down a peg or two by the offworlder. Although he was virtually Skid’s dictator, he would never dare to speak to them in the fashion Bruce had.

  “Do it,” Inel commanded, as he maneuvered his not inconsiderable bulk onto the front seat of the ute.

  Bruce watched Toytoo and Cyprus climb awkwardly onto the deck and perch themselves on the wheel arches facing each other and tried to fend off the attentions of the dogs who tried to lick them to death.

  Inel remained silent throughout the short trip, holding his breath as best he could to shut out the loathsome stench emanating from the offworlder. He would have pegged his nose between his fingers but thought that would be too obviously rude and might upset the offworlder, who was known to be touchy.

  The last thing Inel wanted was to have his dignity challenged by an angry offworlder with Cyprus and Toytoo as witnesses. After a few minutes they came upon the massive herd of ivops which still showed no sign of concern despite Bruce’s having shot one of their number a week or so earlier.

  “What do you intend to do?” Inel asked as the ute came to a stop. He knew that the final product would be some kind of organic material that they should be able to consume in the place of synthofood but not how that product was arrived at, or what form it took.

  “Watch carefully and I’ll show you,” Bruce replied, forgetting he was talking with a head of state and had probably broken a thousand Skidian conventions on what was and what was not acceptable behavior. Not that he was worried unduly about that.

  Despite his rudeness, which Inel recognized as simply an ignorance of Skidian custom, Inel found Bruce’s presence quite refreshing and followed his actions intently. He regarded Cyprus and Toytoo, who had remained seated on the deck, with a jaundiced eye. Ever since their return from the offworlder’s planet, they had become full of their own importance, and Inel knew he would have to deal with them soon before they got too ambitious.

  Bruce strapped his knife around his waist and took the rifle from the brackets he had made behind the seat.

  “That one over there,” he said, bringing the rifle up to his shoulders and aiming at a medium-sized ivop directly in front of the ute.

  Bang!

  Cyprus and Toytoo all but fell off their perches as the ivop hit the ground. Bruce leant the rifle against the ute and ran over to the fallen ivop, drawing the knife as he did so. As Bruce slit the animal’s throat, Inel grasped his own in sympathy almost feeling the sharp blade slice across his own throat as a jet of bright red blood spurted from the wound.

  “Be careful in case it kicks,” Bruce warned Inel as he approached for a closer look.

  “You’ll probably want to develop a machine to do this eventually,” Bruce commented as he began to skin the carcass, “in a plant where hundreds of animals could be processed at a time, rather than out here in the open where things get a little messy. You can also use the skins for clothing if you want.”

  Inel wrinkled his nose. Not likely, he thought, wondering how anybody could eat any part of the bloody mess before him. Bruce completed the evisceration of the carcass with a practiced ease that Inel thought would be difficult to emulate.

  “Some of this stuff is edible.” Bruce prodded the entrails with his knife, retrieving the kidneys, heart and liver.

  “Get lost, dog!” He kicked Cop out of the way as the dog tried to sneak one of the kidneys he had laid out carefully on the skin.

  “Most of the carcass, except for the bones of course, can be eaten. For now, though, I’ll just chop off the choicest cuts.” Bruce cut chunks of meat from the carcass, while Inel tried to work out what was actually the edible material. As far as Inel was concerned, seeing the way it was produced had put him right off trying to consume any of it.

  “Who would have ever thought it possible?” whispered Inel somewhat in awe, finding it difficult to believe his ancestors had obtained their food in such a fashion.

  Cyprus decided to take an interest in the proceedings, but after a moment he vomited noisily beside the ute. The acrid whiff of vomit in the air and the sound of Cyprus’s retching sparked a sympathy effort from T
oytoo. Toytoo’s composure was not helped by Can tucking into the manna from the gods that she had stumbled on while waiting for the boss to throw him something a little more substantial.

  “Are these skills you have displayed difficult to learn?”

  “Nah, not really. Once you’ve got the general idea, all it takes is practice. You could start feeding people right now by simply coming out here and slaughtering ivops. But you also need to ensure a constant supply of ivops, which is why I’m developing this farm. Er, organic plant.”

  “Hmm. And you are sure we can consume this material?” Inel asked, misunderstanding a critical part of Bruce’s explanation. His ancestors had after all eaten this material, however unappetizing it appeared in its present form.

  “The meat? Yeah, sure.”

  “In this condition, what further preparation is required?”

  “Well, if you have to you can eat it raw, though it’s more common to cook it. Come back to the house and I’ll show you.” Now he had the full attention of the top Skidian Bruce was going to take full advantage of the situation. He cut out a section of the hide, wrapped up what meat he wanted to take and dumped the load onto the back of the ute, while the Skidians regarded the carcass dubiously until they realized that he meant to go.

  “Get out of it, you silly bugger,” Bruce yelled at Punch. He had made the dogs run home so that they didn’t get into the meat on the way back. Punch decided the best place to run was right in front of the ute. That was okay as far as things went. However, Punch was a run-over dog in the making, if he stopped suddenly for some reason.

  “Ya witless bloody animal!” Bruce yelled at him in exasperation after taking some evasive action. “Geez, Wayne,” he muttered under his breath at the dog.

  As if she had been forewarned about the imminent arrival of her leader, Leaf was waiting as Bruce pulled up to the house. Leaf greeted Inel respectfully with averted eyes and led the Skidians onto the veranda. Once the Skidians comfortably settled, Bruce went inside to have a wash. Once he’d showered, pulled on a Skidian robe he thought might be more appropriate attire, considering the status of their visitors, than his usual shorts and singlet, he checked on the cook and joined the Skidians outside at the table.