Oridor’s rapid departure from the scene further reinforced Bruce’s poor impression of Skidians, if that was possible. Then Cyprus also began to spend more time away in town (Bruce’s derogatory term for any built-up area of more than ten or so buildings) than he spent at the farm.
“Well, stuff the Skidians!” he decided for the umpteenth time. I’m quite happy pottering about here, minding my own business, he told himself untruthfully. For, deep down, he knew he was important to Skid’s future, and he resented the fact the Skidians didn’t realize it.
Despite the odd frustrated, bad-tempered flare-up – flare-ups that either sent him to the bottle or got him so bitter and twisted that he would not talk for days on end – Bruce thought he was fairly happy with his lot.
Sue amateurishly tried to analyze his behavior and counsel him, using such terms and theories as she had picked up from her own encounter groups and visits to her analyst. Her cliché-ridden approach was enough to clamp Bruce’s jaws firmly shut.
‘Do you want to tell me about it’, indeed! Bruce suspected Sue didn’t really know what she was talking about, in spite of the ease with which she articulated the psychobabble. He also figured that having someone more or less as screwed up as yourself try and solve your problems wasn’t such a good idea either.
Sue wished she had met Bruce on earth so she could have assessed the changes in his behavior and, more importantly, gotten some advice from that one fountain of wisdom that had never failed her, her mom. A vain hope, of course, for had they lived in the same country instead of a world apart, or even the same town. Given their different backgrounds it was unlikely their paths would ever have crossed.
Concluding she would never break through to Bruce’s inner soul to develop in him the sort of openness and honesty that she took for granted, Sue gave up. She realized he would still manage to function at some level, whatever the crisis. For that was his strength: he would trundle along, no matter what. Bruce might fall into a kind of melancholy or work himself up at times, reacting to the Skidian environment, but at least the manifestation of this anger also acted as a release for it.
Without realizing it, Sue, who believed she was so in touch with her own feelings, had bottled up her emotional response to being on Skid, and all things Skidian, and began to feel rather distressed.
Despite the obvious, she just felt that something was wrong and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She did not know whether she was physically ill or her nausea and tiredness was simply a reaction to stress. It was not as if she could go make an appointment with her doctor to get a checkup, or visit her analyst.
She did not have any confidence in the Skidian medical establishment, who unbeknownst to her closely monitored her health status and had not decided to intervene yet – or how to. The very idea of some Skidian quack doctor pawing her made her shudder. She might just as well have another beer.
At one point Sue became so withdrawn that Bruce wondered whether she might be suffering some sort of mental breakdown. All she seemed to want to do was make love with a fierceness and passion that almost frightened him, and sleep. More than once he had to use a headache to avoid another sexual marathon, an embarrassing ploy because usually it was he who couldn’t get enough.
“Have you any idea how long we’ve been in this place, Sue? Feels like ages.”
They were sitting on the veranda after their evening meal, having a beer and staring up at the myriad stars that filled the sky. The remains of the meal had been cleared away by Leaf, who had distanced herself from them, Bruce suddenly realized, after her night of sexual exploration. When was that? Not long ago, for sure. Bruce seemed to think it had been just the other day. But it could have been last week. Could it have been the one before? He tapped his glass and tried to count the months. It was at times like these he regretted never having got into the habit of keeping a diary.
“I worked it out the other day.” Sue had in fact asked her tablet, which Bruce had not thought to do. “We’ve only been on Skid for five months.”
“Is that all? Seems much longer somehow. Like a bloody lifetime.”
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
Both of them could remember how at times the days just seemed to drag on forever. For an eternity. But it was not so bad now. Or was it? Sue seemed more like her old self for the moment.
“So we can be rightly proud of our efforts here, then?” Bruce suggested after a moment’s consideration, really wondering whether they could be. There was always something else that could be done. For Bruce, finding the energy to do it all was his major problem. “We’ve done a lot of work here, eh?” he added, as much to reassure himself as anything.
“Suppose so,” Sue replied uncertainly.
“I feel as if I’ve been here for bloody years.”
With that depressing thought he tossed his glass over the veranda railing and into the night, feeling the irrational urge to wreck something again. The sound of tinkling glass as it smashed in the darkness gave him a certain vicarious satisfaction.
Sue almost followed his example but restrained herself. Years of middle-class, conservative indoctrination by her parents and peers prevented her from utilizing this useful emotional release.
Bruce called belligerently for another beer, which was delivered by drone. Leaf was keeping her distance! Bitch! Bruce thought, and through his beer-befuddled brain considered rooting her out of the hole she had withdrawn to and … he didn’t know what.
Sue correctly identified Bruce’s descent into a morose mood and prepared to join him getting drunk. She had been led to believe this was not a well-adjusted reaction to stress. Nevertheless, drinking to excess did provide a temporary respite from the depressing realities of Skid. Even if you paid for the indulgence with a hangover most of the next day.
Tonight, though, before he really got going, Bruce seemed to take control of himself. Instead of drowning his sorrows he became animated and talkative, unusually so for someone generally so taciturn. He began telling stories, almost to himself at first, as if recounting a chapter of misadventures, until abruptly Sue began to laugh. The stories were about the sorts of situations Bruce had got into, stories that certainly hadn’t been very amusing at the time. However, from a distance, related to someone else, they were funny.
But the telling of them also made him a little sad, for he had never told most of them to anyone before, and he realized how many years he seemed to have lived in an emotional wasteland. Men weren’t built to be alone, he’d finally discovered after years of believing himself to be a loner and more or less happy to be one. He paused and reached unsteadily across the table for his pouch of agar as he began a new story.
He’d never felt he had it in him to be a good storyteller. He’d get the punch line confused when telling jokes, and people somehow always turned away halfway through, leaving his words hanging in midair and him acutely embarrassed. Then he’d stare uncomfortably at the ground or have another beer to hide his discomfort.
Suddenly, millions of miles from a home he would never see again, he realized he’d sold himself short as a social animal. Tonight, with Sue as an attentive audience, he never missed the punch line, never failed to emphasize a climax articulately and never wanted for an appreciative laugh. So why did he feel so sad?
A few days later Cyprus reappeared at the farm after a protracted absence, only dallying long enough to deliver a message before disappearing as quickly as he had arrived.
Oddly enough, his message was the first direct communication Bruce had received from anyone. Usually they just seemed to expect him to know what was going on by telepathy, or something, so he didn’t know whether to make anything of the fact that Cyprus had ventured out to the farm or not.
“Useless bugger!” Bruce grunted, just for practice, as Cyprus reboarded the aircraft that had flown him to the farm.
It looked as if the Skidians were good at talking and making generous promises, but when it came to action they w
ere seriously challenged.
Thinking about this one day, Bruce wondered how they could appear to be so technically sophisticated and yet so bloody useless at the same time. Somewhere along the line they must have got their act together. On the other hand, if they could channel even a small part of the energy and enthusiasm they reserved for watching Stim, Bruce thought they could easily solve their present crisis one way or another. However, they couldn’t or wouldn’t, so it seemed to him they were doomed.
Well, that was tough. He, Sue – and Leaf if she wanted – would survive out here okay, and any other Skidian who made it this far. Though Bruce doubted many would venture out of the cities, even if they realized there was food in the wilderness. Few would even be aware the farm existed; though the likes of Inel and their hangers-on might just decide to show up on their doorstep.
Bruce was sure they could be provided for, although he didn’t view the prospect with any relish. The great fat oafs would just sit around pretending to be important, expecting to be fed and waited on hand and foot.
“In a week’s time,” merely a general Skidian term that meant sometime soon, “I will conduct a high-powered delegation to the organic plant to conduct a workshop,” Cyprus had pompously informed them. He also stated they were expected to provide an organic meal in the manner Bruce had called a barbecue.
“Reading between the lines, it looks as if Cyprus reckons he’s in charge of the place, don’t you think, Sue?” Bruce suggested to her as they watched him disappear. “On the other hand, maybe the Skidians have come to their senses and are keen to expand their organic operations.”
Perhaps they were just a little slow off the mark and he’d misread their intentions all along. Bruce’s eyes watered a little as he thought all his silent pleas for recognition had been answered.
Thirty
Bruce poured another beer and promised himself not to drink too much more. With an afternoon’s steady drinking behind him, he was already feeling both totally indestructible and a little unsteady on his feet, so the pledge to practice a little moderation was an empty one.
True to her earlier promise, Sue, with a little help from Leaf, had certainly organized a decent enough feed, Bruce decided, and set his beer glass carefully down on top of the wood-fired barbecue he’d built. He flipped over the meat charring on the grill using a fork he’d made out of a length of wire.
“Not quite burnt enough on that side,” he said to himself. He liked his meat well cooked, especially as the ivop steaks, despite being marinated in an onion and Skidian wine combination for hours, weren’t exactly tender.
Bowls of salads and stuff sat on the trestle table that Bruce had built using several doors he’d temporarily ripped out of the house, sharing pride of place with bowls of synthofood and potatoes cooked in foil on the barbecue.
Taking another swig from his glass, Bruce critically regarded the ivop steaks sizzling away. Beside him, still marinating in a bucket, were more than enough steaks to feed everyone several times over.
“About time to turn them,” he said to himself again, because he had nobody to talk to, a fact that was beginning to annoy him. Being ignored in your own home just wasn’t the done thing in his view. Bruce recharged his glass from the large jug he’d propped up in the bucket of meat to keep cool. He was feeling expansive now. Warm. Euphoric. But he felt a rising sense of self-righteous anger that he knew he should stamp on firmly but didn’t know if he could.
“Better slow down, man,” he told himself, taking another long swig, “or you’ll be properly pissed.”
Toytoo, Cyprus, Yarad, slimmed down versions of Mulgoon and Sideshow, and another couple of dozen Skidians unknown to Bruce had formed a loose, insular group around the beer dispenser. Off to one side stood Inel and another portly gentleman, keeping aloof from the others.
Looking around, Bruce got the idea that every single one of them, perhaps barring Inel and Cyprus, looked singularly ill at ease. It was difficult for him to decide whether this was because of the proximity of their seniors, the food arrayed before them or the very fact of their being out in the wilderness, which Bruce knew unsettled them. It also occurred to him that the discomfort might also be caused by coming into close contact with him and Sue, as if they were in danger of being contaminated by some foreign, contagious, incurable disease. Even Cyprus, who was by now well used to organic food and being out in the wilderness, refrained from any contact with him.
Bruce turned over a piece of meat, burnt nicely on both sides now, took out his knife, sliced a piece off and popped it into his mouth. “Not bad.”
With his eyes on the trestle table, noting the food Sue had prepared, Bruce felt a pang for the little extras that were missing. Tomato sauce and warm, crisp bread smeared with butter – garlic bread preferably. I should be able to make tomato sauce with a little experimentation, he thought. And he could milk a cow, er, an ivop. Soon they would be able to bake bread, of a sort. They had put a decent spread together so Skid was becoming more bearable every day, at least where food was concerned. But Bruce knew he could never be entirely comfortable there.
“How’s the cook?” Sue asked, emerging from the house with a tray full of food.
“Done. Give us a plate, eh, and I’ll chuck this lot on.” Bruce took the plate, filled it with charred chunks of meat and handed it back. “I’ll just whack some more on. You might as well tell the others to dig in, eh?”
Sue drew Cyprus aside quietly. “It’s ready. You can tell your friends to start now.”
Cyprus took his responsibilities fairly seriously and after getting his cue from Inel he made a long, rambling speech to his companions. Companions who now tentatively eyed the organic food arrayed before them. Those who had not attempted the organic material before became noticeably nervous, shifting from one foot to the other, and looked as though they were searching for an excuse not to partake in the feast.
Some of them stared at the food incredulously, as if to say, ‘Are we really expected to consume this material?’ As far as they were concerned, it was bad enough having to spend the best part of a day, any time at all actually, in the wilderness. Besides, the most important Stim event of the month was taking place right at that moment and they were missing it.
Nevertheless, they all took at least a small portion of the organic food. When all said and done, whatever they were there for, and for most of them that wasn’t exactly clear, it was a distasteful exercise only performed at the direct command of Inel. And even then only under as much protest as good manners would allow.
The Skidians had no doubt been told they were visiting a new food plant, a successful but small-scale alternative to the failing synthofood plants. They might just as well have visited a brewery for all the good it did them.
Even after an intensive briefing and an updated situation report on the ability of Skid to feed itself, famine was a problem to tackle when it became a personal reality. Not a likely prospect, given that each of them still lived almost as well as they had always done. The unusual shortages the general populace was beginning to experience had not struck them yet and never would.
There had been a few nervous looks when instead of heading for an industrial complex, their transport headed into the wilderness.
“A new organic food plant in the wilderness,” Cyprus, who was used to reporting data and having it go in one ear of his audience and straight out the other, informed them. Worse was to follow when they realized this was where the offworlders who had been presented to the senate some months ago had been quarantined.
The male was a most uncouth individual, who as well as being rude and arrogant, dressed in a fashion that could only be described as obscene, and used far too much agar. He also had the effrontery to presume to conduct the elite of Skidian society around the experimental unit where he had clearly been quarantined. It soon became obvious to all the Skidians, except Inel perhaps, that Bruce was in fact quite unintelligent. Cyprus was obviously the expert on the organic plan
t and supplied them with the information that the offworlder was unable to articulate.
His commentary was along the lines of: “The offworlder is unable to manage a bigger unit than this without assistance. Therefore, the productive potential of the organic system is limited.” No one thought to ask the obvious questions: Why was this so? Was not the offworlder brought to Skid to instruct Skidians on organic food production so they could produce their own organic food?
Where were the Skidian trainees, the drones? Cyprus had conveniently forgotten this minor detail, and Inel alone kept his own counsel as native professions of ignorance and arrogance surged around him like waves hitting a beach, dulling his desire to act to save his people. Maybe they weren’t worth saving?
“The management of these organic plants is a simple matter. If needed, small groups of Skidians could establish their own units using the data we have already collected,” Cyprus’s commentary continued.
So why hadn’t this been done?
Then Cyprus delivered what he considered to be his trump card, a master stroke that would deliver him to the highest council of Skid, despite his lowly birth.
“I would willingly supervise such a development program given that I have extensive and relevant experience in this field.”
What experience, one might ask? Inel marked his card for future reference. How could it be, as Cyprus maintained, that he could manage the organic plant, extract its full potential and train other Skidians in the art of organic food production when the offworlder was apparently unable to do so? And what is more, why did somebody not point this simple fact out?
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