by John F. Carr
The nomads choose to occupy an economic, almost an ecological, niche. They live off their flocks. On the empty steppes of Haven, there is not sufficient pasturage to maintain a flock of sheep, camels, goats, yaks, cattle, reindeer, moorse (an import from Churchill), or whatever in one place. Not even the native muskylopes can live by grazing in a fenced-in pasture. It is necessary to move about to find sufficient food and water for the herds. The need to take pregnant women to low-lying areas for childbirth reinforces the urge for constant movement.
The nomads are a part of the overall Haven economy. For every sheep they butcher and eat, they sell at least two at some urban market. They save up the money they make from the townies to pay for spaceship tickets to Mecca. They are dependent on prayer almanacs printed in Castell City.
They are not isolated from the rest of Haven. They merely have mobile addresses.
* * *
On old Earth, I saw a classic exhibit of nomads interacting with the urban dwellers around them. A few Bedouins are still allowed to roam the Judean hills around the city of Jerusalem. On the Mount of Olives, barely a kilometer from the edge of urban Jerusalem, I saw a Bedouin encampment with a television antenna sticking out of the headman’s tent. My tour guide laughed and said, “While the headman is busy with one wife, the other three watch television.”
I didn’t laugh; I made notes. What I saw was a typical group of Haven-style nomads. Their source of wealth was their flocks of goats, which could not survive camped in a single spot in the barren Judean hills. These Bedouins lived by the age-old rhythms of goat herding in the Wilderness, but they also took their pick of the culture and technology around them.
From Georg Bekroff, The Peoples of Haven, Vol. IV: Nomads of the Steppes, Castell City: The New Harmony Ethnographic Society, 2074
THE CONSULTANT
James Landau
2075 A.D., Haven
MILLVALE was a small town, so Enrique Perez knew Mac MacKim by sight. Mac was gray haired and in his late sixties, but still in shape except for a roll of fat over the belt. When Mac asked for a job, Perez said with a sneer, “Why? You out of work?”
“I got laid off from the flour mill.”
“Fired, you mean.”
“Same difference.”
“Why’d they fire you?”
“They said I was loafing on the job.”
It was the first day of construction on the Millvale Bridge and Perez, who was overseeing the work, looked around at the debris from the first wave of trucks and said to Mac, “I could use someone to clean up the trash. Interested?”
From that day on, Mac was the Bridge’s janitor.
Mac was hardly a model worker. He chatted with passers-by. He stopped to watch the clouds or to watch the Titan River flow under the bridge. He never went out in the rain and he refused to shovel snow.
Still, every non-raining work shift he showed up with his broom and shovel. It might take all shift, but the bridge deck would be free of dirt and litter, the trashcans would be empty and the guardrails shining.
Mac also cared for the tolls. From the day the bridge opened, the toll collectors accepted payment in kind and sometime in kine, although poultry was more common. Farmers would pay in advance with freshly-hatched chickens. The birds had to be fed against the day the farmer would show up with cash to redeem them. The collectors rotated the duty of feeding the tolls, but it was agreed that Mac was in sole charge of cleaning the cages.
Millvale had opened the bridge with considerable fanfare. A brass band was recruited from Castell City; a reviewing stand was set up; refreshment vendors were in place. Mayor Juan de la Torre was to give the main speech and Perez, a City Councilman in charge of the project, was to cut the ribbon.
The proceedings were about to start when word came that a nomad tribe was driving a flock of sheep to the bridge. The Mayor ruled that the nomads would have the honor of being the first patrons. Since the bridge had been built to attract nomads to Millvale, Councilman Perez would usher the tribe onto the bridge and collect the toll, which had been set at twenty-five credits per tribe.
The Mayor cut his speech short when the nomads reached the reviewing stand. It was not a full tribe, but rather six men on horses leading two muskylope carts and a flock of a little over one hundred sheep. Each horseman had a Kalashnikov automatic rifle slung over his back, a pistol in his belt and a whip in his hand.
Perez stepped into the street to greet them. The leading rider, whip in hand, told him in heavily accented Russki to get out of the way. When Perez did not move, the whip snapped over his head like a pistol shot.
Perez flinched. Before he could recover, the whip snapped again, this time past his ear. Another rider rode close to Perez, held his whip ready, and said in equally bad Russki, “Chief Selim speak, you listen. Understand, townie?”
Perez, outnumbered and unarmed, let the second horseman move him back to the reviewing stand. The nomads rode through the red ribbon and stopped at the flimsy wooden tollgate.
With much cracking of whips, they led the sheep forward to smash their way through the gate. Selim made a gesture towards his rifle and the toll collectors fled. The sheep slowly milled their way across the bridge without any of the locals trying to stop them.
As the two muskylope carts followed them across, the Mayor announced that “without further ado, the bridge is now open.”
The next day, repairing the damage, the toll collectors returned to their booth and started collecting money from local travelers, whose only alternative was to travel thirty kilometers downstream to the ferry and pay an even higher toll to cross the Titan River. The toll booth soon took in somewhat more than the twenty-five credits Selim and his band had not paid.
Then a second group of nomads arrived, leading a much larger flock of sheep. They were obviously not as well-off as Selim’s tribe. Several carried “Lermontov specials” (single-shot hunting rifles made in Lermontovgrad for new farmers) rather than Kalashnikovs. The rest had bows and arrows. Only the leader had a pistol in his belt. Clothes were shabbier and horse trappings more worn. Half the riders were seated on muskylopes rather than horses. They were accompanied by only one cart, with two women on the driver’s bench and half a dozen children sitting on the tailgate.
Again Perez tried to talk to the nomads. He was met by the leader, who kept his hand on his pistol butt.
“You let Selim through without charge,” the nomad leader said in good Russki. ‘You think you’re going to make Tyugan pay?”
Perez looked around at the riders, each of whom was ostentatiously preparing to unsling his rifle or draw his bow, at the toll collectors, who were already scurrying for cover. Then he swore in Spanish and stepped aside.
This flock proved less manageable than the previous one. MacKim, who had been sweeping the bridge deck, only avoided injury by climbing onto the railing, but his trash barrel was ruined. The sheep knocked over the tollbooth and a muskylope ate the day’s tally sheet, along with all the paper CoDo credits. The children on the back of the wagon jumped off to chase the coins which rolled out of the damaged booth.
Afterwards, Perez helped Mac with shoveling the manure, a long and painstaking process since coins that had been missed by the nomad children kept turning up in the droppings.
* * *
The City Council held a long meeting. The bridge had been intended to attract the nomads, who previously had to cross the Titan River by ferry. Yet, the nomads were not spending any money in town, nor were they paying the Millvale bridge tolls, either.
Mayor del a Torre had called the CoDominium Mission in Castell City and had been told that, while the CoDominium considered Millvale under its protection, the collecting of tolls was strictly a matter for local authorities.
“Commissioner, can the Millvale Police enforce the tolls?” the Mayor asked.
The Councilwoman who was Commissioner of Public Safety laughed at the idea. “The Millvale Police consists of a handful of detectives and a squad of night
watchmen. The police have neither the manpower nor the firepower to face rifle-toting nomads.
“Then, we have to face facts,” Perez stated. “We’ll just eliminate tolls for nomads, as they aren’t about to pay. And it appears we don’t have anyone to stop them.”
Council Chairwoman Elena Santander objected. “The bridge was financed by bonds backed by toll revenues. Millvale will need permission from the bondholders to give anyone free passage.”
The Council voted to enforce the tolls on nomads, by replacing the old gate with a sheep-proof barrier and reinforcing the tollbooth. The toll was to remain at twenty-five credits for one tribe and its flocks and the tally sheet was to be kept on a computer, as paper records had proven not to be adequately secure.
Before adjourning, the Council directed Perez to purchase Mac a manure cart.
A traveler from the Shangri-La Valley broke out laughing when he heard about their difficulties. “You should have bought Selim a drink, taken him to dinner, anything to delay him for a couple of hours. Then when Tyugan showed up, let the two of them fight it out. Selim and Tyugan are deadly rivals,” the traveler explained. Tyugan’s tribe is bitterly jealous of Selim’s prosperity; Selim’s people believe the Tyugas are little better than beggars.
“Both tribes wanted to be the first to bring sheep in quantity across the Titan River to the Shangri-La Valley railroad. First-comers are likely to get a corner on the Lermontovgrad market, one of the largest in the Shangri-La Valley. Upon learning about your bridge, both tribes had culled their flocks and set off to the Valley via Millvale and the railroad, with a minimum of herders and one or two wagons to carry supplies. Both had sent scouts ahead to report the instant the bridge would be opened.
“Tyugan, respectful of Selim’s better-armed men, had given his rival a two-hour lead. The chiefs knew that Millvale would be charging a toll on the bridge; neither had any intention of paying it.”
* * *
Half a cycle later more nomads showed up, not a handful of shepherds but a full tribe. Men on horses, all carrying rifles, were in the lead, followed by the gaudily-decorated wagon of the tribal shaman. Then came an immense herd of sheep and a smaller one of goats. Behind were fifty muskylope wagons, with twice that many spare horses, reindeer, yaks and muskylopes tied to lead ropes. Bringing up the rear was a herd of cattle and a final platoon of horsemen.
The flock of sheep brought downtown Millvale to a standstill. Truckers on Main Street stopped and climbed atop their cabs to watch the show. “It’s as if the Titan River was flowing with freshly sheared wool straight down Main Street,” one driver said. The goats resembled ice floes on the river and the cows an avalanche, slow, noisy and unstoppable.
The nomad chief, carrying a lighted torch, rode up to the strongly-built wooden sheep barrier and set it on fire. The shaman, standing on top of his wagon, contributed a cloud of multi-colored smoke. His driver, firing a pistol into the air, discouraged any would-be firefighters. The toll collectors fled when bullets started getting close, but the newly installed strongbox in the tollbooth proved strong enough to prevent the nomads from looting the money.
Once the burning gate had collapsed, nomad boys with fireproof gloves threw the embers into the river and the flocks and wagons calmly crossed the bridge. Perez, watching as the tribe passed, kept muttering, “If only the City Council were that well-organized.’
The Council meeting was quite acrimonious. Perez still argued for abolishing the toll. He was shouted down by the Mayor, who insisted that Millvale had lost face before the nomads and had to do something to reestablish its standing, before the tribesmen started looting the rest of the town.
The next work shift Perez found MacKim leaning on the guardrail, dreamily staring at the water rushing under the bridge. Perez picked a spot next to Mac, asking, “Anything worth watching down there?”
Mac pointed. “Yeah, the water’s just the right height to form a whirlpool around that rock.”
Perez watched the eddy in silence.
Finally, Mac said, “Guess watching the water’s better than listening to the Council arguing.”
“How did you know?” Perez asked.
“Heard some talk from passers-by,” Mac replied. “The Council can’t decide what to have for dinner.”
Perez swore under his breath, then said, “Next time I’ll stay home and have you tell me what went on.”
Mac turned to Perez and said, “What you need is a squad of Marines. The tribes are practical; they’d rather pay a few credits than get into a for-real fight.”
“Where can we get a squad of Marines,” Perez asked. “We ask the CoDominium authorities; they’ll laugh and think the joke’s so funny they’ll tell it to the nomads. Haven is such a backwater that the CoDo Governor doubles as their Consul-General. And it hasn’t gotten any better since Governor DeSilva replaced the Bronson regime.”
Mac nodded. “The Bronson’s were so corrupt that even the Harmonies couldn’t stand the stench.”
Perez nodded, remembering the hue and cry that went up when a Harmony assassin murdered Erhenfeld Bronson, Jr. “So what do you think it will take to make the nomads pay up, Mac? Discounting the arrival of the CD Marines, of course.”
Mac smiled like a small boy. “Not active-duty troops. Marines can retire on half-pay after twenty standard years. My son Rod just got out with his pension; he could round up some of his buddies if you wanted.”
* * *
Rod MacKim was in his late thirties, a tall energetic-looking man with none of his father’s time-to-take-a-break air about him. He was dressed in the fashion for men’s clothes that had recently arrived on Haven from Earth: knee breeches and a baggy-sleeved, multi-colored tunic with a tie and sash in even brighter colors.
“Is this what you wear for inspection in the Marines?” Perez asked, glancing down at his own work clothes.
“No,” MacKim replied. “I wanted to show you I can make it as a civilian as well as a Marine. I have talents other than a parade-ground voice.”
“That voice may be what we need. I’m looking for a guard captain, not a cardsharp.”
“Oh, so you play poker here, too?” MacKim asked blandly, and then recited,
“If Marines playing poker you need,
Then we hope that these words you will heed.
The Leathernecks
Will use marked decks.
But who cares? They don’t know how to read”
Perez said, “No poker here. This is a Hispanic town and poker is a strictly Anglo game. You want to stay here, you’d better take up dominoes.”
“Nothing wrong with dominoes,” MacKim said. “I’ve played it before. Also backgammon, craps, pinochle—”
“Enough of that,” Perez barked. “I need someone to set up a town guard force that can out-bluff the nomads, make them pay tolls and otherwise behave themselves. How would you propose to do that?”
“Easy. I could get you a dozen men, with rifles, in half a cycle,” MacKim replied. “Pay them Marine wages and they’ll stick around as long as you want. A squad of Marines will convince any nomad tribe to behave themselves. The tribes understand force—look at the way they’re always fighting each other. They will try to run all over you because they don’t imagine you’ll fight. One squad of Marines will change that opinion of theirs real fast.”
“You sound awfully sure,” Perez said.
“Trust me. I know the nomads like the back of my hand. Learned all there is to know about them after serving six years on BuReloc ships bringing them to Tanith and Haven.”
“You speak their languages, too, I take it?” Perez asked.
“Between Jones and me, we speak most of their languages.”
“Who is this Jones?” Perez asked.
“Buddy of mine in the Marines, retired as a sergeant in the Military Police. We worked the BuReloc ships together: I handled the Turks, while he took the Mongols.”
* * *
Perez reported to the Council that he was
opposed to hiring Rod. “I don’t trust the guy. He’s too glib, too sure of himself. Do you think anyone can really learn all there is about nomads? Particularly while holding a machine gun on them?”
“How much do you know about nomads, Enrique?” Chairwoman Santander asked. She was a lawyer and tended to cross-examine her colleagues. “Maybe we could use him as a consultant, considering that he does have all those years of experience.”
“There’s an old Anglo term for consultant: ‘Beltway Bandit.’” Perez replied. “I don’t know what a beltway is, but this bandit hasn’t been signed on yet and already he wants us to hire him a staff. We’ll never get enough in tolls to cover the Marines’ salaries. Let the nomads through free; just have our peddlers lined up where they have to slow down to funnel their sheep onto the bridge.”
“It would be worth what we’d pay the Marines,” the Mayor said, “if it kept just one tribe from getting drunk and setting the town on fire.”
“What about paying the Marines for the time between nomad visits?” one Councilor wanted to know.
The Treasurer quickly figured out what the payroll would be. Even the Mayor did not want to pay that much.
“Just hire Rod MacKim,” Perez said. “Then dress the Council up in uniform to be the rest of his force. We act dumb enough to pass as Marines.”
To Perez’s disgust, his suggestion was taken seriously. Santander moved that Rod hire the rest of the bridge guards locally and train them himself.
“Can Rod handle raising a squad of soldiers?” the Mayor asked.
“Maybe that’s why he wants Jones, to be his drill sergeant,” Perez answered. “Jones is an MP, and it’s riot police we really need. At least, I hope we don’t have any infantry firefights.”
“On the contrary,” Chairwoman Santander said. “By asking for Jones, MacKim implies that Jones is the better nomad expert.”