by Pam Uphoff
Not that the women were accommodating. They were all checking out Orobona and Hamza. The enlisted grit their teeth when they were called eunuchs and treated like servants. They made notes of which women needed to be tossed into the streets.
Harriet Watson rolled her eyes. "I've tried talking sense to them, but they aren't about to give up their cushy spot and start cleaning the palace, or learning how to cook."
Jaime shrugged. "No point in wasting time on them now. We need to focus on building shelters. After comet fall we can ease them into working or into their own houses. God knows how they'll make a living, but that really shouldn't be our problem."
The older woman crossed her arms and glowered at him. "You mean, apart from having caused the problem by killing their husbands?"
"No. I mean their having apparently having been raised to look pretty, thrill their husband, and do nothing is not our problem. They need a dose of reality. Cook, clean or get out."
Devvy Tripp had walked in sometime during the conversation. "I suspect they can sew, maybe embroider and so forth. They can't be totally helpless. Can they read and write? Could they teach the children? Act as secretaries? Go back to school? Yes, I know, the traditional low status female jobs. But they'll have to start somewhere."
Harriet Watson nodded. "Perhaps Dr. Neighbors will need some nurses."
The sixty-six privates split up into three shifts and started patrols, making bets about how many of them would find themselves working under which officer.
Jaime figured they were all going to be digging holes, no matter what officer they were under. And they did.
Sally Harper got their communications powered up, talked with the twenty grunts that had been abandoned on the far side of the World. They had nothing to report, other than that a kilometer wide circle of desert had replaced most of the gate camp. They had moved to the boxes left behind by the science camp, and taken up hunting to supplement supplies left there, and an occasional supply drop from the natives.
They kept the generators running and the gate anchor powered up.
No gate opened. They had no way to tell if the anchor had been damaged, or if this world was embargoed. But they kept it powered up, and rotated teams through to guard it, as a break from digging holes.
"They won't abandon us." Sergeant Johnson eyed the anchor. "If that lot that went through damaged the gate, it'll take time to repair it. And if they hadn't damaged it, I'd have thought the army would have been back in force, to take out the natives that had dared to attack them."
Jaime nodded. "Yeah, but Sarge, this is Fascia, where the Oners were based. Them attacking the Earth . . . may have been very . . . it's only been a week, not only might there still be fighting going on, if the Oners switched the gate to their world, there may be a full blown invasion and war going on."
They all stared at the empty ring.
"We'll find out eventually. Right now? Enjoy your break from digging. Tomorrow you'll be back at it."
And then there was the palace staff. Everyone from guards to maids. Some positions were confirmed. Some were confirmed for a short term. Lots of stuff was hawked to get coin to keep the government running—the Amma having taken a good deal of gold with him. Lots of gifts were accepted. And often sold.
The Ambassador advised.
They got a small backhoe working, and made short work of the basic holes needed.
They started a school in the palace, mainly to keep the kids out from under foot. Kenton groused about being put in it, but after Jaime took on the older kids for math three times a week, he dug in and applied himself. Some of the Ambassador's staff helped, then other soldiers, as they got bored. Some of the widows could read, and tried to teach, or at least chaperone their daughters when the soldiers stepped in to make sure the kids were all being taught, and taught well.
"But I don't know why, since we're all going to die in three weeks." Kenton scowled at the worksheets the camp printer had produced.
"We're not going to die. Or at least you won't die ignorant. Four times six."
"Twenty-four. My teachers never made me do this. They said a gentleman had clerks to do this stuff."
"Gentleman? Kid, you want to go home to your parents?"
"No." A scowl and growl. "I don't look much like my mother, either."
Indeed the kid was almost white blonde, a rarity in Fascia. Jaime'd seen blonde witches, but they'd all been from the West.
"Yeah, right. The Fairies brought you. Five times six."
"Thirty. Thirty-six, forty-two, forty-eight, fifty-four, sixty, sixty-six, seventy-two, seventy-eight, eighty-four, ninety. I know the sixes. Can't I come help dig?"
Jaime looked out the window, calculating from the slant of the sun. "Yeah. Let's get out of here." Twenty days. They deepened and squared off one of the holes the backhoe had made, and started the support framework.
Three guards were hung for rape.
And they dug lots and lots and lots of holes. Tornado cellar types, but with doors that opened in, on account of the inevitability of sand shifting and piling up on and against them. Some of the older boys from the harem showed up, and got put to work. Two of the girls as well.
Must be orphans, no mothers to "protect" them.
Scrap metal and wire mesh from the camp reinforced the local concrete. They stocked the bunkers with food, water . . . everything they could fit in while leaving enough room for the people. They even turned three in to stables. Horses, cattle, sheep and goats. Hamza's scavenging even brought in cages of chickens, ducks, and geese.
***
The north facing hill the palace sat upon was an advantage, and the troops dug in to the north of it for themselves and the rest of the palace staff and all those women and children.
All through the city, people were digging.
The weather was beautiful as they came into the last days of the year. And right down to the last second they kept thinking the Earth would come through.
Some of the shelters closed up early, all the children being put to bed down underground by apprehensive mothers.
But Jaime opted to wait until after the last moment, with a fair number of his compatriots, and the stubborn Kenton, whose grasp of Earth's English was growing daily, and sounding suspiciously like Jaime's northern European accent.
They watched from the roof of the north wing of the palace. At sunset he saw the first streaks of meteors hitting the upper atmosphere, burning up completely.
"C'mon. Break up. Break up completely." He prayed out loud.
A fireball roared across the sky, west to east half way up from the southern horizon and descending below the horizon. A spike of pain shot through his head. He gritted his teeth against it and watched a flurry of fireballs racing, burning up mostly but a few stubborn ones persisted until out of sight.
Pain like terrified and dying screams in his head. He strangled some red meteor light and thought about a shield blocking outside thoughts and the pain dropped, went away, bobbled about trying to make itself known. The ground shivered under foot.
The compression wave of an impact would travel the fastest in the ground, slowest in the air. Would any hit the oceans? The ground quivered and he knew that with so many pieces coming down it was almost guaranteed that there would be oceanic strikes and tsunamis.
He was keeping time in his head, and finally turned away, raising his voice. "We'll be getting the air blasts from those first strikes in a few minutes. This is a good time to take cover and see what happens." He strode down through the palace and out the lowest doors. Into the furthest of the last two shelters left open.
Danielle followed him in, big Ralph, scrawny Andy and little Katie. Kenton. Half the late comers were the older children of the murdered Soltis. Fourteen and fifteen year olds, they'd labored to save themselves and their people, joining work crews without regard to their former high status. If we survive this, we should recruit them.
A deep boom rolled across the palace grounds, and wind wh
ipped hard across the roof. Jaime looked up in concern, and a late rush stampeded out the doors to fill their shelter and spill over to the very last. He glanced at his watch, scavenged from the camp, and ran a quick calculation.
He closed and barred the door, and settled down between Danielle and Andy.
"It's weird to think I've known you guys less than a year."
"Nah." Ralph grinned. "You're still the greenest little private to ever survive boot camp."
Andy snickered. "I remember how you screamed going through the gate."
"I hate going through." Jaime admitted. "Never did get over it." The ground shivered again. "The comet must have broken up. That's four separate ground shocks. If the first ground shock belonged to that boom, then it hit roughly 2000 miles away"
"We're going to survive, aren't we?"
"Hey. Have a little faith in these shelters! I hand dug this one especially for you."
"Ha!"
"Okay. I did it for me. I have to survive long enough to get back to Earth and regen treatment. I refuse to die in this condition."
Katie shook her head. "I never know whether or not to laugh at your jokes."
"I laugh." Andy said from the other side. "Or maybe I'm just laughing at his incredible optimism."
Jaime leaned his head back against the wall and felt another quiver. He knew that somewhere someone was writing it all down. A bunch of the techs were riding it out in their mod, so they could mind the seismographs. He'd thought seriously about joining them, but he wasn't a tech, just curious.
A couple of the littler children got closer, snuggled down with them. Some of the children had been completely orphaned with the deaths of their fathers, and the troops were picking up the slack. It wasn't like they were going to have children of their own any time soon, after all. Jaime drifted off to sleep, dreamed of drowning in blue fizz, and only woke when they opened the door three hours after the last ground shock.
He yawned. "Well, so much for the End of the World."
They were kept busy for days exploring collapsed buildings, and rescuing people, but the local casualties were very light, and even the structural damage not bad. The palace had lost roof tiles and a few windows.
The coastal dwellers reported a high tidal surge, but not high enough to be dangerous this far up the Kara Sea from the open ocean.
"Which begs the question." The captain brought up at the end of the week. "Am I going to be the Amma of the entire Auralian Empire? Quite apart from not being Auralian, having no idea of the extent of the empire, how it was built and how many pieces want independence, having no army to protect it or keep it . . . We need a long term plan, just in case we're really and truly stuck here."
"I know where there's a map." Katie Foster was waved permission to fetch it.
"There were, I think, about a dozen administrative areas." Oklahoma Johnson tapped his fingers. "I'd recommend you stabilize this area first, so you have a solid base to expand from, if you want to expand."
"We need to train with these swords, everyone learn to ride a horse and fight from horseback. New tactics . . . " the LT started making a list.
Ambassador Johnson rapped the table. "One important thing to decide on is whether we contact the people we know in the Kingdom of the West. Do we let them know a foreigner is controlling a sizable chunk of their worst enemy? Or do we continue this Amma Lyle Lilian impersonation. In theory, they could bring the twenty stranded soldiers and the astronomers here, or all of us back there. Possibly with the Gate Anchor."
The captain nodded. "But first Amma Lyle needs to consolidate his power. I think we'll try doing it by improving local people's lives."
Hamza nodded. "Sewers, clean water."
"Maybe some dams for irrigation? More food never hurts."
The Ambassador's secretary, Harriet Watson nodded. "We should expand the school, get everyone a basic education."
"We need better banking laws, prime the economy."
"Build some hospitals." Their sole doctor requested. "In fact a medical school would be nice, share our expertise."
Almost the first thing they did was move out of the harem. Mind you, the baths were quite nice, but the ambiance . . .
The "welcome guests" wing had three levels. The female soldiers laid claim to the top level, the Ambassador and his male staff took the second level. The officers laid claim to the ground floor.
The grunts took over the "guests awaiting ransom" wing.
The Captain split up his soldiers in an uneven three way. Security of Palace and Camp, under Lieutenant Frank Comfrey, got twenty grunts. Lieutenant Hitchens' "Diplomacy and Intel" unit got ten. The others were assigned to Engineering under Tony Lennox.
Sergeant Johnson's squad drew the task of enlarging the water supply system. Jaime recruited a work crew and took them up into the hills. There were plenty of dry arroyos for small dams. The trick was finding ones with a large catchment area behind it that was not being farmed.
They wound up doing a lot of their own mapping. Crude, but enough to show where irrigation water would be useful, and where they could place dams.
It involved a lot of tromping about the desert. Alone, Jaime tried the few magic tricks he'd managed. Cutting things and setting fires, mostly. With just Kenton around, he tried the mental blocking he'd done, during the comet fall. Kenton glowed enough to be a good test case, and also handy for holding rods for their crude mapping and surveying. The kid joined every expedition out of town he could.
"I think building a bunch of small dams for local use in farming is going to work better than a single large dam." Jaime shrugged. "And this way we get some actual hands on practice in building dams."
Andy nodded. "While the boys in the shop figure out how to make pipes."
Jaime looked over at the LT. "I noticed a few books, on our scavenging run through the camp. Do you think the Ambassador's staff could be persuaded to collect them into a library? I'd sure like a book on building dams. Save us some trial and error time, you know?"
The LT grabbed a loose sheaf of paper and wrote on the top sheet. "We've only got seven working computers. I need to set up a filing system."
Andy cackled. "Think you can get any of those spoiled widows to learn how it's done?"
"They're not spoiled." Craig looked up from the shovel handle he was carving. "They are backstabbing, ambitious, witches. Some of the younger ones might be glad to escape, though. Or the older daughters. Sheesh. They mostly got married off at sixteen. Hard to tell some of the widows from the daughters."
Jaime bit his lip. "We need to break up that clique. I've got Kenton living with us, how about we pull in all the boys over thirteen, and perhaps the older girls can move in with the women upstairs? Just . . . be around us instead of them, for starters."
Danielle nodded. "We've got plenty of room, there's just nine of us."
"Some of their mothers died, not our fault. Childbirth and so forth. Invite them first, or, at least the older ones." Lennox scratched his chin. "I'll see about moving the young men as well. Recruit them for part time duties and part time school perhaps." The LT bent a censorious gaze Jaime's direction. "Like that young scamp who's managed to adopt you."
"The ambassador and the captain are finding him useful. I don't know how much the boys out of the harem know about the real world, but they worked their asses off digging shelters, once they were shown what to do. A few of the girls, too."
"Right. Start with them, and we'll add more as word gets around that they are working, and getting paid, not being abused."
The Amma's "special representatives, guards and staff" adapted, and adjusted. More of the harem widows moved out, returning to their families, or having managed to negotiate new marriages. Some found the Earthers more interesting, or at least the officers. Ambassador Johnson married Harriet Watson. Then Dave Hamza married one of the widows, a bit to everyone's shock. There were a few marriages, both all Earther and mixed. Some, married or not, adopted orphans. Households of on
e sort or another formed up. Kenton started calling himself Kenton Felis. The nine native boys who were over fifteen moved in with the soldiers, and some of the older orphans as well.
The first small dams took six months, and the irrigation channels were ready for the second crop. With a good harvest, the Amma started on public works. Sewers and water mains were almost done before the Amma's first anniversary as the ruler of the immediate area. Schools . . . the city folk were a bit slow to take to the idea, especially for girl children. Until the working women realized they could get someone else to mind and feed the children while they labored. By the end of the year the hospital was finished, and a medical school was being planned.
The engineering unit shrank, plans for diplomacy outside their area grew.
Two years, nothing from Earth.
Chapter Three
Late Spring 1376
Karista, Kingdom of the West
Major Carwell "Lefty" Lebonift was hard put to stand at attention and neither run away nor start whimpering.
"I do understand, and sympathize, with your not wanting to go near Auralia. But without Bran and Oscar, you're the only wizard I've got. And I need to find out if there are any Oners in Fascia, or whether the odd reports I'm getting are all due to the Earthers that were kidnapped along with their gate."
He had to agree with General Rufi, but . . . well . . . "Or if Pax is there, although it doesn't much sound like anything he's ever done before."
"That we know of." The third man in the room, Colonel Burris, was the head of the King's Own, the elite group that guarded the royal family, and also collected intelligence both inside and outside the Kingdom.
"True. We've only observed him for a few years." Lefty braced his shoulders. "Well. Perhaps I should check with . . . those people in Ash about that, and then get moving. Do you know if the ports at the Narrows are open?"