by Bill Nolan
“Well, I didn’t know there was a crisis. Nante showed up and told us to increase security, so we turned on the shields. She didn’t say why, but we did, of course, notice the Empire soldiers around the clinic. She said there had just been some threats, but not to worry, as it was probably nothing. The To’Ach’an here stepped up internal security, just in case.”
Robert said, “Good, I’m glad it didn’t interfere. It was just a misunderstanding with some of the other Tocals, but it’s all settled now. So, what else do you need here? You have enough people and money?”
“Yes,” Maria replied. “We are in good shape. The staff is getting along, and nobody is overworked. We will be able to start giving vacation time soon. Now, some of the people here do seem interested in these new planets I am hearing about. I have to admit, I’m no different. I would love to spend some time on a completely wild world. That would be very cool. Also, I met a couple of the Pixies. What is up with that? I didn’t know they were real.”
“Surprised me too. They have visited Earth quite often over the centuries, and have been seen enough, either accidently or on purpose, that almost every Earth culture has legends and myths. They don’t have magic, though – just technology. Their ships probably account for the flying saucer sightings. The ships don’t have the capabilities of ours, but they do have some interesting abilities. They aren’t as intelligent or autonomous as our ships, either.”
After breakfast, Robert quietly slipped out of the facility and headed out to a somewhat clandestine meeting at the facility near Pearce, east of Tucson. Once there, he hiked out into the forest a mile or so, where he found a skipper waiting. Once inside, he greeted an old friend. “How are you, Kysandra Nutima? It has been a while. How is our special project progressing?”
“Very well indeed. I’m a little cramped in here with all the rest of the equipment, but nobody suspects a standard looking skipper to be a jump ship, and especially not a To’Ach’an jump ship. To use an Earth phrase, we really do fly under the radar.”
“That’s good,” Robert answered. “We may have to expand your purview a bit, though.” He then explained what had happened in recent weeks. “The list will, I suspect, need to be expanded. A bunch of suddenly unemployed and unattached former Tocals and their minions is bound to be a source of trouble.”
“No doubt. So, you want me to take them out? Oh, and I knew what’s been happening for the most part. Shanna keeps me informed as much as she can. The comms on my little ship don’t always have the range to reach her.”
“We will want to see what they do first, but it seems likely we will have to make them go away. How would you like some company? I can arrange for some of our new friends to join you. I have spoken to their queen about it. Besides other help, they can install a device which will allow you to cloak the ship, and possibly a personal cloak as well. For what you do, that could be pretty handy.” They discussed specifics for a while, and then Robert walked back to his aircar and returned to the clinic. Robert’s personal assassin, Kysandra, waited for the “company” to arrive the following day.
Later that day, at the clinic, Robert had a quiet meeting with Nante, the Empress. “I know you said your troops and navy stayed loyal, but that ship out front got pretty well blown up, and it has your markings on the side. So, what’s really going on? You also stayed on Serena instead of coming over to Shanna. I infer from this that you didn’t feel Shanna was safe. How big of a problem do we have?”
“On my side, I think I have it under control. On your side, you may have more traitors on your ship. They can no longer win, since the ships have turned things around, but they also have to know that they are dead as soon as you catch them. Desperate people do desperate deeds. Be careful.”
Once he left Nante, he contacted Podara and Shanna. They did a lockdown, confining people to their rooms, and then Podara began meeting with them one at a time. It would take a couple of days for her to examine everyone for treason or blocked areas. Her mental abilities were unmatched, so Robert knew she would find any problems if they existed. Once they got back to the Large Magellanic Cloud, she would have to do the same on the other ships in their little fleet.
Once he had things underway on Shanna, Robert had another, very private meeting with Glenora. “How would your people like to get some payback for the three ships you lost?”
Glenora smiled. “We were able to rescue nineteen of the thirty people on the ships. They had suits with locator beacons. What do you have in mind?”
Robert explained about Kysandra and her very special skipper. Glenora said, “Perfect. I know just the people. I will have them get the equipment they need and meet Kysandra. I have heard of her, by the way. She is something of a legend.”
“Yes, she is. We think the former Tocals could be a problem, and they were certainly responsible for the death of your people. I don’t think we can let that go. Kysandra handles these situations for me.”
Glenora was very pleased that those responsible would be dealt with. “By the way, we have been observing you since you were quite young. We saw your thread in the weave and I thought we should keep an eye on you. As usual, I wasn’t wrong. We also made sure you met Jane. We’ve been sort of guiding humans for a very long time. Please keep that to yourself. I only mention it because I suspect you already knew.”
“True, I did. Sometimes I can see the weave, and I have seen that there were things affecting it from an unknown source or sources. Then, when Jane and I met you on your planet, it became a lot clearer. I left that banquet wondering when the second shoe would drop, and here we are. That ‘simple creatures living in a treehouse’ act was really good. I hope you didn’t think I bought it.”
“No, that’s why I snuck along. I could see trouble coming. You know it isn’t over, don’t you?”
“I do. Sometimes I think it will never be over. I seem to move from one trouble to the next, with never much of a gap in between. I guess it keeps life interesting.”
“You are a warrior of the To’Ach’an. Do you want to live forever? To’Ach’an warriors don’t die in bed, you know.”
“Thanks a lot. I needed a good pep talk. I may not live forever, and I may not die in bed, but whenever and wherever, I promise you I won’t go down easily. Someday I will move too slow or jump the wrong way, but on all the other days, I will win. Thanks for the help. This would be tougher without you and your people. Why did you decide to make yourself known? I know Jane would never have found you if you didn’t want that to happen. You had decided to intervene.”
Glenora thought for a moment, and then Robert could see her come to a decision. “It was because of Jane. When she found out about the Potriem she just attacked. No hesitation at all. Just do the right thing. She put her life and her ship on the line for people she had never met. I had to respect that. I have been studying and guiding humans for many centuries, and that instinct to do the good thing regardless of possible cost is all too rare. I saw that if we didn’t intervene, Jane would die. We need her. Now, let’s get this done.”
“You say ‘get this done’ like you know what I’m planning.”
“Yes, it’s true. We Pixies are smarter than we look.”
“Well, you pretty much have to be, don’t you?”
Chapter 19, Settlers
Robert had a few more days to spend on Earth before Podara would be finished dealing with possibility of more traitors in Shanna. She first made a point of checking fellow To’Ach’an that she was quite sure would not be traitors. She knew this process could get violent, and so she wanted some backup she could trust. Anybody who was a traitor knew they would be killed when caught, so she knew they were unlikely to go quietly. Of course, Shanna herself had a lot of interior defenses, but it couldn’t hurt to take additional precautions.
Robert spent the time seeking groups who might like to be colonists on some of the new planets, once they were ready for that step. He didn’t want to just move Earth problems to a new location, and th
ese new colonies would be somewhat isolated and very rural in character for a long time. This made for some interesting choices. There was always an undercurrent of racial tension almost everywhere on Earth. One way to avoid that was to select a single racial group for each planet. This could have the side effect of creating very insular cultures which would never get along with the other insular cultures on nearby planets. The same was true for religious groups.
Then there was the issue of people wanting familiarity. That meant that farmers, for example, would want to take their familiar crops and livestock. Robert wasn’t too interested in introducing a lot of possibly invasive species to these new worlds. He spoke with Glenora about this, as the Pixies had a much better understanding of ecology than the humans did. Besides farmers, these planets would support reasonable numbers of hunter/gatherers, which was a lifestyle which was getting pretty much impossible on Earth. After thinking about this, meeting some leaders of various groups, and brainstorming with his own people and the Pixies, he finally decided that they wouldn’t look for certain groups. They would take applications from families. Single people just don’t make good colonists.
Once they had an idea what they were looking for, they created a website to handle first stage applications and then put the word out on social media. Wow! They got 45,000 applications in the first hour, and then it started speeding up. An amazing percentage of the population loved the idea of leaving Earth to settle a new world. The website just let people sign up. When they did, they got a whole application packet via email. A society needs more than a few farmers and hunters. All of the different skills which make up a modern society were going to be needed. Now, a lot of stuff could be imported, but imports had to be bought, so the colonists would have to be able to make some money. They would have children, so there would need to be schools and teachers, at least for the younger children. University level education could be handled off world. They would need medical care and law enforcement as well. That was the tip of the iceberg. Robert wasn’t looking to create a frontier society where everyone built their own house, dug their own well, and produced their own food. People would need carpenters, masons, electricians, and plumbers, just to get a house built.
A lot of the applications turned out to be from what might be called survivalists. That wasn’t an automatic disqualification, but they did want to avoid people who were too radical. The mountain men groups also expressed a lot of interest, but the whole hermit vibe was an issue. This doesn’t make for a society. They wanted little villages, not people off all by themselves. That kind of lifestyle doesn’t make for solid families. Another group they had to watch out for was people pretending to be a family, once it became known that only families were being considered. In addition to that, there were some pretty radical groups, many of them religious, who wanted to get a lot of their people picked in the hope that they could control the colony. They were fairly easily weeded out, and everyone was informed that any trouble of that kind would result in people being removed from the colony and returned to Earth. Since they started recruiting in the areas they controlled, most of which were English speaking, they did require everyone to be able to speak English and have at least some fluency in the Galactic standard language.
It turned out that Podara discovered two more traitors among the Tovena on Shanna. They had not yet taken any bad actions, and so they were just removed from the ship and turned over to the Empire to be returned to their home worlds. Once that was done, Robert was ready to return to the Large Magellanic Cloud. They would have some special guests in the ship, heading on a very special vacation. Nante had elected to stay in Serena with Jane and Glenora. That meant Serena had to take her time heading back.
When Mandy read about the search for colonists, she called her husband Paul at work. He had worked his family’s little farm here in Oklahoma as long as he could, but it was just too small. He couldn’t make enough to keep it going, so now he was working construction trying to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the bank was in the process of taking the farm away from them. Paul was so depressed that she was afraid he might do something desperate. Maybe this colony thing was just what they needed. By the time he got home that night, the application packet had arrived in their email. They stayed up late filling it out. Hey, they had skills! Paul knew farming and livestock, and he also knew construction. She taught home economics, so she knew how to can and dry and pickle, and she could sew. They would make great colonists; she just knew it. Before they went to bed, they sent off the application.
A lot of other people were doing the same thing. Luckily the applications were all coming in electronically, so Shanna could look through them first. They were from a broad spectrum of people. There were the expected farmers and ranchers, but there were also professionals in various fields. One family, Bob and Jen Smith, wanted to start a newspaper for the colony. They knew it would be online. Two brothers, who were married to sisters, were vintners. They wanted to grow grapes and make wine. Another man and wife wanted to start a craft brewery. Yet another family talked about starting a bakery. The list went on and on. Of course, the To’Ach’an would have to pick out a planet first.
Chapter 20, Fundraising
While Robert was on Earth anyway setting up the colonists, he was approached by people in the Ducks Unlimited organization asking for a donation to support wetlands. Robert decided to really make a splash, and so he immediately thought of the planet Janakara, which they had been exploring in the first system they had visited when they arrived at the Large Magellanic Cloud. He offered to donate 10 hunting and fishing trips for two people each. The hunting trips that were donated to Ducks Unlimited included transportation, food, lodging, 30 days on the planet, and the opportunity to hunt or fish at least 15 species of big game that had never been seen on Earth. There were, of course, hundreds of large species, but the pursuit of at least 15 was guaranteed. Each hunter could bring one companion, who could also hunt if they wished. In addition, the National Geographic Society was invited to send a writer and photographer at no cost.
It was decided to allow 500 people to attend a banquet where the trips would be auctioned off. Of these, 250 would be eligible bidders, and each could bring a dinner companion of their choice. Each of the 250 bidders paid $75,000 for themselves and their companion to attend. Six of the trips would be auctioned off at the banquet. One was to be awarded in a raffle, at $100 per ticket, with the winner drawn and announced at the banquet, and the other three would be awarded in a special drawing. Every person who had paid to attend the banquet had one entry in this drawing.
Janakara is an Earthlike planet, which, like Earth, has a wide variety of climates. It is somewhat larger than Earth, but has a lower density, so the gravity is about 10% less. The land area is a bit less than Earth, which means it has quite a bit more ocean. The ocean areas of Janakara are more broken up than on Earth, and some are quite shallow. The continents are smaller, but there are more of them. There are no permanent ice caps, although both polar areas do get cold in the winter.
The plant and animal communities on Janakara are as rich as those of Earth, and the entire planet is still wild, since there are no people or other similarly intelligent races on the planet. The entire planet is still as pristine as Earth was one million years ago. There are no roads, no cities, no pollution, and almost no buildings. Robert and his people had put in five small facilities of about 20,000 square feet each to act as bases when visiting.
For all practical purposes, the entire galaxy was Robert’s playground, and since no other sentient being had claimed Janakara, Robert was able to do so. Janakara was his, to do with as he wished. For the time being, he didn’t want to do anything with it that would disturb it. He liked the wild feel of the place. Besides, he had always enjoyed hunting, fishing, and other similar outdoor activities. Janakara was a paradise for an outdoor sportsman.
The banquet was sold out less than 12 hours after it was announced, and several animal rights groups immedia
tely prepared to protest. The media really got involved, and it was turning into quite a circus. It was Jonu who had the idea to move it to Shanna without telling anyone but the participants.
Aircars picked up those who didn’t have their own at whatever location they chose, and they came from all over Earth for an opportunity to bid. Marcy Stewart and a camera team were invited to cover the event, and it was broadcast live on a worldwide network.
The banquet was a huge success. Following an excellent dinner that included many dishes and beverages the Earth residents had never seen, a ½ hour film was shown that highlighted the many attractions of Janakara. Then the bidding started. The first trip sold for just over nine million US dollars. It turned out to be a bargain. The price just kept going up, with the sixth trip selling for nearly sixty million US. It was a very successful fundraising night for wetlands in North America.
The time of the trip had been preset for a departure one month exactly from the date of the banquet. Travel time was about 10 days each way, so the total trip time would be 50 days.
The winning bidders were a very mixed bag. One was a member of the Kuwait royal family, another was a German automaker, and a third was a South African who had made his money in diamonds and then opened a very large hunting preserve. An American computer software baron, the head of a major Wall Street trading firm, and a Japanese Corporation rounded out the successful bidders.
The three attendees who were drawn were an English Baron, a fast food restaurant chain owner, and a rather well-known actor. The final winner was the holder of the winning $100 raffle ticket, who turned out to be an out-of-work autoworker from Michigan named Jimmy Burns. He was a lifelong hunter and fisherman, and a member of Ducks Unlimited for 30 years. He was immediately offered phenomenal sums of money for his trip, but he resisted the temptation to sell. His wife, Betty, was in a wheelchair due to advanced arthritis and ill with cancer, but he hoped she would be able to enjoy the trip anyway.