The Colony Ship Conestoga : The Complete Series: All Eight Books

by John Thornton

  “Stop making excuses and tell me where she is!” Jerome yelled.

  “I do not have that knowledge. I am responding to an automatic emergency call. Additionally, you personally do not have the proper indwelling identification markers. That is a minor, but important offense, which should be addressed. At present, however, I do not have time to implant you, I must be off to the mass causality scene. I can inform you of a general procedure. I have no knowledge of individuals, but any surviving causalities from the area in question were transported to the Special Care Unit. That was reopened to receive the estimated high number of causalities associated with the calamity which befell Terraforming and Restoration,” The white automacube, calling itself Doctor 372, responded.

  “The what?” Jerome demanded. “She was taken where?”

  “I have no knowledge of where she was taken. The procedure was that any surviving patients would be taken to the Special Care Unit,” Doctor 372 responded with hostility in its mechanical voice. “Release me now or security forces will be summoned.”

  “Security?” Jerome mocked. “I have been told that there are no security, or police forces, not in this habitat anyway. And that mass causality incident you are talking about, well, they are all dead! You are too late!” He reached into his holster to draw the Willie Blaster.

  “Security forces have been summoned. Your actions have been reported. Your claims about the mass causality situation are unverified, and suspect due to your unreasonable behaviors.” The white automacube spun about very rapidly, and then suddenly reversed direction. Jerome was dislodged from his perch.

  “Stop! I must know where Cammarry is!” Jerome aimed the Willie Blaster at the fleeing automacube.

  “Security has been summoned. I am on an emergency response call to a mass causality trauma situation. Emergency! Emergency!”

  Jerome’s lips tightened, his eyes narrowed, and he gritted his teeth. “Last chance to stop.”

  The white automacube spend onward.

  Piff. Piff. Piff. Piff. Piff.

  He fired. The medical automacube, Doctor 372, was ripped apart from the impact of the multiple high speed projectiles. They easily pierced the thin layers of the unarmored machine. Its energy pack ruptured, the internal mechanisms crumpled, the manipulation arm spun wildly about, and two drive wheels were sheared off.

  “Emergency! Emer….” The machine’s mechanical voice trailed off and stopped as the shattered parts spun around the wreckage.

  “I told you they were already dead. It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. Machines are essential, they allow life to exist. Machines are the mother of civilizations, arts and sciences, but machines will obey me.” Jerome holstered the Willie Blaster. He snapped the weapon into place and patted it. “Machines will obey me.”

  “Well, rube, when you get angry, you make things happen. I can see that is a commonality with your partner,” Bigelow said as he stepped out from where he had been hiding. “Are you sure that white cubie was heading for the tunnels where you killed all those people? Maybe there was another event somewhere? A different medical emergency?”

  Jerome turned and glared at him.

  Bigelow put both hands up in front of his face, palms toward Jerome. “I know where that SCU is located. You know, that Special Care Unit, where those medical cubies apparently took Cammarry. I can show you the way there.”

  “Do it.” Jerome nodded ever so slightly.

  “So we are giving up on Terraforming?” Bigelow asked with a smirk.

  “That automacube said Terraforming is toxic and life support there has failed. From what I saw, that is logical and explains why I could never get back in.”

  Bigelow took another sip from his bottle. “So do we leave or do you have other cubies you want to destroy first?”

  Ignoring the snide remark, Jerome asked, “Is there security coming?” He was thinking of the red automacubes which he and Cammarry had encountered in around Wolf City.

  “I told you several times, the Kurent does not have security or police forces.” Bigelow drank from his bottle. “From what I understand, there once was a security service, which I believe was ship-wide. Occasionally, and this is only hearsay, so take it for what it is worth or not, but occasionally, some old system or cubie mentions ‘calling the police’ or like that medical machine you clobbered said, ‘security has been summoned’ but nothing has ever come of that. Nothing I have seen anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “How should I know why?” Bigelow said, and added a great deal of religious blasphemy to his words. “Security is not a priority, not for the Unity of Beta knot-heads. The Kurent wears a massive sheepskin costume. He dances around with his chain and bells. Now he is claiming to have brought back the water. He used to only claim to be ‘keeping away the cold of space’ or the ‘poisons of an alien world’ while the rest of the Unity of Beta laments their communal guilt over making planet-fall. But there are no security forces or police.”

  “Tyranny and anarchy are the opposite ends of the same club. So how far is that Special Care Unit?” Jerome’s anger was showing on his flushed face.

  “The other end of the habitat, downriver all the way toward the sea,” Bigelow replied. “We can use my troika, acquire some riding horses, or take a boat. Do you have a preference?”

  “I am not sure. That white automacube was responding to something. I think it was those animal butchers in the tunnel. Remember what they said? We heard about the Ferryman again.” Jerome was thinking of Khin as well as Cammarry. “The lunatics who slaughtered those animals mentioned the Ferryman. A ferry is a type of boat, correct?”

  “Well, in a literal sense, yes. That Ferryman may be all talk, bluster, and nonsense.” There were many profanities sprinkled in Bigelow’s speech, many of which Jerome did not know. Bigelow continued, “From what I have heard, the Ferryman uses spacecraft to take people to a better habitat. I used to think that was gibberish, but then you and Cammarry came here in a spacecraft, right?”

  “How do we get to that Special Care Unit?” Jerome barked.

  “I asked you what you preferred. Anyway, well rube, the river level is rising, so a boat may be the quickest, but may also be the most risky.”

  “A boat it is then.”

  “Rube, you do have a sense of adventure about you.”

  “I am a dutiful partner. Cammarry must be found and saved. We may also find the trail for Khin. Lead on.” Jerome’s eyes were as hard as permalloy. His face set in determination.

  “We will have to backtrack some.” Bigelow led them back down toward where the menagerie was located. They hurried through that horror of carnage. The foul smell of blood and butchery was heavy in the air. Passing through the bulkhead door was easy, and then though the broken open double doors and up the stairway.

  Light shined down from the exit, and they both blinked against the brightness as they emerged. The sky tube was bright with its warm yellow light, shining down upon the biological habitat.

  The town of Seron was around them, but it looked different than Jerome recalled. Far away, past the structures nearest to him, he could see the apartment building up against the end wall of the habitat. He used that as a reference point to understand his location. He was standing on the far opposite side of the town, on its outskirts, but still close to the end wall of the habitat. He turned around and saw that he had emerged from a building which was very different from any he had seen before.

  “The Kurent’s manor,” Bigelow stated as he looked at where Jerome was gazing. “Extravagant and gaudy, if you ask me, but you did not. It is the official headquarters for our leader and the entirely worthless Unity of Beta. They are likely in session right now, having a meeting, eating, and producing nothing to help anyone.” Again Bigelow liberally sprinkled his commentary with obscenities and anatomical impossibilities.

  “But if there is no police, how did anyone ever manage to keep order?” Jerome asked.

&n
bsp; “Well, rube, until fifteen years ago, when the drought started,” Bigelow kicked some dirt on the ground and looked away. “People cared about the social order, especially after the insurrection. Most people are descent, and those that did not cooperate and work together for the good of the community were shunned. That was how Beta operated after the planet-fall. Some say Beta was supposed to be that way. That there was a community spirit which all people shared in, begun by the people who first inhabited Beta at the launch.” Bigelow took a drink from his bottle, then wiped his lips. “But when the water failed, and you and I know more about that then most everyone else, well, then the Kurent did manage to setup and run the water sanitation center. There water was rationed out, and everyone got some. If someone tried to steel water, everyone turned on the thief. Mob justice against those few thieves did discourage others. But people like the Ferryman exploited the whole thing. Now that the water is back, well… you saw what happened in the menagerie, and almost happened to Anika, Agnes, and Arabella.” His hands were shaking a bit as he mentioned his horses.

  “So there was some stability,” Jerome stated. “Using water as a reward or punishment by a mob? But the multiple births? Those parents who left their children out to die? Those people who slaughtered the caged animals?”

  Bigelow did not answer.

  Jerome tried to distract his anger at the people of Beta. Flexing his muscles rhythmically helped reduce some of that anger, but not all. He studied the building as if it were one of the domes he had investigated. Looking at the Kurent’s Manor, Jerome estimated it to be about twenty meters high at the highest of its many peaks. The base of the building was a wide and irregularly shape. Overall the structure reminded Jerome of castles he had read about in literature. It was made from permalloy which had been spun to look like some kind of old-style stacked stones. The manor was the most extravagant, garish, and sumptuous building Jerome had ever seen. Ornate curlicues on its edges, fancy and tall narrow windows in every wall. Various, sharply pointed peaked roofs, mostly four sided, surrounded one man central peak. A multitude of smaller cupolas were also seen, many over the top of turrets, or towers. At the pinnacle of most were spikes that went straight up pointing toward the sky tube far overhead.

  “Anti-roosting devices,” Bigelow said as he caught Jerome’s look. “Pigeons, storks, swifts, swallows, and other birds like to nest up on those kinds of roofs, so the Kurent’s Manor was designed to help prevent that. Those barbs and fancy metalwork help inhibit bird activity.”

  “They worry about birds roosting, but do not have police for the people?” Jerome remarked. “Where are their priorities? I mean birds are important, the ones I have seen on the Conestoga are amazing, the only real birds I have ever seen, but how can any government lead, if anarchy is embraced?” Jerome stared at the Kurent’s Manor and wondered how such a place could exist. After the children he had seen abandoned, the carnage he had witnessed in the menagerie, and the slavery in Habitat Alpha, he was just confused as the motives of the Conestoga people. There was an immense discrepancy between the Conestoga’s people’s actions from the human behaviors in Dome 17. “Laws are not dangerous which inhibit wicked passions. History, what is known after the Great Event, shows that. Compare the decades of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any society you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest evils appear.”

  Bigelow shook his head in a noncommittal manner. He looked away from the Kurent’s Manor. “Rube, you still interested in a boat to get to the Special Care Unit?”

  “I want the quickest way to find Cammarry.”

  Bigelow gave him a long and hard glance. Bigelow wondered about the rising anger obviously visible in Jerome. He had seen what Cammarry was capable of doing, and now Jerome as well. Bigelow considered how he might escape Jerome’s presence, should the need arise. He would hide his fear of Jerome, but watch for a chance to get away.

  “Is a boat the fastest way to find Cammarry?” Jerome demanded.

  “The Kurent’s Manor is not just the main house,” Bigelow gestured. “The section around the house, includes gardens, and passages to other underground specialty places, like the menagerie. There are neat lodge-houses along the river, as well as housing for the farmers. You saw the fields as we came in. The farms accommodated roughly fifty dairy cows, twenty-five horses; and a veterinarian clinic for work animals. But what interests us is the durhams.”

  Jerome shrugged his uncertainty of the meaning of durham. “I want to find Cammarry, not tour this place.”

  “Durhams are boats, rube.” Bigelow smacked his palm against his own forehead and cursed a few profanities. “Sorry, I know, your dome place did not have boats, or animals, or other stuff, right?”

  “That is correct,” Jerome said sullenly. He was gaining some control over his anger, but it was difficult. He unconsciously touched his ear looking for the com-link to call Sandie. “So these durham boats, can we use one?”

  “Well, that remains to be seen. The curators of the dock are Lloyd and Erma. At least they were years ago when I worked in Terraforming. With the drought, I have no idea what they have done. But we will check. If boats are not available we can walk back to get my troika, or hire some horses.”

  “Unless the criminals here have slaughtered them all,” Jerome said.

  Bigelow gestured to a sidewalk that passed by where they were standing. They followed it along and down to the riverside.

  “The river’s water level is still far from where it once was,” Bigelow said as they approached the dock. The old channel was about three or four meters higher than the current river back, and some small trees and bushes had grown up in the steep bank. “You can see where that pier juts out. The river used to flow right up to there.”

  The pier was made from some wood materials, with stainless steel reinforcements. Jerome wondered why they had not used permalloy for the construction. “I do not see any boats.”

  “They may be gone, or stored inside. The river has not been navigable for over ten years. The curator’s home still looks to be in use. See the garden at the side?” Bigelow pointed.

  The house next to the dock and pier was similar to the majority of the homes in Seron. It was from permalloy, and had a well-tended garden, as well as clean and neat yards around it. The sidewalk up the pier was also in good repair. The two men walked up to the door, and Bigelow knocked.

  An elderly woman answered. “How may I help you?”

  “Erma?” Bigelow asked. “Is Lloyd here as well?”

  The woman squinted. Her dusty blond hair was streaked with gray. She had it pinned up in a neat style. Her smile widened across her old face. “Yes, Lloyd is here. Let me call him.” She turned and walked away.

  Bigelow looked at Jerome and shrugged.

  A tall and slender man came to the door, following Erma. He walked stiffly, but erect. He was bald, except for a thin strip of gray hair that wrapped around the sides of his head. He had a pudgy face with some drooping jowls, and was missing a couple teeth. He smiled. “How can I help you?”

  “We need to get to the Special Care Unit as quickly as possible,” Jerome blurted out. “I understand you can help with that.”

  “The quickest way possible would be to use the transport system at the terminal under Seron,” Lloyd replied. “But that was when it was fully operational, back in the days of my youth. Erma and I would ride those transports anywhere around Beta we wanted to go.”

  “We could even ride to the other habitats, but that was so long ago.” She gave Lloyd a gentle and loving squeeze to his arm. “Lloyd do not tease this young man. He obviously is in a rush to do something. I bet it involves a girl.” Turning to Jerome she smiled and said, “Am I correct? Are you pursuing a lady who has caught your attention and you are sweet on her?”

  “Actually…” Jerome began, but Bigelow interrupted him.

  “There is no fooling you,” Bigelow said using his conniving voice. “This youn
g buck is eager to court a young miss, and she is working down near the Special Care Unit. She is an aspiring nurse. She loves helping others, and you know how much that is needed in this world today.”

  Lloyd put his arm around Erma. “Oh young love. Now that the water is returning, courtships and romance will return to its rightful place.” He kissed the side of her head.

  “It is not like that….” Jerome tried to interject, but again Bigelow cut him short.

  Bigelow forcefully stepped in front of Jerome. “The lad feels embarrassed is all. What with having to ask for your help. May we borrow a boat? Our intention is to float down so he can make the proper, and time-honored omiai. Both he and the miss are orphans, so there are no parents to do the dutiful thing. Hopefully, and I am humbled by my part in all this, but hopefully, there will be some children who arise from this prospective union. It is Beta’s only hope for the future, am I correct?”

  Lloyd looked more closely at Bigelow, his pale blue eyes were somewhat cloudy, but he focused them as best he could. “Yes, the journey depends on the next generations. I recall you worked over in Terraforming, Brigadier, if I recall correctly.”