Jennings' Folly

by Thomas C. Stone

  It’s a smooth ride. Everything is monitored by onboard computers and the space inside is cramped, but designed well. The driver partially stands on footholds and also has a padded seat to sit upon. The strider can drive itself, and if there is more than one machine on a trip, one can be slaved to another, so that a driver may choose to nap out for a bit while the slave follows and mimics the master. It can also operate in extreme conditions using, for instance, infrared for navigations when the pilot can’t see due to bad weather.

  The most important thing when driving a strider, says Pat, is to not run into anything.

  Self-evident, but true.

  All the same, horses could go places the striders couldn’t. The big difference was that the striders were fast.

  The weather cooperated so Grandpaw pushed the speed and we floated across open fields, sometimes parallel to the road and sometimes losing sight of it altogether. The view from the strider at full speed is hypnotic. It feels like you’re flying and you almost are. There are times when the anti-grav push has the strider moving at two meters or even greater above ground level.

  Because we were in a hurry, Papaw decided to follow the road past Summit rather than detour three kilometers.

  Summit was built on a hill that commanded a view of the only approach from the northeast, our direction. If the people of Summit kept a watch, which they do, the striders would be noticed in short order while still kilometers away. I’m sure that’s what Papaw was thinking about when riders drew up on our left and right. They signaled for us to stop and that brought a curse from Grandpaw but he told me to start braking and I did, finally coming to a halt under the walls of the fortressed, frontier town.

  One of the riders broke away from the group and came prancing before the striders. It was Jonah. He knew who we were – we had the only striders on the planet. “Come out,” he commanded. “Show yourselves. I want to see who is in there.” To no avail, he peered at the tinted plexiglass in an effort to see inside.

  Over the radio, Papaw told me to stay put. “I’ll see what this nitwit wants.”

  Grandpaw popped his door and climbed out. Exposed by the open door, Kaliis didn’t bother to unbuckle himself. Jonah remained on his horse and looked down at my grandfather. “Were you going to pass through without saying hello?”

  “Hello, Jonah,” said Grandpaw.

  “Hello, Mr. Jennings,” replied Jonah. He looked toward me or, my strider, rather. “Who’s in the other machine? DeKalb perhaps?”

  “Is that why you stopped us, Jonah? So you could see who was driving?”

  “You two were fairly flying across our fields. You’re a hazard. Additionally,” Jonah faced me again. “If DeKalb is in there, I’m going to arrest him and impound the machine.”

  “Now look here” said Grandpaw, “We’re headed to squelch an outbreak in New Botswana. You want it to get around that you held us up?”

  Jonah didn’t answer. Instead, he repeated his question: “Who’s in the machine?”

  Papaw sighed and gestured for me to pop the hatch and come out, which I did. Jonah acknowledged me, but the corner of his mouth twitched as he flashed a smile. He turned away and Papaw asked if we were free to go.

  “Can you pay the fine?” Jonah countered. With that big smile on his face, it was hard to tell if he was serious or not.

  “Fine for what?”

  “I thought I’d made that plain. You’ve presented yourself and the operation of this machine to be a danger. I don’t care how you operate these things elsewhere on the planet, but I won’t have you flying through at high speed, endangering members of my community.”

  “Fair enough,” said Papaw. “How much?”

  Jonah looked to his men as if to remind us he had the power of numbers on his side. He held up two fingers. To Papaw, I clearly heard him say, “Two rocks. One for each machine.”

  “I watched Papaw remove a dark blue felt bag from a zippered overall pocket. He loosened the drawstring and pulled open the little pouch. From its interior, he plucked two, tiny diamonds. He held them up and looked at each with one eye closed before handing both to Jonah. Jonah slipped the stones into his breast pocket.

  “All right,” said Papaw. “Are we square? Can we go?”

  Jonah nodded and gave us a salute like it was some sort of blessing and indeed, it was. We were allowed to continue on our way.

  Chapter 14

  Calgary, located on the coast, was our destination. From there, the plan was to catch a boat to the launch complex, forty kilometers westward. The launch center was located a good distance from the population for good reason. Whenever the rail gun was fired, the resulting low level sonic boom was both destructive and annoying. So, it made sense that they built the launch site far away from Calgary.

  It was my third trip to Calgary. The first was when I was six. On that occasion, Papaw decided we needed a family vacation, and since none of us but he and Pat had been to the big city of Calgary, that’s where we went. It was a horrible trip. Calgary is located on the coast but there are no beaches, no places of outstanding beauty. It’s a simple industrial town, really. There were stores where merchandise was displayed on shelves – I was unaccustomed to that – where we spent Papaw’s blood money, but other than that, there was nothing to make any of us marvel and look forward to a return trip.

  Setting the atmosphere, liquor lounges and drug drops were the picks for the exhausted hourly worker at the end of a typical day. Calgary was not the place to bring the family on holiday.

  The second time was just a couple of years ago when I was fourteen. Again, it was with Papaw on a provisioning trip. Specifically, Aunt Liza was out of cloth or “sewing material” as she referred to it. We are a fairly self-sufficient lot, but one thing none of us did was make cloth, so we had to buy or trade for it elsewhere. Either Summit or Calgary and Papaw hated to go to Summit.

  On that trip, like the previous family trip, we rented rooms in the only place for visitors to stay while in Calgary, an establishment called The Guest House, located on the far west side of the city, adjacent to the docks.

  So, when we finally pulled the striders to a halt after a long day of travel, it was outside The Guest House. Papaw had reservations and early in the morning we planned to board a boat that would take us to the launch site. The only bad thing about it was that everything had to be unpacked from the striders. From there on, all gear was carried by hand. The striders were left inside rented storage stalls at another location and we hired a cab to take us back to The Guest House.

  Papa and Kaliis shared a room and I had a room all to myself. I should have been tired but I suppose I was wired by the prospect of being shot through the atmosphere and traveling at hypersonic speeds. Before we left, when I told Aunt Liza about the rail gun, she replied, “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  I sat by the window in the second story of The Guest House and looked across the darkened avenue to the wharfs and moored boats beyond. An occasional transport zoomed past and pedestrians still walked the streets, even at what I considered a late hour. The ways of city people are unlike those of this bumpkin. In any case, I was awake and even though I was in the rather drab industrial city of Calgary, I felt I was in an exotic, foreign place off on a quest.

  Feeling adventurous, I pulled on a jacket, slipped the card key into my pocket, and left my room with the intention of getting a closer look at the boats in the harbor.

  No one was at the front desk as I walked through a lobby furnished sparsely with furniture that had seen better days. The double glass doors to the street opened automatically as I approached, letting in the fishy smell of ocean waterfront. I took a deep breath and turned to my right. On the corner was a street light. From my previous trips to the city, I already knew the basics – look both ways before crossing, don’t cross in the middle of the block – because Uncle Pat had been such a stickler about me not knowing how to behave that he drilled me and even had me read an old commercial driver’s license manual.
I must admit, it did help in protecting myself, plus if I ever want to drive a transport, I know the rules of the road.

  I went to the street corner and, despite there being no traffic, I waited until the red light turned green. I have to hand it to the original designers; the system for safely crossing the street is utterly genius in its simplicity. There is only one weak link as far as I can see and that relies on the assumption people will do the correct thing. Anyway, I did the correct thing and waited for my light to turn green which eventually it did. After I crossed the street, I turned to my left and headed for a series of piers that jutted out into the harbor. I looked at the little hotel and saw the light I had left on in my room. The other rooms, besides the lobby entrance on the lower floor, were all dark.

  If you’re not into astronomy, then the night sky on Dreidel looks similar to the night sky on Earth. Looking closely under the right conditions, you can see our Milky Way. It’s not the same Milky Way as that seen from Earth (so says Papaw), but its effect is the same: billions of stars strung out together to form a thin cloud running across the dome of my vision.

  Below, a calm sea reflected the light from the stars and I think its beauty is comparable to the fields of white that surround my home during the winter. Both visions are perfect in their symmetry and in whatever ratio exists between the eye and the mind that decides whether something is worth looking at or not.

  The boats along the pier were interesting to me in that they were like a starship for a number of reasons. They are both fully contained transport systems that take into account survivability factors for the occupants and even, to some degree, comfort. They both had engines that had to be maintained as well as environmental systems for water and waste. Both were ingenious ways to get around and I figured if I could live on a spaceship, then I could probably live on a boat as well. The problem with the boat, however, is that it couldn’t go places a spaceship could.

  I guess I was thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had never before seriously put the question to the test because for as long as I could remember, all I wanted to do was to become a hunter like my Grandpaw. And now, I had become that. Not seasoned, like him or Uncle Pat, but a well-trained and confident newbie. I remembered what Grandpaw said years ago, “…if there were any lizards left,” he said, like he and Pat were going to kill them all. The truth was, he and Pat had very nearly done just that.

  So who knew how many more hunts there were going to be? Papaw was old too. It was a miracle he’d gone on for so long.

  My thoughts wandered as I walked up to the end of the long pier and looked down at the water below.

  A shuffling caused me to look behind. Halfway down the pier, a man stepped from a boat and opened a toolbox. As he pawed through its contents, another man spoke to him and stepped from the boat onto the dock. There was a light on a pole above me and I suddenly felt exposed there at the end of the pier.

  A third man appeared on the rear deck of the boat. He spoke to both men and then for no reason he looked at me. I turned away back to my business of staring at the murky water, only to glance backwards as the third guy stepped off the boat.

  There was no other way off the pier but to walk by the three men. Maybe they would leave. I looked up and the third guy was looking at me. He smiled and I turned away again.

  Oh boy. Things were turning out to be a cautionary tale. I put my face into the ocean breeze and waited, fully expecting that when I turned about again, the three would be gone.

  Kaliis and Uncle Pat made sure I went through the full course of simulator training in the martial arts by the time I was twelve. Sparring was fun and I was quite good at it, but sparring was not fighting, and then again, fighting for your life was a different matter altogether.

  I took a breath and turned around. The three men – they were guys, really – were coming my way. I told myself to get over it; maybe they wanted to be friends. Who was I kidding?

  The guy in the middle was missing his bottom front teeth and I wondered if and how he ate unsliced fruit. “Hola,” he said, “que pasa, bonita?”

  “Nada,” I replied.

  The dude seemed pleased and looked to his friends before facing me again. He had stopped advancing and stood a couple of meters in front of me with the other two standing on either side of him, effectively blocking off any chance of escape. My back was against the railing that kept people from walking off the pier and for a moment I thought about jumping into the water.

  “Que quieres?” I asked. What do you want?

  “No mucho,” he said. “Que hace aqui?” Not much. What are you doing here?

  “Dando un paseo, que es todo.” Out for a walk, that’s all.

  “Eso es bueno,” he said, licking his lips, “pero este es un muelle privado. Usted debe pagar el peaje.” That is good, but this is a private pier. You must pay a toll.

  “Un peaje?” I repeated.

  “Si. Un peaje.” All three wore deck shoes and I surmised they worked or lived on boats. The dude on the left was dressed in a filthy tee shirt and spotted dungarees. The guy on the right was tall, bald, and had an enormous nose. When he grinned at me, his nostrils flared and the twin holes looked like the business end of an old-fashioned, double-barreled shotgun. He took a step forward and leaned against the railing, looking at me. The thing I noticed most was that he was now within reach.

  The mouthpiece for the group, the guy in the middle, took a step forward and reached for me with his right hand. I ducked and edged to my left until I was in the corner, in the crook where the rails met. The only good thing about the position was that only one of them at a time could get to me. How long could I fight off even one of them?

  Middle guy squared up to me and I kicked him in the crotch, right between his legs, and watched as the ploy worked on him as it did on my brothers every time. He crumpled backward and tall guy grabbed a fistful of my hair with his left hand. I let him pull me to him and he rubbed his stubbled chin along my cheek, making smacking sounds, as if I would ever consider kissing someone who smelled that bad.

  Tall guys, or maybe it was just big guys in general, always seem over-confident to me. And then again, I’m the one who’s always attracted to the runt of the litter, so maybe I’m biased. Anyway, Uncle Pat is a small man but a great fighter, and he always told me it wasn’t the size of the dog in the fight, rather it was the size of the fight in the dog. These guys, however, hadn’t given me any time to warn them off.

  Tall guy had me by the hair with one hand while the other had latched onto my right wrist, leaving my left hand free. In a neat little trick I learned in one of the many self-defense videos in the basement, I made a fist but let my thumb lie alongside the knuckle rather than curled away like you’re supposed to. But in this instance, it gave me something with which to poke tall guy and that’s what I did; over and over, my left arm pumped in rapid uppercuts to the soft underside of his jaw between chin and throat. In moments, tall guy released me and staggered backward with his hands at his throat to ward off further attack.

  Tee shirt boy laughed at his compadres. “Deja que una niña hacer que a usted?” he said. You let a girl do that to you? He stepped forward and I high-kicked the center of his face, catching his nose with my heel. His hands went up and he turned away. I rapped him once on the side of the head for good measure and would have hit him harder but it was the same hand that did the chin jabbing and it was a little sore. All the same, he went down.

  Middle guy had not quite recovered. He lay on the boarded pier, hands at his crotch, making a big “O” with his mouth. Tall guy was dabbing at the underside of his chin and, discovering the blood there, re-considering his ill-fated attack.

  I stepped over tee shirt boy and walked backwards down the pier, keeping an eye on the hoodlums. When I was far enough, I turned and started to run. Hands reached from the darkness beside a closed fast food stand.

  “Hold it there, Mandy.” Papaw stepped into the light. Kaliis remained in the sh
adows.

  “What are you doing here? You gave me a fright.”

  “The better question is, what are you doing here?” answered Papaw.

  “Couldn’t sleep. Out for a walk.”

  Papaw looked up the pier. The three hoods were picking themselves up. “Yeah, I can see that. Are you all right?”

  “What? Me? I’m fine. Those guys might need a band-aid, though.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  We took Kaliis back to The Guest House and Papaw announced he was hungry and ready for breakfast even though it was three o’clock in the morning.

  We found an all-night greasy spoon (Grandpaw’s phrase, not mine – I don’t even know what it means.) down the street from the hotel and took a seat at a booth next to a window overlooking the bay. He ordered two pouched eggs, toasted bread with real butter! as was announced by little placards placed on each table, a purple melon of unknown origin, a glass of meccan juice, and a large glass of milk. I had scrambled eggs with sausage bits mixed with potato fries and a sturdy cheese I would have thought would have resisted melting. I also had two large colas because I had worked up a thirst from my altercation with the pier people.

  Papaw started out by saying, “I hope you learned something tonight.”

  I nodded and said I did.

  “Don’t just say you did. Tell me what you learned.”

  Papaw and I were going through an established routine he had trained me to do from an early age. That is, after a hunt, successful or not, sit down and analyze what happened.

  I took a bite of eggs/fries/sausage and chewed on it for a moment.

  “First,” I mumbled, then swallowed, “it’s not safe to walk around out here.”

  Papaw nodded. “What else?”

  “What if they’d been armed?” I said. “What then? Perhaps a different outcome, eh?” I looked at Papaw. His brow furrowed with lines that looked deep enough to stick a finger into but he said nothing.