by David Drake
"All they provide us with is processed food, processed!" Easton said with the first animation he'd shown since his shout as he fell off the ladder. "Why, if they'd give me proper support in Paris, I could turn this whole base into a garden of healthy natural delights."
The next door past the barracks was open also. The smell staggered Mark. "Wow!" he said.
"Well, the sewer system seems to be blocked," Easton explained with some embarrassment. "And we're below ground, of course. So since the pump space was two-level and the pumps didn't work anyway, we've converted it to a, ah, well, a latrine."
The holes in the floor of the room had held a pair of centrifugal pumps eight feet in diameter. The equipment had been removed—Mark wondered how—and replaced with two-by-sixes raised a foot and a half above the holes so that users could sit with their families an adequate distance out in the air beyond.
"The right hole is for officers only," Easton said. He pulled the door shut. "Now, you know, this could be a valuable source of carbon and nitrates if properly composted, but I've had difficulties explaining this to the troops."
Who are the ones who'll be cleaning and transporting the valuable fertilizer, of course . . . "I can imagine you would have difficulties convincing your men, yes," Mark said.
He guessed that the garrison's answer to any problem was "Throw it downstairs." Mark didn't want to think about what the corridors on the fort's lower levels were like.
"Look, how many men do you have all told?" Yerby asked. The furrows of his frown had been getting deeper with every additional sign of neglect.
"Oh, I don't know about that," Easton said peevishly. He waved a hand to brush the question away. "That's all Hounslow's province."
The next two doors, both closed, were labeled COMMANDANT and DEPUTY COMMANDANT with letters cast into the dense plastic of the panel. Mark noticed that the bottom of the doors had been shaved off and the top of either panel gapped a finger's breadth at the side opposite the hinges. The fort had been settling in the generations since it was built. Cracks ran across flat surfaces and doorjambs twisted out of true.
Mark remembered the latrine. Also, sewer lines broke.
The next room was labeled COMMAND CENTER, by odd purple paint stenciled onto a sheet of plastic tacked to a replacement door of wood. Below that, in straggling script hand-lettered in green, Keep out!
Easton tried the handle. It was locked. "Oh, dear," he said. "Maybe we shouldn't. He really doesn't like to be—"
Bannock pushed the door open with his hip and shoulder. Pieces of flimsy latch flew into the room. The frontiersman boomed, "Hello there! Hounslow, is it? I'm Yerby Bannock, and we need some of your men on Greenwood."
The man who leaped up from behind the desk was tall, black-haired and cadaverously thin. His initial expression was outraged, but it turned to horror as soon as he heard Yerby's words.
"Oh, that won't be possible," Hounslow said. His gray uniform was threadbare but immaculately ordered, down to the neat HOUNSLOW on the tape over his left jacket pocket. "Why, I've just completed the duty rosters for the next—"
He gestured at the walls. They were covered with graph paper on which lines and names were drawn in at least six different colors of ink.
"—nineteen months. Can't possibly be done. I—you aren't from Paris, are you? Are you from the Inspector General's office?"
"No, we're from Greenwood," Mark said sharply. He'd heard Captain Easton scurry off the moment Yerby burst the door open. They were here with a simple question, and there didn't seem any reason they shouldn't have a simple answer.
"No" was simple enough and acceptable so far as Mark was concerned; but it couldn't be "no" from a lunatic.
"Certainly not for Greenwood," Hounslow said, nodding vigorously. "I don't even know where Greenwood is."
From the way he talked, Mark doubted Hounslow knew where his left foot was. The data terminal built into one end of the desk was cold and very possibly as dead as the fort's sewer system. The charts on the wall were hand-drawn. The same names occurred on them over and over again, but they were written in different colors.
"Look, we just need fifty or a hundred men," Yerby said in a cajoling tone. "It'll be a nice experience for them, getting—"
"Fifty or a hundred?" Hounslow repeated. "Why, I've only got forty-three troops total to carry out all the necessary duties here! Fifty or a hundred? Are you mad?"
Well, I'm certainly not very friendly, Mark thought. Aloud he said, "Just what duties are these, Lieutenant?"
"Why guards, charge of quarters, commandant and deputy commandant's drivers—"
"Where do you drive?" Yerby asked.
"It's beside the point whether we have vehicles or not!" Hounslow said. "Those positions have to be filled. This is a military base!"
Could've fooled me.
"Command post runners, guards for Heavy Weapons Stockpiles One, Two, and Three—we have over a thousand tanks and heavy artillery pieces here! KP—of course that's just distributing ration packs, but the position, the position, is sacrosanct. And only forty-three troops!"
"Why in heaven would you have so much weaponry here?" Mark asked. The idea of a basement full of tanks sounded as dotty as everything else to do with Dittersdorf Base.
Hounslow drew himself up stiffly. "Sir, we are a pre-positioning base of crucial importance to the security of the Alliance!" he said. Deflating somewhat, he added, "And of course it would have been awfully expensive to ship all that equipment back to Earth at the end of the Proxy Wars."
Yerby scratched his head. "This whole base and . . ." he muttered.
Mark bowed formally to the anguished lieutenant. "Thank you for your time, sir," he said. "Yerby, I think we should get back to the spaceport. We don't want Amy to worry about us." And we certainly aren't doing any good in this combination of a kindergarten and a nuthouse.
5. Going with the Flow
With Amy at the front to steer, Yerby Bannock pushed a cart loaded to the point of overbalancing toward the ship that would take his party to Greenwood. Mark and Dr. Jesilind struggled together with the other cart holding Amy's and Jesilind's gear—less in volume and much less heavy than the machinery Yerby was bringing from Kilbourn.
"That's close enough," a crewman called from the open hatch. "We'll stow it." She scratched behind her right ear and glanced at the fellow beside her at the winch controls. "Of course, we might not have time to take care of it before liftoff . . ."
Mark stepped away from the luggage cart, gasping to get his breath back: He'd volunteered to help get his new friends' gear to the ship. He didn't regret the offer or even the effort—but if Dr. Jesilind had been pushing with all his strength, he was even less of a baggage handler than he was a scholar.
"Twenty Zenith dollars to split between you," Yerby said cheerfully. "And let's not have any accidents. Or else maybe I'll have an accident too."
He smacked his right fist into his left palm. The threat was as lighthearted as Yerby's willingness to tip for the work, but Mark had seen enough of the frontiersman to know that both were real.
"Yerby," Mark said, "Doctor, I'm glad to have met you. Amy—"
He bowed.
"—a particular honor to have met you. I wish you well in your new home."
"Well, you have a good voyage to Kilbourn, too, lad," Yerby said. "Space ain't so big that we might not knock into each other again. I'd like that."
"I don't believe I heard just why you were traveling to Kilbourn, Mark," Amy said.
"Very likely for education, my dear," Jesilind said. "Mr. Maxwell is the sensible sort of youth who can appreciate the value of an education."
A valve on the starship let out a shriek, jetting white steam into a generally gray sky. Mark held his tongue during the release, but he kept his eyes on Jesilind. The doctor really shouldn't have smirked in that would-be superior fashion. . . .
"In a manner of speaking, that's true," Mark said deliberately in the relative silence following. "I hope
to learn about real life on the frontier. But as for formal education of the sort you mean, I have a degree from Harvard."
"You took a Harvard course too?" Jesilind blurted. "I understood—"
"I took a degree at Harvard," Mark said. "On Earth. I didn't meet your Dean Brickley, sir, because he died before I was born. Even before you were born. But he was a scholar of great capacity, I'm sure."
Yerby slapped both his thighs, a wham! wham! as startling as shotgun blasts. "Don't that beat all?" he cried. "Amy, didn't I tell you right off what a smart lad Mark was? Degree on Earth, yet! Earth!"
"Certainly a visit to such a site of ancient learning is of value," Dr. Jesilind said, attempting to project a tone of icy detachment. "Though as I understand it, the instruction on Earth is by hypnagogue also."
"One side or a leg off!" the crewmember shouted as she gave Jesilind a warning push. She'd set the winch clamps on the first layer of Yerby's baggage. Five large trunks swung through the space the doctor had occupied a moment before.
"That was largely true for background materials," Mark said. "Some of the lectures were recorded as well. But I had a live seminar with Dr. Kelsing—Anitra Kelsing, perhaps you've heard of her?"
Of course Jesilind hadn't. Mark could have made up names and Jesilind wouldn't know the difference. But Mark didn't have to make up names.
"She takes twelve students a year, and I was fortunate enough to be accepted as one of them," Mark continued. "The seminar covered views of the political background to the settlement of Quelhagen, which of course was particularly interesting to me."
"What did I tell you?" Yerby repeated. "Live courses!"
Dr. Jesilind looked like he'd gulped down a bite of something he really should have avoided. That was pretty much true: he'd had to swallow the smirk he'd given Mark.
"But if you want to see the frontier," Amy said, "why are you going to Kilbourn, Mark?"
"Well, because I thought . . ." Mark said. He looked at Amy and suddenly wished that he'd been a little more careful in his phrasing. "That is, from Quelhagen, it seemed—"
"That Kilbourn was frontier!" Yerby bellowed cheerfully. "Say, that's a joke as good as the one you pulled on us, saying you weren't no scholar!"
Amy blushed and turned her head as if to watch the rest of Yerby's baggage hoisted aboard the starship. She hadn't acted vain about her education the way Jesilind did, but learning that Mark thought she was a hick from the frontier must have hurt.
He didn't think that!
"Look, lad," said Yerby, putting his arm protectively around Mark's shoulders. "Forty years ago, in my daddy's time, Kilbourn was a pretty rough place, sure. Now, hell, they've even got uniformed policemen and laws about how much you can drink."
He shook his head in remembered amazement. Having seen Yerby in action, Mark could imagine how the frontiersman was likely to have reacted to a bartender who told him he'd had enough to drink. "So if you want frontier, a place a fellow can make his own luck—well, you ought to come to Greenwood with us. You'll get your education and I shouldn't wonder if you got rich besides, as sharp as you are."
"Mr. Maxwell has already made his plans, Yerby," Jesilind said in a thin tone. "And besides, our ship is about to take off."
"I haven't been to Greenwood myself, yet," Amy said, her embarrassment forgotten. "I remember what Kilbourn was like when I was younger, but . . . it would be nice having someone else around who'll find things as new as they'll be to me."
"As a matter of fact," Mark said, "my time's my own for the next year. Most of a year. But—"
The winch was hauling aboard the last of the party's baggage. The cargo handler rode the load into the hatch.
"—Dr. Jesilind is right, there's no time for me to board with you. Perhaps a later vessel?"
Yerby laughed heartily. "You go bring your traps, boy," he said with a dismissive wave toward the caravansary five hundred yards away. "If you need help, the doc'll help you, won't you, Doc?"
Jesilind looked startled. "No, that won't be necessary," Mark said. "It's just the one bag."
"And me," Yerby continued, "I'll stay here and make sure the ship don't lift before you get back. Which it won't, or my name's not Yerby Bannock. You don't even need to run."
Mark ran anyway, as best he could. The combination of Amy's pleasure and Jesilind's sour expression both spurred him.
6. Home Is Where the Heart Is
"Holy Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior," Yerby Bannock murmured softly as he stumbled to the hatch from which Mark was getting his first look at Greenwood. Yerby pressed his head with both hands as though he were trying to keep the brains from leaking out through his temples. "How are you feeling, kid?"
"I'm always a little woozy after sleep travel," Mark said. "This was a longer trip than some. But I'm all right."
The ship had landed on a grid a hundred feet in diameter, big enough for a single ship but far too small to hold two at a time. The steel spiral against which ships braked themselves was buried ten feet down in the stony soil, but the ground still radiated heat from the mutually repelling magnetic fluxes. On more highly developed spaceports the surface was thick concrete or even vitrified earth. Here ships landed on dirt, and a few plants between the twists of the steel managed to survive the heat that baked their roots at every landing.
Landing-site preparation was the factor that limited interstellar trade. Ships traveling between prepared sites braked orbital velocity against the planet's magnetic field, but for actual landing they required a denser flux to cushion them down. Except for a few nickel-iron asteroids, that meant burying a huge mass of magnetic material in which the incoming ship could induce a field to repel that of the vessel itself.
The bigger the ship, the greater degree of site preparation. Even small tramp freighters like the one Mark had arrived on required hundreds of tons of metal to ease them in safely. That was a major project for a completely raw planet, but until it was accomplished all ships had to land by rocket. The weight penalty of the rocket motors and fuel was enormous, and it was a lot more dangerous than almost idiot-proof magnetic landings besides.
"Boy, I think there was something wrong with the gin I got on Dittersdorf," Yerby said. He closed his eyes, shuddered at whatever he saw inside his head, and opened them again. "The top of my skull feels like it's going to pop off."
"You drank more than two quarts of liquor immediately before we got into our sleep capsules," Mark said, trying not to scold. "I was afraid you might have poisoned yourself drinking so much."
Yerby shrugged and winced at the motion. "Oh," he said, "I always do that before transit to keep from scrambling my brains. The doc's got a machine but it never worked for me. I just get drunked up before I go under, and I come through okay."
Yerby didn't look okay, but Mark wasn't in perfect shape himself. Nobody was at his best following days of electronically induced suspended animation. Mark knew how to bring his brain waves in line with the induction apparatus instead of fighting it, but sleep travel still wasn't his idea of a fun time.
The alternative was to stay awake during transit between bubble universes, where all physical laws changed and life itself was an unnatural intrusion. Starship crews had to do that, and by the time a voyage was over they were virtually psychotic.
The flight crew had disembarked before ground personnel brought the passengers out of their sleep capsules. The navigator stood near the ship, punching violently at nothing at all. Two crewmen sat catatonic at the edge of the field, their eyes focused a thousand miles away. The chief cargo handler was sobbing uncontrollably in the cargo hatch; three stevedores waited to unload the ship, but they knew that if they disturbed the crying woman she might claw them like a wounded leopard.
The captain plaited grass blades into a chain. As his fingers formed the chain from the bottom, he swallowed the other end.
There were worse things than Mark's wooziness, or even than Yerby's hangover.
The landing site was a rough plain.
A dozen winch points—bollards set down to bedrock—ringed the field three hundred yards out. A ship could skid itself off the magnetic mass to allow another vessel to land. Two ships similar to the freighter Mark stood in were on the margins of the field now.
Most of the hills surrounding the field were heavily forested. "Greenwood" wouldn't have been a bad name for the planet even if the Protector of Hestia had been a Mr. Smith. On the knoll five hundred yards to the east sprawled a complex of stone and concrete buildings. Several brightly colored dirigibles bobbed on tethers above the courtyard wall; winged flyers, seemingly too delicate to be machines, lifted toward the ship.
"There's the Spiker, lad," Yerby said. He pointed toward the buildings with the care his throbbing hangover demanded. "Blaney's Tavern to the ship crews, but all the folk on Greenwood call it . . . See the critter there at the front gate?"
Mark squinted. "I thought it was a truck," he said. "Or a tank."
"The critter" was thirty feet long, ten feet broad, and ten more feet high. It stood on six stumpy legs and appeared to have neither a neck nor a tail. The huge head was jagged with scores of spines a foot or two long; rows of similar projections ran down the backbone and the flank Mark could see from this angle.
"A spiker," Yerby said. "Ain't very many of them. Guess there couldn't be or they'd eat the place down to the rock. That one charged a bulldozer while they were building the field. Would've flipped the dozer over, too, if old Blaney hadn't finally managed to burn through the hide."
The freighter's winch hummed, tracking the first load of cargo out of the hold. Much of it was Amy's luggage. "Guess I'm ready to do some work," Yerby said. To Mark he didn't look ready for anything but embalming, but it wasn't Mark's place to judge.
Ground personnel had extended the hatch steps when the ship arrived; in the grip of transit psychosis, the flight crew had simply jumped or fallen out of the vessel. There was no railing. Mark led Yerby gingerly down to the hot soil.
"Hope Desiree's here with a blimp," Yerby said. "My wife," he added with an apologetic grimace. "Damned if I know why I ever married her. Drunk, I suppose."