by Sam Smith
Awen thanked him, listened to the cameraman chatting to the technicians. The competition didn’t worry Awen. This newcomer was more interested in who was driving the tractors rather than what they were doing. His customers wanted names and faces, not drama. After the arrival of the second cutter Awen returned to the console by the phone, phoned the ‘friend’.
Waiting for a propitious lull, Awen opened the plane door to check on Tulla. Sleepily she opened her eyes.
“My you’re dirty,” she mumbled. He smiled and closed the door.
As he was about to return to the plateau’s edge the console phone rang. The engineer was on her handphone to one of the drivers. Awen answered the console phone. It was Jorge Arbatov. Awen told him that Tulla was asleep, took a message. The police ship had left for XE2, Jorge said, had taken with it a copy of the film for Inspector Eldon Boone. Awen wrote and nodded: that was all far away.
The second cutter idled at the valley entrance while the first cutter continued to painstakingly cut its channel. With the cliff face now towering above it the cutter had to stand further back each time it blasted lest all of the undercut cliff collapse upon it. It also had that much more rubble to drive up over after each rock fall.
By now Awen was filming less and less. The scene was familiar to him and his cameras. He walked around the plateau’s edge finding novel angles, once capturing the waltzing interplay of tractor lights as they manoeuvred about the rising and widening valley floor. One tractor was almost engulfed by a slithering landslip of shale. Engines roaring it extricated itself. The six technicians cheered.
“That’ll teach her,” the engineer said.
The first cutter completed its channel. With an echoing rattle of rolling boulders it reached the other side of the low mountain. While the cutter sliced out a space for itself to park on the far side of the channel, the engineer sent in the tractors to push the rubble through. The first tractor rode up over the rubble, didn’t start shovelling until it was near the end. Its swaying and bumping caused several loose rocks to fall into the channel. The tractor cabs were armoured. The loose rocks were scooped up by the second tractor. And while those two tractors were clearing the far end of the channel the last two were picking up the rubble at the rear.
When the first two tractors tipped their rubble into the far valley they followed after it into that valley. The last two tractors, shovelling closer to the channel’s surface, encountered large steps where the cutter had risen up on its previous fall of rubble to cut out the next section. These two tractors reversed out of the channel and the second cutter went in to level out the steps. Once the tractors were able to mount the steps they too tipped their rubble into the far valley.
Meanwhile the technicians had descended to the deserted valley floor and had begun laying out new landing lights and setting up a beacon. Six cabins were then delivered two at a time, closely followed by another cutter and another tractor. By this time the technicians were working inside the cabins, preparing more torches and other machine parts. Awen was told which cabins were his and Tulla’s. The channel was now clear and the first cutter was making a temporary road up to the central mountain. The other two cutters had gone off through the valley to the proposed Nautili road and were working there.
Dawn was still three hours off. Awen decided that he had enough footage of flashing lights, woke Tulla, told her that her cabin was ready. Confused by the new placings of the lights and the comings and goings of the new people Tulla let herself be led down from the plateau and into her cabin.
“Can you wake me at first light?” Awen asked her, had to repeat the question. Tulla forced herself to think.
“First let me call Tevor Cade.”
Awen waited while with singleminded concentration she dialled. The number had been left in the cabin by one of the technicians. The phone was answered almost immediately.
“Any reaction?” Tulla said. She looked at her watch, “Over four hours now.” She listened, “Good.” She smiled at Awen’s camera, “As before.” Reminding her to wake him at dawn Awen went to his cabin, removed his cameras and collapsed on the bed.
A sleep’s moment later he was being roughly woken. Eyes shut against the smarting daylight he bedecked himself with cameras, staggered out into the morning. The first thing he noticed, apart from the blazing heat of the sun, was the lack of noise. The crack and rumble of tumbling rocks was now far in the distance.
Shading his eyes he looked to the top of the cliffs. He filmed three separate rising clouds of yellow dust. Tulla, freshly showered, stood smiling down on him.
“I’ve got us a lift,” she pointed to a small open-topped wheeled vehicle. “Thought you might want to take a closer look. Or do you want to eat first?” Awen shook his head, and rubbing his eyes and teeth with a finger climbed onto the wheeled vehicle. A technician drove them through the deep shadowed channel, across the next valley and on up to the middle, where two cutters were working on what remained of the mountain top.
At a safe distance Tulla and Awen disembarked from the vehicle and looked about them. The technician took a small machine part over to one of the cutters, which was shut down while the driver consulted the technician.
“Where’s the engineer?” Awen asked. Tulla pointed a thumb at the sky.
“She slept?” Awen said.
“Don’t think she needs it.”
“What about the drivers?” The heat dried their mouths as they talked. The air tasted of grit.
“They changed shifts about an hour ago,” Tulla said. “The extra cabins.”
“Didn’t see them. Only just opened my eyes.” Awen stretched his face, and camera to one eye he filmed the two clouds of dust in either direction.
Occasionally visible was one or another of the tractors as they carted the rubble into the culverts and valleys on either side of the proposed route. The technician returned to them with the faulty part,
“Want to take a closer look?”
“I’ve got to go into the capital,” Awen said. “Know anyone who’ll give me a lift?”
“If you have a wash first,” the technician laughed at him.
As they drove back through the clean new rock of the channel Tulla told Awen that a police plane had already flown over once that morning, that the police were going to make three patrols a day to check that the Nautili weren’t laying their trail elsewhere. Tevor Cade had reported that the hourly transmissions continued as before.
Later that morning Awen got a lift into the capital with a technician, returned that afternoon with a paper bag full of small packages. Immediately on landing he sought out Tulla for a progress report; and, his cameras reloaded, they set off again towards the flat-topped mountain.
To the South they could now see the cutters at work. Beyond the hills and mountains to the North, though, a cloud of dust still obscured all activity. By the next morning the cutters there were visible.
That day and the next Awen made several more trips to the flat-topped mountain to film the changes in the landscape, stood there among the tractors roaring past him to tip their rubble.
On the second afternoon the blue sea was visible in both directions and the sides of the road were already beginning to slant down. The tractors at that time had already begun making their winding roads to the marshes. As the distance they had to go increased so the pace of the work slowed.
On the third night Awen flew with Tulla to the Senate meeting. At this Senate meeting Tulla and Jorge sat to one side, available to answer any queries raised in the debate. All the Senate Members were conversant with the film, even so Tulla had to reiterate exactly what she hoped to achieve by the building of the road. She was greeted with open scepticism by a few of the Senate Members, but that the Nautili hadn’t yet attacked them lessened the fears of even the most timid of Senate Members.
From the gallery, as before, Awen and the local reporters dutifully filmed the circular gathering. The Senate Member for South Five had shaved again. That similarit
y apart this session of the Senate wore a different expression.
The anxiety was still evident, but not the sidelong cynicism nor the weary fatalism that Hambro Harrap had inspired. The Senate Members seemed to realise that Tulla Yorke and Jorge Arbatov were hiding nothing from them, had no ulterior motives. And if, by their efforts on Happiness, Tulla Yorke and Jorge Arbatov could save lives on other planets, then the Senate Members were prepared to grant them every assistance. And, while accepting that Tulla Yorke’s concern was not solely for their planet, they nevertheless welcomed her concern, were grateful for both her disinterested expertise and her ingenuous admissions of ignorance. Indeed Tulla was so transparently honest a person that she didn’t think to be modest.
Back at the base were now some fourteen cabins. A canteen had been installed. The off-shift drivers and technicians were sitting at tables outside, quietly talking, with — as a background — the distant sky-lighting flash of the cutters’ lights and the far off rumble of the tractors. While Tulla and Awen had been at the Senate two more tractors had been brought in, were already ferrying rubble to the marshes.
On the fourth morning Tevor Cade reported that the Nautili were still transmitting on the hour every hour as before. The police’s dawn patrol had seen no sign of a Nautili trail. When Tulla and Awen reached the flat-topped mountain the road was appreciably lower. When Jorge and the Spokesman visited the road that afternoon the four cutters had started work on the middle mountain itself, the tractors now having to strain up the steep chamfered sides of the road to dispose of the rubble.
“How much longer?” Jorge asked the engineer. The engineer was so coated with dust that she looked like a piece of rock. Nor did she move when spoke,
“Sometime tomorrow morning.”
“You slept yet?” Awen asked her as the others moved away.
“Yesterday I think,” she said, and called a tractor driver on her phone.
Three hours after dawn the following morning the last tractor ground slowly up out of the road. A few of the drivers, some technicians, managed to raise a self-conscious cheer. A police plane passed high overhead. The engineer, the Spokesman, Jorge, Tulla and Awen descended to the smooth floor of the road. Here the mountain had been.
The party looked down the straight road to the triangle of blue sea at either end. The road to the South gleamed in the sunlight, was spotted with small pieces of gravel.
“On behalf of the entire Senate,” the Spokesman laid his red plump hand on the engineer’s begrimed shoulder, “I would like to express our heartfelt thanks to you.”
“Just pay me,” her bloodshot eyes pointedly held Jorge’s.
Her handphone bleeped. She held it to her ear, handed it to the Spokesman. He identified himself, listened, said thank you.
“The police patrol reports no sign yet of any trail.”
“Now we wait,” Jorge said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
On being told that their ship had been the only ship allowed through the Nautili’s blockade, both Sergeant Alger Deaver and Constable Drin Ligure had palpably paled. Consequently, believing themselves to be singlehandedly pitted against hordes of Nautili, both had been on edge when they had escorted the Director’s hired ship to the planet. But, as before, they had been allowed to land safely, to leave safely and, on the day before the Nautili road was completed, they had been allowed to once again enter Happiness’s atmosphere unharmed.
Indeed such was the lack of incident that Sergeant Alger Deaver was rapidly becoming scornful of the notion that the Nautili were responsible for the planet’s misfortunes. After all no-one had seen any Nautili. Nor did his being under the immediate command of the Director aid his peace of mind.
“What do civilians know of police work?” he asked of Drin at least twice a day; and further voiced his displeasure on that subject when, on taking up station in the stratosphere, the Director told them to proceed to police headquarters in the capital and there to await further instructions.
“And just what are we supposed to do while we’re waiting?” Alger asked Drin, “Go on local leave? Be on standby? What?”
Between them Alger and Drin had established a working partnership, arriving at it sooner than was normal because of their unusual circumstances: both had seen the other scared. Of course both had also had to adapt themselves to their partner’s personality; and, Drin being the younger and the subordinate, most of the allowances had been made by him, most of the accommodating had been done by him. So he had learnt not to take Alger’s grumbles too seriously, replied now with a noncommittal shrug.
As for Constable Drin Ligure.... that he should be a key part of this unique adventure excited his young imagination. On their brief return to XE2 he had dashed off to get what files he could on Nautili. Alger, however, had dourly refused to share his interest, stubbornly held to his scepticism,
“How do they know it’s them if they can’t see them?”
“But what else,” Drin had earnestly asked him, “could have happened to their moon and ships?”
“You’ll see,” was all that Alger would reply to that.
Immediately on docking at police headquarters in Happiness’s capital Alger again called the Director, badgered him for explicit instructions. The Director, who was staying at the Spokesman’s farm, wasn’t versed in police terminology. Face averted Drin smiled covertly at Alger’s increasing exasperation.
“What I’m trying to say is,” Alger threatened the console with his square fist, “do you want us to remain on the ship all of the time?”
“No, I don’t think that will be necessary. I think it might be advisable to sleep there, but the rest of the time do as you please. So long as the local police know where to find you. Yes. That should be satisfactory.” Alger, though, wanted exact unambiguous instructions,
“So we have to sleep on the ship?”
“Yes.”
“And the rest of the time we can do as we like?”
“But don’t go too far. So long as you can be reached quickly should the need arise. Now, if you don’t mind...”
Shaking his head Alger turned to Drin, asked him what they were supposed to make of that,
“Are we on standby or aren’t we? And how long for? I bet you one thing for certain — we’ll run over into our leave again. Another thing for certain — I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. He didn’t say anything about not having a drink, did he? I’m going to find us a nice cosy bar.”
Alger asked police headquarters for directions to the nearest bar, told the desk to call him there should any orders arrive for him. The bar to which they were directed was the one that the off-duty planetary police officers frequented. And there Drin and Alger stayed, save when they returned to the ship to sleep, for the following three days.
The local police officers made them welcome, invited them into their conversations. At first the talk was almost exclusively concerned with the Nautili, about the newly completed road, about the two squads of police ships stationed at the farms to either side of it. Drin watched the local news for details of the road, asked the police on leave from the farms what was happening.
Alger, however, held to his contention that there might not be any Nautili; and Alger was a born barroom debater, soon had a disputatious semi-jocular argument flying about his head.
That first evening the name of Hambro Harrap was mentioned. The general opinion of the police officers was that he had been stupid to have even tried leaving.
“Politicians,” Alger interjected, “I’ve met a few. They’re not very sensible. Same as your lot here. ‘Collecting moons,’ one said. Collecting moons!”
With nothing new happening upon the road Alger sought other controversial topics. He denigrated, in turn, life on planets and the people who wanted to live on planets. The local police laughed at his deliberately outrageous assertions. Alger became a celebrity.
“If I had my way,” he tapped his fingernail on the bar, “I’d clear the whole lot of you o
ff here, leave it to the Nautili if that’s what they want. And welcome to it. You lot here are more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Don’t say that when you outbid each other for our timber.”
“I’m not saying there aren’t things wrong with Space. Why every damn substation has to have its own newspaper beats me.”
Even the barman entered the fray. The bar served only planet-brewed liquor and planet-grown food.
“Can’t you honestly taste the difference?” he asked Alger, “Apart from it being all fresh it’s got trace elements in it. You don’t get them from platform compost.”
“Even your taste buds got imagination,” Alger dismissed the very idea. “And I got imagination too. The recycling in Space is basically the same as here. Only difference is volume; and here it’s out of control. Here you get animals shitting into your recycling. It’s only good manners that makes me eat and drink the damn stuff.”
“In Space you eat your own shit,” a police officer said.
“Least we know where that’s been.” And once more the bar filled with raucous laughter.
At first Drin chuckled with the other police officers at Alger’s often illogical claims, but by the third day he was bored with the inside of the barroom. Outside was a whole planet waiting to be explored. He asked Alger if he might go sightseeing; but, as he didn’t know exactly where he was going, and that was the attraction of it, Alger told him to stay in the bar. Drin tried asking the other young police officers about life on the planet, but they were more taken up with rebutting Alger’s provocative observations.
During those three days Alger had also started taking orders from some of the police officers for goods which, because of the planet’s present isolation, were in short supply on Happiness. One police technician gave Alger a two page list of machine parts. When Alger quibbled about the length of the list the technician raised his prices. Realising that this was not an official request, with a wink at Drin, Alger grouchily demurred until he got double the going rate.