by Alan Black
Pushta brought in two glasses. Ice tinkled in the orange liquid. “Please forgive me, Mrs. Smith. I opened the orange flavor. It’s Nikki’s favorite juice flavor and she hasn’t had it in a while.”
Veronica said, “It’s not an issue, Mrs. Johannsen. Please feel free.” The fortified, powdered juice was a purchase made in anticipation of her pregnancies and future children. Now she might not have children with Elias gone. She looked thoughtfully at Reynolds. She tried to put the thought of becoming pregnant away, but it was stuck.
Pushta said, “May we sit in your lovely kitchen while you discuss business with Mr. Reynolds?”
Veronica smiled. “Of course you may. If you can wrangle your husband and son inside, they’re more than welcome. I can fix us all something for breakfast or lunch if you give me a few minutes to speak with Chuck Reynolds here.”
She turned back to Reynolds. “Tatum tried to steal my crops because I was in a jam having lost my field robot. But, I’d rather let them rot where they lay.”
Reynolds said, “Veronica, I managed to get copies of your original contract with Tatum. You agreed to a price based on the value of your crops when you planted them. Unless you spend your days watching the commodity reports coming out of Landing City, you wouldn’t know that farming yields were overestimated. Watching the daily commodity reports is my business, not yours.”
“I don’t see the issue. I plant the crops, get water to them, and they grow. I don’t have weeds and I don’t have pests.”
Reynolds said, “Yes. That would be the case if you only considered the land up here near the foot of our northern mountain range. The crew performing the original telescopic survey only took reasonably flat land and divided it up into agribusiness blocks. That survey was completed by minimum wage city workers back on Earth, not by farmers walking the land.”
“And?” Veronica asked.
“Water is the issue. Many of the sections in the south looked like open farm country, but they’re too dry to support crops or cattle. Their creeks and streams only looked like they had a yearlong water flow, the key phrase being “looked like.” Far too many lakes and waterways dry up during the summer, the dry season. The weather patterns alternate. It’s dry in the south during the north’s wet season and vice versa. The south should be starting their rainy season, but it hasn’t started and—beyond a few torrential downpours—it didn’t happen at all last year. The few rains they did get, gushed out of the sky causing flash floods. They washed away the topsoil from any plowed ground. Landing City is going to get hungry before a lot of the food production on this planet gets into full operation.”
Veronica said, “We just moved from the rainy season into the dry season. Nothing should have dried out yet.”
Reynolds shook his head. “The farmers in the south tried to plow and prepare their dry fields before the wet season rains came. Those who were too early saw their fields blow away in the high winds during the season change. Those who were too late saw all of their work washed away.”
Veronica asked, “What about the rivers and lakes?”
Reynolds said, “They are too few and too far apart to be effective for all of the farmers located there. Honestly, Veronica, I could sell twice the crops you have at twice the price and I would still be making twice the profit I did a few months ago. Fresh produce is at a premium.”
Veronica kept her face placid, keeping her excitement to herself. “Twice is good, but what are you paying for crops in the ground? As you know, I lost my field robot yesterday.”
Reynolds shook his head. “I’m not in the harvesting business, but I’m here to fix your problems. The Johannsens lost their place down around Bedrock. It was near the coast, and from the vids I’ve seen, the place looks like a ghost town…a dry, dusty ghost town with little beyond piles of dust and tumbleweeds. They’re here looking for work. You need help so I brought them along.”
“Help is nice but I need a tractor or a new field robot. I have an old truck, but it’s a passenger vehicle, not a farm truck. I may have to retrofit something on it to get it to tow my harvester. I have all of the automated equipment I need, but it doesn’t pull itself. Even the extractor isn’t self-propelled.”
“I picked up a tractor from some friends who went to an auction in Landing City. It’s hover capable and in almost new condition, coming from some defunct farm in the far south. I got it for pennies on the credit. I paid Steve and Pushta to drive it to Twisted City for me and I paid them to drive here with me. Steve and I put the tractor in the back of my truck. If you don’t want the tractor or their help, I’ll pay them for their time back to Twisted City.”
Veronica said, “I don’t have the cash to pay for new equipment or hired help.”
“I understand. Very few farmers have cash laying around all the time. You have crops in the ground and you can reimburse me after the sale of your first crop…plus a small interest fee. Modest really, I’m not in the usury business of payday loans.”
She smiled, “What about paying the hired help? Do you charge extra for helping me pay them?”
“That’s between you and them. What I’ve paid them so far is included in the price of the equipment. I cannot speak for them, but I feel confident that they’ll work for delayed compensation, as long as they can get a roof over their heads and help feeding their children.”
She did not know what to say. It sounded too perfect.
Reynolds said, “It’s a bit much for most people and I wasn’t too sure about you after what I heard from Tatum. He made you sound like some kind of raving, incompetent lunatic. Still, I gambled on you and came over here anyway. Steve and I saw some of your fields on the drive in. It appears you are not incompetent—whether or not you are a lunatic remains to be seen. So, what’s your answer, yes, or no?”
“Chuck, I’d come over there and kiss you if I didn’t smell like an old goat.”
He smiled, “So we’re done with the business portion of the program? Are we moving into flirting?”
Veronica blushed. She decided this was no time to be shy. She did want children someday and she wanted, not needed, but wanted a husband for that. Maybe meeting Chuck Reynolds was good for more than business.
She said, “Wait. Before we get into the flirting thing, are you straight or gay?”
“What? Why would you ask that?”
“Honestly, Chuck, the last two men I was attracted to—before I met you—turned out to be gay. I’m concerned I may be developing a pattern for meeting handsome men that are unavailable. So, which is it, straight or gay?”
Reynolds said, “Sorry Veronica, I’m happily married, very happily married.”
Chapter Fifteen
Veronica watched her new hired hand, Steve Johannsen, reach under the back bumper of her truck. Without looking, he slipped his hand between a pair of hover skirts. Flicking some switch, he leaned back and kicked the skirt out of the way.
“Easy peasy, boss lady.” He plopped on the ground and stretched his long legs under the truck. Scooting forward, he slid his hands along the truck’s back bumper rail. “I love these things. They sure cut down on the welding.”
“What things?” she asked.
He patted the rail. “This. It’s like a Picatinny Rail on a gun.” At her confused look, he smiled. “I thought you were from Arizona?”
“Well. We’re not all gun nuts there, you know?”
Steve nodded, “So I gather. This rail allows you to attach a multitude of add-ons and extras. On a gun, we could add a scope, a laser sight, or even a flashlight. On the truck, we have room to add just about anything we want short of an elephant harness. Hand me one of those servos from your field bot.”
Veronica picked one up from the pile at her feet and handed it to him.
Steve turned it over a few times in his hands. “It’s practically brand new. Better than I ever had to work with on Earth. It was a brilliant move to save them when your bot died.” He slipped the servo onto the rail, grabbed a power
wrench, and tightened it down. Putting all his weight on the servo, he yanked. Neither the servo nor the truck moved.
Steve fastened four more servos onto the truck bumper rail, placing them at odd intervals. It confused Veronica but the tall man nodded in satisfaction. Sliding out from under the truck, he yanked the hover skirts into place, locked them down, and patted the truck in approval.
He grunted, “She ain’t pretty, but she’ll do.” Looking down into Veronica’s face, he added, “Well, boss lady, ready to go to work?”
“Work?” she asked. “I thought we were already working.”
“Not hardly.” he laughed. “We got acres of taters to dig up. That’s the easy part. Then we have to plow and plant all over again.”
Chapter Sixteen
Veronica looked out the truck’s front windshield and shook her head in amusement. If this was work, then it truly was the easy part. Steve was dragging the harvester behind her tractor, scooping up potatoes from the ground. The harvester also mulched the leftover organics and mixed them back into the dark black soil.
Her new tractor—hers once she paid Chuck for it—had an enclosed cab, air conditioning, and Steve found some music he liked on its entertainment center. He was bopping up and down in the seat and tapping his hands on the steering yoke, but his eyes never left the neatly planted rows and the tractor hovered so carefully over the tops of the plants it barely rustled leaves.
Steve had hooked up a high-sided wagon to the back of the truck. Her job was to drive next to the harvester and follow carefully along. Steve would dump a load of potatoes into the wagon and they would continue to pour in as he dug them from the ground. When the wagon was full, Veronica drove it to the edge of the field and dumped the produce into an automated container sent by Reynolds.
It was certainly not hard work, as the truck’s interior was plush and air-conditioned. Veronica’s only problem was keeping her mind on what she was doing. It was mind-numbingly dull driving the truck from here to there and back again. Even the truck’s speed and hover height was set on automatic.
Veronica’s mind did start to drift. She refined and re-refined her plan to get back at the Halberds. They had pushed her way too far. She could deal with their hostility, but when they took active measures to hurt her, she had no option but to fight back. She did not want a fair fight. That was not her nature. She would put them down hard enough they would never get back up to hurt her again.
Her plan, as harsh as it sounded, was to start with Maine. Her plan was to kill him. It was one thing to think about and imagine how to do it, making it look like an accident, however, she wondered if she could actually commit murder when the time came. She was angry enough, but there is a wide gap between anger and murder.
Faithful to her labors, as her thoughts returned to revenge, her steering wandered, reminding her to maneuver the truck back into position. Her only distraction from planning murder was watching produce container after produce container fill with potatoes, then lift skyward, guided on automatics toward food warehouses in Landing City.
With the sun dipping toward the horizon, Veronica called to Steve, “Let’s knock it off for the day. We can pick this up in the morning.”
“What? We just got started. The tractor and the truck have lights. If we keep at this, we can get 'em done by breakfast.”
Veronica laughed, then, realized the man was not joking. “You may be some kind of super farmer, but I need to get something to eat and stretch my legs for a while. I even plan on sleeping in a nice comfortable bed tonight.”
Steve sighed, “You’re the boss.”
Chapter Seventeen
Working in concert with Steve, they managed to harvest her fields in less than half the time it would have taken Cal even with the robot working around the clock. Steve would have worked around the clock, but Veronica was not willing to do so and insisted he take the time to eat a hot meal and spend time with his family.
They saved ten percent of her potato crop as seed material. Steve plowed and planted three times the acreage of her first field, breaking new ground farther from the house. It was exciting to work hard all day, come home to a hot meal made by Pushta, and check her bank balance, watching it grow as each shuttle of crops reached the market. Reynolds had not lied. He was getting her market price. As the price went up, her bank balance increased also.
Once the potato harvest and sale was completed, they replanted the original potato field with corn. Her master plan was to replant potatoes in the same area, but Steve convinced her to research crop rotation. She was glad he did as she discovered rotating her crops would protect the soil by providing and replacing needed nutrients.
It had been a long few weeks. None of the work was hard because the machines were doing most of the work, but it did take human oversight to keep them aligned properly. None of Veronica’s new equipment was programmable like Cal was.
A free Saturday was long in coming. Steve and Veronica flew over her onion fields in the morning, checking the plants, and laying out the plans to harvest in the coming weeks. They swooped over the cattle pasture and dropped a fortified block of salt for her small herd of eight cattle. They managed to get back to the house in time for the breakfast Pushta had prepared.
Veronica pushed her breakfast plate away. “No more.” She was amazed at how good fried hash browns tasted, especially when they were potatoes harvested from her own fields. “I’m glad I left the truck down by the produce container bins. I’ve got three helpings of potatoes to walk off or I’ll be waddling around Twisted City when we go shopping today.”
Pushta said, “We’ll be right behind you, Mrs. Smith. I need to put these dirty dishes in the washer first and wrangle these monsters we call children.”
Veronica grinned, “Take your time. We have all day.”
She went out the door and walked slowly but steadfastly toward the truck. It was not far away, only a few hundred yards. She was enjoying the fresh air and the momentary quiet.
It was not quiet for long. She soon heard the Johannsens following behind her. Ransom was laughing and running barefoot in the deep green grass. Veronica wanted to join the five-year-old in his barefoot frolic, but she had just pulled her boots back on for the trip into town.
Reaching the truck, she climbed up the hover skirts and slid onto the driver’s seat. She yelped in pain at the same time she heard Ransom screech in agony. Her hand slid to the pain in her butt causing added pain to her fingers and hand.
Glass? There’s broken glass everywhere. She now saw that the windshield was completely gone as well as all side windows. The truck was built to be tough, but it was not equipped with shatterproof windows. Glass shards were scattered everywhere in the cab and on the ground.
Before Veronica could shout a warning to the Johannsens, Steve and Pushta had already grabbed Ransom and Nikki and were rushing them back toward the house. Veronica tried to get out of the front seat without sliding, but every movement hurt. She managed to get off the seat and climb down the hover skirts without screaming. She hobbled painfully toward the house.
Steve had stopped before reaching the house and was sitting in the grass with the kids. Pushta was already running back from the house with a first aid kit. Steve was trying to comfort Ransom, who was howling. His feet were cut and bloody.
She stood over the couple as they held Ransom down, picking glass shards from his feet. They carefully spread antiseptic on the cuts and bandaged each foot. The young couple inspected every inch of Nikki, though the girl was not crying and insisted she was fine.
When she finished ministering to her five-year old Pushta sighed. Sitting on the ground, she looked up at Veronica. “Okay, Mrs. Smith, it’s your turn. Turn around and drop ‘em. Steve, you go away now.”
Veronica was embarrassed, but this was not the first time she had been unclothed in front of this family. Besides, her butt hurt too much to complain. Steve left before she managed to get her jeans down around her knees.
; Pushta made tsking noises while using a pair of tweezers to pull the glass from Veronica’s backsides and hand. More antiseptic and bandages were the order of the day. As her pain subsided, Veronica’s anger grew.
Watching Steve sweep broken glass from the cab of the truck, her anger flared red-hot.
Finally, Pushta said, “You’re done. The antiseptic will have a numbing effect that’ll help in a few moments. You let me know when it starts to hurt again and I’ll reapply it. Okay?”
Ransom said, “My feet don’t hurt no more. Can we go to town now?”
Pushta replied, “No, son. You’re going to have to lie down for a while and stay off your feet.”
“Aw, Ma.”
“No. The more you argue, the longer you will have to lie down.”
Veronica pulled her pants up and turned to the woman. “I am so sorry.”
Pushta shook her head. “Not your doing. Ransom will be okay, but we’re going to have to skip the trip to town today, maybe next weekend?” Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed a child under each arm and carried them to the house.
Veronica reached the truck as Steve was poking his finger into a hole in the upholstery.
It went knuckle deep, and he dug around until he pulled out a bullet. Holding it up, quite unnecessarily, he said, “The windows were shot out.”
Veronica clenched her teeth but said nothing. She reached behind the seat and pulled open a toolbox. Tossing needle nose pliers to Steve, she said, “Pull additional bullets out with this. Keep the evidence as pristine as you can.”
Steve was seething, his eyes red with anger, and he kept glancing at the house even after his wife and children had disappeared. He said, “Evidence? Who’s going to investigate? There isn’t any law here but what we make ourselves.”