by Alan Black
A whistle behind her caused her to look up. “Thank you, Pushta. I think that’s the reaction I was trying to get from someone. I was hoping it came from the men, but I’ll take the compliment where I can get it.”
Pushta said, “I wish I was taller like you. You make that dress stand up and salute.”
“Nonsense. Steve would have married a taller woman if he wanted one. He picked you. I would swap my height for a man like Steve any day. You’ve got a real gem there.”
“I wish you were getting a gem. Please don’t think I’m getting above myself, but you don’t have to rush into this with this Halberd guy,” Pushta said. “There’s a good man out there for you.”
“Not to worry, I have this covered. Besides, my first husband turned out to be a closet homosexual or maybe bi-sexual…I don’t know. So what if my second husband is a moronic a-hole? Let’s just say that I have a history of picking the wrong men.”
“Please? I was hoping we were becoming friends, but I think this is a major mistake. He won’t change, and he makes me uncomfortable.”
Veronica grabbed Pushta by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Listen, we are friends. You and Steve are good people, and I love having you and the children here. Don’t jump to any conclusions. Please wait to see how things turn out. You may not like me for what I’m doing, but I think it’s necessary. I promise you this: if you don’t like the way things change, then I’ll do everything I can to help you and Steve get settled somewhere else, okay?”
“No!” Pushta said. She buried her face in Veronica’s bosom. “It’s not okay. This place is my home. I won’t go and I won’t abandon you to that man.”
“Okay, please don’t blubber on my dress, just zip me up, and help me find my black strap sandals.”
Once Veronica was dressed, Pushta led her into the kitchen She was surprised when her whole staff stood and applauded.
Steve smiled and gave Veronica hug, “We were wondering when you were going to get up, lazybones. Just because you’re getting married is no reason to sleep late. Saturday is a work day around here, you know.”
“What is this?” she asked. “You all get together for some kind of popular uprising?”
Maslow said, “I was told someone was fixing breakfast. I’ve been waiting but it’s almost eight o’clock, we might as well wait for lunch.”
Mags jumped up and grabbed a pot from the stove. “I’ll get breakfast started.”
Veronica made a quick dash and yanked the pot from Mags’ hand. “Sorry, not this pot. I used it to boil something yesterday and it needs a proper cleaning and disinfecting before it’s fit for human food.”
Mags shrugged, “Okay by me, but anything I cook is likely to kill us all anyway.”
Pushta said, “Well, maybe I better cook. Everybody get out of my kitchen. I mean out of the boss’s kitchen. Go sit in the living room and tell lies.”
Chapter Forty-One
Steve gave his wife a peck on the cheek and followed the crowd into the living room. Everyone looked happy, they were laughing, telling jokes, and appeared to be having a good time.
He tried smiling and joining in but failed miserably.
I really like the boss lady and Pushta is completely enamored of her. He shook his head trying to clear his thoughts. What is she doing? This marriage will end badly for everyone.
One of Pushta’s favorite Eastern Philosophy sayings came to his mind, ‘a sharp stick has two ends, one good and one bad.’
I think this sharp stick is missing the good end. This marriage is going to be bad all the way around.
Chapter Forty-Two
Breakfast came and went before Veronica was ready. The time to depart snuck up on her.
Was she ready for what she was going to do? It was one thing to plan such an action, but entirely another to commit the crime. She had seen enough crime dramas on the vid to know criminal intent required action. If she did not act—and act soon—the Halberds and Manning Tatum would run her and her extended family off this land. She could accept becoming homeless on an unnamed planet, but not other families, especially those with young children.
She grabbed one of her three bottles of 180 proof whiskey. The women each carried a dish to pass for the potluck. Between them, they had sandwiches with a sweet pineapple-flavored butter-like spread, a plate of pineapple-flavored sponge cake squares, cupcakes with pineapple-flavored frosting, and in an odd twist, a large pan of beef barbecue.
Steve raised an eyebrow at the bottle of whiskey.
Veronica smiled. “This is not for the potluck dinner. It’s a wedding present for my husband.”
Steve opened the passenger door to the truck and helped her in. “You wanted to get your husband something that he could use?”
“Well, the Wizard of Oz already handed out the only spare brain left laying around.”
“That bottle of whip-belly isn’t going to do his brain any good. Of course, you can’t kill off what you don’t have.” He climbed into the driver’s seat and waited for everyone to settle into the back.
She laughed. “Easy there, Steve. That’s my fiancé you’re talking about.”
Steve looked sheepish. “Sorry, boss. I was speaking out of turn.”
“No. It was your turn, but please hold your judgment on this marriage until you see how it works out, okay?” She looked Steve in the eye. “You don’t have to like him, but I do want you to speak up if you think I’m making a mistake.”
Steve looked at her. “You’re making a mistake.”
She laughed. “Well noted. However, I can’t make said mistake if we don’t get to it.” She pointed at the road to town. “As the man said, impulse engines only. Engage.”
Steve yelled out his open window. “Is everyone settled and comfortable in the back? Do adults have their alarm systems in-hand? Shield restraints in five, four, three, two, one, now.” He grinned at Veronica. “Engaging impulse engines, boss.”
Steve did not push the truck’s speed over a hundred and twenty. Without the protective screen on the back of the truck, everyone riding there would be hammered by high winds, and the smallest piece of sand or grit hurt when it hit you going fast. At their current speed, it would take less than ten minutes to go the eighteen miles to reach the glade by the road.
She watched the countryside blur past. She looked with curiosity at the streams on either side of the road whenever they came up close. There were some pools of water in the dark parts, but the streams were no longer running. It would not take long for the farms and ranches around them to begin to dry up.
Long ago, she dismissed the people on those farms as a concern, because they sided with Manning Tatum and the Halberds against her. There was not much picking and choosing sides, no one even opted for neutrality. She was certain there were a few people who hated her and Tatum with equal animosity, but actual hostile action against both parties was not neutrality; it was fighting a war on more than one front at the same time.
She wondered if the land drawing had been as random as advertised. Had the committee rigged the land lottery, giving the best sections to their friends? Tatum was friends with the Wiggins and the Lamonts before leaving Earth. Both were not crossroad neighbors from each other. She could not prove it, but she suspected Tatum and the Lamonts were relatives.
Sections of land along the rivers with an abundant supply of water seemed to go to farmers and ranchers who were either on the committee or had friends or family on the committee. The less connected a person seemed to be, the farther away from a town their land became. It seemed to her that only a quick review of the rivers and streams running along arable land was the only consideration in the land survey.
Veronica was not popular with the committee. Most of them wanted her left behind on Earth because of the dissolution of her marriage. Her crossroad neighbors, the Halberds, were not popular because they were the type of people they were and should have been dropped from the Pioneer Compact as undesirable. She and the Halberds dr
ew sections in the land lottery that looked undesirable on a map. Their land butted up against the foothills with only part of the land flat enough for farming. Their sections had some springs and streams, but there was little natural water flow.
People like the Wiggins and the Lamonts somehow won prime sections of land located on riverbanks next to the town. Theoretically, as the town grew, land needed for expansion would have to be purchased from Wiggins, Lamont, and the landowners just south of town.
The framers of the Pioneer Compact did not consider water rights; therefore, there was no mention of them in the compact. The streams Veronica watched originated from springs on her property or passed through her land before heading south to merge and form the Cold Water River. Veronica controlled all the land south of her place because she controlled the flow of water flowing south from the mountains to Peaceful Junction. It made no difference whose name was on the deed to any property south of hers along the Left Fork and Right Fork streams. She alone had the ability to control the success or failure of all landowners south of her property by turning on or off the water spigot.
She had, with the construction of three small dams, effectively shut off the water to all nineteen of the land sections along these two streams. There were a few springs here and there, but they did not amount to much water, so she would have to wait and see how tight she could close the spigot. Of course, once the water backed up behind the dams, it was going to have to flow somewhere, but that probably would not happen for one or two rainy seasons.
Steve tapped the windshield pointing ahead to get her attention. “Nice of you to get married at the county fair.”
“Well, so much for a quiet sedate ceremony.”
A man waved them to a stop. He pointed to a field on Lamont’s property. “Parking is all over there. A credit per vehicle.”
Steve said, “This is Veronica Smith. I don’t think she should have to pay or walk across a cow pasture to get to her own wedding. You can tell the Lamonts I said so.”
The man scratched his head, obviously in deep thought. “I could call them, but yeah, I guess the wedding party shouldn’t have to pay. Go on.” He turned and directed other flitters, trucks, and air cars into the parking area. There were too many vehicles coming in from the south to account for the population of Peaceful Junction.
She watched as a gang of twenty air skis cruised to a stop next to the parking attendant. The flyers wore leather jackets labeled Sky Angels. It did not look like the man was going to get a credit from each flyer.
She wondered again about the standards the Pioneer Compact had for allowing people to join the trip to this planet with no name. She would have rejected many of the people she met, simply on compatibility. The Halberds would never meet any standard she designed. This was not the first time she wondered where the Halberds came up with the money for the emigration and shipping fees. She wondered if the ability to pay all fees was the only standard applied to the applicants.
She had no information on the members of the Sky Angels gang. Back in Arizona, many flyer groups consisted of doctors, lawyers, and dentists who joined the groups to ride on the weekends. It had been a struggle to keep her husband from buying an H-D air ski even though he did not know how to ride. She wondered why he was so interested at the time. Now she was certain it had to do with wearing leather and keeping the company of other men.
Steve pulled into a small space beside the road next to the pond. There was not much room, but someone had roped off an area by the trees and was keeping it clear. It was not quite noon, but the place was buzzing. Tents and booths were set up all over. Vendors were selling crafts and homemade canned goods. Organizations were extolling the virtues of membership. Booths were selling hot dogs, deep-fried everything, and refreshments of all kinds.
She heard the clink of glasses from the saloon tent and the melody of slot machines from the casino tent. She saw the Halberds flitter and air skis parked outside the bar tent. Eve Halberd sat in the flitter with the doors shut and the windows up. Veronica was concerned as the temperature was already over a hundred degrees. The poor girl was cooking unless she had the air conditioning on high.
A rush of air skis blew down the racetrack with people cheering and placing bets. The air skis barely split the air, slipping silently along a few feet above the ground. A pair of horses stood in line ready for the next race, pawing at the ground throwing up clouds of dust.
There must have been a thousand people already in attendance and more arriving all of the time. She expected only the locals to show up. Evidently, entertainment was at a premium all across this little section of their new world.
Steve settled the truck to the ground and shut off the safety field. He got out and went back to help his wife and children climb to the ground. The rest of her crew poured out of the back of the wagon like hungry cowboys on a Saturday night.
Veronica looked around and smiled at all of the activity. She had chosen this spot because of the shade trees and the small body of water. It was a large pond, slightly smaller than a lake. She wondered if the water flowing into the sand sinkhole twenty miles away on the Halberd’s place leaked into an aquifer and then been forced up like an artesian well at this location. Diverting the water on to her property might shift the aquifer levels.
The water level was already down a foot, maybe a foot and a half. She did not see Wiggins anywhere, but it did not look as if anyone was paying attention to the fact that the spring had stopped flowing.
Chapter Forty-Three
Veronica walked around the pond. Looking at the spring she saw the ground was wet, but it was no longer flowing into the pond as it had every time she stopped there to get water. The pond overflow was opposite of the spring, flowing into the Cold Water River. She did not remember seeing it flood except in the rainy season.
Tatum and Wiggins walked up to her.
“A bit dry are we?” Tatum asked.
“It must be that time of the year,” she replied.
Tatum said, “I didn’t mean the spring.” He pointed at the bottle of whiskey she held in her hand by the bottleneck.
“Oh, this? It’s a wedding gift for my fiancé.”
Tatum said, “I don’t care for much about you, Mrs. Smith, but I will say that you do know the way to a man’s heart.”
She said, “Assuming he has one.”
Wiggins stared at the pond as if seeing it for the first time. “The water level does look like it’s down a bit. I don’t know though. I sure don’t remember the spring giving out last dry season.”
Tatum shrugged. “It shouldn’t be a problem for you here. You can always divert a little bit from the Cold Water River.”
Veronica said, “It would be a chore to irrigate uphill from the river, but with the right pumps and piping it shouldn’t be a big problem for you. It might be expensive, but still manageable.” She smiled at the men. “It would be impossible for me to pump water the twenty miles to my place. I’ve already tried and failed to find a robotic aerial drop water system.”
Wiggins continued staring at the spring. “I just don’t remember this drying up at all.”
Veronica said, “We don’t have much history to go on. Maybe every few years it gets dryer than the rest of the time. I can’t say since we don’t have any long-term studies on weather patterns. From what I hear, the farms south of Landing City are already drying to dust bowl proportions.”
Tatum looked around as if unconcerned. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Wig. It’s not like you’re up north where Smith is.” He looked at her and grinned. “I suppose things up there are getting dry, too.”
She smiled. “I’m sure it’s dry and hot everywhere on this part of the planet. For all we know, we’re at the end of a wet cycle and the planet is about to move into a thousand-year dry period. Maybe that’s why there are no animals or insects. They all die off during the dry times, but the plants go to seed and wait for the next rain.”
Wiggins’ face turned red and
the tone of his voice lost its calm. “What, we’re going into a thousand-year dry cycle? Why would you say that? What do you know?”
She said, “Easy there, Archibald. There would still be sea life, even if all the animals on land died. But from what I’ve heard, the seas are as empty as the land except for plant life.”
Wiggins looked confused. “My name is not Archibald.”
She nodded, “Yeah, I know, but you look like one.” She walked away before either man could say anything else. She wanted to find Maine. It would not be hard to locate him. Her choices were the saloon or the casino. She doubted he would be riding a unicorn on the merry-go-round. The saloon was the first place she was going to look.
Chapter Forty-Four
Tania Halberd watched Veronica walk around the pond toward the saloon. Should I warn that woman about Maine and Dillon? They’re both exceptionally low-grade losers. I can’t figure out which is worse, my husband Dillon or his moronic brother. She shook her head after making her decision. Nah, I’m not saying anything. The woman will get what she deserves if she marries into this family with her eyes open.
Chapter Forty-Five
Veronica stopped at the entrance before going into the tent housing the saloon. The Halberd’s daughter stared at her from their parked flitter. It should have surprised her that they left their young teenager in a closed, locked vehicle, but she was not. Back on Earth, Phoenix had laws against leaving pets or small children in closed vehicles in the scorching summer heat. Temperatures would rise so fast heat stroke happened quickly, killing infants, toddlers, and pets. The Halberd girl was not an infant or a toddler, but that did not make it the right thing to do.
She stared at the girl for a moment. The girl had the look of a Halberd. That was enough for Veronica to dislike her, but the poor girl did not choose her family or her DNA. Veronica walked over to the flitter. The girl allowed her to open the door before dropping her eyes to the floor as if yanked by strings. From the safety of a locked vehicle, the girl could stare at people, but face-to-face, she lost her nerve. Veronica felt sure the girl was unable to look any adult in the eye.