by Lindsay Peet
CHAPTER TWO
Mobahey wasn’t my first desert planet, and I’d learned long before that there is any number of reasons why many dislike these bitter barren dust balls. Relentless heat, bitter cold, crazing thirst top most lists; people learn soon enough to loathe the mineral tang of overheated sand and stone, the timid pale-greenery, the thorns and needles and sharp-edged scarps and rocks ready to attack you whenever you let your guard down. But what I’ve come to hate the most is the stupid jokes because somebody thinks it’s clever to make believe we’re in some space-hero holo, like that commercial technoid-dreck is real.
It isn’t, and believing what some animated holo or viddy told you about conquering deserts, or space, or jungles for that matter, will just get someone killed. And, Darwin be damned, sometimes it’s not even the most-idiotic who wind up dead. In this universe we need to be clear about what’s real and what’s playtime – there and then was for real, and some fool made a bad enough mistake that somebody died, and by my thinking it hadn’t been the right somebody who got killed. Wilderness is like a hanging judge that doesn’t tolerate fools and is impatient with evidence.
So next afternoon we were leaving Sandy Aggo, our party now of three and now with ‘horses’ and ‘mules’ heading out into the vastness as fast as we could handle the ‘horses.’ The light blazed into our eyes from the flats before us, and dust swirled up and choked us, and the horizon floated, quivering and wavering in the indeterminate distance, never growing nearer or clearer. Hooves made soft shuffling and clopfing noises in the powder, sometimes our beasts punctuated their mysterious horsey reveries with whistling snorts, and steadily, steadily we all moved forward.
Mobahey, being developed and dedicated and to the peace and quiet of retirement, had been kind of strict about keeping the neighborhood just so; they pretty much regulated away industrious neighbors who might have worked, built, farmed, or created anything you could hold in your hands. Even our little expedition was skirting the boundaries of their decorum; if I hadn’t brought many of the more-specialized tools from off-planet the whole thing would likely have been a washout. Maybe it was just plain hostility to hard work, desecration of their decorum, had been at the root of why we’d been chased from that town, I chuckled to myself.
And decorum counted for a lot. It was why Mobahey had only one spaceport to a continent (making three), why wheeled electric vehicles were permitted in the settled areas only, and outside of them it was hooved transport or expensive and muffled lighter-than-air vehicles. No humming speeders or whirring floaters, no chopping copters, no all-terrain vehicles banging and bouncing out here.
Thus, the Mobahey ‘horse’. They were native animals, and the settlers on Mobahey had wanted as little changed on their planet as possible – of course, that was after the climate machines, microbes and nanobots had done their parts making it more pleasant for humans. The ‘horse’ survived all the changes and all the rules, patiently setting one hoof before another as it had done for eons.
In their own way the horses also discouraged desert travel. How a four-legged beast can have a gait that combines the worst of a rolling sea and a paint-shaker is Divine Mother’s little mystery, but riding one was better than walking, slightly. After a day and a night in the wastes we were done riding, leastways for awhile; we’d arrived at a ‘likely treasure spot’ on the map. I didn’t imagine that either Lordano nor Jedub was looking forward to spending another day in the saddle soon; I also didn’t imagine they were keen on digging in the heat and grit, but they had to earn their pay somehow.
“Hey, Boss, you might want to come over here and check this out.” I was reclining in the scant shade of a big tescoreo bush, watching the shadows of the moonlets of Mobahey race across the dappled desert when Jedub spoke up. Once I was standing over the pit my shadow fell almost straight down, leaving my feet in a baby eclipse, and my feet were probably grateful, because all around it was really, really hot. “What is it now? Time for another bathroom break?” Last time I’d come over he and Lordano had mooned me; who knew what hijinks they’d come up with now?
This time I found Lordano bent over a rubbery convex surface, brushing off the dust and grit. “Is this your treasure we are finding? What kind of treasure is this being? A ball is it?! A stupiding ball?!!!”
I looked down, and damned if he wasn’t right, both with his statement and his question. This was the second of five likely treasure spots I’d been given – the first we’d gone to a few days before, and it apparently had been washed out in a gully-flood, and ourselves we’d ended up on the run too, since Jedub had gotten too talkative in that bar. All in all, there was a decent chance that what we three were staring at was what we’d been paid to find. Still made no sense to me – I mean, this was it?! A big rubbery sphere, looking to be about a meter across judging from the bit uncovered? This was the treasure my mysterious Mr. Stanley had hired us to find?
Strange are the ways of the stupidly wealthy, I shrugged. Spend a small fortune on a beach ball. Jedub had picked up some pebbles and was tossing them at the treasure in boredom and frustration, watching them bounce off, and one came right back at him, smacked him in the eyebrow. Lordano and I laughed, Lordano said, “Careful you should be – somebody’s eye you out could put!” and we two chuckled some more while he made grimaces, and then I got serious. “Well, come on now, dig it up! And make sure you don’t pop it – in fact, best hand me those pick-mattocks, if you don’t mind.” I didn’t know what it was I was looking at or how it might be valuable, but I was pretty sure it would be less valuable with a big hole punched in it. Also, I’d clean forgot to pack the Acme Treasure Ball Patch Kit.
Jedub and Lordano looked at me funny, and looked at the ball funny, and looked at me funny again, and then tossed up their pick-mattocks. They’d be at least another hour trying to free that thing up with their shovels and paws I reckoned, so I took a string of mules to the spring around the backside of the hill to fill up the animals and the canteens. If we were going to celebrate we’d need water.
When I got back they were resting in the shade of the tarp I’d rigged up; no I wasn’t a totally heartless bastard, I’d put a tarp over the pit for shade, but do you think they thanked me? Anyway, the ball was free, nestled in the bottom of the pit, and they were muttering. Without hearing them I knew what the problem was – all along they’d planned on making off with the treasure after killing or stranding me. Now there didn’t seem much point. Not that killing me bothered them too much, they just needed a better excuse, which I understood – I believe in hardnosed cost/benefit analyses myself. When I’d hired these guys I knew that any loyalty I saw in them would only be my wishful thinking.
Well, when you’re trying to scrounge up a work crew on a ‘retirement planet,’ you take what you can get, and these two and Drishter had been ‘accidentally left behind’ when their ships had departed. I’d known what I was hiring, and didn’t worry much as I reckoned I’d out-think them on every move. That part was easy – I just figured out a couple options for what I might do in their shoes, judged they’d go with the least imaginative play, and then I worked my counter-move. I was less concerned with treachery than idiocy.
“Well, what’re you two doing?”
“We’re done, Boss, this is it,” Jedub gestured angrily at the ball, pebbles again in his hand, ready to toss some and tempt Fate once more.
“What makes you so sure?” I asked. Pretending a knowledge I lacked I said, “You think this is it? I expect more. In fact, I’ll be damned surprised if there isn’t a second ball, at least.”
“These balls come in pairs, you’re sayin’?”
Lordano giggled, then I laughed, and pretty soon we all three were guffawing, rolling on the ground, slapping our thighs and holding our guts. Not that any of it was so funny, it just hit us that way at the time, like things sometimes do, especially when you’re tense and tired. “Well, yeah,” I gasped finally. “Yeah, I mean, are you so satisfied with what we got that you’ve got n
o curiosity in seeing if there’s more?”
“A point he is having,” wheezed Lordano.
“Awrite, awrite, let’s get back to ‘er then, Lordano,” grumped Jedub as he scattered his pebbles, away from the ball, and after tossing me the ball they lifted the pick-mattocks from the lip of the pit and got back to work.”Be careful with those things, guys, there’s no telling how shallow the other one’ll be.” I found my little puddle of shade again and tried to remember what I’d been told about the treasure, trying to see what I’d missed, what I was still missing, because frankly I felt kinda lost, and I really really hate that feeling.