The Loafers of Refuge (24 page)
Read The Loafers of Refuge Online
Authors: Joseph Green
“Thanks, Varrie. I’ve often needed the authority this gives me. Only now I can’t tell you off when I feel like it any more.”
English grinned. “Why do you think you got the appointment?”
Little Harvey was first out of the flitter, swinging his six-foot length of lean masculinity to the ground in one easy motion. He was still called “Little Harvey” to distinguish him from his crippled uncle, but actually he was taller than his father. He looked around, curiously, at the village which would be his home for the next month.
Carey followed him out more slowly. This was his first visit to Timmy’s village, but he had been often into the High Forest to negotiate with other tribes. The Earthmen were making a noticeable dent in the section of the woods which extended south past the Whitecap Mountains, and it had already been necessary to move one Loafer tribe further north, into the huge tract he had managed to reserve for them.
Timmy was waiting to greet him, with Tharee behind him. Micka stood quietly in the background, holding a baby in her arms, and Bilejah of the golden spots stood beside her, holding a baby of her own. Beside her stood a tall young man who resembled Timmy too much to be anyone but his son.
Timmy raised a hand and the excited hubbub subsided. He extended the hand to Carey, and as the two men clasped hands a voice spoke in Carey’s mind, and in that voice he recognized the presence of Timmy, Tharee, Micka, Sanda, and a host of others. And the voice said,
Greetings and welcome, friend of our people, and know that our time of exile is soon ended. When your son returns a Controller we shall come with him, and the dawn of a new day is at hand.
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The Loafers Of Refuge
Gold The Man
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The Horde
Collections
An Affair With Genius
This novel was based on a series of stories
which appeared in
New Worlds Science Fiction
,
1962 and 1963
FOR BUZ AND ELINOR,
WHO HELPED SO MUCH
Joseph L. Green (1931 – )
Joseph Lee Green was born in Florida in 1931. He worked for almost four decades on the American space programme, retiring from NASA as Deputy Chief of the Education Office at the Kennedy Space Center. A prolific writer of short fiction, he produced only five novels, the best known of which is 1971’s
Gold The Man.
He was a charter member of the SFWA and one of the first American writers to be published on Victor Gollancz’s nascent science fiction list.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Joseph Green 1965
All rights reserved.
The right of Joseph Green to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10293 4
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.