The Past Through Tomorrow (59 page)

Wingate was behind the Pusher. This circumstance probably saved Satchel Hartley at least a scalp wound, for he caught the arm of the Pusher as he struck. Hartley closed in at once; the three wrestled for a few seconds on the bottom of the craft.

Hartley sat on the Pusher’s chest while Wingate pried a blackjack away from the clenched fingers of the Pusher’s right fist. “Glad you saw him reach for that, Hump,” Satchel acknowledged, “or I’d be needin’ an aspirin about now.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Wingate answered, and threw the weapon as far as he could out into the marshy waste. Several of the amphibians streaked after it and dived. “I guess you can let him up now.”

The Pusher said nothing to them as he brushed himself off, but he turned to the Crocker who had remained quietly in his saddle at the controls the whole time. “Why the hell didn’t you help me?”

“I supposed you could take care of yourself, Boss,” Jimmie answered noncommittally.

Wingate and Hartley finished that work period as helpers to labor clients already stationed. The Pusher had completely ignored them except for curt orders necessary to station them. But while they were washing up for supper back at the compound they received word to report to the Big House.

When they were ushered into the Patron’s office they found the Pusher already there with his employer and wearing a self-satisfied smirk while Van Huysen’s expression was black indeed.

“What’s this I hear about you two?” he burst out. “Refusing work. Jumping my foreman. By Joe, I show you a thing or two!”

“Just a moment, Patron van Huysen,” began Wingate quietly, suddenly at home in the atmosphere of a trial court, “no one refused duty. Hartley simply protested doing dangerous work without reasonable safeguards. As for the fracas, your foreman attacked us; we acted simply in self-defense, and desisted as soon as we had disarmed him.”

The Pusher leaned over Van Huysen and whispered in his ear. The Patron looked more angry than before. “You did this with natives watching. Natives! You know colonial law? I could send you to the mines for this.”

“No,” Wingate denied, “your foreman did it in the presence of natives. Our role was passive and defensive throughout—”

“You call jumping my foreman peaceful? Now you listen to me—Your job here is to work. My foreman’s job is to tell you where and how to work. He’s not such a dummy as to lose me my investment in a man. He judges what work is dangerous, not you.” The Pusher whispered again to his chief. Van Huysen shook his head. The other persisted, but the Patron cut him off with a gesture, and turned back to the two labor clients.

“See here—I give every dog one bite, but not two. For you, no supper tonight and no
rhira
. Tomorrow we see how you behave.”

“But Patron van Huys—”

“That’s all. Get to your quarters.”

At lights out Wingate found, on crawling into his bunk, that someone had hidden therein a foodbar. He munched it gratefully in the dark and wondered who his friend could be. The food stayed the complaints of his stomach but was not sufficient, in the absence of
rhira
, to permit him to go to sleep. He lay there, staring into the oppressive blackness of the bunk-room and listening to the assorted irritating noises that men can make while sleeping, and considered his position. It had been bad enough but barely tolerable before; now, he was logically certain, it would be as near hell as a vindictive overseer could make it. He was prepared to believe, from what he had seen and the tales he had heard, that it would be very near indeed!

He had been nursing his troubles for perhaps an hour when he felt a hand touch his side. “Hump! Hump!” came a whisper, “come outside. Something’s up.” It was Jimmie.

He felt his way cautiously through the stacks of bunks and slipped out the door after Jimmie. Satchel was already outside and with him a fourth figure. <

It was Annek van Huysen. He wondered how she had been able to get into the locked compound. Her eyes were puffy, as if she had been crying.

Jimmie started to speak at once, in cautious, low tones. “The kid tells us that I am scheduled to haul you two lugs back into Adonis tomorrow.”

“What for?”

“She doesn’t know. But she’s afraid it’s to sell you South. That doesn’t seem likely. The Old Man has never sold anyone South—but then nobody ever jumped his pusher before. I don’t know.”

They wasted some minutes in fruitless discussion, then, after a bemused silence, Wingate asked Jimmie, “Do you know where they keep the keys to the crock?”

“No. Why do y—”

“I could get them for you,” offered Annek eagerly.

“You can’t drive a crock.”

“I’ve watched you for some weeks.”

“Well, suppose you can,” Jimmie continued to protest, “suppose you run for it in the crock. You’d be lost in ten miles. If you weren’t caught, you’d starve.”

Wingate shrugged. “I’m not going to be sold South.”

“Nor am I,” Hartley added.

“Wait a minute.”

“Well, I don’t see any bet—”

“Wait a minute,” Jimmie reiterated snappishly. ‘Can’t you see I’m trying to think?”

The other three kept silent for several long moments. At last Jimmie said, “Okay. Kid, you’d better run along and let us talk. The less you know about this the better for you.” Annek looked hurt, but complied docilely to the extent of withdrawing out of earshot. The three men conferred for some minutes. At last Wingate motioned for her to rejoin them.

“That’s all, Annek,” he told her. “Thanks a lot for everything you’ve done. We’ve figured a way out.” He stopped, and then said awkwardly, “Well, good night.”

She looked up at him.

Wingate wondered what to do or say next. Finally he led her around the corner of the barracks and bade her good night again. He returned very quickly, looking shame-faced. They re-entered the barracks.

Patron van Huysen also was having trouble getting to sleep. He hated having to discipline his people. By damn, why couldn’t they all be good boys and leave him in peace? Not but what there was precious little peace for a rancher these days. It cost more to make a crop than the crop fetched in Adonis—at least it did after the interest was paid.

He had turned his attention to his accounts after dinner that night to try to get the unpleasantness out of his mind, but he found it hard to concentrate on his figures. That man Wingate, now…he had bought him as much to keep him away from that slavedriver Rigsbee as to get another hand. He had too much money invested in hands as it was in spite of his foreman always complaining about being short of labor. He would either have to sell some, or ask the bank to refinance the mortgage again.

Hands weren’t worth their keep any more. You didn’t get the kind of men on Venus that used to come when he was a boy. He bent over his books again. If the market went up even a little, the bank should be willing to discount his paper for a little more than last season. Maybe that would do it.

He had been interrupted by a visit from his daughter. Annek he was always glad to see, but this time what she had to say, what she finally blurted out, had only served to make him angry. She, preoccupied with her own thoughts, could not know that she hurt her father’s heart, with a pain that was actually physical.

But that had settled the matter insofar as Wingate was concerned. He would get rid of the trouble-maker. Van Huysen ordered his daughter to bed with a roughness he had never before used on her.

Of course it was all his own fault, he told himself after he had gone to bed. A ranch on Venus was no place to raise a motherless girl. His Annekchen was almost a woman grown now; how was she to find a husband here in these outlands? What would she do if he should die? She did not know it, but there would be nothing left, nothing, not even a ticket to Terra. No, she would not become a labor client’s vrouw; no, not while there was a breath left in his old tired body.

Well, Wingate would have to go, and the one they called Satchel,—too. But he would not sell them South. No, he had never done that to one of his people. He thought with distaste of the great, factorylike plantations a few hundred miles further from the pole, where the temperature was always twenty to thirty degrees higher than it was in his marshes and mortality among labor clients was a standard item in cost accounting. No, he would take them in and trade them at the assignment station; what happened to them at auction there would be none of his business. But he would not sell them directly South.

That gave him an idea; he did a little computing in his head and estimated that he might be able to get enough credit on the two unexpired labor contracts to buy Annek a ticket to Earth. He was quite sure that his sister would take her in, reasonably sure anyway, even though she had quarreled with him over marrying Annek’s mother. He could send her a little money from time to time. And perhaps she could learn to be a secretary, or one of those other fine jobs a girl could get on Earth.

But what would the ranch be like without Annekchen?

He was so immersed in his own troubles that he did not hear his daughter slip out of her room and go outside.

Wingate and Hartley tried to appear surprised when they were left behind at muster for work. Jimmie was told to report to the Big House; they saw him a few minutes later, backing the big Remington out of its shed. He picked them up, then trundled back to the Big House and waited for the Patron to appear. Van Huysen came out shortly and climbed into his cabin with neither word nor look for anyone.

The crocodile started toward Adonis, lumbering a steady ten miles an hour. Wingate and Satchel conversed in subdued voices, waited, and wondered. After an interminable time the crock stopped. The cabin window flew open. “What’s the matter?” Van Huysen demanded. “Your engine acting up?”

Jimmie grinned at him. “No, I stopped it.”

“For what?”

“Better come up here and find out.”

“By damn, I do!” The window slammed; presently Van Huysen reappeared, warping his ponderous bulk around the side of the little cabin. “Now what this monkeyshines?”

“Better get out and walk, Patron. This is the end of the line.”

Van Huysen seemed to have no remark suitable in answer, but his expression spoke for him.

“No, I mean it,” Jimmie went on. “This is the end of the line for you. I’ve stuck to solid ground the whole way, so you could walk back. You’ll be able to follow the trail I broke; you ought to be able to make it in three or four hours, fat as you are.”

The Patron looked from Jimmie to the others. Wingate and Satchel closed in slightly, eyes unfriendly. “Better get goin’, Fatty,” Satchel said softly, “before you get chucked out headfirst.”

Van Huysen pressed back against the rail of the crock, his hands gripping it. “I won’t get out of my own crock,” he said tightly.

Satchel spat in the palm of one hand, then rubbed the two together. “Okay, Hump. He asked for it—”

“Just a second.” Wingate addressed Van Huysen, “See here, Patron van Huysen—we don’t want to rough you up unless we have to. But there are three of us and we are determined. Better climb out quietly.”

The older man’s face was dripping with sweat which was not entirely due to the muggy heat. His chest heaved, he seemed about to defy them. Then something went out inside him. His figure sagged, the defiant lines in his face gave way to a whipped expression which was not good to see.

A moment later he climbed quietly, listlessly, over the side into the ankle-deep mud and stood there, stooped, his legs slightly bent at the knees.

When they were out of sight of the place where they had dropped their patron Jimmie turned the crock off in a new direction. “Do you suppose he’ll make it?” asked Wingate.

“Who?” asked Jimmie. “Van Huysen? Oh, sure, he’ll make it—probably.” He was very busy now with his driving; the crock crawled down a slope and lunged into navigable water. In a few minutes the marsh grass gave way to open water. Wingate saw that they were in a broad lake whose further shores were lost in the mist. Jimmie set a compass course.

The far shore was no more than a strand; it concealed an overgrown bayou. Jimmie followed it a short distance, stopped the crock, and said, “This must be just about the place,” in an uncertain voice. He dug under the tarpaulin folded up in one corner of the empty hold and drew out a broad flat paddle. He took this to the rail, and, leaning out, he smacked the water loudly with the blade: Slap!…slap, slap… Slap!

He waited.

The flat head of an amphibian broke water near the side; it studied Jimmie with bright, merry eyes. “Hello,” said Jimmie.

It answered in its own language. Jimmie replied in the same tongue, stretching his mouth to reproduce the uncouth clucking syllables. The native listened, then slid underwater again.

He—or, more probably, she—was back in a few minutes, another with her. “Thigarek?” the newcomer said hopefully.

“Thigarek when we get there, old girl,” Jimmie temporized. “Here…climb aboard.” He held out a hand, which the native accepted and wriggled gracefully inboard. It perched its unhuman, yet oddly pleasing, little figure on the rail near the driver’s seat. Jimmie got the car underway.

How long they were guided by their little pilot Wingate did not know, as the timepiece on the control panel was out of order, but his stomach informed him that it was too long. He rummaged through the cabin and dug out an iron ration which he shared with Satchel and Jimmie. He offered some to the native, but she smelled at it and drew her head away.

Shortly after that there was a sharp hissing noise and a column of steam rose up ten yards ahead of them. Jimmie halted the crock at once. “Cease firing!” he called out. “It’s just us chickens.”

“Who are you?” came a disembodied voice.

“Fellow travelers.”

“Climb out where we can see you.”

“Okay.”

The native poked Jimmie in the ribs. “Thigarek,” she stated positively.

“Huh? Oh, sure.” He parceled out trade tobacco until she acknowledged the total, then added one more package for good will. She withdrew a piece of string from her left cheek pouch, tied up her pay, and slid over the side. They saw her swimming away, her prize carried high out of the water.