Third World (14 page)

“
Yes, well.” The man
looked
earnest,
which was what he said his name was. “We were sort of
wondering if we might do a little trade.” The boy was Freddie and
the girl Dana.

“
Oh, really.” Hank put cups
of steaming brew down in front of them, with him and the lad
standing as Hank only had two chairs for the six places at his
kitchen table.

He had an old crate, one that he could
drag over in the unlikely event that he had company. He pulled it
out for the boy.

Two’s company, or so they said. Three’s
a crowd and four was a lot of people in such a small space. The
girl sank onto her chair with a look of sheer bliss, her eyes
meeting Hank’s all of a sudden.

She nodded and sighed deeply, a curious
compliment but no doubt heartfelt.

“
What were you thinking of?”
There was no way in hell that Hank would give up a horse or a
mount, the critters as they were called were better than horses in
some ways, albeit a mite slower and harder to train to the master’s
will.

One they got the idea, they sort of
latched onto it.

They thrived on local forage and could
go up and down a ridge a horse would be advised to reconsider.
Strong animals, they would work cheerfully as long as they were fed
and cared for.

Hank had never used a whip or spurs. He
found he didn’t need them the way some folks claimed.

“
Do you have any canned
goods?” Ernest leaned forward and stared Hank right in the
eye.

“
Ah, yes.” Hank thought
carefully. “What have you got to trade?”

“
A few bullets, a half a
bottle of pain pills. A few other things.”

The girl mentioned sewing
needles.

Hank had all kinds of stores put away.
He didn’t eat all of them over time for various reasons.

Some required other ingredients to make
a meal, some he was saving for a treat—those would be hard to part
with, like the chocolate-nut cake in a tin, which he remembered
from a few years ago as moist, soft, sweet and very chocolatey, if
indeed that was a proper word.

***

Unit One and Unit Two, as Newton had
taken to calling them, arrived in Oak River nigh on midnight. It
was a Friday in July according to the local calendar. Ship’s time
was just a string of numbers, but they had adapted once, and could
do it again. While they had been reassured in Capital City that
there was a hotel and they would be welcomed, the place looked
supremely deserted. It was bedraggled by yet more rain, practically
unlit except for a few faint yellow windowpanes down the road, and
a light behind the front door of Peltham’s General Store, which was
otherwise dark. He picked out a few more dim lights in the distance
up the street.

The main street was a rutted, muddy
hell with scattered puddles shining in the reflected glare of head
and tail lights as the roof of the cab drummed under the
downpour.

Buildings stretched before them, lined
up right and left. The town had a lumber mill, and a grist mill,
and served as a commercial and agricultural hub for the surrounding
area, with handicrafts and services. The local industry was listed
as subsistence farming, hunting and trapping. It was all right
there in the field notes, along with a map he expected wouldn’t be
completely accurate, not after all this time. The map and notes had
been made twenty-four years previously and had never been updated
since.

Not a horse or person or vehicle of any
description moved. Rain pelted down and the troops were huddled
under a tarp they were holding over their heads in a collective
effort that was good as far as it went. There were some gripes as
well, but he’d ignored the on-air remarks so far. He’d better get
them indoors or there would be mutiny.

“
All right, according to the
display, the hotel is about the middle of the block on the right
side.” He made this location, their GPS accurate to the half-metre,
to be the place they were looking for.

He peered through the gloom. The Ensign
was with Unit One and their floodlights illuminated crudely painted
signs on the plain boards on the sides of buildings. The bulk of
the other vehicle loomed in front of their vehicle lights, blocking
out some of the view. Newton was seated on the right, up front
now.

“
Peltham’s General Store.”
Faber looked and pointed.

“
This pretty much has to be
it.” Opposite Pelthams, which was on their left, was another
two-storey building, one which indeed had a light on in the front
windows and some light spilling out from the back of the alley
beside it.

It was maddeningly
anonymous.

The alley was quite wide, three metres
or so, and probably out back was where the horses would be parked.
“I don’t see a sign. That doesn’t surprise me, for some
reason.”

“
What in the hell is that
thing hanging off the post?”

Faber pointed their spotlight at it,
deftly fingering the joystick that moved it.

“
Holy,
fffah
…” He trailed off. “I don’t
know.”

There was a silence as they peered at
the cracked, peeling and oddly-formed old thing as it shivered
under the rain and a gust of wind.

“
I know!” Newton turned to
stare at Trooper Barnes.

It was oddly uncomfortable having her
in here because she just plain made her commanding officer think
all the wrong thoughts. He couldn’t help but turn and stare
whenever she made the slightest comment. Perhaps it was all the
fresh air and clean living but he didn’t think so. She was just
beautiful, no denying it.

“
You’re kidding.”

She blushed and gulped a little, but
went on.

“
I think that’s chicken
wings and a bottle of beer, with foam rushing out of the
top.”

Newton turned to peer up at it in the
gloom. His face was something to behold when he realized that she
had nailed it, and the shapes were at least sort of
correct.

“
It sure is quiet around
here.” Barnes had a strong personality, and she was pushing back,
but just a little. “Too quiet.”

She looked over and snorted at
Newton.

“
I don’t like
it.”

There were a few chuckles but he could
live with it as he grinned in unfeigned relief. They had gotten
this far.

“
Very good.” He hadn’t been
complimenting the other troopers, and he was aware of that fact,
still, he couldn’t help it. “Keep that up, and you’ll soon make
corporal.”

She blushed beet red and stared off
over his shoulder, and it suddenly occurred to Newton Shapiro that
a commander really shouldn’t joke around with the troops for any
number of reasons. Even when they were poking and prodding at
him.

“
Sorry, just
kidding.”

She gave him a quick look but said
nothing.

Faber grumbled, perhaps it was just
life in general.

“
Shut up.”

They’d stopped fifteen times in the
last ten kilometres to cut low-hanging branches, clearing brush
from the sides and logs that lay right across the line of travel.
To call it a road was to mistake its intentions and even its
nature. It was a series of tracks gouged out the earth, a braided
stream of foot, hoof and wheel marks, and God alone knew how they
even followed it. Wielding buzz-saws and axes, slipping and sliding
in the darkness, everybody was wet, cold, hungry, and tired as
hell.

But they were here now, it was his
responsibility, and in some ineffable way, his victory and his
reward. The difficulty of travel on the surface was definitely one
of the lessons learned and would figure prominently in his report.
He never would have believed it until he had experienced it—and
that would go in the report as well. Imagine doing that under fire
and surveillance by enemy spotters. Imagine trying to do it in a
hurry with all-green fighting troops. It was a sobering
thought.

“
All right. I’ll go.” Newton
reached up, almost grabbed the helmet, but then thought better of
it and settled for wearing his forage cap.

With a gesture to the Trooper, she
opened up the door, still barely able to look at him. He vaguely
wondered if she had a crush on him. The thing slammed shut with
alacrity as he climbed the short ladder and stepped out into a good
seventy-five millimetres of slop which might have been water on the
top ninety percent but was surely good old horse manure underneath,
judging by the squirmy feel of it under his boots.

The smell of the road was unmistakable.
It was strange how quiet the rain made everything. Even the idling
engines seemed oddly muted.

While the boots were indeed waterproof,
rain coming in from higher up the body trickled down and settled in
the bottoms, and his feet felt definitely squishy. Like walking
around in your own blood, it was strangely warm and there must have
been some sand in there as well. Between his toes felt distinctly
gritty, a feeling he’d always hated. He was a million times better
off than the troops, which was why he took a turn at the work when
the appropriate chance arose.

His luck was in. The dim shape of
someone inside moved around and they were headed towards the front
door if he wasn’t mistaken. His pace quickened. There were seven or
eight steps up onto a covered veranda and then he was at last out
of the driving rain. If only he had a dry rag to mop his
forehead.

Shapiro knocked on the door, and it
opened as soon as he did so. The trucks rumbling at idle right
outside the front door might have had something to do with
it.

“
Welcome, passing
strangers!”

“
Hello. I’m Lieutenant
Newton Shapiro of Her Majesty’s Ship
Hermes,
and I’ve got sixteen,
seventeen people that need rooms.”

“
Ha—how many did you
say?”

“
Seventeen.
Sorry.”

The fellow, tall and balding, perhaps
in his late forties but the folks seemed to age more quickly on
this planet, gulped a little on hearing that, but he was in no more
of a bind than Newton was.

“
Why, uh, well…of course.
I’m Jim Gregory, sir. I’m the owner. Come right in
please.”

They would come to some kind of
arrangement.

Lieutenant Newton Shapiro, always on
call, always on duty, it never seemed to end, keyed his
microphone.

“
All right, people,
dismount. No essential gear is to be left aboard, and make sure you
lock the vehicles. Don’t lose the keys, incidentally.” He thought
about that. “Who has the keys?”

Faber and Trooper Hernandez indicated
they did.

“
Roger that, look after
them. It’s your responsibility. Thank you.”

The publican was already back inside,
lighting a half a dozen lamps in the front room, which was clearly
for eating and drinking, and the first thuds of heavy feet were
already tramping inside as the noise level picked up considerably,
possibly for the first time in some years. There were cheers and
whistles as the first soldier spotted a couple of billiards tables
in a big room stretching off from the left end and then going
straight back along the southern side of the building to bring in
as much natural light as possible. That gallery was lined with
genuine windows, and with the lamps in there it was brighter, much
brighter than the dining room. Newton thought the place seventy
feet wide or so, but it went back from the street a more
considerable distance as he stuck his head around the corner and
checked it out.

Long, low ceilings, dark,
smoke-blackened beams, and stucco panels with a thick impasto all
firmly overlaid with the smell of tobacco and fried meat gave the
place an instant appeal after three days in the trucks.

All that fresh air wasn’t good for a
man, and they’d been sleeping out in tents for three nights in a
row. His guts were tight and he’d been having trouble eating the
last day or so. His feet squished in the boots.

Mister Gregory came out of a back room,
with armloads of sheets and pillowcases. The muffled, sleepy voice
of a woman came from the back end of the building.

“
How many rooms do you have
here, exactly?”

“
Ah, ah…some will have to
double up.” The man’s concern was evident, but where else were they
going to go? “I can send word around and maybe find a couple more
rooms around town. My boy will go. There is another place, but they
only got two rooms and I think one’s occupied.”

“
So, how many rooms do you
have?” Newton appreciated the man’s designs, they had nowhere else
to go and he knew it.

“
Well, six.” The man nodded
vigorously. “They are pretty big, and the guest rooms have two beds
each. We have a couple of spare mattresses out back.”

Ah. A little light went off in Newton’s
head. He wondered if there was some way to hot-bunk it, with people
sleeping in turns.

“
Okay, so how do you propose
to do this? I will instruct my troops accordingly.” Newton was
firmly courteous.