Horst Elwes had been watching the episode with a number of Group Seven's members, and now he stepped up to Powel. The supervisor's
dog turned its neck to look at him. Lord, but it was a brute. Lalonde was becoming a sore test for him indeed. “Was it necessary
to be quite so unpleasant to those boys?” he asked Powel Manani.
Powel looked him up and down, eyes catching on the white crucifix. “Yes. If you want the blunt truth, Father. That's the way
I always deal with them. They have to know who's in charge from the word go. Believe me, they respect toughness.”
“They would also respond to kindness.”
“Fine, well you show them plenty of it, Father. And just to prove there's no ill feeling, I'll give them time off to attend
mass.”
Horst had to quicken his pace to keep up. “Your dog,” he said cautiously.
“What about him?”
“You say you are bonded with affinity?”
“That's right.”
“Are you an Edenist, then?”
Vorix made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker.
“No, Father,” Powel said. “I'm simply practical. And if I had a fuseodollar for every new-landed priest who asked me that
I would be a millionaire. I need Vorix upriver; I need him to hunt, to scout, to keep the Ivets in line. Neuron sym-bionts
give me control over him. I use them because they are cheap and they work. The same as all the other settlement supervisors,
and half of the county sheriffs as well. It's only the major Earth-based religions which maintain people's prejudice against
bitek. But on worlds like Lalonde we can't afford your prissy theological debates. We use what we have to, when we have to.
And if you want to survive long enough to fill Group Seven's second generation with your noble bigotry over a single chromosome
which makes people a blasphemy, then you'll do the same. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a settlement expedition to sort out.”
He brushed past, heading for the harbour.
Gerald Skibbow and the other members of Group Seven followed after him, several of them giving shamefaced glances to the startled
priest. Gerald watched Rai Molvi gathering up his nerve to speak. Molvi had made a lot of noise at the meeting last night,
he seemed to fancy himself as a leader of men. There had been plenty of suggestions that they form an official committee,
elect a spokesperson. It would help the group interface with the authorities, Rai Molvi said. Gerald privately gave him six
months before he was running back to Durringham with his tail between his legs. The man was an obvious lawyer type, didn't
have what it took to be a farmer.
“You were supposed to be here yesterday to brief us,” Rai Molvi said.
“Quite right,” Powel said without breaking stride. “I apologize. If you would like to make an official complaint about me,
the Land Allocation Office which issues my contract is in a dumper down on the western edge of town. It's only six kilometres.”
“No, we weren't going to complain,” Rai Molvi said quickly. “But we do need to establish certain facts to prepare ourselves.
It would have been helpful had you attended.”
“Attended what?”
“Last night's council meeting.”
“What council?”
“Group Seven's council.”
Powel took a breath. He never did understand why half of the colonists came to Lalonde in the first place. The LDC must employ
some pretty amazing advertising techniques back on Earth, he thought. “What was it the council wanted to know?”
“Well… where are we going, for a start?”
“Upriver.” Powel stretched out the pause long enough to make the other man uncomfortable. “A place called Schuster County,
on the Quallheim tributary. Although I'm sure that if you have somewhere else in mind the river-boat captain will be happy
to take you there instead.”
Rai Molvi reddened.
Gerald pushed his way to the front as they all moved out from under the dormitory's creaking roof. Powel had turned, making
for the circular harbour two hundred metres away, Vorix padding along eagerly behind him. There were several paddle-boats
pulled up at the wooden quays inside the artificial lagoon. The bright red specks of scavenging chikrows swirled overhead.
The sight with its sense of purpose and adventure was unbeatable, quickening his blood.
“Is there anything we need to know about the paddle-boats?” he asked.
“Not really,” Powel said. “They carry about a hundred and fifty people each, and it'll take us about a fortnight to reach
the Quallheim. Your meals are provided as part of your transit fee, and I'll be giving talks on the more practical aspects
of jungle lore and setting up your home. So just find yourself a bunk, and enjoy the trip, for you won't ever have another
like it. After we make landfall the real work begins.”
Gerald nodded his thanks and turned back to the dormitory. Let the others pester the man with irrelevant questions, he would
get the family packed and onto the
Swithland
straight away. A long river trip would be just what Marie needed to calm her down.
The
Swithland
followed a standard design for the larger paddle-boats operating on the Juliffe. She had a broad, shallow hull made of mayope
planks, measuring sixty metres from prow to stern and twenty metres broad. With the water flowing by a mere metre and a half
below the deck she could almost have been mistaken for a well-crafted raft had it not been for her superstructure, which resembled
a large rectangular barn. Her odd blend of ancient and modern technologies was yet another indicator of Lalonde's development
status. Two paddles midway down the hull because they were far simpler to manufacture and maintain than the more efficient
screws. Electric motors because the industrial machinery to assemble them was cheaper than the equivalent necessary to produce
a steam generator and turbine unit. But then electric motors required a power source, which was a solid-state thermal-exchange
furnace imported from Os-hanko. Such costly imports would only be tolerated while the number of paddle-boats made the generator
and turbine factory uneconomical. When their numbers increased the governing economic equations would change in tandem, quite
probably sweeping them away entirely to be replaced with another equally improbable mismatch craft. Such was the way of progress
on Lalonde.
The
Swithland
herself was only seventeen years old, and good for another fifty or sixty at least. Her captain, Rosemary Lambourne, had
taken out a mortgage with the LDC that her grandchildren would be paying off. As far as she was concerned, that was a bargain.
Seventeen years of watching hapless colonists sailing upriver to their dream's ruin convinced her she had done the right thing.
Her colonist shipment contract with the Governor's Transport Office was a solid income, guaranteed for the next twenty years,
and everything she brought downriver for Durringham's growing merchant community was pure profit, earning hard fuseodollars.
Life on the river was the best, she could hardly remember her existence back on Earth, working in a Govcentral design bureau
to improve vac-train carriages. That was somebody else's existence.
A quarter of an hour before they were due to cast off, Rosemary stood on the open bridge, which took up the forward quarter
of the superstructure's top deck. Powel Manani had joined her after he had led his horse up the gangplank, tethering it on
the aft deck; now the two of them watched the colonists embarking. Children and adults alike shuffled round. The children
were mostly gathered round the horse, patting and stroking it gently. Shoulder-bags and larger cases were strewn about over
the dark planking. The sound of several heated arguments drifted up to the top deck. Nobody had thought to count how many
people were coming on board. Now the boat was overladen, and latecomers were reluctant to find another berth on one of the
other ships.
“You got your Ivets organized well,” she told the supervisor. “I don't think I've ever seen the gear stowed so professionally
before. They finished over an hour ago. The harbour-master ought to nab them from you and put them to work as stevedores.”
“Humm,” Powel said. Vorix, who was lying on the deck behind them, gave an uneasy growl. Rosemary grinned at that. Sometimes
she wasn't sure who was bonded to who.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“Someone, actually. They've got themselves a leader. He's going to be trouble, Rosemary. I know he is.”
“You'll keep them in line. Hell, you've supered five settlements, and all of them wound up viable. If you can't do it nobody
can.”
“Thanks. You run a pretty tight ship yourself.”
“Keep an eye out for yourself this time, Powel. There's people gone missing up in Schuster County recently. Rumour has it
the Governor's none too happy.”
“Yeah?”
“The
Hycel
is carrying a marshal upriver. Going to have a scout round.”
“I wonder if there's a bounty for finding them? The Governor doesn't like homesteaders ducking out of their settlement contract,
it sets a bad example. Everyone would come and live in Durringham otherwise.”
“From what I hear, they want to find out what happened to them, not where they are.”
“Oh?”
“They just vanished. No sign of a fight. Left all their gear and animals behind.”
“Fine, well, I'll keep alert.” He took a broad-rimmed hat out of the pack at his feet. It was yellow-green in colour, much
stained. “Are we sharing a bunk this trip, Roses?”
“No chance.” She leant further over the rail to scan the foredeck for her four children, who along with two stokers were her
only other crew. “I've got me a brand-new Ivet as my second stoker. Barry MacArple, he's nineteen, real talented mechanic
on both sides of the sheets. I think it shocks my eldest boy. That is, when he actually stops boffing the colonists' daughters
himself.”
“Fine.”
Vorix let out a plaintive whine, and dropped his head onto his forepaws.
“When are you back in Schuster County next?” Powel asked.
“A couple of months, maybe three. I'm taking a group up to Colane County on the Dibowa tributary next time out. After that
I'll be up in your area. Want me to visit?”
He settled the hat on his head, working out agendas and timescales in his mind. “No, it's too soon. This bunch won't have
exhausted their gear by then. Make it nine or ten months, let them feel a little deprivation, we'll be able to flog them a
bar of soap for fifty fuseodollars by then.”
“That's a date.”
They shook on it, and turned back to watch the quarrelling colonists below.
Swithland
cast off more or less on time. Rosemary's eldest boy, Karl, a strapping fifteen-year-old, ran along the deck shouting orders
to the colonists who were helping with the cables. A cheer went up from the passengers as the paddles started turning and
they moved away from the quay.
Rosemary was in the bridge herself. The harbour didn't have much spare water anyway, and
Swithland
was sluggish with a hold full of logs for the furnace, the colonists, their gear, and enough food to last them three weeks.
She steered past the end of the quay and out into the centre of the artificial lagoon. The furnace was burning furiously,
twin stacks sending out a high plume of grey-blue smoke. Standing on the prow, Karl gave her a smiling thumbs-up. He's going
to break a lot of female hearts, that one, she thought proudly.
For once there wasn't a rain-cloud to be seen, and the forward-sweep mass-detector showed her a clean channel. Rosemary gave
the horn a single toot, and pushed both paddle-control levers forward, moving out of the harbour and onto her beloved untamed
river that stretched away into the unknown. How could life possibly be better than this?
For the first hundred kilometres the colonists of Group Seven could only agree with her. This was the oldest inhabited section
of Amarisk outside Durringham, settled almost twenty-five years previously. The jungle had been cleared in great swaths, making
way for fields, groves, and grazing land. As they stood on the side of the deck they could see herds of animals roaming free
over the broad pastures, picking teams working the groves and plantations, their piles of wicker baskets full of fruit or
nuts. Villages formed a continual chain along the southern bank, the rural idyll; sturdy, brightly painted wooden cottages
set in the centre of large gardens that were alive with flowers, lines of tall, verdant trees providing a leafy shade. The
lanes between the trunks were planted with thick grasses, shining a brilliant emerald in the intense sunlight. Out here, where
people could spread without constraint, there wasn't the foot and wheel traffic to pound the damp soil into the kind of permanent
repellent mud which made up Durringham's roads. Horses plodded along, pulling wains loaded with bounties of hay and barley.
Windmills formed a row of regular pinnacles along the skyline, their sails turning lazily in the persistent wind. Long jetties
struck out into the choppy ochre water of the Juliffe, two or three to each village. They had constant visitors in the form
of small paddle-driven barges eager for the farms' produce. Children sat on the end of the jetties dangling rods and lines
into the water, waving at the eternal procession of boats speeding by. In the morning small sailing boats cast off to fish
the river, and the
Swithland
would cruise sedately through the flotilla of canvas triangles thrumming in the fresh breeze.
In the evening, when the sky flared into deep orange around the western horizon, and the stars came out overhead, bonfires
would be lit in the village greens. Leaning on the deck rail that first night as the fires appeared, Gerald Skibbow was reduced
to an inarticulate longing. The black water reflected long tapers of orange light from the bonfires, and he could hear gusty
snatches of songs as the villagers gathered round for their communal meal.
“I never thought it could be this perfect,” he told Loren.
She smiled as his arm circled her. “It does look pretty, doesn't it. Something out of a fairy story.”