Second Chances (91 page)

------*------

The next morning Jolie was annoyed by the radio chatter. She sat heavily in her chair and looked at the log. “Shit,” she muttered, seeing some messages from Juanita. Professor Hinkley had just left, he'd looked exhausted and a bit guilty. Apparently he'd been up all night talking with the woman.

“What the hell?” Jolie muttered, looking over the radio transcript in the computer log. Apparently Colonel Dunn hadn't wanted to wait; he'd pressed the woman to make glass right away. When she'd had problems, he'd sicked his son Jake and a few other people on to her to help. Burns had been reported. “Work with something that hot, dur,” Jolie muttered darkly, shaking her head. Apparently the first two batches had failed, and the third had looked good but then had cracked in the night air. The professor had tried to help them over the radio all night, talking himself hoarse. Jolie whistled as she traced her finger down the line. Apparently the colonel had ordered the professor to return early, and that hadn't gone over well with the professor. She shook her head. It really wasn't up to the professor; he was stuck unless someone was flying south. Jackie, however, was headed in the opposite direction in a week, so that was out.

“Hello?” A familiar voice asked over the radio. Jolie sighed, hearing the tired voice. She shook her head. “Hello, is anyone there at Capital?” Juanita asked.

“You sound tired, Juanita,” Jolie said sympathetically. “You should get something to drink, eat and sleep. I just chased the professor out. This can wait. There is no sense getting hurt when you are this tired.”

“Who is this?” a male voice interrupted, snarling.

“Jolie,” she said without thinking, blinking in confusion.

“When I want your opinion lady, I'll let you know. Until then just give the woman what she needs. You people sold us a bill of goods; it's about time you got the damn thing to work,” the male said.

“Who is this?” Jolie asked, now angry herself.

“Colonel Dunn. Get to work,” he snarled.

“Now hang on here, I'm not some flunky of yours, Dunn! I have other things to do! I'm trying, she's trying, but you of all people should know not to fuck around with hot stuff when people are tired! Accidents happen!”

“I know,” Juanita said. “Some of the glass splashed when we mishandled it,” she said. “He's gone by the way; Diego called him off, something about a broken fence,” she said, sounding relieved.

“Good. Bastard,” Jolie snarled. “He better wise up. I'm not going to take his lip. You shouldn't either lady.”

“I have no choice. He's El Colonel, El Jefe,” Juanita said, voice dropping into a stage whisper.

“Bullshit,” Jolie growled. “If you don't like the boss, leave! Go somewhere else where people will respect you!”

“I...we need to focus,” Juanita said desperately. From the sound of her voice, someone else was now listening. Jolie wanted to continue her diatribe but stopped herself. She didn't want to get the other women into trouble. She nodded. “We have figured out we need to grind the sand to make it a fine powder. Joe has rigged an electromagnet to try to get the iron out or at least as much as possible,” Juanita said.

Jolie whistled. They had been busy. She nodded. “Okay then,” she said, checking the notes in front of her. “I don't have much; the professor apparently was working from memory,” she said, accessing the how to files. “The soda ash...” She did her best to help the poor woman over the radio until the professor returned and took over.

------*------

During the mid-summer harvest time, the Tropic Village reported they had a horrible first yield. Mitch let it slide, he had been warned it would be that way since they were using crude tools and learning the process. They also didn't have modern fertilizer or equipment to help them. He pulled in Hejira and Ivan to consult with the Tropic farmers to improve their yield as they replanted. “It's a learning process. We've still got time. One, possibly two more harvests before winter the way things grow on this world,” Ivan said. Mitch nodded. Ivan was fast becoming a legend in the farming community. The Capital was exporting half their harvests now; the rest was split between processing for winter and the local resident's consumption. No other community could compete with that on his level.

He shook his head and checked on the other communities. Professor Hinkley had stopped for two days in Dunn's neck of the woods, long enough to iron out the remaining issues with his glass production. They were now producing a small but steady stream of glass, mostly trinkets or blocks. Still it was good to see another community making glass. Well, one other than Capital and Crash Town.

From the report Jolie gave him, the professor had struggled to break free of Dunn; only Klinger's timely arrival to pick him up had allowed him to leave at all. He shook his head. And apparently Jolie wasn't a fan of the good colonel either. He snorted.

Dunn's two biggest exports were meat and hides. He was doing a good trade with Prairie for wheat and feed. Prairie had some cattle but none for export. Apparently they were breeding them, building up their herds. They were the only community that had traded for embryos from base.

They were getting timber in from the Sweds, Iron Village and Copper Town, so much that they now could stockpile some for the mill Brian and Vance were busy building. A second smaller mill was under construction at each of the supplying communities.

They barely kept up with demand when it came to manufacturing. It was hard to stockpile any of the resources in useful quantities, and base's planned expansion was suffering from the various side projects that kept coming up. It seemed every time they had a shipment of ore come in, like for instance copper, someone put in a radio call for them to produce wire or copper piping or fittings.

There wasn't much going on with the Asians, Africans or Mongols; apparently Tsakhia still hadn't gotten his scouting party back. He was also still quiet when he spoke with outsiders. Mitch wasn't sure if the man was sulking or not.

Yung Li had given birth to a girl, then to everyone's surprise she'd left the child with Ester. The explanation was that the girl would not survive the lack of proper medical care or food in the Asian village. The truth was a bit darker; they still discriminated against girls. He shook his head. In theory he could understand it. A male was better on a medieval farm, but women were needed just as much for other things. Besides, if he had his way they'd all have modern farms within the next ten years. Modern
American
level farms with all the trimmings and equipment.

He frowned and then moved on down the list. The Falklands Islands were exporting their version of wool. Of course Dunn took a tithe of that before he passed it on to Paul. That warehousing thing was getting old, Mitch thought. He thought about charging Dunn for warehousing, a little tit for tat, but then decided it would seem petty...and probably diplomatically counterproductive.

The Israelites were quite content with their limited level of trade. They, like the Sweds, were determined to remain as self-contained as possible.

Chief Roberts hadn't been heard from in a while. They were still exporting sulfur and other materials, but the timber had slacked off. Getting it down the mountain was a pain in the ass; when one compared the cost to exports from Iron that had forests all around on near level ground, they were losing credit. Apparently Roberts had seen that and decided to keep the timber for local use while shifting to greater production of the sulfur and other materials his community could produce.

All in all, things were looking very good. They had very few alien or dinosaur encounters, and from what he was reading, no fatalities in months. That was good. Great even. They were adapting.

------*------

Five weeks later the Tropic Village radioed in an apologetic report. The second harvest was reported again bad, they had just enough to feed themselves. “I'm starting to wonder how much they are planting. Irrigation, pests...” Ivan said, shaking his head as he read the report. “Are they doing enough for just themselves I'm guessing?”

“I'm wondering the same thing. Or are they planting um...too close together? Multiple seeds too close? Or hand casting?” Hejira asked. “They've got cotton, latex, sugar, what else again?”

“A lot of hot plants,” Mitch said.

“You'd think they'd have some skills with the sugar at least. The Caribbean was known for producing sugar. You know, the molasses is made to make rum,” Hejira said.

“Without pictures or seeing it, we can only guess from here,” Ivan said. “And I am
not
going south to find out for myself,” he said, shaking his head.

------*------

When the third and final harvest of the season came around marking the beginning of fall, Trinika claimed a series of tropical storms and pests had ruined the crops before they could be harvested. “Such a waste,” she said over and over. Mitch scowled when he heard the recording Jolie played for him. “If you send us more seed, we'll try again next year. I'm sure we'll do better next year,” the woman said sounding pitiful.

Jolie looked up and shook her head silently. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. He didn't want to jump to any conclusions, but the whole once is an accident, twice coincidence, three times enemy action played over and over in his mind.

That doesn't jive boss,” Jolie said. He looked at her as she looked up. She pulled up a report on her computer. “See? Crash Town is near them, about five hundred kilometers east. They are less than thirty kilometers from the coast; the Tropical village is six or seven hundred kilometers inland at the base of the mountains.”

“Okay...”

“I've got the Doppler radar reports somewhere,” Jolie said. She checked her files. Mitch leaned over her shoulder watching her call up the files. Finally she pulled up the right ones. “Ah, here it is. We got this from professor Hinkley, a sort of test of their data transmission systems,” she explained, looking up to him again and then back to the LCD screen. She pointed with her stylus. “See? The Doppler they have is very crude but powerful. According to this the Tropical village got kissed by the outer edge, barely anything there. Crash Town got a piece of it, but they too had it minor. The storm's eye never moved on shore; it just hugged the coastline staying off shore in the warmer waters until it crossed over the rounded edge here,” she traced the storm's path with the stylus along the coast and then up. “And then up and up until it hit the cooler waters and dissipated.”

“I see,” Mitch said frowning thoughtfully. “That still doesn't prove anything conclusive, Jolie. They could still have been flooded by the rain. Or lost crops due to the intense winds,” he said.

“Let me look into it some more. Make some calls,” Jolie said.

“Don't stir anything up,” He warned, rubbing her shoulder. She nodded. “In the meantime, see if Jackie can redirect the long range drone south. She's where?”

“At East headed back here. She doesn't have the range from there. And if she headed to Dunn or Prairie they'd ask why,” Jolie warned.

“True,” Mitch murmured. “See what else you can dig up,” he said. She nodded again as he left the room troubled. He didn't like where this was going. He suspected she was right, but he wasn't ready to admit it to himself.

------*------

Jolie contacted the neighboring communities. Juanita let slip that Dunn's people had taken in a big shipment of sugar and rum from the Tropics recently. “Really? A rum party?”

“It's not tequila but it's something,” Juanita said, sounding tipsy. “You should be here; we're having a harvest party,” she said with a grin in her voice.

“Maybe next time,” Jolie replied. “So, where did the rum come from again?”

“The islanders of course! They make some good stuff,” Juanita said, then lapsed into Spanish. Jolie shook her head and let the woman spiel into a recorder while she punched up another channel and called Crash Town. She wondered if anyone would answer.

“Yeah, we're all set with the storm damage, thanks for asking Jolie. It was really minor,” Warrant Brown replied, amused by her concern. “Right neighborly of you,” he quipped.

“Well, I was wondering because we've gotten some radio reports from the tropics that you and they got hammered pretty bad.”

“Oh? I don't know who was telling you that. I was just over there. My first time. They were doing fine. They were having a hell of a party, something about molasses and rum,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yes. We traded some of the sugar from their last two harvests from them. It's great. Coffee too. I heard they did good with cotton, but we've got our own stuff here plus the textiles we traded with you folks. Thanks again for that,” he said.

“No problem,” Jolie said, trying hard to not seethe in anger. “No problem at all. So, coffee too?”

“Yes. Elise Jean-Louis and Gilbert Peck got a couple of plants going. Apparently Jean-Louis was a coffee farmer back on Earth. He was transported with a lot of beans and plants.”

“I see.” She frowned. “And they said they had nothing to export,” she muttered to herself.

“We're supposed to carry a load of sugar and other stuff north for them for a fee,” Brown rambled on. “I suppose it's for you folks, but thought I heard someone say it was for the Africans or Prairie people. I'm not sure. I probably shouldn't say, so you didn't hear this from me,” he said.