The Loafers of Refuge

THE LOAFERS OF REFUGE

Joseph Green

www.sfgateway.com

T
HE SUN WAS
a soft purple ball sliding swiftly towards the grey sea when Carey got home from school. He closed the front door against the penetrating wind and hung his cap and coat in the closet. The gaslights were already burning and it was warm and bright inside the big wooden farmhouse.

He heard voices in the kitchen and walked that way. His sister Doreen, a pert thin redhead of fifteen, turned from the table she was setting and flashed him an impish grin. Maud was bent over the burners of the old-fashioned gas stove. She was a tall, gaunt woman in her early fifties, the head of her family of five children and one crippled brother since the death of her husband under the heel of a
grogroc
eleven years before. The Sheldon family had prospered under her care, and now the two oldest boys had farms of their own, and the married girl would soon deliver her first child.

“Hello, Carey,” she said, and smiled warmly at her big, husky son, who would be eighteen tomorrow and a man at last.

“Hi, Mom. Can I help you there, Sis?” He opened the silverware drawer and started distributing forks and spoons. Doreen, who had known the instant he stepped inside that he had something on his mind, kept silent and let him work. There was a rapport between the two members of the family born on Refuge not shared or understood by the others.

He thought of how to say it, how to lead his mother into a receptive frame of mind, knew there was no way, and finally blurted out, “Mom, I … I’m going to take the Controller’s initiation with the young Loafers tomorrow.”

Maud whirled from the stove in sudden shock, her face paling. This was what came of letting Carey associate with
those hairy creatures. She had been warned; all the neighbours had told her to keep him away from those naked savages, but she had believed in good relations with the natives and had let him visit their crazy little town, let the solemn, bright-eyed children play with Carey and Doreen in her own yard. Then the strength gained from a thousand past crises came to her rescue. Her thin, strong face grew calm, and her voice was controlled when she said, “I don’t know what possible reason you could have for wanting to go through a bunch of primitive rites, Son, and I don’t much care. You’re going to school tomorrow same as always, and that’s final.”

“I’m eighteen tomorrow, Mom. That makes me a man, and I have to make my own decisions. They’re holding the rites a week late just for me. I … I can’t explain it too well, but I have to go.”

He faced his mother squarely, feeling miserable because he was hurting her. She was an understanding woman, ordinarily. But how did you explain a conviction like this? How did you tell her about long walks and slow talks in the brightness of the Refuge night, how explain the peculiar affinity he felt for the whole group of young Loafers he knew, that same affinity which existed between himself and Doreen but between no other two members of the family? How did you convey a feeling of peace and purpose Earthpeople did not know and could not understand? Worst of all, how did you explain that they were hard-working people in their own right, and deserving of respect? Their ultimate aims were beyond his present understanding, but he had caught a glimpse of the strength they possessed in their control of nature, their power over animals, in the ability of Timmy and his father to find each other over a distance. This strength had been demonstrated on the few occasions when Earthmen, drunk or rowdy, had invaded the little towns and tried to become intimate with the young Loafer girls. They had come crawling back, sick, shaken and frightened, but without a hand being laid on them. When questioned they could only speak of visions, delusions, of loss of control over their own bodies, of finding themselves hitting wildly at imaginary foes and striking down their companions. The tales had been incoherent, but impressive.
After the first few times the Loafers had been let well alone. They had large preserves of land, primarily the wooded areas no one was interested in clearing, and the two races had little to do with each other. Refuge was big enough for both of them.

“Sounds like the lad’s made up his mind, Maud,” said a new voice. Uncle Harvey, unnoticed, had entered the kitchen from outside and was standing quietly by the door.

Maud whirled towards him, and for once the strong woman was weak before the challenge of her son and the apparent agreement of her brother. There were tears in her eyes when she said, “Talk to him, Harvey. Make him see those manhood rite things don’t apply to Earthpeople. Harvey, he can’t go!”

The crippled man stepped carefully forward, favouring his artificial leg. He had lost a limb on Earth, many years ago, and had never become used to the manufactured replacement. He had lost, with it, the desire to command his own life. His only happiness was in his work, and in that he and his dominating sister found a common meeting ground. They were both happiest at the end of a long day of constant toil, and the half-square mile of rich land which composed the Sheldon farm provided many such days.

“I’d talk him out of it if I could, Maud, because every year there are a few who don’t come back. And though he was raised from birth with the Loafers I don’t think he can match them at their own game. Whatever they do, it’s dangerous.”

“Not really,” said Carey quickly. “It’s mostly just a long fast.”

Maud sat down at the table, her tough, wrinkled hands folded in her lap. Doreen came and stood by her chair, resting one arm across her mother’s lean shoulders in silent sympathy. Maud’s voice was under control when she said, “Why don’t you go feed the fatbirds, Son, while your uncle and I talk this over. We’ll discuss it again after supper.”

“There’s nothing to discuss, Mom, but okay.” He walked through the kitchen into the yard, and across the hard ground to the caller at the barn. He seized the handle and gave a quick starting jerk. The high, wailing scream of a siren in the high-frequency range lasted just a second before fading
out as he picked up speed. He turned the handle for a full minute, then let it relax and slow, stopping it abruptly when the noise became audible again.

He walked into the barn, unlatched the door to the peanut stall, seized a shovel and began pitching nuts into the centre of the floor. He worked vigorously for several minutes, the dust rising in a cloud around his body, and was thoroughly warm when he heard the first flutter of wings outside and the thud of taloned feet hitting the ground. The fatbird waddled through the door, his big red beak probing the air, his bright black eyes searching for food. With thousands of others just like him from all the neighbouring farms he had spent the day in the heavy woods a few miles north, eating the berries that were still plentiful this early in the winter, but his greedy appetite demanded more. The fatbirds were giants among flying creatures, and their eating was their death. When they became too heavy to fly they fell prey to the many small carnivores roaming the heavy woods covering most of Refuge. The Earth colonists provided shelter and extra food during lean times, and the hundred-pound birds grew heavy while comparatively young and tender.

The fatbirds were slaughtered by the local farmers on the same basis nature had selected, and provided the bulk of the tons of meat the town of Refuge transmitted to Earth every day. In return, the transmitter brought them the tools and implements needed to clear more land, raise more fatbirds, plough more acres into the ordered rows that were swiftly transforming this rich and virgin-wooded world into a gigantic farm. Earth’s teeming billions had to eat, and there was not enough arable land left on its atom-scarred face to feed them. With the perfection of the matter-transmitter it became feasible to raise food on other worlds, and the great emigration from Earth began. The transmitters killed any living thing sent through them and even the largest interstellar ship carried less than a thousand people, keeping the movement slow and ordered. But Refuge was only one of a hundred worlds already busily producing food, and the day they solved the problem of transmitting living things the Earth would see an emigration such as it had never known. There were still millions
of people who liked to have room to stretch their legs, who enjoyed breathing fresh air and working under no authority but their own.

Carey waited for several minutes after the last fat figure joined the feast, then scanned the sky once more and shut and latched the main door. When they had devoured every available peanut the birds would roost for the night on long poles built in tiers on one side of the barn.

The family was at the table when he came in. His eldest brother, Robert, who had married the Stevens’s youngest girl and built a house adjacent to theirs, had dropped in for supper.

They let Carey eat in peace, but when he pushed back from the table Robert was set to pounce. He was the smallest of the three brothers, the most hard-headed and the one with the shortest temper.

“What’s this about you taking the manhood tests with the young Loafers tomorrow?” he asked, keeping his tone friendly and reasonable.

Carey shrugged broad shoulders. “That’s it. I’m taking the tests.”

“What are you trying to prove? That an Earthman can be as useless as a Loafer? Listen, I know you spent a lot of time playing with the Loafer kids and I know you’ve got friends there, but what reason is that for trying to be a useless bum yourself?”

Carey felt the hot surge of anger deep in his body and had to force himself to be calm, to keep his voice down. “They’ re not bums. They’re not even loafers. They’re as human as you and I, and in their own way they work just as hard. I’ve asked permission to take the tests because I want to learn how they manage the animals, and if I become a Controller I’m going to show you and a few hundred others that these people are developing in their own way just as fast as we are in ours. There are other values in this universe besides spaceships and transmitters and tri-D sets, and they have something we’ve missed entirely.”