The Loafers of Refuge (6 page)

After the meal, which was simple but good, Harper sat gazing into the fire while Cassie washed dishes in the river water. When she came back into the firelight he noticed her arms and legs were clean of dust and grime, and realized she must have bathed herself as well.

She saw his glance and smiled. “There’s a very nice sandy beach at the point where the water’s only two feet deep, Sam. And the water is icy, but so clean I wouldn’t be afraid to drink directly from the river.”

He got up, stretched lazily, full of a contentment that had no name and a peace that went through his soul. He took the three steps that separated him from his wife and pulled her into his arms for a long kiss, then picked up the soap and towel and walked towards the river. Behind him, Cassie undid
the door flap and crawled inside on the flat air mattress, where she swiftly undressed and slid beneath the covers.

Harper shed his clothes on the riverbank and stood for a moment at the water’s edge. One of Refuge’s two moons had risen over the north-west horizon and cast a pale streak of light across the gently moving dark surface. He lifted his arms, clenched his fists, gazed out over the beauty of the river, at the dark shadow of the opposite bank, and felt a swell of exultation such as he had never known. His chest filled with air as he took a deep breath and held it, and the muscles in his arms and legs stood out under the skin as he dedicated himself, wholly and completely, to this new life.

It was autumn on this continent, and the snow-fed water was so cold it numbed the skin. He bathed swiftly, and afterwards washed out his clothes.

Harper emerged, dripping, and dried himself. He picked up his clothes and held them in one hand as he walked back. He spread the wet garments across the railing of the trailer and then walked to the tiny house. A bare arm emerged from the darkness as he stooped to enter, and held back the flap. He crawled inside to the warm and welcoming embrace of his wife.

I
N THE SIX
months they had been on Refuge, Harper had ploughed over a hundred acres between the river and the trees. Green shoots thrust upward from a large garden near the usual “first” house—a neat, small log cabin made from trees he had cut from the nearby hillsides and hauled to the riverbank. Some of the “first” houses built by the less industrious colonists were all they ever achieved, but the majority made a few good crops and built large, spacious homes such as the Sheldon farmhouse. On Refuge, the trend was towards large families and they needed room. Here it was available.

“You’ve got off to a very good start,” observed Carey as they walked towards the well-tended garden.

“Cassie helps, and I’ve enjoyed it so much it seemed more like play than work,” replied Harper.

Carey looked again at the immense amount of work which had been accomplished in so short a time. Play? Well, perhaps for some it was.

Before the small group reached the house the soft purr of tractors was heard. Two men eased the big vehicles into the yard and dismounted. Willy Miller, Carey knew, but the man with the heavy black beard, who was introduced as Earl Kronstadt, was a stranger. Harper introduced them as his neighbours from the other two farms in the valley. Carey noticed with hidden anger that Kronstadt ignored Timmy’s proffered hand until the young Loafer dropped it in confusion. Doreen saw the slight also, and her freckles turned a brighter red.

“We came up here to tell you we’ve got the same trouble now,” said Willy Miller, speaking to Sam Harper. “I was
working my outermost field, the one about two hundred feet from the woods, when I noticed the last few rows nearest the trees seemed a little brown. I did some hasty digging and found these. Same as yours.” He extended some slim brown roots, half an inch in diameter and very soft and pliable. “I stopped by Earl’s place and we checked. Same story. Just the ones nearest the woods now, but it’s spreading fast. Another two weeks and fifty acres will be ruined.”

Carey looked at the root, puzzled. It resembled nothing he had seen before. He passed it to Timmy, and could tell by his friend’s expression it was equally new to him.

“This is basically the cause of our troubles with the Loafers, Carey,” said Harper in explanation. “These are roots from a short, squat tree that grows pretty heavily through those slopes on the side of the hills, and I have a heavy group of them scattered through my land where it approaches the hillside. For some reason every tree within a quarter-mile of my field has put out these long roots and run them down to the peanuts, and they’re strangling them. It’s the fastest growing plant I’ve ever heard of. I found the first group of roots and cut them in two, and in two days the cut group had reached the field again and three more trees had extended roots and were taking nourishment away from the peanuts.”

This was something entirely outside Carey’s experience, and Timmy was also baffled. “Could we see the field where they first appeared?” Carey asked.

“Sure. Come along.” Harper led the small party across the open land, through fields where young corn was growing tall in the purple sun, where row after row of green peanut plants spread their pinnate leaves towards the sky. Like most new colonists Harper was making his first year’s crop largely peanuts. The hay would feed the livestock he would begin acquiring, the nuts would enable him to start raising fatbirds, and any surplus peanuts could be sold directly to Earth.

They reached the edge of the cultivated land and Harper showed them his damaged field. About three acres appeared to have been hit by a blight, though nothing showed above the surface. The plants were withered and brown, some already
drooping in decay. And it was obvious that the disease was spreading.

Harper had brought along a shovel. He led them to the edge of the field facing the woods a few hundred feet away and began to dig. In a moment he hit roots. He rapidly cleared away an area a yard square and called them over. They all stood staring at the network of small roots he had uncovered, spread through the soft soil. Harper worked his shovel away from the field, towards the trees, and a definite pattern began to emerge. Three separate series of three roots ran in a direct line from the stricken field towards the trees.

“The edge of my property extends almost to the base of that hill,” said Harper, pointing out his landmarks to Carey. “All of this grove of trees is on my land, and I had intended to clear it within a few years anyway, and use the timber to build my house. When I followed a couple of sets of these roots and found they were coming from the same type of tree I decided to cut those down now and save my peanuts. That’s when your Loafer friends stepped in and stopped me. I had the saw blade on the tractor and was heading for the first tree when three of them popped up out of nowhere and motioned me away. I tried to argue with them, to explain that it was my land and I could cut down trees if I wanted to, and found none of them could speak English. So after a While I got tired of arguing with them and tried to drive past. And they … stopped me.”

There was a look of remembered horror in his eyes, and Carey had to restrain his smile. The mental powers of the Loafers were seldom exhibited to strangers, but when they were it was with telling effect.

“Carey,” said Timmy abruptly, in the soft, flowing tongue of the Loafers, “there is something here, a—a presence I feel but cannot explain. Open your mind to reception and see if you do not sense it.”

“I do!” said Doreen excitedly. “I’ve felt it ever since we walked out here. It’s as if—as if there were a lot of people here, but they’re invisible, and they can’t talk, or move, or even think. It’s the oddest thing!”

Carey closed his eyes and did as Timmy suggested, for a
moment only. He did not want Harper and his neighbours to think C.G. had sent a group of lunatics to solve their problem, and someone had to remain in communication with the Earthmen. But that moment was enough. The sense of presence was there, and while it was faint it was also massive, as though they were surrounded by hundreds of dim-witted people or by a single great mind of low intensity. It was something completely outside his experience and he found himself as much at a loss for words as Doreen.

He opened his eyes. “Could we see one of these trees, say the first one that attacked the peanuts?”

Harper gestured for them to follow and led the way into the woods. The ground among the trees was strangely open and uncluttered, almost park-like in its neatness and symmetry. Most of the trees were the tall
kanna
, a conifer very similar to the spruce, which covered most of the temperate zones of the planet, and was an excellent source of timber. Spaced at fairly regular intervals among the kanna, almost as if planted there, were a large number of short, heavy trees, very wide around the trunk and extremely bushy at the top. It was to one of these that Sam Harper led them.

“Here’s the culprit. I traced that first set of roots back to it, and I wish now I’d cut it down before it had time to tell its friends. Now every tree in the grove has run roots to my peanut field.”

“Carey, I want to leave,” said Timmy in a soft, urgent voice. “Now.”

Carey glanced at his friend, turned and led the way out of the grove at a fast walk. The three farmers followed him, puzzled at his abrupt departure.

Timmy seemed to recover once they were back in the open fields. Carey saw his tense shoulders relax and the lines of concentration fade from his face. Something in that grove had been giving Timmy a bad time.

He turned and spoke to Sam Harper as the big man came up. “I think our next step is to visit the Loafers and ask their reason for not wanting those trees cut, Mr Harper. They seldom interfere in colony affairs. They wouldn’t have stopped you except for what they feel is a good cause.”

“I don’t care what their causes are,” broke in Earl Kronstadt. “I’m not going to stand for this, and if any of your Loafer friends get in my way—well, a man’s got a right to defend his property. They’ll get a taste of my arc-rifle!”

“I wouldn’t cut down any trees until we get this cleared up, Mr Kronstadt,” said Carey quietly. “For your own sake.”

“I can look after myself, thanks,” said Kronstadt angrily, turning and walking off. “Just you keep those hairy devils off my place!”

“Can we borrow two horses?” asked Carey of Harper as Kronstadt left. “The Loafers don’t like machinery. I don’t want to take the flitter up there.”

“You can borrow my two,” said Willy Miller, and Carey realized Sam Harper didn’t have horses as yet.

“What about me?” asked Doreen.

“I think you’d better stay with Mrs Harper until we get back, Sis. They probably wouldn’t want to talk with anyone not a Controller.”

She faced him rebelliously for a moment, but then Sam Harper put a muscular arm around her slim shoulders and said, “Doreen, come on into the house and meet the wife. We’re expecting our first baby in about four months and she doesn’t get much company. You can cheer her up a little.”

They all went into the house and had coffee while Willy went after the horses. Cassie and Doreen took to each other instantly and were soon chatting like old friends. Cassie told her about Sam’s insistence on spending the first night on his own land, and the first few weeks of living in the tiny folding house while Sam built their cabin. When Willy came with the horses and Carey and Timmy left for the Loafer village Doreen had got over her pique.

The valley squeezed together to a narrow neck at the upper end, where the small river came tumbling down out of the rocky hills. The Loafers had built their homes in the last large grove of trees in the valley, and when they rode into the little community Carey saw another of the many ways these people knew of adapting nature to suit their needs.
Their homes were arbours, made by planting some fastgrowing creeping plant with large flat leaves in a circle around a tree, then forcing the plants to merge and form walls and a roof. Circle after circle had been planted and grown and weaved together until they had walls several feet thick and impenetrable to anything short of a grogroc. One small section the size of a big man had been left thin and served as a door.

Scattered in profusion throughout the grove, growing in every open space, climbing up treetrunks in riotous confusion that was yet ordered and methodical, were food plants. The grove itself contained a large number of kitzl trees, but that was only the beginning. Every edible plant which grew in that area of the continent was represented, and made to grow with unbelievable fecundity. Yet no plant strangled another, no grass had been cleaned away, no vines were harming their host trees. The large grove, outwardly no different from a thousand like it in the valley, was actually a combination home-farm of immense complexity.

“That is a house of much time and many seasons, while we make a waquil house in a day,” said Timmy critically. “But how green-cool and alive during the hot time!”

Carey had seen other amazing feats the Loafer had performed by their close control of nature, but he shook his head in wonder. These people were the most advanced in the cultivation and use of plants of any tribe of which he had heard.

A few small children stared wide-eyed at the strangers, but no one paid them any particular attention. Timmy sent a young girl after the Head Councillor, to whom he was related in a distant way, and in a few minutes a very old man whose body hair had grown thin with age and whose beard was a silvery white came slowly out of an arbour to welcome them. He and Timmy went through a complex ritual of greeting and establishing of kinship, and then the old man motioned them inside his house and they pushed their way through the leafy green barrier.

There were three other grizzled oldsters and one middle-aged Loafer with very black hair sitting around a small fire in the centre of the compost floor. They rose to their feet
and muttered grave greetings as the young men entered, and Carey realized they had interrupted a Council meeting.

Or was it the other way around? Had the meeting been called because these people knew they were coming and would want to speak to the Council?