Third World (10 page)

Chapter Eight

On Their Way
Again

They were on their way again, with
Emily and Ted’s cart disappearing over the brow of the hill and for
all intents and purposes winking out of existence.

Hank was again at a bit of a loss for
conversation.

“
Emily will drop off my
flowers on the way home.”

“
Ah, it’s good to have
friends.” Hank didn’t have too many friends.

Although Red might qualify, he was the
sort that a young person like Polly might not find too
interesting.

His hands felt sweaty on the reins. Red
was sixty-five, Hank just in his early forties. Yet he felt closer
to Red than to pretty much anyone else in town. Red was born on the
planet. There was some terrible gulf between him and young people
these days. They either looked on him with a kind of awe, or a kind
of genial contempt.

The neighbour kids were always stealing
out of Red’s melon patch, and they had played some awful tricks on
him over the years. Hank wondered how he could stand it, especially
when things got bad but Red was philosophical. Maybe Hank didn’t
love people quite the same way. Yet no man was an
island.

“
What’s that?” She rose up
in her seat and pointed off to the edge of the world.

“
Huh.” Hank had been caught
flat-footed and foolish-looking, peering off into the dull backdrop
where the hills in the east melted into a low mass of seething grey
rain clouds.

“
Well, I’ll be.” He was
about to call her
young lady
when he caught himself. “You have good
eyes.”

Pulling a brass telescope out of his
saddlebag, Hank studied the horizon.

He handed it over and she took a long
look.

“
Nomads!” She chewed her
lip, causing a pang of something to go through him.

Her lips were like raspberry wine…her
skin like a spring peach. Her long black hair was healthy and thick
and he couldn’t stop himself from thinking all the wrong thoughts.
Hank took the glass and studied them further.

There was the mass of animals, several
different species, the dull blue-black of the local cattle, the
taller necks of what were similar to antelope or even caribou, with
the ruddy red coats and this time of year, great tufts of lank and
dirty wool hanging off the belly and hindquarters…some of the
animals were unfamiliar, but the likelihood was that they were all
herbivores or possibly omnivores.

He knew a lot of big words, compared to
some folks.

He’d never seen a nomad before, so he
studied them closely. The slender figures carried long staves, and
wore a hooded brown cloak that they probably slept in. They looked
to be about average height and build. There were a surprisingly
small number of them. No one led the herd. Hank swept the glass
carefully across the horizon. There were three men or at least
people on the front of the southern flank. Extrapolating from that,
there might be at most a dozen or so herders. He wondered if there
were more, and if they had carts of their own following behind.
Taking the work in shifts made sense. They must have womenfolk
about somewhere, otherwise how did they propagate
themselves?

“
Where are they
going?”

“
Nowhere in particular.” He
lowered the glass. “They follow the herds and the herds follow the
grass and the water, or maybe just try and stay ahead of the
drought.”

Drought brought fire, from lightning,
and human causes, and spontaneous combustion maybe when heaps of
dead plants lay in the sun too long.

He considered the
implications.

“
They started off following
the migration routes. Originally, they picked up stray calves, or
ate crippled or aged animals.”

One thing led to another. A newborn
calf would get separated from its mother and then be hand-raised,
the nucleus of a domesticated herd.

They sat their mounts on a ridge clear
of the line of march. She was sort of hugging herself, and he felt
a kind of curious feeling himself. This was the unknown.

“
It’s interesting, normally
they don’t pass anywhere near here.” Hank thought it
through.

The nomads had adapted to a wandering
life and had learned enough to manage the herds and even the
grasslands, as it was said they lit the occasional fire to burn off
old growth, preventing the spread of forest and fertilizing the
soil in time for the next round or the next season. So little was
known about them, and here they were within five or six kilometres
of town. Perhaps some concern was justified.

The head of the herd passed them now,
less than five hundred metres away, down in the bottom of a small
valley. Dust, almost unheard of and an unbelievable sight, rose
beyond the far hilltop and showed that another bunch must be over
there. Indistinct shapes blended into a heaving mass of bawling,
bleating mayhem. The smell eventually came to them on the breeze
and that was all new too.

The enigmatic figure of the first
shepherd passed directly in front of them. He didn’t look up, break
step or seem to make any signal or acknowledgement of their
presence. The next one was still a half-kilometre
behind.

Hank turned to Polly.

“
It’s all right. I’m sure—I
know damn well they’ve seen us up here.”

She said nothing. The noise of all the
animals, bawling cattle, other croaks and grunts, squeals, came
from here and there and there wasn’t much to see. Yet it was a
memorable thing, and it was only the two of them.

He smiled and engaged her attention
with a pat on the forearm, a touch he had done unconsciously at the
time but would marvel at later.

“
Well, I guess we’ll have a
story to tell.”

She nodded soberly.

“
I was hoping to see the
gorge.” Still, it was better than nothing,

It would take hours for the herd to
pass and the gorge, with high rock walls and foaming cataracts, was
on the other side of the valley.

It broke the monotony.

Now might be a good time. Hank mustered
up his courage. It was better to know at some point, rather than
waste one’s life pining.

“
I was wondering if you
would like to go to the dance on Saturday night.”

Her head swung and her eyes lit
up.

“
That would be
wonderful.”

“
Well then, I will come
a-calling for you.”

“
Sure. How about seven
o’clock?”

He agreed that that sounded just fine,
his heart pounding in his chest and his tongue suspiciously stiff
and wooden all of a sudden. He was having trouble getting enough
oxygen into his lungs but he hoped it would pass before she thought
of any further conversational gambits.

With a grave nod and a last look at
another of the herders traipsing solemnly past on the fringes of
the heaving mass of meat, milk and cheese on the hoof, they turned
and headed back. Her mother would be missing them by now, and maybe
they could have a nice hot cup of tea before he went on
home.

***

“
Go home, ya lousy screws.”
Someone in the back of the place yelled, but it didn’t matter one
way or another as they were leaving.

One face in particular, flushed with
drink and resentment, caught his eye. The man made a rude gesture
of universal significance.

Shapiro’s cheeks reddened but he nodded
pleasantly at the proprietor behind the bar.

The fellow was studiously wiping down
the countertop which was pretty clean by any standards. The man
looked up.

“
Thank you.” With a nod, his
section of troopers followed him out into the evening
gloom.

They’d been very routine patrols, and
they had no intelligence so far, and no real problems
either.

No one knew anything, or if they did,
they weren’t saying. Inordinate persuasion wasn’t in his mission
brief. Making a point, showing the flag, exercising sovereignty,
all of the preceding was stated or implied in his orders. That and
grab some deserters if you can find them.

Hernandez giggled, as relieved as
anyone at not finding any action, but he was allowing greater and
greater informality, most times. When he was giving instructions,
he expected strict attention to all facets of a briefing, no matter
how routine or trivial it might seem. Policy was his to make, as he
put it.

“
Don’t take it too personal,
ladies and gentlemen.”

They were patrolling in broad daylight
today, showing themselves, being remembered.

Someone snickered in the headset, and
he had to agree with that.

A gaggle of small kids of various sizes
and ethnic backgrounds followed his small patrol as they headed
south towards the hotel along a major thoroughfare, one with wide
walkways and a boulevard treed in ornamental Earth types down the
middle. Most of the boys and girls had sports or cycling helmets,
and they all carried sticks and toy guns at the ready position.
Their leader was a real ham, barking out orders and making dramatic
hand signals whenever the Imperial troops did anything at
all.

Newton had to grin, taking a quick look
back, engaging his squad in the best kind of unspoken
communication. He gestured and a couple looked
rearwards.

There were chuckles and muted sounds in
his headpiece. All of their patrols had been routine, the heckling
in the last place slightly unusual, in that it wasn’t too
expletive-ridden.

It was sobering to discover
that they weren’t always well-liked or well-received, but then the
local twenty-two man police force probably wasn’t the most popular
bunch either. There was always that small minority. It was always
the way. People had a few drinks and consequently a few things to
say when authority showed up. They were just flexing their muscles,
knowing this sort of social humiliation would soon have to pack up
and go home. And
they
couldn’t get away, he thought soberly.

He understood their point, for small as
the place was they were taxed just like anyone else and the
benefits were likely illusory at best for the average man in the
street. But this was the capital. The hinterland would be even
worse in terms of taxation versus visible benefits. This was just
one more unspoken aspect of the mission.

There was a scattering of footsteps as
the pack of little people broke from cover in doorways and alleys
behind them, racing past to set up covering positions along the
white stone balustrade the hotel affected. A second team of kids
raced past the door to secure the next intersection, thirty metres
farther on.

Newton Shapiro shook his head at the
sheer imagination.

He touched the button on his wrist and
spoke to the troops.

“
Sure glad I don’t have
their energy.”

There were corresponding chuckles and
remarks, and while Hernandez and Benson kept talking, pushing his
tolerance a little, he let it go as they were right
there.

He would be so grateful to get out of
the blasted body armor, already tending to stink, on or off the
body, and head straight to the showers. After that, it was the bar
and a drink.

As far as his own youthful ambitions of
commanding troops in the field went, the thought just brought a
tired grin at this point.

Chapter Nine

Trooper Cornell Had a
Point

“
Jesus, H, son-of-a-gun.”
Trooper Cornell had a point.

The swarthy son of a Baltimore Jew as
he liked to tell everyone, the man probably hadn’t been to the
temple in years, not aboard ship anyway. He could swear in eleven
different languages and make fun of pretty much every religion you
ever heard of.

“
Rain. More bloody rain.”
The men and women were clustered around the command team in the
hotel lobby.

Faber had already poked his head out,
and the bus that was to take them to the outskirts of town and the
rendezvous with a trucking company was visible through the
water-streaked glass of the revolving doors.

“
All right, people, listen
up.” Faber held up two hands and they all quieted down.

He nodded at Newton.

“
Thank you. Soldiers, we’ll
be changing transport in a short while, and then we’ll be
patrolling out into the countryside.” They stared in rapt
attention. “We’ll be on our own, and field regulations
apply.”

The outback was something just a little
bit different, and they perked right up.

“
We won’t likely come back
here afterwards, not as far as I can see. Whether our patrol is
successful or unsuccessful, time is limited and we’ll be heading
straight to the shuttle on our return as we have no prisoners here
in lock-up to recover.”