Third World (11 page)

There were one or two nods. They all
watched and listened closely. Newton nodded at Faber.

“
All right. Saddle up.”
Faber, for all of his faults, was competent to bully, cajole, slap
and wheedle the people along, as they trooped past and out the
front door.

Some of the kids looked up to Faber,
Newton saw it instantly, and yet some obviously didn’t.

Faber, as he marched along beside the
troops, whirled and beckoned at the hotelier beaming from behind
his gleaming counter.

On his cue, three red-vested boys
strode forth from a side office hallway and snatched up the luggage
as Newton and Ensign Spaulding looked on.

Dave Semanko, oddly uncomfortable with
such frivolities, coughed into a cupped hand and gave them a look
from behind thin lenses and from under wispy blond eyebrows, which
were a perfect counterpunch to the handlebar mustache he had been
working on of late.

“
Shall we go?”

“
It never hurts to put on a
show, Dave.”

***

The rain was incessant and heavy,
although the command team was at least indoors, inside the cabs.
The troops huddled miserably, in dripping ponchos and soaking
armor, on wooden bench seats, up high and exposed to the wind in
the backs of their two five-ton trucks, six-wheel drive monsters
built to exploit a virgin planet. They had set up charging systems
for the suit batteries in each truck, but the units could only
charge four suits at once and it took several hours. The suits were
heated, but it wasn’t the temperature so much as the constant
drenching. His people were on power-saving routine. They had
another charger, but it was felt that patching another one into the
vehicle electrical system would be pushing their luck.

The cab had a driver’s position, a
passenger side seat, plus seating for seven around the back and
right side on benches with six-point belts. The belts seemed like
overkill until they hit the first few bumps. Behind the driver was
open floor space with hold-downs scattered strategically. They had
all the troops’ common squad gear indoors, tents and sleeping bags
and such, and that was at least something. The terrain must be
extreme at times, even away from the mountains and on the plains.
There would be gullies and ravines to cross no matter where they
went.

Newton’s mind raced. He’d give them a
break in a couple of hours, maybe a bit sooner if shelter of
adequate size presented itself. They couldn’t all jam into some
householder’s front room, not unless it was some dire
emergency.

Jackson and Faber had their truck, and
he and the Ensign and the rest were comfortable enough in the
second vehicle. Let them break the trail and find any hazards
first, and in fact their machine only had four troopers on the
back. The rest were on Newton’s truck, along with the weapons and
most of the supplies. The trucks were big enough and it seemed like
a good idea to have a forward scout, one not so heavily
loaded.

He made Beth hold back, and let the
other vehicle get a good hundred yards out in front of
them.

“
We’ll have a brew-up. In
about two hours or so.” A hot drink would do everyone some
good.

She looked over, unsure of what he
meant.

“
Faber’s got it all worked
out, he’s got a clean metal bucket and everything. He says he has
some good tea.”

Semanko and Spaulding had arranged for
a veritable crate full of snacks, crisps and candy bars and
chocolate. The troops would appreciate that, Newton thought. It had
a hasp and a lock, which was smart.

She refocused on driving, nodding at
the idea of tea breaks. It would be at least four or five hours
before they got to Burnt Town, which was the first settlement out
the northwest road. Its population was said to be about a hundred
souls. Sitting on the back of the constantly-lurching vehicles
would be extremely wearing after a while.

The northwest road was said to be the
best on the planet, at least for the first hundred and fifty
kilometres or so. Going by that statement, the roads on the rest of
the planet must be sheer hell.

Privately, she wondered if all of this
was really worth it.

***

They had their brew-up by the side of
the road, with at least Newton feeling some affinity for the breed
of soldier, a special type of person, going back generations. Faber
impressed him as that sort of fellow. He had it all organized and
had thought it through beforehand.

Wars are won by short, wiry
men shouldering huge burdens in impossible terrain.

Faber had one bucket, and
into that he emptied a bag of sand from a landscape store. Pouring
in some gasoline, out of a red plastic can available on a hundred
planets, he tossed in a good old-fashioned paper match and their
impromptu stove lit up with a
whoosh.

“
We can carry this in the
back corner.” Faber glanced at Shapiro, who nodded. “We’ll lash it
to the tailgate.”

“
All right.”

In the second bucket, carefully chosen
for size, Faber poured in gallons of water from their reserves,
lined up in rows in their plain white plastic jerry-cans and tied
securely at the front of the truck bed.

The troops brought out their field mugs
and Faber was soon doling out tea bags and paper packets of sugar.
Having also invested in a half a dozen large coolers, and a couple
of big car batteries to power them, Faber had cream, cold milk and
everything.

People stood around gabbing,
as Jackson, Spaulding and Newton studied the map. Semanko stood by
the fire in spite of its noxious smell but there was much damp in
the air. The temperature was seventeen degrees Celsius. According
to Newton’s notes the climate was
equitable,
an odd word but he was
starting to understand that what it really meant was
monotonous.

They were in a patch of forest, which
gave only the barest cover. They had stopped at the first
intersection they had come to after leaving town. It was a Y-shaped
junction, with the pale red clay of the side-road leading off to
the right, up a fairly steep grade. It looked not much different
than the road they were on, hence the consultation. There was a
small clearing under trees maybe eight metres tall, black conifers
with limp and feathery branches.

“
Giresi’s Corners is only
four kilometres up the road.” Jackson, trying to be helpful,
thought further. “I don’t see any intersecting road. But it’s a
small place, and maybe a good place for someone to hole
up.”

Lieutenant Shapiro thought it over.
There was likely no one there. The display map indicated maybe
fifteen or twenty buildings, all of them small going by the scale.
He switched to satellite photos and saw nothing but greenery and a
thin , meandering trace that might be the trail.

“
I suppose it wouldn’t take
long. And there’s nowhere for them to run.” Newton liked it. “All
right, why don’t we do that.”

Their progress was surprisingly slow so
far. He hadn’t been prepared for that.

They made it two hills in. After
knocking down the earthen banks on both sides of a rushing brook,
only a foot deep and with flat rocks all over the bottom, a process
where all troopers bailed out and set to with entrenching tools and
much good-natured cussing, the trucks were driven across with some
delay. Newton thought that as a military exercise, it went well
enough.

The next hill was all barren white
rock, bordered by low growths of what appeared to be similar to
antler coral, a light blue with mauve bases.

There were a couple of brief pauses to
clear low, overhanging branches. They’d made three hundred metres
in the first hour. He shook his head at the knowledge.
Unbelievable.

Newton was just beginning to think that
maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. That was when it got a whole
lot worse as Faber in the lead truck crested the hill and when
confronted by a heavily-rutted and very swampy stretch, the fool
dropped it down a gear and stomped the throttle, hoping to blast
his way across.

The speed built quickly and then there
was a big brown splash when they hit, and then the crew in the
second truck saw them wallowing and side-slipping, with
rooster-tails of muck and filth coming up off all the
wheels.

The vehicle came to an abrupt halt,
going down on the left side about five degrees. The lead truck with
its dejected crew had only gotten about fifty metres before bogging
down.

When Newton and the others stopped
instantly, just over the crest, Faber and his crew were just
climbing out the high-side window and trying to get up on the roof
of the truck.

Lieutenant Shapiro took the microphone
off its hook on the dashboard.

“
Mister Faber?”

“
Ah…yes, sir?” There was a
wave from a figure on the back of the bogged vehicle.

Newton thought carefully about his next
words. With a sigh, he asked his question.

“
How much cable do you
figure we have? Can I reach you from up here?”

Studying the expanse of water-logged
roadstead ahead of them, reaching a couple of hundred metres at
least before it turned off and was sucked up by small conifers and
large indigenous brush, Newton decided he had had enough. The next
ridge appeared to be four hundred metres further on. There were six
major ridges between here and the village. The elevation change was
about twenty-five metres, and then the hamlet was a hundred metres
lower. They might have the very devil of a time getting
out.

Faber was a long moment in
responding.

“
We’ve got three, but
they’re not very long.” Dead air hung on the speaker as Newton
consulted with the men and women in the back of his command
vehicle.

He thought the cables were about
twenty-five metres in length. They had talked about just this sort
of eventuality but clearly Faber hadn’t been listening.

“
All right, the people in
the back say there are cables back there. We’re trying to sort them
out, they’re all tangled. Just sit tight for a minute. I’d rather
not go down in there.”

Faber came right back.

“
Roger that.”

There were chuckles from the other two.
Ensign Spaulding was giving Jackson a driving lesson and Trooper
Ozawa was in there as well. Newton was rotating them through one at
a time just to break the ice and getting to know each person
insofar as that was possible. There wasn’t room in the cab to put
everyone indoors and keep the vital electronic gear dry.

Faber’s voice was sardonic on the
airwaves.

“
I need a
volunteer.”

Newton’s people chuckled
appreciatively.

One of Faber’s crew jumped off the back
end of their machine. He went in right up to his chest and the
suit-radio chatter went pretty blue for a minute.

Shapiro shook his head when Jackson’s
hand moved to adjust the speaker, probably turning it down a bit
for the Lieutenant.

“
What the hell—they’ve
earned it.”

Jackson gave Spaulding a look and they
exchanged a private grin.

Jackson turned and surprised Newton
Shapiro.

“
We’ll get you properly
trained, sir. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

The whole cab broke up at that one,
which perhaps was the intention. Newton supposed it could be
worse—the water might have been hiding ten metres of quicksand
under there and there was something to be said for no reported
injuries.

But he was beginning to appreciate the
challenges of command, or even just moving around, in a totally
alien environment.

The clouds opened up and the fourth
brisk shower of the day began as Spaulding snorted and the troopers
cursed as they dragged their cables and struggled through the muck
to attach them together for towing.

Shapiro was beginning to have a bad
feeling about this. There was no way in hell he was going to
abandon that truck.

As if sensing his mood, the others just
sat watching the action, not saying much until Newton noticed the
lone trooper sitting there in the back, all nice and
quiet.

“
Well, don’t just sit there,
Mister Ozawa. Get your ass out there.”

Colouring slightly, Ozawa gave a rueful
grin. Putting on his helmet, he unsnapped the side door and
promptly did just that.

“
Zoom in on that terrain
map.”

It was all there in fifteen colours.
The washboard effect of gullies and valleys and gorges all lay
across their path of travel.

“
What are you thinking,
sir?” Spaulding’s eyes were upon him.

“
Looking at that crap, I
wouldn’t even want to walk there.” Yet it was only four more
kilometres.

***

Hank didn’t quite know what he was
letting himself in for when he asked Polly to the dance.

It was one thing when her eyes lit up
and she said she would go.