Third World (9 page)

She said nothing. How could anyone
explain or describe coffee? It simply didn’t grow here, and it was
prohibitively expensive. The free stuff at the café was ersatz, and
he couldn’t even really define the word ersatz.

“
I don’t miss the big
cities, the traffic.” She had no idea what traffic even was. “I
don’t miss the crime, the poverty of the soul. The pollution, and
the news media. The constant noise, the blaring sirens. Voices
yelling in the night and no one even looks out the window
sometimes.”

Polly listened, with eyes a bit round
and with a little white showing.

He looked at her.

“
There is a world of beauty,
and a world of pain. People who were born here will never see that
beauty. In some ways they really are better off than us back there.
They have things you and I can never dream of.” Hank was just
confusing her.

There were certain things they would
never be exposed to. The place had some advantages.

She told him about a magazine, a couple
of years out of date. It was going the rounds as such things did.
Her friend had lent it to her and she was obliged to pass it on to
a friend or even a deserving stranger. That homely spirit, the
neighbourliness, was the best thing about Third World. She took it
for granted, of course.

She loved pictures of New York, and the
insides of people’s houses. It’s not like women didn’t dream, and
the pictures helped.

It was the way things were done, very
pragmatic and very altruistic the people were around
here.

It made sense to feed your neighbour
when the odds were they might be feeding you in a year or two.
There was some sort of communal spirit.

Maybe that was what was different about
Hank. He still knew what private property and possessions were, and
a time when magazines littered the coffee table.

Peltham still knew what credit was.
There were a few old-timers left, and then what?

“
Oh, look.”

He broke out of his reverie to see a
pony-cart off to the north, coming down a wisp of a trail towards
town.

“
Huh.”

The white-clad figure of a girl sat
beside a darker figure, probably male but they were still a ways
away.

“
It’s Emily.” Polly peered
intently. “That must be Ted.”

“
Oh.” He had no idea of who
she was talking about.

“
They’ve been stepping out
for a while.” She gave him a quick look. “You’d think at some point
there would be an announcement.”

Hank grinned in
acknowledgement.

“
If he hasn’t made up his
mind by now…” She left the rest unsaid.

Hank felt kind of frozen and wooden,
but the rest of the saying was clear enough. A fellow who waited
too long wasn’t likely to get around to it at all.

They sat their mounts and the animals
chewed grass and the low growths that corresponded to nothing in
living memory as far as Hank could make out but the horses
tolerated it and the critters were weaned on it, and that was
something.

The cart crossed a marshy spot in the
bottom of the valley and came up the hill towards them, the small
critter pulling the weight, huffing with the exertion but the pair
making no effort to get out and walk which was what Hank would have
done just to save time. It was good to get off the mount for a
while to stretch the legs and ease lower back muscles, always
flexed by the hard saddle and the fluid movements of the mount. He
helped Polly dismount, heart pounding and very aware that he held
her around the waist, and that she smelled heavenly.

He’d noticed a difference between
Earthies, the old-timers, and people born on the planet, especially
the younger generation. They didn’t care for time. They had no
drive, no ambition.

Their lives were complete.

On the plus side, it was like they
didn’t have a care in the world. In that sense, the company had
delivered on its promises. It really was a whole new way of life.
Even Hank had to admit that it had changed him, and in many ways
for the better.

He was fourteen…no, fifteen when they
got here.

The trouble was the social isolation of
the place. Just the sheer raw numbers, or lack of them. It was like
you could count everyone in the world if you had the normal number
of fingers and toes…it meant nothing to the younger ones, and
everything to him.

It was like no one around here knew
what a bicycle or a skateboard was.

There was no way in hell he could ever
go back to the old life. The thing to do was just to accept that,
and try to make the best of it. Sooner or later we all have to die,
and his life had been no more tragic than any other. For Hank, life
was sort of objective, and the people around him were living their
lives more subjectively. There was no stigma to eating a turnip
when it was all anyone had. They had never tasted lobster, or crab,
or chocolate. They had never seen television, or listened to a
morning show on the radio. They might know what a car was. Most had
never seen one. He grinned at the thought of what a nine-day wonder
it would be if one actually showed up in town. The cars he was
thinking of wouldn’t even make it this far. The roads, all two or
three of them, were just too poor. People traveled at five
kilometres or ten kilometres an hour and thought nothing of
it.

Rip away all the veneered layers of
social status and expectation, all narcissism and sense of
entitlement, and a turnip tasted a lot better. It was all they had,
all anyone had sometimes. Even then they thought Hank was rich.
It’s not like he lived any different than they did.

It was one of the things that set him
apart, and he was all too aware of it. His own biological clock was
ticking, terms he had never consciously used before in his
self-assessments, and he had no idea of what Polly was actually
like. Accustomed to being on his own, self-sufficient, and
accountable to no one really, Hank was doing well. Even if he loved
Polly, and there were no assurances that was what was actually
happening to him, if they were really incompatible then marrying
the girl was the wrong thing to do.

That was something else that set Hank
apart, for surely no one else on this gol-durned planet gave a hoot
as to who lived with whom, or who married who, or who knocked up
so-and-so.

People shrugged and rolled their eyes
and life went on as before. Marty was the only preacher in a
hundred kilometres and nature took its own course. A lot of folks
made the pilgrimage to his church only after five, ten or their
twentieth anniversaries. They saved a little money and took their
time. It was more romantic for the women, he supposed. He figured
the men could care less, for the most part. It made the womenfolk
happy, and those were some good parties.

That’s what they said,
anyways.

“
Hi!”

Hank was aware of being sized up, much
as how a side of beef might be sized up by a half a dozen
households pitching in, to cut it up themselves and maybe save a
bit of money. He took off his hat and nodded, and the other
gentleman, a brown-bearded young man of about thirty, nodded and
did the same.

They put their hats back on.

The gentleman had an unpleasant habit
of spitting off to one side, which he did often and well, but he
seemed a cheerful sort and quiet too, as he sat back, reins
drooping, and let the womenfolk have their fun.

“
Hi!”

“
Hi, Emily.”

Suitable greetings being exchanged, the
ladies set to.

Turning their backs on the males, heads
down, they went up a small rise ostensibly to pick some flowers.
The wildflowers were one of the few compensations of the place
thought Hank, not that he would have ever chosen the planet based
on such attributes. They were just there, and yes, they were
nice.

Ted looked sort of familiar but Hank
didn’t think they’d met before. He’d bet ten dollars he knew the
fellow’s dad from somewhere.

“
Nice weather—for a
change.”

The young man grinned and
spat.

“
Sure is. Say, you got any
work up around there?” It was just another conventional remark, but
one that got him to thinking.

Ted had figured out who he was and yet
Hank wondered sometimes himself.

“
Ah. Not right now, not as I
can say.” Hank stewed on his own thoughts. “You never know,
though.”

Ted nodded thoughtfully as
well.

A word of explanation often set things
right.

“
I don’t harvest for another
three, maybe four months. Last time, the prices were maybe not so
good, and I don’t really know if it’s worth my while to go for a
big crop this time around.”

A big crop meant more money, but the
brokers knew exactly how much they needed, whereas no one around
here did. Unsold bracken was almost worthless and you wanted to
control your costs.

Hank regarded the fellow. He had to be
Ginley’s son, or nephew, or cousin, a real young one, or something.
He just had the look about him of a Ginley. Ginley had worked for
him, years ago, basically a hard worker but needing to be told
everything, when there were times when Hank would have been glad to
leave the man to it and go off and do something else.

“
What’s your dad’s name? If
you don’t mind my asking?”

“
Jeb Wilcox, over in Four
Corners.”

“
Ah.” Hank had never heard
of him.

But he was almost sure there was some
relation.

“
I’m Hank Beveridge, by the
way.” The two men shook hands. “Tell you what, if I need help I’ll
ask for you or leave word at Peltham’s.”

Ted agreed that was fine and they
turned to await the ladies, strolling a short distance away as some
infernal feminine plot was hatched to ensnare good men everywhere
with their charm and their wiles.

Hank had his head tipped back slightly
to observe some black specks flying past at a fairly high altitude,
hundreds of metres anyways, going from the northwest to the
southeast. His mind was still on women, and marriage, and love and
all the lust and sensuality that he had once known about, in the
way that kids do, in another life, another time and place. It was
all bound up in one big old ball of wax inside of his head. When he
was very young television and the news-feeds were everything. These
kids had never played a video game.

“
They’re going
somewhere.”

Ted looked up dismissively and then
agreed.

“
Yeah—they must smell
something down there.”

Hank glanced over. That might be it.
The avian creatures, all leathery in the body and naked in the
wings, were definitely meat-eaters and probably scavengers. He’d
never seen one take a dive after prey. They seemed clumsy and
awkward on the ground, where there would invariably be a
carcass.

In the air, they were grace
personified, with the frontal silhouette v-shaped, and with the
wingtips gracefully curled up and the round body set low, braced
and supported by the powerful shoulders.

Up close and hopping around on the
ground in their stiff, two-legs at once manner, uttering their
hisses and croaks as they jockeyed for position and tore at the
carrion, they were somewhat less attractive.

There was no denying it, life with
Polly could be very good if he could just get on with
it.

It was a question of putting it into
words, and the timing had to be right.

Worse things could happen to a man than
being married to Polly Morgensen.

“
Are you going to the dance
Saturday night?”

“
Huh?” At first Hank didn’t
quite catch what he said.

Ted regarded him in a dispassionate
fashion.

“
If you don’t hurry up and
ask her, somebody else surely will.”

Trying not to tense up too much or
appear too eager, Hank nodded in agreement.

“
I reckon that’s
so.”

It was a good idea to invite her, far
better than just showing up in the hopes of her being there—and
seeing her already occupied with another fellow.

He looked at Ted with new
eyes.

“
You know what? That’s a
darned good idea.”

The worst that could happen was that
she might say no. In which case, he would have an answer and it
would be time to move on. If she said yes, it opened up new doors
for the future. Maybe not promises, but doors to another kind of
existence. He had to start somewhere or just forget the whole
idea.

The ladies, heads still together but
clutching big handfuls of flowers and brightly-coloured weeds
approached. Their little gossip session was over. Hank wondered why
Emily was paying unusually close attention to him and he blushed a
little and very carefully and very correctly assisted Polly up onto
Blossom.

How much time had they spent discussing
him?

And what was the verdict? It was all a
big mystery to Hank Beveridge.