COMPANY OF ADVENTURERS

“The sky is purple!” said Mamie .

“Rand mentioned that to me once,” said Dita. “The sky on Madonna is purple too. Said it had something to do with the plankton in the oceans. Guess they used the same plankton here when they seeded it.”

With the exception of the sky, Summerfair was pretty much like any agricultural world. A little greener than some, since the towns had been located near water rather than mineral deposits or prairie. The influx of refugees from Madonna, running from the catastrophic failure of terraforming, had led to shortages of food and housing at first, but the refugees had brought money and skills, having left behind a once prosperous ranching and farming planet.

Rand was untying the combines and tractors.

“Do you know our contacts, Rand?”

“Wohlstand Province refugees was resettled halfway round this moon. So, no.”

“I’ll handle the negotiations if you want sir.”

“I’m fine, Dita.”

Their buyer had sent a crew to pick up the tractors on a wheeled lorry pulling a trailer. The crew, two women and a man, were efficient about the paperwork, and Dita was able to get the machines out of the bay and payment beamed to their employer, Business Solutions Unlimited, within half an hour.

Mamie and Marco set up the fence around the cargo door to make a safe play area for the children. Dita laid a blanket out on the hard packed dirt and basked under the low ultraviolet of the protostar that was Summerfair’s sun. Her spacer’s tan was getting pink and Mamie had to remind her to cover up before her pale skin burned.

“Where are the crew for these combines?’ asked Rand. He was tense and kept striding down the dockyard road to the gate, then stamping back to the ship.

The day wore on to afternoon and in the purple sky rose Madonna, near the horizon amd looking like a mountain range beyond the skyline of the port city.

Mamie had brought some of the children’s toys outside where they would be able to run about, including a trampoline which had been stowed for weeks while the cargo bay was filled with wine, clothing, fabrics, grains, bales of herbs, and finally machinery.

The children were screaming with delight as they bounced and somersaulted about. Mamie

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joined them and Marco was deciding whether his dignity was more precious than the fun of bouncing.

There was only one other ship in port and it did not seem to be a family concern. From the other ship, a man much like Marco, big, grim, and tough, stopped to watch the game.

“Yours?”

“My crew. None of my get.”

“Nice tits on the eldest one.”

“Watch yer mouth. She’s the captain’s wife.”

“So not a goer.”

“Best check out the whorehouses. Our crew’s not available.”

“No harm asking. Gal rides with us, she’s allys up for it, but you get tired of the same old. And of takin sloppy seconds.”

Marco found himself surprisingly disgusted.

So you fly outta here?” the other merc continued.

“Quattro. Doing some work on contract for Business Solutions Unlimited. You?”

“Naw, the Walden is scrabblin for work. Know anythin open? Don’t much care what it is.”

Marco had already decided he wouldn’t pass any information along even if he knew any. He gave a negative grunt.

Rand shouted from inside the ship, “Mamie! There’s water on the floor of the bunkie.”

Mamie jumped down from the trampoline and called to Marco, “Watch’ em?” before running into the ship.

Marco took the opportunity to nod dismissively to the Walden thug, and entered the play yard where Beege threw herself off the trampoline and climbed to his shoulders. Marco laughed.

The water leak turned out to be more serious than they expected. “At least we can afford the parts, Rand. And there’s nothin too expensive or scarce. But it’s gonna take a lotta time to get it all fixed and ready,” she told him.

“So we’re stuck here.”

“It ain’t so bad, sweetie. We’re waitin’ for the combine pickup anyways. Got the play yard set up for the minis. And this is a good world, not too dry, not too hot or cold. Trees.”

Before Rand could move to his usual grouchiness when uncomfortable or unhappy, Mamie kissed his cheek. “I gotta work on this, darlin. And Dita’s takin’ care of the customers, when they show up. Why don’t you walk around the town, see what’s doin’? Might find us our next cargo?”

Rather than walk, Rand took the land mule and the supplies list from the galley wall. Ignoring the inevitable request from Derry for a puppy, his first job was to find an art supplies shop, since Mamie wanted craft supplies for the children. It took some searching, but after a couple of hours he found most of the items on the list, then added a large amount of glitter that would delight Mamie. At a grocery, he bought some specialty condiments, finding a salty yeast paste he had rarely tasted since leaving Madonna as a teenager.

As he returned to the ship, he passed a livery stable with a prominent list of prices for hourly rentals of horses and equipment. He stopped and made arrangements to rent a horse the next day.

Mamie had made good progress on the leak. It had been located, and supply to that set of pipes had been closed. Unfortunately, that meant that the rooms in the passenger quarters would not have the use of their commodes or of the shower room. The crew quarters, the infirmary and the kitchen were unaffected. Mamie had found the parts she needed, but not before the shop was closed. She would pick them up the next day.

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“But he wants some of the Barsoom Colony parts we still got, so that’s shiny, too.’

“If you don’t need me, I think I’ll take time to ride out of town. Shake off some of this…. whatever.’

“The combine people called and apologized,” Dita reported. “Seems we landed during a religious holiday of some sort. They won’t be here till day after tomorrow. Coming in from Branson’s Mark. I offered to take the machines to them.”

“From The Mark? They won’t allow that. They got some real standoffish cult going there, has been for fifty years.” Rand said. “And Dita, when you do meet with them, check the payment close. Them spiritual types will cheat you just because you ain’t as holy as them.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

“Just do it.”

Rand was the only horseman as he headed out from town. All the traffic was motorized,fastcars, landmules and trucks of various types. His mount seemed used to it and paced steadily even when a group of boys in a flashy fastcar whooped by, tossing beer cans at his rump.

Once past the city limits, the personal vehicles disappeared and only occasional trucks passed, often in convoy. He saw tractors and combines in fields, too far away for greeting.

The air was green and lush. Rand had rarely smelled the like since he had left Madonna as a teenager. Ten kilometres out of town there was a little sign of human life, save the road itself, which was lined with bush.

The trees were mostly second growth but eighty year old patriarchs towered here and there. planted when the moon was terraformed. The sun was high and hot, the sky clear of clouds shining violet , but man and horse were cool in the shade under the canopy.

The paved road had wide unpaved shoulders, part grassed over, and Rand steered the horse to where it could move more comfortably.

“You wanna run, buddy?” Rand nudged the horse, who sped up until they were galloping along the roadside, Rand posting high in the saddle hoping to prevent sore buttocks that had not been used like this for years. The wind in his hair swept thought from his mind.

Eventually he noticed the horse’s breathing was laboured and he reined it in to a walk. He looked ahead and saw a break in the woods. Following that side road, hardly more than a wide path, he came to a clearing with a shabby house surrounded by swept gravel. He stopped and waited long enough for any inhabitants to look him over, then dismounted.

“Hello, the house,” he shouted. There was no response.

The children had gone inside for lunch but Marco sat on Mamie’s chair in the sunshine, watching the Walden. The thug had left for town and no one else had come out from the ship. Walden was an Odyssey transport, larger than Bluebell but all cargo space and able to operate with a four man crew if necessary. Most spaceships in the yard left their cargo doors wide open allowing fresh air to circulate, Walden was closed up tight. There was something not right about the ship.

Marco dozed and woke with a start to the hail of the honey wagon crew. After getting a crew census, they negotiated a price for emptying Bluebell’s sewage tank and supplying fresh water. Dita arrived as they came to an agreement.

The white-suited honey wagon techs hooked up the pump to Bluebell’s valves, while the foreman crossed to buzz Walden. A tall, handsome man answered and negotiated with the foreman. Then the foreman returned and spoke with his crew. “Anybody up for a rinse and comb out?” Marco overheard.

The lead hand tech spit on the ground. “Let the filth take care of their own filth.’

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The younger tech said, “Vern’s gotta point, but I need the money. Big house payment next month. Count me in.”

The foreman returned to the Walden and began negotiating again. The big man seemed angry and shouted a lot. The foreman just shrugged.

“What’s a rinse and comb out?” Marco asked the techs.

“Shovel out the shit an bedding from a cargo hold been carrying animals. Hard work but okay less they’s been carrying pigs.”

“That what they was carrying? Pigs?”

“No. Worse. Slavers. Don’t let their cargo up to use the head and crowd in more bodies than they would with cattle of horses, so the shit builds up. And they’s allys a chance of catching something. Not the zoonoses.”

“Zoo?”

“Animal diseases. They don’t pass easy to people but if one human person is sick on a slaver, you got shit and puke and pus. The slavers don’t care. At least with cows, as many as goes in, comes out. We’ve found bodies in slavers from time to time. Most of the bodies gets dumped before landing though.”

“Bad business.”

“It ain’t They grab unchipped folks on some back birth world. Chip’em on board, so they can’t be identified. Any die, they didn’t pay for ’em. So they don’t care if they load 500 and deliver 300. Less food even. And if they can’t read then they sell em with labour contracts signed with a mark.”

“Say that for our captain. Rand won’t deal with slavers.”

The techs disconnected their hoses and reconnected another batch. “Just give your tanks a rinse out an you’ll think you’re shitting rosebuds.”

Rand got a cloth from the saddle bag the stable had supplied and rubbed down the big gelding’s sides. It whickered in pleasure at his sure touch. ‘We’ll hafta find you some water, fella, Guessin this place has all mod cons. Indoor plumbing, belike.’

He removed the saddle and rubbed the sweat from the animal’s back. Chickens strutted out from the porch and from the enroaching bush.

“Ugly beast, that.”

Rand swung around, his hand on his pistol. A woman, some twenty years older than Rand and holding a pitchfork stared blandly back at him. Rand relaxed slightly and so did the woman.

“We do have indoor plumbing, although we’re on advisory at the moment. I can offer the horse a drink, and boil water for tea if you want.”

“I’d purely enjoy that, m’am.”

“You’re a Madonna boy. But I don’t know you.”

“Yes’m. Randolf Hudson. I come up in Wohlstand. My ma had a ranch there.”

“She didn’t make it here, then.” It was a statement,not a question.

“No.”

“Where was you at?”

“OutThere. Seeking adventure. I reckon I was at Quattro when Madonna burned.’

“There’s a pump behind the house with a trough. Give your horse a drink and put him in the barn outta the sun. I’ll have tea in the house.”

She turned briskly on her heel. Rand admired her style. Madonnans didn’t waste words on what couldn’t be changed. “We change what needs changin’,” he thought wondering how much change he really had accomplished.

The farmer introduced herself as Winona Honda. She didn’t say so, but Rand thought she lived

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alone. Her children, she said, had scattered, some taking academic degrees, all moving away for work. She was divorced.

“Kicked his philanderin ass to the curb when the kids was mostly grown. Weren’t much good as a farmer, a father and downright useless nights.”

“Hope my wife gives me a better report,” laughed Rand.

She nodded. “So here I am, getting old on a farm that needs young muscle and more money than I got to make it beyond subsistence. “

“Plannin on sellin up?”

“No. Yes. I dunno. Seems stupid to keep going on. My girl wants me to come to her on Hera, my boys think I should sell up and move inta town. Closer to the church and the library.”

“Got any offers?”

“Ain’t listed. Not many young ’uns want the farm life. And a lot of the land’s gone back to bush.”

“Location’s good.”

“A house,indoor plumbing, the photovoltaic are only a few years old, Andy, my youngest, had ‘em replaced when he made a bundle selling contract labour to Corone Mining.’

Rand winced. Her youngest had been running slaves, whether mother knew it or not.

“House is weathertight, just needs paint. Price of timber is way down, but anyone clears it out, there’s good soil for grain or fruit.” She had been rehearsing that.

“We was ranchers, back home. Ma had twenty hands, needed all of em at drive time.”

“Big ranch.”

“Felt like it was the whole world.”

“They said on Madonna you could see so far, you could glimpse God’s plan.” she poured more tea. “I sold off my stock couple years back. Only got a few sheep, a couple nannies for milk and way too many damn chickens.”

Rand accepted more tea. A bell rang outside.

“Egg man.” said Winona. The chickens were screaming at a hover mule in the gravelled yard.

The egg man ’s hover mule had a cooling unit installed. Rand helped Winona load pallets of eggs— mostly brown but some larger and blueish white. Those were counted separately and paid for in cash. The ordinary eggs were a credit transfer.

“The blue eggs a specialty, then?” he asked as the hover mule departed.

“Noticin sort?”

“Noticin, not talkin.”

“Some say they’s special good for pregnancy.”

“Startin? Stoppin?”

“Startin and goin on.”

“That a problem here?”

“No but up to The Mark, they want babies there. Allys seems to be a problem with that.’

“Still run by Branson, himself?”

“Yeah. He’s powerful old now, course.”

Rand had learned a version of the history of Branson’s Mark in his schooldays on Madonna. Settled by a cult let by Jonah Caesar Branson in 2483, the moon was owned outright by the leader. They were basically self-sufficient, pacifists and conscientious objectors and were the subject of many scurrilous rumours about their practices.

“How often you shipping eggs?”

“Hafta send ’em fresh, so every two days this time of year. Ronnie there sells most of them from his factory, but when they’s a surplus he pasteurizes em for export.”

“He got a regular transport?”

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“Catch as catch can. The bottled eggs keeps good so they kin travel.”

“I’m looking for cargo. What’s Ronnie’s company?”

“Soak et Cie. Down at the Market Square. Not everybody will take a small cargo like that.”

“We do specialty work. Not worried bout what it is.”

“You should look into labour supply. My boy done good in that.”

Rand was almost sure the old lady didn’t understand that ‘labour supply’ was a euphemism for slave trading.

“Well, Winona, I might do that. Mostly this run its been farm crops and dry goods.”

“There’s The Mark now,” said Winona, as the moon rose n the afternoon sky. “Less you want to stay for dinner, you’’d best be getting back to town.”

“If that was an invitation, I’ll have to say thanks but no thanks. I think I’m on the cooking rotation tonight and best be on the move.”

While Rand saddled the horse, Winona packed a dozen of her fresh eggs for him, refusing payment.

“Gets lonely out here sometimes. I’ve enjoyed the visit.”

Rand was thoughtful all the way home.

Marco called Dita who transferred credits to the honey wagon’s accounts. She stared across at Walden, and the big man, arms crossed, stared back.

“That the captain?” she asked the foreman.

“Honda? Yea, right bastard too. Family’s from hereabouts, but he don’t pay them no mind neither.”

The techs moved on , with the foreman shouting to Captain Honda that the would be back in about an hour to clean their bay.

The captain leaned in the side door to the bay, watching what little passing traffic there was. His eye caught Bluebell’s painted logo, a wreath of flowers centred by the name. He eyed Dita and Marco, shrugged and went inside.

The children were playing outside when the honeywagon techs returned. The foreman come over to Marco,who was once again supervising the children.

“You might want to take the kids away, bud. This job’ll make a horripilous stench.”

The cargo bay doors rose proving him absolutely right.

The children look appalled. The baby started to cry,’NOT me, Mawk! NO!’ she sobbed. She pulled off her panties and waved them at Marco. “NOT Me!”

“Okay Baby Girl. You’re good. All dry.” he soothed her, picking her up and patting her bare pink bum. “Derry, take yer sister inside.”

The Walden’s captain emerged again, laughing at the children’s hasty retreat. Marco’s dirty look was wasted on him.

The techs moved quickly in spite of their hazmat suits. They used wide shovels to move the bulk of the filth to the front, where it was vacuumed into a honey wagon tank. Then they used heavy push brooms for the remaining bulk.

Next came a tank mule, and hoses sprayed the walls and floors with detergent and water as the techs picked up the floor grates to expose the metal decking. Some of the filthy water dripped onto the dockyard dirt and the foreman shouted at his crew to be more careful.

Nearly two hours had passed and Branson’s Mark was rising in the late afternoon sky. The techs had stripped off their hazmat suits, trusting to the germicidal properties of the fluids.They were all red-faced and sweaty. The foreman shovelled up the wet earth where dirty fluid had landed and tossed it

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into the tank. He handed out sanitizing towels to his crew.

“Took you long enough,” grumbled the captain as the foreman walked up the cargo bay ramp for his pay.

“We does it right,. You could transport medical supplies that bay is so clean.”

“Well, you’ll hafta come back for yer pay. My man’s in town picking up the cash now.”

“Not gonna happen, Handy. You can pay cash or you can pay wire, but you pay or you get a tankful of stink back in your nice clean hold.”

‘Handy’ glared at the smaller foreman. “C’mon, Lao, you’ve known me all our lives.”

Lao signalled his crew, who picked up their hoses. “Yep. I have. Which is why you’re payin now, fore you run off.”

The glare turned to a feral grin. “Just jesting, Lao. Gimme yer paybook.” He took the foreman’s comm and punched in payment. Lao checked the figures and entered his own acceptance codes. He nodded and turned away, signalling his men that they could pack up. The captain re-entered his ship.

“That Honda fella’s a right twisty bastard,” remarked Marco at the dinner table.

“Honda?” asked Rand. Marco filled him in on the cleansing of the Walden, interrupted by Beege’s insistent explanation, “Not me!”

“Farmer I got them eggs from is name of Honda,” said Rand. “Wonder if that is the son she’s so proud of, the one in ‘labour contracts’.”

Mamie reported that Bluebell’s water system was fixed. “Better’n new, bossman.” she said. ’The shower’s got real good pressure and the hot water is faster too.”

“But them combines is still in the hold.”

Dita nodded. “The men from Branson’s Mark are due tomorrow. Their holy days is over. We can leave as soon as we have a decent cargo for Third Rock.”

Rand was not paying attention. ’Walden sounds familiar too..’

“It’s a fairly famous book, Rand,” Dita said. “About living a simple life away from civilization.”

“That farm was …nice though,” Rand said later, sitting with Mamie in the commons after the children were in bed. “Felt good, the only noise from the chickens. Only smell the bush.”

“And the chickens.”

“The old lady needs a little help with that. She’s younger’n Marco’s Ma, reckon, but not as strong.” He sat silently, running his hand through Mamie ’s smooth hair.

“Would she like visitors again?” asked Mamie . “We might could take the kids out for a drive.”

“Wouldn’t want to impose….”

“You got her contact. Call. Ask if she needs anything from town. Shall I = bake a cake, too.?

Winona was happy to have visitors. She asked Rand if he would pick up her regular order from the hypermarket, mostly staples she couldn’t grow, and her mail from the postal outlet. “You”ll save Ronnie the egg man a side trip, too.” she said happily.

Rand used the trip into town to fix a contract with Soak et Cie carrying their bottled pasteurized eggs to Third Rock . Dita called Perse to explain the new cargo. He would find them a customer for a cut of the profits. On Third Rock he had another cargo set up . “Just a simple delivery.,” he told her.

After lunch the Reynolds family, supplemented with Hope and Dita, packed into the mule with the groceries.”We look like an invading party. ” said Derry.

“More like a field of flowers,” his father said, taking in the four females in their bright sundresses. He and Derry wore plain teeshirts and khaki pants.

The trip was quick and uneventful, the reception more than friendly. Winona had pulled out her

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best china, delicate floral cups and plates that Mamie admired enthusiastically.

“My second girl sent them from Pentangle. She wants me to move there, but I”m tied to the farm.“Winona changed the subject. “Your littlest one likes the chickens.”

Beege was following a spectacular white bird with orange wingtips and high crest around the gravelled board. She saw her parents watching and pointed, “Bubba,” she crowed.

“Not butterfly, BabyGirl, chicken.”

“Chitch.”

“Chicken.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s two nearly three,” said Mamie . “Derry is going on nine. Hope turns thirteen next month .” Mamie stopped, abashed.

Their hostess poured more tea for Mamie , but Rand demurred, asking if he could walk about.

As they returned to Bluebell, the baby sleeping, Hope and Derry playing games on their comms, Mamie asked Rand, “You like lbeing here, doncha, sweetie?”

“Pleasant enough.”

“See anything innerestin on your walkabout?”

“It’s overgrown, but there’s good farmland. The bush has some real timber . Outbuildings in good shape.

“Winona was saying her daughter wants her to sell up and move near her.”

“Told me that yesterday.”

“Summerfair’s like to be makin money with the terraforming on Madonna.”

“It ain’t terraforming. It’s reclamation. The gravity and water’s still there. Just poisoned.”

“It’d be hard to look up at Madonna every day knowing that. ”

Rand looked at the purple sky. The Mark was halfway through its first nightly orbit. Ossemaria was rising near the horizon. And Madonna gleamed a deeper violet overhead.

The buyers had turned up as promised from Branson’s Mark. Their foreheads were grey with ashy paint, although otherwise they were immaculately clean, beardless and shaven-headed. Their in-system shuttle had just barely enough capacity for the two combines although they packed in a small CentraPro cryopac marked Bovine Sperm- With Care.

David had taken some time away from the local clinic to help Marco and Dita with the delivery. But his attempts to make conversation were shuffled off.

“You must be getting good crops to need pricey machines like these.”

“Pater Branson tells us we need them.”

“Did your holy days go well?”

“We do not speak of that to gentiles.”

“Are you hooked up with the Flying Doctors? I know Summerfair is a regular stop. But this is my first visit here.”

“We take care of our own.”

“Flying Doctors can drop in with clinics— we do vaccinations , cosmetic repair, maternity and well baby care, fertility aid.”

The older man looked interested in the last while the younger man went stiff and seemed angry.

“Tell me about the babies.”

“We handle all kinds of sexual and reproductive health concerns. I’m a certified midwife and of course Michael handles surgical care. He was lead for a heart operation at our last stop; a preemie—

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less’n two kilos— born with her heart outside her body. She was in surgery for four hours and when we left she was looking about. They ran an apgar and she made normaleven with all that trauma.”

“D’you see a lot of monsters.?”

David’s lips thinned. “We see a lot of sick babies with abnormalities. Sometimes it’s a genetic thing, sometimes it’s environmental. Like at Strike a lot of kids are born with strange lungs. We’ve done a few replacements and they’re fine, or no worse off than anyone else there. It’s probably Bowden’s Disease but no one has pinpointed why and how it affect newborns.”

The younger man, looking angrier by the minute put his hand on his co-religionist’s arm. “Brother, we have to return by evensong.”

The older man looked embarrassed and gave a last tug to the tiedowns. Dita passed him Bluebell’s CentraPro comm and they processed payment.

The younger man nodded briskly and headed aboard. The older man whispered to David, then he too went aboard.

Within minutes, the shuttle was in the air and heading out of atmo, towards Branson’s Mark.

Dita lifted an eyebrow.

“He wanted the Flying Doctors codes. Guess they have some baby troubles.”

“They been marryin cousins for fifty years,” said Marco.“Bet they got a lotta backbirths.”

By dinner time, the Flying Doctors central office has contacted Michael about doing a reproductive clinic on Branson’s Mark.