The Brave New World

Kirk blinked. He was looking, at pretty close range, at a small wooden hut standing in the middle of a row of similar small wooden huts. He took a deep breath and found himself inhaling the aroma of human excrement. He coughed, and heard Adam laugh.

He turned and saw his son, dressed in a tan suede jacket and pants. The pants were tucked into stained brown leather boots whose tops ended just below his knees. Two men leading horses by their halters were pa.s.sing behind Adam, talking in low voices. The ground was covered in dead leaves, and the trees in the background were already half-naked in preparation for the coming winter.

Adam laughed again and said:

"Dad, you got me completely fooled. I was sure you were here all along. You arrived just this moment? I"ll be d.a.m.ned."

"Let me collect my thoughts," Kirk said, meaning it very literally. Whenever he entered his second self in the New World, he got access to the memories and insights his double had collected in the meantime. It took time to adjust; things definitely worked smoother when there was telepathic contact between the two worlds.

"You were saying the new latrines will be ready end of next week?" he said.

"Yes," said Adam.

"It"s taking a h.e.l.l of a long time."

"That"s what I was getting to. There"s been all this rain, and the wood is taking a long time to dry."

Kirk nodded.

"I understand you haven"t started working on the ship?"

"Not yet. I guess we"ll build it in the spring."

"That"s not good," Kirk said sternly. He lifted his chin and looked his son in the eye.

"We must reconnoiter the whole coast right down to the Channel Islands," he said. "Because Channel Islands is where Bernard will be building our southern base."

Adam let his breath out with a hiss.

"You"re really got it for that Placek woman, don"t you, Dad," he said.

"Don"t call her a woman," Kirk snapped. "She doesn"t look like one and she doesn"t like to be called one, either. If you called her a woman to her face she"d have probably slapped you. Correction: she"d give you one of those killer punches they teach at anti-rape workshops."

"I really can"t imagine anyone wanting to **** her," Adam said.

"You"ve got a limited imagination, son. And a bad memory. Remember that kid couple of years back? The one that preyed on widowed grandmothers? The youngest was sixty nine and the eldest eighty, and he raped them all."

Adam shuddered.

"Did he get life?" he asked.

"Sure he did. But he had one of those difficult childhoods and if he plays nice, he"ll be out in twenty. Who knows, probably less, with all the s.h.i.t that"s been coming down they"ll be releasing people much earlier. Anyway. We must get going on that ship. It"s the least we can do for Bernard. You know he"ll be going down there with a bunch of people to start a new settlement. Scouting out the location in the New World is the least we can do."

Adam shook his head.

"It"s six thousand kilometers, Dad," he said. "You realize that? Six hundred times ten. It"s going to take years."

"Well, we"ve got nearly three years," said Kirk. "He"s planning to go in June."

"He"d better make it very late in June," Adam said.

"Not possible. He"s got to start the settlement in the early summer at the latest. Late June makes it winter."

"Can"t he wait an extra couple of weeks, then? He could get it going in the spring."

"We"re going to lose a whole year. "

"Bernard can catch up on that," Adam said. "He"ll just hit Placek harder from Day One. He"ll get all the colonizers along her bit of coast screaming blue murder within a few years, or few months, depending on your choice of time zone, so to speak."

"It"s not enough to get them screaming blue murder. Her whole region has to take a significant economic hit. I need to have a solid reason to replace her with someone we like."

"We"ll do it, Dad, don"t you worry," Adam said. "You know what we should do? Get going on a second ship right after we"ve launched the first. A caravel, not another f.u.c.king cog. Much faster, and sails better."

"We need the cog to transport goods. A caravel won"t carry half as much."

"I doubt greatly we could fill a rowing boat with the goods we"re likely to trade with anyone in the next couple of years."

"Well, you"d better hope it"s much better than that. We"ve got to develop trade with the colonies that will be popping up south of Golden Gate. Both our income and our jobs depend on it."

"I have a feeling most of our trade will be coming overland, from the glorious Lander colony," Adam said. He reached out and gave Kirk"s arm a squeeze and added:

"I"ve got to go, Dad. Got to look at a couple of things before sunset. You staying for a couple of days?"

"Could be difficult," said Kirk. "I"ve got just one day left before I see Brock and he wants to hear solutions to the situation back home. You have no idea how bad it is up north, Adam. We got off lightly."

"Yeah. Well, if you aren"t around I"ll just deal with your guy. He"s just like you, makes no difference. It"s eerie."

"It"s not eerie," Kirk said. "It"s natural. He"s my double."

"See you later, Dad. One way or another."

"See you."

Kirk watched his son walk away. No, he wasn"t mistaken - the New World Adam was better built and more muscular than the original model. All that physical activity had made its mark.

He began walking towards the neat row of log cabins stretching along a dirt road that ran through the center of the settlement. His own house was on the top of a gentle rise overlooking the a.s.sembly square. It was larger than the cabins: it had a big front porch, and its own kitchen in a separate hut at the back.

The colonists living in the cabins used communal kitchens: one for every ten houses. They"d all learned the hard way it was better to keep cooking fires well apart from sleeping quarters: during Kirk"s short tenure as governor, there had already been a couple of fires that could have been catastrophic.

The settlement was located on a strip of land jutting into Richardson Bay, an inlet cut into the tip of the northern peninsula of the pair that formed San Francis...o...b..y. The road that began at the a.s.sembly square in front of the governor"s residence ran down to the jetty protruding into the bay; it was flanked by rows of cabins.

The two rows ended in big storage sheds purposely built next to the waterfront in antic.i.p.ation of thriving trade. A large launch platform of tiger rock had been built right at the water"s edge. It wasn"t the best spot for that; the settlers had been forced to put it there. All the other locations had resulted in New World exports arriving back home on rooftops, in private backyards, and other inconvenient spots. The very first attempt to send something from a small platform in the settlement"s a.s.sembly square was particularly unlucky. It delivered the goods right in the middle of a road intersection. This caused one Jonah Palmer, aged sixty six and a little slow to react, to drive his bicycle right into the unexpected obstacle, fall off, and crack his helmet-less, bald head on the kerb. He was killed on the spot.

The settlement buildings containing the communal kitchens were located behind the cabins, three on each side. The stables and barns and chicken coops and workshops were out of sight: located further inland, they were guarded by a couple of watchtowers which were manned around the clock by sentries armed with crossbows. They had already killed two illegals trying to steal eggs. A search party sent out to find illegal colonies had returned empty-handed, maybe because they were under orders not to carry the search too far. Kirk didn"t want government soldiers discovering one of the settlements belonging to the Lander colony.

The commander of the colony"s militia wanted a palisade built to protect the farmhouses and the workshops, but Kirk had objected.

"We have more important things to worry about than a couple of thieves stealing a few eggs and chickens," he had snarled. "We need more residential buildings. We need a gla.s.sworks, we need a second carpentry shop, we need to expand the smelter. We need manpower and wood and I"m not going to waste any on building a palisade. We"ll build a fort at the base of the peninsula, later. We"ll build TWO forts! But not now. Later. When we"ve got a surplus of wood after clearing land for fields and pastures."

There were 248 colonists living in the settlement at the moment, counting Kirk and Adam; Kirk estimated he needed at least twice that to get things really going. But food was a major problem - Kirk was obliged to send at least half of all produced food back to Earth. Nearly half of the colony"s population was involved in food production, one way or another. The gatherers already had to spend a full day traveling before they found a single mushroom or a berry. Luckily the fish didn"t seem to get scarcer, even though the fishermen were pulling in over a ton almost every day.

"Sir?"

Kirk jerked, badly startled. He had stopped by the front steps to his house without thinking, lost in his daydream as his eyes wandered over the settlement. He focused on the man who had accosted him, and recognized him instantly as one of the people working in the smelter. He was an old man, far too old to be a colonist, in Kirk"s opinion. But back on earth, back in San Francisco, he was a university professor with special knowledge of medieval smelting techniques.

"Yes? What is it?" Kirk barked. He wasn"t pleased; he received pet.i.tioners at his office every morning. If he let them bother him outside those hours, they"d turn his life to h.e.l.l.

"I"m sorry, sir," said the professor, sounding like he really meant it: really weepy. "I have a favor to ask - a great favor. My relatives - I have two sons back home, and each of them has a family - would very much like to volunteer as colonists, sir. They are out of work and out of money and are close to starving."

"What do they do? I mean, what are their professions?"

"They are - they worked in the banking industry, sir. They were vice-presidents."

"And they ran out of money? Incredible."

"They were fired without any notice or severance pay, sir. The banks they worked for are going into liquidation. All their savings were in stocks and shares, and evaporated. They will work for food, sir, as long as they can send some home. They don"t need pay."

Kirk shrugged.

"I"m sure they can raise enough money to buy licenses and set up colonies of their own," he said. "They"ll be able to do that in a week"s time. They can survive a week, can"t they? Don"t they have any, I don"t know, family silver that they can sell off? Correct that. Tell them to register a mint, and start making coins. And start their own colonies. I"ll give you a tip: tell them to choose locations some distance away from San Francisco. This whole area is going to get very crowded, very soon."

"They can"t join the settlement, sir? They"re good boys, with good heads."

"I don"t need good heads," Kirk said. "I need skillful hands. Are they any good with their hands? Can they chop down a tree, build a house, actually make something? Are they good at anything at all, apart from sitting on their a.s.ses and looking at a computer screen and attending meetings and making phone calls?"

The professor was silent.

"Tell them to get a skill," Kirk said. "Tell them to register a mint, and start their own colonies. And next time you want something, come and see me during my office hours."

He turned away and climbed the steps and went inside his house, still fuming.

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