Eclipses (v1.0), page 15
Canals with waterlocks were becoming numerous, and the water level of the huge Rift River was falling rapidly. Beth scanned every cultivated field, looking over the tops of the golden grain for a house while Shelley kept a wary eye on the river. It was smooth but swift, and fallen trees were numerous. And with every canal they passed there was less water over which to move around branches and tangles of roots. Without the dams that controlled the headwaters, Shelley knew the way would be impassable by raft at this time of year. The water level was too low and the crops Beth was so lovingly admiring would be fields of desert trees, fans black as they waited for occasional rain.
“There, up ahead, Shelley,” Beth said, jabbing him on the shoulder to be certain she had his attention. She was pointing to a sod house near the edge of the river.
It wasn’t much of a house; there would be better up ahead, but it was getting late in the day and Beth had been patient for hours. She didn’t seem to realize they were still in the sparsely settled land inland of the rain forest where life was harshest, though it was not as bad along the river and the many canals as it was in the places where colonists were dependent on rain or groundwater. Sod indicated a first-year house, an easily constructed shelter that would do until the first crop was harvested and sold. But now he could see the antenna rising next to a tin stack that served as a chimney, so he ferried to the riverbank, aiming well up from a fallen tree whose branches strained the current. Beth was out of the raft pulling on the bowline, her bare feet dancing anxiously over the damp bank, looking like she wanted to drop the line because there was nowhere to tie it.
“I’ll take it,” Shelley said, stepping out into ankle-deep water. As soon as the line was in his hand, Beth sheltered her eyes against the late afternoon sun and walked toward the sod house. There was nowhere for Shelley to tie the line, either; he watched Beth for a moment, saw someone come out of the sod house to greet her. Shelley looked at the fallen tree. Perhaps if he carefully snugged the raft up to the trunk, it would be safe; it didn’t look as if the raft could slip past and get snagged. He walked along in shallow water and was nearly at the fallen tree when he realized it was lying along a bulldozed breakwater that backed water into an irrigation ditch, which was also hidden from riverview by a tangle of thornbushes. Ranchers were careful to keep their irrigation ditches free of debris and growth so that water would flow unobstructed into the fields. He looked back to the sod house and saw Beth standing where he last saw her, as if rooted to the spot while she talked to a man. They were too far away for Shelley to hear what they were saying, but not so far that Shelley couldn’t make out what looked like a rifle in the man’s left hand. The skin along his neck pricked. He’was standing on the edge of a renegade’s fortress, but he didn’t know if Beth would understand. Renegades were few in the Empire and not likely to be gun-toting, since they could only fall as far as their land grants, if they had them. She might not realize that coastal renegades faced more desperate circumstances and the same punishment for stealing water as for murder. He didn’t know whether to shout for her to return or tie the raft and go after her.
But Beth was coming back, looking over her shoulder at the man while she tried to scramble over mud and rocks to the water’s edge. The man was following her, hesitantly but with the rifle hefted a bit, just a smooth movement away from firing position.
Quickly Shelley turned the raft, pointing the bow out toward the current and getting rid of the bowline. Beth’s feet touched the water, skipping carelessly over river cobbles, her face tense.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“Paddle like crazy to miss that tree,” Shelley said, swinging over the tube and grabbing the oars. He dipped the oars to the hilt and heard Beth’s paddle splashing behind him. The current took them, sucking them toward the rack of treacherous branches. Half-dead foliage slapped their eyes and bark raked their skin and the tubes of the raft. One of Shelley’s oars was useless against the branches and he backpaddled madly to straighten the bow before they tumbled over the submerged breakwater. The raft slipped through the branches and took the fall at forty-five degrees; it bucked and shipped water but did not flip. Shelley pushed on the oars, forcing the logy raft into the main current.
“Shelley, he’s going to shoot!” he heard Beth shout just as he heard the shot. It was a scatter gun, he could tell from the pop. He cursed and pushed harder on the oars. They were in the main current now but not moving so swiftly that a determined man with a gun couldn’t run along the bank and get another good shot off at them. Shelley glanced back. The man had already climbed over the tree and was wading across the irrigation ditch, a process slow enough that Shelley knew they’d pull away safely before he got across.
“The bow tube’s punctured,” Beth said.
“Damn,” Shelley said. “Can you get some tape on it?”
“Doing it … but there may be more holes underwater.”
He looked over his shoulder to see Beth drying off a section of the tube with her shirttail, sealing tape poised to slap over the little hole just as soon as the tube skin was dry. When one was done, she began looking for others.
Shelley felt a small measure of relief when Beth climbed over the rowing frame to put her weight in the bow. The bow tubes were as secure as she could make them. At the same time the river curved away from the renegade stronghold. Had it curved the other way he would have been fearful that the renegade could take a shortcut across land and be waiting for them somewhere downstream. But this way, even if he knew a good overland path, he would have to cross the river first. That might slow him down so much that it would be impossible for him to intercept the raft. Even so, he kept a wary eye on the bank.
“I think he was a renegade,” Beth finally said. She had stopped paddling, but her eyes were scanning the banks, wide with amazement and fear.
“I figured that when I saw the hidden breakwater. He’s stealing water, so he’s got good reason to be frightened.” The river curve had straightened out again; the man would have to be a fantastic runner to catch them. Shelley breathed easier and glanced back at the bow tube. It was sagging but not shipping water. “What happened?”
“When I asked to use his commscreen he told me he didn’t have one. I started to argue because I could see the antenna; I stopped when I realized how hard he was looking at you.” She looked sheepish for a moment. “I thought he’d just come back from hunting.” She shook her head, condemning herself for her naiveté. “He was awfully nervous.”
“He’s got good right to be. If the vigilantes find out he’s stealing water, they’ll pop him in to cold-sleep for fifty years.”
Beth nodded, perturbed.
It wasn’t exactly a death sentence; some people had survived thirty years of cold-sleep, people forced to make a round trip between Earth and Serensunar. Sometimes the orbiter crews had difficulty in rousing sleepers, and when that happened they took them back to Earth so that the arousal could be attempted by teams who were experts in dealing with the complications. Serensunar had begun forcing dangerous renegades into cold-sleep only in the last century; some, Shelley heard, had indeed survived a fifty-year sentence. They had awakened to find old friends and relatives ancient or dead and the very lay of the land changed. They were given minimal stringer contracts to make good if they could. So far there had been no repeat offenders, but that could be because vigilantes could be ruthless with second offenders.
The Empire didn’t have as much trouble as other areas did with renegades. They could survive in isolation, since every land grant guaranteed water. Although that guarantee had nothing to do with the citizen’s contracting ability and life might be tough without being able to contract for supplies or even medical needs, renegades could survive because most Empire homes were basically independent, with their own solar heating systems and self-generated fuels.
“When we’ve put some distance between that renegade and the raft, we’ll beach it and make repairs,” Shelley said. “Likely we’ll find a settlement, but I’ll pick the place this time. Coastal folk aren’t as homogeneous as Empire people.”
“Now you tell me,” Beth said.
Beth, Shelley noticed, scanned the banks long after anyone could possibly have followed them overland. He was more worried about the renegade following them in a boat that might have been secreted somewhere in the irrigation ditch. Since the stem was not shipping water badly, he decided not to stop until nightfall or until they came to a good-sized settlement, whichever came sooner.
At sundown he spied the shape of a waterwheel downstream, the type that was often used to grind grain into flour. There were several buildings up along the bank, and, as they got closer, he could tell they had a substantial look to them. A community effort didn’t often fall to renegade status and still look that good. He felt comfortable about beaching the raft.
They were greeted warmly by youngsters in long dresses and coveralls who spoke an English dialect that Shelley suspected originated on Earth. Their faces were sun-browned and dirty from a day of play or work in the fields, healthy-looking and filled with curiosity about Beth and Shelley and their strange boat. In minutes the children were joined by elders, who made sidelong glances at Beth’s bare legs before insisting Beth and Shelley leave the raft and join them in the cookhouse for dinner. They had a commscreen, but it had been down for a month due to an earthquake that had all but destroyed the delta power station. They didn’t seem to be suffering much from the lack of electrical power; they had the water-powered mill and enough human muscle to manually operate their irrigation system. Shelley learned the women had been pressed into field work since the power failure, something they didn’t ordinarily engage in due to some complicated sex roles. He didn’t try to understand, for he didn’t really care.
They had a good dinner, a refreshing change from Beth’s camp stew, and help in mending the river raft. The young men exchanged worried looks when they saw what had happened to the raft. They told Shelley the renegade was well known to the area but as yet not dealt with because local folk were too busy tending their farms without the aid of machinery. It was, he knew, a major decision to go after a renegade and ship him off in chains to the cold-sleep facilities in Research City. But as soon as Shelley told them about the bulldozed breakwater he had gone over on the raft, it seemed the decision was made. These people paid the Empire dearly to have water flowing into their own irrigation ditches this time of year, and the thought that it was being siphoned off without a tithe being paid on crops rankled the most gentle among them.
He and Beth slept in sex-segregated dormitories, but they enjoyed real beds and warm showers. The community was astir at the crack of dawn, and Beth and Shelley were on their way after a hot breakfast and sincere wishes for a safe end to their journey.
“I wish you hadn’t told them about the renegade,” Beth said as the raft caught the current and moved out over the chops stirred by a brisk morning breeze and colored bright gold by sunlight. She had decided to sit in the bow again; her hair was neatly braided and fastened with bits of ribbon that she hadn’t owned yesterday.
“They already knew about him,” Shelley said, easing up the oars.
“Yes, but now they know he’s stealing water, too. They’ll have him in cold-sleep before the new moon.”
Shelley puzzled at Beth’s distasteful shudder, but he said adamantly, “He’ll get what he deserves. He’s taking water he’s not entitled to.”
“So what? There’s plenty in the river,” she said, suddenly defiant. “They aren’t being hurt. Did you see their fields? They’ve plenty of water. This whole land is fertile and well watered, so what does it matter if one man takes enough for his crops, too?”
“It’s only fertile because of the river water. Away from the waterways, the land is brown and dry. You’ll see what I mean when we get to Plum Grove. The only place rain falls around here is right up against the coast, a strip about a kilometer wide. A lot of that is useless tide marsh. Every other drop of water has to come out of this river.”
“Are you telling me the famous rain forests are only a kilometer wide?” Beth asked, her manner still frosted with inexplicable anger.
“Except in the delta, that’s the way it is,” Shelley said. “There probably hasn’t been a drop of rain on these fields we’re seeing for the last three or four years. Farmers irrigate by pumping water out of the river. If Aram has a bad year up in the mountains, the people on the tail end of this system don’t get any water.”
“You ought to be building dams here, Shelley,” she said accusingly. “They need lakes and reservoirs.”
“Hey, Beth. What is this?” Shelley said, drawing in the oars completely. “First it’s the land, then it’s the system, and now I get the feeling you believe I made the man go renegade because I didn’t stay on the coast and build dams. You’re not making sense. Water may have nothing to do with why he reneged originally. Maybe he ducked out on a labor contract; maybe he’s just squatting on that land. In fact, that’s quite likely considering he has only a sod house. And I know you’ve lived with the Water Baron long enough to understand what kind of effort it takes up in the mountains to maintain enough water to keep this river running all year long.” “Aram doesn’t just fill reservoirs,” Beth said quickly.
“Every dam generates hydroelectric, power, so don’t try to convince me the Empire is all-benevolent in its water conservation efforts.”
“Now it’s Aram’s fault,” Shelley said. “Beth, you’re condemning the entire system to keep one renegade afloat.”
She looked uncomfortable, hugging up her knees and staring down at her toes. “You don’t know what cold-sleep is like. It’s a kind of death, even if you survive. You wake up in a world in which you’re powerless. It doesn’t matter if you’re coming from the ships or if you’ve stayed on the planet the whole time. There’s nothing familiar to grasp and hold on to. You’re alone.”
Just for an instant Shelley softened, receptive to the tragic look on Beth’s face, as if the loneliness of planeting brought unbearable pain. Knowing Beth was a brave woman, and a gentle one, made him sense it all the more. “I guess what you say is true, but you made your own decision to risk it, and that renegade did, too, with the first drop of water he stole.”
Beth nodded reluctantly and was silent for a while. Then she asked, “Why haven’t they built their own dams here? I know about the earthquake problems, but it’s not so bad here as it is in the riftlands. They could build them, couldn’t they?”
“Probably. I plan to try … if I can get past the other problem. They’re not organized; nothing but pockets of iconoclasts who, individually, can’t finance anything bigger than their ten-acre land grants can hold. Just try to organize them into dam-keepers.” He laughed mirthlessly. There was a successful fishing and canning industry and co-ops that ran the railheads, but mostly the coastland was farms and tiny cottage industries where people eked out a living as best they could with little cooperation beyond the closest neighbors. Even as a child, Shelley had noticed that every kilometer he walked inland from the coast was like walking a few years back in time, electrical power becoming less reliable and mechanization more crude, until there was only that which a man or woman could depend on their own muscles to perform.
“There’s another house up ahead,” Beth said sullenly.
“They said the power failure was widespread,” Shelley replied. “We’ll be near enough to the Plum Grove railhead to walk there in a few hours. That’s almost sure to have an operating commscreen. ’ ’
She nodded, took up her paddle and tried to add a little speed to the river current.
Chapter 15
The heavy red socks Shelley had given her to use as moccasins were shredded from weeks of night camps on the sandy riverbanks. Beth realized they would do little now to protect her feet on the road from the jetty to the railhead, and she was made aware of how strange she looked by stares from the local folk. Their own garb was mostly homespun and dyed with indigos or left the natural wheaty and brown colors with bright sashes or jewelry providing color contrast. She took off the socks, stuffed them in her pocket and sought the turf on the roadside to avoid the sharp gravel in the road. It felt good for the first kilometer, but the farther they got from the river, the dryer and clumpier the turf became. Shelley walked close to her, his big boots scuffing up purple dust from the blue earth. His hand brushed hers several times, until he caught her fingers and held on.
“It is all right?” he asked when she glanced at their clasped hands.
“Feels good,” she replied a bit hesitantly. Why now, she wondered, but when she looked at him she thought she knew. The distant look in his eyes that had been so much a part of him since the river journey began had vanished, replaced by a vague smugness. He squeezed her hand, adding support as she picked her way between turf clumps, as if his holding her hand were nothing more than some sort of acknowledgment of her presence after all this time. Beth had to admit that it was a relief to be off the river.
There were orchards on both sides of the road, and the trees looked sad with their leaves so wilted and withered. This would mark the third year in a row that the cold ocean current running just to the south of the delta hadn’t brought its usual measure of rain. The little wooden houses that they saw were blue with the dust and the garden patches were empty, save for occasional children who didn’t seem to notice the barrenness around them. This place was at the edge of the rain forests just a little too far inland to depend on the ocean-current rains, Shelley had explained, though Beth guessed those rains had fallen here when the homes had been built and the orchards planted. Shelley said this settlement was one of the better-planned communities in terms of transportation, for all the little homes had access paths or tracks. The orchards weren’t landlocked, which she knew was a big problem in some coastal areas, but they’d miscalculated their irrigation needs, or the energy needed to pump the water up from the river. It was hard to imagine how the little rural community survived; surely those pitiful trees had not borne a decent crop. And then she noticed that some of the homes were abandoned, wooden slats nailed over” the doors and the windows shuttered tightly despite the heat.
