The Loafers of Refuge (4 page)

The initiation had taken place in the early winter, and by happy chance all eight participants had passed. During the six months since, Carey and Timmy had worked together as much as time permitted, developing their strengths, and now could handle almost any animal with ease. Still, there was a tremendous horde of accumulated knowledge of the processes of nature to be learned, and every hour of actual Controlling taught them more of the finer points of the art. Carey had chosen to end his more formal education after completing college preparatory last spring, rather than journey to Earth for the two years schooling necessary to obtain a degree. He had decided to continue as a farmer and had little need of academic honours.

Carey smiled when he saw the excited look on his redheaded sister’s thin face. Doreen had turned sixteen in the early spring, and was beginning to outgrow some of the angular slimness that had characterized her since a small child. She would soon blossom forth as an attractive young woman. Both Carey and Timmy had been coaching her in the art of Controlling, and she would be ready for the initiation rites
next winter. Apparently she had learned even faster than Carey.

He picked up the mike and pressed the switch. “Carey Sheldon here.”

“’Ullo, Carey,” said the bored, nasal voice of Varinov English, head of the Security Section of Central Government. “Got a bit of a problem in the Upper Sweetwater River Valley. New family named Harper moved in late last fall. Seems they can’t get along with the Loafers in that community at the head of the valley. The complaint, as I get the story, is about a large grove of trees on this fellow’s land which he wants to cut down, and the Loafers won’t let him. Can you and Timmy run up there tomorrow and straighten them out?”

“That sounds a little off. The Loafers normally respect property rights,” said Carey, puzzlement in his voice. “I’ll be glad to go up there and see what I can do. Can I have the use of the C.G. flitter again? That’s a long ride to the Upper Sweetwater.”

There was a brief silence, and then English said, “We’ll arrange it. Be here first thing in the morning to pick it up.” “Will do,” said Carey, and signed off. Doreen was waiting to pounce.

“I want to go with you,” she said rapidly, giving him no chance to interrupt. “You promised me I could next time something came up that didn’t look too dangerous and I want to go’. If I’m going to take the initiation next winter I’ve got to get in some real practice—”

Carey stopped her by putting one large hand firmly over her mouth. Grinning, he said, “Okay. You can go, if it’s all right with Timmy.”

Doreen squealed with joy, hugged him tightly, then went running to tell Uncle Harvey and her mother. There was no danger of Timmy saying “no”. She knew Carey’s hairy young Loafer friend had too soft a look in his eyes when he stared at her to refuse her anything she wanted.

Carey followed her more slowly. Maud had just come in from the yard and was listening to Doreen with a slight frown on her tanned face. She had dropped her opposition to
Carey’s becoming a Controller, and had even permitted Doreen to take lessons. But this business of her travelling thirty miles up country with Carey and Timmy on what could well be a dangerous mission went against the grain. There was little point in arguing, though. Since her youngest son had learned that Controller thing she had felt the reins of family control slipping slowly but certainly into his young hands. Not that she minded. She had run the family for twelve long and weary years. It was a relief now to be able to lean on his strong young shoulders.

“Take good care of her, Carey,” she said at last, and saved herself useless argument.

“I won’t let anything happen to her, Mom. Now I’m going over to Loafertown to see if Timmy is free tomorrow.”

He saddled a horse for the two-mile ride and cantered across the open land to the sea. He found Timmy and several other young Loafers engaged in a merry game of fishing. They were sitting on a rock that extended a short way into the water, fishing with dip-nets. The water below them swirled with fish, but they were extremely fast and hard to catch. At the inlet to the small lagoon three pre-initiates were projecting the image of a whampus. Their untrained minds had little power, but with all three working hard the image was sufficient to hold the fish in the lagoon. The fish, whose dim minds were hard to control, could not be lured directly into a net but had to be hemmed into a small area and physically caught. This particular school was largely blackfish, which ran from two to four pounds in size and were delicious eating. As long as they felt the presence of a whampus at the inlet they would race back and forth in the shallow water, where a real whampus could not venture, and adept work by the young Loafers would yield a rich dinner. When they had all the fish they could eat before they spoiled, the Loafers would release the remainder. They lived in strict accord with nature, never taking more than was needed of any food or facility.

Carey swiftly explained the request to his friend, and Timmy nodded in understanding. “I know some of those people at the head of the Sweetwater, and have distant kin in
the tribe. They have customs not shared or understood by their neighbours, and raise trees as if they were children.”

“Well, apparently we’ll have to convince them it’s Harper’s land and they must leave him alone, or get his grant changed and have the disputed grove added to their preserve,” said Carey. “But we’ll worry about that when we get there. I’ll be by early in the morning. And … Doreen wants to go with us, and I said it was all right with me if you agreed.”

Timmy turned and gestured towards the three young pre-initiates, who had left the inlet and were walking towards them, while the blackfish, the whampus projection gone, vanished through the inlet into the open sea. “A little actual work will do her good, Carey, though this does not sound like a problem for a Controller.”

“No, and I don’t know why they called you and me,” said Carey. “But if we can smooth things out it may save some bitter feelings on both sides.”

Timmy nodded in understanding, and Carey left him to return to home and work. The young peanuts were just raising their green heads above the ground, and the tender plants needed cultivating.

Carey landed the flitter well away from the house and the three of them climbed out. Harper was striding towards them, a big, blond man, walking bareheaded in the bright spring sun. He was a little older than most new colonists, obviously a man who had received his Call only a few years before he would have passed the age limit.

“Gee, he’s almost as big as The-Old-Man-In-The-Mountain,” breathed Doreen softly. She was referring to an eccentric hermit, a giant of a man named Brian Jacobs, who lived alone somewhere in a hidden home in the Whitecap Mountains, and only came down to pilfer small articles from unguarded farms.

“He’s friendlier, we hope,” said Carey with equal softness, and then Harper had reached them and was extending his hand. He was a big man by Earth standards, almost six feet tall, but not out of place on Refuge. Carey liked him
immediately. He had the look of tough, ready competence which a man needed to make a go of it on Refuge.

Carey introduced himself and his companions. He saw Harper hesitate slightly, then take Timmy’s hand in a firm grasp. He smiled gravely when Doreen extended her freckled, skinny hand, and treated her like a grown woman, which pleased her immensely.

“When C.G. told me they were going to send out a team to talk with the Loafers I was really expecting someone a little older,” said Harper. “Do you work for the Government?”

“Not really, Mr Harper. I’m a sort of unofficial negotiator with the Loafers, and Timmy and I have managed to help a few times before. As for my age, I’m eighteen, which is the legal age at which you become an adult on this planet.”

“No reflection on your ability intended,” said Harper with a smile. “It’s just that I think you’re going to have your hands full.”

“None taken. Concerning the Loafers, I was raised with them from a baby and I know them pretty well. I’m the first Earthman actually born on Refuge.”

Harper raised bushy eyebrows in polite acknowledgement, then turned and led the way to the house. Carey, as he followed, found himself wondering how it must feel to be an involuntary immigrant, to be compelled by law to leave the planet of your birth and journey through interstellar space to a new and strange life on a distant world.

Sam Harper dawdled through breakfast until his wife, in impatient anger, snapped, “Finish your gunk and get out of here or you’ll be late to work! It’s hard enough for you to keep a job as it is.”

Harper fiddled with his spoon, stirring the lukewarm liquid that passed for coffee. He and Kay had quarrelled bitterly after going to bed the previous night, a harsh, intense argument that had finally awakened the baby. When she returned to the narrow bed after getting him to sleep again she presented her back to her husband. He lay in the silent darkness
and realized that, for him, life on Earth was no longer bearable. And he had made a decision, and known at the time it was an irrevocable one. “I’ve got news for you, honey. I’m not going to work today.”

“What? Are you out of your mind? Do you want us back on that miserable subsistence pay?”

That was the automatic, unthinking answer he might have expected from Kay. She was a beautiful woman but one completely lacking in sensitivity, with no initiative or drives of any sort. Like eighty billion other Earthpeople she lived a comfortable, dull life, from birth till death. The government fed and protected her, doctored her when ill, delivered her babies, and when the lawful two had arrived would sterilize her as well. In the year 2092 the average human lived to be a hundred and fifty, and Earth was choking with the pollution of their billions. “I won’t be on subsistence, baby. Just you. I’m signing up for this month’s Call.”

She pushed back her chair and jumped to her feet, incredulous. “Now I know you’re insane! No one volunteers for the Colonial Service who isn’t! What’s wrong with you?”

“I think you know. Haven’t you been consulting the building psychist about me lately?”

She hung her head in sullen shame. “Well, you’re so hard to live with …”

“It could get tougher than it is, Kay. I didn’t tell you yesterday, but my request for a transfer to the shops was refused. The waiting list of qualified people is so long they’re not accepting new applications. And I’ve sat at that useless desk shuffling useless paper until I can’t stand it. I’ve got to get out of there or go as insane as you seem to think I am.”

“Everyone can’t work in the shops, Sam. You must adjust—”

“Adjust! You mean learn to like doing nothing? That’s adjustment in today’s world, isn’t it? Adjust to non-thinking, non-working, non-laughing—and after a while non-living? No thanks, not for me!”

“You can’t change the world—”

“No, but I can leave it!” He crossed the tiny kitchenette, tried to take the small woman in his arms. “Come with me,
Kay. We’ll find a new life together where a person can change, can grow—”

“I’d like to stay just as I am, thanks,” she said icily. And for the first time Harper realized his wife was as small in spirit as in body, a creature well-suited to her environment. But she had been his wife for five years … and it is never easy to give up a son.

He should have expected it. Less than a quarter of the spouses of new colonists chose to accompany their mates. The pioneering spirit had been bred out of the average Earthling. Harper looked at his wife’s delicately lovely features, framed by her golden tinted hair. It had been predetermined that Kay would refuse. She did not understand his desire for a life with freedoms and challenges no longer available on Earth.

Harper dressed hastily and left the two hundred and eighty square feet that was his allotted living quarters, then caught the express lift to the roof and stood in line to get aboard the series of aircars that landed and took off at two minute intervals. The apartment building, one-hundred-and-twelve stories of steel and concrete anchored to the bedrock of what had once been the North Island of the New Zealand group, was only one of a series of similar buildings which covered almost the entire island.

The Colonial Service Building was on South Island, as were all the Government buildings. Sam leaned back in the soft seat and started out of the window at the Floatfarms as they passed over the open stretch of water between islands. The channels of clear water reserved for pleasure boating grew more narrow each year as the huge algae farms demanded ever more room. The giant aluminium harvesting platforms, small at this distance, moved with relentless slowness through the green fields, harvesting the raw gunk. Earth’s people had to eat, and pleasure boating was not necessary to life.

He had heard recently that the official workweek, which had crept from twenty to forty hours in the last fifty years, would soon be extended to forty-eight. Eighty billion people had to have something to do. The recreation centres were inadequate and there was no room to extend them.

South Island was almost identical to North, except that the
buildings, being largely industrial and governmental, were taller. They covered the land like a grey blight, and in their cavernous depths millions of people lived and worked and died without the touch of sun on their faces or the coolness of an unfiltered breeze blowing through their hair. One dull day passed into another with the ease of habit: so many hours sitting at a desk accomplishing nothing, so many sitting in front of the tri-D at home being insufferably bored, and so many of supervised, carefully controlled play.

The Colonial Service was the third stop of his particular aircar. He descended into the bowels of the tower and in less than an hour had been interviewed, accepted, and sent home to pack his personal belongings and get them to the matter-transmitter. His ship would leave next day.

On the ride back he leafed through the mass of literature the recruiting officer had given him. Most of the information was repetitiously familiar. He knew about the automatic divorce for persons Called, or volunteers whose mates did not wish to accompany them. One of the few new things he learned was his exact destination, a planet called Refuge in the system of Antares, and the amount of land he and his new wife, whoever she might be, would own. A full half square mile.