No Guarantees
This was my Bess and John story written to show my sister it wasn't a foregone conclusion that Devon and John would end up together. With the right circumstances occurring, things could go in another direction. Like the Julia story, this one has Bess discovering something about a friend, too.
There is no real hurry Caine to speak of, but there is reference to a bunch of screaming grandmothers attacking Bess' corn. Now that's a picture I can't get out of my head.
I think all of the corrections are made that needed to be made. If not, I'll find them later and fix 'em before I move the story to my web page.
NO GUARANTEES Autumn, Looking Back. . .The chill breeze was a good indication summer was ending, and, looking around, one could see the first hints of fall were beginning to show. Bess Martin stood beneath the arched mess tent and sipped at the cup of water she held in her hand. It was early evening and work for the day was winding down. Outside, just across the grassy field, the first wing of the hospital and a few barracks style living units were bathed in the orange tinged sunlight. She was reminded of the prefab units in which her family had lived on Earth. Sturdy in appearance, bland and virtually identical, the units would hold five families each in relative comfort.
Devon Adair's colony town was taking shape slowly but surely.
Though Bess had long since accepted the group's decision to build their settlement on the bluffs above the beautiful beaches, it didn't stop her from worrying that they were making a mistake for which they would some day pay.
They had reached the com dish in early spring, laden with the tools and vehicles they would need to start building, and, very quickly, the weeks had turned to months, and life atop the bluffs had fallen into a routine. Her companions were happy with that, but she was not. The end of their long journey had brought to a close more than just their nomadic lifestyle.
The teamwork that had brought them across kilometers of the continent became the driving force behind the building of the structures taking shape across the green field. Their dependence on one another for day to day existence, however, had almost immediately started to change.
Spring. . ."Morgan, you've got to help me make them listen."
Bess and Morgan Martin were in their tent after the evening meal. Bess was agitated. Morgan was poring over his notes and records, getting them in order and trying to make a comprehensive report out of them. Bess paced the small space behind him.
"There is a long, wide valley just ten kilometers inland. It has a fresh water spring and a pond beneath it. It's a better location than this. We're too close to the beach."
Morgan stopped what he was doing and ran his hands through his hair. He turned his head to speak over his shoulder, eyes and hands emphasizing his words even though Bess couldn't see them. "How many times do I have to tell you? It's a losing argument. Devon is determined to build here. It's her worry anyway, Bess." His voice lowered, and the tone changed only slightly and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "It's not like we're going to be spending the rest of our lives here, you know. Once we're on our way home, your worries about no one heeding your doomsday advice will be all for nothing."
Bess' step faltered for just an instant. She paced another few steps and then turned to look at her husband's back. "Honey, we're not going back. Remember? We talked about it months ago and decided to stay. You said sending a recorded log back to the stations would be an acceptable report on the Advance team's mission."
She could tell by the way he ducked his head and began to fiddle with the gear chips spread out in front of him that he had changed his mind, that he was going to try to avoid an argument and duck out on her. Well, there had been too much of that lately and she wasn't going to have anymore of it.
Bess crossed her arms and went to stand beside Morgan, putting herself between him and the tent's flap. "When did you change our plans? How long were you going to wait before you told me about it?"
Morgan glanced at her quickly and nervously. "I really have to get these reports in order, Bess."
"No. You really have to talk to me and you'd better have a good explanation for what you just said to me, Morgan Martin."
"But, Bess," he said, waving his hands over the materials on the table in front of him, "you already know how important my report to the stations is going to be!"
Her expression hardened and her voice lowered. "You know that's not what I meant."
There were no guarantees on Earth nor on G889, and Bess Martin was getting tired of trying to drive that point home with her fellow Edenites. Since reaching the com dish and the ocean, everyone's main priority was creating a safe home environment to receive the people aboard the colony ship.
All of a sudden Bess' practical knowledge gleaned from growing up and surviving on the surface of Earth was deemed not as important as it had been when they were on the march to get here. The advance group, intended to be here or not, had reached their destination safe and sound with few sorrows to change them; and now they were all working toward preparing for the arrival of the colony ship, and after that, the departure of the crew members who were going home.
Bess had left the meeting under the big dome tent feeling exasperated and angry. No one was listening to her at all anymore. It wasn't that she was feeling left out or ignored or that her ego was being bruised. She knew she was being ignored and dismissed, and maybe that resulted in a little ego bruising, but she also knew the feeling of euphoria at reaching New Pacifica with time to spare was blinding the others to the dangers found here. What was worse, they were resisting all attempts by her to stop it. Even Morgan, dependable, reliable Morgan who counted on her for so many things, had gotten caught up in the race to have a hospital and living quarters erected soon. After yet another disagreement with him, while the other members of the group pretended to not notice, she'd gotten up and walked out of the tent without a word to anyone.
Of course, getting the hospital ready was their priority. It always had been and Bess didn't want them to not meet that goal. She wanted them to do it all in a safer place. Somewhere a little farther inland.
What difference would it make if they weren't right on the ocean?
Time and again she had tried to talk to them about it, but no one was listening. It was bad enough to be brushed off by Morgan, but even Yale, who should know these things, too, was not taking her views into account. Morgan and Yale were the smartest men she knew, each in their own way, and until now they had both respected and listened to her opinions.
It was like everyone had contracted a bad case of being full of themselves. She hoped it ended on it's own before something bad happened to cure it.
All in all, life on the beach wasn't what she thought it would be. Morgan was once again looking forward to going home to the stations, life on this planet under rustic conditions just wasn't for him, after all. He had learned to survive along with the rest of the group, he explained, but it hadn't changed the basic needs in him. The Martins were going back to the stations when the colony ship arrived.
The trouble was, Bess didn't want to go back, and nothing she said or did could convince Morgan she really meant it. Their decision to remain, made during their stay at the group's last winter camp, was as binding to her as their G889 marriage had been. It was a painful thing to know Morgan had dismissed it so easily without asking for her input.
As the weeks turned to months and the colony began to take shape one structure at a time, Bess was feeling the gap between herself and the group, including Morgan, growing wider. She was alone in her convictions that living a stone's throw from the beach was a mistake.
She scuffed along through the sandy earth, walking past the tents and vehicles, worrying what was going to happen when the group finally saw the worst that living planetside had to offer. Morning dew still coated the grasses and brush and she kicked at them carelessly, watching the droplets coat her boots with a film of liquid.
"Hey," the voice of John Danziger interrupted her thoughts unexpectedly, causing her to jump and turn to give him an annoyed look. He'd left the meeting before she did, after the topics under discussion turned to those he had nothing to do with, as far as implementing them went. "Don't wander too far. Got no time to be looking for you if you get lost."
His tone was friendly, not irritated or angry.
Bess decided he was just making sure she was safe, so she let her annoyance pass. Instead she remembered how he and Devon had managed to lead them across the continent to this very spot despite never having done anything like it before. "Danziger, can I ask you something?"
He wasn't doing anything, just seemed to be sitting on the back of the transrover and looking at the ocean, as bored by the meeting as she was irritated. He raised one knee and hooked an arm over it. "Sure. Go ahead."
"Did you train anywhere else on Earth besides in the Arctic?"
He frowned.
What the. . . ? "Uh. . . In the desert on the African continent, in the blue zones on the South American continent."
"Did you ever experience a storm during those times?"
Danziger sighed. He saw where this was leading and made a vague gesture with his hands. "In the desert we had to ride out a sandstorm. Thought the wind was going to blow our tents away, but we managed."
Bess took a few steps closer to him, the fingers of one hand rubbing the other at her waist. "That was a windstorm on an unhealthy planet. The weather patterns have been all screwed up for centuries. This is a healthy planet. So far all we've really experienced is rainstorms, snow and ice storms and a couple of thunderstorms. They were nothing compared to a hurricane."
"Look, Bess. You've been trying for weeks to get Adair to listen to you about building the colony too close to the shore, but this isn't Earth. Yale said?"
"I know what Yale said, but what if he's wrong?" Bess boosted herself onto the rover and sat with her back against one side and looked at Danziger. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. "We lived in the eastern part of what was called Tennessee in the old days. Still is by everyone but the mappers on the stations. There was a hurricane in the Atlantic to the east of us. Hurricanes are at their strongest when over water, and after they come to land they start to lose power. That hurricane came to land and was headed right toward us, but there was a mountain range and so much land between us and the ocean that no one paid it any attention. What no one knew was it was one of the biggest storms to ever form in that part of the world since the old times. It wiped towns and forests right off the map in one of the green zones along the east coast. It did lose strength, but what was left of the storm that hit us uprooted trees, blew houses off their foundations and poured so much rain on us in so little time there was flash flooding that did more damage than the storm did. I remember it, Danziger. Our town never recovered completely. The damage was that bad, the loss of life was worse. For the rest of my life on Earth, we lived in prefab, steel huts from government relief. There were parts of the mines flooded with water that no one ever was able to pump out." After a moment, she added, "John, there weren't supposed to be storms that big on Earth anymore. No one could figure out how it could have happened, but it did. The right conditions just popped up.""
In the silence that followed, Danziger listened to the roar of the ocean waves and considered this.
"Okay," he said after a while. "I'll admit none of us really knows the variety of weather there can be on a planet's surface. We've been through a lot of storms, though, Bess. Thunderstorms on the grasslands, the rainstorm that kept us pinned down with no shelter for almost a week. Snow, ice. We've come through a lot."
"We were lucky, Danziger!" Bess said angrily. "We were lucky to not see a tornado. We were lucky to not see an avalanche from the snowstorms in the mountains. And the thunderstorms were nothing compared to a hurricane!"
Avalanche? he thought, as he raised a hand to calm her. "All right, all right. So if you could get the others to listen, what would you suggest we do? Besides finding a site farther inland for the colony village? You know Devon will never go for that."
Bess threw her hands in the air. "Any number of things! First we could plant the fields farther in and be sure our food crops are safe. Most of it would be ruined by high winds no matter where we planted if a hurricane did come through, but at least it wouldn't be wiped out completely. The fields we've planted here haven't even got wind breaks from the sea breezes. Without a few trees to protect them all the soil will either blow away or wash away. Do you realize how high the waves can get in a really bad storm? We're only forty or fifty meters above the sea. A wave with the power of a hurricane behind it can get twice as high as that."
Danziger had to admit to himself that made sense. They'd seen a dust storm ahead of them while crossing the pan just before reaching their second winter camp. The dust cloud had stretched for kilometers. The dust had hung in the air for days after the storm ended, getting into everything as they went through the area.
"Is there any particular reason why you're telling me this, Bess?"
"Yes, there is. While everyone is busy with the meeting, I'd like to show you something."
"What?" he asked, suddenly wishing he has stayed under the tent and sat through the rest of the meeting.
"I have a special project I've been working on whenever I have the time."
And, so, Danziger found himself, mag-pro across his lap, sitting in the passenger seat of the dunerail as Bess drove it across the grasslands on the bluffs above the ocean. They were going east at a very good clip.
"You know how I like to get up early and go for a run most days?" Bess was talking loudly over the sound of the rail moving along. "One morning I went a little farther than normal and I found a valley with a spring in it. It was beautiful and I told Morgan it would be an ideal place to build a house for ourselves someday. If we stay here, that is."
She swung the rail around an outcropping of rocks and barreled on.
Danziger set his feet against the flooring and grabbed the side rails as casually as he could considering he expected to be thrown out of the vehicle at any moment. He didn't want to tell her to slow down and take it easy. That would be admitting he was fearing for his life. Instead he tried to keep the conversation going.
"You always run this far out by yourself?"
"Oh, no. Morgan usually follows in one of the little ATVs, but going up and down the hills, it's easy to get ahead of him. Of course, if one or both of the kids are running with me, I only go until they get tired, then we rest and turn back.`"
That was a surprise. "The kids go with you?"
"Sure! Once in a while. Uly loves to run, and True hates to let him get faster than she is, so they come with me now and then." She glanced over at the look on his face. "They're kids, Danziger. They need to let off steam once in a while and just play and be kids."
The dunerail labored up a rocky hillside and at the top, Bess drove through a thick stand of trees where a path had been cleared. When the ground began to drop away at the other side of the hill, she stopped suddenly and turned off the engine. She leaned forward against the steering wheel and waved her hand at the valley floor.
"What do you think?"
Below them was a wide L-shaped valley. The trees under which they parked extended downward and partway across the valley floor, covering the north end of it. The rest of it was open, but the land had been tilled and planted, and moving slowly among the rows of growing produce was the solitary figure of a zero unit. A small tent sat on a section of undisturbed ground next to a small pond. Just above it, watered gurgled out of the ground and flowed over rocks and stones to splash lightly into the pond, and from there it flowed away to the south.
Before Danziger could answer, the whine of another vehicle sounded behind them and one of the ATVs pulled to a stop beside the rail. True and Uly were on it.
"We saw you leave camp," True said. "We thought you might be coming here."
Uly hopped off the back of the ATV and stood beside Danziger. "Isn't it great?" he said.
"I might have known the two of you would be in on this." John pointed at the valley floor. "Is that. . .?"
Bess and the kids laughed. "Yep!" said Bess. "That's the damaged zero from the old ship that kept wandering off and getting lost. After you had him deactivated we brought him up here. True and Uly were able to figure out how to bypass his damaged programming, and then we just gave him instructions on how to care for the fields. We come out to check up on him as often as we can."
Danziger smoothed his hair back with one hand and let out a breath of air. "Look, I don't know how you've been able to keep this a secret for so long. I didn't even notice anything was missing. Why are you telling me about it now?"
Bess sat back in her seat. "I wanted someone from the inner circle to know about it. So if the worst happens and we need this food we can bring it in without Devon building the first jail on G889 and throwing me in it."
"Inner circle?"
She smiled. "That's what those of us in the outer circle call it," she started the engine again and roared down the hill as Uly scrambled back onto the ATV to follow with True.
Danziger felt an adrenaline rush and grabbed the side of the rail as it flew downward suddenly and bounced along the track being worn in the soil.
By the time they returned to the beach camp it was mid morning and people were breaking up into pairs or work crews to begin their labors for the day.
Danziger waited until he climbed out of the rail - which he had driven back - to turn to the other three. "All right," he said. "I won't tell anyone about your special project," he stopped to wave away their relieved and happy looks, "yet. If someone notices seeds or plants are missing, or even that the broken Zero is gone, I'll have to tell them. I don't like keeping secrets from anyone. We're still trying to survive here, and I'll agree with you that maybe we aren't going about it in an absolutely perfect manner. Still, we made it from the crash site to this spot by working together and by being a team. I don't like putting that aside even for a special project as well thought out as yours is."
Bess and True ran around the dunerail to give him a grateful joint hug.
"Thank you, John. You won't regret it. I promise," Bess assured him.
True smiled up at him. "I told her we could count on you. I knew we could!"
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered as they drew away and turned to leave. He wished he could smile back but he felt as if he'd just been suckered into being the fourth hand helping them harvest their crops when the time came.
Footsteps coming around the transrover caught their attention.
"Well, there you are," Devon's voice interrupted the moment. She walked slowly toward the three of them and nodded politely as True and Bess hurried past her with cheery good mornings and big smiles. Uly followed after them with the same look on his face. Odd that Danziger looked as if he'd just been outsmarted at something.
She decided to take a lighter approach to his long absence from the camp, just in case. "What did you do? Tell them another flying man story?"
Summer. . .Bess waited by the ATV for quite a while, stretching more than usual before she decided Morgan wasn't coming. Something must have come up. Something was always coming up. He wasn't going to be accompanying her on her run this morning. She started back toward their tent angrily, but stopped halfway there and decided to go alone after all. She went to the line of vehicles, picked one of the small ATVs and drove it past the gap in the lasers she had opened earlier. After getting out and resetting the alarms, she drove away toward the valley in the hills.
This quiet spot with the ever toiling Zero unit for company had become Bess' sanctuary in the past weeks. The carefully tended crops were doing well. She was going to have a bountiful harvest, and her only worry was how to blend her produce in with that of the colony's fields when the time came.
The plants were tall and healthy, well tended and a first picking would be at hand soon. The corn was getting so high one couldn't see the pond from the hilltop anymore, and only the very top of the domed tent still was visible above the gently waving stalks.
Bess had been lucky the children were able to find a way to reprogram the Zero. They were resourceful kids and growing up fast. Uly had the idea to make a small canal system along the farthest rows of plants for getting water to them without having to carry filled containers by hand from the pond. The first irrigation system on G889 was a big success.
At the valley, she drove down the hillside and made a long swing to the north around the crops - the only downside to the irrigation system. You couldn't drive directly to the tent by the pond anymore, you had to circle around the crops.
She stopped beside the pond and climbed out of the ATV. Another little vehicle was already parked beside the tent. She smiled. Well, if the children are going to be getting up this early and coming into the hills, she might as well ask them to accompany her for morning exercise.
Before going inside the tent, Bess surveyed her gardens with satisfaction. Earth seeds and G889 seeds grew and proliferated side by side, unlike the colony gardens where the emphasis was on growing familiar foods from the stations. The plan was to grow a few of the more nutritious native plants in the garden and look for other plants growing in the wild if the need arose.
Not Bess. Those plants had saved their lives - something else the others had forgotten - and she wanted to see if they could be domesticated, if the ones from her garden would turn out as good as the plants they'd found in the wild.
Turning to the tent she walked the few steps to the flap, and leaned down to duck inside.
Danziger, working on the zero unit, glanced at her quickly before going back to what he was doing. "Mornin', Bess."
She straightened up and stared for a few seconds. "John! Good morning."
"Made a spare memory pack for the unit." he said. "Thought I'd fix his voice mod, too. Nothing I can do about the cracked motivation mod, gotta save our spares for the units doing the heavy construction, but he'll be able to answer you now instead of having to hook him to a com unit. You can give him voice commands, too."
She was impressed. "Wow. That's great. Thanks."
He shrugged. "Well. . . In case that natural disaster happens, you can give him a warning over your gear without having to drive out here."
"Good idea."
She dropped to her knees beside him to watch what he was doing. "Sometimes I wish I could just pick up and move out here," she said. "The peace and quiet would be so relaxing after all the noise and heavy work involved in building." She looked at his face and grinned a little. "I notice you feel the effects of the hard work, too. Weightlessness makes a difference, doesn't it?"
He laughed shortly. "Tell me about it." He glanced at her again. "What's the problem? Morgan think this is too far away from the main camp?"
Surprising herself as much as Danziger, Bess said, "I wasn't including Morgan."
In the silence that followed, both searched for something to say.
Danziger could sympathize with her, in a way, but had no idea how to say it aloud. He and Devon had begun disagreeing and arguing as much as they ever did in the early days of their relationship, and everyone knew the Martins were having problems.
The relatively calm period that had settled onto the group after Devon's return from cold sleep was giving way to complacency. The worst was over and it was back to business as usual.
The colony ship was close at hand and half of the group was thinking of going home. The other half was looking toward the future and fulfilling the promise of helping the Syndrome children and their families prosper on G889. Devon and Morgan had found a renewed sense of commitment to the Eden Project.
Bess rose to her feet and began to pace. "You know, Danziger, I was thinking about making this dome into a greenhouse. Something kind of like the biodome, you know? Putting my crops together with what the settlement is growing - we're going to have a lot of food to preserve for winter. When the ship arrives most of our fresh food will be used up immediately, and by mid winter we're all going to be missing fresh fruit and vegetables." Hands on hips she turned around in a circle and surveyed the tent. "Do you think it can be done?"
John was at a loss for a moment. He made a motion with his head and hands. "Well, sure. . . I suppose it could be done. We learned a lot about how one works at the biodome. But, uh. . . Shouldn't you be making plans for returning to the stations instead of for growing food throughout the winter here?"
The look Bess gave him was pure fire. "The final decision about that hasn't been made yet. The Martins returning to the stations hasn't been set in stone."
He nodded slowly and went back to work. Even though it was meant for someone else, he didn't like that look coming in his direction.
Taking a deep breath, Bess let her irritation with Morgan dissipate and she felt a little annoyed at herself for taking it out on Danziger, or nearly so. Making an oh, well gesture with her hands she smiled. "Anything I can do to help?"
She was surprised when he answered, "Yeah, as a matter of fact."
It took a few minutes more to finish the job, and both knew they'd better hurry to get back to the camp before they were missed. Danziger packed his tools and waved his hand in dismissal when she asked again if he needed help.
"No. Better get going. I'll be right behind you."
"Okay. See you later, John."
Bess leaned forward and raised the tent flap, ducking under and looking back as her hand fell away from the stiff material. She turned for her ATV and stopped dead in her tracks. "Ohhhh. . . my!" she whispered. She took a small step back toward the tent and reached her hand behind her, searching for the corner of tent flap she had just dropped. It took a second to find her voice. In a tone more shrill than she intended for it to be, she said,
"Danziger?! There's a grendler out here!"
Nothing could have surprised Danziger more. He knew there were Terrians in the area. Both Alonzo and Uly had confirmed that. And though there were plenty of signs that grendlers were also living nearby, no one had seen one in the months since they'd reached the com dish. The dish itself had taken a beating from the creatures. Peripheral bits and pieces had been ripped from it, but the grendlers either hadn't been able to open the casing and reach the main components, or they hadn't tried.
John dropped his tools on the ground and rushed through the tent flap, hitting Bess in the lower back with his shoulder and sending her a few quick steps forward, toward the grendler, before she could stop her momentum and scurry backward.
Danziger grabbed her by the shoulders and stopped her from plowing into him, as well as helping her stay upright when she stumbled against him.
"What does it want?" he asked.
"How should I know?" she answered. "Maybe we should go back into the tent until it leaves."
"What good would that do? If it wanted to come inside, too, what would stop it?"
"How should I know?"
Danziger looked down at the top of her head. "Well, you've done this before!"
She shook her head. "I traded with one before, sure, but not this one! Besides, I had something to offer then." She turned her head looked at him from the corner of her eye. "You're the one with the tools."
"I ain't trading my tools!"
"Well, we can't stand here all day, Danziger!"
"Why not? It seems to want to." He gestured toward it with one hand. The grendler was, indeed, staying in one place and looking at the two of them curiously.
Bess went silent for a moment, looking at the creature, as if really noticing it for the first time.
Beneath his hands Danziger could feel the tension leave her and she straightened her shoulders, leaning away from him. He dropped his hands and watched.
She started to speak in her most charming manner, gesturing with her hands. "You. . .frightened us. We've never seen any of you here before. We've been living on the beach for a while now and . . .you guys just never come to visit!"
The grendler remained silent, looking at her. It shifted it's position a little, toward the crops and away from the vehicles.
"Bess, I think it's here to see your garden. It might be-"
"Oh!" She stepped forward. "I'll bet you're wondering why we have another field planted here when we have so many larger ones growing over by the beach camp. Well, this is my garden." She placed her hands on her chest. "I planted this over here because I think the fields by the camp are too close to the ocean, the water. I think a storm might come and knock over a lot of the plants there and destroy them."
The grendler moved toward the corn stalks and began to gesture and make rumbling, grunting noises to her.
"This is corn," she explained and hurried over to touch it. "This is a food we humans brought with us from the place where we used to live to see if we could grow it here in this planet. It's something that we can grow ourselves to eat."
In a flash the grendler moved with incredible speed and stood beside her, grabbing a long leaf and leaning forward to bring it's face closer to it.
"Uh, Bess," Danziger said from the tent, waving his hand, index finger raised. "That's an Earth plant. It might be something an anim - a native from here shouldn't eat. We don't want to get it sick and angry."
She looked at the grendler. "That's right! What my friend just said. You should be careful about trying to eat it, because. . . Well, that's not the part you eat anyway. The part you eat is still growing and it might not be good for you."
She touched a small ear just forming along the stalk, but the grendler paid her no attention and began to scurry about from stalk to stalk, grabbing and sniffing the leaves. It took a bite out of one, then another, and another.
Bess looked at John. "I think he likes it. Umm. . . What do you think we can trade it for?"
Danziger took a few steps closer, frowning but looking surprised as the grendler munched on the leaves from the corn stalks. He stopped beside Bess. "As long as it leaves the corn alone, taking a few leaves won't be so bad."
"But what to trade for?"
As if understanding, the grendler began it's growling way of communication and produced a metal object from somewhere within it's layers of clothing and draped materials on it's body.
"That's a signal booster!" Danziger said.
"Okay," Bess said quickly and pointed to the object. "That's good! We'll trade you leaves for more things like that."
"Electronics, like the stuff we use in our camp. Anything like that."
"Yes," she agreed. "Anything made of metal, like this." She rapped her knuckles against the roll bar of the closest ATV. "We'll take anything like that in trade for leaves." She frowned suddenly. "Are they called leaves or fronds?"
"The grendler doesn't care. It's food to him. A new kind of food."
"Okay. Look. We come here every morning to check the garden." She motioned toward the sun. "Only in the mornings before the sun is way up. If you want to trade, come here then and we'll look at what you have to offer. All right?"
The grendler growled and rumbled something in reply and turned back to the corn stalks.
"Hold on, hold on!" Bess said. "Danziger, do you have a knife?"
"Well, yeah. . ."
"Good! Give it to me. I'll cut off some leaves and make a bundle and we'll give it to him for that signal thing. Of course it might not work, you know. He probably tore it out of a crashed prisoner transport or something."
Danziger dug out a pocket knife and gave it to her. "Doesn't matter. It has parts that might still be good."
Bess moved quickly from plant to plant, cutting off leaves until she had a small bundle. "Okay," she said to the grendler. "We can't trade a lot of leaves because the plant needs them to grow, but we can trade a little bit at a time. After the corn, these things, are bigger we can give you more. Taking too many now will make the plant die and then neither of us will have anything we want, will we?"
The grendler eagerly reached for the bundle of leaves, but Bess was hit with a wave of inspiration. She drew it back. "Oh, no. Show us what else you have first."
In the end, they decided the signal booster, an intact looking power pack and a broken wing assemblage from a small hovercraft was worth two bundles of leaves.
After the grendler disappeared over the eastern hilltop above the spring, Bess and John looked at one another and started to laugh. After a moment they could barely stand up under their own power.
Danziger regained control of himself and sat on an ATV tire. "That was quick thinking, Bess. I was imagining us running back to camp while it ransacked the tent and the vehicles."
"Well, you noticed it seemed curious about the garden. It was easy to go from there." She wiped her face and sank to the ground in from of him. "Oh, boy, that was fun!"
They started to laugh again.
"We might have been killed and we're laughing like idiots," Danziger said.
Bess nodded. "Julia said it was a common reaction after a fright."
He stood and reached out a hand and pulled her to her feet. "And speaking of Julia, let's get out of here. We better get back to camp before anyone starts looking for us."
In the days that followed, Bess was never really sure why what happened next did. John was pulling her to her feet, and as she rose, she raised her other arm and grabbed his shoulder for support. How that simple gesture turned into a kiss and a strong, warm embrace between the two of them, was something she wondered about for days afterward.
At the time, it took a few seconds to realize what was happening, and then draw away quickly in astonishment. Neither knew what to say, and after a few false starts, they each turned to a vehicle, climbed inside and drove away.
Bess was back at the main camp for several minutes before Danziger roared in from a different direction. She smiled ruefully to herself and gathered the tools she would be using that day. At least he was still thinking. She had driven straight back to camp, still so surprised by the kiss, she didn't even remember crossing the distance.
After the evening meal, Bess finally went to speak to Danziger. He was working alone, putting away the lasers and locking down the other equipment they used that day.
"Hey," she ventured, looking at him to see if he was still feeling as puzzled and slightly embarrassed as she was. With Danziger one could never tell, really. "I told the kids about the grendler." She shrugged. "You know. They go up there, too."
He nodded. "Good idea. I was thinking about it. You can get out of camp every morning easier than I can. You should have one or both of them go to the valley with you just to be sure. I'll come when I can, but. . . Well, it would be noticed if I started going somewhere early every day." He finished what he was doing and went on as he worked, "I'm going down the beach tomorrow to set-up gear relays. I'll tell Devon I saw grendlers. It'll be an excuse to take one or both of the kids and an ATV with you when you go running in the mornings."
"Great! That'll work. Thanks." She smiled and swung around to march away. She was glad he wasn't going to let that little bobble up there in the valley come between them. It wasn't as if they were interested in each other, after all. Good. Those things happened when people faced danger together, and she was glad he could see that.
It wasn't until she began getting ready for bed, she began to wonder why Danziger found it so easy to put the whole matter behind him. Why was it so easy for him to forget about it?
No, she thought.
It isn't me. It's his problem.Still, it irked her for a long time that he was so easily past the incident.
A storm had begun brewing offshore three weeks after Bess and John met the grendler in the valley. The group had been able to see it taking shape far out on the horizon over a period of two terrian days. At first it looked as if it was a storm that would pass them by and continue northward to eventually dissipate over the ocean.
When it began to swing landward, it was obvious the worst of it would hit well to the north along the coast, but the group had decided to listen to Bess and they prepared for the first real storm they would encounter on G889.
The winds had blown, the ocean had swamped the beaches and pounded the bluffs, trees had bent in the wind, and one of the ATVs had been rolled a hundred meters away from camp. A few tents were damaged and many of the plants in the fields had been broken. The crew had taken shelter in a small cave system Uly and True had found in the early days of the encampment.
When they emerged afterward, the buildings had been slightly damaged, but the walls were still standing. The damage was nowhere near what the Advance group had been expecting after listening to Bess' warnings. It was easy for them to quickly become complacent about the disaster-that-wasn't. To make matters worse, Morgan, her most trusted ally, had swung completely to the camp believing the worst had come and they had survived. Scouts to the area hit by the brunt of the storm showed worse damage, but it was decided to be nothing that would have hurt their existence had it passed over them. Bess hadn't even tried to explain the difference between the plant and tree abundant land the settlement was on and the open area the center of the storm had ravaged. No one was listening.
Only Danziger seemed to notice with any concern the size and the type of flotsam and driftwood that washed up on the beaches for days after the storm. Though they never talked about it, she could see he was thinking about it and wondering.
Everything returned to normal, but it was a normal to which Bess was feeling a stranger.
The days passed and the items the grendler brought to the valley began to pile up even though the creature did not come every day, and Danziger had to make the time to visit the valley and sort through it all and glean the usable items from the junk. He made certain True was with him whenever he came. Bess wasn't sure what to make of this. She continued to do the trading and she continued to find peace within herself by coming to the valley as often as she could.
Autumn, Looking Ahead. . .Bess drank the last mouthful of water and washed the empty cup in the disinfectant solution for dishes and utensils. Wash, rinse, dry. She'd done it so many times before she barely noticed, anymore. Instead of joining the group gathering around the fire outside, Bess decided to have a shower and turn in early tonight. She had to get up early the next morning and bring some of her vegetables to the caves before anyone else got up and she was needed for work.
Coming out of the bathhouse later, she looked around the camp. It was dark now, the sun was gone so even the ocean was dark and lost to sight. There were lights glowing in the tents and in the windows of the one finished barracks where some of the group were living. Her own tent was dark. Though she and Morgan still shared their living quarters, they were rarely there at the same time. Neither seemed to want to be the one to acknowledge there was anything wrong between them.
Presently, Morgan was inside the mess tent, having taken over one of the tables to spread out his equipment and gear chips so he could continue getting his personal reports in order. With the long hours spent in construction, he was using his spare time to do personal business. Under any other circumstances, she would have chided him for neglecting his rest and order him to come to the tent with her and retire for the night. Just a few shorts months ago, he would have protested halfheartedly and let her coax him to bed.
As Bess walked slowly toward the tent she decided it was time for her to move into one of the rooms in the barracks. Tomorrow after work on the other buildings was stopped for the day, she would ask Diane Denner to give her a hand moving her few belongings.
At the tent, she didn't bother turning on a light, just climbed onto the bed. A folded length of light material was at her feet. She spread it over herself and lay down. The murmur of voices at the fire blended with the low crash of the ocean on the beach and she was asleep long before she expected to be.
The next morning Bess left the camp alone, and reached the top of the hill overlooking the valley and stopped the vehicle.
Well, one good thing came out of the whole matter, she thought. My
tomatoes and corn are better than anything the colony gardens are producing. And my lettuce? Beats theirs hands down. She heard an engine coming through the woods behind her, and stopping to her right. "I hope you two aren't neglecting chores to come out here," she said tiredly, assuming True and Uly, or one of them, had followed her.
"I'm neglecting every chore I've got," Danziger answered from the dunerail. "Thought you might need some help sneaking your stuff into camp. I'm supposed to be out looking for rock to quarry,
but I've already found a couple of good sites weeks ago. I can load up the rail with your crops and put it in the caves with the other stuff. Devon's got everyone learning to use the lasers so no one will be going near the caves. I can make as many trips as necessary."
Bess' smile was brilliant.
The zero unit had been busy, as always. Anything that could be used as a container for vegetables was filled and neatly lined up inside the tent. The zero itself was in shutdown and waiting for the sun to climb over the hills so it could recharge. Danziger looked through the latest offerings from the grendler.
"Hmm. I can melt most of this down now we got a working smelter from the last grendler cache we found down south."
Bess looked at him reproachfully. "I really don't think you ought to go raiding anymore grendler caves, Danziger. You might offend our partner. We don't need a pack of screaming grendlers coming in here and taking all of my corn one day."
He shrugged. "I know, but I can't get the point across to the others without telling them about the gardens."
"Oh. Well, I'm going to take three of these back with me and just say I stopped at the fields after my run and picked some food for meals this week. My turn to do meals. I can get away with that the rest of the week."
Danziger nodded.
She said, "I, uh, had an idea the other day, but I thought I?d better ask you what you think before I do anything about it."
Danziger laughed lightly. "You've been doing fine here, Bess. Considering all of the things the grendler has brought to trade, you've been picking the right stuff to keep. The junk pile could be a whole lot bigger than that little handful of stuff. Got sound judgement."
She smiled and shrugged a shoulder. "Well, this is something else. We have a lot of stuff here. I thought maybe the grendler might be able to take some of the harvest and trade it with other humans on the planet. Only thing is, it would alert the people to someone being here who has Earth seeds and stuff. It would be announcing our existence to the world."
"That it would," John agreed, pausing to scratch behind his ear. "Let's think about it a while. There might be a solution."
"I hope so. I've also been thinking about the Elder's people and the people at the second biodome back at our winter camp. If we could send them some of our crops they could start saving seeds for next year."
Danziger sat on the corner of one of the two small tables in the tent. "That would be the best way to go about it. Both of those groups know we're here, and neither is too interested in seeking us, or anyone else, out for any reason. They might appreciate second hand contact through the grendlers, though."
Bess crossed her arms at her waist and began to pace. "The problem would be getting it to them. Our grendler would have to deal with other grendlers and before we know it, we might be making trades with a lot more than just one."
"Not necessarily. I don't know much about grendlers, but I'd be willing to bet the one we're dealing with knows where all the spider tunnels are in this part of the country and exactly where they go." John raised a hand and gestured as he went on. "I've been thinking about that, myself. Maybe we can eventually trade for information on where the nearest tunnel is and where it goes. Never know when one might come in handy."
Bess stopped pacing and looked at him with her head tilted a little to one side. "And here I was thinking you were going to blow up and start hollering about trusting our grendler with a bigger role in the trading set-up. Where is the Danziger who told me, the first time I brought him here, he didn't like keeping this a secret from the others? Do the words
we're a team ring a bell?"
"Uh," he ran a hand through his hair and seemed at a loss for words.
Bess closed the distance between them in less than a second. This time she had to doubts where the kiss and accompanying hug originated.
A short time later, Bess watched the dunerail disappear around the fields. As irritable and downright ornery as John Danziger could be most of the time, he had a very sweet side to him, too. She climbed into the ATV and followed after him.
Bess had no choice but to return to camp after taking part of her small load of produce to the cool caves where the yield from the main field was being stored. Throughout the day as she learned to cut stone blocks and plane wood with the lasers, she kept watch for Danziger's return. The zero would do the picking and packing while John did the transporting. It was a private amusement to think of them as employees of her agricultural consortium. She hoped he did know of sites to quarry more rock for the building as he claimed he had. She didn't want him getting in trouble with Devon on her account. Not now.
At midday when he reported in and gave the locations of the rock outcroppings, she had already asked Denner to help her move from the tent into a room in the barracks, and with that settled, the rest of the day flew past.
Finally released from their chores that evening, True and Uly raced across the dusty common area forming between the circle of barracks foundations and made a beeline for the storage tent where they had hidden the materials for a secret project they'd been working on. One of Yale's recent lessons had included showing them holos of things called kites that children on old Earth had played with sometimes. By accident they'd discovered some of the water soaked driftwood on the beach dried without shrinking and when you cut away long strips of it, the strips were light as a feather. Just the kind of wood Yale had mentioned was needed to built a kite light enough to rise in the air. It never occurred to either child the idea might have been planted by Yale and not an original inspiration of their own.
Racing in the lead, True neared the open flap of the tent and all of a sudden skidded to a halt on the trampled grass on front of it.
She had to be seeing things. That couldn't be her dad in there with Bess Martin. They definitely couldn't be kissing each other.
Uly was approaching fast. True looked away and turned. She ran toward Uly and caught him by the shoulders as he slowed to avoid a collision. "We have to wait a while before we get our stuff."
"Why?" the boy asked.
"You're not going to believe this. I just saw the weirdest thing."
"What?"
"You're not going to believe it. Bess Martin is kissing my dad."
Uly's eyes widened. "Whoa!" He took a step in the direction of the tent.
"No!" True said and stopped him. "This was a major kiss."
"Whoa. . . How major?"
"Really, really major. Like when you bump your head and see stars."
"Whoa. . ."
"Stop saying that!"
"Well. . . When can we get our stuff?"
True bit her lip. She wanted to finish that kite and see if it would fly. "Come on, but let's be really noisy." She started to trot toward the tent and called over her shoulder. "I'll get to the tent before you will!"
Uly started after her. "No, you won't!"
If there was a chance to see this major kiss before it stopped he wasn't going to miss it.
"Hey!" True yelled as he streaked past her. She slowed to a walk. Oh well, if that didn't announce their arrival nothing would. She composed her face and prepared to be surprised to see her father and Bess pretending to be putting their tools away. She had a feeling she would be doing that a lot for a while.
There were no guarantees this would be a secret for long.
The End
