Helium3 - 1 Crater (23 page)

“We're gonna be stuck here forever,” Irish said. “And when the long shadow arrives with us still sleeping in our trucks, if a heater fails, we wake up a big, pink slab of ice.”

“You see?” Petro said. “This whole convoy could fall apart any minute.”

Crater waited out an hour with gloomy Petro and Irish, feeling more than a little gloomy himself, then looked at the time and said, “Got to go check on the gillie.” He ran to the shop, and Clara waved him inside. “The bath did some good, I think,” she said and unwrapped the gillie. It immediately got up and crawled into its holster. It still looked limp. “Let me keep it overnight,” Clara said. “I'll give it a fresh bath every few hours. No extra charge. I've gotten attached to the little thing.”

Crater thanked Clara, used the convoy number to pay her, and walked back to the main corridor. He tossed up a prayer to the Big Miner on behalf of the gillie, even though it was just a biological machine.

Crater next decided to seek out Maria. He wanted to talk to her, to see if this surprising turn-around on how she felt about him was real or a dream. Along the way, he encountered a group of women and children who were wearing red and black robes that draped their bodies from their necks to their ankles. After a second look, Crater realized they were Umlaps. The facial features of the women and children were softer than the men's harsh angularities and they seemed a bit taller than their men, but Umlaps they were for certain. The children appeared to all be girls, none more than eight years old by Crater's estimate, huddled within the knot of women and looking out with wide, frightened eyes.

The Umlap women had big hands, short legs, no ears, and long arms, physical characteristics expected of Umlaps, but Crater was struck by how normal the children looked, if normal was the right word to use. Their limbs were the proper ratios, and their ears, the ones he could see, seemed to be just like any other attached to a human child.

The Umlaps were peering into various shops, then consulting with each other before wandering on to the next shop, buying nothing. Finally, the women sat down on some mooncrete benches in the center of the tube, the children sitting in their laps or hanging on to their shoulders, and just stared at people as they went past. Crater wondered what they were doing at Aristillus, then supposed that was as far as they had gotten after running away from Baikal.

Petro came strolling along and stopped beside Crater.

“What pathetic creatures,” he said. “I meant to tell you they were here, seeing as how you did away with their king. As a potential king myself, I think perhaps you went a bit too far.”

“I didn't do away with their king. Bad Haircut did that.

Why are they here?”

“The truck they drove from Baikal broke down about a mile away. They abandoned it and walked here.”

“They look scared.”

“They should be,” a woman shopkeeper said, stepping outside her store. “From what I've heard, they've had a lifetime of being beaten and generally abused by their men. Now they're getting another fresh dose of abuse. Mayor Trakk has slapped a fine on them for every day they're here. He expects their men to pay for their return.”

Petro said to the shopkeeper, “My brother killed the Umlap king, so I imagine they won't be paying anything.”

“I did no such thing,” Crater said. “I tried to help the king.”

“And where is he now?”

“Dead.”

“I rest my case.”

The shopkeeper clucked her tongue, shook her head at the strange outlanders who'd washed up in her hometown, and went back inside her shop.

Crater watched the Umlap women and children and wished there was something he could do to ease their burden. After a while, he realized some of the women were begging from passersby, all of whom were hurrying past without even glancing their way. “They're hungry,” Crater said, alarmed.

Petro shrugged. “Just ignore them, Crater. They're not your problem.”

The way Crater saw it, they were as much his problem as anyone else's. He walked down the corridor until he reached a shop with a sign that said Meal In A Box. He checked with its manager, then went back to where the Umlaps were sitting.

He didn't quite know what to say, but one of the women gave him a hard look. “Look, girls,” she said in Umlap, “this one likes to stare at our misery.”

“We should grab him for ransom,” another of the women said. “Perhaps someone would feed us if we let him go.”

“My name is Crater,” Crater said in Umlap to the first woman who had spoken.

She was taller than the rest, her robe slightly cleaner, and she wore a cap on her head that was black with red piping like Wise Beyond Belief's cap. “How do you know Umlap?” she demanded.

“There are Umlap miners in Moontown, my home. They taught me and I am a quick study. Also, I was recently in Baikal.”

“Were you?” Her eyes narrowed. “We escaped from those evil men there who chained us to our beds at night and whipped us when it suited them, which was most of the time.”

“I'm very sorry to hear that,” Crater said. He hesitated, then said, “King Wise Beyond Belief and his assistant, Hit Your Face, are dead. So is Bad Haircut.”

This news caused nearly all the women to frown, which meant, of course, they were happy. But then, perhaps upon reflection, they began to smile, and tears leaked slowly down their faces, for even the backward Umlap expressions couldn't change that physical reaction. The children, sensing something terrible had happened, started to wail.

“Why did you tell them that?” the woman with the black and red cap scolded. “Those men, as awful as they were, were Umlaps.”

“It was the truth,” Crater said.

“Do you think it so virtuous to tell someone the truth even though it will ruin what little happiness they have?”

Crater thought that over, then said, “But you would have found out eventually.”

“But not so soon. Therefore, you are responsible for their present unhappiness.” She eyed him until her anger seemed to subside. “My name is Queen No Nonsense Talker. My husband, Thinking Great Thoughts, was the king before Wise Beyond Belief killed him and took over. Thinking Great Thoughts was not a good king either. He allowed many evil things to happen.”

Crater pointed at the shop. “If you and the others are hungry, go there and get what you need. I gave them my convoy number.”

The queen pondered Crater. “And what do you get out of this sudden charity?”

“Nothing. Do you want the food?”

“Yes, of course. We've been eating out of garbage cans.”

“Then please be my guest.”

The Umlap queen grimaced and stood up, saying, “Ladies, this kind stranger, for reasons I'm not certain, is offering us and our daughters food. If we go over to that shop and get what we want, he says he's willing to pay for it.”

Actually, it was the Colonel paying through his convoy number, but Crater couldn't imagine he would mind, considering his generous spirit. The women and children headed for the shop. Crater followed them, reminded the proprietor of the convoy number, and watched while the Umlaps were handed meals in little paper boxes whereupon they retreated to the benches to eat.

Petro, who'd been watching, came over. “The Colonel is going to love paying for this,” he said, chuckling.

“Leave me alone,” Crater said.

Petro shrugged. “I've got a card game in the casino anyway.” He walked away.

Crater sat with the women and their daughters and enjoyed watching them eat. All the while, he considered their situation, and being a sequential thinker, he gradually resolved in his mind what they should do. When they were finished eating, the women tidied up the area, threw all the boxes in the trash receptacles, and the queen came over and sat in front of him, her hands on her knees, and regarded him carefully and deeply.

“Are you looking for a bride?” she asked. “I'm thirty-eight but still healthy. I have had my one girl child so would not burden you with raising another since she is already grown.”

“What do you mean you've had your one girl child?”

“Umlap women can have but one child, always daughters.

After that, we become sterile.”

“Why is that?”

“I don't know. Something in the way we were engineered.

But look there. See that young woman?”

Crater looked and saw a young Umlap woman looking back at him with hopeful eyes.

“That is my daughter. She is a normal human being, and it may be she can have more than one daughter. She might be more suitable to you for a wife than me.”

“I don't need a wife,” Crater said, then processed the other thing the Umlap queen had said. “What do you mean your daughter's a normal human being?”

The queen glanced lovingly at her daughter, then said,

“The men who made us did so by modifying our DNA while we were still in egg form. It changed us to be as we are but did not change our progeny. Perhaps you are familiar with the dinochicken that these doctors invented before us, the dinosaur made from a chicken egg? Two of the dinochickens mated, an egg was laid, but out did not come a dinochicken but a normal chicken. We are the same except, of course, we aren't dinochickens. We are humans.”

“Yet you can only have one daughter.”

“Yes,” the queen mused. “That part we do not understand.

I don't think the men who made us understood it either. There is so much more to us than DNA, or protein, or nerve endings, or anything else. There is something that is beyond matter.”

“You mean your spirit,” Crater said. “Or maybe your soul.”

“Yes,” she said and, though her expression didn't change, Crater could tell she was crying inside. Perhaps all the Umlaps were crying inside, including their poor men who were selfdestructive, because they could not find their souls within the bodies and minds constructed for them by other men. All Crater could conclude was he was glad the laboratory that had made the Umlaps had been burned down.

“You seem lost in thought,” the queen said.

Crater focused on the situation at hand. “I've been thinking over your problem. Why don't you travel to Moontown?

The Colonel has always been happy to hire Umlaps.”

“It is where we actually meant to go,” the queen admitted, “but we weren't sure of the way and ended up here.”

“You should have turned left at the dustway, not right,”

Crater said.

“The men never allowed us to study a map,” the queen answered, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She, like the other Umlap women, had thick, black, lustrous hair.

Crater looked around at the truck drivers listlessly wandering the shopping corridor or picking around the shops.

“Heel-3 trucks have an extra seat. You could ride on them to Moontown or whatever heel-3 town suits you.”

“And what payment would these drivers take?”

She had him there. The drivers were, after all, independent contractors. “They would want to get paid,” he conceded.

That was when Captain Teller showed up. He pulled Crater away from the women. “Please tell me you didn't feed them with our convoy number.”

“I fed them with our convoy number,” Crater said.

Teller's face, already pinched, pinched some more. “You are insubordinate, Crater, the worst scout I've ever had. If it wasn't for your mechanical ability, I would have fired you long ago.

The Colonel will have both our hides for this expenditure.”

“I'm sorry, sir,” Crater said, though he knew he didn't sound very convincing.

“Come to think of it,” Teller said, “the solution is simple. It will come out of your pay.”

Pay was something Crater had never asked about, was uncertain would occur, and had no clue to the amount. “That's fine, Captain,” he said.

“Why did you do it?” Teller demanded. “I am a bit of a student of human folly and think I could get a college degree just by studying you.”

“I felt sorry for these poor women. Besides, I told them the Colonel would hire them.”

Captain Teller coughed, then choked on his cough. “You did
what
?”

Crater couldn't figure out why the captain was so upset.

“There's a labor shortage at Moontown.”

The captain struggled to regain some semblance of control.

“Perhaps so, Crater. But you can't just go around promising jobs from the Colonel. You have to get permission first. Why don't you understand these things?”

“The Moontown preachers always said I should do the right thing.”

“Promising that the Colonel will hire these women is not the right thing!”

Maria arrived at that moment, got the gist of the conversation, pondered the women and their daughters, went over to have a closer look, then came back. “They are somewhat smelly,” she announced. “That is a problem that needs to be addressed.”