leaning out, he smacked the water loudly with the blade: Slap! ... slap, slap ... Slap!
He waited.
The flat head of an amphibian broke water near the side; it studied Jimmie with bright, merry eyes. «Hello,» said Jimmie.
It answered in its own language. Jimmie replied in the same tongue, stretching his mouth to reproduce the uncouth clucking syllables. The native listened, then slid underwater again.
He – or, more probably, she – was back in a few minutes, another with her. «Thigarek?» the newcomer said hopefully.
«Thigarek when we get there, old girl,» Jimmie temporized. «Here ... climb aboard.» He held out a hand, which the native accepted and wriggled gracefully inboard. It perched its unhuman, yet oddly pleasing little figure on the rail near the driver's seat. Jimmie got the car underway.
How long they were guided by their little pilot Wingate did not know, as the timepiece on the control panel was out of order, but his stomach informed him that it was too long. He rummaged through the cabin and dug out an iron ration which he shared with Satchel and Jimmie. He offered some to the native, but she smelled at it and drew her head away.
Shortly after that there was a sharp hissing noise and a column of steam rose up ten yards ahead of them. Jimmie halted the crock at once. «Cease firing!» he called out. «It's just us chickens.»
«Who are you?» came a disembodied voice.
«Fellow travelers.»
«Climb out where we can see you.»
«Okay.»
The native poked Jimmie in the ribs. «Thigarek,» she stated positively.
«Huh? Oh, sure.» He parceled out trade tobacco until she acknowledged the total, then added one more package for good will. She withdrew a piece of string from her left cheek pouch, tied up her pay, and slid over the side. They saw her swimming away, her prize carried high out of the water.
«Hurry up and show yourself!»
«Coming!» They climbed out into waist-deep water and advanced holding their hands overhead. A squad of four broke cover and looked them over, their weapons lowered but ready. The leader searched their harness pouches and sent one of his men on to look over the crocodile.
«You keep a close watch,» remarked Wingate.
The leader glanced at him. «Yes,» he said, «and no. The little people told us you were coming. They're worth all the watch dogs that were ever littered.»
They got underway again with one of the scouting party driving. Their captors were not unfriendly but not disposed to talk. «Wait till you see the Governor,» they said.
Their destination turned out to be a wide stretch of moderately high ground. Wingate was amazed at the number of buildings and the numerous population. «How in the world can they keep a place like this a secret?» he asked Jimmie.
«If the state of Texas were covered with fog and had only the population of Waukegan, Illinois, you could hide quite a lot of things.»
«But wouldn't it show on a map?»
«How well mapped do you think Venus is? Don't be a dope.»
On the basis of the few words he had had with Jimmie beforehand Wingate had expected no more than a camp where fugitive clients lurked in the bush while squeezing a precarious living from the country. What he found was a culture and a government. True, it was a rough frontier culture and a simple government with few laws and an unwritten constitution, but a framework of customs was in actual operation and its gross offenders were punished – with no higher degree of injustice than one finds anywhere.
It surprised Humphrey Wingate that fugitive slaves, the scum of Earth, were able to develop an integrated society. It had surprised his ancestors that the transported criminals of Botany Bay should develop a high civilization in Australia. Not that Wingate found the phenomenon of Botany Bay surprising – that was history, and history is never surprising – after it happens.
The success of the colony was more credible to Wingate when he came to know more of the character of the Governor, who was also generalissimo, and administrator of the low and middle justice. (High justice was voted on by the whole community, a procedure that Wingate considered outrageously sloppy, but which seemed to satisfy the community.) As magistrate the Governor handed out decisions with a casual contempt for rules or evidence and legal theory that reminded Wingate of stories he had heard of the apocryphal Old Judge Bean, «The Law West of Pecos,» but again the people seemed to like it.
The great shortage of women in the community (men outnumbered them three to one) caused incidents which more than anything else required the decisions of the Governor. Here, Wingate was forced to admit, was a situation in which traditional custom would have been nothing but a source of trouble; he admired the shrewd common sense and understanding of human nature with which the Governor sorted out conflicting strong human passions and suggested
The Governor held office by election and was advised by an elected council. It was Wingate's private opinion that the Governor would have risen to the top in any society. The man had boundless energy, great gusto for living, a ready thunderous laugh – and the courage and capacity for making decisions. He was a «natural.»
The three runaways were given a couple of weeks in which to get their bearings and find some job in which they could make themselves useful and self-supporting. Jimmie stayed with his crock, now confiscated for the community, but which still required a driver. There were other crockers available who probably would have liked the job, but there was tacit consent that the man who brought it in should drive it, if he wished. Satchel found a billet in the fields, doing much the same work he had done for Van Huysen. He told Wingate that he was actually having to work harder; nevertheless he liked it better because the conditions were, as he put it, «looser.»
Wingate detested the idea of going back to agricultural work. He had no rational excuse, it was simply that he hated it. His radio experience at last stood him in good stead. The community had a jury-rigged, low-power radio on which a constant listening watch was kept, but which was rarely used for transmission, because of the danger of detection. Earlier runaway slave camps had been wiped out by the company police through careless use of radio. Nowadays they hardly dared use it, except in extreme emergency.
But they needed radio. The grapevine telegraph maintained through the somewhat slap-happy help of the little people enabled them to keep some contact with the other fugitive communities with which they were loosely confederated, but it was not really fast, and any but the simplest of messages were distorted out of recognition.
Wingate was assigned to the community radio when it was discovered that he had appropriate technical knowledge. The previous operator had been lost in the bush. His opposite number was a pleasant old codger, known as Doc, who could listen for signals but who knew nothing of upkeep and repair.
Wingate threw himself into the job of overhauling the antiquated installation. The problems presented by lack of equipment, the necessity for «making do,» gave him a degree of happiness he had not known since he was a boy, but he was not aware of it.
He was intrigued by the problem of safety in radio communication. An idea, derived from some account of the pioneer days in radio, gave him a lead. His installation, like all others, communicated by frequency modulation. Somewhere he had seen a diagram for a totally obsolete type of transmitter, an amplitude modulator. He did not have much to go on, but he worked out a circuit which he believed would oscillate in that fashion and which could be hooked up from the gear at hand.
He asked the Governor for permission to attempt to build it. «Why not? Why not?» the Governor roared at him. «I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about, son, but if you think you can build a radio that the company can't detect, go right ahead. You don't have to ask me; it's your pidgin.»
«I'll have to put the station out of commission for sending.»
«Why not?»
The problem had more knots in it than he had thought. But he labored at it with the clumsy but willing assistance of Doc. His first hookup failed; his forty-third attempt five weeks later worked. Doc, stationed some miles out in the bush, reported himself able to hear the broadcast via a small receiver constructed for the purpose,
