Reality Dysfunction - Emergence

just gets automatically ignored, but we know you’ll give us a fair hearing, Mr Molvi.”

Which was so true. It was his job to arbitrate, and like it or not, the Ivets were part of Aberdale. He must appear strictly impartial.

“We want to organize ourselves,” Quinn had said earnestly. “Right now you have all eighteen of us working for you each day, but you have to feed us and let us live in the hall. It’s not the best arrangement, because we just sweat our arses off for you and don’t get anything out of it for ourselves, so we don’t give a hundred per cent, that’s only human nature. None of us asked to come to Aberdale, but we’re here now, and we want to make the most of it. We thought that if we had a rota so that thirteen of us are available as a general work team each day, then the remaining five could use the time to build something for ourselves, something to give us a bit of pride. We want to have our own cabin; and we could trap and grow our own food. That way you don’t have to support us, and you get a far more enthusiastic work team to help put up your cabins and fell the trees.”

“I don’t know,” Rai had said, although he could see the logic behind the idea. It was just Quinn he was unsettled over; he had encountered waster kids back in the arcology often enough, and Quinn’s sinewy frame and assertive mannerisms brought the memories back. But he didn’t want to appear prejudicial, and the lad was making an honest appeal which might well be beneficial to the whole community.

“We could try it for three weeks,” Quinn suggested. “What have you got to lose? It’s only Powel Manani who could say no to you.”

“Mr Manani is here to help us,” Rai answered stiffly. “If this arrangement is what the town council wants, then he must see that it is implemented.”

Powel Manani had indeed objected, which Rai thought was a challenge to his authority and that of the council. In a session to which Powel Manani was not invited, the council decided that they would give the Ivets a trial period to see if they could become self-sufficient.

Now the Ivets had built themselves a long (and very well constructed, Rai grudgingly conceded) A-frame building on the eastern side of the clearing where they all lived. They caught a huge number of mousecrabs in their creels, which they traded for other types of food among the other villagers. They had their own chicken run and vegetable allotments (villagers had chipped in with three chicks and a few seeds from their own stocks). They joined the hunting parties, even being trusted to carry power weapons, although those did have to be handed back at the end of the day. And the daily work team were enthusiastic in the tasks they were given. There was also some kind of still producing a rough drink, which Rai didn’t strictly approve of, but could hardly object to now.

It all added up to a lot of credit in Rai Molvi’s favour for pushing the idea so hard. And it wouldn’t be long before the time was right for Aberdale to think about formally electing a mayor. After that, there was the county itself to consider. Schuster town was hardly flourishing; several of its inhabitants had already asked if they could move to Aberdale. Who knew what a positive, forthright man could aspire to out here where this world’s history was being carved?

Rai Molvi came to the end of the jetty flushed with a strong sense of contentment. Which was why he was only slightly put out by a close-up view of the Coogan. The boat was twenty metres long, a bizarre combination of raft and catamaran. Flotation came from a pair of big hollowed-out trunks of some fibrous red wood, and a deck of badly planed planks had been laid out above them, supporting a palm-thatched cabin which ran virtually the whole length. The aft section was an engine house, with a small ancient thermal- exchange furnace, and a couple of time-expired electric motors used by the McBoeings in their flap actuators which the captain had salvaged from the spaceport. Forward of that was a raised wheel-house, with a roof made entirely of solar panels, then came the galley and bunk cabin. The rest of the cabin was given over to cargo.

The Coogan ’s captain was Len Buchannan, a wire-thin man in his mid-fifties, dressed in a pair of worn, faded shorts and a tight-fitting blue cap. Rai suspected he had little geneering; the hair peeking out from his cap was tightly curled and pale grey, dark brown skin showed stringy muscles stretched taut and slightly swollen joints, several teeth had rotted away.

He stood in front of the wheel-house and welcomed Rai on board.

“I need a few supplies,” Rai said.

“I ain’t interested in barter,” he said straight away, cheeks puffing out for emphasis. “Not unless it’s powered equipment you’re offering. I’ve had my fill of pickled vegetables and fruit preserves and cured hides. And don’t even think about saying fish. They’re coming out my ears. I can’t sell anything like that downriver. Nobody’s interested.”

Rai fished a roll of plastic Lalonde francs out of his pocket. Buchannan was the third trader captain to appear at Aberdale recently. All of them wanted cash for their goods, and none had bought much of Aberdale’s produce in return. “I understand. I’m looking for cloth. Cotton mainly, but I’ll take denim or canvas.”

“Cost you a lot of francs. You got anything harder?”

“I might have,” Rai said, with a grey inevitability. Didn’t anybody use Lalonde francs? “Let’s see what you’ve got first.”

Gail Buchannan was sitting in the wheel-house, wearing a coolie hat and a shapeless khaki dress. An obese fifty-year-old with long, straggly dark hair, her legs were like water-filled sacks of skin; when she walked it was with a painful waddle. Most of her life was spent sitting on the Coogan ’s deck watching the world go by. She looked up from the clothes she was sewing to give Rai a friendly nod. “Cloth you wanted, is it, lovie?”

“That’s right.”

“Plenty of cloth, we’ve got. All woven in Durringham. Dyed, too. Won’t find better anywhere.”

“I’m sure.”

“No patterns yet. But that’ll come.”

“Yes.”

“Does your wife know how to sew, then?”

“I . . . Yes, I suppose so.” Rai hadn’t thought about it. Arcology synthetics came perfectly tailored; load your size into the commercial circuit and they arrived within six hours. If they started to wear, throw them into the recycler. Waster kids dressed in patched and frayed garments, but not decent people.

“If she doesn’t, you send her to me.”

“Thank you.”

“Knitting too. None of the women that come here know how to knit. I give lessons. Best lessons east of Durringham. Know why, lovie?”

“No,” Rai said helplessly.

“Because they’re the only ones.” Gail Buchannan slapped her leg and laughed, rolls of flesh quivering.

Rai gave her a sickly smile and fled into the cargo hold, wondering how many times that joke had been cracked over the years.

Len Buchannan had everything a farmstead could ever possibly want stacked up on his long shelves. Rai Molvi shuffled down the tiny aisle, staring round in awe and envy. There were power tools still in their boxes, solar cells (half of Rai’s had been stolen back in Durringham), fridges, microwaves, cryostats full of frozen animal sperm, MF album flek-players, laser rifles, nanonic medical packages, drugs, and bottle after bottle of liquor. The Lalonde-made products were equally impressive: nails, pots, pans, glass (Rai saw the panes and groaned, what he wouldn’t give for a window of glass), drinking glasses, boots, nets, seeds, cakes of dried meat, flour, rice, saws, hammers, and bale after bale of cloth.

“What kind of things would you take downriver?” Rai asked as Len unrolled some of the cotton for him.

Len pulled his cap off, and scratched his largely bald head. “Truth to tell, not much. What you produce up here, food and the like. People need it. But it’s the transport costs, see? I couldn’t take fruit more than a hundred kilometres and make a profit.”

“Small and valuable then?”

“Yes, that’s your best bet.”

“Meat?”

“Could do. There’s some villages not doing as well as you. They want the food, but how are they going to pay for it? If they spend all their money buying food, it’s going to run out fast, then they won’t be able to buy in new stocks of what they really need like seed and animals. I seen that happen before. Bad business.”

“Oh?”

“The Arklow Counties, a tributary over in the northern territory. All the villages failed about six or seven