Reality Dysfunction — Emergence

salvageable. They passed one ruined transients’ warehouse where a stack of cargo-pods had been pulled from the gutted remains, the warped composite resembling surrealistic sculptures. Darcy watched a forlorn family prise open a badly contorted marsupium shell with deep scorch marks on the oyster-coloured casing. The infant quadruped had been roasted in its chemical sleep, reduced to a shrivelled black mummy. Darcy couldn’t even tell what species it was.

Lori had to turn away from the empty-faced colonists scrabbling at the pods’ distorted lids, shiny new ship-suits smeared with dirt and sweat. They had come to Lalonde with such high hopes, and now they were faced with utter ruin before they’d even been given a chance at a life.

This is awful,she said.

This is dangerous,darcy replied. They are numbed and shocked now, but that will soon give way to anger. Without their farmsteading gear they can’t be sent upriver, and Rexrew will be hard pushed to replace it.

It wasn’t all burnt,she said sorrowfully. The afternoon and evening of the riot there had been a steady stream of people walking past the Ward Molecular warehouse carrying pods and cartons of equipment they had looted.

They walked round harbour seven until they came to the quay where the Coogan was moored. The ageing tramp trader was in a dilapidated state, with holes in its cabin roof and a long gash in the wood up at the prow where it had struck some snag. Len Buchannan had only just managed to get out of the harbour ahead of the rioters, flinging planks from the cabin walls into the furnace hopper in his desperation.

Gail Buchannan was sitting in her usual place outside the galley doorway, coolie hat shading her sweating face, a kitchen knife almost engulfed by her huge hand. She was chopping some long vegetable root, slices falling into a pewter-coloured pan at her feet. Her eyes fastened shrewdly on Darcy and Lori as they stepped onto the decking. “You again. Len! Len, get yourself out here, we’ve got visitors. Now, Len!”

Darcy waited impassively. They had used the Buchannans as an information source in the past, occasionally asking them to pick up fleks from assets upriver. But they had proved so unreliable and cranky, Darcy hadn’t bothered with them for the last twenty months.

Len Buchannan walked forward from the little engineroom, where he’d been patching the cabin walls. He was wearing jeans and his cap, a carpenter’s suede utility belt hanging loosely round his skinny hips, with only a few tools in its hoops.

Darcy thought he looked hungover, which fitted the talk he’d heard around the port. The Coogan had hit hard times of late.

“Have you got a cargo to take upriver?” Darcy asked.

“No,” Len said sullenly.

“It’s been a difficult season for us,” Gail said. “Things aren’t like they used to be. Nobody shows any loyalty these days. Why, if it wasn’t for us virtually giving our goods away half of the settlements upriver would have starved to death. But do they show any gratitude? Ha!”

“Is the Coogan fit to be taken out?” Darcy asked, cutting through the woman’s screed. “Now? Today?”

Len pulled his cap off and scratched his head. “Suppose so. Engines are OK. I always service them regular.”

“Of course it’s in tiptop shape,” Gail told him loudly. “There’s nothing wrong with the Coogan ’s hull. It’s only because this drunken buffoon spends all his time pining away over that little bitch-brat that the cabin’s in the state it is.”

Len sighed irksomely, and leant against the galley doorframe. “Don’t start,” he said.

“I knew she was trouble,” Gail said. “I told you not to let her on board. I warned you. And after all we did for her.”

“Shut up!”

She glared at him and resumed slicing up the cream-white vegetable.

“What do you want the Coogan for?” Len asked.

“We have to get upriver, today,” Darcy said. “There’s no cargo, only us.”

Len made a play of putting his cap back on. “There’s trouble upriver.”

“I know. That’s where we want to go, the Quallheim Counties.”

“No,” Len Buchannan said. “Sorry, anywhere else in the tributary basin, but not there.”

“That’s where she came from,” Gail hissed venomously. “That’s what you’re afraid of.”

“There’s a bloody war going on up there, woman. You saw the boats with the posse leaving.”

“Ten thousand fuseodollars,” Gail said. “And don’t you two try haggling with me, that’s the only offer you’ll get, I’m starving myself as it is. I’ll take you up on my own if Lennie’s too frightened.”

If that’s starvation, I’d like to see gluttony,darcy said.

“This is my boat,” Len said. “Made with my own hands.”

“Half yours,” Gail shouted back, waving the knife at him. “Half! I have a say too, and I say Coogan is going back to the Quallheim. If you don’t like it, go and cry in her skirts if she’ll have you. Drunken old fool.”

If this is the way they carry on, they’ll kill each other before we get out of the harbour,lori said. she watched len staring at the burnt-out sections of the port, his brown weathered face lost with longing.

“All right,” he said eventually. “I’ll take you to the mouth of the Quallheim, or as near as we can get. But I’m not going anywhere near the trouble.”

“Fair enough,” Darcy said. “How long will it take us at full speed?”

“Going upriver?” Len closed his eyes, lips moving around figures. “Without stopping to trade, ten or twelve days. Mind, we’ll have to moor in the evenings, and cut logs. You’ll have to work your passage.”

“Forget that,” Darcy said. “I’ll have some firewood delivered this afternoon, enough to get us there in one go; we can store it in the forward hold instead of a cargo. And I’ll spell you at night, I don’t need much sleep. How long travelling like that?”

“A week, maybe,” Len Buchannan said. He didn’t seem terribly happy with the idea.

“That’s fine. We’ll start this afternoon.”

“We’ll take half of the money now, as a deposit,” Gail said. A Jovian Bank disk appeared from nowhere in her hand.

“You’ll get a thousand now as a deposit, plus five hundred to buy enough food and water for three weeks,” Lori said. “I’ll pay another two thousand once we leave the harbour this afternoon, two more when we get to Schuster, and the sum when we get back here.”

Gail Buchannan made a lot of indignant noise, but the sight of actual cash piling up in her disk silenced her.

“Make sure it’s decent food,” Lori told her. “Freeze dried, I’m sure you know where to get stocks of that from.”

They left the Buchannans bickering and went on to a lumber-yard to arrange for the logs to be delivered. It took an hour longer than it should have done to get their order sorted out; the only reason they got it at all was because they were regular customers. The yard was frantically busy with an order for a thousand tonnes of mayope. The laughing foreman told them a lunatic starship captain was planning to carry it to another star.

They were going to make Joshua Calvert’s deadline. Marie Skibbow couldn’t keep the thought out of her mind. It was mid-afternoon, and she was sitting up at the bar in the nearly deserted Crashed Dumper having a celebratory drink. What she really felt like doing was singing and dancing, it was a wonderful experience. All the