The USE encampment, the FAITH enclave, and the Spits were the richest in terms of food reserves, but they had made it clear that they weren’t about to volunteer anything to help out. The Spits, in particular, were trying to stretch their resources out for as long as they could. Their annual surpluses were swiftly being whittled away. They would be a have-not within a few years.
Three hours of negotiating, pleading, and threatening had accomplished zero. They knew I wasn’t about to abandon them, so they were willing to call all my bluffs.
In disgust, I finally cut off the video connection without so much as an over-and-out.
Homer looked at me from his video window. He’d been following the whole thing. “Damn, number two, this is kind of a rock-and-a-hard-place situation.”
I nodded glumly. For the moment, at least, I was out of ideas.
“It’s going to get worse,” Homer added. “The climate isn’t improving. A lot of groups are only surviving because of reserves of some kind. They’re not producing enough food to get by.”
“Thanks, Homer. I needed that encouragement.”
Homer shrugged. To be fair, he probably wasn’t trying to bait me.
“What we need, Riker, is to go into the farming business or something.”
“We’ve been over that, Homer. We actually could establish farms in the former tropics, but they’d be good for maybe twenty years maximum. And we’d have to build the infrastructure. All the existing farming infrastructure is in the formerly temperate zones.”
Homer stared into space, rubbing his chin. “I keep coming back to space stations. Something itching at me…”
I opened my mouth to object, and Homer held up a hand to forestall me. “I know, Riker. Too complex, not enough population density in a space station to make it worthwhile, too much risk. I just think we’re looking at it wrong.”
I gave a half-shrug and started to respond when Homer yelled, “Crap!” and froze.
I pictured Homer getting hit by a missile and had a moment of panic, but he came back right away.
“Arthur’s dead.” Homer looked as angry as Homer ever did. “I just got the telemetry from the drones up Saturn way. He was working some wreckage when there was a nuclear detonation. I’m getting reports from drones farther away from it.” Homer sighed. “Booby trap. No way to tell who set it up. I told him, several times, to watch for those. He got careless.”
“Did he save a backup anywhere?” Even as I said it, I knew the answer. Making a backup and keeping it on board was easy, but pretty useless in a case like this. And we didn’t have the space to save each other’s backups. I had a TODO item to build some storage into the Sol space station for just this purpose. And, like 99% of my TODOs, it was filed under “Someday.”
I took a moment to mourn for Arthur. Downer or not, he was one of us. Homer was looking at me expectantly, and I realized I was having trouble focusing. With an effort, I brought myself back on track.
“Okay Homer, get the drones to recover what they can, and I’ll go talk to the colonel. Looks like we’re going to need to change the schedule again. We can’t do without a fourth Bob. And I think we’d better build that storage matrix.”
“Um, there’s an alternative,” Homer said. “We’ve got the printers for my Earth-scavenging ops. I wouldn’t say they’re exactly idle, but at least Colonel Butterworth isn’t leaning over them and steaming them with his breath.”
I laughed at the unexpected imagery. And Homer was right. I nodded an acknowledgement to him, and forwarded to Bill an In Memorium entry about Arthur, for the archives. As soon as Charles was back in Earth orbit, we would have a wake.
Bob – May 2166 – Delta Eridani
It took almost a month to get ready. The trek to the best village site would be long and arduous. From discussion with Moses, it seemed that it was one of the first villages to be abandoned, and unfortunately it was the one with the best supply of flint.
Moses wasn’t clear on why it hadn’t been better defended. He apparently had been a young cub at the time, and most of his information from that era was second-hand. He’d been one of the last Deltans to be trained to knap flint before they were forced to leave.
In any case, Marvin had surveyed the route that they would have to take. It would not be easy or quick. A mountainous spine ran down the center of this continent, and there were only a couple of passes that were low enough to be useful. During that part of the trek, there would be no local food unless the tribe got very lucky.
I didn’t know if the Deltans had lost the techniques for food preservation or if they’d never developed them. Before they could leave, I had to teach them how to preserve meat. The Deltans understood the benefit right away and took to it with enthusiasm.
The Deltans worked to build up a larder for the journey. Once the decision had been made, everyone got on board, and with the immediate gift of knowledge that I’d brought, they began to trust that I was steering them in a good direction.
Gorilloids were spotted on a number of occasions, hanging around the edge of the Deltan territory. They might have been hoping for targets of opportunity, but they seemed to have had the stuffing knocked out of them in our last encounter. They didn’t challenge any of the Deltan hunting parties. Of course, the sight of an occasional drone floating about might have had a little something to do with that, as well. I was quite happy to put the fear of bawbe into them.
While I waited for the Deltans to finish their preparations, Marvin and I made sure we built some more busters. They were hardly an ideal weapon—about equivalent to fishing with dynamite—but they were better than nothing. Besides, they made up for their lack of precision with an abundance of theatrics.
We also faced a breeding issue. Deltans, it turned out, had an annual breeding cycle, and a large number of mothers-to-be were coming up on their due date. The Deltans were rightly reluctant to move before the latest generation arrived.
Archimedes’ stock continued to soar with the other juveniles. He was, for all intents and purposes, now a member of the tribal council, something that even Arnold couldn’t claim. I also noted in passing that Archimedes was now showing a lot of signs of Deltan puberty. Likely the next few years would see a whole bunch of mini-Archimedeses running around.
That was fine with me. There was a noticeable difference between talking to him and talking to most of the rest of the tribe.
Finally, the day came. The whole tribe lined up, packed their belongings onto several travois (another gift from the bawbe) and set off into what was for them the great unknown.
The gorilloids were in evidence on departure day, hanging around just out of range and watching the parade. I wondered if the gorilloids actually understood that their erstwhile prey was about to leave for good, or if they were just drooling over all that lunch on the hoof. Either way, the first gorilloid that made a move would get a buster in the face. I was lined up, ready, and just waiting for something to obliterate.