Titanium Texicans (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

TASSO LOOKED around at the darkness. The night was too dark to see much beyond the lights of the little flitter. He was as close to the safety of the flitter as he could be and he was as far from the flitter as he could get. He put the tie rod on a flat rock, butting the cut ends up against each other. He braced them with other rocks, holding them in place.

He had one long electrical cord stripped from the entertainment center in the console. He hadn’t even known the flitter had an entertainment center, much less that the system was loaded with music and holos. He had a second electrical cord made up of a series of short lengths he twisted together. He deemed half a dozen systems unnecessary, like the transponder, the running lights and the holo-vision set.

He wired one end of each electrical cord into the engine power outlet and he wrapped an extra pair of socks around the other ends. He turned his eyes away and squeezed them shut as he touched the loose ends of the wires together and lowered the sparking, glowing end onto the tie rod. At home he would’ve used the arc welder and the welder’s helmet in the barn.

He was sure the heat would melt the cut ends of the tie rod, but he wasn’t sure whether it would melt it into uselessness or meld them together. The dazzling flashes were too bright to watch it welding, melting, or melding. The light was painfully bright through his eyelids. He hoped he didn’t short out the power box. He really hoped he didn’t start a brush fire. He really, really hoped he didn’t set his spare socks on fire.

He yanked the two wires apart. He blinked in the dim light, willing the spots before his eyes to go away. He stared up into the night sky and swore there were more stars than usual. He shook his head. Two bright lights wouldn’t go away. In fact, they seemed to be getting brighter and larger. He realized another aircraft was setting down in the field.

Tasso calmly walked back to his flitter and stood next to the open hatch. He didn’t like strangers. They made him nervous. Of course, he didn’t have much experience meeting strangers. Plus, someone cut the tie rod on the flitter. He didn’t know when they did it. He didn’t know how they did it. He didn’t know why they did it. Most of all, he didn’t know who did it.

The other aircraft settled into the weeds a few meters away. A couple stepped into the lights of his flitter. The man was huge, bearded, and rough looking. He nodded at Tasso, but didn’t move any closer. The woman was as tall as the man, but slight and pale. Even in the dim flitter light, Tasso could see her freckles.

“Mr. Menzies, I assume,” the man said.

“Yes, sir,” Tasso replied. “I’m Tasso Menzies.”

“Where is your grandfather, boy?”

Tasso didn’t answer. His grandfather was his own business.

“I see your grandfather still didn’t teach you manners,” the man said with a shake of his head.

“You don’t remember us, do you, son?” the woman asked. “We’re the Lamonts, your neighbors.”

Tasso reached down and grabbed Grandpa’s shotgun from the front seat. He didn’t point the gun at the Lamonts. He rested it in the crook of one arm, thumbed the selector to chain shot, and took two steps forward.

Mr. Lamont didn’t back up, but he held up his hands. “Whoa there, son. Take it easy. There isn’t any call—”

Tasso interrupted, “Sir, I am not your son. My name is Menzies. It is mister to you and Tasso to my friends.” He didn’t mention he’d buried his only friend. “I will thank you to remember that, if you please.”

“Our apologies, Mr. Menzies,” Mrs. Lamont said. “We didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just our way of being friendly.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lamont, but I’ve had all of the Lamont friendliness I care for.” Tasso said.

Mr. Lamont kept his hands in front of him. “Mr. Menzies, you don’t need to keep holding an old sky-raker. Besides, your scuffle with our boys was years ago, it’s all over and done with.”

Tasso shook his head. “My scuffle with your boys was seven years ago at your Landing Day picnic. Your boys called me a name that was an insult to my dead mother. Adults denied me the opportunity to defend my mother and I didn’t hear an apology from your boys. I don’t see how it can be over and done with until I say so.”

Mr. Lamont stepped in front of his wife. “Seven years is a long time before demanding an apology at the point of a stobor-shooter. My boys have grown up since then and they know better. Surely you don’t hold a grudge.”

Tasso pointed the shotgun skyward. “This isn’t for that day, although I can hold a grudge as long as it takes. You and yours insulted my family and me twice this night. I will brook no more.”

“Twice?” Mrs Lamont asked. “I don’t understand.”

Tasso flipped the safety on the shotgun, but didn’t put it away. “Dougall used a word seven years ago that insulted my dead mother more than me. You know the word he used and you know why I object to its use. I’ll not repeat such a word in front of a woman. Dougall called me by the same name tonight in front of his sister. That is one insult and I’ll not be called that again without response.”

Mrs. Lamont shook her head, “I’ll deal with him later.”

Tasso shrugged, “So will I. Please, if you would be so kind as to inform him of my intent to thrash an apology from him?”

“And the other time?” Mr. Lamont asked.

“Now when you insulted Grandpa and me over my manners, when it appears you have neglected the manners of your own offspring,” Tasso said.

“Young man,” Mr. Lamont said. “I’ve been as patient with you as I can be, but I don’t like having shotguns pointed at me and my wife. We’ll see what your grandfather has to say about your manners.”

Tasso smiled sadly. “You have my apologies because you are a better man than I take you for if you have the ability to talk to men beyond the grave.”

“Why you little—”

Tasso interrupted him by lowering the muzzle of the shotgun, pointing it at Mr. Lamont.

Mrs. Lamont put a restraining hand on her husband’s arm. “Mr. Menzies, there’s no need for firearms. Surely we can work through differences between neighbors without the threat of violence.”

Tasso nodded. “I’d have liked that, ma’am, but since someone already tried to kill me tonight by sabotaging my flitter, I’m in no mood to be reasonable. I neither asked for your help, nor do I want it. Thank you for your offer. Please go.”

“But your flitter—” Mrs. Lamont began.

“My flitter is my problem,” Tasso interrupted. “I’ll fix it on my own or I’ll walk to my destination.”

Lamont nodded. “Let’s leave the young fool—”

Mrs. Lamont squeezed her husband’s arm and shook her head, interrupting him in mid-sentence.

Lamont said, “Let’s go, honey. Mr. Menzies has made his wishes clear.”

Mrs. Lamont said, “Please, Mr. Menzies? I was your mother’s friend once.”

Tasso gritted his teeth to keep from speaking.

“Please? I don’t want to abandon you out here alone, for her sake if for nothing else.”

“Tell that to my mother!” Tasso yelled. “Everyone abandoned her but us. You never came around when she needed a friend.”

Lamont grabbed his wife and pushed her towards their aircraft. He paused before following her. “I’ll tell you this, son. I don’t like being turned away at the point of a gun. I will go, but I will remember this the next time we meet. You’ve made an enemy tonight.”

Tasso shouted back, “You’re seven years too late coming to that realization, Mr. Lamont. You remember that.”

He continued to point the shotgun at the aircraft until it vanished in the distance. He yelled in frustration, blasting a dozen shots at the dark sky.

“Yeah, I know, Grandpa. Wasting ammunition is childish,” Tasso said, but he felt better.

He propped the shotgun against a fender and walked to the repaired tie rod. He cautiously tapped the metal and found that the weld was cool enough to touch. He picked it up and saw a large lump of metal had fused around the cut. He tapped one end against the rock, but it stayed in one piece. He pulled at each end and it held.

“Hunh! That might have worked.” He looked at the patch of sky that swallowed the Lamont’s aircraft and shouted, “I may not have to walk after all, so there.”

He carried the part back to the flitter and carefully examined it in the light. He couldn’t see any cracks in the impromptu weld, but the knobby blob of metal would keep the tie rod from sliding smoothly through its attendant groove. Crawling into the back, he held the tie rod to its boltholes in the engine. It looked like it would still fit. It looked a bit thinner than other tie rods. He grabbed a rasp from the toolkit and sat down to file the excess metal away.

Working to fix the flitter helped calm his jangled nerves. He was already upset over the loss of his grandfather, and the flitter damage really didn’t help his mood. The encounters with the Lamonts made him angry. Breaking rocks would help him release his frustration, but the small delicate engine work was all he had available. He knew if one more thing went wrong, he was going to have to break something.

CHAPTER 5

THE SUN WAS WELL ABOVE THE HORIZON AS TASSO watched the Bain Highlands disappear behind him. He was flying low enough to frighten the flocks of sheep scattered across the deep green hills in the morning light. Watching the fluffy looking animals bleat and bound away from his shadow would have been funny if he’d been in a laughing mood.

His grandfather was gone and he’d had to leave his home for who knows how long. He’d managed to make temporary repairs to the flitter, but he was still angry that someone had damaged it before he took it on his long flight. And yes, now the flitter was his. Grandpa would want him to have it, not Uncle Bruce who hadn’t wanted anything to do with their place. On top of it all, why did Dougall have to be the one to answer the flitter transponder call?

The little red flitter sputtered occasionally, causing Tasso to hold his breath. Once through the McGrath Pass, he put the McWithy Range behind him. He set the autopilot to an altitude of ten feet. He was barely skimming the surface of the planet, scooting around trees and avoiding steep hillsides. It shouldn’t hurt any worse than his first crash, assuming he crashed right side up, if he crashed this low. A ten-foot drop wouldn’t give him any time to react.

Flocks of sheep gave way to herds of cattle. The sight of large cattle herds shifted to views of large farms and plowed fields. Tasso spotted a small cluster of horses. He knew about horses, he’d just never seen one before. He stared at the large creatures until they were out of sight. Smaller farms replaced the large farms and slowly changed to industrial parks and clusters of homes.

Along the way, the autopilot beeped at Tasso and took over. It slid over a dirt farm path, slowed, and lowered the altitude by a couple of feet. The flitter turned onto a gravel road. It slowed again and lowered the altitude a few more feet. It turned again onto a paved road, slowed, and dropped altitude to no higher than three feet.

Tasso continued watching the towns and farmsteads slide past his windows. It felt like he was creeping along, since he was increasingly less excited to get where he was going, he decided going slow was okay. He started waving ‘good morning’ to anyone he saw. Grandpa said it didn’t cost much to be polite, so he waved. Fewer people waved back the closer he got to Landing City until he decided to quit waving, too.

He spotted a sign for the farm product processing facility. Due to his recent crash, he was hours behind his original schedule and the plant should be open and operating. Before he gave it a second thought, he took manual control of the flitter and guided it down a small road into a parking lot. He circled the lot slowly, but didn’t see any spaces marked for visitors or for tour parking. There were many empty parking spots reserved for this person or that person. He slid into an unmarked spot at the far end of the lot and eased the flitter to the ground. It sputtered and shook before shutting off.

Leaving the flitter behind, he walked to the main building. He fell in behind a group of men and women. They all walked past the main doors, around the side and into the plant proper. The group went one way. He went another. He spotted a tractor pulling a long trailer as it floated into the plant. He followed.

Everyone was walking along between two painted lines on the floor. He followed, watching the tractor-trailer’s progress across the facility. He couldn’t see what produce was in this particular trailer. There were tractor-trailers, shuttles, and even a few wheeled machines backed into spots along the central corridor of the huge facility. He saw men prodding hogs along a chute, beans of some kind pouring into a bin, and potatoes creeping along a conveyer.

He tried to look at everything at once. He never imagined a building big enough to drive into except for a garage or a barn. He stepped aside to let a group of women walk past, standing outside of the painted lines on the floor.

“Hey, kid! Get your helmet on,” a man shouted at him.

Tasso said, “Yes, sir.” He wanted to say something back to the man other than a polite response, but he wasn’t quick witted that way. Grandpa always said the best response to a rude comment was to walk away. Grandpa had been saying that since he took on all three of the Lamont boys. He’d been a kid and he would’ve whipped them all no matter what Dougall said on the radio. He wasn’t a kid anymore and didn’t like being called one, but he let the comment slide and turned away.

He stepped back between the lines and the man went away. He didn’t have a helmet, and as he looked around, the only people he saw wearing helmets of any kind were outside the painted lines. As long as he stayed within the lines, no one said anything to him. He followed the tractor-trailer. It stopped, backed into a slot, and emptied a full load of chiamra plants into a funnel feeding the plants onto a conveyer belt. Tasso followed the chiamra plants along the belt. The conveyer belt went up an incline until it dropped the raw chiamra into an agricultural-processing unit.

Grandpa had shown him pictures of the agricultural-processing units. They were larger than their old farm shuttle, and the shuttle was big enough to put the flitter inside its storage bay. Without the automated processes, it wouldn’t be profitable to farm chiamra. The machines processed the blossoms into spice. The only market for the spice was off planet and the only place to sell chiamra plants for off planet sales was at this facility. He watched the agricultural-processing unit take in the raw material, but he couldn’t see where it spit out the spice or the stalks.

There was a bin at one end collecting scrap plant sludge to rework into fertilizer. There was little market for the fertilizer on Saronno. The high concentration of nitrogen in the chiamra sludge was in over-abundance on this planet thanks to the neo-ironwood trees. Shipping fertilizer to other worlds by spaceship wasn’t a profitable business because the freight charges cost more than any money earned.

He knew that somewhere deep inside the machine the plant was stripped down to the stalk and the blossom. The agricultural-processing unit ground the blossom down and processed the powder for spice. Humans at another location manually slit the stalk open and carefully extracted two or three seeds. Collecting the seeds was too complicated and delicate an operation for a machine to manage without damaging them. He knew this because everyone knew this. Grandpa said everyone also knew the processing facility was barely operating at a profit.

One year, he and Grandpa processed some spice manually. They tried it on some potato soup. Tasso couldn’t understand why anyone would want to buy the stuff. Although they thought they had processed the spice correctly, it didn’t seem to do anything to improve the taste of the soup. They decided they would continue to grow chiamra as long as the processing facility bought their crop. They would switch to another crop if the processing facility closed or quit buying chiamra.

Another tractor-trailer was floating along at a creeping pace as it entered the building as the first tractor-trailer slowly left the building at the other end. There was a row of signs above the exit doorway. Each sign displayed pricing for a different commodity. A large sign directly over the doorway displayed the current price of chiamra plants and blossoms. Tasso shook his head. The price had dropped again, reaching a point that was slightly less than a credit per acre. Unless the price went up before he brought in his harvest, he wouldn’t get enough money out of his whole crop to pay the land tax and buy the seeds he would need for the next planting.

“Price dropped again!” a voice said at his elbow.

He turned and saw an older man standing next to him. “I noticed,” Tasso replied.

“Y’all bringin’ in chiamra today?”

Tasso shook his head, “No, sir. I’m just visiting. Our crop is barely pushing up seedlings. I hope the price goes up before we get blooms.”

“We can always hope. I was going to switch to corn and cane sugar. Me and the missus can get six crops of corn to one of chiamra.” The man pointed at the price board. “At that price, it don’t hardly pay to plant. Do you see the number in the bottom right corner? That is the price of seeds. It dropped this week, falling low enough to keep us planting.”

“Yes, sir. Why corn and cane sugar, if I may ask?”

The man laughed, “If I don’t make enough profit sellin’ my crop, I can at least eat it. And what I don’t eat I can use to make my own corn liquor. Instead of starvin’ to death growing chiamra, I can die fat and drunk.”

The man walked away, laughing at his own joke.

“Hey, kid!” a voice said.

Tasso turned. Two large men stood behind him. The front of their shirts said ‘security’. Tasso wondered why they didn’t buy shirts big enough so the sleeves didn’t squeeze their arms so tight.

“What are you doing here? Show me your badge.”

Tasso wasn’t sure what badge he needed. He pointed at the old man walking away. “I was with my uncle, sorry.” He started to edge away.

“Uncle? I doubt that. Grab him, Stu.”

Stu reached to grab Tasso, but Tasso ducked under his arms and raced back the way he’d come. Two other security men were coming from that way and they blocked his exit. He leaped over the conveyor belt. The other side dropped away. He landed on a large metal cargo storage unit. He dropped off the box to the top of another container, and jumped down to the floor. He ducked under a moving shipping container and dodged through a series of little hallways made by stacks of big metal boxes.

Tasso would have marveled at the manmade canyon, but a hooting alarm began blaring, cutting through the factory noise. He came to a wall and turned toward the roadway. A tractor-trailer was pulling out of the building. He leapt across into the trailer, landing hard on his hands and knees.