Frontier

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been studying information on Mirandan almonds because my father is experimenting with growing them. Hammer, do you want to retake your modules at evening class, or sign up for another year of community service?”

  “Missing four nights a week in the bar with my friends will be hard,” said Hammer, “but I’ve just got a job working on the Jains’ farmland and I don’t want to give that up to do more community service. Teacher Lomas scares me to death though. I don’t suppose ...”

  Hammer was about seven years older than me, a head taller, heavily muscled, and had a thick beard. He gave me the pleading look of a desperate small child.

  “I’ll do my best to sort out a place at evening class for you,” I said.

  I didn’t bother asking Hammer what he wanted to eat and drink. Jonas was already hurrying up with a plate of pie. I handed Hammer a tankard of beer to go with it. Hammer was a creature of habit who never ordered anything but pie and beer.

  I glanced across at Rina’s end of the bar, and saw she’d served her few customers now and was looking isolated and upset. She noticed me looking at her, and waved her hands in despair. I pulled a sympathetic face in return. I daren’t risk asking some of my queue to go to be served by her. If they refused, it would make the situation even worse.

  As I carried on serving people, I could feel the ache in the centre of my forehead that meant one of my stress headaches was starting. I’d been working at Mojay’s Bar since I turned 16 on Year Day 2787. There’d been times when one of the barmaids had failed to appear so we’d had to cope with just two of us, but I’d never been in the situation where the customers were shunning the only other barmaid.

  I was deeply relieved when the door from the general store opened and Cella swept into the room. She laughed at Mojay’s reproachful face, gave a toss of her head that sent her loose hair flying around her shoulders, and spoke in ringing tones.

  “I know I’m late, but you’ll have to forgive me in the circumstances. Remember I only got married yesterday.”

  Cella got her apron, put it on, took a single glance at the situation at the bar, and went to stand between me and Rina. The crowd in front of me instantly shifted position to be served by Cella as well as me. With two of us serving customers now, the mob at the bar gradually thinned out, and my headache eased a little. By half past seven, we finally had a break between customers, and Cella spoke in a cautious whisper.

  “What’s going on? Why don’t the customers want Rina to serve them?”

  “It’s that poisonous woman, Shelby Summerhaze.” Rina’s face was pale and angry. “She’s been telling everyone that I’ve been sneaking off to meet Norris behind Theo’s back. Now Mojay will fire me again, and Theo and I were depending on my wages to buy equipment for our farm.”

  “Someone should drop Shelby Summerhaze off the cliffs at Northern Reach,” said Cella. “Don’t worry, Rina. You leave as soon as the bar closes, and I’ll talk to Mojay and make sure he doesn’t do anything drastic.”

  “You can’t stop him firing me,” said Rina.

  “Of course I can. I just need to delay things for a few days, and people will work out there’s no truth in Shelby’s story.” Cella paused for a moment. “There isn’t any truth in it, is there, Rina?”

  “Of course not,” snapped Rina. “I would never treat Theo like that.”

  Cella lifted both her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I had the impression you really liked Norris.”

  “I did really like Norris,” said Rina. “It was awful when ... Well, it’s too complicated to explain what went wrong between us, but I’m definitely not doing anything behind Theo’s back.”

  “Then there’s no need for you to worry,” said Cella. “I’ll tell Mojay that Shelby Summerhaze has been complaining about the dress fabric he’s selling in the store, and he’ll keep you on as barmaid to annoy the woman.”

  I wondered if Shelby Summerhaze really had been complaining about the dress fabric, or if Cella was planning to fight lies with lies. Knowing Cella, it was better not to ask.

  Cella turned to frown at me. “Amalie, you’ve got one of your headaches, haven’t you?”

  “A bit of one,” I said.

  “You’d better take your food break now then,” said Cella, “and don’t come back until you feel better. We can handle things here.”

  As I headed towards the kitchen door, Jonas hurried out of it, juggling three plates of pie as if they were painfully hot to hold. He sprinted past me, and I heard a sudden crash followed by a round of applause from the bar customers. The chunky, locally made, china plates that we used in the bar were almost impossible to break, but Jonas had obviously managed it.

  I didn’t bother to look round to see the extent of the damage, just went into the steamy, food-scented sanctuary of the kitchen, and leaned against a wall with my eyes closed.

  Chapter Four

  “Another headache, Amalie?” asked Guiren’s voice.

  I opened my eyes, and turned to face where the elderly man was standing by the stove. “Yes.”

  Guiren tossed a couple of fish into a pan. “You still haven’t heard when you’ll see a specialist about the problem?”

  “I’ve got an appointment in February 2789.”

  He shook his head. “That’s eight months away.”

  I sighed. “I know, but I’m a low priority case. Doc Jumi says my headaches are a simple problem that will be very easy to cure.”

  “If it’s that easy, why hasn’t he cured them already?” asked Guiren.

  I shrugged, collected a plate from the stack on the kitchen table, and went across to the array of food keeping warm on the hot plate. I hesitated for a moment, unsure I’d be able to eat anything, but helped myself to pie, potatoes, and a dollop of red Mirandan cabbage. Guiren tugged a chair across to the table for me, and I slumped down into it.

  “On any civilized planet,” said Guiren, “you’d have had expert treatment for your headaches months ago, and I’d be having at least two rejuvenation treatments a year instead of one.”

  I laughed. Guiren was always grumbling about only getting one rejuvenation treatment a year. Aged 65, he was the oldest person I knew. When the Colony Ten group arrived on Miranda thirty-one years ago, they’d all been in their twenties except for their leaders. Vast numbers of other colonists had arrived in the last twenty-one years, but very few of them were over 30 years old.

  Guiren picked up a bottle, poured out some virulently green liquid into a glass, and topped it up with water. “Of course, on any civilized planet I’d be in prison for poisoning people, which is why I came to the frontier in the first place.”

  I frowned at him. Some of the single male colonists came to Miranda because they were caught by the frontier dream of building new worlds. Others came because they wanted to leave worlds where they were misfits and start a new life. Still more came because they were ordered to leave by worlds that wanted to get rid of troublemakers.

  I’d known Cheng Guiren for well over a year now, but I still wasn’t sure what category of new colonist he’d been. He obviously hadn’t come to the frontier expecting to become a farmer, because he’d never done any community service, just started working for Mojay.

  “On my first day as a barmaid,” I said, “you told me you came to the frontier to escape from an older brother who’d tried to murder you. I actually believed you for two whole days, until I overheard you telling Cella you came to the frontier in search of your long lost twin daughters. The next week, you told a newly arrived colonist that you had to leave your home world because you turned into a wolf every full moon.”

  Guiren handed me the glass. “The truth is always boring.”

  “You’ve never told me what world you came from.”

  “I’m not going to tell you now either,” said Guiren.

  “But what was it like? Was it very different to Miranda?”

  “It had far too many interfering pol
iticians who made the wrong laws about the wrong things,” said Guiren. “Now drink your medicine.”

  I peered suspiciously at the pale green mixture. “What sort of medicine is this?”

  “A traditional Mirandan remedy for fatigue, hangovers and headaches,” said Guiren. “I invented it last week.”

  I’d no idea what was in this drink, but if Guiren really wanted to poison people he could have killed everyone in the bar by now. I took a cautious sip, and found the drink tasted of Mirandan limes with a hint of something that resembled Earth mint but wasn’t.

  Guiren went back to cooking his fish. I sat still for a minute or two, enjoying the peace and quiet of the kitchen. No, quiet wasn’t the right word for this. It was never quiet in the kitchen. Guiren was always clattering his pans on the stove, or chopping vegetables, and every now and then either Delun or Jonas would dash in, pile food on plates, and dash out again. The point was that there was no pressure on me when I was sitting in here.

  I didn’t know whether it was Guiren’s medicine or the freedom from stress that was helping, but I felt the throbbing in my head slowly ease to a faint ache. I picked up my fork and prodded at my pie. I had to force myself to eat the first mouthful, but once the taste of the rich gravy was in my mouth I started wolfing down the food as fast as I could. Once I’d finished eating, I sent a text-only message about Hammer to Teacher Lomas.

  The reply came thirty seconds later. “No room.”

  I sent a single word. “Please.”

  This time the reply was longer. “No! This classroom is as overcrowded as Earth was before they invented interstellar portals.”

  I tried again. “Hammer’s a very nice man. He’s desperately keen to start growing crops on his farm.”

  I had a two minute wait for the reply this time. “Deity aid us, we’ll run out of air.”

  I grinned, went back into the bar area, and across to the table where Hammer was sitting. “You can start evening classes tomorrow. Make sure you stay right at the back of the room and don’t say a word for the first week. You have to prove you’re a quiet, attentive pupil, or Teacher Lomas will throw you out.”

  “Thanks,” said Hammer. “If this is my last night of freedom, then I’m having a few glasses of Pedra’s home brewed whiskey.”

  Hammer was a working man who’d been coming to the bar for years and never caused trouble. According to Mojay’s rules, that meant he could drink what he liked. The only problem was Hammer’s bulky size.

  “If you overdo the whiskey, have you got someone to carry you home afterwards?” I asked.

  Hammer gestured at the other men at the table. They looked strong enough to manage it between them, so I waved at Cella, pointed at Hammer, and gave the hand signal that meant he was approved for a run on whiskey.

  The rest of the evening was mercifully peaceful, except for a brief appearance by Palmer Nott. When he marched into the bar at ten o’clock, demanding whiskey, I was worried that he’d start shouting about his new farm and get himself beaten to a pulp.

  Fortunately, Palmer seemed to have learned something from what happened at school. When he was given the one small whiskey that was his limit under Mojay’s rules, he just stood quietly at the bar, taking occasional tiny sips from the glass. Palmer’s expression told me that this was the first time he’d drunk whiskey and he didn’t like it. He still seemed determined to finish his glass though.

  I was preparing for an argument if Palmer asked for another whiskey, working out a tactful way to insist he swapped to beer, when Palmer’s father arrived. Braden Nott marched up to his son, grabbed the glass from his hand and smashed it down on the bar, then caught his arm and dragged him off towards the door. All the men at the tables were jeering and laughing as they went by.

  Palmer Nott had often annoyed me in the past, but at that particular moment I felt sorry for the boy. Colonists came from a host of different planets in every sector from Alpha to Delta, each with its own cultural rules on the age a person should be considered an adult, so Miranda had evolved its own system that involved other factors than age.

  Girls were adults as soon as they married. A boy was entitled to some adult respect when he had his farm, and full adulthood was achieved by either reaching the age of 25 or marrying a wife.

  Braden Nott had just given his son a farm, making him at least partially adult, and then publicly humiliated the boy by dragging him out of the bar as if he was still a child. I wondered how many of Palmer Nott’s faults were because of the way his father treated him.

  The men who’d already got their farms left soon after that. Those still doing community service and living in the settlement dormitories stayed on until Mojay threw them out at closing time. The instant the door was locked behind them, Delun and Jonas began hurrying round cleaning tables. Rina tugged off her apron, and Cella grabbed it from her.

  “Go now!” she ordered.

  Rina scurried off through the store door. Cella and I were folding the aprons and putting them away when Mojay came over to the bar.

  “Rina has already gone then.” He scowled in frustration.

  Cella grinned at him. “Rina was here on time so she’d a right to leave on time too. Have you heard that Shelby Summerhaze has been spreading lies again? I hope she hasn’t upset you.”

  “She hasn’t upset me,” said Mojay, “but she’s upset a lot of my customers.”

  “I’m sure that isn’t true,” said Cella. “Nobody believes her stories about the bad quality of your goods.”

  Mojay frowned. “Has that malicious woman been claiming my milk isn’t fresh again?”

  “I’m not sure if it was the milk or something else,” said Cella smoothly. “I wasn’t paying attention to the details because I knew it wasn’t true.”

  Mojay seemed to think about that for a moment, then turned to me. “You did a good job tonight, Amalie. I appreciate it.”

  “Do you appreciate it enough to give me a bonus?” I asked hopefully.

  “Times are hard.” Mojay gave his standard response to any requests for pay rises or bonuses, and hurried away.

  Cella looked after him and laughed, then led the way out through the dark shadows of the general store. We skirted the piled sacks of flour and potatoes, dodged the milk churns, and went outside. It was a lot brighter there, as the light from Miranda’s single large moon combined with the glow from the illuminated sign over the general store. That sign could be set to be far brighter, and to flash rapidly in a bewildering variety of colours, but Mojay had to keep it at this muted level or a host of nosy moon monkeys would gather to gape at it.

  Cella and I walked up to the portal. This was a second grade model that offered a list of twenty destinations, so we could portal straight to Lone Tree. Once the portal activated, we stepped through to where four tracks met among some fields of medcorn, and followed the eastern track into one of the conservation zones.

  Native Mirandan trees crowded against both sides of the track now. Much faster growing than Earth trees, with wide, scaly trunks that erupted in a sudden burst of massive reddish-green fronds at the top, they blocked out most of the moonlight. We had to pick our way warily in the darkness so we wouldn’t trip on the ruts left by cartwheels, but I loved being in the conservation zones at night. This was when they came to life, with sparkling clouds of tiny sapphire, emerald and ruby coloured flutterflies performing their midair mating dance, and the glowing, childlike faces of moon monkeys watching us from among the trees.

  Every world had conservation zones on its inhabited continent, but they were especially important here. These were the protected breeding grounds for the native species of Miranda. Without them, the farms would be nothing but dead land, because there were no earthworms or pollinating insects on Miranda. It was the wormlike larvae of the nocturnal flutterflies that worked the soil, and the Mirandan mammals like moon monkeys and panda mice that pollinated the crops.

  I finally broke the silence. “You seem happy with married life.”
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  “I enjoyed being single,” said Cella, “but a girl has to settle down in the end, and I’ve got two of the best husbands in humanity.”

  There was another pause. I had a question I wanted to ask, and there didn’t seem an obvious way to bring it casually into the conversation. I gave up and just asked it.

  “You didn’t come to Miranda until you were 8 years old. I’ve just realized that you’ve never told me anything about your old world. I’m not even sure what sector you came from.”

  Cella wrinkled her nose. “I was born on Osiris in Delta sector. I’ve never talked to you about it because I wanted to forget all about that horrible place.”

  “You weren’t happy there?”

  She shuddered. “It was dreadful. My family lived in a cramped dome house. There was a grassy area outside, but if my brothers and I tried playing there then the neighbours shouted at us. Going to school was a nightmare too. I was always bottom of the class, so the other kids called me stupid Cella.”

  I frowned. “But you did well at school here.”

  “Going to school on Osiris was very different to going to school here. A lot of the things the teachers were talking about seemed totally pointless, and they were constantly giving us tests, which I always failed. When my family came to Miranda, I felt like I’d escaped from prison.”

  Cella smiled. “Suddenly lessons were about practical things that made sense to me. There weren’t any tests at all until we started doing the Farming Studies Certificate modules, and nobody cared if I passed those or not because I was a girl.”

  “So you never wished you could go back to Osiris?”

  “Not for a single moment. As a married couple with children, my parents got their farm right away. My father still had to do community service to pay for it of course, but we could live in the cabin, and my brothers and I could run wild on the farm. I loved the space and the freedom. I’d sit outside for hours in the evening, admiring the magnificent sky.”

  We’d reached the point where the track came out of the conservation zone. Cella paused and pointed upwards. “Osiris had two tiny moons, and some boring stars that you could barely see for all the settlement lights. It was nothing like the amaz night sky we have on Miranda.”