"This is crazy," Sean said. "You want us to walk barefoot for over a hundred kilometers, without any food or water?"
"It won't be a hundred kilometers. I and Susan will meet you halfway. We will bring food, water, and and footwear for all of you."
"Footwear? Who's your shoemaker?"
"Susan makes very nifty sandals. Admittedly they don't last long. But they'll definitely last long enough for you to complete your trip."
"I'm not doing it."
"What?"
"I said I'm not doing it. It's insane."
"It's the only way, Sean. If Deacon - the governor - finds out we've been playing tricks, we could lose our licenses."
"First of all, let's get something clear here," Sean said. "You've been playing tricks, as you put it, from Day One. You started an illegal settlement in the New World."
"That wasn't quite like that. We started it before all the rules and regulations were announced."
"You didn't turn over all the gear you got from the cube, either. Let's not split hairs, Dad. Besides, if you're so determined to play fair and square now, why aren't you coming with us?"
"Well, we wanted to make things easier for you by meeting you halfway."
"Harold and Gladys can meet us halfway, too."
"Sean!"
"Dad, don't 'Sean' me. You've panicked. You're not making sense. How the hell will Deacon know we didn't launch our settlement from Yule Point?"
"I told you that he's investigating what's going on."
"He can investigate all he likes. He agreed you and the Pendeltons can merge colonies. You'll tell him you launched from Yule Point like he told you to, and instantly set out to join the Pendeltons."
"If he finds out we lied to him - "
"You've been lying to him all along."
"That's why we have to stop. Every consecutive lie increases the chance of getting caught out."
"Dad, if you're serious about me and Maureen and the kids having to trek barefoot for two days then we're out. We're not doing it. I'm sorry."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we won't be joining your settlement."
Dave Ramsey was struck speechless. He circled the room, and came to a stop in front of Sean. He said:
"Sean, I have to remind you that I'm the license holder."
"And I have to remind you," Sean said, "That you paid for that license with my money."
"Sean, I had to help the Pendeltons. They had very little money saved. The cube landed on their property. Harry generously offered to share everything with us; I owed him something in return. We all owe a lot to Harry. He was the first to enter the New World, all this was his idea. And thanks to him, we have a cache of implant kits, more than we got together with our licenses."
"That's very noble of you," Sean said. "It doesn't change the fact that I paid for your license. I did it happily. And now you're starting to play power games."
"Sean, how can you say that. I - "
"Yes you are. Anyway, that's beside the point. Regardless of everything else, I refuse to take my family barefoot through the bush just because you've decided it's time you started playing nice with Deacon. You want to play nice? Play nice with me."
Dave didn't know how to respond to that. After a while he said:
"I'll have to talk this situation over with Harry."
"You do that," said Sean. "And I'll talk it over with Maureen."
Dave found that his hands were trembling when he went to wake up Harry. His friend looked so happy, stretched out on the silvery mat atop his bed, that Dave hesitated. He disliked to be the bringer of bad news. It crossed his mind that all of them felt much happier in the New World than they did back at home, on good old Earth. Except Earth wasn't so good any more. Earth seemed to be going through one of its periodic transformations.
Dave Ramsey was a man full of intellectual curiosity. He wanted to know as much as possible about the world he lived in before he died. This led him to read about the history of Earth. Among other things, he found out that Earth had been covered in an ice sheet all over on three separate occasions during its existence - well, some experts argued there was a thin band of ice-free water at the Equator.
Another fact he learned was at at the beginning of life on Earth, as much as the entire planet was covered by a warm ocean, so thick it resembled a soup. Gazillions of primitive bacteria happily swam around in this soup, finding plenty of nourishment and multiplying like crazy. Luckily or unluckily, their waste - their bacterial shit - consisted of oxygen. The amount of oxygen they released changed Earth's atmosphere, killed off most existing forms of life including the oxygen-shitting bacteria, and ushered in a new era in the planet's development.
Life on Earth had chosen to commit mass suicide 2.5 billion years earlier. History liked to repeat itself. Dave often thought that life on Earth was headed toward another mass suicide event. A few hundred million years later, new living organisms would evolve in Earth's new environment.
Dave liked Earth as it was. It distressed him to see it change. The only change he would like would was a change to the way things were a couple of centuries back: less people, less noise, less trash, cleaner air. He fell in love with the New World from the moment he arrived there. All of its hardships paled in its pristine beauty.
It made him feel vaguely guilty, but he had to admit it: he liked his life in the New World more than the life he had on Earth.
He knew that his old friend Harry felt the same way. When he woke him up, he said right away:
"I'm so sorry, Harry, but something's come up. We need to talk about it."
"Hang on a moment," Harry said. "I need a drink. I'm bloody parched."
He drank noisily from the half-full glass on the night table by the bed. Dave said:
"You drank half that glass twenty minutes ago, and you woke up feeling parched?"
"I was doing a lot of running around over there, and felt very thirsty," Harold said. "It sort of carries over. You know what I mean."
Dave did. He'd felt whatever he'd felt in the New World echo inside him when he returned home. When Harold put the empty glass back on the bedside table, Dave said:
"Sean refuses to launch from Yule Point. He is convinced that we've panicked, and that it's a lot of suffering for nothing. He's ready to quit the whole scheme if we insist."
Harold sat up on the bed and rubbed his face. Then he said:
"You know, he might have a point."
"You didn't feel that way before," Dave said. "You said that Sean absolutely had to launch from Yule Point."
"I think we've both been hasty," said Harold. "The girls came running talking about bloody Vikings and it just put us into a certain frame of mind. That, and the fact we feel guilty because we've been lying to poor old Henry all along. It's like we're expecting retribution."
"So you think he can launch from here?"
Harold shrugged.
"It seems the only sensible thing to do, doesn't it," he said. "Mind you, you should all engage in a bit of playacting, like we discussed earlier. Go down to Yule Point, wander around in the bush for a few minutes, and come back. Make sure someone sees you while you're at it."
"I wouldn't put it past Henry to post a spy down there," Dave said gloomily.
"That would be excellent. He'll get a report you obeyed his instructions to the letter."
Dave was silent, and it was obvious to Harold it was one of those silences that contain a lot unsaid.
"What's the matter, Dave?" he asked.
It was obvious Dave felt uncomfortable with what he was about to say. He looked left, he looked right, he looked at the ground. He was still looking at the ground when he said:
"It's stupid really, but the way Sean spoke it felt like, it felt like a power grab."
"Power grab?"
"Come on, Harry. We've always quietly assumed we'll be running this colony."
"We weren't assuming anything. That was the way it was. The four of us were running things."
"Well there's going to be eight of us the moment Sean's gang goes over there, with many more to follow. I don't think the system we've had is going to work any more. We need to decide who will be doing the deciding in our colony."
"You mean we need to choose a leader?"
"Yes."
"How about old-fashioned democracy? Everyone has one vote?"
Dave laughed.
"Come on, mate," he said. "You want me to believe you'll be happy when you're outvoted by all those youngsters you've recruited? The kids from MacDonalds and Pizza Hut? Especially when they want to do something stupid?"
Harold was silent for a while. Then he said:
"You're right, Dave. That would be a little hard to swallow. Considering that we're the ones who got this whole thing going, and so on."
"We have to think about that, and soon," said Dave.
"You're right, again. But what you have to do even sooner is do this Yule Point thing. Get Sean and his gang and go there and do it, the quicker the better. We'll talk about it when you get back."
"It will be deep night by the time we get back."
"We'll talk about it in the New World, then. It's better this way actually, we won't have to hide from Sean."
"But you agree with me, in principle? That we need to introduce a system of government?"
"A system that recognizes us as founders of the colony? Of course I agree."
"I hope you mean a system that makes us leaders because we founded the colony. Right?"
"Yes. I was trying to be diplomatic. Go on, get this thing started with Sean. We can't afford to waste any time."
"Okay," said Dave. "Do you think we should take implant kits and stuff with us, just in case?"
"Of course," said Harold. "Remember about Deacon's spy."
He watched his friend go and shook his head. Rebellious kids! Deep down, he was happy he and Gladys never had any. Everyone said a life wasn't complete without having children. Harold thought the opposite was true.
You couldn't have a complete life when you sacrificed a lot of it for other people. And children were the most needy people of them all. They cost a lot of effort, and a lot of money. And from what Harold had seen, all children were emotional vampires.
He was going to make sure they had a damn good system in place, a system that handed him and Dave unquestioned leadership in the colony. They had founded it; it was theirs.
And that was that.
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