"Looks good," Carlton Brock said.
"Yes," said general Roy McAdam with visible pride. "What's more, it will soon look even better. By spring, we'll be making thousands of bricks per day. Didn't manage to get the brickworks completed this year, because the lumber mill was a priority."
"Mmm," said Carlton Brock. "Spring... It's not winter yet."
"Spring is only a couple of weeks of Earth time away, sir. By the time spring arrives back in the World, we'll have a real town here. With solid brick housing, paved streets, and a proper sewage system."
"It doesn't look bad right now," said Brock.
The two men were standing on the platform of one of the four watchtowers that had been erected around the settlement. They were dressed in brown leather suits and leather hats. Brock had refused to replicate in the New World until a full suit of clothes had been prepared for him.
Officially, the watchtowers were meant to protect the nascent town from unexpected dangers. In reality, they were used to keep tabs on the multinational crowd of delegates from various countries Brock had been forced to allow into the settlement.
When a watchtower sentry spotted a foreign colonist or colonists stray too far from town, a team of soldiers on horseback was instantly dispatched for an interception. The foreign colonists were politely but firmly induced into turning back, and returning home. They were told this was for their own good. There were lots of unknown dangers lurking beyond the immediate neighborhood of the settlement. And general McAdam, the governor of the town, was personally responsible for the safety of its inhabitants.
All this heart-warming concern for the well-being of the foreign colonists was motivated by other reasons. Some distance from the settlement, the American inhabitants of New York had already erected several installations that they wished to hide from foreign eyes. The big launch platform completed in the early days of the settlement was one of those.
It was a visit to the platform the previous day that had finally convinced Brock of the differences in scale between the two worlds. It took two hours on horseback to get there. Back in old New York, it took twenty minutes of brisk walking to reach the receiving port in Central Park. Initially, everyone had thought this was due to geographical differences between the two worlds.
At first, Brock regretted that New World's New York had been established by soldiers that had replicated in the underground staff room in the United Nations building. He would have preferred a location free from meddling by foreign heads of state. However, that room had since become an official launching pad for new colonists. This meant that the two New Yorks were unquestionably the capitals of their respective worlds, which pleased Brock.
He was also very pleased by the fact that he already had a settlement going in every US state capital and major city - around a hundred, all in all. And that he had just been appointed governor of the United States territory in the New World. And that it had all been his own idea.
An Earth day earlier, he had proposed that UN commissioners for former nation states act as governors of corresponding territories in the New World. He also proposed to do away with all this 'commissioner' bullshit. It reeked of a soulless, inefficient bureaucracy, he'd said. The United Nations were the new government, weren't they? So the people appointed to supervise former nation states should be called governors.
His proposals were enthusiastically voted through by the new parliament, composed of the former heads of state that now became governors in both worlds. The New World governorships promised to be very lucrative. A tenth of a single percentage point of profit from an entire territory containing thousands of colonies promised immense wealth.
Correction, thought Brock, gazing with unseeing eyes at the panorama from the watchtower. There would be literally millions of colonies. Because there was ten times more space due to the difference in scale.
Refocusing his eyes on the landscape, he looked around and frowned.
"Roy," he said. "I can see smoke to the left."
"To the south?"
"To the left."
"Right, right," said general McAdam.
"Left!"
"I meant right, I got it, it's to the left. Yes, I can see it too. That's the shipyard. We got sixty people there, a whole village."
"The shipyard was supposed to be ket secret."
"It is."
"But I can see it. I mean, I can see its smoke."
"That's because we are twenty feet above ground level, sir."
"You mean those foreign assholes can't see it? What if they climb a watchtower?"
"No one is allowed on the watchtowers except the military and the government."
"You'd better keep an close eye on all those foreign guys," Brock said darkly. "I don't trust them. I think they're a bunch of spies. They want to find out how we do things over here so that they can copy everything over there. It's the same old story. America, the mother of innovation, invention, and progress getting gang-banged by a bunch of thieving bandits."
"Yes, sir."
"I mean, just look at this. There, right where I'm pointing now. Look at the that launch platform we've built for those assholes. There's a lineup around the fucking block."
"We're allowing all colonists to make one personal transfer a day, sir. That platform is meant for all the inhabitants of the settlement. Most of them are sending food."
"I saw a guy send a pot," Brock said. "One of those beautiful copper pots your guys have been making."
"It was probably full of food."
"Well, the pot went, too. They can examine it, and tell the guys in their own colonies to copy it."
"That's true."
"Is there any beer left? I mean real beer, not that horrible kumis stuff."
"Yes, sir. I've reserved a dozen barrels as government stock. But we'll have to drink it in my office at the town hall."
"Any chance of getting some food, too?"
"Of course. I'll have some sent up from the canteen."
"Excellent."
"After you, sir."
Brock climbed down the ladder to the platform, and stepped aside. The soldier at the foot of the ladder automatically stood at attention. Brock looked at him, pursing his lips. Like the general and himself, the soldier was dressed in a suit of leather, though of noticeably worse quality. There was a small ax stuck behind his belt, and a rather large, wooden whistle hanging from a leather thongs around his neck.
"At ease," said McAdam, stepping off the last rung of the ladder. He and Brock walked off in the direction of the settlement, talking quietly.
The soldier watched them go for a while, then climbed the ladder: he was on duty until four in the afternoon. His name was Ed Nanni, and he was an army private in both worlds. At this moment, his original back on Earth was sleeping soundly in the barracks of an army base in New Jersey.
Ed Nanni hoped his wife in New York had collected what he'd sent her earlier that day: two eggs, a smoked chicken drumstick, a couple of carrots, and a cob of corn. Things were increasingly grim at home. There was absolutely no food to be bought anywhere. They were surviving on his army rations, and what food he could send during his three-day stints in the New World.
Thank God they didn't have children! His wife's brother in New York had two. He used to have four, until fairly recently. Flu had killed one, and diarrhea another. And there was another problem. Ed's wife was beginning to look like a movie extra in one of those films about zombies. It didn't do much for their sexual relationship. He was kinda happy to be confined to the barracks at the New Jersey base.
He was also happy to have a fling going with Corporal Janice Wilkinson in the general's office, in the New World. Thanks to her, he was enjoying several benefits. Corporal Wilkinson was the general's administrative assistant. In addition to providing him with sex, she frequently took some food from the general's quarters, and gave some to Nanni. She was a great, warm-hearted girl, and best of all his wife would never know. It just wasn't possible.
There was only one bad note in all this: Ed Nanni didn't like the way Janice bossed him around in the bedroom. He thought it was the Army's fault, though maybe she was also subconsciously influenced by wearing all this leather. They had made her a corporal, and he was a private. The rank thing kind of seeped into relationships. Well, he was going to change the balance of power soon. He'd been promised promotion by the captain commanding his company.
Once I'm sergeant I'll show her who is the boss, Ed Nanni thought. Once I'm sergeant I'll fuck her so hard she'll be pleading for mercy.
Smiling to his thoughts, he resumed watching out for curious foreign colonists embarking on unauthorized exploration journeys.
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