The Methuselan Circuit (5 page)

“Thanks,” she smiled sweetly and punched him on the arm. Then she disappeared in the market.

“Is that a new girlfriend,” Dad asked, coming around the end of the truck, hay sticking to his shirt. Alexander gave him a sour expression but he told his father the story of the rocket ride and Katrina’s problems. Dad nodded, and told him, “You should stay in touch with her. That’s very mature for a person your age. How we handle failure is much more important than how we handle success. Anyone can be a good winner!”

Alexander thought about that for a moment and realized his Dad was right. After all, how would he feel right now if he had messed up his ride? He doubted he’d handle it as well as Katrina.

“Come on, we need to get this load across the island, you’re an Altar Server for the evening mass.”

“What did we get for the hay?”

“Here you drive,” Dad said, handing Alexander the reins. He got out his computer pad and dictated the data from the sale into a holographic spreadsheet. “Ten tons of hay in exchange for seventeen yards of cloth, five spools of thread and twenty gallons of kerosene.”

“Doesn’t it ever seem weird selling hay one day and flying a spaceship the next? I mean are we ever going to get back to the way things were before?”

“Do you mean before the wars?” Dad said. He shook his head and explained. “The history books are sketchy on it, but you have to realize that we didn’t invent our space technology, at least not the technology we use today. We were given this technology by the Scythians during the Ascension Wars against the Galactic Alliance. They didn’t want us in space, and they were after the Scythians as well. The Scythians armed us and we became an interstellar empire. That lasted under the leadership of Alexander, who eventually united us with the Galactics. He became Galactic Overlord and for a decade or so things were fine, but the Methuselans invaded. The only reason any of the Galactic empires survived was due to Alexander’s leadership, the Terran Fleet and Terran Legions; he chased the Methuselans all the way back to the galactic core!” He shook his head. “Alexander himself disappeared on the way back to Terra. His ship returned, but no one knows what happened to him. Had he returned the Caliphate Wars never would have happened.”

He sighed, looking around at the hodgepodge of advanced technology and primitive pre-industrial age practices. “All at once, we were leaderless, and every culture had suffered greatly in the wars. Without Alexander we began to fracture again. The Fanatics tried to implement their religious empire, destroying everything we’d done in coming together. They tried to force their culture, their religion and their supremacy on the world. We beat them in the end, but the Caliphate Wars destroyed much of what was left in the world. We went from a world of eight billion people to one billion over a span of seventy years.

“They were hard times. We’re only just now beginning to catch our breath again.” Dad sighed and looked back at the hay. It rocked back and forth in the bed of the truck. He grimaced, making it plain that he didn’t like this any more than Alexander. “Of course I didn’t have to resort to this a few years ago. The cargo runs to the mines gave us a comfortable living. The new Administration hit businesses hard with taxes though. An extra twenty-five percent may not sound like much, but it was our leisure money and part of our food money. I had to make it up somehow. That’s all part of the brave new world, I suppose.” He patted Alexander on the back. “You’ll be part of that son, but be mindful of the past. You’ll see an important part of that in two weeks. The Academy is built on the wreckage of a captured Methuselan ship, but Alexander’s flagship, the
Iowa
is moored there—still operational
.
” He whistled. “Now there’s a piece of history. Listen up when they talk about it. The sacrifice of every man on that ship and in Alexander’s fleet is why we’re still here today. It’s why Terra isn’t a glowing hunk of slag in space. Always be mindful of your history Alexander or you’re doomed to repeat it!”

CHAPTER 5: Leaving the World Behind

The buzzer on his alarm sawed insistently on his slumber. He succeeded in ignoring it for a while, but eventually it forced him to open his eyes. It was still dark. The clock said 4 am. That couldn’t be right. He didn’t have to get up until 5am to join his sister in feeding the animals. He hit the alarm button, silencing it, reminding himself to throw the blasted thing away when he got up.

“Alexander are you going to go to the Academy or not?”

It was his mother’s voice, and he was immediately awake. The Academy, of course it was today! He had a 6 am takeoff at the school and it was already 4:15. He had to get ready. After taking care of the necessities, Alexander ran back into his room to pull his uniform on. It was smart, very smart. The material was a thick pearlescent white. There was a white coverall that enclosed him from ankles to wrists and halfway up his neck. It was comfortable, temperature controlled and doubled as a pressure suit in case of a loss of cabin pressure in space. Over it went a white tunic with a naval scarf. He wore high black boots and gloves. Topping it all off was a white cap with a trailing black ribbon.

Alexander admired himself in the mirror. He looked good.

“You’re not going to wear that out to feed the animals are you,” Mom asked. “You look very nice and I’m sure the horses and dinos will be impressed, but you don’t want the spaceship to smell like a barn do you?”

“Oh Mom do I have to,” he complained.

His sister Katherine walked out of her room rubbing her eyes. “If I have to get up early to see you off the least you can do is to help me feed the animals!”

Grumbling, Alexander took off his uniform and put on his “grubbies” as he called them.
This is the last time I’m ever going to work on a farm again, thank God! To think they’re making me do this now. I’ll be in space in two hours, but now I have to walk through the muck to feed farm animals. I’m not going to miss this at all!

They walked through the mud room and onto the back porch. The rain beat down mercilessly on the roof. It was one of those Seattle days where it would rain and rain and rain. The mud was already ankle deep off the gravel walkway. Alexander put on his leather hat and oilskin coat. He heard that legionary battle gear had an automatic anti-water setting on the uniform. You could go under water or walk into a hurricane and never get wet—the military got the best stuff.

The rain pounded down on him and his sister, making them hunker down in their coats and hats. It was a relief to get into the barn where it was dry and musty. Most of the animal were already there waiting for breakfast, smelling like wet manure.

“I’m not going to miss this at all,” he muttered.

“Thanks a lot,” Katherine told him scathingly. “I won’t miss you either.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Alexander said quickly.

“You’re going off into space and leaving me here to do all your chores, as if we don’t have enough to do to keep this place going,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

Alexander hadn’t thought of it that way. He hadn’t thought of how his leaving would affect anyone else but himself. Kathy was right; he’d be pretty sore if he were in her shoes. “Listen, I know it’s not fair, but I can’t change my mind now. If it makes any difference, I’ll do all your chores when I’m down here on leave.”

“All of them; you’d be willing to do that?”

He didn’t want to, but he forced himself to say, “It’s only fair. I should do something extra when I’m back and give you a break.”

“That’s nice of you,” she said, but she shook her blonde head. “I think it would be enough if we did the chores together like we always have.”

“Deal,” he said as he divided out the hay, one flake to each animal. They finished up and ran back inside. Mom and Dad were waiting for them with breakfast.

“The first thing you’re going to miss is real food, so let’s enjoy this,” he smiled. They sat down at the little farm table together and held hands. Mom said grace.

“Oh Lord, thank you for all the blessings you’ve bestowed on this family. Keep Alexander safe on his new adventure. Amen.”

“Amen, Thanks Mom,” Alexander said. He dug in. There was scrambled eggs, bacon and blackberry muffins. After what Kathy said, he ate breakfast with his family with a little bit different point of view. Everyone was silent, and he felt he needed to say something. “I just wanted to let you all know how much I’m going to miss you. It’s pretty selfish of me to leave you with the farm and all, and well thanks; it means a lot to me.”

Fifteen minutes later he was in his uniform again. Everyone piled into the truck, which Dad started. “This is a special occasion.” The diesel ran the drive motor. It wasn’t nearly as efficient as the small fusion generator but they were going to drive not fly, so it really didn’t make much difference. Pulling away from the house, Alexander looked back one last time. He couldn’t see much through the rain smeared glass, only a brown blob against the green grass.

What was once an asphalt street was now a grass-grown lane. The wild herds of goats, deer, cows and dinosaurs kept it mown down. There wasn’t any hunting on the lanes, so the animals weren’t afraid of humans. It did cause some problems, like this morning. A half mile from the house, they ran into a herd of triceratops munching on the grass and ferns. Dad honked his horn, but the dinosaurs simply looked at the truck with indifference. They had every right to; they were bigger than the truck.

“At least we don’t have any sauropods on the island,” Dad said. Dinosaurs were everywhere now. They’d been exported to the Galactic zoos and zoological planets millions of years ago, and re-imported back a hundred years ago. Unfortunately, the wars broke open many of the zoological preserves. The dinosaurs took advantage of it, as did many of Terra’s former species. One could find mammoths up north alongside saber tooth cats, gorgons in the deserts, even massive Great Whites, Megladon in the oceans. The last few hundred years had been interesting ones on Terra to say the least. Fortunately, the island had no big predators. The Peninsula had problems with Tyrannosaurs—the Cretaceous dinosaurs had no problem with the mild winters—and sometimes sections of Seattle would close down when one got into town, but the island was free of them for the time being.

At the moment, however, Alexander was more interested in the more advanced aspects of Terra’s tumultuous years. He looked at his watch.

“Don’t worry son, we’ll get them out of the way.” Dad reached back for his rifle. He cocked the lever, but before he got out he reached over and turned the energy shields up to full power. They were originally designed for safeguarding the occupants during a crash but they worked just as well against an angry triceratops. The diesel motor increased its RPM to handle the load.

“Do be careful,” Mom said.

“I always am,” he said, but then he stopped. “Looks like I won’t need to do anything after all, the unioneers are here. Someone must have called a while ago.”

A troop of men and women dressed in yellow rain slickers drove up from behind in an open bed truck. The foreman, who drove the truck and stayed in out of the rain, waved them toward the truant dinosaurs. They trudged through the rain with lassticks, metal rods with energy bulbs at one end. The bulbs could deliver a nasty stun to even the largest animals through the thickest fur or hide; they respected them. The ten unioneers were motivated to get out of the rain. They approached the triceratops herd waving their sticks. The energy bulbs glowed bright orange in the rain, looking like a flight of will-o-wisps flying at the dinosaurs.

The herd turned and trotted off the road and into another field. The unioneers formed a line along the road to make sure their truck would pass. Dad honked a thank you and drove past, dialing down the shield. The sound of the engine faded as did the unioneers in the rain. “That’s one good reason to serve and become a Citizen. You don’t have to work in the rain or snow—unless you’re in the Legions of course.”

“But Dad we work in the rain; I was in the rain this morning.”

“True, but we choose to do that. We do that because we own our animals and they are our responsibility,” he reminded them. He uttered a strangled laugh, which meant it wasn’t something that was funny at all. “That’s where part of our tax increase went. The unioneers got a ten percent leisure money increase. Why I don’t know; I can’t help but wonder what this President and his Administration are up to.”

“Now dear don’t get yourself all worked up over politics,” Mom said, and she looked over her shoulder. “You get to ride your horses for fun. That’s a big deal. Union children don’t get to do that. Those men and women aren’t herding triceratops in the rain because they own them; they’re doing it because someone from the county told them to do it. Later on they may be digging ditches, clearing paths, whatever. They don’t know. They’ve traded responsibility for a guaranteed job, three meals a day and a roof over their heads. That’s the difference.”

Three minutes later they were at the school. A silver gray shuttle waited on the school lawn. Like many things it was once something else. In this case, it was an old Boeing 737. Its wings were cut short and two matter-anti-matter engines replaced the jets. A covered stairway led up to the cabin door. At the bottom was a small tent. An officer stood there with the Sister Mary Katherine.