The other two ships were emptying out as well, people milling around the ambulance trying on parkas for fit, chattering away with the release of tension and happiness at reunion–it had only been a couple of months, subjective, but that twenty-four years was somehow just as real.
Of course everybody knew what we had found, or not found, on the surface, and they were full of apprehension and questions. I avoided them by taking Marygay off to “confer.” After everybody was on the ground and in warm clothes, I went halfway up the ramp and waved both arms for attention.
“We’ve decided to set up temporary quarters at the university. So far, this ambulance is our only working vehicle; it can take ten or twelve in at a time. Meanwhile, let’s all move indoors, out of the wind.”
We sent the ten biggest, strongest people first, so they could get to work on breaking into the dormitory rooms, while Charlie and I led the others to the cafeteria where we had found our first planetside meal. They walked silently by the eerie piles of old clothing, which had some of the appearance of bodies felled by a sudden disaster, like Pompeii.
Food, even old boxed fruit, cheered them up. Charlie and I answered questions about what we’d found in the city.
Alysa Bertram asked when we could start planting. I didn’t know anything about that, but a lot of the others did, and there were almost as many opinions as people. None of the ones who’d come from Centrus were farmers; the farmers from Paxton were unfamiliar with the local conventions. It was obvious, though, that it wouldn’t just be a matter of picking up where the previous tenants had left off. Farming around here was specialized and technology-intensive. We had to devise ways to break up the soil and get water to it without using electricity.
Lar Po, also no farmer, listened to the arguments and seriously suggested that our best chance for survival was to find a way back to Paxton, where we’d have a fighting chance of growing enough to feed ourselves. It would be a long walk, though.
“There’s plenty of time to experiment,” I reminded them. “We could probably survive here for a generation, scavenging and living off the ship rations.” A few weeks on the ship rations, though, would drive anyone to agriculture. That was undoubtedly part of the plan.
The sheriff came back with the welcome news that they’d found a dormitory on the river that didn’t even require breaking into. The rooms had electronic locks, and power failure had opened everything up.
I sent Charlie out to start setting up work details. We had to have a water system and temporary latrine as soon as possible, and then organize into search parties to map out the location of resources in the city.
Marygay and I wanted to go downtown, though, to look for two more pieces to the puzzle. The Office for Interplanetary Communications.
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Chapter twenty-three
Like the Law Building, the OIC had been unlocked in the middle of the day. The sheriff dropped us off and we walked right in–and were startled to find artificial light inside! The building was independent of the city’s power grid, and whatever it used was still working.
Direct broadcasts from Earth wouldn’t be useful, since it’s 88 light-years away. But messages via collapsar jump only took ten months, and there should be a log somewhere.
There was also Mizar, only three light-years away. Its Tauran planet Tsogot had a Man colony, and we might hear something from them, or at least call them, and hear back six years later.
It wasn’t a matter of just picking up a mike and flipping a switch–if it was, you did have to know which mike and which switch. None of the terse labels were in English, of course, and Marygay and I didn’t know much MF other than idiomatic conversation.
We called the sheriff to come back and translate. First he had to pick up a load of food downtown and ferry it to the dorm; then he’d come by on his way to the next pickup.
While we waited, we searched the place pretty thoroughly. There were two consoles in the main large room, with signs that identified them as “incoming” and “outgoing” (though the words are so similar, we might have been exactly wrong about both), and each console was divided into thirds–Earth, Tsogot, and something else, probably “other places.” The ones for Tsogot had Tauran resting frames as well as human chairs.