To the Memory Of
ULYSSES GRANT COWPER,
First Mayor
- who died for his city
The carving was not good; Rod had done it.
"Grant told me once," he added, "that government was the art of getting along with people you don't like."
"Well, I sure don't like Bruce and Theo!"
"Neither do I. But Grant would have figured out a way to keep them in line without getting rough."
"You figure it out, I can't. Roddie, you should never have let Bruce come back. That was bad enough. But when he married that little... well!"
"They were made for each other," Rod answered. "Nobody else would have married either of them."
"It's no joke. It's almost- Hope! Quit teasing Grantie!" She bounced up.
Miss Hope Roberta Baxter, sixteen months, and Master Grant Roderick Throxton, thirteen months, stopped what they were doing, which was, respectively, slapping and crying. Both were naked and very dirty. It was "clean" dirt; each child had been bathed by Caroline an hour earlier, and both were fat and healthy.
Hope turned up a beaming face. "'Ood babee!" she asserted.
"I saw you." Caroline upended her, gave her a spat that would not squash a fly, then picked up Grant Throxton.
"Give her to me," Rod said.
"You're welcome to her," Caroline said. She sat down with the boy in her lap and rocked him. "Poor baby! Show Auntie Carol where it hurts."
"You shouldn't talk like that. You'll make a sissy of him."
"Look who's talking! Wishy-Washy Walker."
Hope threw her arms around Rod, part way, and cooed, "Woddie!" adding a muddy kiss. He returned it. He considered her deplorably spoiled; nevertheless he contributed more than his share of spoiling.
"Sure," agreed Carol. "Everybody loves Uncle Roddie. He hands out the medals and Aunt Carol does the dirty work."
"Carol, I've been thinking."
"Warm day. Don't strain any delicate parts."
"About Bruce and Theo. I'll talk to them."
"Talk!"
"The only real punishment is one we never use- and I hope we never have to. Kicking people out, I mean. The McGowans do as they please because they don't think we would. But I would love to give them the old heave-ho... and if it comes to it, I'll make an issue of it before the town- either kick them out or I quit."
"They'd back you. Why, I bet he hasn't taken a bath this week!"
"I don't care whether they back me or not. I've ridden out seven confidence votes; someday I'll be lucky and retire. But the problem is to convince Bruce that I am willing to face the issue, for then I won't have to. Nobody is going to chance being turned out in the woods, not when they've got it soft here. But he's got to be convinced."
"Uh, maybe if he thought you were carrying a grudge about that slice in the ribs he gave you?"
"And maybe I am. But I can't let it be personal, Carol; I'm too stinkin' proud."
"Uh... Turn it around. Convince him that the town is chompin' at the bit- which isn't far wrong- and you are trying to restrain them."
"Um, that's closer. Yes, I think Grant would have gone for that. I'll think it over."
"Do that." She stood up. "I'm going to give these children another bath. I declare I don't know where they find so much dirt."
She swung away with a child on each hip, heading for the shower sheds. Rod watched her lazily. She was wearing a leather bandeau and a Maori grass skirt, long leaves scraped in a pattern, curled, and dried. It was a style much favored and Caroline wore it around town, although when she treated herself to a day's hunting she wore a leather breechclout such as the men wore.
The same leaf fibre could be retted and crushed, combed and spun, but the cloth as yet possessed by the colony was not even enough for baby clothes. Bill Kennedy had whittled a loom for Sue and it worked, but neither well nor fast and the width of cloth was under a half meter. Still, Rod mused, it was progress, it was civilization. They had come a long way.
The town was stobor-tight now. An adobe wall too high and sheer for any but the giant lions covered the upstream side and the bank, and any lion silly enough to jump it landed on a bed of stakes too wide now for even their mighty leaps-the awning under which Rod lolled was the hide of one that had made that mistake. The wall was pierced by stobor traps, narrow tunnels just big enough for the vicious little beasts and which gave into deep pits, where they could chew on each other like Kilkenny cats- which they did.
It might have been easier to divert them around the town, but Rod wanted to kill them; he would not be content until their planet was rid of those vermin.
In the meantime the town was safe. Stobor continued to deserve the nickname "dopy joe" except during the dry season and then they did not become dangerous until the annual berserk migration- the last of which had passed without loss of blood; the colony's defenses worked, now that they understood what to defend against. Rod had required mothers and children to sit out the stampede in the cave; the rest sat up two nights and stayed on guard... but no blade was wet.
Rod thought sleepily that the next thing they needed was paper; Grant had been right... even a village was hard to run without writing paper. Besides, they must avoid losing the habit of writing. He wanted to follow up Grant's notion of recording every bit of knowledge the gang possessed. Take logarithms- logarithms might not be used for generations, but when it came time to log a couple of rhythms, then... he went to sleep.
"You busy, Chief?"
Rod looked up at Arthur Nielsen. "Just sleeping a practice I heartily recommend on a warm Sabbath afternoon. What's up, Art? Are Shorty and Doug pushing the bellows alone?"
"No. Confounded plug came out and we lost our fire. The furnace is ruined." Nielsen sat down wearily. He was hot, very red in the face, and looked discouraged. He had a bad burn on a forearm but did not seem to know it. "Rod, what are we doing wrong? Riddle me that."
"Talk to one of the brains. If you didn't know more about it than I do, we'd swap jobs."
"I wasn't really asking. I know two things that are wrong. We can't build a big enough installation and we don't have coal. Rod, we've got to have coal; for cast iron or steel we need coal. Charcoal won't do for anything but spongy wrought iron."
"What do you expect to accomplish overnight, Art? Miracles? You are years ahead of what anybody could ask. You've turned out metal, whether it's wrought iron or uranium. Since you made that spit for the barbecue pit, Margery thinks you are a genius."
"Yes, yes, we've made iron-but it ought to be lots better and more of it. This ore is wonderful... the real Lake Superior hematite. Nobody's seen such ore in commercial quantity on Terra in centuries. You ought to be able to breathe on it and make steel. And I could, too, if I had coal. We've got clay, we've got limestone, we've got this lovely ore- but I can't get a hot enough fire."
Rod was not fretted; the colony was getting metal as fast as needed. But Waxie was upset. "Want to knock off and search for coal?"
"Uh... no, I don't. I want to rebuild that furnace." Nielsen gave a bitter description of the furnace's origin, habits, and destination.
"Who knows most about geology?"
"Uh, I suppose I do."
"Who knows next most?"
"Why, Doug I guess.
"Let's send him out with a couple of boys to find coal. You can have Mick in his place on the bellows- no, wait a minute. How about Bruce?"
"Bruce? He won't work."
"Work him. If you work him so hard he runs away and forgets to come back, we won't miss him. Take him, Art, as a favor to me.
"Well... . okay, if you say so.
"Good. You get one bonus out of losing your batch. You won't miss the dance tonight. Art, you shouldn't start a melt so late in the week; you need your day of rest... and so do Shorty and Doug."