Chapter 19: Shamanton

~~ Delta - Mar/03 - (Earth - Sep/2095) ~~

Our little community grew.

One of the Therian clans asked if they could set up a small village inside our shield. With Alec and Justin’s help, we negotiated how to let them do this. They wanted to set up homes similar to the faeries off the ground. They would also build small plot gardens.

They wanted to harvest the small feral pig-like animals we’d called snufflers. We had found other animals trapped in the zone of the dome so they would also cull them, so their populations didn’t get out of hand. They would also like to forage outside the shielded area.

They promised that moderation was their aim, they were used to looking after their resources to ensure they didn’t overuse them. There were also several fruit and nut-bearing trees they wanted to harvest and propagate.

These people could transform into a form of ape and called themselves the Baboo Clan. They weren’t much taller than Pix (about 120cm) in their human forms. They could climb very high to retrieve the fruits and nuts. James asked them if they wished to harvest some of the downed trees in the area. He hadn’t gotten Justin to collect them all.

The Baboos could use them for building their homes and doing their crafts. He would, however, appreciate if they also installed sanitation units. We could make them in our replicator he told them, and we could work out a bargain to pay them off.

They also asked if they paid us the extra, could they use the replicators as well, for basics like in the other domed cities. We agreed this was acceptable and even decided a small unit for their village would be purchased.

It would help with keeping the place tidy and supply items the other new people could buy. The replicators made great waste disposal units. We would own it, but they could run it. It would have its own building and a shop front to blend into the village centre.

We decided a shopping area would be required. We got the price lists and what resources were needed, to double-check we had them available and set up one of the Baboo families as the shopkeepers. Sean agreed this was a great idea and happily sold us a replicator for our village.

He included solar-cells and C-cells for their homes and for them to sell to new inhabitants. He had discovered a crystal in Futura called the de Ray Crystal. They made excellent energy collection and storage units, and Sean had created the C-cells to act like batteries, but they took up only a fraction of the space considering the huge charge they could store.

So now, we even had Therian neighbours.

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Kim said that we should put in a wharf and a main road for our town.

If we used Justin’s shields and a wall, we could extend our shield to allow for expansion along our road and easier access by the river. Gary had sent us a lovely guy in the second week of us being in the dome. He was called Hans, and he had come to help us to map out a basic street plan.

We then planned for some public buildings and areas for housing and the shopping centre. Somehow, our Research Centre and home had changed into the township of Shamanton.

Since it was all on my land, and I was collecting the lease money, I was elected Mayor, not that I really had much choice in the matter. They simply called me the Mayor. I even called a town meeting at the end of the month and said I was happy to have an election.

They agreed they probably should pick some councillors for me. I said yes, but you should select a Mayor you wish as well. Snorre stood up and expressed in a booming voice, “All those in favour of Trixy as the Mayor raise your hand.”

So, they did, and that was that. They then elected four councillors in a similar vein. I got back at Snorre by getting him elected as the town Magistrate. Since he was a shield mage, he couldn’t really argue. The people also determined that five-year terms were acceptable for elections and we got on with living.

Alec also added a fifty square kilometre block of land for us to divide up as Crown land to be leased and administered by the township of Shamanton. He also gave the council and me a bank account, to use for the town’s coffers. Most of the towns’ land took up a scrubby plains area with scattered clumps of forest on the northern side of our Reserve.

The new land could be easily turned into farms and used for livestock. Many of the trees the Baboos wanted to propagate produced fruit and nuts that were becoming very popular. So, setting up orchards became very prevalent for our region.

Alec swapped us some of our lands back, so, for the most part, the people came under the town charter. Alec informed me that if the town needed more land, then let him know.

Justin’s crew had come back and levelled the area and built the roads to Hans’s plan. They knocked up a God’s House, a set of council chambers with a police station, a combined library and museum, a community centre, and building we could use as a school.

It was amusing to see prefab buildings appear out of the air and then a swarm of people bustling all over it doing the final fit-out. They even built a forty-room hotel, a twenty-room office building with eight shops underneath and several warehouses to be leased out a lovely long wharf. I was amazed by how quickly the shops and offices found tenants.

Justin then built a bridge over the river and twenty kilometres of road to the plains and allotted a similar area of land for expansion. He told me I got to be mayor of it too. He and Alec had a joint account, and all revenues went into it. As far as they were concerned, they both governed the continent and couldn’t see it changing as long as they were its wizards.

As they would probably outlive my kids and me, I was more than happy with the status quo. If in time, they decided to separate the Emeralda side into its own town, we would worry about it then.

This was such a cool place to live, I decided. My job as Mayor was not terribly arduous. Neither was Snore’s as the magistrate. It was amazing how fast we found people to look after land and city planning and development.

We did have the occasional argument or neighbourly dispute, but I was learning these people, for the most part, were little different to humans in general, just a lot more tolerant of other people’s rights and differences.

By the end of March, we had a township of over three hundred people, including us at the Research Centre. I don’t know where they all came from, everywhere I guessed.

The bulk of the Baboo clan was still mostly on our land, and they were happy to keep things as we started out. They became our Reserve Wardens, and we hired them to map the different types of trees and animal movements and keep tabs on the goings-on in the Reserve.

They could still hunt and collect to meet their needs and a little extra income if they needed it. From the feedback I got, they were delighted with their new jobs and took the preservation of the Reserve to heart. They also collected a lot of useful data for us.

The other locals still had to get our permission to enter the Reserve or use its resources. James and I were happy with this. He did want it to stay as a Reserve but would allow select areas to be mined or have the trees harvested.

We got some extra people to study the new town area for migratory paths and any special places or locations of unique species that should be deemed part of the untouched Reserve.

We had a lovely little community, and I liked it.

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I had one fly in my ointment.

Do you remember when I said that when I first met Leann Mac Rena in the office that she annoyed me? Well of late, that annoyance has intensified. Over the months that James and I had been together, she had not been particularly nice about James or me.

Foxy had told me on the odd occasion that Leann had told people what a loser I was, for picking a guy like him. I’d hear the odd rumours about James and me. Being in love with the bloke, I just put it down to jealousy and ignored it. After all, I was living with and fucking the bloke, and I had no complaints.

Things came to a head when she came out to the Reserve for a couple of weeks. One night we had a bit of party, and I overheard her talking to some of the other new personnel. She hinted that James had certainly got lucky when he latched onto a rich bitch like me.

I wondered where this came from. I was sure everyone knew it was James’s wealth, not mine. She then implied that he hadn’t treated his previous wife very well. That he would abandon her for weeks, then come home and demand her to perform kinky sex with him and fuck her until he hurt her.

It was rumoured he had a boyfriend out at the dig, so that was why he didn’t come home as often, and he had told Heidi not to come to the dig site to be with him. This bit made me mad: A) James didn’t like having sex with men and B) it was Heidi who had refused to go the dig sites with him.

Heidi had said his sexual acts were why he couldn’t get her pregnant and she wondered who the real father of my kids was. She had heard that I had been seen with Brandon Gillard in Clarksville and it was probably him. Man, I was spitting mad at this last bit as well.

I thought my diadem would crush my skull for my bad thoughts, but to my surprise, it didn’t even get warm. This only encouraged me to act out my revenge. It was justified because she was not only slandering me; she was picking on my wonderful, loving James. And that I could not forgive.