Chapter 4

“Punished? How.” John wanted to know.

“Punishment in the Colony is very basic. Two ways are possible. The lesser punishment is banishment to Earth, with nothing from the Colony going with the criminal. The second is much more severe: banishment to a remote part of this planet, to live alone as best they can with minimal equipment and supplies. The idea is that the criminal proves whether and how one can live in that location. If he dies quickly, from fatal local diseases or wild animals or insects, we know to steer clear. If he survives for many years, and establishes a farm or something that can be spotted from orbit by The Personalia, then we know that the site is suitable for later colonising.”

John was impressed. “Good grief: a very practical form of punishment, that benefits the colony, one way or another.”

“That is exactly how we see it. We haven’t had to use the second sentence yet. No-one has committed a murder or a rape that would merit that one.”

“Assuming he can’t get off in court on a technicality...”

“There are no possible technicalities involved, as there are no courts as you would know them, and no lawyers on either side. The case is heard by locals who know the people in the case so can judge from experience who is telling the truth. They decide the verdict and recommend the sentence. That recommendation goes to the Governor to approve or amend before being carried out.”

“So there are no lawyers involved with the legal system? That seems odd!”

“I didn’t say that. There is one lawyer for every case. His job is to tell the jury what they can and cannot do in dealing with the defendant, how to treat witnesses, and the range of verdicts that are possible. His job is that of a guide for the jury, to enable them to make wise decisions.”

“That sounds very efficient. Cases can’t last that long, I presume,” John said with a smile.

Mrs Kempe failed to smile back. “The average is around one day per case. Selecting people for jury duty can take longer. Some people try to avoid that duty with spurious excuses like having to go to work.”

John was not sure if that was a serious comment or a dig at his own sense of humour. He let it pass.

Mrs Kempe asked if they had been allocated some farmland. John said that it had been under discussion when they had been sent to see her. “In that case, get yourselves back there, and complete the transaction. You will want to see your land as soon as possible; to decide what you want to do with it. I will phone you when I want to discuss your employment details.”

On their way back, Catherine asked, “What do they do for food, here? I am getting hungry. We haven’t eaten since that snack on Ascension.”

Elizabeth told her, “We can ask when we are getting details about our land allocation. The people there are sure to know.”

She was right. When they were called for their interview, the first question they asked was where do you eat here? The response was surprising.

“Oh, for the moment, we all eat at the canteen. The only folk who don’t are the farmers who are too far away for that to be practical. We pay a standard charge per meal. That simple arrangement suits everyone, including the staff. You pay with your phone at the checkout: just touch your phone to the checkout machine, and it gets deducted. Everything goes faster as well, and it doesn’t matter if you are a poor family. You can eat as well as a better-off family, and no-one notices any difference. It is good for social cohesiveness.”

Elizabeth was slightly concerned. “Is the food very basic, then, to suit that payment plan?”

“Basic? Certainly not. The chefs pride themselves on offering a quality product. We think that when the colony expands, and can support restaurants, a few of our chefs will move out to run these commercial restaurants. The theory is that they want to establish a reputation for good food, well cooked and presented, so that they can attract customers to their new restaurants when they can open them. The population is too small at present to support commercial restaurants, but we expect to grow fast.

When we grow, it will be mostly new arrivals who will patronise the canteen until they sort themselves out and either get a job here or take over a farm in the rural areas.

We don’t have proper roads yet, so getting back in from the countryside is a hassle, mostly walking, with a few handcarts getting built for carrying children, farm implements, and household goods. The movement of bulk supplies, such as for house-building, remained a major problem. The Personalia solved it by offering a heavy goods transport service on a temporary basis, as they can use their anti-gravity to lift off the ground and move along to deliver bulk materials, like fertiliser, to farms where there is no railway line handy – which is most of the Colony.

This is apart from their delivery of house-building materials from Earth. They deliver these directly to the house site, rather than delivering to a central store, then it being shipped out again. The Personalia are all for making work simple.

How the Landerships move forward on anti-gravity without using rockets, I don’t know, but whatever they do, it works. They have asked for human freight transport to be provided as soon as possible, so the Governor has passed the word around. There are no takers yet. Would you want to start up a freight transport service, sir?”

John laughed. “No, thanks. I already have a job offer; in fact, all three of us have prospects of jobs.”

“That is what we find, sir. There are more and more jobs requiring to be filled, so anyone with the right qualifications and expertise is soon snapped up. The Colony is setting up a personnel database for all new arrivals, so that when a job is found to be necessary – such as a teacher – we can check the database for people with a teaching background. That person is then approached, to see if they want the post. How long did it take for you to get a job offer?”

“Today, and we had just arrived,” admitted John sheepishly.

“So, if all your questions are answered, can we sort you out on your tract of land. Do you have any special requirements: forest, level plain, slopes, coastal, near the river, and so on? Did you plan on a particular style of farming?”

“We didn’t actually plan on farming, to be truthful,” admitted Elizabeth, “But we will not refuse a tract of land, either. When we settle down and start a family, that farm will probably be our base. How big is the tract of land likely to be?”

“Currently, we are working on multiples of 100 acres, on the assumption of 100 acres per adult, as the basic allocation. The Governor can add to that allocation for people he is trying to entice here, or as a reward for excellent service. I gather nothing like that was suggested to you?”

“No, nothing,” said John. “We decided we wanted to come, so that I could marry these two charmers.”

“How nice,” the official exclaimed. “Our marriage laws are starting to encourage immigration, it looks like.”

Catherine corrected him. “Nothing here is having any effect on Earth’s population so far. The existence of the colony is still secret, due to us using alien spaceships as our sole means of transport.”

“Oh. I was not aware of that. The administrators here were all hand-picked for the colony, so I had just assumed that the colony was now attracting new settlers.” He paused, then asked curiously, “If it is so secret, how did you get to know?”

Elizabeth replied, “I am a policewoman. The major police forces have been briefed, for background knowledge in case trouble starts. If you really want a lot of settlers, you’ll need to make knowledge of the colony public.”

“I will pass that on, but it may well be that the plan is to start slowly; then once the infrastructure is much more in place, it will be easier to cope with a greater influx of settlers. That would make sense to me.” He reflected a moment then returned to his task.

“Can you kindly make up your mind as to your land configuration? I would like to get home to my wife and children tonight.”

“Tonight? It is only coming up lunchtime, remember.”

“At the rate you lot make decisions; it may be next week before we get finished.”

“Oh, all right. John, Catherine, ideas on what we want in the way of land?”

John said, “Land beside the river would be handy for water supplies, but tricky if the river floods. Does it?”

The man shrugged. “Don’t know. We have not been here long enough to see any flooding, but who knows? There are pluses and minuses every time.”

Catherine said, “It depends on the quality of the soil of the tract. Some soils are more productive for crops than others. If there has been flooding in the past, there may be boulders in the ground that will be a hazard for planting crops, but the soil may be fertile. If there are a lot of trees, these would help to stabilise the soil, and provide some wood for various needs.

I vote that we look over a proposed tract before agreeing to it. Can we do that, sir?” She smiled sweetly at the official, as only a teenager can.

He huffed and puffed for a moment before coming out with, “I have not had such a demand before. Other settlers just accepted their tract of land, as it was free. You three are different, probably because the land is not so essential to you.

Look, if I pencil in a tract, can you promise to go look it over tomorrow and get back to me sharpish? I can only let you do this once. If it is not to your liking, you’ll have to take whatever I can get for you as an alternative. Do you agree?”

John looked at Catherine, then at Elizabeth, getting brief nods. “Very well, Let’s have the tract as a provisional allocation, and we’ll report back to you tomorrow before the end of the day.”

The official added, “As it is just lunchtime, could you do me a favour and go out to look at the land this afternoon? Then you can get back to me in the morning, and we can settle this permanently: either this tract, or some other that is available.”

John agreed. “That sounds reasonable. Just give us the location and boundaries, and we’ll do that. The weather seems fine for that.”

“The weather’s fine here on most days,” the man vouched for the weather.

Lunch at the canteen was as good as any restaurant on Earth. Perhaps the range of dishes was restricted to readily available ingredients, but on the whole very acceptable, and the price was quite good also.

John and his ladies found that bicycles could be hired by the hour, so they took bikes for their trip to the tract of land that was on offer. The sort-of-grass surface was manageable, as the sort-of-grass only grew a couple of inches high. This allowed them to avoid obstacles in the ground and they made it to the tract fairly readily. There were very few patches of soft soil for them to cycle over.

Catherine remarked on the fact that GPS seemed to work here. “I can only conclude that there are global positioning satellites in orbit already. That is expensive, at the start of a colonising project.”

John was less certain. “Not necessarily, darling. With The Personalia being in orbit, they can be asked to place satellites in appropriate orbits without too much effort at all. That’s probably what they did.”

“Yes, I can see that now, John. It can’t be expensive, that way. Having these aliens helping must be of great assistance for a new colony. GPS means you can do a lot of things relatively easily.”

With the assistance of the bikes, they wandered the bounds of the property they might be owning. The ground near the river was sandy, suggesting a previous life as a sandbar, but further back the land rose a dozen feet higher, to where the trees took control, except for a rocky area that only catered for small bushes. One corner of the rocky area had a deep pool of water hidden from direct view. You can almost fall into it from above if you were not careful. John remarked that it might act as a reservoir, if they had a house built at a lower level.

Elizabeth pointed out that one shouldn’t have the house too near river level, or it would be flooded if the river burst its banks. “You need to be at least halfway up the hill to be safe,” she pontificated. Catherine agreed with her, so John accepted that idea.

He remarked, “You two seem to have decided.” The girls looked at each other, and nodded. “Looks that way,” declared Elizabeth. “I’m in,” Catherine announced.

“Right,” said John. “Let’s get back to the settlement and arrange our accommodation for tonight, then we can report our acceptance in the morning.”

Elizabeth reminded John, “We have no formal appointments yet, for our jobs. We’ll need to ask about that. We probably have to sign contracts of employment before we can start.”