Chapter 28: The Trip

The trip to Ochre City was surprisingly boring.

Captain Hail had set the suite aside for Sable and I. I had the master room, and Harry was bunking with Sable in his room. We even had our own little reading room between our rooms and a little bathroom.

The ship was now fully lit, and they even had a better pump, so we had water for the showers. Silver had added a new water tank in the hold as part of our ballast, so we no longer carried the water barrels. She had even fitted a special filtration system that kept the tank full using sea water.

Our suite was very comfortable, and we settled in very quickly. I had sixty head of longhorns and two young bulls in the hold with Red, Star and Opal our lankys. Silver had said they had plenty of snufflers and cluckers in Ochre and we would pick them up with some more lankys when we got there.

This suited me just fine. We had no problem selling the ones my herders had brought with them. They got snapped up very quickly. On a whim, I brought a couple of the older male pups from Bou, as I knew they weren’t related to Ochre’s herd.

Cavil had sent me home with my chiller wagons full of his best cheeses, and we had them in a cold room. Captain Hail was sure they would sell well. He loved Cavil’s cheeses and made sure several went into the stores reserved for the crew.

Ricky had also sent me three carts of his best ales and Hail grinned when he saw them. We swapped them for the ale that Silver had loaded and we sold off her stock. Apparently, several of the high-end taverns in town loved to stock her ale, so it was sold as fast as the cluckers were from my property.

They had already sold off the chicks that Hail and brought with him. I knew agents from Leigh and Dale had already purchased them. Roberts and Ian’s shipment of snufflers and cluckers should be arriving at their new wharf any day. I’d be able to pick up new blood from them when we wished.

Phil and Cavil had given them orders for some stock too. Since Cavil and I were concentrating more on our dairy herds, we were sure the other Bulls would still have plenty of sales for their longhorns even with the new sources of meat. The ships were dropping off more people from South Federation, so we still had plenty of people to feed.

One of the machines that Garnet had fixed was designed specifically for producing fertilisers. It had gone to the main meat works I owned outside Horn City. All the off-cuts and bones were dumped into it. That was much more hygienic, and it saved them from having to burying it.

The granule mix the machine made was sprinkled onto vegetables and other plants or ploughed into grain paddocks before they planted. It was becoming a popular sale item, as the veggies and grains loved the stuff. Rose had also found out that if Hali added the bones from the meatworks in Hornville to her feed pellet maker, it improved the product.

Hali had excelled herself, and we had filled one of the storage holds with her feed. When Silver inspected the feed and asked how we were making it, Rose informed her she would fill her in. Silver was delighted, as she was sure they could also make the feed for sale in Federation.

They now had a little ship called The Imp. She made regular runs to Greco and several smaller towns along the Slit. Several members of Captain Hail’s old crew operated her. Although she was only half the size of Mercy, she was a sturdy little ship and profitable to run.

Captain Hail told me on the trip that things in Garson were not as happy as when I left. Domo Ethen wasn’t a good leader and was proving very fickle. Hail now mostly traded with Domo Leslie’s City, Greco, and with the smaller towns on the south side of the Slit outside Domo Ethen’s immediate attention.

They had shifted forty people from a small town to Ochre on the last trip. They said they were being harassed by slavers. Seemingly, a lot of people had been moving to Greco or anywhere else that they could go.

It was believed that Ethen was having labour issues, as a result of them moving. So he was resorting to slavery, even though he said he wasn’t. Things between Greco and Garson were getting tense, as raids had been reported on the north side of the Slit.

That didn’t please me, but it wasn’t my problem. I had no interest in Greco or Garson. The animals I had collected from there would provide me with breeding stock for many years before I would be interested in acquiring more. At this stage, I knew if I needed a new bull, Silver had stock I could pick a couple of good bulls from.

I mostly wanted to go to Weston for the gems, but it just may prove a solution for Captain Hail. It was closer than Garson, and he could travel faster over open oceans with my device on his ship. The damn ship went so fast that sometimes I wasn’t even sure it touched the water!

Silver had provided him with new maps they had gotten from the satellite thing up in the sky. We had worked out that other than sailing around Lime Isle and the tip of Green Island, the trip was mostly an open seas voyage.

We did have ten other passengers aboard, and while they were interesting enough, they were a bit in awe of me, and it took a little while for them to accept that I was just another passenger. Well not quite, I suppose. The fact I travelled with my own android and the crew treated me like I was the boss probably didn’t help.

Tom had grown a lot I noticed. He was the ship’s navigator, and he had learnt to read the weather and adjust our speed and direction accordingly. He really had that ship jumping to his commands. I gave him and Dazzle, a single gem ring each.

I taught them how they could control the shield and speed controller I had built without even touching it. I’d even increased the range of the collision alarm. Tom was happy to teach Dazzle everything he knew and a few others new things in his cabin. They had become inseparable.

Captain Hail said he often felt like a passenger on his own ship. Dazzle, Silver and Tom had become a great team, and the other androids inspected the ship so regularly that he barely had anything to do but entertain the passengers. The androids took over looking after the livestock, and I too ended up with little to do.

Sable had a great time. The Captain found himself teaching Sable everything about the ship. I often got included just for something to do. While I loved reading, I was an active person, and I found that while on the ship I had gone back to doing the exercise routine I had established on my last trip.

Sable and Harry joined me each morning, and by the third morning, many of the passengers had started joining us. The Captain and either Tom or Dazzle depending on who had the morning shift would join us. It was a great way to start the day.

I’d then go and do my inspection of the animals and helped the androids shift the different animals up on deck even though they didn’t need me. They took care of the cleaning, and I’ll be honest, I let them do this task. The Captain would then hold his morning lesson about different parts of the ships.

We spent quite a few lessons on learning when different sails were employed and even made. He’d teach us how they used them with the speed controller depending on the weather, and Tom would often explain his part. One of the androids, Coppa, often looked after the sails for Tom, and she was often the night navigator.

Hail told me they were the same sails that had been on the ship when I put my preservation spells on the ship. They didn’t seem to wear out or rip. It even still had the same ropes on it. Coppa assured me they did very little maintenance on the ship. I’d eliminated many of the back-breaking tasks that sailors hated.

So for the most part, they pointed the ship in the right direction and let her go. Ben, the cook, made our excellent meals. With the preservation cold rooms, we always had fresh food, and he got quite inventive. The passengers couldn’t believe that they didn’t get seasick when we were on the open water or how well they were fed.

The ship seemed just to skim over the water, and Tom explained that he’d gotten the trip between Ochre and Horn down to two weeks or twenty-two days at the longest if, they had to slow and navigate around storms.

It still took another thirty-three days to get to Greco because of the navigation around the land and islands. They still made that trip twice as fast as any other ship. They determined the trip to Weston should only take about as long as the trip between Horn City and Ochre City.

I was amused to note all the androids had the new power supplies. Other than Silver and Coppa, the others had changed places with other androids when they went to Ochre City. They all thought a sea voyage was a good learning experience.

The human crew treated each of the androids as individuals. They each had their own quirks and senses of humour. Even the passengers got into the habit of treating them as people too. Captain Hail wouldn’t tolerate any mistreatment of his androids.

They were his crew, end of story. He made sure on the first night on board that the passengers understood the androids were not there to serve them. They would assist if the request was reasonable and they would tell the passenger if the request was or wasn’t.

If the android refused, the Captain always stood up for the android. The passengers learnt quickly that he always did. Hail said the people coming from Horn were less trouble than those from Federation, as many had already learnt that the androids in Horn City were the same.

I had to smile when he told me. Even the new androids in Horn had been developing personalities if they had a new power supply. Magenta had apparently been experimenting and had found if the older androids got the new power supplies, they also became alive as she called it. She said the newest androids needed longer to develop.

I had no problem with her experiments. Silver said that Magenta’s counterpart in Ochre, Nickle, was also conducting the same experiments and so far, they had twenty androids with personalities. She said because they had gone longer without human contact they hadn’t developed to the same stage as Rose’s people but they were learning.

Ochre City now had three hundred people living in it, and their controller Ochre was a lot happier now, and so were the androids. They had even been digging out where the old citadel was so they could access the lower levels. They had even found a room with other androids in it, and they were bringing them online.

I noticed the difference when we sailed into port. They had built a new residence over where the citadel had been. I was informed it was mine. I was surprised at this and asked why? Silver said, “Because you are our High Mage, Bron.”

I raised my eyebrows and asked how I became the High Mage of Ochre City as well as Green Island. “Because you are. We assume that when you are ready to hand the reins of Horn City over to Sable, you will come here.”

“What if I prefer to hand Ochre city over to Sable since I will around for quite some time as a mage?” I queried.

Silver looked at me. “That would be more than acceptable to us, Bron. We would be delighted to have one as powerful as Sable to rule us. He is an exceptionally bright child. He has your sense of right and wrong and treats everyone fairly even for his age.”

“If you keep training him, he will make a ruler we would be proud to have. We have waited for a long time for a ruler like you to come along. We are more than happy to wait a little longer for when Sable is ready to replace you. I can see that this is a very suitable solution for you and us.”

I looked at Sable, “So what do you think son? Would you be happy to come here to live when you are ready to rule?”

He was busy taking in everything. His eyes were bright with excitement. He looked back at me, “Yes daddy. I feel like I’ve come home. Does that sound strange? It’s a strange feeling, but I really like this place.”

I looked at Silver with a grin, “I think we have solved that problem, Silver.”

Silver nodded, “Ochre says she feels you both. She is looking forward to meeting you and Sable. Now that we have better access to her, I can take you to see her. She lives in the basement under the new residence. We didn’t rebuild the citadel but we can if you wish, master Sable.”

Sable looked at the three-story mansion they had built on the site. “No, I like what you have built. It is way big. I don’t need lots of towers.”

I chuckled and said, “That may change later when you have ten wives and two dozen calves running around.”

“Possibly, daddy, but that is a problem for another day,” he answered ever practical.

I agreed. I’m sure my calf was a much older person stuck in the body of a nearly four-year-old. Mind you, he was a lot taller than I was at the same age. If it wasn’t for the obvious signs that he was but a calf, it wasn’t hard to believe that he was a lot older when you talked to him.

I remembered my mother had said to me one day that I was six going on to sixty after I’d got into an argument with my grandfather. I remembered the argument too. The fact that I had later been proven correct was an incident that cemented my grandfather’s hatred of me.

Like Sable, I too had learnt to read at a very young age. My grandfather had hated that my mother had indulged my love of learning. I had a feeling that I must have learnt at a rate similar to Sable. We couldn’t seem to help ourselves.

My mother had told me knowledge was power. She had also insisted that not all knowledge could be learnt from books. She taught me to watch people, learn by what they did, and even more importantly, what they didn’t do. She taught my sisters Jose and Rona this, too.

She taught me about body language as she called it. She said while a person’s words could lie, many people didn’t realise that their body told the truth of the lie. She said it was a lesson my father had taught her and she had found it had been a useful tool.

I had also found it useful for telling me a lot more about how a person was feeling and not just about lying. I had also learned to detect their feeling from how they spoke. Picking out surface thoughts didn’t hurt either, though it wasn’t one of my strongest abilities.

Her lessons had stood me in good stead with the androids who didn’t display the same body language as humans. I had noticed the more advanced the android, the more these human traits had filtered into their speech and to some extent their movement.

Rose and Silver were two good examples. I had noticed the softening of their speech when they referred to each other. My suspicion of their feelings for each other was confirmed. I’d hate to lose Rose, but I knew that eventually, she would want to be closer to Silver.

For now, she seems to be happy with how things stood between them and she’d not mentioned any wish to leave me. I suspected that Silver also felt the job she was doing was where she needed to be now. I did notice that she was teaching Coppa to be her eventual replacement.

I had also noticed Hail looking at the two androids when they were together and that he suspected they had strong feelings for each other. His acceptance of the androids as people was obvious in how he treated them as his crew. He had marvellous people skills, and I learnt from him, as did Sable.

I had liked Hail when I first met him, and my respect for the man was up there with my respect for Cavil. I considered them two of best people I had ever met and my friends. I did find it odd that I had few friends my own age. Even my spouses were older than me.

I guess I just grew up a lot faster than my peers.

We only stayed three days in Ochre City.

We already knew what we wanted to stock on the ship. However, Captain Hail’s cargo still had to be unloaded, and the ship loaded with the new products. As far as Silver and her people were concerned, anything the androids farmed or made belonged to me and by default Sable.

Since they now had a functioning population, commerce had been re-established, and they leased out the land and resources using the same principles as we did on Green Island. Candy and Ochre both considered they were operating my cities, so Ochre realigned her laws to match.

She told me we didn’t do a lot different from the people who had lived in the city before I came, so it was no trouble to adopt my laws. She even adopted the laws and directives from Candy’s Council. I had to chuckle and would delight in telling Vaughn he was running two cities.

I had checked in with him and the council before I left and was more than happy with the jobs they were doing. When I went to leave, I noticed the receiving room had plenty of people in it. I had asked one of the people why they were there, thinking the council had more problems than they had let on.

The person said they had a little problem, but they were sure Councillor Anna would be able to help as she always did. Several others nodded in agreement and mentioned other councillors by name. They told me things were much better now that the councillors were approachable.

I contacted Vaughn and told him to add a bonus to all the councillors’ and their clerk’s accounts for doing their jobs so well. He then chuckled and said that they already loved me, but he would do it anyway as they made his job easier.

They hadn’t elected a council here. Most of the people just told an android, and generally, it was fixed or sorted out. I think they thought the androids were in charge and I decided not to disillusion them at this point. The population was small, and if they have any big problems, I’m sure Ochre would pass them on to Candy.

I told Ochre if they if they did have problems and couldn’t contact me then they should tell Vaughn. He could come and sort it out or do it through Candy. Ochre agreed this was an acceptable solution. She told me Candy had a high opinion of my Deputy-Mayor. They had analysed his decisions and found him a sound leader.

I agreed with her and said that Vaughn would do his best to help the people here once he became aware that I had passed some of my responsibilities to him. I mentioned I’d better double his bonus when he found out.

Ochre commented that since he was technically their Deputy-Mayor as well, then she would ensure he received his wages from here. I chuckled and told her I was in agreement with this decision. Poor Vaughn, he was going to have a calf when he found out.

We inspected Sable’s mansion, and we were suitably impressed. He informed me it was my mansion until he felt he was ready to move here. Ochre mentioned that if I needed resources to purchase gems, then I should probably see what was left in my treasure rooms.

She gave us directions to a treasure room they had started storing any precious metals they found in since other such metals were in it. Intrigued, Sable and I went to investigate the lower sections under the mansion. We found the treasure room she had mentioned.

I had little trouble with the spells as they let the Systems Android, Beryl and I enter unhindered. We were shocked by what was in it. Beryl told me that the meteor that hit the Citadel hadn’t been that large but it had caused a lot of damage even in the lower sections.

It was why the lower levels had been blocked off for so long. The androids that had been trapped with Ochre had taken a long time to dig themselves out. The ones trapped on the surface also had difficulty in locating a point to enter.

Ochre had to sleep for long periods to preserve her supplies, and the androids with her had to sleep when she did. The surface androids simply followed their programming until she woke again. Ochre’s androids had eventually opened up a tunnel to the surface, and she found the shield had been reduced to the small area it now covered.

The androids couldn’t function outside the shield without her for many centuries. They had also learnt from the other androids that the people had left or died. It had taken them a long time to fix the inner city that they had left, as many of the machines they needed were not accessible.

They had been liberating levels as they could and had only regained access to many of them about twenty years before. Once I had turned up the androids had put in a lot of effort to ensure I could come and see her next time I visited the city.

They had also built the residence for me since they now had a mage back in control. Like Candy, they had been ruled by a High Mage like me in the past. It surprised me that as far as the androids, Ochre and Candy were concerned, I was the boss.

They couldn’t seem to fathom that they could rule without me. I could only guess that it was something programmed into their basic makeup. They couldn’t seem to accept that a non-magical person or even themselves could rule. To them, only a High Mage or a wizard could.

While they controlled repairs, communications and day to day services, they couldn’t tell the people how to live their lives. Their job was to serve. Even the androids that displayed independent thinking still believed that they were designed to serve and that was what made them happy.

I doubted that I’ll ever be able to convince them otherwise. However, they were capable of determining the level of service they should supply to a person. They knew the difference between them being taken advantage of as to being needed. I believed the fact they had learnt how to say ‘no’ made them even more human.