Chapter 29

On his own and uninterrupted for the moment, Reginald wondered how many varieties of pseudo-bird species there could be in the national park. A proportion of all Earth insects tended to be poisonous or biting creatures, so he speculated that the same would apply to these local versions of birds. The visitors should be warned of the possibilities, and so to be careful interacting physically with the local avians. His thoughts turned to a list of dos and don’ts for visitors.

He listed them in his mind.

First, do not bring in any weapon other than up and close protection, like a knife or pepper spray. So no guns of any type (including airguns and tasers), crossbows, standard bows and arrows, or blowguns with poison darts. (He wanted to say, if you feel the need of such excessive protection, don’t come to the Park, but that proscription might not be permitted by the Governor). Reginald didn’t know of any native animal that people would need serious protection from, but his knowledge might not be up to date, and possibly the Colony’s knowledge too.

The same restrictions would apply to transport, but that would be made plain at the entrance by a road barricade and a metal fence on either side. No motorised vehicle, whether two or four-wheeled. An off-road bicycle or mountain bike is not acceptable either: foot travel is best.

Second, adopt the best practice of all – leave nothing behind when you leave, except footprints.

Three, don’t remove anything from inside the Park unless previously agreed with the authorities; most especially, do not take any living organism: it is part of the Park’s ecosystem and so stays there. Exceptions may be allowed for a few small fossils or rock samples, maximum mass of one kilogram. Gold and silver, if found, may not be extracted, as geologists will need to see it in situ, for research purposes, and future visitors would like to see it as well.

Instructions would be to check with Park staff about possible search locations for fossils and semi-precious stones such as agates, rose quartz, amethyst, and onyx. There would be no guarantee that any of these examples might be found within the Park.

Four, fires are dangerous to the Park, so you are advised to not start any fire at all, not even to boil water for a drink. Bring your hot drink in a flask. Fires would be treated as vandalism by the visitor.

Five, avoid causing damage to any part of the Park, whether to trees, animals, pathways or the streams/rivers within the Park. Don’t block a stream: the Park is natural: let’s keep it that way.

Six: step lightly as you go. Avoid causing loud noises that may disturb the Park, its denizens, or other visitors. Loud music or any kind of explosion is forbidden for that reason.

Seven. Clothing. Wear clothing appropriate to the season (Check with the Colony forecast if you are unsure. It is your responsibility to do so). Please also wear outer clothing that will help us find you if you get lost: bright colours are best, but alternatives are contrasting stripes such as black and white or yellow and black.

Eight. Carry a light source that you can flash if you hear a search drone overhead. This is particularly helpful at night. If you do not have a torch available, build a small fire in a stony place with no dry foliage nearby, e.g. a riverbed. An emergency situation, such as injury or heart attack, is the only occasion that a fire is permissible; and have a container of water handy to put out the fire as soon as it is no longer essential. Even a plastic bag will do for water, if the open end is tied shut.

Nine. If you intend an overnight stay, bring a tent and a sleeping bag. These must NOT be left behind, ever, or you will incur a large fine for clearing up afterwards. You will be identified, please note.

Ten. Picnics. If you intend to have a meal break, bring your own folding seats and table, and a picnic basket with all the utensils needed, and the prepared food, as no open fire cooking will be done here. A better option would be to sit on boulders, use another boulder as a table, and eat sandwiches you brought with you. This saves on carrying your table and seats. Eating from local plants is not advised until these can be confirmed as edible by humans. Fish from the streams is similarly not advised as food, and should be returned alive to the water if caught by fishing.

Stopping at that point, Reginald reckoned this was enough for now. The list could be refined later, as there was plenty of time for such preparations before the Park opened for business.

He was interrupted by Erika and Frances coming to find him.
“Reg dear, can we use the decoration plan we have installed here as the template for the new house?” asked Erika. “Frances thinks this would be simplest and best, and I agree. We can take pictures of each room as a guide.”

“Now that seems eminently sensible,” Reg was swift to add his approval, for he intended to leave his ladies to deal with all decoration matters. “Once you know how many rooms need decoration, you can order your supplies of paints and tools, and the curtain material for the windows.”

“Yes dear, but with a larger house we intend to have the curtains sewn commercially so that we just need to hang them on the curtain rails; faster that way if they come to us by rail.”

“Hmm ... I see. A drapery. Does that mean that small businesses are springing up in the city?”

“Yes. There are always needs that have to be supplied, so someone will see that and provide the service. There are already several small bakeries in the city for bread and other baked goods. Hopefully they will eventually be selling birthday and anniversary cakes. Our children will like birthday parties from about age two, when they are old enough to note the difference.”

“So are there services you believe should be provided but don’t exist yet? Could we do something to provide these services, even if it is simply asking the Governor to get local firms in Metropolis to expand into this city?”

“Reg, to do that research we’ll need to ring round local families and ask them what is missing in city facilities. It all takes time, so leave it with me and us girls will organise a survey.”

“Thanks, Frances.”

Reg was wandering through the house and sniffed as he passed one of the toilet rooms. He was puzzled by the acrid aroma and went to find one of his wives. It was Jessica he found.

“Jessica, what is that funny aroma coming from the toilet back there? It is quite a sharp acrid smell.”

“Oh, that is just the nappy bucket, soaking nappies before they go into the washing machine. The acrid smell comes from the sanitising chemical that we get from the pharmacy. It is mostly bleach, I think. That is what I used to use, back home.”

“So we don’t use disposables?”

“I thought you knew that. Disposables are a problem for waste disposal facilities, as the plastics in them don’t break down biologically, so they need specialist furnaces to destroy them. Thus, cloth nappies are best for the environment. Remember that such disposable diapers also have to be imported from Earth, so reusable cloth nappies are by far the better option. I wish I could say the same for milk.”

“How do you mean? You all breast-feed, don’t you?”

“Yes, but as the children grow they need to be weaned off the breast, especially if we have new babies coming along. With no milk-producing animals on Rehome that we know of, we depend on supplies from Earth, but that comes as powdered milk, the only way it can get here safe from biological contamination. It also avoids wastefully transporting a lot of water in the milk.”

“That sounds sensible, my darling. I am a mere man, so I didn’t notice that.”

“Talking of which, most drug addicts are men. How does it happen that we have drug addicts on Rehome? Don’t they get weeded out at the start, before being allowed to move to Rehome?”

“Dammit, you are right. That must mean that they got addicted here, so someone is probably selling drugs in one of the cities. I must ask Admin about this.”

He did not waste time, but made the call within the hour, and asked to speak to someone who dealt with drug addiction. Surprisingly, he found himself speaking to Colonel Diane Kempe.

“Yes, Mr Robertson? What can I help you with?”

“I may be wasting your time, Colonel, but my wife Frances queried the presence of drug addicts in the colony. She reckoned these would be prevented from coming to Rehome, so how do we have drug addicts raiding our pharmacy?”

“Ah, yes. Nice to hear that Frances noticed that too; observant of her. It bothered me too that we could have drug addicts raiding a pharmacy. It implied that someone was selling drugs to our community, but at the moment we depend on members of the public telling us about such matters, as we don not have massive numbers of security personnel to patrol the streets. Do you have any suggestion towards identifying the drug pushers?”

Reg suggested, “Pushers can’t sell drugs if they don’t have them, so they must have a source of the drugs. I have heard nothing of native drugs on Rehome, so to my mind the drugs must come from Earth. Addicts raiding a pharmacy suggest a limited supply is available, possibly intermittent at the moment due to a restricted route.

Can The Personalia identify such drugs within cargo or personal baggage, as that is the only way I know that the drugs can get here from Earth?”

“Interesting thoughts, Mr. Robertson. You are slightly misinformed about drugs on Rehome, as we know of one that was discovered by accident, and we export it to Earth quite legally. It is though not the kind of drug that addicts here would be seeking, so I believe I shall speak with The Personalia about detection possibilities. Addiction may not be on their list of interests in regard to humans.

They will probably ask for samples to help them identify the substance in transit. Leave that with me, and the Colony will make a start on this. Thank Frances from me, for her useful insight.”

“Thank you as well, Colonel. You seem to be on top of our criminal element.”

“I only wish that was 100 per cent true, Mr Robertson, but we try, we try.”

Reg finished his call and told Frances what Colonel Kempe had said.

“How nice of her, Reg. She sounds a lovely woman. I read somewhere that she is the security chief of Rehome; the boss lady of everyone involved in protecting the colony.”

Reginald frowned. “No doubt, but what is she a Colonel of? We don’t have an army, do we?”

Frances gave him a gentle smile. “No dear. Her title of Colonel goes back to her time in the military on Earth, and she has retained it to give her some exalted level of authority here. Calling her just Mrs Kempe would not sound like the chief of all security services; would it?”

“I suppose not.” He changed the subject. “Have you and the girls thought about more shops in the city?”

“Yes, dear. We think it important that the Colony thinks in terms of repairing rather than throwing out and replacing goods, as that is wasteful, typical of Earth’s throwaway society. What our city needs is a range of repair shops; electrical, mechanical and wood repairs - furniture primarily, but repairs to wooden doors and so on. Women might also like to see a shop where clothes repairs and alterations can be done. Children grow out of their clothes so quickly that alterations is a good idea. Our other thought in that line is a swap shop, where you can hand in clothes that you no longer have a use for and buy (at a reduced price) donated clothes that might suit your family’s needs. All donations would have to be washed and sterilized before handing in.”

“Hmm. Not everyone would find it easy to take stuff to the city, so why not have a donations bin at each rail station? At the end of each day or week, depending on usage, the donations bin could be picked up by the last train and dropped off at the city’s main station, where they would be collected each morning by the swap shop operators. Presumably empty bins would be taken out as replacements to the stations by the first train in the morning.”

“That’s a very practical suggestion, Reg. I’ll add it to our suggestions list for passing to the Admin people in Metropolis.”

“Fine. I need to take another tour round our farm, in case there is something new that needs attention. I’ll go on the tractor to save time.” He paused. “That reminds me, we should take the tractor to our new home when it is ready, and we probably need to buy another one to supplement what we can do with this one. By the time we get there it will be too late to plant anything, but we can make a start on ploughing ground that is suitable for crops, and let it get some frost during the winter.”

This spurred a thought that a circuit track round the Park edge would be a good route to get to arable patches within the private belt that would be part of their land. It need not be anything other that a basic farm track wide enough for a tractor to use.

His drive around the farmland was spoiled by the arrival of a slight drizzle that obscured the tractor windows, cut general visibility and forced him to drive close to the farm edges in order to view the boundary fence. The fence seemed intact, but with one or two deceased insectile birds hung up on wires that they had failed to see in time to avoid. Perhaps the topmost wire should have had a fluttering bright cloth to deter such inadvertent suicides.

The ploughed soil of the fields looked better with the dampness, and so far no local grass had appeared, probably because of the mostly dry conditions since ploughing. Reginald surmised that the patch that already had grass growing was probably watered by an underground source; perhaps because of an impermeable clay layer below that had trapped earlier rainwater.

His assessment was that the farmland looked in satisfactory condition, even though it would be sold to the quarry company shortly. They would need to have an expanding barrier round the quarry site as it was worked, to prevent unwanted gawking visitors falling fatally into the workings. There was nothing to stop the company from planting the belt with earth crops and thus getting some benefit from the land before the quarry extended its bounds.

Next, looking from a distance, his view of the destroyed site of the ancient alien object confirmed to him that there was no change at the spot. That pleased him, and he returned home in a better frame of mind. They could move with no concern for the land that were abandoning.

That made him think about how long it would take for the Colony rail builders to construct the line to the Park. What if they had to cut down chunks of forest to keep the line on an acceptable gradient? How much would that slow them down? Did they have adequate machinery to do the job?

The next day he made enquiries to that effect, and the man he was able to talk to reassured him.

“We have been, shall we say, encouraged to proceed with all possible haste, Mr Robertson. The Governor wants to have the Park open to the public as soon as practicable. With the cooperation of The Personalia, we imported a couple of large bulldozers to clear and grade the rail route. The Personalia replaced the diesel engine with a nuclear one, so that fuel is not a bother. We can run the machines as long as we have drivers. That means with teams of drivers we can keep working all the daylight hours we have, and possibly a few hours of darkness if it proves possible. One doesn’t like the possibility of a machine toppling over and injuring or killing the driver.

Most of the route simply means grading the route to the rail requirement, and we are aiming at a two per cent gradient as much as we can. That is the maximum of the existing rail system installed by the alien builders, and we try to keep to that standard. This can make the route from A to B a bit more sinuous, but it all depends on the existing land surfaces. My provisional estimate is that we should have the rail bed completed to the Park within two weeks or so. The track laying is much faster, as it is merely a matter of bringing ready-built sections of track on a train, then transferring the sections ahead of the train and connecting them up. As a result, I am anticipating the line being completed to the rail terminal at the Park in about three weeks. It is then up to The Governor to decide on the line’s priority for new trains; there is a constant demand for trains to run on the new lines being built outward from the cities to serve the hinterland.”

“Thank you for that information, sir. I shall consult with Governor Kempe on the priority question, as there are other aspects that have to link in with completion of the rail access, such as the building of the rail terminal/Park entrance, and the new house and staff accommodation for Park employees. Your timetable will be most useful in that regard.”

“I understand. Will the terminal include a food outlet, or will such facilities arrive later?”

“A good point, sir; one which we have not thought about. I shall refer it back to the planners of Park facilities. Any other good ideas?”