Chapter 9

“Winter? Yes and no. It is the winter period as we are used to, but it doesn’t get terribly cold, though it does increase the moisture level considerably. It is more like a monsoon, but in a colder time of year; something to do with axial tilt. That’s why I am careful about good deep fenceposts in certain areas that may see a lot of rain.”

“Oh. A lot of rain, eh? But I don’t see the usual rain gullies eroded by rushing water.”

“That is because the rain doesn’t come down in sudden torrents. Here it is more a lot of shorter showers, and if your soil has good drainage, it is not seriously affected. Clay soil is more affected by the rainfall, but the water tends to run over the clay without digging into it. Think of that claggy puddling clay that was used in dam building and canal lining in the past. That is the sort of clay we tend to find here, though some of your clay is a bit on the whitish side...”

“I see. Is there a commercial outlet for it on Rehome? A market for puddling clay?”

“No idea on that one, Mr Robertson. Perhaps you can check on that by yourself.”

Reginald made a mental note to check on uses for clay deposits. His thoughts were interrupted by flickering shadows from above. He glanced up and saw two Landerships swooping down towards his land. Instead of in line astern as before, they were coming down in parallel, flying side by side, making him wonder why. He directed Ivan’s attention upwards, saying, “I think The Personalia are ready to laser the site, Ivan. We are well away from the target, but I wonder why they are coming side by side.”

“As long as they stay well away from us; that is all that matters to me,”

said Ivan. The two spacecraft now sent out light beams toward the target, one beam from each ship, and as they hit the target the wide beam sharpened to a narrow beam concentrated on a minuscule target within the excavated object. Immediately, the doubled laser beam imposed a massive heat transfer into the object, turning the target white hot in an instant. The power in these beams must be fantastically large, Reg thought to himself. He was surprised they didn’t need the third Landership’s power unit. Perhaps they had refined their calculations for powering the lasers. Suddenly, the object shattered explosively, with pieces of it flying in every direction. Moments after this happened, the laser beams shut off dramatically. It was time to see what the object had become under the instantaneous combined heat from the twin lasers. The explosion was followed by a cloud of dark smoke that obscured the hole for a little while. The north breeze slowly dissipated the smoke, taking it down the slope of the field, but the angle between Reginald and Ivan’s higher position at this distance, and the shattered object in its hole, made it impossible to view the result from where they were standing hundreds of meters distant. Reg suggested, “Let’s move on with our fence line, Ivan, and when we are closer, I want to go down and have a look at what is left of the object in my field.”

“If you want. I think I’ll let you do that on your own, just to be on the safe side.”

“That’s fine by me, Ivan. It is my problem, not yours. I won’t waste your time, so what I intend to do is pop down to the spot, take a quick look around; maybe take a few pictures, and come back to the boundary line. You can continue with your measuring, and I’ll come back to where you have got to.”

“Suits me. I only need you at times to confirm a variation on the normal fencing plan. If I meet one before you return, I’ll just wait there for you. It is a nice day anyway.”

A few minutes later, Reg was able to see an easy way down the gentle slope to the object’s hole, so he got started in that direction. After about five minutes more, he tentatively approached the spot. As he got closer he began to feel the rise in temperature coming from the excavation, and he hoped the conflagration had run its course. Stepping to the edge of the hole, he looked over and in. What he saw surprised him, but then anything would be surprising after that laser attack. The object was not sitting there anymore. In its place was what appeared to be a puddle of cooling glass, with a shattered metal ball apparently floating in it except that the glass was solid and the metal was embedded. He realised the metal ball must previously have held the sentient circuits that had survived all that time in the ground. Reg’s excavation and the research team’s prodding and probing must have broken open the surface, exposing the interior to sunlight and so providing the energy to power the remnant circuits that The Personalia had told him about. The rocky remains, that had surrounded the protective ball, were gone entirely; probably flung out of the excavation by their sudden expansion caused by the heat impact of the laser beams. Rapid heat expansion of rock often leads to shattering with an explosive force, so the solidified rock that had held the remnant for so long was probably scattered in small pieces over the field. Reg guessed that the original material had been softer ñ clay or mud or something that had been solidified into rock by the heat produced by the landing impact of the memory core in its hardened protective ball. The ball had been cracked open, exposing the contents to the environment in the ground. Over time, that had allowed deterioration to the extent that only a small remnant of the original was still viable; not viable enough to function properly, but enough to offer residual awareness. His phone rang. When he answered, it was The Personalia. “Reginald Robertson, we note that you have arrived at the site of our recent laser application. We would like you to photograph what is visible to you, and send the images to us for examination.”

“I can do that, yes,”

Reg replied, and proceeded to do that immediately. He took several shots from various angles, then emailed them to The Personalia number. He got the response he expected. “Thank you, Reginald Robertson. We are examining these now, and will say shortly whether these are sufficient for our purposes.”

Reg explained, “Make it quick, as I have to return to where Ivan is waiting for me on the boundary fence line.”

“One minute only, and we will be ready.”

True to their word, the voice was back in that time, saying, “These images are enough to confirm that what we aimed to achieve is complete. Thank you. You may leave now. What remains has no significance or concern for safety, so you should be able to plough that field without hindrance from now on.”

“Do I just bury that debris in the hole, or should I break it up first?”

“Either is satisfactory, but if it is deep enough not to disturb your plough, just burying it should be fine. It will not cause any reaction to the soil, being mostly glass. The metal is also non-reactive to most substances. Its presence shows that.”

They quickly concluded the call, and Reginald began his trek back up to where Ivan was still walking the boundary. The sub-contractor had not found anything that needed his client’s opinion this time. Reginald joined him at the boundary line. “Hi, Ivan. That was a good result. The object is gone, shattered to bits, and the remains are a puddle of fused glass with a broken metal sphere embedded in it. The Personalia are satisfied with the result, and I am too, so we can continue with our planning.”

“Good,”

Ivan declared. “Not far now to the corner of your land, then it is downhill and then back to the start point.”

“Fine. How does the final stretch appear to you?”

“I cannot speak to the ground conditions until we get there, though the lie of the land appears fairly gentle from here, and no more forestry to get in the way. I think it will now be down to what the ground is like. We still have to walk it, but I will be glad to see the end of it!”

“So will I. I would like to to invite you in for a refreshment before you leave us. My girls will want to thank you for your efforts today ñ and probably also for keeping me from harm.”

The last of the boundary proved to be as expected. The ground varied in softness a fair bit, and there was one short stretch of rock at surface level, but that was all; nothing terribly important. When they finished, down at the rail line, Ivan had to be persuaded to come up the track to where the house stood. The promise of a chair and a rest for a while, accompanied by a drink, did it and he and Reg appeared at the door, met by one of the ladies. They had been coming out to watch for him every so often, and this time it was Sandra who was there. She called back to the others, and they all clustered by the door to watch Ivan and their husband trudge the last few steps to the house. Frances asked, “Done, Reg?”

He agreed, “Yes, I am done in, darling; that was a long walk!”

“I meant done with your work, as you well know.”

“That too, Frances. A few amendments that will increase the price a little, but not significantly. Ivan is also going to quote us for fencing individual fields afterwards. We could both do with a drink; we are parched.”

“A drink for now, then an early dinner.” Reg headed off for his drink, while Frances greeted their visitor. “Ivan, can you stay for dinner?”

“If my girls let me. Allow me to phone them and check, please?”

“Of course. Men must accede to their women’s schedules, particularly where meal preparation is involved.”

Ivan got on his phone, and they heard him trying to explain his dilemma: wanting to come home but also wanting to be sociable withy the client’s family. He finally said goodbye and closed his phone. Turning to Frances, he told her, “They say I can stay, provided I return with as many details of your family as I can remember. They seem fascinated by such a large family.”

Frances gave him a knowing smile before answering, “I know what they are thinking, Ivan. Be prepared for them to seek another wife for you, so that they will have help in looking after their babies.”

He was bemused at this female conclusion. “Eh? You think that is what they intend?”

“I do think so, Ivan. They want to make use of the marital arrangements possible on Rehome. I will introduce you to all the wives here by name and the names of their babies. All you have to do is try to remember our names and match them to faces. You don’t have to tell your ladies which of us have the ugly faces!”

“Oh, but none of you are ugly, Mrs Robertson! If a few of you are slightly less than beautiful, then Reginald does not see you that way. Does he ever treat you as anything other than beautiful?”

“Never; that is true.”

“Then you are beautiful in his eyes. He sees inside you and likes what he finds.”

“How lovely, Ivan. You have a nice way with words. Your wives are fortunate to have you as a husband. What are the names of your ladies, may I ask?”

“One is Hazel, the other is Ivy.”

“Delightful names! You must get them to come visit us soon. We can advise them on having babies, with all our experience between us. I don’t suppose Reg asked their names?”

“No, he hasn’t. Should he have?”

“Being a man, no; I wouldn’t expect it. Any woman would have asked your wives’ names almost at once.”

“I see what you mean, Mrs Robertson. I should ask your first name, shouldn’t I?”

“I am Frances. For my sins, I am regarded as the leading wife of Reg. I get to be the bossy one, and Reg normally listens to what I have to say as well. We all love him dearly, but we see him as a ëwork in progress’. Most women treat their husbands similarly, but Reg had a bad upbringing, so he needs extra support at times.”

“Yes, I have noticed that Hazel and Ivy push me in certain directions if they feel this is best for us as a family. I am happy to fit in with them; they are wonderful girls.”

“Sounds to me like you are a good husband to them, Ivan. Reg is a good husband to all of us. He learned to live with us as part of himself, of himself as a person with all the range of feelings that bubble up within us. As a youngster he missed out on much of that development, so we had to put it back into him. He was like a child learning to enjoy a new present, only his presents were us girls, and we knew more about people interactions than he did. He paid for that tuition by helping us with our academic studies. It worked out surprisingly well for all of us, and when we started to talk of marriage, of a permanent family group, there was nothing he wanted more; just to be with us for ever.”

“He didn’t go through the usual explorations with a first girlfriend at school?”

“He had no real friends at school at all. His mother controlled his life; made sure he had no social life at all. Deprived of that outlet, he concentrated on absorbing information; learning for the sake of learning, to fill up that hole in his life. He had no birthday parties with friends, was not allowed to go to other schoolmates’ birthday parties. She treated him as the one who should have died when his father was killed by a road traffic accident. Reg in his pushchair survived, but his father didn’t. It was therefore the child’s fault, in her mind. That was her rationale behind his treatment.”

“Good God! He shows no sign of it now.”

“That is the result of being with us, his women. We nurtured him as he grew to know how to act with other people at university, and it was noticed. It was also noticed how we girls improved our results in all our subjects. Reg had so much knowledge packed into his brain, and poured it out to us as we needed it, as our personal academic tutor. With him, we learned how to learn and how to apply that learning to effect.”

Ivan said, wonderingly, “I am amazed that he even got himself to university, if he was so socially backward.”

“That was down to the school. The teachers saw that he absorbed knowledge effortlessly, so they pushed him to learn more; then when he did well in the exams, they pushed for him to be given grant aid to get to university, and persuaded the university to provide a subsistence grant for living in student accommodation so that he didn’t have to travel daily from home. Reg had no idea this was happening in the background. He just found he had been accepted by the university and that they were providing student accommodation for him. He could never have afforded university otherwise, with just a widowed mother for a parent; one who didn’t care about him. We were fortunate that he got to university or we would never have found him.”

Ivan gasped out, “Amazing!”

but his host had not finished. “Now what about you, Mr Barclay? Or should it be Barclay de Tolly? Which do you use?”

“Either is fine, but most folks like it simple, so Ivan Barclay is the usual.”