Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

She sighed and nodded. “Well, Brother, somebody taught them to use domesticated animals and how to build and plow and sow and reap without machines, so they have some skills you wouldn’t expect.”

He grinned. “Let’s go see and ask them.”

She nodded. “I’m kind of curious to see those big animals close up, too.”

Even though they could have flown to the nearest people in the fields or even the next town in short order, there was never any thought of doing it. Instead, they would walk, unaccustomed as they were to the difference in gravitation over The Mountain ’s artificial but totally stable one gee, and the natural atmosphere that seemed a bit richer if also smellier than that in the ship. Gravity here was, in fact, a bit lighter, although not dramatically so. It wasn’t enough for grand gestures and feats, but it did make things seem a bit easier, a bit less stressful, to do.

They walked through the courtyard between two of the old buildings and out onto the plain beyond. There was a lot more junk lying around all over here, but it was consistent with what they’d seen in the square. They’d come, they’d set up what they could with what they had, and they’d finally, and apparently within a fairly short time, run out of power to keep a modern town center and colonial headquarters going.

“I wonder where their ship is?” she mused.

“Huh? Oh, not here, that’s for sure. They were off-loaded, the defense system was set up, probably also using units from other places, and then whoever brought them all left. Well, we’ll see what these folks know, if, at least, we can get anybody to talk to us. I’ve never been on a recidivist world before, but the records show that half the time the people tend to run like hell when they see strangers or sometimes try to attack them.”

She looked around and mentally gave a prayerful plea to God. “Thanks a lot, Brother,” she said sourly.

Having no particular knowledge of the locals, they picked what looked like a decently worn path and started off, oblivious of the direction. If settlement had been radial from this point, one direction was as good as the other.

The road showed signs of wear; it had once been well traveled, an ad hoc paved path perhaps three meters across, but clearly no highway. Wind and rain had battered into it taking the wear and tear from earlier times and widening and worsening those effects. It was obviously a well-traveled road no longer, but one cracked, pitted, smoothed, and rutted like some exposed rocky outcrop in active weather. The people might still farm the areas near the old landing site, but they didn’t go there any more and hadn’t for quite some time.

They walked along rather casually, taking in what sights they could and speaking only now and again. Both were aware that they were probably being observed, and they wanted no sense of threat or intimidation to emanate from their manner, nor any sense of fear, either. They did stop after an hour or so at the bank of a small stream and, after taking samples and checking with a pocket analyzer, determined that the water was in fact just that, and they drank. It was warmer than they would have liked, kind of appropriate for hand washing rather than drinking, and it had other oddities, but it quenched thirsts and their analyzer assured them it would cause no ill effects.

“What’s that odd aftertaste?” Eve asked him, making a slight face. “Tastes like plumbing or something.”

John laughed. “That’s minerals dissolved in the water. It’s perfectly normal and the way things work on real worlds. You’ve just never had to drink any water that wasn’t purified and distilled.”

“Water shouldn’t have a taste,” she insisted.

He shrugged. “I admit to some hesitation, but not on taste. The trouble with this sort of natural spring water is that you never know where it’s been.”

She almost spit it out, but managed not to. Either she’d have to stand the stuff or she wasn’t ready for this kind of work, and she definitely wanted to be ready for this kind of work. Still, his somewhat teasing comment bothered her because, while said mostly to get her goat, the fact was, it was also the truth. She was in the first stages of realizing what living in a primitive or natural environment really meant.

They were fast walkers and in good shape on a lower than standard gravity world, though, so they made very good time, and within three hours they came to the outskirts of the closest village on the road.

It was the smell that got them first. The stench of human and animal waste, and the effect on it and anything else organic in a hot, wet climate was almost overpowering. The insects, perhaps drawn by this, were also quite heavy and some of them bit, and there were the sounds of animals all around, including, unexpectedly, the barking of dogs.

There weren’t any pets as such allowed on The Mountain , but there was an entire animal wing, a zoological department as it were, where a number of animals were kept and bred for various purposes and where, just as important, large stores of fertilized animal embryos and a comprehensive DNA record of just about every animal known plus representative stem cells to grow them if need be were kept. Every child born and raised on the big ship had been introduced to the smaller, less threatening animals, small friendly dogs and affection-starved cats in particular, because they were part of the experience the Doctor thought important in growing up so long as they didn’t have the run of the ship.

“Don’t expect these dogs to be friendly,” John warned her. “Just because ours are doesn’t mean that they weren’t also bred as watchdogs and guardians. Stay away from them if you can while here; you simply can’t be certain which are playful and which might be killers.”

Still, that might be easier said than done, she realized. While some of the bigger, noisier dogs seemed to be restrained by leashes affixed to poles in the ground, others did wander around. Fortunately, the barkers were mostly tied, while the wanderers barely acknowledged their existence or approached, sniffed around, then went on when they were not fully appreciated.

There were some cats, too, mostly asleep under things and in shady spots. They looked big and fat, which meant that they were well fed at least. On what wasn’t so clear, but colonies tended to introduce cats when they had a small varmint population to control.

The houses looked a bit less ramshackle on the ground than they had from the air, but they certainly didn’t seem like places either of the spacefarers would have felt comfortable in. The walls appeared to be local adobe-type mud, with thick tan walls and narrow doors of wood that seemed to be covered with some sort of incongruous mesh screening that certainly couldn’t have been locally produced. “That’s salvaged stuff,” Robey commented. “It’s weathered quite well. I suspect everybody got some here, but I can’t imagine it being common the farther out we go. Some of the pipes doing drainage here look slick and well machined, too, but the patches at the junctions are crude and jury-rigged.”

Eve looked around. “I doubt if they do more than sleep in those places,” she noted. “No chimneys, roofs are salvaged slates, pitched thatch, or similar. The bigger buildings near the town center would have to be common barns, and I suspect that the area over there with the big covered pit and the stone slab tables and benches is the common kitchen.”

She was about to deduce more when several figures emerged from some of the houses and one of the large barnlike structures, carrying sacks over their shoulders or large jars on their heads, all heading towards the “common kitchen.” They all looked young and strong, wearing thin gray cotton one-piece dresses and little else, and they were all women and girls. They all had coal-black hair trailing down and reddish-brown skin and there was a definite racial kinship in the features, possibly due to close intermarriage.