Ric Locke - Temporary Duty

The swing-up garage door hadn’t been opened in Peters’s memory; the old man opened the smaller door beside it and gestured. “Lead the way, I’m sure you remember.” He stood aside while the others trooped in and up the stairs to the main floor, glancing at the cloth-shrouded ‘21 Corvette that had occupied the garage since forever. A coal-fired furnace sat in the far corner, producing cheerful warmth in defiance of EPA regulations, and a miscellany of tools and junk lurked in the back corners, beyond the reach of the single bulb.

The living area of the house was pleasantly warm and smelled of something good simmering. “I’ve got enough gas to run the generator tonight and part of tomorrow,” Granpap announced as he emerged from the stairway behind Dzheenis, stripping off outerwear and hanging it on pegs. “Can’t have space people living like pioneers.” He had white hair and a lined face, but his movements were lithe and confident, and the hair was a thick ruff that curled a bit at his temples.

“You might be surprised. Granpap, this is Ander, and this is Alper. We’re—” he hesitated a moment “—I reckon ‘married’ is the best way to put it, leastways that’s how I feel about it.”

“I’m charmed to meet you,” the old man said with a smile, and took one woman’s hand in each of his own. “Welcome to my home. I hope you’ll consider it your own.”

“Thank you,” said Alper. “We’re pleased to meet you at last. John’s heritage is clear in your face.” Ander murmured something, seeming shy, and the two responded to the elder Peters’s gentle tug, at first a little reluctant, then molding themselves to him the way they did to the younger one.

“It would appear that the ceremony took place about six months ago,” the old man commented as he released them.

“You might say that… this here’s Khurs. She’s—” he hesitated “—it’s hard to explain, but she’s part of the family, besides bein’ a crackerjack translator and secretary, and about twice as smart as I am, maybe three times.”

“Charmed,” said the old man a little hesitantly, and took her hand.

Khurs was having none of that. “Don’t I get a hug too?” she asked in her surprising baritone, and slipped inside the reach of his arms to clasp him tightly. His arms went around her more or less by reflex. “You remind me of someone I knew and liked a lot,” she said, her voice muffled by his clothing. “You’re not used to looking at Grallt, are you? We’ll have to work on that.”

Peters grinned at the old man’s expression. “Last, but not least in any sense, this here’s Dzheenis, who’s also a member of the family in the same way Khurs is.”

“I’ll forego the hug for the time being,” said the big Grallt as he extended his hand. “Pleased to know you.”

“And I you,” said the old man, sounding a little dazed.

“Everybody, this is Donald Peters, my grandfather. Don’t call him Don, he don’t like it. He’s the one raised me from the time I was three.” Peters smiled. “Anything you don’t like about the way I act, you can blame it on Granpap here.”

“Now just a damned minute,” Donald snapped. “I’m not taking the blame for all of it, certainly not for the way you talk. That was our redneck neighbors, especially those no-account Wisenant boys.”

“And girl,” Peters put in with a grin. “Don’t forget Faye.”

“Hunh. As if I could forget Faye Wisenant. Or her mother… although Janice had her moments.”

“Yep. She hollered pretty loud when they come up, if I recall.”

The old man didn’t respond to that, but his eyes twinkled. “Sit down, everybody,” he suggested, and began to gently detach Khurs from his waist. “How long have you been—” he stopped, shook his head, and smiled. “I was about to say ‘on the road’, but that’s just showing my age. How long have you been traveling?”

“It seems like forever,” Alper said with a shiver.

Peters nodded. “About ten hours, and over half of that was creepin’ up the valley at a walk. Truth is, some places walkin’ would’ve been faster.”

“Not to mention safer,” Donald said tartly. “You must be hungry as bears. Anything I need to know before I start dishing out venison stew?”

“I don’t know of anything,” Peters said, and met his grandfather’s look with a spread-armed shrug. “On Llapaaloapalla we pretty much ate from the same pot. There’s some things don’t agree with both species, but then I get the hives from hazelnuts and none of the rest of us has any problem.”

“You do know that raises some pretty hard questions,” the old man commented.

“I didn’t at first. I reckon I spent more time tryin’ to figure out Faye Wisenant than I did listenin’ to what you was tryin’ to teach me.” Peters repeated his palm-up shrug. “I ain’t got no answers, and neither does anybody else I know.” Then he grinned. “To either question, to tell the truth.”

“Hunh. Well, at least it means I can feed you. Sit down, all of you. There’s been nobody in this kitchen but me for ten years, and I can do better without help.” Donald began dishing out stew; Peters noted with an inward smile that Khurs got the first portion, whether as a mark of favor or to keep her out from underfoot he couldn’t tell. Thick chunks of bread, just at the point of near-staleness perfect for sopping up stew liquor, finished out the meal, and to drink they had a choice of clear spring water or a dark-amber ale cloudy with suspended solids and tasting of health, growth, and fertility.

Donald Peters served himself a glass of ale and stood leaning against the kitchen island, sipping and watching as stew disappeared. “How long can you stay?” he asked when spoons started reaching mouths with less urgency.

“Four days, no, three now.” Peters grimaced. “I got to be in Washington on the fourteenth.”

“I’d hoped for longer.”

“I’d planned for longer.” He looked up. “I’d intended a week, maybe ten days, like I told you in my first letter. Then the damn Navy needed two weeks to decide whether to give me a medal or throw me in jail. They’d still be at it if I hadn’t told ‘em I was leavin’ with or without paperwork, an’ they’d better shit or get off the pot.”

“You probably didn’t make any friends.”

“Hunh. That kind of friends I don’t need… then I had to go to south Texas, an obligation I took on myself to see my buddy Todd home and buried.” He took a sip of ale, then twisted his mouth in a way that had nothing to do with the drink. “Shit. Poor bastard got his heart cut out by a chunk of flyin’ debris, and been froze solid for six months, and there wasn’t nothin’ for it but to thaw him out and do an autopsy.

“Didn’t get that done with ‘til last Friday, and then we had to wait ‘til the banks opened Monday morning, followed by another two days while the assholes ran around like chickens with their heads cut off tryin’ to figure out how to give his heirs access to the money he’d made on the ship.” He took another sip, then set the glass on the table. “The whole time couldn’t none of us turn around without trippin’ over a Fed with a form to fill out and ‘just a few questions, Mr. Peters, I won’t take much of your time.’ Has it always been this bad? I done bought and sold a spaceship that’d take you from here to a star you can’t see in ten days or less, and it took less time, and a Helluva lot less paperwork, than openin’ a bank account in Port Lavaca, Texas.”

The elder Peters shook his head. “I’m just surprised you were able to get it done that quickly. No wonder you were anxious enough to get here to fly in a howling blizzard. But to answer your question: no, it hasn’t always been this bad. When I was a kid, and even into my twenties, you could still move around pretty easily, especially if you had a little money. Then it started getting tighter and tighter, but nobody really noticed, because it was still possible to get things done if you worked at it.” He shrugged and spread his hands. “Your daddy had some caustic things to say about me setting up this place, and hardly a day went by that I didn’t wonder if he was right. Then came the Year of Our Lord Twenty-Twenty-Three.”