Not With A Whimper: Producers Read online

  Not With A Whimper: Producers

  D.A. Boulter (c) 2016

  Copyright page

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters and events are fictitious and any similarity to people, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright (2016) by D. A. Boulter, all rights reserved

  Cover Design by D.A. Boulter

  Images: Space Station: Andreas Meyer (from 123rf.com)

  Earth: JohanSwanepoel (from Depositphotos.com)

  Books by D.A. Boulter

  Not With A Whimper Books:

  Not With A Whimper: Producers

  Not With A Whimper: Destroyers

  Not With A Whimper: Preservers

  Not With A Whimper: Survivors

  Yrden Chronicles Books:

  Trading For The Stars (Book 1)

  Trading For A Dream (Book 2)

  Other Amazon Books by D.A. Boulter

  Courtesan

  Pelgraff

  Pilton's Moon / Vengeance Is Mine

  ColdSleep

  The Steadfasting

  Prey

  Enemy of Korgan

  Ghost Fleet

  In The Company of Cowards

  A Throne At Stake

  D.A. Boulter’s blog: http://daboulter.blogspot.ca/

  D.A. Boulter can be contacted at: mailto:[email protected]

  This series is dedicated to Mrs Jennifer Hanes, my Grade 12 English teacher, who believed in my creative abilities. Thank you, and Rest In Peace.

  Note:

  Although the 4 books of the Not With A Whimper Series take place concurrently, and can thus be read in any order, the preferred reading order (according to the author) is: Producers, Destroyers, Preservers, Survivors.

  This will present the reader with the fewest spoilers, though some are unavoidable as characters from each book interact with those from the others.

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  Author’s Note

  Books by D.A. Boulter

  Not With A Whimper: Producers

  ONE

  Friday, May 21st

  Robert Clement stood leaning back against the split-rail fence, and watched the lowering sun sending its golden light across the green field of growing grain. As his fingers toyed at his moustache, he idly wondered how many farmers had done likewise throughout the long past, seeing hope in a new crop. He felt a vast weariness come over him as he realized his son would not stand here as he did, watching as his own work produced food for his family. His son held his gaze much higher – on the stars. Up there, food for the family would come from hydroponics, with machinery doing much of the work that a man did down here – well, that men like him did down here.

  Speaking of food for the family, Linda would soon have the evening meal ready; he should start thinking about returning, for she didn’t like it when he came in late. He needed to do something about her – had tried, but without success. He contemplated having an affair with another woman, but she would just laugh at him if he brought it up, not sue for divorce. He’d have to think of a more compelling reason.

  The rising breeze cooled him, and he figured he’d better wash before supper, too, as the long day’s work had left him sweaty, and he smelled of having done a man’s work.

  A small noise to his left attracted his attention, and he turned his head to look down the long, dusty road. A man of middle height ambled towards him, absently kicking at the odd stone. His worn-out clothes proclaimed him as an itinerant worker. With the man’s hat pulled low over his eyes to protect them from the lowering sun, Robert only saw the stubble on his chin and cheeks. He looked like he had walked a long time, had that weary gait that Robert knew too well from coming in after a brutal day of ploughing with the horses.

  Upon noticing Clement, the man turned from the road, crossed the ditch and came to a stop just the other side of the fence.

  “A dry walk,” he said, and shook an empty canteen. “Wouldn’t happen to be able to spare a sip?” He glanced down to Robert’s waterbag – one that he had made himself – hanging from the fencepost. “Be right neighbourly.”

  “Of course.” Robert unstopped his bag and the man uncorked his canteen. Robert poured until he had filled the canteen, leaving himself with a mostly empty bag.

  “Not shorting yourself, I hope,” the stranger said.

  Robert laughed. “A refill waits a fifteen minute walk from here.” He had a thought. “And soon supper will wait with it. Hungry? We could set another place.”

  He noticed the gaunt look below the three-day stubble on the other’s face, and wondered when he had eaten last. But the man shook his head, pulled back his sleeve and glanced at his chrono. “Nope, though I’d love to stay. Don’t have the time.”

  Robert froze inside. The stranger wore an expensive chrono – one that he could pawn for maybe one thousand North American Dollars. That didn’t fit the man’s image – that of a hobo of centuries past. What did he really want? Why had he come, and why now? Who was he? Robert didn’t allow any of his thoughts to change his expression.

  “No time? You have someplace to be?” It would sound like he just made conversation. Robert didn’t trust even the seemingly-empty outdoors to not have ears.

  The stranger yawned and stretched, again revealing the chrono. Deliberate, in case Robert had failed to note it first time? “Yep. Going to the coast.”

  The coast? Going west, as the man appeared to be doing, that lay over a thousand miles away – the other coast even farther. What difference would an hour make? The coldness inside his stomach spread to other parts of his body.

  “How long do you have to get there?” he asked amiably.

  The stranger tilted his head to the right, pursed his lips, and looked up to the left. “Maybe a hundred days – end of August. No later.”

  The coldness turned to a stone that weighed him down. That soon? “You have an important meeting to attend?”

  “The most important of my life.” The stranger hefted the canteen. “Thanks for the water. Like that poet Frost said, I gotta lotta steps to take before I can put my head down. Best to start taking them now. Like my momma used to say, ‘First step is the hardest, but once you make it, you just keep on going until the job gets done.’”

  Robert smiled at him. “And I had best start taking a few myself – to my house, where my wife will get upset if I’m late for supper.”

  The stranger answered Robert’s smile with one of his own. “I should envy you, mister, but I don’t. Much easier to just start walking when a man has no one else to think of.” He raised two fingers to his hat brim in a casual salute. “Where I’m going, I probably won’t see you again. So, thanks for the assist. How far to Carterville?”

  “It’s twenty miles from Felson. So, another 16 miles by this road.”

  The man nodded his thanks, turned and started shambling on, never looking back.

  Robert watched him for two minutes. Then, a feeling of dread filling him, he turned and began his own walk. He would have to escalate. And that would mean more friction – friction he didn’t really have the stomach for, but couldn’t avoid. Damn. Damn them all to hell.

  He hardly tasted the meal, and both wife and son noticed his distraction. They didn’t try to g
et his attention; they knew better. So they spoke amongst themselves in low tones, and he paid no attention to their words.

  Linda raised an eyebrow when he went to his little study directly after supper instead of helping her with the dishes as he usually did. But she said nothing, and merely signaled to Lawrence to help her. Her son muttered something about his chores, but a cautioning look from Linda silenced him.

  In his study, Robert took out his books and stared at them until the fading light from the window made the figures run together, undecipherable. At that point, he put his face in his hands and closed his eyes. He had hoped. But, no, the timing left him with no options. Lawrence and Linda would both learn to hate him. He grimaced, and corrected himself. Lawrence would learn to hate him even more than he already did.

  TWO

  Saturday, May 22nd

  Lawrence Clement unstrapped his chrono – what his father called a wristwatch – and began to wind it viciously. He sneered at the indicators that pointed across its face – one to the six and the other to halfway between the two and the three. He stared at the thing in his hand, then relaxed. The fault did not belong to the watch, but to his father. Lawrence cursed the day his father had made his decision to leave the city with all its comforts and excitement to buy a farm in the middle of nowhere. He cursed the farm, and he cursed his life.

  “Lawrence, time to muck out the stable,” his father’s voice from behind had him hunch as if under a blow.

  Clamping his jaw shut against the compulsion to answer back, Lawrence replied, “Yes, Dad.”

  He turned and looked down at his father, not a small man himself. His father looked up and considered him.

  “You’ll grow into a big man, son. Big men need to watch themselves; someone smaller always tries to cut them down. And little engenders ridicule like a big man who whines. You do your job, do it well, and don’t complain.”

  Larry fumed to himself. The old man only said that to keep him in his place. Big men don’t complain; big men can take it. Yeah, he had grown large, and few in his class could match the strength he had developed doing manual labour on the farm, but certain complaints were justified – like his – no matter his size or strength.

  “I’ll be in the south field, if anything comes up.”

  Lawrence heard the footsteps receding, and began to breathe again. “Do this, do that, Lawrence,” he mimicked cruelly. “It’ll make a man out of you.”

  He spit on the ground, then reattached the archaic device about his wrist. The wretched thing could only tell time and nothing else. Well, not even that; it could merely indicate time. The wearer had to interpret the position of the indicators – hands, his father called them. It hadn’t even a solar-chargeable battery in it; it had a spring. If one forgot to wind it on a daily basis, it stopped.

  And he had forgotten to, just last week, causing him to arrive at class late – much to the malicious delight of Jason Wall. Lawrence’s eyes narrowed in remembrance. He glared again at the watch, then jumped. The position of the hands recalled to him the time. He ran to the barn, built by hand and without nails (one of the few of its kind left in the United States of North America), placed the shovel in the wheelbarrow and pushed the unpowered contraption to the nearest stall.

  Working like a madman, he shoveled the horse droppings, and then threw down some fresh straw. He moved on to the next stall, and then the next. If he hurried, they would have more time for the most important thing in his life. And that made working hard worth the effort.

  “Larry, are you in here?”

  Lawrence’s heart jumped at the sound of Sandra’s voice. At last! He dropped the shovel where he stood. “Yes,” he called out, “I’m in here.”

  He practically ran to meet her at the entrance to the barn. A great smile came to his face as she came into sight, blue eyes gleaming at the sight of him, blonde hair blown by the breeze. But his eyes, though taking in the beauty, went past all that and to the backpack, right where he hoped it would be.

  “You brought it,” he said, breathing out a sigh.

  Sandra laughed, the sound like music to him. “Of course I brought it, silly.” Her eyes met his, and her smile matched his own. “Where’s your father, Larry?”

  Larry’s smile faded. “Out in the south fields, the bastard.”

  Sandra frowned. “He’s your father, Larry. You shouldn’t refer to him like that. It isn’t nice. It isn’t right.”

  “He isn’t nice. He treats me like a slave, like we’re not even related.”

  She grimaced, which detracted somewhat from her beauty. “Oh, it’s not that bad.”

  Larry had the good sense to not press it. He didn’t want to spoil his pleasure with thoughts of the old man, anyway. “Okay,” he agreed, “it’s not that bad.” He glanced at his watch. “We have at least an hour, maybe two.”

  He waited what seemed an eternity as Sandra pulled the pack from her back, opened it, and brought out the computer. His eyes glowed at the sight of it. “What’s first?”

  Sandra smiled at him, eyes twinkling. “What would you like?”

  “The module.” Quick, decisive.

  Sandra set in on the workbench, and brought it out of its sleep mode to the very page he had in mind. He grinned, reached out, and squeezed her hand.

  “I thought you might choose that,” she said, answering his grin with one of her own, and squeezing his fingers in return. That led to him giving her a great hug. He practically lifted her off her feet, and held her close, breathing in the scent of her shampoo, which still clung tenuously to her hair.

  “Careful, Larry, you don’t know your own strength.”

  He laughed, and tossed her lightly into the air, catching her on the way down, only to receive another hug. The warmth of that made him want to stop, to do something that biology regarded as an imperative. However, he had given himself to a higher imperative.

  Thus, reluctantly, Larry released her, needing both his hands to enter figures into the slots. The orbiter came up, and Larry boosted it to the orbit it needed to achieve geosynchronicity. The module affirmed the input as correct, and allowed him to move on to the next page. Together, the two teens stared at the next problem. They bent to the task, everything else, the smell of the barn, the lack of a proper desk, the dim light, all forgotten.

  A clang came from the yard, causing Larry to start. He glanced at his watch, and his eyes widened. Well over an hour had passed. He kicked himself for not paying more attention to his surroundings. Should the old man catch them, his escapes from the drudgery heaped on him would vanish – probably forever.

  “It’s Dad. Quick, put it away,” the eighteen-year-old whispered, jumping to his feet, and grabbing the shovel. By the time his father made his appearance, Larry had finished the last stall and had grabbed the wheelbarrow’s handles.

  “Ah, there you are. Oh, Sandra, I didn’t know you were here.” His father gave a heavy nod of his head to acknowledge the young woman.

  “Mr Clement. I came by to talk with Larry. We have an essay due next week, and have to collaborate.” If ‘Mr Clement’ noticed her pack, he gave no sign.

  “You look well, Sandra. How are your parents?”

  Lawrence fidgeted. Hopefully his father would leave soon; hopefully he wouldn’t ask to see their notes. Sandra brushed back her long blonde hair with her hand and smiled winningly.

  “They reside in the best of health, Mr Clement,” she said. “And they asked about you when I told them I intended to work with Larry.”

  Larry held his grin back. Unlikely. Unlikely that they asked about his parents because it seemed unlikely that Sandra had told them of this jaunt. She, at least, had the freedom to move about without a tyrant for a parent watching her every move, declaring what she could and could not do.

  “Well, Linda and I are just fine. You can tell your parents we appreciate their interest. Lawrence, are you still here? You know where that goes.”

  Gritting his teeth behind a smile, Lawrence pushed
the wheelbarrow out into the yard. He desperately wanted to know what his father said, wanted to be there in case he had to intervene. But, no, Sandra had a quick mind and she could handle his father – he hoped.

  Upon re-entering the stable, he found the pair laughing.

  “That’s too funny, Mr Clement.”

  Larry peered at his father in the gloom of the barn. What was too funny? He hoped no stories about his childhood had come up. He hated it when his father told stories about him as a kid. The old man fingered his moustache, and then turned to him.

  “She’s quite a girl, your Sandra,” he chuckled. “Well, if you two have an essay to discuss, get to it. I’ll bring the cows in for you today.”

  “Uh, thanks, Dad.” His father had rarely offered to do any chore for him. Rather the opposite. Responsibility built character, as he never tired of saying, as Larry never heard without resentment. But his father hung up his tools in their proper place and, after waving to Sandra, strode away.

  “He’s not so bad, really, Larry,” Sandra said after his father had moved beyond earshot.

  “What did you tell him?” He didn’t want to know what his father had said. Better to not know than to show his embarrassment.

  “We just talked about the weather. I told him about the time I got caught out in the hailstorm. He told me of a similar experience.”

  Lawrence grinned. He understood his father’s laughter now. Sandra had a knack for telling that story. Then he sobered. “Bring it out again. We have at least 30 minutes before he can get back – maybe another hour.”

  Sandra opened her pack, and brought forth her computer once more. He brought it out of its sleep mode and began entering equations. The satellite he had conjured stood in geosynchronous orbit, oriented such that its antennas captured signals from the ground and its solar panels brought power from the sun.