He smiled down at me and said, "I studied Ekistics at university, it's the science of settlements." And then, in a quieter voice, he added, "I wish I'd paid stricter attention." And then he was walking away, to cheer and laugh and revel in the hard work of making a permanent encampment around which to begin our sojourn into future greatness, more intricate harmonies.
I bent and lifted more dirt, tossing it up onto the pile I'd made. The surface of the ground was at my chest now, and I knew I should go only a little deeper before beginning to shave the sides to enlarge the hole.
Ice, gritty like sand, which Castell called permafrost when I asked, and tendrils of some kind of fungus, too, made root shapes into what little loam there was, then spread flat where the rocky dirt layer began. It was like a vein of decay, maybe a motherlode, undermining the seasonal grasses above. It was as if the best of Haven floated upon the worst.
It occurred to me that my hole mirrored a grave at the moment, and that put me in mind of the Reverend Garner "Bill" Castell, our leader's father. Had the son studied Ekistics in preparation for his father's grand vision of a promised land where his church might exist in freedom and liberty? If so, then what had distracted him from the stricter attention he wished he had paid?
Shaking my head, I started widening my pit, trying to slant the walls the way Reverend Castell had shown us.
We worked for several hours, then broke off to rest and eat.
It was after a meal of a small handful of dry rice washed down with tea and broth, which made it swell to fill bellies, that we had our first trouble with the patches of stickyleaf grass.
Its serrated stalks sliced open exposed flesh, allowing its sticky leaves to cling over wounds. We later found out that some workers were using the stuff as makeshift adhesive bandages. Unfortunately, the sticky stuff, clear and odorless, worked like some snake venoms, breaking down proteins in the skin and blood. Anyone with the stuff on them developed ugly purple masses of pulped tissue. Blood poisoning can result, and the affected areas must be cut out, and quickly.
Allergic reactions are also not uncommon, including anaphylaxis, which can result in quick, gasping death. I knew about that one because I'm allergic to bees, which, by the way, we'd imported, too. Without bees, few Earth plants can cross-pollinate. Fortunately, the tough African/Penn State hybrid was thought capable of colonizing any planet, so there was little worry on that account.
As for stickyleaf grass, our medics figured it out and explained it as a cousin to acid-secreting firegrass, but only after several emergencies left more than a few of us injured. One child, three and curious, had placed a sticky leaf on one of her eyes, and another had been eating them and died.
It was our first warning that Haven could, indeed, be very specifically an alien world into which we were the trespassers.
After that, we were all far more careful to take nothing for granted. Not even the soil in which I dug seemed as inert.
It seemed a trial of some kind, and I endured it by working even harder. I made the acolyte house extra secure by creating a zigzag entrance just big enough for one large man at a time to crawl through.
Nor was my dread of predators entirely unwarranted. A large part of our supplies, after all, consisted of the embryos of various foraging creatures, which we'd let loose. Once populations of these herbivores and omnivores thrived, we'd introduce the carnivores, a few of them, to act as predators and thus maintain a natural harmony.
An Earth-nocturnal cat from the Negev desert called a caracal, for example, was thought to be perfect for the dim lighting and relatively rainless conditions prevailing over most of Haven. It might raise havoc with our poultry, but could save grain from vermin, too. The high deserts and rugged mountains of our new homes would seem like paradise to such creatures, I thought. But encountering one might not be such a blessing.
Before any encounters might happen, though, there must be a thriving human settlement. On this world, man came first, bringing plants and animals with him, and although the harshness of the climate was a shock to many of us, even an insult, still, it was our place to be cautious.
In our hands lay Haven's fate, and we strove to be worthy of such responsibility.
In use lies ownership, and stewards of the land are keepers of the future, as our Writings tell us. On a more practical level, our church's resources had been spent to get us here, and the supplies we had were very likely all there would be. Haven's an out-of-the-way world, not on trade mutes and in fact on the very rim of the CoDominium's interests and influences. And so we struggled onward. How fragile we considered our every possession, how gently we treated even stones.
Our laying out of the encampment proceeded at a measured and deliberate a pace. A few of us might have hurried to escape the bitter winds, or to gain privacy or other comforts, but haste would have created its inevitable waste, and that might well have meant doom. Colonizing a world requires patience.
Castell supervised us, and kept us patient, and we remaining Chosen labored hard. We quickly patterned our habits so that there was always work being done, even as others rested. With only variable nights, Haven invited such perseverance.
In several of my sleepings we had a place that seemed familiar upon waking, and some of the quicker animals were beginning to take on proper forms, among them the chickens. I found out by almost trampling a dozen yellow chicks that hopped by just as I climbed the four steps up out of the acolytes house. To my look of surprise one of the genetics people said, "We let them breed a few cycles first, just to make sure."
"Then have you foodbirds?" I asked, my mouth watering.
He nodded. "Many have died, yes."
"Waste not, want not." Feeling lighter of step, I walked toward my day's duties. One of them was helping soothe the beasts to be slaughtered, by being among the chorus whose drones kept the birds calm even as the butcher graced each throat with his molecule-sharp, gently wielded blade.
Reverend Castell declared it Yule Season when he heard that meat was available. We celebrated with feasts and exchanged gifts of song, dance, and privacy. And our meals of roast chicken and eggs done many ways were, indeed, duly sanctified because we ate no meat that had not passed on its lifeforce first, and we ate no eggs that had not been candled and pronounced free of conception. Nature's cycles were kept in harmony.
Life began improving for us, as we harmonized with our new environment. Meetings were held again, as the work became predictable. Schools commenced classes. We sang, always we sang, and some began constructing instruments with which to enhance our music.
Once, as I sat with a group around a fire in the town square, the sound of a lone harmonica drifted to us from the woods. "The outcasts," someone said, and although a search was made, no one was found. Tales of the many odd items smuggled from Earth began to feature in our rest periods.
We contemplated the loss of regular dusks and dawns in one of Reverend Castell's sermons, and it moved us to think of the sacrifices sometimes necessary when better life beckons. On a more mundane level, shaving was largely forsaken, because facial and body hair added another layer of insulation, something to be cherished on chill Haven.
An influenza went through us at one point, giving most bouts of vomiting and fevers and worse, but no one died from it, and we pronounced it ship-borne, a legacy of lesser times, simpler tunes, when we'd lived in Earth's cacophony. Most negatives were blamed on Earth, while anything positive was a sign that Haven welcomed us, celebrated our arrival, and supported our efforts toward Universal Harmony.
Several women showed signs of pregnancy in the first months, and all would soon, we hoped. I often wondered when we acolytes would be permitted to choose wives from the girls, and I confess that I slept but fitfully all too often as I imagined this twelve-year-old, or that fourteen-year-old, naked and in my arms, her eagerness exactly matching mine, our knowledge equivalent as our bodies formed a chord.
Even Reverend Castell took a wife, Saral. His wedding was quiet and private, and she radiated both calm and good cheer when she stepped out of his house the morning after they'd plighted troth.
It was many sleeps before it dawned upon me that Saral was the woman who'd very likely been raped in the bunk beside me, during transport, and I could not help wondering if the Reverend had wed to save her from possible prejudice. Perhaps it was another of his lessons, too.
For a while we got along well, and bound ourselves in peace, but then the intruders came.
III
After a dozen Earth-months on Haven, I could go in shirtsleeves, and my body had filled out until I was bigger than Reverend Castell himself.
Walking between the rows of plastic-covered furrows, I crossed one of the fields north of town. The trick of covering the plants to create mini-greenhouse effects had increased our second crop yield by seventy percent, so I watched my feet, remembering clumsier days.
In my left hand I carried three small animals, all dead. They'd been discovered by three of our outlying farmers and I was taking them to the doctors for analysis. One looked like a salamander, green with red spots along its flanks, but it had a soft membrane across its forehead, and its eyes were multiplex, like a bee's.
Another of the animals I'd seen alive. It had a furlike covering that scraped off like moss, four legs, and twin tails with bristles at the end. Those bristles were more like tiny barbs, and caused swelling. I knew because I'd kicked one once, at the edge of a corn-crop.
Coming down the hill, I had a good view of the lake. Its beauty inspired me with pride at our world. Boats bobbed near the shore I approached, while our wharfs, now numbering three, showed much activity as nets were repaired and boats were sealed.
We used resin from the pinelike trees for a natural sealant, even inside our houses. It dried to resemble a plastic. Those trees, whose sap ran outside their trunk, added layer after layer in a seasonal cycle we had yet to parse. Resin could be harvested in liquid form, and kept pliant by heating, or it could be peeled in sheets.
I waved, but the small figures could not have seen such a gesture, if they saw me at all.
That's when thunder sounded, a rare sound on Haven. It was rarer still from a clear sky showing only sparse, high cirrus clouds, so I squinted upward, perhaps subconsciously recognizing the sound.
A glint became a glitter, and then the spot swelled and I drew in a sharp breath. My pace increased, and soon I was running.
No one on the shore or in the boats seemed to notice, and I wondered if the sound had been baffled from their hearing by the very hills on which I now ran. My gestures and shouts did not carry far enough.
The spot had grown now. Blunt at the snout and wide in the beam, it was obviously a shuttle. Even as I glanced upward again the wings extended farther, to let it achieve subsonic speeds without tumbling.
I had to skirt a stand of oaklike trees, then cut through some more of the pines before I got another clear view of the lake. Some of the boats were making their way to shore. Others bobbed in apparent ignorance.
Increasing my pace, I grew light-headed. Thin air duelled with highland lungs, for I'd been raised in the Rockies, but my speed and rhythm suffered. The splashship was now big in the sky, and falling fast. It banked and I saw stains and signs of neglect. "Earthers," I shouted, my anger surging.
And then the last few boats began moving, their occupants rowing frantically, but it was too late.
I stopped running on the crest of the final rise. The animal specimens lay behind me, flung in frustration. All I could do was watch, squeezing my fists until my knuckles crackled.