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- Herausgeber: Adriana Pertile
- Kategorie: Erotik
- Sprache: Englisch
The first booklet of this novel tells of an ancient fleeing tribe, as well as the background of its flight, and its tragic conclusion. We left Paxma, the tribe's Shaman, a man endowed with a culture well ahead of their current time, while sitting by the bedside of Quilen, the tribe's dying chief and his longtime friend. Paxma does his best to ease Quilen's pain by the use of powerful drugs, whose action he can adjust depending on need. Thus, during the periods of pain remission, Paxma tells his friend a story he learnt from a time traveling entity, story that unwinds in a future roughly similar to the time we are living in today. Quilen will learn that two catastrophes that happened in very distant ages and places, unexpectedly had some common, obscure beholders.
Paxma’s story is the subject of the present booklet (the second one) and the sequels; it sweeps over several continents, and its actors are the post-Catastrophe members of a Scientists' Center located in Castle Burg, a lakeside town of the fictitious Cordillera country, which is placed on the same latitude as most Northern Italian villages lying on the Swiss border. In such Center, a strife for the primacy in the world’s power supply takes place between the Botany’s and the Physics’ Masters, and is made incandescent by some petty bickers arisen over the billiards table. The Botanist’s pugnacity exceeds all boundaries and accidentally will unveil the authors of a Catastrophe that nearly wiped out the human race.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Adriana Pertile
This book is a piece of fantasy. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author's creativeness or are fictionally adopted. Any affinity with actual conjunctures, or settings or persons living or deceased is absolutely fortuitous.
GREEN SUNSET - #2 Copyright © 2019 by Giuseppe Ricci
Cover design by Amedeo Ciocci ([email protected])
through modification of the Schossberger Castle (Schossberger Kastely) Tura, Pest County, Hungary's inside photo, made available by Torobala/Wikimedia Commons. See:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Schossberger-kast%C3%A9ly_%287474._sz%C3%A1m%C3%BA_m%C5%B1eml%C3%A9k%29_23.jpg/1280px-Schossberger-kast%C3%A9ly_%287474._sz%C3%A1m%C3%BA_m%C5%B1eml%C3%A9k%29_23.jpg
as
Image CC BY- SA 2. 5 HU, under the Conditions shown on the summary published athttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schossberger-kast%C3%A9ly_(7474._sz%C3%A1m%C3%BA_m%C5%B1eml%C3%A9k)_23.jpg
which refers to:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/hu/deed.en
Accordingly, the present cover, designed by Amedeo Ciocci, will be available for reproduction under the same Conditions and License.
The tower viewed through the room window belongs to Palazzo Gallio, in Gravedona (CO), Italy. (Photo by Giuseppe Ricci).
Translation from Italian by Giuseppe Ricci, (authoress' husband), under the literary/linguistic supervision of Yahya Oktay Edip (mail to: [email protected]) (a long time family friend).
Table of contents
Inscription
Foreword
The Castle
Escape from Rome
Surprise at the West Junction - I
Passage to Cordillera
Planning in the dark
To the wines
Greenhorns
Entrance exams
Trouble from Aswan
Balls and bile.
Mocking tournament
Incoming flights
New Wine Feast
Geigers' Song
Chlorophyll vs Protons
Australian style divorce
Fralla
Jasmin
A game changer
Fralla stretches
Back to the Cave
Bad news
So, guys, are you coming too?
Credits
Inscription
This book is for my never forgotten infants Riccardo and Riccardo.
It is also for my daddy, Umberto, who in his candor wished Pertile surname to be spread
throughout the world.
Foreword
This novel has already been published in 2015: also as an eBook, in full and in the Italian language. We preferred to split the English version into multiple books, each of which offers a more than acceptable reading time.
The first booklet of the novel tells of an ancient fleeing tribe, as well as the background of its flight, and its tragic conclusion. We left Paxma, the tribe's Shaman, a man endowed with a culture well ahead of their current time, while sitting by the bedside of Quilen, the tribe's dying chief and his longtime friend. Paxma does his best to ease Quilen's pain by the use of powerful drugs, whose action he can adjust depending on need. Thus, during the periods of pain remission, Paxma tells his friend a story he learnt from a time traveling entity, story that unwinds in a future roughly similar to the time we are living in today. Quilen will learn that two catastrophes that happened in very distant ages and places, unexpectedly had some common, obscure beholders. Paxma’s story is the subject of the present (the second) booklet and the sequels; it sweeps over several continents, and its actors are the post-Catastrophe members of a Scientists' Center located in Castle Burg, a lakeside town of the fictitious Cordillera country, which is placed on the same latitude as most Northern Italian villages lying on the Swiss border. In such Center, a strife for the primacy in the world’s power supply takes place between the Botany’s and the Physics’ Masters, and is made incandescent by some petty bickers arisen over the billiards table. The Botanist’s pugnacity exceeds all boundaries and accidentally will unveil the authors of a Catastrophe that nearly wiped out the human race.
The Castle
Escape from Rome
She had got into the desolation of a street she was finding deserted for the first time in her life and, failing to get her car started, had tried several others. There they were, everywhere, keys in the dashboards and all sorts of clothes, underwear, keys and gadgets on the seats, or on the floor. But no engine would start. Later she would come to know that, in the general calamity, the Boot was among the most unfortunate countries; both for casualties and for hydrocarbons failure. Almost everywhere in the world engines would keep working, one way or another, even for more than a week: but there, dammit, everything had been cut off right away. She had started wandering an uninhabited Rome under the scorching sun.
It had been a cheerful and numerous family, her parents still in charge of five children, raised so far in the cult of freedom. Four brothers and her, the only female: all about as tight as one can get. Overnight, what one day would be baptized "Scarlet Light" had swept everybody away. She would turn twenty after a month; her younger brother had been seventeen, the older twenty-five. Only in the morning did she recover from shock, desperate but determined to swallow the new reality: of her folks only a memory remained.
She entered a sporting goods store through a showcase semi-blocked by the SUV that had smashed through it, and chose a tough mountain bike, her great passion of the high school times. She also took trekking shoes, backpack, bottle, and a small, powerful binocular. Mini skirt and vest hadn't been changed since the day before and ended up in a corner, soon replaced by resilient scout shorts and a blouse of the same sort. Feeling attracted to a Rambo knife hanging from its waistband, she slung it across her shoulder to rest through her breasts. A waterproof poncho found its place in her backpack, along with a pair of hunting trousers, and a woolen jumper. She finally left the store, bike on her shoulder, working her way through the narrow passage afforded by the SUV in the showcase. A stop in a bakery, which she found open, added some food to her load. Food, she would find out, would never be a problem.
Pushed to the East by an instinct that seeped over her catalytic state, she crossed the whole city without seeing another living soul: garments, shoes were scattered everywhere; now and again the breeze rolled shirts and underwear on the tarmac, catching her always unprepared. Toward midday, finding herself in the square of her university, she thought instinct had guided her there, and went in, though a little wavering. No one: only a few clothes. In her faculty's lab she tripped over Claudia's t-shirt and shorts: a graduated girlfriend with whom she had taken breakfast the morning before. She had been slaving away over a major research and no doubt had been there late at night, probably planning to stay until the early hours.
Judging by how she had reacted to the disappearance of her folks, for a moment she feared to fall into the dumps. Instead ... no backlash at all. Was that the beginning of a cynical time ... already? Hard to say it under those conditions, but she knew that cynicism would sprout, cover her heart as tight as an ivy. It was tormenting to leave behind the place where she had distinguished herself, acquired the greatest honor. Absolute first in every course, she had been running for a degree in physics that was expected to come up more than bright. Shaking her head, she shrugged her shoulders and fought back the first tears of the day. Pushing on the pedals, now on purpose she turned around the Campo Verano Cemetery to enter the Parks Highway.
She adjusted on a pedaling that promised to last and, zigzagging among stuck vehicles, came to see the exit to Castel Madama while the afternoon gold flushed into serotine purple. And there, finally, a human being. A lanky, red-haired boy in light shorts, vest and sandals, with a dapple-gray horse, which by contrast looked like a monument.
He had seen her from afar and waited for her in the middle of the roadway. The horse, dressed only in his halter, grazed grass from the edge, waving a greyish tail.
"Hello young man", she said, struggling to look cheerful because, even from afar, he looked like an image of discomfort.
His name was Remigio, a twelve-year-old survivor of a family of affluent farmers of the Tivoli neighborhood. They too had been a numerous litter and he the youngest. All gone. Even the dogs, two mighty shepherds and a snarly terrier: all disappeared into nothingness. But ... was that so everywhere?
That caught her off guard. "I'm afraid so, at least here: by now, some plane, say ... helicopter, should have turned up... but ... what am I saying ... fact is no engine works anymore ..." And it was all true, damn it, all over the day she had not seen a dog either. Not to mention horses or donkeys, for that matter. A horse... a good idea … she had a fair way with horses. But did he own that dapple grey only?
"No ... yes", Remigio said, starting to sob, "we also had a bigger one, a draft horse, but he had also disappeared."
"A draft horse?"
"Yes, grandpa liked him better than our tractors." He was eighty, grandpa, but still very lively and active, and liked to reserve small plots for himself, to cultivate them the old-way. Who knew where grandpa was now ... As for himself, everything had happened without him noticing anything: the day had been tough on the fields, and he'd slept like a stone. At waking ... house deserted ... nothing working: no fridge, no light, no toaster ... He sniffled. "But at least, do you know what happened?"
"Yes my young friend: it must have been ten in the evening, when the sky lit red. Then the red lowered and for a moment we were all in it, like in a bloody aquarium. The unluckiest (practically everybody, she would later find out) were knocked unconscious: drooling, trembling, convulsions ... But it lasted only a little: in a few seconds the red was gone, just a thin pinkish fog was left around the corpses. A hungry mist: it ate them, and they began to shrink. Before dawn nothing was left."
She'd omitted the most repugnant thing: that fog was alive, swarming inside with something indistinct, vermicular, which she hadn't dared investigate too closely. All in all, though, she'd come down too hard on him, perhaps even brutal. But she couldn't help herself, never having been good at sugaring the pill. The boy had turned to stone. As if of him only the eyes had been spared, wide open onto her like two headlamps. A change of pace was in order: "Well, sooner or later we'll find some others to tell you the story better than me. But, you? What did you do this morning? "
Remigio raised his knuckles to wipe the tears. He'd searched barns and stables and ascertained the disappearance of dogs and the other horse; then he'd ridden to the bordering farm. The same situation was showing there, so he'd released livestock and poultry, had come back home to do the same, and then out again, on horseback.
He'd been on the highway the last couple of hours, with no idea what to do. He kicked a pebble off the asphalt. "Damn, and what do we do now? What about going back to my home? "
"I don't think it's a good idea. Better to move, look for other people. Let's go to L'Aquila, have a look, then, if that's the case, we'll keep going, maybe up to Pescara."
Remigio rubbed his eyes again. "May be hanging out here, freeing cattle ..."
"Great, but unpractical. We might well turn around for the whole Boot, then. Look, let's do as I say, and if along the way we see or hear something ... we get the job done. Does he hold his trot for long, your horse? "
"His name is Dardo. Yes, as long as I need. "
"Why isn't he saddled? And where's the bridle? "
Her question caused a new pause.
"Mom too used to say that to me all the time. But that's the way I want it: the horse is mine. Grandpa gave it to me; even the saddle, but I used it little."
"Again: unpractical. We aren't off to picnic and the saddle comes in handy for a thousand reasons."
"You are right. At home I also have its bags. Everything custom made, grandpa said. But today I didn't think of it, just wanted to leave because I was so scared ... But if you are around, then ... Then what do we do, shall we get back there to pick it up?"
"How long does it take?"
"An hour and a half, more or less," Remigio said.
She thought about it and turned back to consider the path she'd covered, then again forward, towards the mountains. She shook her head: "Yes, yes. Even though in L'Aquila’s riding school we would find some good saddles. But not tailor-made. Ok then, we'll eat, sleep there, and tomorrow we'll be back on the highway. And if we find a good horse, then I'll ditch the bike and ride too."
"I doubt if you'll find one. Today I wandered a bit, but I didn't see any. My neighbors had a couple of donkeys and a horse, and they are gone too."
"OK. The bicycle isn't bad either. Then you'll have to wait for me quite often ... A lot of climbing on the way to L'Aquila."
They slept in Remigio's farm. The next day, going through Tivoli, she had him well equipped, and his saddlebags filled up. The Remigio who rode with her toward the highway dressed now in jeans shorts, khaki canvas hunting vest and inevitable trekking shoes. They got to L'Aquila after a week. An eternity, but that hundred kilometers trip had multiplied many times because Remigio's ear picked up every minimal sound of animal origin.
"You hear?" he'd say.
"Here we're going in circles," she'd answer, sweeping the landscape with a slow, resigned look.
"But ... poor creatures," he'd say with a whingeing voice, blushing and twitching on the saddle.
"Well, then. Good thing we aren't in a hurry. After all, traffic's so light ... ", she'd say again, not spotting a living soul.
And she followed him over farm tracks, dirt roads, meadows and stubble. Feeling outperformed when having to labour on the pedals to cross a lawn; or, bending, to push the bike through a fallow, while he towered upright on the saddle, suddenly imposing like a reborn Genghis Khan. They opted for innumerable detours and detours of detours, chasing remote bleats, choirs of moos, some brays, only one bark and no neighs at all. They released dozens of cows, hundreds of sheep and goats, half a dozen donkeys, a quantity of pigs, a single dog, thousands of birds and not even one horse. The wrecker knife excelled in cutting ropes, straps and collars.
Her complaints became more and more listless every day, when, releasing every new cow, Remigio started a drag because ... poor thing, how would she do if no one milked her?
Then she would move the subject to any other topic. "I guess your Dardo's value must have soared one hundredfold, in this new ... situation."
The boy scratched his head: "Yes, but what to make of cash, nowadays?"
Christ if he was right. That was a real problem, and she'd been struggling on it too. She wanted to hope that sooner or later they would find some other Survivor. But, doing the math on the available data, she could estimate how many had been spared in the Boot. In their wanderings they had covered, she reckoned, a tenth of the area of an average province, without finding anybody: and they were in two only. With a bit of optimism, and expanding to the hundred and ten provinces of the Boot, one could think that there could be between two thousand five hundred and three thousand survivors in the whole State. Later she'd find to have come very close to the real figure, a very bad one for that matter, in the planet's global disaster. So: a small village's population spread over the entire Boot's surface. With stockrooms everywhere, overflowing with food and other basic commodities, many with very long shelf life. Not to mention machines, technical articles and tools that, with a bit of care, could last for decades. What to do, then, with money? "You'll see: we'll all be forced to refresh our concept of equivalence." She would ascertain it herself a few months later.
"Equivalence?"
"Ouch. In which class were you? "
"Second year, secondary school."
"Then you should know it. And it goes hand in hand with that of barter." His horse had no price at the moment, she said: he'd have to hold on to him very tightly. But, later on, the shortage of any kind of highly sought-after commodities would bring forth the right individuals to produce them, or to obtain them somehow. And they would set the conditions: the prices, in a few words, in terms of other products or services. And the market would be reborn that way. The horses, who would have thought of it, would be more demanded than any super off road vehicle of the ... time ... era ... age... How to define what they had left behind just three days before? And how easy it was to see it as something gone, how logical to consider the new situation as irreversible. Remigio had listened, nodding in silence. In the end he said, "I don't think I'll ever sell my Dardo."
In the late afternoon they went looking for some isolated house in the fields, where it was more likely to find LPG cookers and showers. So they washed away the dust of the day, and after that she cooked, but even the LPG's burning kept worsening every day.
She had expected Remigio to sneak a peek at her sometimes, and confirmed it the first day at bedtime. Nothing wrong with that, she could understand it. She even had an impulse to embrace him, to be hugged ... motherly, fraternally ... or ... she didn't know how. But their partnership would soon be dissolved, and at the moment of parting what could have come from a good intention, would do more harm than good to the kid. They slept in different rooms.
At L'Aquila they ran around a whole morning, before the Student's House came to her mind. It had been rebuilt two centuries before, following an earthquake, and she knew it to be energy efficient, a whole roof of PV panels. They found a dozen people there, who’d moved in from the neighborhood, joining in with an engineer who knew the structure and how to handle the technical equipment. They had got organized and for a couple of days had lit a bonfire in the courtyard, hoping the smoke might attract other Survivors; that term was bound to be universally adopted. How come they hadn't fired today? Simply forgotten.
They idled in the House for a couple of weeks, then it became clear that the outlook wasn't brilliant from there. Was there any two-way radio in town? There were some in the army barracks, said the engineer. Problem was, no one knew how to use them. They'd better go down to Pescara then, she suggested: on the coast, close to a harbor and to important roads, it'd be easier to put a good group together. Some of them wavered but in another couple of days they all headed east.
Others joined them along the road; including a board steward, who had been on vacation in the L'Aquila's countryside at the crucial moment. He maintained that in Pescara the Harbor Master's Office was a well-known place among seafarers and had a well-equipped communications room. Every survived sea man in the area would touch base there: in the long run, someone who knew about radios would turn up. Going to Pescara? If so, they shouldn't forget about the horse, because there was no forage in town. They found it in a farmers' cooperative, right in the sunny and silent center of a little town on the route. Dardo got two sacks slung on his back.
Their group numbered seventeen people, when they got to Pescara. The steward had got it right: they found an army officer at the Harbor Master's Office.
"Braga, Major of the Army", he said.
"Marisa", she said.
He was a middle-aged man, belly starting to show, gray mustaches. Formerly an Army Engineers' instructor, he had settled in a broadcasting room with a radio telegraphist technician, and trawled the air the whole day. They were not alone, he said, there were fifty of them, who'd come from everywhere. At the moment everybody was around looking for food and more, but in the evening they would all be back. The engineer placed himself at his disposal.
She stood next to Remigio, waiting for the Major even when the others had left to settle in a nearby hotel. And how was it going with the radio?
"Nothing yet from the Boot. I'm afraid it doesn't look so good, here around", said the Major, "but we have a good contact from Celtics' Hill."
"Who's up there?"
"Scientists, technicians. They reactivated the electrical systems for the town needs (energy doesn't lack there, with that giant power station) and aim at getting quickly organized."
"Any name?"
"We are talking to an electrical/computer engineer, Chizallet, who'd been working there already. He's running the control room, and takes care of radio probing, like us here."
"Excuse me Major ... they want to get organized?"
"Eh, my daughter, there are now so few of us to make us all equally important: you can still call me Major, but ... no formalities, please."
"Okay, Major, I'll do that", she said, shaking his hand for the second time.
"Now, to answer your question: it seems that at Celts they want to set up a center for energy production and the restoration of basic crafts and agricultural activities."
"And by the radio? Have they found someone else around the world that you know of?"
"Yes, and almost everywhere scientists, broadcasting from renewable energy power stations."
"How are they going at Celts?"
"Well, they are moving their first steps. A pretty aleatory attempt, isn't it? Anyway, they're now expecting someone really important."
"Do you know who it is?"
"Yes, it's Vuchich, the physicist."
"The Nobel Prize?"
"That's right. I see you're familiar."
And how! She had definitely heard of him, having read his books when still at high school, and got passionate enough to opt for the physics faculty. Disavowing at the last moment a fondness for veterinary science, which she'd nursed since childhood. "Yes, I read his books." Her stare had got blank: just then a patch of blue sky had opened in the blanket of darkness that had borne down upon her since her last night at home. Suddenly she realized she would do anything to join Vuchich and work with him, wherever he was.
"Well, you must have a heck of a background", the Major said with an intrigued smile.
Oh yeah. She'd started that training in her childhood: her father, a natural at math, had fostered the same skills in her, who owned them at an exceptional level. Her composure was now back. "Indeed I've been lucky, I've had exceptional parents."
The Major looked at her even more puzzled. "Anyway," he said, "they confirmed today Vuchich is traveling from Port of the Islands. The nuclear plant just died even there, nice and quiet, as it happened everywhere."
That was new. "Died?"
"Yes, we know that thanks to the radio. They went off everywhere; even natural radioactivity has disappeared."
She had to reach Vuchich as soon as possible. Frustration already hurt now, not to be able to catch up right away. "Is there a way to cross, Major?"
"To ferry to Cordillera?"
"Yup."
"I'm sorry, my child, you just got here ... The time to take a breath ....”
"And yet ..." How could she tell him that keeping herself in motion was the lifeline that kept her alive, the dam holding the mess she had inside? Especially now, that she'd heard about Vuchich. Hoping, but maybe she was getting her hopes up, it would dampen ... when she found him. Sigh.
"You must have taken a real battering, Marisa, but who hasn't been hurt, of those who are here?" The Major shook his head. "Believe me, I have all the makings to understand you, if you know what I mean. Crossing was a very unsafe adventure even before, with motor boats: can you imagine ... today? Just wait, until a new frame of life has evolved ... you might even like it ... Aren't you worried about your own skin?" He paused, weighing her up, a bit like her father had done until a few weeks earlier. "But you can afford a thread of hope", he continued. "We have another small group in town. They live at the docks, near enough. Their chief is a local seaman: he started a fishing activity and is doing well, we eat their fish too. Rumor has it, he's able to cross. But I'll introduce you to Claretta tonight, she is better informed."
Meanwhile the missing members had begun to trickle in. Some, they said, had stopped at the hotel for dinner. She and Remigio kept waiting, sitting by a window, until the sunset light released a magic palette of colors from the yachts swaying at berth in the canal out there. Who knew what kind of time it would take before somebody boarded a yacht for a leisure trip, a vacation …
At dusk the major turned off the equipment and they all went out. Dardo had spent his time tied in the shadow, his muzzle sunk in a fodder bag: they recharged the sacks on his back and led him to drink at the hotel swimming pool.
There were about sixty of them, sitting at the nearly silent tables in the large dining room. A former car park attendant had used to round up his proceeds by working at night in a pizzeria. Now, in his undershirt, he tossed his paunch around the fire, haranguing four lads who had joined him in Molise and now worked as his assistants, feeding oven and grill with reclaimed wood and running clumsily around the tables. But that night they produced a decent spaghetti, and grilled fish with a tomato salad.
Claretta was among the last to arrive. About fifty, tall and lean, white hair, dressed shorts and military shirt. She was one of the two group's physicians; the other one was a forty-year-old from the Boot, who had decided to stop and make his life in Pescara. They would only realize it a few years later: except for some unpredictable accidents, doctors would only serve the newborns.
They took to one another at once, each one telling her story, while having coffee at a side table. Around them the atmosphere was muffled: nothing to do with the cheerfulness the old world would have reserved for such an occasion. And yet, food had been great and good wine plentiful, as it would be in the future. Claretta had practiced at the Shamans' Seminary; the Scarlet Light had befallen her at a congress, right there in Pescara and in that hotel. At home she had left her husband, and two children just out of adolescence. She'd never heard of them since, and masked her despair behind a Tuareg tan, even succeeding in reviving it from time to time with sparks of a flamboyant smile. Which, to a discerning eye, would have turned out to be silent darts of distress and frustration, shot by her unconscious against a situation with no way out.
Yes, Claretta said, there was a group of fishermen at the harbor. They went to the sea nearly every day and supplied with fresh fish even them in the hotel. She'd been there several times and knew them well: eight people, more or less obedient to that guy Ferruccio, a local seafarer with a reputation as an expert. She had informed them of her contacts with Celtics' Hill, of her need to rush to the Shamans' Seminary, where her family lived. Ferruccio was the only one good enough to try the crossing, but, he said, the season wasn't propitious: they would have to wait till the next spring. Then they would reconsider the issue, but she shouldn't make too many illusions. She went back to him every week, just to keep contact: that man was her only hope. "But you see", she said, "chances of snatching a full ride to the Seminary are nil: it's more than fifteen hundred miles of dangerous water. No, it will be just across from Pescara. Then I should find my way South. Like, a horse ... or on foot ... " She let her voice go off, head down, slowly moving her spoon around in the empty cup.
"Claretta, it was the first thing I asked the Major," Marisa said, turning her eyes onto the full but almost silent room. The only common note with what was already natural to name as "old times" had been the constant cook's shouting around the stove. But now dinner was over and even that was off. "Because, you will understand, if I want to start living again, I need to get there as soon as possible. We'll drop by these fishermen together."
A wait had thus begun that, as Ferruccio had foreseen, was bound to last a very long time. Meanwhile the situation evolved. From the first night Remigio had acquainted himself with a small group that gathered around a middle-aged tenant-farmer, who had also come from Molise. There were two women in their late thirty, eight teenage girls and five young men in their twenties. Some of them, one way or another were familiar with field chores: they meant to continue along that path and the others would follow.
That first night they had been back from an inland exploration to the north. They had found a dude ranch with a very nice horse farm and an extensive roof, covered with P.V. arrays and therefore reasonably self-sustaining. It was on a hill, about thirty miles from there, surrounded by a radial pattern of fields with very well-chosen crops. At a rough guess it could accommodate fifty people, so their group would be more than comfortable in there. Next to the two storeys main building, a vast stable-barn was located. It must have stabled about twenty horses, and apparently none had survived, but there was room for many more; and the boxes had movable cross bars, so they could easily be converted into cattle stalls. In the vicinity there was some freed cattle that only waited to be brought in: clearly, the concern for imprisoned animals had not affected Remigio only, she thought. Finally, they had spotted three horses in the pasture, free and quiet, and that was good news. They had steered clear, waiting to deal with them in earnest, which was an extra reason to move quickly. The tenant had arrived with Perla, a huge plow mare now tied outside next to Dardo; he knew how to start farming using horses and cattle for large-scale jobs. To find animal farming equipment, he said, they had to climb to mountain farms: there, sooner or later, some old style plow, harrow or others would turn up. Otherwise, they could find tools for small tractors, which could be to reused, but it would take a blacksmith and a carpenter to do modify them.
Listening to those words, Remigio had given her a pleading look that almost made her feel like a mother: the boy was eager to join them but felt obliged to have her blessings. "Go," she said, pushing him toward the girls' group. "It's okay, and put your heart into it. And, you know, it looks like I must stay for a while, a year more or less. We'll be seeing a lot of each other, don't doubt it."
Yes, they would see each other again, and how! In the Pescara community there were a mechanic, a plumber, two electricians and other craftsmen. A guy, a former bank director, had been a DIY carpenter, but was quite good and could be very helpful. The major, the engineer and the communications technician formed a further repository of practical knowledge.
Hotel, headquarters and farm were all within reach of the military walkie-talkie, which the major was seeking in the barracks of the region. If one climbed up to that ten-story hotel's roof, he could communicate smoothly with everyone; thus each working group was equipped with one, including the fishermen.
The farmers' relocation took place in the three days following their arrival; the free horses were captured and carried into the stable, where they joined Dardo and Perla. The technicians immediately had to rush, connecting power lines and installing a small booster pump to get water from the aqueduct (which at the moment was flowing just by drop), to feed the farm uses. There was a hectic coming and going, either on horseback or on a bicycle.
The major's radio quest didn't find anyone beyond Celtics' Hill. It was actually right from Celts that, a couple of months later, the news came that a nucleus similar to theirs was forming in Taranto, in the port area like them. In Taranto they hadn't got much expertise in broadcasting, and had asked Celts to warn Pescara to wait for their call. The contact was established and it turned out that the group in Taranto was made up of a hundred people. Unfortunately, as Celts had reported, they were unfamiliar with radio systems: he, the operator, was a sixteen-year-old, caught up in the Catastrophe as he moved his first steps as a radio amateur. They had plenty of technicians and a couple of good nurses, but no physician. An exchange of trades was agreed, and the Pescara doctor was chosen on a temporary basis; two groups departed at the same time from their Centers, with the idea of meeting halfway.
She and Claretta started calling in at the harbor the week after her arrival. The fishermen had settled in the Nautical Club complex, one step away from the boats, and didn't mean to join the Major Group. At her first arrival, they became effervescent. Much more than when she had been alone, Claretta said with amused irony. Those people were undergoing a contrived abstinence, bound to last only heaven knew how long, and she was well aware how the other sex could react to her appearance. She adopted a cheerful expression, ignoring the inevitable wisecracks, acknowledging the most tolerable with half a smile.
Ferruccio was a fifty-five-year-old, dry and sinewy, frizzy black hair and perfect teeth. In short and naked torso, he was squatting to mend a fishing net he'd spread out on the pier. He was burned by the sun even more than Claretta and greeted them half-heartedly, just nodding his head. But then, just as the newcomer's image came to the right part of his brain, he jumped up with prodigious agility. Classic example of average height, that was, just a little taller than her.
"Hello Doctor," she said to Claretta, pointing then a piercing black look at her, that didn't want to quit.
After that flush of recognition, they came to the reason of their visit, which eventually was the usual one: the ferry. With a new interested party. He immediately stated that until the following spring it was out of the question. But then, in front of a dumbfounded Clarette, he spontaneously drifted into arguments: the weather trend, especially the winds, which made such a decision categorical. With a good diesel the crossing was possible in every season, though extremely dangerous in certain months. But, as for a sail crossing, only spring offered some possibilities; but you had to be careful, grasp the right time.
"Anyway, we can debate this again, that is ... whenever you want," he concluded, always holding his eyes on her.
"You can't say you didn't impress him", joked Claretta going back to the hotel. "From that guy, more than monosyllables or clipped sentences I've never been able to get."
"All right, won't we? It will benefit us both."
Over time, Celts' radio discovered other nuclei in the Boot, and eventually counted a dozen of them. But not only good news came by the radio. There was a Celts' late contact with the Old Shaman Seminary, Claretta's place of residence in Cordillera. On the radio was an engineer, the only survivor of the wind / solar power plant. The Catastrophe had deprived him of his wife and five children, the oldest of whom had been still in elementary school. He had holed up in his home at the village edge, coming out, when he remembered to, only to get food. There were five other survivors in the village, a real record; together they had rescued him from starvation a number of times. He'd carried on like that a few months, then went back to the office to do what others around the world had done first thing. He'd got on the radio and called Celts, which had always been their primary contact and were well aware of Claretta's situation; furthermore, she had nagged them that same day from Pescara, looking for possible news of her family. That was, then, the first case they asked him to account for. He was well aware of it, having been a colleague of Claretta's husband and their neighbor at home. Checking their home had been one of the few things he had undertaken the day next to Scarlet Light. Everyone was gone, he said; proof of that were the three unmade beds, on which the night garments still lay.
Claretta had always affected a gloomy certainty of having been left alone, not to be hoping for the impossible. Still firm however in her decision: she would go back to Cordillera anyway, because her house, the relics of her beloved were there, and she wanted to see them again. A reason that sounded fake and induced biting compassion. She would look then at her sideways, justifying her in full: there was no doubt that a mother's pain should in any case exceed her own. When the confirmation came from Celts, that her family had really disappeared, Claretta had no reaction but closed in a muteness that lasted a week.
"I'm sorry, Marisa", she eventually said, the face drawn with stress, "I'm afraid you'll be sailing to Cordillera by yourself. After all, I've carved myself a small niche here: it's good people, and I want to think it's worth to believe it, because I can be of good help to them.
I know, I have always maintained the opposite, but where do you think I could go now? To my house, to weep for as long as I've got to live? I'll stay in Pescara."
Helping her decide, perhaps, was the presence of the Major, who from the beginning had shown to her something more than simple solidarity. Logical. Human. She understood her well and in a sense envied her: with her heart or her brain she had found her way, and this was a huge step forward in that new world full of uncertainties.
Every week Ferruccio's people made a couple of calls from the harbor: there was fish for everyone. She was the one who went to pick it up, with a bicycle she had found in a deserted bakery. In the basket mounted behind its saddle their thirty kilos of fish fitted more than easily. She usually asked about Ferruccio before loading. If he wasn't at sea, she would find him busy mending nets or repairing some other professional gadget as he had done the first time they had met. She sat then on the door step of his home (he lived in a spacious room of a ground floor, where some shelves replaced almost every piece of furniture) and chatted with him. At first she did that out of mere opportunism; but he had sailed on almost every sea and his point of view was so personal and involved that, despite all expectations, she was fascinated by it.
A bit for proof and a lot out of curiosity, she wanted to know how he'd made experience enough to cope with a crossing as perilous as the one, she hoped, which waited for them within a few months. He had benefited, Ferruccio said, from the teaching of a great master, the only positive figure in a very difficult life span.
"When was that?"
He'd lived a poor, troubled youth, he said, and had been eighteen years old when a very stylish gentleman appeared on the Pescara's wharfs, looking for a pair of lads with some practice of sea work. They should join one of his experienced sailors on a boat he'd just purchased. They went to see her, up along the canal: a ten-meter brand new sailboat.
He'd occasionally worked as a sea-boy on a fishing boat and had a twenty-year-old, unemployed friend who was also looking for work at sea, so he ventured to list these references. The man said he would hire them, even before seeing his unexperienced candidate. He was at the town's most luxurious hotel and invited them for dinner a couple of times, making them feel like guests of a king. His offer was a small monthly fee plus a decent bonus on each trip, which they accepted and started waiting for the "first sailor", who was to come in from Cordillera the week after.
All three of them went to meet him at the airport: from the 'Arrivals' gate came out a hunk of a man, two meters tall, sandy blond hair, with an amicable, slightly off face. The boss introduced him as "Toni" and took them all to dinner, during which he announced that, starting after two days, their first practical test would take place.
They had to get off the canal at dusk and sail in the dark to a certain point on the coast, just south of the city. There they should wait at anchor, silent and without giving signals: a boat would approached them, announcing itself with a whistle, to deliver a load for them to ferry to Cordillera. That load would be the proof of mission accomplished, the master said. The scene was to be repeated across the sea the following night, but then the approaching boat would only pick up their "proof." He objected that anchoring in Cordillera was risky, everybody knew the sea there to be full of underwater rocks: nobody went there. Chicken feed, said the boss, Toni would do it well: he had knowledge of all the mentioned points and already knew the passwords for the night contacts. The pier keeper had their generalities: they should go there the next morning and spend the day in the boat, practicing navigation on the open sea. They could refuel the boat auxiliary engine at the port petrol station, whose staff had been tipped off by him. He could not attend, due to cropped up commitments, but he would be there, waiting for them two days later: they should contact him on the cell phone half an hour before landing. He advanced them a half of the bonus, put off the other half at their return, handed Toni the boat keys and wished them a good trip. None of them had got anyone waiting for them, so they decided to go sleep on board. It was almost midnight and the watchman had expected them for the morning, but he let them on board anyway.
He knew that boat enough, there were several in Pescara, so was surprised to find it rather tight inside. It had to be a four-person boat and, look, they were jammed even in three, in there.
"It's a special version," Toni said. "There's an oversized engine inside and the fuel tank has eaten the part you miss."
He'd thought they were to sail and now there was a powerful engine involved. He kept it to himself anyway, and slept quiet all night. The next day, during the navigation tests, he began to understand what sort of head the newcomer bore on his neck.
