Science Fiction Friday

Welcome to Cotter

Nobody is on Cotter because they thought it would be a nice place to live. A few are born here, and they look to ship out as soon as they are old enough, big enough, or pretty enough to hitch a ride on a transport going anywhere. Everybody else on Cotter has a story. Mine? Common as most.

I ran corporate security for an operation of one the big families on a hub planet. I didn't do the body work, but I knew the codes. I made good money, married a sweet girl, had a couple of cute kids. I would have had a couple more, except I liked to gamble. It seems silly now, but it made perfect sense then to risk things. They were just things, and there was a thrill. My gambling got me in trouble, then it got me a second job with credits on the side, no bite out for the Gov. Selling codes, discreetly you understand, gave me money to blow on the happy powder mixed in my fine interplanetary bourbon. It ain't hard to guess where things went from there. I'd already dumped my beautiful wife and kids for a veil dancer when I had to squeeze out, filthy and half-frozen, in the cargo bay of a transport that sounded like it was going fly apart any minute. They dropped me at Cotter as I was, another dried up morsel for the maw of the mines.

That's mainly what folks do on Cotter, dig ore out of holes and crack it, that, or make ceramics out of heavy metal muck. It's too smelly and nasty for the pristine planets back in the hub. They leave it to us out on the fringe to poison our bodies and our dirt. I don't know which is worse, the mines and the smelters or the mudholes and the kilns. I worked the mines when I first arrived along with the majority of the bodies in the equatorial belt.

One evening I stumbled out of a bar half blind from booze with more than a touch of wood alcohol. I collapsed, you might say, in a muddy alley with my back to a trash bin. I don't know how long I was there, but night was falling under a clear sky in some high plateau town. It was full dark when I roused. Somebody was trying to get me up on my feet. A voice rasped and laughed in my ear, "You'll freeze to death out here, commie."

"Don't care," I managed to croak. "Might as well. Ain't we in hell already?"

If a crow could laugh, it would make a sound like my rescuer. He dragged me on until it was light and warm, stretched me out by a little portable heater. I knew nothing else until I woke up from senseless dreams with a foundry in my head and rats in my gut. I tried to sit up. A broad, thick hand descended from the heavens bearing a battered metal cup with perhaps fifty cc's of some dark liquid.

"Hair of the dog?" I muttered.

"More like balls of the wolf. Down it fast."

I didn't argue. I gagged. It was all I could do to keep it down. Still, my head felt better almost immediately. It a few minutes I was on my feet and drinking strong coffee from the same cup — after my benefactor had rinsed it out.

"You could make a good livin' sellin' that stuff in the back alleys of a mornin'," I told him. "My name's Hayes Re—."

He interrupted me. "Hayes is good enough. I'm Del." He offered me a big, dark hand, clean, but cracked over calluses and heavily stained.

"Del, thank ya. I owe ya for pullin' me out'a the cold last night."

"You'd a done fer me jus' the same."

"I'm not so sure 'bout that. I ain't the man I ought'a be."

"Who is? I know ya would, though. Ya been on Cotter long?"

"Ah, six, eight months. I lose count. Underground most of time and ever day the same."

Del had not stopped smiling. He had a broad, flat face burned dark and weathered. He was mostly bald. The fringe of hair remaining was streaked silver and badly in need of a trim, but his mustache was heavy, neat, and pure white above and to the sides of a wide, thin-lipped mouth. He was lean, not a big man at all, but he looked tough. The object on his hip drew my attention. The only people on Cotter with visible weapons were guards, sheriffs, and the occasional visiting Fed.

"How'd you get a stunner? I'd never take you for a guard."

"This ain't no stunner, son," Del said as he drew the weapon and handed it to me butt first. "Part of my kit. Comes in pretty handy out where I go. You know what it is?"

"It's a — a projectile weapon of some sort. Is it an antique? It looks like the Old Earth guns in the history books."

Del nodded, accepting the weapon as I passed it, very gingerly, back. "You're close. It ain't no antique, though. It was made a couple of systems away on a planet called Marfa. Uses caseless ammunition, but, other than that, it's about like Earth-That-Was firearms. It'll kill most things up to the size of beef cow or whatever pretty easy. I mainly use it when I've snared a toothy somethin' a' one kind or another."

"What do you do?"

"Oh, this, that, and the other. Mostly I trap and hunt. I sell the furs and hides if they're any account. Eat or sell the meat if it's edible."

"You mean you hunt some kind of animals? I've never seen anything on Cotter. I saw deer in the reserves back on, uh, the hub planets. I even hunted once — with a crossbow, like William Tell."

Del gave his crow laugh. "Yep, this ain't like that. Here's the thing. Out beyond the Belt, the weather ain't so good. You go north or south on this rock, and you soon hit all-day cold. The tiffers didn't get 'nough tilt, or get it in close enough, I reckon. Anyway, ya cain't grow much a'nothin' out there, but sheep make it all right."

"I can understand that, but why would they put wild animals and things on a terraformed planet?"

"They probably don't like to brag about the truth too much. Tiffers just do what the planet scientists tell 'em. I might know. I've been on fresh planets a time or two. You want to guess my age?"

"Older than me, I guess. Seventy?"

"A hunnerd and thirty."

I whistled. "My great-great granny was a hundred and thirty when she died all right, but she didn't look like she could run amuck in no bar full'a Tong."

Del doubled over laughing. When he was able to he continued, "I knew I liked you, Hayes. You got a sense of humor. Ya need that. Truth is I ain't got no good explanation fer my age and unnatural preservation. But the point is that I've seen some things, and I worked as a tiffer myself at one time." He paused and refilled our coffee cups. I took the chance to look around. We were in a little block shack with a one-way roof. It was open to the rafters. I judged that it was attached to the side of a bigger building, like a lean-to.

"The smart boys figured at first that you could just make a planet then send people with seed and livestock. And ya can do that. But the rumor among the tiffers was that strange things would begin to happen to the stock and the plants, and, sometimes, to the people. A world'll fill itself up and get what it needs to plug its holes. Old Earth had lots of places fer things to live, and there was somethin' livin' ever'where. The story goes that they'd drop cows on a rock and pretty soon somethin' be birthed that wudn't exactly a cow, or anything else that anybody'd seen. If ya dropped dogs and cows, there was less trouble. If ya dropped dogs and cats and cows and birds and fish and frogs, there was even less trouble. The more variety they put down to begin with, the less things had to mutate to fill the holes. So the stories around the stove go.

"I don't know if that's all true fer sure or not. I know that's what's done any more and has been for at least the last four hunnerd year or so.

"So, there's small game, beaver, wolves, panthers, wild dogs, eagles, wild sheep and goats, caribou, wild ox — lots a' game out there beyond the Belt. It's hard country and hard livin', but a man's in the open air and on his own. That's worth a lot."

I nodded. "Yep."

We talked on for a while. Del seemed to enjoy my company. I finally had to leave to get back to my shift at the mine. I tried to pay him at least for the food he shared with me, but he wouldn't take anything. He said that my credits would cause him more trouble than they were worth. I didn't quite understand that at the time.

As I rose to leave, Del said, "Ya get tired a' that hole, come join me in the outlands. I could use a good hand skinnin' and settin' snares. I cain't pay much, but I feed good 'nough."

I shook his hand again. "I'll think about it. When ya comin' back to town?"

He shook his head. "No tellin'. This is my first trip in in five year. Ya might ought'a take it as a sign. I'm headin' due south from here. Once you're off the plateau, there's a river runs down to a big lake, a real big lake. It's fourteen-fifteen days on foot. I'll be camped somewhere around that lake for the next three-four months. After that I cain't say, but it ain't likely to matter if ya ain't there by then."

In the mines, we didn't get paid by the hour or the shift, we were paid by ore mass. The more ore a miner could send to the top, the more credits he drew at the end of the week. Each of us had two "buckets", big robotic bins that held five hundred kilos a piece. A man who sent four buckets a day to the top could make enough to live. The start of the week after I met Del, I had drawn a rich run and was sending up six buckets just about every shift. When payday rolled around, I was expecting a nice bonus, but my pay was the base amount — as if I had just been doing the regulation four buckets. I headed for the paymaster's office. She showed me the tallies, and mine matched my payout. I studied it for a few minutes.

"Is there anyway to finigle these?" I asked.

The paymaster was an older woman, pretty hard-looking, but kind-hearted and fair. She answered slowly, "I have heard of it — miners pullin' somebody's ID out and slippin' in their own. I don't know how you'd figure it out, though."

"Timin'. I worked sixteen hours shifts all week. I sent up a bucket two or two and a half hours into my shift, then about every three hours after that. Nobody pulled my last bucket 'cause I always came out with that one. Run my tallies and look for the gaps."

She did. The first two days the thief had been careful to pull my loads at different intervals: first and fifth, then second and fourth. The last four days, he had just taken the middle two, third and fourth, consistently. "All right," I said, "let's look for somebody that had two loads in the middle of my shift those last four days."

We found three miners that were close. When the paymaster matched them up to the times on the first two days stolen batches, one name fell out. The paymaster called in a couple of higher ups, and we went over my story. The higher of the higher ups expressed sympathy, "But," he explained, "there's really nothing we can do unless this other miner is willing to admit to the mistake. The machine could have misread — "

"Sure. Once or twice. Or ever time, but not a pattern like this. This had to a'been done deliberate." I was getting more than a little frustrated and heated.

The higher up shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing we can do unless the other miner is willing to confirm your claim."

"All right. All right then. I'll see if that there can be arranged." Spinning around, I stormed out of the slick, clean offices and back into the rubble, rock dust, and puddles. I didn't have many friends among my fellow miners, but I had a few I knew well enough. It took me about forty-five minutes of asking questions to locate the bastard who had swiped my buckets. He was having dinner at a place called the Redhand Club — which seemed poetic enough. There were two men and two hired women at the table when I strolled up. My pigeon was a big one. He had about four inches and, worse, probably twenty pounds on me — all muscle best I could tell.

I told him my name and my bucket number. "Which," I said, "you ought to know pretty well by now seein' as it's payin' for yer dinner and yer escorts here."

He smirked. "You accusin' me a'somethin', squish?"

"Yep. And I'd call ya a thief to yer face if ya'd quit sittin' on it."

He was fixing to stand up when I dumped the table over on him. It went downhill from there. His partner helped a little. He was trying to take me out with a sap but took his buddy down instead. By then our one-on-one had blossomed into a general brawl, and the fellow with the sap had his own distractions. I was dragging my unconscious witness to the door when he recovered his wits. He lit into me and was getting the better of it when the sheriffs arrived and electrified everything that was moving. They threw six of us in the tank — the same tank — where our dispute resumed. Fortunately, the three other miners were willing maintain a peaceful neutrality. We passed the night without further violence. Bright and early, the sheriffs shoved us out the door to make room for a new batch. I should have let it go, gotten drunk, and considered it a lesson learned.

Instead I went down to the market and started talking and dropping credits until I found an old woman who dealt in items she didn't keep on her table. I laid out my complaint. She took my money — every single credit in my book — and handed me a canvas bag full of cheap protein bars. "Don't open it until you get back to your place," she whispered.

I went into my tiny room, shut the door, and sat down on the bunk. Fishing in the bag, I was a little angry thinking perhaps the old woman had cheated me, then my hand closed on the cool metal. I drew out the pistol. It was fully loaded with thirty rounds. I had no idea what it would feel like to shoot it or even how to shoot it. It is a wonder that I didn't blow a hole in my foot. After I had fiddled with it for an hour or so I thought I had the operation down pretty well.

I stuffed the protein bars in a rucksack along with my spare clothes and the rest of my worldly possessions. All told it weighed about ten kilos and the protein was half. I put on my coat and headed down to the back alleys to look for the man who was about to die.

Chapter 2