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  Ferryman

  Copyright © 2020 Caldon Mull

  Published by Caldon Mull

  at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  Ferryman ... is a work of fiction, any resemblance of any character to any person, alive or dead is entirely coincidental. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Part One - Kalahari

  Part Two - Sedna

  Epilogue

  About Caldon Mull

  Other books by Caldon Mull

  Connect with Caldon Mull

  Acknowledgements

  I wish to thank my wife Marie, without who nothing would be possible and less would matter anymore.

  I also wish to thank my Emeritus Editor Russell Goldman who has also walked a long path with me. He is a spark behind these words of mine that you read, as both a fiery forge and a cool balm.

  Part One - Kalahari

  “Everything is the light.”

  The caravan had been nearby for almost a week when his father had relented and allowed him to pack a small bag, so that he could go and see what they would offer him for his digital Reading from last year. They had finally talked about it; Ken had made a point of sitting at his father’s feet near the cooking fire, until he had relented to the silent insistence and invited open discussion about the matter at hand. They had both presented their respective cases and methodically agreed (or agreed to disagree) on each item, as was their way with each other; until his father had admitted that Ken had the stronger case and should proceed with his plans.

  Ken couldn’t explain all of his reasons for wanting to go to the traders with his father, so he carefully kept his argument focused on points he knew he could defend reliably and close convincingly. If Ken was honest with himself, winning his fathers’ blessing for his endeavour was his ultimate desire; what came afterwards was less significant in his mind’s eye. The discussion with his father helped Ken to establish his social inventory.

  If he had really wanted to, he could have simply gone to his grandfather for permission to go; and be done with it. But if he had done it that way, there would have been a void in the clan which relied on him for the meat and labour he provided. Ken thought it better to seek approval and have plans in place for his cousins and kin to agree to fill the gap while he was gone.

  That promise of service having been secured, the rest of the petition was quickly ticked and checked down the list without too much resistance. Ken was eighteen and newly married. He was already an expectant father and was delighted with his prospects and his wife, so he was certainly not going to leave and never come back…Ken just wasn’t that sort of character, a fact to which his clan could attest.

  It was Autumn, so the game was plump, the fruit were ripe and both were bountiful, no hardship requiring extra hands was anticipated over the next few weeks. It was the best time to go and so he should. Once this process had been discussed and negotiated, the agreement was presented to his grandfather, the Headmaster of the Clan, and it was ratified. Ken was on his way!

  Words of advice and caution in dealing with the Wagon Lords were still ringing in his ears as Ken set out just after the sunrise, on an easy jog towards the crumbling station that used to be the heart of Keimoes. The old irrigation channels still gurgled with running water this late in the year, groups of springbok nuzzled at the browning leaves in the riot of cane shoots and grape vines that vied for purchase among the ancient cement structures as he sped past. They were tame enough to watch him speed by with twitching ears and wary gazes, canny enough to realize he was going somewhere else and not intent on hunting them.

  After all, it had been hundreds of years since there had been sufficient numbers of humans in the region for them to merit the raising of an alarm within the herd. Ken grinned to himself as he trotted, they were sensitive to certain things, the animals. If he just moved past them, intent on going somewhere and on a trajectory that would pass them by, they would not react in alarm.

  On the other hand, if several of his cousins moved together in a certain way, if they regarded those deer in a certain way, that would immediately make them wary and prone to flee. They knew somehow that they were being hunted and worked actively to avoid being prey. Ken chuckled to himself as he contemplated that irony.

  The prey was always more elusive and cunning when something sought to make them their quarry. He could appreciate that level of cognition; in fact he had to account for it, in order to survive with a full belly. That thought submerged in his subconscious as he threaded through the vast channel complex, onwards towards the Keimoes encampment.

  It was past noon when he arrived on the bluff overlooking the encampment of old ramshackle station buildings and new shiny-silver wagons. He leant against a ruined concrete water tower and regarded the activity below him. All manner of movement greeted his sight as he sipped water from his eggshell in the shade of an acacia tree that grew through a crumbled section of the concrete; people hustling and bustling around the shimmering carriages hunkered over their thick tracks.

  In the large flat area around the station platform they ported water from the springs and channels feeding from the Orange river in large clear containers. Some returned from the tangled vineyards with clippings of the now-wild vines cradled in handfuls of soil, others clustered around a portable signal tower that Ken guessed was a GPS gateway.

  He finished his water and hauled his tablet out from his kaross, he grinned as he saw the WiFi signal light up and set the downloads he wanted before approaching the laager. There was an update on the game finder app he really wanted and a couple of hundred books from the global library that could download while he still had charge.

  Chandri stood above the rest of them, leaning against the old station doorway in the shade provided by a corrugated iron awning. Ken headed for her. She looked up as he approached but didn’t leave her spot in the cool darkness that ran the length of the porch. The building wasn’t quite derelict, just shabby. The Traders had maintained some older and newly-built structures to suit their industry and maintain their outpost. Their mandate was to service isolated communities, like Ken’s own clan, as they had done for long centuries.

  Ken knew that Keimoes was a terminus point on caravan trail and thus wasn’t subject to the same intensity of maintenance that it could be, and Ken’s clan and associated clans throughout this area weren’t big consumers of the goods and services provided by the Trader network; aside from medical, technical, enlightenment and other knowledge-based products.

  His father had told him that his father’s-father had once worked right here, in the long-ago time before the big people had faded away from the dying rural towns and his people had been forced to return to their old ways. That wasn’t really by choice either... after decades of petitions to be reinstated to their traditional lands, then then-President of the Republic had eventually conceded completely. The state claimed ‘Victory of Diplomacy’ had a sinister and unforeseen consequence that was almost typical of the narrow-issue 21st Century political process. He had loaded the protestors from the gardens of the Parliament building where they had camped for years, intent on being acknowledged and presenting their claims; and had dumped them into a resettlement village not far from where they were now.

  A few weeks later, he had arrived with a treaty, got the signat
ures he had wanted and left: never to return. The growing desert fringes around Keimoes may have been the Gaza walls; or may have been the gulag tundra for all the end result was the same: they were trapped within and the world carried on outside.

  The seed corn never arrived, the grant accounts were looted with no explanation and petitions to discuss these grievances were summarily refused. The clans were forced to start hunting and gathering as they had done in ages past, because that was all that was left to them now. With dawning horror, the clan’s headmasters realized that the State’s ‘Victory of Diplomacy’ was also their ‘Final Solution’.

  Ken felt himself frowning as he thought about this. The way in which that had been done was remarkably similar to the way the land had been taken in the first place, off-hand and by-your-leave. The cruellest cut was whitewashing this abandonment as a solution as a ‘victory’. It was only after the collapse of the regional State and the EarthGov support during the Plague Years that re-established a connection between the abathwa and the World.

  The Trader caravans were the clans last lifeline to an unrecognizable and irrevocably changed outside World. The more Ken thought about it, the more he was convinced he was correct in wanting to do this; to engage with this world more rather than less. Last year had seen him receive his final adult vaccinations and he had elected for a digital Reading as well, an imprint of his Mind to determine his vocational inclinations. The results had been astounding for Ken, he had registered a 99.9% match for a ‘Ferryman’. Chandri had told him that was one of the rarest matches and would be unbelievably valuable.

  She had said that if he would agree to come through in his eighteenth year, she would contract his Digital Twin on behalf of the Traders. The value of a ‘Ferryman’ imprint would secure this Trader Caravan route for a long time.

  Ken approached her, smiled, and waved. She had seen him emerge from the shrubs and watched him as he crossed the dusty earthen road and waved back. He wondered how he should address her now that they were going to be business partners. She had taken charge of this caravan on his sixteenth birthday when they had first met, and she wasn’t that much older than he was.

  He knew she had hated the honorific ‘baas’, traditionally used when addressing Trader heads, and had refused to acknowledge that for a while. In fact, Ken’s whole clan knew this and subsequently used it at every opportunity when addressing her, her obvious discomfort at the use of the appellation providing endless amusement for them.

  “Dag se, baas Chandri, hoe gaan dit met jou?” Ken stopped at the balcony rail and greeted her in Afrique.

  Her bracelet shimmered and repeated his phrase in Panglish, and then clicked and popped in another language Ken only distantly recognized. Chandri scowled at it and moved to switch it off.

  “Hullo Ken,” she answered in Panglish, “I think the location services have overridden the translator settings, it’s stuck on !Ke as well.”

  “Switch it off, nobody has spoken !Ke in over four hundred years…not really, anyway.” Ken switched to Panglish. “Nobody likes to do Business in Afrique either, so there’s that. I’ve come to sign up for that Ferryman contract.”

  Chandri’s face lit up, “I’m really pleased you decided to do that. It’ll make a big difference to us, and you... all of us.”

  “Will it take long?” Ken moved into the shade beside her. Partly because of the heat of the sunshine, partly because she was so much taller than him, her breasts were at eye-level.

  “Not really.” Chandri shrugged, “Most of the time spent is spinning up the processors and we have plenty of sunlight for that over the next two days. What made you decide to come, by the way?”

  “That’s difficult to say.” Ken frowned quickly. “It’s more of a feeling than a thought.”

  “Give it a go, I’d like to know.” Chandri pulled out a slate and tapped a set of instructions onto it while she watched him rest his elbows on the rail and stare out at the wagon train.

  “It’s like we don’t... matter.” Ken sighed, “Every vision of what may be in the future always has us stuck out in the bush somewhere in the Stone Age. Will anything I say hurt the Twinning...?”

  “Not at all.” Chandri shrugged, “It’s already part of the package I’m getting. Go ahead, finish what you’re thinking.”

  “I’d like to be a part of the future - on my terms - and this is one way I can see myself and my kids being a part of that. I don’t want somebody discounting me and my clan because they think we’re from the bush and always belong there... in the Stone Age.” Ken shrugged, “Making plans to freeze us in time, or coming up with some excuse or the other to exclude us from the world we’re all trying to make.”

  Chandri looked surprised, “I’ve always thought you liked living out there. You’re certainly better at it than anybody else could be.”

  “Hah!” Ken laughed without much humour, “Just because we’re good at surviving out there and have done for thousands of years, Chandri, doesn’t mean it automatically follows that I would never want to sip coffee on a sidewalk cafe in Selene City, under the moon-dome in the light of a full-earth.”

  “That’s why we distribute stuff along our routes, slates and courses, technology and services.” Chandri dropped the slate into a pocket, “We’ve had to find some way to keep in touch with all the isolated pockets of humanity scattered around the globe since The Ebb.”

  “The plague years, the collapse of government... I get all that. That was hundreds of years ago.” Ken took a deep breath to calm himself, “Most of us can read and write, can speak at least a few languages and have some specialities because of the online mobile slates and the EarthGov programs. But get this, three hundred years after our emancipation it still feels like we were pushed into a backwater and left there... charming little first-nation people communing with the wild in the Kalahari Desert!” Ken snorted, “If we need vehicles we can build them ourselves out of mud and sticks… or weave grass and sand for our computing devices and mobile smart-slates.”

  “Okay, I do get that.” Chandri shrugged, “You’re perfect for this environment, but there are also other places you’d be just as good in. Our Charter is to provide you with what you need. It really helps us if you want what you really need.”

  “Something like that.” Ken took another breath, “I want to show somebody that we are part of humanity’s future’ just like everybody else - not because of novelty but because of utility. You seem to understand that more than others, I think.”

  “Of course I do.” Chandri grinned, “It’s what we Traders do...” Chandri trailed off, then sighed, “Seriously Ken, you came just in time. In another year or two, we wouldn’t be able to keep this service going without you taking this contract. We’re one of the last Caravan routes still running and there’s almost no reason to keep doing so anymore.”

  “I thought something like that. I’ve noticed changes in the climate just in the last few years.” Ken nodded. “The geography learner modules on the slate feed me projections from the Indian Ocean Dipole, it looks like we have hectic El Nino and La Nina conditions settling in for some decades ahead. This will be bad for us.”

  “Yes, the green Kalahari and green Sahara monsoon cycle has started up intermittently; nine months of dry heat with drought and three months of torrential deluge every year.” Chandri shifted her feet, “It’s going to pound the people in this area to the very brink of existence before it becomes a predictable thing. It is one of the reasons we are looking to withdraw from the routes completely.”

  Ken blinked, agog. “It says this is a natural process? That climate feedback loops have tipped and there is nothing to be done about it?”

  Chandri shrugged, “That’s about right. In geological time we have entered the Holocene Thermal Maximum, then after that we’ll have a cooling phase before another Ice Age. The latest projections for the Thermal Maximum are about ten thousand years, perhaps another twenty after that for cooling off to the new Ice Age.”


  “Ten thousand years like this?” Ken groaned, “The clans would be lucky to survive another century.”

  “Or worse.” Chandri sighed, “The good news is that there will be a planet-wide optimal zone for humans for about five thousand years, in twenty thousand years’ time. It’s EarthGov policy to not do anything stupid while we wait for that gap.”

  “I’m all for not doing anything stupid.” Ken clasped his hands and squinted at the shimmering Wagons, “If I’m on contract with you and something happens out here... like those wildfires last year... or something else... do you help out, or something...?”

  “Yes, we do.” Chandri followed his gaze to the storage section of the train, “It’s an ancient ‘essential service’ that is part of our charter. We’ll transport you down to Cape Town and relocate you at Arktica. It’s one of the last places with ‘human optimal’ conditions and the Governor is happy to have more people. If you’re under contract, this service stays on the table.”

  “If I didn’t contract with you?” Ken shrugged; it didn’t harm to ask.

  “Then we would have to raise funds to provide that service and reassemble the Caravan from the mothball state we would put it into in the next few months.” Chandri noticed the muscles in Ken’s shoulders tense as she spoke. “As I’ve said before, we’re down to the wire on this route. Perhaps the funds would come in, perhaps they wouldn’t. It would all be down to chance and it may not be possible at all, maybe it would take months longer than you would need.”

  “So there would be a reason to ignore us yet again... maybe this time we would disappear for good and stop bothering the big people…” Ken snorted, turning to face her. “No, I don’t think so. You need a Ferryman and I’m good for it. My people say that I should tell you I’m mated and have a baby on its way back home.”