Judds errand, p.1
Judd's Errand, page 1
JUDD’S ERRAND
GREG KROJAC
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Please note that this book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2019 Greg Krojac
All rights reserved
Language: UK English
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BOOKS BY GREG KROJAC | SHORT NOVELS BY GREG KROJAC
NOVELLAS BY GREG KROJAC
SHORT STORIES BY GREG KROJAC
1
Judd kicked the body with a boot that looked like it had seen at least five wars and lost three of them, the force of the impact causing dust and sand to drop hastily back onto the desert floor. There was no need to be gentle; the man was already dead – just how Judd wanted him to be. He didn’t like killing people, but sometimes he had no choice. The man had tried to steal his precious box and had ignored all requests to go on his way unharmed, demanding – at gunpoint – that Judd hand over the graphene-coated container. That was never going to happen. Judd wasn’t overly protective of the box because of its inherent value, even though it was almost indestructible and actually worth a lot of money in itself, but he would rather die than give up its contents.
He’d built up quite a reputation as a courier. He was driven and didn’t allow himself to be distracted from his task by anybody or anything. If you wanted a package delivered, Judd was your man. He had a 95% success rate which was quite a feat when most of his competitors could only muster 52% – those that were still alive, that is. Of those 5% failures, only one could have been avoided; he had trusted someone who didn’t deserve his trust – he wouldn’t make that mistake again.
He could tell by the tattoo on the man’s forearm – two suns overlapping like a celestial Venn diagram – that he was a follower of the twin sun gods Suncé and Sunon. He didn’t believe in the gods himself, but many did and, even though this man had tried to kill him and steal his property, he would respect the man’s burial traditions.
He gathered a few rocks together and covered the man’s face with them. It was important to followers of the Sunsu religion that their life spirit should find its own way to the Resting Place, and they needed eyes in order to be able to do that.
Stopping momentarily, before crouching down and positioning the last two stones over the corpse’s eyes, he took a pair of mirror sunglasses out of the breast pocket of his jacket, placed them on his nose, and glanced up at the suns which beat down mercilessly on anything that wasn’t in shade. If he was taking the trouble to protect a dead man’s eyes, it didn’t make sense to leave his own eyes unprotected.
He reached over his right shoulder and drew his razor-sharp machete from its sheath. Raising the blade above his own head he swung it down on the dead man’s neck with such force and accuracy that just the one downward sweep sliced the head clean apart from the torso. Laying a few more stones to cover the vulnerable stump of the still visible neck, he had a final message for the dead man.
“I warned you but you wouldn’t listen. I only did what I had to do. But I bear you no ill-will on your journey to the Resting Place. I’ve adhered to your customs – even though, personally, I’m a non- believer – so your life force should pass on without problems. May your gods go with you.”
Those closing words spoken, he walked the ten metres to where his buggy was parked and returned immediately to the decapitated corpse with a length of strong rope wrapped around his right shoulder. He slid his arm underneath the headless body just enough to allow him to thread the rope under its back and leave enough cord free to fasten a knot, securing the corpse tightly in its loop. He attached the other end, to the tow bar of the buggy. Settling back in the driver’s seat he pressed his thumb onto the card-key and the engine purred silently into life.
The car edged forwards as his right foot applied pressure to the accelerator. He didn’t push the gas pedal down hard yet as he didn’t want to disturb the sand too much when he left the scene – that would have been counterproductive.
Once he’d travelled about three hundred metres distance from the buried head he stopped.
“Well, Ruby? Ready for a drive?”
The vehicle didn’t answer him; it never did.
He opened up the throttle and Ruby lurched forwards, her tyres fleetingly clawing for grip. Once found, the car rocketed onward, kicking up a large dust trail behind it; the decapitated body tumbled and somersaulted as it was dragged behind in Ruby’s wake. After another kilometre, Judd stopped the buggy, climbed out of it, and released the now battered and bruised corpse from its bonds. He returned the rope to its place inside the buggy’s meagre trunk, tucking it beneath a dark brown trench coat.
Returning to the driver’s seat, he slid his hand underneath the passenger seat to confirm that the box was still there; of course, there was no way it wouldn’t be there but he felt better for feeling its familiar touch.
Ruby accelerated away and what was left of the body faded into the distance. Judd patted the buggy’s dashboard.
“I know, girl. It’s messy but dragging the guy’s body behind us has given the sand-jackals something else to find and fight over. They’ll leave his head alone for a while and his life force will have time to make its journey. We did a good thing.”
2
The suns were beginning to set and the light was starting to fade. Soon it would turn pitch black and the night-time temperatures would drop to a biting chill of minus twenty degrees. Judd needed to find shelter and find it fast. And it wasn’t only the low temperature that made the night dangerous – darkness gave cover to the many predators that roamed the desert.
The sand-jackal’s larger and more terrifying cousin, the bear-wolf, was the most dangerous of them all, seemingly devoid of all fear. Once a bear-wolf got your scent it would pursue you relentlessly until one of you dropped dead. Its Achilles heel was that despite its aggressive nature, evolution had decreed that it should live a solitary existence and avoid contact with its own species at all costs – except for the purposes of mating. The animal would only approach a female bear-wolf when she was on heat, they would mate several times over a few days – a pretty violent experience and hazardous for the male – and then both disappear back into the desert separately, never to be seen again.
Judd learnt at a young age how to deal with bear-wolves; spending his early years in the desert, he had no choice. His father had been killed by a bear-wolf when he was ten orbits old and his mother had been determined that her son wouldn’t suffer the same fate.
One day, hearing the screech of an adult bear-wolf in the distance, she decided that it was time to pass on some valuable survival tricks to her son. She locked the boy inside their small cabin and all he could do was watch as, not wanting to ruin her clothes, she stripped off and smeared bear-wolf faeces all over her body.
Judd was accustomed to his mother’s eccentricities – she had never been the same since the death of his father – but this was a new low, even for her. He was disgusted – he could smell the putrid stench even from their home – but he was also immensely impressed by what he saw next.
A bear-wolf emerged from the nearby woods and galloped towards the homestead, the thunderous pounding of its feet unsettling the young lad as it hurtled towards his mother. He shouted out for her to get up off the ground and run back to the house but she ignored him and simply lay motionless, waiting to be devoured.
Suddenly, the bear-wolf skidded to a halt and raised its head, sniffing at the air. Judd watched as its ears and nose twitched simultaneously, trying to recognise the odour that was coming from his mother. He feared she was about to die and a tear trickled down his cheek.
Without warning, the bear-wolf rose up on its hind legs and bellowed to the skies, before dropping back onto all fours and cantering back into the woods. Judd’s mother waited a couple of minutes to make sure that the animal had really gone and then stood up. Still grasping the key to the padlock in her hand, she made her way back to the building.
Judd was just thankful that she had survived the ordeal.
It wasn’t until Judd was almost a man that he discovered that, had the faeces been from that same bear-wolf, he would have been orphaned there and then. He learnt his mother’s lesson well and never travelled without a large tub of bear-wolf excrement tucked behind Ruby’s passenger seat.
An outcrop of boulders rose up in the distance and he directed the buggy towards the potential shelter. The stones looked like nibbled at stacks of pancakes, eroded in that fashion by sea (the desert had once been underwater), by rain (when rainfall was common), and by prehistoric winds.
Arriving at the rocks, Judd got out of the car and checked out the structure, finding not only a narrow entrance which led to a safe refuge for him but also an opening that looked like it had been created as a shelter for Ruby. He got
Stopping only to pick up his backpack, the tub of bear-wolf faeces, his lightweight sleeping bag, and – of course – the precious box, he returned to his naturally carved sleeping quarters and squeezed through the entrance. The fact that it was a tight fit was a huge benefit – it was way too small for a 400 kg bear-wolf to pass through. He was thankful that he wouldn’t have to cover himself with bear-wolf dung and, instead, just coated the entrance to his temporary bedroom with the foul-smelling paste. The precaution would also keep the smaller and less lethal sand-jackals away. The scavengers wouldn’t kill him but their presence would certainly prevent him from getting a decent night’s sleep.
Next morning, the suns rose at ten hours, as they always did, and darkness surrendered to daylight, the sky’s hues returning from a black void, bedecked with thousands of twinkling stars, to a bright orange sheet, punctuated only by the twin suns. Judd took two sachets from his rucksack – one containing powdered nutrients and the other containing a liquid mixture of water, sugar, taurine, caffeine, and vitamins. He consumed the contents of each sachet, folded the empty packets and placed them inside a plastic case inside his backpack; he didn’t like to pollute his environment and never left any trace of himself bar footprints, tyre marks, or memories.
He peered through the opening in the rocks to ensure that there were no nasty surprises waiting for him outside and returned to his vehicle.
“Good morning, Ruby. I hope you slept well.”
He looked the car over, checking that all was as he’d left it. Everything was fine.
“You’re looking good, girl. A bit dirty but nothing that won’t wash off when we get to The Spring. I might even treat you to a polish and wax – if you’re lucky.”
Ruby’s bodywork was constructed of a light but strong alloy polished to a fine ruby red finish – hence the buggy’s name. Strictly speaking, Ruby was actually a sandrail, as the buggy had a protective tubular steel roll-cage to protect its driver and passenger in case of an accident. The entire surface area of the vehicle’s coachwork was covered in minute solar cells, almost invisible to the naked eye, which continually supplied solar energy to a converter at the rear of the vehicle, in turn, providing power to the motor. She was the perfect self-sufficient vehicle for the desert environment.
Judd and Ruby had gone through a lot together and he hoped the day never came when he would have to surrender his companion to the great scrapyard in the sky. He pushed the card-key into its slot and started the engine.
“Ready to rock and roll, girl? Next stop, The Spring.”
3
It was important to stay within the invisible desert strip when travelling through the desert. If a traveller strayed outside the bounds of the two-kilometre wide safety ribbon there was a serious risk of death through heat exhaustion, and not just the regular heat exhaustion that his ancestors back on Earth occasionally suffered. It was very hot within the two-kilometre safety area but exposure to the obscene temperatures outside of The Corridor could rapidly lead to fatal heat stroke.
To ensure that this would never happen to Judd, Ruby was fitted with a GPS system that set off alarms if the entirety of the vehicle transgressed the unseen borders. This was potentially the most important of the vehicle’s modifications – the tract that Judd drove on was indistinguishable from the rest of the desert and the risk of committing a life-ending error was never far from the minds of those who used the inter-city corridors.
The continual ticking of the Corridor Location System was irritating to novice travellers – the time between ticks increasing or decreasing according to a vehicle’s position between the invisible walls – but experienced drivers like Judd were able to drive more or less centrally within the boundaries and the ticks only occurred every thirty seconds or so. Indeed, with this constant interval, they didn’t even notice them after a while. However, Judd was still subconsciously alert to any change in tick frequency and could correct his course immediately if necessary.
Occasionally he’d see dead animals as he neared The Spring; some had been killed by predators – usually bear-wolves – and some had clearly died of thirst. All were in varying states of decay. Their carcasses were a constant reminder to travellers to respect both the environment in which they were travelling and the fragility of their own bodies; the desert showed mercy to neither man nor beast. Some people used this roadkill for sustenance along the way – those that couldn’t afford the nourishment packs that Judd used – but Judd shied away from this. As long as he had enough fi-creds to pay for the life-giving sachets, he would do so; scraping dead animals off the floor of The Corridor and putting them into his mouth was reserved for the menu of last resort.
After another hour of the same incessant expanse of sand, Judd was finally able to see the low-rise structures of The Spring. The buildings looked about ten kilometres away, as the Corvus flies, but he knew that the true distance was at least double that. He was used to the mirages that the terrain threw up but he was content in the knowledge that, be the city ten or twenty kilometres away, before long he’d arrive at the city gates.
Approaching the settlement gates, Judd knew what to expect. He’d suffered varying levels of prejudice his whole life but now that he had money, it seemed that the bigotry had intensified. It was almost as if people believed he wasn’t entitled to live comfortably, and that he was a troublemaker, just because he looked a little different to them. Throwbacks were considered an abomination to many but, fortunately, there were still enough people around who understood that their appearance was just a genetic mutation – or rather, a lack of one – that gave them the same ocular characteristics as their Terran ancestors. The vast majority of Duoterrans had cat-like eyes, whose pupils changed from their natural vertical slit state to round, depending upon the amount of light that was available or the mood of the owner.
This flexibility of dilation was a consequence of the terraforming of Duoterra, back when terraforming was in its infancy and some mistakes were understandably made. Consideration hadn’t been taken for the inherent natural forces of the planet and, after millennia of a world during which Duoterran eyes had evolved their feline qualities, the planet and its twin suns had conspired to return the planet to its pre-terraform environment. This left the ever-present orange glow to the daytime sky and the accompanying climatic changes. Whereas the early colonists had transformed the planet to something resembling their home planet – an ecological diversity of flora and fauna, of tropical, temperate, and dry climate zones – the latter climate rode roughshod over the tropical and temperate areas and installed itself as the primary climate of the entire planet.
One of the two guards at the gate eyed Judd suspiciously.
“Remove the shades.”
Judd pretended he hadn’t heard the man, who repeated his demand.
“The sunglasses. Take them off.”
Judd did as the man said. He didn’t know exactly what it was about him that rubbed some people up the wrong way – even before they saw his eyes – but the guard’s demand wasn’t uncommon.
The guard peered at Judd’s eyes. His suspicions confirmed that Judd wasn’t quite like him, his attitude became one of contempt.
“A throwback, eh? You’d better not start any trouble.”
Judd had no intention of causing trouble. He planned to have a beer or two to wind down, and then get a decent night’s sleep in a proper bed. He’d leave the next morning.
The guard’s colleague, meanwhile, was poring over Ruby.
“Nice set of wheels you have here. Tell me something, how does a throwback like you afford a buggy?”
Judd would have liked to verbally spar with the two men but resisted the temptation. He didn’t want to ruin his chances of entering the settlement walls by rising to the bait. He was looking forward to a good night’s sleep.
“I’m good at my job.”
The first guard re-entered the interrogation.
“And what job’s that, throwback?”
“I deliver things.”
