"All right," I said. "Piggyback. But we take turns."
"Friday! You can't carry me."
"I carried Pete last night. Tell her, Pete. You think I can't handle a little Japanese doll like you?"
"Japanese doll, my sore feet. I'm as American as you are."
"More so, probably. Because I'm not very. Tell you later. Climb aboard."
I carried her about fifty meters, then Pete carried her about two hundred, and so on, that being Pete's notion of fifty-fifty. After an hour of this we came to a roadÄjust a track through the bush, but you could see marks of wheels and horses' hooves. To the left the road went away from the landing boat and the town, so we went left, with Shizuko walking again but leaning quite a lot on Pete.
We came to a farmhouse. Perhaps we should have ducked around it but by then I wanted a drink of water more than I yearned to be totally safe, and I wanted to strap Tilly's ankle before it got bigger than her head.
There was an older woman, gray-haired, very neat and prim, sitting in a rocking chair on the front veranda, knitting. She looked up as we got closer, motioned to us to come up to the house. "I'm Mrs. Dundas," she said. "You're from the ship?"
"Yes," I agreed. "I'm Friday Jones and this is Matilda Jackson and this is our friend Pete."
"Pete Roberts, ma'am."
"Come sit down, all of you. You'll forgive me if I don't get up; my back is not what it used to be. You're refugees, are you not? You've jumped ship?"
(Bite the bullet. But be ready to duck.) "Yes. We are."
"Of course. About half the jumpers wind up first with us. Well, according to this morning's wireless you'll need to hide out at least three days. You're welcome here and we enjoy visitors. Of course you are entitled to go straight to the transient barracks; the ship authorities can't touch you there. But they can make you miserable with their endless lawyer arguments. You can decide after dinner. Right now, would you like a nice cup of tea?"
"Yes!" I agreed.
"Good. Malcolm! Oh, Malcooom!"
"What, Mum?"
"Put the kettle on!"
"What?"
"The billy!" Mrs. Dundas added, to Tilly, "Child, what have you done to your foot?"
"I think I sprained it, ma'am."
"You certainly did! YouÄFriday is your name?Ägo find Malcolm, tell him I want the biggest dishpan filled with cracked ice. Then you can fetch tea, if you will, while Malcolm cracks ice. And you, sirÄMr. RobertsÄyou can help me out of this chair because there are more things we'll need for this poor child's foot. Must strap it after we get the swelling down. And youÄMatildaÄare you allergic to aspirin?"
"No, ma'am."
"Mum! The billy's boiling!"
"YouÄFridayÄgo, dear."
I went to fetch tea, with a song in my heart.
XXXIII
It has been twenty years. Botany Bay years, that is, but the difference isn't much. Twenty good years. This memoir has been based on tapes I made at Pajaro Sands before Boss died, then on notes I made shortly after coming here, notes to "perpetuate the evidence" when I still thought I might have to fight extradition.
But when it became impossible to keep their schedule through using me, they lost interest in meÄlogical, as I was never anything but a walking incubator to them. Then the matter became academic when The First Citizen and the Dauphiness were assassinated together, that bomb planted in their coach.
Properly this memoir should end with my arrival on Botany Bay because my life stopped having any dramatic highlights at that pointÄafter all, what does a country housewife have to write memoirs about? How many eggs we got last season? Are you interested? I am but you are not.
People who are busy and happy don't write diaries; they are too busy living.
But in going over the tapes and notes (and sloughing 60 percent of the words) I noticed items that, having been mentioned, should be cleared up. Janet's canceled Visa cardÄ I was "dead" in the explosion that sank the Skip to M'Lou. Georges checked carefully in Vicksburg low town, was assured that there were no survivors. He then called Janet and Ian... when they were about to leave for
Australia, having been warned by Boss's Winnipeg agentÄso of course Janet canceled her card.
The strangest thing is finding my "family." But Georges says that the strange thing is not that they are here but that I am here. All of them were browned off, disgusted with EarthÄwhere would they go? Botany Bay is not Hobson's choice but for them it is certainly the obvious choice. It is a good planet, much like Earth of centuries backÄbut with up-to-date knowledge and technology. It is not as primitive as Forest, not as outrageously expensive as Halcyon or Fiddler's Green. They all lost heavily in forced liquidation but they had enough to let them go steerage class to Botany Bay, pay their contributions to company and colony, and still have starting money.
(Did you know that here on Botany Bay, nobody locks doorsÄ many don't have locks. Mira bile visu!)
Georges says that the only long coincidence lies in my being in the same ship they migrated inÄand it almost wasn't. They missed the Dirac, then barely caught the Forward because Janet crowded it, being dead-set on traveling with a baby in her belly rather than in her arms. But of course if they had taken a later ship or an earlier ship, I still would have met them here without planning it. Our planet is about the size of Earth but our colony is still small and almost all in one area and everyone is always interested in new chums; we were certain to meet.
But what if I had never been offered that booby-trapped job? One can always "what ifÄ" but I think that it is at least fifty-fifty that, after shopping as I had planned, I would still have wound up on Botany Bay.
"There is a destiny that shapes our ends" and I have no complaints. I like being a colonial housewife in an 8-group. It's not formally an S-group here because we don't have many laws about sex and marriage. We eight and all our kids live in a big rambling house that Janet designed and we all built. (I'm no cabinetmaker but I'm a whee! of a rough carpenter.) Neighbors have never asked snoopy questions about parentageÄand Janet would freeze them if they did. Nobody cares here, babies are welcome on Botany Bay; it will be many centuries before anyone speaks of "population pressure" or "ZeePeeGee."
r
This account won't be seen by neighbors because the only thing I intend to publish here is a revised edition of my cookbookÄa good cookbook because I am ghost writer for two great books, Janet and Georges, plus some practical hints for young housewives that I owe to Goldie. So here I can discuss paternity freely. Georges married Matilda when Percival married me; I think they drew straws. Of course the baby in me fell under the old test-tube-and-knife sayingÄa saying I have not heard even once on Botany Bay. Maybe Wendy derives some or most of her ancestry from a former royal house on The Realm. But I have never let her suspect it and officially Percival is her father. All I really know is that Wendy is free of exhibited congenital defects and Freddie and Georges say that she doesn't carry any nasty recessives either. As a youngster she was no meaner than any of the others and the usual moderate ration of spankings was enough to straighten her out. I think that she is quite a nice person, which pleases me as she is the only child of my body even though she is no relation to me.