The Wheels Run Truly: A Science Fiction Lost Colony Adventure (Martha's Sons Book 6) by Laura Montgomery

Author:Laura Montgomery [Montgomery, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ground Based Press
Published: 2024-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Western First Landing’s inhabitants were not accustomed to strange sights. They were far from the city, far from the Beautiful, and seldom even thought of Stampo, the nearest heritage site. They watched over their herds of dairy and beef cattle, kept the dietary covenants, educated their children, and did everything they could to nurture and multiply Earth’s biota. They ignored the city and its news, although, against the better judgment of many, they found Jonas Luwenthal’s writings on what happened there entertaining enough, in a horrible sort of way. His pamphlets and papers provided sufficient evidence of the decision they had already made to have nothing to do with the place.

Nonetheless, although generally a hard-headed lot, they were not lacking in curiosity. So, when a horseless vehicle was spotted by a young couple likely risking pregnancy and a forced marriage, it only drew questions from their respective parents about what they had been doing in such a secluded fold of land, and with whom? And in the cold?

More credible than a pair of seventeen-year-olds, however, was Mary Nance’s sighting. She was a respectable cattle herder in her forties, and she’d spotted the conveyance at dawn. True, when she’d whipped her horse the two kilometers to where she’d seen it, it had vanished, but she knew what she’d seen. It was tall, carried a large tank, and had a closed-in section at the front. It was powered on its own. Perhaps the governor had sent it.

But the vehicle hadn’t stopped in Purcell or any of the other locations where travelers who knew might find a place to get some dinner and spend an evening. The behemoth machine had to come from First Landing’s city, likely from the palace, and possibly presaged no good. Mary owned a phone and reported her sighting to her elderly father, who called it a truck. Mary allowed as how, yes, she’d been taught about such things in school, but she couldn’t be expected to remember things that didn’t affect her daily life, where she worried more about soil science and biological systems than imaginary—"sorry, Dad, ‘ancient’”—machinery. Her father mentioned it to others. Word spread, and the amorous couple mounted their horses rather than each other, and some of their friends joined them, but they did not spot it again. They did find crushed grasses, marks that they finally decided were cart tracks of ridiculous width, and other mysterious signs they all agreed signified what their elders called a truck.

The mystery vehicle carried five people hoping they had made their progress unseen but not entirely sure of their success. Two of the men kept their sword belts close at hand at all times, and one of the women her crossbow. The need for weaponry bemused the two sleepers, but they were grateful enough.

The large western open stretches appeared empty of people. Their hopes to the contrary notwithstanding, the dirt roads were not empty, and they rigged a fall of canvas to trail behind the terraseeder, blurring their tracks across meadows and pastures.

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