The Short Fiction of Wallace Macfarlane by Wallace Macfarlane

Author:Wallace Macfarlane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ROAD FACTORY

W. MACFARLANE

Illustrated by Jeff Jones

Published in Amazing Stories, November 1971

*

He was just a farmer, and that was what they wanted on Guelf; someone to plant seeds. But being a farmer meant a good deal more than that…

The last thing Conway Croner expected to see after midnight on the dock of the seed and fertilizer warehouse he once owned was a tall woman in tight gold pants and a fiery rose knee length coat. It was a hot night after a brutally hot July day in Imperial Valley, but she looked like something out of an I. Magnin window, handsome, elegant and cool.

“I want to buy seeds,” she said. Her skin color was dark cream and she wore no makeup. Her hair was close cut, curling red mahogany. Her eyes were also red, a dark sleeping red that simulated brown. “How deep do you bury them?”

“Lady, you’re out of this world,” said Con Croner.

He was very tired. He had been working 16 hours a day for 10 months. He had lost his everlasting shirt in the spring tomato crop he brought along in an attempt to recoup his overwhelming losses in the winter crop. One year ago he was worth $110,000 and tomorrow the new owner would take over the business. The last bills were in and he had been reviewing disasters with an adding machine to learn the worst of his financial position: he was $12,000 in debt.

“Perceptive,” she said. “Are you a farmer?”

“I thought so,” he said. “What happened was, I hit a 60$ wholesale market when I was a senior in high school. Those four acres of Earlypak #7 paid my way through two years at UC Davis. I went gunny sacking during vacations and made out like a bandit.” She had the quality of standing still and listening, and the sight of her was refreshing as a brand new merry-go round.

“I read market reports like the bible and hit empty spots you wouldn’t believe. I know winter tomatoes are just like Russian roulette, but the long range weather forecasts and the cockleburr seeds and how far north the albacore got—all the indicators said a warm season. I had to front paper and run water and they got root rot and froze black anyway. San Diego had an early spring and Mexico stayed late. Does that explain it?”

“No,” she said. “But I want to buy seeds and perhaps your services, if you will engage them to me.”

Croner listened to the frogs croaking. A breath of hot wind rattled the bamboo in the ditch. From the Silver Horse Bar and Grille a block away, voices and laughter and music rose and fell as the door opened and shut. He looked at the bugs swarming in the light above the dock. When he looked again, the woman was still there. “Shoot, Luke,” he said. “Uh—start from the beginning. Who, what where when and why, and how much.”

“The City Spagassin has contracted a road on Guelf. It is a static carrion huntsman culture and nararl was included in the standard clause.

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