Book 1 Flight of the Armada Chapter 3 Part 2

Glendon managed to get the truck to the store without grinding the gears too badly or hitting anything important or living. When they got out of the truck, Darien indicated that the Naradi should keep the keys. He wanted no part of a vehicle that growled and lurched and bounced about so.

Darien dwarfed the people in Glendon’s store, who told him the oil company workers usually stopped in for morning biscuits at the café down the road.

“They’re always taking on help, and they’ll give you a ride back here at the end of the day,” the store owner said. Darien nodded and went out the door to the café. Ed Gentry looked at Glendon. “Boy, they grow ‘em big where you live over there in England, don’t they?”

“(Yes),” Glendon agreed. “(I am very prepared to work now).” The owner just shook his head.

“I don’t wonder that y’all survived the blitz. Your work ethic just can’t be beat.” He directed Glendon to re-arrange some heavy items that he could not manage. Glendon did as he was told easily and cheerfully. “Dang,” Ed marveled to his wife as they watched him work. “I never saw the like. He's just one great big friendly mechanized crane.”

They noticed he did not seem to know much about the retail business. Glendon smiled pleasantly to customers and spoke with a lovely musical lilt to his voice, but despite his polite phrasing he did not have a grasp of the value of goods. The first time he was asked about the price of a box of canning jars, Glendon blinked and smiled wider. “I have only begun my task here,” he admitted glibly, “but I am certain Lady Gentry would be delighted to inform you as to the nature of the item.” He had no idea what ‘price’ any item was, but he listened carefully to the conversation that followed and learned. He noticed the numbers on the signs and surreptitiously watched Ed Gentry give change to customers beginning with the price and counting out the remainder.

“That’s two dollars and sixteen cents, out of three; all right, four gives you twenty, five makes twenty-five, and here’s fifty, seventy-five – three dollars. There you go,” Ed said pleasantly. He noticed the serious way Glendon watched the exchange. Ed assumed his new help was converting American dollars into British pounds in his head. After the customer left Ed counted the cash in the till out loud casually, as if he did that sort of thing regularly. Glendon was quick to absorb the information since basic mathematics was something Earth had in common with the Stellar Council worlds.

Darien’s appearance at the door of the café made the waitress gasp. “Holy cow, Bobby, we got us a giant,” she called out to the cook. She approached Darien cautiously and gave him a good look up and down. “Can I get you something, mister?”

“(I seek the oil man Forbes),” Darien told her. “(He suggested I roust a bout).”

“Oh, Dickie will be along directly,” she assured him. “Him and his crew almost always stop by here on the way to the rig. You want some coffee and a donut?”

“(Why)?” Darien asked, and cursed Michael Sheldon privately. He told them all about Earthian history but there were many things they still did not know about day to day living. The Earthian did not give a hint how to answer such incomprehensible questions.

“Well, have you had breakfast?” she asked.

“(No).”

“Honey, you can’t go work for Dickie Forbes on an empty stomach. And where’s your lunch kit?” Darien shook his head. “You’ve never worked on an oil rig before, have your big guy?” she asked.

“(I have not),” Darien told her, “(but I daresay he has never done things I have done).”

“I wouldn’t doubt that for a minute,” she said, and showed him to a table and handed him a menu.

He groaned. Damn that Michael Sheldon of Taulsa! What is the meaning of this ritual?

“(I am newly arrived here. I cannot read this)."

“Oh! You’re a foreigner?”

“(Yes. What did you say, a coffee...)?”

“Coffee and donut; sure, honey.” She went behind her counter and brought both out to his table. She watched him sniff the coffee curiously. Before she could warn him, he took a big swallow. Roaring, he leaped up out of his seat and threw the coffee cup away to shatter against the wall. The cook ran out to see what happened.

“I’m sorry, I thought you knew coffee is hot,” the waitress fretted.

Darien pointed at the donut. “(And this thing; what will it do? Bite back)?” he demanded suspiciously.

“You ain’t never had coffee and a donut before?” the cook asked. “Man, are you from another planet?”

Darien straightened quickly and said, “(No. I am... an English).”

“My brother was over there in the war,” the cook said. “Whereabouts in England are you from?”

Darien thought swiftly. “(The place where the drinks do not scald the mouth).”

The cook laughed. “Jenny, clean up Mr. Churchill’s coffee for him and get him some orange juice. You just sit back down there, fella. We’ll fix you up.”

A large work truck pulled up outside, and four men piled out of it. One of them was Dickie Forbes. They came into the café and whooped at the sight of Jenny cleaning up the broken cup and coffee. “Must be a bad cup of beans,” one of the men told the others.

“That big guy over there is looking for a job,” she told Dickie Forbes.

“Well, hello there, fella!” Dickie greeted as he shook Darien’s hand. “So, you want to work on a rig, do you?”

“(No),” Darien replied. “(I am interested in oil work).”

Forbes laughed. “Boy, are you green. Okay, son: I need some muscles and you need some work. You come on with me, then. Jenny, let’s get a cup to go.”

She got them all go-cups and put lids on them. “Let it cool off first,” she told Darien. “Then drink it.”

“Did you do that to the coffee?” one of the men asked Darien as he pointed to the coffee stain on the wall. Darien nodded. “Where’s your flyswatter?” The other men hooted with laughter.

“Pete,” Mr. Forbes warned.

Darien remained silent. He went with them to the truck, an International Harvester Travelette capable of holding six passengers. They headed for the oil field.

The men looked him over and did not know what to make of him. Darien was by far larger than any of them, but his black clothing, long blonde braid and sunglasses were completely out of place in the Oklahoma oil brotherhood. They waited for him to say something, but Darien did not know what he should say. He was reluctant to initiate a conversation for concern he might say something that would betray his true origins. A slip of the tongue could be costly. He wished he had Glendon’s conversational skills or Gareth’s easygoing personality. He had wanted to get out and do something on this world to help his people but now he regretted his haste.

Finally, the man named Pete spoke up. “So, what’s your name?”

“(Darien Phillipi).”

They waited. “Where are you from?”

“(I am from Thuringa).”

“Well, where in hell is that?”

Darien pursed his lips together in consternation. This ‘hell’ place was a familiar notion. The Gollar held a belief that when the wicked die they were consumed by their own evil presence and fated to remain locked away from the presence of peace that the good were promised. The Warrior Prince did not care for the implication that Thuringa should be cast similarly. “(It is not in hell).”

“Well okay, Goldilocks! I didn’t mean to spoil your day,” Pete chuckled, and the other men joined in. They were baffled by Darien’s strange silence and temperament. They decided to leave him alone.

Once at the work site, Darien was appalled to see the green field scarred by the mess and confusion of an oil rig. In the distance he saw pumpjacks working to bring oil to the surface. He could sense it being drawn from the ground and it made him strangely weak and weary. The smell of the oil and grease made him so nauseous, when the sludge and film got on his skin he had to dash away to throw up in private. He scrubbed most of the oil slurry off with a red cloth, but he still felt ill. His co-workers cut him no slack.

“Goldilocks sure is a delicate thing, ain’t he?” they asked each other loud enough he was sure to hear.

"Yeah, he don't like to get dirty!"

“Don’t let those old boys mess with you,” Dickie Forbes told him. “You’ll do fine.”

Darien was taken completely aback by Forbes’ words. Fine in Thuringi meant something far different than it did in American English. To an American, fine meant good, acceptable, approved. To a Thuringi, fine was a term applied to a particular part of a female’s body, her extreme charms – her genitalia.

Darien was stunned, wondering what Dickie Forbes meant, saying Darien was… doing fine? He had not ‘done fine’ since the night before they left the Armada. This was not a good time to join these people, Darien decided. Their lexicon was still too foreign for his comprehension. But what could he do? He could not simply walk away from the job site. He had no idea where the ranch was, and they took so many twisting roads he was quite confused about direction.

Darien mused over the use of the word ‘fine’ as another truck of workers came out to the site. Darien stared at one of them. He was the same coffee colored man who frightened Carrol when they came to the ranch house and walked inside unannounced. The man did indeed bear a vague resemblance to a Shargassi with his shiny head with sparse hair, round eyes and wide flat nose. His eyebrows arched when he spoke as multiple wrinkles appeared on his forehead. He was much shorter than a Shargassi, however. His eyes were markedly smaller, and his nose was not beaklike so he could not be mistaken for one of the enemies of the crown. Still, Darien kept a wary eye on him as well as another man with the same kind of round-shaped head but lighter of skin tone and slicked-back hair.

“How did you like the peaches I gave you, Glen?” Margie asked.

Glendon turned his attention to her, and the fifty-year-old woman was smitten with his sunny smile. “Why, they were wonderful, such a treat! We appreciated it very much, thank you.”

She glanced around. “Did you bring your lunch with you, or were you going to go to the café to eat?”

“Is it dinnertime already?” Ed asked in surprise. “Boy, the morning just flew by.”

“I did not bring anything. Is it required?”

“No, but you just might get hungry,” Margie said with a laugh. “I’ll tell you what, you can have dinner with us. I have some fried chicken in the refrigerator left over from last night. Why don’t we go have some of that and I’ll fry up some okra and heat up a mess of peas.”

Glendon’s benign smile masked his complete ignorance. “That sounds pleasant.”

Lunch was laid out on a small table in the little office behind the cash register. The food was a revelation; it was tasty and after so many gintas of travel ratios, it was a veritable feast for the Naradi. In answer to his question, Margie explained how she cooked it.

“Why, that sounds deceptively easy,” he said. “I have never eaten a bird before.”

“You haven’t?”

“No. We are not meat-eaters by nature.”

“Where did you say you were from? Turkey?”

“Thuringa. Thur-ING-gah.” The subject was too uncertain for him, and a quick glance at a shelf provided a change. “Is that an image of your son?” The young golden-haired man in the framed picture stood before a tent in a green uniform, smiling proudly for the camera.

“Yes, that’s our Gary. He joined the Army right out of school.”

“Where is he now?”

Margie took a moment before she replied. “He was killed on duty earlier this year. He was our only child.”

Glendon heard similar words from his own people, and his heart went out to the Earthian couple. Unlike Thuringi, Earthians had a limited number of years to bear offspring and it was obvious this couple would not have a ‘late child’ as Thuringi in their four hundreds or five hundreds sometimes did. Glendon reached to place his hand on hers in sympathy, and that gesture and the tender look of understanding in his eyes told them what they needed to know about Glendon Garin.

“There is nothing so noble as a sacrifice in the line of duty. I know that may mean little to a mother’s grieving heart, but every military man knows it is the ultimate service to one’s king …or country.” At that moment, the bells over the door jangled to indicate a customer had entered. Glendon rose and bowed. “I will see to their needs,” and with that he left. They heard him greet the customer as smoothly and welcoming as a toastmaster.

“He reminds me of Gary,” Margie said with a smile as she gathered up the bowls and plates. “He’s got that same sweet way about him when he talks.”

Ed Gentry was thinking the same thing. Glendon’s soothing tone and elaborate but sympathetic words were remarkable from such a young man. Ed went to the cash register counter and watched as the customer pointed to a stack of one hundred-pound sacks of horse feed. Glendon nodded and, in one swift movement, swung a sack of feed onto his shoulder and walked to Ed at the counter. There was no strain in his muscles and no effort betrayed on his face. It was as if he had placed a kitten on his shoulder and was taking it for a ride.

“Whoo-wee, where’d you get this weightlifter, Ed?” the customer called out.

“He’s one of Mike Sheldon’s friends,” the store owner replied. “Pretty strong, ain’t he?”

All that afternoon Glendon did whatever was requested and behaved as if he had done it his whole life. No task was too insignificant; no load was too heavy. The sun shone down on his long gleaming braid as he loaded supplies into trucks, much to the amusement of the customers.

“You know, they have a barber shop in town,” one man teased him.

Glendon considered his words and replied pleasantly, “I shall remember that when I am in need of barbs.” The customer howled with amusement, but Glendon could only tilt his head slightly and wonder what was so amusing.

Ed thought, it’s as if he just came to Earth like some kind of – Suddenly he looked at the picture of his son on the shelf behind him. Ed was a practical man, but he always harbored a secret longing to see an unearthly being. Maybe it was just his imagination working overtime and mixing with the subject of his late son, but it was a comforting thought.

“I tell you what, that boy sure ain’t the sharpest ax in the shed, is he?” the man asked as he came to Ed to pay the bill.

“That boy is an angel sent here to look after me and my wife,” Ed unintentionally spoke his notion aloud, but the customer simply nodded in agreement. Perhaps the young man with the British accent was just a foreigner on a streak of bad luck, but Ed would not have put it past his son Gary to be so thoughtful as to send help from the Great Beyond.

The thick black sludge that encrusted the tools continued to nauseate Darien and he bore it with a stoic face. He did not understand why he was sick to his stomach or why his head ached so, but with all the new experiences around him he supposed it should have been no surprise. Many times that day, his hand instinctively reached for his pistol. Darien did not understand the slang, the oil terminology, or the nature of the work but he did know when he was the butt of an ongoing joke. The first time they teased him he reached for his weapon and found nothing there. It was back at the ranch house on his hammock. Never in his life had he ever held his temper as he did that day. Every time one of the men laughed at him or made a comment about coffee or flyswatters or the dark glasses he wore, he had to swallow his pride.

At lunch break most of the other workers took out tins containing wrapped meals. When he saw that Darien had no lunch, Dickie Forbes shared his lunch with the new worker and Darien discovered cold cut sandwiches. His coffee was cold. It was very bitter, but at least he could drink it without being scalded. He was seated near the black man and decided to test him to make certain he was not a Shargassi spy.

“Crita vonn?” he asked. Their universal translators were now tuned to translating only between Thuringi and American, and the Shargassi for “who are you?” came out as pronounced.

“Say what?” the man asked, perplexed. “You talkin’ to me?” Darien nodded. “Well, what are you saying?”

“Crita vonn,” Darien repeated.

“My name is George, ain’t no Critter Von,” the black man said.

“Big guy calling you names, George?” asked Pete, the one who took particular pleasure in teasing the Thuringi.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” George said. The other men looked at Darien curiously, and the intense inspection made the Thuringi uneasy.

“(I... I ask from whence you came),” Darien said hastily. “(I thought you understood the language).”

“‘From whence you came’, George,” Pete mocked Darien’s solemnity. “Hell boy, we don’t understand you any better’n you get us.”

George shook his head at the Thuringi. “No, I don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve been staring at me all morning. You still mad about your sister? I didn’t mean to scare her, you know.”

“(I understand you meant no harm. But I have never seen anyone like you on Earth before).”

“Then buddy, you ain’t been around!” George said, and the others laughed.

Darien smiled frostily. “(Not around here, no),” he admitted. When they went back to work, their teasing did not let up. By the end of the day, Darien was terribly ill from the nauseating black oil and his repeated need to step away and throw up. He only felt marginally better afterward.

By the time he was let out of the truck at the store, Darien was in a white-hot fury. He stalked into the feed store like a man on a mission and looked around for Glendon. Glendon saw the stormy set to Darien’s jaw from across the store. “(I am over here),” he said.

Ed Gentry waved Darien over to the cash register stand. “Hello there, big fellow! You look like you could use a cool drink.” He reached into a large red box and pulled out a curvy bottle of dark water and handed it to Darien. It was frosty cold, and Darien looked at him with frank suspicion. “Go ahead, it’s okay. Oh, wait,” Ed said. He took back the bottle, turned to the large box with an attached device on its side and removed the top from the bottle with the device. He handed the bottle back to Darien and said, “It’s soda, son; it’ll be good for you.”

Darien glanced at Glendon, who nodded encouragingly. Darien took a drink cautiously, remembering the surprising morning coffee. This drink was cold and tingly and sweet, and Darien jerked his head back in surprise. It was the best thing he experienced all day long. He looked at Glendon’s boss.

“(You are a good man),” Darien intoned. “(I shall remember this kindness).”

“Well, that’s all right,” the man said humbly. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Glen.”

“(I shall be here, Lord Gentry).” Glendon and Darien went out to Darryl Sheldon’s truck. Glendon got behind the wheel. “I assume rousting is not a pleasant endeavor.”

“The endeavor is not nearly as difficult as the cretins who perform it. I will choke Michael Sheldon when next I see him! I had no idea what I was doing or why they mocked me. Nothing was explained to me and I stumbled about as the fool all day. I have never felt so helpless in my life.”

“It is not Michael’s fault. I had no idea what I was doing, but Lord and Lady Gentry have been kindness itself.”

“The Dickie Forbes is pleasant enough, I suppose,” Darien grudgingly admitted, “but oh! If only I had my sword with me for even a minute with the rest of them.” They got back to the ranch house and Darien promptly went to bathe. The oil and grease on his clothing would not come clean, and his skin was scrubbed red before he was satisfied. Glendon prepared the evening meal, a pot full of red meaty soup that was spicy and hot and tasty.

“Lord Gentry suggested this,” Glendon told the others.

“What is it?” Carrol asked.

“He said it is chili,” he answered, ladling it into bowls.

“It is chilly and hot?” Brent asked. “This is a strange world.”

“How was rousting?” Stuart asked as he reacted to the taste of chili with delight.

“I do not like it,” Darien said told him. “I must know more about the nuances of this society. Did you know, they drink scalding hot bitter water in the light of dawn, and in the hot afternoon sun they drink cold sweet water?” He showed them his soda, only half-full now. He passed it around and they all took a taste and agreed it was good.

“This world has fizz bars,” Stuart exclaimed.

“It does not mean they are civilized,” Darien muttered, “just handy with liquids. If it were not for the fact that I refuse to be defeated, I would be tempted to stay here tomorrow and find out more of their customs some other way.” He peered at Gareth. “What is the matter with our good Major Sword-and-Fist?” he asked.

Gareth had propped his elbows on the table over his bowl of chili and fell asleep sitting up. “He is tired,” Carrol said gently. “I am loath to wake him only to send him to bed.”

“We should carry him upstairs,” Stuart suggested. “He ate a good lunch, and he can always eat when he awakens.” He and Darien got on either side of him and lifted. Gareth jerked awake. “Go back to sleep,” Stuart said quietly to him. “You earned a rest.” Gareth faded again. They carried him up the stairs, and Darien paused at Gareth’s bedroom door.

“We will hang him if we put try to put him in his hammock,” he said. "He ought to have a proper bed.”

“Put him in one of ours.”

“Put him in Carrol’s,” Darien said with a devilish grin.

“You are not funny,” Stuart said. “It is difficult enough for them.”

“Why make it difficult?” Darien asked.

“She is our sister,” Stuart hissed.

“It would make her happy,” Darien hissed back.

“Many things that make us happy are not always good for us,” Stuart reminded him as they continued to hold the groggy engineer in the hallway.

“Stuart, must you always do the proper thing?” Darien groused. “Can you not go on instinct for once?”

“It is instinctive for me to see to the proper conduct of our dear sister and her admirer.”

“Then put him in her bed to sleep and make her sleep in his hammock.”

In the end they put him on Stuart's bed and Stuart slept in the hammock. He decided upon awakening that beds were a must for all of them.

"Why, hammocks are comfortable," Glendon said in surprise. "I like mine. It is like a lover's arms around me."

"I felt wadded up," Stuart said as he stretched to relieve his muscles.

Gareth came down the stairs the next morning to find only Carrol in the house. She was in her workspace in the master bedroom, making notes on the vegetation samples she gathered so far. "Where is everyone else?" he asked.

"We all had a nasty reaction to the meal Glendon made, but that has all been handled. Glendon and Darien went to their tasks. Simply put, Glendon is learning much from the store man and Darien hates the oil people." Gareth chuckled and moved closer in order to hold her hands. "Stuart is walking about the property to see what he can find, and Brent is puttering about with the gakkis – er, the cabrett. Or no! They are called cows."

"Why would Brent deal with them?" Gareth wondered.

"He wants more luket, I suspect." She let go of his hands in order to slip her arms around his waist. For a moment they regarded each other solemnly.

"Brent can have his luket," Gareth muttered to her, "this is more to my liking."

"I am entering the house!" Brent's voice warned. "I am moving through the kitchen!" Reluctantly, Carrol broke away from Gareth and went to the parlor door.

"We are in the parlor, Brent," she called out, and explained to Gareth, "He does not want to come upon anything he would have to admit that he saw."

"We should leave the house entirely," Gareth suggested playfully. Brent came to the doorway covered in dust.

"One can elicit luket from those ugly Earthian cabrett," he informed them with a satisfied smile. His hair was wildly askance, and his face bore a dirty smudge across one cheek. "It is not easy, but it can be done." He entered the room as Carrol returned to her sorting. "We decided that we would take the Isador to the Great Waters on a day when Darien will not be in the oil field and Glendon will be at the store only in the morning. Saturday, it is called. Did you have a good rest?"

"Yes, I did," Gareth said.

"And have you had a good awakening?" Brent asked saucily.

"If you would only go elicit more luket, I might," Gareth told him, and Brent laughed. "So, you named your ship the Isador?"

"Yes. She is beautiful, accommodating and hopefully, will respond eagerly to my touch." Carrol's cheeks reddened and a small "yeep!" escaped her lips. Brent picked up on it. "Little sis, I fear all our coarse talk will harm you."

"I shall not be harmed by the likes of you," she said, tossing a cloth at him. "I have Gareth to protect me from your alarming conversation."

"Gareth?" Brent hooted. "Between the two of us, it will be a wonder that your ears are not burned away." He did retreat to the front room, grinning to himself as he did. He started to taunt them a little more but a rumbling noise outside caught his attention.

He went to the front door and peered through the aged brown screen. It was still bright daylight, but the sky was being overtaken by heavy clouds rolling in from the horizon. Brent walked out the front door as if in a trance.

A strong, steady wind bent the tree branches about and made the grass and leaves swirl in place on the ground. The breeze against his face was exhilarating. As he slowly stepped onto the porch steps, he felt a drop of moisture on his face. He reached the bottom step, looked up to the sky, and stretched out his arms. The clouds opened up and the rain began in earnest, pelting him with fat drops of clean, life-giving moisture. Brent stood with his eyes shut to the skies, his head lolled back and a look of bliss on his face.

This was no tank of water that the cattle drank from; this was not a nearly stagnant stock pond half full of mud that nearly twisted his feet from his ankles. This was pure water and Brent reveled in it. A water planet, a planet teeming with life, a planet he could bring his five hundred surviving watermen for a renewal. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could thrive and grow since this planet Earth supported millions of people. He loved this world; he loved the hope it gave him. It was impossible to tell which were raindrops or tears of gratitude on his face.

Gareth and Carrol stood at the window to watch as Brent continued to stand with his arms outstretched, catching some rain in his mouth as it fell. "He seems content," Carrol murmured, then realized with a start, "Oh! Stuart is out in this rain!"

They went out onto the front porch and saw him in the distance, running at a comfortable pace back to the ranch through the field next to the fenced yard. He jumped and cleared the fence easily – a four-foot fence was hardly a challenge for a Thuringi. They saw as he neared that he was soaked to the skin and laughing.

"Have you no more sense than to stand in the rain?" he hooted at Brent.

Brent regarded his question with disdain. "Where the rain is, there am I," he said proudly. Stuart stopped and thought for a moment before he lifted his own arms and stretched upward to call upon his unique gift. Among the Thuringi, only the Phillipi line had the genetic ability to use the fabled Arda liquid of their home world. The liquid was a powerful source of energy, and each Phillipi had his or her own particular talent through which that energy was channeled. Little blue sparks danced on the tips of Stuart's fingers, and Brent found himself in a three-foot-wide circle of clear dry air, surrounded by the heavy rain.

"Stop messing about, Son of Thuringa!" Brent protested. "This is my time." Stuart lowered his hands suddenly, and rain smacked against Brent's face like a wave. Brent jumped at him and chased his brother-in-law around the yard. They both slipped on the slick wet grass, and Stuart made it up to the porch just ahead of Brent.

"A base!" he called out the time-honored child's claim.

"And Father supposes these two are among the hopespring of the Thuringi," Carrol told Gareth dryly. He leaned over and kissed her briefly on the tip of her nose.

"Take heart, Your Nibs," he said blithely, "sometime in the not-so-distant future, they might grow up." She laughed.