FARSEE

About the Book

“The captain announced that a totally foreign natural phenomenon was the cause of it and that he was climbing as steeply as possible to try to get up above it. Steve Whitman was a war veteran fighter pilot but we didn´t know it then. We thought he was going to kill us with his inept flying!"

Kate paused to take a sip of water. "The rate of our ascent was squashing us back in our seats, pinning us, popping our ears and making them ring. The jet engines were screaming but the howling of the wind could be heard clearly above the whine. Steve saved our lives by his flying.

* * *

"We won´t be able to stay," Bon said. "Whatever they concede to now to placate us to go back to work, they´ll bear us a grudge. They´ll just wait until the next time they think they can get back at us." She poured them tea from the pot she´d brewed.

"Much as they resent our presence they´d resent our leaving more," Gerald responded from the sofa where he was relaxing. He was back to his normal calm, efficient self again.

"I´m sorry. I´m the cause of it all," Cally apologized from where she stood looking out of the living room window.

"No, sweetheart," her mother corrected her. "If anything, you were the catalyst. We´ve never really fitted in with the community but we put up with it because we thought it was easier than to try to make it on our own."

* * *

By the end of a week they were able to leave with packed rucksacks on their backs and their laden cart. The cart was wide and deep with handles in front and back and mounted on two wide-track wheels to make pulling or pushing it over rough terrain easier. Despite their taking everything they could in collapsed dehydrated or compact form, they were loaded to capacity, the limit determined by what they could manhandle.

* * *

Gerald was wrong and Bon had been wise to advocate caution. The assault came in the early hours of the morning. A bright moon was setting in the pre-dawn dusk when a shot rang out from the trees slightly below them and to their left. The bullet ricocheted off the rock face behind their tent.

Cally was on guard duty. She fell down flat on her stomach and lay, petrified, while Gerald and Bon crawled out from the tent, their rifles in their hands.

"Are you going to give over or do we have to kill some of you first?" A thick voice called from where the shot was fired.

* * *

"Crying won´t make it go away." The quiet voice might just as well have been the knell of doom.

The man was standing three paces away from Cally, inside their camp. He held his rifle in both hands across his middle as if that was the position it was always held in. She stopped her impulsive action of reaching for her rifle resting on the ground next to her, the barrel leaning against her knee. When he saw her arrested movement he put his rifle up, pointing it skyward, but she noticed he had his finger on the trigger.

* * *

The man´s surliness discouraged conversation. Cally worked with him while Bon hovered in the background. Gerald was lucky; no major blood vessels had been ruptured. Although he had to take a few swigs from the bottle and clench his teeth until the veins and the tendons stood out like cables in his neck, and the sweat poured out of him like he was a watering can, Gerald came through.

The passage the projectile had ripped open had swollen closed. The cavity had to be worked open, and kept open to expose the bullet where it was lodged among a cluster of tendons and vessels. The piece of distorted metal had to be dislodged and pried loose gently then eased to the surface with the utmost care and delicacy.

.

Cally gazed fondly at the kids, as the wave of excitement washed up to them and swirled around Jonti. Her touch of nostalgia about the schoolhouse back at the settlement was swept aside by a young female barging her way through the clamoring children to get to Jonti. He also seeme

About the Author

I’m a retired accountant. Retired means I can write and keep myself otherwise occupied than by pestering my wife. Accountant means I have to be kept out of the mischief of telling others how to spend their money.

Numbers are cold and figures are uncompromising. Business correspondence is either dictating or placating and minutes of meetings leave no room for one’s own flights of fantasy. I earned a living in the harsh world of facts and stories got bottled up inside me while I dreamed to escape.

My characters talk a lot and think a lot to express their feelings. Their attitude to events and an underlying motive is more important than the mere occurrence of events. I like to see what I consider to be good to prevail. I want to express myself in my writing to identify with my kindred spirits – be they accountants or plumbers or housewives or whoever.