Boucher's World: Emergent Read online

  ******

  Three months later…

  Jade punched the regulator on the water dispenser again. Still no water. What the...? Shards. These things never broke down.

  Her pretty brown face crinkled up into a puzzled frown as she stared at it. The day was warm, and she needed to fill her water pouch - now. She tried it one last time with the same result.

  She stood there for moment thinking, then she walked to the back and pushed the water lever on the small shower.

  Crap. Nothing.

  She sighed, slung the pouch over her shoulder, picked up her pack, and headed back out of the rest station.

  “Tally!” she yelled as she stepped outside.

  She looked around. Where’d he get to?

  She shook her head impatiently and homed in on his signature, finding him near the wheat field.

  With a quiet rustling, Tally came padding sedately toward her, long bushy tail held high in the air, his silver fur gleaming in the afternoon sun.

  he sent calmly,

  Tally could vocalize but didn’t if he could avoid it. His mental voice was a pleasant, harmonious tenor but his audible one was…well, different. So, he preferred to use mind-speak.

  “Couldn’t get it to work,” said Jade shaking her head in disgust.

  She deliberated for a second, then reached into a side pocket on her pack and pulled out a small, black, rectangular hand device. She peered at it, then touched one of the three lines running horizontally across the top half.

  A tiny green indicator on the top blinked and a large three dimensional map popped up in front of her.

  She studied it, tracking from the two icons that represented herself and Tally and their current position at the rest station, to two points a little farther to the north.

  “According to this map, there are two other rest stations in this area, the closest about a mile ahead.”

  She turned the map off and shoved it back into her pack.

  She shrugged. “We’re okay on our quota for the day,” she remarked, “so we have enough leeway to get there and still make enough catches for the bonus.”

  sent the large Cat. he added, golden eyes flashing in the sunlight.

  He was right. Jade was getting thirsty.

  Of course, she wouldn’t be having this problem if the lid to her water pouch hadn’t popped off when she slipped in the wet grass on the hill above the wheat field, and landed butt-first on the pouch.

  She had gotten up rubbing her skinny behind, grimacing because she could feel her work pants were wet.

  She’d bent to retrieve her empty water pouch and slipped - again. Now her knees and pant legs were decorated with grass stains… and mud. She hated hills. Even little ones, such as that one had been.

  She’d shot Tally an indignant look when she caught a mental snicker from him.

  Fortunately, the pouch was still intact and she hadn’t been hurt - except for her dignity - so they’d headed for the rest station so she could get a refill.

  And maybe wipe off some of the mud.

  Now she settled the pack on her back and noted that at least her backside had dried. She brushed at the mud caked on her knees and got a cloud of dust and dirty hands for her trouble.

  She grunted irritably and growled, “Let’s go.”

  She and Tally worked for Nuisance Apprehenders, Inc., the leading pest control company amongst all the villages and enclaves, and they had to catch a required number of “nuisances” each day or risk a cut in credits. They were currently assigned to clearing the fields located to the west of Village Twelve, their home village.

  They weren’t making a killing doing this but it bought food and paid the mortgage - and it allowed them to remain independent. They liked this job a whole lot better than the first one they’d had: working at a flower shop in the market district in their village.

  She carried all of the gear needed for the job and operated the lure that brought the pest close enough to grab, and she bagged the perp once it was caught.

  Tally did most of the grabbing, being careful not to bite or hurt them since they had to keep them alive and relatively unscathed. Sometimes - if she was close enough - she could make the catch if she moved fast enough.

  Unfortunately, that’s what led to her slipping: she’d moved too fast and couldn’t get traction on the wet grass. Tally’d had to chase that one down after she fell. Not that he minded the chase. In fact, he rather enjoyed it, and he was exceptionally good at it.

  Even with the Change, not all ex-pets could resist gobbling up a pest or two in the heat of the moment. He never did that. He handled the small creatures with gentleness, though he did scare them up a little - just to hold them still until she got them caged.

  The little pains-in-the-neck got over it.

  Jade still had that last delinquent, a tiny vole, in one of her pest cages. She decided to store it in the stasis chamber inside the rest station rather than lug it with them, or take it back to the other side of the wheat field where their other little outlaws were already stashed in the chamber there.

  They opted to leave the cart and pick it up on the way back.

  Too bad we can’t use the cart to ride to the next rest station, she thought, but it wasn’t built to carry Humans.

  It could easily have carried Tally but he would never have deigned to ride while she walked. Besides, it was slow and hard to maneuver.

  I sure will be thrilled when we’ve moved up in status enough to rate one of those little evolved hover-rovers the company has, she thought wistfully, Tally could operate it.

  She couldn’t drive one of those but Tally was good at operating evolved vehicles.

  It was a Cat thing.