The 97th Step Read Free

lathe, and his father had begrudged him both the time and the copper for the wire. The flitter needed a new coil, it needed a new inducer, and it needed at least four new repellor grids. If prayer had any validity, then that must be what was holding the flitter together, because Mwili prayed every time he cranked the rattletrap up. Taking the ancient craft on the fly was an invitation to accident, and a broken head or worse. This time, fortunately, he'd only been half a meter up and cruising slowly when the engine shut off. He'd raised dust and a few bruises, but both he and the flitter had survived fairly undamaged otherwise.
    "Where did this happen?" his father finally said.
    "At Three Rocks."
    Mafuta looked in that general direction, but Mwili knew that even if his father wore spookeyes and scopes, he'd never be able to see the flitter. It was twenty-six kilometers to the rocks. Twenty-six dusty kilometers and four weary hours on foot, by way of the only road leading to their farm. A more boring stretch of land could hardly be devised; God must have put his mind to it, and only He knew why.
    "Did you leave the road? Strain the engine?"
    "No, Baba. I went straight to the post and came straight home."
    "Why did you not return to the post and call me?"
    Mwili sighed. It was nearly twenty klicks from the rocks to the supply post. He would have saved all of an hour on the call, and still had to walk home—the supply warden didn't give anything away for free, and Mafuta Kalamu would never have agreed to pay for his son to ride home, not in ten times ten thousand years. That would have been sixty-five kilometers he would have had to walk, and that made no sense at all. But he wouldn't say that to his father. Instead, he said, "I thought it would be better to come home. The distance is nearly the same, and I could get started quicker on the repairs."
    "You brought the coil?"
    Mwili reached into his gi and pulled the coil out. It was the size of a drink can, wrapped in a greasy rag.
    "Yes, sir."
    Grudgingly, Mafuta said, "That was good." But the faint praise vanished as he suddenly came to the point that Mwili had feared the most: "But—what of the supplies? You just left them there?"
    Mwili took a deep breath and allowed it to escape quietly. Why, no, father, he thought, I packed all three hundred kilos of food, seedlings, chemicals and electronics into my back pocket and carried them home!
    Of course I left them there!
    Aloud, the boy said, "I hid them."
    "You hid them? Where?"
    "Behind the center of the Three Rocks. Under a tarp, covered with dirt. They won't be visible unless you are looking for them—"
    "And you think anybody who sees an abandoned flitter won't look around, fool?"
    "Baba, what else was I to do?" Careful! That was dangerously close to the sin of Impertinence.
    But the smaller sin was lost in the larger for his father. "Three months' worth of supplies! The seedlings will likely freeze! And there are dust dogs who prowl the rocks!"
    There was nothing more Mwili could say. The last dust dog seen within a hundred klicks had been spotted more than five years past, and moving away, at that. The tarp and dirt would probably protect the seedlings. And the chances of anybody passing along that stretch of road for the next week were slimmer than Mwili’s pet ferret.
    The hard-faced man raised the strap. "You should have stayed with the supplies, to protect them against thieves or animals! I would have come looking for you, in a day or two. But no, you wanted the comfort of a soft bed, the warmth of a fire, over our precious supplies! Kneel!"
    Mwili dropped to his knees, landing harder for his exhaustion. He leaned forward, bending at the waist, hunching his back. He heard the whistle of the thick leather just before he felt the slap and burn below his shoulders. He did not cry out, for he had long since learned that only made his father more angry at him for being weak.
    "Pray!" His father's voice was a roar. Pray for