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Chapter 22

Mississippi Oil


Fort Peterbilt


April 18, 1008 CE


Michael Anderle looked at the now mostly empty tanker trailer and sighed. For three years they had been using the gasoline and fuel oil, not just to run the Peterbilt, pickup and generators, but to help with starting fires and heating forges and kilns to make iron, steel and stoneware of all sorts, boiling water, sterilizing instruments, distilling alcohol, nixtamalization of corn, and so on and so forth.

The fuel hadn’t been wasted; it had meant the difference between life and death for hundreds of people. And even when it hadn’t meant life and death, it had meant a significantly improved standard of living.

But it was running out.

And they needed more oil. Jerry’s database included locations for really shallow oil wells in several places that were on or near the Mississippi River, according to geological surveys in the latter part of the twenty-first century. How well that information would line up with the course of the Talak River in the year of our lord 1008 was less certain. The oil wouldn’t have moved, at least not much, but the river would have shifted its course over the thousand-plus years.

That meant wildcatting, and that meant pipes and drilling gear. Which they still mostly didn’t have. It was on the list, but kept being pushed down as other things took precedence.

Michael shook his head. That had to stop. If they didn’t get oil, the Peterbilt was going to stop working. If they didn’t learn to refine gasoline, the pickup and the generators were going to stop. Well, the pickup was. They’d already replaced the gasoline engine on one of the generators with a steam engine.

Melanie put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “We’ll get to it.”

“We have to get to it now. Or next year, folks are going to be plowing the fields by hand. More importantly, the Peterbilt has become the symbol of our new nation, and having it stop working will hurt us all.”

* * *

Jerry took off his glasses computer and carefully set it in its case. “There are a number of workarounds that we can do. Pipes don’t have to be made of iron or steel. Wood will work if the pipe doesn’t have to go too deep.”

He waved at the screen where a geologist was narrating a cartoon about how to drill a thousand foot deep well using wooden pipe and a hydraulically powered cutting head.

“Okay,” Alyssa said, “you guys get to work on the oil rig, while I go down the Talak with the pickup barge, and start negotiating with the local tribes.”

“I’m going too,” Shane said. At her parents’ look, she said, “I’m fifteen, Mom. And in this time, girls are starting to . . . well, you know.”

“And you know that you-know-what is going to wait at least a couple of more years. Why do you want to go?”

“More like a decade,” added Michael.

Shane rolled her eyes. “I need to go because, aside from Jerry, I’m best with the glasses computers.”

It was true. The glasses computers were a new and different system with their augmented reality and virtual keyboards. Like learning a new language, it was easier when you were younger. Jerry had been extensively trained in it, but in spite of, or just possibly because of Alyssa’s ability with the keyboard and screen systems she’d grown up with, she still hadn’t gotten used to the new system. Certainly not as quickly as the youngsters had. Michael and Melanie were better than Alyssa with the new system, but not as good as Shane. And besides, they were going to be needed upriver plowing fields and negotiating with the northern and western clans.


Talak River


April 28, 1008 CE


Keneva waved to Pulok, the engineer. Pulok pulled the lever that engaged the propeller.

Keneva was the barge captain. He was a member of the Kadlo from Kallabi. A man in his forties, he’d studied with the shaman from Kallabi, then been a trader by canoe to tribes to the south of the United Clan’s territory. He’d moved to Fort Peterbilt to study about the time that Jerry Jefferson had arrived.

He was proud of the boat, but what he really wanted was a seagoing ship.

The barge backed away from the dock, and Keneva turned the wheel. The barge slowly turned, and once it was close enough to pointing downriver, he straightened the rudder and called, “Okay, Pulok. Forward engines.”

Pulok pushed the lever forward, then she reached down and shoved the wooden gear to the left. Then she reengaged the chain drive and the propeller started turning the other way. The barge started to move forward down the river. Pulok was from Jabir, and had been learning about the magic of the Peterbilt people since their arrival. She knew as much about steam engines and gear systems as anyone on Earth. She checked the steam gauges, and looked at the flywheel to see how fast the engine was turning. She nodded to the fireman and he shoveled a bit more charcoal into the fire box.

Then she linked the generator to the drive, and started charging the batteries.

The barge had the steam engine and generator in the back, counterbalanced by the pickup truck near the bow. There were also removable tents in the center of the barge, where Alyssa and Shane were working to map the river.


Talak River, 323 miles downriver


April 30, 1008 CE


There were people waving at them from the shore. Two days and one night of travel had taken them to somewhere near where the border between Arkansas and Louisiana would be in that other history.

They were also shouting, but in a language that was completely unfamiliar to Alyssa or Shane.

Keneva spoke it, though. Almost spoke it. He spoke a language that was spoken fifty miles upriver from here, which was sort of like this language.

He shouted back and there was some back-and-forth. He turned to Alyssa Jefferson. “They say they have oil!” he announced. What they’d actually said was “we found the black mud that burns.”

“How do they know that we want oil?” Shane asked.

“Because rumor travels the Talak faster than fish,” Keneva said. “They are happy to see the great Peterbilt. They say they didn’t believe that it was actually this big.” He grinned. “I haven’t told them yet that this is just the pickup.”

“Well, tell them,” Alyssa said. “If they really have oil, they are going to be seeing the Peterbilt and the tanker trailer sooner than they think.”

Slowly, they maneuvered the barge to ground on the east bank of the Talak, put down the ramp, and drove the pickup onto shore. The local tribe did some farming, a bit of corn, but mostly squash and beans. They were interested, but they were a small camp, perhaps two hundred people, including women and children.

Digging a well would pull a lot of resources.


Village of the Moshik


May 2, 1008 CE


The Moshik, though they did some farming, were part of a larger hunter-gatherer tribe that abandoned the river for most of the fall to hunt. Fall was when the animals were at their fattest. After hunting season, they moved back to the river for the winter and spring. They were mostly interested in the pickup as an item of curiosity and proof of magical power. Also, their notion of what was going on up north had only a distant relationship with the truth. That wasn’t new to the Peterbilt people. This was a world without the internet or even written letters. The whole world was one giant game of telephone, the game where a kid whispers something to the kid next to them and it goes around the circle until it gets back to the kid completely transformed.

The Moshikains didn’t believe that the Peterbilt people came from the future. That was ridiculous. Clearly they came from a mystical land of the north and the stories have been garbled by traders. And clearly they had great magic in the north.

“It’s not magic,” Alyssa explained.

“It’s a kind of magic you can learn if you want,” Keneva translated. “The Peterbilt people share their magic. And the cross god doesn’t require sacrifices.”

The elders nodded, but not like they really believed it. The hunter-gatherers knew about the sacrifices and they knew that it was usually the poor or strangers that got sacrificed. They had their own harsh customs, but a large part of why they stayed downriver was because they didn’t want to fight people as powerful as the northern river people. What they did know was that the dark-skinned woman of the Peterbilt people had cast a mighty spell that had ended a disease among the peoples of Hocha. Based on that, they were willing to trade for oil. They didn’t want a woman with that sort of power angry with them.

“Well, what do you think of their oil well?” asked Pulok.

“It’s more tar pit than oil well, but there is oil coming up,” Alyssa said. “Let me finish my tests. There may not be enough volatiles for gasoline.”

“Should we go back upriver?” Keneva asked. At over three hundred miles they were out of radio range, even of the station at Fort Hilltop.

“Let me finish my tests,” Alyssa repeated.


Fort Peterbilt


May 2, 1008 CE


Akvan read the message. What the Peterbilt people had thought wasn’t exactly true, meaning the idea that the river people had no written language. They didn’t exactly, but they did have knotted leather strips. They were part of the mysteries only known to the Pharisees of Hocha, but they did have them and his special friend in Hocha had taught him the magic of the knots. So, as he looked at the beaded necklace and read the knots, he knew that his friend was warning him again. He went to see Jerry Jefferson.

His father’s cousin Lomhar was back in Kallabi. Akvan was in Fort Peterbilt. And he was learning a great deal.

The world was complicated, much larger than he’d thought, and much less centered on his people than he’d ever wanted to believe.

It was true that Hocha was bigger than London was at this time, but London was a primitive backwater in Europe. The big cities were Constantinople and Baghdad. Even in the Americas, Hocha was fairly small compared to South American cities.

Jerry, as was often the case, was sitting in a chair and moving his hands about in strange and mystical gestures. Jerry had explained that they weren’t mystical at all, and even showed him by letting him wear the glasses for a few moments, so he could see the magical boxes Jerry moved about to find the information he was searching for.

All he’d managed to convince Akvan of was that the Peterbilt people had two different words for magic. Magic and science.

“What’s bothering you, Akvan?” Jerry asked when Akvan got his attention.

“I have a message from Jokem!”

“Jokem?”

“He’s a priest of Talak in Hocha.”

“Is he the one who warned you to get out?”

Akvan nodded.

“Okay. What’s he saying this time?”

“That I should stay away from the Peterbilt.”

“Why?”

Akvan shook his head. “He didn’t say why. Just that I should not be with it the next time it leaves the fort.”

“That makes sense,” Jerry said. Jerry Jefferson wasn’t anyone’s notion of a spy. But as the librarian for the database, he’d fallen into the role of spy master. Not even that, really. He was just the guy who kept the files, and determined who got to look at them. Which meant that he got to look at them, so he was about as informed about the politics of Hocha and the United Clans as anyone.

“They were deeply embarrassed and angered by the Peterbilt’s trip through Hocha.” Jerry sighed. “‘Never do your enemy a small hurt.’ That’s a quote. Several people have said it throughout history, everyone from Machiavelli to an ancient Samnite. What the Peterbilt delivered in their attempt to keep casualties down was a small hurt. They embarrassed the hell out of the Pharisees of Hocha, but didn’t actually weaken them. The worst thing about it, is that it probably convinced them that no matter how strong our”—he held up his hands and made quote marks—“‘magic’ is, we’re weak because of our unwillingness to kill the innocent. So they think that if they send people to attack us, we won’t respond. Not, at least, in any way that will really hurt them.”

“Are you saying they’re wrong?” Akvan asked, really curious. It had always seemed to him that the Pharisees were powerful because they were willing to do whatever they had to do to be powerful. Whether it was sacrificing young women to the river goddess, cutting their own faces and genitals in bloodletting rituals, or sending out warriors to attack any village that defied them.

“I’m saying their concept is wrong.” Jerry held up his hands. “Never mind. This discussion belongs in a philosophy class. What I’m saying is, if your friend’s friends do this thing, you’d better warn him to get his ass out of Hocha, unless you want to be scraping up his remains.

“Thank you for the information, Akvan. I’ll inform the great women’s council and the chiefs.”

* * *

Hamadi laid the steel ax on the table. It was new, made right here in Jabir out of bog iron. It wasn’t for chopping trees. This was a war ax. Hamadi was used to stone axes and clubs. This had the weight and balance he was used to, but at the same time, it could take a beating that would shatter a stone ax to nothing. He also had a new mail shirt. It was cloth, with pockets that held iron sheets. It weighed more than the bone and leather he’d worn before, but it would stop a spear or an arrow most of the time.

Hamadi had made the transition from Stone Age to Iron Age without even glancing at the Bronze Age. He was anxiously looking forward to the Gunpowder Age. He had grenades. They were made of wood with embedded stone, but what he wanted was a revolver.

Michael placed his pistol on the table. This was a meeting of the chiefs and it was custom. New custom, but custom all the same.

“You need to keep going out,” Ginak, a war chief of Kacla, said. The weapon he’d laid on the table was a spiked club, much like the one Hamadi had given to Michael, and Michael had returned, after that first raid, years ago now.

“I know. I don’t like it, but you’re right. We can’t let the Pharisees dictate our actions.”

Ginak grunted and nodded. He didn’t really trust the Peterbilt people. He was very much afraid that they were too soft for this world. Good people. He didn’t know how many lives nixtamalization had saved, but he knew it was more than all the women the Pharisees had sacrificed since the beginning of Hocha. At the same time, the strong took and the weak gave, and that was just the way the world worked. And the Pharisees were strong.

“More than that, Michael,” Hamadi said. “I think we should reconsider making another assault on Hocha.”

“We can’t,” Michael said. “Evil doesn’t mean idiots. After the first raid, they realized that the Peterbilt needs a flattish surface to drive on. They dug out a trench around the walls and put walking bridges in front of the gates. Those bridges will hold a man, even several, but they won’t hold the Peterbilt or even the pickup truck.

“If we’re going to hit them, we’re going to have to find another way.”

Ginak grunted again. “We need one of your airplanes”—he wasn’t a stupid, or even an ignorant, man. He’d seen the images of airplanes flying and the descriptions of how they worked—“to fly over their walls and drop grenades on the high priest’s residence mound.”

“That might actually be possible. Not a real airplane, but a hang glider or a balloon.” Michael shook his head. “No, not a balloon. All the cloth in North America wouldn’t be enough to make a hot air balloon big enough to carry a man and a five-hundred-pound bomb over Hocha. But a hang glider . . . that we might be able to do. We’d need a long, straight, flat piece of land somewhere within a few miles of Hocha. The longer, the better. And a really long rope. Pull the hang glider along to give it some altitude.” He shrugged. “It might work. I’ll talk to Jerry and see what we can come up with. I wish Alyssa was here.”


Village of the Moshik


May 7, 1008 CE


Shane manipulated the data and fed it to Alyssa’s laptop. The oil seep was smallish, but it was a safe bet that there was enough crude there to fill up the tanker a couple of times. They were going to need more eventually, but for now it would do. Besides, there was quite a lot of tar and there was a whole lot that Alyssa could do with tar. “It’s time to go back,” she told Alyssa.

They would be taking Moshikain tribesmen with them on the trip back, to see the Peterbilt and the capsule and the magic pictures. It wasn’t that they doubted, but people from the future was a lot to take on faith, even if they did have the pickup to show.


Talak River


May 9, 1008 CE


“I have Fort Hilltop,” Shane said.

“Well, tell them we have an oil source next to the Mississippi. We won’t have to go to Spindletop, at least not yet.”

“Okay.” Shane used the virtual keyboard to type out a message and sent it. They had contact, but it was like one bar on a phone, enough for instant messages but not for speech or large data files.

A minute later, she got a message. “Be careful. Our sources in Hocha suggest a possible attack on barges carrying Peterbilt and pickup.”

She copied it to Alyssa’s laptop.

The trip upriver was going a bit smoother than the downriver trip had gone. They were using oil from the oil seep. It was thick and unrefined, but it burned and that was all the boiler needed. It also didn’t produce the ash that wood or coal left in the firebox. Just soot.

They were carrying a lot of local herbs and spices, as well as local plants and meats. Trade down the Talak was going to be profitable. Perhaps not so profitable as the trade up and down the Mississippi had been in the nineteenth century. After all, there weren’t nearly as many people in America in the early eleventh century as there were in the nineteenth. And those people didn’t have the beginnings of the industrial revolution to supply the trade. At least, they didn’t have it yet. But that was going to change.

Shane would make sure of it.


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