Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [30]
Kes settled into a satisfying rhythm with her shovel: plunge it into the dirt, stomp it down, rock it back, lift and throw. The task somehow managed to completely occupy her mind. There was room for nothing but earth and rocks, and moving them from one place to another.
They dug their post holes wide enough to stand in and deep enough that they were in the ground up to their chests. By the time Kes finished with hers, she realized that B’Elanna had completed two and was halfway through the last one. “I’m fine,” the engineer said. “I’ll finish this one up if you’ll grab the tape measure and level and check that the other three are exactly the same depth and flat. Stomp down the dirt until it’s packed hard before you check.”
Kes did so, removing a little more soil from two of the holes to even them out. When B’Elanna finished with the fourth hole, they checked that one together. Then they said good night and went to their quarters.
Kes slept well, bone tired, but satisfied from the day’s labor.
It took a week of their free time to secure the anchor posts in the ground and build the windmill’s tower, platform, and ladder. Kes was impressed by the ingenuity of the humans who had developed the procedure five centuries earlier. Though her human friends always referred to the nineteenth century as a primitive time, it seemed to Kes that it took more skill to make do with so little than it did to build using the vast technology Voyager’s crew had at their disposal. After all, it would have taken a couple of days of painstaking labor from dawn to dusk for those earlier teams (usually pairs or trios, according to B’Elanna) to raise their mill and set it in motion, whereas they could now speak just a few words to blink a windmill into existence on the holodeck. Where was the challenge in that?
Kes would rather do it traditionally, measuring each board twice and then sawing it, carefully burying each four-by-four leg in the ground, cooperating to hold and nail the smaller girders and diagonals in place, then climbing up on long, loose planks placed horizontally over what they’d already built to do it again for the next higher level. The tower quickly became recognizable as an authentic structure rather than a jumble of boards, and it made her heart soar to look at it. She was certain B’Elanna was pleased with their progress, as well.
They fell into the routine of working for an hour or two and then, when they needed a rest, lying down in the grass for a bit to look up at the sky, which was programmed to change over time. At first, they examined the clouds, pointing out when one looked like a fork, a flower, or a phaser. After a few days, heavier winds blew the clouds away and they gazed at a masterpiece of solid cerulean.
“What is this place called?” Kes asked one day.
“I don’t think it’s any place in particular,” B’Elanna answered, “but the geography is called ‘the plains’ and they’re like the ones you would find smack-dab in the middle of the northern American continent.”
“Are the plains always so beautiful?”
“Well, from what I gather, it didn’t rain very much before climate control was developed, which is why they needed to bring up groundwater. We’re experiencing late spring, but by the end of the summer it would be hot enough to scorch all this grass. Prairie fires were a big problem, too.”
Kes sat up and threw out her arms. “The risk might be worth it to stay where there is so much life.” Contrary to her first impression, the billowing grass wasn’t homogenous, but a happy mixture of several different varieties. Within their blades, insects of many colors and sizes crawled and leapt. There were usually at least two or three broad-winged birds in the sky, urgent cries contradicting their lazy gliding. Once, B’Elanna had even pointed out a small mammal poking