The CRES code

Chapter Eight - The New World

That night, George Randall, who had slept in the finest hotels in the world with human room service staff instead of robots to serve his every need, slept on hard, itchy straw next to goats.

The watered down stew had done little to satisfy his hunger, particularly as his body drew upon its reserves to recover from the rigors of hypersleep, and he awoke to find himself ravenously hungry. It was the mouthwatering smell of oat porridge that had awoken him, he found. The cottage was still almost pitch black, lit only by the glow coming from the ashes of last night's fire as Gelda stoked them back to life, but steam was already coming from the cauldron hanging above it as the farmer's wife cooked breakfast. Randall found himself hoping that she was cooking up enough for six this time. He thought he was quite capable of devouring the entire contents of the cauldron all by himself.

There was a brief gust of cold as Wilks opened the door to go out into almost perfect blackness. Dawn must still be hours away, Randall thought, but having to make a living in this primitive lifestyle evidently required them to work all the hours of the day, and then some. He wondered whether they ever got tired of living this way and yearned to return to proper, civilised living. Frozen food straight from the supermarket ready to eat after a moment in the flash oven. Proper indoor plumbing... Some of these people must occasionally go back to civilisation, he thought. He wondered what the others thought of them. Were they weakling failures who deserved pity for not being able to 'cut it' in the medieval community, or were they traitors for walking out on friends and family?

What did Wilks and his wife really think of their four houseguests? he wondered. He knew they were letting them stay for the night out of a sense of religious obligation. Did they have sympathy for these four unfortunates they'd found wandering naked and lost in the countryside, or did they actively resent them for eating their food and crowding them in their own house? Either way, Randall knew, they wouldn't have to endure their company for more than one night. Somewhere out there were cities and civilisation with all the luxuries and conveniences of modern life, and Randall intended to find them.

The door opened again as Wilks came back in. "The outhouse is at the end of the path," he said as he shivered the cold out of his bones. "If you need to use it, and I 'spect you do."

Randall nodded his thanks, glad that he was finally becoming able to understand their strange accent and way of speaking. After listening to them talking together for long hours the previous evening, he was becoming able to understand them as easily as if they were from his own time.

The watery bowl of stew the night before had done little to fill their bowels, though. Randall only needed to empty his bladder and he went outside to do it. Outside, the only light came from a crescent moon low down near the eastern horizon, but his eyes were already adapted to the dark and the wooden outhouse was visible a short distance away, as promised.

As he approached it, though, the rank odour coming from it deterred him and he went behind a bush instead. There was a brief shaft of ruddy red light from the cottage as another of its occupants left to answer the call of nature, but Randall ignored it, trusting in the darkness to cover his modesty.

When he'd done what he needed to do he took a moment to look up at the sky. It was ablaze with stars. More than he'd ever seen in the polluted skies of the Earth in the time before he'd gone into the hibernaculum, and the milky way stretched across the sky, every tiniest detail of its intricate structure clearly visible. Not even the skies of Switzerland, where he'd taken most of his holidays, had been this clear. He stared up at the spectacle, amazed at how clear the sky was now and feeling a little appalled by what they'd done to it in his own time. They'd had no choice, of course. Industry was needed to keep the economy functioning, and there was no way to have industry without pollution. Losing the sight of the stars, and most of the wildlife on the land and in the oceans, had been a small price to pay for keeping civilisation moving and he'd never felt bad about enjoying all the benefits of modern life. Now, though, he couldn't help but feel a surge of delight that the people of this new age had found a way to restore the planet.