Carnifex

5/10/48 AC, Desperation Bay, Lansing Colony, Southern Columbia, Terra Nova

News traveled slowly on the new world. Rather, true news traveled slowly.

"But you can get the UN's lies right away," said Ollie Rogers to his assembled family and a few guests, over dinner.

Ollie now had five wives. One had died but three more, along with another seven children, five of them from those three wives, had come his way from the survivors of the wintry disaster that gave the bay its name. Of his thirty-one living children, natural and adopted, three had children of their own. Ollie considered it a mark of God's special favor that he had been so blessed with offspring. Though it wasn't as if he would not have been elected as leader of the colony even if he'd been a bachelor.

One of the guests, Benjamin Putnam, asked, "What do you believe, Ollie? Do you think it's true about the UN troops using or raping little girls up in Balboa?"

That rumor—really that set of rumors, for there were several variants—had become quite widely told over the last few months. The least of the variants told of pre-pubescent prostitutes being dismembered and their bodies put on display near one of the UN's bases, to drive their trade to where the money was less.

Rogers arose from the table and walked to the cabin's sole window, a wavy glass that the colony was just beginning to produce. Looking outside he saw a small cemetery, with a tree growing in the middle of it. They'd named the tree "the tranzitree," and the white wooden crosses around its base reminded Rogers that the tranzitree's fruit, with its bright green exterior and poisonous red interior, killed.

"Ben," Rogers answered slowly and deliberately, "we've both heard a lot of propaganda in our lives. That one has the ring of truth to me."

"Disgraceful," judged Gertie. She'd grown rather plump the last couple of decades but her husband still found her among the best of all women.

"Disgraceful, it may be," agreed Rogers. "But what can we do about it?"

"We can help them; the people the UN is trying to suppress, I mean," said Ollie's oldest son, also called "Oliver" or just "Junior."

"You have children of your own to watch out for," the patriarch reminded.

"We don't," said three of the boys, simultaneously.

Sheriff Juan Alvarez's son, too, spoke up, "And neither do I." Before the lawman could object, his son added, "And if we don't stop the UN up there, how long before they come here? Father . . . Mr. Oliver, you both left the homes you had because of them. Where do you . . . where do we . . . go . . . if they come here, too?"

"You'll need better arms than we can provide," Rogers said. He didn't say it like he thought it would be impossible to get those arms. "We have, after all, found quite a bit of gold here."