I woke warm which was a nice change after a year of serving on the Mary Pipov Express in Siberia.  I had gone sword and gun against one of the ape-wolf hybrid supercommando’s that infest that part of mid-Twenty-first Century Siberia, and I put paid to its ambitions of eating the crew, but it repaid me in kind with claw and poison fang.  So, now I woke in another universe after dying, or versing out in the previous one.

For I am a verser, a creature possessed of a peculiar kind of quasi-immortality, and with great powers that I had gathered along the way.  It is sufficient to say that few humans whether mage or martial artist could stand against me for long anyways.

And so I rolled to my feet, ready to fight, and looked about a cornfield where the young stalks barely reached my kneecap, and the soft pale black earth stretched out flatter than a pancake for miles.  My gladius was in my hand, and I trembled with the need to fight.  I had been so sure I had the creature.  I had timed its strikes, and was sure that I was fast enough to duck a roundhouse, and go in for the throat.

Instead it had caught me by the face, and shoved a claw into my right eye.  Desperately, I had lashed out as it lifted me by the skull, and with a wild kick collapsed its snout into its brain.  We had fallen and died in each other’s arms.

And I wanted a rematch.  Granted, we were both dead, but still I wanted another go at it, because I didn’t see how I could have made that elementary a mistake.

Still bouncing with nerves, I slipped my clean sword into my duffel bag, and bounced up and down.  Finally, not able to control my irritation, and the adrenaline rush, I set out in a run.  The field gave way to a slim asphalt road with blue-green dividing line, and a wide shoulder.

I ran several miles, full backpack and all, and then came to a farmhouse set behind a sagging fence overgrown with vines.  The barn and the shed completed thesides of the square of hard-packed dirt where chickens wandered looking for worms.  Stripping off my polar wear, I slowed, and shrugged.

I walked into the yard, and a young man stepped out of the white farmhouse via way of the back porch.  He stared at me, and I smiled, hoping he would use the local language.

"Hi, I wonder if you have some water, I can pay."

"Pay?" He had a strange twang to his words, but it was English, so I was happy.  He laughed, and waved off the offered money.

Then he stepped back in, and got a cup, and walked over to a pump.  It was a handpump around back which surprised me since I saw what I assumed were electric lines going from his house, and further down the road.

"Pump’s out." He said, with an embarrassed look.  And then he set to pumping.  The first gush of dirty water did not catch me by surprise, and the following water was clean, clear, and slightly touched with iron.

After my run, and the changeover from artic weather to this hot, humid bath, I enjoyed it immensely, and so I don’t know why, but I spoke.

"I know something about pumps.  Perhaps I can look at it for you."

He studied me, and I waited.  Then he went back to the house to obtain permission I thought from a parent, but for all I knew it could be Cthulu who was sitting in his living room.  The thing to remember is that ‘looking normal’ and ‘being normal’ is that they can be radically different.  When you travel to a new universe, there is no telling what you will get into.

Josh, the older teenage lad, came back with several screwdrivers, a pair of pliars, and a hammer.  Then he took me to the far side of the house which rested in shade amidst luxuriant grass.  And there sat a pump in its casing, and very non-helpful it was.

My pschyometry to find out what had broken in it did not worke at all.  So I determined on exploratory surgery, and sent Josh to get the instruction manual.

The pliars easily removed the screws, at least for me.  Although Jost was startled when he came back.

"Those were frozen.  I always had to hammer some loose."

I shrugged, and began cleaning the electrical contacts which had blackened.  An brown flower-laden apron in small designs so inconspicuous as to merge into one vast swirl was being wiped in soapy, work-seamed hands as the matron of the house came around the corner to discover me at work.

"What! Are! You Doing?!" She stood aghast.

"Trying to fix the pump, ma’am." I said as calmly as I could deciding that neither charm of which I have some shortage or power would do me good.

Josh came up to assure her it was all right, but she fluttered about in fear that I would permanently break it, and they would not have the money to fix it.  To which Josh quite reasonably in my mind pointed out that it was already broken.  But that did not assuage her.

Indeed, I saw her fear was that I would totally trash it, and that the minor repairs they did not have the money for would become major repairs.  I suppose I could have whipped out my engineering credentials gained at Edinburgh, and at the Menlo Park School for Versers, and on several starships, but instead I just smiled calmly and waited since such credentials would likely convince her I was quite mad.

Finally ten minutes of drama later, Josh had convinced her that he would keep a close eye on me, and make sure I didn’t do anything too drastic.  She went back to her handwashing of dishes, and the big, blonde young man with the touselled hair and the long sleeve button up shirt hanging loose around his black denim came over with an embarrassed look on his face.

"She…" He paused. "Gets excited."

I understood.  It seemed to me that Josh’s Mom, Melody, had a feeling like the universe was spinning out of control, and if she engaged in frantic steering that maybe she could get it back under control.  Or perhaps she thought her remonstrations appeased the gods.  It was about control and the lack thereof, in some way I was sure.

But, its not something one wishes to say to a polite, yet socially diffident young man like Josh was.  He might take it to mean ‘you talking about my mom’ and feel obligated to pound me into the dirt.  Not that he could, but it would be awkward.

I continued to take the pump apart, finding a gasket that was worn deep in the guts of the machine.  And Melody came back out to see her pump half-scattered across the lawn as she muttered before fleeing back inside.  In actuality, I had laid everything down in precise and neat order clockwise so I would know which part went next when I put everything back together again.

Tasting the gasket, I identified it as a rubber gasket.  Flexing it, I nodded as it sat there stiff and stern, almost brittle.  A close examination let me know that it was not from ancient use as it had few cracks, but it seemed defective.  So I sent Josh in for some flour, some mild acid, and a few other household chemicals plus a foot square span of plastic wrap.

He looked weird at me when I used that term ‘plastic wrap’. 

 "Clearsnap. You mean, right?"

I waved him on.  Its one of the problems of being a verser.  Even in an equivalent tech level, in one world they say "Tomas Toppers", or "Reynold’s Wrap", or "Plastic Sheet #1", or "CFP–for Clear Food Protectanct" or here I saw as he brought back the plastic wrap, they call it "Clearsnap."  And using the wrong word marks one as weird.

After that, it was a matter of wrapping a chunk of clay around the tube, and around that a layer of dirt, and then making a thin tube of plastic wrap with the chemicals sprayed in as mist, and a larger tube, perhaps an inch across surrounded the whole with flour dusted into it.

Then I took a two square inch remnant of the Clearsnap, and holding it between my fingers turned it into a convex lens by blowing gently on it.  I turned away and told a mystified Josh to do so as well.

It took a few tens of seconds for my primitive fire starter to catch, but then things happened in very quick succession.  The heat from the focused light ignited the flour-air mixture making one of the deadlier  explosives you’ll find before you get to electrical resistance explosives–a Fuel-Air Explosive.  That ignited, and boom, and following it so quickly that the human ear could not hear the difference, the flaming ring of fire reached outward almost to my knuckles and inward to the second ring of plastic.

There, the much higher ignition point chemicals, also a fuel-air explosive, you’ll note, absorbed the fire’s energy, thought about things for a tenth of a second, and then let loose with a flash of light that mimicked a magnesium photographer’s flash for intensity–if you were looking away.

Josh got up from the ground where he had dove for protection, and I slowly stood, flicking my right hand which was a bit seared.

"Whaaaa?"

"Check it out."

I pointed to the dirt ring.  The outer dirt was compacted, but we brushed it off with my keys, and inside was a perfectly hard, but slightly pliable clay ring resting where the gasket had.  It was untouched by foul chemicals due to the shielding soil, and ready for use.

After that, it took perhaps a half-hour for us to put the pump back together again.   I let Josh prime the pump, and with a triumphant grin go inside and start the water back up.

The Siberians on the Pipov had been masterful mechanics, and they had taught me much about making do with little things. 

I had heated the clay up to nearly ten thousand degrees, but there was so little volume of heat that it had not damaged the pump in the least.  However, this was a very easy thing to misdo, and a mistake with a FAE tended to mean they picked up your teeth in the next county over.

So, on second thought, this might not have been my best idea ever.  Although to listen to Matron Melody, it was barely good enough, and why hadn’t I also fixed the crud in her pipe lines since ‘her water hardly flows anyways, even if the pump might be working for a day or an hour.’

I felt pity for Melody and her son.  He had worked hard, and instead of a pat on the back, he got a verbal whipslash.  And she, it seemed felt as if acknowledging the presence of anything good would mean inviting the devastation of the gods upon her house.  Still I felt worse for Josh as his face crumpled a bit at the edges, and I knew he wanted to cry, but considered himself too much of a man to do so.

Still, she begrudgingly put out a plate of food for me, allowing that I had done some help.

The man of the house came home from town in his large truck, and gave me a short stare, and then talked to his wife.  After that, he went out back, and checked on my work.

When he came back, his expression was different.

"I suppose you’ll be wanting a job."

I paused, and reigned in my temper at this ingratitude.

"I could do one, if you like."

"OK." He paused, and as if it pained him he spoke again. "Well done on the pump." And then he gave me a crooked smile. "I hear tell you did some flim-flammery with the pump to fix it.  Try to save your tricks for Josh and Tyler and Lisa, the kids."

I blinked.  He assumed the whole thing I had done was an effort to impress Josh with my skill, instead of the actual thing.  What a pinched little man, I thought sadly, and wondered why I was staying with these people.  I could do right by them for years, and give them loyal service above and beyond the call of duty, and the most I would ever get would be a grudged thank-you.  But somehow, it seemed right to be here, and so I stayed at the Callen farm for the next week.

Horse stalls, and cow stalls, and the hay mow, and the corn silo all got to know me very well.  In the process, I fixed several more things, the two younger kids insisting that I fix the rope swing in the haymow, although I’m happy to say the learning process went both ways.  Mr. Callen, and I never heard his first name, was a talented mechanic, and he showed me quite a bit on the running of his coal gassified tractor.

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