Much later that night, Zol and Gertrude’s kids went off to bed, despite the huge excitement level of having both their mother and father back, and Ashley managed to put her twins down to sleep in their tent, ensuring the baby monitor was switched on and she would hear the slightest squeak they made. The twins were sleeping through most nights, but tonight they had taken a while to go down, as if they too understood the excitement of having Zol come into the camp.
It was only then, when things had quietened down, that the adults had the opportunity to talk without interruption.
Zol brought out a sketchbook from his small backpack. ‘Take a look,’ he said, pushing the book towards Ashley.
He had sketched the escarpment perfectly from memory. It was obvious that he’d spent many private hours working on the plan. Each small rondavel drawn was neatly decorated in different ethnic designs and had an initial outside the front door. And each had breathing space between itself and the neighbour nearest it. Two of the larger buildings had an ‘S’.
‘Why two S’s?’
‘Scott’s home,’ he pointed to the smaller of the two, ‘and school,’ he pointed to the larger one.
‘This looks great,’ Scott said. The plan was meticulous in detail. Zol had placed everything similar to the set-up they had finished building at Delmonica the year before for their safari camp. It was just as they’d discussed, but Zol had taken the time to fill in more details on the plan – extras, like where they were putting in the generator house before the powerlines pushed through.
‘Londamela,’ Zol said, as he spread his hands wide.
Ashley grinned. ‘What a lovely name. What does it mean?’
His face looked almost sad when he said, ‘Sort of “sleep here”. A friend once had a safari business with that name, but his partner outgrew it and went on to bigger business along the way, but I liked the older family set-up better.’ He seemed to zone out, as if thinking of another time.
‘What are the buildings made of?’ Ashley enquired.
Zol shook his head as if physically snapping back to the present. ‘There’s a lot of stone around, and many trees. We can bring in cement.’
‘What about when we leave? How long do we live here? If we make a permanent camp, it’ll cost money and then more money again, when we have our own place.’ Ashley spoke her thoughts in quick succession, her mind working overtime.
Scott leaned in and ran a finger along her forehead, attempting to straighten the deep frown there, and she smacked his hand away as one would a mosquito.
‘Albert won’t mind,’ Scott said. ‘He’s a single man, so building things doesn’t happen as fast as he would like. He’s previously spoken to Zol and I about all this, and is happy to contribute towards it, too. And we have sold a lot of the cattle, as the lions here would have thought they were easy food.’ His voice was that of a man accepting his fate, and making the best of it.
‘Oh Scott, your stud herd –’
‘It can be rebuilt when we get our own ranch,’ he interrupted her. ‘I kept the base stock. But right now, our first priority is to make a home for us. Start on a home for all those families coming soon across that damn river. The happy wanderers should be here within the week, so, if we manage to have the cement here by then, everyone can help build, and the structures will go up a hell of a lot faster with so many hands.’ He looked at Zol for confirmation.
‘Two weeks. They’re travelling slower than I expected, and there are more of them. Others keep joining along the way. But there have been big rains up river, and there’s more coming. They’re going to need help getting across.’
Scott looked at Zol. ‘Extend that by a week then. How long before we need to get to the river to help them?’
‘Probably good to be there early, just in case,’ Zol said.
Lisa filled everyone’s coffee cups again and put out a fresh tin of rusks, the hard biscuits freshly baked. She sat down next to Elliott. ‘You comfortable there, Gertrude?’
‘Perhaps the leg could use another cushion under it,’ Gertrude conceded, and Zol hopped to it to make his wife comfortable.
‘What are you actually saying, Zol?’ Ashley asked, once he’d finished fussing over Gertrude. ‘Please tell me I’m reading your conversation wrong. Our staff are all coming so far and then they won’t be able to get across the river? Which river are you all talking about anyway?’ She still found she had gaps in her information from her time spent in the hospital and then on the isolated trek, often with only the twins for company as Lisa would often sit with Elliott too.
‘The mighty Zambezi, Madam,’ Elliott said.
‘Oh my God!’ Ashley put her hands over her mouth, then removed them to talk again. ‘What have we asked these people to do?’
‘No, we didn’t ask them at all. They chose to come,’ Elliott told her. ‘In Zimbabwe there’ll be no jobs for them now that the Decker family has gone. No jobs. No food. The government will hurt the families more. If they get here, they have Boss Scott and you, and they have Zol and Gertrude. They chose to do this, Madam. Even you couldn’t have made one of them stay behind. If you had left them, they would have heard where you settled, and they would come and find you anyway. At least now, with the guards, they are safer on their journey.’
She looked at the men seated around the table, then at Gertrude, as she always did when there was a serious discussion going on. Gertrude was silent. ‘Gertrude? Is this true?’ She needed to know Gertrude’s answer, not just some macho crap that the men were so good at handing out.
‘It’s true. They’ll make it. They travel with both the anti-poaching units, without Zol now, but there are still twelve honourable armed men. No harm will come to our people.’
Ashley rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. ‘How do we explain them to the Zambians when they get here?’
‘We don’t,’ Zol answered. ‘They simply work on the new camp, and when we leave to our new ranch, they move too. Everyone sticks together. There aren’t too many locals left in the areas that they “lease” to the Zimbabwe ranchers. They were deserted during the war and have never returned. So there is not a big danger from the local population demanding jobs that we can’t provide. And, if we are unlucky enough to go into an area where there is a resident chief, then we will deal with it then.’
‘But … ?’ Ashley started.
‘The Zambian and Mozambican governments have established a resettlement program with the displaced farmers,’ Scott said. ‘They are leasing out land on a ninety-nine-year agreement scheme. The white farmers from Zimbabwe are resettling a country once torn apart by war. Zimbabwe’s loss is their gain. We put in an application. So, we won’t own our land to begin with, but we can buy it soon enough, once we start turning a profit again. We know a few of the farmers who are here, and they have gone through this already. Started again, with less than we have, and are now farming successfully. The government doesn’t care who you have on your work force, as long as you help feed their population.’
‘What about later? What about voting? Pensions? Citizenship?’ she asked, now fairly agitated with herself that she hadn’t thought of all this before.
‘Give it a few years and we’ll all be given citizenship, blanket style. It’s Africa. The benchmark moves daily and you can suffocate under the red tape, but eventually everything works out, somehow.’ Scott hugged her to him, and she gazed up at the contours of his face. Blanket amnesty in one country, and blanket citizenship in another. Ashley shook her head.
‘Okay. How much money do we need to build this camp? How much have we got left?’ she asked.
Scott smiled quickly. ‘Enough for now.’
‘Enough,’ said Zol at the same time.
‘Hey, my doting African males, business partners. Remember me? I’m not suddenly suffering the “the little wife syndrome” because I had the twins … Details please?’ Ashley said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
Zol lifted his hands in a gesture that said Scott should take over all the talking and he settled back into his chair. He’d never got comfortable with having a woman know the state of their finances. In his world, the man made the money, he ensured there was enough money to keep his wife, and he spent that money wisely to ensure his wife didn’t need to worry. Scott and Ashley’s way of sharing financial information was alien to one of his traditional characteristics, and he just couldn’t change. No matter how much Gertrude encouraged him to.
‘Sorry. I guess I fell into that old habit again too easily,’ Scott admitted, and squeezed Ashley’s hand.
She smiled. ‘I don’t need exact facts and figures now, but I do need to know where the closest city is. Should I think about going back into engineering consulting?’ Ashley said, conscious of Zol’s views on an open book financial arrangement between them.
‘Livingstone is hours away on a bad road. You don’t want to even think about that possibility. There are other options, but for now we’ll manage,’ he said. ‘We have lodged money with the Zambian government for a land claim, and showed proof of farming implements, so we are already on the list for priority reallocation of land, and there is a little more in our South African accounts. I also moved forex into a Zambian account while you were in Cape Town, but we need to go to the bank and put your signature on the account too. At the moment it has just Zol and I as signatories, but your name is there. Like I said, we’ll manage. Besides, if it gets too bad and we are desperate, we can sell our half of Kevin’s aviation business to him. He would love to own the whole thing.’
‘No. If it gets to that stage, we’ll find another way …’ Ashley protested. She knew how much Kevin and Scott liked being business partners, and how profitable their business was. It would be throwing money away if they contemplated selling their half of that business for a short-term fix. She’d discussed all their finances with Scott before they got married. And when it became time to sell her share of her Australian engineering business to Bronwyn, Scott had been involved in the negotiation. Ashley’s savings had been pooled into Delmonica’s account years before, ploughed into the ranch as working capital, and used to enlarge the size of Delmonica when another ranch next door had come up for sale early in their married years.
What was his was hers.
Once they were alone, Scott and Ashley would hash over the figures together.
‘Madam Ashley, we have enough money for everything now and when we move to our own ranch,’ Zol said.
Scott looked at Zol, who winked, and Scott smiled.
Ashley smiled too. She tapped Zol’s plan with the pen and changed the topic. ‘So, about this river crossing that our staff are going to attempt. We don’t own a single boat. How many boats does Albert have?’
‘Four,’ Elliott said. ‘A houseboat, a fishing boat with a cabin and two that are more rubber ducks than boats. All have good working engines, but that’s not the problem. We have to get them down to the Zambezi. That’s the hard part.’
‘How did he get them here?’ Ashley asked, her interest as an engineer piqued.
‘The big two have their own trailers, and the other two probably came on the roof of his bakkie. They sit on pallets so that the mice don’t eat the rubber. But there is no good road down to the crossing place,’ Zol said. ‘It’s better than it used to be, and there’s a new track I found, but it is rough, really rough.’
‘Okay, let me think.’ She took Zol’s notepad. ‘I hope you gave me a study in my rondavel,’ she said, glancing at the plan, then turned over the page. ‘I wish, Scott, that you had thought to discuss these plans with me earlier. I could have planned more.’
‘Healing time, remember?’ He nudged her gently and smiled.
Smiling back, she returned her attention to the notepad and began her mind mapping on the clean page. ‘Our end result, the safe arrival of the rest of the staff,’ she wrote. She put in the four boats and the expected flooding river. ‘Can they cross somewhere else?’
‘No, that’s the safest place. I have a map.’ Zol stood up and grabbed a dog-eared map from his backpack.
‘See, here?’ He pointed. ‘The river. This is where they’ll cross. Here they won’t be bothered by the police, nor anyone else, for that matter. It’s where the steep walls of the gorge end. Occasionally there is a safari outfit that canoes past, but if they cross early in the morning or late at night, they won’t be seen. But in the rain, this bend here, it’ll be bad.’ He pointed to the green area around the river. ‘These are reed beds, nothing here but crocodiles, hippos and nesting birds. During the dry, the big game comes here for food and water. But in the wet, the reeds will pull anything down. This is the biggest danger. If we use a boat other than an inflatable duck, the motor from the boat could get bogged in the reeds. We’ll need to put both the ducks in here, along this dirt road from Undaundato, then bundu bash into the valley along that track I marked, and launch here. No reeds here.’ He showed her another section.
She stared at the map. What he was proposing seemed impossible to her, but she knew Zol and the way he thought details through, and any plan he proposed would be manageable.
‘But the police from both countries have patrols here.’ Zol pointed to where they would launch. ‘They have tried to stop many refugees already. This has always been where people cross, even during the independence war. Many people know this is the part of the river where it flattens out, and the current is not so strong, and you can see the crocodiles coming. But on the Zambian side there could still be a few landmines leftover from the wars. We can’t take the big trucks down there, only bakkies and lighter vehicles. The mines should be deep and if we sweep in front first, we’ll be okay.’
Ashley looked at the map, her mind ticking into engineer mode, unconsciously tapping the pencil on the table in a rap-rap rhythm as she bounced it up and down.
Scott put his hand over hers. ‘Sleep on it,’ he said quietly.
She sighed heavily. ‘Okay.’ She closed the notepad with a snap sound and handed it back to Zol.
In the last few years, as with all the construction they had done, theirs had become a four-way partnership. Extending the school, building and designing the safari camp on Delmonica, Ashley was the practical side of the process. She was the one who made it all work out. Scott had the ideas, Zol visualised them on paper, Gertrude put in her five cents’ worth if she thought it helped, but often wouldn’t comment, it wasn’t her way, and Ashley made things work. This was the team that had made their ranch successful. Once again they would build, and build again when necessary. That was just how life was.
Scott yawned. ‘Time to chuck in the towel for the night. Thank you for getting here Zol, and everyone else, for working on the plan tonight, despite the fact we were supposed to be celebrating …’
Ashley grinned at him.
Lisa and Elliott stood up, took all their cups to the washstand, made sure no food was lying around that a wild animal could be attracted to, and left to go to bed. Zol walked slowly alongside Gertrude, bearing her weight and making it easier for her to get to their tent.
Scott and Ashley retired to theirs. Zol arriving that night was a bonus to the one week celebration of being at the FA Ranch. Everything now seemed possible. Another move loomed over the horizon, but as Ashley had learned from experience, one simply lived one day at a time in Africa.
After checking on the twins Ashley climbed into their bed and pressed her back against Scott’s warm body. His fingers immediately began stroking her shoulder, causing her skin to goosebump with emotion.
‘Listen,’ he said.
She lay still and concentrated. The night was alive with sounds of distant animals: the familiar sonar pings of a bat, the mournful howl of the black-backed jackal in the distance, a distinctive voice of a spotted eagle owl, and the grunts of tsessebe hiding in the darkness of the night bush. The hideous screams of a spotted hyena horde were audible, fighting over a kill. But nearer, more threatening and distinctive, they heard a distinctive cough, almost a grunt but not quite.
‘Leopard,’ he told her. ‘Don’t go out of the tent tonight.’
‘Oh Scott, I think I’ve learned that one by now, don’t you?’ She laughed and dug her elbow into his ribs.
Dawn broke, brilliant in jewelled colours of pink and blue hues scattering across the new sky. Ashley fed the twins and carried them outside. Signs of night visitors greeted her. Leopard spoor crossed over by hyena stared at her from just beyond her tent. In the bright sunrise she knew the creatures of the darkness were gone, disappearing in the light of day. She laughed as she read the morning news on the ground as a city girl would read the newspaper.
Scott and Zol were nowhere in sight. She lugged the twins to the dining table, amazed that her two children could be getting so heavy, so fast. Elliott had coffee brewing. He peered into the carrycots. ‘I’ll watch them for you.’
‘Thanks.’ She went to the ‘ladies’, threw water on her face in the wash tent, and was ready to face the new day.
‘Any cereal left?’ she asked when she sat down at the table, peeking in at her babies, checking they were still asleep.
Gertrude looked up. ‘None. Lisa mixed bread last night that should be nearly ready.’
‘Yum, hot bread for breakfast.’ She stretched her back, arching it like a cat would. ‘Elliott,’ she said, putting her arms behind her head and stretching more. ‘Did you ever imagine your life different from what you are living?’
‘I’m happy to still be living,’ he said as he turned and went to the fire to get the bread. He had never disclosed much information on his life to her, even when she’d asked him directly.
Ashley contemplated his answer as she ate the bread put in front of her, dripping with sweet fig jam made by Lisa in the kitchen at Delmonica. Tears welled in her eyes. They had lost a lot. She’d learned so much in her five years in Africa, and now her newest priority would be the safe arrival of their staff to their new home.
Looking after everyone was second nature to Scott and Zol, but to her it was still felt unreal that she would share responsibility for all the displaced people’s welfare. She mopped the last of the jam from her plate, picked up Zol’s map and spread it out over the table. There was work to do.
Lisa sat next to her – something that under normal circumstances would never have happened. Lisa and Elliott were staff, they were brought up not to share their bosses’ table. But boundaries had been crossed and decisions made that affected everyone. Accordingly, everyone had changed and boundaries had shifted.
Everyone except Zol. He didn’t know the exact year he was born in, but because of his white hair, he was considered an old man, and was forgiven for keeping his traditions. Change didn’t come easily to most old men. To Ashley, Zol appeared timeless. He hadn’t aged in the years since she came to Africa, but seemed suspended in time – always old. His presence glued everyone around him together.
As if conjured by magic, Zol and Scott broke the cover of the trees.
‘Breakfast,’ Scott declared, waving at them with the leg of some type of venison slung over his shoulders.
Lisa jumped up and met him at the second camp table in the kitchen area, where he easily flipped the carcass onto its surface. Ashley looked away from the butchering that was needed on the buck. She knew that once it was skinned, gutted and deboned where necessary, Lisa would start cutting steaks from the rump, but she still didn’t have the stomach to watch. She’d lost many of her city vices, but seeing an animal be butchered and being okay with all the blood was not one of them. Soon the delicious smell of chargrilled steak filled the air.
Albert arrived in time for breakfast.
‘Typical bachelor,’ Ashley mumbled good-heartedly. ‘They can smell the food the moment it’s cooked.’
But Albert surprised her. He had no hunting clients with him, and he’d brought along a few supplies from his fridges.
‘Thought you guys might need some of these by now,’ he said, smiling and thanking Lisa as she placed a cup of coffee in front of him. She took the eggs and fresh vegetables from him with glee.
They all sat around the table and tucked into eggs and steak with hot bread, washed down with coffee.
‘So, when do we start building?’ Albert asked.
‘You got any cement?’ Scott looked at his cousin.
‘Ten or so bags. It’s in the flat trailer.’
‘What flatbed trailer?’ Ashley enquired excitedly, almost as if she’d caught a huge fish on a tiny line.
‘I have two trailers under the trees at the back –’
‘How big? What suspension do they have on them?’ She shot the questions at him like a volley from a semi-automatic weapon.
‘Ashley, slow down. We’ll take a look after breakfast,’ Scott said, laughing.
‘I can see why you stay married to her, other than her looks, cuz,’ Albert said.
Scott looked at Ashley and winked. She grinned at him. ‘Well, sun’s up and it’s time to get going,’ Scott said. ‘Thanks to the chef as always.’ The breakfast party broke up, with a murmuring of thanks to Lisa and Elliott.
Gertrude called out to Ashley and Scott. ‘I can watch the twins this morning if you’re going to look at those trailers. The kids and I love having them around us.’
‘Thanks, Gertrude,’ Ashley said, passing her Paige. ‘I fed them an hour ago, so that gives me about three hours. Half-hour round trip travel time, two and a half hours to check out everything stashed at Albert’s ranch. You sure you’re up to it?’
‘I’m fine. I put up with mine jumping on the mummy-trampoline all the time. Besides, your babies are not work yet, they’re still too young. Anyway, rather you than me poking my nose in Albert’s things.’
Ashley laughed at her. It wasn’t often that the sparkling personality beneath Gertrude’s quiet exterior was visible, but today it was shining brightly.
‘I’ll watch out for man-eating lion-sized rats, shall I?’ she said, laughing at the joke of her being a foreigner and supposedly not knowing what they would find in the bachelor’s belongings.
‘You bet you!’ Gertrude took Paige willingly. Her eldest daughter Florence, now five, took Brock eagerly.
‘I’ll be careful, Uncle Scott,’ she said. Already manners were being drummed into her, but the break with tradition in calling him Uncle rather than Boss was a huge one for Zol’s family.
He patted her hair. It was in neat plaits, tightly bound to her head and decorated with beads. Gertrude kept her children proud of their heritage and traditions.
Elliott, Zol, Scott and Ashley piled into the double-cab. Zol still got in the bin section, despite the fact there was plenty of room in the cabin. Ashley had long stopped asking him to join her. Elliott hopped on the back with Zol. He grinned at Ashley. It was still a point of debate between them, even after all this time.
Albert’s stash proved to be a goldmine, and was more readily accessible than their own implements, which were stored securely under tarpaulins and sitting on wooden pallets to keep them off the ground. Ashley made a list of two trailers, a converted four-wheel drive game-catching vehicle complete with a rocket launcher for nets, and tools. He had the normal grinding machines, drills and even a small lathe. And everything was simply sitting under a makeshift shelter under trees, with fertiliser bags covering the equipment motors to keep the rain out.
‘Your cousin should get this stuff into a workshop,’ she told Scott.
‘I think now that we are building him a home and a safari camp, that will become his next priority. Remember that he moved here with nothing, already he has performed a miracle just getting up a decent fence,’ he replied, swatting her bum as he passed her. ‘Perhaps when we are finished the camp, we can help him build the workshop area too, although for that he’ll need to pay for all the materials.’
She saw no man-eating rats, but there was a huge python. She was happy it was a python and not a cobra that had made its home within the shelter. Elliott moved the snake away for Ashley. Although she now tolerated snakes, she still wouldn’t touch one.
‘She’ll come back, Madam Ashley. She keeps the rats away,’ Elliott told her as they watched the snake slither out of their sight.
‘As long as it’s when we are finished here.’
The five of them dragged out the equipment and supplies Ashley said she needed. At a drink break, Scott asked the big question.
‘So, what’s your plan?’
‘One boat, we only need the largest of the ducks. The flexible duck – it could be our saving grace. It already has two motors, and we can take one spare. If we take the flatbed trailer and change the suspension by cutting into the –’
‘Ashley, too many details. Get to the point,’ Scott interrupted her.
‘Okay. We modify the trailer. Take two bakkies, ours and the game catcher, and one trailer. We leave the cattle trucks somewhere on the main road area, with someone to watch them while we are away from them. Then we take the lighter vehicles down into the valley. With the mods on the trailer, it should make it down the gulley and across. Ideally, we need to get there before the next rains start. The duck will carry eight at a time across the river. If we get there and the water is too swollen, we use plan B. The rocket launcher should take the rope across, and we can feed a steel cable next. The guards on that side can tie it down. Then we take the boat and use it as a ferry, and we won’t have a fuel problem.’
‘Sounds feasible. What about getting it all back?’
‘People first in the two vehicles, and those who can walk out do. We hide the duck and come back once everyone’s safely on the main road, winch it back onto the trailer and drive it out with only one vehicle.’
Scott looked at Ashley, her face flushed with exertion as she rummaged in Albert’s belongings. She smiled at him and his heart melted. He still couldn’t believe he was so lucky that she’d married him and stayed on in Africa. She’d made his life so much better. She’d enhanced it. She deserved more than the life Africa had dealt out to her.
He’d had wealth in Zimbabwe that most people only dreamed about, and had lost it. He’d lost it. While other white farmers were squirreling money out of the country, he’d believed in his country and kept most of his wealth in his land. Sure, a few hundred thousand was in the bank, but the real value was in his soil. He’d improved his infrastructure, bought more land around Delmonica, and grown his ranch. Now it was gone.
He acknowledged that hindsight was a brilliant thing to have. He should have put more away, kept an account in South Africa and offshore as a rainy day fund. Kevin had insisted, three years earlier, that Safari Aerospace move its base into Botswana. That decision had been their lifesaver. He’d started as Kevin’s silent financial backer all those years ago, but it had been Kevin who had looked after their investment with his foresight. Before, it had always been Kevin that was the footloose and fancy-free bush pilot, and Scott the sound business partner. Boy, how things had changed over the years. How they had both matured.
Yet despite having to move money and assets from county to country, Scott couldn’t leave Africa. It was in his blood. One day, when the government in Zimbabwe changed, he could try and get his ranch back for their children. He understood how much Ashley had given up in leaving her homeland and adopting his, because he knew that although everyone told him it was safer and better for his children, he couldn’t imagine a life anywhere but in Africa.
There were values there that First World countries wouldn’t understand. And there was Zol, and all the workers from his ranch. He could never desert them; they were his responsibility. They were his family. No overseas country was going to take them all in, and there was no way he could afford to keep them all together in another place other than Africa. But moving south into South Africa wasn’t an option. They had their own problems. The people had begun a war on the white farmers, and were killing them there too.
But here in Zambia, they would be all right. Things would be tight until Zol could offload Charlie’s diamonds. He felt bad for not telling Ashley about them, but he would not take a chance that she might freak out and call them blood diamonds and not want to use any of the money they would generate. He worried that with her First World Australian upbringing, she would not accept that they were uncut free ranging diamonds, not conflict diamonds that people had died retrieving and were used to fund wars. He just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to explain how his father and Zol had picked them up all those years before, and had them stored away, safe for a rainy day. One day he would, just not today.
He would never sell Kevin out of their company. That was part of the future too, expanding to wherever their ranch was allocated. It was going to be better to ride out the tough time, sell the stones and trickle the money through as if he was taking the profits from the aviation company to slowly re-establish everything else.
This was Africa and there was always a plan. He still had his family, his wife and two beautiful babies. Others who had lost their land had not been half as lucky.
‘Look what we found,’ Zol called excitedly, breaking into Scott’s deep thoughts. ‘We can do the first two buildings elevated on decking.’
‘That’s great,’ Ashley said, running her hand lovingly over the plank of wood.
Zol and Ashley continued looking through Albert’s accumulated stash under the tarpaulins by the trees while Elliott and Scott loaded cement onto the trailer, along with a load of flooring. As he helped load more planks, Scott silently acknowledged that he would never understand the affinity that his two best friends in the world shared for building things. He simply wanted things to run well.
They thrived on building them.
He was sure if left on their own, Zol and Ashley would build a city, simply to test out different materials and construction theories.