by Jack L Knapp
“If we find a place we can grow food and defend from enemies, someplace with a year-round supply of game, I’m ready to stop. A good water supply is important too. The first place that meets our needs, that’s home.”
“Might be a place like that when we get to the mountains, Matt. How far away are they?”
“Well, so far we’re just seeing a smudge on the horizon that might be mountains. I’m guessing they’re less than a hundred miles ahead. We’re making fairly good time, so I figure anywhere from ten days to a month of traveling. It will depend on whether we have to cross another big river or maybe run into a canyon that would force us to turn north. We know the sea is south of here, so any canyon or river is likely to get wider and deeper the farther south we go; that likely means going north, even though it’s not what I’m hoping for.”
“Matt, the horses are standing up well to being ridden. What would you say to Laz and me riding ahead, maybe two days on horseback going out and another two days back? By then we’ll have a good idea of what we’re facing. If we find anything, we’ll cut the trip short. I’m tired of traveling too.”
“We all are, Lee. If you two want to ride ahead, you can leave tomorrow morning. We’ll look for you four days from now. Just be careful of the horses. You’re riding better, but you’ve still got things to learn. So do I. We all need time in the saddle before I’ll feel confident in using the horses. Just be careful.
“You know what kind of place we’re looking for. If you find anything promising, look around for game, a place we can cut firewood, see if there is stone available for building. You know most of what I have in mind. By the time we get there, those two engineers and I will have a building plan that we can adapt.”
“OK, Matt. Well, I’ve got to go pull a cart for a while.”
“Me too. Talk to you later, Lee.”
#
“I’ll be glad when we can stop, Matt.”
“Me too, Lilia. We’re eating better than we did last year, but people are getting short-tempered. We can all use a rest. Once the village is built and we have supplies, we can laze around through the winter. I’d like to try making music again. What are you planning to do?
“Maybe make small clothing. I’ll need at least two sets.”
“Really? I know Sandra’s starting to show, but is there another pregnancy?”
“I know of one, Matt, me. You’re going to be a father.”
“Really? Wow...I wasn’t expecting this. Wow. You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. It’s not my first time, you know. I’m probably three months along. I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure.”
“Wow. Lee is going to be a brother. He’ll have a sister or brother.”
“Half-sister or half-brother, Matt. As soon as we develop paper, we can start recording births. List the name of the mother, and the father if we know for sure who it is.”
Matt was surprised, but then realized he shouldn’t be. Lee was seventeen or eighteen years old now, and the transplanted people might still be bearing children a century or more on. Assuming, of course, the futurist who’d told Matt what they’d done to his body was right, and they’d done the same thing to the women. It would require rethinking. Absent accident or attack, people might live indefinite lives on Darwin’s World.
Would the changes breed true, he wondered? Or would their genetics revert to what they’d been before as mutations built up over the years?
Matt had no idea. Time would tell.
#
Matt raised his head and looked east. Funny; there were no clouds, but that noise sounded like thunder. Well, perhaps something was going on over the horizon.
Sal was inspecting the carts as he did every morning.
“How are things looking, Sal?”
“Not bad, Matt. Wheels are holding up reasonably well, but we may yet have to go back to dragging stuff. At least we’ve got the horses now and they can carry a lot more on a travois than a human can. Did you hear that thunder?”
“I heard something, off to the east. But I didn’t see a cloud, did you?”
Both men looked across the trees. The sky had been clear, but now there was a thin line of condensation.
Sal looked at Matt. “That’s a contrail, Matt. Condensation forms after an airplane flies through supersaturated air. I think we heard a sonic boom.”
“I guess you’re right, Sal. So much for the futurists leaving us alone.”
“You think somebody else might have been here long enough to develop jets or rockets, Matt?”
“Maybe. But that’s not the impression I got from the futurist I talked to. The others, those miners, might have brought one here, but I doubt they’d have turned it over to transplants. Maybe they’re expanding their mining operation? They sent their own security force with modern weapons, at least a lot more modern than anything we had.”
“No way to tell. I guess we’ll just keep on going. I got to liking the idea, that this was our world to develop in our own way.”
“I hope they leave us alone, Sal. We’ll soon find someplace we can settle and build a town. Maybe we can start trading with others, barter what we make for what they can provide.”
“I agree, Matt. Long as they come peaceful, I’ll be glad to trade. Maybe even welcome a few more people into the tribe, but I don’t know if I ever want to see a city again. Maybe let the tribe grow, but as soon as it gets big enough to become uncomfortable we split off and start a new tribe somewhere nearby. I guess that’s what Tex is already doing. Sooner or later he’ll pick up another person or two.”
“Yeah. Well, I guess we just wait and hope for the best. Still, that aircraft worries me.”
“Me too. Well, I’ve still got a few spare wheels and none of these need replacing yet. That mix of wax and grease has worked well. Glad you thought of it.”
“See you later, Sal.”
Matt went to find Colin. Lee and Lilia would also need to know about the aircraft.
#
Discussions added nothing new. A single sighting provided too little information. Lilia simply nodded and went back to what she’d been doing. Lee briefed his guards to watch for strangers, but not to overreact unless they proved hostile.
Lee departed with Laz the following morning. Futurists or no, Matt needed information about what lay ahead.
Colin began keeping the campsites smaller and closer together when they stopped for the day. Whenever possible now, shelters were located under cover of trees and the cook-fire was doused as soon as everyone had eaten. Breakfast was cold food, most often leftovers from supper.
If the futurists wanted to contact them, the new tactics might make it difficult to find the tribe, especially from a fast moving, high-flying aircraft.
Even the carts left little evidence they had passed because people were careful not to follow in the tracks of the cart ahead. Of course, if the futurists had sufficiently advanced technology, the efforts might be in vain. Colin and Matt thought it worthwhile.
Time passed and Matt relaxed. Perhaps the futurists weren’t interested in a small, obscure tribe.
#
Three days later a scout returned to the tribe in late afternoon. He brought with him a man wearing an unfamiliar uniform and carrying a heavy rifle slung over his shoulder.
Chapter 36
“I met this fellow about half a mile back. I figured I should bring him to you.”
“Probably a good idea, Dominick. He cause you any trouble?”
“Not so far. He had some questions, but I decided you should be the one to talk to him.”
“Good enough. You can head back.”
Dominick nodded and turned away.
“So. Who are you and what do you want?”
“You can call me Chief. That’s my title, and it’s what people call me; I’m Chief of Security for Mine 23. You’re Robert, correct?”
“Robert’s dead. I’m Matt.”
“Sorry to hear that. You’re the one Robert hired t
o bring meat for the mine crew?”
“I did that for a while. Were you there when I brought in meat?”
“I was hired afterward. But Robert left records, and I’ve accessed them. A lot of people ended up being fired over that transaction and some others. The manager was passing out steel weapons and tools without permission, and no one ever accounted for the stuff. We can overlook that, except for the rifle. You’ve got that, and we want it back.”
“What makes you think we’ve got it?”
“There’s a tracker in the receiver group. It’s short range...only about five kilometers at most...and it’s a good thing we found you before the battery went dead. But I know the rifle’s here. Hand it over and you can go on your way.”
“You can have it. I used up the remaining bullets a couple of months ago. I probably should have just dumped it, but there was no way to tell what might happen. I had the rifle, but someone else might have had cartridges for it. If whoever found the rifle passed it on to somebody with ammo, that might have caused more problems than we needed.”
“I’m glad you kept it, and that was a smart decision on your part. Quite a lot of ammo was unaccounted for after the fight at the mine. It might have been lost or expended, of course, there’s no way to tell. But this is the only rifle that didn’t get recovered.”
“I’ll get it.”
“I’ll come with you if you don’t mind. I know you said you have no ammo, but I don’t know that, do I?”
Matt grinned. “No, you don’t. Come ahead.”
Chief followed as Matt went to his cart. “You’re in charge of this band now?”
“I am, duly elected after Robert was killed. Not that elections mean much on Darwin’s World.”
“Are you the one that named it? We’re calling it that too. It sounded better than Earth 4428.”
“You number the versions of Earth you find?”
“We do. The others either have humans already in place or the planet is dead. There were a number of late-time meteor strikes in some of the dimensions. Our version, we call it Earth Prime, was incredibly lucky to have evolved as it did. In several timelines there’s no moon; the Moon crashed into Earth and wiped out all life more complex than bacteria. Those planets are evolving, of course. Someday they may develop intelligent life. But it will take billions of years and they won’t be humans. The versions of Earth where the Moon broke up are heavier and a lot of things are different. There are almost no tides for one thing, earthquakes and volcanoes are more common than on other timelines and animals are developing along different lines. There are continents but they bear no resemblance to what’s on Earth Prime. Lots of islands too, big ones.”
“You can’t move ahead in time?”
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this, but no. We can cross from one dimension to another...that’s fairly easy...but going back in time is energy-intensive. It’s theoretically possible to move ahead in time, but there’s never been enough available energy to give it a real try. At least, that’s been the conclusion of the mathematicians.
“That’s why we need the mine. We mine...well, it’s a rare earth element that’s no longer available on Earth Prime. We had enough of it on Prime to begin our operation, but it will be years before we accumulate enough to routinely travel back in time. Even though we’re operating mines in hundreds of different dimensions, there’s just not much of the mineral available on any version of Earth, so we cross timelines laterally.”
“Interesting. How did the futurists bring people like me forward?”
“We’re not sure they did. It’s possible they sent a few people back to your time with some of their medical and dimension-switching equipment and just left them there. Our people think it’s a one-way trip. The futurists talked to people about suicide being the major cause of death? We think this is how the ones who went back choose to suicide. They’ll work in the past, sending people from your time across to a different dimension. The futurists who do the transplanting will die when the nukes fall. As near as we’ve been able to tell, they set up their facilities at what will be ground zero for a nuke. It could work; they send you from their past across to a different dimension, and people from their own time cross to the same dimension in your future and pick up people they want to integrate into their downtime society. It’s a simple lateral transfer.
“We could be wrong, of course. They may have the technology to get around the limits we face. If they charge up the transport device to send it back, then bleed off the charge, we think it might return to the time it left.
“They could be grabbing you and bringing you forward, but the only way we could duplicate their efforts with our current level of science is the one-way trip I described. Even then, we couldn’t totally rebuild a body and change the genetic code the way they did. We found that out by autopsying the bodies left behind after the attack on the mine.”
Matt began offloading the things stacked atop the cart. He glanced at Chief and wasn’t surprised to notice increased alertness.
“It’s right beneath that roll of deerskin. You can pick it up if you want.”
“I will, thank you.”
Chief reached beneath the roll and pulled the black rifle out. As soon as he had it in his hands, he began muttering into his collar.
Matt realized there was a tiny button microphone there, what Matt had assumed was part of the uniform’s insignia. Chief ejected the magazine and confirmed that it was empty, then pulled back on the cocking handle. Locking the action open, he peered into the chamber, then reversed the rifle and looked down the bore.
“Empty, right enough. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. We’ll be stopping in half an hour or so. Want to stay for supper?”
“I don’t mind, if you’ve got enough.”
“We’ll be having fresh buffalo, most likely. Occasionally it’s something else, but there are a lot of buffalo around and they don’t spook when one of them falls.”
“Your bows are strong enough to kill a buffalo?”
“Plenty strong enough. I killed a mammoth with mine, although I think it was a lucky hit. The first shot didn’t do more than annoy the beast.”
“Mind if I look?”
Matt removed his bow and handed it over. Chief held it with his right hand on the grip, three fingers of the left hand on the string. Grunting, he attempted to draw the bow.
“I see what you mean. How many kilos draw weight is that thing?”
“No idea. We’ve never had the ability to measure it. But this is my third bow, and every one has been stronger than the last one. Most other bows aren’t as strong, but I can handle this one. I’m happy with it.”
“Nice work. There are places in Darwin-Europe that have archery, but I think you’re the only group in Darwin-North America that has anything like this.”
Chief returned the bow and looked ruefully at the angry red mark left on his fingers.
“I suspect you’ve got some serious calluses on your fingers too.”
Matt nodded. “Some. It took a while. I thought of using a glove or archer’s ring but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. If we need a bow, we don’t have time to put on a glove or thumb-ring. Those things are for when you intend to shoot more than a dozen times. If we ever get into a war I’ll be the first to put on a glove.
“Anyway, we’re almost there. See that strip of deerskin hanging from the branch up ahead? Our supper is waiting. The scouts will already have it field-dressed and Colin will soon have the carcass butchered. By that time, his wife will have a nice bed of coals ready for the kitchen crew to start cooking. Some of the folks will have gathered fresh vegetables along the way, probably enough for a salad. We’ve got salt but no salad dressing.”
“Salt’s enough. I’ve roughed it before.”
“Been a soldier long, Chief?”
“I’m not actually a soldier, Matt. I’m a security agent. We don’t really need soldiers now, not since the Bad Times.
”
“Bad Times? Was there a war?”
“There was always a war, back then. When were you harvested?”
“I lived until the early 21st Century, but my soldiering was done in the late 20th Century.”
“Well, the United Nations broke apart in the mid-21st Century. After that things deteriorated rapidly. Armies were mostly kept home, but there were at least a dozen active terrorist organizations and they attacked pretty much everyone, North America too. They started launching strikes against targets in the Mideast and South America. They caused a lot of civilian casualties, but they did manage to hit some of the villages where the Muslim terrorists were based. Supposedly the US and Canadian governments couldn’t locate the militias. The historians can’t agree. Most don’t think the two governments put much effort into countering them. They weren’t hitting locals, and they targeted people who were attacking North America and Europe. A lot of the financing for the groups came out of North America, but most of the attacks were launched from elsewhere.
“Anyway, the NorAm Militias had motivation and money. Some of that last came from Israel and probably a lot of the technology did too, even though the Israelis always denied it.
“Eventually someone had enough of the nonsense, and what should have been a small brushfire conflict went nuclear. Some of the bombs were relatively clean but not all of them. There are places that we still don’t go, more than two centuries on. Somewhere between half and two-thirds of humanity didn’t survive. Nukes weren’t the only things that got used. Europe and Asia got hammered, eastern North America too. The damage extended down into northeastern Mexico.”
“So which part of America did you live in before you took this assignment?”
“America? No, that place is still a howling wilderness. I live in Australia. Nobody cared enough to bomb us or hit us with germs. No one ever explained this to you?”
“No. The man who picked me up told me why he was transplanting me, but that was all. You’re not from the same time?”