Outland (Revised Edition)

by Dennis E. Taylor

  Once through, they moved to the runway. Goro did the required preflights, even though he’d done the same checks twenty minutes earlier, then climbed aboard and started it up.

  “Nice and quiet,” he said to Bill.

  Bill gestured toward the engine. “I never could stand the noisy ones that sound like lawn mowers. I made sure I ordered a model that advertised a low decibel rating.” He stepped back, and motioned to Goro to take off.

  Goro gave him a thumbs-up, and taxied down the runway. The ultralight needed very little space to get aloft, and within seconds, Goro was circling Rivendell. People stopped what they were doing and pointed. The sound of cheers drifted up from the spectators.

  After a few minutes, Goro landed. They refueled and rechecked, then Bill and Goro climbed in. The takeoff took only a little more runway with two people.

  As they did the obligatory circuit around Rivendell, Bill got his first chance to see Pleistocene Nebraska from the air.

  Holy crap on a cracker! Bill was sure he was gawking like a tourist, but didn’t care. Nebraska in Outland was hillier than Earthside, as Erin had pointed out more than once. It also had a lot more trees, although not anywhere near the dense forest typical of the West Coast. The trees were mostly deciduous, with what looked like maple, oak, and birch dominating, with maybe some pine and cedar here and there.

  The important thing was to get a good overview of the land within a five-mile radius or so. Bill had instructed Goro to spiral outward for as long as fuel allowed.

  Bill took picture after picture with the tablet, frequently adding voice annotations. He noted clear, flat areas for farming; hillier, open areas for grazing; and groves of trees that looked large enough to be able to handle a partial harvest. One of the principles that the new colony had already laid down was that they would not raze the environment like a cloud of locusts.

  Bill’s reverie was broken by a muttered comment from Goro.

  “Hey, Bill? Remember we talked about birds?” He gestured to their left. “Pigeons.”

  Bill looked in the indicated direction, and sure enough, an enormous cloud of birds was bearing down on them. “Passenger pigeons. I’m beginning to understand why our forefathers wiped them out. Rats with wings doesn’t even begin to describe it. Can you dive under them?”

  “You can’t dive in an ultralight, dammit,” Goro exclaimed as he wrestled with the controls. “Not if you want to stay in the air. On the other hand …” Goro pulled the nose up and turned toward the flock, while opening the throttle wide open. The sudden noise from the engine and the rapid approach registered with the flock as a potential attack. In moments, the cloud of pigeons was breaking for the horizon.

  “So, not all fun and games,” Bill said. “Can we do something to protect the propeller?”

  “Better to convince the birds to flock off and leave us alone.” Goro turned and grinned. “Air horns, and maybe a couple of big eyes painted on the surfaces. I’ll work on it.”

  Bill nodded, although Goro had already turned away. “Yeah, we’d probably better ground this thing until you do that. I don’t want to be responsible for Outland’s first aviation disaster.”

  Once back on the ground, Bill headed for his Mad Science Lab for a meeting with Monica. When she arrived, late as usual, she looked around in appreciation. The lab was in its usual state of semi-chaos. “No one would ever be able to find anything in this,” she said.

  “Which is why I can hide a complete gate in plain sight.” Bill rushed around for less than a minute, grabbing items and connecting cables, then picked up a tablet and poked it. A gate shimmered into being in the middle of an apparently random pile of junk, showing a Nebraska parking lot.

  He turned to Kevin and handed him the tablet. “One hour, okay?” At Kevin’s nod, Bill and Monica stepped through the gate.

  Bill looked over his shoulder just as the gate disappeared. He and Monica began walking. “You have all the weapons accounted for?”

  “More or less. There have been a few reports of people having their weapons stolen, and I’m sure we’re going through more ammo than we should be, so I think there’s some siphoning-off happening. But not enough to be able to throw a public fit. And we can’t get a bead on who’s doing it anyway. I’ve got guys watching Adam and his friends, but we can’t be too obvious about it.”

  “Or we could just shoot them and be done with it.”

  Monica laughed. “Usually that’s my line. We discussed it, Bill. We’re not autocrats, and as long as Adam and his doofus friends are just spouting off, it’s all First Amendment. If we start strong-arming people, we could find ourselves on the wrong end of history. And let’s face it, these guys might really turn out to be all talk.”

  “Mmm, but I’m a little worried that we might be caught short if we hide too many weapons, though. We did a flyabout today—”

  “I saw it. Pretty impressive.”

  Bill smiled before continuing. “What I didn’t really mention to anyone is that all the predators aren’t gone, they’ve just put a little distance between themselves and us.”

  “You could see that from the air?”

  “Yeah. There’s a big zone of land around Rivendell filled with either our cattle or native grazers that have figured out that it’s a safe area. Or at least safer than farther out, where we find lots of wolves and big cats. We haven’t thinned them, just pushed them outward. As long as we keep shooting at a few of them every day, they’ll stay away. But …”

  “I get it, Bill. Keep enough weapons available to handle any predatory incursions, while not making so many available that we’ll be potentially arming a bunch of insurrectionists. So what’s on tap for tonight?”

  “I need to set up a secure communications infrastructure, you need to make sure that the misplaced weapons aren’t obvious, and we still need more portals. Busy, busy.”

  “I have a few other items to take care of as well.” Monica laughed. “Paranoia really is addictive.”

  65. Too Close for Comfort

  August 9

  Matt sat in his pickup, idly drumming his fingers on the wheel, as Bill played with the tablet.

  “Yep. This is it.” Bill waved to the crew sitting in the pickup truck. “Let’s set up.”

  Matt turned off the engine, and everyone piled out of the truck. Two people climbed up to sit on the roof of the pickup, AR-15s in hand, as a pack of wolves that had been following the truck casually settled down about fifty yards away to get some sun. The rest of the crew unloaded the truck gate and the portal generator and set everything up. Meanwhile, Bill walked around with the pole-cam, watching the video feed. He kept one eye on the two guards, ready to dive into the truck if they started to get agitated.

  In a minute or so, Bill stopped. “This spot is inside the rental office, and the ground level is close enough. We can open up here.”

  They assembled the truck gate, moved it into position, and Bill powered up the portal. There was the usual blurring, then they saw the inside of the Home Depot. Bill grinned and shook his head. “I will never get used to that!”

  They’d previously discussed strategy and duties. It took less than fifteen minutes to pull everything through from the other side. Workers returned through the gate, laden with equipment.

  On the Outland side, Bill watched people pop out of the gate from both sides, walking in opposite directions. That’s actually making me dizzy.

  Finally, they were done. They shut down the gate, covered all of the plundered equipment with tarps, and loaded the portal hardware back onto the truck.

  “This is going to take forever,” Matt commented. “We’re looking at about eight trips. And at the speed I’ll have to drive on this terrain, it’ll be a half day per trip.”

  Charlie, one of the guys on the team, walked around to the back of the pickup. “You know you have a trailer hitch on your truck, right? Doesn’t Home Depot rent trailers?”

  “Right,” Bill said. “Let’s see if we can find one.”
Off came the portal hardware again, and the search began.

  Bill stepped through the gate with the rest of the crew, to get a look around. The trailers were arrayed at the front of the store, chained to metal stays. Of course, the intent was to prevent a grab-and-run, rather than people who had all day to work on the problem. While most of the crew stood around, a couple of others went back into the store to find bolt cutters.

  As they were pushing the trailer through the large gate, there was a shout in the distance. Bill looked up just as something ricocheted off the Home Depot wall.

  “Jesus H.,” Charlie yelled, “we’re being shot at! Everyone through the gate.”

  As the crew ran through back to Outland, Bill took a moment to look closely at the approaching figures. Those are uniforms.

  One of the uniformed figures stopped and raised his rifle. Uh oh. Time to go. Bill leaped through the gate just as another bullet struck the brick side of the building. “Shut it down!”

  Charlie wasted no time closing the gate. Shocked silence reigned as everyone looked at each other.

  “We all here?” Bill asked. “Nothing left on Earthside?”

  A brief inventory of crew and equipment confirmed that everyone and everything was present.

  “Those were military,” Matt said. “National Guard, I think, although I’m not really up on my uniforms.”

  “Well, that kind of makes sense,” Bill said. “They’d be first in for an emergency like this. Isn’t there a National Guard base in Lincoln anyway?”

  “I think so. I’m sure someone will know. We can ask around when we get back.” Matt tapped his chin. “But maybe we can talk to them. There might not be a better time.”

  “Are you nuts? They shot at us. Twice.”

  “They thought we were looters.”

  “We are looters. Technically.”

  ”Yes, but—” Matt stopped talking and sighed. “Okay, point taken. But we’re trying to feed about three hundred people. Look, maybe we can combine our efforts. Maybe they have civilian refugees as well. We have to at least try.”

  “Yeah, fine, but we have to do this carefully,” Bill cautioned.

  “Agreed. I don’t particularly want to get shot. Look, we learned a few things about the portals the first time we crossed over. We can set things up to keep the risk down. Here’s what we’ll do …”

  Private Andrews poked at the severed chain with his foot. “A trailer, right?”

  Timminson waved his hand at the other trailers, lined up along the front of the store. “It looks that way. But where is it?”

  “For that matter, where are the guys we shot at?”

  “Honest to God, they just disappeared.”

  “People don’t disappear, Howie. They must have gone around a corner or something.”

  “Do you see a corner? Or an entrance? Or a manhole cover, even?” Timminson countered. “They didn’t—”

  “Uh, guys?”

  Timminson and Andrews both whirled at the unexpected voice from behind them. Andrews automatically went into situation eval. The man stood about twenty feet away. He was dressed casually, no weapons in sight, alone. He had the look of someone you wouldn’t want to try to push around, though, at least not without a lot of backup. Weight on the balls of his feet, well-balanced, shoulders not hunched, apparently relaxed. There would be no wrestling this guy to the ground, not with only himself and Timminson.

  Andrews raised his rifle. “Hands on your head. Get down on your knees.”

  The man didn’t obey. “Guys, listen. I’m trying to get a discussion going here. We’re not what you—”

  “Last chance, asshole. On your knees or you’re dead.”

  The man sighed, looked to his right, and shrugged as if he was talking to someone. But he was facing a blank wall. What—

  Without warning, without taking a step, the man disappeared. Andrews looked wildly around, but there was no trace of him. There was something odd on the ground—it actually looked like grass—then that disappeared as well, leaving only pavement.

  “What. Just. Happened?” Timminson said.

  Andrews walked over to where the man had been standing, and pushed his foot around on the pavement. It seemed completely normal. He turned to Timminson. “Nothing happened. Nothing at all. We didn’t see anybody. Understand?”

  Timminson frowned. “The guy disappeared. Only—well, he kind of disappeared from the head down. Like he was being erased.”

  “I know, Howie. I saw it too. Like I said, though. I don’t want to have to explain this to Chavez.”

  Matt stepped out of the gate as the two crew finished lowering it to the ground. The ellipse enclosed a patch of pavement, incongruous in the surrounding sea of prairie grass. As Charlie deactivated the device, the pavement faded out, leaving grass within the ring of the gate. The two men who had lowered the gate around Matt to bring him back tilted it back to vertical.

  Bill grinned at his friend. “I’d love to be able to listen to the conversation right now.”

  Matt replied, with a brief smile, “No doubt that would be entertaining, but this is a big problem. We have to figure out how to talk to them without getting shot. Or arrested. Or both. Possibly in that order.”

  66. In the News

  Here is the latest news on the hour from BBC World Service:

  South Korea’s largest news agency reports that North Korea has begun amassing troops on the border between the two countries. In addition, the North Korean Navy has positioned itself just outside of South Korea’s territorial boundary. Military experts point out that North Korea has traditionally been dependent on China for the resources to provide for its populace—even at the sub-poverty level at which the North Korean proletariat exists. With the recent Chinese withdrawal of military and economic aid, North Korea may be looking for alternative sources of supply.

  In a shocking move, six of the most debt-ridden nations on the planet—Greece, Italy, Egypt, Portugal, Spain, and France—have announced jointly that they will no longer be servicing their national debts. In addition, the European nations announced that they will no longer consider themselves part of the European Union. World markets, which were already taking a beating because of the Yellowstone crisis, dropped sharply from their already historic lows.

  And there are credible reports of multiple explosions in a number of U.S. state capitals. Several groups have claimed responsibility. At least one is a domestic American revolutionary group.

  67. Farming Legacy

  August 10

  Al and Joaquin sped down the side of the road, dodging back and forth from pavement to shoulder as necessary to get around the abandoned vehicles. Joaquin was sweating profusely. Trying to keep up with Al on a motorbike was nerve-wracking. There’s a reason they call him crazy. Al wouldn’t slow down an iota for Joaquin, but he would stop occasionally to wait if he got too far behind. When that happened, there’d always be some comment about Joaquin’s skill. Or lack of it.

  The two were on a tour of the farming communities around Lincoln, looking for supplies and equipment that would help set up an agricultural base in Rivendell. So far, all they had found were abandoned farmhouses and dead livestock. And worse. Joaquin’s eyes teared briefly, recalling some of the scenes that he’d never be able to unsee.

  Up ahead, Al had turned down another long driveway and stopped to wait. Joaquin followed at a saner pace. As he turned the corner, he glanced at the mailbox, labeled “Wildman.”

  “This looks like a prosperous farm,” Joaquin said as he pulled up beside Al. “House and outbuildings all in good shape.”

  “Let’s hope,” Al replied. “I’m getting tired of all the street driving.”

  “What, dodging all the cars isn’t enough excitement?”

  “That’s how I always drive. Usually the cars are moving too. This is boring.”

  Joaquin shook his head as they headed for the front door. Not that he doubted Al. The man was always on the edge of Darwining himself out.r />
  Al pointed. “Pickup still in the garage.”

  “If we can find keys, it’ll be worth moving the big gate over here.”

  Joaquin knocked loudly on the door, then waited. So far, they hadn’t found anyone still alive, but it would only take one half-dead, half-crazy resident protecting his or her home to make things go very bad.

  A repeated knock along with loudly announcing their presence produced no results. Joaquin tried the door. To his relief, it wasn’t locked.

  They quickly went through the house, checking each room. Al opened one, then backed out quickly. “Oh, man …”

  Joaquin came over and peered through the door. Two adults, two children.

  “Recent,” Al said. “Odor’s not as strong as—”

  “Yeah, got it.” A couple of times, they’d found corpses that were well into the process. The stench had driven them retching from the houses.

  “No obvious signs of struggle,” Joaquin said. “And they seem to have died at about the same time.”

  “What, you’re a cop now?”

  Joaquin motioned toward the bed. “They all died together. There’s no weapon, no obvious wounds.”

  Al stared at the tableau in silence for a while. “If they hung around instead of leaving and ended up with that lung disease Erin is always talking about, maybe an overdose or something would be a mercy.”

  “We’ll never know, Al.” Joaquin slowly closed the door, as if trying to avoid awakening the room’s occupants. “Let’s finish this and get out of here.”

  “Yup.”

  “He was a wheat farmer, all right,” Matt said, surveying the barn. “Lots of saved seed for next year, lots of equipment. Obviously knows what he’s doing. Er, knew.”

  He turned to Joaquin and Al. “Nice find, guys. Sorry about the residents. But this will help us considerably.”

  He examined the equipment. “Some of this equipment is too large even for the truck gate. You know anything about farm equipment?” Receiving a couple of headshakes, he continued, “I guess we’ll have to get Bill in here. He can tell us whether we can break any of it down for transport.”