by Ryder Stacy
The taped account of the adventure finished with the Doomsday Warrior staggering into Century City’s south portal nine months ago, about as near death as Danik had been.
When he awoke, Danik had only one thing in mind. To travel to Eden with this man-among-men, with this hero of the twenty-first century, Ted Rockson, and his team of Freefighters. If Danik should die, then it would be a noble death, to be among such brave warriors.
After a breakfast of fresh scrambled hawk eggs and coffee, served in his room by a pretty orderly named Janet, Danik eagerly set off down the corridors he was becoming familiar with to his morning meeting with the entire Rock Team. Danik was elated. He had remembered something. Not much, but something. Perhaps it would be enough.
Four
Rockson had gathered most of the Rock Team in the Security office. They sat with notepads in front of them, around the shiny-surfaced conference table. Rath was there of course too. The door opened a moment after the combat veterans had all arrived. Rock looked up, expecting to see Danik. But instead it was Rona. All dressed up in full combat gear.
“Rona, what the hell are you doing down here?” he bellowed.
“I want in on this one. Rock. You left me out of the Alaska mission—I’m going on this one.”
“Like hell you are. I’m only taking members of my northern team. The winter team. You’re out.”
“I’m in.”
Rock sighed, “Look Rona, there probably isn’t a mission at all. I assume you’re familiar by now with the events of the past few days, our visitor from Eden?”
She nodded.
“Well, Danik doesn’t remember enough to lead us anywhere. And even if he did, unless we figure out some way to get through a thousand miles of waist-high snow and subzero temperatures—even these men, all veterans of the Alaska mission—won’t be able to do a thing.”
Before the argument died down, Danik came in on schedule and seated himself. After introductions, Danik told of his new recollections. They were sketchy. Danik couldn’t trace his course on the map Rockson had spread on the table. There was no need for such maps in Eden. He did remember some landmarks along the route he had taken from Eden. The team eagerly listened to these recollections.
“I remember we crossed a river—a shallow thing that my friend Run Dutil said was the Rio Grande. Then the next thing I recall, two days later, are some odd-shaped rocks—about fifty feet high. Carved by the surface winds, I suppose. One looked like a whale—I’ve seen your pictures of whales.”
“Does that formation ring any bells?” Rock asked.
No one was familiar with it.
“Anything else?” the Doomsday Warrior asked.
Danik offered him some scattered bizarre landmarks, descriptions of the places he and his friends had taken shelter on their trek:
A five-story-tall teepee-shaped souvenir store and restaurant, abandoned no doubt in the first few days after the 1989 war. There, two of his friends, Sysin Print and File Format, had died, he didn’t know of what. Perhaps of a combination of the cold and lack of food.
Scheransky asked, “What is the derivation of your friends’ names? It sounds like computer talk.”
“Most of us in Eden, those that don’t have a famous family name, are named by computer at our first birthday. The names are the result of a registrar picking the keys of the birth registry computer at random, until a systems message is printed. That becomes the child’s name.”
“Please go on,” Rath said, “and no more interruptions.”
Danik related that the rest of the desperate party of Edenites had gone on, hopefully straight north, and reached an immense, beautifully arched, perfectly preserved stone bridge going nowhere, sitting in a shallow desert lake. There, two more friends of Danik’s company had expired as they all huddled together for warmth in an old concrete-slab pile. The dead were entombed behind a loose foundation stone in the bridge. The temperature had dropped from that day onward. On the last leg of the journey to Colorado, Danik and his last surviving companion, Run Dutil, had tried to make notes and measurements of their course, using a toy compass Run Dutil had found in a collapsed building near the strange stone bridge.
The snows kept falling, and they found shelter. Dutil had died in a strange building filled with plastic statues of Presidents of the United States.
“That’s all I can recollect.” Danik ended. “If I had only taken that notebook of Dutil’s out of his dead frozen hand—but I didn’t. I didn’t even bury him, I—I left him sitting there. I was . . . so weak. I can’t give you a clue as to where that strange building with plastic Presidents is.”
At the mention of the last odd sight. Rona shouted out, “I think I know the place he means—it’s the Presidential Museum outside of Colorado Springs. Once, years ago, when I was a teenager, I went there with a scouting team. We were looking for signs of a new Soviet-made road—and found it too—blew it to hell. But anyway, we came across this old building half collapsed. We went inside and there was a plastic JFK in his rocker, and a glass case containing plastic statues of the three men who made the first Moon trip—Armstrong, Aldrin, and Conrad.”
“That’s it,” Danik said, elated. “You’re right. There were those astronaut statues too.”
“Great,” exclaimed Rath, “So, Rockson, we can get your attack team to Colorado Springs—a mere two days’ journey. Then the notebook can steer you on the rest of the way.”
Rockson was only somewhat encouraged. “If the notebook is still there, and if Dutil’s scribblings—he didn’t have any training in direction finding—make sense. Two big ifs, Rath.”
Rona reached across the table to touch the cold thin hands of the stranger. She smiled warmly, asked. “Mr. Dutil, is there anything else, anything at all?”
Dutil spewed out a few other descriptions of the trek—just terrain descriptions. Crumbling cliffs, a twisting canyon of sandstone.
Rock couldn’t hazard a guess at Danik’s route. Unless Danik remembered where he’d started out from, as a reference point, they hadn’t much to go on. And if he knew that, they’d be busying themselves to get there.
“I agree; we go to the President’s museum and then look for the notebook,” Rock said. “We’ll at least give Run Dutil a decent burial, if the animals haven’t had him by now. If the notebook has anything useful in it we can proceed from there. But I need some ideas for travel in this damned weather.”
“I know a way for us to get to the President museum, and to get all the way to Eden, despite the snow,” Rona stated firmly.
“How?”
“Uh-uh. First you promise to take me if I have a way for us to get there, then I tell you. Agreed?”
Rockson wanted to know her idea. He said, “Agreed.”
Rona told him “Dogs. We make sleds and use dogs just like you did in Alaska.”
“Rona, there are no dogs here in Century City.”
“Yes, there are. You remember those snow-wolf pups that were a gift of the New Omicron City Council upon your safe return from the Alaskan mission?”
“Yeah—some gift. They near took one of my fingers off—you can still see the stitches. I sent them down to the kennel area for study. Haven’t heard a thing—”
“They’re all grown up, and since they never lived in the wild, they’re mellowed. They’re positively almost like dogs. Still a bit wild—they have three rows of teeth—but I think they might do handily to pull sleds. They have lot of spirit, anyway. Maybe . . .”
“Hmmm. Maybe won’t do—besides, they would be only one year old now.”
Rona was undaunted. “I went to see them this morning. They’re really big, Rock. You should see them. Kathleen down in Breeding said they’re training well; they heel and sit and give you their paw and everything. And there’s only been a few—well, accidents . . .”
“Accidents?”
“Well, they nipped a few of Conyer’s fingers off. But that’s because he had the smell of some meat he was feeding them e
arlier on his fingers.”
“Great. Forget it, Rona. Any other ideas on how to beat the snow?”
“How about getting some skis and skiing to Mexico?” McCaughlin suggested. “Course. I don’t ski so well. It was okay to have skis on when hanging on to a dog sled, but I don’t think I personally could manage such a trek on skis.”
Detroit said they could never ski a thousand-plus miles either. Archer shrugged. He took off his floppy hat, because it was warm in the room. Danik, who had never seen Archer’s remodeled forehead, gasped.
McCaughlin smiled. “Don’t be alarmed, Danik. Archer had some crystals implanted up there in his head. On our mission north last year, some hairy things smashed an ax down on his skull and did some damage. We took Archer to an advanced Eskimo hospital, and they patched him up real funny. The crystals that fill that gap in his skull look pretty, and they spark blue and red whenever Archer tries to think too profound—ain’t that right, partner?”
Archer sort of growled something, and his beard of tangled black moved up and down like he was a chewing something he didn’t like. He put his hat back on.
“Any other ideas on how to trek in this bad weather?” Rock asked, getting the show back on the road.
There were none, except snowshoe trekking. And that would take longer than walking. Time was the crucial factor.
Rock sighed. “Let’s have a look at these dogs, Rona. Lead on.”
The rest of the Freefighter team went over maps trying to find the landmarks Danik had reported seeing on the way north. Rock and Rona rode the elevator down to X level and entered the animal-breeding area. The smell of cow dung and hay and so on made Rona sneeze. But Rock inhaled deeply. “Ah, just a country boy at heart.”
“Give me a break,” Rona said. “I get hay fever.”
Breeding Section was cavernous carved-out area about 100 meters by 90 meters, with a high arched ceiling that sported hundreds of full-spectrum lights. It felt sort of like sunlight on the skin. The baaing of sheep and the mooing of cows from the many rough-hewn wooden stalls attested to the success of the efforts of Dr. Kathleen McCullough and her staff.
McCullough, wearing a white lab smock over her rather tubby middle-aged body was carrying a clipboard, met them halfway up to the canine area. “Hi.” she smiled, revealing several gold fillings. “I was told you would be interested in seeing our wolf-dogs, Rock.”
“Rona no doubt told you that. I’m skeptical. But lead on.”
They went past a stall containing several cows nibbling on bales of hay. “Sweet, aren’t they? They’re of a black-and-white milk cow called the Guernsey—or the rad-resistant twenty-first century equivalent anyway. They give lots of milk. We supply all the city’s milk and much of Century City’s meat from right here—and that’s not all. In Z Sector, we’re now doing important back-breeding of many rad-altered species too. Schecter had done some unique gene-splicing research that enabled the staff to begin restoring much of the vanished species of the Rockies to their original look—without altering their inherited resistance to the radiation levels hereabouts.”
“It’s comforting to see,” Rock noted as they passed the fox cages, “that these red fox no longer have multiple razor-horns with venom inside them. Almost got killed by one of their wild relatives once.”
“Someday these back-bred species will be put on the surface to breed and multiply in the wild, but right now there are precious few of them. And we have to toughen this species up. Or make them craftier. Otherwise their relatives—the horned variety—will make mincemeat out of them.”
Kathleen McCullough was an affable type, and Rockson wanted to linger and admire the handiwork of her section, but they had to rush onward to the kennels. “I’ll demand a longer tour some other time. Kathleen.”
“Come any time.”
They entered the K-9 area. The barking was intense and immediate when the door was opened. And not only barking—some sort of God-awful high-pitched howls, several of them.
“Is that the—”
“Yes, the snow-wolf pups have become noisy in their old age.”
“Jeez,” Rock said. “I don’t know if I could take a lot of those horrible howls.”
Rona laughed. “They are really not so bad once they stop howling.”
They went to a grillwork window, and as Rockson leaned close to the glass, slavering snarling triple-row-of-teeth mouths slammed against the metal grating.
Rock leaped back. “God, I didn’t expect that.”
“You have to be introduced to these wolf-dogs by someone they like—or else. This one,” said Kathleen, opening the next door as Rockson flattened himself against the wall and put his hand on the butt of his shotpistol, “is the biggest one—one hundred and ten pounds of fury. We call her Class Act, because she has such a beautiful silvery coat of fur. Come on in, and meet her.”
Kathleen approached the giant furry wolf-dog and petted its head. “Hi, it’s me—we’re going to come in now—we have some dog yummies for you and some visitors—please be nice now—no biting?”
A snarl in response. Kathleen said, “Now, be a nice girl.”
“Scaredy cat—you can hide behind me,” Rona said.
“I’m not afraid, just cautious,” Rockson retorted, and petted the head of the brute. The wolf-dog’s fur was cool and fluffy. She went to lick his hand. “She’s a bit bigger than I expected,” Rock said, “but she’s nice.”
The triple row of teeth could be seen easily, as the dog yawned and sat down on its huge haunches. It seemed to be smiling.
“Good dog,” Kathleen said, petting it once or twice more.
“Rock, I think she likes you.”
“Yeah,” Rockson said ambivalently. “Are the males bigger?” He petted the thing’s head again. The dog responded by rubbing up against his leg, a move that almost tumbled him over. “Man, this dog has some strength.”
“And so do her brothers and sisters. Yes, the males are a bit bigger but less intelligent.” Kathleen winked at Rona, and Rona laughed.
Rona, recovering, said. “They’re certainly strong enough to pull a few of our itty-bitty sleds to Mexico.”
Five
Rockson reconvened the attack team, and told them it might be possible after all to use sleds and these strange dogs.
Danik was eager to go right away, but Rockson told him that several days at a minimum would be needed to prepare. “Get some sleep, take a whole lot of vitamins, build yourself up, Danik. We can’t go slow. It will be an arduous trip—assuming we find the notebook and it helps us find our way to Eden.”
While Danik was recuperating, the dogs were rounded up; and training them on a crash basis was begun. The extensive experience the Rock Team had gotten handling sled dogs in the Alaska mission proved invaluable.
To speed things up, Rockson assigned teams to handle specific tasks. Detroit and McCaughlin were in charge of production of the super-lightweight plastic sleds, handicrafting the nylon lead ropes, and selecting some skis.
Rockson and Chen rounded up maps of every area between the city and mid-Mexico. Rockson also compiled a set of history tapes and slides of a thousand sites south of Colorado. This was for Danik’s viewing. He sent them to his room. But Danik sent back word that he couldn’t remember the route he’d taken north except by the strange ruined twentieth-century tourist attractions he had already told them about.
Of course weapons were a must; Rockson and Chen went through C.C’s extensive armory, selecting the lightest, deadliest of the lot. Rock picked up two compound bows with two-hundred-pound pulls, and Chen loaded up on exploding star-knives. They would take along the usual standard Freefighter equipment too—a set of Liberator .9mm rifles and x-pattern shotpistols.
They needed a complete roster of foodstuffs and sundry supplies from the quartermaster. These supplies included inertial navigation compasses with illuminated faces, sextants, pemmican—the highly condensed high-calorie food for trekking in cold weather—McCaughlin’s special b
iscuits (just add snow and cook), salt, tea and coffee, egg powder, and bacon. Plus some jam, a few loafs of pumpernickel bread, assorted pots and pans. They would also bring sleeping bags. Coleman lamps, a Primus stove and fuel for it—though it could burn animal fat. They intended to hunt on the way south. They’d need warm blankets, an emergency first-aid kit, and a dozen other items. Century City was a storehouse of such items and there was no problem assembling the roster.
Rona and Archer—sort of beauty and the beast—were in charge of actually getting the dogs trained and attached to the sleds in time for a test run through the town square in three days. Everyone moved efficiently.
Rockson, four days after they had a destination, proudly announced to Security Chief Rath that they were ready to go. Danik was up and around, and he came into Path’s office just as Rockson was reporting.
“If all goes well,” Rock said to the strange visitor, “we will get you to Eden—despite the harsh winter conditions.”
“Rockson,” Danik said, “I understand you are going to use sleds pulled by ferocious mutated wolves. Isn’t that—rather unusual? Why not use snowmobiles? I understand there are several here in—”
“Equipment breaks down,” Rockson explained, “One cog busts and you have a useless hunk of metal. Believe me, nothing has yet replaced the reliability of dogs for long hauls over snow. These particular wolf-dogs are strong. If they can be controlled, and I think they can be, they will be more than satisfactory for the job. They can eat what we kill for them on the way also. We would need a few filling stations for a bunch of snowmobiles.”