Tamer- King of Dinosaurs 4

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “What is coffee?” Liahpa asked.

  “A hot drink made with roasted beans of a plant,” Kacerie explained. “It has caffeine in it to help wake you up.”

  “Ahhh,” Liahpa said with a shrug. “I don’t have such a drink on my world. We do have tea though. It is made with herbs and hot water.”

  The women began talking about the various drinks from their homeworlds, but I focused on my troodons. It only took me a few minutes to inspect each one for cuts, give them a rub down, and then scratch each of them under the chin. The dinosaurs were as affectionate as Jinx was, but the balaur bondocs just stood at attention as if they were a military unit waiting for orders.

  I moved over to the trikes and inspected them for cuts. Tom did have a few shallow scratches on his big meaty legs, but there was nothing too serious. Katie was fine, but Nicole’s cuts were a little deeper than I had first thought, and one of them was bleeding pretty well. I didn’t really have any medication or salve to put over the wound, but we did have some sinew and bone that we might be able to turn into a needle and thread.

  I did an inspection of Bob, Sonny, and Cher, but the parasaurs were undamaged, so I went back to Nicole and the cleared my throat. “We’ve got a bit of a problem.”

  My friends turned their attention to me and then walked over through the balaurs so that they could see Nicole’s leg.

  “She is injured,” Kacerie sighed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s probably not that bad. I think that if I leave it alone it will eventually heal. There is a little bit of blood coming out, and that is kind of disinfecting it. However, it wouldn’t hurt to stitch it up so she recovers quicker. Galmine, do you know any herbs or plants we can use to cover the wound that will help with healing?”

  “I do,” the rock-skinned woman said. “When we were last out of our walls, I was just looking for plants we could eat, but I thought I saw a few trees we might be able to use to treat infections. I can also search for herbs that might do the trick.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then we’ll also need to figure out how to use one of the bones from one of the carcasses we have eaten as a needle. Then we can use some sinew we have hanging up as a thread. We’ll have to disinfect those in boiling water.”

  “I can try to figure out how to make a needle out of some bones we have,” Kacerie said. “The obsidian we got can probably make small blades that I can use to cut the hole out of the end so that we can pass the thread through.”

  “I also need to learn how to make blades from a stone,” Liahpa said as she looked at Kacerie. “You all have given me a few sharp pieces to cut with, but I don’t know the technique yet.”

  “Sure,” the hair-stylist said with a nod. “I’m not that great at it yet, but Sheela showed me how to chip off the stone. I’ve never done it with the obsidian though.”

  “We are going to get more blades from Quwaru’s tribe,” I reminded them, “but it would be good for everyone to learn.”

  “I also have soap to make,” Kacerie sighed as she shrugged at me. “What do you want me to work on first?”

  “I'd like to take care of Nicole in the next hour or so, but let's talk about our to-do list,,” I said as I gestured for everyone to walk over to where our covered kiln and cooking fires were. The fires were still going from earlier in the day, but the combination of the roofs we had made and the walls were giving us some shade.

  “First is defense,” I said as I looked to Sheela.

  “We have the trench around the walls,” Sheela said. “That will help against the larger dinosaurs.”

  “It didn’t really help us against the smaller ones,” Kacerie said as she gestured to the group of balaur bondocs. “They were about to climb the wall.”

  “That would not have happened if we had guards at the gate,” Sheela said with her usual stoic shrug. “Victor normally has the triceratops at the gate.”

  “I get that,” Kacerie said, “but what happens when Victor has to leave again?”

  “The solution is simple,” Trel scoffed. “Victor cannot leave the camp any longer. He is too important.”

  “I have to leave to get shit done,” I said. “We still don’t know if my Tame ability will allow you all to ride the dinosaurs away from me.”

  “But you left Hope and Jinx here, and they did not attack Galmine,” Liahpa pointed out as she turned her red eyes to the voluptuous rock-skinned woman.

  “Of course not,” Galmine giggled. “Hope and Jinx love me.”

  “Leaving some dinos here to guard is a bit different from you guys taking them out to ride,” I said. “If something bad happens here, and they go berserk, you can all hide in the inside walls, but if something bad happens outside of the fort walls, you might get left alone. Or even attacked.”

  “So how do we test it?” Trel asked. “You are too important to risk with the daily water gathering you do.”

  “We are all important,” I said with a shrug.

  “I will ride one of them out into the wilderness,” Sheela said as she gestured to the group of trikes and parasaurs. “I am the one most capable of making my way back if something happens.”

  “Okay,” I said as I smiled at the blonde woman. “We don’t need to worry about that quite yet. Let’s get back to the ‘defense’ topic.”

  “We were about to make more spears, bows, and arrows for the platform,” Sheela said, and her lips turned into a grin that showed her sharp canines.

  “Good, and we are going to get a lot of sharp points for the arrows and spears.” I gestured to the tip of the spear that she had in her hand as I spoke. “We were just sharpening and then fire treating the wood because we didn’t have a lot of time, but I think we need to try using some obsidian that we got as points. We should be able to carve slots in the ends of the spears and arrow shafts, push the flat part of the arrowhead in, and then wrap it with sinew to join it together.”

  “I can sit with Kacerie and Liahpa when they are working on the obsidian and then come up with a solution for them, but what about the points that Quwaru’s people will give us?” Sheela’s blonde eyebrow turned up in a question.

  “We should still be familiar with knapping them and attaching them ourselves,” I said. “I’m sure the ones they give us will be better than what we’ll do, but I want our tribe to be self-reliant.” The beautiful women all nodded at my words, and I continued. “What else for defense?”

  “You wanted me to make the saddles for the other dinosaurs,” Kacerie said. “I helped Trel make the one for Tom, and I think I have a good idea about the design. I’m going to need a lot more cordage though.”

  “I was working on cordage for the last few hours,” Galmine said as she smiled at the pink-haired woman. “There is probably enough for one more trike saddle.”

  “Great,” Kacerie said, but then she looked at me and grimaced. “But that means you’ve got me working on soap, sewing needles, thread, and making saddles.”

  “I’m going to think about it while we go over the list,” I replied, and the beautiful woman gave me a wide smile. Kacerie’s personality had changed a lot since the first couple of days that we met. At first, she had seemed lazy, ungrateful, and uncooperative. I’d actually left her behind at the lake because I feared that she would use her Lance ability on either me, Trel, Sheela, or Galmine, but she’d turned around when I saved her from a dino attack, and had been nothing but nice to everyone since then. She was even doing a great job of reminding me about tasks on my list, and I guessed that her experience owning her own hair salon was helping her manage all the different duties I was assigning.

  “What else for defense?” I asked Sheela.

  “That is all I can think of at the moment,” the cat woman replied.

  “I have something,” Trel said as she gestured to the tree. “I’ve talked about building our camp up in the tree eventually, but we should at least have a watch post up there.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said to the dark-haired beauty. �
��That’s going to be your project though, none of us can get up there easily. It’s gotta be at least sixty feet up to the nearest branches.

  “Hmmm,” Trel said, and we all looked up at the massive tree on the other side of our inner camp wall. It was the only tree in the clearing, and from the ground, it seemed to grow a little higher than the other redwoods in the forest.

  “We would also need a rope ladder so that the person on watch could get up easily,” Sheela said.

  “Could you use your claws to climb up?” Trel smirked at the blonde woman.

  “I could,” Sheela replied, “but it would be more dangerous.”

  “I was joking, of course,” Trel laughed. “Building a rope ladder would be the easiest part. I will get to building a lookout perch up in the tree, but my first priority is the water filter. Victor, can we speak of that now?”

  “After we talk about food,” I said as I looked to Galmine. “How are we looking?”

  “The meat we were slow cooking for the last few days is mostly bad,” Galmine said as she frowned at the campfire holes that Trel had dug into the ground. “You all will need more meat today or tomorrow. Especially now that we have six new friends.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Carnivores will be a bit harder to maintain than herbivores. I don’t think the troodons and balaur bondocs are going to need that much raw meat per day, but now we have eleven of them. I’m guessing that each of the troodons will need about two or three pounds of meat a day, and the balaur bondocs will need three or four. So a rough guess of thirty-five pounds of meat a day.

  “That is a lot of meat,” Liahpa said. “Can you send them out to hunt?”

  “Maybe,” I replied as I looked at our pack of medium dog-sized dinosaurs.

  “We have salt now,” Galmine said with a cheerful smile. “If you hunt something larger, we can preserve the meat longer.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “We’ll just have to find something that is big enough to feed everyone for a week or so, but not too big for us to drag back here.”

  “I could continue to modify the sled that we used to bring the tree branches into the fort,” Trel said as she gestured to the sled and the pile of wood branches by the gate that we had used to build the guard platforms on the inside of the wall.

  “I like that idea,” I said to Trel, but then she raised a long black finger and wiggled it in the air.

  “After I make the filters, dear Victor.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I laughed and then turned back to Galmine. “How are you on food? I know we just got a bunch of vegetables to plant.”

  “I have eaten of some of them,” Galmine said as she fluttered her eyelids at me sweetly. “I have not had an opportunity to plant them yet. You said you would help me. Do you still want to--”

  “For sure,” I interrupted her. “I think Emerald wanted to help too.” I looked to the silent woman, and she nodded at both of us enthusiastically.

  “Galmine should also look at the bamboo,” Kacerie reminded me.

  “I would love that too,” the gray-skinned woman said with a cheerful smile.

  “Okay,” I said to the group, “As far as short term with food, we have a bunch of balaur bondoc corpses out in front of the gate. I think their meat will be really tough, and I don’t want to feed them to the ones we just tamed, but I think we’ll be fine to eat them.”

  “How will you feed them today?” Sheela asked.

  “I’ve got a plan forming in my head,” I said as I smiled at her. “Let’s keep going through our list, and then I’ll tell you all what your assignments are.”

  “We need to inspect the fish traps,” Kacerie said.

  “Good reminder,” I said as I smiled at her.

  “You also mentioned something a few days ago about getting small dinosaurs for eggs,” the pink-haired woman said as she winked at me.

  “Yep, I’ll keep an eye out for those. Is there anything else we need to think about for food?”

  The women all looked at each other, shook their heads, and then looked back to me. I was suddenly struck again by how completely crazy this situation was. Just a few months ago I had been mopping up shit in a Los Angeles County Animal Control kennel. I’d loved my job, but it was only because I loved working with animals. I didn’t have anything else going on for me, and I had no plan to improve my life.

  Then aliens grabbed me, put crazy cyber eyes in my skull, and put me on a dinosaur infested planet with a bunch of other alien men and woman. So far, the men all seemed to be highly aggressive and capable warriors, and the woman all seemed to be beautiful and skillful as well. I still had nothing but guesses as to the aliens’ real goals with this abduction, but I’d gone from zero to hero with my dinosaur taming abilities, the strategic planning I’d learned from playing video games, and the charisma that came from a short life of being a nerd and just being nice to people.

  Now these six beautiful women wanted me to organize them, lead them, and protect them from all the violence that Dinosaurland could throw at us.

  I almost didn’t even know who I was anymore, but I’d somehow done a great job of protecting my friends, and I was going to keep doing it for as long as I lived.

  Dinosaurland was terrifying, but somewhere in the mix of all this, I’d grown into the man that I always wondered if I could be, and I’d somehow had fun doing it.

  And I didn’t want to go back home. I was in love with these women, and I never wanted to be without them.

  “Victor?” Sheela asked.

  “Oh, sorry,” I said as I blinked away my thoughts of my previous life. “My mind was wandering. Okay, so next we have water.”

  “Finally,” Trel sighed. “I was beginning to think you didn’t care about my life’s work.”

  “You just started talking about a filter a few days ago,” Kacerie chuckled.

  “And it has occupied my mind along with the thoughts of Victor and my brood since then,” Trel scoffed. “After all, there is nothing more important than what is in my mind. You do know I am a genius, correct?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Kacerie said with a surprisingly straight face. “You’ve told us. A few times actually.”

  “Yes, but you keep forgetting,” Trel tsked. “Ahh well. Let’s talk about the filter.”

  “You had to make the kilns first,” I said as I pointed to the three large chimney shaped structures that she had made out of mud.

  “Yes,” she answered, “and now I have the various grains of sand I require and a basic model for a funnel. I will spend the rest of the day shaping the first one and then heating it. Then I will test the filter tomorrow.”

  “Got it,” I said. “I know you will do a great job on it.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “What about the pump to push water from the river to our camp?” Kacerie asked.

  “I will work on it after the filter,” Trel answered as she tapped her lip with one of her long fingers. “If we can get that woman from the other tribe to join us, it will make the situation much easier.”

  “You mean Adella?” I asked.

  “The one who can move the water,” Trel answered. “I forget what her name was. I’m sure they will all come to their senses soon and come join us. Once they do, I can use her powers to begin a siphon that I think will work much better than the pump idea.”

  “We’d still have to lay clay pipe though?” Kacerie asked.

  “Yeah,” Trel answered. “First comes the filters.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Then we need to talk about living conditions and sanitation.”

  “This is my favorite topic,” Kacerie whispered as she leaned forward.

  “We need some sort of pavement surface inside of the fort,” I said. “The rain made everything all muddy, and you can see where our walking lines have torn away the grass. Pretty soon, the whole area is going to be covered in mud, and we are going to track it inside of our huts. We need some paving stones.”

  “It will take too much cla
y,” Trel said. “We need clay for the filters and the plates you promised the other tribe.”

  “Can we make them out of mud?” I asked with a shrug.

  “To protect us from mud, you are going to make bricks out of mud?” Trel asked as she raised a perfect eyebrow.

  “My ancient people made bricks with something called ‘adobe’ or ‘cob,’” I explained as I made a square shape with my hands. “I’ve never done it before, but they would mix mud with straw, form them into bricks using a mold of wood, and then lay them out in the sun to dry.”

  “And that worked?” Trel asked with a bit of disbelief as she tapped her finger to her lips.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What if it rains?” she asked. “Won’t it just turn the brick back into mud?”

  “Hmm,” I said as I thought through it. “Most of the adobe houses I’ve heard of were built in areas where there wasn’t a lot of rain.”

  “I can see it working for walls of a hut,” Trel said with a shrug, “but if you want to build a path with it, I think the rain will destroy them.”

  “There has to be a way to mix more sand, or more straw, or something with it to get it to hold up to rain,” I said and my eyes drifted toward the three kilns that Trel had crafted.

  “I’m going to test it out and try heating them with fire. That might temper the material enough to keep it from turning back into mud once it is wet.”

  “I’d like to help you,” Kacerie asked as she raised her hand. I was a bit surprised by her volunteering, so I gave her a wide smile.

  “You’ve got a lot of stuff to do,” I said. “I’ll take your help if I need it, but this might be something I have to do on my own--”

  Emerald waved as I finished talking and then she tapped her own chest and then pointed at Galmine.

  “Ohhh, good idea,” I said to Emerald.

  “What did she say?” Kacerie asked.

  “She wants to help me with the bricks, but she also thinks that Galmine might be able to help us find the right way to mix the mud together with the straw and sand so that it is optimal.”

  “You got all that from her pointing at herself and Galmine?” Liahpa asked with disbelief plain on her face.