The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “Right! I’m finding them useful, all right. You fetch the straps and the snips. Me, I’m going trash diving.”

  Kris didn’t take but a minute to get what Andie wanted.

  When she came back, Andie was still digging in the midden heap in the inner chamber, while Ezra, Melek and the others were still in the outer chamber. “Did you figure out what they were talking about, when they talk about this place?” she asked Andie, while Andie was rummaging around.

  “You missed that? The bird flaps?” Andie replied.

  “Bird flaps?”

  “Sure, the linked thumbs and fingers waving. We use the same thing to sign for birds sometimes as well. That and the hand about eight feet in the air and the two men extending their hands towards each other about twelve or fourteen feet apart.”

  “I’m not getting this,” Kris admitted.

  “You are more pragmatic than I am,” Andie told her best friend. “Yeah, I know people think I’m the pragmatist, and I suppose I am, but underneath this hard exterior is the heart of a romantic. You, Kris, are your father’s daughter and have the heart of an accountant.”

  Kris giggled. “I suppose. But what’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Do you remember the bird beak gesture?” Andie turned and used her thumb and index finger to mime a bird’s beak.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know what he was talking about. He was scissoring his arm and leg.”

  “Imagine an eight foot tall pterodactyl-like critter with rows of sharp teeth that can nip off arms and legs, and with a twelve- or fourteen-foot wing span. Imagine why every last one those soldiers we saw are in here with us -- even though they couldn’t possibly be sure if we didn’t have confederates hiding around here someplace close, ready to spring at them -- went ape when they saw this cave. They have two men on the door, and the rest are alert, not taking it easy.

  “They are, in short, ready to spring into action. Against what? I’d say they were surprised to see us here. This place is largely wasteland, and there can’t be too many people around...”

  “That’s another thing,” Kris told her. “People. They’re people, not bug-eyed space aliens.”

  “Well, I’ll grant you, they look a little like people. Their ears stick out more than ours, and I’d say they have larger eyes. I imagine there are other differences too. I’m still working on that.”

  Andie found what she’d been looking for, a sword blade about two and a half feet long and maybe an inch wide. She’d already set aside what looked like a triangular file that had seen many better days as well.

  For the next two hours, Andie worked with bits and pieces from the midden heap, doing Kris knew not what -- and Andie wasn’t saying. After a bit, Kris returned to where Ezra and the other man were still talking, as hard at it as ever. She watched the two of them, fascinated. It was easy to tell when one or the other of them understood something.

  Ezra was relaxed and confident, and so was the man he was talking to. The other one, the one Kris had seen the others defer to, including the man talking to Ezra, seemed bored and wasn’t paying much attention to the two men talking. Now and then he’d glance at Kris, but the expression on his face was what Kris thought of as “disdainful.”

  The other four men were mainly by the entrance. Two of them had their bows strung and arrows nocked but not drawn. The others had their bows strung and over their backs. Alert, but not a full alert.

  She contemplated the two men talking to each other. She’d seen them in the room that Ezra thought had been the slave quarters. She was fairly sure that the two men had taken their measure of each other in there, both appalled at such a place. Well, Kris had been appalled as well. Whatever it had been, though, it clearly had cut the ice.

  The two men now had some words in common, and while Kris wished they were English words, at least they were slowly making themselves understood with each other. She tried to focus on what they were saying, but there was now almost a sign language component to what they were doing which made it more difficult.

  It had been six hours or so when the two men stood up, and shook arms again, and Ezra walked over to her and asked, “Do you have more notebook paper?”

  “Sure, I have two unused yellow pads and one partly used up.”

  “Could I get one? A pencil or pen, if you have a spare?”

  “Sure,” she told him. She went to her pack and got them out and gave them to Ezra.

  He grinned at her. “I didn’t want to stop in the middle and ask for this, he’s doing much better remembering things than I am as it is. But I need to get some notes down while it’s still fresh.”

  He started writing hastily, filling up three pages as fast as he could write, then added another page going more slowly. Kris had been surprised when he had used only every other line on the page, but saw him going back and inserting things with carets. There was a method to his madness, she decided.

  He finished and looked at her. “Where’s Andie?”

  “She’s a rocket scientist, remember? Last I saw, she was making something.”

  “Okay, I need to get something to eat and drink; you and she need to get something too.” They went back into the inner chamber where Andie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a number of things, some of which Kris decided were tools.

  Andie just shook Ezra off. “Yeah, I’m hungry. Kris, please, would you get me something?”

  Kris didn’t mind and fetched Andie one of the meals and then heated it for her. Andie started in on it, while Ezra waved at what she was doing.

  “Is that what I think it is you’re making?”

  “Yep, a revolution.”

  “Is that a wise thing to be working on?”

  “What are those bird-things he was talking about?”

  “He calls them dralka, sort of like a flying appetite, about the size of a VW bug.”

  “That’s what I thought. I bet it’s a little exciting shooting them down with a bow and arrow.”

  “Well, he seems proud of his ability to bring one down with every other shot. The critters are armored, except for the throat and ass.”

  “Achilles’ ass? That wouldn’t have made the stuff of legends!”

  “What are you making, Andie?” Kris asked.

  “A basic, Mark One crossbow. I just need this to hold together long enough to demonstrate the principle. This piece of shit isn’t going to last much longer than a couple of shots.”

  “And how is it a revolution?”

  “Well, usually significant advances in weapons bring about revolutions. Long bows were effective against most early forms of armor, and I haven’t seen any armor among them -- so maybe a crossbow won’t be as big a deal here as it was on Earth. But it takes years to learn how to be an archer and weeks to learn to be a good crossbow shot.”

  She looked at Ezra. “How common are these dralka?”

  “Here, not very common,” Ezra said. “To the north -- well, I’m not sure I understand everything perfectly, but they get a lot more common. This place used to be a nest. They hollow out something like beehive-shaped rooms. One chamber is where the little ones hang out, on the ground. That’s the chamber here, and then the main chamber, between the young and the great outdoors. They’re like bats, I gather -- they hang down from the ceiling when they sleep. Except dralka sleep at night and hunt during the day.”

  Kris grimaced. “They eat people?”

  “Yes, indeed. And as bad as that is, there are the dralha, further north and west. They are a larger version of the dralka, one that can cut a man in half with one bite and carry away half the corpse at once. They usually hunt in family groups, and mama comes along behind daddy and scoops up the rest. According to Melek, they are armored all over, and the only way you can bring one down is to shoot one in the eye. Except, looking up, you can rarely see the eyes.”

  “This will help then,” Andie told him with assurance.

  “Yeah, I guess so. I admire your initiative, Andie
, and to tell you the truth, if you’d have asked me, I’d have said to go for it. But if things don’t turn out like you expect, don’t be surprised.”

  “Melek? Is that his name?” Kris asked, honing in on something she thought competent to ask about.

  “Yes. I’m not sure if I’ve gotten the ranks right, but he’s something like a sergeant. His boss is something like a lieutenant.

  “You have to understand this translation stuff. It’s not hard to translate simple words like red, blue, yes, no and the like. But more complex words are another story. Their military ranks have an experience component like ours do, and a more explicit competence component. That’s for common soldiers. I think, mind you, I think, that for the officers there’s the same thing, plus some sort of property or noble title component as well. There’s also another set of affiliations each of them has that I don’t understand at all.

  “As near as I can tell their society is more or less feudal, with oaths up and down, but like I said, the further you get from simple, the more complex things become.”

  “What was the arm shaking?” Kris went on to ask.

  He shrugged. “That room -- it’s pretty clear what it was for. It was hard to understand exactly what all he was saying, but there was once an outlaw named Rangar who was a terrible scourge. He robbed, raped, kidnapped, and killed all over. They never could find his hideout -- and evidently we did.

  “On the other hand, from what I’m told, this was something like a hundred years ago. I don’t think it was due to global warming, but about a hundred and fifty years ago this area was mostly swamp and jungle...”

  “A swamp?” Andie interjected. “You have to be kidding!”

  “No, the climate changed, going from temperate rain forest to high desert. From Melek’s descriptions, the fires that burned through here were monsters, killing thousands of people. When it was done, there was nothing left. The survivors moved west to the other Fingers, where the rains didn’t fail and set up shop there.

  “Andie and Kris -- these people came here as refugees. Back home it would be the subject of a B-grade science fiction movie epic. They came from a relatively advanced culture far to the east that was suffering from barbarian incursions. When it looked like they were doomed, about twenty thousand people from a city fled on ships. About four hundred survived to reach here -- this being like twelve hundred years ago.

  “And what did they find? Jungles teeming with all sorts of predators. Sure, there were a lot of meat animals as well, but this is a planet where there wasn’t an asteroid strike to wipe out the dinosaurs. He’s pretty cagey about describing geography here, because he thinks we’ve come from the east ourselves, but think Hadrian’s Wall in England. They put up a series of walls at choke points and killed off the beasties.

  “This has taken most of those twelve hundred years, and is, so far as I can tell, still ongoing further west. If you can make a working crossbow, Andie, that will give them a huge leg up. Huge.”

  “Well, I’ll make a working proof of principle. I’m using a broken steel sword blade for a bow, and using eight feet of steel banding for a ‘string.’ Banding that I’m running four layers thick. I’m using some of this old wood that seems solid enough as a stock.

  “I don’t have good tools, and I don’t have the right materials. I’ve got a half-dozen thin iron rods that probably were to be made into more slave shackles. If I can shoot two of them without this breaking and killing me, I’ll be lucky enough to be rescued.”

  “Cocking?” Ezra asked her.

  “I’m using one of the larger eyebolts. I’ve spread the eye a bit, and I’ve filed it a little -- it’ll work as a fork. I think. I used the other half, added a small hook for a trigger. How likely are we to run into one of those critters here?”

  “It’s not very likely. Further north it would be more likely as the dralka routinely fly about a hundred miles hunting. But these people make a serious effort to keep nest sites eradicated here. We’re about four hundred miles south of where the wall is. They have, I gather, extensive patrols further north, but just a few outposts this far south in the barrens.”

  Ezra stood up. “Well, back to the salt mines.”

  “Ezra, what is the status of women here?” Kris asked hastily.

  “Well-protected. Not many women survived to get here, and at first it was pretty rough. That was fine for a while, but now both genders think of women as helpless and fit only for motherhood. The women have long hair and wear dresses. They thought you were a man and Andie was a boy until Melek got a better look at you. They were sure Kris was a woman, but it’s scandalous for her to be wearing pants. They still don’t know what to make of Andie.”

  “Stress ‘different strokes for different folks,’” Andie told him.

  “Oh, we’ve already figured that out. I might also add, that they don’t have a clue what our firearms are. I’m still debating if I want to hold the information back or spill the beans.”

  “Maybe you can just show them your rifle?” Kris offered.

  “Yeah, but you have to understand, worse comes to worst, we could be here a long time. If they can trust us, and if we can trust them, it’ll be far better in the long run.” He hesitated. “Melek said that his lieutenant has already sent two runners north. When a more senior officer comes, they’re going to want us to move north.”

  “There is no way you can talk him into letting us stay here?” Andie asked, her eyes bright.

  “For a number of reasons, they’ll be burying this place.”

  “That can’t happen,” Andie said levelly.

  “Trust, Andie, is our only hope. They know we’re different, and I’ve tried to explain how we got here, but really... You’d have trouble explaining the physicality of it to someone on Earth. Sure, you can invoke ‘Star Gate SG-1’ and ‘wormholes’ and a lot of people would understand, sort of. But not most.”

  “Well, I don’t think that it is a wormhole,” Andie told him. “But, the fact is, I don’t know. It’s like the blue door is just like any other door -- except one side is here, and the other back home.”

  She met his eyes. “I’m going to write an explanatory note that we’ll have to keep updated, sitting under the air horn. So that if someone comes for us and we’ve been moved, they’ll know where to look for us.”

  “Sure, Andie. The truth is, Melek and his men aren’t going to come back here unless they have to, and if you’ll police up the extension cord for the light bar, there won’t be a trail of bread crumbs leading to the supplies.

  “Melek is sharp and he’ll figure out we’ve got a stash back here, somewhere, but if I ask him, hopefully he won’t nose around very much. Now, I have to get back.”

  He left and Andie went back to work. Kris debated which would be more boring -- watching Andie scrape and whittle, or listening to incomprehensible words. She decided the words made more sense and gripped Andie’s shoulder as she stood up. Andie grinned at her.

  “You’re scared,” Andie said quietly. “I’m scared. But things aren’t nearly as bad as they could be.”

  Kris nodded. Not so far.

  * * *

  Melek looked at the young woman as she came back. There was no doubt that Ezra, as he called himself, was deferential to her. He forced himself to think.

  His trousers were held up by a belt. Ezra wore a belt, but the two women didn’t, yet their trousers stayed up just fine. Rationally, if you thought about it, trousers were far more practical in the field than dresses, belts or not.

  He let Ezra distract him with another arm shake. How could he get through to Ezra that the way Ezra shook hands was making the others nervous? He glanced over to where the others were and smiled to himself. Of course, this chamber made them nervous even if it was clear that it hadn’t been used as a rookery for hundreds of years, at least. They were clustered by the entrance, and their attention consisted of occasional nervous glances behind them and far more concern on what might be coming.

  S
till, that led to a topic that would be worth exploring. He tapped his bow and told Ezra the word for it. He held up an arrow and named it as well. Ezra nodded and mimed drawing a bow, aiming and shooting. So, the weapon was familiar to him! Still, that begged the question; why was he weaponless?

  He tried to ask, but Ezra shook his head. Instead, it was like Ezra was changing the subject. Once again, he wanted to know about geography. That just wasn’t possible, even if Melek was sure of the man’s honesty. Not all men were true.

  Ezra smiled again and pointed to Melek’s bow, then himself, and shook his head just like Melek had when refusing to answer questions about geography. For a few moments, Melek was confused. Was that why they didn’t have any weapons? How could that be? Every male of his people old enough to carry a bow had one and practiced as often as possible.

  Then it struck him. Ezra was saying that as Melek couldn’t talk about geography, Ezra couldn’t talk about weapons.

  That rocked Melek back on his heels. If he couldn’t talk about them, did that mean that he didn’t have weapons -- or that he wasn’t permitted to talk about them, as Melek wasn’t permitted to talk about geography with a possible easterner?

  So, did Ezra have a weapon? With sudden cold certainty Melek knew that he did. Ezra was too confident for him to be unarmed. Which begged the question -- he had a belt knife, but who didn’t? If he was armed, what was he armed with?

  Melek’s eyes went to the device on Ezra’s shoulder that Melek had initially thought was a bow. He pointed to it and said, “That?”

  The question was understood, if not the word, and Ezra confirmed his guess with a shake of his head.

  Melek swallowed. What was his duty here? If Ezra and the women had had bows, they’d have been taken from them. Could he justify not asking for Ezra’s weapon?

  Then his eye rested on the smaller object under the shoulder of the taller woman. The little one had a similar object. Aiii! They were all armed!

  Ezra reached out and gripped his arm again. Then he pointed at the two at the rookery entrance that had their bows ready. Ezra snapped his fingers twice, very fast. Then he pointed his finger at the others and snapped his fingers repeatedly.