The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “I’ll write down the geography,” Ezra told them. “Then tomorrow we’ll make final preparations, and the next day, we go.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Andie said with more jollity than Kris felt.

  “Yes, and of course, we can’t go outside, because we’ve already sealed the door. Melek’s people have covered up any tracks we made outside -- the storm wiped out most of them, anyway,” Ezra informed Kris and Andie.

  He paused. “As far as I can tell, they don’t have any particular superstitions about being out and about at night. On the other hand, it’s a lot darker out there than it is back home, most nights. With this moon covering part of the night sky, it’s going to be really hard to see anything. The way this is going to work is that for three days, it’s dark because the sun is behind it, then after that, the sun will start shining on it, gradually making more light available in the hours before dawn. Like the difference between a new moon and a full moon.”

  * * *

  It was just another bit of the weirdness of being on another planet. Melek’s world had a day of twenty hours, give or take thirty minutes. You would think that the three from Earth would tend to sleep longer than the locals, but it wasn’t true. Andie was still just getting four or five hours of sleep a night, while Kris was getting around six. Melek and his people slept nine or ten hours a night.

  Thus it was that before dawn the next day, Andie shook Kris awake. “Hey, you want to see something neat?” Andie asked.

  “The backside of my eyelids?” Kris asked, wishing she could have slept more.

  “No, this is cool! Come on, I’ll show you!”

  Ezra had been adamant since they’d arrived in this place: “Be ready!” So Kris went to pee, dressed as well as she could, and put the pistol she had in its holster before following Andie.

  Andie led the way back to the nursery and flashed her light on a set of steps a lot like the ones in the main chamber that led to the observation post. “I was thinking last night,” she told Kris, “that these guys would have been in a world of hurt if they’d been caught in here where they couldn’t get out. That got me to wondering. So, I looked here, remembering the shape of the mountain above us.”

  Her flashlight held steady on the steps. “These lead much higher than the set in the other room.”

  “And you climbed them?” Kris said, feeling a little ill. She’d yet to negotiate the other steps without falling -- to be brought up short, and saved by the safety rope.

  Andie laughed at her. “Worry wart! See that, along the one side? More eyebolts!”

  Kris looked at saw them -- eyebolts roughly three feet apart.

  Andie stretched up and clipped a rope she’d left behind on the highest eyebolt she could reach and started up. In spite of the frequent rope changes, she ascended rapidly, before vanishing into a slit almost at the roof. A moment later she called down to Kris. “Come on up! Be careful!”

  Andie dropped the rope and Kris complied, and about two minutes later, she was next to Andie, high above the floor of the cave.

  This tunnel was wider and taller than the one to the observation spot; in fact, you could walk upright in it. Andie led the way for about thirty feet, where the tunnel turned. Kris could see weak daylight ahead, and a moment later they were outside.

  Since they were on the west slope of the mountain, they were in shade, made doubly so, because the entrance emerged behind a huge chunk of limestone that looked like it had at one time been undermined by weathering, and then cracked, dropping six feet and tilting.

  “We shouldn’t be out, Andie,” Kris warned her friend. “We can’t afford to be seen.”

  Andie laughed and said, “Look around, Kris! Unless you’re in this slit, you can’t see us. Come on, this is so cool!”

  She led the way along what might once have been a path, but the recent heavy rains had made a small stream bed. Kris looked back at the way they’d come, wondering where the water had come from, and then realized it had come from higher up the mountain, but it couldn’t have been a large volume, as the tunnel entrance was just three feet above the bottom of the stream bed.

  They went about a hundred yards, trending uphill, and in that time the rock slab on their left ended, but it was because there was an even larger slab that had fallen away at some time in the far distant past.

  “I’ve followed this another hundred yards up the mountain,” Andie told Kris. “The slit stays about thirty feet wide, but the walls get higher on the left. If I remember correctly, this looks like an over-hanging cliff from the other side.”

  Kris thought about that and nodded. Yeah, that was so, and as a result, no one had bothered to go that way, not wanting to “waste” their time finding the cliff edge. “Still, at some point this has to end,” Kris commented.

  “I imagine so, but the bandits wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if there wasn’t a good exit. It’ll be a couple of hundred feet higher, at least, and a half mile or more away from the cave.”

  Kris nodded and they retraced their steps and went back inside. Everyone else was still asleep, and Andie got out some of the teabags she’d packed with their emergency supplies and some of the heaters. In a few minutes she had tea brewing.

  The two young women drank the tea and ate breakfast, then visited the latrine cave again. “We’re getting to the point,” Andie told Kris, “where we need that TP substitute.”

  Kris laughed. “Let’s see, we have flying critters that eat people, giant storms, ancient enemies, an unknown fate ahead of us -- and you worry about the TP supply?”

  “You left out the walk in the park,” Andie corrected her. “I was talking to Ezra last night when he was working on the verbal description of the map. If they aren’t shining us on, it’s nearly four hundred miles. A substantial fraction of the distance that Lewis and Clark covered.”

  “Sacajawea, where are you when we need you!” Kris quipped. She turned serious. “Jeez, Lewis and Clark took two years. I hope it’s not a great big fraction of that.”

  Andie smiled. “Those guys could do a hundred miles in a day when motivated -- just not for long. Think twenty-five or thirty miles a day... roughly two and a half of their weeks.”

  “It’s going to be tight,” Kris said helplessly.

  “Very tight, unless we meet a relief expedition,” Andie agreed.

  Others were finally stirring, including Ezra. Andie told him about the exit and moments later Ezra, Melek and another of Melek’s men were examining the trail.

  They left Kris and Andie back near the cave and Andie scuffed the stream bed with some anger. “Do you suppose it was fucking like this before women got the vote? ‘You girlies stay back, so you don’t hurt yourselves!’”

  “Sacajawea,” Kris invoked the name again. “Pocahontas, Florence Nightingale -- they got out there and led. Mostly, though, women stayed safe. Don’t forget what Joan of Arc earned for being a leader.”

  They were near the entrance to the cave, just a few feet beyond the darkness. The block to the west had broken off and tipped and twisted a bit when it had fallen. Where they were, the break was about twenty feet wide at the base, and much wider towards the top.

  To the left, the angle of the slope was about thirty degrees on their side, and while it would be an easy descent to make, getting there to make the descent was nearly impossible.

  To their east, their right, the slope was steeper, perhaps sixty degrees, which made it passable, but difficult. Ahead of them the passage slowly widened out, while behind them, going south, it narrowed. In less than a hundred yards it was a very narrow crack, with the two butts of rock nearly in contact. Kris couldn’t see any further south, but it was obvious that the crack pinched off.

  Already the day was warm and Kris sighed and stretched, glad to feel the warmth after the continual chill of the cave. “I’m going a bit after Ezra and the others,” she told Andie. “To where that patch of sun is.”

  Andie grunted in acknowledgement, busy studying th
e fossils exposed when the rocks had broken. Kris walked about a hundred yards and sat down on a convenient rock. The three men were much further along, and she could no longer hear the sounds of their progress.

  She eyed the gap above her. Could a dralka fly into this crevice? She laughed to herself. Well, Luke Skywalker could have flown an X-Wing fighter in here, so probably yes. And, like Luke and his wingmen, turning would be an issue. You could go up -- or crash.

  She was seated near the steep part of the ravine, and she doubted if a dralka could fly close enough to bother her.

  She was still thinking that when she heard the scritch of gravel above her, coming from the east. What had Ezra said? That if you met a dralka on foot a bow was useless? You needed a sword -- or she thought, maybe a pistol. She pulled the pistol from the holster and got set, looking upwards.

  “Andie! Something’s coming!” she called back to her friend. Andie spun and dropped to one knee, her pistol coming out as she did.

  It was almost comic. Evidently the sound of Kris’ voice had provided a tiny bit of warning. Someone appeared at the top of the slope, her arms wind-milling to keep from falling off the edge. The woman jerked backwards abruptly, and lost her balance, sitting down on her rump as she slid down the steep slope on her butt.

  Kris stared at the sudden apparition. She appeared to be about Kris’ age, and was dressed in thin cotton pants and a thin cotton blouse and was wearing what looked like sandals.

  The woman stared at Kris pretty much the same way Kris was sure she was returning the look.

  Then there were more gravel sounds from up above and Kris looked up.

  Chapter 12 :: Precipitate Action

  The newcomer at the top of the slope was tall and thin, black-skinned, black-eyed, and had long, flowing black hair. He stopped short and even as Kris watched, he brought up to his shoulder what looked like a rifle and took aim, intent on the girl at the bottom of the ravine.

  It was instinctive, without thought or reason. Her pistol was in her hand, and she saw someone about to shoot a girl not twenty feet away from her.

  Ezra had been right, she realized a moment later. The explosion of the shot came as a surprise. Worse, she hadn’t jerked the trigger.

  She’d been aiming for his chest, but the bullet hit him in the neck. She could see the explosion of flesh and bone behind him, and without a sound, without a twitch, he pitched forward and fell headfirst into the ravine.

  There was no question in Kris’ mind that he was dead the moment he started to fall. His head lolled forward at an angle that was impossible for someone to duplicate, except in a cartoon. The landing didn’t help either.

  Andie came forward, her pistol at the ready. “Shit! Dead-eye Kris! You killed him!”

  “He was going to shoot the girl!” Kris said, her voice was startled, but faint, her stomach starting to protest.

  Andie’s eyes went up to the crest of the slope, and after a second, her eyes never leaving off scanning for anything untoward, she spoke softly, “You realize we are now well and truly fucked, right?”

  The three men were coming; Kris was sure it was them, but she held the pistol half raised in case it wasn’t. It took another minute for them to reach the three young women. “Kris?” Ezra asked gently.

  “He had a rifle. The girl fell into the ravine and was trying to recover when he showed up. He lifted the rifle and started to aim. I had heard her and had my pistol out... when I saw him about to shoot her -- the pistol went off.”

  Ezra shook his head. “No, you pulled the trigger and killed him dead, Kris. Don’t blame it on the weapon. You pulled the trigger.”

  “I’m... sorry,” she said, her voice soft, tears running down her face.

  “Why?” Ezra asked roughly. “You said he was going to kill someone. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “I... I... I thought so. God, Ezra! I killed him!”

  “Kris, you have to stop and think. At times we have to make a judgment about the situations we find ourselves in. Sure, later we can second guess ourselves, and you know that everyone else is going to do it as well. You have to put that all aside. You think back on how you made your decision. You think about it as coldly and rationally as you can. If you screwed up, you lift your chin and look around and say, ‘my pistol went off.’” He grinned at her, “Er, that is you say, ‘I screwed up. I’ll never do that again.’ And if you don’t think you screwed up, the hell with what everyone thinks. It was there for you to decide.”

  Kris took a deep breath. Her stomach was still sick, and she was trembling. “Andie says I’ve fucked up.”

  “Well, the odds just two of them are up here running around by themselves aren’t good. So, what we are going to do is you and Andie take our guest,” he waved at the girl, “inside. Politely, but firmly. You have to understand that if she runs away that we are all likely dead?”

  Kris nodded, still numb.

  He nodded grimly and went over to the dead man and picked up the man’s weapon. Ezra examined it briefly and then carried it to Melek and showed it to him. Ezra tried to explain quickly, but when he couldn’t, he arranged with Melek to have the body moved inside -- explanations would have to wait until later.

  He came back to Kris and Andie, who were watching Melek’s men moving out to look around.

  “You two have to go inside now. Once you guys are inside, we’ll bring in this guy. For what it’s worth, Melek wants to give you a medal. He is really excited. The first dead ancient enemy in a very long time. Get moving now, you and Andie first.”

  Kris was now standing next to Andie, and she went to the girl, who was still sitting down, staring at the dead man without expression. When Kris gestured to move along the ravine, the woman nodded and said something to her. Kris jerked her thumb more firmly, and the woman stood and gingerly moved in the direction indicated.

  Andie led the way, then the woman and then Kris. The woman balked at the dark hole, but Andie grabbed her wrist and tugged. Reluctantly the woman went along with Andie. Like Melek and his people, she was curious about the flashlight, but she didn’t seem to be burning with desire to learn about the cave.

  Getting her down into the nursery was more of a chore, but Andie made a rope harness for her and essentially lowered her the sixty feet to the ground with Kris helping belay the rope. Andie went down very quickly, far more rapidly than Kris could manage, and found that Andie was fending off Melek’s men, who were curious about the strange woman.

  Kris watched from above, waiting for Ezra. He appeared for only a few moments. “Collum is seeing to policing the site, spreading sand on the blood and the like. Then he’s going to very carefully take a look around. So far, though, there’s no sign of anyone else.”

  He gestured towards the light. “I’m going to have to stay here for a while. If they find us, they’ll try a rush the first thing. If I pile up a half dozen bodies in the tunnel, they might not push really hard.”

  He gripped Kris’ shoulders. “I imagine you feel like shit -- most people do the first time they kill someone. And it feels ten times worse when you haven’t been trained for it or you haven’t had a chance to psych yourself up for it. Just be cool, think about it, and it wouldn’t hurt to talk to someone. Talk to the newcomer, if nothing else. She won’t understand a word you say, but trust me, the person who needs to understand the most about what happened just now is you.”

  He nodded to Andie. “We have been goofing off, you know. I’m the one who has been learning the language, while you and Andie had a bye. Kris, this points up the danger inherent in that. We need to learn about that girl, and Melek is going to ask questions of her. I hope she answers quickly and honestly, because that girl was in bad company.”

  “I think she was running away,” Kris maintained.

  “It could be, or it could be she was just exploring with a companion. You said yourself you think she heard your voice. I should be there when they ask her questions, but I’m going to have to stay here for an hour
or so to make sure we can hold the entrance if we’re attacked. Ideally, one of us should listen to the interrogation.”

  “Why?” Kris asked.

  “Well, allies from a different culture frequently have entirely different ideas about what is an acceptable way to ask questions. They could start whittling on her to establish that they are serious before they ask even one question. They could just decide she’s an enemy, regardless of her skin color, or that she’s too much of a risk and decide to kill her. I might be able to understand some of what they are asking, and if nothing else, I’d be able to slow things down if they start getting rough. Except I’m not going to be there, and you and Andie don’t know the language.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Kris promised. “I feel so bad...”

  “Why? The odds are highly in favor of your having done exactly the right thing. You never gave him a chance to line up on a target. It is entirely possible he’d have seen you before he fired and shifted to you. I am positive that Melek thinks you’re a hero, and he’s jealous as hell that you killed one of his enemies before he could.”

  Kris went down and Andie came up to her and hugged her tight. “Fuck, Kris! I thought you were going to be dead!”

  Andie laughed bitterly. “I’ve read a dozen times in books about some guy in a tight situation and I quote -- ‘without even his dick in his hand.’ I thought that meant totally fucking useless, but I never imagined just how totally useless you can be, standing there with nothing in your hand, and no dick in sight!”

  “I don’t understand,” Kris told her friend.

  “I froze, pure and simple. I saw the girl and assumed, ‘Ah, a friend!’ Then I saw the guy aim his gun. I couldn’t move -- I was paralyzed. Then, bamm! The fucker’s dead! I wanted to cheer, but my mouth was too dry to work.”

  Kris turned to her. “You’re not horrified I killed someone?”