Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy)

by Julian May

  I strolled along the lake’s edge for a short distance, then stood receptive and relaxed beside the expanse of calm milky water, listening with my mind’s ear. I am not a poet, not a sensitive; I have never experienced cosmic consciousness, never joined in a true coadunation of minds, never experienced even the least hint of those awesome precursors to Unity that the young operants of the modern, post-Rebellion Human Polity yearn after and mind-whisper about.

  But I did experience the essence of Ape Lake that morning.

  The rearing mountains were a palpable sensation, like drumbeats deep in my bones. I tasted a tangy shrillness radiating from the surrounding icefields, sensed the defiance of the valiant, twisted little trees of this exposed shore, veterans of hundreds of years of storm blasts. I heard the distant thunder of an avalanche, the rush of a small waterfall tumbling down the slope on the other side of the lake. Most portentous of all, I perceived that I was watched by other minds—gentle, subrational, operant minds, whose contribution to the plenum of Ape Lake made it a part of planet Earth unlike any other. I felt amazed and grateful that these minds seemed quite willing to let me and Teresa and unborn Jack share their home with them.

  My fears and misgivings seemed to evaporate along with the dew on the willow thickets. I prayed, which I hadn’t done for some time; and then, loaded down with sacks of food, I climbed back up the trail to the meadow and began to make breakfast.

  During our first week at Ape Lake, which coincided with the last week that caretaker personnel worked in the Megapod Reserve, Teresa and I refrained from any activity that would drastically change the appearance of the cabin site as seen from the air. And as it turned out, two vintage flying machines did pass over—a large banana-shaped turbocopter toting some kind of bulky load on a dangling cable, and a venerable Cessna floatplane. Both were far to the south, behind Mount Jacobsen, and heading northwest toward Megapod Reserve HQ at Bella Coola. The noise of their internal combustion engines gave us plenty of warning so that we could hide. I made a stab at farsensing the occupants of the aircraft but only managed to determine that none of them was operant.

  One of the first tasks I set about was the digging of a new latrine pit closer to the cabin, and the moving and roofing of the johnhouse itself. Meanwhile, it was Teresa’s job to gather and dry large quantities of moss and old-man’s-beard lichen. Over the next week she gleaned twenty giant garbags full of this material, which we would need for log chinking.

  Building a food cache came next. This was vital in a region where bears, wolverines, and other creatures with a taste for human victuals abounded. I didn’t know too much about Bigfoot appetites, but I had a hunch the creatures might be even more of a nuisance than grizzlies if they pegged us as a free lunch stop, so I designed the cache accordingly.

  The time-honored method, according to our wilderness references, was to find four stout trees that grew more or less in a smallish square, lop off the branches, then construct a high platform using the trunks as corner posts. The cache is accessed by a removable ladder. Unfortunately, our cabin site was on a northern slope, and the nearby trees were mostly stunted hemlocks or other varieties deformed by winter wind blasts and heavy snow. The best I could find were two fifteen-meter whitebark pines a stone’s throw uphill of the cabin and close to little Megapod Creek. Their battered trunks were so wide at the base that I couldn’t close my arms around them. However, they tapered drastically higher up and were barely adequate. I figured to make the other legs out of two logs buried upright in holes; but the ground was so rocky and hard to dig that we eventually settled for a triangular cache.

  I used my old axe to cut down and delimb a suitable Engelmann spruce, leaving a few of the top branches for camouflage. (The more efficient woodzapper would have created clouds of possibly betraying steam, and we didn’t dare use it until the first of September.) We hauled the log laboriously into position with the come-along hand winch. A pole tripod, with the come-along suspended, enabled us to raise the log and socket it in its pit, which we filled with rocks and soil. Later, we would fit the three supporting posts of the cache with conical collars made from flattened Spam cans in order to discourage squirrels, mice, and other marauding small fry.

  I built the ladder out of saplings—deliberately making it too fragile to bear the weight of a Bigfoot!—and nailed the platform beams in place. I was amazed when Teresa volunteered to hammer down the trimmed poles of the cache floor and build its tarp frame.

  “Oh, I’m not afraid of heights at all.” She laughed. “When you sing Queen of the Night, you get hung from the stage flies as often as not.”

  So I left her to it, working fearlessly four meters above the ground and vocalizing like the Lark Ascending, while I got on with making the temporary shelter we would live in until the cabin was refurbished.

  This shedlike structure, which Teresa dubbed Le Pavillon, was a simple framework of poles, lashed together with wire and guy-roped against the wind. It became a reasonably snug four-by-six-meter wigwam once it was roofed and draped with heavy plass sheeting, then thickly covered with evergreen boughs on top and on three sides. The fourth side, facing the cabin some three meters away, had the transparent plass exposed for lighting, and an overlapping flap door that could be tied shut. The floor was more plass sheeting, turned up at the edges and basted to the walls so that water couldn’t run inside. I scattered dried grass underfoot for absorption and less slippery walking.

  Le Pavillon was to be our principal dwelling place for the next four weeks. It was, of course, unheated; but so far the weather had been warm, with some brief periods of rain. After the first shower, I added a kind of lean- to porch at the door. This was roofed not with plass but with the old cedar shakes from the cabin, which we had carefully collected in order to reuse. I rescued the iron stove, set it up in the lean-to, abbreviated chimney poking out the side, and—presto! A nifty covered hearth. Once it was safe to make a large fire, we could cook and bake decent meals on the stove instead of living on trail rations reconstituted with water boiled in our little microwave. When the first frost killed off the blood-sucking insects, we’d be able to sit by the fire and toast our bones on all but the stormiest days, and even use the stove to dry clothing when the humidity was high.

  The woodpile and chopping block were right beside the porch. After the cabin was repaired, Le Pavillon was going to become a wood-storage shed, easily accessible from the cabin a couple of meters away even when the snow was roof deep. I scavenged broken floor planks from the derelict building and whacked together benches and two rickety tables. I also made a few rough shelves, promising to do better on furniture later, when I could slice up fresh boards with the woodzapper. The little dome tent, which I moved inside Le Pavillon and placed at the far end, was the designated bedroom and the only true refuge from the ravenous blackflies, mosquitoes, and mooseflies that plagued us in spite of our coercion and our repeated applications of repellent.

  We worked so hard during those early days (and fell asleep so quickly each night) that there was very little time left for simple socializing. Teresa was cheerful but very often lost in mystical communion with the fetus, who, it seemed, was keenly appreciative of the special ambiance of our refuge. In workaday matters, she was usually willing to let me take the lead, doing without complaint whatever jobs I assigned her. She was a strong woman with a ravenous appetite, and her condition seemed to cause her no physical discomfort whatsoever. Since there was as yet no outward sign of the pregnancy, I tended to forget all about it.

  Seven days after our arrival we were sunburned, bug-bitten, and afflicted with a few minor scrapes and bruises—but we had shelter from the elements, a secure cache, and a few rude comforts. The old cabin had the rubbish cleared out of it and was ready for its new floor and roof. Now that the long-awaited first of September had come at last, we could finally work on our wilderness home without fear of being spied out. But first—a day of rest!

  I decreed that we would celebrate the traditiona
l American Labor Day holiday three days early that year. It was time for Teresa to relax, and time for me to explore. She had no desire to accompany me and tried to persuade me not to leave her alone; but I convinced her that it was necessary to know what resources the area had. Most important, we needed larger and straighter trees than the gnarled specimens growing around the site if we were to repair the roof of the log cabin properly and cut new floor joists and planks. I already had a pretty good notion of where I could find what was required.

  “You will be careful?” Teresa’s mind reflected quick-flicking disaster scenarios of me tumbling into ravines and ice crevasses, being chased by enraged Bigfeet, fending off slavering grizzlies and wolves, getting lost, suffering a heart attack.

  “Of course I’ll be careful. And you know we don’t have to be afraid of any of the critters. Why don’t you just play your keyboard and sing, or watch a good old movie on your Tri-D? You’ve worked hard and you deserve a rest. But hiking is my recreation. Has been for damn near a hundred years! If you feel lonesome, you can give me a mind-shout. I’m not going to go more than two, three kloms away. Just around the end of the lake to check out Ape Creek Canyon and the opposite shore.”

  She cocked her head as if listening, then broke into a brilliant smile. “Jack agrees with you that there’s nothing for me to be afraid of.”

  “Exactly.” I kept my mental overlay solemn. “Well, wish me luck, ma petite. If I don’t find some decent roof beams, we may end up spending the winter in Le Pavillon!”

  I stowed a few necessary items in my old Kelty backpack, then hoicked it on and set off across Megapod Creek, heading for the eastern end of the lake. It was a marvelous sunny day, brisk with a light breeze. There were white cirrus streaks clawing up the azure sky over Mount Remillard, and I hoped that a cold, clear air mass was moving in on us. This hope was reinforced once I hit the bush, for the goddam bugs came at me in kamikaze squadrons, wild for what might be their last chance at a blood feast before a hard frost stopped their little clocks. I despaired at driving them off with my coercion and finally put on gloves and my head net.

  There was a game trail a dozen meters upslope from the shore, which I was able to follow through an area of dense wooded growth. Then I came to a series of rocky meadows, where the alpine wildflowers made a beautiful season-end display. Scarlet paintbrush, lavender asters, and yellow daisylike arnica bloomed amid the last spikes of arctic lupine. There were plenty of ripe blueberries that could be used to make plass-baggie jam, and abundant black crowberries that I seemed to remember were also edible. I farspoke Teresa and transmitted a mental picture so she could check on the crowberries in one of the reference flecks, and also told her the good news about the blueberry crop. She was really an excellent cook, and our restricted menu of freeze-squeeze meals had been a sore trial to her, although she had never complained vocally. Her farspeech now came to me all scintillating with enthusiasm:

  RogiIknowwhatI’lldo! I’ll come pick some berries and I’ll bake us a PIE! And make some decent bread instead of that awful bannock!

  Sounds wonderful …

  I went up onto a bold little promontory to survey country that was not visible from the cabin site. Beyond the rocky outcrop there was a large clearing extending down to the lakeshore. I saw no watercourse, but from the suspiciously lush dwarf willows and other rampant vegetation, I judged it to be a bog. As I tramped across it I discovered that I was half right: it was a kind of suspended water meadow—the flower-dotted surface quite dry at this time of year but pocked abundantly with holes a meter or less in diameter, having deep pools of peaty-brown water 20 or 30 cents below their overhanging grassy rims. It was necessary to step cautiously to avoid breaking through the treacherous areas of thin crust. I negotiated this obstacle course and passed into a dwarfed hemlock forest beyond, keeping an eye out for animal droppings or other signs of life. But there was nothing except the ubiquitous insects and one friendly whisky-jack, a bird that outdoorsmen with no sense of humor vilify with the name of camp-robber. The western race was a little grayer than the birds of my New Hampshire White Mountains, but its habits were identical. It followed me, announcing my presence and begging for a handout by means of noisy clucks and squawks and throaty whistles. I couldn’t have asked for a better bear alarm.

  Ape Lake’s shape resembled that of a poorly baked croissant, about three kilometers long and one wide. The northern shore was a fairly smooth concave curve, while the southern, where the cabin stood, was irregular, with a couple of largish outwash moraines down at the glacier-dammed western end. An extensive grass flat at the lake’s pointed southeastern terminus made a natural corridor between the heights of Mount Jacobsen on my right and Muttand-Jeff Ridge on the left. There was a region of thick forest at the corridor’s far end that I decided to investigate later. Ape Creek did not drain through this gentle notch. Instead, the flat held only a meandering trickle that flowed into the lake. The Ape Creek outflow was a few hundred meters up the opposite shore, where an abrupt gash broke through Mutt-and-Jeff Ridge.

  I followed the narrow white-mud shoreline across the flat, then walked over rocks until I came to a thick tangle of driftwood logs blocking the Ape Creek debouchment. With the whisky-jack yelling at me to beware, I crept across this mantrap with exquisite care, the waters of the creek rushing two or three meters beneath me. When I reached the other side, I climbed partway up a talus slope until I had a good view down Ape Canyon. Its walls looked as though they had only recently been cleaved from the living rock, and lacked any semblance of a shoreline. The creek waters crashed down a series of ledges, then leapt outward in a white, rumbling cataract that my farsight estimated to be a good 20 meters in height. There were smaller cascades further on. It seemed fairly obvious that Ape Canyon would provide no easy thoroughfare for either human or Megapod. When the big apes came visiting, they probably entered the lake basin through the notch …

  I had finally reached my goal, the shore opposite the cabin. Beyond Ape Creek the terrain was very dicey going. Contorted spiky krummholz and tangled alder grew close to the water’s edge, and behind them the slope was extremely steep. But I didn’t have to travel much farther to find what I had been looking for. The brush thinned a bit, and there on the precipitate hillside I found a stand of fine straight Engelmann spruce trees. Numbers of them were ideal for boardmaking purposes, measuring more than 35 cents in diameter at the base; the smaller ones and the saplings would make perfect beams and roof poles. All I would have to do was zap down a sufficient number of trees, delimb them and trim them to size, and tumble them down the 40-degree slope into the water.

  And then figure a way to get them across the lake.

  I found a breezy rock to sit on, took off the head net and gloves, and shared my lunch of raisins and Velveeta-smeared bannock with the whisky-jack. (Neither Teresa nor I had managed to bake anything respectable in the microwave. Bannock, a traditional wilderness food made by mixing flour, lard, baking powder, and water, was fairly tasty when baked in ashes or fried over an open fire. Unfortunately, microwaves turned it into gray slabs with the consistency of plassfoam padding.) As I ate, I considered one solution to the log-transport problem after another.

  Solution the First: Our hardware-store loot included ten-penny nails. These could be used to spike small log stringers to the larger timbers, forming them into narrow rafts. I could pole these along the V-shaped shore to the cabin, a distance of perhaps two kloms. It would be desperately hard work, but my arms are strong, and I could walk on shore some of the time, lining the rafts and playing Volga boatman. Evaluation: Practical, but very slow. And I’d surely get wet, and the water was ice cold.

  Solution the Second: If I could rig a sail, the rafts could travel directly across the lake, less than half the distance of the shore route. No sweat for me, speed dependent upon the wind … which unfortunately prevailed from the west, straight down the lake, when it wasn’t dead calm, as it had been rather often during our week-long stay. Evaluati
on: I’d still get wet, and how the devil do you steer a 400-kilo log raft through deep water in a crosswind?

  Solution the Third: Tow the rafts across the lake behind another boat. Evaluation: We didn’t think to bring an inflatable, and I hadn’t a prayer of building a canoe or dugout.

  Solution the Fourth: Stop thinking like a deadhead normal, you klutz! Chop and slice the wood to size on this side of the lake, then use your psychokinesis on a calm day to push the individual pieces of lumber across. Even your lousy PK is strong enough to move floating wood. Evaluation: Eureka!

  The whisky-jack laughed at me.

  Feeling very pleased with myself, I finished lunch and then scrambled up the slope to cruise the trees and select appropriate specimens. Then I stood quietly among the doomed spruces and told Ape Lake that I would do my best not to scar the landscape if it would cooperate by keeping its waters calm during the transport phase of the logging operation. The local vibes remained tranquil, and I decided that the response was affirmative. Tomorrow I’d begin cutting with the wonderful new Matsu woodzapper, the laser device that had made chain saws obsolete—to say nothing of simple axes. With luck, I’d have the cabin in good shape inside of three or four weeks.

  The day had lengthened into late afternoon. Across the lake, a small plume of smoke rose from the campsite. Teresa had fired up the iron stove for the first time, and perhaps even now she was beginning to cook us a civilized meal. I decided not to farspeak her; it would be more fun to be surprised.

  I started back along the shore, feeling more vigorous than I had in years. Negotiating the Ape Creek logjam was easier the second time around, and when I reached the opposite bank I sat down and stared at it for a while. Providential, that mass of tangled timbers. Without it, I would have had a hell of a time crossing the strong creek outflow to my tree farm. Once again, my mind acknowledged the genius loci.