Cyborg 01 - Cyborg

by Martin Caidin

  Finally it became too difficult to speak, to be heard over the hollow, booming thunder of the wind and the constant hiss of sand racing over the surfaces. It was even more difficult to walk. They had to quit, and they started searching for a windbreak. They found it beneath the sharp cut-off of a high slope, and Tamara and Steve sank gratefully to the ground, their backs huddled to the wall of the hard-packed earth.

  For several minutes Tamara was content simply to rest, to give her tortured lungs the chance to breathe without dragging dust and sand through her throat. She leaned against Steve, her head resting against his shoulder, her eyes closed as slowly she regained her breath and her strength. Steve took the opportunity to look around them. It must have been a wash of some kind, he realized. Either wind or water had sliced a deep furrow in the ground to create the sheer earthen wall and overhang above them, shaping it into a cupped arch that effectively took the wind and blowing sand away from them. Seated quietly, away from the direct, booming cry of the wind, he heard the sand as something new, making a sound surprisingly like dry, powdered snow racing over the frozen surface of the Arctic. To his left and right the sand arched almost straight out from the curving edges of the natural cupola, sand etched against what was left of the sun, a glowing half-light, yellowish in color, unreal, appropriate for the unfriendly world outside. They were in a pocket surrounded by fury, sand racing overhead and to each side of them, but reaching them only as particles sifting or trickling down the embankment against which they were resting.

  If they had winds on the moon this is what it would be like, he thought. That fine powdery surface, whipped up and cast ahead—he remembered his own hours of slow movement on that cindery, dusty surface. Not like this sun-baked hell. No air, nothing to move the dust . . . Mars, that’s another matter. They’ve got the granddaddies of all dust storms, cover the whole damned planet, like that one back in November of seventy-one. Winds of two hundred miles an hour and more. Miles high. A whole world wrapped in dust. Dust, but there wouldn’t be much sound to it. Couldn’t be. That’s real dust there. Not sand. Sand comes from water eroding rocks down to the size of grains and—

  He brought himself up short. Danger there. He was drifting, letting himself slide way down into the back of his mind, escaping from the moment. You’ve been in this sort of business before, he told himself, enough to know that if you can’t cope with reality you hide in memories, escape . . . He wondered why his body seemed to be shaking, and turned to realize Tamara was prodding him. She smiled and shook her head. “Give me your jacket, I’ve already asked you for it three times.”

  He wondered at her request but slipped from the uniform tunic and handed it to her. Quickly she removed her own tunic, opened another button to release thin, hard fishing line. She handed him the knife. “Cut a series of holes about an inch apart along the edge of each jacket,” she said.

  When he was through, she pulled the fishline through the holes, knotting each one until the two tunics together formed a makeshift shelter over their heads and shoulders. She cuddled as close to him as she could move, then, suddenly startled, pulled away, still hooded by the makeshift cape. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Your arm. It needs attention now.” She cut away the shirt sleeve. The blood had long before caked. She moved her face close to the wound and made a hawking sound. “I’m trying to raise spit to wash away the blood so I can see beneath it.” She was already dry and her saliva greatly reduced. Nevertheless she managed to remove the covering of dried blood. She held the first-aid kit beneath the cape, broke the iodine and swabbed the wound. He gritted his teeth. Then she rubbed penicillin ointment over it and wrapped it tightly with gauze and tape.

  “That thing have a mirror in it?” he asked. She searched the kit and handed him a small mirror, three by four inches. “We could need this, to signal a search plane—hopefully a friendly variety.” He slipped the mirror into his shirt pocket. She put the kit on the ground next to him and returned her body to his, slipping beneath his arm and resting her face against his chest. For several minutes they were content to sit and regain some of their strength.

  “Tamara?”

  “Hunh?” She was almost asleep.

  “That Russian chopper. The Israelis control the Sinai. How come they were so free and easy flying after us?”

  She shook her head, still buried close to him, now with her arms about his body. “No one controls the Sinai,” she told him. “Only small parts of it. The rest is worthless, like where we are. We don’t occupy this area, just patrol it every now and then.”

  “That means they’ll be back.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you that. That’s why I want you to go on by yourself.”

  “No way,” he said.

  “Please. I wish you to be serious.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The information about the atomic bombs.”

  “Thermonukes, by the looks of them.”

  “Even worse, then. Steve, that information must get back. The . . . pictures. Listen to me. By tomorrow morning, by noontime at the latest, I will be dried out. We have no water; there is none here in the Sinai. I will not be able to walk and I do not crawl very quickly. You also will be dehydrated. But it will affect you less than me. You are stronger. If you push on, sleeping by day, you possibly can make it, Steve. Please.”

  “Really, Tamara, knock this off right now. The answer is no. We move together.” He glanced up. “Besides, those clouds are helping more than you think. It may not rain but the humidity level is up. We won’t be losing body water as fast as before. So will you shut up and get some sleep? We’re going to be moving all night.”

  She stared at him, shook her head sadly and moved close to him again. He felt her breasts against the side of his chest. Firmly against him. His arm moved around to hold her, to bring her tighter. She murmured quietly, moved his hand to her breast, and fell asleep.

  They awoke to a deep orange moon, low over the horizon. Steve was awake first, careful not to move. He listened. For the sounds of engines, voices, anything. Silence. Even the wind was gone. He glanced at his wristwatch. After midnight. They’d slept longer than he’d planned. He called Tamara. A croak was his only sound. Startled, he swallowed—or tried to. His tongue was swollen, his throat sandpaper dry. He moved his tongue about his mouth, feeling it raspy against his teeth, his palate. He managed to produce some saliva, moved it from tongue to teeth, to the sides, then to his lips. This time his voice came through. “Tamara. Wake up.” He expected what might happen and he held her. For a moment she shuddered, grabbing him tight. Finally she sat up, removing the cape from over them. Sand fell in a shower about their bodies.

  She’d been in binds like this before, he realized. No attempt to speak. She worked her mouth slowly and carefully, building moisture, wetting her lips. He waited until she was through. She had a ghostly smile on her face as she looked at him. “How do you feel?”

  “Lousy.”

  “This is the best we will feel until we find water.” She stretched slowly, climbed to her feet. “By tomorrow night at this time . . .” she shrugged, as if she knew the futility of resuming their argument. She looked about her, studied the moon, coppery and huge, low on the horizon. “That will help as it climbs,” she said. “The desert reflects light well.” She turned to him. “I imagine you have not come to your senses.”

  “Let’s go,” he told her. He slung the improvised cape over his shoulder and hooked the first-aid kit to his belt. He checked the compass and they started out to the east.

  They walked in silence, sometimes apart, sometimes Tamara taking his hand without comment and matching his stride. The free air temperature was down to . . . he didn’t know how cool it was but it helped, as did the relative humidity. He recalled the deserts of Mexico and Arizona at night, remembered that during his survival training even in the worst deserts the relative humidity would climb to forty or fifty percent. That would cut down the loss of body water. Stil
l, he figured they’d lost anywhere from three to five percent of body water. That was enough dehydration to make them acutely uncomfortable, and it was only the beginning. He brought to mind the old military trick of finding a smooth pebble to put in your mouth so you could suck on the rock and activate your salivary processes. Great, except that your body had to have nearly its full complement of water to begin with. All a pebble would do when you were dry was to rattle around on your teeth. He remembered the salt tablets. Same damned thing. One gram of salt helped to retain eighty grams of water in the body, but once again you have to have the body water from the start, and if you didn’t the salt could make you crazy with thirst. Leave it alone, just keep going, keep moving.

  Several times he heard the distant sound of engines, and stopped to scan the sky. Tamara’s vision was far superior to his own, especially at night. She saw like a fox in the desert and pointed out distant lights in the sky when all he detected was sound. Nothing in the air was coming close to them. In fact, their closest visitor was a good twenty miles off. Not friendly, either. There were four of them, flying fairly low in a grid search pattern, dropping parachute flares. He and Tamara watched as they walked along, trying to be on the alert for anything that might approach from another direction. When it did their hopes rose and were promptly shattered. Two Israeli jet fighters, Phantoms, by the sound of them, thundered from out of the east and raced for the enemy planes. Radar picked them up well in advance, however, and the Russian or Egyptian planes, or whatever the hell they were, raced for the other side of the Suez Canal. Steve came to his senses after the Israeli fighters had disappeared. The small flare bombs. He had one in his pocket, another four still in the left wrist container. He could have twisted the fuse and thrown them as high as possible. Hard to miss that at night in the desert. But he hadn’t. The loss of body water obviously was screwing up his thinking. He tugged at Tamara’s hand and she stumbled after him. “Come on,” he said roughly. She didn’t answer and he wanted to hold her in his arms when he saw the cracked, darkening lips.

  At three in the morning he called a halt for another rest. He needed to relieve himself; despite the desperate need for water his body still functioned and he had to urinate. He had the passing thought that he should walk away from Tamara but he was too numb, and such civilities at this time, especially after their living together (now he began to understand the foresight in that arrangement), seemed rather pointless. He turned to the side and his hands fumbled with the zipper.

  “Don’t!”

  “What the hell’s wrong? I’m sorry, but the facilities aren’t quite what I’d ordered—”

  “We can’t afford to waste any liquid.”

  He looked at her with open disbelief.

  “You don’t understand,” she said, forcing the words through a parched mouth. “Not drink. Dangerous. Salt from kidneys.” The words came out slow, spaced carefully. “Wash out mouth, gargle. If not the tongue will swell, impossible to swallow.” She breathed deeply and looked up at him. “Old trick of desert. Many Arabs . . . Israelis have lived because of this.” She motioned weakly. “Need a container.”

  She searched about frantically, then pointed to his waist. “First-aid kit. Save ointment for burns, our lips. Rest useless to us. Use that.”

  He hesitated and her expression was one of weary exasperation. “Don’t be a fool. Do as I say.”

  He opened the first-aid kit. It was a box that sealed tightly, made to resist the penetration of water. That meant it would hold liquids as well. But he still couldn’t accept what she was saying, even though it clearly made sense. He emptied out the box, gave her the ointment, threw away the rest. He hesitated once more, and she gestured angrily for him to get on with it. He did, and to his astonishment, when he used the results as she directed, the cruel parchness of his mouth and throat ebbed away.

  He brought her the container for her to do the same. She protested weakly that it was more important for him, that he needed his strength. He remembered what he had felt like, the cottony swelling in his mouth, barely being able to swallow. “Take it, dammit,” he told her, and she did, repeating the process she’d taught him. Then with him supporting her, she provided what she could for the container. He sealed it off and returned the kit to his waist.

  She spoke more easily now. “Soon our bodies will dry up. It’s important to contain all we can. Rinse out your mouth and throat as often as possible. Use it freely. Otherwise it will evaporate and do nobody any good. You cannot save liquid out here in the desert.”

  She rubbed first-aid ointment against his lips and nostrils, then stood patiently as he did the same to her. He put away the ointment tube. “We’ve got three more hours of night,” he said simply. There was nothing else to say. He held her hand firmly as they started out toward the east again, crossing the cruel floor of El Arish.

  With the first light of dawn he found a depression in the side of an embankment, a half cave of sorts. He arranged her within the overhang, and suspended the makeshift cape to provide them some measure of shade to cut the savage heat of day. For the clouds were gone and the sun stalked the desert with malevolent fury.

  He awoke with some of his strength restored by the long rest. No time to waste. He roused her from a coma-like slumber, waited until her head cleared and she had her bearings about her. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice toneless. They started out again to the east, and the whisper of a memory taunted him. She had explained there was no oasis near them, that farther to the east, closer to the Israeli border, was the first of these, and there would likely be military detachments there. “Bur Um Hosaira is to the north,” she had said. “The most northern one of the four. Then there is Agerud, Thamilet Suweilma, and closest to us, if we go straight east, El Kuntilla. They are all in low hills.”

  An oasis. That meant that before the war they had been occupied by the Egyptians, and that meant Egyptian military forces. It also meant, his tired brain told him, that when the Israelis struck westward, they would have gone straight for the enemy encampments. At the first sign of a massive attack by the Jews, the Egyptians would have fled in a wild route to cross the Sinai. He racked his brain to recall the details of some of those pursuits . . . Speeding Israeli armored columns, led by spotter planes, had raced across the desert to cut up whatever Egyptian columns they found, and then sped on to hunt for fresh game. That meant . . .

  “Were there any major battles, Tamara,” he pressed her, “in this area?”

  She nodded. “Between El Arish and Gerario, the dry beds,” she said slowly. “Maybe twenty-five or thirty miles east of El Kuntilla. I remember . . . I was a radio operator in one of the teams that went into the Sinai.”

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged. “We destroyed a column. Many vehicles.”

  “And?”

  “We sent back the prisoners with a few guards and kept moving to the east.”

  “So the battle would have been to the east of us, maybe some ten miles from here?”

  She nodded, then fell silent, exhausted. But he had at least a goal, now. He had to find one of those columns of wrecked vehicles. In the desert things remained intact for years. The name Lady Be Good flashed into his mind. An old B-24 bomber from World War II. Crashed in the Libyan desert. The crew died. Fifteen years later someone found the wreckage and the skeletons. But the water in the canteens was as good as it had been the day the plane took off on its mission.

  He pulled, dragged, supported her through the night, stumbling, sometimes falling, sometimes wandering in wide circles. But he pounded his hand against his skull, shouted and yelled to keep himself even partially alert. He had to keep moving. Their only chance now was finding one of the wrecked military columns.

  The hours fell away into a staggering numbness. Several times Tamara collapsed, finally could go no farther. He laid her down on the desert floor, unconscious. He balanced himself carefully, lifted her up and placed her across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He was surp
rised to discover it was far easier to walk with her as a burden than it had been before. Now he could set his own pace, not hobble himself with her erratic gait. He picked up his speed, moved along in a fast walk, leaning forward, his legs moving with the least effort he had known in many hours. It was the movement of an automaton. He thought of the bionics legs supporting him, carrying Tamara, legs he had once cursed. Now they were proving just how marvelous they truly were. No muscles to tremble, no nerves to go slack, no tendons to pull and hobble him. Still, as he moved at a steady pace, the weight of Tamara on his shoulders increased steadily, numbing his shoulder muscles.

  The moon had slipped to just above the horizon and he cursed the increasingly longer shadows. The desert floor he walked over was a mixture of clumps of sand, hard rock, stones, and God knew what else. Sometimes his foot stabbed into an obstacle and he stumbled forward, reeling as he fought for his balance. His legs propelled him forward, tireless, pacing his steps, but the rest of him was being drained. A man can’t walk like this without burning energy, and the body needs its water to compensate. He knew he had lost between ten and fifteen percent of his normal body weight, that Tamara also suffered. She was alive only because of her superb physical conditioning. He could move with the girl’s weight across his upper body only because of the limbs that generated his movement, and for the first time, hoping he might continue on long enough to reach safety and save their lives—her life—he was grateful that he was no longer the man he had been before his crash in the California desert . . . A man could lose everything in one desert and find it in another . . . His thoughts dwelled on Tamara. He moved by rote, by the memory of cells. He could no longer think rationally of their immediate position. Moving on with Tamara, getting her to safety, dominated. He realized that if he were the same Steve Austin who had been an astronaut and a test pilot, he might still be alive and crawling on his belly rather than walking with this sustained pace. Most men who lose ten percent of their body weight through dehydration die quickly. At fifteen percent, those who are alive are crippled and raving. He raved, all right, but he could still feel and he kept moving, and he felt an accustomed and growing affection for the very things that had once made him curse himself as less than human. His feeling for Tamara was nothing if it wasn’t human. He thought of the little girl whose life he had saved in the flaming bus, and realized with a shock that penetrated his benumbed mind that he had been cured of this obsession with that moment.