Anywhere but here

by Jerry Oltion

  "I think every branch that's loose enough to come down this year probably did it already," he said as he continued to saw. "That thing really smacked this tree."

  "It must have a head like a rock," Donna said.

  "Well, that's about how smart it seemed."

  Trent finished the wedge, then went around to the other side and started in on the back-cut. He planned to drop the tree uphill parallel to the stream so he could cut off the top and pull it downhill when he swung it out over the waterfall. He kept his eye on both sides of his cut, making sure he was leaving an even amount of wood to act as a hinge when it started to fall. He had to cut to within a half inch or so before it teetered, then he removed the saw and gave the tree a good push. It held for a second, then let go with a groan and a pop, tipping right toward where he'd intended it to land. The top made a loud swoosh as it fanned down through the air, then the trunk thumped to the ground with a deep, bass boom. Arrows flew every which way when the tuft at the top slapped down, rattling down like pick-up sticks.

  "Let's get under cover for a few minutes in case that guy comes back to investigate," Trent said, leading the way to one of the leafy trees, where they could climb up in its branches if they had to get out of the way. They leaned up against its trunk in the relative dryness beneath its canopy and watched the rain come down.

  "Thanks," Donna said after a minute or so.

  "For what?"

  "For gettin' me away from that damned computer for a while."

  He nodded. "It was definitely eatin' on you." He put his arm around her and pulled her up against him. "Tell you the truth, right now I don't care if we ever do get home. We've got food and water and shelter, and in a week or two we'll have power enough to drive around if we need to, and the fridge will work again and we can cook on the stove if we want. A person can't really ask for much more than that."

  "Not for the moment, anyway," Donna admitted.

  "Not ever," Trent said. "Anything more is just luxury. Hell, the pickup and the stove and the refrigerator are luxury. We could probably get by with a tent and a pocket knife if we really had to."

  "And a condom and a wedding ring," Donna said playfully.

  "Don't need that with all these arrows layin' around." He tilted his head back and looked up into the leaves overhead. They made a kaleidoscope of green and gray against the sky. "Life is real here. It's all so . . . immediate. Rain and rocks and trees and streams. We go home and we're going to be right back in the middle of all the crap we were tryin' to get away from, only worse because we can't just go on livin'

  the way we were now that we know what our government is really doing to people." Donna shifted uncomfortably. "What can we do, though? We'd make pathetic revolutionaries. You could probably assassinate the president if you put your mind to it, but that wouldn't stop anything. You'd have to knock off everyone down to the White House janitor before you got a replacement president who wouldn't just keep the same system in place."

  "Killing people ain't the way to make the world a better place," Trent said. "That's the kind of thinkin' that got the country in the mess it's in."

  "What, then?"

  "I don't know. That's why I'm kind of happy just to hang out here for a while." Neither one of them had much to say after that. They waited a few more minutes, and when the buffaloceros still hadn't returned they went back out to the downed tree and lopped its top off. They moved over to the second tree that the buffaloceros had head-butted, dropped that one uphill, too, and cut it to the same length as the first one. Then they shoved them both out over the pool below the waterfall, making sure they stuck out just far enough to mount the motor on. There was enough length left on the bank to hold them in place while they hauled rocks up from the stream bed to weigh them down. That was an all-day job right there. It took a lot of rocks to hold the logs down under the kind of weight the motor and a tire would put on the free ends. Trent tested their progress from time to time by walking out on the span over the water, edging out a few inches at a time until the logs started to overbalance.

  "Don't you go falling in," Donna told him. "It's too damned cold today to get wet." Trent was already pretty well soaked from rain and sweat, but he didn't want to fall into the pool either. Fortunately the logs were as non-skid as sandpaper from the little pockets where arrow-branches had broken free. He couldn't have slipped if he'd wanted to.

  They broke for lunch, hauling an armload of arrows down to the camper on their way, then after they'd eaten the last of the ham sandwiches and chased them with a beer, Donna sat down at the table with the computer again while Trent went outside and piled more rocks on the logs. He didn't give her any trouble about it this time. She did have to spend some time at it if she was going to make any progress.

  It took another couple hours of rock-hauling to make the counterweight heavy enough to support the motor. It would have been easier if the stream wasn't running high, but Trent had to scrounge his rocks from the upper bank, and his supply grew steadily farther away as he worked. At last he called it good, and went back to the pickup to remove the motor.

  The ground was soaking wet, even beneath the tree. He considered waiting for the rainstorm to blow over, but this felt like the kind of rain that could go on for days, and he knew he would go nuts with anticipation if he couldn't test his idea before the day was out. So he took the tarp off the woodpile and laid it on the ground in front of the left rear wheel and slid under the pickup with his tools to begin removing the wheel, motor and all.

  It wasn't all that difficult. The motor was mounted to a couple of swing arms that kept it horizontal throughout the suspension's range of travel, and the disk brake and the tire were both mounted to the same hub at the end of the axle that stuck out of the motor. He jacked up the truck to take the weight off it, supporting the jack on a flat rock scrounged from an outcrop at the head of the meadow and backing it up with a length of firewood wedged in next to it, then he simply loosened the bolts on the swing arms until the motor came free.

  He left the tire mounted so it would support part of the motor's weight. That way he could move it by just lifting the other end of the motor and rolling the whole works along, but he didn't put it out on the logs yet. He still needed to figure out what to do for paddles, so the water would actually turn the wheel. He had plenty of arrows. He supposed he could tie a bunch of them to the sides of the tire so the ends stuck out past the tread, and then tie beer cans with the tops cut off to the ends of the arrows. They wouldn't hold much water, though, and when the motor was in braking mode, it would resist turning pretty hard. He would probably need something that held more water, like hollowed-out chunks of log. That would probably provide enough resistance, but it would be a lot of work to hollow them out. He needed something that was hollow already, and would hold some serious water. A dozen slo-mo shells would do it, but the rising water had washed all the debris off the gravel bar where he'd gotten his helmet, and there weren't any more dead ones in the meadow. There weren't any live ones there today, either. They must not like flopping through mud. He would have to go out hunting for them to find any at all, live or dead.

  The idea of killing a dozen animals just to provide scoops for his waterwheel wasn't all that appealing, either. He decided he would rather walk down the valley a ways, following the stream and checking out any open ground he found along the way. It might even be easier to find what he needed today than on a dry day. Any slo-mos he found out in the open today were most likely going to be dead already, so at least he wouldn't have to keep flipping them over like he had done yesterday. He had taken off his armor while he was under the truck. Now he put it on again and stuck his head inside the camper. "I'm going for a walk downstream to look for empty slo-mo shells. Back in an hour or two."

  Donna had wrapped herself up in a blanket, but with the blue light from the screen on her face, she looked cold even so. She looked up and said, "Okay. Take the rifle."

  "It's too rainy to be carryin' that aro
und. I've got the pistol; that'll do."

  "All right. Be careful."

  He needed something to carry the empty shells in, assuming he found any. He tried to think what would work, but the only big container they had in the camper was a five-gallon water bucket, and that would only carry three or four slo-mo shells. They had some plastic garbage bags, but those probably wouldn't hold up to the weight. They didn't have a duffel bag or a laundry bag or anything like that. It was starting to sink in just how little equipment they did have, way out here in the ass end of nowhere. They had a tarp. He could throw whatever he found in the middle of that and gather the ends to make a sack. That would have to do. He pulled it out from under the pickup, folded it as small as it would go, and set off to see what he could find downstream.

  28

  The days were definitely longer here. He had hauled rocks for a couple of hours alter lunch, and spent at least two more hours taking the wheel motor off the pickup, but the sky was still as bright as ever. That wasn't all too bright today, but the gray didn't have that soon-to-be-dark cast to it that it got at the end of a day. Trent told himself he would turn around at the first sign of darkness, or at the end of an hour, whichever came first. He didn't think he'd forget; he was already growing hungry. They might have to start eating four meals a day if they stayed here for long.

  The stream was nearly twice as big now as it had been yesterday. He could hear rocks banging along in the current nearly continuously. Chunks of wood sailed past, bobbing over rapids and swirling around in the pools. He kept his eye out for passing helmets, but none came along while he was looking. He did find one at the edge of the bank just a hundred yards or so downstream from camp. He picked it up and looked at the bottom, saw that it was still intact, and set it back down, telling himself he would pick it up on his way back if it hadn't moved by then.

  His boots squelched with every step. He stopped long enough to pour the water out and wring his socks dry, but within twenty minutes he was squelching again. The ground was so wet, he might as well have been walking in the creek.

  The forest wasn't as dense as a mountain forest on Earth. There were wide swaths of open ground between trees, giving Trent a good view of the whole valley as he walked. He zigzagged between helmet-shaped rocks, finding a couple of empty shells and quite a few actual stones, plus a couple of still-living slo-mos that were just weathering out the storm on patches of relatively dry ground. That gave him the idea of looking up on the slopes, where he found a lot more live ones, but none dead. Apparently sick ones or old ones flopped downhill rather than uphill with their last effort. He went back to the stream and started scanning the bends for logjams. That's where the shell he was using for a helmet had come from; it stood to reason that there would be more of them in similar places, if he could just find one that hadn't washed out.

  He kept checking the sky for cupids, too, but he hadn't seen any all day. If they didn't hunt in the rain, they were going to be hungry when the weather broke; he would have to remember to keep an even closer watch then.

  He didn't spot any more buffaloceros, either. Even thing seemed to be hunkering down, waiting for better weather. After a while, just for the sake of science, Trent crept up to a big clump of bushes and started poking around under it with an arrow, and he scared out half a dozen different kinds of lizards and rodents and even a bird. This one was a lot smaller than a cupid, with bright yellow scales under its wings that flashed like strobe lights as it fluttered off through the rain toward another bush. There seemed to be plenty of small game around, and if the buffaloceros they'd seen wasn't the only one of its kind, then there was big game, too, but he wasn't finding any predators other than cupids. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing from his point of view, but ecologically it didn't make a whole lot of sense. Where there was a food supply, you would expect something to evolve to eat it. Unless the armor to keep them safe from cupids cut too heavily into their ability to hunt. That would make cupids the top predator in the food chain, but there didn't seem to be enough of them for that. The more he thought about it, the more the back of his neck began to tingle. Were there wolves out there in the mist, slinking along from tree to tree just out of sight, pacing him until they were ready to attack? Or was there some kind of Jekyll/Hyde thing going on with the slo-mos, and they would suddenly sprout teeth and legs and swarm down upon him by the thousands? It seemed unlikely, but people were finding crazy ecologies all over the galaxy, and not always returning home to tell the tale. He told himself he was just being paranoid, but all the same he began flinching at every sound, and making 360-degree sweeps of his surroundings every few hundred feet. The two slo-mo shells that he had collected so far seemed awfully light booty to be risking his life for, except that he needed them if he and Donna were ever going to get back home.

  At last he came upon a logjam that hadn't been swept away by the rising water, and there in its lee were eight slo-mo shells. Two of them were pretty badly decomposed, but Trent fished them out and tossed them in his tarp anyway. Maybe he could seal them up with duct tape well enough to make them work.

  That one windfall brought his total up to ten shells, which made him feel a lot better about his expedition. He considered going on to look for another logjam, but the back of his neck was still tingling, and he was starting to wonder just how many shells he needed, anyway. Twelve would be easiest to mount, because they would be straight across from one another at the points of two hexagons, but he could make do with ten if he had to. It wasn't like the watershed had to be perfectly balanced. He slung the tarp full of shells over his shoulder like Santa Claus with his sack and started upstream again. At least he didn't have to worry about getting lost. There weren't any forks in the stream; if he just followed it uphill, he would eventually run into the pickup.

  He heard a rustle of leaves behind him and turned, expecting to see nothing like the last hundred times, but there was a flash of motion in a tree maybe thirty feet away, and a big cat dropped off one of the low-hanging branches. At least it looked like a cat in the body; long and slender on four supple legs, with a sinuous tail at least three feet long lashing back and forth behind it. Its head was more like a huge rat's, with a long snout full of teeth and two beady little eyes set close together above it. Its ears were big for its size, and rounded, like Mickey Mouse ears, but there was nothing funny about the way it moved. It wasn't attacking, but it was definitely advancing on him, completely unconcerned that he could see it. Why now? he wondered. If this thing had been stalking him, as he suspected it had, why had it chosen now to reveal itself? Maybe because it thought he had already spotted it? He had just reversed direction.

  He dropped the tarp and pulled the pistol from beneath his rain jacket. His hands were cold and wet, but he made sure he had a good grip and held the gun steady with his left under his right while he cocked the hammer.

  "Stop," he said, but there was no volume in his voice. He cleared his throat and said again, "Stop right there."

  The creature did, but only for a second. It tilted its head to the side in obvious puzzlement, then growled a deep, almost subsonic rumble and took another step closer.

  "Stop!" Trent hollered, but this time it ignored him.

  This creature was at least as heavy as him, and all muscle and teeth. If he let it get close enough to pounce, he was dead. He had no idea whether or not it was intelligent, or whether he could kill it with a

  .45 pistol, but he was rapidly running out of options.

  The tarp had spilled its contents when he dropped it. One of the slo-mo shells had rolled right next to his feet, balancing upside down on its rounded top. Without stopping to think about it, Trent got a toe under the shell and lofted it at the advancing cat, then kicked another to tumble along the ground toward it while the first was still in the air. He bent down and grabbed another in his left hand, hurling it awkwardly after the first two, but it wasn't necessary. The creature had already turned and fled back to its tree, leaping up the trunk an
d disappearing into its canopy as if it had never been there. Trent's hands were shaking so bad he didn't trust himself to lower the hammer on the .45 without slipping and firing it by mistake. He just slid it into the holster, then retrieved the slo-mo shells, keeping a wary eye on the tree as he did. The shells all had the same chewed-out hole in the bottom that the ones he had turned into helmets did, and now he thought he knew where those holes had come from. Those rodent teeth would be great for gnawing through a shell.

  If that's all the rat-cat ate, then it wouldn't have to be so sleek and fast. Trent bet it ate its share of lizards and rodents and whatever else there was around here, too. It might even go for buffaloceros if it hunted in packs. Trent didn't know if it had been seriously considering him as food or if it was just curious, but he didn't want to find out the hard way.

  He steered wide around the leafy trees on his way back to camp, imagining cats in every one and hearing them with every noise. The stream suddenly became a liability as well as a guide, because the closer he walked to it, the more its rush of water masked any sounds that might warn him of another attack.

  It was a long walk back, and much steeper than he had remembered it. He found the slo-mo he had left by the bank still in the same spot, so he picked it up and added it to his collection, but this one was still full even if it was dead, and it made the bag a lot heavier. By the time he finally saw the camper he was out of breath and sweating like a horse, but he called out to Donna as soon as he got within shouting range, "Hey, are you okay in there?"