Anywhere but here

by Jerry Oltion

  Donna crawled in first, and he slid in beside her, ready to sleep, but she said, "I'm still wide awake. Do you mind if I read for a while?"

  When they had first gotten married, he couldn't sleep when she did that, but he had long since gotten used to it. "No, that's all right," he said. "Stay up as long as you want." She reached across him for the computer and woke it up from sleep mode, then switched out the flashlight.

  "What are you readin'?" he asked.

  "What do you think?" she said, holding the computer sideways so he could see the screen full of equations.

  His stomach rumbled again, and he had to fight to keep the macaroni and cheese down. "Good idea," he said.

  He couldn't sleep after all. It wasn't Donna's reading; it was his stomach, which had never recovered from the whiff of slo-mo guts. At least that's what he hoped was the problem. They had used the local water for hot chocolate and to boil the noodles. If there was something wrong with that, too, then they were in even worse trouble than if it was just the food.

  He struggled for over an hour to keep his stomach in check, but the nausea just grew worse until he finally realized he had about thirty seconds to choose his spot. He tossed off the covers and bolted from the camper, running a dozen steps out into the meadow toward the trench they'd dug for a latrine before the cramps doubled him over and he fell to his knees, heaving his supper all over the ground.

  "Trent!" Donna yelled from the doorway. "Are you all right?" The flashlight beam caught him just as he heaved again, then the beam wobbled and he heard her take a couple of steps before she, too, lost her dinner.

  For a moment, Trent thought throwing up might be the worst of it, but then he realized that his trouble wasn't just in the front end. He barely had time to get his feet out of the way before his bowels cut loose, too. He heaved and groaned until he was sure he had no insides left, and then he dry-heaved some more. He could hear Donna doing the same behind him. They would both be sitting ducks if there were any night predators out there in the darkness, but at the moment he would have welcomed the release. The rain was like little ice picks on his back. He finally managed to straighten up and take it on his shoulders, then after a couple of deep breaths he struggled to his feet and staggered back to the camper. Donna was a silhouette on her knees off to the right, the flashlight dropped on the ground beside her.

  "Don't come near me," she said.

  Trent couldn't help but laugh. "Don't worry, I'm as rank as you are. I'm just getting us something to clean ourselves up with."

  "Oh. All right."

  He leaned inside without actually going in, felt for the paper towel roll under the cabinet, and tore off a long strip of towels. He tore that in two and gave half to Donna, then went back out into the darkness to clean himself. He felt surprisingly better now, despite the rain robbing the warmth from his body, better enough to get the shovel and bury their mess in the latrine.

  Back in the camper, they dried themselves off and crawled into bed again, holding each other close for warmth.

  "Do you think it was the water or the smell of that meat?" Donna asked.

  "I don't know," Trent admitted. "It could have been fumes from the fire, for that matter."

  "I suppose it could have. It's going to be a cold time if we can't start a fire."

  "I'm more worried about it bein' the water," Trent said. He wondered what they could do about it if it was, and he realized there was one thing he should do yet tonight. He sighed and said, "Damn. I've got to go back outside and rig up the tarp and a bucket to catch rainwater while we've still got the chance. We don't have any idea how long this rain will last."

  She apparently didn't like the idea of going back outside any more than he did, but after a few seconds she said, "You're right. I'll help you.''

  They got dressed this time, and Donna carried the light and the pistol while Trent tied two corners of the tarp to the side of the camper that stuck out closest to the edge of the tree's overhang. He angled it downward and tied the other corners to two arrows stuck in the ground, then positioned their five-gallon water bucket under the low end where rainwater would run off the tarp into it. When he was satisfied that it would actually collect water, they went back inside and crawled into bed again. They were both shivering by now, and Trent's hands were so cold he didn't want to touch Donna with them, but it was pretty hard to snuggle without touching. Her hands were just as bad, so he finally said, "Okay, on the count of three, let's just grab each other and get it over with. One, two—yow!" She had already put her hands on his back and stalled rubbing.

  "Why drag it out?" she asked.

  "All right, woman, you asked for it." He laid his cold hands on her back, too. She flinched, but didn't scream, which was a good thing since her mouth was right next to his ear. The relative warmth of her skin under his hands offset the feeling of ice-cold fingers on his own back, and after a minute or so her touch actually started feeling pretty good. That's when she put her feet on his legs.

  "Gah!" He jerked away, then forced them back into contact. "Damn, how can you be so warm on one end and so cold on the other?"

  "Talent, I guess," she said.

  He shivered. "When we get the batteries charged up, let's go someplace warm."

  "Deal."

  Provided they lived through the night, he thought, but he didn't say that out loud. 30

  He woke ravenous. It was dark as a coal mine in the camper, without even the pale moons of the air vents that had greeted him yesterday morning, but he felt completely slept out. He was warm again, and so was Donna. Whatever had made him sick last night was over. He felt ready to get to work on the generator and start-charging the batteries.

  He slid out of bed and found his clothes by feel. The stuff he'd worn yesterday was still wet, but he was going to be working in the creek today anyway, so he put on the same things, wincing at the cold shock against his warm skin. He dressed in the dark, patted the counter until he found the flashlight, and slipped outside. There was just enough light to see the shapes of things, but no details. He didn't know if the light was the first glimmer of morning or just starlight behind the clouds, but he didn't care. He was too awake to go back to sleep.

  He flipped on the flashlight and swept the beam around in a wide arc, then up into the tree. No wild animals waited to pounce on him.

  The temperature couldn't have been over forty degrees. He could see his breath. It was still raining, but he bet there was snow higher up the mountain. He went around to the side of the camper to check on his water collection system and found the bucket tipped over. Dammit. They needed that water. He wondered what had gone for it with the stream right there. The rat-cat, maybe, or a buffaloceros. He didn't see any tracks, so it was most likely the cat. He looked around once more, righted the bucket and set it under the drip, then went back inside.

  Breakfast was an apple and a couple handfuls of Cheerios, found by feel and eaten quietly in the dark so he wouldn't wake Donna. He could have eaten the whole box of cereal, but this was the only one, and he didn't know how much of their other food they were going to be able to eat. They had lots of noodles and macaroni and stuff like that, but only a case of bottled water to cook it in. Until they were sure they could drink the stream water, or could collect enough rainwater to make do, he didn't want to use up the only food they knew they could eat.

  He gathered up his tools and slipped back outside. It was growing lighter. He could see the tree trunk now, and the dark spot of ground where they had had their campfire. There were a bunch of slo-mos under the tree, too, or so it looked until he looked for the shells he had gathered yesterday and didn't find them beside the truck where he'd left them. Something had been rooting through them, probably looking for anything edible. He would have bet anything it was the cat. He swept the flashlight around again, checking out the tree carefully and walking all around the pickup, shining the light outward all the way around. He belatedly thought to check underneath the truck, too, and up on top,
but there was nothing there, either. Whatever had checked out their camp, it was gone now.

  He sat down on his camp stool and began busting the flat bottoms out of slo-mo shells. It was slow going, but he took his time, prying pieces off a little at a time with pliers and being careful not to weaken the helmet part of the shells. He had done half of them by the time the sky grew light enough to call it morning, and by the time Donna poked her head outside the camper, he was done.

  "How long have you been up?" she asked.

  "'Bout an hour."

  "Did you eat?"

  "Yeah. Go ahead and get yourself something."

  "All right. Want me to make you something hot to drink?"

  A cup of coffee would be great, but she would have to start a fire to do that. "No thanks. I want to get these mounted and get this bugger generatin' power before I take a break." She gave him a dubious look, but she didn't say anything; just went back into the camper. He got to work boring holes in the slo-mo shells; four each, big enough to pass a parachute shroud line through. That took almost as long as chipping away the shells had, but he kept at it until he got them. Then he put on his helmet and shoulder armor and rolled the motor out to the logs he'd prepared yesterday. He had to splash across the stream with it, but with the tire taking most of the weight it wasn't that hard. Getting it up the other bank was tougher, but he only had to get it high enough to swing the motor over the logs, then scoot it back out over the pool until he reached the end and could swing the tire around even with the waterfall. He gingerly let the logs take the entire weight, testing to make sure his counterweight of rocks would hold, but the logs barely even flexed, so he tied the motor down and got to work tying arrows and shells onto it. He didn't trust the logs to support the motors weight plus his own, so he worked from the rocks at the head of the waterfall, leaning out to the tire and running the rope through the slots in the wheel. He made a loop around each arrow shaft, then cinched it tight around the knobby tread so it wouldn't slip, leaving about a foot of arrow sticking out past the tread on either side of the tire, then he tied a slo-mo shell to each pair of arrows so it would hold water when it was on one side of the tire's rotation, then dump it and rise up empty on the other side. The first ones were easy, but when he got half of them done, he saw the flaw in his plan: he couldn't do the others without the ones he'd already done sticking into the falling water. They were definitely going to work to generate power, because he couldn't keep the wheel from spinning back around every time one of them caught some water.

  He had to untie the motor and swing it around so the shells couldn't fill up, tie on all the arrows and shells, then swing it back into place. It immediately started spinning, and he let out a wild "Woo-hoo!" when it did.

  Donna came to the camper door and started clapping when she saw what he'd done. "Way to go, cowboy!" she yelled.

  "It ain't done yet," he said, but it didn't take much longer to finish. He went back to the pickup and pulled one of the two batteries from its cradle under the hood, unplugged the patch cord between it and the motor he'd removed, and carried them back to the logs, where he mounted the battery next to the motor, tying it down good so curious rat-cats couldn't knock it into the water. Then he plugged the battery into the motor's control box. The wheel slowed and the logs dipped downward a couple inches when he made the last connection, and he thought for a second that they would topple all the way into the pool, but the counterweight held, and the battery's charge light went on. Donna had come with him to the edge of the stream. "Now you can cheer," he told her.

  "Yay!" she said, and she gave him a big hug.

  They watched the waterwheel spin. The ammeter was mounted in the pickup's dashboard, so he had no idea how fast the battery was charging, but he counted revolutions of the wheel and figured it was doing maybe thirty rpm, which would be about three hundred feet a minute . . . which was pretty slow. He could walk that fast. Charging a battery that could drive a pickup a couple hundred miles at that rate would take a while.

  The motor was waterproof, but he wasn't so sure about the battery, so he got a garbage bag and covered it with that, tying the bag down tight. He couldn't see the charge light now, but he could check it from time to time. It wasn't like he had a whole lot else to do now.

  Donna still did. Now the entire weight of their situation rested on her. She went back into the camper and started in on the computer again, grimly determined to solve their navigation problem by the time the batteries were charged.

  Trent read over her shoulder for a while, trying to piece together what she was learning, but it might as well have been in French for all the good it did him. He watched her draw circles and triangles on the screen and call up the calculator program to crunch numbers, and he even recognized the numbers, but he couldn't follow what she was doing with them.

  He was afraid to distract her with a bunch of questions, but even so she finally said, "Go whittle on a stick or something. You're making me nervous."

  It was actually a relief to be let off the hook. He'd felt obliged to help if he could, but he'd known as well as she had that he wasn't going to magically figure out where they were. So he went back outside and watched his waterwheel spin, still pleased with himself about that, at least. The slo-mo shells dipping into the fall made a satisfying sploosh when they filled, and when they emptied out at the bottom of their arc they spread little skittering water balls across the pool. The logs supporting the motor flexed a little with each refill, their soft creak adding to the sound of flowing water. After a couple days of non-stop work, it was hard to believe that he could just stand there and watch more work being done without him. This must have been how the first guy to hoist a sail felt, suddenly freed of paddling everywhere. The rain showed no sign of letting up. It wasn't coming down hard; just steady. He checked on the collection bucket and was happy to see that it already had a couple of inches in the bottom, and while he was at it he pounded arrows into the ground around it to keep animals from knocking it over again. Then he went out with his camp saw and gathered some more firewood. They might not use it, but they might, and he'd much rather haul wood during the day than after dark. He spent a while inspecting the dents and scratches the truck had picked up over the course of their travels, and in a what-the-hell mood he went ahead and washed it, using their cook pot for a wash bucket and a sponge from under the sink. It looked pretty good when he was done, if you didn't look too close and ignored the missing wheel.

  He found the meteorite in the glove box while he was cleaning out the cab. Holding it in his hand was a surprising comfort. It wasn't from Earth, or even from the solar system, but it was from someplace a lot closer to it than here. So was the pickup and everything in it, but for some reason the meteorite reminded him more of home than any of the man-made stuff. If they ever made it back, he would have a belt buckle or something made from a slice of it.

  Donna was still at the computer when he went in around mid-day to check on her, but she wasn't studying orbits anymore. She had a star map program on the screen, and she had a piece of paper on the table beside the computer, on which she had drawn a big circle with little dots scattered around one tiny portion of it.

  "What's that?" he asked.

  He was half afraid she would tell him to go take another hike, but she just looked up and said, "The galaxy. I decided to hit the problem from another angle. Like you said yesterday, we know what direction we were headed in relation to Earth when we took the big jump, but I didn't know what direction that was in galactic terms, so I mapped it out. I figured I might get lucky and it would turn out to be a direction that didn't require a lot of math to figure out a velocity change."

  "It makes a difference?"

  She nodded. "As near as I can tell, if we went straight out or straight in or straight along the tangent—that's this line that points the same direction that the galaxy rotates—then it would be fairly easy to guess our distance from the difference in velocity.

  "So were y
ou?"

  "Was I what?"

  "Lucky."

  She made a face. "No. We went about nineteen and a half degrees inward from the tangent. That means we went toward the core a little bit as well as across. That's two variables instead of just one." The lines on her drawing were starting to make sense now. "So how far are we talking, anyway?" he asked. "I mean, if we went straight in or out or across?"

  "What difference does it make? We didn't."

  "But it might still give us a better idea of how far we came than we've got now." She sighed theatrically and said, "Well, if Earth is going half a million miles an hour this way," and she pointed to one of the arrows she'd drawn on the galaxy, "then in order to gain another third of a million, which is what we had to make up, we would have to go two-thirds of the way farther out from the core. Or two-thirds closer in, depending on whether we had to speed up or slow down. That's assuming that the galaxy is a solid disk, which it isn't. The outside spins slower than the inside, which is just the opposite of what you'd get if it was."

  "So what does that mean?"

  "It means my brain hurts. I've got to figure out how to calculate a star's actual orbit around the galaxy, and then I've got to figure out how much difference in velocity there is between two stars partway around it and at different distances from the center."

  Trent looked at the drawing. Two-thirds of the way from Earth to the core of the galaxy? That was a long damned ways. The entire region of space that their star map could recognize was probably about the size of one of those dots Donna had drawn. If they couldn't figure out an accurate distance back to that patch of stars, then knowing the right angle to aim for wouldn't help them a bit. He hated this math stuff. It made him feel helpless. He had always preferred just jumping into things and figuring them out by trial and error until he got 'em right, and most times that was all it took, but that didn't seem to be the way it worked here. It was doubly frustrating because they knew which direction to go. All they really needed was a reasonable guess as to how far, and they'd be in business.