by Darrell Bain
The cougar saw that it had been spotted and snarled at them. Booger Bear made a harsh rumbling sound that came from deep within him, but Maria made the strangest sounds of all. She began speaking in a weird patois of English, Spanish, cat sounds and some other noises that none of the others recognized.
The cougar's ears twitched. It flexed its muscles and opened its mouth. Its English was barely understandable but Gary caught it. “Humans go,” it said.
Maria responded again, unintelligible to anyone but the cougar, but it must have understood, for it twisted its position in the fork of the tree and leaped away, hitting the ground and slithering off through the brush with hardly a sound.
Gary and Lea both turned to Maria in wonder. Gary knew what she had done, but not where she had learned it. Enhanced animals did communicate among their kind and between species to a certain extent, using a polyglot of sounds that very few humans could understand without working directly with them.
“Where—” Gary began to ask, then remembered. “Oh! The leopard that saved your life in Mexico. You must have learned from it."
“Yes,” She said.
“What did you say?” Lea asked.
“I told it we were too dangerous to eat, and to watch out for any humans with guns like ours."
“You mean we're the first humans it's seen?"
“Probably not, but I doubt that it's run across very many; otherwise it wouldn't have even thought about attacking three armed humans. Anyway, it's gone and won't bother us again. What's more, if it runs across any other animals and takes a notion, it may warn them, too."
Gary nodded thoughtfully, remembering now how Maria had sometimes talked to Booger in a low voice. He wondered if she had been teaching him the animal patois she had learned. If so, it might prove to be beneficial in the future. But in the meantime, the flies and mosquitoes were driving him crazy. After they all paused to drink from the stream, he led off again, accepting wet feet and legs in order to cross the stream and follow the game trail Booger Bear pointed them to. Fifteen minutes later beams of sunlight became visible through the trees and they came out on the highway they were seeking.
The secondary road had once been a wide two lane thoroughfare, built to handle lots of traffic. Now grass and weeds were growing in cracks and crevices and there were few signs of vehicular travel. It was still open though, and the sunlight falling on it depleted the swarms of insects that had been feeding on them. With a sigh of relief, Gary suggested a halt to refresh themselves.
“I should have thought of canteens,” He said as he sat down with a sigh of relief, but already feeling thirsty again. He didn't notice how quickly Maria appropriated the spot closest to him, insinuating herself between him and Lea.
The truck driver noticed it, though, and smiled to herself at the thought that Maria herself didn't appear to be aware of what she was doing. She had also begun to suspect what Maria's previous profession had been and thought it unusual that she was demonstrating such a proprietary interest toward the geneticist, even though so far, she thought it was probably unconscious on the cat woman's part. “We'll come to more water farther on,” Lea said. This part of Texas is wetter than it used to be and it's not high summer yet. We can find water, but I'm really going to miss being able to change clothes by the time we spend a few days on the road."
Just the thought gave Gary pause. He had spent a lifetime using all the amenities of civilization without giving a second thought to them, even though he knew from reading that many people in the country were suffering from having to desert homes that were very far away from large cities.
“How long do you think it will take to get to Dallas?” Maria asked. She edged closer to Gary until they were almost touching.
“Too damn long for my money, and I don't know what I'll do there now that I've lost my truck,” Lea said. She looked reflective for a moment then added, “If I thought they'd have me I'd try to get into space, despite the overcrowding and synthetic food."
“Would they still take you? Being wanted now and all?"
“Sure. I've talked to lots of floater pilots and they talk to the shuttle pilots. The moon and space stations don't give a damn about your past, nor what laws we might have broken down here. If you're on the list of professions they're after and can pass a psycho exam, they'll take you. They're just interested in making themselves self-sufficient before it's too late."
“Too late for what?"
“They seem to think the world is going to be taken over by the enhanced animals eventually. Hell, they may be right for all I know. Look what's happened to the countryside already."
Gary didn't answer. He was seeing firsthand the result of all the genetic manipulation of animals. Too many had been sold as pets, then abandoned and too many experimental animals had escaped and begun breeding. And almost invariably, they contained the same long life and disease resistant genes that most pet owners had themselves, and insisted on having in their pets he thought glumly. Not to mention that the genetic changes wrought in them were almost all dominant traits. Even when they bred with normal animals, their characteristics prevailed in the offspring. And yet mankind had survived innumerable technological advances. Somehow he thought they would survive this too. What he was more interested in was survival for himself and his companions and his pet. He suddenly noticed that Maria was sitting so close to him that their legs were touching. He smiled at her and got one in return.
* * * *
By afternoon they were miles further on their way, following the secondary road which more or less paralleled the main interstate. By that time, they were becoming worried about finding a place to spend the night. Twice they had gone off on old driveways or once-graveled roads hoping to find a house but neither had worked out. One home had been burned to the ground; the other was occupied by a rat colony. They hastily retreated from it. Gary had heard stories of unwary travelers whose bones had been found picked clean by rats; he didn't want them to end up that way.
Just before dusk, another side road appeared, paved and not quite so grown over as the previous two. Lacking a better alternative, they decided to try it. A short way down the road they came to an abandoned service station and grocery, built of concrete walls and with a slanted roof that had kept debris from piling up and collapsing it. It was surrounded by cracked tarmac and the ruins of old gas pumps. They approached cautiously. The glass of the main entrance had been shattered but the holes did let in the last of the sunlight. It showed a spider web infested interior and a floor cluttered with debris left by looters. There was a strong smell of feral dog or perhaps wolf but the interior was empty.
“Will this do for the night?” Gary asked, his cleanly soul blanching at the prospect of sleeping among such clutter and the sharp odor of unwashed canines.
“It's better than staying out in the open for sure,” Lea said, leading the way inside.
“Dog smell,” Booger Bear said, disgust evident in his voice. He had had dealings with a dog in the past, a bad tempered pet from the neighborhood that was allowed to roam free. Twice it had attempted to break into Gary's yard. The last time he had singed it with a laser beam enough to discourage further encroachments but Booger Bear still remembered the smell.
“They're gone,” Gary told him. He began to clear rubble and spider webs away from a corner of the small shop for a sleeping space.
“Still close,” his pet declared. “Bad dogs."
“We'd better block the door and have someone keep watch tonight,” Maria suggested. To her, the canine odor was closer to wolf than dog, or at least a cross between the two, much like the smells that had sometimes come in on the wind in Mexico where she had lived. Wolves that had been enhanced by well meaning zoologists had made a remarkable comeback and were in the process of decimating the livestock of ranches and farms. The intelligence-enhanced animals bred freely, both among themselves and with feral dogs abandoned by owners or others that had deliberately left homes where they were mistreated. T
hey were beginning to outrun their food supply.
By dark they were settled in, with the door blocked by furniture and sleeping places cleared. Maria had shoved aside the rubble next to Gary's spot in preparation for sleeping there later. She had volunteered for the first watch.
There was little to eat; only some snacks that had been salvaged from the federal van, and nothing at all to drink. Booger Bear declined a portion of crackers that Gary offered him. He climbed easily over their barricade and disappeared for a half hour, then returned dangling a mouse from his jaws, one that had been watching more for owls than a very smart cat. Booger Bear settled down and gnawed happily at his meal. He had seldom tasted the natural food of his species.
Talk was desultory and centered on what to do once they reached the southern environs of Dallas. Gary knew that they could find lodging and food there with the gold they carried, but it was new identities and computers they all needed now if they were to try hiding in the city. They couldn't function long without them in an information oriented society. He knew that he would have a worse time than the others so far as staying safely under cover; his image had been widely spread. For the first time in his life he regretted the genes his parents had selected for him that left him beardless. That would have been the start of a good disguise otherwise. On the other hand, he certainly couldn't complain about the longer life and disease resistance components of his genome. Drinking the untreated water from the stream they had crossed held no dread for him; he knew he wouldn't get sick, and he was fairly certain that Maria and Lea wouldn't either. Almost all altered humans who hadn't changed themselves as adults had those same genes inserted at birth, along with the ones that made them different from “normal” humans.
Night sounds kept Gary awake for a long time. A few he could identify from his work with mammals, but most were totally unfamiliar. Once or twice a cry would cause the Booger Bear's fur to fluff out in alarm and just before he drifted off there was a noise that almost anyone would recognize. The long, drawn out howls of a wolf pack getting ready for a night hunt echoed and resounded again and again. It raised the hair on his neck for long moments but finally the howling died out and his tired body fell into a restless sleep.
Gary came back half-awake with the sensation of Maria's soft young body snuggling up next to him. He moved and she inched backward, practically forcing him to put his arm around her waist. She took his hand and brought it up to her breast and held it there until he responded and curled his hand around it in the age old fashion of sleeping couples. It felt entirely comfortable and in just a little while he was back asleep, followed shortly by Maria.
Across the room, Lea sat up and watched by the moonlight streaming through the broken windows and door; it was her turn to stay awake. She felt somewhat left out at the pairing, but there was no jealousy; she had already sensed that Gary was falling for the cat woman, whether he knew it or not. And her female instinct told her that Maria was staking a claim and wanted no interference, whether she knew it or not too.
* * *
CHAPTER TWELVE
Gary's watch was as undisturbed as the previous ones had been. He spent most of the time thinking of Maria. When awakened, she had slept on contentedly, not even moving as he gently disengaged his hand from her breast, and from her hand that had been covering his. He had no inkling of the thought processes of prostitutes, even those forced into the profession, but he did know something about altered humans, simply from his profession. Some resented the changes made to their bodies that they had never asked for, especially those with the more bizarre manifestations. Others accepted it and tried to live the best they could in a society gradually becoming antagonistic toward them. So far as he could tell, Maria had grown to young adulthood remarkably free of bitterness and was striving fiercely for a chance to live a normal life. He was only sorry that it looked as if he would never be in a position to provide it for her. And that thought made him realize that she was becoming attached to him, and him to her. He admitted to himself that despite having been married, he knew little of the processes of female thought, altered or otherwise, but he did know that the little tug at his heart he felt when he looked at her was a good indication of his feelings.
As he waited for daylight he turned the new emotions over in his mind again and again. By the time the first signs of daylight began to appear, he decided that if she wanted to stay with him he could forget her previous life. It hadn't been her fault. The only thing he worried about was whether she felt as strongly toward him as he was beginning to about her. He hoped so, and he vowed to act in a manner that would let her know how attracted to her he was, but would let her take any further steps. And even then he would be careful. The last thing he wanted was a union formed from her being grateful to him; he wanted it to be natural if it happened at all. That decided he sat contentedly, absently stroking the sleeping cat, his black fur practically invisible in the darkened room now that the moon had set. He smiled over at Maria's shadowy form, just beginning to stir. Perhaps soon he would have another cat in the family, or one with some cat in her at least. A man could do much worse, he thought.
* * * *
Now that they were on the secondary road they made much better time, delayed only by the occasional fallen tree and washed out spots that had formed deep cuts through the tarmac.
Booger Bear was almost ecstatic at being able to run free. He had never been allowed to venture far outside the area of Gary's previous home without supervision and when going any distance, he had always been carried by his human or ridden in the pocket of his jacket designed for him. His nose twitched at all the new sights and smells as he bounded ahead then waited on the humans to catch up. Some of the odors he recognized by instincts patterned into his genes over thousands of years; others were completely new. He could smell the presence of mice in abundance and had to be spoken strongly to in order to keep him from going hunting again. The dog/wolf smell was still strong and he kept a close watch for any that might come close. Rabbit scents were recognizable and he salivated at the memory of the pet rabbits he had seen on occasion. He would hardly have recognized the ones he smelled now. Their heads were large with instilled intelligence and extra large and strong legs, bred into them only recently as a survival trait necessary to live in the wilds among equally intelligent predators. Booger Bear didn't even realize that, strong as his sense of smell was, much of it had been discarded to make room for the genes of intelligence that had been added.
Gary and Maria walked comfortably close together, occasionally holding hands. Gary enjoyed the touch of his fingers on the fine down adorning the back of her hands. There was a breeze and clouds overhead and the promise of an eventual rain in the air. If he wasn't so dirty and sweaty from all the walking he would have felt almost like they were out for a walk in a park, but again, as the day progressed he began to tire. Even with a genome selected by his parents for muscular strength as well as other traits, he simply wasn't used to this kind of steady exertion. Nor he noticed were either of the others, though neither had complained. He saw that even Booger Bear was showing signs of faltering; cats could move fast but they weren't designed for steady walking for long periods. All this made him begin to think of suggesting a break for a few minutes.
It was Booger Bear and Maria whose keen ears first picked up the sound of an aircraft, or more accurately, the sound of an unpowered floater moving air out of its way with a soft whistling noise.
“There's a plane or a floater coming down,” Maria announced, looking to the sky.
“I hope to hell it's not looking for us,” Lea said nervously.
Gary stopped and the others followed suit, scanning the sky in all directions. Soon the floater came into sight. Ordinarily a combination of solar power, ambient magnetic conversion and hydrogen fuel cells kept the craft aloft, but something was obviously wrong with this one. It was flying far too low to simply be crossing a stretch of the wild countryside. It passed overhead and curved around out
of sight, obviously following a turn in the old road, and even more obviously looking for an open space to set down.
“It's in trouble,” Lea said. “There's no sound from the impellers and it was still dropping when it went around the bend."
Gary strained to hear, wanting to know if it was going to crash or make a safe landing, but again it was the enhanced cat who told them what was happening.
“Sky car on road,” Booger Bear said.
“You're sure, Booger?"
“Sure."
“It must have come down easy then,” Lea said. “And I don't think it was looking for us. Did you see the windows? And its size? It's a passenger, not a cargo craft."
“Let's go see what's happened,” Gary suggested, thinking to himself that if they could offer the craft and its crew some help, maybe they could get something to eat and some decent water from them.
No one had an alternative suggestion and they trudged on. Gary estimated that the craft must have come down two or three miles further ahead.
Half an hour later, Booger Bear stopped suddenly in the middle of the pavement, ears tilted forward. He listened intently for a moment, then turned around. “Dogs. Bad dogs. Hurt people."
Gary listened. He thought he might hear something but the wind was behind them and he couldn't be sure.
“I hear it too,” Maria said. “Wolves. From the sound of them, they must be attacking."
“How could wolves attack a floater?” Lea asked, knowing how tough the composite skins of the aircraft were; the freight haulers she drove were made of the same stuff.
“Some of them must have gone outside,” Gary said. “Come on, let's go. Maybe we can help.” He patted his sidearm, checked the laserifle he was carrying to be sure it was ready and began to move, taking long strides.