On the final day on the Kanawha, they came to a large group of boulders and snags blocking the river. Again, they elected to portage around the blockage rather than take their chances.
It was at this point they entered the Ohio River, the largest of the rivers feeding the Mississippi.
“Smooth sailing ahead, folks,” Karen grandly announced.
“Yeah, until we hit the falls,” Bill said.
“Falls? On the Ohio?” Karen asked.
“Yeah. Don’t you know about them? The river drops a chunk with a series of falls that last, oh, about two or three miles. On Earth, they’re called the Falls of the Ohio. I don’t think they’re as bad as what we’ve already gone through, but then again, we weren’t expecting some of this stuff.”
“Where are these falls?”
“Uh, I think around Louisville.”
“What’s Louisville?” Meri asked.
“A city on the Ohio,” Karen answered absently, apparently in thought.
40
Bill was surprised at how large the Ohio River was. As they drifted along, he commented on this.
“Didn’t you know the Ohio’s actually got more flow than the Mississippi?” Meri asked.
Bill shrugged, his life vest rising with the movement.
“Hey, I may be a geographer, but that doesn’t mean I studied a lot about physical geography. Remember, I’m a spatial analyst, not a physical geographer.”
“But didn’t they teach this kind of stuff at your school?”
Thinking back to his days in the Geography Department at the University of Washington, Bill was made aware, once again, by his more-educated wife, that the education he got was rather slim on geographical features, and long on analysis. Apparently, Hayek University was a bit more serious about geographic features and knowing places. Then again, she had a degree in Exploration Science while his degree focused mostly on cultural geography related to Earth.
“Not really. Guess I’ve still got a lot to learn.”
Meri humphed and turned back to facing forward, keeping an eye out for something to kill and eat.
While they still had plenty of ammunition left, Meri continued to hunt with her bow, rightfully arguing that they didn’t know what nasties might appear, and she’d rather use a rifle than a bow on an attacking Smilodon or lion (or cougar, Bill thought). Bill had taken to fishing off the side of the canoe. It was at this point he felt a bite and started reeling in the line on the YoYo. He had given up using his fly rod on the big river, not risking having it break with a monster catfish.
Sure enough, after a several minute fight, Bill brought a large catfish up to the side of the canoe. Being careful not to let its spikes poke him, he lifted the fish out of the water and into the boat, then hit it over the head with a heavy stick he kept in the vessel for exactly that purpose. At this, Meri looked back, saw the stunned fish, and promptly vomited over the side of the canoe.
“You okay?” Bill asked, after his wife finished wiping her mouth. She nodded and said “Yeah. Just having some stomach problems, that’s all.”
By now Bill was becoming a bit suspicious. “You sure you’re not pregnant?”
Meri looked at him in surprise. “No.” She shook her head. “Ain’t possible. I’m on birth control. Remember?”
He turned to Karen. “You’ve been pregnant before. What are some other signs?”
Karen raised her eyebrows and placed her paddle across the canoe’s gunwale. Meri looked back in shock. Leaning forward, Karen said, “Well, for most women, the first clue is skipping a period. But, since we’re all on birth control implants, which can cause irregularities, skipping one wouldn’t even be noticed. For me, it was tender boobs.”
Looking past Bill to Meri, Karen asked, “Boobs tender?”
Bill turned back to Meri. Eyes wide, Meri nodded.
“It’s possible,” Karen said. “Wouldn’t be the first time, and I doubt it’ll be the last.” Then she got a big, shit-eating grin on her face. “Congrats!”
Bill was in shock. Looking at his wife, he could see she was, too.
“I can’t be pregnant,” she protested. “I’ve got birth control implants,” she repeated.
“Honey, those things are only effective 99.99 percent of the time. Looks like you’re that rare point zero one percent,” Karen said, resuming her paddling while maintaining her grin.
Bill continued to stare at Meri who had developed a worried look.
Slowly, a smile crept across his face. “Hey, we’re gonna be parents.”
It only took a couple of days to make it to the falls of the Ohio. During that time Meri continued to have morning nausea. They all finally, and in Meri’s case, reluctantly, agreed that she was, indeed, pregnant. Bill was both secretly pleased and worried. He wasn’t sure if he was truly ready for fatherhood, particularly if it involved being stranded on Planet 42 with no hope of rescue. But having a child with Meri also thrilled him, knowing that it was definitely a sign of commitment on both their parts, despite the unplanned nature of her pregnancy.
As they approached the falls, Karen decided to have them portage around them rather than risk any accidents. “One was enough,” she said, glancing at Bill’s broken leg.
Just like the prior portage, Bill wasn’t able to do much other than hobble on his makeshift crutch. Fortunately, he was able to carry some of his primary survival gear along with his rifle. Of course, this didn’t include his backpack, which was left at the takeout point for one of the women to retrieve. Once again, he provided rear security, but this time his shooting skills weren’t needed, and they managed to complete the portage without incident. At the end, Bill was exhausted. Using the crutch while still maintaining security over three miles of rough terrain was more than his body was ready for.
While Bill rested with the canoe, Meri and Karen headed back to the takeout point to get Bill’s pack. Karen, being taller than Meri, had left her pack with Bill just in case the two women didn’t return.
Bill no longer felt nervous being alone in the wilderness. As he sat by the canoe, rifle in his lap, looking around for any threats, he wondered why that was so. He suspected it was a combination of his being an outdoorsy type growing up, along with the fact that he had managed to survive as long as he had during the extended trek. Christ, he thought, here it is September. Three months and thousands of miles, and we’ve still got thousands more to go. Man, I hope we make it there before it gets too cold. Bill’s thoughts turned to the upcoming leg of the journey.
Okay, so if we go up the Mississippi, we can take the Missouri or the Platte. Which one will get us closer to the gate? The gate that allowed their survey craft to access Planet 42 was located on Bowman Field on Sacajawea Base on Hayek. That roughly correlated with the location of the little town of Selah, Washington, on Earth. So, if we go up the Missouri, we can make our way up the Lewis. At this point, Bill stopped thinking and chuckled to himself. Just like Lewis and Clark in the 1800s. Ha.
Of course, they would need to cross the Rocky Mountains in winter, most likely. He estimated it would take them until the end of the month at the earliest, but more likely late October before they made it to the headwaters of the Platte or Lewis Rivers, both of which began in the Rockies.
Cross the Rockies or stay on the plains? It was a question he wasn’t quite prepared to answer. Luckily, it wasn’t his decision; that fell to Karen, as the crew’s commander.
Within a couple of hours, the women had returned with Bill’s backpack. While they had been gone, Bill had also gathered some edible plants and started a stew with Meri’s pot, using some of the cooked venison from the night before. Meri had wrapped it in leaves to preserve it as much as possible, but that didn’t stop Bill from sniffing it before throwing it into the pot. Bad enough Meri’s barfing every morning, he thought. Last thing I need is to have her come down with food poisoning and be puking all the damned time.
Upon their arrival back at the impromptu camp, Meri gave Bill a quick kis
s and said, “Hey, look who can cook.”
“Ha, ha,” Bill retorted. “I’ll have you know I’ve been cooking since I was a kid.”
Karen looked around and said, “Yeah, we might as well set up camp here for the night. Don’t know if we’ll find another spot as good before we hit the Mississippi.” She set out the trip wires, Meri set up hammocks, and Bill continued cooking and keeping watch.
It wasn’t long before the food was ready. The three attacked it like ravenous dire wolves. Had this been home, Bill doubted he would have been able to eat so much, but the amount of energy they were expending on this trip was more than he was used to. “Y’know, I read somewhere that the guys from the original Corps of Discovery ate about five thousand calories a day and didn’t gain any weight.”
Karen looked down at her own body, then back up to Bill and Meri. “Considering how much weight we’ve all lost, I don’t doubt it.”
Other than having to tighten his belt a bit over the past several months, Bill hadn’t really noticed any weight loss. As a matter of fact, he thought he had put some weight on, particularly on his arms, chest, and shoulders. And it looked like the two women had done the same.
“I don’t think we lost weight, so much as lost any spare fat we had,” Meri said. “Think about it. We’re eating a lot, we’re working a lot, but we’ve all packed on some muscle.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I think most of the fat I lost was here.” Karen gestured to her breasts.
“I’m thinking I’m going the opposite way, there,” Meri said, looking down at her own chest.
“No doubt. Wait until you’re near term, then they become huge.”
“Well, I hope we’re home long before then.”
Nobody said anything, but Bill thought, Me, too. I’m not sure I’m up to helping deliver a baby out here without a doctor.
Morning arrived with the screeching of passenger pigeons awakening. The birds had flown in and settled in the surrounding forest the night before in swarms blocking out the sun so that sunset had been a rather hurried affair. Bill was on final watch, so he wasn’t rudely awakened by the squawking and screeching, but the two women were.
As Meri climbed out of her hammock, Bill heard a noise just outside the trip wire, followed almost immediately by the sound of the wire being set off. A small flare burst several feet into the air, illuminating the scene. A befuddled looking bison was standing at the perimeter, looking at the small sun that was drifting down on its little parachute. Taking advantage of the opportunity for a large amount of meat, Bill shot the bison in the chest. He reloaded his rifle and had it ready for another shot just in case it was needed. The bison stood unmoving for about a minute, in which time Meri had retrieved her rifle and Karen made an appearance with hers. The passenger pigeons took flight from the shot, breaking branches as they took off en masse, and raising even more of a ruckus than they had before the shot.
Finally, just as Bill was about to take a second shot at the large bovine, it collapsed with a large groan, blood gushing from its mouth and nostrils. This was the first bison they had seen, and all three were stunned by its size.
Meri was the first to comment on it. “I think it’s an Eastern wood bison,” she said.
“Wood bison?” Bill asked.
“Yeah, cousin to the plains bison, only smaller.”
“Well, it’s certainly big enough,” Bill said, looking down at the dead animal.
While not quite as large as the auroch they had killed in Eurasia, it was still big.
“You killed it, you clean it,” his wife said, then promptly turned and vomited into the brush.
The rest of the morning was spent skinning and cleaning the bison and preparing it for smoking. Lunch consisted of bison heart and liver fried up with some wild onions and cattail stalks Meri had found near the river.
Karen and Meri gathered the sticks necessary to construct the drying racks, and soon after lunch, they had as much of the bison that could fit on the racks smoking over a fire. They estimated it would take a full day, so hammocks were left up and wild acorns gathered to replenish their flour supply. Meri discovered many berry bushes surrounding their camp, so the three also gathered as many as possible for pemmican.
Throughout the night, one of them tended the fire and kept watch while the other two slept.
Bill had decided to keep the bison skin and turn it into a coat. Winter would be upon them soon. The clothing they had, while barely suitable for winter conditions, wasn’t up to the task of a potentially harsh winter on the Great Plains. Part of his training had emphasized planning for future conditions. The skin was staked out and Bill painstakingly went through the process of removing excess flesh and fat from the underside of it. After all the flesh was removed, he took some of the salt they had made while traveling across the Atlantic and spread it on the underside of the skin. Once it was coated, Bill rolled the hide up and set it against a tree trunk, with one end facing the ground. This allowed whatever remaining fluids in the skin to drip out onto the ground.
41
It took longer than they expected to resume the journey, but when they did so several days later, they had more travel food in the form of dried bison, ground acorn meal, and sundry other wild plants gathered during the course of their stay near the fall. Bill suspected they would be increasing their calorie intake, not just because they’d be paddling up a river, but also with demands created by cooler weather.
It didn’t take them long to reach the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Once again, Bill was surprised at the comparative sizes of the two rivers. Despite knowing that the Ohio had the greater flow, it was still unnerving for him to see “the Mighty Mississippi” smaller than the joining river. That got him thinking as to why the lesser of the two rivers was given the name of the conjoined rivers. He posited the question to the two women as they began paddling upstream. Both shrugged.
Talk tapered off as the act of paddling against the current wore on them. Fortunately, they had enough food that Meri didn’t need to hunt, so all three were able to propel the craft along. They got into a steady rhythm, with two paddling while the third took a break. It allowed them to make steady progress without completely wiping them all out within an hour or two.
As he paddled, Bill realized he had come quite a far way from his beginnings on Earth. Even with all his time spent in scouting and fishing, he had never spent this much time outdoors, especially in a wilderness environment. Nor had he ever worked this hard in his life. Where once he was a slim, relatively in-shape young man, now he was a tanned, veteran Trekker, with callused hands, broad shoulders, and a slim waist. It reminded him of his former fiancee’s comment about Captain America having a Dorito-shaped body — triangular with the wide part being the shoulders and the narrow part being the waist. I wonder what she’d think of me now? Then he thought, Actually, who cares what she would think? She didn’t want me gallivanting around on strange planets in the first place, and here I am, actually doing just that.
At their first landfall on the Mississippi, after setting up camp, Karen called a mini-council, requesting input from the other two.
“Odds are, we’re gonna be crossing the plains or the Rockies during winter. Staying put ain’t an option, ‘cause we’ll likely die if we do. Thoughts on routes?” she asked.
Meri looked at Bill, raising an eyebrow.
Bill said, “We’ve got a couple of options. First is to float downriver to the Arkansas River, but that won’t get us far enough west, which is why I didn’t recommend that route months ago. Our best option is to continue upriver to the Missouri, and either follow that all the way to its headwaters, or we can take the Yellowstone or Platte.
“The Yellowstone will put us up around Yellowstone Lake, which is about 2400 meters up, and on this side of the Rockies. I haven’t checked, but I think we’d be stuck at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone if we go that route. I’ve been in Yellowstone National Park in the summer, and it sn
owed then. You can imagine what it’ll be like in winter when even Yellowstone Lake freezes over.
“The Platte will also put us in the Rockies, at about 2700 meters in a valley surrounded by mountains averaging 3600 meters tall. I’m thinking crossing those bad boys in the winter wouldn’t be such a smart idea, and since we’re not planning on spending the winter here,” he paused.
“That pretty much leaves the Missouri to its headwaters. Overall, it’s pretty smooth, other than a couple of smaller falls and the great falls in Montana. Make no mistake, though, this’ll be a long-ass trip. The river alone is over 3000 kilometers long, not counting the 300 or so we’ve still got here on the Mississippi. And that don’t include the rest of the journey to the IP. At around twenty-five klicks per day, figure it’ll take us about five months to get to the headwaters if all goes well. So, looks like we’ll be getting there some time in February or March. And that ain’t even considering the leg we’ll have to take by land to get to the Snake River, which’ll feed us into the Columbia River.”
Noticing Meri’s confused look, he amended his statement to reflect the differences in their geographic knowledge base. “I mean, the Nch’i-Wana.”
“Ah, okay. Now I’m tracking,” she said. “We’ll take the Shawpatin down to the Nch’i-Wana, then up the Yakama.”
“Yeah, that’s about it,” Bill said. “If I’m correct, we’ll need to cross the Rockies and the Bitterroots, something that Lewis and Clark did two-hundred-odd years ago, before we can hook up with the Shawpatin.”
Even though it was a warm September day, the thought of crossing the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains in the dead of winter put a chill in all of them.
“Yeah, that’s gonna be fun,” Karen finally said. “So, we just continue paddling upriver until we can’t, and then hoof it. Right?”
“That’s pretty much it,” Bill said.
The Corps of Discovery Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3: A multiverse series of alternate history Page 43
