by Herb Hughes
Jack’s smile disappeared quickly as a shrill scream blasted through the restaurant door. It was loud even though the door was closed. Heads spun on twisted necks as everyone in the restaurant looked out the large front windows, trying to see what had happened. While everyone else was looking, Jack was out of his seat and running. Dokie turned back from the window to say something to Jack and saw only an empty chair across the table. Then he looked up to see Jack, homebuilt in hand, going through the front door. Dokie jumped up, grabbed the second homebuilt, and rushed after the Rhino hunter as fast as his short legs could churn.
Several bodies, or pieces of bodies, lay in pools of blood a half block away. The Rhino whipped its head up from its last victim as red-soaked body parts tumbled off its horn. Blood splattered in all directions, drops and globs hurtling through the air. The Rhino was poised to impale a yellow-skinned man who was standing there, obviously in shock. Not knowing what else to do, Jack screamed at the Rhino as he ran toward it. The beast saw him, whipped his head around in a blur of motion, and began to charge at Jack. They were running toward each other at full speed.
From fifty feet away, Jack knelt in the middle of the street on one knee and leveled his homebuilt. It was his personal rifle, and he knew it usually pulled a little to the left, so he aimed at the eye on the right, hoping to hit the animal between the eyes. Everything had to be split second. Rhinos had lightning reflexes and could cover vast amounts of ground at the snap of a finger, easily outrunning any creature humans had brought to Agrilot. Jack squeezed the trigger.
As the huge beast stumbled and fell, Jack turned to the side and tossed the spent homebuilt to where Dokie would be with two more strides. The little man understood. He tossed the loaded homebuilt to Jack a fraction of a second before the spent one landed in his hands. Then he stopped running and immediately began reloading as Jack leveled the second rifle.
The Rhino had only stumbled and was charging again, blood gushing from its right eye socket. Jack had practiced with the second weapon enough to know that he had to aim a little high and a shade to the left. He took the best bead he could on the charging animal and squeezed the trigger. Then he froze. There was no way Dokie could get the first homebuilt reloaded in time, so if the second shot didn’t kill the beast, well, he wouldn’t have to worry about any more embarrassing newspaper articles.
Jack felt his lunch turning over in his stomach as he watched the Rhino stumble a second time. The animal’s left front leg dropped to the ground, then both rear legs gave way as the beast lunged forward, finally collapsing to the dirt street with its horns only inches away from Jack’s foot, blood streaming from a thumb-sized hole directly between the eyes.
Jack’s legs were jelly. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand, so he continued to kneel in the street, leaning on the homebuilt and trying to act calm. He was anything but calm on the inside. Even with one hundred and nine prior kills, he had never come so close to dying on the horns of a Rhino.
“My, God! What a helluva shot!” Dokie yelled.
“Two dead,” someone down the street shouted.
A young ranger came running up. “You okay, Mr. Wheat.”
“Sure. I’m fine.” Jack said, trying to talk around the lump in his throat. He felt the nervousness quavering his voice and hoped it wasn’t audible to others.
The young man eyed the dead Rhino and the large hole exactly between the Rhino’s eyes. “That was an unbelievable shot,” he said. “I’ve never seen anybody that accurate with a homebuilt.”
“Thanks, officer. Better check for injuries. Get some help here if anybody needs it.”
“Yes, sir!”
As the ranger hurried off to where the bodies lay, Jack felt like the life had returned to his legs enough for him to stand. He was a little wobbly, but he managed to stay on his feet.
“You sure you’re okay?” Dokie asked.
“Yeah, I sprained my foot when I knelt so quickly,” he lied. “It’s nothing. It’ll be okay by tomorrow.”
An older gentleman with a round, yellowish face, bald head, and white jacket came up to Jack and Dokie and said, “You’re Jack Wheat, aren’t you? I’m sure you’re used to this, but I want to thank you for saving my life. I froze. I couldn’t move. That… that horrible thing ripped through that young man and was coming at me and I couldn’t… I couldn’t do anything. You saved me from being ripped… ripped...” The man started crying and dropped his face into his hands. His whole body was shaking.
Jack and Dokie looked at each other. Neither knew what to say. At that moment, the young ranger came running back. “No injuries. Two dead. It would have been a whole lot worse if you hadn’t shown up. I shot him above the rear leg. I doubt he even felt it. By the time I could have reloaded there would have been several more dead, including me.” Then the ranger noticed the crying man and put his arm around him. “It’s okay, Mr. Suey. It’s all over now.”
“He said Jack saved his life then he broke down like that,” Dokie said.
“It’s shock. I’ve seen it before. He’ll come out of it eventually. Mr. Suey owns the drug store back on the other corner. He’ll be okay. It’ll take a little time. Man, that was a hell of a shot. You’re going to be the talk of the town when this gets printed in the newspaper, Mr. Wheat.”
Chapter 27
The wind-whipped rain drove into Mac’s withered old face with a vengeance, but he tried to keep Toadstool moving in the right direction. Only, he wasn’t quite sure what the right direction was. There were no landmarks in the featureless expanse of sand, and there was no sun to go by. He used his best judgment as he urged the mule through the soupy, rain-soaked desert.
“This is the way for sure,” Mac said. “I think. It’s gotta be. And we gotta keep on going, Toadstool. Gotta get to Jack and tell him about that crazy place. Maybe even Jack won’t believe a story this crazy. But it’s true. I swear it is.” He patted the water skins strapped to the saddle. “What the hell’s it doing raining like this in a sand desert? It don’t rain in the desert. Why now? Of all the gol-darned times there’s been since the world began, why pick this damned moment to have a once-in-a-thousand-year deluge in the desert?”
The storm raged for over an hour. There was no need to stop as there was no shelter anywhere. All they could do was keep on going, step after weary step, slowly and steadily. Finally, the rain began to slacken. Not too long afterward, Mac could see the light of a clear sky on the far horizon. The clouds continued to move quickly. As the blue grew larger and eventually covered much of the sky, he could tell by the now shining sun that it was late afternoon.
“After all that ugly gray, it sure is good to see blue sky again, only it seems bluer than it usually does. I’m tired and hungry, and I know you are, too, Toadstool. I’m still soaking wet, and my skin is getting chapped raw. We’ll rest and eat a little bit at sunset. Need to keep our strength up. But, raw skin or not, we’ve got to keep riding through the night. I hate to push you so hard, but it’s important, crack the world sort of important.” The mule merely twitched its ears and kept trodding along at its miserably slow pace.
By nightfall, most of the sky was cloudless. Mac pulled out the last of their food. He had been rationing the supplies even before they’d found the strange room, but this was it, and it was all too meager. They still had plenty of water, and maybe with water Toadstool would keep moving.
Mac noticed the stars. He glanced back at their tracks, as far as he could see in the dark of evening, and then turned his head back to the stars once again. It didn't feel right. He swept an arm along a line of known stars then looked back toward the line of their tracks.
“Oh, shit!” he shouted out loud, the sound quickly swallowed up by the soft surface of the sandy desert. “This ain’t no good, Toadstool. You been going northeast, not southeast. How long we been a’going the wrong way? Danged if I know. We must have gotten off track in the storm somehow. This is plain bad. I don’t reckon I know exactly where we are. Hell, we migh
t be closer to Lisbon than to Borderton. Either I told you wrong, or you went wrong. We’ll have to correct that. Maybe go a little more south than southeast. It’ll be all right. We’ll get there. We got to. We got to find Jack.”
Toadstool hee-hawed and stood there looking at Mac as if to say it was time to go, so Mac lifted his bone-weary body and climbed onto the mule, straddling the mule’s back as best he could. Using the stars to determine their direction, he pointed south by southeast. “This way, Toadstool. That’ll get us to Borderton.”
Within a few minutes, Mac began to nod. Shortly afterward he was slumped over, fully asleep against Toadstool’s neck. The mule kept walking, continuing to veer ever so slightly to the left as he walked.
Chapter 28
“Change assignments? What in the stars?”
“I’m sorry, Ethan,” Diana said. “I don’t want to cause you any problems, of course. But all this work with tissue… I need to do something different. I’ve been here quite a long time, you realize.”
“Yes, of course, Diana. But you’ve got, what, eight weeks left before you return? You are a highly skilled medical technician. Why change jobs now? And what would you do?”
“I need a change. Perhaps, I could transfer to the computer area.”
“Computers? I don’t understand. You have no background in computers. Eight weeks is not enough time to teach you how to program… “
“I know quite a lot about computers.”
“There’s nothing in your records,” Ethan said, a look of total perplexity on his face.
“It, ah, wouldn’t be on my records. My father was an expert. He taught me. I assure you, I’m quite able to handle it.”
“I see,” Ethan said. He was silent for a moment. Regardless of the perfect medicals, something was wrong. There was no way he could allow this woman to work in the computer area, not until he got to the root of the problem. “I will give it some thought, Diana. Understand that I am quite reluctant to make a change with so little time left in your tour. Besides, it would upset the assignments of other personnel. And no one has your experience in the tissue preparation area. But I will consider it. Please allow me some time to consult the department heads involved. Ah, would you like to take some time off in the meantime? Perhaps a day or two of rest would help. I will approve it if you like.”
“That… that would be good, Ethan. Thank you.”
“Of course.”
The woman stood, smiled, then turned and left the room.
“Central on,” Ethan said as soon as the door slid closed. The physical image, Lucy, appeared instantly. There was the slightest moment’s hesitation before Ethan said, “Lucy, did you hear that?” There was no need to ask as he had mentally commanded Lucy to record as soon as Diana had entered, but the statement came out.
“Yes, Ethan. Disturbing.”
“It, blast the stars, makes no sense. After a five-year tour, she wants to change jobs with only eight weeks to go? In all my years of management, I have never seen the equal of this. Her behavior is not that of a woman who is in perfect mental and physical health, regardless of what her medicals indicate. Do you have any explanation?”
“I do not, Ethan.”
Chapter 29
Jack suffered through a restless night. He woke time and again while visions of the charging Rhino flashed over and over in his mind’s eye. He knew it wasn’t fear keeping him awake. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself. No, it was the whole situation. Everyone expected him to “solve” Lisbon’s Rhino problem, but the city was too big. It was sheer luck that this Rhino came out of the ground near the restaurant where he was having lunch. He was able to save a few lives, but it was unlikely that would happen again. He simply could not solve Lisbon’s Rhino problem by himself.
The city of Lisbon needed something one hunter could not provide. His mind kept going over it, but he could not come up with an answer. He knew there had to be a better way, but he did not know what that better way was. Finally, as night drifted dangerously close to morning, his mind slowed enough to let his body drift off. He woke late to find a message from Sheffie on the nightstand beside him. When she left for the library, she had not wanted to wake him.
He told himself he was getting all too used to Lisbon by sleeping this late, but it was, in fact, still a little early for many of the city’s residents. Jack dressed quickly and went out to the street. Dokie was waiting patiently at the designated spot. As they ate breakfast, Jack told the story of Avery Witherstone riding his automobile into Borderton and the chaos it had caused. He was surprised to learn that Dokie not only knew Avery, but often worked for him, procuring things that were not otherwise readily available, and generally helping out in Avery’s workshop. Lisbon wasn’t such a large town after all.
“I also remind him to eat,” Dokie said.
“Why? He can’t eat on his own?”
“He gets so wound up in the projects he’s working on, he forgets. If I didn’t remind him, he’d starve to death. Hey, why don’t we go over to his house when we finish breakfast? You’ve got to see his place to believe it!”
From the outside, the inventor’s home looked almost like any other house on the street. The carriageway on the right side of the house was much more worn and more deeply furrowed than other carriageways in the neighborhood due to the weight of Avery’s automobile. Aside from that, the rest of the house looked almost normal, if a little neglected. A fresh coat of paint would have helped, as would pulling the knee-high weeds from the shrubbery bed.
But the almost normal look on the outside became an illusion when Dokie, who seemed to have full run of the residence, unlocked the front door and let Jack inside. There was little that would qualify as normal on the inside.
Jack had never seen a house with so many things in it. There were strange looking pieces of wood and metal lying about everywhere, some on the floor and some on the furniture. There were individual pieces and piles of pieces. Some were assembled into curious devices that he could not begin to understand, and some pieces lay there by themselves, appearing to be waiting for some unforeseen future time when the inventor might pick them up and use them in one of his contraptions.
Strings and ropes and metal tubing wound in and about the equipment, tied to various ends of this and that. Some were tied to nothing. There were small wood and twine models, some of which appeared to be cars, but most of which were mysterious machines that Jack could not fathom. Some of the models were moving about or going in circles or had parts that rotated or swung back and forth. Most did nothing. Other devices hung from the ceiling at different levels, some so low Jack had to watch his head as he walked through. Twin strips of silver metal, a few centimeters apart and connected with wood strips, wandered across the floor, weaving in and out of the models and various wood and metal contraptions. The strips disappeared into other rooms at each end.
“What’s that?” Jack asked, pointing toward the metal strips.
“That’s Avery’s train. Hold on a second.”
Jack waited quietly. He heard a growing noise from the next room, and Dokie signaled that the sound was what they were waiting for. Moments later a small model of a train appeared at one end of the track. It was seven cars long. It snaked its way through the clutter in the room, finally disappearing around the corner and into the far room.
“Amazing,” Jack said. “It’s too small for steam, isn’t it? You can’t build a fire that small. How does he power it?”
“The train runs on electricity, sort of like the telegraph, but I don’t understand. He’s got this big black box in another room that he uses to make the train go, but he spends more time working on the box than the train spends going around the track. I guess the important thing is it works… sometimes. More or less. He says this is going to revolutionize life on Agrilot once he figures out how to make it work on a large scale.”
They wandered through more rooms that, if anything, had even more devices and contraptions strewn a
bout than the first room. Jack had to watch both his step and his head to avoid hitting things. And, with a few of the things moving around, sometimes they bumped into him when he was standing still.
Some of the small contraptions looked a little like things in the pictures in the old Earth books that Sheffie had shown him, such as the airplane models that hung from the ceiling, and others looked like nothing he’d ever seen before.
Dokie took him out the back door and across a rear yard that was much like the clutter on the inside, except that the curious devices were on a larger scale. It was easy to see which items Avery no longer worked on because the metal was rusting on many of them. The pair picked their way through the larger scale contraptions and walked into the workshop where Avery was tinkering with an assembly of small metal pieces. His attention was so focused on what he was doing, he gave a jump of surprise when he saw Dokie and Jack, but he recovered quickly. “Good morning,” he said. “It is a pleasure indeed to have the two of you visit.”
“‘Lo, boss,” Dokie said.
“Morning, Avery. Dokie told me what an interesting home you have. I couldn’t resist the urge to see it. It is amazing.”
“Thank you, but it’s mostly clutter. I keep thinking I might clean up and get organized some day. If I can find the time, of course.”
“If you find the time to organize,” Dokie said, “It’ll be the last thing you’ll ever find. When everything’s put up where it belongs, you won’t be able to find it again.”
Avery laughed. “Yes. Quite right, I’m sure. Could I offer you gentlemen some tea?”
Still full from breakfast, Dokie and Jack both politely declined.
“Ah, Pogo my boy. Here with my morning paper,” Avery said.
A small brown and white dog came running through the jungle of parts and jumped up on the table next to Avery, a newspaper in his mouth. Avery took the paper, patted the dog on the head, then flipped the fold over. He read for a moment, his brow wrinkling as he did so. “Oh, dear.”
