by David Boyle
Mark checked with Wheajo. “Yep, that’s the one.”
Charlie made a stop at Ron’s tent, then hurried over and handed the device to Wheajo. “McClure says I need to watch.”
“Figured as much. Except that you were going to do that anyway, yes?”
“You bet.”
Mucous from one of the frogs was applied to the glassy hemisphere on the end of the yaltok, after which Wheajo programmed the device via the contacts along its side.
“What are you guys doing?” Tony asked, already craning on his way to the canoe.
Mark didn’t answer, and neither did Charlie, both watching intently while Wheajo tapped in a series of entries in response to queries made by the device. Ron hurried over, tucking in his shirt. “So, how’s it going?” he said, and propped a foot on the canoe to tie his shoe.
“Too early to tell,” Mark said, like the rest watching symbols scroll across the display screen. The scrolling ended, Wheajo quick to pronounce the sample benign.
“That covers a whole lot of ground, Wheajo. You want to clarify that a little?”
“Of the myriad active compounds, none are capable of causing either neurologic or circulatory dysfunction.” Wheajo contacted a lit yellow panel, puffs emanating briefly when the surface of the hemisphere glowed. Wheajo noticed Tony frowning. “Sample residues have been purged.”
“I’ll be darn,” Hayden said. “The thing sterilizes itself!”
Wheajo extended the yaltok to Mark, who wiped the surface with a section of spotted skin from the other of the bullfrogs. The test results were similar, and the sample likewise pronounced benign.
“I know you were just being cautious, Mark, but sounds like a false alarm.” Tony headed back and asked Charlie to search nearby for some dry wood. “And don’t take all day with that. I doubt you’d like what’s cooking well done.”
Wheajo held out the analyzer. “This last one and we’ll be there,” Mark said, applying mucous from the salamander. Ron and Hayden were still ragging on Mark for being an alarmist when Wheajo completed his analysis. The symbols displayed were definitely not in English, but anyone watching could see that they were different from the earlier two. Wheajo purged the yaltok and requested a second sample.
“Missed a keystroke didja?” Ron snickered, caring not at all that his commentary was ignored.
The analysis came back with identical results. Wheajo tapped in new commands, and the display changed to show a complex pattern of dots and lines: a diagrammatic of the molecular structure of the most active of the mucosal components. Wheajo studied the readout. “In this instance your suspicions were correct. The epidermal effluent does indeed contain elements consistent with a powerful neurotoxin.”
Hayden stared at his hands. “Where’d you put the water jug, McClure?”
“You’re kidding, right? The water jug…? With that shit on your clothes, what you need is to dunk your head in the river.” Ron pointed. “And don’t look so smug, Bennett. You and Wheajo need to rinse off too.”
Mark nodded. “Guess that maybe isn’t such a bad idea. And while I’m gone, would you dig around in my pack for another pair of pants?”
“So long as it’s not buried in your underwear, I’ll see what I can find.” Ron started for the tents. “Oh, and Wheajo…?”
“Yes?”
“That’s quite the gizmo you got there. Thanks for the heads up.”
It was a small step, a very small step, but after everything that had happened today, Tony was grateful for any gesture that might reduce friction in camp. Tony knew Ron, or thought he did—the thing with his wife, then his father. When it came to ‘shit happens’, some guys got more than their share. It was too early for a solid take on Wheajo, but so long as he didn’t push the wrong buttons there seemed at least the possibility that the two of them might eventually get along.
Ron stepped from Mark’s tent. “I didn’t realize how much I’d hate digging through another guys’ clothes.”
“Your manhood’s safe with us. And I’m sure they’ll appreciate the effort.”
“Yeah, well, they better,” Ron said, stomping away. “Sometimes I think Prentler needs a leash.”
Tony caught Charlie’s sour expression. “You don’t think that’s funny?”
“I just changed pants because the thing we dragged outta the fuckin’ swamp was coated in poison! Hell, funny. I mean, look around, man.”
Tony flipped the meat simmering in the pan. “You’re going to tie yourself in knots if you’re not careful. Even Ron’s taken a stab at burying the hatchet. That’s got to say something, doesn’t it?”
A rush of dark silhouettes flapped noisily upriver. “Ask me again when we get home.”
Tony could see he was striking out. “You want to be stubborn? Fine. In the meantime I’ll ask that you get that boat of yours away from here. Tomorrow we can think about rinsing it in the river, but for now it’s too contaminated to be anywhere near food.”
The Rockfinder definitely wasn’t pretty. “Blood and guts turn you off?”
“Especially while I’m cooking…. Really, it’s getting late.”
“Guess I could stiffen the supports up some.”
“And if you could raise them, even a little, my back would be most appreciative.” Tony smiled. Finally a spark.
Amazing what a change in focus could do.
Once they started on rebuilding the supports, it became apparent that the Tripper hadn’t been located in the right place to begin with. “How about here?” Hayden said. “The fire between us and the tents. Gets dark, it’ll at least look more normal with our stuff in the background.”
“Let’s us keep an eye on the river too,” Mark said.
Ron caught Tony shaking his head. “Trust me, it’s not going to take that long. Just shift what you got there off to a side burner.”
“A side burner?” Wheajo asked.
“Forget he said that,” Mark said. “Just get those logs over here. Believe me, you don’t want to piss off the cook.”
The supports were repositioned and rebuilt, people shuffling in every direction, bumping, yapping, and getting in each other’s way, the canoe soon situated regardless. Mark got the dishes and utensils from the cookbox while the lengths of freshly cut trees were reassembled beside the canoe and topped off with lifejackets for cushions.
Lost for a moment in the hustle-bustle of camp life, their appetites whetted by the drifting aromas, all were primed for their first good meal in what felt like ages: pan fried amphibian, rehydrated beans, and beer.
9
The last hints of daylight had faded, and with the passage of twilight came the hoots and calls of creatures they could only imagine. With leftovers tossed in the river and the cookbox stashed beneath the Tripper, the men one by one settled around the fire, some nursing beers, all drawn to the calls filtering across the river. The campfire crackled, thoughtlessly merry, the tents and the foliage behind them flickering like orange-tinted ghosts in the darkness; stars winking brilliantly when breezes rippled the leafy canopy.
The flames were hypnotic, and sitting there it was easy to lose oneself in the delusion that none of what had happened was real. Trees shuddered across the river, frightened eyes already staring when a snarl shattered the stillness.
“This can’t be happenin’, you know that don’t cha? Not him. Not us. Fuck, not any of it!” Charlie clamped the sides of his head. “It’s all just…. It’s impossible! We can’t be here! We can’t…!”
“Maybe so,” Hayden said, “except that we are. Thing that’s got me is how we’re going to get out again.”
Ron followed the rustling alongshore. “Assuming we can.” Another snarl, this one further upriver. He knocked back the last of his beer, tossed the can and headed for the tarp. “Any of you guys ready?”
Mark slipped a cigar from its wrapper, then let out a belch. “I am… You know, eat, drink, and be merry? How many are left anyway?”
Ron clicked on the flashlight
and fished under the tarp. “Got four cases, and part of another one not counting what’s left of the six-packs you bought. How long’s it need to last?”
“That depends on how long we will,” Charlie mumbled.
“Could take a vote. You know, finish it tonight, or just drink our usual.”
“Just grab some,” Hayden said. “We’ll worry about head count in the morning.”
Mark licked his cigar. “You in or out, Van Dyke? You don’t want to be the only one sober do you?”
“You guys are idiots…. Yeah, I’m in.”
“That’s the spirit,” Hayden said, swirling his can before draining it. “Like I said last year, we keep bringing too many nonessentials and not enough beer.”
Mark lit up with a twig from the fire. “Then next time you make the damn list.” Ron strolled back from their newly fashioned warehouse. “Hope you managed not to shake them this time.”
“Bitch, bitch,” Ron said, flipping a can to Hayden, and another to Charlie. “Next thing you know, he’ll want it cold, too.”
Mark puffed out a smoke ring. “That’d be nice.”
“Just watch you don’t fucking spray me with it.” Ron kicked a log into the fire, sparks spiraling as he took a seat. “You too, Bull. Get with the program. A little suds will calm your nerves.”
“Like that’s gonna happen. Prentler with his nonessential crap. Wheajo with a busted… whatever the fuck, time machine. Look around, Prentler. You weren’t such a fucking cheapskate, we mighta thought about bringin’ another boat, and none of this woulda ever happened.”
“That’s simply not fair. Hayden was joking, and you know it. No one is happy about what’s happened, Charlie, and there’s plenty of finger pointing to go around.” The conversation was going in entirely the wrong direction, Tony wondering how to redirect it when he noticed the alien holding back in the shadows. “You can’t be shy, Wheajo. Not in this group. You got something you need to say, you simply have to jump in and say it.”
Wheajo nodded and stepped forward. “I feel obligated to correct a misconception.”
Ron took a gulp. “And what misconception is that?”
“The brizva is not, if I understand the term correctly, ‘busted’ as you say. Its functions are fully intact and operable. The brizva is merely discharged.”
“So shoot me,” Charlie snorted. “Busted, discharged, we’re still stuck here.”
“We cannot return to our previous timeline, yet our situation is perhaps not so dire as you presume.”
Tony tapped out a smoke. “I’d love to believe that. But without that transporter of yours working, what else is there?”
“We can wait to be rescued,” the alien said simply.
A lightning bolt couldn’t have had more of an impact, the questions flooding from every direction: “A rescue? Really?” “How long ‘til they get here?” “Is that even possible?” “Why the hell didn’t you say so before!”
Wheajo waited for the barrage to subside.
“Fellas, please… slow down already,” Tony said. “Give him a chance to answer, okay?” They settled like corks on a freshly shaken bottle, hopeful and ready to pop.
“We’re listening,” Ron said impatiently.
“The crew of the Iolomho will have initiated a search upon my failure to report. The communications monitor will be examined, and the transmission emitted by—”
“I’m sorry. The Iolomho? Is that your ship?” Hayden asked.
“Yes,” Wheajo said, pausing to ensure there would be no further interruptions. “The brizva transmits positional and transport vectors at activation that allow ship jump coordinators to monitor transport activities. Those transmissions should provide the crew sufficient information to ascertain my endpoint destination.”
Ron glanced when a breeze rustled the trees. “Then all your people need to do is follow the signal here.”
“No. There is no signal to follow. The data transmitted merely established my point of origin and direction of travel.”
“Sounds a bit like getting a fix on a cannon round leaving the barrel,” Mark said. “They’ll know where we were, and somehow our direction, and from that they’ll need to figure out where we ended up.”
“An apt, if simplistic analogy.”
Hayden reached for his beer. The alien’s confidence was clearly meant to be reassuring, but really, what else was he going to say? It didn’t take a mind reader to see that Mark and Ron were skeptical, yet with no other options, even they seemed willing to accept there was little to do but wait. Still, he wasn’t particularly comfortable with the idea of placing everyone’s lives in the hands of Wheajo’s crew. “So let’s say your people have what they need to run a trace. How long will it take them to get here?”
“I have not the knowledge of the variables that must be examined and acted upon, and I am loath to speculate.”
“Okay, we get that,” Ron said. “Putting together a rescue isn’t easy. But you have to give us something, even if it’s a guess.”
“If you insist.” They waited anxiously while Wheajo considered the problem in depth, nearly a minute passing before he spoke again. “I would guess, as you say, not less than twenty or more than forty of your days.”
Charlie nearly swallowed his tongue. “Three to six weeks? No way can we last that long! Those are dinosaurs across the river! And we packed what? A week’s worth of food? Even stretchin’ it, we’ll never make it near that long!”
“Good heavens, that is a long time,” Tony conceded, reaching for a cigarette, then realizing he already had one lit. “You spend a lot of time in the woods, McClure. And I realize it’s nothing like Wisconsin, but do you think we can survive here that long?”
“I don’t see why not. We’ve got shelters, tools. A campsite that even Charlie has to admit is better than a lot of the places we’ve pitched a tent. Weapons and ammunition; animals that act like they’ve never seen anything like us or are too stupid to care; fish in the river. If anything, food is the least of our problems. Hell, it’s all around us.” Ron glanced at the faces around the fire. “The bigger issue is what our chances are of staying clear of the bastards across the river.”
“You got that straight. One’a them gets over here….”
“We got the picture, okay?” Ron turned to Mark. “You’re the closest thing to an expert we got Bennett. What are the odds of us staying out of the neighbor’s hair for the next month?”
Mark was slow to answer. “I was thinking about whether I should give you a line of bull, but the short answer is zero. And no, I’m not saying they’re going to come charging across the river. You guys saw the shoreline when we landed, and there weren’t a lot of tracks. Personally, I didn’t see any that made me nervous. Could be it’s just too much of a hassle for the locals to bother with. Getting on the island or getting off, having that rapid down the way has got to help. The current could be a deterrent as well.
“Obviously, we need to be careful. How careful, we’re all going to find out. The next few days will give us a handle on that. If dinosaurs behave anything like mammals, and there’s a good chance they don’t, we’ll maybe get a feel for their movements in a week. And that’s a total guess, so don’t go bitching at me if that turns out not to be the case. We keep our heads, not do anything stupid, and we should be okay.
“And really, think about what we bring to the table. Hayden was backpacking before any of us met, and assuming he puts that noggin of his to work, he has the knowhow to make this place a real home. Charlie… you, Ron, and I have the hunting experience, including with primitive weaponry.”
“You talking about that bow and arrow crap? Get serious. You really think you’ve got the stones to—”
“Drink your beer, McClure,” Mark said, hoping to shut him up. “And while I’m not sure about the books anymore, I do know a few things about dinosaurs. We’ve got boats and enough whitewater experience to run most of the rapids we might find if we ever decide to go downriver.”
“I don’t know what ‘we’ you’re talkin’ about, but I sure as hell ain’t goin’ any farther.”
“Never say never, Charlie,” Mark admonished lightly. “And Delgado here? I wouldn’t put it past him to be able to make skunk taste like filet mignon.”
“Now that’s an exaggeration, though I do appreciate the sentiment. I would like to think I could put my systems analysis experience to work, only I can’t for the life of me see how.”
“Even Wheajo has tricks up his sleeve if that analyzer thing of his is any indication.”
“I expect my prior experiences endow me with certain usable skills.”
“Skills?” Ron said, more spitting the word than pronouncing it. “Now there’s an exaggeration. Fancy shit maybe, and a database loaded with everything you want to know about astrophysics and all kinds of other high-falutin’ crap. But survival skills? Yeah right. Out here your so-called skills aren’t worth a shit.”
“Will you quit already? Wheajo picked up on paddling fast, did a decent job of it too, and he’d never even seen a paddle before.”
“You make a good straight man, Bennett. That’s exactly my point. He’s never done any of the things we’re going to need to be doing. Never killed his own dinner, or cleaned it for that matter. And from the looks of that ship, I’d be willing to bet he’s never cooked a for real meal in his life.” Ron looked the alien square in the eyes. “Am I wrong, or what?”
“What you say is correct. However, having observed all of you throughout the day, I believe my visual acuity and hearing are inherently superior to yours. This is not to be construed as a boast, rather an observation. I can assure you that I will endeavor to learn whatever skills are necessary to ensure our mutual survival.”
Ron took a slug. “You do that, Wheajo.”
They sat contemplating their situation and the length of time they’d likely be forced to endure it. Food was the item they would soon be without, and they would have to find it while at the same time avoiding discovery.
