by David Boyle
Ron stepped out and warily applied his weight to the branches they’d cut and fitted to the limbs extending from the trunk. “Feels okay I guess, though I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time up here. Nails would have been nice.” The view wasn’t terrific, but the thing was functional. Ron dropped the hatchet, then climbed the notches to the ground. “Mark and Tony can finish the other one. Give them something to do while we’re gone.”
“Not bad,” Charlie said, ax over the shoulder and staring into the sprawling goliath of an oak. “Could use some branches to break up the outline, but like you said, Bennett can dick with it later.”
Ron nodded absently, and wiped his forehead. “Any bug juice left?” Charlie found the bota nearby, gave it a shake, and tossed it over. Ron took a long swig, at the same time gazing along the trail. “You know… maybe we did too good a job.”
“Huh?”
“Check it out,” Ron said, directing Charlie along the path to camp. “Got a couple of jogs in it, but hell, now anybody can get here.”
Charlie sucked in a breath, frowning then and letting it bleed slowly through his nose. “Shit… Yeah, and anything.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Charlie considered the problem further. “How bout we use the cuttings to make barricades? You know, like the ones ya see in them World War II movies? Prop a tree here and there. Heck, we can make gettin’ here a regular obstacle course.”
Ron tried picturing the idea in his head. “Maybe, so long as we skip the zigzag part. Remember, none of us were football jocks like you.” At that, Charlie was onto something. “How about this?” Charlie polished off the last of the Kool-Aid while Ron explained.
“Yeah, that’ll work. Where do we put the first one?”
They walked the trail, and for the first time paid attention to details. Ron stopped where the pines were clustered especially thick. “How’s here grab you?”
Charlie eyeballed the trees. “Yeah, these look strong enough. We can string a barricade from there… to there,” he said, indicating the limbs. “And if we’re lucky, maybe we can squeeze in another one.” He glanced further down the trail. “The next one could go right about there.” Ron agreed.
Charlie tipped the axe off his shoulder. “Want to try it?”
“Thanks, but my arms are shot.” Ron stepped away. “Besides, you’re better with that than me.” He stepped to one of the pines they’d felled earlier. “Long enough?”
Charlie walked over. “Hell yeah,” he said, and took a stance. He spat into his palms, then took up the axe, and with a single blow whacked away the floppy outer portions of a limb. The stub remaining was stiff and very sharp, and at just over a foot long, damn near impossible to break.
Ron stacked the cuttings beside the trees while Charlie hacked his way along the log, in short order transforming the former pine into a wickedly spiked pole. “Find me another one,” Charlie said, rolling the log to work its opposite side. “This ain’t gonna take long.”
*****
By late afternoon, Hayden and Tony had transferred gear from Ron’s tent, torn it down, and loaded it into the Tripper. A single dump bag would serve for their clothes, a safeguard against the possibility that given greater latitude they’d pack too much of what wasn’t needed. Hayden layered in a day’s worth of clothes, leaving to Ron and Charlie the task of packing their own. The clothes and other personal belongings would eventually either be divvied into the other two tents, or stored outside in their rubberized dump bags.
Wheajo was going over the details of how to assemble the frame and other parts to the canoe when Mark sauntered into camp.
“Thought we lost you,” Hayden said, relaxing by the fire. “What’s with the sticks?”
“They’re not sticks. They’re spears,” Mark said, propping all but one against a tree. “I even made extras for you guys. Here… And watch that broadhead. It’ll cut you like a fish if you’re not careful.”
Hayden hefted the shaft. “Nice balance. How’d you manage that?”
Mark took a slug from the water jug. “Practice,” he said, and wiped his mouth. “That patch of bean pole kinda trees back in the woods? Well, it ain’t there anymore. Pretty much cut down the whole frickin batch before I figured out what part to keep. Give these a toss if you want to see how they fly. They don’t have points. Use the real ones and you’ll trash the edges. Keep that in mind, Prentler. You too, Wheajo. Arrowheads kill by causing massive hemorrhaging. So don’t go poking them in the ground.”
Tony had a look. “So that’s what those strips were for. Nice job on the bindings.” He smiled. “Been spending time at museums lately?”
“Tony, I’ve shot bows pretty much all my life. Even thought about trying to chip me some stone points once or twice. Never got quite that far, but I have taken a look at how the Indians did it whenever I got the chance. Funny how you can end up using something you saw staring through a museum display case.”
Wheajo too examined the spear: how straight it was, how it fit in his hand, and finally how the four-bladed arrowhead was affixed to the shaft.
“Pass muster?”
“Primitive certainly, yet an ingenious use of resources. Used with sufficient force, it may even be lethal.” Wheajo paused for a second and appeared almost to smile. “As to your question… indeed it does.”
Dinner passed quietly as the shadows stretching across the river gradually swallowed the opposite shore. The trip list, created months before, was examined item by item to ensure that nothing important could inadvertently be forgotten.
“…throw bags are packed, painters stay with the boats. Sleeping bags?”
“In the morning.”
“Stove?”
“Hell no. Leave it.”
“You sure?”
Ron worked the rod along the barrel. “Trust me, Prentler, we’ll manage.”
“Tarp—I’ve got one packed. Your tent, my little flashlight, and three of the small water containers. Tony, yours are filled, right? The big ones?”
“All topped off. I doubt we’ll need to, but Mark and I can use the tablets if we need to. You’re taking the pump?”
Hayden nodded. “Okay. Well, looks like that does it. I can’t see anything else that we’ll need.” He pocketed the list. “Anybody?”
“I still think we should be taking the binoculars,” Ron said.
Mark nixed that idea. “We need them more than you do. The natives get restless, I want to be able to keep an eye on them. Besides, you got Wheajo.”
Stationed as usual off by himself, Wheajo was taken aback by the remark. “Was that a compliment?”
Mark shrugged. “Call it what you want. All I know is, your eyes are better than any of ours. Sure as hell they’re better than mine.”
A squeaky shrill sounded when Ron pulled the ramrod clear of the barrel. “Okay, so you keep—” He flinched when Mike made an appearance, then shook his head as the dinosaur edged closer, sniffing. “It’s a brush, shithead. See?” The dinosaur nipped at the bristles. “No… Let go of that!” The dinosaur pulled away, lips curled, snorting. “Not too bright, is he?”
“Smarts aren’t everything,” said Charlie, unable to repress a laugh while Mike pawed at its muzzle. “And you did offer.”
“Uh huh. Like I said… not too bright.” A brief examination showed no harm done, after which Ron replaced the stiff-bristled rasp with a swab. A snarl sounded in the distance. “Tell you what, Bennett,” he said, wetting the cloth with oil. “You keep the binocs; I take that scuba knife. Could come in handy.”
Mark jammed the butt of his spear between his feet. “I’ll go you one better. I keep the binocs, and you blow me.”
“Only if I can use the pistol.”
“Oooo baby,” Hayden cooed. “That’d leave a mark.”
Mark was only half joking. “Leave me the handgun, and the knife is yours.”
“I suppose you’d want ammunition too.”
“That’d be nice.”
<
br /> Charlie was seated on the block of Styrofoam in the bow of the Discovery. “Some guys want everything,” he said, working a file across the axe head.
“I’m just hoping to stay alive, Bull.” Mark turned when a snarl sounded, this one from a different direction. The first stars of evening were making an appearance, distant Jupiter winking above the eastern horizon when a breeze jostled the trees behind the two remaining tents, matted ferns marking the spot where Ron’s tent had stood. A lump formed in his throat. How long before it would again be reoccupied, if ever?
Ron ran the oiled swab rhythmically along the bore. “Prentler, how about fixing the fire? I can hardly see what I’m doing anymore.”
“I can do that. And while I’m headed that way, anybody for a beer?” Ron motioned to count him in, as did Charlie and Tony. Wheajo not surprisingly said nothing. “How about you, Bennett?”
Mark, lost in thought, looked up only when Hayden repeated the offer. “Yeah sure, count me in.”
Tony looked to Mark, and clearly didn’t like what he was seeing. “Leave it, Hayden,” he said, and got to his feet. “I’ll get the beers. You take care of the fire.”
Ron saw the worry as well, and laid the rifle across his lap. “I gotta wonder about you, Bennett,” he said, dismantling the ramrod.
“Is that so?”
“To look at you, anyone would get the impression that it’s your ass on the line, not ours. And I gotta wonder why. Especially after going on and on last night about how many dinosaurs there are downriver and by the lake. You ask me, you’ve got the shoes on the wrong feet.”
Mark bristled. “And you don’t think I should be worried.”
“You can worry all the fuck you want. It’s the who that bothers me.”
“You’re telling me you wouldn’t be worried about being left here… with no boats and essentially no weapons? Alone?”
“You’re not going to be alone,” Ron countered. “Tony’ll be here to hold your hand.”
“Spare me the sarcasm, McClure.” Mark looked past Wheajo, and for a second watched as Tony dug beneath the tarps for the beer. “I suppose you’d be comfortable with him watching your back.” Ron’s adamant gaze faltered, if only long enough for Mark to see he’d made his point. “So tell me again why I’m not supposed to be worried.”
“Hey,” Charlie said, jumping in. “That’s the guy—”
“Charlie, this isn’t about friendship. If something happens while you guys are away…. Hell, we either fight it out or we’re history. And you’ve seen Tony in action.” The words cut Charlie like a knife. “Sorry, that didn’t come out—”
“And what do you figure is going to happen?” Ron asked.
“I didn’t say it’s going to happen. I said if.”
“You mean if a dinosaur gets on the island.”
“What else?”
“We’ve been over this before,” Ron said, losing patience. “And if our friends across the way used this place on a regular basis I’d say you’d have cause to worry. But they don’t.
“Look… we’ve covered this island like a blanket and haven’t found anything in the way of fresh tracks. Am I right?”
A grudging nod. “Yeah maybe. But we weren’t looking specifically for tracks.”
“That’s a crock and you know it. If dinosaurs had been here recently, you or I or Charlie would have found the evidence: tracks, chewed branches, droppings. Hayden here, or Tony would maybe have to go out of their way to find stuff like that, but us? Come on. For us it’s as natural as opening ours eyes.” The axe handle thunked against the canoe, and Ron could see Charlie nodding. Ron shrugged. “But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s different with you guys.”
“You guys…. You mean bow hunters don’t you? Like gun hunters have a lock on hunting skills. When’s the last time you shot anything at twenty yards? Or thirty? Hell, I killed a deer at eight yards once. Eight yards, McClure! I was damn near standing on top of the little prick and he never knew what hit him. You don’t get that close without reading sign.”
Ron leaned back. “And did you really have to look? Or did you just see it?” Mark’s demeanor softened. “The point, in case you missed it, is that you see things without even looking. Like tracks and nibbled twigs. Lighten up Bennett, and get your head out of your ass. You’ve got yourself tied in knots for something that just isn’t there.”
Mark knew he’d been had. “I… I guess,” he conceded, though still unsure whether a valid conclusion could be drawn based on the absence of evidence. Still, Ron seemed to make sense.
An armload of firewood clattered to the ground. “What, you guys done arguing already?” Hayden said, brushing himself off before kneeling beside the fire.
Ron snapped the lid closed on the cleaning kit. “We weren’t arguing. Though I will admit that trying to get your partner here to believe his own eyes is like pulling teeth.”
Hayden chuckled as he added wood to the fire. “You can’t mean Mark.”
“Don’t you start.”
Wheajo had long since completed his inventory, and now, at a lull in the human’s conversation, he found himself gazing at the stars. The patterns were different, but the stellar types and overall distribution was not unlike the star field from which he had come. Sitting in the soft glow of the campfire, he allowed himself a momentary respite, recalling an ancient myth.
When the Grotky were born, it was said, Ty was known as the King of Fire. Ty was not a star then, but a dragon whose kingdom was the daytime sky. From its eye poured the light of day; from its nostrils, the wind. The King, though not always kind, ruled over Nyvra, and each night, before it slept, the dragon would cover the world with a cloak to protect it. The King was not alone, though it was only when he slept that one could see proof. The lesser beasts of the sky remained hidden during the day lest the King would kill them, and were thus obliged to roam only while he slept. And it was during these forays that their claws made holes in the cloak. Holes that the ancient Grotky called paku. On the rare occasions when the sky was especially black and clear, the myth said, one could even see the creatures’ main trail: a band of light stretching from horizon to horizon.
Tony shuffled past, and on joining his companions was summarily harangued for taking so long. The human, paradoxically, seemed to accept the upbraiding as normal.
The Ulaxians were an inscrutable species. Yet were they so different from the ancients?
The paku were not tracks, after all, rather stellar furnaces at the center of which thermonuclear furnaces forged lighter elements into heavier ones, starting with hydrogen, and when the initial mass was sufficient, ending with iron. The reaction chains were myriad and complex; a near continuum of variations governed by the initial mass, composition, and environment of the cloud from which the star had formed.
Most intriguing, and in a way disturbing in light of the old myth, was the recognition of how little one could know or learn in isolation. The ancient scholars had been supremely intelligent, yet had it not taken hundreds of generations for them to develop a culture and technology sophisticated enough not only dispel the notion of the paku, but to prove that they, like Ty, were physical entities? Vast balls of concentrated matter, and not gods. To create the vast store of knowledge that he had so long taken for granted?
Indeed, would not that slow progression from ignorance hold true for any sentient species?
Wheajo considered the humans huddled about the fire. Perhaps he and they were not so different after all.
“…I’m glad you think so.”
“Really,” Hayden said, poking the fire with a stick. “How hard can it be with four of us on a boat? Mark said it was only….” Hayden noticed Ron’s stare.
The snarl came a few seconds later.
Mike uncurled himself from around Charlie’s feet and hissed toward the river, his master quick with a comforting hand. “You see something fella? Huh? Do ya?” he said, stroking his increasingly agitated pet.
“What’s out th
ere?” Tony said, a quiver in his voice.
“Beats me,” Hayden said. “But it sure sounds big. McClure, any ideas?”
“Actually, I’m surprised it took them this long.”
Between the fire and the trees screening the river, Ron was halfway to the landing before he found a hole through the trees big enough to see the feathery outline of the opposite tree line, the Cretaceous landscape lit by the soft glow of the nascent crescent moon.
He listened and watched.
“Anything?” Mark asked, staring into the darkness.
“Thought I did, least for a second. Between the rapids and these trees….” A rapid fire yipping like that of a salivating coyote spilled from across the river, the calls followed quickly by another, and another.
Mark slumped on his heels. “Guess that answers that question.”
“Come on. You didn’t really think that thing was going to rot out there without drawing a crowd, did you?”
“I could hope.”
“You guys seen Wheajo?” asked Hayden, faceless in the dark.
“Over here,” Charlie whispered, motioning them to the landing. “You gotta check this out.”
Ron and Mark came chugging over. “Lose your buddy?”
“Mike? Yeah, he’s such a scaredy cat. But check it out. When’s the last time you saw a sky like that?” he asked, marveling at the profusion of stars. The sky was truly magnificent, the Milky Way flowing like a pale river across the blackness. A river not high on anyone’s agenda.
“Yeah great,” Mark said. “Next time I’ll bring my telescope.” A branch snapped. Then the crunch of animals shuffling through the leaves. He turned to Wheajo, standing nearby. “You got a count?”
“Six at present; all small, all lower echelon. Another band is approaching from the east.” Wheajo cocked an ear, concentrating. “One… no two others are approaching also. One from the south, one from the southeast.”
“Gimme a break,” Ron drawled. “You telling me you can count those assholes… with your ears?”
