"Well . . . yes! Precisely! This current arrangement is far too much like your own various states. Always squabbling, and never agreeing to work together toward a common goal!"
Matt smiled tolerantly at the Australian. "The United States usually manages to pull together over the important things."
"Yes, but it takes wars to make it happen, I might remind you!"
"That may be," Matt confessed, "but it looks like the Lemurians have their war too."
No one spoke for a while as the launch crept farther upriver. Once, Scott almost lost control when a crocodile bumped the boat and he flailed madly for the Thompson submachine gun he always carried slung over his shoulder. "Hold your fire, Mr. Scott," Matt said, just loud enough to be heard. The croc was swimming disinterestedly away, and Tony gave him a sheepish glance as he regained control of the boat.
"How are things going ashore, Lieutenant?" Matt asked Shinya. He'd been shaken from his trancelike study of the wildlife by the launch's capering.
"If you mean the preparation of the militia, Captain Reddy, I must report progress is poor, but improving." Nakja-Mur had decreed that all able-bodied People, male and female, should take training with Sergeant Alden and Lieutenant Shinya, as well as some of their own few warriors every other day. Attendance was mandatory, but from the beginning, participation was somewhat sparse. Many of the younger, more adventurous townsfolk turned out with a will, and some had achieved a level of training that let them perform as NCOs for the less-proficient attendees. Alden had even begun training an "elite" force of a hundred of the sharpest and toughest, which would, of course, become his "Marines."
The vast majority managed to avoid service at first, however, due to exemptions granted almost as a matter of course whenever they complained to the High Chief 's secretaries that their occupations should be protected as "vital to the defense of the People." Some even had a point, and to be fair, many of the young, able-bodied Lemurians had been conscripted into the projects being undertaken for or by the Americans. All those were subject to military discipline, however, and put through a daily regimen of close-order drill and basic weapons training. As the Grik threat became more real, particularly over the last couple of weeks, Shinya had noticed an increasing number of faces at drill that he'd never seen before.
"What kind of numbers are we looking at?" Matt asked.
"It's difficult to say. Sergeant Alden and I drill them each day, but with a few exceptions, we only see them every other day." Drill took place on a large "common" at the foot of Nakja-Mur's Great Hall, and the High Chief often watched the proceedings. The place had once been, for lack of a better term, a "park" near the center of town. But the ground had now been so churned by marching feet and maneuvering troops that they'd taken to calling it the parade ground. It wasn't big enough for everybody, however, so roughly half the militia drilled one day, and the other half the next. It was dreadfully inefficient, but with the dearth of open ground in Baalkpan, it was the only answer. Shinya gazed thoughtfully at the water and turned back to the captain. "I think it's not impossible, right now, to field nearly fifteen hundred Baalkpan troops, reasonably well trained for the type of fighting we saw upon Big Sal. In two weeks, we can perhaps double that number. In six months, we could put ten thousand in the field, but that would include virtually the entire adult population of the city. To assemble such a force, however, will take an even greater sense of . . . urgency than they now have."
"You mean we'd have to be literally under attack, here, to expect that level of participation?" Matt muttered in resignation.
Shinya nodded. "I fear so. Of course, by then it would be much too late to organize them properly. A few of Sergeant Alden's `Marines' have gone aboard the Lemurian ships to get them to learn our drill so coordination would be possible at need. They've received . . . a mixed welcome. As for the tactics we're teaching them, without the benefit of firearms, the only real options are those you suggested. A `Roman' shield wall, backed by spearmen, backed in turn by archers." He shook his head. "One of the most difficult things was to get them to abandon their crossbows. These people are made for shooting bows, and a longbow has a greater range and rate of fire than a crossbow, but they didn't understand why we, a people with such technology, should advocate such simple weapons." He grinned. "Once they saw the superiority of longbows, it wasn't difficult to convince them." Shinya's expression became grim. "Of course, they want firearms."
Matt nodded. "I wish they had them, but without steel . . ." He sighed.
"Once we drag them out of the Bronze Age, we can have a look at flintlock muskets or something, but for now?" He held his hands out at his sides.
"I know Alden's training some of his `Marines' to use our weapons. How's he doing?"
"Yes, he's training fifty of them, but they only get to fire a few rounds each. Mr. Sandison has solved the projectile problem—I think he called it swaging? But the difficulty remains making new cartridge cases if the empty ones are damaged or lost. And, of course, the primers. No one seems to think gunpowder will be a problem"—he bowed toward Letts— "but it won't be smokeless at first, so the automatic weapons won't function well." He shook his head. "Of course, all these logistics matters are not my concern, particularly since I know nothing about them. But I understand that one of Mr. Sandison's concerns is replacing Walker's depleted ammunition stores for her main battery. His experiments with the small arms are the `test bed' for the four-inch guns."
"Lieutenant Shinya, I don't know how it worked in your navy, but logistics is the concern of any officer, infantry officers included—which is what you've become. I'm glad you're keeping up with it." Matt's gaze drifted forward, and he saw massive wooden pilings set in the riverbed some distance out from shore. As they neared, he saw that a framework connected them and a party of 'Cats was working to lay down a plank deck. They'd arrived at the fueling pier.
They secured the launch and trooped ashore. All were armed in spite of the small army of laborers nearby. Bradford had insisted, explaining that unlike in their own world, the large number of workers going about their business here wouldn't frighten predators away; they would only alert them to a smorgasbord. A fair percentage of the Lemurians present were, in fact, dedicated to security. They were armed primarily with oversized crossbows that threw a bolt two feet long and an inch in diameter.
Matt remembered Bradford telling him there were some truly astonishing predators lurking in the jungles of this new Borneo, but he'd paid only passing attention at the time, preoccupied with the refit of his ship. Now he tried to remember some of the creatures Bradford had described. They must be pretty big, he mused, if it took a handheld ballista to bring one down.
At the edge of the clearing, three large cylinders stood atop adobe furnaces with a maze of heavy, local copper pipe twisting among them.
Matt recognized the cylinders as the ill-fated torpedo tubes of the number three mount. He hoped they would prove more useful here than they had aboard the ship. Furry, kilted workers scampered around the apparatus that they hoped would become a functioning refinery—if they found anything to refine. Chief Donaghey and Mahan's Perry Brister were supervising the project, and by their filthy appearance, they'd done more than that. Matt waved at them to carry on as the party continued past the high tower set in the center of the clearing. In it was a now fully recovered Leo Davis and one of their precious BARs. He looked like a prison guard overseeing a chain gang, but the obvious distinction was that he was there to protect the workers, not to prevent escape. More Lemurians stood guard at intervals along the trail leading from the fueling pier into the dense jungle surrounding it.
The wellhead lay almost a mile inland. The trail was wide, and down the center was a pipeline constructed from the curious oversized bamboo that seemed, in every respect except for its massive size, just like bamboo "back home." They'd seen it used extensively in local construction and for masts, of course, and it was a natural choice for those applications, being generally the
diameter and length of a telephone pole. Matt hadn't known they were going to use it to transport the crude. Bradford and Letts noticed him appraising the arrangement as they walked alongside.
"Bound to leak like a sieve, Skipper," said Letts resignedly. "The couplings are short pieces of tin pipe pounded into the ends and sealed with pitch. I guess we can build something better once we have the time."
"No, Mr. Letts. It's ingenious. I hadn't even thought how we'd move the oil from the well to the refinery. Well done."
Letts looked embarrassed. "Well, it was really Spanky's idea," he demurred.
"A good idea, no matter whose it was." Matt paused, looking at the pipeline with a thoughtful expression. "I can't help but wonder, though.
A fueling pier, a pipeline, even a refinery—all situated where they are just because of the wellhead. Are you sure we're not taking one small detail a little too much for granted?"
Bradford blinked at him and wiped the ever-present sweat from his brow with a handkerchief that might once have been white. Then he grinned mischievously. "Never fear, my dear captain. As you Americans would so quaintly say, the fix is in." He stopped and glanced at the sky. It was visible above the quadruple-canopy jungle only because of the pipeline cut. As so often happened at this time of day, the bright blue they'd basked beneath much of the morning had been replaced by a sodden gray.
"Oh, dear."
Isak Reuben took a final, long drag off his cigarette, and it burned fiercely almost to his lips. He flipped the tiny butt off the platform, where it hissed and drowned in a puddle. The deluge had become a gentle drizzle, but it fell long and hard enough to soak him completely. Not that it mattered.
He was always soaked, with sweat, and his filthy T-shirt clung to his skinny torso like a slimy, splotched, translucent leech. His fireroom pallor was gone, as was Gilbert's, replaced by the harsh reddish brown he remembered so well from his life in the oil fields. It was a color he'd hoped never to see on his own body again.
"Goddamn," he exclaimed matter-of-factly, "ain't White Mice now."
He grabbed the cable that dropped down from one end of the walking beam and disappeared into the hole at his feet. The slack felt about right.
"Wind 'er up, Gilbert," he croaked at his companion, who made a rotating motion with his hand.
A short distance away, a pair of young 'Cats sat on a brontosarry's back, and one made a trilling sound and whacked its flank with a stout bamboo shoot. With a guttural groan of protest, the beast began to move.
It was harnessed to a giant windlass, and as it trudged through a slurry of mud, round and round, a belt running from a large-diameter central shaft transferred its meager rotation to a smaller, faster wheel. Another belt ran to yet another wheel, between the two in diameter. This one turned a crank that raised and lowered a pitman, causing the walking beam to go up and down. As it did so, it raised the cable-tool bit far down in the hole and then dropped it with a resounding "thud." The bit drove a few inches deeper every time.
Isak looked at the sky, beyond the eighty-foot bamboo derrick that still struck him as just . . . wrong somehow, and saw patches of blue struggling to disperse the clouds. He shook his head unhappily. Every time a squall blew up, he hoped subconsciously that it, like the one that had brought them here, would take them home. Home to the real world, where he could bask in the honest warmth and isolation of his beloved boilers, where steam was magically made. Steam that turned honest turbines. He frowned. Anywhere but here, where steam rose from the ground because the sun cooked it out, and where stinkin' dinosaurs pretended to be motors! He groped for another cigarette and frowned even deeper, staring at the massive animal trudging slowly around. "RPMs ain't much, but the torque's pretty respectable."
Gilbert touched the cable himself at the bottom of its stroke, as he walked over to join him. "What?" he asked.
"Nothin'."
Gilbert nodded. "Quiet rig." Both were used to loud engines doing the work of the dinosaur.
"Too quiet," complained Isak. "Ain't natural."
Gilbert nodded again, in solemn agreement. "Gimme a smoke, will ya?" His customary monotone was as close to a wheedle as it ever got.
"No."
"Why not? I shared mine with you."
"Yeah, and now yer out, ain't ya? Stupid."
Gilbert stared down at the well as the cable went slack, pondering. No question about it, Isak was the smart one.
The other fireman sighed heavily, shook a soggy cigarette out of the pack, and handed it over. Then he peered inside. "Now I'm as dumb as you. Only one left."
The well was situated in another artificial clearing, and one of their Lemurian security guards trilled a call from his watchtower near the pipeline cut.
"What's he jabberin' about?" Isak asked, irritably reaching for one of the old Krag rifles they always kept nearby. "I hope it ain't another one of them Big Ones. We really need bigger guns for huntin' around here."
The "Big Ones" he referred to were forty-foot monsters Bradford insisted were allosaurs. Unlike most of the other dinosaur species they'd encountered, Bradford's modern allosaurs were not stunted. They'd hardly changed at all from those in the fossil record—the only difference he could see, if anything, was they were bigger than their prehistoric ancestors. There weren't many of them, though, and even if they looked built for speed, they preferred to lurk along well-used trails in the dense jungle and let their prey come to them. The destroyermen called them "super lizards" in spite of Bradford's protests. Isak only knew they were hard as hell to kill and they scared the shit out of him.
"Hold on, Isak," Gilbert said. "They all sound like monkeys to me, but that don't sound like a lawsey-me-there's-a-Big-One-a'comin' yell."
They both stared toward the cut for a few moments more, then relaxed a little when they saw humans emerge into the clearing.
"It was too," Isak said. "That's the Skipper."
Matt waved at the Lemurian peering down from the tower. It was one of
Alden's Marines, armed with a Krag. This was arguably one of the most important parts of the "fuel project," but aside from the sentry, there were fewer than a dozen people, including the Mice, working the site. Most of the labor currently involved cleaning and stacking the "bamboo" pipes they were using to case the well. At this stage, few hands were really needed to operate the rig and most were needed only when it was time to bail, or pull the bits for sharpening.
A pair of bits lay across hefty sawhorses now, and two workers held them down while another vigorously worked them over with a file. The bits were Spanky's idea. He'd used a heavy I beam meant for shoring up buckled hull plates. He cut the twelve-foot beam into three segments and cast heavy copper slugs on the ends to give them more weight. By all accounts, they worked well, but they didn't hold an edge and had to be sharpened a lot.
Matt stared, fascinated, at the bamboo derrick and the ingenious contraption operating it. He'd seen oil wells, but he didn't know much about them. All he could say about this one was . . . it resembled an oil well. That the derrick was a strange greenish yellow did a lot to undermine the impression, however. His gaze swept to the platform and he saw the two firemen staring back. That's probably another reason there's not more workers here, he conceded. It took special people to voluntarily spend much time with the irascible Mice. Even if those people had tails. Together, he and his party slogged through the swampy ooze surrounding the rig until they reached the platform and clambered up.
"Good afternoon, men," Matt began amiably. "Thought I'd see for myself how things are going." Isak just shrugged and looked around as if to say, "Well, here it is."
Bradford stifled a cough. "Yes, well, I think you can see they've done a marvelous job. Marvelous!" He beamed at the two men. "How deep are we now?"
Gilbert had retreated a few feet and stood next to the sampson post that supported the walking beam. Neither he nor Isak had been spoken to by officers more than a dozen times in their lives—not counting Spanky—and it always un
nerved them a little. For the most part, throughout their Navy careers they'd lived in the fireroom, and officers lived . . . someplace else.
"Three hundred and sixty-nine feet, when the cable goes tight this time," Isak said, and he glanced furtively between the visitors. He suddenly yanked the filthy hat off of his head. "If you please."
"Excellent, excellent!" Bradford exclaimed. "Can't be far now!" He turned to face Matt. "As I said, the fix is in! I happen to know oil was found on this very spot in 1938! A respectable deposit, too. Quite adequate for our needs!"
Matt smiled at him. "But what makes you so sure it's here . . . here?"
Bradford blinked. "Why, you did, of course! As you said, the geography is the same. As we've all discussed at some length now," he smiled patiently, "this is our very same earth. Only a few inhabitants have been changed about. The very same oil found here in 1938 should still be down there, since no one's ever drilled for it!"
"I sure hope you're right, Mr. Bradford. I'm not certain it's the same thing. Just because Borneo's here, does that mean the same oil's under it?"
A trace of sadness touched Matt's smile. "I'm morally certain the North American continent exists . . . here. Its shores and distinctive landmarks are probably like those we remember. The Paluxy River may still run where my folks' ranch should be. Do the same catfish I used to catch still swim that river, Mr. Bradford? I doubt it. If they do, they'd probably eat you." He held up his hand before Bradford could protest. "I'm just saying if we don't find oil here, we need to keep an open mind about where to look next. Above all, we mustn't get everyone's hopes up that finding it here's a sure thing." Matt's smile twisted into a grin. "Always remember, gentlemen, oil is where you find it—but it may not be where you left it!"
Gilbert nodded solemn agreement with the captain's words. What was that damned Aussie trying to do? Jinx them? He reached over and felt the cable. "Tight," he announced. Isak nodded. He addressed the Lemurians on the draft beast.
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