Anywhere but here

by Jerry Oltion

  Too bad. Coasting downhill was the one time when the pickup's wheel motors generated electricity rather than burned it. Trent got an image of one way he could recharge the batteries: He could dismantle the pickup, carry it to the top of the mountain piece by piece, put it together again, and coast to the bottom. If he cleared a road straight down, he wouldn't even use up any battery power going around obstacles. He would gain a kilowatt-hour or so with every trip. That meant he would only have to do it . .

  . what, a couple of hundred times? Piece of cake. He could probably have it done by the time the kids were ready for college.

  That set him thinking, though. Coasting downhill wasn't the only way to rotate a wheel. He could take off a tire and put a crank on the hub and save himself a lot of climbing. He wondered how much power he could generate by hand?

  He had no idea, but the computer might. He went back to the camper and leaned in the door. "Hey, does the encyclopedia in that thing have conversion tables for calories to kilowatts?"

  "What?" Donna looked up, puzzled, her face lit by the blue glow of the computer screen.

  "I want to know how many kilowatts I can generate turning a crank."

  "Turning a crank?"

  "Or pedals. That might work better."

  "For what?"

  "Generating power using one of the wheel motors in brake mode."

  "Oh. All right. Let me see what I can find." She set to work with a smile, happy to be doing something else for a while, and within just a few minutes she had an answer. "A thousand calories converts to just over a kilowatt-hour. And it says here that the human body burns two to five thousand calories a day, depending on how hard you're working. So if you're putting out five, minus the two it takes just to keep you alive, that gives you about three thousand calories going into the crank, so you can do three kilowatt-hours a day."

  And that was assuming a hundred percent efficiency, in both him and in the generator. "I think I'd do better hauling the truck uphill in pieces," he said.

  "Huh?"

  "Long story. Never mind." He went back outside and watched the rain come down. He was on the right track, though. The wheel motors were already designed to generate electricity as well as use it. The trick was to find something else to spin them. Harness one of those buffaloceros guys? They could probably put out at least a horsepower. But Trent doubted they would break to harness very well, and even if they did, the motor needed to spin fairly fast to have any efficiency at all. A windmill? That could work, except that down here in the valley there hadn't been much wind yet. The storm had blown in without stirring much more than a breeze.

  Another rock tumbled along the stream bed. Trent felt the hollow thuds as it banged its way to a stable spot. There was plenty of energy there, if he could just harness it. He looked upstream to where he'd found the little waterfall above the bathing pool. A four-foot drop could turn a waterwheel. It probably wouldn't have a whole lot more power behind it than him turning a crank, but it would be non-stop.

  He tried to visualize how it could work. The simplest way would be to set the motor right out over the pool next to the waterfall, so the water could flow past the edge of the tire. He could tie tin cans or something to the tire to catch the water so its weight would turn the wheel. But how could he suspend the motor over the pool? It weighed at least a hundred pounds, a hundred and fifty with the tire. Run a couple of logs across from bank to bank? The far bank was about the right height, but the one on this side was too high. He would have to dig down three feet to reach the right level. And besides, how could he get the wheel to rotate with the logs in the way? He would have to separate them wider than the tire and build a platform to set the motor on so the tire could spin between the two logs. That meant one of the logs would have to go in behind the waterfall, and there wasn't room for that, so he would have to dig out a space for it, and that was rock rather than dirt back there. Or he could build a flume, but that would probably be just as difficult. It was starting to look like more work than turning a crank. Okay, try again. Imagine holding the motor out over the pool in his hands. He wouldn't need to stick his fingers out past the tire; why couldn't he do that with the logs? Just stick them out from the far bank and tie the motor to their ends. The tire would be free to spin, and he wouldn't have to build a platform or dig out behind the waterfall or anything. He could feel his heart starting to speed up. This could work! Arrow trees were tall and straight, and if they were as stiff as the arrows themselves, then two of them would easily hold the motor's weight without bending. He could pile rocks on the other ends to keep them from tipping into the pool. He would have to dismount the pickup's batteries and set them close enough to the motor's control box to hook them up to its leads, but he could do that easy enough.

  He could do it. He went back into the camper and said, "I've figured it out. I'm building a waterwheel."

  Donna looked up from the computer. "A waterwheel?"

  He told her his plan, talking too fast and tripping over his tongue in his excitement, and he forced himself to slow down and take it step by step. She started nodding as she realized how it could work.

  "That's great," she said, but she wasn't smiling.

  Trent could read her moods like a billboard. "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "Nothing."

  "Yeah, right. Out with it."

  She looked at the computer screen for a second, then back at him. "You've figured out how to fix our spaceship, but I still haven't figured out where we are."

  He shook off the rain from his jacket and went inside to sit across from her. "Hey, you'll get it. And if you don't, we'll find Earth by trial and error. We can charge the batteries and go hunting for it, and if we don't find it the first time we can come right back here and try again."

  "Oh, sure," she said. "Do you have any idea how big the galaxy is? It's a hundred thousand light-years across. The volume of space that the computer will recognize is about four hundred light-years across. We could search at random forever and never hit it."

  "We don't have to search at random. We know Earth is about thirty thousand light-years from the center of the galaxy, so we can go to the core, then jump outward thirty thousand light-years and work our way around the galaxy until we hit something we recognize."

  "That's still a huge amount of space to search. And thirty thousand is an awfully even number. Glory probably rounded it off so she didn't sound like Spock. If the actual distance is thirty thousand and a half, we'd never find what we were looking for."

  "Yeah, all right, but still. We can narrow it down a lot."

  "And I could pinpoint it if I was just smarter!"

  He took her hands in his. "You're the smartest person on the planet, babe. If anybody can pinpoint it, you can."

  "But I can't! That's what I'm trying to tell you. I've been staring at this damned orbital mechanics textbook for hours now, and it's not making any sense. If we went straight out from the center of the galaxy, and if the galaxy was rotating like a solid disk instead of a fluid, then maybe I could figure out how far we went, but the galaxy isn't solid, and if we went at an angle across it I couldn't figure out where we went even if it was."

  "We know what direction we went, don't we?" he asked.

  "What?"

  "We have the webcam's images of the stars after every jump, and we know what direction we intended to go every time, right? So like we figured before, unless there was an aiming error as well as a distance error, we know what direction we went, and we know what direction to aim to undo it all. All we're missing is the distance of the one big jump."

  Even with the door open, not much daylight made it into the camper. Donna's face was lit mostly by the computer screen, and its blue glow made her look icy cold. She pulled her hands away. "That's all we're missing? Hey, that makes everything better. That's what I'm trying to figure out, dumb shit!"

  "And you'll get it! Don't worry."

  "Don't worry. That's easy for you to say. You've solved your p
roblem."

  "Well, excuse me! I'm sorry I'm so goddamned smart." He got up and stomped the two steps to the door, but when he stopped and turned around for one last retort and saw her sitting there in the dim light, he took the two steps back and sat down across from her again.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that."

  "Sure you didn't," she said sullenly.

  "Look, if I was smart, I wouldn't have pissed you off, now, would I? I mean, it stands to reason. You're my honey bunny ducky downy sweetie chicken pie li'l everlovin' jelly bean. I piss you off, and it's no sex for me."

  "Oh, that's flattering."

  "But it's flawless reasoning."

  "You're trying to use a logical argument to convince me you're not smart?"

  "How'm I doing?"

  "Well, it is about the dumbest thing I've heard you say all day."

  "I could start praising President Stevenson."

  "That's not necessary," she said quickly. "You do that, and I'd just have to put you out of your misery." She was trying not to smile, but it looked like she might lose that battle pretty soon.

  "How 'bout if I quote him? 'Space travel is bad for business. It'll just encourage people to skip out on their debts, like the government does.'"

  "He didn't say that."

  "Sure he did. He just didn't use those words."

  She pursed her lips, and finally cracked a smile, but it vanished as fast as it came. "Nice try, but I still can't figure out where we are."

  He shrugged. "We don't have to do it today. It'll be a couple of weeks before the batteries are charged. Maybe I'll have another brainstorm before then. Or maybe you will."

  "Fat chance."

  "You never know. In the meantime, come help me cut down a couple of trees." 27

  Arrow trees were tough. The wood was fibrous, and the saw kept binding. Worse, every time they jarred it, it dropped arrows. Donna kept an eye trained upward and called out a warning when one cut loose, but Trent was getting tired of jumping back every time he bound the saw blade. Plus he was starting to sweat under his raincoat.

  "There's got to be a better way," he said, pausing for breath.

  "We could throw rocks at the branches and knock down all the ones that are ready to come loose," said Donna.

  He looked up at the tuft of greenery at the top of the tree. It was forty feet up, at least. He could pitch a few rocks that far, but not many, and not accurately. He could shoot any individual branch he wanted with the rifle, but the bullet would go right through it. Donna was on the right track, though. What they needed to do was jar the whole tree with a good, solid jolt, and shake down all the loose branches at once.

  There were a couple of big logs in the stream bed. They were from the leafy kind of tree, all twisty and not much use for suspending a motor over the stream, but one of them might work as a crude battering ram. Trent had to slosh out into the water to reach them, but it didn't matter; his boots were already soaked from walking around in the rain and from fording the stream anyway. He cut off the small end of the closest log, leaving about eight feet of log about the size of his thigh, which he and Donna dragged up the bank to the arrow tree.

  "Okay," Trent said when they had gotten into position about ten feet from the tree. "We run toward it, hit it with the log, let go, and keep running. I'm going to go straight through, but I think you should swing wide and go to the side. You'll get out from under the tree faster that way. And watch you don't drop the log on your feet."

  "Right," said Donna.

  Trent took the front end, and Donna lifted the back. "Hit, drop, and run," Trent said. "Ready?"

  "Yeah."

  "On the count of three. One . . . two . . . three." He started toward the tree, wobbling a little under the weight, then caught his stride and rammed the log hard into the trunk. It rebounded and he let it go, continuing on past and shouting "Run! Run!"

  He heard a patter of arrows hitting the ground behind him, and one clanked off his helmet, but then he was out of range. He turned to make sure Donna was okay, too, and saw her still running.

  "You're clear!" he shouted. She slowed to a stop and turned around. It looked like a miniature forest under the tree. At least two dozen arrows had come down, all but two or three sticking point-first in the ground. Trent pulled them up and tossed them in a pile off to the side, then picked up Donna's end of the big branch and dragged it out into the open again. "One more time?" he asked.

  Donna said, "Sure," and picked up her end. He lifted his, and on the count of three they did it again. Three more arrows came down. Trent tossed them aside with the others and was trying to decide whether or not to give it one more whack when he heard a snort off to the side and looked up to see the buffaloceros lumbering straight toward him.

  "Jesus, get in the camper!" he yelled to Donna. She turned and ran, but she had to cross the stream to get there, and it was too wide to leap. The buffaloceros saw her movement and started toward her while she was picking her way across the slick stones, but Trent stepped out in front of it and waved his arms, shouting "Hey! Hey you! Over here."

  The buffaloceros turned toward him, lowered its head, and charged. He backpedaled as fast as he could, putting the trunk of the arrow tree between it and him, but the creature didn't seem to see the tree. It crashed headlong into the trunk, shaking it way harder than Trent and Donna had with their log. It staggered back a step just as a hail of arrows glanced off its armored back. A couple whacked into Trent's helmet and shoulder guards, too, and one tore a hot streak down the side of his left leg.

  "Ow!" he yelled, dancing back out of the way, but the buffaloceros came after him, sidestepping the tree this time. Trent knew he would never make it across the stream before it caught him, and he didn't want this thing ramming the camper anyway, so he picked another arrow tree and sprinted for it, his helmet tilting askew and his shoulder guards flapping up and down as he ran. He heard Donna screaming from the other side of the stream and heard hoof-beats thundering just behind him, and he poured everything he had into the last few steps between him and the tree. He didn't even slow down; just dodged past and prayed that the buffaloceros wouldn't see this one, either. It didn't. Apparently it only saw things when they moved. It smacked this tree at full-tilt, too, bringing down another rain of arrows. Trent was already out from under it and halfway to the next tree beyond; he ran to it and skidded to a stop behind the trunk while the beast was still shaking its head from the impact.

  It looked around, stupefied, obviously wondering where Trent had gone. It didn't seem any worse for wear. That armored forehead was apparently good for more than just arrows. Trent held perfectly still while it turned its head from side to side. Donna was across the stream now and running for the pickup, and her footsteps drew its attention, but the moment it looked away from Trent he picked up two rocks and tossed one at the thing's side.

  It bellowed loudly and whirled around, just as Trent tossed his other rock into the bushes to his left. Either the motion or the sound of the rock hitting branches was enough to set it off, and it charged into the brush, scattering twigs and leaves everywhere. Trent picked up another couple of rocks and tossed them out ahead of it, beyond the bushes, and it continued onward, chasing the sound. It kept running even after it passed the last rock. Trent listened to its hoofbeats receding into the forest, and when he was sure the creature could no longer see or hear him, he walked back to the tree he and Donna had been working on.

  She came back from the pickup carrying the rifle. "Are you okay?" she asked.

  "Yeah. It didn't get me."

  "Something did."

  "Where?"

  "Your leg."

  Oh yeah. He hadn't even felt it after the initial sting, but he looked down at his left calf and saw a rip a couple inches long in his pants, and blood welling up from a cut beneath that. Now it hurt. He sopped up the blood with his pantleg and had a look at the cut. Not very deep. It was more of a scratch than a cut, probably from the rough sides of
the arrow. "It'll be all right," he said. He looked back toward where the buffaloceros had gone. "I guess now we know how to call one of those guys if we ever want to. They must like to butt heads like bighorn sheep."

  "It's probably mating season," Donna said.

  Trent nodded. "I hope one of 'em doesn't mistake the pickup for a female." He reached for his camp saw, then swore when he noticed what had happened to it. He'd laid it next to the pile of arrows while he and Donna had been using the log for a battering ram, but the buffaloceros had run right across it in its charge, and the last three inches of it were bent. It was the bow, not the blade, that had taken the brunt of the weight, so at least the blade hadn't snapped, but Trent had to go back to the pickup and pound the bow into shape again. He did it inside the camper with the door closed, setting the flashlight on the counter so he could see and hammering against a chunk of firewood with a towel between it and the floor so he wouldn't attract another buffaloceros. When he got back to the tree, Donna had cleaned up all the arrows that had fallen around its base. They made quite a stack. Trent would have to build a longbow and see how they worked for hunting. That was a project for later. He had a waterwheel to build today. He bent down to the cut he'd started and took a few light strokes with the saw, testing his repairs before he put his weight into it. It seemed strong enough, so he started sawing in earnest, and Donna didn't call out a warning even when the blade bound a few strokes later.