“They’re beautiful,” Chou said, a smile breaking the stone of her face.
“Vulpes Lagopus,” Silas said. “And they are, indeed, most beautiful.”
I could have stayed and watched them play all day, but the wind sliding off the ridge brought with it an uncomfortable drop in temperature that cut through even the thick sweater I wore.
“Best ve keep moving, I think,” Freuchen said, seeing Albert scrunch up as the icy wind passed over us.
With a final concerted effort, we made it to the top.
The rocks that formed the mountain’s ridge might as well have been an undulating wave of slabs jutting out at random angles. The slippery ice made it all but impossible to find a secure footing. Even Freuchen was having problems.
“I vish ve had brought some rope and tackle,” he grumbled.
“Allow me,” Silas said. The robot reached for one of the slabs, pulled himself effortlessly onto it, and sat there like he was riding a horse. His eye-bar scanned the opposite side of the mountain. “There is easier ground on this other side,” he said. He shimmied ten feet or so farther along the ridge, then swung his legs over to the opposite side, so only his upper torso was visible to us. Then he beckoned to us to come to him.
“Peter first, please,” Silas said, reaching two metallic hands down to him. Freuchen took them and allowed the robot to pull him up. He scrambled over the ridge and turned back to us. The Dane was shorter than Silas by a couple of feet but still more than tall enough that he could easily reach down and help Chou up and over the ridge.
I checked with Albert. “Ready?” I asked. The boy nodded. I picked him up with both hands beneath his armpits and offered him up to Silas, who pulled him over the ridge, then I took Freuchen’s hands and allowed him to help me.
A blast of wind stung my face with icy pinpricks, and I closed my eyes, waiting for it to die away. When I opened them again, I gave a gasp of amazement. Stretching out for as far as I could see, from horizon to horizon, was almost nothing but forest. It must have gone on for several hundred miles in every direction. Looming over all of it like the sword of Damocles, the collector was visible for the first time in all its amazing, terrifying, and unbelievable hugeness. It cast an enormous shadow that slowly moved like a sundial over the tops of the trees.
That first day, when I washed up on Avalon’s beach and I’d got my first brief look at this incredible edifice, I’d thought it was made up of facets…and I’d been right. The trunk was constructed from huge, irregular slabs of some translucent milky material, like pieces of a shattered mirror put randomly back together again. They glinted blindingly when the sun caught them. Miles above us, the collector’s cone-like bell spread out across the atmosphere like a lily pad on a pond. The trunk—miles across at its thickest point—swept down toward the earth, growing rapidly narrower before broadening again. As it neared the ground, it vanished into tightly-clustered rocks that rose above the trees at its base, oddly out of place in the sea of green surrounding it. Lines of energy moved and shifted within the collector’s trunk.
“It does not seem possible. How could something like that even exist?” Freuchen asked, his voice resonating with awe.
“I have no idea,” I replied, turning to look at Chou, who stood silently next to me, her eyes fixed on the distant structure.
“Look, over there,” said Albert. “Smoke!”
We’d been so distracted by the collector that we had failed to notice the five or six trails of smoke rising just a few miles to the northeast. I raised my binoculars and glassed the area.
“It looks like a settlement,” I said. “I can make out the roofs of a couple of buildings.” I passed the binoculars to Freuchen.
“I think you are correct,” he said.
“There are more, too,” Albert said. He pointed off into the distance at more streams of gray smoke, several miles from the first. “And over there,” he added, pointing further to the north where a single large plume of smoke twirled lazily upward.
“At least three separate camps,” Chou said.
“People,” I said, turning to look at my companions. “There are people.” I felt a thrill of excitement pass through me. We hadn’t seen anyone else since leaving Avalon, and I had secretly begun to wonder whether there was actually anyone else on this planet other than the few hundred souls who’d had the good fortune to end up on the island.
“How far away do you think the nearest settlement is?” I asked.
“Approximately four-and-a-quarter miles from the base of the mountain,” Silas said.
“Ve can make it by late afternoon if ve get a move on,” Freuchen said, and without another word began to climb down toward the forest.
“Silas, will you lead the way?” I asked. Despite the robot’s memory problems, his ability to navigate was second-to-none, and we were going to need it now we were back in the Everwood.
“Of course,” he said, and took his position at the front of the line.
The smell of wood smoke wafting between the trees told us we were close to the encampment we had spotted earlier from the mountain. Hunkering down behind the trunk of an oak tree, we plotted our strategy, keeping our voices low so they wouldn’t carry to the settlement.
“We need to be cautious,” Chou said. “We have no way of knowing who these people are or what their reaction to strangers might be.”
“Agreed,” Freuchen added. “I think ve should pursue the same strategy as ven ve returned vith Silas to the garrison.”
I nodded my agreement. “All of us wandering into that camp is going to set off alarm bells for them. We need to play it cool, and that means Silas needs to stay out of sight until we have a better idea of the kind of people we’re dealing with. No offense, Silas.”
“None taken,” the robot said.
“I will enter the settlement,” Chou said, as though she would not hear any argument.
I shook my head. “Nope. I’m the one who needs to go in. If these people are no threat, then great, but if there are any agents of the Adversary who recognize me, then it’ll be better they don’t know about you. In other words, I might need you to come save my ass.”
Freuchen said, “I think it vill look very suspicious; a lone woman traveling on her own. I vill go vith you.”
Chou nodded.
“I would certainly feel more comfortable knowing Peter was accompanying you,” Silas added.
I thought it over for a few seconds, then nodded my agreement. Freuchen was imposing enough to deter any straight-up attack but charming enough that if the people of the encampment were friendly, he would not be seen as an immediate threat.
“Okay,” I said, standing and looking to Freuchen. “I’m ready when you are.”
Chou shook her head. “I suggest we make camp here until morning so Silas is fully charged and will be able to assist if the need should arise.” She was right. It made no sense to enter the settlement tonight only to have Silas shut down until the aurora arrived. We would need him to help us escape if it came to that. Despite the robot’s aversion to violence of any kind, the mere presence of the enormous golden robot carried an awful lot of shock value and would, hopefully, scare the crap out of any attacker. They didn’t need to know he was a pacifist.
Five
It began to rain a few minutes after I woke. The first drops pitter-pattering against the forest’s canopy before proliferating into a cacophony of white noise. From my backpack, I pulled an oiled poncho that had belonged to one of the dead Nazi’s and slipped it over my head. Everyone else did the same, except for Chou, who just raised her hood.
“Okay, are we all clear on what the plan is?” I asked, loud enough to be heard over the deluge.
Silas stood in what had moments before been a pool of early morning sunlight, but which now was just a pool. “We will wait at this location. If you have not returned by this evening, we will continue to wait until after tonight’s aurora, then we will move closer so that we can ascertain whe
ther you need our help. If you do not return by tomorrow evening, we will enter the camp under cover of darkness and locate you.”
“Exactly,” I said.
Chou still wasn’t happy. “I do not like the idea of waiting that long,” she said. “It leaves too much to chance.”
I shook my head slowly. “You need to give us time to feel these people out. The Architect only chose to bring those he thought were worthy, and somehow, I don’t think there’s much likelihood of that being a camp full of the Adversary’s people. We have to gain their trust and make sure that they’re trustworthy in return. And it’s going to take more than a morning to do that.”
Freuchen laid one of his big paws on my shoulder. “Don’t vurry. I vill take good care of her.”
Chou inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, and nodded.
“Be careful,” Albert said, his brow furrowed with concern.
I smiled. “No need to worry about us, little man. We’ll be just fine.” I kissed him on the crown of his head and gave him a hug.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I said to Freuchen, who handed me my backpack. I slung it over my shoulders, and the two of us headed off through the trees in the direction of the encampment.
Freuchen and I pushed through the trees. The downpour had turned out to be little more than a squall and had already evaporated, leaving the air fresh and clean. It made following the smell of woodsmoke through the trees as easy as following a path. We walked in silence, communicating only with pointed fingers and nods when we thought we should change direction. I placed a hand on Freuchen’s shoulder and brought him to a halt, then pointed ahead of us to a spot just past a thicket of bushes. I leaned in close and whispered, “See him?”
It took Freuchen a second to spot the man sitting on the ground ahead of us, his back against a tree trunk, chin resting against his chest, obviously dozing. He was dressed in jeans and a wool sweater. Occasional puffs of mist escaped his nostrils. Cradled in the crook of his arm was an improvised spear like the ones Albert had made for us.
Freuchen whispered. “Perhaps now might be a good time to announce our presence. Ve don’t vant to startle him into doing something stupid.” I nodded my agreement but still jumped when Freuchen said, very loudly, “I once stalked a vale for six days along the coast of Greenland. I vas half-frozen to death and starving but there vas no vay I—“
The guard leaped to his feet, a look of shock and sleep-confusion on his face. He spun around a few times, then finally spotted us.
“Hey! You there, stop where you are.” His accent sounded Australian. He swallowed hard as he ran his eyes up Freuchen’s huge frame. The Dane had two feet of height on the guard and was twice as broad. “Who are you? Where did you come from?” the guard demanded.
“Hey there, stranger,” Freuchen said, raising his arms in a gesture of surrender (which I also did) and smiling amicably. “Ve are no threat. Ve are just two explorers washed up on the same shores as you.”
The guard was in his twenties, skinny, but savvy enough that he understood that Freuchen could snap him in two and use him as a toothpick if he wanted to. He projected a cocky bravado to hide his obvious fear while he eyed us both suspiciously. He said nothing for a moment, then advanced, his spear held out in front of him. When he was close enough, he reached for my sword, but I stepped backward.
Freuchen stared down at the guard. “Tsk, tsk, that does not belong to you, little man. Now vy don’t you take us to whoever is in charge and ve promise not to tell him you ver asleep at your post.”
The guard hesitated, then motioned with his spear back past the tree where he’d been asleep. “That way,” he said.
He waited for us to step past him, then followed.
The side of a log cabin, bigger than any of the garrison’s huts we had built on Avalon, materialized through the trees. I nudged Freuchen to draw his attention to it. He nodded to the left of the first where I saw a second cabin. Beyond that was a third and fourth. A man stepped out of the nearest cabin and disappeared into the trees, whistling to himself. Next, a woman appeared carrying a child clutched to her breast. She was dressed in a toga, her hair pulled up into a coil on her head. She glanced at us wide-eyed then continued on her way.
“Where are you taking us?” I asked the guard.
“To the Mayor,” he said.
“You have a mayor?” I said, but the Australian had gone quiet.
Stepping from between the first two huts, I had expected to see a camp similar to the layout of the garrison spread out through the surrounding forest. Instead, the ground sloped away then vanished altogether, revealing an opening to a vast pit two or three hundred feet across. The ground around the mouth of the pit had been cleared of trees and bushes, but a carpet of deep green moss still hung over the edge, undulating in the gentle breeze.
“That way,” the guard said, nudging us toward a set of roughly hewn steps that had been cut out of the earthen side of the pit.
We followed his command, but as my foot touched the first step, I came to an abrupt halt, gave a little gasp of surprise. From there, I could see that the pit was a hundred-plus feet deep. The stumps of trees that had grown along its sides showed where they’d been removed, then used to build numerous cabins and buildings in their place. I quickly counted thirty or so of these large buildings, twice the size of the garrison’s. Each was held in place by log stilts similar to homes I’d seen when I’d gone sightseeing through Hollywood Hills. At the bottom of the pit was a huge beautiful blue-green lake, fed by a waterfall that gushed from a fissure about three-quarters of the way up the northern wall. There were a lot of people milling around—at least several hundred that I could see. Some were weaving baskets from the reeds growing in clumps along the shore of the lake. Others were working on new buildings, or cooking meat over open fires and what smelled like bread in a row of six earthen ovens, or just standing and chatting amongst themselves. There was even a woman using a simple potter’s wheel to make clay urns or vases. A few faces turned our way as we followed the guard down the winding dirt path into the pit before returning their attention back to whatever they’d been doing. Every face smiled at us.
Freuchen and I smiled back. We exchanged a glance that said this is a good start.
About halfway down, the guard said, “That way,” nodding toward a path that ended at the door of a cabin. We did as he ordered and stopped outside the door. The guard edged past Freuchen and knocked hard on the door with his stick.
“Come on in,” a woman’s voice said from within—an American woman’s voice. The guard pushed the door open then ushered us inside.
The cabin was surprisingly clean. The logs that made up the walls gave it a countryfied feeling. The smell of sap and oak added to what was a relaxing atmosphere. Dust motes floated through the air of the main room with a wall on either side, partitioning off two more rooms. There were no doors in either doorway, so I could easily see into them. One was a bedroom, with two utilitarian wooden beds covered in what looked like brown fur. The other had a sectioned-off area with a row of shelves that held a collection of cans, tools, buckets, and other miscellaneous stuff that I guessed must have arrived with the town’s people.
A young woman sat at a table in the main room, eating a meal of leafy greens from a clay bowl. She looked like she was a few years older than me, her long blonde hair tied back in a bun. She had a calmness to her that made me instantly like her. Putting down her fork, she swallowed, smiled widely, and said, “Oh, guests! Welcome.”
“I found them in the forest, Mayor,” our guard said.
“Well done, Robert,” the woman answered, stepping around the table and walking toward us. Her blue eyes turned first to Freuchen then to me. “Do you speak English,” she asked, smiling.
“Ve do,” Freuchen said.
I nodded. “Yes.”
She tilted her head quizzically. “You’re American?” she said, with some evident surprise.
“Yes. California.”
&nb
sp; Her smile grew wider. “What year?”
“2018.”
“Close enough to me,” said the woman with a wry smile, then after a slight pause added, “New York, by way of Denison, Iowa.”
I hadn’t noticed the large dog that had been asleep at her feet until it stretched, letting out a loud almost-howl of satisfaction and got to its feet, padding over to where the woman stood.
I offered my hand to the woman, “My name’s Meredith, and this is Peter.”
“I prefer just Freuchen,” Freuchen said.
The woman shook our hands in turn. “My name’s Emily,” she said, reaching down to stroke the large dog’s head, “and this is Thor. Welcome to New Manhattan.”
Six
“Please, have a seat,” Emily said, fetching two wooden stools from the bedroom and placing them in front of the table. “Are you hungry?” she asked once we were sitting.
“No, but I could use some water, please,” I said. Freuchen echoed my request.
“Of course.” She filled two mugs from a pitcher and handed them to us.
“Thank you,” I said, sipping from my mug. “This place is… amazing.”
Emily laughed. “It is, isn’t it? We were lucky to find it.”
“There are a lot of…” I almost said candidates, but caught myself in time, “people here. Did you all arrive together?”
Emily continued to smile but diverted. “Why don’t you two tell me your story first?” She sat back in her chair, her smile broadening.
Chou had anticipated we would be asked about where we were from and had advised us that we withhold all mention of Avalon and what had taken place there. So, before Peter and I left, we’d all agreed on a simplified story of our arrival.
“We arrived off the coast to the south,” I said, gambling that everyone else had also arrived similarly to us. “Freuchen pulled me from the water, and we’ve been looking for others since then.”
A Memory of Mankind: (This Alien Earth Book 2) Page 5
