Dealing in Futures Part 4

Well, it may turn out that we'll be glad it's where it is. What if they follow us all the way there? If they try to encircle the clearing and wait us out, the jungle will get them; we won't have to do a thing. Plathy skills work fine down on their friendly island, but up where the dome is situated a hunting party armed with clubs and spears wouldn't last a week. Free lunch for the fauna.

We have to push on fast. Islands like this one will be common while the river is wide and slow. We'll be fairly safe. When the jungle closes in on both sides, though, the river will become a narrow twisting cataract. No island protection but its noise might confound Plathy hearing, make it harder for them to ambush us.

At any rate, this is the plan: each day on the plain, cover as much ground as possible, consistent with getting a few hours of sleep each night. Rest up just south of the jungle and then make a forced march, two days to the dome.

Maybe this haste is unnecessary. If the Plathys were their normal, rather sensible selves, they'd cut their losses and go home. But now we have no idea of what's normal. They may harry us until we kill them all. That would be good for the race, leaving it relatively uncontaminated culturally. Bad for us. A few more engagements like last night and we won't have enough power in the crazers to make it through the jungle. Might as well stand by the river and sing blood songs to the hungry lizards.

Gabriel Five days of no contact, but I can't shake the feeling we're being watched. Have been watched all the way. Now an afternoon and night of rest on this last island, and Maria wants us to push all the way to the dome.

Physically, I suppose we can do it. The terrain isn't difficult, since a game trail parallels the water all the way up. But the game that made the trail are formidable.

They gave us plenty of trouble when there were twelve of us. And theoretically no Plathys.

(I wonder about that now, though. Surely someone was watching us back when we buried the weapons. How long had they been following us? They claimed that they never go to the mainland, except for a few brave Walkers, and of course they always tell the truth. About what they remember, anyhow.) I haven't recorded anything for a long time. Waiting for my state of mind to improve. After the night of the attack I ran out of hope. Things haven't improved but I'm talking to myself to stay awake for the rest of this watch. I think Brenda's doing the same thing. Sitting on the other side of the island staring at the water, mumbling.

I should go remind her to pay attention. But I can cover both banks from this side.

Besides, if they're going to hit us, I wish they'd hit us here. Clear fields of fire all around. Of course they won't; they learn from their mistakes, Maria says.

I'm being paranoiac. They're gone. The being-watched feeling, I don't know. Ever since Derek got it I've been a-I've been . . . loose in the head. Trying to control this-this panic. They look to me for strength, even Maria does, but all I have is muscle, jaw muscle to keep the screams in. When that one swam by us headed for the mainland I knew we were deep in s.h.i.+t.

Derek had religion. We argued long nights about that. What would he be doing now, praying? "Nuestro Senor que vines en el cielo, alabado sea to nombre. . . ."

Good spear repellent. I miss him so.

n.o.body will ever find this tooth with its feeble beep transmitter. When they come back and find the dome empty, that will be the end of it. Not enough budget for a search through obviously hostile territory. Not enough resources on this planet for anybody to want to exploit it, so no new money to find our teeth. We'll pa.s.s into Plathy legend and be forgotten, or distorted beyond recognition.

A good thing for them. If there was anything of use here, we'd be like the Eskimo anthropologists Maria talks about, recording the ways of a race doomed by the fact of recording. So maybe the Plathys will have another million years of untroubled evolution. Maybe they'll learn table manners.

I'm afraid of them but can't be mad at them. Even after Derek. They are what they are and we should have been more careful. Maybe I'm becoming a real xenologist, at this late date. Derek would say I'm trying to compose myself into a state of grace.

Before dying.

It infuriated me that he always had answers. All I ever had was questions.

So two days' push and we're safe inside the dome. Food and cube and books and spears bounce off. Maybe I've read too much, written too much; the pattern seems inescapable. We're at death's door. Capital Death's Door. If we make it to the dome we'll break the rules.

Calmate. Calm. Maybe I'm projecting, making patterns. Here there's only real things: cause, effect, randomness, entropy-your death is like the falling of a leaf, Derek said; like the leaf falling, it's a small tragedy, but necessary. If everything lived forever the universe would fill up in short order.

Mustn't blather. Reality, not philosophy. We rest so we can be alert. If we're alert enough we'll beat the jungle. Beat the Plathys that aren't there. It's all in my head. For the next two days take the head out of the circuit. Only reflex. Smell, listen, watch: react. React fast enough, you live.

Only I keep thinking about Derek. He never knew what hit him.

Brenda Gab asked me to watch both banks for a while so he could give love to Maria before it got dark. Hard to watch both banks when I want to watch him. Men look so vulnerable from this angle, bouncing; a new perspective for me. I've never been an audience except for watching on the cube. It's different.

Admit I'm jealous of her. She's fifteen years older than I and shows it. But he wants her for his last one. That was obvious in his tone of voice. At some level I think he's as scared as I am.

If he thinks this is his last one he doesn't know much about women. Maria will let me wake him up when our s.h.i.+ft is over.

If I can wait that long. I've watched him sleeping; he has the refractory period of a twelve-year-old. To be exact, I know from observation that he can do it twice and still get an erection in his sleep. No privacy under our circ.u.mstances.

Funny friendly sound, don't hear it like that while you're doing it-what was that?

Something move?

Just a lizard, I guess. Nothing now. We've been seeing them the last two days on the jungle side, around dusk and in the firelight. They don't come in the water. What's going to happen tomorrow night, no island, no fire? Don't want to die that way, jumped by a pack of dinosaurs. Nor have my head bitten off by a sentient primitive. I was going to be a grandmother and sit on the porch and tell doctor stories and die with no fuss.

Why won't they attack? I know they're out there, waiting. If they would only come now, I could die that way. I remember the feeling, fifty or a hundred of them against the three of us and our two crazers. Not a fair fight, perhaps, but G.o.d it did feel good, holding our own, epinephrine from head to toe. This waiting and worrying. Light the fire.

Stack the wet wood around to dry. Gives me something to do while they're finis.h.i.+ng up. Being quiet for the sake of my sensibilities, or theirs. Just heavier breathing and a faster rhythm of liquid sounds. I've followed that unspoken code, too; we haven't been all three together since the water hole. She's had him seven times since, to my four. To my knowledge. Why am I keeping score? They were made for each other. Iron man, iron woman.

I was in love once or twice and know, this is something else. Not just s.e.x; I've been that way before, too. Hysteria is part of it, but not in the old-fas.h.i.+oned womanish sense, the womb taking over. This is a certainty-of-death hysteria, to coin a category.

It's different from just fear. It's like, it's like-I don't know. As if you had never tasted water before, or seen colors, and suddenly here is a cold spring or a rainbow. Minus the joy. Just something primal and unlike anything before. Does that make sense?

We've been in danger G.o.d knows constantly for how long? Not the same. There was always hope. Now we're two days away from total sanctuary and for some reason I know we won't make it.

I remember from psych cla.s.s a lesson about people who seemed to know they were going to die. Not sick people; soldiers, adventurers, whose sudden violent death seemed to resonate backward in time-they told their friends that somehow they felt that this was it, and by G.o.d it was. You can call it coincidence or invoke pragmatic causality-they were nervous and therefore careless and therefore died-but here and now I think there's more to it. Once I'm safe inside the dome I'll publish a retraction.

Right now I feel my death as strongly as I feel the need for that man inside of me.

Maria Somehow we lived through that one.

We'd been in the jungle for perhaps twelve hours, dusk approaching, when a lizard pack hit us, or two packs, from in front and behind. The trail is scarcely two meters wide, which saved us. The carca.s.ses piled up and impeded their charge. We must have killed forty of them, man-sized or slightly smaller. Not a type we'd seen on the way down.

Were they intelligent enough to coordinate their charge, or is it some kind of instinctive attack pattern? Scary either way. Used up a lot of energy. If it happens a few more times . . . it happens. No use thinking about it.

At least the action seems to have been good for morale. Both of them have been radiating depression and fear since we started out this morning. Reinforcing each other's premonitions of doom. I shouldn't have let her go to him at watch change, or I should have admonished her to f.u.c.k, don't talk. It was too much like saying goodbye.

I got that feeling from Gab too, last night, but I tried to rea.s.sure him. Words.

By my reckoning we have fourteen to eighteen hours to go, depending on how much ground we can cover without light. Decided against torches, of course. The Plathys don't normally hunt at night, but they sure as h.e.l.l attacked us in the dark.

Natural impulse is to climb a tree and wait for dawn. That would be suicidal. The jungle canopy is thick and supports its own very active ecology. We can't take to the water because the current's too swift, even if we wanted to chance the snakes.

We'll stay within touching distance, Gab in front because he has the best hearing.

Brenda hears better than me, so she should bring up the rear, but I think she'll be better off in the middle, feeling protected. Besides, I want to have one of the weapons.

Gabriel Never another night like that. I wound up firing at every sound, jumpy. But a few times there actually was something waiting in front of us, once something that wasn't a lizard. Big s.h.a.ggy animal that stood up on its hind legs and reared over us, all teeth and claws and a d.i.c.k the size of my arm. He was too dumb to know he was dead, and actually kept scrabbling toward us after I cut him off at the knees. If we'd gone a few steps farther before I fired he would have gotten at least me, maybe all of us. The crazer light was almost bright in the pitch blackness, a lurid strobe. I used up the last of one fuel cell and had to reload by touch.

At least we don't have to worry about the Plathys. Nothing remotely edible could make it through a night like that without energy weapons.

When I mentioned that to Maria, she said not to be too sure. They were tracking us on the jungle side before. Not the same, though. This jungle makes that one look like a park.

Dead tired but moving fast. We're looking for a pink granite outcropping. Fifty paces upstream from it there '.

s a minor trail to the right; the dome clearing is about half a kilometer in. Can't be more than a few hours away.

Brenda There it is! The rock! Hard to...talk running...

Maria Slow down! Careful! That's better. Not a sound now.

Gabriel Oh, no. s.h.i.+t, no.

Brenda They . . . burned it?

Gabriel Spears Maria Take his weapon! Get to cover! Here!

Brenda I-oh!

Maria So . . . so this is how it ends. Gab died about ten minutes ago, in the first moment of the attack. A spear in the back of his head. Brenda was. .h.i.t then too, a spear that went in her shoulder and came out her back. She lived for several minutes, though, and acquitted herself well when the Plathys charged. I think we killed them all, thirty- seven by my count. If there are any left in the jungle they are staying there for the time being.

They must have piled wood up around the dome and kept a bonfire going until the force field overloaded and collapsed. It wasn't engineered for that kind of punishment, I suppose. Obviously.

Little of use left in the ruins. Rations destroyed, fuel cells popped by the heat.

There's a toolbox not badly harmed. Nothing around to repair with it, though. Maybe if I dug I could find some rations merely overcooked. But I don't want to stay around to search. Doubt that I'll live long enough to have another meal, anyhow.

My fault. Eleven good people dead, and how many innocent savages, because I wasn't prudent. With that first abrupt life change, the frenzied breeding, I should have ordered us to tiptoe away. Another decade of satellite surveillance and we would have learned which times were safe to come in for close-up study. Now everything is a shambles.

Racial vanity is part of it, I guess, or my vanity. Thinking we could come naked into a heavily armed Stone Age culture and survive by our superior intelligence and advanced perspective. It worked before. But this place is not Obelobel.

I guess all I can do now is be sure a record survives. These teeth might not make it through a Plathy or lizard digestive system. I'll . . . I'll use the pliers from the tool kit.

Leave the teeth here in the ruins. Buried enough so the Plathys can't find them easily.

One h.e.l.l of a prize to bring back from your Walk North.

I have only about a tenth charge left. Brenda used up all of the other before she died. Not enough to get out of the jungle, not even if it were all daylight. One woman alone doesn't have a b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.king chance on this world. I'll try the river. Maybe I can find a log that will float me down to the savannah. Then hike to the coast. If I can make it to the beach maybe I can stay alive there for a while. Sleep with one eye open. I don't know. Look for me there. But don't bother to look for too long. The pliers.

Sorry, Brenda... .

Sorry ... Gab. Sweet Gab. Still warm.

Now mine. One jerk. Some blood, some pain. Tem se garlish. !ka.

To: Ahmadou Masire, Coordinator Selva Sector Recreational Facilities Confederacion Office Building, Suite 100 Bolivar 243 488 739 Selva From: Federico Santesteban, Publicity Director Office of Resources Allocation Chimbarazo Interplanetario Ecuador 3874658 Terra Dr. Masire: I hope you will find the enclosed transcript of some use. Your a.s.sistant, Sra.

Videla, mentioned the possibility of a doc.u.mentary cube show to generate interest in the hunting trips to Sanchrist IV. Seems to me that if you inject some romance into this you have a natural story: sacrifice, tragedy, brave kids battling against impossible odds.

We could save you some production costs by getting a few Plathys s.h.i.+pped to your studio via our xenological division on Perrin's World. They have a hundred or so there and keep their stock stable by cloning. You'll have to have somebody put to- gether a grant proposal demonstrating that they'll be put to legitimate scholarly use.

Garcia Belaunde at your Inst.i.tuto XenolOgico is a tame one, as you probably know.

Have him talk to Leon Jawara at the PW Xenological Exchange Commission. He'll make sure you get the beasts at the right part of their life cycle. Otherwise they'd eat all of your actors.

I tried to pull some strings, but I'm afraid there's no way we can get you permission to take a crew onto the Plathy island itself. That '.

s a xenological preserve now, isolated by a force field, the few remaining Plathys constantly monitored by flying bugs. You can shoot on the mainland, if your actors are as crazy as your hunters, or use the crater lake island. There are a few feral Plathys roaming there, though, so take precautions, no matter what the season. Use a restraining field if that's within your budget; otherwise, regrettably, the smartest thing would be to kill them on sight.

Their behavior patterns become erratic if they're separated from family for more than a year.

The search party that followed up on Dr. Rubera's expedition could only find five of the tooth transmitters. There was no trace of Maria Rubera, or any other human remains.

A sad story but I think a useful one for your purposes. Gives your expeditions a dramatic historical context.

Let me know if I can be of further service. And by all means send us a copy of the cube, if you decide to go into production.

Your servant, Federico Santesteban There's a great temptation in science fiction writing to succ.u.mb to the Law of the Conservation of Backgrounds: having worked out a useful and interesting fictional "future history," you hate to throw it away after just one story. So you recycle it.

I've used the universe that lies behind Seasons in a half-dozen stories and two novels (All My Sins Remembered and There Is No Darkness), and it's one I tend to return to whenever a story demands a starfaring human civilization. The basic premise is that way back in the twenty-first century the bases of political and eco- nomic power changed radically: America and Russia started slugging it out and they brought Europe, China, and j.a.pan down with them. Africa and South America emerged more or less intact, so when a practical faster-than-light drive was developed (by Hartford, an Australian concern), it was a Spanish and Swahili- speaking "Confederacion" that pushed out to the stars. Some of the stories in the series, like Seasons, are rather serious, and some, like the one that follows, are rather otherwise.

When you look at a story several years after writing it, sometimes it's difficult to remember what impulse caused you to start the thing. That's not a problem with this next one. Another writer made me do it.

In the late summer of 1981, Jerry Pournelle kindly arranged for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to invite a dozen or so science fiction writers to come to Pasadena and watch Voyager 2's Saturn flyby pictures as they came in. It was one of the most exciting things that's ever happened to me. Every few hours-sometimes every few minutes!-a picture would come in that set planetary science on its ear. The scientists' enthusiasm was contagious; the very air crackled with suspense, mystery, joy.

But they didn't have any beer.

So every now and then, when there was a lull in the data transmission, we'd saunter down the hill to where Jerry had parked his jeep, providentially loaded with iced beer, and stand in the hazy California heat sucking long-necked Budweisers, talking about this and that. Sometimes about science fiction.

The topic of Star Wars came up, and I expressed admiration for the cantina scene; all those weird aliens sitting around drinking noxious fluids, munching on raw meat, whatever.

Jerry was not so impressed. "Every science fiction writer has written the aliens-in- a-bar scene a dozen times," he said. Not every one, Jerry. I hadn't. So I did.

A !TANGLED WEB

Your s.p.a.ceport bars fall into two distinct groups: the ones for the baggage and the ones for the crew. I was baggage, this trip, but didn't feel like paying the prices that people who s.p.a.ce for fun can afford. The Facilities Directory listed under "Food and Drink" four establishments: the Hartford Club (inevitably), the Silver Slipper Lounge, Antoine's, and Slim Joan's Bar & Grill.

I went to a currency exchange booth first, a.s.suming that Slim Joan was no better at arithmetic than most bartenders, and cashed in a hundredth share of Hartford stock.

Then I took the drop lift down to the bottom level. That the bar's door was right at the drop-lift exit would be a dead giveaway even if its name had been the Bell, Book, and Candle. Baggage don't generally like to fall ten stories, no matter how slowly.

It smelled right, stir-fry and stale beer, and the low lighting suggested economy rather than atmosphere. Slim Joan turned out to be about a hundred thousand grams of transvest.i.te. Well, I hadn't come for the scenery.

The clientele seemed evenly mixed between humans and others, most of the aliens being !tang, since this was Morocho III. I've got nothing against the company of aliens, but if I was going to spend all next week wrapping my jaws around !tangish, I preferred to mix my drinking with some human tongue.

"Speak English?" I asked Slim Joan.

"Some," he/she/it growled. "You would drink something?" I'd never heard a Russian-Brooklyn accent before. I ordered a double saki, cold, in Russian, and took it to an empty booth.

One of the advantages of being a Hartford interpreter is that you can order a drink in a hundred different languages and dialects. Saves money; they figure if you can speak the lingo you can count your change.

I was freelancing this trip, though, working for a real-estate cartel that wanted to screw the !tang out of a few thousand square kilometers of useless seash.o.r.e property.