America 2040 - Golden World Part 18

"Don't do that," she said.

"What?"

"Never underestimate yourself," she said firmly.

He looked at her. "You're big on that stuff, huh?"

"What stuff?"

"Self-image."

"I'm working on it," she said, and with a start, she realized that it was true. Why had she always put herself down, kept her weight so low that she looked almost emaciated? Was it fear that if she entered the compet.i.tion she'd lose? So here she was, filled out, curvaceous, overweight by her own standards, and she had, at last, entered a compet.i.tion with two strikes against her.

"Well," Paul said, "I've always had a winning att.i.tude. You can't partic.i.p.ate successfully in sports unless you have it, but-"

"But you don't have a winning att.i.tude as far as Sage is concerned?"

"Hard to. I lose too many times with her."

"When you were partic.i.p.ating in sports, Paul, did anyone ever tell you about the law of compensation?" "What you give you get?"

"That's right. Give out good, good comes back. That's stating it at its simplest. Give out love, get back love. "

"Well,that part of it hasn't worked," he said.

"Perhaps you're forgetting one of the most important aspects of the law of compensation," she said.

"When you give in one direction, the return does not necessarily come back from that same direction,"

she said.

He laughed. "Then maybe there are a half-dozen women returning my love like crazy, huh?"

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe only one."

He looked at her, startled. "You telling me I should start looking elsewhere?"

She wanted to say,Yes, dummy , but she didn't. She said casually, "Oh, I'm just talking. Advice is like bitter medicine-easy to give, hard to take, right?"

"I guess so. " His grin came back. "Hey, Vange, you're all right. You're a very all-right woman. You understand things." He was serious again. "Maybe if you put in a good word for me with Sage, huh?"

From a very old American short story:Why don't you speak for yourself, Evangeline ? From her own lips, "I can try."

"Thanks. Look, I've gotta go. I just sneaked off for a while." He stood and shook water from his hair.

"Tell Sage I said so long."

"I'll do that," she said.

He ran up the slope, gave the admiral a salute, and was gone. Evangeline walked to sit down on the towel next to Sage.

"So Evangeline has a beau," Sage said.

She blushed. "He's in love with you," she said.

Sage laughed cruelly. "He's just in heat, like all of them." She looked at Evangeline, with a grim little smile on her lips. "I see the wayyou look at him, though."

No, she thought,it couldn't show . "I like him. He's a friend," she said.

"Sure, " Sage said. "Surrrrrre. Who are you trying to kid?"

"You know, Sage," Evangeline said, finding that she was full of surprises for herself on that sunny, late afternoon, "you not only have a strong streak of cruelty in you, you're rather stupid at times."

Sage's face went taut, then relaxed. "Oh, you're trying to tell me that I should have pity on him, be nice to him." And, Evangeline thought, as she lay back to enjoy the sun,you're so very self-centered that you don't even know when you've been insulted .

FIFTEEN.

The jungle on the continent that the Americans had named Columbia covered an area larger than the entire Soviet Union, with the conquered European countries thrown in. It began to grow dense three thousand miles south of Stanton Bay. There at the jungle's edge the two Apache Indians, Jacob West and Renato Cruz, set up their base camp, and Jack Purdy helped them ferry down the steel-mesh squares from theSpirit of America . Renato welded the squares together using a molecular bonder.

Duncan Rodrick flew down, while they were a.s.sembling the landing pad to be dropped atop the jungle, to get a good look at that southern paradise that Clive Baxter's noisy "concerned-citizens" faction kept talking about. It was, without a doubt, beautiful country. There were shady glades in deep forest, and clear streams, and almost every growing thing seemed to have a fruit or a nut attached to it. But history repeats itself, and every explorer who settled in a tropical paradise where food was easily available was doomed to fail-either lulled by false security or destroyed by sheer laziness. No, the Americans would stay put as long as he was in charge.

Rodrick had started giving Clay Girard flying lessons. Clay would be celebrating his sixteenth birthday soon, and because of the small population of the colony, adulthood would, Rodrick thought, come early to kids like Clay simply because they were needed. Clay handled the scout very well on the approach to the Apache camp, and Rodrick talked him through a vertical landing that jarred teeth only slightly.

Renato and Jacob were just making the final welds. The admiral, well armed, was standing guard. Clay had Jumper on a leash, much to the dog's disgust. The camp had been set up in a natural clearing in a hardwood forest, which extended its vast carpet of green for over a thousand miles north toward Hamilton. Clay didn't want Jumper exploring the woods on his own, for the scouts had recorded a variety of life signals there.

From the air, the jungle to the south was an unbroken deep green. The thought of a band of almost impenetrable jungle extending three thousand miles on either side of the planet's equator had a sobering effect on Rodrick; he wouldn't want to be out there in the midst of it, even without the larger-than-elephant life forms the sensors had picked up.

Clay pitched in to help finish the welding. He was getting to be a good hand with the molecular bonder, and Jacob and Renato were quite willing to let him help so they could stand up straight, backhand their sweat, and have a long drink of cool water.

Jacob showed Rodrick their target area on the map. Jacob had printed, in that vast area of jungle where the only map features were the winding rivers and two areas of connected lakes, Terra Incognita. The selected area was two thousand miles north of the equator, near the coastline of a vast indentation which, on a sensibly sized continent, would have been called a bay, but on Omega was big enough to be a sea.

"You're going to have to carry the landing grid over a thousand miles," Rodrick said.

Jacob nodded. "It won't be the most aerodynamic configuration ever flown, but if we winch the gridtight against the landing skids, I think I can fly at around three hundred feet with no problem. Take about four hours, we figure, from lift-off to the time I settle down on the treetops."

"But that means you'll have to put the scout with the grid down onto the canopy. You won't have a chance to feel out whether the trees will take the weight."

"I'll settle in very slowly, " Jacob rea.s.sured him. "We're mounting the grid to the landing skids with explosive bolts. If I see I'm going to settle into the trees too far, or if the thing starts to tilt too much, I'll press a b.u.t.ton and be free to get the h.e.l.l out of there."

Rodrick and Clay watched the awkward union of scout and grid lift off, then move away, cautiously at first, toward the south. Renato'sApache Two scout was flying just below, telling Jacob that all was looking good. Rodrick let Clay lift the captain's scout and then took over, flying in close to Jacob's Apache One himself to take a look. Jacob was up to an airspeed of three hundred.

"It's very musical. Captain, " Jacob radioed. "The wind whistling through the mesh sounds like a thousand Apaches doing the death dance."

"You've never even seen a thousand Apaches," Rodrick joked, "much less heard them doing a death dance."

"Ah, " Jacob said, "but in my dreams-the souls of my ancestors bewail the dirty deal you white eyes gave them."

Sobbing Wolf, better known as Lieutenant Renato Cruz of the United States s.p.a.ce Service, let out a rapid stream of Mescalero. Rodrick was thinking that their Apache-language conversation was being recorded back at control on theSpirit of America , and he grinned. The air talk betweenApache One and Apache Two while on patrol or exploration drove Grace Monroe crazy because her "black box," or translation computer, couldn't make head or tail of the language.

"d.a.m.n it," Grace had told him and Renato once, "I think it's all made up. I can handle Russian with this translation computer, and if it can translate Russian, it should be able to translate anything."

"I am hurt, " Renato had responded, a smile tugging at his lips. Then his voice took on the tone of a lecturing professor. "I have already explained that at the peak of our civilization, before we were overrun by the marauding barbarians from across the ocean, there were fifty-five families of language in the Americas, and to understand, one must group them into five superfamilies. Mescalero is of the superfamily Nadene, subgroup Southern, family Kusan, along with Kiowa Apache, San Carlos Apache, Chiricahua, and, shamefully, Navaho. Now if you-"

"Hey, Cap'n!" Clay yelled, interrupting Rodrick's memories, "look atthat !"

Clay had been playing with the scout's optics. They were flying at five thousand feet over an area of shallow lakes, large areas of which were covered with large, golden-hued flowers. Rodrick looked at the screen where Clay had enlarged a view of a great, floating flower garden. In the open areas the water was still relatively shallow so that the clear water took on a green tint from vegetation on the bottom. The blooms looked as big as washbasins. But it was not the impressive flowers that had excited Clay.

There was a family of them. The adults were big, barrel shaped, with short, fat legs and a long, flat tail that seemed to provide underwater propulsion. A ten-foot-long neck supported a triangular head shaped like that of an Earth rattlesnake. The three youngsters were frolicking around the two adults, diving andsurfacing, flipping the broad, flat tails to scoot forward, walking on the sandy bottom of the lake on their short legs.

"Apache One, Rodrick. I'm going down to take a look at that lake just below. Catch up later."

Rodrick hovered the scout at three hundred feet. The noise of the hydrogen-powered jets drew one disdainful look from the two adults, who then went back to grazing on the large, golden blooms of the water plants.

"They're almost like dinosaurs, " Clay remarked.

"Put the calibrator on the screen," Rodrick said.

Clay punched up the calibration grid, and with neck outstretched to reach a particularly enticing bloom, the largest of the two adults measured just over twenty-eight feet from the neck to the tip of the broad, flat tail. The young ones were just under ten feet in length, about four feet of the length neck. They were as frolicsome as kittens or otters.

Rodrick was recording the scene on film. They watched until the two adults, apparently having had their fill, turned, stretched out their long necks, and shot away under water, running first on their short legs and then folding their legs against their bodies as they reached deeper water and used their tails as pushers.

"If there's anything that big down there in the jungle, Jacob had better be careful," Clay said.

Rodrick's scout caught up withApache One andTwo just as Jacob was maneuvering downward, the hover jets flaring. Rodrick hovered nearby. Jacob carefully lowered the large rectangle of steel mesh, inch by inch. The mesh sank into the undulating green canopy of the treetops. He eased off on the power as more and more of the weight of mesh and scout was supported by the trees.

"I'm down," he said, after three minutes of slow, careful lessening of power.

"Does it seem solid?" Renato asked.

"A rock," Jacob answered. "I'm going to rock the baby a little bit to be sure." He used steering jets to rock the scout back and forth. "Doesn't move at all," he reported. "I'm going to get out and loosen the bolts."

Rodrick began to fly small, slow circles around Jacob's scout. Renato, with the admiral, was still hovering, ready to dart in to pick up Jacob if needed. It took only a few minutes to separate the scout from the grid, and then Jacob lifted his craft a couple of feet and placed it to one end of the grid.

"You can come on down and join me," Jacob toldApache Two .

Renato put his scout down besideApache One . The admiral jumped out, and he and Renato offloaded equipment, then Renato lifted off alone to go back to the base camp and get the rest. Next, Rodrick put his scout down, and he and Clay joined the admiral and Jacob on the mesh. The sun hit them with a force that made them perspire immediately.

"I'd like to get one look down through the canopy," Rodrick said, "if we can cut a hole without too much trouble." They moved to the outer edge of the mesh, where a three-foot square had been cut out. Jacob armed his laser and began to cut, careful not to sever a large support limb. Vegetation flared and turned to ashes. He finally cut through one lower limb, a full twenty feet under the mesh, and the laser beam lanced down to sizzle large leaves on undergrowth a full hundred feet below the lower edge of the densely tangled canopy.

The jungle seemed to be in three tiers: the canopy, which was twenty feet in depth, consisting of tangled limbs, vines, and foliage fighting for a s.p.a.ce in the sun; a relatively clear layer below the canopy, which was studded by the boles of the huge trees; and then the undergrowth, which grew, in that particular spot, to a height of around twelve feet.

They could not, of course, see much looking down through the hole Jacob had cut in the canopy, but he lowered a camera on a long boom, and then, by watching the portable screen set up atop the mesh, they could see the dim, damp cave below them.

A flock of black and white birds flew within view of the camera, darting in and out among the tree trunks and hanging vines. There was no breeze at all atop the jungle, and they could hear the steady dripping of water collected in the topmost tangle to seep out slowly after each rain.

"We got one of the big life signals within a hundred feet of our present location. No sign on the camera of anything down there, though."

"Well, enjoy your little outing," Rodrick said. "I'll be monitoring your reports. Don't get any foolhardy ideas."

"I'm an Apache brave, not just brave," Jacob retorted.

It was a relief to get back into the scout and turn the cooler up full blast. The outside thermometers were registering one hundred ten degrees. As Clay waved good-bye to Jacob, he saw that Jacob's uniform was already dark with sweat.

"Well, Mr. Girard," Rodrick said, as he started the scout upward, "I think we could steal a couple of hours if there's something you'd particularly like to see."

"The southern islands," Clay said, his hazel eyes glowing, "if that's not too far."

"Very well," Rodrick said, all business. "Mr. Girard, give me a ballistic vector for lat.i.tude forty south, longitude twenty west." Clay punched in the numbers. Back on Earth any s.p.a.ceport would have been programmed into the navigation computer by code number, but the only point programmed into the computers of the scouts on Omega was home, Hamilton base.

"Checklist for ballistic firing, Mr. Girard."

"You want me to do it?" Clay asked, licking his lips nervously. He had not yet fired the scout's rockets.

"You have to learn how sometime," Rodrick said.

Clay went through the checklist slowly to be sure he missed nothing. Then he looked at the captain questioningly.

"Any time you're ready," Rodrick confirmed. Clay pushed the rocket-firing b.u.t.ton, and it felt like a giant had kicked him in the chest and pushed him back into his couch. The s.h.i.+p shot upward, tilted, then came into the breath-catching nothingness of free fall and the deep, purple sky before arching over to begin the downward plunge.

Rodrick nodded to himself in satisfaction as it was done perfectly. They strained forward in their harnesses, and suddenly there was the sea below and a large island with others stringing off the northeast and southwest.

"Going on jets," Clay said.

"That's a roger."

"Want to take her now, Captain?"

"No, you're doing fine. "

Clay took the scout down to five thousand and did a lazy circle around an island about the size of New Zealand, leaving behind a sonic boom, the instruments registering Mach one. The islands below were beautiful-thickly wooded mountains, gleaming white beaches, lagoons of such clarity that the coral formations and growth on the sea bottom could be seen. Clay slowed as he approached a cl.u.s.ter of smaller islands, went down to five hundred feet, and saw the white, rhythmic lines of surf breaking onto the atolls.

"I never saw the South Pacific, except on the screen," he said. "Must have looked like this."

"Except the palm trees didn't have broad leaves," Rodrick said.

"Someday maybe we can have vacation places down here."

"Sure."

"I want my house to be on that big rock, right there," Clay said, tilting the scout to pa.s.s a couple of hundred feet over a rocky headland.