Castaway Planet (19 page)

“So the island keeps the rivers flowing without falling through?” Whips summarized. “That’s amazing.”

“It is!” Caroline said emphatically. “Even more for Dad, really, since this is geology that’s being built by living things. We’re making major discoveries almost every week here.” She looked wistful, and Sakura knew why, even before Caroline spoke again. “I just hope . . . someday . . .”

“I know, honey,” said her mother. “So do we all.”

The unspoken thought of
will we ever be rescued?
dropped a leaden blanket over the conversation, and Sakura decided she wasn’t putting up with it. “So, everyone, I was thinking. If my omni’s right, we’re in the beginning of July back home.”

“Well,” Whips said reluctantly, “Probably. But I’m not sure of the relativistic—”

“Never mind about
that
. Not like anyone’s here to argue whether the calendar’s off by a couple days or whatever. What I was saying, is that we’ve been here for over ten months, and in just a month—July sixteenth—it’ll be Hitomi’s birthday.”

“I never thought about that,” her mother said, clearly startled. “I haven’t . . . oh, dear. That means we’ve missed everyone else’s birthday except Hitomi’s and yours, in August.”

Caroline looked thoughtful, then laughed. “Not quite.
I
got a brand-new room for
my
birthday.”

“Really?” Sakura checked. “You’re right. We moved into our house on your birthday!”

“But you’re right to bring it up, Sakura. We’re living here now, and that means it’s time to start remembering things like birthdays, anniversaries, and so on.” She looked at the others. “So what should we do for Hitomi?”

Talking about the birthday opportunities kept them busy until lunch was over. Sakura shouldered her pack again and looked up. “About a half a kilometer to go, Whips, and then we’ll be at the top. Let’s go!”

“Right behind you!”

Chapter 30

“What do you think, Caroline?” Laura asked.

Below and ahead, a brilliant green flatland was spread, with glinting pools and channels of water meandering through the wind-rippled green. There were scattered patches of bushes and a few stunted trees, but for the most part the growth was low and lush. Small hummocks of land, humps a few meters across, were dotted about the swamp.

Caroline was smiling. “Oh, that’s
very
promising, Mom. Very. Look, over there, we see the streams coming in, and they slow down and go into this wetland. I want to get over to the far side there, where it looks like the stream’s wandered around a bit.”

She pointed ahead and to the right, where the ridge they were on curved around, gradually dropping in height until it became a low hill, merging into the base of the small mountain range. Not too far to the left of this, the wetland merged with the downslope. Laura could see the rippled shape of the land nearby that Caroline thought indicated a wandering of the stream itself.

“So you think we’ll find clay there?”

“Don’t get your hopes up too high,” Caroline cautioned. “But if there is clay around here, that’s a place I’d expect to find it.”

“Cool!” Sakura said, but—Laura was glad to see—restrained herself from setting out.

“Whips? Are you all right to keep going?”

“Give me a few minutes and I will be,” the young Bemmie answered, his breath a bit labored. “Downhill’s easier, and a wetland looks
much
more my kind of place.”

“Much less ours, though,” Laura said, studying the deceptively beautiful flatland. “There’s almost certainly deep mud there, and given everything else we’ve seen, there might be some very nasty creatures. I’ll leave you to your own judgment on how far you want to go into that stuff, Whips, but I want the rest of my family staying on the solid ground as much as possible.”

“No objection here,” Caroline said. “Our new boots may seem to be waterproof but I don’t see any reason to test that.”

Sakura suddenly pointed. “Look there!”

Laura followed her daughter’s gaze, and saw large ripples spreading across one of the many little ponds. “Did you see what made that?”

“Not really,” Sakura admitted, “but I saw the movement. It was something pretty big.”

“Keep an eye out then. Ready, Whips?”

“Ready. Let’s go!”

The four made their way cautiously along the ridge. Whips dropped lower down and eventually was sliding along the edge of the swamp, ducking occasionally into small pools and then sliding up over the little hummocks, which were mostly covered with green, reedy growths. “Definitely fresh water,” he called up to them. “Some minor jelly-stingers but nothing that bothers me. I’ve heard some movement that tells me there’s a lot of life here. In fact . . .”

He hesitated, then lashed out with his arms; there was a sudden commotion in the water, and Whips turned and flung a fish measuring nearly a meter long up onto the bank near them. “Dinner, I think!”

Laura had the others stay back, studying the creature before risking getting close. Plenty of fish on Earth had spines and poison and really sharp teeth. Here they seemed to be at least as bad.

Like many other forms of life on Lincoln, the fish that Whips had caught was quadrilateral in its symmetry, with a four-part mouth that didn’t seem to have many teeth. They were basically ridges with some very small back-pointing barbs. Sakura took careful aim and put an arrow through it. She might not be terribly good with a bow, but at this range she didn’t have to be.

Once the writhing slowed, Laura moved forward and checked the fish-creature more carefully. “No defensive spines of note. Mostly non-toxic, too, though I’d avoid the internal organs. There are some concentrations of questionable materials in there, according to the nanos. Looks like you’re right, Whips, you just got us dinner!”

“Great! I’ll catch something else for me—that one wouldn’t be enough.”

They quickly filleted the fish and wrapped them in broadleaves—tough, non-toxic leaves from one of the trees in the forest that they’d brought for samples and for uses like this. “In these temperatures, wrapped like this, they’ll keep for perhaps four hours,” Laura said.

“That should get us up to the area we’re heading for,” Caroline said. “So Whips and Saki can get dinner ready then, while you and I do some trial digging.”

Small creatures scuttled away through the underbrush as they walked; Laura caught a glimpse of the same feather-fur that covered the capys, but on something much smaller. This world’s equivalent of mammals had multiple niches covered just as they did on Earth, she guessed.

The creatures were similar to mammals in several ways. Not only did they have a furlike covering, but they also seemed to give birth to live young and nourish them from their own bodies. This contrasted drastically with things like, say, the minimaws. Akira had recently determined that they were egg-layers whose larval forms turned out to be thin-legged small predators that Sakura had named “stilt-snakes.” They must slowly lose their legs and become more and more burrowing creatures as they got older.

They made good time along the perimeter of the wetlands. Whips’ speed was drastically increased with access to significant water and mud to go through, rather than dragging himself across dry land. In about three hours they came to the gently rippled land bordering one of the streams.

“This is good enough,” Caroline said. The others, Laura included, promptly dropped their barkcloth bags with a sigh of relief. Whips slid up from the wetlands, accompanied by the familiar sulfurous smell of buried decay. “Eeew! Whips, go wash off, will you?” Sakura said as he approached.

“Sorry!”

This time he moved into the nearby clear stream and rolled around until the black mud was gone. Only the faintest trace of the smell remained when he returned. “Better?”

“Much better,” Laura agreed. “Did you get something to eat?”

“I grabbed smaller fish and things as we were walking. I’m set—don’t worry about me.”

“All right. I’ll leave you and Sakura to get the fish cooked for the rest of us, then.”

She got her pointed spade—wooden, of course, with an edge reinforced by a strip of metal—out of her pack while Caroline did the same. Caroline pointed out some areas of interest, and they started digging.

Digging with wooden shovels in ground that had never been tilled—even ground mostly without stones—wasn’t easy. They also had to go quite a ways down, and Laura quickly found herself covered with more sweat than the hiking had managed to produce. “How are you doing, Caroline?”

Her daughter had just stopped and was kneeling on the ground. “Good! Hmm . . . well, we have deposition layers. Oh . . . oh, what’s this?”

Caroline was squeezing something between her fingers. “That sure
feels
like it could be clay!” she said, excitement vibrating in her voice. She squinted down into the hole. “Layer’s really thin, though. Not very good for digging it up. How far down are you, Mom?”

“About . . . fifty centimeters, according to my omni.”

“I was down to seventy-nine, and my layer’s at sixty-one through sixty-two and a half.”

“Good Lord you’re fast. I must be getting old.”

Caroline laughed, still staring at the pale ball of maybe-clay she’d dug up. “I’m just used to digging. Had to do a lot of it in my fieldwork a couple of years ago. How often do doctors have to dig holes in the ground?”

“Only when we make big mistakes,” Laura said wryly.

“That’s morbid of you, Mom!”

“Always glad to provide the more cynical humor,” she answered with a grin. “Okay, I’ve gotten to about seventy centimeters now. Is that lighter layer what you’re looking for?”

Caroline trotted over and took a look. “Yes, that’s it . . . but it’s even thinner here.” She stood and gazed at the surrounding territory. Laura recognized the look as that of a the professional gauging their next move; something that looked the same on a doctor evaluating a patient for an operation, an engineer judging a design, or her daughter trying to figure out which way that layer of hopefully-clay would be thicker.

“Can I borrow your omni, Mom?” she asked after a moment.

“Of course.”

While Caroline resumed her study of the surroundings, now with the omni to help, Whips gave a startlingly good imitation of a ringing bell. “Dinner’s ready, come and get it!”

“Be there in a minute,” Caroline said absently. Laura went over to the camp, where Whips and Sakura had gotten a fire going with the charcoal they’d brought and grilled the fish, as well as roasting some totatoes—tubers that had a distinctly tomato-ey taste—in the fire.

Sakura made a face as they started eating. “Awfully bland. And a kinda blah backtaste.”

“Muddy,” Laura agreed. “Catfish can taste that way. I seem to remember you can soak them in some things to reduce the taste, but we haven’t got any of that.” She took a couple more bites, as Caroline joined them. “If you eat it with a bite of totato, though, the backtaste disappears.”

Sakura tried that and Laura had to smile at the surprised look. “That works, Mom!”

“My mother taught me that: it’s not just what you eat, but in what order, and how you eat it, that determines what you taste.”

“Gramma was real smart,” agreed Caroline. “So, my best guess is that we need to head over there.” She pointed across the stream. “The land flattens out between two rivers over there. It’ll get wetter and mushier a bit, but I think we could end up with a much better layer of clay—and I’m pretty sure this is clay, now.”

“That’s wonderful!” Sakura said, beaming. “We’ll be able to make pots and cups and—”

“Slow down, Saki!” Caroline said, though she was smiling too. “I said I’m
pretty
sure. But even if it is clay, it’ll probably take a while to figure out how to make a kiln that can fire it, and how to make the right mix that doesn’t shrink too much or break too easy, and glazes if we want to waterproof them. But . . . yes, I think so, eventually. And there are other uses for good ceramics, a lot of them.”

“Then let’s go!” Sakura said, standing. “I want to dig this time!”

“As soon as we finish eating,” Laura agreed. “And you’re welcome to my shovel, too.”

After making sure the fire was well out, the four moved across the stream and headed for the area between the next two streams, a broad, lower plain area that blended almost imperceptibly into the wetlands. “We’ll try to stay out of the actual swampy area,” Caroline said. “But the wetter ground might be easier to dig.”

A loud, booming cry, a deep-throated bellow, echoed from somewhere in the swamp; the whole party froze momentarily. “What was
that?
” Sakura demanded, gripping her spear.

“Don’t know,” Whips said. “It isn’t any of the animals we’ve seen before.”

“It was quite a ways off, though,” Laura said calmly, though the unexpected roar had gotten her pulse racing too. “No need to panic. We’re out in the open here and we’ll have plenty of time to see anything approaching us.”

“You’re right, Laura,” Whips said. “And I can sense things in the water pretty well.”

It didn’t take long to reach the area that Caroline had selected, and Sakura immediately attacked the ground with Laura’s spade. The moister ground and Sakura’s enthusiasm let the fourteen-year-old send dirt flying out of her hole at a startling rate. Caroline, though more experienced, was actually smaller than her younger sibling and dug in a more controlled, sedate fashion.

A few minutes later Sakura grunted. “Ow! That’s not the same as the rest. It’s hard to get through.”

“Hard, or just . . . thick?” Caroline asked, putting her shovel down.

“Thick, I think. Kinda sticky . . .” With a grunt, Sakura yanked the shovel free. “Oh my God, is that—”

Caroline raised the end of Sakura’s shovel, to which were stuck reddish-brown chunks of something. “I think it is,” Caroline said, a broad grin spreading across her face.

She grabbed one of the chunks and pressed it between her hands and then tried rolling it. In a few minutes, a long, slender rope of rust-colored earth lay in her hand. Caroline curled it around her arm; it only cracked slightly. “It
is!
Clay, Mom, Whips, Sakura—that’s
clay!
”

The general cheer was louder than the distant bellow had been. “You’re sure? No analysis?”

“Looking at the microcomposition in the omni’s view, I’m sure. It’s maybe not exactly like any Earth clay, but it’s definitely clay.”

“The stuff you found before was lighter, though,” Sakura pointed out.

“Different compositions, probably from different weathering locations,” Caroline said, answering the implied question. “The deposition area was where we predicted, but that didn’t mean that composition couldn’t be different. That might be useful, actually. Different types of clay have different uses. Let’s dig up some of this clay, and then go back to the other holes and at least get some samples of the other clay so I can compare them back home.”

Whips couldn’t handle a shovel well, and he was best used as a watchman and guard anyway. With the three humans working together it took only a half hour to dig up and wrap about twenty kilograms of reddish clay. Divided up between them it wasn’t very heavy.

“Great!” Caroline said. “Now we can go back to our first spot. She glanced at the sun, which was starting to get low; they were on the second bright cycle which meant that sunset would be coming later today. “I’d like to get home, but I guess we’ll have to camp.”

Laura nodded. “It will take too long to get back. We’ve been traveling for about ten hours total.”

“That long?” Caroline’s face showed her surprise, then she looked thoughtful. “I guess it has been that long.”

“I think that we should make our camp at the first dig site,” Laura said, as they started back, Whips sliding along the edge of the wetlands. “We can dig up the other samples in the morning-night, really—and then go straight home.”

“Works for me.”

They headed back towards the first site. As they walked, Laura was abruptly assailed by a nebulous feeling that something was wrong.

She turned towards Whips, but even before she could shout a warning, the Bemmie suddenly slewed towards shore, jetting furiously for dry ground. Even as he did so, one of the green-covered hummocks—a hummock that hadn’t been there when they first passed—lunged towards Whips, rising up, revealing wide, dark eyes and the top of a savage, quadpartite mouth like a double crocodile. Twin
somethings
streaked through the water—and Whips’ flight was halted as though he had run into a wall.