The Boy at the End of the World (5 page)

Fisher had a hard time wrapping his thoughts around the idea of there being so much food that people didn't have to hunt and scrape to find it.

“They must have been very healthy,” he concluded.

“Actually, the amount of food and kinds of food they ate made them unhealthy.”

Fisher shook his head. His life was so different from the way humans had lived that he couldn't believe he was part of the same species.

“It is very doubtful that this is the Great Arch the Stragglers spoke of,” said Click. “If there was such a thing here, it is long gone, crumbled to dust and faded into the sands of time. We have reached a dead end.”

Fisher said nothing. His eyes swept over the debris-strewn beach, the logs of driftwood, the plastic barrels, the plastic sheets, and lengths of cable.

“No,” Fisher said, “we haven't reached a dead end. We're going to keep going.”

He looked downriver, where the water swirled and kicked up clouds of spray.

“And we're going to need a boat.”

Fisher knew about boats. He knew about boats the way he knew about fishing hooks and nets, or the way a Trapper or a Hunter would know about deadfall traps. Sorting through the beached junk, he pulled aside logs of white cedar and poplar and cottonwood of similar lengths, ten to twelve feet long, and arranged them side-by-side in the shallows. If he built his raft on dry land, he'd have to shove it into the river, and he wasn't strong enough to do that by himself. Click would try to help, but the robot lacked physical strength. And Protein generally wasn't interested in doing anything that didn't involve food.

With his makeshift knife, he sawed through plastic pipes. He tied one length to the front of the raft, another to the back, and a third diagonally across. This would give the raft stability. Then, with every scrap of nylon he could find, he lashed the logs with the tightest binding he was capable of. Fishing skills made him good at knots, and he was confident his bindings would hold. Styrofoam blocks and plastic barrels provided even more stability, and he used the last of the plastic pipes to form a crossbeam and mast. His sail came from a sheet of stiff plastic trimmed into a square. When turned in the correct direction it would catch some wind.

As the sun set and the river blazed with shimmering orange, he stepped back from his creation and appraised his work.

“You think a Forge could have done any better?” he asked Click.

“I think I shall reserve judgment until I've seen it float.”

CHAPTER   10

Fisher loved being on the water. Standing at the sail, he lifted his face into the quick wind and barked commands to Click at the rudder. The raft handled the current of the Mississippi well, and they made good progress down the river.

Protein stood unhappily before Fisher near the middle of the raft. The stabilizer pontoons helped keep the raft steady, but Protein still had to remain almost motionless at the middle or else his weight would tilt the craft. He made sad lowing sounds at Click, as if the robot would somehow feel sorry for him and force Fisher to abandon this waterborne mission, and the more Click ignored him, the sadder the mournful notes that came through his trunk.

But Fisher had no intention of giving up his raft. Traveling over water seemed even more natural to him than walking. The word
fun
formed in his mind. He almost asked Click the purpose of fun, but decided to simply enjoy the sensation instead.

Not that he wasn't attending to survival needs. He'd fashioned a fishing pole and mounted it on the back of the raft, and a hook made from a piece of wire trailed behind on a thread of nylon. His world consisted of junk, and by using junk, he had changed his world. That's what the human animal was best at: forcing the environment into new shapes. If Fisher could do that, he would survive.

Midway through the first day on the river, Fisher's fishing pole jiggled. He ran to the back of the raft and touched the taut line.

“Got something!” he exclaimed. He began pulling in the line by hand, slowly. If he tugged too hard, he'd risk tearing the hook right from the catch's mouth.

“Keep your hand on the rudder,” he told Click. “And watch out for logs and junk.”

“You are imprinted with boating skills,” Click said. “I am not. My programming does not include steering a raft down a fast river and trying to avoid obstacles.”

“Well, I can't steer and fish at the same time, so you'll have to do more than you're programmed for.”

“I shall try. Do you want me to steer around that big tree branch we're headed for?”

“Yes!” Fisher screamed, just as the raft barely missed a floating oak tree.

Once the tree was safely behind them, Fisher scowled at Click and turned his attention back to his fishing line. A foot-long fish lurked just below the surface. It was as wide around as Fisher's calf. Sunlight gleamed off silver scales. Fisher could almost taste it.

He drew the line in another inch, and then another.

Patience.

A great boiling commotion engulfed his fish. Green tails thrashed. Dozens of slender jaws lined with needle teeth ripped his fish to shreds. The feeding frenzy was over before Fisher could pull in his line, and the skeleton of his fish sank in a milky cloud of blood and fleshy flakes.

“What has occurred?” asked Click, having only the sounds of frenzied splashing and Fisher's cries of profanity to go by.

“Crocodiles,” said Fisher. “Tiny ones, like piranhas. Like, piranha-crocs.”

“Ah. I would advise not falling into the water, then. If you did, your survival would be most unlikely.”

Protein's head shivered unhappily.

Fisher edged away from the side of the raft and returned to the sail, mourning the loss of his fish. Now he'd have to catch some more bait. Maybe he could spear one of those piranha-crocs. There must be something in the river that ate them. Everything that ate was eaten by something else.

A flicker of movement caught Fisher's eye. Five little piranha-crocs were clawing up the right-front styrofoam stabilizer.

Fisher grabbed his spear and rushed the crocs. Leaning precariously over the edge of the raft, he poked at the snapping little monsters to knock them off.

“Your survival is in imminent jeopardy,” Click advised from the rear of the craft. “Try not to fall in the water.”

“Why would I try
to
fall?” Fisher shouted back.

Distracted, he didn't notice until too late that a squadron of crocs had boarded the middle of the raft. Their tails flicked and their yellow eyes gleamed as they opened their long jaws and hissed. Two of them broke off from the rest and darted toward Protein.

The mammoth shivered and flared his ears. Dodging Protein's stomping feet, the sleek crocs crawled up his flank.

“Get off him!” Fisher screamed, charging.

Half a dozen crocs cut off Fisher's path. They converged on him in a snapping swarm and scrabbled over his feet and up his legs. Pain lanced his flesh as their teeth sunk in, puncturing cloth, tearing skin, biting away meat. He grabbed tails and flung crocs away, but now his bare hands were in range of their teeth. A croc bit into the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, and Fisher yowled.

I'm going to die
, he thought with dread calm.
They are the stronger animals, and I am their food
.

In panic, Protein was rocking the raft, sending river water rushing over the logs. Click clung to the tiller, no longer steering, just trying to keep from washing overboard, and Fisher struggled to keep his own balance. If he fell into the water the piranha-crocs would reduce him to bones in less than a minute.

Maybe that's what had happened to the Stragglers. Maybe they'd never survived the Whale Road. Maybe the human species had gone down screaming in the bloody waters.

“Fisher. Catch.” Click lobbed Fisher's knife.

Snatching it out of the air, Fisher wasted no time. He stabbed. He sliced. He cut and thrust. Blood flew, much of it Fisher's own, but not all.

Once he was finally free of the crocs, he rushed over to the mammoth. Protein stomped and flailed with his trunk, trying to reach the crocs climbing up his back.

“Easy, don't step on me, I'm trying to help.” Fisher skewered crocs and flung them over the side.

Breathless, Fisher's chest heaved. The raft was eerily quiet. The attack was over, the marauding little reptiles defeated.

And now Fisher collapsed in a heap of pain. He was soaked with sweat and blood and couldn't get enough air in his lungs.

Click loomed over him. “Fisher? What is your status?”

Fisher stared at the sky through a veil of blurred vision.

“I think my survival is in imminent jeopardy,” he murmured, just before passing out.

My poor pants!
thought Fisher. They were shredded and sticky with dried blood. Then he saw the condition of his legs: pretty much the same as his pants. The entire lower half of his body throbbed and burned.

Strips of cloth were tied around his legs: bandages, poorly knotted and soaked with blood.

He rose up on his bare elbows to find himself lying on a sandy strip of riverbank. The raft had fetched up on the shore nearby.

“I advise against moving, Fisher. You are badly damaged.”

Fisher squinted up into Click's face.

“Did you tie these bandages?”

“Yes. I reasoned it would help stop the bleeding. I used fabric from your sleeves. I did not know what else to do. I am programmed with even less medical knowledge than you are imprinted with.”

“I didn't know you could tie knots.”

“Of course I have knowledge of knots. It is only skill that I lack.”

The knots were loosely fastened and wouldn't last long, but they
were
knots.

“And you managed to land the raft by yourself.”

“Yes. It was a somewhat rough landing.”

Protein passed Fisher a short, skinny stick.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he said, accepting it from the mammoth's trunk.

“I share your puzzlement,” said Click. “He has been offering me useless items for some time now. My theory is that he is socializing.”

Protein blinked.

Fisher set the stick down and forced himself to his feet. His head swam. It felt like a thousand fishhooks were tugging his flesh. But he didn't topple.

“Again, Fisher, I advise you to remain still. I will bring you water and food. Perhaps I can catch a fish. Can you instruct me how to build a gas-propelled harpoon gun?”

“You might be surprised to learn that, no, I do not know how to build a gas-propelled harpoon gun. Actually, wait—yes, I do. Huh.”

But what were the odds of finding a fully intact air compressor around here?

“Really, Fisher, I think you should stay immobile.”

“I'm fine.” He gritted his teeth against the stabbing pains in his legs. Dizzy and weak, he stiff-walked over to the raft.

Click had run the raft right into a beached tree stump. The pole supporting the left-front stabilizer was nearly snapped in half. Worse, the ropes binding the logs together had unraveled down to no more than a few threads.

Fisher looked around the little patch of beach. There was the raft. And there was Protein, busy digging up a bush. There was a solid tangle of gnarly, thorny brush on the land side of the beach and croc-infested waters on the other. And there wasn't much else. He couldn't see anything he could use to make repairs, let alone build a gas-propelled harpoon gun.

This was a disaster. Without the raft, they'd be stuck here. And Fisher had to face facts: his legs weren't simply hurt. He was injured. It would take him days to heal, maybe weeks. Just the act of standing was wincingly painful. Long days of marching and running and climbing weren't possible.

And the word
infection
gnawed at him.

Infections made you sick. Infections made you fail to survive.

Fisher had to deal with it.

“What do you know about infection?”

Click whirred. “There are medicines that combat infection. We do not have any.”

“What about plants and stuff? Can we make medicine?”

“Of course. But I have no idea which plants or how to use them. I advise you to make sure your wounds do not become infected.”

“Thank you, Click,” Fisher said. “I don't know what I'd do without you.”

Was infection the same as rotting? From his store of fishing knowledge, Fisher had already figured out how to use salt to keep meat from rotting. Could salt help preserve his own leg meat? It seemed unlikely. But the word
antiseptic
scratched at him. He could at least clean his wounds.

Fisher built a small fire. Then, with plastic sheeting from the raft's sail, he made a water bag, which he hung over the fire on a tripod constructed of sticks. His deadfall traps never worked, but at least now he knew how to make tripods.

To the water he added the last of the rock salt. When the salt dissolved he removed the bag from the fire and waited for it to cool from boiling to merely hot.

He used this time to summon his courage.

It didn't feel like he had any.

“Oh, well,” he said. And he poured the hot brine over his wounds.

He howled. Protein snorted in distress and sympathy. He padded over and nuzzled the top of Fisher's head with his trunk. Click watched silently.

Weeping, Fisher kept pouring until every last drop had gone into his croc-bitten flesh.

Then he curled and shuddered and used every last bit of his profanity.

But he didn't keep at it for very long. There was still a lot of work to do.

It took a great deal of pulling and stretching and grunts and tears of frustration and effort, but by nightfall, Fisher had bound all the logs back together. He had less rope, so he used fewer logs, but the raft actually felt more solid than it had before the croc attack. After all, he now had experience to go along with his imprinted boat-building knowledge.

There was no way to repair the pole connecting the stabilization pontoon to the raft, so he modified his design and tied the pontoons directly to the sides of the raft.

Maybe the raft would float.

Maybe not.

“We'll rest up and leave at first light,” Fisher told Click.

But Fisher couldn't rest. His legs hurt too much. And without the strength to gather wood, he managed only a dwarf fire fed by the stray sticks Protein brought him and Click (but mostly Click). Sleep came in brief fits.

Sometime before dawn, Protein squealed an alarm.

Fisher snapped awake. Darkness still blanketed the beach. His fire had burned down to ashes.

“Click, what's going on?”

But the robot didn't answer.

Instead, Fisher heard noises. Little scritching sounds. High-pitched whirring. Mechanical noises. And a rasping sound, like something being dragged across sand.

Fisher rose painfully, spear in one hand, knife in the other.

“Click? Where are you? What's happening?”

“I believe I am being abducted, Fisher.”

“I can't see you, keep talking! Abducted by what?” Using his spear to feel his way around, Fisher tried to follow Click's voice.

“I cannot make visual identification. My night-vision unit is housed in my broken left eye. I regret that I was not constructed with a backup system—”

Click's voice was coming from the shore. And there were other noises as well: mechanical movements, different from Click's.

Fisher stumbled his way toward them. His foot struck a rock and he went down, his legs flaring with agony. He made himself get up.

“Click? Keep talking! I'll find you!”

“I believe I am being dragged into the river, Fisher. I advise you to abandon me in the interest of ensuring your own survival.”

The next thing Fisher heard was a splash. Then, some gurgling bubbles.

Fisher tromped into the river, ignoring the fresh sting of water on his wounds, and peered into the darkness. “Click? Click?!”

But it was no use. He was blind, and Click didn't answer his calls. There was just an odd sound, a wet sort of buzzing. The word
propeller
formed in Fisher's mind.

Fisher thrashed through the water and kept calling for Click. Too quickly, the propeller noise faded.

He stood in the river for just a few more seconds, listening to nothing, then stumbled back to shore. Holding out his hands, he moved toward heat to find his dead campfire. He blew on the coals until their glow returned, and after a few moments of tending them, he was able to light a stick.