The Far Side (31 page)

He went and talked more with Melek, and a group of them went to the boulder.  It didn’t take long to move it to partially block the entrance, and Ezra rejoined the girls.  “In a bit, we’ll look for the spy holes.  That boulder is a very clever piece of work.  There are places for six men to grip and lift it, and it’s easily manageable with six.  Melek also thinks there are bound to be some spy holes as well.”

It took about two hours of looking before they found the spy holes -- there were four of them in a small chamber.  The only sign of where that chamber was was a series of holes chiseled into the rock, one above the other.  You climbed up the wall putting your feet in the holes, and your hands into others.  It wasn’t the safest thing in the world, but there were two eyebolts at the top that let you pull yourself into the chamber, eyebolts that Ezra had fastened safety ropes to.  With a couple of people keeping the ropes taut, you could get up and down safely and relatively quickly.

Later, they were sitting all together at dinner when the scout came back.  He reported quickly to Melek who then asked questions for a while, and then Melek explained things as best as he could to Ezra.  Ezra kept Kris and Andie abreast of things as Melek talked.

“He says there are maybe a hundred of them.  They have a ship that is pulled up on the land, and it’s a wreck, and they seem to be cannibalizing it as well for firewood and shelter.

“They do seem to be their ancient enemies, and the irony here is too hard not to hurt.  Their enemies are black-skinned, tall, and thin.  In a total role reversal, they are mostly armed with axes and...”

Andie interrupted.  “How is that a role reversal?  Didn’t the Norsemen use axes?”

Ezra shook his head.  “Except the Norsemen were tall, blonde, and blue-eyed.  Not only are these men black and have brown eyes rather than blue eyes -- the real role reversal is that there are about eighty of them, according to Collum, the scout, and about twenty whites who are slaves.  And, Collum says, they are carrying something that looks more like my P90 than a bow.  The axes are carried on their backs.

“And, the scout says they have a couple of people out scouting as well, but they are staying close to the ship right now.”

“We’ve shared food with Melek and his men,” Kris told Ezra.  “I know Melek said he needed time to think -- now he’s got to pick one from column A or one from column B.”

“Yes, he either gives us a map or a description, or we can’t go with them,” Andie confirmed.

Ezra glanced at the locals and turned back to Kris.  “Well, there are only nine of us left.  The smart thing to do is head north the first thing in the morning, before any scouts can get here.  Except that’s back to five cases of food each, which is going to be about eighty pounds.  Even if we carry one jug each and find enough water, it’s going to be a close run thing.”

“Can you even carry a water jug -- much less eighty pounds of food?” Kris asked Ezra.

He held her eyes.  “This isn’t a case of ‘can I’ -- it’s a case of ‘I have to.’”

“And just how will it affect our ability to move north if your back goes out?” Kris asked quietly.

He shrugged.  “You would go north and I would have to find a good spot to hole up.  I wouldn’t be going anywhere.”

“That’s not an acceptable option,” Kris said heatedly.

“And the alternative?  Everyone else carries ten extra pounds for me?”

“If that’s what it takes,” Kris told him.  “You can take your Protestant work ethic and shove it.”

“And you fuckin’ know where you can shove it, too!” Andie said with even more heat.  She waved at Melek and his men.  “You’re the only one who can talk to these guys.  I don’t care what you think about Melek; he’s one man.  Six men with two teenage girls along would be stretching too many males’ ability to deal with the word ‘no!’”

“Well, we’ll have to see what happens when I give Melek our ultimatum.  Things could end up going in the toilet right then.  It’s not a good sign he hasn’t brought it up.”

Andie sniffed.  “Since Menim left, I bet he’s finding himself in sole command for the first time in his life... and finding out how attractive the idea of ‘kick the can down the road’ is.  The problem with that is, if you get in the habit, pretty soon that’s your response to every problem or decision.”

“Amen,” Ezra told her.  He stood up and went over to Melek, and the two men drew off a ways and talked for a long time.

After an hour, Kris couldn’t take the waiting anymore and got up and joined them.  She lifted an eyebrow and Ezra nodded.  “In principle, he’s agreed.  The problem is that drawing a map is treason; leaving one lying around for someone to find isn’t very smart, not to mention even more treasonous.

“What I’m doing is getting a firm description of the lay of the land, and instead of drawing a picture map, I’ll do it in English, as a narrative.  It won’t be as good, probably, and it’ll give him almost no cover, because technically he’s committing a capital offense by giving us the information.  And, considering that we’re going to spread it to the folks from back home, I’m not sure but his bosses have a right to worry.”

“And what are our plans?”

“We have closed and sealed the door.  We’ll stay here tomorrow getting packs ready as best as we can.  You understand that they don’t have any of their equipment?  No packs and all of that?  They aren’t going to be bringing much gear along, because it’s gone.

“He thinks they can cobble something up to carry what they’ve got; you and I have our packs.  We’re going to have to do something for Andie, ourselves.

“Melek would really like to stay a few days here, making sure everything is as ready as it can be, and eating some of the food.  He says that on foot we should be able to make good time, and he doesn’t expect more than one or two difficult river crossings -- and even that’s not certain.  The water levels fall fairly quickly after a sudden rain like this.”

“Did you tell him about your back?” Kris asked.

“Yes.  It’s not a surprise, but such injuries are common here -- usually you just die as they aren’t very big on charity.  Your father took a huge step down in his estimation when he found out my back was messed up -- he’s not sure why anyone would hire someone who is ‘broken’ as they so quaintly put it.  But he agrees that I’m too valuable to be left behind, and if you and Andie carry part of my stuff, he’s okay with it.”

“Magnanimous of him,” Kris said dryly.  “We ask for a lousy map, and we can’t have it -- just a verbal description.  We ask if they’ll carry part of your gear, and they balk.”

“They balked only a little, Kris.  The thing with negotiation is that you don’t back people into corners, and you always leave yourself and the other guy options that you can wiggle around.  With their ancient enemy sitting on the beach a few miles away, we’re lucky Melek is going to cut us any slack.”

Kris thought about that.  “Are they going to associate us with the bad guys?”

“I have no idea.  You have to admit that it’s a mighty big coincidence to have guests from another planet drop in the same week you get a super-duper hurricane and your enemies from 1200 years ago show up on your shores.”

“Hey!” Andie said with a laugh.  “Tell them that God is a woman and she’s a bitch!”

Ezra looked at her seriously.  “You would think our experience back home would teach you to be more careful, Andie.  Say that sentence in any Muslim country back home, and you’d find yourself on the execution block in short order.  Melek and his people have beliefs and I’ve told him that we have them too -- we’re both smart enough not to want to pry into that can of worms just yet.  We skirt around the topic, light on details.”

Andie spoke more seriously.  “Something has happened back home, that’s clear.  Either we are lost, or someone isn’t letting them turn on the machine again, or build a new one if the old one was damaged.  We had problems with the DWP and the FBI -- and we sure as fuck had trouble with the two assholes.

“It would take something pretty drastic to make it so that Linda, Shorty, or Lin couldn’t build a new machine if the old one was messed up.  Which just shouts that someone is stopping them.  At this point in time, our situation is imponderable.  It could just be that Kit and Art are trying to hog the machine and get all the credit -- and money -- for it.  It could be the government, the power company...

“But it doesn’t matter who it is because I had my Doomsday Weapon ready to go last week.  Fuck ‘em!  If I can’t have it, they sure as fuck aren’t going to get it!  I’m going to drop the biggest F-bomb the world has ever seen!”

She looked around.  “The problem with that is it won’t kick in for another two weeks, more or less, because time here is so messed up.  Then, who knows how long it will take before the Doomsday Weapon wipes out all of the opposition?  I have no idea.

“The bottom line is that I’ve been keeping the instructions under the air horn up to date, morning and evening.”  She waved northwards.  “I don’t see any long term way we can stay here and with possible enemies that close -- I say we blow this place.”

“I’ll write down the geography,” Ezra told them.  “Then tomorrow we’ll make final preparations, and the next day, we go.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Andie said with more jollity than Kris felt.

“Yes, and of course, we can’t go outside, because we’ve already sealed the door.  Melek’s people have covered up any tracks we made outside -- the storm wiped out most of them, anyway,” Ezra informed Kris and Andie.

He paused.  “As far as I can tell, they don’t have any particular superstitions about being out and about at night.  On the other hand, it’s a lot darker out there than it is back home, most nights.  With this moon covering part of the night sky, it’s going to be really hard to see anything.  The way this is going to work is that for three days, it’s dark because the sun is behind it, then after that, the sun will start shining on it, gradually making more light available in the hours before dawn.  Like the difference between a new moon and a full moon.”

* * *

It was just another bit of the weirdness of being on another planet.  Melek’s world had a day of twenty hours, give or take thirty minutes.  You would think that the three from Earth would tend to sleep longer than the locals, but it wasn’t true.  Andie was still just getting four or five hours of sleep a night, while Kris was getting around six.  Melek and his people slept nine or ten hours a night.

Thus it was that before dawn the next day, Andie shook Kris awake.  “Hey, you want to see something neat?” Andie asked.

“The backside of my eyelids?” Kris asked, wishing she could have slept more.

“No, this is cool!  Come on, I’ll show you!”

Ezra had been adamant since they’d arrived in this place: “Be ready!”  So Kris went to pee, dressed as well as she could, and put the pistol she had in its holster before following Andie.

Andie led the way back to the nursery and flashed her light on a set of steps a lot like the ones in the main chamber that led to the observation post.  “I was thinking last night,” she told Kris, “that these guys would have been in a world of hurt if they’d been caught in here where they couldn’t get out.  That got me to wondering.  So, I looked here, remembering the shape of the mountain above us.”

Her flashlight held steady on the steps.  “These lead much higher than the set in the other room.”

“And you climbed them?” Kris said, feeling a little ill.  She’d yet to negotiate the other steps without falling -- to be brought up short, and saved by the safety rope.

Andie laughed at her.  “Worry wart!  See that, along the one side?  More eyebolts!”

Kris looked at saw them -- eyebolts roughly three feet apart.

Andie stretched up and clipped a rope she’d left behind on the highest eyebolt she could reach and started up.  In spite of the frequent rope changes, she ascended rapidly, before vanishing into a slit almost at the roof.  A moment later she called down to Kris.  “Come on up!  Be careful!”

Andie dropped the rope and Kris complied, and about two minutes later, she was next to Andie, high above the floor of the cave.

This tunnel was wider and taller than the one to the observation spot; in fact, you could walk upright in it.  Andie led the way for about thirty feet, where the tunnel turned.  Kris could see weak daylight ahead, and a moment later they were outside.

Since they were on the west slope of the mountain, they were in shade, made doubly so, because the entrance emerged behind a huge chunk of limestone that looked like it had at one time been undermined by weathering, and then cracked, dropping six feet and tilting.

“We shouldn’t be out, Andie,” Kris warned her friend.  “We can’t afford to be seen.”

Andie laughed and said, “Look around, Kris!  Unless you’re in this slit, you can’t see us.  Come on, this is so cool!”

She led the way along what might once have been a path, but the recent heavy rains had made a small stream bed.  Kris looked back at the way they’d come, wondering where the water had come from, and then realized it had come from higher up the mountain, but it couldn’t have been a large volume, as the tunnel entrance was just three feet above the bottom of the stream bed.

They went about a hundred yards, trending uphill, and in that time the rock slab on their left ended, but it was because there was an even larger slab that had fallen away at some time in the far distant past.