We also found two EVA geology specimen bags with shoulder straps, which made excellent packs. Aenea hoisted one to her shoulder and loaded the extra clothes and bric-a-brac we were finding.
I still was convinced that there had to be a raft there, but no amount of digging and opening locker compartments revealed one.
“M. Endymion,” said the ship when I mentioned to the child what I was rooting around for, “I have a vague memory.…
Aenea and I stopped what we were doing and listened. There was something strange, almost pained, about the ship’s voice.
“I have a vague memory of the Consul taking the inflatable raft … of him waving good-bye to me from it.”
“Where was that?” I asked. “Which world?”
“I do not know,” said the ship in that same bemused, almost pained tone. “It may not have been a world at all.… I remember stars shining below the river.”
“Below the river?” I said. I was worried about the ship’s mental integrity after the crash.
“The memory is fragmented,” said the ship in a brisker tone. “But I do remember the Consul departing in the raft. It was a large raft, quite comfortable for eight or ten people.”
“Great,” I said, slamming a compartment door. Aenea and I carried out the last load—we had rigged a metal folding ladder to hang down from the air lock, so climbing in and out was not the struggle it had been earlier.
A. Bettik swooped back after ferrying the camping gear and food cartons down to the waterfall, and now I looked at what remained: my backpack filled with my personal gear, Aenea’s backpack and shoulder bag, the extra com units and goggles, some of the food paks, and—lashed under the top of my pack—the folded plasma rifle and the machete A. Bettik had found yesterday. The long knife was awkward to carry, even in its leather sheath, but my few minutes in the jungle the day before had convinced me that we might need it. I had also dug out an ax and an even more compact tool—a folding shovel, actually, although for millennia we idiots who had joined the infantry had been trained to call it “an entrenching tool.” All of our cutlery was beginning to take up space.
I would have been happy to have skipped the ax and brought along a cutting laser to fell the trees for the raft—even an old chain saw would have been preferable—but my flashlight laser wasn’t up to that sort of work, and the weapons locker had been strangely devoid of cutting tools. For one long self-indulgent moment I considered bringing the old FORCE assault rifle and just blasting and burning those trees down, splitting them with pulse bolts if need be, but then I rejected the idea. It would be too loud, too messy, and too imprecise. I would just have to use the ax and sweat a bit. I did bring one of the tool kits with hammer, nails, screwdrivers, screws, pivot bolts—all the things I might need for raft building—as well as some rolls of waterproof plastalum that I thought might make crude but adequate flooring for the raft. On top of the tool kit were several hundred meters of nylon-sheathed climbing rope in three separate coils. In a red waterproof pouch, I’d found some flares and simple plastique, the kind that had been used for blasting stumps and rocks out of fields for countless centuries, as well as a dozen detonators. I included those, although they would be of doubtful use in felling trees for a raft. Also included in this pile for the next trip east were two medkits and a bottle-sized water purifier.
I had carried the EM-flying belt out, but the thing was bulky with its harness and power pak. I propped it against my pack anyway, thinking that we might need it. Also propped against my pack was the 16-gauge shotgun, which the android had not bothered taking with him during his flight east. Next to it were three boxes of shells. I had also insisted on bringing the flechette pistol, although neither A. Bettik nor Aenea would carry the thing.
On my belt was the holster holding the loaded .45, a pocket for an old-fashioned magnetic compass we’d found in the locker, my folded pair of night goggles and daytime binoculars, a water bottle, and two extra clips for the plasma rifle. “Bring on the velociraptors!” I muttered while taking inventory.
“What?” said Aenea, looking up from her packing.
“Nothing.”
Aenea had her things packed neatly in her new bag by the time A. Bettik touched down on the sand. She had also packed the android’s few personal items in the second shoulder bag.
I have always enjoyed breaking camp, even more than setting it up. I think it’s the neatness of packing everything away that I enjoy.
“What are we forgetting?” I said to the other two as we stood there on the narrow beach, looking at the packs and weapons.
“Me,” said the ship through the comlog on my wrist. The spacecraft’s voice did sound a bit plaintive.
Aenea walked across the sand to touch the curved metal of the beached ship. “How are you doing?”
“I have begun repairs, M. Aenea,” it said. “Thank you for inquiring.”
“Do you still project six months for repairs?” I asked. The last of the clouds were dissipating overhead, and the sky was that pale blue again. The green and white fronds moved against it.
“Approximately six standard months,” said the ship. “That is for my internal and external condition, of course. I do not have the macromanipulators to repair such things as your broken flybikes.”
“That’s all right,” said Aenea. “We’re leaving them all behind. We’ll fix them when we see you again.”
“When will that be?” said the ship. Its voice seemed smaller than usual coming from the comlog.
The child looked at A. Bettik and me. None of us spoke. Finally Aenea said, “We will need your services again, Ship. Can you conceal yourself here for months … or years … while you repair yourself and wait?”
“Yes,” said the ship. “Would the river bottom do?”
I looked out at the great gray mass of the ship rising from the water. The river was wide here, and probably deep, but the thought of the wounded ship backing itself into it seemed strange. “Won’t you … leak?” I said.
“M. Endymion,” said the ship in that tone that made me think it was acting haughty, “I am an interstellar spacecraft capable of penetrating nebulae and existing quite comfortably within the outer shell of a red giant star. I shall hardly—as you put it—leak because of being immersed in H20 for a brief period of years.”
“Sorry,” I said, and then—refusing to have the ship’s rebuke as the last word—”Don’t forget to close your air lock when you go under.”
The ship did not comment.
“When we come back for you,” said the girl, “will we be able to call you?”
“Use the comlog bands or ninety-point-one on the general radio band,” said the ship. “I will keep a buggy-whip antenna above waterline to receive your call.”
“Buggy-whip antenna,” mused A. Bettik. “What a lovely phrase.”
“I am sorry that I do not recall the derivation of that term,” said the ship. “My memory is not what it used to be.”
“That’s all right,” said Aenea, patting the hull. “You’ve served us well. Now you get well.… We want you in top shape when we return.”
“Yes, M. Aenea. I will be in contact and monitoring your progress until you transit the next farcaster portal.”
A. Bettik and Aenea sat on the hawking mat with their packs and our last boxes of gear taking up the rest of the space. I strapped the bulky flying belt on. It meant that I had to carry my own pack against my chest with a strap looped over my shoulder, the rifle in my free hand, but it worked all right. I knew how to operate the thing only from books—EM belts were useless on Hyperion—but the controls were simple and intuitive. The power indicator showed full charge, so I did not anticipate being dropped into the river for this short hop.
The mat was hovering about ten meters above the river when I squeezed the handheld controller, lurched into the air, almost clipped a gymnosperm, found my balance, and flew out to hover next to them. Hanging from this padded body harness was not as comfortable as sitting on a
flying carpet, but the exhilaration of flying was even stronger. With the controller still held in my fist, I gave them the thumbs-up, and we flew east along the river, toward the rising sun.
THERE WEREN’T MANY OTHER SAND SPITS OR beaches between the ship and the waterfall, but there was a good spot just below the waterfall, along the south side of the river where it widened into a lazy pool just beyond the rapids, and it was here that A. Bettik unpacked our camping gear and the first load of material. The noise from the falls was loud as we stacked the last of the small crates. I unlimbered the ax and looked at the nearest gymnosperms.
“I was thinking,” A. Bettik said so softly that I could hardly hear him over the noise of the waterfall.
I paused with the ax on my shoulder. The sunlight was very hot, and my shirt was already sticking to me.
“The River Tethys was meant to be a pleasure cruise,” he continued. “I wonder how the pleasure cruisers dealt with that.” He pointed a blue finger at the roaring falls.
“I know,” said Aenea. “I was thinking the same thing. They had lévitation barges then, but not everyone going down the Tethys would have been in one. It would have been embarrassing to go for a romantic boat ride and find you and your sweetheart going over those.”
I stood looking at the rainbow-dappled spray of the falls and found myself wondering if I was as intelligent as I often assumed. This had not occurred to me. “The Tethys has been unused for almost three standard centuries,” I said. “Maybe the falls are new.”
“Perhaps,” said A. Bettik, “but I doubt it. These falls appear to have been formed by tectonic shelving that runs for many miles north and south through the jungle—do you see the difference in elevation there? And they have been eroding for a very long time. Note the size of the boulders in the rapids? I would think this has been here for as long as the river has run.”
“And it’s not in your Tethys guidebook?” I said.
“No,” said the android, holding the book out. Aenea took it.
“Maybe we’re not on the Tethys,” I said. Both of the others stared at me. “The ship didn’t get a starsighting,” I went on, “but what if this is some world not on the original Tethys tour?”
Aenea nodded. “I thought of that. The portals are the same as the ones along the remnants of the Tethys today, but who is to say that the TechnoCore did not have other portals … other farcaster-connected rivers?”
I set the head of the ax down and leaned on the shaft. “In which case, we’re in trouble,” I said. “You’ll never find your architect, and we’ll never find our way back to the ship and home.”
Aenea smiled. “It’s too early to worry about that. It has been three centuries. Maybe the river here just cut a new channel since the Tethys days. Or maybe there’s a canal and locks we missed because the jungle grew over it. We don’t have to worry about this now. We just have to get downriver to see if there’s another portal.”
I held up one finger. “Another thought,” I said, feeling a bit smarter than I had a moment before. “What if we go to all this trouble of building a raft here and find another waterfall between us and the portal? Or ten more? We didn’t spot the farcaster arch last night, so we don’t know how far it is.”
“I thought of that,” said Aenea.
I tapped my fingers on the ax handle. If that kid said that phrase one more time, I would seriously consider using the implement on her.
“M. Aenea asked me to reconnoiter,” said the android. “I did so during my last shuttle here.”
I was frowning. “Reconnoiter? You didn’t have time to fly that mat a hundred klicks or more downriver.”
“No,” agreed the android, “but I flew the mat very high and used the extra set of binoculars to search our path. The river appears to run straight and true for almost two hundred kilometers. It was difficult, to be sure, but I saw what may be the arch approximately a hundred thirty kilometers downriver. There appeared to be no waterfalls or other major obstacles between us and it.”
My frown must have deepened. “You saw all that?” I said. “How high were you?”
“The mat has no altimeter,” said A. Bettik, “but judging from the visible curvature of the planet and the darkening of the sky, I think I was about one hundred kilometers up.”
“Did you have one of the spacesuits on?” I asked. At that altitude a human being’s blood would boil in his veins and his lungs would burst from explosive decompression. “A respirator?” I looked around, but nothing like that was lying in our modest piles of goods.
“No,” said the android, turning to lift a crate, “I just held my breath.”
Shaking my head, I went off to cut some trees down. I figured that the exercise and solitude would do me good.
IT WAS EVENING BEFORE THE RAFT WAS FINISHED, and I would have been working all night if A. Bettik had not taken turns with me on the tree cutting. The finished product was not beautiful, but it floated. Our little raft was about six meters long and four wide, with a long steering pole carved into a crude rudder set onto a forked support at the rear, a raised area just in front of the steering pole where Aenea molded the tent into a lean- to with openings front and rear, and crude oarlocks on each side with long oar-poles that would lie along the sides of the ship unless they were needed for rowing in dead water or emergency steering in rapids. I had been worried that the fern trees might soak up too much water and sink too low to be useful as a raft, but with only two layers of them wrapped together into a honeycomb with our climbing rope and bolted in strategic places, the logs rode very nicely and kept the top of the raft about fifteen centimeters above the water.
Aenea had shown a fascination with the microtent, and I had to admit that her sculpting of it was more skillful and efficient than anything I had shaped in all my years of using the things. Our lean- to could be ducked into from the steering position at the rudder, had a nice overhang in front to shield us from sun or rain while keeping the view intact, and had nice vestibules on either side to keep the extra crates of gear dry. She had already spread our foam pads and sleeping bags in various corners of the tent; the high sitting area in the center where we had the best view forward now boasted a meter-wide river stone, which she had set there as a hearth with the mess gear and heating cube on it; one of the handlamps was opened to lantern mode and was hanging from a centerloop—and, I had to admit, the overall effect was cozy.
The girl did not just spend her afternoon making cozy tents, however. I guess that I had expected her to stand by and watch while the two men sweated through the heavy work—I had stripped to the waist an hour into the heat of the day—but Aenea joined in almost immediately, dragging downed logs to the assembly point, lashing them, driving nails, setting bolts and pivot joints in place, and generally helping in the design. She pointed out why the standard way I’d been taught to jerry-rig a rudder was inefficient, and by moving the base of the support tripod lower and farther apart, I was able to move the long pole easier and to better effect. Twice she showed me different ways to tie the cross supports on the underside of the raft so that they would be tighter and sturdier. When we needed a log shaped, it was Aenea who set to with the machete, and all A. Bettik and I could do was stand back or be hit by flying chips.
Still, even with the three of us working hard, it was almost sundown before the raft was finished and our gear loaded.
“We could camp here tonight, get onto the river early in the morning,” I said. Even as I said it, I knew that I did not want to do that. Neither did the other two. We climbed aboard, and I pushed us away from the shore with the long pole I’d chosen as our main source of locomotion when the current failed. A. Bettik steered, and Aenea stood near the front of the raft, looking for shoals or hidden rocks.
For the first hour or so, the voyage seemed almost magical. After the sultry jungle heat and the tremendous exertion all day, it seemed like paradise to stand on the slowly moving raft, push against the river mud occasionally, and watch the darkening walls of
jungle slip past. The sun set almost directly behind us, and for a few minutes the river was as red as molten lava, the undersides of the gymnosperms on either side aflame with reflected light. Then the grayness turned to darkness, and before we caught more than a glimpse of the night sky, the clouds moved in from the east just as they had the previous night.
“I wonder if the ship got a fix,” said Aenea.
“Let’s call and ask,” I said.
The ship had not been able to fix its position. “I was able to ascertain that we are not on Hyperion or Renaissance Vector,” said the small voice from my wrist comlog.
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “Any other news?”
“I have moved to the river bottom,” said the ship. “It is quite comfortable, and I am preparing to …”
Suddenly the colored lightning rippled across the northern and western horizons, the wind whipped across the river so strongly that each of us had to rush to keep things from being blown away, the raft began moving toward the south shore with the whitecaps, and the comlog spit static. I thumbed the bracelet off and concentrated on poling while A. Bettik steered again. For several minutes I was afraid that the raft would come apart in the high waves and roaring wind; the bow was chopping, lifting, and dropping, and our only illumination came from the explosions of magenta and crimson lightning. The thunder was audible this night—great, pealing waves of sound, as if someone were rolling giant steel drums down stone stairs at us—and the aurora lightning tore at the sky rather than dancing, as it had the night before. Each of us froze for a second as one of those magenta bolts struck a gymnosperm on the north bank of the river, instantly causing the tree to explode in flame and colored sparks. As an ex-bargeman, I cursed my stupidity for letting us be out here in the middle of such a wide river—the Tethys had opened up to the better part of a klick wide again—without lightning rod or rubber mats. We hunkered down and grimaced when the colored bolts struck either shore or lit the eastern horizon in front of us.