Looking out the open window Ingrid inhaled deeply of their rugged, rocky surroundings. The odors that clung to the passing terrain were vibrantly different from those back home. Savannah’s air was loamy, damp, rich with the aromatic blend of healthy and decaying vegetation. Sanbona was dry but not a desert; typically Karoo. Possessed of a greater odiferous clarity because they were not overwhelmed by humidity, its fragrances were sharper and more immediately distinctive. She smelled grass shot through with flickers of musk, the tang of dry wood, thick essence of exotic scat, each one able to tickle the sense of smell in ways more subtle and far different from their southeastern Namerican counterparts. Though all wine to her senses, it was like switching in midmeal from shiraz to chardonnay.
When she mentioned it to Whispr there was little appreciation in his brusque reply.
“I came to see animals. Not parse stinks.”
Her response was a scold. “You’ve seen plenty of animals. Why not expand your horizons, open yourself to some new sensations?” She was startled at how at ease she was, both with the bumpy trek and her freely offered criticisms. She had settled completely into a travel mode that was very different from sitting on the beach at Dubaia sipping margaritas with friends from her tower. A less civilized mode to be sure, yet somehow far more fulfilling.
“Don’t be in such a hurry,” he muttered. “We’ll be exposed to plenty of ‘new sensations’ when we try to get past SICK security.” He continued to scan the hilly horizon for signs of resurrected ungulates.
She sighed. “I guess your paranoia will never leave you long enough to let you enjoy life, Whispr.”
He looked over at her. “I enjoy life, doc. Most of all, I enjoy having it. Staying alive is what matters. Everything else, including ‘enjoying’ it, is frosting. Some people don’t think they’re ‘living’ unless they have a lot of frosting. Me, I’m content with the cake.”
She teased him. “But if you weren’t interested in the frosting you wouldn’t be here now, with me, trying to find out what’s on the thread and if it’s worth anything.”
He refocused his full attention on his driving. “Hard to win an argument with a doctor, since they know everything, so I guess I’ll shut up.”
“You know,” she murmured thoughtfully, “I keep thinking about the signal the thread puts out. You would think that whoever wants it back would be able to trace it.”
He started slightly. He’d nearly forgotten about the minuscule transmission. “Didn’t we decide that its signal is almost insubstantial? That it would take specially tuned equipment to pick up something so slight?” He found himself eyeing the landscape with fresh uncertainly. “I was having a pretty good time. Why did you have to go and remind me of that?”
“Sorry.” Her smile was apologetic. “It just struck me. I suppose the answer to my own question is that the signal’s not strong enough to be picked up at any distance. If it was, surely the thread’s owners or manufacturers would have confronted us by now.”
“Yeah.” The tension eased out of him. “Yeah, that makes sense. But if it can only be picked up at such extremely short range, then what’s the point of it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out when we get to Nerens.” As she sat up a little straighter in the seat the responsive back struggled to conform to her new posture. “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“I don’t have a clue where I’m going,” he replied cheerfully, “but the guide app does.” He indicated the small, brightly colored projection that was hovering in the air midwindshield. Continuously updated and renewed from the downloaded material in his comm unit, it was watching over their progress as surely as any Preserve ranger. To reassure her he activated the 4×4’s vorec. They were immediately enveloped by the quietly confident tones of a pleasant male voice with a scratchy Khoi accent.
“You are approaching the Umbiqui Hills. The track you are on will angle to the left approximately fifteen degrees and begin to descend a slight slope. In five minutes you will come to what appears to be a wide river. Do not be alarmed. This is not a river but a seasonal stream. Today’s hydrologic forecast indicates that at the preferred point of crossing its depth should vary from two to five centimeters. As the vehicle in which I am presently functional is capable of safely fording active streams up to a meter in depth there is no reason to slow your progress. You have reached the turn. Proceed at a speed of no more than twenty-five kilometers an hour until you reach the crossing. At that point you will be ready to …”
Reaching over, Ingrid switched off the vorec. “Okay, okay, I’ll quit worrying about where we’re going, if not when we’re going to get there.” A quick look showed that the 4×4’s battery pack still held nearly a full charge, with the vehicle’s power supply constantly being topped up by its amorphous solar coating. Even if night suddenly descended they would have more than enough power to reach the N1.
As they rolled down the gentle slope whose location the guide app had accurately predicted she studied the surrounding landscape. This was truly rough country. “The Little Karoo,” the maps called it. Sanbona Preserve occupied a good portion of the indicated region, an area from which small outposts and private homes had long ago been removed. All the better to give saved and resurrected animals adequate room in which to roam, she knew.
Why couldn’t she just relax completely? As Whispr had pointed out with bothersome frequency they would be putting their lives on the line soon enough. In contrast there was nothing to threaten them here, far from potentially dangerous Cape Town. Big carnivores like Smilodon or modern lions would never attack a vehicle because it neither smelled nor looked nor acted like their normal prey. They would regard anyone and anything inside as part of the machine. She could and should consider herself safe and still on “vacation” at least until they crossed the Orange River.
Whispr peered sideways at the doctor as Ingrid leaned back into the responsive comfort of the passenger seat. Why couldn’t he have fallen for someone in his own social, financial, and educational league? he reproached himself. She was too rich for him, too smart, too attractive. Not merely out of his league but off his planet. She had closed her eyes and finally seemed to be taking it easy.
He tried to keep his eyes on the dirt track ahead, but they kept darting back to the woman napping beside him. It wasn’t enough that she was a respected and successful physician, he told himself. Oh, no. On top of that she had to have recently melded curves that now emulated the surrounding topography. Curves that thanks to the motion imparted by the 4×4 were tantalizingly less inert than the stony foothills through which they had begun to climb.
If she caught him staring at her she would freeze up. If he jerked around sharply from staring at her he would sprain his neck. He almost forgot that he was supposed to be looking for animals. Resolutely he turned his attention back to the passing countryside. A couple of Osteoborus went trotting by; canine in shape but with far more powerful jaws. A line of gemsbok crested a nearby ridge, strung out like spiky beads on a string of broken granite. A shape emerged, vanished, and emerged again behind them.…
It was not organic.
He sat up straight in the driver’s seat and snapped a couple of verbal commands. The image in the 4×4’s rear-facing pickup telescoped, tightened, and sharpened focus. For a moment he thought he had imagined what he had seen. For an instant he hoped that he had.
Hearing him voicing commands, Ingrid blinked and yawned as she looked over at him. Lulled by the clear air, the warm morning, and the gently cushioned rocking motion of the rental she had nearly fallen completely asleep.
“Something interesting behind us? Don’t tell me we’re being followed by a predator or something?”
Whispr divided his time between the rough track ahead and the scene to the rear. “Can’t tell for sure yet. I only saw it once, and I’m not positive about what I saw.”
She was interested now. “So it is a predator? What kind? Felid, canid, ursinoid—what?”
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“The worst kind. Simian.”
She sat up fast at that, turning in her seat to look back the way they had come. The view to the rear was very similar to what could be seen directly ahead: broken rock, big glacier-polished boulders, scrub, small trees, the occasional tiny furred shape rocketing between patches of cover. Certainly nothing to set off any alarms. She peered harder.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Good.” Wiry fingers gripped the 4×4’s wheel tightly. Had it been an illusion? A mirage? Hard to be certain of anything glimpsed to the rear of a moving vehicle jouncing its way through a landscape fraught with fanciful shapes. “Let’s keep it that way.”
MOLÉ MADE CERTAIN TO KEEP well back of his quarry’s vehicle. There was no rush. He was enjoying the sights himself and in no hurry to commit murder. There was always time to commit murder. The abundance of remarkable creatures he had been privileged to see so far this morning were proving to be an unexpected side benefit of his task. Knowing that he might never come this way again and that there was no need to expend energy in the service of unnecessary haste, he had decided to wait to conclude the exercise until he and his target were in as isolated a part of the Preserve as possible. That was not yet. The Touws River still lay in front of them.
He did not look upon his decision to grant the condemned another hour or so of life as playing God. He was delaying for his own gratification, not for them. Certainly he appreciated their choice of this morning’s sightseeing route. The more rugged and little-visited the section of Preserve they had unexpectedly set out to observe, the better for his purposes. In his line of work he was always grateful for the opportunity to take his time. Catching up to this pair of Namericans for a second time had cost him a good deal of extra effort. He fully intended to extract a certain amount of payback in kind.
It was so very good of them to come to a place where he could do so at his leisure.
“WAIT.” HAVING SWIVELED HER seat a hundred and eighty degrees, Ingrid was peering hard out the back window. “I think I do see something. It’s right at the limit of my vision.” She waved loosely in her companion’s direction. “Pull over and let’s see if it comes closer.”
He replied without taking his eyes from the track ahead. “For a doctor you sure have some annoying lapses in logic. If there’s another vehicle that’s been following us we don’t pull over, we speed up. Can you tell if it’s a private transport or a park vehicle?” He licked his lips nervously. He wanted a drink but given the increasingly uneven trail dared not take his hands off the 4×4’s controls.
“Maybe it is park rangers on patrol and they’re just checking up on us.” She continued to search, hoping to get a better look at whatever was behind them.
Whispr was growing increasingly grim. “If it’s Preserve rangers running a check they would’ve hailed us by now.”
“Then it’s probably just other tourists like us, out exploring.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Tourists like us. Can’t you see anything yet?”
“No—wait, yes, I see it now. It just came over a rise. It’s another surface transport. Not a floater. Off-road terrestrial, like ours. I can’t tell if it has any Preserve markings—it’s still too far behind us.” She glanced over at him. “I understand why you don’t want to stop, but if you slow down a little I can get a better look at it.”
“Make do with what you’ve got, ’cause I ain’t slowing down. Not unless you identify it as some kind of official vehicle.” His right foot depressed the accelerator and the muted hum of the 4×4’s electric engine rose ever so slightly. “I’m going to pick up a little speed. Keep watching and let me know if it falls out of sight, maintains the same distance, or starts to close the gap between us.”
Her eyes had widened slightly. “You don’t think, Whispr, that we’ve been tracked all the way out here?”
“You’re the one watching behind us, so you’ll know before I do.”
Her brief moment of relaxation had given way to uncertainty. “I still bet they’re just adventurous tourists, like us.”
“Possible,” he conceded without taking his eyes off the track ahead.
“Maybe we should call for help, ask for some rangers to meet us at the river?”
“First off, you’d have to invent a plausible excuse for the call. Second off, if someone is following us with something other than sharing animal encounters on their minds, they’re likely to be monitoring local transmissions. If they pick up a call for help they won’t keep hanging back. They’ll come after us with all intents blazing and for sure get to us before any park rangers can.”
She swallowed. “So—what do we do?”
His voice was tight. “Just what we are doing. Keep acting like we don’t know they’re there, that we haven’t spotted them. Hope we run into some patrolling rangers. I’m thinking that’s not likely out here, so we bide our time until we find a better place to make a run for it. If they’re in a terrestrial off-road like you said then we might be able to stay ahead of them until we can get to an outpost. Or at least the presence of witnesses.”
She sounded crestfallen. “It’s SICK, isn’t it? One or more of their operatives?”
He responded with a bitter laugh. “What happened to ‘adventurous tourists’?” He accelerated a little more, ever so slightly and hopefully at a rate that might be overlooked by whoever was following them. “Don’t be so quick to agree with me. I’ve been known to be wrong before.”
They continued climbing into the rocky foothills, the track becoming narrower and more difficult to follow the higher they ascended. In places the usual electronic ping posts were even replaced with ancient, painted trail signs. They had reached a very remote part of the Preserve. A truly apt place, Ingrid realized, in which to carry out a termination.
“Where is it now?” Whispr’s naturally high voice had risen fretfully into soprano range. “Still behind us?”
“I think it’s gone!” It took only another couple of seconds for Ingrid’s excitement to vanish. “No, it’s still there—and I think it’s closer.” She turned in her seat. “Whispr! What are we going to do?”
“Same thing I’d do if I was being followed in Greater Savannah. Which I was, not too long ago. Run like hell.” He studied the image on the rear-facing pickup. The vehicle that was trailing them did not look any more sophisticated or capable than their own rental. Unless their pursuit was experienced in and knowledgeable about Preserve conditions they were likely to be on an equal footing when it came to driving. That possibility offered better odds than he was used to, and he had beaten difficult odds before. His foot shoved down on the pedal. The request for maximum acceleration was answered, with an electrically powered vehicle torque was instant, and the rented off-road leaped forward.
“We’ll try to get to the Touws River.” He glanced only occasionally at the rearview. “If we’re lucky we’ll find some rangers there!” He didn’t really believe that. According to the guide app they were unlikely to encounter anyone except perhaps a few other back-country tourists until they reached the N1. Could they stay ahead of those who were tracking them until then? Even if they managed to make it safely to the main highway it was still a long way between towns. But on the principal roadway between Cape Town and Joburg there would be road trains, he told himself, and witnesses.
Ingrid let out a scream and he jerked his foot off the accelerator—too late. Missing a tight turn on the winding track the rental soared over a pile of crushed rock. They hung in the air for what seemed like minutes but was only a second or two before the 4×4 slammed into the slope below. The solid, cushioning wheels were designed to compress considerably before they reached the point of material failure. The real threat lay in damage to the multiple independently riding struts that attached them to the rest of the roadster. If any of these were bent or broken the 4×4 would become unmaneuverable. That they remained intact despite the pounding they were taking was a tribute to the vehicle’s manufacturer an
d its engineers’ knowledge of the unforgiving South African terrain. Reinforced for off-road travel, the chassis and wheels held together.
Though fully intending to berate Whispr for his driving, a shaken Ingrid held off. She could yell at him later. Right now the last thing he needed was to be distracted or have his confidence undermined.
Repeatedly swiveling her seat so that she could switch her attention between the view ahead and the one to the rear she struggled to identify the following vehicle and to count its occupants. Despite her most strenuous efforts this proved impossible. Their own 4×4’s continuous jouncing and banging made it difficult for her to keep her seat, much less pick out details within a trailing transport.
Screw Whispr’s warning, she told herself. Anybody following them at this speed through this kind of terrain had something on their mind other than wildlife watching. And if it turned out that the trailing vehicle was full of nothing but a bunch of wild-eyed teens intent on throwing a scare into some unsuspecting tourists, then she wanted to be able to tell them what she thought of them. Either way she’d had enough of Whispr’s paranoia-driven life-threatening driving. She pulled out her comm unit.
Whispr took his eyes off the trail ahead long enough to notice what she was doing. “Hey, remember what I said about any calls being picked up by whoever’s behind us?”
“I don’t care!” You’re not panicking, she told herself. You’re just voicing your anxiety. “I’ve had enough of this!”
Checking to ensure that the vorec control was on she shouted at the pickup. “Sanbona Preserve main ranger station! Emergency!”
A faint and perfectly incongruous musical tone chimed softly as the communicator complied. A couple of seconds passed before a voice responded. It was disconcertingly mechanical.