Demonstrating remarkable agility Whispr not only managed to stand up on the overturned 4×4 as the current carried it downriver, he maintained his balance while shading his eyes from the sun as he scanned upstream.
“I can’t see any movement. As I climbed out the window after we landed in the water I saw it come over the ledge, drive down about halfway, and then flip and roll. It must’ve slowed down before it went over. Maybe whoever it is is still trapped inside.” There was grim satisfaction in his voice. “If they are I hope they’re good and busted up. So they’ll still be alive when the scavengers find them. The guide app says that there are some Percrocutas in the Preserve. Resurrected hyenas as big as lions.”
His words all ran together in her head. She sat up. The last time she had taken a leisurely boat ride was when her sometime paramour Rajahn had treated her to a relaxing cruise on board the replicated sternwheeler Abelmare Queen for a romantic jaunt and moonlight dinner up the Savannah River. Her present situation was neither relaxing nor romantic. Her companion was neurotic, paranoid, and possibly a borderline psychotic. Chasing them were one or more unknown individuals who, if nothing else was known about them, were certainly not borderline.
A sudden thought made her raise her right hand. Her fingers carefully probed the fabric near the top of her left breast. Only when they encountered a barely perceptible bump did she let herself relax. The hidden compartment was intact and so was its precious cargo. She was not worried about the capsule’s integrity. Though thin-walled, it was made of industrial-grade material. Her body might shatter but the capsule would not. But if the security compartment’s seal had been broken in the crash then the small capsule and its irreplaceable contents could easily have been washed away. Small as they were it was unlikely they would ever have been found again.
Confirmation of its presence on her person and the absence of any discernible pursuit were the only good nuggets she was able to mine from the crash. Her comm unit and Whispr’s were both missing; swept away by the churning force of the river. The rest of the 4×4’s electronics were accessible but useless, waterlogged beyond reboot. On impact with the river the off-road vehicle’s rear hatch had popped open. All the supplies they had purchased from the lodge shop and carefully packed for the rest of their journey had been whirlpooled out. As she sat contemplating the disaster an assortment of local fish were no doubt dining happily on the lost food. They had bought enough to sustain them all the way to the Namib. Now not so much as a dehydrated doughnut remained.
But—they were alive. And if Whispr’s ongoing observations of the river behind them were to be believed, finally safe from whoever had been trying to track them down.
“You know,” he told her as he swayed like a lone cattail atop the upturned, slowly drifting vehicle, “this has its upside.”
She gaped at him as she fought to wring water from the hem of her shirt. “Really? Upside? Pray enlighten me.”
Given their present circumstances he was unaccountably cheerful. She would have stood up and punched him except that she was afraid of falling into the river. His brain might not be better than hers, but his balance was.
“Whoever was after us no longer is. If their backer or backers run a follow-up they’ll find their minion’s vehicle wrecked by the riverbank and, hopefully, the body or bodies of whoever they hired. When they come looking for us, all they’ll find is this derelict 4×4.”
She brooded silently for a moment. “If they’re as persistent as whoever they hired then they’ll look for our bodies, too. For confirmation. Even if they don’t give a shit about finding us, they’ll take a long hard look for the thread.”
He was smiling like a penniless Meld who’d suddenly found an unopened prepaid enhancement package abandoned on a park bench.
“Don’t be so quick to give them that much credit. They’re just as likely to believe we drowned and that our bodies got trapped on the river bottom or eaten by scavengers. Hyenas or crocs or fish. As for the thread, they might assume it was consumed along with the rest of us. Or if it got swept away separately that it fell to the bottom somewhere back near the crash site.” His brow furrowed as he tried to remember geographical details from the Preserve guide.
“The Touws becomes the Groot River, which dumps into the Indian Ocean.” He spread his hands. “If SICK or whoever’s been after us here comes to the not unreasonable conclusion that we’re dead, and that the thread is irretrievably lost in the river, then—no more people trying to kill us. And if they’re not looking for us anymore, the better our chances of getting into this research place.”
Though she could not refute the basics of his logic she was unwilling to share what she regarded as his premature glee.
“This isn’t like you, Whispr.”
Resting his hands on knoblike knees he bent toward her. Silhouetted against the almost cloudless pure blue sky all he needed, she thought, to be the splitting image of a well-known character from a classic children’s book were a few strands of straw poking out of his collar and ears. As it was, he looked as if a stiff breeze could carry him away.
“What isn’t like me?”
“Optimism. It’s atypical. Not like you at all. I’m not sure how to handle it.”
He straightened and looked back downstream. “For the first time since you popped those traktacs out of my back in your office I feel like no one’s chasing me. Unless you’ve spent the better part of your life feeling like someone’s always chasing you, you can’t imagine how that feels.” He moved toward one of the roadster’s upturned wheels.
She frowned at him. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going the wrong way. The Namib is in the other direction. We have to get off this wreck and go back the way we came.”
Days ago she would have said nothing. Several near encounters with the homicidal hirelings who had been chasing them had made her bolder. Whispr ought to have been proud. Reaching out, she grabbed a leg of his pants to hold him back.
“How do we know the maniacs who were chasing us aren’t sitting around their wrecked vehicle waiting for their own rescue? It would be worse than merely ironic if after surviving the crash and finally getting away from them we were to just walk into their camp.”
He shook his head confidently. “Trust me, doc. If any of them could walk they’d be following us as fast as they could. I’d have seen ’em by now. I know the type. They don’t give up until they’re dead, or so busted up they can’t move.” With a thin forefinger he traced an arc in the air.
“We’ll land on the opposite bank from where we went into the river and make sure we hike a ways inland before retracing our float. Besides taking us in the direction we want to go, on the off chance that someone did survive their crash they’ll be looking for us to keep floating downstream, just like the 4×4. And they’ll be on the opposite bank from us, looking for footprints. So we have multiple reasons to get off this piece of drift trash and start back the way we came. Besides,” he added encouragingly, “upstream is where we’re most likely to run into other visitors, or maybe a patrolling ranger vehicle.”
She stared at him. “Now I know something’s wrong with you, Whispr. You must have hit your head. You’re making too much sense.”
He grinned and looked away. “Where my own future is concerned I’m always thinking ahead. Maybe I’m not an intellect like you or your friends, doc—but I’m a survivor. Stick with me and you will be, too.”
She was not entirely sure she agreed with him, but neither was the only real alternative especially enticing. Drifting downstream until their ruined vehicle beached or grounded itself held little appeal. And as the river continued to widen on its way to the sea it was likely to provide a home for more and larger wildlife. Hippos, who killed more people in Africa than any other animal. Crocodiles. So …
With the thread safe under her shirt she joined him in swimming ashore. Helping one another they ascended the far bank and started walking northwest. The still-rising sun was warm e
nough without being overpowering to finish drying her and her clothes. Occasionally she caught him looking over at her and realized that until it was dry, her outfit was going to cling to her. She plucked at it repeatedly in hopes of accelerating the drying process. But she did not touch herself when he was looking at her.
After an hour of hiking beneath what was a relatively benign African sun and having had nothing to eat but some wild berries that Whispr found, she no longer cared what she looked like.
IT WAS VERY THOUGHTFUL of his quarry, Molé felt, to come back to him instead of continuing to try to run away. Almost touching. Perhaps they had seen too many ancient entertainment vits where the pursued intentionally walk backward and attempted to circle around behind those who are after them. Or, depending on what if any of their travel gear had survived their crash into the river, they had realized that help and civilization lay much farther away downstream than up.
Their decision to reverse course and hike against the flow of the river was understandable, even sensible. Normally it would have been difficult to impossible for anyone to detect the two fugitives as they made their way upstream while keeping well inland from the tributary itself. But then, a pursuing Natural would not have been alerted to their negligible presence by the visual alarm that appeared on the inside of Napun Molé’s wholly melded left eye as it picked up a trace of their slow-moving but unmistakably human infrared signatures. He tut-tutted softly.
Previously they had made it difficult for him, and now they were making it too easy.
Monitoring their progress, he waited until their heat signatures had moved upriver well past his present position. Then he crossed. A medium-sized croc, no more than three meters long, coasted toward the strange figure to investigate. The maniped fast-twitch muscle fibers in Molé’s legs went to work, enabling him to outdistance the curious reptile.
Emerging dripping wet on the far shore he scrambled up the slope and settled into a comfortable practiced stride that would allow him to keep pace with his quarry. He was in no hurry to catch up to them. The likelihood of them encountering other travelers or rangers before nightfall in this remote corner of the Preserve was slim. It was a chance he was willing to take for the pleasure of waking them from what they would be confident was a secure sleep. He could not keep from smiling as he envisioned the look of horror and confusion that would wash over the stick-man’s face when he awoke to see the muzzle of the small pistol centimeters from his head just before Molé blew his left ear off.
Though the pistol made little noise it would probably be enough to wake the good doctor Seastrom. He would not blow her ear off. He would take his time with her. As he indulged himself he would every so often ask her to provide him with formal medical descriptions of the procedures he planned to carry out. In between operating he would reduce her shrieking companion to dehydrated trail food. He hoped the local scavengers who would find whatever he left behind of the two bodies would appreciate the time and effort he intended to put into providing them with a late-night snack.
One of Africa’s innumerable species of bloodsucking flies landed on an exposed part of his right forearm. It had a heavy soot-gray abdomen and a brilliant metallic green thorax. He looked on with interest as its hypodermiclike proboscis pierced his flesh. The pain was sharp but insignificant compared to what he had lived through in years gone by. It was an excellent stimulant. He felt recharged, alive, and freshly angered.
From the middle finger of his left hand a thin metal tendril whipped out to crack like a whip a couple of millimeters from the banqueting insect. The miniature sonic boom the snap generated shattered the fly’s head. Retracting the tendril Molé reached over and flicked the now headless and blood-bloated body off his arm.
Everyone, he reflected, had their own way of connecting with Nature.
INGRID WAS TOO TIRED to do anything but concentrate on the way forward. Fortunately the vegetation inland from the river consisted largely of low grasses interrupted occasionally by clusters of trees or the weird local succulents. This was dry country; not desert, but far from veldt or jungle. There was plenty for both contemporary and resurrected browsers to eat, which was one of the reasons the government had expanded Sanbona to encompass much of the Little Karoo.
From time to time small four-legged creatures scampered out of their way or hopped frantically clear perpendicular to their path. From reading the Preserve guide she knew these would all be modern species. Bringing back and successfully maintaining the ancient Pleistocene and Holocene megafauna was difficult enough, but it did have one thing in its favor. It was hard to lose track of large animals. For that and many other reasons, some of them patently obvious, resurrecting extinct rodents was an idea whose time had definitely not yet come.
“Do you think it’ll be like this all the way to the N1?” she asked tiredly.
Whispr did not seem to walk so much as flow forward. “Hard to say. We don’t know the country. If I remember the app right it’s at least eighty kilometers from where we went into the river up to the highway, and that’s in a straight line. I’m hoping that as long as we stay close to the water we’ll eventually run into some other travelers.” He jerked a thumb skyward. “Guide app says that park floaters regularly track animal movements. We just need one to see us and help’ll be on its way. Or someone somewhere running an idle satellite search might see two unequipped people out walking in the middle of nowhere, get curious, and make a report.” He smiled encouragingly. “One way or another we’ll get out of this okay.”
“Of course,” she commented sardonically, “it doesn’t improve our chances for rescue that we deliberately didn’t file any travel plans because we didn’t want anyone to know where we’re going.” Stumbling on a loose rock she nearly turned her ankle and proceeded to curse everything within view. Whispr eyed her in mock surprise.
“Why Doctor Seastrom—I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use such unprofessional language.”
“Better get used to it,” she snapped. “The longer we have to walk, the less professional my bedside manner’s going to become.”
“May I say that I find it charming?”
“You may not. In fact, why don’t you shut up for a while?” She surveyed the surrounding grassland uneasily. “All we need is for one of the big cats to hear us plowing through the brush.”
He slowed until he was once more walking alongside her. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”
“Oh, wouldn’t you? And why not?” She glared up at him.
“Because,” he explained amiably, “a Smilodon or a leopard or a lion is likely to smell us long before they hear us.”
Her expression twisted. “I can always depend on you for reassurance.”
His tone turned somber. “You can always depend on me to be realistic, doc. I told you that a long time ago.”
And I wish I’d seen the back of you, she thought dourly, a long time ago.
A barely perceptible bulge against her left breast, the capsule holding the thread was a constant reminder as to why that would not have been a good idea. But it did not keep her from wondering where she would be and how she might be doing if she had simply left him behind in Miavana.
Unexpectedly, they found a wonderful place to spend the night. The jumble of house-sized, water-polished boulders that edgy eons had spilled into the river extended all the way from the water’s edge to the crest of the ridge where they had been birthed. The result was a level three rapid flanked by shards of mountain like cracked hard candy. Though open at both ends and not properly a cave, one enormous stone raft cantilevered at a forty-five-degree angle offered complete protection from the elements. Surveying the interior of the temporary shelter as she sat on a smaller stone, Ingrid decided that if the skies opened up and it poured they would still stay comfortable and dry beneath the impenetrable overhang. Of course, the sky was not likely to open. This was the Little Karoo.
Whispr seemed reluctant to join her. “What’s the matter?” she teased. “A
fraid of the dark?”
“One, it isn’t any darker under that big rock than it already is out here. Two, I’m fine with it. It’s a really nice shelter. Three, really nice shelters usually attract critters who are in need of them. Something similar in Savannah would stink of dogs or cats or rats. So I would expect a great place like this to also attract dogs or cats or rats. I dunno about the local rats, but I do know that some of the dogs and cats run bigger than the average. You smell anything? See anything suggestive? Like maybe gnawed bones with the marrow leaking out?”
Startled by the suggestion she rose from where she was sitting and peered back into the deeper reaches of the overhang. The sun was still up and there was enough light to see into the farthest recesses. To her relief her gaze encountered only dirt and rock.
“It looks empty.”
He joined her but carried out his own inspection as he did so. Wary eyes flicked from one potential place of concealment to the next. He would have reacted exactly the same had they been back in Savannah, except that there he would have been looking for two-legged predators. But the doctor’s eyes were good and her judgment sound. The semicave showed no signs of recent occupation.
With all these big broken rocks around there are probably lots of equally good hiding places, he told himself. And a predator would prefer to make a den higher up, away from the river. Not far from where he stood the rapids thrown up by the boulders that had tumbled into the channel gnashed and gurgled like caged raptors, the tributary impatient in its rush to join the Touws.
The temperature was starting to drop along with the sun. They might have to huddle together to keep warm, he mused. Would she concede to the inevitable or would she prefer to shiver rather than lie beside him? He was nothing if not hopeful. Meanwhile another concern manifested itself.