From howell_g@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz Thu Jun  8 05:58:59 PDT 1995
 
 
 
THE  HUMAN   MEMOIRS
Part I Section A
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made
     -HOUSMAN
 
 
     Running  feet pattered and clicked on worn
flagstones,  the sound   echoing  hollowly   through  the
Library's  cold   stone corridors. Of course running in the
Citadel was frowned upon, but at this hour the halls were
practically deserted;  the only  ones around  to witness
such infractions were the rats and  mice,  and they
couldn't care less.
     The cavernous oval floor of the foyer - packed with
students during  daylight  hours  -  was as deserted as the
rest  of  the Library.  Beyond  the  antique leaded glass
of the  high  ceiling dome, night-bound clouds scudded
across the sky, seemingly just arm's length outside. He
blinked up at fat raindrops blatting against the glass and
shivered;  the heating was turned down for the night, not
that it ever made much of a difference in a room this size
anyway.  Somewhere in the library an old water clock chimed
the hour, making him glance at his timepiece for
confirmation. He grimaced. Rot it! Late enough already.
     In  the  dimness,  terminals - a few with  green
characters flickering up their screen - stared glassily
from their cubicles. Beyond  the glass partitions,   row
upon row of  ancient  shelves stretched off into the
shadowy vaults.  The soundproofed  viewing and  study
chambers were tucked away in a quiet corner  behind  a row
of wood-panelled doors,  one with the 'IN USE' plate
glowing. He sighed and took a guess at exactly what she'd
say, then opened the door.
     "You took your time!"
     He grinned. Close enough.
     Mas  swung  her  feet off the edge of  the  desk,
spun  the chair around and glared up at  him as  the door
hissed shut behind him.  One finger was  impatiently
drumming  a tattoo on the well-worn upholstered armrest.
"So, did you bring it?"
     "Love you too," he retorted, flopping into the second
chair. She glared at him. "Alright! I got it," he waved the
plastic case under her nose.  "Why did you have to wait for
the last minute anyway?"
     "I had other business," she growled.
     He'd heard that one before. "Sure. More important than
your finishing grade?"
     "Yes."
     "Oh? What? Someone die?"
     She stared at him, then began to bristle. "None of
your business!"
     "Alright." He shrugged. "Sorry. Forget it. Anyway, you
could have booked some of the libraries disks earlier in
the year."
     "I didn't know they'd all be booked out. That
festering video they showed; suddenly everyone wants the
disks. Great   timing,"   Mas  scratched   fingers
against   the wooden countertop, "Just in time for a
thesis. Why on earth did they set THIS as the topic?!"
     "Come on. You know it's customary for every Academy
graduate to do it."
     "Every year?"  she asked with a wrinkle of her nose.
"You'd  think the  'Great  Learned  Ones' would be filled
to  the  back  teeth reading all those recycled essays.
Most of the students just load a thesis saved a year ago
and rewrite  it. If you look through the files you'll see
they all seem remarkably similar."
     "Those files're supposed to be locked!"
     "Huh!" she snorted.  "You of all people should know
the locks they use are a joke.  There's no way  they can
keep a dedicated system wanderer out.  If you  know the
right  people  and right software,  you can  get  access
to anything."
     "You wouldn't!"
     She just grinned at him.
     Perhaps she would. That was her style: all take and no
give. He  didn't know why he'd agreed to help her.  A
strange  one  she was:  Only recently arrived at the
Academy, perhaps not even from the  east coast.
Intelligent enough - in the Academy  that  went without
saying  -  probably  smarter  than  he  was,   but  also
incredibly  aloof and arrogant.  Nobody knew anything more
about her other than that she kept herself separate from
everyone else, never  entering  into  relationships:   a
frigid  bitch  to  all appearances.  He'd never known
anyone who had even claimed  to have spent a night with
her.  He had never found her files in the admin system.
She  seemed  to  be  a   nobody, but nevertheless  she held
some kind of sway over the  establishment, that was the
only way they'd been able to bend the rules and  get into
the Library after hours.
     Her arrival at his dorm had come as a complete
surprise  and her request. . . no, her demand  for help on
this project had left  him flustered and tongue-tied.
Perhaps if he'd been thinking straight he wouldn't have
agreed to help.  It was his high academic achievements
that'd caught her attention and he knew in his  gut that
when she'd squeezed him for all he was  worth,  she'd  dump
him.
     Somehow, he didn't care.
     Frigid she may be,  but she was also undeniably
attractive; any red-blooded male would gladly give a
testicle for a chance to be shut in a cubicle with her. A
shame she had a tendency to turn it into an experience akin
to being shut in  refrigerator. A real waste.
     He  sighed. . . Oh well.   "If you're going to do it
that  way, what  do you need me for?  I'll just let you get
on with it."  He began to stand but she kicked his feet out
so he fell back into the chair.
     "Sit down!  You're a walking encyclopedia when it
comes  to this  kind  of thing. And I know you get a rush
out of  doing it. Already  got  a career planned out,
haven't you?  What  was  it? Historics and Research?"
     "Uh. . . yes. How'd you know?"
     "Heard you in the canteen."
     "Oh."  When  had that been?  He hadn't been to  the
canteen for. . .
     "I  can't understand why you enjoy this kind of
thing,"  she snorted.  "We  could  be researching
something  practical,  like matrix  memory,   or  the
space  probes  and  parallel  junction projects."
     "And  where'd those come from?" He waved the  disk.
"Aren't you forgetting  who  actually  suggested  those
ideas.   We've  just developed the capabilities to actually
build them."
     "History!" she muttered. "Shackles of expectations!"
     "Huh?"
     "Nothing." She shook her head. "Just forget it."
     "Forget it? You like riddles?"
     "No. It's nothing. Just something my father once told
me."
     "Your. . . "
     "Don't ask!" she snapped.  "Now we've got work to  do.
That video:  how  accurate was it?"
     "Uh. . . "  her  sudden  change of tact  had  thrown
him.  Her father,  that was a fascinating slip.  There was
more there. . . but later.  "I. . . It was fairly well
done, but of course you could still tell they were
costumes. And they 'cleaned it up' a little:  rearranged
parts to make it more  interesting." He  flipped the disk
box in the air and caught  it  again.  "This transcription
is copied verbatim from the original  translation. Well, as
close as possible anyway. Everything's there."
     "Great," she muttered unenthusiastically.  "Ah,  well.
What about the museum? You recommend it?"
     "Definitely!  You  haven't seen anything until  you've
seen them in the flesh,  so to speak.  Weird!" he chuckled,
then added, "And  you  should look up their mating habits.
That's  got  some interesting titbits."
     Mas snorted,  snatched the case and popped it open,
checking the disk's label before dropping it into the
drive.  The screen flickered, the manufacturer's logo
blinking across the top, then the disk's boot sectors took
over and a menu appeared,  icons arranged in neat rows.
Mas selected one, pressed  the  puck's button and the drive
light flickered  for  a second, then the high-resolution
digitised graphic of an ancient, worn leather volume
appeared on the screen along with title and dates.  Beat
his old system back home clear out of the running
speedwise, and the graphics were so clear they seemed to
jump out of the glass. Another few  seconds then the screen
cleared and the text of the translation began  to scroll
down the VDU.
     "Put  it up on the big screen," he suggested,  then
after  a few  seconds  added,   "Who  knows,  you  might
even  find  this interesting."
     She bared teeth back at him and he smiled to himself.
     At the touch of a key,  the featureless black wall
above the monitor  flickered,  text  appeared on  it,  the
lights  dimmed. Without  another word the pair settled back
in their  chairs  and began to read.
 
 
THE HUMAN MEMOIRS
 
     This ain't no technological breakdown,
this is the road to hell. . .
 
 
 
     Chris  Rea's  voice  faded in a burst  of  white
noise, then pulsed back to full strength again as the
transistor radio  swung like a electronic pendulum from the
dash. The   headlamps  of  the  world-weary   Deuce  n'  a
Half illuminated  the road ahead for  fifty meters in the
clear  night air,  the  catseyes down the centre glaring
back at the truck  as the  lights  swept  over  and  past
them.   I  squirmed  on  the uncomfortable seat, trying to
work some feeling back into my numb tailbone.  I think they
cut cost in the earlier  models:  welding the   axle
directly  to  the  chassis  without  bothering   with
suspension.
     "Will you stop squirming like that!"  Tenny  Dalton
shifted  gear and glared at me,  his face turned into  a
cragged monstrosity  by  the faint green glow of the dash.
The  stub  of cigar jutting from his mouth glowed like a
malevolent  LED.  "You got a rash or something?"
     "Not  yet,"  I  groaned and stretched
melodramatically,  "but it's only a matter of time.  Where
are we anyway?"
     "How  should I know?  You've got the map."
     "You don't NEED a map!" I protested, then rubbed my
eyes and picked up the flashlight from the dash,
illuminating my watch. "Shit. We should have caught up with
them an hour ago."
     "Hey!  I've been going where you tell me.  You sure
it's the right damned road?"
     I  leaned  back  and flashed the battered old
angelhead  at  the  map strapped to the dash. "Uh, what's
this road?"
     "Ah. . . last sign was US29 to Charlottesville."
     "Uh-huh." I squinted at the map. "Uh. . .Yeah,  that's
what I've got here. How long ago was that? Half an hour?"
     "'Bout that."
     "Well,  next stop's. . . " I peered at the confusion
of  lines, "Lynchburg. . . I  think.  That's not too far
now.  Might  catch  up there."
     "Shit. Better hope we do," Tenny  growled.  "Can't
you imagine  it?  Trundling into camp two hours after the
others.  A truckload  of live ammo rolling around  the
countryside unescorted,  SOP out the window. . . Shit,
Jefferson'd have a field day."  He  slapped the wheel in
disgust,  then  reached  over  to fiddle  with the radio as
it faded out again.  "What  the  fuck's wrong with this
thing?"
     "You put fresh batteries in it?  Try another station.
If the coil hadn't died on us back there there. . . "
     "Oh,  yeah.  Whose  fault was that?  You're  the
mechanical whizkid.  You were supposed to overhaul it in
the  pool.  'Sure,' you  said, 'get  right on it' you
said." He clamped  down  on  the cigar  again;  the tip
glowed furiously as he puffed away on  the reeking thing.
"And get your feet down."
     "I did the coil," I snorted, dropped my feet and made
a show of  dusting off the scratched metal.  "It'd take me
years to  fix everything on this heap."
     "Heap?"  He actually sounded outraged.  "Don't
criticise  a classic piece of machinery.  "He patted the
worn  steering  wheel affectionately. "She don't like that
kind of abuse, do ya girl?"
     "Talking to a truck. . . "I shook my head
despairingly.  "Have you  ever thought about professional
help?  Or at least  a  long, long vacation?"
     He laughed and took his right hand off the wheel to
flick me the finger. "You're going to eat them words," he
grinned. "It's a good truck. I like the way it handles."
     I stuck my feet up on the dash again, unintimidated.
"You're only  saying  that cause you keep drawing  the
short  straw.  It handles like a four ton lump of shit.  I
mean,  hell,  even  SLEP didn't want anything to do with
it."
     "Really?" he asked lightly and the truck lurched over
to the right.
     I  glanced over at him,  "You trying to prove. . .
OHSHIT!!"  I yelled  and  grabbed for the dash as a car's
lights  glared  from around a corner, the driver hit his
horn and Tenny held it to the last second. Tires screamed
as the truck lurched back to the left side  of the road and
a seconds later the vehicle itself  flashed past us.
     "Jesus Christ!"
     "Might  have been," Tenny said with a glance in the
mirror. "I didn't see."
     I shook my head.Join the Army; See interesting places;
Meet interesting people. It's a man's life. . . And then
there's the Quartermasters Corps. It's a living. It pays
more than regular army, and I was scraping for every cent I
could. These days college really costs.
     One of the rules engraved in the rank and files'
unofficial handbook  is 'never volunteer'.  Okay.  That's
no problem. You don't have to volunteer: they do it for
you. You can wake up one morning and find you've pulled a
duty  riding shotgun on a fifty year old truck on a run
from Fort Delvoir  out of  DC  down to Fort Jackson with a
couple of  tons  of  outdated military hardware on the bed.
     And then to cap it all was the driver. . .
     Tenny  Dalton:  PFC,  old friend.  Oh,  he could
drive  all right.  In fact the way he handled a truck was
downright uncanny, as  were some of the other things he
did.  Everything he  did  he accomplished  well  and with a
slight  air  of  indifference,  as though  he  really
wasn't trying.  This applied  whether  he  was overhauling
an engine or coming on to one of the noble Ladies  in a
dive in Jacksonville.  Still,  they weren't as annoying as
his insistence on smoking: cigars of all things.
     I  coughed  and  tried to fan a  streamer  of  smoke
aside. Useless  to ask him to chuck it;  he'd sooner
amputate his  right hand.  I don't know where the hell he
got them from,  but he only smoked Havanahs.
     I just wound the window down a bit further and let
cold air whip  around  my  face.   When  the  local  FM
station  vanished completely into the sea of static, Tenny
spent only a few seconds fiddling with the dial, then
snapped it off.
     The engine growled and the transmission grated, then
settled down  again as the truck started up a grade.  The
shadows of  the trees  along  the  roadside  blurred past
in  the  darkness  and occasionally the bluish-white smear
of the cloud-covered moon was visible through the black
crests of trees and mounatins.
     With nothing to see or say,  I yawned,  then settled
back to doze.  Well,  I  meant  to  doze.  Not my  fault  I
dropped  off completely.
     A   slap   on   my   shoulder   snapped   me   out
of   my slumber. "Davies. HEY! Davies!"
     I yawned, shook my head and roled my shoulders. Damn
kink in my neck .  "Huh?  Wassup?" There was  no  sign  of
civilisation  outside.  Just trees,  darkness,  trees,  and
more darkness. "Where are we?"
     "Somewhere near Roanoke." He was leaning forward,
trying to watch the sky.
     "Oh. .    . WHAT?" I grabbed for the map.  "Damnation!
You decide to  take  the  scenic route did you?" How the
hell  did  I  sleep through that? "Why didn't you wake me?"
     That  wasn't  a rhetorical question,  but  he  still
didn't answer.  "Hey!  The power was out when we went
through Lynchburg. Lights and everything.  I took the wrong
turnoff. . . Look,  there's something  weird going on.
Check the sky and tell me if you  see anything."
     "Huh? The martians coming?"
     "Goddammit! Will you look!"
     What the hell was he on about? I shrugged and wound
down the window. "Oh, wow man!"
     "You see it?" he urged,  just about smearing his face
across the dusty windshield in his efforts to see upwards.
     "There's  nothing  there," I told  him.  "You  were
perhaps expecting  the  Hindenburg?   You  should  check
those   cigars: anything  besides tobacco in there?" I
grinned and looked  up  in time  to  see a bolt of white-
blue lighting arc across  the  sky. Less  than a second
later the horizon ahead flashed with a  white glare that
died just as fast.
     "Holy shit!"
     "You see that?" Tenny yelled, his voice too loud in
the cab. "You see it?!"
     "Yeah. Weirdest  lightning  I  ever saw. . . There's
another!"
     "And another!"
     The bolts had all originated at different places in
the sky, but  they  all seemed to finish at the same spot,
out  of  sight down  the  road.  The sky just over the hill
was pulsing  like  a gigantic strobelight. I  stared as
more pulses of blue-white light snapped  across the night
sky. The clouds had cleared, the stars bright.
     "No clouds," I muttered.
     Tenny  glanced at me,  then fixed his attention on the
road again.  His fingers flexed on the wheel.  "Yeah, I
noticed. . . What the fuck is it?"
     "Ball lightning?"
     "Say what?"
     "Fireballs.  A  kind of lightning. . . maybe." I
leaned out  of the side window, peering ahead. "I can't see
anything, I. . . SHIT!" I cursed and ducked as the air
above my head was ionized.
     That  time  the bolt came from behind  us,'bout  ten
metres above the road and going straight ahead,  it
disappeared into the darkness  ahead.  A couple of seconds
later,  the sharp crack  of its passage hit.
     Tenny hadn't even noticed the near miss,  he was
staring  at something else.
     SOMETHING was forming in the air ahead. . . no,  all
around us. No real shape to it,  a whirlpool of the deepest
blue hanging  in the  air,  like one of those laser light
shows.  Jagged bolts  of cyan  and electric blue lighting
materialized out of thin air and shot  into  the  vortice,
highlighting it  and  the  surrounding landscape in
strobing flashes of surreal color.
     We were heading right for the hub of the thing.
     The hood of the truck blazed with dazzling corona
discharges  and  St.  Elmo's fire coruscated around the
headlamps  and  other metal fixtures.  The radio blared to
life with a scream of static as electrical sparks flared on
the antenna.
     "STOP!!"  I screamed.  There was a continuous almost
sub-sonic rumble from the mega-high voltage plasma
sculpture building in front of us.
     He snarled something back.  Bitten in half, the
glowing stub of the cigar dropped into the foot well.  He
had already  floored the brake and clutch.  Nothing.  He
jammed the transmission  into reverse:  A  spectacular
shower of sparks gouted from  the  back wheels and tortured
metal under the truck screamed,  but we  kept going.
     I grabbed for the dash and yelped as fat blue sparks
kicked me back.
     Whatever it was, we hit it at seventy five. . .
     And kept going, right through it.
     Hit something with an impact that almost broke my
neck, the front of the truck leaving the ground,
superstructure  protesting while the engine noise went off
into an earsplitting whine. There was a retort that could
only be an axle breaking,  then the headlights illuminated
flashing glimpses of  grass,  stones,  and trees.
     Pounding  and crashing as the crates in the  back
broke loose.  I was thrown against Tenny,  then against the
door as the truck fishtailed,  threatening to roll,  then
the door broke open and everything was still for long
seconds then a giant backhanded me  and everything spun,
rolling and bouncing against bushes and  rocks. Stunned,  I
didn't have time to do anything but lie there gasping for
air as the back of the truck slewed past,  just  missing
my head.
     It flipped,  again and again,  rolling and skidding
along on its side,  sparks flying, canvass flapping and
cargo crates tumbling end over end,  metal screaming, then
something caught and it became a  fireball slamming into
rocks where it stuck,  burning  with  a vengeance.
     "Tenny?"
     The  explosion ripped the night apart as cargo  cooked
off, more  fireballs  bursting  to  life.   There  was  a
sound  like machinegun  fire.  Thousands  of tiny trails of
smoke  arced  and corkscrewed  high into the air and fell
back to earth as  smoking and  glowing  debris  was hurled
away from the  mass  of  flames. Tracers whined overhead
like mad skyrockets.
     "TENNY!"
     I lurched to my feet, then promptly keeled over again.
 
*****
 
     Warmth on my face woke me.
     I  opened  my eyes,  then closed  them  nearly
immediately, groaning  as the morning sun dazzling me.  I
rolled over onto  my hands  and knees.  The movement
startled a family of deer on  the edge of the forest.  With
graceful precision they melted into the trees. I stared
after them, then remembered.
     The road. . . the lightning. . . the crash. . . Tenny.
     It hadn't been a nightmare.  Smoke was still curling
up from the  wreckage  of the truck.  Blackened and
twisted  debris  was scattered far and wide over across the
gentle slope, like driftwood on a beach.
     The  shattered skeleton was still ticking and pinging
as  I picked  my way around warped pieces of metal,  olive
crates  with blistered paint and contents data stencilled
on the sides,  small craters  gouged in the earth by
ordinance cooking  off.  Gobs  of melted  lead  and objects
that were just identifiable  as  fragments of shell-casings
littered  the ground.  Actually it was  surprising  that
there was this much left of the vehicle.  If so much of the
cargo hadn't  been  thrown clear as the bed broke  up,  the
truck  would probably have been reduced to pieces to small
to find.
     Now  there was just a framework,  the cab scored black
with carbon,  crumpled like an accordion and tipped to one
side.  The door on the drivers side was still closed,
jammed into place and facing the sky.  Where the windshield
had been was a hole  framed by shards of glass:  a mouth
with jagged black teeth grinning  at me.
     Behind it. . . Tenny hadn't gotten out.
     I  turned away and  vomited, hard  and  violently;
heaving until I gagged on  bile,  felt  it running from my
nose.Help.  Where was help? Surely someone had seen the
fire! The road. . . there were cars, trucks. . . I coughed
on smoke and puke then ran for the road.
     A  few paces into the forest I stumbled to a  halt,
leaning against  the  slender bole of a pine.  The road!
Where  was  the fuck was the freeway?!
     A  road isn't something that wanders off by  itself.
People don't steal them.  Still,  it wasn't there. For
fruitless hours I searched for it;  wandering around in
circles, climbing hills and trees.  All around me,  as far
as I could see to the east: trees, trees, and trees,
finally fading into the horizon. Westwards were The
Smokies, seemingly unchanged in the brilliant afternoon
sun.
     There was no, repeat no, road.
     Numb, not understanding I returned to the clearing to
wait.Something else I noticed.  The scars the truck had
torn into the  grass:  They  ran about forty metres from
the  wreck  before stopping.
     In  the  middle  of a gently  sloping  grade,  covered
with summer-gold grass, the tracks just. . . stopped.
 
******
 
     The  night was chill.  I curled up close to the small
fire, lying there with my eyes open, watching the flames.
Strange to be almost killed by fire, to have friend die by
flame, then use fire to keep me alive. I shuddered then
closed my eyes and tried not to dream.
     Something that night woke me.
     There  was movement on the periphery of the light cast
from the dying campfire.  Shadows,  like circling sharks
orbiting just beyond the terminator.  Many eyes glowed dull
red,  feet  brushed against grass and pine needles. A low
rumbling hung in the air.
     I rolled to my feet, reaching for a knife that wasn't
there. Out of the darkness,  like a ghost from the shadows,
a grey wolf materialized, head low and growling.
     "Uh,  sit boy," I said.
     It snarled. I yelled as it lunged toward me, teeth
bared.  It hit me low,  tumbling me  backwards.  I  caught
handfuls of fur and kicked, sent the animal flying over my
head.  Sparks exploded  into the night and a terrified
howling cut the  air  as the wolf landed in the fire.  Coat
blazing,  it scrambled to  its feet  and fled.  I could see
it running across the field  like  a flare, its fur burning
brighter and streaming sparks.
     There were still more of them out there.  I took up a
hefty branch, only just smouldering, and fanned it in the
air until the glowing end burst into flame.  Another wolf
lunged towards me and I jammed the brand into its mouth. It
yelped and turned tail and ran as fire lapped from its
mouth, catching on its facial fur. Waving  the  burning
branch,   I  yelled  and  charged  the remaining wolves.
They retreated before me,  but stopped when  I stopped.
     I  turned in time to jab another attacking creature
in  the eye.  It  leapt backwards and rolled on the
ground,  yelping  in agony,  then bolted blindly for the
trees. Now they'd had enough. The pack melted away into the
night, in search of easier prey.
     I stood there panting hard.  Wolves?! In Virginia!
Attacking a human! This was beyond bizarre.
     For the rest of the night I didn't sleep. Instead
sitting by the fire,  snapping awake with my heart pounding
whenever I began nodding off.
 
******
 
     I  used  the  piece of spring steel to  prise  the
lid  off another  case  from  which  the  stencilled
lettering  had  been obliterated  by heat.  The top came
off with a screech of  nails, revealing neatly stacked rows
of olive green 81mm mortar  shells. Thank god they still
had their handling caps on. If they'd cooked off in the
crash, I wouldn't be writing this. In  another case I found
the fuzes for  the  shells.  Impact fuzes. Another box
yielded grenades. Another a trio of M-60 GPMGs, one  with
its bipod twisted and carry handle snapped  off.  Three
81mm mortar tubes survived intact, along with five of the
Stokes-Brandt bases. Hell, those thing were practically
indestructible.
     Case  after  case  I  went  through.  We'd  been
hauling  a miscellaneous   shipment,   surplus   and
outdated   equipment, everything  from ammunition and
weapons to socks to the old  cans of  C-rations.   While
some  stuff'd  been  turned  to  charcoal briquettes,  a
surprising amount had survived  intact.  I  sorted through
the mess of crates and boxes, gathered together some bits
and  pieces to keep me alive and kicking if I had to walk
out  of here:  food concentrates,  canteen,  pack, knife,
and a few other odds and ends.
     However the object I had really been seeking I finally
found lying  under  a bush:  a case with the  legend  M-
16A1   GI867503 PROPERTY  OF US ARMY stencilled in black on
olive green.  I  tore the  box  open and hefted one of the
black  weapons.  Inspection revealed no firing pins in the
rifle.  I had to crack open a case of spares for those. And
for the ammunition. . .
     I knew for a fact that we'd had twenty ammo cases with
one thousand  twenty  four rounds each of the  old  5.56
ammunition, about five of the standard IMR NATO 5.56
rounds,  another  twenty of 7.62mm,  and fifteen 12.7mm
listed on the inventory.  I  found twelve  metal cases of
the smaller caliber rifle  ammunition  and four  catering
to the heavier 7.62 GPMG rounds.  Although I  also found
five containers of 12.7mm ammo,  they were useless. Even if
I  did have a weapon of that caliber,  I wouldn't be
carrying  it around with me.  However it might have been
useful in case I came up against - say  - a hostile tank.
     Not that likely in Virginia.
     I  overloaded on ammo: three hundred and sixty rounds
of  Armalite  ammo, enough  to  fill twelve thirty round
magazines.  I  scrounged six clips and filled those, the
excess rounds I loaded into canvas belt pouches.
     Obsolete hardware. Surplus. Scorched and dented, but
more than enough had come through to ensure that if those
crazy canines came back I didn't have to  worry about being
turned into dog food.
     So, from the remains of the truck I came away with  an
M-16  with an Armalon optical sight and three hundred and
sixty rounds of 5.56mm ammunition.  A silver-anodized
survival  blanket  sealed  in its  packet,  the  small
anglehead flashlight that'd also survived intact,  one
canteen, a couple of  C-Rations  packs,  a pizo-electric
cigarette  lighter (almost full),  a  digital Casio watch,
a  small  notebook  and ballpoint  pen.  The  small medical
kit  contained  antiseptics, antibiotics,  a vial and
styrettes of morphine,  old fashioned gauze bandages,
surgical suture and needles, three syringes(Disposable).
     The  small  tool  kit for the M-16 yielded a  set  of
allen wrenches,  a couple of small screwdrivers, some three-
in-one oil, and some spare screws, nuts, and firing pins.
My sheath knife had the standard Bowie blade with a hollow
pommel concealing a  spool of approximately ten metres of
single-strand nylon fishing  line, five hooks,  and five
needles and thread.  A gimbaled compass was built into the
pommel.
     My  pack was a canvass job;  singed, acceptably
waterproof and  very tough.  My helmet was my own,  one of
the new kevlar  coalscuttle jobs.  I'd  found it near the
ruined cab:  slightly scorched, but otherwise fine.
     For clothing I had what I was wearing on my back as
well  as a  lifetimes  supply of oversized shirts and
socks.  Didn't bother  me  too much.  It  wouldn't  take
me that long to find a  house  or  gas station;  somewhere
I  could use a phone or stop a  car.  I'd survived basic
training so I could live off the land if need  be. This
wouldn't be too much different.
     That out of the way I took another two hours to
collect  the dangerous hardware together and hide it a
short distance away  in the  trees.  The branches I cut to
cover the pile would  die  and turn brown eventually,  a
dead giveaway,  but it would keep until someone came for
it.  Leaving it lying around for some redneck or hillbilly
to stumble across wasn't a fantastic idea.
     Then there was time for a parting look  at  the
blackened  mass  of  twisted metal  that  was  Tenny's
impromptu coffin. That one look into the cab had been one
look too many. It was  hard  to believe that what I had
seen had once been  a  good friend. I swallowed hard.
     "I'll  be  back,"  I choked.  "Promise.  Get  you  a
decent burial."
     A  final  informal  salute,  then I slung my  pack
over  my shoulder, plonked the helmet on my head, and set
off eastwards. I looked back several times, until the wreck
was hidden by trees.
     As  the  day went on I grew more and  more
disquieted. There  was no way that I could have walked that
long without seeing SOME sign of man.
     But I had.
     It was creepy.
     I  didn't  sleep  well that night.  Several  times  I
awoke abruptly,  heart beating a tattoo on my breastbone as
I  strained to hear something that was no longer there.
Something seemed very wrong,  but I couldn't place it. I
lay back and tried to pinpoint it until I slept again.
     Next  day  I started east again.  Damnation!  I was
in  the middle of some of the most populated land in the U.
S. : there was no  way that I could walk for any distance
without coming  across some    sign    of  civilization:
a house, a road, a gas station, even a plane. . . anything.
At  this rate my next stop would be the Atlantic ocean.
     I saw more animals:  raccoons and red squirrels
chittered  at me,  deer  that  placidly watched as I passed
by.  I  heard  the deep belling of a moose or elk. This far
south?! Nothing was right. Was I in the middle of a
wildlife park? How?
     Later that day I did come across a road running north-
south. Well. . . not exactly a road,  more of a track.
Maybe a trail used by rangers.  It  did  seem well used,
but the  tracks  were  weird: much too narrow to be car or
truck. Perhaps bicycle or trailbike tracks.  I shrugged,
then decided which way to go. North or south.
     "Eenie, menie, minie, moe. . . ."
     South I went.
 
******
 
     The  twin tracks of packed earth in the grass rose
over  an exposed  and  eroded crest then slowly turned and
dipped  into  a broad, shallow  valley.  Lush greenery -
huge  trees  of  every description -  cloaked the length
and breadth of the valley  floor while fields of wind-blown
grasses grew along the gentle slopes :  turning golden from
the summer sun that also coaxed heat-shimmers from the
ground.
     And the track simply dipped down to follow the
valley,  two faint  ruts through the long grass before it
vanished from  sight in the treeline below.
     Sweating in the midday heat and humidity,  my shirt
stripped away  and used as padding between the straps of
the backpack  and my chafed collarbone,  I shaded my eyes
with the blade of my hand and looked around. I was starting
to feel desperate. . . and scared! It  was impossible,
utterly impossible that I could have  walked for so long
and yet have seen absolutely nobody.  Still there was
nothing. Not a building or vehicle anywhere. I sighed,
spat phlegm, hitched the pack up and started down into the
valley.
     It was like something out of the fucking Twilight
Zone: There had to be somebody somewhere!
     The  steady  tramp,  tramp  of my boots  was  a
continuous, monotonous,  mindless rhythm that went on and
on.  Each  footstep raised  a small cloud of dusty ochre
Virginia clay,  turning  the olive  drab  of  my fatigues a
rusty red.  At  least  nearer  the river  it  was cooler,
the more luxurious  flora  offering  some shade.
     Shadows  began to stretch out again as noon passed
and  the afternoon crawled across the countryside.  High
overhead a  hawk circled and hovered before diving upon
some unsuspecting rodent. I sighed a deep breath, wiped
sweat from my forehead then threw the pack and rifle aside
and  sprawled out in the grass on the verge.  For a few
seconds  I  considered taking my boots off, then thought
better of it: I'd never be able to get them on again.  The
water in the canteen was warm - almost hot - but it was
wet.  I took a mouthful,  swilled it around,then spat out a
mixture of water and the grit that I'd accumulated.  I
raised the canteen again and this time took a deep draught.
And  froze with the bottle against my lips,  water
spilling down my chin. The faint sound of metal grating on
metal.
     I lowered the canteen and listened hard.Wind rustled
leaves and birdsong was bantered back and forth through the
trees.
     Then it came again;  slowly growing louder,  more
distinct, closer.  A  faint creaking and the unmistakable
rumble of  wheels being tested to destruction on the
pathetic excuse for a road. It was coming from behind me;
back the way I had come.
     "Alright!" I whooped, then my grin faded: there was no
engine sound.
     No matter. I fumbled the camp back on the canteen and
and grabbed my equipment. Tipping my helmet back on my head
I stood to wait for them. The day no longer seeming so
stifling,  a  cooling breeze seemed to have  sprung  up
from somewhere. There  were  a few questions I wanted to
ask  whoever  this was.  One that came to mind was:  where
the hell was I? a private estate of some kind?
     Abruptly they rounded the corner, shafts of sunlight
shining through  the  canopy above illuminating patches of
dust  as  the breeze wafted it away from wagon wheels and
the llamas' hooves.
     Llamas?!
     I stumbled to a halt and just stared stupidly as they
clattered to an abrupt standstill,  bleating and  tossing
their heads. I stared at them, then at the riders.
     Is this a joke?!
     The llamas skittered impatiently and moved forward and
I saw it was for real.
     I bolted.
     Branches and leaves tore at my face and arms and roots
tried to steal my feet from under me as I stumbled and
careened blindly through the foliage with yowling cries
sounding behind  me.  Then there was an embankment rising
before me: A near-vertical face of dark, crumbling earth,
carpeted with multi-fronded ferns and held together  by  a
labyrinth of tree roots.  I hardly  slowed  as  I clawed
my way to the top,  to fall flat on my face and  scramble
around to see if they'd followed.
     The road was just visible through the  boughs,
trunks,  and foliage; less than thirty metres away. I wiped
sweat from my eyes, liberally smearing myself with dirt at
the same time, and saw the riders  staring back,
gesticulating wildly  amongst  themselves, pointing towards
me.
     "Oh Christohchristohchrist. . . " I was babbling to
myself as I leaned back against a moss-covered boulder,
out of sight for the moment.  When I looked again,  they
were still there. One of them had dismounted and come a few
paces into the trees. I grabbed for the  rifle and snapped
the bolt back,  safety off,  but  held  my fire.
     Eyes the green of molten emerald held my disbelieving
stare and  I  shivered at the chill that ran up and down
my  spine  on spider's feet.For  an  eternity the tableau
held;  that thing  staring  at me, our eyes locked. It
can't be. . .
     And  I  jumped backwards when the creature  turned
and barked at the others then it caught its llama's reigns
and  swung back  into  the saddle,  waving the others  on
past.  They  left quickly,  the single wagon gathering
speed and rumbling off after them.
     For a few moments the single remaining creature on its
llama did  nothing but watch me,  then the furred muzzle
wrinkled  and sharp  teeth grinned at me.  My finger
tightened on the  trigger, but  the  rider had reigned its
llama about and was  hurrying  to catch the others.
     The sounds of their passage faded into the distance.
     Several  minutes later,  my heart pounding,  I climbed
back down  to  the  road.  There wasn't a sound,  not a
sign  of  the creatures. I stepped into one of the dusty
ruts with the  rifle at the ready.
     But  there were the hoof marks,  llama droppings,  and
thin hard  lines like bike tracks gouged into the clay  by
iron-bound wheels.
     Perhaps I should have gone the other way.  Perhaps it
would have  been for the better,  but hindsight tells me
that my fate would almost certainly have been a grisly
death. . . or  worse.  I have  spent  my time in a cage and
do not relish the  thought  of living my life out in one.
     "WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME?!"
     My scream to the heavens echoed through the trees and
hills, scaring birds,  but eliciting no other answer. What
WAS going on? I  couldn't  explain it and my brain was
threatening to  curl  up and  play  peek-a-boo  from some
remote corner  of  my  cranium. I wanted to head for the
hills, anywhere.
     But then you'll never know what happened.
     I don't WANT to know!
     Yes, you do. . .
     Chalk one up for human curiosity. I followed them.
 
******
 
     The river - a broad,  shallow stream actually -
followed its meandering path through the valley an
oversized ice cube had gouged millennia ago as it inched
its way down  from  the polar icecaps,  then retreated
again.  Along its banks, the trees cast  their branches out
over the water to form a leafy  corridor that  didn't
quite meet in  the  middle.  Pines: loblolly  pines,
longleaf  pines,  slash  pines,  overcup oaks. . .  My
knowledge  of botany gave out on me.
     A  cormorant  - surprised while drying its wings -
took  to the air as I approached.  It dropped off its
perch,  skimmed  the water  and climbed away from the
stream that  ontinued  burbling along its way.
     The  road itself twisted and contorted as much as the
river as  it dodged through and around clusters of trees
and  boulders: indigenous  and  erratics.  At  times  it
ran  along  the  river bank,  while at others it had
climbed halfway back up the side of the valley:  always
following the easiest route.  I followed  the track,
always keeping an eye peeled on forest around  me.
     The  afternoon  was beginning  to cool off, the
shadows growing  longer and deeper  when I heard the sounds
coming from down the road: ringing of  metal on metal
through  the  trees.  Animal cries and howls wailed
through  the valley.
     What the hell?!
     My  heart started to pound as I took my rifle into my
hands and cocked it.  Keeping to the side of the track I
moved forward, carefully,  like I was walking on glass.
Every damn broken twig sounded like a gunshot,  but with
the noise from ahead,  there was no way anything could have
heard me.
     Then I rounded a tree and saw them,
     There was a ford here where the track crossed the
river. The wagon sat in the middle,  tipped crazily to one
side, one of the front  wheels  almost completely sunken
beneath  the  waterline. The driver was a bundle of cloth
and limbs lying face down in the water,  the current gently
butting the  corpse against a rock and wafting a trail of
red blood  away downstream.
     More corpses lay in the shallow current, some still
kicking their life away, turning the water to a pinkish
froth.
     There were others still fighting.
     They had to be soldiers of a sort,  those creatures
from the caravan.  Wearing  stained and battered leather
armour, trimmed with blue and silver designs that  despite
the dirt were still recognisable as a uniform of  a kind.
They  waded  knee-deep in the water fighting wildly against
others garbed in a hodge-podge assortment of armour.
     And they were losing.
     Hampered  by  the water and the  treacherous  footing,
they didn't stand a chance against their opposition safely
entrenched along the banks. Swords whirled and gleamed and
grew red, another yowling  scream rang out and another of
the  soldiers  fell.  Now only four of them left against at
least ten assailants.
     A  couple of the soldiers may have made it out  as
together they overcame an opponent on the riverbank,  then
they both twisted and went over backwards, falling with
stubby feathered shafts embedded  in  their necks and
chests.
     I  ducked  as  more bandits stalked into  view
between  the trees  on my side of the river.  Just twenty
metres  away,  their backs  to  me as they recocked their
crossbows.  Why  were  they bothering  to  get  their feet
wet  assaulting  the  wagon?  They could've just shot them
all from a distance.
     I sank a little lower behind the tree.
     The last soldier was crouched low and slowly turning
to face its  opponents  as they circled,  slowly closing
in.  Backed up against the wagon there  was nowhere for it
to run,  it had no chance,  but it still  clutched its
sword.
     I  began  to  move out,  leaving the cover of  the
tree  to retreat back down the track.  The last thing I
wanted here was to be involved in a firefight with. . .
with whatever they were.  I was out of my league.  I didn't
know what kind of shit I was in,  but whatever it was, I
was in it over my head.
     Two  loud cries came at the same time:  one a
truncated yowl as  that last soldier fell, and the other
from the archer who spotted me.
     "Ohshit!"
     I  ducked  automatically and a hastily aimed  quarrel
fired from  the  hip bisected the space I had occupied a
split  second earlier. Shit! I ducked behind a pine trunk
and there was a sharp Thwok! as a stubby bolt sprouted from
the wood near my head.
     Red  feathers,  I  thought as I stared  idiotically
at  the arrow,  spun  around wideeyed to see bows being
aimed again  and started running as another blur hissed
past my ear,  then a hollow sound and someone hit  my  pack
with a baseball bat  and  I  stumbled,  then  dove for
cover,  headlong into the bracken and undergrowth.  Ferns
and bushes  crackled around me as I scrambled on all fours
while  more quarrels  rattled into the thicket over and
around me.  A  fallen log offered some solid protection and
I took it,  diving over  it and hugging the ground.
     There were no more quarrels. Reloading?
     Gasping  air as quietly as possible,  I struggled out
of  my pack,  wincing as leaves and branches rustled.  Red
feathers were protruding  a  few centimetres from the
canvass.  If  it  hadn't hit something solid, I doubted my
backbone would have stopped it.  Bastards. Where were they?
What were they doing? I listened, hearing  wind  in  the
treetops,  water  burbling,  and  a  faint growling  and
the crackling of bracken.
     Again, shit!
     I risked a peek,  then hugged the dirt again,  mud and
slimy leaves rubbing against me.
     They were coming after me!
     Not many options. . .
     I charged the rifle, checking for a flash of bronze in
the breach to make sure a round was seated then gripped
the rifle,  flexing my fingers against chill metal and
feeling  the checkered  grips grow slippery with sweat.
Three of  them,  with swords,  taking it slow.  The archers
didn't have a good angle on me.  Just three of them,  a few
metres apart. I took a breath, clicked the safety  off  and
swung the M-16 up  and  over,  not  aiming, squeezing the
trigger,  the rifle kicking like a jackhammer in my hands,
plants  jigging wildly in the muzzle blast.  Not three  -
four  of them,  one down,  the others staring,  now
starting  to react,  screaming, skidding and spinning to
the dirt as the bursts of  slugs buzzsawed  into them.
First rounds were low  and  wild,  kicking their  feet out
from under them.  I compensated and  hit  torsos, heads,
splintering  bone and shredding  flesh.  They  fell,  two
howling and threshing.
     Over  the  log,  dodging and firing at  the  others.
They'd frozen,  some standing in the middle of the stream,
on the wagon, on the far bank, staring wildly. The archers
tried to fire, their shots going wide as I hit the deck
again and sprayed them with  a wild  burst.  The  first
one's head split open like  an  overripe melon  and the
corpse crumpled like a deflating  balloon;  Small, red
roses sprouted on the others' torsos and they died slower.
NOW the others were turning, running.
     I was on my feet again,  staying low as I ran and
dodged for the cover of rocks and trees by the stream.  One
of the creatures I'd first hit was rolling and thrashing in
the bracken. I shot it in the head on the way past and it
bucked once then was still.  A bolt from a crossbow struck
glittering sparks from a rock near my head.
     "Fuck you!" I screamed, firing back, emptying my
weapon into the fleeing figures: mowing several down like
scythed wheat. When the bolt clicked on an empty chamber I
automatically buttoned out the  magazine,  plucked a fresh
one from my belt,  and rammed  it into  the well.  I
emptied half the magazine at  shadows  running into  the
trees,  kicking dust and wood chips  from  the  trees,
sending rounds ricocheting.  I don't think I actually hit
any  of the bastards. They were fast!
     Then they were gone.
     Ten seconds perhaps.
     Heart  still pounding I looked around,  clutching the
rifle like it was the only solid thing in the world.
     In  the  trees,  a couple of birds ventured  hesitant
calls while the stream continued enthusiastically on its
way. There was the  slow drip drip as the blood from a
corpse on the river  bank ran down a rock,  beaded on the
edge as if gathering its  courage  before dropping into the
swirling water.  The wagon rocked as the beasts pulling it
- bison,  I noticed with dull surprise - tugged at their
harnesses. The corpses weren't neat, with chunks of meat
the size of baseballs ripped out of them. Blood. . . it was
red. Red and glistening like wet paint. A cloying, fecund
smell hung heavy in the air: the flatulence of death.
     A coughing, moaning sound from the water.
     One  of  the creatures - one of the ones in  blue
armour  - struggled  weakly on all fours half in,  half out
of  the  water, blood  from  a gaping slash in its side
swirling  away  with  the current.  It was dragging itself
out of the stream by its  hands, kneeling coughing and
retching in the mud of the ford.
     When my shadow fell across it, it stiffened, raised
its head to see my boots,  then shuddered and collapsed on
its side with a grunt: eyes closed, one outstretched hand
curled half-shut, chest heaving while blood mingled with
the mud.
     I  was  standing above a creature that could  never
be,  my rifle levelled at it and staring in mute shock
while my credulity took a beating.
     Putting it bluntly, it was a cat.
 
******
 
     Well,  my  transport  problem  - probably the  least
of  my worries - was solved. . . sort of.
     The  hole  the  wagon wheel had been  trapped  in  had
been deliberately  dug, deep enough that the wagon couldn't
be pulled out.  The axle was a solid  iron bar that I
sincerely hoped was tough enough to take that kind  of
treatment.  To  get the damn thing out I had to drench
myself  in water that felt like it was runoff from a
glacier,  digging  away one side of the hole with my bare
hands until the bison were able to pull the wagon out.
     They were huge, stupid, reeking beasts, these bison.
Not the plains variety every American should be familiar
with, but rather Wood Bison:  a much rarer breed.  So rare
in fact,  they were  an endangered species. Not recommended
as beasts of burden.
     Endangered or not,  and despite their problems with
personal hygiene, they seemed docile and efficient: hauling
the wagon from the  water  on  the  southern side  of  the
stream  and  waiting with moronic patience, chewing and
farting.
     Hmmm. . . and  people wonder why I hate horses. I
shook my head and tried to wring the last of the water from
my shirt, then hesitated and looked back across the stream
at where a furry body was still sprawled in the mud; one
among many.
     Water splashed around my ankles, but there wasn't a
sign of life as I cautiously approached. Motionless, eyes
closed, twisted crippled-looking hand clenched in the mud.
The wound was a sodden mess, the blood as thick as the mud
it was sprawled in. Liquid bubbled in a nostril.
     Incredible, it was still breathing. I poked it with my
toe.
     The thing didn't budge.
     I  bent down and touched it cautiously.  It didn't
respond. The  fur  was  soggy wet,  the flesh beneath
nearly  hot  to  my fingers. Kill it? Uh-uh. That didn't
feel right. It couldn't hurt me. So, do I just leave it
lying here?
     "Damned if I do, damned if I don't," I sighed.
     Now, how the hell do I do this?
     Gingerly, awkwardly, I scooped the sodden creature up.
     The  felinoid  was  a limp weight  in  my  arms,  its
limbs completely lax and
bumping against my own legs as I  lifted.  Its head  lolled
and saliva drooled from a corner of the  mouth with its
thin,  black lips.  Water washed around my legs again  as
I crossed the stream; carefully, unsteady with my burden.
The thing was surprisingly heavy; I had to struggle to lift
it into the back of the cart. This creature was much
shorter than my five foot eleven - probably an even foot
shorter,  maybe more - but it was  solid; not  fat either.
There was  already a blue-armoured corpse in the wagon that
I hauled out and dumped on the ground to make room for the
still-living creature.
     The  upper  half  of  the  creature  was  almost
completely encrusted in drying mud while the lower was
sopping wet where  it'd  been  lying  in the water.
Covering its upper  legs  was  a sodden kilt made from wide
strips of tooled leather, weighted at the lower ends with
brass disks.  Blood continued to ooze from a  slash high in
its left side,  seeping through the  reinforcing strips of
the once-ornate leather cuirass it was wearing.
     First,  get that armour off. That had me scratching my
head: there were no zippers,  buckles,  or buttons;  just
leather  ties securing it up the left side and on the
shoulders.  The wet leather had swollen; resisted all
attempts to untie them.  Finally I settled  for cutting
them  and peeling both the cuirass and kilt off  in  one
piece.
     Judging by the way the plumbing was arranged,  it was
a she. There  were no breasts to speak of,  just twin
columns  of  three black teats buried in the fur.
     The sword had broken through the tough-looking skin
and  cut into  the  side  at an angle before being
deflected  by  a  rib, ripping away one of those teats as
it went.  There was a non-too-modest  flap  of flesh
dangling loose while a lot  of  blood  had pumped out,
covering  and matting the fur.  Still more had  been lost
to the earth and the river.
     What  was lying in front of me was way beyond anything
I'd ever  covered  in  my basic  medical  training.
Perhaps  nothing serious  had  been hit;  then again,
perhaps  it  had.  How was it put together? Was  its
metabolism anything like mine?  What medicines could I
use?  How the hell was I suposed to know? Stuff like simple
asprin can kill a cat.
     Was it worth it? I bit my lip, then swore and reached
for my pack.
     The quarrel was still stuck into it, stopped by a pack
of C-rations. I turned the dented tin over in my hands, not
quite believing it.  Saved by a freeze-dried meal. I knew
the stuff was tough,  but using it instead of a flak
vest..?
     Of course the med kit had wound up at the bottom.  I
snapped it open,  and selected a small plastic bottle of
antiseptic and a roll of gauze. Nothing to lose.I used my
knife,  methodically cutting away the fur and dirt around
the wound,  washing away filth:  clotted blood,  mud,  and
grass with water from my canteen. That wouldn't be enough.
     The  creature  stirred and its jaw spasmed as I
prised  the wound  open  with  my fingers and squirted
antiseptic  from  the squeeze bottle into it.  I swabbed it
out, then tore open a large sterilised gauze pad, bandaging
it tightly in place even as blood started welling again.
     Tossing  aside  the ruined armour,  I stripped  one
of  the cleaner cloaks off a corpse and settled that over
the cat,  again finding  I  was hesitant to touch it.  Its
breathing  was  rapid, almost panting.
     All the others were as dead as luncheon meat.
     I avoided the messy body with half a face grinning
uselessly at  the  clouds when I examined the corpses.  One
of  the  other archers  was  sprawled in the middle of  a
bush,  his/her  chest punctured where the rounds had
smashed through.  The shock  would have  killed faster than
the wound.  S/he was dressed in  rag-tag cloak, but the
armour underneath looked well used and functional. Red and
black. It looked like a uniform. The crossbow  lying nearby
wasn't that large or powerful, but that was simply due to
the  diminutive stature of the user.  It was well made:
laminated wood and metal, with recurved tines of wood and
bone and some kind of twisted fibre. Six quarrels were
clamped to the stock; each about twenty centimetres long
with a wicked triangular iron tip.
     I weighed it in my hands.  Oh,  well.  You never know
when something like that might come in handy.  Then another
thought struck me and I frowned at the creature in the back
of the wagon. Its armour was in pieces. Would it want
clothes?
     What was I thinking? Clothes?!
     I  shook my head, but still managed to scrounge some
stuff from a soldier.  It'd  been stabbed  through the
throat,  covering the front of  the  cuirass with blood.
Nevertheless,  it was in much better condition  than the
stuff I'd cut off.
     The  creature's sword:  a beautifully  crafted
scimitar.  I found  it in the middle of the stream where
it'd  dropped  it.  I picked  it up,  shaking and wiping
the water and mud off  it  and holding  it  up  so the sun
threw dazzling  reflections  off  the slightly curving
blade.   Nice piece of metal.  I tried a few practice
swings  and nearly took my own leg off. Hastily I stuck it
back in the sheath then  tucked it up on the drivers bench,
out of reach  of  furry hands.
     I  looked  back  over the scene.  Like something  out
of  a picture:  the  stream,  lush greenery dappled by
light  and  tall trees,  patches  of sky and clouds.  Then
there were the  figures tumbled like distorted shop
mannequins, blue against green, water running  over
glittering  metal  and  leather,  teeth  bared  in hopeless
snarls at the sun. Shaking my head,  I tried to figure the
reigns out.  How  DO you drive bison? To start with,
there's no clutch. . .
 
******
 
     I made camp several klicks further down the river
valley.
     The road split at a junction: one branch continuing
eastwards along  the river,  the other climbing out of  the
valley,  going south. I rubbed my tired eyes then decided
not to make a decisioin, not until I could learn more about
my passenger and what was going on.
     It wouldn't hurt to hang around a few days;  I doubted
that the bandits would be back,  and there was a terrible
feeling that there wouldn't be any search parties out
looking for me.
     It took a while to find a suitable campsite, but I
finally settled on a small,  grassy clearing.  Close enough
to  the  stream  for convenience  and far enough from the
road that any fire  couldn't be seen.     Roughly
triangular  in shape it was,  with a pile  of  huge
boulders  - broken and whole - in the  northernmost  apex,
small conifers  persistently   hanging  on in small
patches  of  earth between the rocks. I hitched the bison
up to a tree, leaving them contentedly cropping away at the
grass. Watching them eat set my own stomach to snarling.
     I didn't have to go too far to find a rabbit that was
too curious for its own good. It was the matter of a single
round from the  M-16  and dinner was laid on. The rest of
the daylight was spent skinning and  gutting and laying a
fire, then while waiting for a bed of coals I turned my
attention back to the wagon and the  cat lying in the back.
The   bandages   were  working.   The  wound   had
stopped bleeding,  but the fur
covering its chest and side was completely matted and
plastered with clotted blood and
mud.  Mud covered its broad face and one of the pointed
ears was stuck down against the head.  I  splashed water
onto a rag torn from a cloak and began  to sponge away the
worst of the blood.
     Still unconscious she flinched away from my touch, her
jaw twitched and she high chittering noise.
     Her eyes flicked open, focused on me, then widened
until the a rim of white circumnavigated the huge  pupils:
Green,  flecked with  specks  of copper.  A small,
strangled noise escaped  her  and  she scrambled backwards
into the hay until she was
backed up  against the  drivers  bench,  unable to retreat
any  further.  The  face contorted,  wrinkles  marching  up
the muzzle  as  she  bared  a glistening array of needle
teeth,  canines,  and a  curled,  pink tongue.   Centimetre-
long, ivory-colored  claws  slid  from  her fingertips.
     The  bandages  around  her chest  and  shoulder
flexed  and shifted.
     I  jumped out of the back of the wagon and held my
hands  in front of me, trying to look harmless.  If she
tried to move any more, that wound was gonna reopen. "Hey,"
I coaxed. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you."
     "Fegar  s'sahrorna  nieck  herasti. . . fe, fe!"
     Well that's what it sounded like.  Not a high yowling
as you'd expect a cat to make. They were modulated,
sibilant sounds, fairly deep,  probably due to length of
the throat. It was a langauge, no doubting that. I'd bet
her vocal chords were just as sophisticated as mine.
     You,  the reader of this journal will probably already
know what I was looking at,  but I'll still take the time
to  describe what I saw.
     We stared at each other,  man to cat,  eye to eye. Her
head was mounted on her shoulders, she had two ears and
eyes, one nose, one mouth, bilaterally symmetrical,   but
there  the resemblance to a human ended.
     Take the classic  feline  features  and
anthropomorphise them;  just  the slightest touch.  Shorten
the muzzle a little. Raise the brow and bring more
expressive musculature  into  the features. The  result
would be something like the visage I was looking at.
     That face came out into a classic cat's muzzle,
complete with a broad,  leathery,  valentine-shaped nose
and hare-lipped  mouth with thin black lips. Sharp,
triangular furtufted ears were half buried  in the mane of
fur that grew from the crest of  her  head and continued on
down her neck.  One ear was pierced by a  single silver
earring.  Her entire face was covered with the same  fawn
coloured  fur that enveloped the rest of  her  body,
highlighted with  lighter  gold  stripes pushing over
between  the  ears  to disperse into that mane.
     The arms ended in a hand with four short fingers and a
thumb. No fingernails.  Instead  those  claws  slid into
sheaths in the  tops  of  the stubby fingers.  Except for
the black pads on palms and fingertips, her hands were
completely covered in fur.
     Her  feet  - especially her feet - were so different
from  a human's.  More like a cat's pads.  In fact her feet
were all toe, her heel the leg joint above them -
digitigrade, not plantigrade. Must have balanced on those
clawed toes, walking on toe tips only That sleek,
streamlined face was somewhat marred by the mess of  blood
and clay,  but there was no doubting the  purpose  and
intelligence in the being I was staring at. Nor the
reality. There was no way that this was some kind of
costume; a joke or hallucination.
     "Rsacen esc na fe sfecer?"  she sputtered,  then
shouted  to the surrounding silence: "FARES WHER'R RSE FE!
SAE EI! "
     If  she was expecting someone to answer - one of her
kind  - she was disappointed. The branches of the trees
hung heavy in the darkness  and the stillness,  but there
was no other  sound.  She turned back to me, the iris
dilated to turn the eyes to wide pools of black.
     "Fe," she almost breathed the sound.
     "Sorry,  but  I  don't  speak  the lingo,"  I  said
with a shrug and a smile.
     She plastered herself against the end of the wagon
and bared   her  own  teeth  in  a  grin  that  was
definitely   NOT friendly. My bared teeth she perceived as
a threat.
I  closed  my  mouth and made  placating  gestures  with
my hands. That only served to get her even more agitated. I
couldn't speak to her and she was completely vulnerable.
     "Goddamn it! I'm not going to hurt you!"
     She hissed.
     "Look!  Hands empty!  No weapons.  Savvy?  Shit, look!
Here, take this."
     She  looked  as if she would go catatonic when I drew
my knife,  her eyes riveted on  the  watery  steel blade.
Carefully,  slowly,  I laid the knife on the wagonbed and
pushed  it  towards her - hilt first - and stepped back  to
once more  raise my hands.  Just as slowly she  leaned
forward,  then snatched the knife,  both hands wrapped
around the hilt as if  it were a lifeline.
     "Feel safer?" I asked.
     She was still panting hard, but those eyes had
changed: not so much terror, calculating.
     I unclipped the canteen from my belt and sloshed it
around a couple of times,  then unscrewed the lid and took
a sip out of it before slowly holding it out to her.  She
shrank
back,  shivering and  with teeth bared.  I continued to
hold it out  to  her,  and after  a few seconds,  she
screwed up enough courage to take  it, claws clicking on
the plastic, she raised it to her nose and sniffed warily,
her eyes still on me. She took a careful sip, then tilted
it back and gulped greedily,  spilling much of it down her
front. Her jaw was just the wrong shape.
     "Hey, watch it. You'll be sick if you drink it like
that!"
     At  the sound of my voice she dropped the canteen as
though it had suddenly become red-hot. The knife came up
again, wavering wildly. Then white membranes slid from the
corners of her  eyes and her hand flopped heavily to her
side.
     But her chest was moving steadily,  breath whistling
through her  nostrils.  I found a pulse in the hollow of
her neck and  it was  strong and regular.  She voiced a low
growling moan  when  I moved my hand. Just passed out.
     I stood and stared at her for a while.  Just leave
her;  let her wake up and find I hadn't touched her. That'd
be the best way to tell her I didn't want to hurt her.
Shrugging,  I set off to put another bit of wood on the
fire. It'd been one of those days.
 
******
 
It  was an amazingly clear night,  one of those nights
when you can literally see forever.  The galaxy was a
stream of  white dust spilled across the heavens. . .
     And all of the constellations were there.
     I  must  have sat atop the granite crag for an hour
in  the dark,  just staring at those flickering beacons in
the sky.  They hadn't changed at all.  That red dot was
Mars. . . That was the sky of Earth in the late 20th
century.
     I must be on Earth. . . so where did THEY come from ?
     Aliens?  Huh,  I doubted it.  If they had the
technology  to make  it  from another star to Earth,  why
did they  wear  flimsy leather armour,  use antique
weapons, and ride
around on animal powered vehicles?
     Why did I feel so out of place?
     There was something I was missing here.
     The  felinoid  was  still lying in the back  of  the
wagon, asleep in the warm night air.  Nearby, the fire I
had started had died  down to a glowing bank of coals,  the
skinned
carcasses  of the rabbits lying nearby: ready to be spitted
and cooked.
     Soon  the smell of roasting rabbit was drifting
through  the clearing. I turned the meat on the spit and
glanced up to see the felid awake and watching me over the
side of the wagon,  her eyes flicking  from me to the fire
then back to me again.  She  licked her lips and a string
of spittle dripped from her jaws.
     Smiling, I  reached out to tear a haunch off  the
browned carcass and then  -  slowly  and  carefully,  every
movement deliberate  -  I got up and walked to the side of
the  wagon  and offered the meat at arms length.
     Just as cautiously,  she snagged the proffered morsel
with a claw and after sniffing it,  took a small nibble,
looked at  me, then started tearing at the meat with dagger-
sharp teeth,  taking big mouthfuls, chewing noisily, then
swallowing hard.
     So, she had an appetite. Tough little thing.
     And some appetite too.
     Whilst she was absorbed in satisfying her hunger I sat
down on  the tailgate,  swinging my legs over the side
while  watching her. She finished the meat and stared
back, her eyes catching the firelight  and reflecting it,
the rest of her matted  coat  dull and indistinct in the
flickering firelight.  Her claws were still at the ready.
     "Uh. . . hi," I said.
     She flinched.
     "I  guess  I should introduce myself.  I'm Kelly,"  I
said. She just stared. "Kelly," I enunciated with
exaggerated gestures toward myself and repeated the name
twice, three times.
     She blinked at me.
     I tried again.
     "Freh ash an shirai se fe," she hissed.
     "That's not your name, is it?"
     "Hers  a saf,  s'shesaf."
     I'm no linguist, but that was no language I'd ever
heard before. Gutteral, with hisses, growls merging with
sibilants. All right, I thought I could manage that: "'Hers
a saf. . . uh. . . shesaf' to you too."
     She  jumped  as  though I'd  suddenly  grown another
head.
"Hers  a saf,  s'shesaf"  she repeated slowly,  watching
me intently. I got the idea. "Hers a saf,  s'shesaf," I
echoed her,  completely oblivious of what I was actually
saying.
     "Sthre ts'ref n'esur s'shesaf,  surio saf fe," she
hissed slowly.  I tried to repeat her, stuttering and
stumbling over the sibilants. She repeated herself twice.
Finally I managed the sentence with a modicum  of accuracy.
     Her jaw dropped, then closed with a hollow clop.
     I leaned forward, touched my chest and said, "Kelly."
     Her eyes went even wider as she twigged. That was my
name! I had a language of my own!  By gum,  what a concept!
She stared at me,  opened her mouth,  and gave a croak,
cleared her throat and tried  again,  "She'ae." The
consonants of the kay and ells  lost completely, my name
turned into what sounded like a steam leak.
     "No, no, no. Kelly," I repeated.
     "K'h. . . K'hy."
     With that mouth, she couldn't get the ells at all. I
shrugged then pointed at myself,  repeated my name,  and
then pointed at her and shrugged. She got my point and said
something that sounded like:
     "Tar?"
     She  moved  her  hand  in a  gesture  that  must
mean'no': a horizontal  slash  in  the  air  with  the
hand  open  and  palm down. "Tahr," she corrected.
     We went on like this until I got it right.  She was
willing to let my name slide,  but when it came to her's,
she wanted  it perfect. Afterwards, we tried a few more of
her words. With each new one I learned she stared at me;
like she couldn't believe it.
     By now the fire had died down to a few feeble embers;
warmer than the moonlight albeit not as bright. I squinted
at my watch and decided to call it a night: she needed her
sleep.
     With my pack as a pillow, the smooth, metallic creases
of the survival blanket over me and the cold ground below,
I watched the stars reeling through the familiar sky
overhead until I dropped off.
 
******
 
     The morning was perfection.
     I  squinted  against  the glare  of  sunlight  and
groaned, finally  managing to unwrap myself from the silver
folds  of  the sheet I stood and stretched. My joints
popped and crackled, stiff muscles  stretched  and  relaxed
again.   The  felid  was still sleeping, half curled up
under her cloak. I stared at it for some time, feeling an
uneasiness at the very centre of my being.
     This was the way my distant ancestors would have felt
when a sabre-tooth appeared on the skyline.
     Damnation!  I  clenched  my hand to stop  it
trembling  and abruptly turned away from the blanketed
figure. A furred, clawed, twisted foot was poking out from
under the cloak, hinting at what lay beneath.
     I got out of there.
     For  all our civilization we are still primitive at
heart  I reflected as I crouched by the river.  The water
was a cold shock against  my  skin as I dunked my head,
then shook  it  dry.  The droplets flew in all directions,
glittering in the morning sun.
     We'd come a long way: we have electrically lit homes,
kept warm  in  winter  and
cool in  summer.  We  travel  thousands  of kilometres in
hours,  move  mountains out of the way of our roads
without really thinking about it.
     That's right, we hardly ever think about it.
     How  many  people are there in the world who  can  say
they actually know how an electric light works? How a radio
works? Who can even light a fire without matches? For most
people,  all they need to know is how to flip a switch,
press a button, turn a dial.  Tasks a moronic chimp can
carry out.  If their  transistor radio  breaks  down
through a loose wire or  burnt-out  resistor, they chuck it
out and get a new one: a disposable civilization.
     We  have reached the moon and sent automated  probes
beyond the farthest corners of our solar system.  There are
instruments to explore the macroscopic and microscopic
worlds: Electromagnetic telescopes that can detect a
nebula's fart light years away,  microscopes that can give
a visual image  of  xenon atoms we've
manipulated to spell IBM.
     And still there are those who hang crosses and prayer
beads in their shiny new cars.  It's as if they need
someone,  like  an imaginary friend that children conjure
up:  someone or  something to whom you can attribute the
inexplicable.
     Damnation!  I don't consider myself an complete
ignoramus. I didn't  have  to let my emotions and instincts
overrule  logical thought.
     But that thing gave me the willies.
     I  cupped  my  hands and drank.  Water  ran  through
my fingers and dribbled back into the river.  Several times
I dipped my  hands  into the stream,  then opened them to
let  the  water trickle out.  Finally I sat back against a
rock that hadn't had time to warm in the sun,  was still
cool from  the  night.  The fingers of my left hand
trailing in the stream.
     I looked at myself.
     My  fatigues  were covered with dust and  dark  stains
that could only be dried blood.  Not mine.  Not even human,
but just as red. I stripped  off  and  staked my clothes
down  in  the  current  then scrubbed at them until my
hands were raw.
 
******
 
     The felid was awake when I returned.
     In  fact she was out of the wagon,  leaning heavily
on  the tailgate with one hand clutched against the
bandages.  She stared at  me  when I appeared and her lips
parted slightly in  a  smile that showed the whiteness of
her teeth.
     Returning the smile I took a step forward,  then froze
when  her hand  darted  into  the back of the wagon and
came  back  with  a cocked and loaded crossbow wobbling in
her unsteady grip. Her eyes wobbled, seeming to lose their
focus, then snapping back again. Her grin broadened. I
swallowed hard.  Remind me to take the string with me  next
time.
     "Tahr?"
     "K'hy," she snarled - literally  - and gestured
sharply with the bow and  I slowly raised my hands,
freezing motionless again when her  ears went back flat
against her skull and she barked something at  me. Her
ears  slowly  came up again when she  saw  I  wasn't
trying anything. The end of the crossbow jerked and again
she snarled something at me: "R'rtsa!"
     What the hell did that mean? I just stood there.
     She snorted and wagged the  crossbow  at  the ground,
"R'rtsa!"
     I took a guess and sat  down.
     Her ears flicked and she stood there staring at me.
     I  stared  back, noticing her shifting on  her  feet,
as though she was about to collapse.  And that crossbow was
wobbling dangerously.  I  licked my lips.  "Rtsa,"  I
invited,  gesturing slowly at the ground.
     She  blinked at me,  then her ears twitched. Slowly,
her face contorting in what could have been a wince, she
settled until she was sitting cross-legged, facing me
across the  remains of the fire. Metres away, she glanced
down at the bow, then at me again as if she were trying to
decide to use it or not. I hadn't hurt her; I'd patched her
wounds. Perhaps she just felt the need to take some kind of
control.
     With  my  hands still in the air,  I carefully
pointed  one finger at the bow and said, "Fe?. . . Tahr."
     Muscles  in  her  face  ticked and  pulled  and  she
sputtered something at me.  The crossbow stayed targeted
upon  my guts.
     "Shit!  Look,  you can't point that thing at me all
day!"
     She growled.
     Warily, I lowered my hands.
     She flinched and snarled.
     "Okay," I coaxed. "I'm not going to hurt you. Tahr."
     "K'hy."
     When  I  moved again she gasped,  head going back  and
eyes fixed on me.  I saw her muscles trembling as I
carefully - inch at a time - reached out and plucked a
single blade of grass, holding it up. "Grass," I said.
     Her eyes flicked down to the small green leaf, then
she said, "Frwuch," a deep,  guttural sound coming from the
throat.  I repeated it as best  I could, then she picked a
blade and said a  short  sentence with  her  word  for
grass in it,  then pointed at  me  and  said slightly
different phrase. I repeated them:
     [have/hold] I grass.
     [have/hold] you grass.
     For a few different items - sticks,  pebbles,  dirt -
we did this. The words were difficult to pronounce.  The
basic  sentence  structure  was   predicate-subject,
reversed  from  english.  That threw me several  times,
but  she corrected me.
     Several minutes later she put the crossbow aside in
order to use both hands to get a point across. The weapon
lay in the  grass, easily within her reach,  and both of us
stolidly ignored it  and  concentrated upon the language
lesson.
 
******
 
Morning  dew was beading on the blanket and grass around
my head;  tiny crystal beads sparkling in the dawn. I
closed my eyes and rolled onto my back.
     Something touched my shoulder.
     I  opened my eyes and looked up into a puma's face,  a
bobcat's face,  eyes like cold jade with a slit of night
etched into them. A hand, twisted, furred and clawed, was
reaching for my face.
     With  a  lurch  of terror I  tried  to  scramble
backwards, slipped  on the wet grass,  fell on my back with
dew soaking  me. The  cat  kneeled above me,  reached for
my  throat. . . and  gently touched, feeling the pulse
racing there.
     "Scre  ne fe ther ri seth m'resh,"  she  hissed,
fast,  too fast,  impossible  for me to follow.  Her head
was cocked to  one side like a cat regarding a bird in a
cage. The rising sun was behind her, still  barely  a glow
over the horizon turning the  streamers  of clouds above it
russet and gold.  Seeing that I was as nervous of her as
she was of me gave her that touch of confidence.
     Her  hand  moved  down to touch my  chest  in the vee
of my shirt,  touched the sparse gold hair there, then
travelled up, stroking my skin.  If anything,  she looked
puzzled. The question she asked I couldn't understand, so
she continued examining me in silence,  her hands moving to
touch my face.  I shivered slightly as she pressed a finger
against my cheek, rubbing gently. I could feel  the almost-
leathery pad on her fingertip grating on stubble.  Growing
bolder, she traced my jaw,  tracing the bones. I flinced
when she tried to peel my lips back to examine my teeth:
she pulled her hand back, then patted my cheek. So I
suffered claws tapping against my teeth, fingers touching
my canines. Delicately she bent  my nose from side to side,
then ran a fingertip around  my eyes  and eyebrows and
ears.  Finally she stroked my hair  for  a while,  tugging
at it curiously,  then sat back, still staring at me as if
I were a specimen on a lab table.
     "You [   ]?" she asked.
     "No understand," I replied. The first phrase I'd
learnt, and the one I'd be using for a long time to come.
     Her ears flicked - as though routing invisible flies -
then she touched her chest. "I sathe," she said.
     Sathe. That could be her species name, family name,
job, or just mean she was hungry. Well,  I took a gamble on
it being her species. "Sathe," at least that word came
easily to my lips.
     "Yes. Right. Good," she approved, then waited.
     "I human," I hastily provided.
     "H'man," she tried the word, tasting it. "H'man."
     I sat up and reached out my hand, to touch her. With a
start she pulled away from me.  She stood just out of
reach,  one  hand almost unconsciously clutching the
bandages over her  ribs,  that arm  cradled in turn by her
other.  "H'man," she  murmured,  then turned and limped
back to the wagon.
 
*******
 
     Goddamn it!  She wanted to leave.  With her wound
still red, swollen, and threatening to tear itself open,
she actually wanted to hit the road!
     "Damnation!  No!  I'm  not going to help you!" I
stormed  in frustration,  slouched  back against a tree and
crossed my  arms. She hissed something back and threw the
bisons' harnesses to  the ground in disgust,  being unable,
in her condition,  to lift the wagon tongue. She glared at
me, then caught up a crossbow from the wagon.
     For  a second I thought she was considering using it
on  me, but  without  another glance my way she started off
on  her  own.
     "You're cracked!"
     I watched her limp off into the trees and disappear
from  my view.
     "Anyway, the road's THATAWAY!" I yelled at the forest.
     Christ on a crutch, she's serious!
     So  what?  What did I care for her?  If she wanted  to
kill herself, that was her business.  Wasn't it? I mean, it
wasn't like I owed her anything.  Anyway, I wrestled with
my conscience for a couple of minutes.
     What can I tell you:
     "Shit! GODDAM IT! WAIT!"
     I found her twenty or so metres into the forest,
perched on a sun-warmed rock and obviously waiting for me.
     "Okay lady," I gritted my teeth and rubbed the bridge
of  my nose, forcing the words out, "You win."
     She bared her teeth at me and hissed slowly and
clearly, "We go?"
     "Yeah, sure. . . We go."
     She  looked  down  and  dropped  her  hand  away  from
her breast: the  bandages were stained red with the blood
seeping  out under them.  "Oh,  Christ," I shook my head.
This was one stubborn and determined bitch.
 
******
 
     The beast-lady lay quietly in the back of the wagon,
staring up  at branches and clouds moving past.  I glanced
back  at  her, assured myself the new bandages were still
in place, then  turned  to look out over the mountainous
shaggy  backs  of  the bison as they plodded along.
     This Tahr knew where she was going.  At the fork in
the road she  had directed that we should continue
eastwards,  toward  the remote sea.  I briefly considered
debating this,  then  shrugged. Why not? I wondered what
destination she had in mind and felt the fear again.
     Were there more of them? How many? Where were we
going?Christsake,  I didn't have to go along with this!
All I had to do was dump her somewhere. I didn't need her.
. . did I?
     I don't know!
     So we travelled together, strange companions, each
trying to come to know the other. Learning her language -
Sathe - was hard.
     English was next to impossible for her.  Her mouth,
all  of her vocal apparatus from her larynx to her tongue
to the shape of her jaw weren't as flexible as mine.  With
effort I was  able to  imitate  the growls,  snarls,  and
sibilant noises that made up the  Sathe language,  but she
could barely manage  a  coherent english sentence at all.
     Also  there was the fact that she wasn't human. . . or
that  I wasn't Sathe, whichever way you want to look at it.
     Language  is a means to communicate ideas  and
impressions, its  development  influenced by the
environment, by physiological  and  psychological traits.
This creature I was learning from was mammalian, bipedal,
and bilaterally symmetrical.  We seemed to have a fair bit
in common.
     But  wereas my distant ancestors were  brachiating
primates hastily  adapted for lives on open plains,  her's
were  dedicated hunters,  perhaps forest-dwelling
quadrupeds who - God knows  how or when - began to use
tools. As we'd evolved from such distant and diverse
beginnings,  so had our languages.  There were  terms she
used to refer to things she could see at night,  to sounds
I couldn't hear and to things I couldn't smell.
Conversely,  I was unable to find words for differentiating
between certain tints of a color. . . and there were no
words to describe things I had  grown up  with. Different
outlook. Different mindsets. How do you describe color to a
blind person?
     Given time I'd eventually come to grips with that
language, but for the time I had to live with my questions.
And she had to live with her's.
     So the language lessons continued every day as we made
our leisurely way east. The grammar wasn't that hard to
pick up, but my vocabulary was extremely rudimentary. I
would point things out or have them shown to me, then Tahr
would give me her name for them. It was that way I learned
the cat. . . Sathe terms for fascinating things like tree,
bush, rock,  road,  bison, wood, bird, and other things
that would come in  handy  if  I  intended to live the rest
of  my  life  in  the wilderness.  The  only man/Sathe made
things we had to work  from were the things we had with us,
the wagon,  Tahr's  possessions, and my things.
     My things:  the contents of the pack, my rifle and
clothing. These fascinated and bemused her. She scrutinized
everything from the fabric of my clothes to my gun (a
puzzle I quickly confiscated,  to her obvious annoyance and
indignation).  She tapped the aluminium of my canteen,
tried to bend the laminated steel of my knife blade, stared
and poked at the compass mounted it its perspex bubble  in
the hilt.  Just what I could be doing with such things was
confusing and frustrating her.
     Looking  at it from my point of view there wasn't  all
that much, but I was thankful for what I had, especially
the automatic rifle.  All  Tahr  had  to call her own was
her  sword  and  the tattered remains of her armour.
     And the days went by. Sometimes the merciless Virginia
sun, sometimes rain that brought the bugs and mud. The
lessons continued and increased in  complexity, graduated
to abstracts,  there was more confusion and more  late
nights  sitting around a campfire struggling to grasp a
concept. How  can  you describe something that you can't
simply  hold  in your hand;  something such as thought,
hope, or fear? Miming just didn't work too effectively on a
creature who used different body language.
     Things  progressed  slowly,  at  their own speed  and
as  I learned more,  I was able to fill in the blanks.  But
is was so maddeningly slow! There's nothing more
frustrating than wanting to ask something but not having
the words to do so.
     Apparently there were also questions that Tahr wanted
to ask me, and she did try as best she could.  What was I?
Where did I come from? Things along those veins. Because
of that I was slightly grateful for the barrier  between
us.  Despite my equipment she still sometimes seemed to
think  of me as little more than a well-trained animal:
sit,  wait,  fetch this,  fetch that.  I played along. It
was easier to go with the flow until I  found  out  more
about  my situation.
     Mid-summer.  Hot and dusty after days without rain.
Insects buzzed in irritating  clouds  around the bison.
Grit from  the  road  hung around  in the air before
finally settling in  hair,  mouth,  and clothes.  I  was
itching and covered in an irritating coating  of dust and
sweat.
     Of course when I had the chance to bathe, I took it.
 
******
 
     As the sun sank low  - a red eye over the hills to the
west - the moon was already high in the sky.  The
temperature was starting to drop.
     I pulled my head up from underwater and gasped air,
shaking water out of my hair in a spray of droplets. Arggh,
cold.  Goddamn,  it was good to be clean,  but I  was
looking forward to getting back to the campsite where I had
left Tahr  and  a hot fire.  I rubbed my hair as dry as  I
could  and turned to where my clothes were drying.
     Sitting among the shadows on the mossy bank with my
clothes beside her, Tahr  was  watching me,  one hand
pressing  lightly  against  her bandaged ribs.  She was
regarding me with her head cocked to  one side,  expression
unfathomable.  Damnation! How long had she been watching
while I was gathering goosebumps in my  birthday  suit?
She  continued  to watch me as I waded over  to  collect
my clothes.  Damnation,  she  was studying me as. . . as I
had  studied her.  I felt an embarassed flush burning up
under my skin, then even more embarrasement at feeling like
this in front of something that wasn't even human.  I guess
she had a right to  be  curious  about something she
obviously  had  never  seen before, or perhaps she was
feeling hungry. Those greenstone eyes followed my fingers
on the closures as I pulled on my damp clothes."So  what
are you staring at!" I snapped.  "Never  seen  red hair
before?"
     In return she gave me a glistening grin.
     "Damn  peeping  tom alien bitch," I muttered as  I
finished dressing. "Satisfied?" I asked sarcastically.
     She hissed something in obtuse sibilants,  struggled
to  her feet  with  a open mouthed gasp,  then pointed at
the  water. "Help me?" she mimed washing herself.
     "A  cat  that  likes  water,  eh?  You  sure?  It's
getting cold. . . "
     She  hissed and fumbled with her kilt,  dropping it
at  her feet. I had to help her into the pool, where she
settled slowly, yelping as her wound went under. I'd have
to clean that again later on.  Soon I found myself
scrubbing her  back.  Actually it wasn't too much different
from washing  a dog, but this one cooperated. Caked blood,
dust, and mud swirled away downstream. Finally, a soggy arm
about my shoulders, I helped her back to the camp and the
fire.
     As we huddled close to the fire I couldn't help but
stare at the felid on the far side of the flames.  With the
wet fur plastered to her  skin she took on an appearance
somewhere between ludicrous and pathetic. Her inhuman
skeleton was accentuated:  the long legs and  short  torso
with broad chest.  The bones in her legs and arms looked. .
. wrong; twisted about each other the wrong way, perhaps a
few too many.
     That ridiculously bedraggled fur slowly dried as she
meticulously groomed herself with her claws, puffing out as
it did so. By the time a slab of venison was roasting over
the coals it was a glowing, glossy tan. Cleaned   up  she
looked  much  better   than   before;   sleek, warm. . .
cuddly?
     Her pelt was a dark tan with lighter streaks around
the ribs and on the stomach.  She didn't have whiskers, but
there was that mane:  actually long fur that began at the
crown of her head  and along her cheeks and grew in thick
strands down her neck.  Small was not an accurate
description of her size;  compact would be much more
suitable. As I had noticed when lifting her,  she was heavy
for her size.  There was more  muscle tucked  away there
than her stature revealed.  Was  her's  denser than human
muscle tissue?
     She  glanced up from the haunch she was rapidly
reducing  to bone  and  saw  me  studying  her:  "Thresss
n'rethi  ai  sa  fe r'rescast. Fe'si?"
     I recognised it as a question, but that was all. As I
looked away  in  sudden  embarrassment Tahr  broke  into  a
shuttering, uncontrolled hiss.
     Laughter?
 
******
 
     Tahr seemed certain she knew where we were. With much
waving of  hands  and drawing with sticks in the dirt,  she
managed  to convey  the fact that were near a small  place-
with-[house?]-many called Traders Meet.
     "Town?   Traders. . . Meet?"  I  asked,   struggling
over  the pronunciation.  You  try  and emulate what sounds
like  a  hybrid catfight-leaking  boiler.  It  would get
easier  with  practice. Strange name.  Still, I guess it's
no weirder than Los Angeles or Buffalo.
     But a town.
     "Where this? Where town  is?"  I asked.
     Tahr pointed ahead  down  the road.
     "No.  Not  understand you not. . . " I scratched my
head  in bewilderment. God, how to ask this? I picked up a
stick and began to draw a rough map of the road we had come
down,  the stream  we had  just crossed,  the river where I
had saved her sodden  hide. "We  here,"  I scratched out an
X about where we were.  "Town?"  I  asked  and passed the
stick to the felid.She was staring at the map with a
strange  expression,  then she  took the stick and put in a
triangle for the  town.  Further down the road.
     I  moved my hand to indicate a much larger area.
"Here?"  I asked. "Show?"
     Tahr hesitated, then began drawing, filling in the
blanks.
     She drew a recognisable map of the east  coast,
Canada,  of florida,  part of the gulf,  the Appalachians,
the heartland, the Great Lakes.This was America. The
States! But where was everybody, everything? It didn't fit.
I opened my mouth to speak, but she wasn't done yet.
     She was dividing the map up into sections,  lines
splitting it up into four. . . no, five parts.
     I stared,  perplexed.  Tahr pointed to the eastern-
most section. "Kerr'sther Hytors," she named it and started
adding more details.
     "Hey!  Whoa! Hold it!" Tahr looked up in surprise.
"What the fuck's  this!" I demanded in English,  jabbing my
finger  at  the map.  "This!  What's  going on. . . Oh,
shit!  What's the point  in asking you!"
     "Kerr'sther Hytors,"  she repeated; looking confused.
     I suppose I must've looked just as puzzled, staring at
her map without understanding. Finally I nodded. Very well,
cat, we shall see. We shall see.
     "Kerster Hytors," I acknowledged,  pointing at that
place on the map.
 
******
 
     There  were five Realms - she explained - and the one
we were  in was  named  Kerr'sther  Hytors:  the  Eastern
Realm;  so  called because  -  no  prizes  here - of its
location  on  the  eastern seaboard.  The four other Realms
she tried to describe, but there the language barrier
slammed in our faces.
     No  matter where she thought we were and despite the
fact  I had seen no sign of civilization for over a week,
I was not  yet willing  to  believe  that  I  was  anywhere
but  some   obscure backwoods   block of Virginia  with a
town around the  next  bend. Everything,  the flora and the
fauna,  was absolutely  identical. Even  the  lay  of  the
land  was  approximately  the  same:  the Appalachians
levelling out to the wide coastal plains covered  in a
mixture of coniferous and semi-deciduous forests.  It was
just this damned cat!
     Well,  she said we were making for a town. When we got
there I would see what was what.
     As my grasp of the Sathe language progressed, I tried
to  ask some of the questions that had been bothering me
for some time:
     "Tahr. Who you? Why you attacked?"
     Her wound was healing well. I had taken the stained
bandages off and thrown them away,  but that angry red scar
would be  with her for some time.  One of her fingers
absently traced it out  as she  turned to blink at me from
where she sat on my  right.  From what  I could read of her
expressions,she seemed startled by  the question.
     "I [   ] not you give. Understand?"she said.
I frowned,  trying to think that one through.  Finally I
had to give up. "No understand I," I said.
     "I  do  not understand," she corrected my grammar  to
Sathe proper and tried to explain.  "I like [     ].  I
give you thing; you give me other thing. We [trade]. I do
this. I trader, [merchant]."
     "You give what?" I asked.  "You have no. . . give
things.  You have much. . . Sathe with swords. You no
merchant, yes?"
     Her eyes flickered away from me for a second. "One my
[mate, husband?]."
     Ah.  I had trodden upon hallowed ground here. She was
trying to  change  the  subject.   I  got  the  message.  I
dropped  my questioning  about  what  she was and  instead
asked  about  the unknown word.It  turned  out  it  meant
a  prospective  mate,   she  was [courting?] him, a
boyfriend. "Tahr. . . " What could I say? "I sorry." It
seemed inadequate.
     She looked at me in brief surprise,  then turned away,
ears down  and subject successfully changed.  If she was
telling  the truth about her friend,  I was sorry,  but I
was itching to  find out  what she was really doing.  A
trader with no trade goods  or even supplies and a number
of guards.  I believed her story about as far as I could
throw the Washington monument.
     Well,  two  could  play at that game.  If she  wasn't
being entirely  honest with me,  then there were a few
snipets  that  I could  withhold from her.  Not exactly
lying,  just not  offering all the information.
     The next few days drifted by with monotonous
similarity.  By now  Tahr  was able to take her turn
driving so  we  took  shifts watching  the bison - not that
they needed much,  they seemed  to have  a natural
autopilot;just point 'em the right way  and  they keep
going  -  and  continued  language  lessons.  In  the  late
afternoon we'd stop and set up camp;  a short ceremony
where  one of us'd start a fire and the other would go and
kill some food.
     Tahr  would get a fire going with my  cigarette
lighter (she fascinated in flicking it and watching the
sparks fly). If we had nothing from the night before,  I'd
set off with the crossbow and go hunting small game.  Of
course the Sathe weapon wasn't as powerful or accurate as
my twentieth century firearm,  but it was adequate and
spared ammunition for other contingencies.
     We  drifted  along following this pattern  and
slowly,  one after  the  other,  the days turned to weeks
before  we  came  to Traders Meet.
 
 
End Part 1 Section A