Come Back Page 8

  "So, they put you in to... to do what?" She sounded puzzled like all scientists are when confronted with political egotism.

  "You're right, I'm not too good a geologist, I told them that, but they said I didn't need to be the computers would tell me everything and they did." I mused at past follies. "It's one of the disciplines that a computer can sort out like lightning. I shoved the rocks in and two seconds later it told me what they were and how much they cost to mine on Earth." I paused and put my free arm round her waist. "But it's true what I said up there. I was insurance against the Captain, or anyone, getting feelings of paranoia and I look after the money men's interest." I laughed in my turn. "They owe me plenty."

  I felt her gaze up at me, felt the pressure of her personality, her love, if you like. "You were the executioner." She said, her voice almost a whisper.

  "That's me." I agreed cheerfully. "Anyone goes ape, I shoot the bastards."

  Chapter 7

  QUISSAC

  Linda wasn’t a happy lady. It doesn’t do to discover that the man you thought you knew everything about was a disguised hit man. I didn’t try to explain too much. Either she would come to terms with it or she wouldn’t, but I underestimated her intelligence.

  "Interstellar flight." She muttered. "Light years, emptiness, disorientation, yes, I see." She leaned against me and shivered. "They picked you to make sure no one went mad, went insane because of the sheer terror of the universe. One person could have condemned us all to death." She paused and let the wheels go around in her head. I knew what was happening, I had seen it all before. "And you were to tell no one, you just keep smiling, keep watching." She shook her head, a small motion that sent her hair falling across her face. "They must have been very sure of you. You must be special, know things we don’t."

  "Lazy, that’s what I am." I told her. "I drift along, don’t let things worry me, let other people sort them out."

  "Well, you’re the one that has to sort them out now." She said decisively. Having made up her mind what my role in our little group was to be she ordered us to bed.

  We set a watch. An hour each. Linda and I took the first two hours, cuddled together in our spare clothes in the driest spot we could find which was near the fire, much reduced but still glowing, red sparks drifting up to join the stars.

  The morning was fresh and crisp. We started off with the sun, munching cold pieces of our wild boar friend, large chunks of his carcass being carried by Mike. A sparkling stream provided washing and drinking water and the new day, so bright and cheerful, infected us all. People talked, even smiled.

  Insects there were in plenty, much to Bradley’s delight. The rest weren’t so sure especially when unmistakable wasps arrived and started to take an interest in us. Birds, odd birds, flew high above, so high it was difficult to see them clearly. It was a pity Marie wasn’t here because she knew the name of every bird by heart and its Latin equivalent. To my untutored eye they appeared unusual, but I couldn’t say why.

  The valley we were in was definitely where the road had been, Linda’s data box confirmed it but otherwise you wouldn’t have known. Trees fifty feet high and dense undergrowth covered everything, the only saving grace being that the ground was relatively flat. The morning dragged on and we made steady progress. I reckoned we had around twelve kilometres to go before the Quissac cross roads where Jules and Marie would arrive. At this rate we would be there days before them, so I kept the pace down.

  The day grew hot, the air lifeless in the forest where no breeze broke the stifling heat and soon the ground began to rise steeply, very steeply. A stream, almost a torrent, swept across our path, coming from the high ground to our left. It had carved itself a channel but the rains must have choked it because a respectable pool revealed itself just off the level ground. The water reflected the blue of the sky, insects danced on the surface, a coolness wafted off the scene.

  "We’ll camp here." I decided, waiting for argument but there wasn’t any.

  "Must be a dam or something lower down." Mike observed. "This looks pretty permanent."

  Mary said something I didn’t hear to Mike, peeled off her shirt and trousers and jumped into the pool with a resounding splash. Mike grinned for the first time in days and leaped in with her. Bradley peered carefully to see if there were any giant water scorpions and took Hilary’s hand. They waded in with dignity and suppressed laughter while Linda and I lounged on the bank. She trailed her hand in the water and gave me one of her enigmatic looks.

  "Looks like Mary and Mike are going to forget the past and look to the future." She said with an air of having solved a problem.

  "Seems so." I agreed lazily, watching the opposite shore where leaves were waving in a breeze that didn’t exist. "Just keep still."

  Of course, she didn’t. She suddenly jerked her head all round, expecting to see monsters but I didn’t move so she subsided, giving me a dark eyed look of irritation. "What’s up?" She whispered.

  "Nothing yet." I replied easily. Over on the far bank of our modest lake there was a bipedal figure lurking. Male, I judged and not worried about modesty. His face peered between branches, a dark but not black face, matted hair and straggly beard. Slowly, he parted the branches to view what must have been an enticing sight. Mary had decided to wash her underwear starting from the top. Hilary, after a moment’s hesitation joined in, their laughter causing Bradley and Mike to grin uneasily at each other. I had not realised how well-developed Hilary was nor how white Mary’s breasts were and how the water sparkled on them as she stooped to scrub her things.

  "I see it!" Linda exclaimed in my ear. "David!"

  The man had raised what looked like a bow. The long arrow was unmistakable. He could see Linda and me, but we were out of arrow shot, that would be the thinking. We needed information and he looked like a useful source, so I shot him in the legs, the rifle reports stunningly loud.

  The swimming party shot vertically out of the pool on to dry land in one jump. Mary, minus nearly everything, arrived next to me, panic stricken, shrieking for explanations. Mike, slightly calmer, grabbed his rifle and started to threaten the surroundings. Hilary and Bradley simply made themselves small targets and gazed at me with frowning antipathy. Linda hefted her rifle in a purposeful way and followed me as I waded over to the far edge of the lake from whence loud screams were telling me I had hit someone.

  Was he alone? Obviously he had pals, he couldn’t be the last man left alive, making him a quadri-centenarian. That meant there were others, he must have had a mother. Were they within hearing of gunshots and did they know what they were?

  Visibility in this close, dense forest was bad. We had weapons giving long range killing power but at thirty feet a bow and arrow was just as lethal. The loud screams of pain subsided to moans but I left Linda to approach the man when we found him. He had covering round his middle, crude cloth of some sort, and he was Caucasian but dirty and lacking bits of his left leg.

  Linda grimaced, but knelt down, the man’s eyes looking at her as if she was supernatural. I conducted a careful circular search while she put one of our precious dressings on the leg. I made sure he didn’t have any other ingenious weaponry, of course, kicking the bow and a handful of surprisingly straight and deadly looking arrows into the lake.

  His track was faint but following the signs, I found smaller feet. They had stopped here, twenty yards deeper in, but then they ran, the toes, bare toes, showing clearly. A child or a woman? They looked female to me but you can’t be sure. Advancing to where the respectable stream that fed the lake tumbled down from the tree covered hills I found an end to the track in the damp ground. They just disappeared. Crashing noises from behind heralded Mike, breathless and armed to the teeth, his finger on the trigger.

  "Calm down." I told him quietly. "No shooting unless I tell you. Put the safety on."

  He gave me a wide-eyed look, glanced around him uneasily but obeyed, standing rigid until his eyes found the well-defined footprint I had been sta
ring at. "Another one?" He breathed, starting to lift the rifle again. I let the quiet and the rippling sound of falling water soothe his apprehensions, waiting for that scientist brain to wake up. "Small, isn’t he? Where did he go? Couldn’t have jumped anywhere from here." He cast suspicious glances round him at the nearest trees.

  The tracks stopped in mid step. There was only one answer and he got there eventually, looking up abruptly at the thick, gnarled branches of the massive oak that we were under. I nodded and gave him my rifle. "He or she is up there." I lifted my chin. "I think it’s a she."

  "Hilary’s with Linda." He said nervously. "Bradley’s standing gun guard." His eyes flicked at me. "Is it worth the risk?"

  "What risk?" I replied and jumped for the branch overhead. "Don’t fire, for God’s sake unless more of them come on the ground."

  He looked even more nervous, but my attention was up the tree. Oaks are usually relatively easy climbers, and this was reasonable. Heaving myself up from one thick branch to another I peered all round and listened. I was convinced this was a woman and we had shot her man, so she wouldn’t go far.

  That tree was one of Bradley’s specimens, God knows how many years old and she was near the top. She could have jumped for another tree, but the noise would have carried so she stayed still, hoping I would miss her. She couldn’t go any higher and the branch she was on forked from the main trunk, so I sat myself comfortably on the fork and looked her over. Dark hair, masses of it, light skin, not coloured but sunburnt. Young, no more than twenty, I judged, with full breasts that were heaving with stress. Long legs covered in dirt, and a skimpy middle covering of the same crude cloth. No weapons that I could see.

  "Well." I said. "Nice to meet you." She stared at me with wide, dark eyes. "Back in the twenty third century, you would be a sensation." The compliment whistled over her head, but she knew what was coming next when I pointed down and crooked a finger at her. "Down we go."

  Voices floated up, excited tones, Linda’s dominant. My nervous companion heard the women and bit her lips. I fished out my combat knife and gazed at the blade in an idle fashion before cocking an eye at her. The message was universal, but she was not going to move unless I moved so I climbed down and stood on a branch, leaving the way clear. She came down gracefully but flinched when she had to pass within arm’s reach. For an instant our eyes met, hers staring at a nightmare in combat fatigues and mysterious weaponry.

  I followed her down from branch to branch until we were close to the ground. "You down there!" I yelled, making her jump visibly. "Visitor coming down! Make sure she doesn’t disappear!"

  Mike looked distinctly startled at her dramatic appearance. Linda, however, waved her knife in the woman's face which made her stare at us all as if we were aliens and I suppose we were. "Sister or daughter?" She enquired, staring at her.

  "Closer than that." I muttered. "We don’t want her running off, give me your spare bootlaces."

  Linda shot me one of her outraged looks, but we didn’t know what we had here. Her arms tied behind her we brought her back to where Bradley and co had carried the man who looked unconscious now, an inconvenience that made me bless the foresight in collecting another local. If he died we still had a source of information, if we could get it out of her.

  "There’s a clearing past the stream, thataway." Bradley rumbled in my ear. "Ruins there, stones." He gazed at our guests, the woman on her knees with a pale face by the comatose man. "We’re sitting ducks in this lot." He waved at the thick forest.

  It was sensible and the nervous glances that everyone kept shooting into the woods made it necessary. Mike and Bradley carried the man, Linda prodded the woman in front of her, while Hilary and I broke the trail. We took it slow because we didn’t know if there were fifty more of the tree men lurking around. Crossing the stream was a pig but Bradley’s clearing arrived in minutes, an area where tall grasses grew, their seed heads waving in a small breeze. Large, untidy blocks of stones were piled in the middle but what this had been, four hundred years ago was anyone’s guess. The stones made an excellent sanger when rearranged, a task that Bradley undertook without complaint, assisted by Mary and Hilary.

  Linda, Mike and me, meanwhile, examined our new friends with more attention than we had been able to spare in recent minutes. The man was strongly built, a long scar on his back telling us he was no stranger to injury. His hands were interesting, the nails reasonably clean, and his teeth looked in good order. Mike sat back, ignoring the girl who was sitting with ill-concealed fear next to me.

  "Someone knows about hygiene." He fished in his pocket and produced the tip of one of the man’s arrows. "Look at the point. Metal, right? And see, there’s some kind of sticky mess on the end." He glanced at the girl. "Her hands are dirty, but they’re cared for, they’re not primitive's hands. And look," he leaned without warning and grabbed her long, thick hair. She let out a yelp of fear, but he was peering at the thick, black tresses.

  "It’s been cut." Linda supplied. She fingered some of the hair herself while the girl looked at her with intense interest. "What’s your name?" She turned suddenly and glared at the girl, tapping her own ample chest. "Linda." She pointed an elegant finger at her. "Well?"

  Her eyes flicked from me to Linda, intelligent eyes that understood what we wanted. She shifted herself awkwardly, hunching her shoulders against the pain from her tied hands. I began to think I would have to take out my knife again when she spoke.

  "Melanee." She said. It was quite clear. Linda and Mike looked at her with astonishment.

  "Good French name." I muttered. "After all, this is France."

  "What about him?" Linda pointed down to the man who was beginning to look bad.

  For an instant, a flash of something akin to pure hatred appeared in her eyes but she lowered her gaze. "Loren." She murmured.

  "Could be Lawrence." Mike suggested helpfully, gazing at her anatomy with growing approval.

  "But not from Arabia." I said sourly. "You speak French?" I asked her. "Parley vows Francais?"

  Her brow wrinkled as she dissected my accent but suddenly she let out a torrent of words that could have been French but didn’t sound like it. The general substance, however, was translatable. We had committed a dastardly deed and retribution would follow. Her eyes sparkled and her whole attitude changed, became defiant almost. Mary and Hilary, having finished the fortifications, arrived and sat down, peering at her while Linda explained.

  "None of us knows enough French." Hilary said. "If it is French." She added doubtfully, listening to Melanee’s short explosive words.

  "Yeah." I agreed wearily. "Shut up." I told the girl who stared at me, turned rigid but ceased talking.

  "Must be more hidden talent." Mike said dryly. "That’s a good trick, could have used that myself in the past."

  "Right." I became decisive. "We’ll take her along. What about this guy?" I raised an eyebrow at Hilary who was well on her way to qualifying as a doctor in her spare time. She took it as a sort of hobby, using spare brain power, such was the level of intellect of our crew.

  Now she examined the leg clinically, prodding him in various other places before sitting up and pushing her black hair back. "We can’t help him. The femoral artery is severed, he’s already got a considerable fever, and you can see the swelling? He’s bleeding internally." She gave me a black-eyed look. "It would probably be better if he didn’t come round."

  The prognosis didn’t need translation because the girl let out a wail of grief and started to sob. "Damn." I said mildly, earning me a look of dislike from Hilary.

  "We have no drugs, no equipment, they all went up in the lander." Mike said gloomily. "Only field dressings and not many of them."

  I stood up and considered whether to shoot the poor sod here and now. Linda’s white face told me she knew what was passing through my head, so I peeled off and went to help Bradley build the fire. Of course, any self-respecting native would smell and see the fire from miles away because of the sm
oke but we needed it. "Get anything out of her?" Bradley enquired mildly and shook his head on hearing the limited results of our conversation. "If she’s got relatives, man, they’re gonna come looking and they know the forest and we don’t."

  "Oh, I think we can cope with that." I said.

  There was no help for it but to keep her tethered and that meant her legs as well. The dark eyes gazed into mine as I tied her feet together, the rest looking on uneasily. We had our meal, the pork getting to its limit now but supplemented by fruit, the only benefit we had found so far in this oppressive, thick, never ending forest.

  He died that night. Digging a grave was time consuming and tiring but we could hardly leave him out there for the wild pigs to eat. She seemed surprised at our collective solemnity at the burial but became much more interested when Bradley fished out our chart of the area, staring down at the printed details as if she understood it.

  "Don’t see any way but to carry on along this route." He rumbled, cocking an eye up for my agreement.

  "What about her people?" Hilary asked nervously, speaking aloud what was in all their minds.

  "Mm." I scratched my bristly chin. "Been thinking about that. Over a day since we met her and her boyfriend. If there’s any more around why aren’t they here already?" I cast an eye round the attentive audience. "I think they were a foraging party. The question is, where from? And why?"

  "The river," Bradley muttered. "Or the sea."

  "Yes, the sea." Mike agreed. "If you were part of a small population in a continent that’s solid trees, where would you set up home?" He nodded to himself. "They need water for transport and food. Sitting in the middle of a damned great forest is not good survival tactics."