A Planned Improvisation (3 page)

“I know who you’ve been talking to,” Park laughed. “How soon can you pack your bags?”

“Sorry,” Sartena laughed, “but I’m kind of buried in paperwork this week. I was just trying to help Marisea get you going. Should I file a formal protest with Colonel Theoday?”

“Wouldn’t that just make his day?” Park chuckled. “No, that won’t be necessary. It appears I’ve been drafted to chauffeur Dannet to an urgent meeting with a geyser.”

“Good!” Sartena laughed. “I’m sure that will do wonders for interstellar diplomatic relations.”

“With the geyser, at least,” Park replied. “Oh all right. Marisea, you’re in Sartena’s office, aren’t you?

“Of course, Park,” Marisea admitted instantly as another pale holograph formed.

“Have Iris bring the buggy to the port and we’ll leave from here. Pick up Dannet on the way. Are you happy now?” Park asked.

“Ecstatic, Park,” Marisea crooned.

All holographs winked out and Park turned to Terry. “She’s growing up far too fast.”

“I thought only fathers said things like that,” Terry laughed.

“In this world,” Park corrected him, “I think both fathers and
tamovirs
say it. I’m surprised she didn’t just point Iris at Arn. That probably would have worked too.”

“She may be holding that in reserve,” Terry pointed out. “We can finish this without you, you know.”

“No need,” Park shrugged. “I have an hour or two while Dannet gets packed. We may as well continue on. Do you really think the runways need much maintenance this year?”

“This one looks good,” Terry admitted, “but I generally try to keep a closer eye on the other one. It’s the one we had to patch up after Jance attacked the port.”

“Didn’t we rebuild it from scratch?” Park asked.

“Not hardly,” Terry admitted. “We removed the macadam and patched up the concrete foundation underneath. Then we poured another six inches of concrete on top and faced it with that Mer compound. It ought to be the strongest runway on Earth, but I don’t trust the patched up sub-foundation.”

“It’s holding up, isn’t it?”

“So far it has,” Terry nodded, “but it’s still a patch job, so I keep my eye on it. By the way, while we’re on the subject, did you know some of the Alliance ships are vertical take-off and landers?”

“I’ve heard that, but all their shuttles use runways like ours,” Park replied. “Why? Were you planning to build landing pads?”

“Ambassador Dannet suggested it,” Terry explained, “and it is not a bad idea. If one of them lands here now we’d have to give up a runway until it left. The ground around here is hard enough to support that sort of landing right now, but when the rains start…”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” Park nodded. “Work up a projected cost for such a landing pad. I think Sartena can tell you how strong they would have to be, how they should be marked… At least, I imagine there’s some standardization in the Alliance, and what facilities would be expected at the pads themselves.”

“Not just a large concrete circle?” Terry asked.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Park shrugged, “but some of the ships that have landed here asked for power and communications hook ups. It seems reasonable a VTOL craft would have the same needs. Find out and if we can afford it we’ll build one or two before the wet season. Do you have a projected location?”

“The two runways form a large cross,” Terry pointed out. “There’s nothing but grass to be mowed in between them. There’s plenty of room to put a pad safely between them in two or three places.”

“We have yet to have any VTOL spacecraft land here,” Park considered. “Three pads might be a bit much. We have to maintain them even if they don’t get used, after all. Check the ground out there and see which lot needs the least prep work. We can prioritize the construction that way. We may as well put one in anyway.”

“You sound like you’ve made up your mind, sir,” Terry observed.

“You know the old saying,” Park laughed. “If you build it, they will come.”

Iris arrived two hours later with the packed Mer buggy. The vehicle operated using the same suspensor technology that allowed the Mers to move freely on land. Park had frequently speculated that the technology must have existed before the first Mer as they seemed to prefer to live out of the water most of the time even if their cities were semi-aquatic, modern versions of Venice. They did not like sleeping in the water, for example and while they loved swimming and beaches, moving through the water was recreational for the average Mer.

The buggy could fly comfortably over most terrain although it did have its limits. If the
 
ground beneath was too steeply pitched, they would slide back down or even flip over entirely. Travel through mountainous areas required them to find passes or to go around. However, most of this trip would be over flat ground and gently rolling hills. The Rocky Mountains had long since been worn away. There were still mountains along the west coast of Pangaea Proxima, but they more closely resembled the Cascade Range, being a long string of subduction zone volcanic mountains.

Park’s torc chimed when they were an hour away from Van Winkle. “Can these things be turned off?” he asked Marisea.

“You should have left it behind,” she told him seriously, stroking Cousin’s fur. There had been no doubt that the latter day primate would accompany them on the trip. Cousin had grown used to being alone in Park’s and Iris’ home during the days, but she was a very social animal and preferred to be with her people. In the evenings, Cousin would stroll from Park to Iris to Marisea and croon for attention until she was picked up and cuddled for a few minutes. Sometimes she would just make happy noises while they pet her and other times she used her tiny hands to stroke their hair in return. Park decided it was probably grooming behavior among Cousin’s kind.

Two years earlier, an exploration team had found and returned with another example of Cousin’s species, another female. Marisea had taken Cousin over to meet the new one and have what Iris called a “play date.” The two female burrowers did not seem to hit it off. They were not hostile to one another, but they each seemed to prefer the company of the people who had found them to that of each other. Further, Cousin made indignant noises when Marisea attempted to make friends with the new female. Clearly, the creatures had a sense of ownership and family, but families were
Independent
units, probably territorial. Others of their species had not been found, however, so the Humans and Mer had no idea if the mutual reaction between Cousin and her counterpart was typical.

Park nodded, but asked “Hello?” to activate the receiver.

“Park?” Arn asked, his holograph forming inside the buggy. “I thought you were inspecting the runways.”

“I was,” Park chuckled. He knew it wasn’t funny, but it would annoy Arn and Park was still feeling somewhat resentful of having been coerced into the runway inspection. “I have authorized a more detailed study which I will review on my return and also a study on the construction of VTOL spacecraft landing pads. I imagine Terry and his engineers will have more than enough to keep themselves busy for the next week or two. In the meantime I am on an important diplomatic mission for Dennsee.”

“Important diplomatic mission my arse, Park!” Arn growled. “We’ll discuss this on your return.”

“No we won’t, Arn,” Park told him calmly. “By then we’ll have more important things on our minds. I’ll bring you a souvenir from Yellowstone.”

“Make it a snow globe of Old Faithful,” Arn laughed in spite of himself.

“Heh! By now I suspect Old Faithful gave up the ghost and has been sleeping around, but I’ll find you something,” Park promised.

“Old Faithful?” Dannet asked as park disconnected from Arn.

“There used to be a geyser that spouted out steam and hot waters on a very predictable basis, roughly once every hour and a half, by our time reckoning. It was handy for visitors since they would know when the eruptions would usually occur.”

“Fascinating,” Dannet admitted. “I’d like to see that.”

“Well, it’s not there,” Park told him, “but there may be others like it. The whole area is a volcanic caldera.”

“It’s a volcano?” Dannet asked, alarmed.

“Yes,” Park nodded, “although it hasn’t erupted destructively in a very long time. Over a million years ago is my guess. I know the Mer have no records of any such event, but it’s still an active supervolcano.”

“And this is how you want to spend a vacation?” Dannet asked nervously.

“From what I can tell from satellite photography,” Park went on, “The caldera is not as large as it was back in the Twenty-first Century. It’s only about ten miles across.”

“That is still a very large volcano,” Dannet pointed out, “but I do not understand how it moved.”

“The source of the volcano is a hot spot under the Earth’s crust,” Iris cut in. “It’s an upwelling of the magma. Hawaii is over another such hot spot.”

“Was,” Park corrected her, “I’ve checked the maps and can’t find a hot spot that corresponds with Hawaii. I think it must have cooled off, so to speak. There are two others that I do not think existed back when, though. One is in Asia and the other almost perfectly central in Africa. This is still the big daddy of them all, though.
 
If it were to explode I think we could count on an ice age.”

“And it last exploded one million years ago?” Dannet pressed.

“Are you worried it might be due?” Park laughed.

“Are you sure it isn’t?” Dannet countered.

“In geological terms,” Park replied, “being due could still mean ten thousand years from now. Part of what we are going to do, however, is to place seismometers and other instruments around the area so we can monitor it.”

“So another working holiday?” Dannet observed.

“Of course,” Park laughed. “It’s the only sort I take. Besides, I treat exploration more as a hobby. Given my druthers, I would be exploring this world full time, just like some of the men and women I supervise, but Arn has seen fit to put me in charge of all sorts of exploration, including space. Consequently, I’m also in charge of our defenses, so I can’t stay out of town most of the time. It’s a shame really, because, we still have barely scratched the surface as far as exploration goes. It’s going to take generations to really get to know this world again.”

They could have reached the Yellowstone caldera by way of Ghelati and stayed over night in the comfort of the Mer city, but both Park and Iris felt the whole point of this vacation was to get away from it all. As celebrities, they would have been expected to visit with Mer officials and might well have been trapped in the city for days, going from one party to the next.

Instead, Park flew a few hundred miles further along the Bay of Coolinda – what had once been Hudson’s Bay – and set down for the night on top of a large hill over-looking the bay. “This was a little out of our way,” Park explained, but not by much and the known large critters that might give us trouble aren’t known to wander this close to the beach.”

“Why not?” Marisea asked.

“Not enough food for them,” Park shrugged. “At least that’s my guess. The grass here is shorter and scrubbier than a few miles inland. I’m not sure why there are no trees around here, though. In any case, the larger herbivores would starve if they stayed here very long and animals that hunt them only go where they do. There’s an annual migration that takes place along the northern shores of Africa and Europe, however. I imagine the situation is different there, but here, this is probably the safest place we can find in the Wild.”

Park’s prediction was correct and they spent the night inside the buggy without interruption until Iris took the controls at first light and continued their journey. Cousin, who had spent most of her time with Marisea, as usual, was now curled up near Iris’ feet. “Why are we aloft before our first cup of coffee,” Park asked when he realized she had started off while the others were still asleep.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted. “So I decided we might as well take to the air. Make coffee if you want. The pot back there is on gimbals. It won’t spill in flight.”

“All right,” Park shrugged, but when he turned back toward the micro-kitchen he saw Marisea was already up and brewing a pot, so he just waved at her and sat back down next to Iris.

The approach to Yellowstone was not quite what Park expected. In spite of having told the others that this was not a mountainous area, he was still surprised to see that there were no obvious mountains until he noticed their elevation about sea level. It was his turn to drive the buggy and his eyes strayed to the altimeter. “Ground’s getting higher,” he remarked. “We’re over three thousand feet above sea level.”

“And we’re about one thousand feet above the ground?” Iris asked. Park nodded. “Well, we are headed toward a large active volcano. I imagine emissions have been building up over the eons.”

“But we’re still over a hundred miles from the caldera,” Park pointed out.

“Continental drift, hon,” Iris reminded him. “We’re flying over the area the volcano used to be millions of years ago.”

“I think we ought to start setting up the instruments, then,” Park decided letting the buggy start its descent. “We’ll put a seismometer every ten miles until we reach the rim of the caldera. Place more around the rim itself along with some of the other instruments and then put the rest inside the caldera itself.”

They neared the caldera in ten mile steps, and gradually the ground rose another five hundred feet until Park spotted a plume of steam venting ahead. “I guess we’re here,” he remarked. “I didn’t notice a definite edge to the caldera.”

“The actual size of it was being debated even when we went into stasis,” Iris pointed out. “We knew the approximate size, but the actual edge of the caldera is only clear where there has been some subsidence of the ground. I think I see that off to the south west, but not on this side.”

“And there’s a big plume of steam or ash up ahead,” Park observed. “This doesn’t look like the Yellowstone I remember.”