An Accidental Alliance (5 page)

     
“It seems to me, they decided to put us away for a future need that never arrived,” Iris went on. “And as you said, Arn, they completely forgot about us.”

     
“How secret was this project?” Park asked suddenly.

     
“Somewhere above Top Secret,” Arn replied. “Van Winkle held several security classifications, so not only it was Top Secret, but only a few people outside the team were even aware there was a secret to be kept in the first place.”

     
“That’s it, then,” Park noted, “We were so secret the odds are no one told their successors we even existed. Any idea of how long ago that message was recorded?” he asked Iris.

     
“According to the computer,” she replied with a smirk, “Eight years, two months and a few days.”

     
“What?” Park and Arn asked together.

     
“The computer has been in stasis most of the time too, remember,” Iris pointed out, “and that’s the really bad news. If my estimate is anywhere near accurate, that message was sent to us about two hundred and fifty million years ago give or take a dozen million.”

     
Park whistled at that estimate. Arn looked dazed. “That’s a very long time,” Arn finally managed to say. “Did you learn anything about the
 
missing team members?”

     
“Just a log note a few seconds after this saying they were released and returned to their lives,” Iris told him. “Park, you don’t look as shocked as Arn.”

     
“One or two million,” Park remarked, “or two hundred fifty million. It’s just a matter of degree, I guess. Either way we’re so far out of our time, the concept hasn’t got a lot of meaning for me. The good news is the pompous ass we just saw on the screen is not only dead, but likely his molecules have been filtered through countless animals and plants by now. I think we can all take comfort in that.”

     
“What, that he lives on among us?” Arn countered sharply.

     
“More like that he does not live on… among us,” Park laughed.

     
Arn scowled. He had been doing a lot of that since this morning. “Two hundred fifty million years. Will there be any humans left out there, do you think?”

     
“It isn’t very likely,” Park told him. “The descendants of humanity, perhaps, but very few species have survived that long. Horseshoe crabs are about the only ones that come to mind, although I imagine there may be others. I think we had better be prepared to encounter weirdness. Hmm, sounds like fun.”

     
“You’re weird,” Arn accused.

     
“Then so am I,” Iris told him. “I think it sounds like fun too. Park, I insist on being part of your team. I can’t wait to see this new world of ours.”

     
“It’s not ours yet,” Park reminded her. “We just got here, remember? But I’m still anxious to see what’s out there for us.”

     
It took three days to find the crates for Van Winkle Base’s helicopter, during which time, Velvet Blair, the only technological expert who was among the first awake, managed to
 
dredge up a complete base inventory and where everything was stored. It came as a surprise to Arn that the base had been stocked with not one, but two of the choppers as well as enough spare parts to keep them going for years, as well as a complete machine shop where still more parts and tools could be produced.

     
“We also appear to have a small jet in storage,” Arn admitted to Park.

     
“We’re going to need a runway before we bother unpacking that,” Park admitted. “Do we have anything to build one with?”

     
“We have concrete and enough of the ingredients of hot-mix asphalt,” Arn informed him. “We also have the machinery to mix and handle it all with. There’s enough concrete to build a small town, although only enough asphalt for a runway. “So we’ll have concrete streets if we don’t decide to make do with packed dirt for now. I have a general idea how to make cement and I’m assured the computer has the actual formula stored away.”

     
“What about fuel?” Park pressed.

     
“Maybe enough to last a year,” Arn admitted, “although it’s in stasis too so it is not aging. We’ll have to be careful to not waste it until we can produce some more. The ATVs run on ethanol, but the jets run on what jets have for a century or more. Well, for a century not counting the time we were in stasis. The helicopters have their own fuel supplies too, but if we can’t find a source of petroleum, they’ll only be of finite use too. I think it is safe to assume our ancestors bled the world petroleum resources dry.”

     
“True, but in two hundred and fifty million years, the world has had time to produce more petroleum, assuming the conditions were right,” Park replied. “Hmm. Don’t we have any solar powered vehicles?”

     
“The boats are mostly solar powered,” Arn replied, “and so are the ATVs. They’re hybrid just like we’re used to, but of course come nightfall, you aren’t going to have more than half an hour to find a place to stop unless you have something in the tank. Fortunately ethanol is not a problem.”

     
“For morale purposes, that’s probably a good thing,” Park chuckled. “We may want to start aging our moonshine though.”

     
“We won’t be making moonshine, Park,” Arn told him.

     
“No?” Park asked. “Then it will be the first time a man had a still when he didn’t try to keep a bit to drink. Better to find someone in the group who knows how to do it safely and then have him start putting some down to age. If you don’t, someone will anyway. And if you’ve never tried it, you can take my word that distilled spirits are not at all better for being fresh.”

     
“Well, maybe,” Arn shrugged. “What have you been up to the last few days?”

     
“Besides overseeing the construction of that flying tinker toy, you mean?” Park shot back. “I’ve been working with Iris to try to figure out just where we are in the world.”

     
“Ohio,” Arn replied. “We’ve been through this.”

 
    
“Ohio, oh sure,” Park nodded, “but at what latitude? The continents can drift all over the place in two hundred and fifty million years.”

     
“So what latitude are we at?” Arn asked.

     
“I’m still working that out,” Park admitted. “We don’t have a telescope unpacked and Velvet won’t allow me to use the computer for that sort of thing yet.”

     
“You could devise a simple quadrant and take a sighting of Polaris,” Arn suggested.

     
“Can I?” Park asked. “I’m not sure which star Polaris is. Everything has moved around. Polaris is no longer the pole star and in fact I don’t think the North Pole is pointed at any bright star in particular. I have an educated guess where Polaris is and even where the pole points to, but so far I just have my eyes to judge by. I can’t tell by how much, but we are further south than we were. My estimate is somewhere around where Florida was, by latitude, anyway.”

     
“What about by longitude?” Arn asked.

     
“That all depends on where Greenwich, England is these days,” Park replied. “Longitude is an arbitrary measurement anyway. We may as well declare ourselves to be at zero degrees and measure every place else based on our own position. Two hundred and fifty million years is a tough number to grasp. The dinosaurs had only been dead for sixty-five million years in our time.”

     
“How sure are you that it really has been that long?” Arn asked.

     
“It’s an estimate,” Park admitted. “Iris tells me that our computer lost contact with the atomic clock roughly after one million years, but since then the computer’s internal clock has moved ever so slightly every time it came out of stasis to check on the outside world. So it gained one second per year until we woke up. If you take the number of seconds recorded and multiply by years, the resulting number is fairly easy to arrive at. When are you going to admit it to the rest of the team?”

     
Arn had been putting off that decision since they had seen the moon through the hole in the stairwell wall. It was common knowledge they were well out of their time, but not by how much. “I’ll break it at tonight’s meeting,” Arn told Park. “It will be a good way to see how the team reacts before we start waking up anyone else.”

     
“There shouldn’t be too many problems,” Park told him. “You told me yourself that one of the criteria was that we were all without family and had a strong interest in the unknown. We all knew we might wake up long after everyone we knew was dead.”

     
“We thought we might be a few decades out of our time, maybe a century or three,” Arn replied. “We never considered anything like this.”

     
“I’m fairly sure most of the team has figured it out already,” Park told him. “Maybe they haven’t made the same estimates, but none of us is stupid, nor are we uneducated. They’re going to realize that millions of years had to have been necessary to put the base at ground level. By the way, I plan to go out on the chopper tomorrow morning. It’s time to recon the area around us.”

     
“I wasn’t aware you could fly,” Arn showed surprise.

     
“It’s been a few years,” Park shrugged. “Well, two point five hundred million years, but about five before that too. I’ve flown most sorts of fixed wing craft. Never been in a helicopter of any sort but Tina Linea assures me, I’ll have it down in no time.”

     
“We don’t have enough fuel for a flight school, you know,” Arn warned him.

     
“We only have two other pilots in storage too,” Park pointed out. “Unless someone forgot to mention it among their hobbies. Besides, I’ll be going out with Tina tomorrow. The chopper has two sets of controls so I’ll get to try them with supervision. I’ve no intention of flying solo unless I have her approval. By the way, Iris will be monitoring us from Central Ops.”

     
“How is she going to do that?” Arn asked. “We don’t have a radio tower erected yet.”

     
“I’d like to put one up,” Park agreed, “but for now I’ve draped a wire antenna over the stump of the old elevator shaft. It runs down to Central Ops from there. It will be enough until we can get a real tower in place. With luck we may have a sixty mile range.”

     
“I don’t want you going more than thirty miles out tomorrow,” Arn instructed.

     
“Thirty miles is nothing,” Park scoffed. “We can see almost that far from the top of the base.”

     
“Humor me on this,” Arn replied. “We need to take this one step at a time.”

     
“You said we didn’t have all that much fuel,” Park pointed out.

     
“We have enough to be careful,” Arn insisted. “Besides we should do most of our recon by ATV or boat. Those vehicles use renewable resources.”

     
“And the choppers?” Park asked pointedly.

     
“Emergency recovery if a team gets into trouble,” Arn told him firmly. “I’m not even sure if we’ll need the jet for some time to come.”

     
“Probably not, but we should build the runway in case we do,” Park told him.

     
“Once you get beyond the rivers, there’s nothing but grassy plain as far as you can see,” Park reported by radio the next morning. “I still haven’t seen any large animal life, but maybe we haven’t been looking in the right places. We’re going to swing south and follow the river for a bit before doing our eastward swing. Over.”

     
“Park,” Iris called back, “Arn wants to make sure you’re staying within the… uh… assigned search parameters. Over.”

     
“What’s the matter Arn?” Park laughed. “Don’t you trust me? Over.”

     
“Not when you ask like that,” Arn grumbled back in the control room, but he did not broadcast that comment.

     
“We all have complete trust in you, Park,” Iris assured him at the same time. “Over.”

     
The truth was that Park had instructed Tina to fly over fifty miles from the base before starting their search patterns. Park was operating a self-stabilizing camera that had been hastily mounted under the helicopter to record anything they saw that was of note, but so far there had not been much to see they couldn’t spot from the base itself. The northern branch of the river had grown a little smaller as they headed upstream, but not by much. Then they did several swings to the north and west of the base and saw nothing but the tall golden-silver grass.

     
“Nice to know,” Park replied. “We’re just crossing the river to the southwest of base and will commence our southern search. Maybe I can find you some posies. Over.”

     
“I read you, Park,” Iris replied. “Over and out.”

     
Park had been disappointed in not seeing any animal life to speak of. He did not think the sound of the helicopter was frightening it all away. He had seen too many films of animal life taken from helicopters and planes. A lot of them did run from the noise, but you still saw them. He had to admit, however, that from a thousand feet up he would miss most, if not all, of the smaller critters and a lot of medium-sized ones could be hidden in the endless grass.

     
“It’s also possible this is the wrong season and they’ve all gone north for the summer,” Park told Tina over the noise.