An Accidental Alliance (9 page)

     
Park crawled over and prodded it, deciding that either he had killed it or else had knocked it out. Finally he was able to get a closer look at the thing. It was slowly turning gray now and a clear, gooey liquid was draining out of the bullet holes.

     
“What is that thing?” Iris asked, rushing over to Park’s side.

     
Park looked at the creature, ignoring the sharp pain in his ankle and replied. “More calamari, I think, than I ever want to see again.”

     
“Excuse me?” Iris inquired.

     
“Well, I believe this is a cephalopod,” Park explained. “You’ll note the endoskeletal shell is sort of like a squid’s shell. That skin over it is a mantle. Okay, it’s almost three feet tall and nearly as wide and it doesn’t look much like a squid, but I think that shell stopped our bullets, or deflected them, maybe. And look what it is using for legs. There are eight of them and while fairly short, they’re not entirely unlike a squid’s arms.”

     
“And those tentacles look mean,” Iris added.

     
“Tentacles?” Park asked and took another look. “Funny, I didn’t see them before.”

     
“They were nearly all I did see,” Iris told him seriously. “How could you have missed them? They nearly grabbed you twice.”

     
“I was looking more at the mantle, I guess,” Park replied.

     
“Why is it turning all gray?” Iris asked.

     
“I think that’s its natural color,” Park replied. “A lot of cephalopods have natural camouflage. Think of this thing as a land-squid.”

     
“Squids don’t breathe air,” Iris remarked. She held out her hand to help Park to his feet.

     
“They did not use to,” Park replied reaching to take that hand, “but all land animals descend from creatures that at first came from the water. Why not cephalopods? Ow!”

     
“You hurt yourself?” Iris asked concernedly.

     
“Dinged my ankle, I’m afraid,” Park told her, hopping on his good leg while holding on to her. “Let’s get that grazer before anything else decides to stop in for lunch.”

     
“Park, you can barely walk like that,” Iris protested.

     
“I can’t walk at all,” he confessed, “just bounce around. But we have to bring these samples home.”

     
“I have to at least wrap that ankle,” she protested.

     
“After the grazer,” he told her stubbornly.

     
“Now!” she told him just as stubbornly.

     
“Maybe if you bring a bandage from the boat, then,” he backed down. She nodded and ran off to the boat. Park was not yet willing to concede his defeat, however, and hopped toward the land squid, grabbed it by the long tentacles and started dragging it, hop by hop toward the river.

     
“What do you think you are doing, Parker Holman?” Iris asked sharply when he had made it halfway.

     
“Trying to be useful,” he replied calmly.

     
“And how useful will you be if you completely ruin your ankle?” she countered.

     
“Not very,” he admitted. “Okay, strap me up, please.”

     
“Sit,” she commanded, helping him to the ground. Then she knelt by his foot and strapped the ankle tightly with his shoe still on. “You’re ankle will be starting to swell,” she explained before he could ask. “If we remove the shoe you won’t get it back on again. And we probably should leave it like this until we’re past the portage. Unless you want to call for
 
the helicopter”

     
“Heck, no!” Park told her firmly. “If I do that, I’ll never hear the end of it from Arn. Isn’t that a bit tight?”

     
“If you were just going to sit in the boat I would say yes,” Iris told him practically, “but you insist on being the big strong man. It will hurt if you step on that foot, but at least the ankle won’t give way under your weight, although you might wish it would.” She finished the job and told him, “Well, let’s get this squid thing to the boat and get the oars.”

     
“Oars?” Park asked.

     
“And some rope,” she decided. “We can strap the grazer to the oars as a sort of travois. I’ve never done that, but it is supposed to make that sort of thing easier.”

     
They got the grazer into the boat and started back upstream. While Park operated the motor, Iris re-rigged the cover to keep the dead animals in the shade and then she sliced off several pounds of meat from both the grazer and one of the blade birds and put it in the cooler.

     
“What’s that for?” Park asked.

     
“We need to see if these things are edible,” Iris replied. “I figure it is probably better if we keep the meat fresh before testing it.”

     
“We have portable testers with us you know,” Park told her.

     
“I know, but we aren’t going to take the time to stop for a barbecue and we’ve no other way to cook it if it is safe,” she pointed out. “You’ll just have to put off your sampling of futuristic cuisine. And I’m not sure I care to try the land calamari. It smells horrible already.”

     
“No arguments from me,” Park replied.

     
Getting over the portage was sheer hell for Park. The added weight of the animals did nothing to ease the task, but they soon found the best way to lug the boat over the shallows with Park only able to hop was in short tugs. It was well past dark by the time they were able to power their way back in the river, but they continued on only another hour before stopping for the night.

     
Once they had, Iris redressed Park’s ankle, which did not look as bad as they had feared and they both fell asleep in the middle of a deep section of the river. Another day of travel brought them back to the base near dusk.

     
“You should have called for help,” Arn scolded them while others were unloading the boat.

     
“It wasn’t that bad,” Park insisted.

     
“You don’t know that,” Arn snapped back. “For all intents and purposes, we’re on an alien world. We have not the faintest idea what sort of dangers are out there. I don’t want anyone wandering around wounded if we can help it.”

     
“We might have lost our samples,” Park argued, “and maybe the boat.”

     
“The boat and samples are replaceable,” Arn replied heatedly. “You two are not. Now you are not going out again until the docs tell me you are fully healed.”

     
“No kidding,” Park laughed. “I’m not going out again until I know I’m fully healed.”

     
“You’re not a complete fool then,” Arn growled. “So what did you find?”

     
Patty Zinco was fascinated by the smelly land squid which had only gotten worse for the ride in the boat, but Arn was more interested in the slightly more familiar animals. “They are not really a mammal or a bird,” Patty reported the next day, “Although their descent from those classes is obvious. My colleagues and I are referring to their classes as postmammalia and postavis until we can get a better handle on them. We’re going to need more samples before we know for certain and even then it is something we shall probably revise repeatedly for years to come.

     
“In any case both are safe to eat,” she continued. “The grazer is quite tender and tastes a bit like veal, a little grassy, but not unappetizingly so. The blade bird is not too pleasant to eat. It’s gamey and tough. It tastes like rubbish, if you must know. You could eat it in an emergency, but it would have to be pretty dire, I think. The land squid, if you insist on calling it that, is poisonous.”

     
“And infernally hard to kill,” Park replied.

     
“You need a gun with more stopping power is all,” Arn told him. “I will see our people are better equipped.”

     
Over the next three weeks, Park’s team of scouts found still other postmammals and postavians that were both edible and tasty and Arn declared the problem of finding a local food source ended.

     
Park was not decreed fit for travel for over a month, during which he became increasingly restless, insisting on going on the infrequent helicopter forays and hobbling around on the crutches the doctors had provided him. Unable to help much with physical duties he turned to working in Central Ops and made a nuisance of himself in there as well, so the entire base finally relaxed once he was cleared for exploration duties.

     
“Only half our crew is up yet,” Arn told Park and Iris the night before they planned to leave again. “Maybe you should wait until we’re at full strength.”

     
“Arn,” Park argued, “this is no longer a mission. We are a colony and as a colony it behooves us to explore the world around us.”

     
“You are a team leader, Park,” Arn insisted. “How can you lead when you aren’t here at the base?”

     
“I lead by example, Arn,” Park told him. “I always have. My scouts know what they’re doing. They’ve explored a one hundred mile radius around the base and are about to take a closer look at those incredible mountains. That will be an entirely different environment and may tell us more about the world as it is.”

     
Iris had been letting the two men talk but she cut in now. “I think I know the shape of this world as it is today, well, more or less.”

     
“Huh?” Arn asked.

     
“How?” Park asked at the same time.

     
“You gave me the idea, Park, when you said the number two hundred fifty million rang a bell with you,” Iris explained, “so I decided to do some research when we got back. If projections in the Twenty-First Century were at all accurate, the continents have mostly collided into a single super continent they referred to as Pangaea Proxima or the next Pangaea.”

     
“I remember that now,” Park’s eyes lit up. “But I thought the name was Pangaea Ultima.”

     
“Most scientists got away from that name realizing that the Earth would continue to change, so calling it the final Pangaea was inaccurate,” Iris told him. “Those mountains are so tall because they are possibly what’s left of the Atlantic Ocean and the entire Eastern Seaboard after the collision with Africa. Beyond Africa is Europe which still attaches to Asia which in turn, if our scientists were correct, is connected to the lower tip of South America.”

     
“How certain is that?” Arn asked.

     
“This far out into the future?” Iris countered with a laugh. “Not much. Even the people who predicted this weren’t all that certain, but those mountains are in the right place and we’ll find out soon enough.”

     
“Hmm, if this is Pangaea Proxima, we ought to be thankful for that river,” Park remarked.

     
“Why is that?” Arn asked.

“The original Pangaea of the Permian Epoch was noted for the arid conditions on the interior of the supercontinent,” Park answered. “I guess the rain just dried up before it could get there. If that is a condition of supercontinents and not just of the Permian, then we’re in a fairly dry part of the world. That might explain the savannah-like conditions.”

     
“If that is a savannah,” Iris pointed out, “then there must be a dry and a rainy season.”

 
    
“I suspect this is the dry one then,” Park nodded. “It hasn’t rained since we got here. Although knowing how deep into the dry season it is may be crucial. Arn, better let the farmers know about that. Maybe just a kitchen garden this year until we know the best times to plant.”

     
“They’ve already decided that and reported on it,” Arn assured him.

     
“Well, they’re the experts on that,” Park nodded.

     
“It hasn’t stopped you from trying to help out anywhere else,” Arn noted.

     
“I’ve been bored,” Park admitted. “That’s why I’ll be best off exploring. I’ll stay in contact as long as I can, likely a couple weeks at the least – we aren’t planning to speed our way downstream – and plan to be back in two or three months at the outside.”

     
“Long trip,” Arn noted.

     
“Not long enough to see the whole world,” Park shrugged, “not even enough to see our own corner of it, really, but it’s a start. Just like last time you’ll know where to look for us if it comes to that.”

     
“Well, just to ease my mind,” Arn requested, “keep a journal, a boat’s log, if you will.”

     
“Why?” Park asked. “Our pictures and notes will be on board. Oh… I see if we go missing, but you find the boat you want our observations. Yeah, we’ll both keep logs. I’ll grab a few notebooks from out of Supplies, then.”

     
This time they chose to travel three days before stopping for a look around. The wheels Iris had fitted to the back of the boat looked ungainly and even a bit silly, but when they arrived at the shallows they still had to portage over. It took almost no time to swing them down into place and then just a few minutes to pull the boat to the other side and then back into the navigable water.

     
“Sure glad that worked,” Iris breathed once they were on their way again.

     
“You didn’t think it would?” Park asked, surprised.