Conquistador (69 page)

The younger Afrikaner went up the slope and returned with a string of mules. Sandra came forward and the two of them oversaw the loading; Adrienne and Botha cut stalks of brush and went back down the beach, sweeping over their footprints. A normal night's breeze would obliterate most traces that didn't remove, and a few days would take care of the rest. While they were about it Tom went a little into the thick brush and crouched on guard with his back to a small sycamore tree; what he could see of the landscape was a lot more densely grown than he'd expected, the vegetation dry and dusty enough in high summer, but plenty of it, ranging from knee level to more than his six-three of height.

“And it's noisy,” he murmured to himself, relaxing into a hunter's absolute stillness that let all sounds in, only his eyes moving, and his chest as he breathed.

He could hear the beat and hiss of the waves as the tide went out, like the heartbeat of the world when you were near the shore. There were plenty of insects, too; not many mosquitoes, thank God, since there wasn't a freshwater swamp close by. But a fair swarm of other types, chirping and rustling and buzzing and shrilling and hopping and flying through the darkness. He moved his head occasionally in a slow arc, because the goggles cut off peripheral vision, and more than once he saw a bat twisting through the air in pursuit of some bug or other. There were birds in plenty—nightjars, and he saw a great horned owl whip by at only twice head-height, swerving and jinking like a fighter plane and intent on something inland; then he heard the harsh scream-click-hiss of a barn owl not too far away. A couple of black-tailed jackrabbits passed him, hopping and then landing and coming erect with their tall ears swiveling like radar dishes; one landed near enough for him to reach out and touch it if he'd wanted to. It gave a bulge-eyed double take and a squeal as it realized there was a human at arm's length, and thumped the earth in alarm before it tore off.

Can't be easy to be small and tasty,
he thought.

Something larger went through the brush a hundred feet to his north; he couldn't tell exactly what and didn't care to guess, not in the crazy mixed-up ecology John Rolfe's importations had produced, but whatever it was it snorted as it caught their scent and crashed off. A coyote went yip-yip-yip and howled occasionally, answered by others across the huge stretch of wilderness—but then, song-dogs had survived here even when it was all built solid; they were as adaptable as humans, and nearly as clever.

Farther away something gave a grunting moan in the night, an
ooorrrrghhh . . . ooorrrrghhh . . . ooorrrrghhh . . .
that built up to a throaty roar. He recognized it then, more from the MGM logo at the beginning of movies than anything else—the territorial roar of a lion, announcing its claims to the world and any other male thinking of horning in on its pride of females.

Face it,
he thought, grinning silently, and breathing deeply to take in the scents of sea air, dry satchet-smelling herbs and dusty earth,
this is as close to paradise as a man like me is going to get. Lots of space, lots of animals, just enough civilization to visit when you want a book or a good dinner or a movie or a cold beer.

The thought of going back permanently FirstSide, back to crowding and itchy madness and a world so empty of life, was getting increasingly repellent.

Plus I think I'm in love, and that it's mutual. If only John Rolfe weren't such a ruthless son of a bitch . . . well, for now he's
my
son of a bitch. Got to admit he's one gutsy and smart son of a bitch, too. I don't like everything he's done by a long shot, but it's impressive that he's been able to do it. He took that one wild chance and ran with it.

Something crackled behind him and to the right, very faintly. Tom spun before the sound was finished, the weapon in his arms coming up to his shoulder in a perfect three-point aiming position even as he threw himself prone. The leveled rifle probed the darkness as his finger took up the slack on the trigger.

More than one man had died because they assumed someone Tom's size had to be slow. Assumptions were nearly as deadly as bullets, and much more popular.

“You fast, not just big, Tall Man,” a thickly accented voice said. “Listen good, too.”

“Hello,” Tom said dryly as a wiry brown form rose from the brush; the dark skin was about as good at melting into the background as his fatigues.

Kolo nodded wordlessly and slipped the polished shaft of his tomahawk back into a loop at his belt, then turned and trotted away through the darkness—making a lot more noise this time; you could move silently through this wilderness of dried stalks and crunchable vegetation, or quickly, but even someone like the Indian tracker couldn't do both. Behind the spot he'd occupied another figure rose—Jim Simmons, with a scope-sighted rifle cradled in his arms.

“Sorry,” the Scout said; they shook hands. “We just got here, and Kolo likes a joke. Also he's annoyed that this trip means he can't get back to visit his wife and family.”

Tom looked at the sycamore he'd been squatting under. “Yah, you betcha, life is hard—and he was going to put the tomahawk into that tree just over my head, wasn't he?”

He pushed the night-sight goggles up on his forehead; it was a strain if you wore them too long. Simmons shrugged ruefully, his teeth white in the darkness.

“You know the really funny thing?”

“No, what?” Tom said.

He'd been around Roy Tully long enough to know an appeal for a straight line when he heard it. He didn't mind; Simmons was the most likable of the men on this trip, after Roy. Just about the only one besides Henry Villers who was simpatico at all, in fact—possibly it was because they were in the same line of work and were both men of the wilderness by choice. The smaller man went on:

“The local Indians didn't use tomahawks before we got here. Some Families idiot back in the early days evidently gave them the idea, probably because he'd read
Last of the Mohicans
too many times and thought that Injuns just weren't proper Injuns unless they chucked hatchets about with bad intent, and took scalps. Incidentally, the local tribes didn't do that either—not this side of the Sierras—until it was suggested to them.”

Tom winced. “Jim, did you ever get the feeling that John Rolfe and his friends turned this place into a theme park of perverted romanticism run amok?”

The Scout grinned. “All the time. I like it that way. It may be a playpen, but it's
our
playpen, by God.”

They went back to the mules, and Botha and his son Schalk—the name gave Tom a bad feeling, but hell, the two men had been partners for a long time before Schalk van der Merwe went rogue—led them to the rest of the caravan.

It was surprising how much space ten mules and fourteen-odd horses took up; quadrupeds were bulky. Sandra introduced him to his horses, two big cobby roans; he fed them lumps of sugar and pieces of dried fruit, and did the appropriate horse-language blowing in the nostrils in greeting. The women and the smaller men were on mounts that looked like they had a good bit of Arab in their bloodlines, which was just what you wanted for a desert expedition . . . except that breed tended to be small, and asking one to carry two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle, bone and gristle was a bit unfair.

To his relief, he wasn't expected to pull the spare horse along on a leading rein, or help with the mules. Those had been trained to follow each other on a long looped arrangement, and Sandra would be chivvying the horse herd along cowboy-style; he noticed the two Boers and Simmons keeping an eye on her as they moved out in a loose column of twos on what was probably more a game trail than a track made by men. It couldn't be easy, even though the horses wanted to stay close to each other and to their human protectors in the predator-smelling darkness. He also noticed the men relax—a little—as it became apparent that she was good at what she did.

Adrienne rode knee to knee with him. He leaned over close enough to murmur, “Lot of boars wandering around here—male chauvinist variety,” he said dryly.

“Tell me about it,” Adrienne said; he thought he detected a trace of bitterness under the mordant humor. “Do you have any idea of how irritating it is when the best you can get is to be treated like an honorary man? And if you think Jim's bad, you should see what the older generation is like. Fast cars and feminism are the only good points about FirstSide.”

The Bothas led, father and son; this land was part of the Versfeld domain, only ten miles or so from their farm, and they'd both hunted through it for years. The party went east for a good long while, then began trending a little south, keeping the mountains parallel to their course on their left; the Dipper blazed above them, and the Pole Star was plain enough. The land was pretty well flat, with an occasional hill rearing out of the plain; for a while the vegetation died down to sagebrush and dry grass with an occasional scrubby tree. He was a little startled when one of the trees raised its head and looked at them. . . .

A dry rustling sound stopped; he hadn't noticed it until then. That had been something huge cropping at the top of an oak, and ripping the leaves loose with a long prehensile tongue. It reared up to its full eighteen feet of height as they approached, its two knobby horns and long camel-like head clear against the stars, then turned and paced away, both long gangly legs on either side moving in unison. It looked slow even after it had broken into a clumsy gallop, but he estimated that it was moving at nearly thirty miles an hour.

Adrienne gave a low gurgling chuckle. “There's something intrinsically funny about a giraffe,” she said. “Unless it kicks you. In a way, it's a pity this land isn't slated as Commission reserve.”

“I admit, it looks a lot better than FirstSide LA,” Tom said. “Smells better, too. It would be a shame to see it go the same way.”

“Oh, we're never going to let it get like
that,
” she said. “Just farms and ranches and small towns, with a couple of medium-sized cities. No long-distance aqueducts, and strict limits on wells—one thing the domain system was designed to do was make it impossible for cities to reach out and suck other regions dry. But it'll be a lot tamer than it is now.”

It couldn't be much wilder,
Tom thought.
Christ, what a mix-up—Wild West and wild Serengeti!

They came to a dirt road a couple of miles inland, rutted clay scattered with gravel on a low embankment, flanked by ditches and tall posts carrying wires.

Adrienne pointed southward along the dirt road. “That's Highway One,” she said. “It's paved from San Diego to the oil wells and refinery at Long Beach; then it heads north, inland for a way, up to San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles. In theory you could drive all the way from San Diego to the geyser country north of Napa—but a lot of it's rough, not easily motorable like this.”

“It's all what you're used to,” Tom said gravely.
And I've seen better roads than this in Afghanistan, for God's sake.

After that the vegetation grew thicker again; for a couple of miles they traveled single-file through stands of castor-bean plant mixed with wild black mustard in a tangle that that ranged from six feet in height to ten; small yellow flowers were still blooming at the end of the mustard's short branches. After the first few hundred yards it was like riding through neck-deep water that occasionally closed over his head—although water wouldn't make you sneeze, which the pollen from the mustard did—or between rustling walls along a laneway barely wide enough for a horse and rider.

“Careful, big Tom,” Simmons said on his way back to check on the mules.

“Here be tigers?” he replied.

Adrienne answered for him: “The place is lousy with them. Also grizzly bears and lions. Cape buffalo and American bison, and the odd rhino too; and up ahead”—she pointed southeast—“is the Winkpar.”

“Which means?”

“The Indian word was
pwinukipar,
or something like that. It means ‘many waters' or ‘big swamp.' Hippos. Elephants. Crocs.”

“Right where Las Cienegas was, right?”

Before that became a main Los Angeles highway, it had been what its Spanish name meant—“swamps.”

“Right. But it's not just one big block—there are little sloughs and seepage springs all over the country between the river and the Santa Monicas. Excuse me, between the river and the Krugersberg.”

“Well, that adds a certain charm to a ride in the night,” Tom said, and they smiled at each other in the rustling dimness.

And oddly enough, it's true,
he thought, feeling himself warmed.
Although if I'm going to be charged by a rhino, better while riding a Hummer than a horse.

They moved on through the night, stopping every hour or so for ten minutes' rest and switching horses every two. He used the intervals to stretch, grunting a little as he forced head to knee. Mosquitoes grew more common as they skirted the huge swamp to their south; it made him glad he'd had the malaria cellular vaccine just before he left the army. The marshes covered scores of square miles, even toward the end of the summer drought—and so did groves of trees on their edges, sycamores and big cottonwoods and willows mostly, with oaks and California walnut; the shade grew dense enough that everyone put their night-sight goggles back on. They were riding through an open gallery forest most of the time; the problem was that there were patches and outliers of the marsh, where streams ran downhill from the Santa Monicas or underground rock ledges forced the already-high water table to the surface. Those produced jungle, an impenetrable lacework of creepers and California rose. Sometimes you couldn't go around.