An Accidental Alliance (6 page)

     
“If you say so, sir,” Tina replied. It reminded Park that Tina had been one of the military women the project had included. Tina had served as an Ensign in the United States Navy before volunteering for Project Van Winkle and, from what Park could tell, she was very good at flying so after a short stint, getting used to the controls of the chopper, for himself, Park had decided to leave the flying up to the younger woman. You have to watch where you are going when flying and Park was too interested in gawking at the new world like a tourist.

     
The grasslands extended far to the south of the base as Park expected, so he soon directed Tina, “Let’s move along to the east now. All this grass is starting to bore me.”

     
“We can follow the southern branch of the river back to base, sir,” Tina suggested.

     
“We can, but let’s swing a bit further to the east than we did along the northern branch,” Park suggested.

     
“Sir, we’re already twenty miles beyond the limits Colonel Theoday set for us,” Tina replied warningly.

     
“Tina,” Park laughed. “Do you really expect me to believe you aren’t as interested in what lies over the next hill as I am?”

     
“No, sir,” Tina returned the laugh. “The morning haze has burned off anyway, we’ll be able to see farther than we did on the first run that way.”

     
“Good point,” Park conceded.

     
They flew to the east and soon found the branch of the river that ran just south of Van Winkle Base. The stream here curved gently off to the southeast and Tina swung the craft to parallel the watery course. “What’s that in the distance, sir?” Tina asked suddenly.

     
Park looked forward and saw a dark line on the horizon. “Mountains, maybe?” Park asked almost to himself. “Fly closer so we can get a better look.”

     
“Sir, we’re sixty miles from the base already,” Tina warned him.

  
   
“In for a penny, in for a pound, Tina,” Park chuckled.

     
“Excuse me, sir?” Tina asked, unable to figure out what Park meant.

     
“I mean if we’re going to have to take the heat for violating Arn’s orders, we may as well do it right and proper,” Park explained. “Besides that thirty miles limit was more of a suggestion than an order.”

     
“Are you sure, sir?” Tina asked. “Sure doesn’t sound like the colonel.”

     
“Served with him before, have you?” Park asked. “Well, no matter. Just go close enough that we can see what we’re looking at clearly and then it’s straight back to base. The fuel is down to the last quarter of a tank anyway.”

     
“Yes sir.”

     
Fifteen minutes later the thin broken line on the horizon had resolved, as Park predicted, into a mountain range. “Now those are really tall mountains!” Park exclaimed. “But at least now we have something to see besides grass.”

     
The helicopter was flying over the first few foothills and below them the seemingly endless waving grass had been replaced by scrub and finally true trees. Looking down, Park could still not see any large animals, but flyers of some sort were startled out of the bushes and trees. Whether they were avian, insectile or of some order of life Park had never heard of was unclear at this distance.

     
“We’re still at least thirty miles away, sir,” Tina commented. “I doubt the chopper can fly over them.”

     
“Probably not,” Park agreed. “I should call this in.”

     
“If we’re not out of range, sir.” Tina added.

     
“Holman to Van Winkle Base,” Park called. “Do you read me? Over.”

     
“It’s been too long since your last transmission, Park,” Iris replied. There was a lot of static in the signal. “Arn was having a fit. Uh, over.”

     
“Was having?” Park asked. “You mean he got over it? Over.”

     
“I mean he went storming out of Central Ops, Park,” Iris explained. “Where are you? Over.”

     
“Within site of the largest darned mountain range you ever saw,” Park replied. “The Earth has been busy in our absence. Over.”

 
    
“Are they the Appalachians, do you think?” Iris asked. “Over.”

     
“Negative,” Park replied. “They look more like the Himalayas than the Appalachians. This is a very fresh range, not a rejuvenated one. I’ve no way to measure them here, but I suspect there are several that can give Everest a run for its money. Over.”

     
“By now Mount Everest could be a lake, Park,” Iris replied. “Are you coming back soon? Over.”

     
“We’re on our way right now,” Park lied, still keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the distant mountains. Their peaks were snow-capped and even from here he could see the line beyond which no vegetation grew. Those were very tall mountains. “Be home soon. Over.”

     
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Iris replied. “Over and out.”

     
“We only have a few month’s worth of food,” Patricia Zinco pointed out to Arn that evening. They were meeting with Park, Iris and a dozen others Arn had chosen to help plan the “Awakening” as Arn had started calling it.

   
  
“We’ll have to start a farm,” Arn replied. “We have the tools and materials; seeds, fertilizer and whatever else we need. There are several agricultural experts in stasis too. We can wake one or more of them up tomorrow.”

     
“We’re going to need animal protein too,” Park added, “and this morning’s fly around didn’t scare up much.”

     
“We don’t really need meat,” Patty disagreed. “A balanced vegetarian diet is easily planned.”

     
“But I like pepperoni on my pizza,” Park chuckled.

     
“Park,” Arn decided, “You should finalize your team of scouts and use the all-terrain vehicles to search for a supply of meat along with just mapping out the world around us.”

     
“I also want to establish radio beacons, repeaters from our main transceiver in Central Ops in order to extend our range at least up to the mountains,” Park told him.

     
“Do we have the materials?” Arn asked.

     
“According to the manifest,” Iris informed him. “We ought to have one hundred small, but powerful solar-powered units for the job. Each has a range of twenty-five miles, line-of-sight to the next repeater, and it wouldn’t take much to hoist one up on a pole. There is also some more interesting broadcasting equipment in storage to use on other frequencies.”

     
“Interesting in what way?” Arn asked.

     
“It’s multiband and adjustable,” Iris told him. “And even more interesting are the three communications satellites. Placed in synchronous orbit, we can reach almost any part of the world.”

     
“And how are we supposed to get them into orbit?” Park asked.

     
“My guess is that’s what the rocket is for,” Iris told him with a broad smile.

     
“We have a rocket?” Arn asked.

     
“You didn’t know either?” Park sounded surprised.

     
“It wasn’t in any of my briefings,” Arn admitted. “It must have been added after it we were put to sleep. Someone did a lot here after we stopped existing in the world. Very few will have noticed, but the base is nearly twice as large as it was.”

     
“I would have thought that would be easy to see,” James Hardin commented. “How did we miss it?” Hardin was another former military man, having served as a major in the Marine Corps.

     
“Most of us didn’t get the full tour, Jim,” Arn explained, “but the real reason is that all the expansions were on the storage levels. There’s a lot of stuff down there. I’m not sure what anyone expected us to do with it all, but they did seem to be planning for any eventuality.”

     
“Weapons?” Jim asked interestedly.

     
“Yes and a lot of ammo,” Arn nodded. “Most of it is hunting equipment though. If we can find something to hunt with it, we’ll be all set.”

     
“Be vewy, vewy quiet,” Park commented in his best Elmer Fudd imitation. “We’re hunting wabbits.”

     
“Try to find something with a bit more meat on it if you can, Park,” Arn advised. “It will take a heck of a lot of rabbits to feed five thousand people.”

     
“Forty-eight hundred,” Iris corrected him instantly.

     
“Right,” he nodded, “but still more than we can feed with rabbits. I’ll start waking up our farmers though and we can get the rest out of stasis once we have a reliable food supply. Park, do you have a team of scouts picked out?”

     
“I do,” Park replied. “I’ve chosen ten men and women with recon experience and plan to have them out on the ATVs in the morning. Iris and I will take one of the boats and see where the river will take us.”

   
  
“Iris?” Arn’s brow furrowed. “Do you have any scouting experience?”

     
“Do Girl Scouts count?” Iris asked.

     
“Iris is an accomplished boater,” Park told Arn. “On the river I imagine that will be more useful and I can teach her what she needs to know as we go along.”

     
“I don’t like wasting a top-notch engineer on that sort of mission.” Arn told him.

     
“We don’t have a lot of choice, Arn,” Park told him. “We’re all top-notch at what we do. We also need to wear a lot of different hats.”

     
“Also you don’t need an engineer here at the moment,” Iris told him, “but Park does need someone who can handle the boat.”

     
“I don’t like the idea of you sailing your way out of radio contact,” Arn told them.

     
“We’ll be planting repeaters along the way,” Park replied, “and our land-bound scouts will be doing the same, so it may be a few days before we even have to. I don’t plan to rush downstream by any means. We’ll travel one day and then spend the next day conducting a survey of the area. Then go down stream another day and do the same thing for the next month or so.”

     
“A month?” Arn protested.

     
“Are you planning to go anywhere?” Park returned. “Look, we should be fairly easy to find if you need us. We’re going downstream. Just look for the repeaters if the river splits up into different channels.”

     
How about getting back here?” Arn asked. “Tributaries can be difficult to keep track of. Downstream may be one way, but coming back is another matter. It can be difficult to remember the course if you don’t have marker buoys.”

     
“Good point,” Park agreed, “but the repeaters can also serve that purpose. I’ll take a couple cans of a bright paint, so the poles the repeaters are on will be easy to spot.”

     
“What are you going to eat, then?” Arn asked. “Those boats in storage aren’t very large, just oversized rowboats, really.”

     
“I saw them,” Park replied. “They’re twelve feet long and wide enough in the beam to sleep four comfortably if we must, although I plan to take a few half-shelters out of storage too. We can rig them as a pup tent or a sun shade on the boat. Of course first we need to get a boat out of storage. Getting the helicopter out one piece at a time was murder.”

     
“Well, there I can help,” Arn told him. “While you were out flying around today, I organized a detail to dig a ramp to the storage level. It was only about ten feet below the surface and once we had an opening we were about to use some of the heavy machinery inside to speed up the work. It’s still a bit rough and we’ll eventually pave the ramp and build some proper doors for the big hole in the wall, but you’ll be able to drag the boat up that ramp rather than hoisting it
 
up the elevator well on a
 
block and tackle.”

     
“I wish you’d thought of the ramp before we had to do that,” Park chuckled. “Well there’s still a lot of stuff to unpack, so I appreciate it. We’ll launch and equip the boat tomorrow and then the next day Iris and I will start out down the river.”

     
“But what about food?” Arn pressed.

     
“We’ll take what we can and a few of those food test kits I found in storage,” Iris told him. “If we don’t find anything edible out there by the time our supply is half gone, we’ll just have to turn around and come back. Oh, and Park, “I finally ran that program you asked me to. Van Winkle Base is situated at twenty-six degrees, thirty-one minutes and five seconds north latitude.”

     
Park whistled. “That’s further south than I expected. It might explain the apparent savannah conditions out there, though. The only green vegetation we saw was directly along the rivers.”

     
“Well if that is a savannah out there we should have a lot of animal life as well,” Arn told them. “Hopefully some of it is edible. Although I would prefer you not try to find the mouth of the river this trip. It’s too soon, I think.”

     
“It may be reckless,” Park considered. “Tell you what we’ll only be gone a few days this trip. Consider it a shakedown cruise and also get to know our river a bit before doing the whole Lewis and Clark thing.”

     
“I appreciate that,” Arn told him.

     
Iris caught the exchange, although she was certain only she and Park understood the significance. Unconsciously Arn had just recognized Park as an equal in Van Winkle Base. They were not competitors, and deep down, she suspected Arn knew it. Everyone else in the project was in Arn’s chain of command, but Park and his team had somehow slipped beyond the conventions.