An Accidental Alliance (8 page)

     
“I’ll take a look,” Park replied, adding, “Next trip we both get binocs.” He studied the other shore but soon told her, “I don’t see anything either. The grass comes right down to the water there and a little in the water for that matter. Something seems to be making it move but I can’t see it. Must be futuristic mice or something like that.”

     
“There are some small things a bit upstream,” Iris told him, “but all I see is a sort of swarming movement.”

     
An hour later the banks of the river became quiet once more and Park called back to the base. Arn listened to the report but his only comment was, “Next time, don’t call so late. We worry about you here.”

     
“Where did you find these?” Arn asked when Park and Iris returned to base three days later. They had delivered three large animal specimens, but the two that Arn were most interested in were the ones Park and Iris had decided to call a grazer and a blade bird.

     
“It was not quite two days from here by boat,” Park replied. “We got them more or less at the same time.”

     
On their second day away from the base, Park and Iris had continued on downstream for only half a day when the river had widened to a quarter of a mile and became so shallow it was necessary to portage past before getting back in the boat to continue on. The actual portage took two hours of strenuous work, tugging the heavy craft over the sand and gravel. Maybe we need to fit wheels on this thing,” Park grunted when they were halfway along.

     
Iris paused to consider the matter and replied, “That could be done,” she replied at last. We don’t want them in the water all the time, but I think a pair of retractable wheels that swing up and down near the stern would make this portage a lot easier. I’ll see about retrofitting them when we get back. They’ll have to have fairly wide tires for going over soft surfaces, of course…” she trailed off.

     
“I was only kidding,” Park told her.

     
“I wasn’t,” she replied. “Next time we go out, we’ll have a set of wheels.”

     
The next morning Park decided they were far enough away from base to stop for a day to do a detailed survey. The banks of the river were not as steep here and they could see across the plains on both sides.

     
“Look at those!” Iris pointed to the southeast. She had spotted a large herd of grazers about half a mile from the river. The grass was shorter here with only occasional tufts of longer stems where the animals had somehow missed them as they wandered by.

     
“I was beginning to wonder if there was anything that ate the grass,” Park admitted. “and these are big fellows, aren’t they?”

     
“They may be an all female herd, you know,” Iris reminded him, “Gals, not fellows.”

     
“Well there are obviously some females in the group, at least if they are at all analogous to the animals we’re acquainted with. See the young ones among them?”

     
“Where,” Iris asked, staring into the crowds of beasts. They were large creatures. The adults stood six feet and more at their shoulders. Their skin was black and had the same plated appearance many of the other creatures Park and Iris had seen so far. They also had a rhinoceros-like horn on their noses which combined with the fierce spikes that protruded from their shoulders, made the grazers nothing Park wanted to get into a fight with.
 
As Iris peered at the grazers she realized that the largest ones were mostly staying on the edge of the herd while smaller animals and obvious babies were deep inside the protective formation. “Oh, I see them now. Do you think the smaller ones are the females?”

     
“Could be,” Park allowed, “or they might just be younger. These may also be edible. The young ones may be more tender, though.”

     
“You’re not going to kill one of the babies are you?” Iris asked.

     
“No,” Park shook his head, “but those big ones won’t fit in the boat either. Let’s try for something in between.”

     
“In the boat?” Iris asked.

     
“We’re supposed to bring samples back to base. We could just bring a limb or something for the biologists,” Park considered, “but they’ll get more out of a complete animal. If they turn out to be edible, they’ll be of even more use to us.”

     
“The cooler on the boat won’t hold anything that large,” Iris responded.

     
“Yes, we’ll have to race back to base if we want to do this,” Park told her, “but if we can get past the portage tonight, we can motor our way until we run out of fuel and then continue on when the sun comes out. The beast won’t be too bad by then, I hope.”

     
“I still wouldn’t want to eat it and the biologists will want its guts to study,” she pointed out.

     
“They will,” Park agreed, “but that will have to wait for another time. For now they get to study muscle structure and the shape of its skeleton. Gutting it will reduce the weight we have to carry and maybe it won’t spoil as much on the way.”

     
“So which one do you want?” Iris asked.

     
“I’m not sure yet,” Park replied. “Let’s just keep an eye on them. They don’t look particularly bothered by us. The odds are they have never seen anything like us. It makes them distrustful, naturally, but if we just stand here and don’t get any closer I hope they’ll eventually ignore us.”

     
“So long as they don’t attack,” Iris told him.

     
“If they do, you run back to the boat as fast as you can,” Park told her. “I won’t be very far behind.”

     
“You think they will attack?” Iris asked nervously. “Is that what herd animals like this do most of the time?”

     
“I honestly don’t know,” Park chuckled. “I told you I’m not a hunter. Not yet anyway. Also I have no idea if these things will behave like the ones in our time.”

     
“This is our time too, Park,” she reminded him.

     
“It is, yes,” he agreed, “but you know what I meant. These are new creatures to us. They seem to be acting like ones that are familiar to us, but we haven’t been watching them very long either. Similarities may be deceiving. I’m not even sure these plate-skinned creatures are mammals.”

     
“They are warm-blooded and obviously not birds,” Iris pointed out.

     
“In two-hundred and fifty million years there may be a lot of new animals that are warm blooded. In our time… our original time, that is, the only warm-blooded classes of life were the birds and mammals. Two hundred and fifty million years before that, there was no warm-bloodedness, just the beginnings of a transition toward it. Now? Well who knows what may have evolved. These may be mammals or they could be the descendants of descendants of mammals. Mammals as a class of animal life may no longer exist, except for us, of course.”

     
“What about those birds we saw last night?” Iris asked. “Are they still birds?”

     
“Or something descended from them is my guess,” Park nodded.

     
As they continued to watch the grazers, they spotted other creatures as well. Since leaving Van Winkle Base they had seen a fair number of insects although none of them seemed to be interested in biting humans for which Park was grateful. They had also seen flyers, although not close up. High in the sky there had been slowly circling creatures with bat-like wings. Since they had been out in the day, neither Park nor Iris had been certain they were actually bats or if some new animal had evolved a similar wing design. Unlike the bats they were acquainted with, these appeared to circle and glide like hawks and Park conjectured that they might be this era’s equivalent of hawks or vultures.

     
What had puzzled Park the most, however was waking up that first morning on the river and looking at the southern shore where they had seen the grass moving slightly in the water. In the light of day there did not appear to be any grass that was actually in the water, but he decided that maybe the level of the river had dropped just enough to expose the muddy bank on that side.

     
It did not take long for the grazers to ignore the two humans There were other creatures in the vicinity but the grazers were the largest and most plentiful in sight and whatever normally preyed on them was not currently in the vicinity. After a while some of the smaller creatures came outside the protective ring of bulls, if they were bulls, and began to graze where the grass was still plentiful.

     
Park lifted the rifle to his shoulder, chose a target and fired. The herd immediately reacted by tightening up into a rough circle with the massive bulls on the outside. The wounded beast also retreated within the protective perimeter, but not before Iris shot it as well. It screamed piteously and fell to the ground.

     
“The poor thing is suffering,” Iris told Park.

     
“I know,” Park agreed. “Our guns are underpowered for these things. We’ll have to find a way to put it out of its misery. Move back a couple dozen yards and I’ll see if I can spook the herd into running off.”

     
“Why move back?” Iris asked.

     
“So there will be someone to give my flattened corpse a decent burial if this doesn’t work,” Park told her with a wink. Iris shivered at the thought, but did as he had asked. A moment later, Park fired several shots into the air over the grazers and to his satisfaction they ran in the opposite direction. Then he and Iris went up to the whimpering animal and put it down. “Cover my back while I gut this one,” he requested. “With natural protections like these critters have, there must be a range of carnivores who find them tasty. We may too, for that matter.”

     
“I’m seriously thinking of being a vegetarian,” Iris told him, sounding just a little ill.

     
“Well, this isn’t exactly easy for me either, dear,” Park told her gently, “but it’s something I have to do. If I get sick, it will have to be later. Now I just hope my knife can open this thing up.”

     
There was a shriek from their right just then and both turned to see five large, bird-like creatures running toward them. They were larger than the ones they had seen the previous evening, standing almost three and a half feet tall and they were covered with hardened feathers all over their bodies, giving them the appearance of wearing scale armor. Their beaks were a foot long and came to a wicked-looking point. They had wings too, although they appeared to help propel the birds along the ground rather than provide the power of flight. Iris lifted her rifle quickly and fired on the bird in the lead. It dropped instantly and the others halted, confused. Iris fired again and dropped a second of the strange birds. The others squawked and ran off again, flapping their wings rapidly. They still were not truly flying, but now they looked as though a great wind was pushing them along, their feet scarcely touching the ground.

     
Park turned back to the grazer and finally found a way to open the carcass up. It wasn’t a straight incision nor was it a pretty one, but it did the job. Without being asked, Iris went and retrieved the two dead birds. The feathers, if they could still be called that, were sharp, blade-shaped and very hard. They covered the birds completely giving them a natural armor that would leave a nasty wound in the mouth of any predator that attacked them that way. Iris cut her hand on one of them when she tried to pick it up by the neck. The talons on their feet were also long and sharp, reminding both Iris and Park of the feet of certain dinosaurs.

     
Park had far less trouble gutting the two birds, but the load was far too heavy to carry back to the boat all at once. “Let’s take these blade birds back to the boat first,” Park suggested. “Then we can hurry back for the grazer.”

     
“Blade birds?” Iris asked even as she picked the smaller of the two up by its feet.

     
“It just came to me,” Park admitted as they started
 
briskly back toward the river. “It fits. I don’t know if those feathers are a unique adaptation or not, and I suppose the biologists will give these things their own names, but unless you have a better name for them…”

     
“Not really,” she replied instantly. “We may as well call those other things grazers.”

     
“Good enough for me,” Park shrugged. They reached the boat and Park threw the two large birds inside. They were only halfway back to the dead grazer when a large, translucent, golden-colored thing approached them at a surprisingly fast run. It had eight stubby tentacle-like appendages that lifted the translucent body off the ground and made it seem to float rapidly toward them.

     
Not having the time to aim and fire, Park and Iris, tried running away from it. It followed them briefly and then turned to approach the grazer carcass. “Oh, no you don’t, whatever you are,” Park growled and lifted his rifle to his shoulder and fired.

     
He missed with his first shot, but fired again and hit the thing on his second attempt, The translucent creature turned and started attacking them again, so both Park and Iris opened fire repeatedly. They hit the thing several times but it continued to come at them. “Split up!” Park yelled.

     
They ran in opposite directions and the thing decided to follow Park. Fast as he ran, however, the strange thing was faster and finally, Park twisted his ankle on a rock sticking partway out of the ground and felt a sharp pain as he crashed into the dirt unceremoniously. Forced to turn around and fight, he sat up and, with all his strength, he swung the butt of his rifle, smashing it sideways at the creature. For a frozen moment, both man and monster stopped, and then Park broke the spell by hitting it again repeatedly. Finally, the weird creature broke off its attack and started to crawl slowly away. It only got a few yards, however, before collapsing to the ground.