Castaway Planet (17 page)

Chapter 27

Sakura approached the brilliantly glowing fire and the humped shadow near it, silhouetted in the darkness of Lincoln’s long night—though by human time it was now about noon of another day. “How’s it going?”

Whips didn’t jump at the sudden voice—he wasn’t really built for it, after all—but even in the firelight Sakura saw the jangling colors and the twitch of his multitudinous fingers. “Okay so far, but don’t
do
that.”

“Sorry. Is it that delicate?” She kept back from the fire, which was radiating a lot of heat.

“Well . . . yes and no,” Whips said. “In concept this is dead-simple. About as simple as making lye—”

“—which Mom and Melody are starting now, and only Mom and Dad are going to be allowed near once the stuff starts, well . . . lye-ing.”

“Ouch.” She saw the ripple of humorous appreciation run down Whips’ length. “So, with lye-making you basically take pure rainwater, and run it through the right kind of ashes until you get it concentrated enough for whatever job you have in mind. Instead of water, of course, I’m using fire, because what I want to make is quicklime.”

“I kept forgetting to ask, but I know ‘limestone’ and limes that you eat, and lime like people put in gardens. Which is this?”

“None of them, exactly. The fruit’s name, as far as I know, isn’t related at all. The others are all calcium compounds, but limestone’s going to be mostly calcium carbonate, and the lime you put on gardens is called agricultural lime.”

Whips gestured to the roasting setup, which she’d seen partially assembled. The fire burned high below a metal bowl—one of the same pieces of metal wreckage that had been used to make the fireboxes for boring through the column. The bowl itself was held up by several carefully trimmed stones that fitted into hammered niches in the sides of the bowl.

“We crushed up shells and some limestone-type rocks that Caroline could identify—this is where we connect the different ‘lime’ things. The limestone and similar things get put in the bowl, and then roasted to high heat: over 825 degrees, or over about 1500 degrees in the old Fahrenheit scale.” He shoved more charcoal from a large heap nearby into the fire. “That’s why I’ve got to keep it really hot.”

Sakura looked at him, as he inchwormed quickly back from the flames and went to splash water on his body. “Look, let me do that for a bit. You
really
don’t want to get dried out. Shouldn’t someone else be playing with fire?”

“This is
my
project.”

She couldn’t miss the pride in his voice. “So this stuff is for prepping leather, right?”

“Oh, much more than that!” Whips said. “Yeah, make sure the charcoal’s distributed. Anyway, quicklime can be turned into what’s called ‘slaked lime’ just by adding water. The two of them have a lot of uses ranging from taking hair off hides to making cement and plaster, food preparation, and even insecticide. We don’t exactly have insects here, but it may well work on the analogues. A lot of uses for quicklime and slaked, even if we won’t need all of them right away.”

“Just from burned-up limestone and shells? I didn’t know that
.”
Sakura looked with more respect at the pile of smashed-up seashells and rock that was just visible inside the bowl from where she was squatting.

“Not exactly burned, more like roasted. Calcium carbonate gets heated, gives off carbon dioxide, and leaves behind calcium oxide, which is quicklime.”

He raised himself up to get a good look. “Some of that stuff’s already starting to turn; can you see the color change there? It’s also losing coherence. It’ll all be powder by the time I’m done.” He reached over and picked up a thin metal strut. “Okay, step back a minute.”

“You want me to—”

“No, I’m doing it. This is a bit dangerous.”

She watched as he carefully, gently stirred the mass of rocks and shells that was, in fact, starting to crumble. “What’s dangerous about it? The fire?”

“No, it’s the quicklime itself. I picked a very windless night for a reason.” He laid the piece of metal carefully down, far away from either of them. “Quicklime’s very reactive, especially with water. You can actually use it as a heat source. Mel turned up references that said they used to have self-cooking meals in cans, which heated up due to reacting quicklime with water. Enough quicklime exposed to water could actually radiate enough heat to start fires. So you can imagine what that would do to us bags of salty water.”

Sakura thought a moment, then shivered.
Everything inside us is wet.
“So if you breathed it or got it in your mouth . . .”

“A burning—quite literally—sensation is the least you’d get.” He’d edged back again, and she joined him, leaning against his smooth, thick hide. “Your mom’s a doctor, I’m sure you know enough to imagine what would happen.”

“Yeah. Okay, I’ll be careful. But you say you’re going to add water to it?”

“Carefully, yes, after it’s all cooled down. That makes slaked lime, which is what we need for making leather, and we need leather to make you guys shoes and stuff.”

She looked down at her feet, currently encased in slightly padded barkcloth wrappings. “For real hiking! I’m looking forward to getting real shoes.”

“I can’t blame you.”

She looked at the bright flames licking at the underside of the roasting bowl, and for a few moments they were quiet.

Something was nagging at her. She couldn’t figure out what it was. It was somehow connected to this discussion, though. She tried going over everything in her head, but it wasn’t quite gelling. “Time to add more charcoal?”

“Yes, you’d better. To keep the temperature up the fire has to be kept high.”

She stepped up and carefully spread more charcoal around, avoiding the supports.

That’s it!

“Hey, Whips,” she said, looking at the supports, “I’ve got a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Aren’t most of the rocks here at least partly calcium carbonate?”

“Well, yes, though quite a few have—”

He broke off, staring, hide rippling in shocked colors.

At that moment, one of the supports
snapped
, and the bowl began to tip—straight at Sakura.

Everything went into dreamlike slow motion. Sakura could see the two pieces of the broken support, a puff of powdery dust surrounding the break and tinted red-gold by the fire, the two pieces drifting apart. The bowl tilted with a deliberate, almost dignified inevitability, the underside clearly glowing red-hot as it left the immediate area of the flames. Inside, the crumbling mass was starting to shift, slide towards her, parts of it clearly yellow, others white. She realized what was going to happen, knew she couldn’t possibly get out of the way in time.

The image of her eyes burning themselves, of the powdery quicklime heating up within her lungs, suddenly rose in her mind.
Got to close my eyes! Hold my breath!

She had no idea what she’d be able to do then, with only a minute or two before she’d have to breathe, but—

Cablelike arms whipped around her and
yanked
.

Everything sped back up. The bowl smashed down into the fire, spraying powder and burning coals everywhere. Whips gave a shivering, keening howl of pain as both struck his back.

But Sakura only felt a momentary sting across one calf as Whips’ panicked throw hurled her three meters and more from the fire, to land tumbling but unhurt in the brush.

She scrambled up, heart hammering. “Whips!
Whips!
Don’t breathe it! Keep your eyes closed!”

The three eyes snapped shut and she heard his breathing cease momentarily. The young Bemmie slid away from the fire as fast as he could move, skin still rippling and shuddering with pain and shock.

“Mom! Come quick!” she shouted into her omni.

Whips let out his breath with a tremendous
whoosh
—but showed he was still thinking, because he breathed in with great, slow care. “Burning . . . across back . . .” he said, with an edge to his voice like a man gritting his teeth.

“Hold on! I’ll sweep it off or something!”

She glanced around desperately. The scattered coals and partially decomposed quicklime were smoking, but she couldn’t worry about the fire yet.
Leaves. Try the leaves!

The area around the fire had been cleared of leaves, of course, but there were a lot scattered where she was. Grabbing two fistfuls, she held her own breath and squinted, making long, sweeping brushstrokes down the area of Whips’ hide that was coated with white dust. Much of it came off, and she dumped the leaves, grabbed more, repeated it, feeling warmth on her own hands. Sweat was mostly water. It touched her and started reacting. But there was only a light coating of it.

There were three buckets of water near the fire. As she nerved herself to test something, her mother responded. “What is it? I’m coming!”

“Accident with Whips’ quicklime experiment!” she answered, then grabbed the bucket and dumped water over her dusted hand.

For a moment it warmed, but as the water continued to pour it rinsed the quicklime away.
So it should work . . . I hope I’m right.

She grabbed the buckets and dumped the water over Whips, successive surges of water picking up the quicklime and carrying it away.

Whips had tensed, but now started to relax. “Exactly right,” he said, with a rippling sound that brought to mind her own shaking hands. “Rinse with large amounts of water to remove.” He started shaking more. “
Sky
, Sakura, I’m so stupid! I’m sorry, oh, by the Sky and Vents I’m
sorry
! How could I—”

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay! I’m not hurt, much anyway, and it’s an easy mistake.”

Running footsteps became audible and both her mother and Caroline burst through the surrounding bushes. “Are you two all right?”

“I’m just a little banged up, Mom. Whips threw me clear. He’s . . .”

“I see.” Laura Kimei dropped to her knees to study Whips’ broad back and tail area.

Caroline started towards the fires, but Sakura stopped her. “Some of that white stuff is quicklime. We don’t want to step on it or get it on us. C’mon, let’s get more water!”

Fortunately the jungle was basically wet. Even though it took a few minutes to reach Blue Hole and return, the fire hadn’t spread far and they quickly got it under control. By then, her mother had stood up. “He’ll be fine. Mostly superficial burns, and I’ve dressed the couple areas that were a bit more serious. His medical nanos are already responding.”

“What about infection, Mom?”

Her mother gave her a reassuring smile and patted her shoulder. “Saki, I’ve been tweaking everyone’s nanos to deal with the local microfauna. Remember Hitomi getting a runny nose a few weeks ago? That was actually one of the worst diseases we’ve run across here, and if we weren’t protected it could easily have turned into something lethal. Usually, your nanos alert me when something strange starts happening and I can give instructions on how to counter it before you’ll feel anything more than a little, oh, ‘off,’ so to speak. So don’t you worry; a little infection won’t bother Whips or any of us.”

“I’m
sorry
, Dr. Kimei,” Whips said. “It’s my fault.”

“What? Why?”

“I stupidly used rocks—
native
rocks—to prop up the roasting bowl. Which was roasting native rocks into a powder.”

Her mother gave a loud guffaw. “Oh, I’m sorry, Whips, I shouldn’t laugh, but . . . well, it’s also relief. When Sakura screamed for help I was afraid it was worse.”

Sakura restrained herself from arguing.
I didn’t
scream.

“But,” her mother went on, “I will agree that was stupid of you. Still, there’s no great harm done, and you’ve obviously had a lesson in thinking ahead in more detail, haven’t you?”

Whips spread his arms. “Oh yes, Dr. Kimei.”

“Then I’ll let the fact that you could have badly injured yourself or Sakura be the punishment.”

“Yes, Dr. Kimei.”

“All right then.” She bent over and gave him a hugging grip to the base of his arms. “Then let’s hear no more apologies, just remember the lesson.”

She stood and then enveloped Sakura in a tight, tight embrace. Sakura hugged her mother back. She was still a little shaky from the whole thing, but the adrenalin was fading now. “I think we’ll probably go back to camp, once we’re sure the fire’s out.”

“All right. I’ve got to get back to Melody.”

She went and stirred the ashes with the slender rod Whips had used earlier; a wisp of smoke came up, which she promptly doused. “Whips . . .”

“I’m—”

“Hey, no, Mom said we’re done with that. I was going to say, let’s just get this done. Tomorrow I’ll help you put it back up . . . with things that won’t burn away under it.”

Whips hesitated.

“Oh, come
off
it, Whips! We’ve all made mistakes. You were just telling me how important this stuff is—were you just making all that up?”

“No! No, not at all,” Whips answered. “We need it, we really do.”

“Then tomorrow we build it again.”

He hesitated, then a ripple of calmer conviction showed across his body. “Yes. All right, tomorrow we build it again.” He looked at the broken stones. “Build it
better
.”

“That’s the idea!”

Chapter 28

“This,” asserted Sakura emphatically, “is dis-
gust-
ing.”

Whips would have liked to disagree with her, given that what they were doing was so vital, but he was unable to even try. “We need leather, though. Those wrap-your-feet shoes you and Mel cobbled together—”

“I saw what you did there!” Sakura said, stirring the nauseating-looking soup with pieces of obvious brain still in them.

“What? Oh, yes, cobbled! Ha! I didn’t notice!” He hadn’t, actually, and suspected he’d never convince Sakura the pun was accidental. “Anyway, those things work okay on the mostly dry flat areas, and you can replace them pretty easily, but . . .”

“I know.” Sakura glanced over at the four flat hides of capys—
not
from the herd they’d been following—that they’d managed to collect and salt. “But they don’t protect us from a lot of things in rougher areas, and if we want to make a big expedition to the higher areas, with rivers and maybe swamps and who knows what else, we really need real shoes.”

Whips glanced down at her feet, which were now heavily callused. “Of course, you’re a lot tougher than you used to be. Still, walking unfamiliar rough territory isn’t the same as the areas we’re used to here near the shore.”

He looked at the hides, remembering just how much work went into the process—skinning the animals, salting them immediately (and how very long it had taken to accumulate the kilos of salt needed!), soaking it in a dehairing solution made from slaked lime, scraping or, as Melody had said, “scudding” the hide, and now . . .

“I can’t wait for this brain puree soup to be finished.” Sakura said. “I’d
really
rather be working on soap.”

“Your mother and father are not letting anyone else get involved where lye is concerned, at least not until they’re sure how the whole process works out,” Whips said, taking his turn stirring the solution. “And I can’t blame them. None of us are chemists—your mom is the closest we’ve got—and while I think we’ve got all the information right, and she’s pretty sure she’s figured out the saponification values based on the chemical references we dug out of the omnis . . . but who knows? I don’t need soap, much, and you guys have been doing okay with sand-scrubs and dips in the fresh water, but I know how much it would mean to you to get really clean.”

Sakura nodded. “Boy, would it ever be great to have a shower or a bath with real soap.” She looked down, wrinkling her nose. “I can’t believe I am going to soak a capy hide in brewed capy brains.”

“It’s the simplest tanning method and doesn’t use any other chemicals we need to make. Dehairing was—”

“Hairy?”

“Ouch. But yes, hairy enough.” He rippled his amusement at her. “Actually I’m glad we’ve done it for this. Now we know we can do it and have it work right, and that means, among other things, cement and concrete. Lime and lye are both really useful industrial chemicals.”

He took over stirring the mess for a bit. “I guess we shouldn’t complain. Some of the other tanning methods use other stuff that’s even nastier. I saw one that used sulfuric acid as part of the process. And we haven’t found a good source of tannin.”

“Still disgusting, though. Will this work?”

Whips gave a rippling shrug. “The brain chemistry, especially the oils and fats, seems close enough. Your mother did a thorough analysis. The capys have more than enough brain mass for the job. And the only steps after that are smoking and stretching, and we already built two hollow-tree smokers for preserving food, along with salting.”

Sakura stuck her tongue out with a nauseated expression. “Well, okay, but I sure hope the smoking and oiling afterward kills some of the smell.” She looked enviously at Whips. “Boy, you’re lucky you don’t need clothes and stuff.”

“I can’t argue that.” It was one of the things that made being a Bemmie clearly better than being a human, especially on an untamed planet like this one. His skin, as long as he kept it reasonably moist, was very tough, and his belly pad was thicker than a human boot sole, so it took something truly vicious to penetrate that.

“How long have we been here, anyway?” Sakura asked absently.

“Check your omni?”

“Duh!” She blinked absently for a moment. “Holy brain-soup. It’s getting close to a
year
. Nine and a half . . . no, ten months since we crashlanded.”

“Is it really only that long?”

“Only?”
she repeated disbelievingly.

“Only, yes. Look at everything we’ve managed to do in that time, without a single qualified engineer, chemist, or even historian to help.” He turned one of his eyes down into the boiling mix, and checked the bottom of the shell to make sure it was still holding up; sometimes they burned or cracked through without warning. “Some of what we’ve done surprises the
Sky
out of me. Oh, we’ve had our failures—”

“—like the jam that caught fire, or that first floor support that warped, or your first try at making the quicklime.”

“Please, don’t remind me of that, and I won’t remind you of your naïve attempt to make spearheads by hammering metal pieces with a rock.”

“Deal.”

He looked around. “But really, Sakura, it’s . . . kind of awesome. We weren’t ready for this. We were colonists, yes, but . . . for a world with other people, with the right equipment, with everything understood, honestly.”

She paused in her stirring, thinking, and he saw slow realization spread through her as she really thought about it. “You know . . . you’re right. We could have died. So many times. We almost broke that one time. But . . . we’re not dead. And we’re not broken. We got up, we started rebuilding, and we’ve made a home again. And we’re not stopping.”

He gave a bright-patterned smile. “We certainly are not!” Whips glanced into the pot again. “Getting close to stopping on
this,
though. But then the real fun begins.”

“Oh, ugh. Rubbing brain stew all over every one of those skins.”

“Into every crevice, every fold, every edge, because if we miss even a small piece, we’re going to end up with a part that isn’t tanned.”

She rolled her eyes, resignation clear on her features. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” She gave the kettle another stir. “But
boy
do I hope they get the soap done soon.”

Some of the solution spattered out, catching Whips. “Ouch! Watch it, Sakura.”

“Sorry!”

“Just be careful.” He couldn’t restrain a flicker of mirth. “After all, this could turn me into one of your people’s monsters.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, if you get enough on me, you’d tan me, right?”

“I . . . guess . . .” she said, now looking at him with suspicious, narrowed eyes.

“Well, then I’d go from Little Bemmie to Mr. Hide.”

“Do you want me to dump this whole thing on you?”

“An empty, empty threat,” he pointed out, “since that would mean we’d have to start this over again. And we don’t have more brains available.”

“There aren’t more
capy
brains available,” she said, looking at his midsection meaningfully.

“A point,” he conceded. He picked up the cloth broom and whisked off the flat rock surface they were going to work on one last time.

“I think that’s it,” Sakura said while he was still sweeping. “Looks smooth and it’s heated to the right temperature, according to my omni.”

“Then let’s get to it.”

“You’ll have to hold the hides down and flat.”

“I know.” Despite other superiorities, Whips knew his manipulating tentacles were not really good at the spreading and kneading motions that would be required for this step; what he could do was to be an anchor and help in stretching the skins later. Sakura would do the majority of the rubbing and spreading of the brain tanning solution, which was sort of halfway between a soup and a paste.

I sure hope this works
.

That was something close to a prayer, actually, even though he didn’t really have a religion. The tradition of Those Beyond the Sky had dwindled a lot since the real people beyond the sky made contact with his. But if there were any unseen forces out there, he really hoped they would keep helping. What Lincoln had taught Whips most clearly was how hard it was to do the things that had seemed so simple in civilization; even the much more primitive civilization of his ancestor Blushspark’s time, without the many reliable resources, processes, and skills taught and used throughout a large population.

Here, a single failure of an experiment could cost them weeks of effort, wiping out resources gained slowly over many days in a matter of seconds. The omnis helped—tracking their actions, highlighting key features, and so on—and taking their time to carefully work out the entire procedures they planned to use also helped a lot. That was, undoubtedly, why they’d had mostly successes.

But the failures . . . they really
hurt
when they happened, in a way that failure didn’t hurt on board
Outward Initiative
or back home in Europa or on Earth.

“Make sure your omni’s tracking your work.”

“Oh, yeah.” Sakura grimaced. “Make sure I get brain-paste
everywhere
.”

“Exactly,” Whips said, with another flickering grin. “You always have to know how to use your brains.”