Darwin's Quest: The Search for the Ultimate Survivor (15 page)

“Downstream or upstream?” I asked.

“Down, I guess,” Lindadawn said, and we started strolling down the path. We had our spears out, but I think we all felt pretty safe on this side of the river.

I moved alongside Borlinga. “Holy crap?” I asked her.

“What mean you?”

“You said, ‘Holy crap.’ That didn’t sound, well, very Borlinga-like.”

She looked at me from the corner of her eyes for a moment, then broke out into a laugh. “Well, you caught me fair and square.”

“Whadduyah mean?”

“What, with instantaneous communications, holos, and every other way to stay connected, do you really think that Shaktians can’t speak proper English? This isn’t the 18
^th
Century, after all.”

I stopped to stare at her for a second before hurrying to catch back up to her. “But what’s with the weird way you’ve been speaking all this time. Like all people from Shakti talk, for that matter.”

“Well, it’s kind of a joke.”

“A joke?” Lindadawn asked, the others by this time listening in to us.

“Well, it’s kind of funny to us,” she told us. “You Earthers, well, you too, Corter and Mike. You’re so careful not to mention how we speak. Like we have a handicap or something. Hell, I don’t even now what I’m saying half of the time. I never know if I’m consistent or not, if I’m using the same structures.”

Lindadawn started it, a slow laugh. It grew in volume, then the rest of us joined in, even Mike. It was pretty funny. A joke played by an entire planet. We walked along the path, laughter echoing around us.

“How have you kept this going for so long?” asked Lindadawn.

“Well, not too many people come to Shakti, and we don’t travel much. Those of us who do, well, we’ve all kept it going.”

“So one day, you all just sat down and decided to pull some cosmic prank on the rest of us?” It seemed a little far-fetched to me even if a delightful turn of events.

“No, not really. Look, you know we speak Bahasa on Shakti, right?”

“Is that Indonesian?”

“Yes, I guess you can call it that. But when Indonesia joined the ASEAN Compact, some people were not that happy with the decision. And some of them were financially powerful. So they left for Shakti and made it a closed colony. Nationalism was pretty rampant, so early on, the initial colonists spoke only Bahasa. Even when we opened back up in ’09, some of the old-timers refused to speak Standard English. After we opened, CNN came to do a story on us, and they interviewed one of our founders, a one-syllable guy named Rup. He never really learned proper Standard, so you can imagine what that sounded like. And the CNN team never went too far beyond him and some of the other founders, so when they aired the piece, the journalist mentioned our ‘quaint way of speaking.’ The rest of us, especially the younger generation born on Shakti, thought it was funny, so we started mimicking that on our local holos, and well, before we knew it, the whole thing was our private joke.”

“So this whole thing started out because of CNN? And your whole planet got behind the joke?” asked Lindadawn.

“Yes, I guess it sounds pretty silly, when you put it in that light. But we liked it. Do me a favor, though. Don’t tell Ratt and Hamlin. Give me that, at least.”

“Ah, Ratt would love it,” Alfhid exclaimed. “But OK, we’ll keep your secret.”

We were still chuckling when we came upon a stairway leading down away from the river side of the ridge. We didn’t even discuss it, but walked down to the ground level. They didn’t even bother to make the rocks look real here. The walls became straight and smooth, and the ground was a machined road. A small fence bordered the road, and on the other side were meter-and-a-half boxes. These were the barrier projectors. Painted on the ground between the boxes was a bright red warning stripe. On the other side of the barrier, we could clearly see a stark, dry landscape. We couldn’t see any signs of life, but we could have been looking at any Earth desert. We walked up and looked out at the scene.

“What do we do now?” asked Borlinga. “Do we try for it?”

Alfhid didn’t reply, but she walked closer to the unseen barrier, and before any of us could say anything, thrust her arm across it. She immediately screamed and pulled her arm back, falling to the ground as we all shouted too late for her to stop.

I knelt down beside her as she writhed in agony, grabbing her by her shoulders and dragging her back lest her legs cross that boundary as well. Her arm was turning a bright red.

Mike looked at her and shook his head. He started to say something, then stopped and just knelt as well, one hand on her leg as if that would calm her.

Within about thirty seconds or so, though, Alfhid did start to calm, but probably because the intense pain was fading. She lay on the ground while we looked on with concern. Frankly, I didn’t know what to do.

She seemed to gather herself, then looked up at us. “Well, I guess that was a completely dumbshit thing to do,” she said with a weak laugh. She lifted up her limp right arm with her left and looked at it, then shook her head ruefully.

“What were you thinking of?” asked Lindadawn.

“I can’t say I really know,” she replied. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, though.”

Borlinga knelt and took a hold of her arm, massaging it. “How does it feel?”

“Well, it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch when I stuck it in, but it doesn’t feel bad now. Just numb.”

“That makes sense. The pain input would be there to discourage any biobeast or natural from crossing over. So now you just need to wait until your nanos repair the nerve damage. But what doesn’t make sense is that with the power off, the barrier is still up.”

“I’m sure there is an independent back-up for the barrier, some self-contained unit. What if there isn’t a viable atmosphere on the other side, and there’s a hiccup in the power. We would lose all our good, breathable air in here. Bad for ratings, you know, to lose your entire cast at once. “

Mike had to chuckle at Borlinga’s phrasing. “Well, yea, you’re probably right,” he conceded. “Most of the net-sleuths contend that the Reservation is on a habitable planet, but even if that’s true, you don’t want biobeasts out there. So maybe they have an independent power source for that, or a battery system.”

I thought about that for a moment. “If it is a battery, then shouldn’t it be running out soon?”

“Good point,” Borlinga said. “Or bad point for us if there isn’t a breathable atmosphere out there.”

She turned to Alfhid. “Can you stand up?”

Alfhid nodded and got to her feet, a little wobbly perhaps, but she did it.

“Well, since the barrier is up, there’s no use for us to stick around here. We might as well get back to the others.”

We turned round and climbed back up the stairway, going slow for Alfhid. I had a momentary thought of offering to carry her, but I don’t think she would appreciate it, and I don’t think I would, either. Alfhid was a pretty big girl, and climbing the steps was taxing enough without her as an added burden. If the game was still on, maybe I would have offered. That would’ve looked good to the viewers. But gaming aside, perhaps altruism fades when real survival is at stake, even for something as minor as climbing a set of stairs. That thought bothered me, but I still didn’t make the offer.

It was easier at the top. The path led us back, and Alfhid was better able to move. We walked in silence. Even in the circumstances, I kept looking at the view. It was pretty magnificent. The Reservation was laid out in front of us. The River Beagle rushed below us, Haven Island splitting it. We could see a tiny Hamlin waiting for us. Past Haven, the lush green jungle led up to the cone-like form of Fuji-yama. It looked peaceful, but we knew hidden there were various constructs, both biobeasts and golems, and naturals which posed serious dangers. These dangers would not be fixed by a simple resurrection now.

When we got to where we had to climb down to Ratt, the question arose if Alfhid could make it. She assured us that one-handed or not, she could do it. Despite that, caution seemed appropriate, so as the biggest one there, I went down directly in front of her so I could help her if she needed it. Luckily, the climb was pretty easy. Still, she slipped once and fell into me, her butt pressed up against my face. She still had her feet, so it wasn’t hard to hold her as she tried to use her good arm to grab hold of something and pull herself back up, but her sheer
blue shorts offered very little in the way of a barrier between her butt crack and my cheek.

She pulled herself up, then looked back at me, with a smile. “If a guy gets that close to me, it’s either marriage or mortal combat. Take your pick, Outerworlder.”

“Well…” I acted like I was considering it. “…the view is pretty good from here. So if you have a good job, and you promise to take care of me, I think I’ll let you marry me.”

She laughed. Leaning into the cliff, she lifted her bad arm with her good one to her lips, kissed it, then held it out so she could blow me the kiss.

Borlinga was above us. She looked down and said, “If you two lovebirds would stop flirting, maybe we can get down?”

“That’s OK, Corter, dear. She just wanted you to herself.”

We could hear a “hurumph” from above, but we started down again.

Ratt was watching us as we got to the bottom. When she noticed Alfhid holding her arm, she stood excitedly, still holding the rope, asking what happened.

Borlinga moved over to take the rope from her. “Hurt her arm, Alfhid did.”

We laughed at Borlinga’s change in phrasing. Ratt glared at us.

“That’s hardly a laughing matter!” she scolded us, rushing to Alfhid’s side. And that caused another outbreak of laughter.

“And marry Corter she must!” she added, not content to leave it at that. All of us laughed even harder, loud enough over the roar of the river for Hamlin to hear us.

“What’s going on down there? Can we get out?” he shouted from his position.

I waved up at him. “We’re coming back!”

Ratt was holding Alfhid’s arm. “You’re marrying Corter? I don’t understand.”

Alfhid leaned over and kissed Ratt on the forehead. “Just a joke, sweetie. And my arm’s OK. It doesn’t hurt anymore, and the nanos should have it fixed in no time.”

“Well, OK.” She didn’t look convinced. “I still don’t think that’s a laughing matter, though.”

Now we had to figure out how to get all of us back. We didn’t trust Alfhid to be able to hold on one-armed, but Mike hadn’t shown the ability to hold on with two arms. We decided to send over Ratt and Borlinga first with Alfhid and me holding the rope, and they made it without a problem. Then I took off my jeans and made a belt around the rope, then around Mike. Lindadawn went first, and then Mike immediately thereafter. With my jeans holding him on the rope, and with Lindadawn’s help, he was able to make the crossing. I made a mental note that if we had to do anything like that again, we had to make safety belts out of whatever vines we had left.

With just Alfhid and me left, I made sure the rope was securely tied around her chest and under her arms. Before, the two of us had been standing on the bank and holding onto the rope. We had to change that this time. Alfhid had to go last as we needed to tie the rope on her. And she couldn’t stand up and hold on to support me. I made a loop with the rope, making sure it was secure around her. She eased her way into the water, back to the far side, the rope looped around the protruding rock, as Borlinga had done on the initial crossing.

She set herself, feet braced against the rock, pulling the rope tight.

“OK, soon-to-be-husband, be gentle with me.”

I stepped into the water, and holding onto the rope, managed to walk at least five of six meters before I began to lose my footing. I let the current lift my feet as I made my way, hand-over-hand across. The water was splashing into my eyes and up my nose, but I made steady progress.