IN NATURA: a science fiction novel (ARZAT SERIES Book 2) (14 page)

  Mot was quite familiar with fish, though his clan rarely ate them, preferring the meat of land animals. In his first life, it had been rumored that some of the Arzat clans that lived closer to the seas lived almost entirely on the strange creatures. He thought about trying to snatch one from the water just to test the difficulty in catching one, but he was too worried about Alex.

  Finally, he spotted Tom and Ara approaching and got up to assist them.

  “Where is Alex, Mot?” Tom asked, as he stepped into camp with Ara.

  Mot quickly helped the Pilot with his load of buffalo, hanging it on a tree branch as he had his while Ara did the same.

  “I cannot find her, Tom Pilot,” he finally said, as he stepped back from the tree.

  Tom was concerned, but he knew Alex too well to panic. She was always wandering off somewhere looking around. She had to be close by. It wasn’t until he spotted the unfinished fire pit that he began to seriously worry.

  Alex would have finished it. She definitely would have finished it,
he thought.
She might not have started the fire, but it would have been ready.
Alex rarely failed to finish something she had started, and she had had more than enough time. He could feel his heartbeat increasing.

  Ara, meanwhile, had quickly scoured the camp and had found same footprints of Alex that Mot had discovered earlier. She stepped over the smooth boulders by the water’s edge and began to examine the other side. Her mantle flared, and Mot instantly knew that there was trouble. He was over to her in a flash, looking down.

  Ara put her nose into one of the large indentations in the gravel and flicked her tongue over it just to confirm what her instincts had already told her.

  “Well?” Mot asked, afraid of the answer.

  “That,” Ara answered, pointing at a smaller indentation in the gravel, “is the footprint of Alex daughter of Simon.  And
that,
” she continued, pointing to another larger indentation and looking back at Mot, “is the footprint of an Arzat!”

CHAPTER 18

UPSIDE DOWN

As Alex began to regain consciousness and her eyes partially opened, she could see the ground rapidly passing below. Her head hurt and the blood was throbbing in it as she realized that she was traveling nearly upside down. The creature had thrown her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and was carrying her with one of his arms clasped tightly around her legs.

  Alex didn’t remember much about being struck, but she could remember the look on the Arzat’s face just before it happened. It was not friendly.
Why,
she asked herself rhetorically,
do I not listen to Tom?
Clearly, she was in big trouble—again!

  She watched the back of the Arzat’s scaly reptilian legs moving quickly over the terrain. He was in a hurry to get somewhere—that was for sure. Now that she was conscious, Alex knew she was going to be very sick in a moment—and that was for sure as well.

  I wonder if this guy telepaths,
she thought, blocking. The bile was rising in her throat and her head was pounding. She needed to do something and soon.
I’ve never puked hanging upside down. Can’t imagine it would go well. Should I try to talk to this guy?

  No, Alex. When you first find yourself in an enemy situation, reveal nothing. Remember?”
She could hear Simon, her father, speaking to her again from the grave. Tom would most certainly say the same.

  God, I hope he is back at the camp and knows I’m missing
, she thought.

  Alex had no doubt that when Tom and her Arzat friends got back to their camp and discovered she was gone, they would come looking for her, but it might take them a while to figure out what had happened.
I have already wandered far from the camp,
she thought,
and this guy is moving fast and god knows where he is taking me.

  She suddenly remembered an old cartoon where the explorers end up in a large pot of water with a bunch of angry natives stoking the fire under it.
Yes, Alex,
she said to herself.
This Arzat is definitely the enemy, at least for the time being. You must be careful to block your thoughts.

  Regardless, she needed to get down. Her head was about to explode. Alex squirmed and moved around a bit, and the Arzat immediately stopped.

* * *

When Za’at had struck the
uman
, he thought he had actually killed her at first. He managed to catch the little female just before she fell to the ground, sparing her more injury, and spent some time examining her.

  I barely even touched her,
he had thought at the time, worried at first that even his lightest blow had been too much for her. After a while, he had been able to determine that the female was still breathing, and he had felt a pulse. Relieved, he had eventually picked her up, thrown her over his shoulder, and started for the caves.

  Za’at was sure that if he was swift enough, he could still catch up to the other hunters or even beat them back to the caves with time to spare. He was going to need it because somewhere along the way, once this little female awoke, he was determined to have her show him the secret of fire before they reached home.

  He was even more relieved when he suddenly felt the female struggling. Though he was quite sure he hadn’t killed her, he wasn’t sure that he hadn’t badly injured the little smooth-skin. If so, she wasn’t going to be much use to him above and beyond a nice dinner.

  Yes, she is very much alive,
he thought with great satisfaction.

  He had been traveling for several torches of time and judged that he was probably already making up a good part of the distance separating him and the hunters, but he knew he still had a long way to go before he would catch them and even a farther distance to travel to get to the caves. He pondered continuing on, but he was ready for a drink and a short break and was curious about the female’s condition.

  Za’at found a wide-open area set in the middle of a small grove of trees and set her down on her feet. The female reeled from the blood suddenly running from her head and almost fell, but Za’at put out a quick hand and gently lowered her to the ground.

  Even I would be dizzy from being carried in such fashion,
he thought.

  Za’at wondered how he would transport the little female now that she was conscious. Obviously, putting her over his shoulder was a bad idea—unless, of course, he was to knock her out again. He briefly considered simply making her walk, but then he realized that would double or triple the time back to the caves. He recalled the painfully slow pace that she and her companions had set when the Arzats had been tracking them before the attack.

  He squatted and got eyeball to eyeball with the strange, blue-eyed smooth-skin. “Now listen, little female,” he said aloud in Arzat, “I don’t know how you escaped the first time, but do not fool yourself that there will be a second. If you try again, I will have you for dinner and save myself the trouble of carrying you home.”

  Za’at knew the
uman
couldn’t understand him, but it felt good to say it anyway. He was somehow sure that the tone of his voice alone would be enough to convey his message.

  Alex looked back at the Arzat in wonder. She had understood every word he had said! Of course, not the Arzat language that he had spoken aloud, but his telepathic meaning was just as clear in her head as if Mot or Ara had been speaking to her directly. She was relieved. They could communicate. Or, at least the Arzat could certainly communicate with her.

  Nonetheless, she continued to carefully block her thoughts for the moment as she had resolved to do. Clearly, she had no idea what this big guy was really up to, but if she could read his mind without him knowing, it might give her an advantage. Conversely, if she tipped him off, he might start blocking his own thoughts, and then she wouldn’t have a clue about
anything
that was going on.

  Of course, Alex knew her skills at mind reading were nothing compared to Ara’s or even Mot’s. She would probably be lucky to pick up on anything he was thinking other than what was at the very surface of his mind—only the thoughts that he conjured as if he were about to speak them anyway. Still, any advantage she could create with this four-hundred-pound reptilian . . .

  “Perhaps, Alex, if you are clever enough and careful enough, you might even manage to stay alive.”

  Alex rarely worried about death. This was an unfortunate trait that got her into trouble often. Not that she hadn’t been concerned a time or two, and it was certainly not as if she had a death wish. She loved being alive. It was just that her almost overwhelming curiosity often got her into very tight situations—like now!

  As she watched the Arzat, the paleontologist in Alex fully awakened and started asking all kinds of questions:
How did you get here? Are there more of you? Of course there are, Alex! If the cryo computers were right, it has been eight thousand years since the asteroid. His relatives must have crawled out from some other cave system; perhaps many cave systems.

  The Arzat was clad in the same sort of loincloth that Mot and Ara were so insistent on wearing, though she noticed that his appeared to be made of some sort of animal hide rather than dinosaur skin, as was the long scabbard he was sporting. The scabbard housed the same sort of long piece of carved wood that Mot had once described as a hunting stick.

  Shit,
she thought, still carefully blocking,
these guys are probably still right in the same technological epoch as Mot’s own clan had been sixty-five million years ago!  Clearly this big bastard knows nothing about modern technology. The earth must have been wiped clean of it when the asteroid hit.

  Though she knew it was probably suicide, a part of Alex secretly hoped he was taking her to his home.
I bet if I could just get there, I could study exactly how the Arzats actually lived in Mot and Ara’s time,
she thought, excited about the prospect.
And what was that he had said about escaping? Hadn’t he mentioned something about escaping before?

  Alex watched as the Arzat produced a skin that was slung on a strap over his shoulder. It appeared to be a canteen of sorts and looked to her very much like a Bavarian wine bag. The Arzat uncorked the end of it and carefully poured the liquid contents into the cupped palm of his free hand, sipping without spilling a drop. He poured small amounts several times and drank. Then he looked up at her and grunted. He slipped the plug back into the neck of the bag and tossed it back over his shoulder.

  “Come,” he said aloud in Arzat, holding out his arms.

  Alex wasn’t very thrilled about the idea of being slung back over the beast’s shoulder like his water skin or his scabbard.
I’ll never survive it,
she thought, suddenly panicked. But, before she knew it, the Arzat had picked her up in his arms and was carrying her as if they had just been married and were about to cross a threshold. She realized there was no point in struggling anyway. The large male could snap her into pieces. She just hoped he didn’t have any immediate plans to have her for dinner.

  The Arzat started off at a swift trot that Alex noticed was extremely smooth. It was something about the way the giant lizards moved—all leg and very little torso. It reminded her of the way she had once seen an ostrich run in Africa and the difference between riding a horse at a trot or a full gallop. Smooth. She now felt almost as if she was gliding over the rough terrain, and the ride—as opposed to being slung over the beast’s back—was quite pleasant by comparison.

  Alex now had a much better vantage point from which to observe the topography of the land. Around her, in all directions, was a vast plain of rolling hills covered in knee-high grasses dotted by occasional clusters of trees. Ahead, the dark outline of what she thought must have once been part of the Rocky Mountains rose out of the horizon, purple in the late afternoon sun. Off in the far distance, she saw something that looked like the smoke of a fire rising in the almost still air.

  It was hard to guess, but she thought they must be traveling at four or five miles an hour at the pace the Arzat was keeping. They had only stopped once that she was aware of, and it had been some time since her capture judging by the sun, which was getting very low on the horizon.

  Alex began to worry even more. If Mot and Ara didn’t get on her scent right away, they might lose it altogether, or the distance might become too great. She looked at the sky again. Night would be falling soon. Surely Tom and the Arzats had returned to the camp by now.

  She thought again about trying to communicate with the Arzat directly and once again decided to save that option for later when she really might need it. Had she known just how far he was planning on taking her, she might have had second thoughts.

  In the meantime, she focused on trying to locate landmarks in case she needed them to identify the way back, but there were few out in the open plain.

  Pay attention
,
Alex. Remember what I taught you. You need to be able to get back!

  She wondered again what the Arzat had been referring to when he had spoken about an escape. She hadn’t had the slightest opportunity to try to escape. Alex put the thought aside and refocused her attention on the topography, trying to memorize direction and various landmarks like her father had so wisely recommended. But, the afternoon was still warm, and that, coupled with the steady and even pace of the Arzat, was making her drowsy. She tried to fight it, but she was eventually lulled to sleep.