The Trek: Darwin's World, Book II (The Darwin's World Series 2) (39 page)

“There’s a tracker in the receiver group. It’s short range...only about five kilometers at most...and it’s a good thing we found you before the battery went dead. But I know the rifle’s here. Hand it over and you can go on your way.”

“You can have it. I used up the remaining bullets a couple of months ago. I probably should have just dumped it, but there was no way to tell what might happen. I had the rifle, but someone else might have had cartridges for it. If whoever found the rifle passed it on to somebody with ammo, that might have caused more problems than we needed.”

“I’m glad you kept it, and that was a smart decision on your part. Quite a lot of ammo was unaccounted for after the fight at the mine. It might have been lost or expended, of course, there’s no way to tell. But this is the only rifle that didn’t get recovered.”

“I’ll get it.”

“I’ll come with you if you don’t mind. I know you said you have no ammo, but I don’t know that, do I?”

Matt grinned. “No, you don’t. Come ahead.”

Chief followed as Matt went to his cart. “You’re in charge of this band now?”

“I am, duly elected after Robert was killed. Not that elections mean much on Darwin’s World.”

“Are you the one that named it? We’re calling it that too. It sounded better than Earth 4428.”

“You number the versions of Earth you find?”

“We do. The others either have humans already in place or the planet is dead. There were a number of late-time meteor strikes in some of the dimensions. Our version, we call it Earth Prime, was incredibly lucky to have evolved as it did. In several timelines there’s no moon; the Moon crashed into Earth and wiped out all life more complex than bacteria. Those planets are evolving, of course. Someday they may develop intelligent life. But it will take billions of years and they won’t be humans. The versions of Earth where the Moon broke up are heavier and a lot of things are different. There are almost no tides for one thing, earthquakes and volcanoes are more common than on other timelines and animals are developing along different lines. There are continents but they bear no resemblance to what’s on Earth Prime. Lots of islands too, big ones.”

“You can’t move ahead in time?”

“I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this, but no. We can cross from one dimension to another...that’s fairly easy...but going back in time is energy-intensive. It’s theoretically possible to move ahead in time, but there’s never been enough available energy to give it a real try. At least, that’s been the conclusion of the mathematicians.

“That’s why we need the mine. We mine...well, it’s a rare earth element that’s no longer available on Earth Prime. We had enough of it on Prime to begin our operation, but it will be years before we accumulate enough to routinely travel back in time. Even though we’re operating mines in hundreds of different dimensions, there’s just not much of the mineral available on any version of Earth, so we cross timelines laterally.”

“Interesting. How did the futurists bring people like me forward?”

“We’re not sure they did. It’s possible they sent a few people back to your time with some of their medical and dimension-switching equipment and just left them there. Our people think it’s a one-way trip. The futurists talked to people about suicide being the major cause of death? We think this is how the ones who went back choose to suicide. They’ll work in the past, sending people from your time across to a different dimension. The futurists who do the transplanting will die when the nukes fall. As near as we’ve been able to tell, they set up their facilities at what will be ground zero for a nuke. It could work; they send you from their past across to a different dimension, and people from their own time cross to the same dimension in
your
future and pick up people they want to integrate into their downtime society. It’s a simple lateral transfer.

“We could be wrong, of course. They may have the technology to get around the limits we face. If they charge up the transport device to send it back, then bleed off the charge, we think it might return to the time it left.

“They
could
be grabbing you and bringing you forward, but the only way we could duplicate their efforts with our current level of science is the one-way trip I described. Even then, we couldn’t totally rebuild a body and change the genetic code the way they did. We found that out by autopsying the bodies left behind after the attack on the mine.”

Matt began offloading the things stacked atop the cart. He glanced at Chief and wasn’t surprised to notice increased alertness.

“It’s right beneath that roll of deerskin. You can pick it up if you want.”

“I will, thank you.”

Chief reached beneath the roll and pulled the black rifle out. As soon as he had it in his hands, he began muttering into his collar.

Matt realized there was a tiny button microphone there, what Matt had assumed was part of the uniform’s insignia. Chief ejected the magazine and confirmed that it was empty, then pulled back on the cocking handle. Locking the action open, he peered into the chamber, then reversed the rifle and looked down the bore.

“Empty, right enough. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. We’ll be stopping in half an hour or so. Want to stay for supper?”

“I don’t mind, if you’ve got enough.”

“We’ll be having fresh buffalo, most likely. Occasionally it’s something else, but there are a lot of buffalo around and they don’t spook when one of them falls.”

“Your bows are strong enough to kill a buffalo?”

“Plenty strong enough. I killed a mammoth with mine, although I think it was a lucky hit. The first shot didn’t do more than annoy the beast.”

“Mind if I look?”

Matt removed his bow and handed it over. Chief held it with his right hand on the grip, three fingers of the left hand on the string. Grunting, he attempted to draw the bow.

“I see what you mean. How many kilos draw weight is that thing?”

“No idea. We’ve never had the ability to measure it. But this is my third bow, and every one has been stronger than the last one. Most other bows aren’t as strong, but I can handle this one. I’m happy with it.”

“Nice work. There are places in Darwin-Europe that have archery, but I think you’re the only group in Darwin-North America that has anything like this.”

Chief returned the bow and looked ruefully at the angry red mark left on his fingers.

“I suspect you’ve got some serious calluses on your fingers too.”

Matt nodded. “Some. It took a while. I thought of using a glove or archer’s ring but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. If we need a bow, we don’t have time to put on a glove or thumb-ring. Those things are for when you intend to shoot more than a dozen times. If we ever get into a war I’ll be the first to put on a glove.

“Anyway, we’re almost there. See that strip of deerskin hanging from the branch up ahead? Our supper is waiting. The scouts will already have it field-dressed and Colin will soon have the carcass butchered. By that time, his wife will have a nice bed of coals ready for the kitchen crew to start cooking. Some of the folks will have gathered fresh vegetables along the way, probably enough for a salad. We’ve got salt but no salad dressing.”

“Salt’s enough. I’ve roughed it before.”

“Been a soldier long, Chief?”

“I’m not actually a soldier, Matt. I’m a security agent. We don’t really need soldiers now, not since the Bad Times.”

“Bad Times? Was there a war?”

“There was always a war, back then. When were you harvested?”

“I lived until the early 21st Century, but my soldiering was done in the late 20th Century.”

“Well, the United Nations broke apart in the mid-21st Century. After that things deteriorated rapidly. Armies were mostly kept home, but there were at least a dozen active terrorist organizations and they attacked pretty much everyone, North America too. They started launching strikes against targets in the Mideast and South America. They caused a lot of civilian casualties, but they did manage to hit some of the villages where the Muslim terrorists were based. Supposedly the US and Canadian governments couldn’t locate the militias. The historians can’t agree. Most don’t think the two governments put much effort into countering them. They weren’t hitting locals, and they targeted people who
were
attacking North America and Europe. A lot of the financing for the groups came out of North America, but most of the attacks were launched from elsewhere.

“Anyway, the NorAm Militias had motivation and money. Some of that last came from Israel and probably a lot of the technology did too, even though the Israelis always denied it.

“Eventually someone had enough of the nonsense, and what should have been a small brushfire conflict went nuclear. Some of the bombs were relatively clean but not all of them. There are places that we still don’t go, more than two centuries on. Somewhere between half and two-thirds of humanity didn’t survive. Nukes weren’t the only things that got used. Europe and Asia got hammered, eastern North America too. The damage extended down into northeastern Mexico.”

“So which part of America did you live in before you took this assignment?”

“America? No, that place is still a howling wilderness. I live in Australia. Nobody cared enough to bomb us or hit us with germs. No one ever explained this to you?”

“No. The man who picked me up told me why he was transplanting me, but that was all. You’re not from the same time?”

“No. I suspect he’s a descendant of my time. Can’t be sure, of course, not unless that new development....”

“What new development?”

“I shouldn’t mention it, but it doesn’t matter. You can’t use the information. There may, and I emphasize may, be a way around that energy requirement I mentioned, the one that keeps us from traveling into the future. One solution to the equations implies that it can be done, though it’s not accepted by the scientific mainstream. The main proponent of the theory is considered a crackpot.

“Anyway, if we can do that, we might just go visit the people who transplanted you. They’ve got a few things we could use. Research slowed during the Bad Times and nearly stopped during the Final War, except for weaponry. And we could solve their problem, the one he told you about. All the transplants apparently got the same story, so it might be true. Anyway, our birth rate is fairly high and our people are still quite ambitious. It wouldn’t take much for us to take over that future civilization. It’s what they want anyway, right?”

“Maybe. What happens to us?”

“You have a world that we really don’t need. I suspect you’ll be left here to make of it what you will. This dimension might even be quarantined; it’s happened before. And you’ve got no place to go back to anyway.

“That manager I mentioned only put the mine here rather than on another timeline because he thought he could use cheap transplant labor. The new management is using people from my time. We ship our own food here and don’t interact with locals.”

“What about the animals? Do they bother you?”

“They don’t bother us,” Chief said. Matt glanced at the heavy rifle over Chief’s shoulder. A closer look revealed several small holes on each side of the barrel’s end.

Muzzle brakes
, he thought.
I wonder what caliber that thing is?

Matt stood aside with Chief and let Colin and Margrette butcher the carcass. This one was a young male buffalo, heavy with muscle, and with a thick layer of fat over the spine. Margrette trimmed most of the fat from the animal and laid it aside; it would be boiled down later for making soap. Some would be given to Sal for making into axle grease by adding dissolved beeswax.

“Any cuts of meat you prefer?”

“Why don’t you pick one for me?”

“Sure. I prefer the backstraps, but I try not to always insist on it. I take a turn with the other people that like it. The backstraps are big enough to feed half a dozen people so you can have a cut. Some prefer roasts anyway, and Margrette’s good at making those. A couple of people insist that the tongue is best, and there’s a school of thought that insists that nothing’s better than a T-bone steak. And as soon as the arguments die down, we’ll have a llama or a camel for supper next time and then it starts again. Personally, I think the sheep are the best eating, but we don’t bag many of those. Rabbit and squirrel are good, turkey too, but most of the time we don’t bother. They’re too small and take too much time and work when you’ve got a whole tribe of people to feed.”

“There was a woman named Margrette who worked at the mine before I got there. Her name was in the records. Is this the same one?”

“She worked there, yes. I wouldn’t ask her about it if I were you. It would be best if no one knew you had anything to do with the mine. All they know so far is that you’re from the future.”

“I can do that. Just tell people I came to recover the rifle and leave it at that. We never knew exactly what happened, except that all the people on duty were killed. The manager wasn’t there, of course. He stayed on Prime and sent someone cross-dimension to oversee the work.”

“The management recruited a bunch of people, and the ones that wouldn’t work, troublemakers mostly, they kept them around and gave them busywork so they wouldn’t cause even more trouble by raiding. Anyway, some of them began making alcohol and they got drunk. I don’t know all the particulars, but Colin forted up in the kitchen with Sal and their families. Robert brought them back and they joined us, been here ever since except for Colin’s daughter. She’s with a man named Tex. He’s starting a ranch south of here. We expect to have more horses by next spring if everything works out.”

“You have any trouble from people living south of here, across that arm of the Gulf?”

“Some. Not in the past month though.”

Chief looked speculatively at Matt. “We found where someone had chopped heads off after a battle. Would you know anything about that?”

Matt looked at him and remained silent.

“OK, good enough. It wouldn’t matter, but if you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll understand. Is this your whole tribe?”