The Unscheduled Mission (6 page)

“I’m hardly the right one to argue with you,” Park admitted, “as I’ve always preferred to go my own way too. Well, I said you could come along. I understand the buggy Iris got is large enough for six and there will only be five of us. I just wanted to be sure you wouldn’t regret not having this last summer before university to spend with him.”

“No regrets,” Marisea assured him, “not even close. To tell the truth I doubt he’ll even miss me much. We’ve only been seeing each other since shortly before you left and I can tell I’m not the sort of girl he was looking for.”

“And what sort is that?” Park asked.

“Someone who wants to be a politician’s wife,” Marisea answered. “He wants a junior partner as he climbs the political ladder. He wants to be a Prime one day and his wife would have to be one of those smiling faces you see in the news all the time. Really, could you honestly see me in that sort of role?”

“Smiling?” Park teased. “I can imagine that,” he paused and then added, “with some effort.”

“Oh you,” she laughed, punching him lightly on the shoulder, “So when do we leave?”

“In the morning,” Park replied.

“Shouldn’t we be packing?” Marisea asked, quickly disentangling herself from Park. She jumped to stand on her tail just a bit too quickly and rose a foot higher into the air than she had intended, settling back slowly, courtesy of her suspensor belt.

“Iris and I are already packed and Iris is getting the buggy now,” Park replied. “She should be back soon with Sartena, in fact.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Marisea demanded.

“I did,” Park reminded her. “That’s when you insisted on coming along.”

“I’d better get busy then,” Marisea decided and hop-stepped quickly out of the room.

In spite of the short warning, it only took Marisea an hour to pack everything she wanted to take on the expedition. Years of following her father around Pangaea had taught her how to pack lightly and quickly and most of the time was spent checking projected weather forecasts for the Atlantic Mountains.

Weather forecasting, so far as Park could tell, had not become any more accurate over the intervening millions of years. It was possible, he reflected at one point, that someone had managed to come up with calculations and sufficient observation to overcome the so-called Butterfly Effect, but if they had, the Mer scientists certainly did not know what it was. In fact, the Mer meteorologists had, Park thought, an amazing blind spot concerning inland weather patterns. They watched what was happening at sea like hawks, but when he suggested to one that root sources of hurricanes and other tropical systems could be seen as they came off the coast of
Pangaea, the Mer had simply stared as though Park had started speaking in tongues.

What Marisea had looked at, therefore, was a report of the satellite-observed recent temperatures in the region they were planning to traverse and a look at the most recent satellite picture of the area. It was just enough that she decided she would need to pack for any reasonable contingency in mind from sweltering heat to a chance of snow.

Actually, she hoped it might snow while they were there. She had never actually seen snow falling because her world was a warm one without icecaps at the poles, so it was only in winter there was even a chance of that sort of weather although not in Sanatis where she had grown up. Nobody lived in
Southern Australis where she knew it did snow in the winter and she had never been in extreme northern Pangaea during the winter there, so snow was just something she had heard about and seen on mountain tops from a distance.

In the
morning
Park
and Dannet loaded several boxes filled with seismometer, weather stations and communications relays. They, in fact, filled up half the living space in the buggy with them, but while the goal of the trip was really just some time off, they were headed out into terra incognita and the data gathered would be valuable. “We’ll have more room as we go along,” Park predicted. “Once these devices have been set up we can collapse the boxes and lash them to the top of the buggy.”

“It’s not so bad,” Sartena remarked. “We just have to watch where we’re walking in here.”

“Easy for you to say,” Marisea laughed. “You can see in the dark.”

“Not quite,” Sartena laughed, “Although my antennae do enhance my senses so I do not need as much light at night as you do to find my way around.”

“Is that what they are for?” Park asked the orange-skinned woman.

“A Tzantsan’s antennae are sensory amplifiers,” Sartena replied. “They enhance all of my senses; sight, smell, touch, hearing, even taste to an extent, or so I was taught. I’ve never not had them, so it is hard to say what the difference would be. It’s not so much that they amplify light in the case of seeing, but use it in a different way.”

“I always sort of thought you looked like a Hollywood Martian with deely boppers,” Park commented, adding, “in a pretty sort of way, of course.”

“You’re the third person to tell me that,” Sartena commented. “I’m not sure if I really want to know what a Hollywood Martian or deely boppers are.”

“I’ll explain it along the way,” Iris promised. “All Park is really trying to say is that in the time we grew up in, the only people who looked like you and Dannet were fictional. Genetic alteration was still a very new science for us and practicing it on people was illegal most places. Now are we ready to go or are we sticking around for lunch?”

“We can eat in the air,” Park replied. “Arn’s called me twice this morning. I’ve managed to avoid going to the base, but I can tell he’s trying to find excuses to keep me here. Do you want to drive?”

“I’d better,” Iris laughed, “at least until I’ve had a chance to show you how. This buggy doesn’t handle like anything else I’ve encountered.”

“You may as well show us all then,” Park decided. “No telling who might have to drive in an emergency.”

“I can fly this, uh… buggy did you call it?” asked Marisea. “Dad’s been having me drive since I was eight or so.”

“Are children allowed to drive?” Park asked.

“Not hardly!” Marisea laughed. “But that never stopped Dad and when we were out in the field he felt like you do, having everyone able to handle a vehicle was always a good thing. Um, Iris, you’ll find it a lot easier if you let that lever up. Secondary stabilizers. They aren’t necessary, but they do make driving a lot easier.”

“Ah, I did wonder,” Iris admitted. “The Mer who showed me how made it sound like an emergency backup system.”

“In some ways it is,” Marisea admitted, “and some of the kids like the feel of driving without them. For one thing they also govern your speed, so if you want to race you need to switch them off, but since we’re going cross-country, the added stability is better than speed unless you like getting slammed around the cabin.”

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Iris told her as she engaged the suspensors and lifted up from the ground.

Just then Park’s torc chimed with an incoming call. “Hello?” he answered it. “No, sorry, we’re already underway, Arn. It’s not important enough to turn back, is it? No? Well why don’t you let Bains handle it. He is your deputy, isn’t he? Uh huh… Well, see you when we get back.” He touched the torc to break contact. “See? I told you all
 
he’d try to get me to stay.”

“What did Arn want, dear?” Iris asked.

“For me to stay on base until further notice,” Park laughed. “He wanted me to oversee the paving of some new streets. Doesn’t matter how important that might or might not be. It’s not my job and he knows it. That’s why he appointed Max Bains.”

“He would rather have you,” Iris commented.

“I like my jobs they way they are,” Park replied. “If I took over Arn’s civil service or whatever you want to call it, I’d have to find someone else to hand off the space and Earth exploration to, and I wouldn’t like that at all. Besides, I was never comfortable with a desk job. Just ask my secretary.”

“Who’s that?” Dannet asked.

“Me,” Marisea laughed. “And yeah, you ought to see his office when I’m not straightening it up. It’s bad enough he hardly ever goes there. Park, what are you going to do when I go off to University?”

“Same thing I do all the time,” Park laughed. “I’ll let the useless paperwork pile up so you’ll have something to do on vacation.”

“Gee thanks,” Marisea told him sourly. “I’ll have to see about finding a replacement then.”

“Don’t you dare!” Park warned her. “It took me long enough to teach you what not to touch in there.”

“I’m sure I would have learned faster if you didn’t ‘teach’ by trial and error,” Marisea laughed.

“It’s always worked for me in the past,” Park retorted.

“Yes, but now you’re in the future,” Marisea shot back.

“In the future there shouldn’t be all this paperwork,” Park pointed out.

“Somethings are eternal, dear,” Iris smiled.

“Death and taxes,” Park swore. “Death and taxes.”

Iris quickly learned that the buggy rode smoother at speed if she stayed at its maximum altitude of approximately twelve hundred feet above ground level. From up there the minor dips and rises in the land were rarely noticeable. Even when they sailed over more extreme variances in ground level, the suspensors evened out their flight so that a sudden rise or drop was not immediately followed, keeping the flight smooth and steady. By mid-afternoon they had passed the considerable foothills and were threading their way slowly into the deeper Atlantic range.

“Hard to believe all this used to be an ocean,” Park remarked.

“Really?” Dannet asked interestedly.

“Well,” Park hedged,” I suppose strictly speaking this crumpled up area was
Pennsylvania
or
New Jersey
. The ocean floor might have been completely covered and subducted back into the mantle or it might have gotten jumbled up the same way these mountains did only further in. I suppose both could have happened when what we called North America collided with
Africa. We won’t really know for certain until we’ve completed a full set of geologic surveys in these mountains, but I expect we will find a relatively thin area where the rocks of North America are separated from those of Africa by some strata that were once on the floor of the
Atlantic Ocean. Just how thin that area might be, I could hardly guess though. Could be yards or hundreds of miles, or it might not exist at all.”

“Should I be on the look-out for active volcanos, Park?” Iris asked.

“There may be a few,” Park conjectured. “But this region hasn’t been a subduction zone in a very long time. I suspect we’ll find it similar to the Himalayas as we knew them; lots of earthquakes since these mountain were caused by the collision of two continental plates and so far as I know they are still in the act of collision, but few volcanos, especially if we were to compare it to the west coast of Pangaea, which is all one long subduction zone. I’m no geologist, but my guess is if we do find a volcano it would probably be along a ragged line that marks the boundaries between the two continental plates.”

“What about the hotspot that used to be under
Yellowstone?” Iris asked. Could that have moved into these mountains by now?”

“Actually that hot spot doesn’t move,” Park told her. “The continental plate moves over it. To tell the truth, I was almost surprised it still exists these days but it’s currently up in what was once
Alaska
. I suppose we could go visit that someday too. Well, let’s see if we can spot the border between North America and
Africa.”

They did not actually get much farther that day and instead landed in a natural clearing next to a small pond where they spent the night. Marisea wanted to go swimming but Iris stopped her. “We don’t know what else might be swimming in there with you, dear. Could be more of those neo-crocs we saw when we met you and you don’t have that sonic zap gun with you this time.”

“No,” Marisea disagreed. “
Reshti
only live in rivers. I doubt they could find enough food in a small pond like this.”

“Piranha could live here though,” Iris countered.

“What’s piranha?” Marisea asked and when Iris explained the young Mer decided that maybe the quiet mountain pond did not look all that inviting after all.

They spent the next day in that area, taking samples, planting a weather station and several seismometers. Then finally returning to the pond in the late afternoon, when Marisea finally decided to take a chance and dove into the water.

“See?” she told Iris triumphantly, hop-stepping out of the pond half an hour later. “It was safe after all.”

“So it was,” Iris nodded, “but you didn’t know that for certain did you?”

“Can’t go living in fear of everything that might happen,” Marisea told her certainly, “or I’d never get out of bed.”

“No need to go jumping in without looking first either though,” Iris retorted.

“Actually I don’t think it was too great a risk,” Sartena opined. “I’ve been looking around as we collected samples and took pictures today and I noticed all the animals around here are much smaller than they are on the plains near Van Winkle. That means there probably is not as much available food for them in this region so evolution has naturally selected for
 
the smaller and more efficient size among the herbivores, since a large creature would have difficulty finding enough to eat and since the herbivores are smaller, so too would be the predators and for the same reason; smaller food supply.”

“Does that naturally follow?” Iris wondered. She was a top-notch engineer, but her biological education had stopped in her second year of high school.

“Well directly after a disaster you might still find the larger megafauna in an area with depleted resources,” Sartena explained, “but the ones who survive are going to tend to be the smaller ones. And then in each generation it will be the smaller ones who reach maturity and so small size is selected fairly quickly. It doesn’t make them a new species right away, but that happens in relatively short order too. Being able to find enough food is one of the strongest influences in evolution.”