Wish You Were Here (14 page)

‘Yo, Chief, where'd you learn to do that?'

Hat shook his head. ‘No need,' he replied. ‘It's one of those magic things. Hell, a snake could juggle with these babies and still catch them.'

‘Magic, huh?' Squab didn't sound impressed, exactly. ‘What's those curious symbols incised on the handle mean?'

‘Symbols? Hey, he's right, let's see.
Made in USA by union labor.
CAUTION
Read safety warnings in manual before use
. Well, I guess that's another little mystery cleared up. Shall we try going up the trail instead of down it this time, or did we try that already?'

‘We tried it, Chief.'

‘Nuts.' Hat lay back, tipped the brim of his hat down over his eyes and folded his hands behind his head. ‘Let's stay here, then. Perhaps if we stay here long enough, the universe'll get bored and go pick on someone its own size.'

‘Chief.'

‘What?'

‘It can't do that, Chief, on account of nobody's the same size as the universe. That's called Einstein.'

‘I stand corrected, Mr Squab. Let's just stay here anyway. '

Far away, a bird sang. An otter slipped into the water, strewing bubbles. A bear roared, either in rage or in terror.

‘Chief.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Wasn't it Einstein who directed
Battleship Potemkin
?'

‘That was Eisenstein, Snedge.'

‘I thought Eisenstein was US chief of staff in World War Two.'

‘I don't think so, Snedge. He was a Russian.'

‘Hey! You mean like a spy or something?'

‘You're thinking of Eisenhower, Snedge.'

‘Ah, right. You mean the relativity guy.'

‘That's him, Snedge. The very same.'

A plane flew overhead, very high. Just before it was due to pass directly over the lake, it changed course slightly and flew round it. They always did. Nobody, not the pilots, not flight control, ever knew why. In the distance, a longship sank.

‘Chief.'

‘Oh, cut it out, will you? I was just getting comfortable. '

‘Chief,' insisted Mr Squab, ‘there's someone coming.'

Immediately Hat was on his feet, hat on, right hand on the butt of his pistol. ‘Damnit,' he hissed, ‘we're right out in the open, too.'

‘It's them Injuns again, Chief.'

‘You mustn't call them that any more, Snedge, they don't . . . Where?'

‘Coming over the ridge, look. Hey, you remember the time we stole their . . .'

‘
Hide!
'

‘No, Chief, we stole their canoe, remember? Don't think they had any hides.'

‘I mean conceal yourself, you dummy.'

‘Sorry Chief.'

 

Linda Lachuk stopped in her tracks, turned round and looked. Nobody there. Odd; she could have sworn she was being followed.

She shrugged and carried on walking, just as the ninth consecutive arrow from Talks With Squirrels' bow hit her smack between the shoulder blades. It was archery of a kind that would have left Robin Hood weeping with jealous rage; nine hits within a half-inch circle at seventy-five yards. For the record, she'd also trodden right on the dead centre of the fragile platform of branches covering the deep pit full of sharpened stakes, put her feet in the tripwires of four noose-and-bent-sapling beartraps and strolled through a direct frontal assault by Talks' entire war party without even blinking an eye. If she'd only known what kind of footage she was missing, she'd have died of frustration.

Just as she was beginning to feel that a nice sit-down and a cup of coffee would be really helpful, she caught sight of a building, fifty yards or so away under the shadow of a stand of tall pines. She stopped, turned off the path and sauntered up to the front door. It wasn't locked.

‘Hello?' she called out. ‘Press. Anyone home?'

The place seemed deserted, but the occupants couldn't be too far away; there was a roaring fire in the grate, and the red check tablecloth was laid for a meal. There were cute little wooden bowls, with cute wooden cups and spoons. A cute cottage loaf and an old-fashioned wood-handled breadknife sat on a cute wooden platter in the middle of the table. A big copper kettle hung on a hook in front of the fire.

Ah, said Linda to herself, a Tea Shoppe. Probably out back they keep the postcards, souvenir mugs and expensive home-made fudge. She sat down on one of the cute wooden chairs - oddly enough, there was only one she could sit on; the other two were too big and too small respectively; rural inbreeding, probably - and looked round for a waitress.

A moment later, one appeared. She was tall, slim, dark and beautiful, with hair like a black waterfall. ‘Hiya,' she said. ‘What'll it be?'

‘Coffee.'

‘Sorry,' the girl said. ‘No coffee. All we got is milk.'

‘Milk, then,' Linda replied. ‘Is there anything to eat? A triple pastrami on rye with alfalfa sprouts and blue cheese relish, and . . .'

The girl shook her head. ‘There's porridge,' she said.

‘Porridge?'

‘It's mighty fine porridge,' the girl said with a smile. ‘Best in all of Iowa. With cream and honey.'

‘Porridge, then,' Linda sighed. ‘Oh, and while you're here, I don't suppose you know anything about the submarine base, do you?'

The girl chewed the end of her pencil. ‘You mean the secret nuclear submarine base in the lake? The one that's a joint venture between the CIA, the Pope and the Australians?'

Linda nodded, unable to speak. For a split second, she even forgot her resentment about there being no pastrami.

‘Sure,' the girl replied. ‘Just wait there till I fetch your order, and I'll tell you all about it.'

She swayed gracefuly away, leaving Linda looking as if she'd just been trapped in amber.
Yes!
The CIA, the Vatican
and
the Ozzies, with alfalfa sprouts, blue cheese relish
and
a fennel salad. Good menu they got here, she muttered to herself, except for the food.

Her daydream froze-framed, and splintered into fragments as she looked at the open doorway and felt the muscles of her stomach tighten into a hard knot.

In the doorway stood three bears.

 

‘All right,' said the squirrel, ‘we're here now.'

Wesley, who had been trudging along looking where he was going, stopped and surveyed.

‘We came
here
?' he demanded. ‘On
purpose
?'

The squirrel's tail quivered; body language for,
Yes, I know
. And it wasn't a prepossessing spot; all that picturesque scenery, all that awesome majesty of nature, the trees, the scree-covered hillsides, the silvery cascade of the waterfall - and here they were, at a garbage dump.

‘But not,' the squirrel pointed out, ‘just any old trash-heap. Look carefully.'

Wesley sniffed, his manner reminiscent of the food-taster to a psychotic Roman emperor who's just slapped an extra denarius on beer and ciggies. ‘Must I?' he queried. ‘Squirrel, this place smells like where I live. I don't
want
to look carefully.'

‘Look carefully.'

‘Oh, all right.' With his toe, Wesley tentatively nudged a parting into the overgrowth of nettles and briars. ‘Like I thought,' he called back over his shoulder, ‘it's nothing but a load of old -
oh my God!
'

‘Impressive, huh?'

‘But—' Wesley turned his head slowly. ‘This hillside,' he said, slowly and nervously. ‘It's not all—?'

The squirrel nodded. ‘The whole hillside, as far as the eye can see. Just one huge great pile of bones. I'm telling you, if you were a dog with a weak heart, you'd be dead meat by now.'

‘Er . . .' Wesley knelt down, uncomfortably aware of creakings and snappings underfoot. ‘Might I ask what sort of . . . ?'

‘It's all right, they're not human bones,' the squirrel replied. ‘Just look at the size of them, for a start.'

Wesley peered closer. They were, indeed,
huge
; enormous ribcages and tibiae and femurs. And skulls too, of course. As soon as he saw them, he knew what the bones were.

‘Buffalo,' he said.

‘Bison,' the squirrel corrected him. ‘Look around you, and you're looking at all that remains of roughly a billion bison. Hey, you're into making model kits; if you like, I'll get you some glue and you can piece a few of 'em back together again.'

‘Shuttup!' Wesley felt the shudders coming on, but there was nothing he could do about it. ‘Did you say . . . ?'

‘A billion's maybe overdoing it, I couldn't resist the assonance. Well over ten million, though. Must be pretty close to eleven million. Can your mind conceive of eleven million of
anything
?'

‘No,' Wesley answered without hesitation. ‘Anything over four hundred is basically just lots.' He took a deep breath and managed to slow his shivering down a little. ‘What is this place, Buffalo Bill's skip?'

‘Hell, no,' the squirrel replied. ‘Bill Cody and his type only helped sweep up the very last knockings. There used to be
lots
of bison in these parts at one time.'

‘OK.' Wesley folded his arms and looked resolutely away. ‘So what happened?'

‘Before Buffalo Bill—'Wesley glanced up into the tree; the squirrel had vanished, and the voice was coming from immediately behind him. ‘Before the red man, even, there were an awful lot of buffs around here. They had it good, too; no natural predators, plenty of suitable food and clean water, amenable climate - the living was easy if you stood six feet at the withers and weighed a ton and a half. In fact, it got so easy that the buffs found they had time for other things besides mere survival and reproduction.'

‘Huh?'

‘Music,' said the buffalo behind him. ‘Poetry. Philosophy. The arts. And, shortly after that, the sciences too. Ten thousand years ago, these babies were highly civilised. Sophisticated, enquiring minds. Sensitive souls capable of savouring the beautiful and strange. Impeccable table manners.'

‘Table manners?'

‘Never spoke with their mouths full. Digested everything in the proper order. Table manners can get really sophisticated when you've got two stomachs.'

Wesley frowned. ‘All right,' he said, ‘point taken. So what happened to them?'

‘Bit slow on the uptake today, aren't you?' replied the buffalo, pawing absently at the crust of the bonehill. ‘They wiped each other out, is what. Par for the course, when a species gets so far above itself that it's got time on its hands. Remind you of anyone?'

‘Um.'

‘Actually,' the buffalo went on, swishing its tail, ‘our lot at least had the common sense to use an ultimate weapon that didn't blow up the planet. As I recall, it was a highly selective synthetic virus that only affected the American bison. Wiped out ninety-nine per cent of the population in just under forty-eight hours.'

Wesley swallowed the nasty-tasting stuff that was creeping up inside his throat. ‘And the other one per cent?' he asked.

‘Oh, they'd made plans. Before the war started, they got the other bison to dig them nice deep bunkers, usually underneath lakes where the virus couldn't get through. Water filtered it out, you see. Then, when all the others were dead and the virus had died out along with them, up they came and got on with the job of rebuilding the breeding stock.' The buffalo sighed. ‘It was sort of arse-about-face Darwinism, if you like. Survival of the most devious. The idea was that the genetic matrix of a bunch of creatures who could cheerfully send the rest of their species to their deaths must be pretty hot stuff; so if they could wipe out the rest of the species until only they were left to breed from, pretty soon they'd have a race of genetically perfect Superbastards; you know, the sort who not only inherit the Earth but duck out of paying the inheritance tax. Can you follow that line of reasoning? It has a sort of ghastly logic, don't you think?'

Wesley nodded. ‘Where I come from,' he said, ‘we call it government policy.The needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. Sorry, you were saying.'

‘Quite,' the buffalo replied. ‘The misrepresentation of the people, and all that. In our case, though, the whole scheme blew a fuse at the last minute.'

‘Really?'

‘Really,' the buffalo confirmed. ‘What actually happened was that immediately after the war started, just before the bunker hatches were due to be sealed, the cleaners who'd been ordered to spruce the place up a bit before the superbison moved in - you know, give it a last going-over with the Hoover, air the beds and so on - changed the locks and refused to come out. The superbison all died of the plague, and as a result the dumb beasts Bill Cody's boys polished off were all descended from a bunch of cleaners and carpet-shampooers; marvellously gifted at keeping the prairies neat and tidy, not much cop when it came to outwitting the white man and his stick that spoke thunder. I suppose you could say it served them right. After all, survival of the most house-proud; it's not exactly a manifesto for a brave new world, is it?'

Wesley shrugged. ‘It was a pity, all the same,' he answered. ‘I mean, they couldn't exactly help the mess their ancestors made.'

‘Sure.' The buffalo sounded unsympathetic. ‘And if the egg you had poached for breakfast this morning had been allowed to hatch, maybe it'd have gone on to write Beethoven's symphonies. I wouldn't lose much sleep over it, though, if I were you. In the final analysis, what tastes better on toast, a symphony or a poached egg?'