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Blake broke the silence of wonder. “Well, then,” he said. “That’s a benefit to us. Why don’t you come with me, then, Ume, and we’ll go catch us a deer, as my wife likes to say.”
“You don’t really ‘catch’ it, do you?” Umezawa asked.
“Not any more than we ‘caught’ that bear,’ said Blake. “In fact, that’s why I’m so anxious to get out there and bring in a mule deer or an elk. Much better fare, and we can supplement the hides.”
Jason looked away from Sano’s hypnotic gaze upon Umezawa, turning to Blake, saying, “So you think we’re going to be here for quite a while.”
Blake drew a deep breath, pausing to think. “Yeah,” he said, finally, easing his breath through his nose. “Yeah, I do. So many reasons. Weather, not the least: these mountain blizzards; they’re hunting us, we know, the bad guys, I mean; wildlife seems to be riled up for some reason, maybe the powers we’re exhibiting—”
“Speaking of bad guys,” said James Thurgerson. “I think it’s a good idea for me to stand pat for a while, if you don’t mind. I’m not keen on being seen or detected by drone or man or even a radio signal. They’d put me to an end with ease if they got my zero.”
“Your zero?” Umezawa asked.
“My location.”
Blake said, “Fair enough. Do you think you can manage to collect wood and do some basic camp maintenance, washing up and such?”
“Whatever I can do to help.”
“All right, then,” Lars said, interrupting. “So I’ll take Jason with me to the airplane. Abe? You want to come? I need a mule, and maybe help from that sapling or something. Who knows?”
“Yeah, sure,” Abe said.
“Wait a second,” said Jason and Blake together. Blake continued. “Why in Hell would you want to go back?”
“We need metal,” said Lars. “Here we are not knowing anything about our present situation except that we are being hunted by technological predators, and I have a radio to intercept communication, but no antenna besides this stumpy thing that can’t see nothing.” He pointed to his radio transceiver and its six-inch antenna.
“Probably do better just trying to get visuals,” Blake said. “Why risk another trip?”
“Blake, man, we gotta go on offense,” said Lars, indignantly. “There ain’t no fortress in heaven or earth that has ever held up a siege for very long. They’ll smoke us out, starve us out, or plain-old blast us out.”
Blake was silent.
“Man, I don’t like it, neither, but we gotta at least get our ears on.”
“Dammit to Hell,” said Blake.
“Unless you know how to smelt copper or aluminum out of these rocks,” said Lars.
“No, I don’t,” said Blake. “Lars, it’s such a bad idea, but I see your point.”
“It’s an awful risk,” Lars said. “I concede that. But the reward for the risk is very great.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“I don’t understand any of this,” said Jason.
“Imagine you’ve lost all your senses,” said Lars. “And someone tells you, somehow—well, forget that you’ve lost all your senses, because I don’t see how they’d communicate with you if you couldn’t even feel hot and cold on and off.”
“Get on with it,” said Blake, rolling his eyes.
“Right, right,” said Lars. “Imagine you’ve gone blind and deaf, and someone types out in Morse code on the palm of your hands—like Helen Keller—say, have you ever seen a picture of that Alabama girl? Boy, howdy, she was something to look at, back in the day.”
“Would you please focus!”
“Oh, yeah,” said Lars, winking at Abe.
Abe suddenly received what Lars was signaling, jumping in to say, “Yeah, this reminds me of, uh…uh…episode seventeen of the third season of The Morose Alpaca, when, uh…this was the second arc, of course--Nami went off on her own to draw out the power of the Kingwizard. The Kingwizard was deeply in love with Abigail, but he’d been disfigured horribly by the mabeasts of Azrael, back in the Season One OVA. The reason they disfigured him was because he’d gotten too proud in his wizardry, reaching with a teaspoon into the pool of dark mana, throwing the spells off balance—”
“Like when you remove a winding on an inductor, and the resonant circuit starts oscillating,” Lars added.
“Yes, that’s right,” Abe said. “The regional mana pool was off-balance—I was going to say more like a laundry washing machine when the towels all gather into one place—”
“Listen, the both of you,” Blake said, sighing with exasperation.
“Now, wait a second,” said James Thurgerson, with a playful glint in his eyes. “I’m trying to follow along here. Nami went off to draw out the power off the Kingwizard? What was he trying to do?”
“Well, he was trying to kidnap Abigail. He was positive—and that was because all his advisors agreed with him—oh, and they agreed with him because, as a matter of fact, he could turn all of them into salamanders if they disagreed with him, which he never did, but he only threatened to do so. He really was a tenderhearted wizard-king, but the disfigurement had made him bitter, and unable to read romantic cues. Well, anyway,” Abe said, drawing in a deep breath, “he was positive he could talk her into falling in love with him, but Abigail was determined to make her way to another village, which—”
“All right,” said Blake, “that is quite enough. Daylight’s wasting.”
“Come on,” said Jason. “You never did explain to me what this about.”
“Imagine you’re blind and deaf,” said Lars, this time with gravity, “and you know people are trying to find you and kill you. Imagine that a friend communicates to you that you can regain your hearing.”
“Then you could hear them coming,” said Jason. “I get it now.”
“Yeah,” said Lars. “Only it is a bit like being blind and deaf, trying to go back to the airplane."
“So you’re going to collect metal there,” said Jason.
“We are,” corrected Lars. “I can make a few antennas, I hope. Depends on what we can wrench out of it. It would be the bees-knees if we can get to the radar antenna: we’d be set for sure. All that copper, all that cabling, advanced circuitry, a big battery, who knows? At the very least, we can bring back the antenna array and start listening.”
“Seems reasonable,” said Jason.
“Yes, it does,” said Blake. “But I’m still nervous about it, so get going before I change my mind.”
“Yeah, boss,” said Lars.
“So you’ll take Abe and Jason with you for protection and pack-muscle. I’ll take Umezawa with me to catch a deer. Sano and Jim can stay here to make house.”
James Thurgerson smiled. Jason yelped. “Wait a second!” He gazed at Sano. She arched an eyebrow. Jason held his own eyes steady, but he cowed a bit in attitude. “Right,” he said. “Never mind. This is a good arrangement.”
“If you please,” said Sano to Blake. “Perhaps I should come with you. Ume should stay with James to maintain. If any of you on either side of the mountain come to be injured, Ume will be central to everyone.”
“Say, that’s good thinking,” said Blake, “but can you tote a mule deer?”
“Probably not, but I should think that’s not really an issue, now is it?”
Blake furrowed his brow, thinking. “No, you’re right. If we down one, it will be a camp-wide exercise to skin it and quarter it for toting.”
“Then it’s settled,” said Sano, looking at Jason.
As it turns out, Stoic, you are to Sano nothing more than a Kingwizard yourself. It might just be better to die than watch her give herself over to Jason.
“Come on,” said Abe, disguising dejection as best he could. “Let’s go.” He bundled himself up for the cold and led the way out. The bower held the entryway open, but the others weren’t quite as ready as he was, or in such a hurry, so he turned and peered from the brightness of the snow-covered mountain into the darkness of the bower. He marveled for a moment at the thing itself. Look, it’s a home. We’re on an adventure together, and we have friends in the tree-kingdom, providing for us a structure to make a home. How about that, Stoic? How can you possibly endure the agony of a warm place to live, surrounded by friends, and those who care for you?
Sano was moving about, getting herself ready. For a moment, he caught the vision of his dream, Sano in radiant glory, shining like the sun, and in every way pure. The grace of her movements were enough to cause a deep chasm to open up within his heart.
Alas, this cannot be yours. Indeed, Stoic, you will wander the mountain and vale of this world ever grieving the loss of such a regal presence fulfilled. It will always be out of your reach, grazing your own flesh for only a moment of time to dwell in your memory as a flash of pleasure without requite. It will be whispered into your ear until the day you die.
She piled out of the bower, overstuffed, as usual, but heavenly, also as usual. Blake followed close behind, testing the atmosphere with his face, wincing into the sun. They made their way down and out of sight while Jason and Lars emerged to join Abe. They followed Sano with their eyes.
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“Shoot,” said Lars, “she’s enough to make you want to survive, ain’t she?”
The two teenagers grunted.
“Let’s go, men,” Lars said, laughing.
They wound themselves up the mountain, catching the natural path which led back to the wrecked airliner. When they rounded that last large mountain boulder guarding the way to the shelf, they looked up and stopped short. The three of them gasped at what they saw. Abe’s heart leaped into his throat.
There was the rock shelf, the unmistakable location of their arrival on the mountain, across the very small gully manned by the little sapling. The wreck of the DC-9?
The airplane was gone.
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