CHAPTER ONE: The Water Goes

One of these things is not like the others. Woody Blake stood subtly apart from the rest of the bucket brigade as they passed buckets up the line from the river through an open gate to the purification stations in Fort Eegan.  He noticed the physical distance, the extra space men subconsciously left around him.  A host of other social signals said, "You're not one of us." 

Ten months of working with them, doing more than his share to keep Fort Eegan from starving that first grueling winter in Bear Country, ten months of holding his quick tongue and temper in check; none of that made much difference to the men around him.  I've gone from murderer to quiet, hard-working murderer.

Woody took a bucket from the person ahead of him, and passed it back.  Early morning sun sparkled off dew on the short grass and clover the bucket brigade gradually trampled into the mud.  The river, swelled with April showers, filled it's banks, less than a foot from overflowing.

Unfortunately, Fort Eegan's rain-barrels and reservoirs were nowhere near full enough to meet the colony's needs, and the bicycle driven pumps that normally took up the slack were both down until metal-workers fabricated parts.  Stuff that costs two bucks at a hardware store, only the hardware store might as well be on another planet.  Actually the nearest hardware store was less reachable than the nearest star.  It's on a different version of the planet.  One without two-thousand pound bears standing on the next hill, wondering how we would taste. 

A herd of mammoths waded into the river not far downstream.  Small green monkeys strolled unafraid among the elephant-like beasts, climbing onto their backs and foraging for flies and vampire birds.  The mammoths' scent wafted to them, earthy, but not unpleasant.

Dave Henning pushed a wheelbarrel full of empty buckets to the front of the line.  As he passed, the tall, wild-bearded biologist nodded to Woody.  One outsider to another. 

A tethered blimp drifted overhead, cameras scanning for threats.  Woody idly watched the river as he passed another bucket to the guy behind him, then focused more sharply.  Something changed.   The waterlogged branch near the other side--it wasn't visible five minutes ago.  Now it stuck several inches above the water.  Woody mentally shrugged.  Just a branch moved by the current. 

Woody passed another bucket on, his wiry muscles feeling the effort, but not unpleasantly so.  His leg gave him an occasional twinge, the remnants of a gunshot wound that ended his attempt to regain control of the AKs, the gang he once headed.  Just delayed it, he told himself.  I don't belong here. I'm laying low for a while, then I'll steal what's left of the AKs from Sam Kittle, and get back in the game.  The thought didn't excite him.  I'm going soft here.  Getting out of the habit of watching my back.  Losing my edge.

The dayshift bats came out in force, scurrying on the ground like mice or gophers.  A hawk perched on a surveillance-camera pole surveying the riverbank with its sharp eyes, ready to swoop down on unwary bats or rodents.  Monkeys chattered at the hawk from the backs of the mammoths.

More of the branch stuck out, at least six more inches.  Woody focused on it, then on the river.  The water seemed noticeably lower.  For an absurd second he thought the bucket brigade was taking water out fast enough to lower the river level.  Yeah, as likely as bailing out an ocean with a thimble.  The water was definitely going down though.  Woody speculated idly on why.  The potential causes didn't seem threatening--a natural dam of fallen trees upriver maybe, or the river breaking through into one of its former beds. 

The water level kept going down, and eventually the colonists noticed it too.  The blimp swung to point its camera upriver.  The bucket brigade kept working another hour, as scheduled, with the water dropping as they worked.  Finally, at nine in the morning, they brought the water supply to the required level and stopped for a well-earned breakfast. 

Dave Henning joined Woody as they walked to the administration building/dining hall, a two-story cement-block building near the center of Fort Eegan, surrounded by wood-frame duplexes with solar panels on their roofs.  The duplexes clustered in groups of eight along crushed-gravel roads, with the houses facing one another in a square and the roads in the center.  Most duplexes sat on cement slabs, but one in each cluster had a basement, a refuge in case of tornadoes.

The duplexes wouldn't have looked out-of-place in a suburban neighborhood except for shutters made of thick metal bars, mostly open now.  Woody's practiced eye, honed by years of construction work before prison, spotted more subtle adaptations to Bear Country--thicker than normal walls, better insulation and passive solar features.

"So where did the water go?"

Woody glanced at Dave.  The biologist stood a foot taller than him, with shoulders and arms that would have looked intimidating on most people.  On Dave Henning the wild wisps of blond hair emerging at random from a mostly bald head overshadowed the shoulders, as did the high, intellectual forehead and wild blond beard.  The biologist grinned, looking boyish.

Woody shrugged.  "Log jam or a beaver dam."

"It would take a big beaver to dam that river.  There are bear-sized beaver further north, but they don't build dams."

"Maybe Sam Kittle and company blocked it.  That's the kind of guy he is.  You should have ended him when the exchange reversed and left you both stranded here.  You should have gotten those women out."

They strolled into the dining room and loaded their plates with eggs and pancakes.  As they sat, Dave said, "Sam Kittle is not high on our ToDo list.  The women I don't want to think about. We've been on the knife's edge the entire ten months since your buddies attacked us."

"Ex-buddies," Woody said.  "Sam Kittle stole them.  I would have beat you."

Dave laughed.  "Cocky."

"A little.  I'm why they survived here with Sam's gang after us, not to mention bears and big cats and being cut off with no warning.  Your tough times don't impress me much."

"Our tough times haven't started yet."  Dave stared down at a forkful of eggs.  "When we use up the food reserves, and the machines break down, that's when the tough times start."

"I know.  I don't think people here do though."  Woody stared out the window at the eight-foot tall wooden fence surrounding an acre of land near the administration building.  He gestured toward the fence.  "They let you in there?"

Dave's expression grew guarded.  "You know they do.  And no, I can't tell you what I do there."

The river was much lower when they finished eating, and the water continued to drop throughout the day.  Even though the rain barrels and reservoirs were full they continued to stockpile water, using every available container.  As they worked, Woody saw a stubby-winged solar powered robot surveyor head upriver. 

Dave strolled by with another wheelbarrel load of buckets and stared at the surveyor.  "They're taking this river drop seriously."

"Why not? Hard to live without water."

"Water we'll have for a few weeks.  What we'll miss faster is electricity if we get cloudy days."

"Ah.  Small-scale hydro-electric doesn't work without the hydro."  Woody gestured to twin wind-turbines towering over one corner of the Fort.  "Too bad those suckers are lemons."

"Not lemons.  Just more spare-parts hungry than anyone expected."  Dave headed on with his load of buckets.

Woody turned and spotted Bethany Mack as she meandered toward the gate.  She had grown at least six inches in the last ten months, most of it in her legs.  Her eight year-old body stood at the boundary between little girl and the glide toward young womanhood.  Her perpetual smile didn't waver as she almost looked at Woody and said, "They're coming for us, from the sky and the emptiness."

****  

As the river dwindled, so did the range of viable theories on the cause.  Sharon Mack stood at the fence, ignoring the fishy smell from the thick mud exposed over two-thirds of the river bottom.  The remaining water trickled sluggishly, with hundreds of fish wiggling, fighting to keep themselves in the remaining shallow water.

"It has to be another exchange."  A tall guy in flannel shirt and jeans put words to Sharon's thoughts.  "It's probably twenty or thirty miles upriver."

A thirty-something woman with a prominent baby bump looked relieved, but didn't say anything.  Sharon wondered what her own face showed.  A complex mixture of relief, disappointment and worry if it reflected her emotions.  Choices.  I could go back.  I could have a real life, a normal life.  And May 21^st would be just another day instead of the day she had planned for over six months.  And when the exchange reversed Leo would be here and I wouldn't.

Someone behind her said, "Great.  That'll give the feds another shot at us."

Sharon didn't glance back.  That we don't have to worry about.

Sister West strolled up.  The tiny woman with her black hair streaked with gray managed to exude both diffidence and unquestionable authority.  She turned to Sharon.  "Council of elders meeting.  We'll need your tech expertise."

Sharon was the only outsider in the council meeting.  She covertly studied the elders and wondered, not for the first time, which ones were FBI.  Sister West of course, and Leo West.  They would want a majority, so at least two others.  Sharon's guess: the guy with the expressionless face and the thick forearms--Dan something, and the only other woman on the council, a tall East Indian woman who looked like she stepped off a Bollywood set.  The others seemed less likely.  Pierce Ramos struck Sharon as vapid, though he obviously didn't share that opinion.  The last two elders didn't either.  They sat by Pierce, two forty-something men with close-cropped greying black hair, both with a hint of fat around the middle in spite of the hardships of the last ten months.

Mid-afternoon sun streaming in the windows provided the only light in the council room.  Sister West turned on a projector. "This is video from the surveyor.  Keep what you see to yourself until we figure out how to deal with it.  I've seen the video, but I want you to view it for yourselves."

The surveyor glided upriver, flying no faster than a fast jog.  Large animals below it glanced up casually as its shadow swept over them.  Smaller ones, small enough to be carried off by predator birds, scrambled for cover, with the exception of the monkeys.  They clustered and showed formidable canines, then studied the strange shape once it passed.

This section of the river was down to a trickle too, with no sign of anything out of the ordinary about the riverbed or the world on its bank other than lack of water .  The video jumped, and Sister West said, "The next four hours is more of the same, so we'll skip to roughly forty-five miles out."

Pierce Ramos shifted restlessly.  "Why don't you just tell us what you saw?"

Sister West didn't respond. 

The surveyor flew on, catching the routine dramas of life in Bear Country.  Someone said, "Should be close to Sterling now, if it is another exchange."

The video showed the surveyor reaching the exchange border, a sharp edged portion of a circle.  The riverbed cut off abruptly, as did the rolling savannah.  In their place: a landscape of purplish black low-lying vines straggling over mounds of grayish dirt.  A long, low structure of some kind lurked in the distance.  An exchange, but not with our reality.

Sharon glanced around the room seeing dawning comprehension and apprehension on the faces, then focused on the video.  She studied the perimeter of the exchanged area, but saw no sign of defenses.  No fence.  No ditch. No people of any kind.  Do we even know they are people?  That thought lingered as a rocket arced up, and the video went dark.

Sister West's voice cut through the sudden burst of crosstalk.  "That's all we have.  Take a break.  Talk among yourselves, but this goes no further, not until we make some decisions."

As Sharon got up she started toward Leo West.  The tall man gave her his patented heart-stopping smile, but turned back to a low-voiced conversation with Sister West.  We'll be married in a month, and still the secrets, the parts of his life I can't share.

She wandered out of the administration building into a perfect late April day.  As she strolled along a crushed gravel path, she spotted Woody and nodded to the wiry convict.  He picked up his pace and grinned at her, showing missing teeth.  "Big confab of the muckety-mucks, and you were there.  Anything you can tell this repentant ex-bad-guy?"

"Are you really repentant?"

Woody shrugged.  "Sometimes.  Sorry I got drunk and shot a guy.  If it hadn't been him it would have been someone else though.  Raging hormones.  Thirst for adventure.  Teenager thinking nothing could hurt me.  And then I had my third strike.  Prison and then the nursing home.  But enough about me.  What munched the river?"

"I can't tell you."

"Well what good are you, then?  I'm guessing another exchange.  Will the marines will be as nice to the Westies this time as they were last exchange?  Kind of odd.  Weird cult sets up illegally in Bear Country and the marines leave lost of useful toys for them.  Surveyors, blimps, thermal imaging cameras.  Makes me wonder what went on between Anna Morgan and Sister West."

Sharon said, "I doubt that the marines will be giving us anything this time."  She thought about a Nigerian city returned from an exchange empty and burned.  "Actually, the marines are the least of my worries."

Sharon got back to the meeting, but before she sat down one of the buzz cut duo said, "We should go to closed session."

Sister West nodded.  "Fair enough.  Stay available though.  We may need your expertise."

Sharon walked out without a word, not angry but irritated.  She spotted Bethany running over.  Her daughter slowed as she approached.  Sharon resisted an urge to hug her.  Like any other mother would hug her daughter.  But any other mother's daughter wouldn't obsessively wash the contacted spots until she bled.   Sharon clasped her hands behind her back. "It's a beautiful day."

Bethany's expression didn't change.  She turned sideways, as if she was trying to make herself invisible.  She never quite made eye contact with Sharon. "The sky is buzzing.  Curious.  Coming to take a look."

Sharon tried to make sense of that, searching for the important core of information that often lurked in Bethany's utterances. "My little Delphic Oracle.  I wish--"  Sharon stopped.  Yes, she wished for a daughter she could communicate with, and hug, one who didn't think in wild untraceable intuitive leaps.  But a mother loves her children.  As they are.

Sharon did hear buzzing in the sky to the southwest.  She turned and spotted a surveyor coming in.  Not ours.  She wasn't sure why she was certain at first, but as it got closer she could see that the lines were wrong, not just wrong but in a way that spoke of a vast gap between its creators and her.

Sharon raced to the council room.  The elders looked up, irritation written on their faces. "I'm sorry, but there is a surveyor coming in from the southwest.  It's not ours."

Bethany's voice came from behind her.  "It's here to taste our power."

That stopped the rush to the window for a second, then the elders gathered and pointed, before rushing outside.  One of the buzz cut guys said, "We have the heavy machine gun the cons salvaged.  Let's shoot it down."

Someone yelled that they should get everyone to the storm shelters.  Sister West cut through the clamor.  "No shooting unless it shoots first.  Anyone who doesn't have to be outside, to the storm shelters, but walk.  Orderly!  No panic!"

Bethany followed the flow of adults to shelter.  The surveyor circled Fort Eegan, then nosed closer.  It hovered a over a section of fence and shot a blue ray, vaporizing a circle of wire.    Sharon said, "We should be recording this."  She glanced back at Leo, who had a digital camera aimed.  "Oh."  That triggered another thought and she hustled toward her duplex, trying not to run.  As soon as she got out of the surveyor's line-of-sight she did break into a run.

An electronics workshop sprawled over one of her rooms.  She grabbed a wide-band radio receiver, a digital recorder, and a digital camera.  She aimed the video camera at the surveyor as best she could through the clutter of buildings, then turned to the radio.  She found two frequencies in use.  She muttered, "Compressed data out.  Commands in.  Commands probably coming from the satellites."

Three satellites of unknown origin circled Bear Country now, with new unwelcome visitors joining the existing one six months ago.

Sharon studied the incoming messages while monitoring the video.  The blue ray tasted the gravel of a footpath, and Sharon studied the signal.  She got a line of sight on the surveyor with a transmitter and replayed the message preceding the ray burst.  The surveyor paused in place, swung its nose toward her, and emitted a complex burst of digital signal.

"You're asking who I am and why you should do what I say," Sharon said.  "I didn't think I could hijack you.  Worth a try though."

  She fed the video into a computer program Leo had given her to translate video from a crashed surveyor like the one circling Fort Eegan.  She fiddled with the feed, but eventually got a surveyor's eye view of Fort Eegan, which she recorded.  The video was subtly creepy, not quite right for human vision.  She watched it, but reluctantly, switching her attention between the video and the command transmission.  The small number of commands told her something about the surveyor.  "It has a lot of onboard smarts.  I want one of those processors."

The surveyor climbed high above Fort Eegan, then swooped down toward the elders.  Sharon got a surveyor-eye view as it passed inches above the buzz cut duo.  They ducked and ran.  The surveyor pulled out of the dive, climbed and turned.  Sister West and Leo still stood in the gravel pathway by the administration building.  The surveyor dived down, aiming at Sister West's head.  She stood unmoving, her eyes calm, as it kept coming, then pulled up, inches from her head.

The surveyor climbed again, and headed southwest.  Sharon muttered, "I'm going to lose it!"  Her eyes flitted along the workbench until she spotted a just-repaired surveyor, the only surviving one in Fort Eegan.  She grabbed it and hustled its big but lightweight form outside.  "If you won't let us take a look at you, we'll let you look for us."

The surveyor worked as a relay, keeping the video feed from the mystery surveyor coming to her screen and video recorder.  That worked until a thunderstorm grounded the blimp and cut the control link to the surveyor.  Sharon put the surveyor into autonomous return mode, and closed the operation down.

Posted on Jan 4, 2012.

More Stuff For POD Members Only

What you see here is a truncated on-line version of a larger zine that I contribute to POD, the alternate history APA.  POD members get to look forward to more fun stuff.