Jack L. Chalker God inc 1 Labyrinth of Dreams

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place to sleep and where wasn't, and what gave the best shelter when a storm
came up; the heat and humidity seemed normal, and even crapping in the wild
became second nature, although Brandy had more trouble with part of that than
I
did. Nothing around seemed poisonous, but a few stomach upsets taught us
quickly what was ripe and what was not.
I had worn a cheap watch much of my life, but for some reason I hadn't put it
on when we set out on that expedition. It was one of my many regrets; it would
have been interesting at least to know what time it was, and what day.
"You know, I don't think anybody's comin' for us," Brandy said one afternoon.
"It's been too long."
I nodded. "Yeah, I'm kinda getting to that point myself."
"I was thinkin' that the winters get real cold up here, I bet, no matter how
hot it is now. We don't have the know-how to make stuff like clothes, even if
there was something around with fur or if we ran into a whole mess of cotton
plants.
If we're gonna live, we got to move south. Real far south."
"Yeah, I know. I just haven't wanted to think about it much. I don't even know
how far it is, but it seems like a hell of a long way. A thousand miles,
maybe.
If we walked ten miles a day, it'd take a hundred days if nothing else was
wrong, and there won't be groves of trees around dripping with ripe stuff to
eat, and there's pretty big mountains in the way, too. I don't remember the
map much, but it seemed like the only flat land was from Bend or where Bend
should be north, and that's the wrong way, babe."
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"I know, I know. But if we stay around here much longer, we're gonna be too
late to beat the snow. We took all the other risks. We risked goin' after
Whitlock when we were warned off even fired and we snuck into that plant."
"Yeah, and it got us here." Still, she had a point. Stay here, and we had a
potentially short lifespan. Move, and we either bought time or bought it
quicker. I never liked being in the back with the meter running, and that was
what staying was. We had to chance a move.
"All right," I told her, "we'll gather up what we can carry that might feed us
for a couple of days before it goes bad, and we'll strike out west, toward
that
Bend valley. Once we're there, we'll see if we starve at that point or can go
on. One day at a time."
"Yeah. One day at a time."
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We rigged up some makeshift packs using the old clothes, but we really
couldn't carry too much, and only the nuts weren't likely to quickly spoil.
Still, we had to do something, and this was better than nothing.
We walked east along the streambed, past the grove we originally found and
more or less into the wilderness. It was not easy going after a few hours;
these were mountains, not little hills, and they were pretty much unspoiled
except by weather and stream action. Some of the passages involved pretty
narrow areas above the stream, and in some cases wading in the stream itself,
trying to avoid slipping on the rocks or losing your balance. The worst part
was that it was hard to tell how far we'd come. We might have covered ten
miles, we might have covered one mile, for all we knew. By the end of the
first day, though, we were in pretty rough country.
There was only danger in going on after dusk, so we found as level and as
comfortable a spot as we could and settled in for the night. We were not fussy
anymore, that was for sure. We snuggled up together in silence.
Finally I said, "What are you thinking about?"
"Just thirikin'. Maybe thinkin' 'bout not thinkin'."
"Huh?"
"Somehow, some ways, we wound up with a whole world just to ourselves. Nobody
else. No cars, no pollution, no slums or ghettos, no wars, no violence, no
racism nothin' but what we brought into it. Just Adam and Eve, more or less. I
been findin' myself thinkin' funny the last few days."
"Huh? Funny?"
"Yeah. Right off, all I could think of was how everything was always against
us.
You know, the self-pity bit. All I wanted was back. Lately, though,' I can't
figure what I want to go back to. I stopped thinkin' 'bout that world. It
ain't real no more. It's evil. Corrupt. And it sure ain't done us no favors,
honey."
"You're getting another one of those dreams. I can tell."
"Yeah, well, what's wrong with dreams if that's all you got? We were okay back
there. Hell, honey, we were good. We did our jobs real good, and it got us
nowhere. Nobody cared. Bein' good just didn't cut it. So, here we are, with a
whole world to ourselves. I know the odds against us, so don't start lecturin'
me, but we got to think like we're gonna make it. If we don't, we sure as hell
won't. And what if we do?"
"We survive. We try to do something with the rest of our lives."
"Yeah, but what? So we have a mess of kids, right? Can't hardly avoid it if we
stay together. We got to forget that old world existed; make it a nightmare.
The rules of this whole new world are what we say it is, the way we live and
act and teach our kids. We got a big chance here if we just stop lookin' back
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and thinkin' the old stuff."
I kind of thought human nature would run its usual course regardless, but I
let her dream. It was better than thinking about the first broken leg or worse
injury. Even appendicitis would kill her not me, mine's gone and just handling
our first toothache might be too much for our level of skill.
Still, we went on until in about two or three days we reached the end of the
mountains and the start of the great, broad river valley. It was really a
sight to see, from a grassy knoll a couple of thousand feet up a mountainside.
You could even see why they named the town Bend, from the way that river
looped, but, of course, there wasn't any city. There also weren't any trails,
but we tried to figure a safe way down. The whole river basin looked rich, and
there were all sorts of trees, bushes, and other growths all over the place.
Whether anything down there was edible, though, I didn't know. Without our
mysterious
Johnny Appleseed, I didn't know if there'd be apples or other stuff in the
wild. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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