BACK    ABOUT    REVIEWS   

Page 23.

Day after day he returned, each time growing bolder as he got to know his terrain.

In the hills above the valley, the forest was sparse and level, and sound traveled well over the mossy, leaf-strewn ground. That made it hard for him to be stealthy, but it also played against his adversaries. If a pack of rippers were to try and stalk him, he was pretty confident he’d hear them in time to react, whether that meant to stay and fight or to run. Perhaps there had been a fire up here in recent years, for the trees had thin, young trunks. Between that and the ground cover of ferns and low bushes, there was little place for him or anyone else to hide.

He trudged the mile or two of ridges carefully, holding his bow and arrows ready to shoot.

Good thing too, for one day a large ripper did rear up suddenly from nowhere, it seemed. The animal had been lying in wait in a depression, very still, until he drew near. With a roar it loped toward him. He could see the triumph and hunger in its mean little eyes. He could see mucus bubbling in its black nostrils, and he could see the furry pinkness of its tongue amid serrated inch-long teeth. He managed to unload two arrows into its neck and jump aside as it faltered on and came to a crashing end in the leaves behind him.

Close call; he stood trembling and breathing hard. He was glad he’d had the sense to come armed to the teeth and tense as his bowstring itself. The animal lay gasping its last ratcheting breaths, staring up at him with accusing eyes, and out of mercy—and so it wouldn’t summon any more of its fellow travelers—he loosed a third arrow hard into its heart. It died in mid-breath, growing limp, and he kicked dirt over it to slow the spread of its blood and innards smells in the air.

He was nearly unnerved enough to leave here and never return. This had been one of his closest calls ever, but then again he rarely ventured this far into their territory. He told himself he could not give up if there was any hope of finding what he sought.

Day after day he returned, and he managed to outflank or avoid any further ripper meal-seekers.

One day, his perseverance paid off in both the brightest and darkest of ways.

He still had only a vague idea where to look for the place Kathryn’s writings suggested was around here, and he was covering the area methodically, one part at a time, skipping nothing.

On this particular day, he sailed beyond the valley as usual, moored the boot, and proceeded back toward the valley on foot carrying his weapons ready. Today was going to be different. Instead of exploring the ridge on top, he was going to venture into the mouth of the valley.

As he made his way along the beach, he listened with the greatest caution for signs of danger. Twice, when the beach ran out, when the woods came right up to the water front, he swam out about 30 feet until he could come back up onto clean beach sand. On open sand, he could spot anything that moved.

Once again the beach dwindled and narrowed—this time because the foothills meandered right up to the sea. The hills above him were not wooded, but rather bare sandstone pitted with age. The narrow strip of sand led around a corner.

He considered swimming out, but the water near shore was full of boulders and looked uninviting.

Cautiously, he made his way along the narrow strip of sand, clinging close to the steep rock face on his left.

For a moment he did not recognize where he was.

He stared at the river flowing past, at his feet, into the sea.

What a tranquil scene!

Then he realized: He was the valley of the rippers. He had arrived where he’d planned to be. Now what? His heart pounded rapidly, and his hands were clammy with fear. The leaves around him rustled gently in the breeze, and he expected a beast to explode upon him at any instant. So far, no sign of trouble, but the stillness was more frightening than if there had been any actual commotion.

He resisted the impulse to dive into the water and swim away as quickly as possible. To his right was the ocean. In front of him rushed the swiftly flowing, powerful jade-green water covered with foam caps, about 30 feet wide in its channel. Ahead was the alluvial fan-mouth of the river, mostly dry at this time of year, a sandy plain dotted with tall brush and saltwater reeds. It was again obvious from this perspective that, in the spring, this river was several times as large with melt water.

Cautiously, he peeked around the bend of the hill, which had been torn out ages ago by rushing water. He looked up the valley and saw lush vegetation stretching upward toward the second line of hills a half mile away.

As he looked along the river bank, he spotted something in the sand—something that looked familiar. Compelled by a curiosity so intense his heart pounded, he walked along the sandy beach—at a moment’s notice, he could throw himself into the water and be carried out to see by the headlong current. He knew the rippers were afraid of rushing water and the salt water to which this led, so he hoped he was doubly safe. Still, he had visions of being torn apart on the very edge of the water before he could throw himself into it and be swept away to safety.

He stepped over and around numerous round, buried stones.

He approached the long white object with a sense of trepidation.

The letters BEACHA were raised in high relief in the granite. It took him several minutes for the realization to sink in: before him, rising from the sand, was a weathered lintel of one of Beacham University’s portals. It had probably lain facing down for eons, and had in the past few decades or centuries been rolled over by a high river current.

He could reasonably figure out now that at some time in geological time, a sea—probably an arm of the old Atlantic—had forced its way over parts of what had once been New England and New York State.

He stood, stunned, looking at the lintel, thinking that with a few more points to orient himself, he could probably even figure out where Alex’s house had once stood. His knees trembled at the thought. More than ever, he knew the cinemas playing in his head represented a real past that had existed, not some fantasy world. The next step would be to find out why. Why was he here? Why had any of this happened? Kathryn had figured out that she was a clone—that should be a vital clue. He shook his head slowly, overcome with amazement as his understanding underwent a world shift. He was where he had started, eons ago—the very place where a young scientist, one sunny afternoon had approached Alex and Maryan to ask if they would be willing to contribute blood and cell specimens for some routine research.

Alex loved the touch of her hand. She might be a champion figure skater, but her touch was soft and feminine. The sun shone warmly, and he felt the ripping sexuality of springtime as he kissed her hand. Her eyes reflected the same hunger, and she ran the fingers of her other hand through his hair. Their picnic lunch, as they sat beside Mirror Lake, remained packed and untouched, and it would soon be time for them to split up to go to their afternoon classes. Alex was on a three-letter scholarship—swimming, baseball, and track—majoring in Chemistry and minoring in Literature to get a nice spread. Maryan was on a track scholarship and was majoring in International Relations and minoring in Linguistics; she also spent several hours most days practicing figure skating. They really had to make the most of every little hour they could squeeze out together.

“Hello,” said a man’s voice.

They looked up. Alex saw a long-haired, smallish man, probably in his mid 20’s, with the look of a grad student. He wore a white shirt open at the collar, dark trousers, and his hair back in a pony tail. He had a full reddish-dark beard, and on a leash at his feet scampered a puppy.

“Oh how cute!” said Maryan.

The man waved a metallic clipboard. “Hi, I’m (name forgotten) in Biochemistry. We’re doing some routine experiments, and he wonder if you’d be willing to donate some specimens.”

“What kind of research?” Maryan asked.

“Just routine stuff,” he said. “Genetics.”

Alex was a bit puzzled. “You want specimens—for what?”

“To run some genome sequences,” the man said glibly. “It’s a statistical thing.”

“Oh,” Alex and Maryan said in unison.

“There’s a free dinner in it for you at a good restaurant.” he waved tickets.

“Oh well,” Alex and Maryan said, laughing as they looked into each other’s eyes, “in that case, sure!”

And here, a million years later, he knelt as the tradeoff for that dinner. He was grateful to be alive—He had the great spirit of Alex Kirk, after all—but wouldn’t it have been better if they’d said no? And what had happened to humankind, anyway? What had killed them off?

As he slowly rose, relieved that his memories were most certainly real, he recoiled in horror. He backed up quickly, stepping over the round stones buried in the sand.

They weren’t stones at all, but skulls. He realized that when he saw that several were upturned, and their empty eye sockets stared at him. And he recognized as well that these skulls were different from those he’d glimpsed outside his birthing cave—these were smaller, finer, narrower—as Maryan’s had been compared to Alex’s.

This was his bright discovery that day. The dark one was about to follow.

No time to stand there in shock.

He heard a rumbling sound.

A terrible scream rent the air.

He caught a glimpse of a naked woman—her body hideously deformed into round puffs of flesh, her head flattened on one side with no ear or eye or hair, her remaining eye blank with terror as she ran to the water, her hands vainly thrashing in the air... she was a poor sister of Maryan Shurey—He was sure of it—and almost himself screamed in horror and revulsion.

He remembered his own poor brother, whom he’d killed. The valley was full of skulls of his brothers and her sisters. How many perfectly beautiful copies of her had come into the world, only to be horrifically devoured like the wretch whose brief life he had just seen come to an end?

A second later, two adult rippers were upon her, tearing her apart.

He dove into the river, partly from fear, partly because he could not bear to see more. The cleansing water took him out to sea, from where he numbly swam back to his boat.

He was sure the rippers would be busy in their valley for the rest of the afternoon.