Dwayne lowered the binoculars and turned back to Jimbo, working at his arrows.
“Seriously?”
“Sure,” Jimbo said, inspecting the fletching on a second arrow. “Clean one of them up, and they might look pretty good after a month or two.”
“Even with the sharpened teeth?”
“That might be a problem, bro.”
Dwayne snorted and turned back to glass the village. The lime-washed chief wasn’t under the outcropping. He swept left and right. No chief. Where did he go? Did he get into the cave while Dwayne was turned away?
No, there he was, speaking and gesturing to the males busy rendering the bodies. A few stopped their work to listen. Two of the larger males came over and shoved the smaller man away; not buying his rap. These guys were war chiefs or hunting chiefs. Alpha males. Taller and more muscled than the others. Dwayne named them Fred and Barney. They gestured and barked at the others who turned away to continue their grisly labors. The little white-washed man kicked sand at them and stormed off waving his hands above his head. He went back and sat cross-legged in front of the cave in a clear sulk.
So, Whitey wasn’t a chief. The white-painted skinny had to be a shaman or priest, and one without much power to command. Maybe the red-painted bastard Jimbo nailed with a headshot two nights ago was the chief, and now the skinnies were leaderless except for Fred and Barney. Or maybe the old lady in the cave called the shots. Dwayne was still going to keep an eye on the lime-washed guy.
“You know,” Jimbo said as he finished fletching the last arrow. “There is one eligible female here I wouldn’t mind hooking up with.”
Dwayne turned back to regard him with narrowed eyes.
“But I have a strong feeling she’s spoken for.” Jimbo looked up with a disarming smile.
That night, they ate rabbit that Jimbo snared for dinner. Big jackrabbits. Everything was bigger here except the people. Throughout the afternoon, they saw evidence of that. Butterflies the size of birds skimmed flowers growing in a clearing. Moose easily ten feet at the shoulder stood munching cattails in the shallows along the shore.
On the hike around the lake to their current position, they crossed a causeway between the sea and a small lake. It wasn’t a natural formation but a dam made of mud packed between logs. Moving under the still water along the causeway, they could see dark shapes rippling the surface; beavers the size of black bears. Jimbo wondered what size bears were in this country and Dwayne said he’d rather not find out.
Jimbo cooked the pair of rabbits in a pit fire.
He coated them with mud he scooped from around a spring they were using for water and they baked inside the mud, buried in the embers of the pit, so there was no open flame and little smoke. He packed the rabbits with wild onion and asparagus. Dessert was salmonberries.
They wouldn’t starve.
There was no big bonfire in the village that night. That must have been a ceremonial thing for feasting on Dr. Kemp. Instead, there were dozens of smaller cook fires w strips of their neighbors hung from spits over the flames. That left the area in front of the cave in shifting shadow. Dwayne couldn’t be certain of who was going in or out of there in the dark. NOD gear would be a godsend right now. And if Jimbo was right. Those eyes on the skinnies meant they had an advantage in the dark. The bigger the eyes, the more light they let in.
“I don’t want to wait anymore,” Dwayne said. “I want to go down there tonight and get her out.”
“Chaz could be back tomorrow,” Jimbo said. He was making more arrows for his quiver. He had twenty or more now.
“Or next week. Or never. And the situation is not improving down there. That witch doctor or shaman or whatever wants in that cave and the old lady has to sleep sometime.”
“Any idea what he wants?” Jimbo said. “Maybe he’s horny.”
“I don’t think so,” Dwayne said. “If that were true, the rest would be trying to get in, too. I think the little witch doctor lost face or mojo. Eating Kemp might have been a power thing, some kind of blood magic. When we showed up, it all went wrong. The witch doctor looks weak now.”
“You’ve been thinking about this,” Jimbo said.
“All fucking day. It makes sense, right?”
“Well, we tried rushing them, and that went south. Maybe a quarterback sneak. When do we leave?”
Dwayne looked into the sky. There was a sliver of moon showing and a bank of heavy clouds moving in over the sea.
“When the weather moves over the moon we start down,” he said.
“Maybe while we’re down there, we can pick up a date for me.” Jimbo grinned.
12
Standard Time
Dr. Morris Tauber sat at the kitchen table in the living quarters and stared without really seeing anything at the little TV set on the table. The sound was turned down to a whisper. It was a rerun of some kind of cop show. From the eighties, if the haircuts were any indication.
Parviz entered from the outside. He wore a parka and sweater. It got close to freezing here at night, and he’d been checking connections around the tower.
“We are good for going in the morning,” Parviz said. “Structure is sound, and Quebat checked levels on the reactor. It will even be especially dry tomorrow. Most optimum of conditions, are they not?”
Tauber made a noise rather than a spoken answer.
“You are sick, Doctor?” Parviz peeled off the parka. His sweater was garish, decorated with reindeer and snowflakes. It usually made Tauber laugh, the juxtaposition of cultures. It was hard to picture the Iranian at a ski lodge.
“Do you think the physical laws of the universe are immutable?” Tauber asked and looked up to meet Parviz’s eyes.
“They are the laws,” Parviz answered. “But only as we understand
