Chapter 13

We made it to the mouth of the valley five days later. We were all tired and sweaty and most of us just wanted to get home. It was midday and the weather was hot. Thankfully, the end of our trek was near and as we turned into the valley our spirits picked up.

Then it happened. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something in the air.

“Stop,” I cried out as my mind registered what I’d actually spotted.

As I spoke I dropped the travois I’d been pulling and grabbed my carbine. Instinctively I chambered a round and I brought the weapon up to the ready. Instantly, Clara and Gabby moved to my side, both armed with their survival weapons. The rest of our people just stood there looking confused. Then the object appeared over the nearby hilltops once again, and everyone saw what had startled me. It caused quite a stir. On seeing the large flying object, both Vedic and Gort had nocked arrows to their bows and they’d brought their weapons to half draw. I stopped them from firing at it, though, as I wanted to see what it was going to do.

What I had spotted was a drone. It was a low altitude survey drone, from the look of it. It certainly didn’t look like a military model. It wasn’t more than five hundred feet up in the air and it looked to me as if was doing about fifty miles per hour. At the moment it had swung out over the valley, and it was heading down the length of it towards our caves. I wondered what it was searching for, and then realized a moment later that it was probably searching for Clara, Gabby, and me. By the time I’d thought about it, the drone was out of sight.

“What is that thing, Jake,” Vedic asked once the drone had disappeared. “Is it dangerous?”

I looked about and saw a whole bunch of worried faces and immediately I knew I had to do something to reassure them. Lowering my carbine and letting it hang off my shoulder, I called for everyone to listen to me.

“There is nothing to be frightened of,” I told them with as much confidence as I could muster. “That thing was from my people. It is not an animal, and it is not alive. It is like the scope on my carbine and my big rifle. It allows my people to see a great distance away. It looks for things.”

By now, Vedic and Gort were conversant with my carbine and sniper rifle, and they knew what my scope did. They didn’t understand the mechanics of it, but they accepted that it was something my people had made and that it worked. The new people really didn’t understand that. I’d let a couple of them take a look through the scope. I’d used it a couple of time to spy out the land ahead of us, to make certain that there weren’t any predators lying in wait. Most thought what they saw was some kind of magic. In fact many of the new people thought I could do magic. I’d tried to dispel that belief, but it persisted. The drone appearing in flight over the valley wasn’t helping them to think otherwise. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do about that, other than to keep insisting it wasn’t magic and hoping that one day they would get it.

With the drone gone, there was nothing left to do but to pick up the travois that I’d dropped and get back on the road, so that’s what I did. It only took a moment or two, and someone to notice that I’d picked up my travois again, for the rest of my party to catch on and to do the same. While I hefted up the poles of the travois and stepped into the harness again, Clara and Gabby came and spoke to me.

“What do you think it is, Jake,” Clara inquired anxiously. “Has Quantum finally started looking for us?”

“They might have,” I told her honestly, shrugging my shoulders as I did, “or they might just be looking for something else. I don’t really know. All I know was that it was a survey drone, not a military drone. The good thing is that it’s reasonably small in size. That means it won’t be able to plant an anchor point. If it doesn’t see us, then it might just head off and look somewhere else, or ‘some when’ else.”

“We can only hope,” Gabby murmured in agreement.

By the time we were able to spot the palisade that protected our caves, I could see that we hadn’t gotten off the hook after all. The drone was flying circles above the cave’s palisade. It was definitely looking for us. It was also causing a bit of a stir. When I brought my carbine up and I took a look through my scope towards the enclosure I spotted Rugar standing on the overhang, armed with his bow and looking very frustrated. It was at that same time when he spotted me.

The whole cave came out to greet us. The women all ran over to me and the instant they arrived they all started pointing at the drone demanding to know what it was. Rugar certainly wanted to know. He’d loosed a couple of arrows at the thing, but they had missed. The drone had responded by flying a wee bit higher.

I gave my people the same explanation I had given the new people. My people got it after a moment or two of thinking about it; however, it still didn’t make them happy that it was flying over our enclosure. All of them were wondering why it was looking for Clara, Gabby, and me.

“It is because my people think that I am lost. They are trying to find me to bring me home,” I told them all, speaking the common tongue. As I did, Gabby did simultaneous translation for the new people. “What my people don’t know yet is that I am not lost and I do not want to go home. I am happy here leading you people and I want to stay.”

That eased the worries of our people considerably, but it did startle both Clara and Gabby. As we got ready to complete the last couple of hundred yards to our enclosure and home, both women approached me again.

“Were you serious, Jake?” Gabby asked forcefully, beating Clara to the punch. She had automatically switched to English so the others couldn’t understand our conversation. “You really don’t want to go home?”

“Yes and no,” I replied with a sigh. “Truthfully, I’ve been enjoying life, here. It is certainly simpler, and in some ways it is more rewarding. Still, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to go back home if I absolutely had to do it. For now, though, I figure telling them that I want to stay here and lead them, is an easier answer than to try and explain to them why I might have to leave. That could really get complicated and confusing for them.”

“All right,” Clara muttered sharply, not looking overly placated by my statement. “I can live with that explanation, for now. However, we will talk in the future. I know you do not trust Quantum or that man Ridgeway, but I for one could go for a hot shower and some real soap and shampoo. Hell, I could use some toothpaste, as we’re out of that as well. So take note my fine friend. You are not to make this decision on your own.”

I told Clara I understood and that I’d never make that decision for her. Then I leaned down and I kissed her on the lips to reassure her. Once I’d kissed Clara, I turned to Gabby and I did the same. My favourite translator just moulded her body to me and she returned the embrace.

The last two hundred yards to the enclosure went without any further incidents. Of course that didn’t last once we got there. The drone flew over us and started to act up. That caused the people to panic once again.

The first thing the drone did was to waggle its wings, as though to say ‘hi, how are you?’ The second thing it did was to fly out over the valley. I watched it go, wondering what it was up to. I soon found out as it lined itself up on the valley floor, and started to descend. In a matter of seconds it had landed out in the valley on the far side of the river. After rolling to a halt in line with where I was standing, it shut itself off. Boy, did that take me by surprise!

The drone landing on our very doorstep so unexpectedly, only to shut down a few moments later, threw my people completely off their game. Any attempt to restore order was defeated by the questions fired at me from all sides. I finally had to shout to be heard.

“Enough,” I bellowed out in frustration. “Please calm down and listen to me. I will deal with the drone. The rest of you will go to the cave. Ramie, you are to settle the new people into the cave. Vedic can help you sort out who is who and where they should sleep. Catta, you are to show Bogdi and Tonko the stables once the travois are unloaded and removed from the horses. They can secure the horses in the stable. I’ll speak to them later about what their duties will be. Once I am back from looking at the drone, I will tell the women what I want done with everything we brought back. Now go, and let me be!”

It was a bit brusque considering I hadn’t seen any of these people in roughly three weeks, but it was necessary if I was going to check out the drone without everyone leaning over my shoulder as I did it. I stood in place until most of the people had moved off to do as I’d commanded. Rugar stayed as did Gort, Clara, and Gabby.

“Okay,” I said sighing heavily as I did, “let’s go take a look and see what this is all about.”

We went to the nearest ford and then across the river to the other side of the valley. We walked in silence, no one really knowing what to say. Once we got close to the drone, I made everyone stop. I told them to stay where they were just in case the drone was dangerous. Naturally that raised questions from Rugar and Gort about how the drone could be dangerous now that it had stopped moving. Rugar actually asked if it had teeth. What could I say in reply to their questions? They had no grasp of even the concept of what a booby-trap was and I didn’t have the time to explain it to them. I just told them to stay back and to trust me, as I knew what I was talking about. Nobody was happy with that answer.

I did a visual inspection of the drone once I was about five feet away from it. I walked around it, trying to see if there was anything unusual about the drone that stood out and screamed at me, telling me to beware. There wasn’t. It was a standard survey drone. It was about the size of a large snowmobile. It looked to be electric driven, with a pusher engine system. The nose of the drone consisted of an avionics package and a ball mounted camera system. The thing had short stubby wings and a tail situated above the engine unit. It was a nice clean, compact piece of equipment.

When I did start tinkering with it, I took my time. I ran my fingers over the surface of it, looking for any buttons or releases that might expose something that was concealed. When I found nothing unusual, I had to start looking in the more obvious places. I opened the service panel on the top of the drone and then hit the diagnostic button. It took only a minute to power up and complete that task. When it was done, I read the results. I ended up scratching my head.

There was no reason for the drone to have landed. The battery in it had more than half a charge and all systems came up green at the end of the diagnostic check. It just didn’t make sense to me. It meant that someone had programmed the machine to land, once it had identified Clara, Gabby, and/or me. Shaking my head in wonder, I started poking around once again, this time opening up the drone’s cargo bay.

Most drones, both military and commercial have some sort of cargo bay built into them. Naturally the military type carried weapon packages as their payload. Commercial types could carry all sorts of things. I had heard of a pro-choice group flying condoms into Poland once using drones. I knew for a fact that this type of survey drone usually carried GPS transmitters that were dropped over areas that the drone had just surveyed so that geologists or cartographers or whoever had deployed the drone could confirm what areas had been surveyed according to their plan. This model’s cargo bay could hold up to ten kilograms, or twenty-two pounds, as long as the payload wasn’t bulky. I definitely wanted to see what was in it.

I was certainly surprised by what I found. In fact, I couldn’t believe it!

“Clara, Gabby, come here!” I shouted back to the two women standing off in the distance waiting for me. “You really need to see this.”

Clara and Gabby came as beckoned. So did Rugar and Gort. Clara looked into the cargo bay first and then Gabby did. Clara was the first to speak, her face twisted up with disbelief and utter puzzlement.

“Mon dieu, Jake,” Clara declared emphatically. “What does this mean?”

The cargo bay was filled with bars of soap, bottles of shampoo, and tubes of toothpaste. It just couldn’t get any weirder than that!

I sat at the fire outside the main cave and read over the note for the umpteenth time. It still didn’t make any sense to me.

People were settling in. Ramie had taken charge of everybody and everything and it had been all sorted out. A welcome home feast was slowly cooking in the hearth. Our roasters had been put to work as had the stew pot. It should be a great meal. Gabby had broken into our limited supply of flour and was making dumplings for the stew. It should be a nice treat. I was currently drinking a coffee. So was Clara. We had very little coffee left. The letter made as much sense to her as it did to me. Gabby was baffled by it, too. The message had completely thrown us off kilter. It was on just one page, letter sized, and typed. It was found underneath the toiletries that we’d pulled out of the drone.

It read simply, “You’ll figure it out when the time is right.”

That was it. There was no signature or anything. It left me scratching my head.

“Why were we sent those particular items?” Clara wanted to know. “I’d just mentioned them to you as we were walking into the valley. We’d already seen the drone, and we were talking about whether we wanted to stay here or go back home. How could they know what I’d just said? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Impact,” I told Clara bluntly. “Whoever sent that drone here wanted to make an impact and send us a clear message. That’s why we got the toiletries and not something else.”

“But what’s the message?” Gabby asked with a strained look on her face. She was frustrated and it showed. We all were.

“I don’t know what the message is,” I told both her and Clara. “I do know that I think that drone is important. It’s fully functional. I could punch in a grid location and some search parameters and launch it without working up a sweat. There isn’t a reason for it to be here except to deliver that message. We just need to think about it. It might take time, but as the message implies, we’ll figure it out.”

“But who sent it?” Clara demanded to know. “Was it Quantum, or your friends, or was it someone else? Why didn’t they identify themselves? Does this mean that Quantum has re-established the Gateway and they’re looking for us?”

I didn’t have any answers to those questions. I didn’t have a clue, either. Thankfully there was enough work that had to be done. Once Clara, Gabby, and I had gotten over our initial shock, we were able to put it to the back of our minds, and see to the other stuff first.

I let the women head back to the cave to help Ramie sort matters out, while Rugar, Gort, and I moved the drone. I had realized that I really couldn’t leave it standing out there where it had settled. It just wouldn’t be safe, one way or another. Together the three of us carefully rolled the drone over to the ford. Once at the ford Rugar and I lifted it up and we carried over the ford and up onto the other side. It was awkward to move and a bit heavy, but the two of us working together were able to shift it without doing any damage to either the drone or ourselves. Once on our side of the valley the three of us rolled it to the enclosure and into the cave.

The others weren’t happy about it, but I didn’t care. I just knew I couldn’t leave it outside in the elements. I knew instinctively that the drone had been sent to us deliberately by someone and, like the kit given us in the cache over in the escarpment, I knew that moving the drone and hiding it from Quantum was important. Thus it went into the cave.

Then it was time to have a chat with Rugar. By now much of the day had passed. The drone and settling back into the cave had taken up a considerable amount of time. I quickly noted that the women were gathered about the outside fire, cooking. It would definitely be time to eat very soon. Seeing that to be the case, I suggested to Rugar that we take a short walk while the women finished up. Rugar quickly agreed.

We headed out of the enclosure, leaving the gate open and I turned Rugar towards the upper ford. The horses had been turned out there so they could graze and drink to their hearts content. I could see them off in the distance, under the watchful eye of Bogdi. The youth was sitting on a rock about twenty yards from the horses. The rock was part way up a hill. It gave him a vantage point to watch from. I could see that he was armed with a thrusting spear.

Seeing the horses grazing got me thinking about some unfinished work that I hadn’t gotten to doing before we had taken off to trade with the Horse People. The fact was that I hadn’t made a single water trough or manger for the horses. I’d felled a good size tree before leaving on our trek and I’d split it into timber to do the job. I’d even planed the boards to make them smooth and left them lying atop the overhang, so that the wood would dry out some while I was gone. I’d left those boards in Uttar’s care to make certain they got turned twice a day. I’d have to take a look at them tomorrow. If they were ready I’d spend tomorrow building while the rest of the cave foraged or hunted. I would have to put in a special request to Ramie when she organized her foraging teams. I’d need pitch for the troughs to make them water tight. Hopefully she’d find some. There were plenty of pines growing about us, so logically she should be able to.

“How has it been, here?” I asked Rugar out of the blue, startling the man with the abruptness of my question. By then we had reached the ford and the horses. Obviously I’d been deep in thought the whole time we’d been walking and Rugar hadn’t expected me to speak up as I had. My question left him flustered and me with a smile on my face.

“Good,” Rugar admitted once he got a grip of himself and he’d settled himself. He answered me with a scowl on his face. It only made me smile some more.

“Good?” I repeated in reply, chuckling softly as I did. “What do you mean by good?”

“Well,” Rugar responded thoughtfully, though I noted a twinkle of mischief in his eyes as he answered me, “I mean that I’ve been getting a good night’s sleep every night, since you’ve been gone. There have been no women screaming out suddenly, and there has been no grunting and groaning to keep a person from their slumber. People sleep much better without you here showing off with your women. I think the women have missed you a lot, though. Ramie and the others have been whispering in the night and talking openly about your return. I expect it to get a lot noisier soon.”

I chuckled in response to his teasing and then asked him about how things had been, truthfully. Rugar chuckled as well and then he told me.

“Besides the peaceful night’s sleep, everything has been going well,” Rugar confirmed freely. “The foraging has been good, as has the hunting. That smoker you built works very well, though I think we need to build another one considering the amount of meat we have been bringing in. Still we have preserved much for the coming winter so no one can really complain. However there is a lot yet to do before the first snow, especially now that we have more people and the horses to look after.”

I agreed that there would be more work, but I also pointed out that we would have a lot more hands to manage the work. Rugar nodded his acknowledgement.

“What about you, Rugar?” I asked the man, gazing at him intently as I spoke in a very serious voice. “It has been two months and more since you came to live here. Beria is healing and I think if she is good and listens to Clara that she will be better before the snow falls. That would mean that you could return to the village and your people if you wanted to. Have you given it any thought? I will tell you honestly that I would prefer you to stay.”

Rugar did me the courtesy of thinking about it before replying. He didn’t take that long.

“I will stay here,” Rugar declared solemnly. “I have learned much with you in your cave, and you have trusted me. Even more, you have given me responsibility. If I returned to my village I would be just another hunter; perhaps better because of the bow, but just another hunter. The chief would sit at his fire and talk to his friends and the shaman and I would sit far from him and not be spoken to or even noticed. Here I sit at your side. It matters not that others sit there as well. When we talk you listen and when you talk, you ask all their opinion, not just a few. More importantly you have treated Tabor as a man in the presence of the men in the cave. He snares rabbits in the nearby woods and he comes with us when we hunt to learn what needs to be learned. That is important to me, so yes, I will stay.”

I thanked the man with all sincerity. Then I took Rugar over to the horses to introduce them to him.

Rugar was impressed with the horses. I led him to them and let him touch and pet them. Then I called Bogdi over. I introduced him to Rugar and vice versa. We chatted for a bit. Bogdi had learned a lot of the common dialect from Gort in our travel. Both had swapped languages during the trek so that they could communicate easily with all members of our company. It had come in handy when making camp and breaking it, and when the men went out hunting at the end of the day. We stayed there until Unna and Atta came running up calling us to supper. Then Rugar and I helped Bogdi to remove the hobbles from the horses, to lead them back to the enclosure for the night.

Supper was great that night. We all sat out under the overhang eating our meal. We talked and told stories. The tales were told in both languages. There was always someone translating what was being said. Gabby was now fluent in the Horse People dialect. Clara spoke it better than I did, but I had to admit I did pretty well so long as I only had to speak to one person at a time. Vedic and Gort were about the same. As for the Horse People, Bogdi was like me and Gort, as were Binda, Cala, and Geeta. The rest were slowly picking up the common tongue that the hilltop people spoke. It made for an interesting evening. Then dusk fell and it was time for bed.