Chapter 26

Clara was indeed pissed off with me when I showed up at the enclosure with the injured man, but then she got over it. In truth, Clara was just happy I’d come back alive. Gabby was happy as well. I ended up giving them both hugs and comfort, before Clara got down to work treating Carlos, the injured man.

I’d driven one of the ATVs back to the enclosure, bringing Carlos and Cora with me. They were brother and sister and Cora had no intentions of letting her brother out of her sight. She told me this in an emphatic manner the second I pulled the panties out of her mouth. She was definitely pissed at me; but she was smart enough to keep her anger in check, when she learned that I intended to pack her brother off to see a doctor.

Before departing, I’d sat and interrogated the woman at the campsite first. Yes she was African-American, although her father had been white. Her name was Katherine Winston and yes she worked for Quantum. She and her companions were part of a mineralogical survey team. Her particular speciality was gemstones. From what Katherine told me, her group wasn’t supposed to be here, wherever here was. They were supposed to be in South Africa locating diamonds and gold for Quantum and their CEO, Dwight Winslow. I confirmed everything that Katherine told me by speaking to my other two prisoners right after my chat with her.

The trip back to the enclosure had been a bit of a pain, in particular for Carlos. The six wheeled ATVs all had a small cargo deck behind the driver’s seat, but the emphasis in that declaration is on ‘small.’ It was big enough for Carlos to sit with his legs stretched out, but he certainly couldn’t lie down. I’d made him as comfortable as I could, putting sleeping bags on the back deck of the vehicle I drove, but that was all I could do for him. I strapped him in so he wouldn’t fall out, and I gave his sister the job of watching over him. The only good thing on the trip back was the fact that Carlos was unconscious for almost the whole trip.

I’d left Rolf and Katherine behind. I still didn’t trust them, and until I did I would treat them like they were a threat to my people and me. I left them both trussed up and in the loving care of Sygor and Tonko. It did mean more work for me though. It took four trips and two complete days to move all four ATVs back to our home along with everything that the group had with them. Comparatively speaking they actually had less than Clara, Gabby, and I’d had, once we’d gotten to the cache. The only things that they had that we hadn’t, were the four vehicles, their solar chargers, and some testing equipment that was mounted on two of the vehicles that they needed for their work. They actually had very little in camp equipment except for a couple of pots and pans, their own dishes and utensils, and a kettle. They also had nothing in the way of food, except for their ration packs, and those were almost gone. Hell, they didn’t even have much in the way of ammunition for their weapons.

“So how the hell did you get here?” I asked bluntly.

I was sitting in my chair in front of the stone and mortar wall that surrounded our central hearth. It was evening and a small fire was burning in it, even though it was late summer and the evening was reasonably warm. It was more out of custom than anything else. Beside me sitting in their chairs were Clara and Gabby. Both were cradling our children. Rugar was there as well sitting by Clara and Gogra was in attendance as well, the older man seated beside Gabby. While Rugar understood some English, Gogra understood almost none. For this conversation, Gabby was doing the job of translating. Across from us sat three of the four people I’d taken prisoner. While not restrained in any manner, all three acted and behaved in a compliant manner. They’d seen what I had here in the longhouse, and they’d eaten well since I’d dropped them off into the care of my people. I could tell that all three of them were suitably impressed.

“We don’t know,” Rolf Anderson declared, speaking for the other three. He was the oldest of the trio, having told me that he was forty years old. He was their team leader. Officially he was a geologist with a background in mineralogy. In his eyes he was a prospector. That was why Quantum had hired him. “We were supposed to end up in South Africa.”

I’d already gone over this with all three of the people sitting across from me when I interrogated them back at their camp. We were just going through the motions once again for those who’d not heard the story before, and so that I had one more chance to decide whether I was going to trust these people or not.

“As we told you before,” Cora Delgado interjected, her voice still edged with a hint of resentment whenever she spoke directly to me, “Quantum hired us to find minerals for them. As Rolf just stated we were supposed to be dropped into South Africa to survey known locations such as the Kimberly Mines region. Quantum was looking for diamonds and gold. Somehow they missed our drop site by a continent or more. We’re still not sure where we are.”

“We’re not too sure either,” I indicated slowly in reply, glancing at Clara and then at Gabby before turning back to continue speaking to the woman and her companions, “though when we left Quantum for here we’d been told we were being dropped into Central Southern Europe, in the region of Hungary. At the moment however, based on what I’ve seen, I’d actually place us a little further southwest than Hungary. While my guess is probably as good as yours, I think we’re somewhere near Croatia or Bosnia. Of course, I’ve got no way of proving it. Still any of those places are quite a distance away from South Africa.”

“Yeah, you can say that again,” Rolf Anderson huffed in response, his shoulders bowed as he said the words. “Boy, are we fucked.”

It was a bit of an understatement. The group had no real supplies and no real training in surviving in the rough. Since landing in the valley downhill from us, they’d basically sat on their asses hoping against hope to be rescued. That rescue never showed up. On top of the fact that they’d ended up in the wrong location, one of their number had gotten himself injured from the very start. Carlos Delgado had decided to do a re-enactment of ‘running with the bulls’ on their first day in the other valley. He’d actually meant well at the time. He’d gone hunting for something to help extend their meagre food supply, thinking it would be the best thing to do before their rations actually ran out. He’d found a herd of aurochs grazing at the far end of the valley they were in and he’d picked them to be his target of choice. The aurochs had stampeded and while Carlos had jumped out of the way, saving himself from getting trampled to death, he had busted a leg doing so and he’d hit his head as he went down, suffered a concussion.

That incident had been pivotal for the group. After Carlos had been injured, everything had just fallen to pieces. No one took charge, including their official leader. Rolf had been the one to shoot the doe, but beyond taking the hind quarter to roast over their open fire, he hadn’t been able to think of anything else to do.

“What do you intend to do with us?” Cora asked hesitantly when nothing else was said for a moment or two. “Are you still intending to kill us?”

I didn’t reply right away. Clara, Gabby, and I had already spoken about the four from our time and our world. My interrogation of them had clarified a few details that had been bugging me from the start. We were in a parallel dimension to our own historical timeline, and not simply in our past. Project Gateway had ripped a hole through realities and it had opened a doorway to this world. Quantum Industries intended to use the Gateway to plunder this world of all the resources that they could find. It was as simple as that. Quantum was a big, greedy corporation that saw profit in using the Gateway and plundering what lay beyond it. They cared nothing for the people who lived here. That greed was why the mineralogical survey team had been sent here. They had been hired to see if the resources Quantum knew about in our world, existed in this one. If they did, Quantum was going to send in a workforce and they were going to strip the planet bare.

The funny thing in my conversation with these four, was the timeline. According to them, my team ... or to be correct, Jenkins’ team, had left Quantum’s main facility only a week before they’d been prepped to depart. Even more interesting was the fact that at the time their group was being prepped, Quantum was still debating whether to send Blackmore and company after us. When Rolf’s group did step through the gateway, Blackmore and his people hadn’t even suited up. It was a paradox that boggled the imagination.

Regardless of the reason, they were here now. In spite of the fact that they were employees of Quantum, it was clear to the three of us that these people were basically harmless. I could set them free if I wanted to and tell them to get lost, or, and to me it was a better idea, I could put them to work for me. They did have extensive knowledge about minerals, including working with them. Cora had admitted that her brother was a bit of a blacksmith, although totally self trained. Their presence in our community could be a plus. I just needed to trust them not to knife me in the back!

“I’m not sure what we intend to do with you, yet,” I told them, taking my time as I did, and looking them each in the eyes as I spoke. “I could kill you, like I told you I would if I thought you were lying to me; or I could set you free and you people can go off and try to make a go of it on your own. Finally, I could let you live here. For the last option, I would really have to trust you not to piss me off!”

“Please don’t send us out there on our own,” Rolf blurted out in response to my statement. “If you do then you might as well just kill us. We can’t survive out there on our own.”

“I’ll do anything to stay,” Katherine interjected when I didn’t respond. “I mean it. I don’t want to go out there again, on my own. I’d rather die.”

At first Cora didn’t say a word. She did look at me and then Clara and Gabby, focusing her gaze upon the three of us. She didn’t even glance at Rugar and Gogra. It was clear that they weren’t important enough, at least to the other woman. When Clara, Gabby, and I didn’t reply, Cora just let out a deep sigh of resignation. As she did she lowered her head in submission.

“For my brother,” Cora muttered softly, not looking at us, “I’ll do anything you ask.”

“We’ll think about it,” I told them bluntly, “and then we’ll let you know.”

I was still concerned after meeting with Rolf and his group. For now, we’d let them pitch their tents between the front gate of the enclosure and the longhouse. I’d secured their weapons, and I’d put their ammunition away in another location separate from the weapons themselves. I’d even taken the knives that they’d been wearing on their belts. As for their vehicles, with the help of Gabby, I’d disabled them so that they couldn’t simply be taken without someone reconnecting a cable or two and a wire. I hoped it would be enough. I also told everyone in the camp to watch the group at all times and to tell me, or one of my team leaders, if they saw any of the group sneaking about. After they’d left following the meeting by the hearth, I’d talked to my leaders and a few other members of the community who were concerned as well. Naturally, all the ex-Plains People sat in on that meeting.

“Did they come to kill Gabby?” Ramie asked with worry in her voice. She asked her question using the common tongue.

“Not as far as I know,” I replied cautiously. “I’ve questioned all three of them and from what I can tell they are only like the craftsmen from the Horse People, and like Uttar and Vedic. They find special stones in the earth, like the flint and the coal we already use. The difference is that they find stones that can be made into the pots that we cook with and the knives that I use to cut things with. If I let them stay here, they could be of a lot of use to our tribe.”

“I think we should just kill them,” Ruba declared adamantly from where she sat amongst the other women of the ex-Plains People. Of them, Ruba was the only one of them who still didn’t trust me completely and she was the only one amongst the women who hadn’t borne me a child yet, though that was primarily because she was also the only woman from the group that hadn’t spent the night in my furs yet. It was a matter of pride for her. As for me, I didn’t really care. I already had too many women joining me in my bed!

Ruba’s words took the others by surprise even though they all knew how she felt about the people that had wiped out her village. It was however hard for them to get beyond age old customs and traditions. It left them uncomfortable talking about killing someone they considered a guest and thus under our protection.

“I will not kill someone I have granted hospitality to,” I told Ruba sternly, although my response was meant for everyone in the room. I hoped it would reassure them that I would respect their traditions. “I have given them food and drink, and I’ve granted them shelter behind our walls. On top of that Clara is tending to the man that I brought here injured. If I decide I cannot trust them, I will ask them to leave. However, I will not be giving them weapons to take with them. If they survive then they will survive by the grace of the Earth Mother and all the spirits of the land. If they die, it will not be by my hand nor by the hand of anyone in this tribe.”

“That is good to know,” Gogra acknowledged loudly once I had made my little speech. As he spoke others like Rugar, Uttar, Vedic, and Sygor nodded their heads in agreement. “I for one will not do them harm. I hope no one else will think of doing otherwise.”

No one said a word in reply, although Ruba bristled at the older man’s statement. It was clear that the young woman was annoyed.

“My concern,” Rugar voiced hesitantly, turning his gaze towards me as he spoke his mind, “is whether there are others like them lurking about in the forest below us, or back at that place you called a compound.”

I didn’t know. Rolf and his group had indicated that Quantum had hired several survey teams and not just them to travel through the Gateway and to verify whether or not the sources of gold, silver, diamonds, and other precious gems were where they were supposed to be; in addition to other resources, both commonplace and extremely rare. While they were the first to be sent, following my team’s departure, they had no idea if anyone else followed them. Since they hadn’t ended up in South Africa as planned, there was no way of knowing, since that was where Quantum had put another anchor point.

“I don’t know,” I admitted freely. “I intend to search below our valley, in the lands on both sides of the river; however it could take us some time to do that. My problem is that there is only one of me. If I search below our valley, I will not be able to search the compound to see if people have returned to it.”

“I could go and look,” Sygor offered quickly, earning himself a sharp look from his two mates and his sister. Even before I could reply, I could see that he was regretting opening his mouth. I almost chuckled at his discomfort, but I didn’t. I knew he meant well, and I also knew the seriousness of what he’d proposed to do.

“I thank you for you offer, Sygor,” I told the young man instead, “but I could not let you go off and do this job on your own. While the men of our tribe are fine hunters and brave men, skilled in stalking their prey and watching over this enclosure and all who live in it; they are no match for the men who might be out there roaming the land in search of Gabby or me. If anyone goes it will be me.”

“Not alone, you won’t!” Clara declared tersely, giving me the evil eye as she spoke. “You’re no better off than any of the men in this community, regardless of how good you were before joining Quantum. It’s been three years since we arrived here. You’re older and while not out of shape, you are out of training. If there is someone like Blackmore roaming about, then you’ll be taking someone with you when you go to back you up, and I don’t want any arguments about it.”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t have to, because others did. Gabby seconded the motion as did Rugar. Even Gogra jumped on the bandwagon even though it went totally against his tradition to let a woman make such a public statement and decision. In fact everyone in the group, including Ruba, declared their belief that Clara was right. I just sighed heavily once they’d all had a turn at agreeing with my mate and then I let it go. She was right, after all. I was definitely out of training. I’d do something about that in the morning.

Carlos’ fever broke that very same night. He’d been on death’s door when I’d brought him in, but Clara had tended to him. She had used up a lot of the medicine that she still had stored away that had come from the compound, and also saw to it that he was watched around the clock. It helped that she had a couple of trained assistants, now.

Her assistants were part of our program to educate our people to be able to deal with any form of emergency. It stemmed from the attack on our cave by Blackmore and company, and from the fact that Atta nearly drowned when she fell into the swollen river that flowed by our old cave. While I had taught our men to use the shotguns and the survival weapons that we had, how to patrol and to work as a team or squad, and how to fight both with a knife and without; Clara had taught basic hygiene to the women in the cave, and basic first aid to everyone, both male and female. The first aid training had helped her identify who were the best students in the cave, thus enabling her to take them aside once we’d moved into the new cave, so she could teach them advanced first aid. After that, Clara had been able to pick out a pair of willing students that she could teach to be medical orderlies, to help her tend to the seriously sick when the situation arose. The two orderlies were Moya and Trona, and both of them did an excellent job.

So far we’d been relatively lucky with illnesses in our community. We hadn’t lost a person over the winter, and every baby born had been born healthy, with both mother and child surviving the occasion. It was a plus and it was all down to Clara and the work she did with the general community, and the assistance she got from her orderlies. We’d had a broken leg, some cuts and bruises, and mild case of diarrhoea (that Clara put a stop to as quickly as she could given the nature of the problem and the unwillingness to complain about the problem to a woman by a man); but beyond that, our community was reasonably healthy. Clara intended to keep it that way.

Carlos was just as stunned to find out where he was, as had been the rest of Rolf’s group. I certainly got the impression from the man that my name had gotten bandied about a bit at Quantum when the anchor point went down and the Gateway closed on this locale. Perhaps it was because he was still recuperating, and thus not completely aware of what he was telling Clara or me whenever I went to chat with him, but whether it was because of his condition or because he was more open than the rest of his group, I did learn a little more that made me wonder what the hell was going on.

The first thing I learned was that Jenkins’ trip hadn’t been the first manned mission that Quantum had undertaken. According to Carlos (but what he’d told me was second hand so I had to take it with a grain of salt), a team had been sent to this world before us. While they did come back, they had come back battered and bruised. Carlos got this information from a technician that he’d been dating at Quantum who’d been part of the support staff that had prepped the first mission. The thing that Carlos’ girlfriend had told him that made me stop and wonder, was that the team hadn’t come to the here and now like Clara, Gabby, and me, but that they had gone from our present year to the same present year and date on the parallel world. In fact Carlos revealed that technically it had always been the intent of Project Gateway to open a doorway to a comparable time period on this planet, where Quantum Industries could set up a trade relationship. Regrettably, the team that was sent in to the comparable time period walked straight into a firefight. Two of their number were killed outright, and one was seriously wounded. The last survivor was able to initiate an emergency recall that opened the Gateway so he and the wounded person could get home.

That story had me wondering what the hell was going on at Quantum that they would turn around and now send someone back into the past on this world’s timeline; and why all the charades with outfitting us, when a short while later Quantum started sending people back with modern equipment and weapons? It just didn’t make any sense to either Clara or me.

The second thing I learned was that Kim Woo had been instrumental in picking Rolf’s group, and sending them through the Gateway on the mission to South Africa. This naturally left me confused because Kim had nothing to do with putting together any operation at Quantum. She was technically their top data analyst. I could see her briefing the group on whatever intelligence that Quantum had accumulated on the region about the Kimberly Mines that Quantum wanted them to check out, but I couldn’t see her picking people and getting them prepped for a mission. To me, that set off a whole lot of bells and whistles that told me that something wasn’t kosher back at Quantum, beyond what I had already figured out. It suggested that Kim had her fingers into the situation in ways that implied government involvement above and beyond General Ridgeway and his agenda. I was starting to wonder if I was stuck between two federal departments involved in a turf war using another world for their boxing ring.