Chapter 3: Far Away Places

She fell! Branches lashed at her face, and bushes crashed beneath her. No time to brace herself; she landed flat on her back with a thud that drove the breath from her body. Colored lights danced before her eyes, and for the longest time she couldn't move or even breathe.

Finally, she managed to draw in a whooping gasp of air, then another. She wriggled an arm. Then a leg. Then, the other arm moved. Everything seemed to be working all right. She tried to crawl out of the mat of tangled brush that had broken her fall, feeling strangely weak. Failed. Tried again, and finally squirmed free of the tangle. Thankful that the bushes were thornless, she pulled herself to her feet and looked around.

She was in a forest! A forest? How could that be? And with a glaring sun shining hotly down through the branches? Not like any forest she'd ever seen before, that was for sure. Not that she'd ever been that much of a hiker or camper. She held fast to her tottering sanity, forcing herself to look more closely at her surroundings. This was real! It had to be!

How long had she been out, anyway? Massive hardwood trees that sprawled close to the ground made up most of the woods around her. The air was hot and still, feeling more like August than April, and through the broad leaves of the trees hot sunlight made golden splotches on the mossy ground. Somewhere, a bird chirped a sleepy refrain, and a faint hum of insect life filled the air.

"Hey, where are we, anyway?" She turned to face a scratched and bruised Tony as he thrashed his way out of a flattened bush nearby, throwing down the shattered remains of a camera that had streamers of blackened film dangling from it. "How'd it get to be daylight all of a sudden? And what's the big idea, jumping us like that?"

"How should I know where we are? Except that it's certainly nowhere near Oregon," Jewel admitted, hiding her fear by making a valiant effort to keep her voice calm. Taking a deep breath, she bolstered her faltering courage by going on the attack. "You're the one who should be doing all of the explaining. Just what right did you two have breaking into that lab, anyway, taking pictures with your little toy camera? What were you doing, playing at being some kind of boy spies or something?"

"We were trying to find out what Marten's been hiding!" Tony blurted out the words, still rattled. "No, I'm not a spy. There are people in our government who think he's keeping back something that could be vital to our national security, and they asked me to help them find out what it is."

"Sounds like what my Uncle Hamid used to call narking for the Establishment," she sneered, taking an involuntary step away from Tony. Not that her rascally uncle was anyone to pattern herself after. He'd even managed to get himself kicked out of the Brothers Free, Portland's Black motorcycle gang, and from what little she'd heard he'd been lucky to make it out with a whole skin. "Big deal! What if he doesn't want to give away his discoveries to the government? To any government?"

"But... but he should want to," Tony argued. "That's the whole point of being civilized. He's got to be made to do what's best for all of the people, not just for him. Anyway, he won't be giving them away. They'll pay him good money for them..."

"Sure, they will. 'I'm from the government, I'm here to help you... ' Just who was your mysterious friend, anyway?"

"He's Steve Jordan, with the I.R.S..." Tony looked around wildly. "Hey, where'd he go?"

"I don't think that he came with us." Jewel cocked her head, listening. "Or if he did, he didn't land anywhere near here. The last I saw of him, he was hotfooting it out the door of the lab like his coattails were on fire."

"What is this place, and how'd we get here?" Tony glared fearfully at the trees surrounding them. His forehead was beaded with droplets of sweat, and not just from the heat, she realized.

"How should I know? You're the one who did whatever it was that sent us here. It's all your fault for breaking into a private laboratory and messing things up. What are you, some kind of a fascist?"

"How did we get off onto this kind of crap? I already know all that I need to about you, and I'm not going to argue with one of your kind about what's right and what's wrong." Tony seemed to look right through her as he ignored her look of sheer fury. "First, I'm going to find out just where we are. Then, when we're back where we belong, there are going to be some mighty pointed questions asked about how we got here so quick. Your loverboy had better have some pretty good answers to them or he'll find out what real trouble looks like. I don't know what kind of a gadget that was, back there in Lab 23, but it sure sent us someplace. It was the middle of the night a few minutes ago. Now, it's broad daylight. We must have landed someplace clear the other side of the world!"

"Maybe we're in China," she suggested maliciously. "That's on the other side of the world."

"My God! You mean this is all a part of a Communist Plot?" Tony backed away a couple of steps, staring around wildly as though expecting to be set upon by riflewielding Chinese soldiers at any moment, then subsided redly as Jewel glared at him in disgust.

"No, I don't really think so." Her anger faded as she had to laugh at his horrified expression, making him flush an even more brilliant red, then she added in a more serious tone. "I'm just afraid that things may be a lot more serious than that. We may not have ended up anyplace on Earth!"

"No place on Earth?" He gave her a skeptical look. "Of course we're on Earth. This sure isn't my idea of Mars or Venus, and the other planets are even worse. Even if that bastard Marten has invented some kind of matter transmitter, the receiver has to be right here on Earth some place."

"Why does there have to be a receiver?"

"Well, I... ah... Stop trying to confuse things. Of course there has to be a receiver! You can't make a transmitter work without a receiver. Anyway, what makes you think this isn't Earth?"

"Mostly, just because it doesn't feel right," she admitted. "My feet keep telling me that I'm about twenty pounds too heavy, for one thing. As though things here weigh more than they should. I thought at first that it was just from having the wind knocked out of me, but I'm fine now and I still feel that way. I don't recognize any of the trees or plants, either, but that could be because we're in Australia or Madagascar or someplace like that."

He dismissed her argument with a disbelieving shrug. "Yeah, or China. No, you're still talking nonsense. I wonder what's the nearest town, and which way it is from here."

"And whether it has people in it, or something else," Jewel added as he started to walk away. "Hold it! Before we go tearing off in all directions, we'd better mark this place so that we can find it again."

"What for?"

"Just in case the transmitter or whatever is focussed on this spot, dummy. If we leave some kind of sign that we were here, it'll be that much easier for Neal to locate us. I'll feel a lot better about it if I know that we can find this exact place again."

"Go ahead, then, if it will make you feel any better." He shrugged, adding magnanimously, "I'll even give you a hand, and move any of the rocks that are too heavy for you."

She pushed a few large rocks together into a pile. Tony made a fair pretense of helping, though she noticed that she was the one who moved the largest rocks. When the heap of stones was large enough to be spotted from more than a few yards away, they stopped and looked around, deciding what to do next.

"If we go down the hill, we should come to a stream," Jewel suggested. "We could follow it until we find a road or something..."

"We'll climb up to the top of this hill," Tony decided, acting as though she hadn't spoken. "Maybe we'll be able to see some sign of a road or a town from there."

Jewel started to argue, but he was already moving away, up the slope. She shrugged her shoulders, deciding that for the time being one direction seemed about as good as any other, and followed his lead.

"How come you're so sure that bastard Marten will even try to find us? He may decide that he's better off just leaving us here, especially if this really is China." Tony glanced back over his shoulder as he spoke, partly, she was sure, to make sure that she really was following him.

"All right! I'm sorry that I ever mentioned the place. I don't think he's the kind of person who would just abandon us, no matter where we are. I only hope that we didn't ruin his machine so that it can't be fixed. Hey, I think I hear something!"

"I don't hear..." He swallowed the rest of his words as Jewel glared at him. In the silence, they heard what sounded like voices, coming from over the crest of the hill. "Yeah, you're right. Come on, let's go meet them. Oof! What'd you trip me for?"

"Shut up and slow down, you idiot!" Jewel's voice was a quietly vicious snarl. "Wait until we see who or what they are, before we go running up to them with outstretched arms and cries of joy. Now, get up and follow along behind me, and do it without any more of your infernal yapping. We need to get a good look at them without being seen."

Tony glared at her, but couldn't quite meet her level glance. Keeping his mouth shut, however barely, he followed sullenly behind as she climbed the last few yards to the top of the hill.

They soon spotted the road. Road? It wasn't really a road at all, just a narrow dirt track that wound along a few hundred feet beyond the crest of the hill, intermittently visible through openings between the trees. Marching toward them, as though straight out of a book on ancient history, was a troop of soldiers. Moving into the sunlight from under a stand of trees, they were almost overwhelming in their barbaric splendor. Their helmets and breastplates, gaily decorated with painted designs and bright feathers, gleamed with brass and silver in the sun. Metalbossed bronze or leather shields and sharp spears gave them a warlike look, as did the short doubleedged stabbing swords slung at their belts. The men were darkskinned, as though fervent sunlight had been at work on already swarthy complexions. Their hair was straight, black or dark brown where it could be seen beneath their helmets, and most of them had short beards. There were no horses or wagons to be seen, and all of the men bore heavy packs.

"We sure don't want to get mixed up with that bunch. Still think we're on Earth?" Jewel asked Tony softly when the soldiers had marched on past.

"Well, sure. They're human beings, aren't they. Not some kind of monsters," Tony answered, sullenly. "They looked like some kind of Indians to me."

"Brown haired Indians? With beards? I've never seen costumes like those, either."

"Maybe they're actors," he argued, his voice rising angrily. "They could be making a movie around here."

"Shut up! They looked real enough to me, and I don't see any cameras around. Don't move. I think I hear some more of them coming."

For more than an hour they watched, sweating silently beneath the trees as troop after troop of barbaric soldiers marched past. Some were grim and silent, like the first formation, marching in step to the cadenced commands of their leaders. Others talked and sang as they marched along, but the language was like none she'd ever heard. Jewel noticed that there didn't seem to be any scouts, as though the marchers might be in their home territory. The last troop to pass by was made up mostly of soldiers who were quite lightskinned, taller than the others, with light brown to reddish hair. They were a ragged, straggling lot who looked frightened and unhappy as they marched along beneath the blazing sun.

"I wonder where they're going," Tony whispered. "There must have been hundreds of them."

"Six hundred and eightythree," she answered, softly. "I counted. I don't know about you, but the last thing I want is to have us get mixed up in some kind of a local war."

The last of the marchers had barely gotten past as she spoke, straggling along tiredly. As though her whispered words had been a signal, more soldiers came charging out of the woods on both sides of the trail. Screams and shouts mingled with the clash of weapons as the startled marchers tried to fight back. Jewel wanted to look away, sickened, but found herself forced to watch in horrified fascination. Men were actually killing each other down there! Hacking and stabbing! Killing, and being killed in their turn. What breeze there was blew up the hill toward where she watched, bringing with it the sounds of battle along with a foul stench of fear and blood and death.

The battle swiftly broke up into small groups and individual fights. The two sides could be told apart mainly by their uniforms, the blue jackets and trousers of the marchers standing out against the ragged and dirty forest green of their attackers.

The badly disorganized marchers were fast getting the worst of it. One group of a halfdozen or so suddenly broke away, fleeing straight up the hill toward where they watched. Jewel, forcing back waves of nausea, barely had time to roll out of the way, diving into a clump of bushes. Biting back spasms that threatened to empty her stomach, she squirmed under a rotting log. Pounding feet and hoarse gasps of fear and pain kept her there as the fleeing men tore past her hiding place.