Chapter 419

The Prison Planet

... As they neared the grasslands, Morales left the rolling case in order to proceed more quietly for the last hundred yards or so. When he reached an area where he could clearly see the valley, he stopped and grabbed Lobo. “Easy, Boy,” he whispered. Then his eyes focused on something totally unexpected. “What the fuck is that?”

Then his reading from the scientists’ notes kicked in. “Aurochs,” he told his friend. “They’re fucking aurochs, or this world’s version of them, I guess. Hell, they were gigantic on Earth before they became extinct a few hundred years ago – somewhere in the sixteen hundreds, I think. One of those notes discussed the difference in aurochs from Earth compared to the ones here, but about all I got out of it was that they were even bigger on 2214.”

As the two stared at the aurochs, Morales decided that they weren’t quite as long as the giant buffalo, but were a good bit taller. The tremendous span of their horns was similar, although the general shape was different. They look an awful lot like cattle, just one hell of a lot bigger and meaner, he thought. The herd he was spying on was only a couple of hundred yards away, but contained at least a hundred animals strewn out over several acres. As before, there were multiple herds of 2214’s version of buffalo, elk, deer and antelope as well as other grazing animals that he didn’t recognize stretched along the great plains. At first glance, it seemed that the aurochs coexisted peacefully with the other animals, but he wondered what would happen if the elk, aurochs or buffalo should choose the same area to feed. Damn. That would be one hell of a fight, he muttered, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near when it happened.

I managed to kill one of the smaller buffalo and got away with it, and I wonder if I can do the same with one of these guys. Hmmm. Something to think about, but it will require some planning. When we get back, I’ll see if I can find more information about Earth auroch steak, he thought with a grin.

As he continued to watch, he noticed several calves nursing. The calves were certainly not newly born and were already nearly half the size of a full-grown Earth cow, he supposed. Of course, he had never seen a cow other than in the movies, television, or displayed in the meat section of a grocery store showing where each type of meat cut came from, so he suspected that his assumptions may have been off somewhat. But he also realized that even one of the calves, field dressed, would have stressed his ability to bring it back to the cave in his rolling case.

Cattle – domesticated cattle, at least – could mean a continuing source of food, milk and butter. He tried to imagine milking one of the aurochs, but even the thought was sobering. Besides, he chastised himself, how could I ever build a fence that would hold these guys? I’ve seen those old-time split-rail fences in pictures, but my fence would have to be several times as high – and much stronger – even if I could tame one of these things. Oh, well. Something to think about for the future – probably a long way in the future. But that’s not why I came here this afternoon.

Again, he scanned the plains with his binoculars. He wasn’t certain, but he thought there were fewer animals than there had been the first time he was here, and the deep grass didn’t seem to be as green as it had been previously. The forest surrounding the plains was beginning to change as well. When he turned the binoculars toward the mountains, he noticed the profusion of vivid fall colors.

Winter is coming. Will Lobo and I survive? Shit! There is so much to do. I need to finish stripping the valley of anything I can find there, and I need to stock the ice cave with as much meat as I can. But will my vegetables even survive? I tried to preserve them the way the articles directed, but what if they rot? And ... I have to close off the front of the cave so it will be warm this winter, but that can come after some of the other things I need to do.

He had hoped to add to his larder, but there were no stragglers among the giant creatures that were reasonably near, and aggravating the herd of either breed would certainly lead to a demise – his.

Mind awhirl with all the things he needed to do before winter, he pulled the case back to the cave. Stopping outside, he knelt by the pottery, but didn’t have to touch it to feel the residual heat coming from the hole, and knew his creations were still too hot.

Gertrude and her chicks were already inside, the hen obviously having used the little mini tunnel he had dug under the bars for her. After beginning preparations for the evening meal, he gave the chickens several chunks of dried fish, hoping to enhance their egg production.

Meal over, he sorted the potatoes, storing the undamaged ones and keeping out the others

He hadn’t gotten around to cutting another log in order to work on his wall tonight, so he took out several crossbow bolt blanks he had already shaped and straightened. After sighting down each, he decided that they were as near perfectly straight as he could make them. After a final smoothing using fine sand cupped in a piece of hide, he held the blanks up to the light once more to check for any defects in the ironwood. “I’ve had one arrow blow up in my face, and that was one too many. I damn sure don’t want it to happen with a crossbow bolt,” he muttered to himself.

“This has to work,” he told Lobo, worrying about the same thing again. “True, I have Robinson’s bolts as well as the ones that came with my rig, but no matter how careful I am with them, some will be lost or broken. But dammit, if my homemade arrows work in the bow, stands to reason my homemade bolts will work in the crossbow, and besides, they are a little thicker and much shorter, of course. Dammit, they should work.”

By bedtime, he had fletched each and attached arrowheads. Tomorrow, I’ll try a couple of these. If the first one doesn’t blow up in my face, that is. But to make sure, I’ll have a tree between my face and the crossbow when I try out the first bolt. As he undressed for bed, his mind continued to think about hunting with the homemade bolts. If they fly true and don’t disintegrate when I pull the trigger, sooner or later, I’m going to have to try them on big game. I used a penetrator tip when I shot the buffalo, and I hit its head from the side where its skull probably wasn’t as thick. Will a flint-tipped bolt do it, or will the flint break when it hits thick bone? Hmmm, I wonder if a gar tooth would make a good substitute penetrator. Seems like the almost-round tooth would do better at penetrating bone – if the tooth doesn’t break, that is. My flint-tipped arrows did great on the badger and the gar, but that was no real test of penetration. He gave an unconscious sigh as he continued worrying, If I screw up on a buffalo, the herd will gore me to death and stomp what remains into bloody mud.

Then there’s the ironwood, or lack therof. I need to start paying attention when I’m out, or else take some time out and do a thorough search for more trees. There have to be more of them around than I’ve found.

After straightening up the cave and feeding his sourdough starter, he undressed, snuggled Junior to his side and turned the lantern out. While thoughts of searching for more of the ironwood trees occupied his mind, sleep came calling.

The sun had just crested the mountains when he awoke to Gertrude’s “puck, puck, pucking,” as she scratched in the dirt near the bars. As he sat to rub his head while sleep seeped out of his brain and he became functional, he wondered why chickens scratched in the dirt. He knew from his reading that they needed some type of coarseness in their craws to help digest their food, but it seemed they did a lot more scratching and looking for fine gravel or whatever, than he would assume they would need. Oh, well. What the fuck do I know?

There were three eggs this morning, so this day had started out great already. He had saved two pieces of bread for toast, but not having anything to wrap it in other than hide, it was a bit dry, but what the hell, he was going to make toast out of it, anyway.

Breakfast over, he finished his second cup of coffee as he contemplated the new day. “Oh, what the fuck; you know what’s first on the agenda,” he told himself as he rinsed the cup and put it on its shelf. Strapping on his weapons, he motioned for Lobo to precede him out the entrance passageway, with Gertrude and her brood following. Outside, he opened the brush gate for the chickens. When they were safely inside, he closed the gate and went over to the fire pit.

The fire had been so hot that it had totally consumed the wood, leaving only a gray-white ash covering the area. Some of the bigger pieces of pottery showed through, but all the shorter pieces were completely covered. It only took a moment to find the piece he had heard being destroyed yesterday afternoon. It was the second tallest of his jugs. “Shit,” he grumbled. “Couldn’t be a little one, oh no. It had to be one of my big ones.

To his amazement, everything else seemed to have survived the firing, including his best jug as well as the bowl with the lid, although it took a moment to find the latter in all the ashes.

Carefully, he dug everything out, but they looked a sorry lot with ashes and soot clinging to them. Grabbing up the big bowl and its lid, he made his way down the steep slope to the stream. After carefully putting the lid down in the shallows, he submerged the bowl to begin scrubbing on it with a piece of hide.

Most of the ash readily washed off the outside of the bowl, but it took some effort to thoroughly clean the last of the grime from the inside of his creation. Holding the big bowl up as the water flowed off it, he realized that it was in far better shape than he had thought when he first saw it buried in the ashes. Tapping it gently with his knife blade, he was pleased to hear a clear, almost chiming sound. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

After carefully putting the bowl down, he thoroughly cleaned the top before fitting it onto the bowl. The top wasn’t perfectly round, so it took turning it until the imperfections matched before it fit snugly into place. He sat on a small rock in the shallows just looking at the bowl. Truth be told, he wouldn’t have favored it with a second glance back on Earth, but things were different now.

“I need more of these, and many different sizes,” he told Lobo. “With a smaller one, I could store my leftovers until the next meal without worrying about insects or the chickens getting into the food. Now I have something to store my frozen meats in for the next couple of meals. I still need more jugs to store water in so I don’t have to go to the spring as much. Come winter, that will be even more important. If it’s too cold to go out, or the spring is frozen, I can use jugs to melt snow in.

“Shit. Do I dare try to cook in any of these? Those African women did. I’ll have to go back and watch that video again, and I think there were more articles about cooking in fired pottery. Hell, stone cookware is expensive in the stores back on Earth. I just need to study some more. If people could do this thousands of years ago, I can learn how.”

Enthused, he spent the next hour thoroughly cleaning and inspecting his ceramics, but he did find two more pieces that were cracked and thus useless. Still, he couldn’t seem to get the grin off his face, despite a couple of the pieces being a bit lopsided. Dry, they were now nestled on his shelves, most of them an orange/yellow, although a couple were a darker orange and one was almost white. He had no real understanding of why, but assumed the color changes were caused by differences in the clay or maybe the pottery’s positioning in the firing pit which resulted in a variation in heat. “Well, Lobo, we at least have bowls to eat out of and store food in, and one of these days, I’ll have a potters’ wheel that will allow me to produce things that look a lot better.”

Lobo had already sniffed each piece as it was cleaned. Then, he reared up on his back feet with his front feet lightly touching the cave wall as he inspected each of the pieces on the high shelf. Grinning, he chuffed at Morales before coming to sit beside the human.

Not sure why the wolf was making his chuffing sound, “A real potter would laugh his ass off,” he said, “but you just watch, one of these days, there’s going to be something on those shelves that I’ll really be proud of, but first I’m going to have to build a good potter’s wheel.”