Chapter 10

David hadn't strayed very far from the group when they had told him he was banished. Despite carrying a growing sense of injustice and anger towards the three sets of twins, his need for companionship kept him from wandering off on his own.

The days of rain had been particularly hard on him, as he didn't have any shelter or a fire to help keep himself warm.

When Ben and Adam had left on their hunting trip, David had been undecided on who he should stick with. In the end he came to the conclusion that there was less risk of being caught keeping an eye on the girls and Thomas, so he stayed close to the shelter. He did follow the two boys until he saw them climbing the cliff up onto the escarpment, but then returned through the rain to a spot where he could watch the new campsite under the trees.

He had another decision to make when Hannah and Sarah left the camp to go in search of their mates and this time he opted to follow the two girls. His skill at remaining hidden was increasing all the time and neither of the girls had any idea that he was tailing them.

David nearly showed himself when the girls stumbled across Adam and he saw that Ben was in serious trouble stuck in the mudslide. The memory of Ben pulling him off of Adam and being the one who had pronounced his banishment held him back however, and he was even disappointed when the girls and Adam managed to free the other boy and get him to safety.

Later that night, the smell of the turkey cooking over the fire almost drove him insane with hunger and he knew he would need to find something to eat soon.

His easiest means of getting food was to comb the beach for shellfish and crabs and that's what he was doing the next morning when he heard Ben and Sarah approaching. Fearful of being caught, David hunkered down in a deep rock pool and pulled seaweed over himself so he wouldn't be seen.

Neither Ben nor Sarah was aware that someone was listening to their entire conversation about the metal nuggets. David lay hidden close enough to hear everything that passed between the twins. He found Ben's claims about the power of the metal very hard to believe, but decided that he would need to keep an eye out for whatever they did to test Ben's theory.

"If he's right, those nuggets might come in very useful if I could get my hands on them. Being able to watch the twins from a distance and control them - now that would be something. We'd soon see who was boss then!"

David remained hidden until he was sure that Ben and Sarah had left the beach. He parted the seaweed carefully and scanned for any sign of them and then eased himself out of the rock pool and took a circuitous route back to where he could spy on the shelter again.

Now that the rains had stopped for the moment, the group completed a survey of the immediate area to identify what damage the weather had caused.

The biggest casualty was Ben's oven. Water had undermined the foundation and the oven had collapsed in on itself. The twins were all disappointed, as the oven represented many hours of hard work and they would need to basically start over again.

The oven was perhaps the least of their problems however, and that was soon to become apparent.

Sarah was already showing herself to be the deepest thinker of the group. Her twin was emerging as the natural leader and seemed to have taken naturally to decision making, but she was the one who really thought things through and identified potential problems before they arose.

The rains had caused her to reflect at length on their position and she didn't like the questions that were appearing in her mind. As was becoming normal for Sarah, she didn't just blurt out what was troubling her, but instead she let the issues mature in her head days while she tried to think of every aspect that worried her.

Eventually she thought she had things ordered in her mind the way she wanted them. She waited until everyone was gathered round the fire, eating the last of the second of the turkeys, before beginning to lay out what she had been thinking about.

"Listen everybody, I'm sorry to sound like the prophet of doom here, but there are some things that have been worrying me. I think we need to talk about them," she began.

Sarah's serious tone caught everyone's attention and they quietened down, waiting for her to continue.

"I think we've got some major problems to deal with."

"Well if you call being stranded on a planet with practically nothing to survive on major problems, then I'd say you've just about hit the nail on the head," scoffed Thomas.

The others glared at him and he shrugged.

"What? That's hardly penetrating insight. Is it?" he challenged them.

The stares continued and Thomas decided to keep his mouth shut for the moment. Sarah started again.

"Look at us. We've already finished eating the birds Ben and Adam caught. So far we've barely managed to get enough food to feed ourselves on a day to day basis. We've all got the same store of memories and we've been thinking about how we can make progress, but it's almost as if we've been playing a game.

"The rains have made me think. We don't know yet what the weather is like on this planet, but the season is obviously changing. It's already clear that the temperature is dropping. How cold is it going to get?

"What are we going to do if it snows? We've not managed to make much by the way of clothing yet and we struggled to cope with a few days of rain. How are we going to manage with snow?"

Sarah had been talking uninterrupted for several minutes and as she did so the looks on the faces around her grew more and more concerned. The others were absorbing her words and thinking about the questions she was asking.

"We need to stop playing at this and accept that we have to do more or we aren't going to survive. So far we've let our hormones run away with us and we've been having fun instead of concentrating on what we need to achieve to live. Sure sex is exciting and new and really enjoyable, but surviving isn't a game. I've finally realised that we need to spend more of our time - perhaps all of our time - getting ourselves ready to survive.

"Making the oven and the pottery was fun, but we could perhaps have used that time better by hunting more and getting additional food and more skins to clothe ourselves.

"We are taking too long to achieve anything. Part of the problem seems to be that we haven't got any experience of anything so when something new happens we spend too long thinking about how we feel about it. We need to stop that and focus. We need to focus on the few things that really matter if we're going to make it through a winter."

"Why are you so sure the weather is going to get that bad?" asked Thomas, unable to keep quiet any longer.

Elizabeth nodded to show that she was wondering the same as her twin.

Instead of answering straight away, Sarah stood and walked out of the shelter and out of the trees. The others followed her until she stopped and pointed off towards the cliffs.

"What?" Thomas asked.

"Look at the mountains. Don't you see anything different about them?" Sarah asked in turn.

All of them looked to where she was pointing. Away off in the far distance they could clearly see that the mountaintops were now white. What had fallen as rain around them must have fallen as snow on the much higher ground. If any evidence was needed that the weather was going to get cold enough for snow, then this was it.

Actually being able to see the snow added weight to the words that Sarah had been speaking and the problems that she had raised.

"Shit! We're in trouble, aren't we?" asked Adam.

"We are if we don't do something to help ourselves," said Ben.

"What are we going to do?" asked Hannah, now on the verge of tears.

"I think Sarah is right. We need to focus all of our energy on the few things that really matter. My memories tell me that our ancestors came through this and that means we can too. Thousands of years ago they spent most of their time in the winter just finding food and keeping warm. I vote that we start to concentrate our efforts on those," suggested Ben.

"But isn't that what we've been doing? It takes us all our time just to kill enough to eat as it is. How do we go about finding food when everything's covered in snow?" whined Elizabeth.

"That's not what we've been doing! We've not really applied ourselves well enough to what really matters - instead we take every opportunity to play and enjoy ourselves. That's got to stop. I've been thinking about this," said Sarah, showing once again that she had gone into this quite deeply in her own head.

"There's not enough food here to allow us to survive. Neither is there enough shelter to help us withstand the cold that is surely coming. My guess is that this planet has been 'seeded' - we all know what that means.

"By my reckoning we're maybe twelve or thirteen years old. If you look around yourselves you can see that most of the living things like the trees look as if they could be the same age.

"If all the life - including us - was created at the same time, that means that the animals have had that length of time to breed and multiply. So, in theory, there should be plenty for us to live on, we just need to find a place where there is more of it about.

"Ben and Adam told us they had found some caves. Maybe it would be better to think about moving to them - at least that would give us some shelter from the weather. Didn't you say you saw game up there too?"

"Yeah, we did, but actually, I think there's some other stuff we could do," said Ben. "History tells us that one of the things people did that made a big difference was to domesticate animals. It would be much easier if we could manage to rear our own deer or something. That way we wouldn't need to go out and hunt so much."

"But that would take ages! Do we have time to try to do that before the winter comes?" asked Hannah.

"Maybe not, but perhaps we could find a way of trapping some animals - maybe in one of the canyons that Adam and I saw."

"What about the coal? Are we just going to forget about that?" asked Elizabeth.

"Food is more important right now. Finding enough of it to last through the winter should be our first priority now," Sarah replied. "If we can kill enough game then we'll have skins to keep us warm too."

"We should vote. All those in favour of moving to the caves?" asked Ben.

Not surprisingly all of the youngsters raised their hands and that was it. They had all agreed to pack up what little they had and make the journey to the caves that the boys had found.

"Cheer up Thomas, at least you'll be closer to all that flint that Ben and I found," laughed Adam.

The discussions had left Thomas feeling uncomfortable. It sounded as if they were all going to have to work doubly hard just to stay alive and he didn't like the sound of that. Already he was trying to think of ways of avoiding doing anything too difficult.

From his hiding place deeper into the trees, David watched and was puzzled as the twins started to pack up their stuff. He couldn't creep close enough to listen to their conversation for fear of being discovered and he had no idea therefore what was going on. He assumed the twins were merely going back to their original campsite now that the rain had passed. It didn't take them long to gather their things and he remained hidden until all of them had traipsed off through the trees.

Once he was sure they had gone, he crept up to the now abandoned campsite and rummaged about to try to find anything useful. There was still some meat on the bones of the last turkey and he was soon gnawing away at them, desperately trying to get every last scrap of nourishment he could.

When he was finished, he crept through the trees to find out where the others had gone. He was surprised and panicked when he didn't find them back at their first campsite and immediately started to search for signs of them. It didn't occur to him that they had decided to make such a dramatic move, so his search was limited to the areas they had already frequented.

Eventually David's search took him closer to the cliffs. The route up to the escarpment that had been used previously no longer offered a way up and he made his way cautiously along the foot of the cliff, casting about for any sign of the twins.

At last he came across some scuffmarks that showed where the others had climbed up. He had spent hours hunting for them up until now and was now worried that he might have lost them for good. Scrambling up the cliff, he peered over the edge but there was no sign of anyone.

"Fuck! What am I going to do now? Where could they be going?"

David was fearful of being on his own. His only thought was to find the twins and stay close to them. Even being able to see them was a comfort, but now he was in danger of losing even that much.

The twins were making good time and were already half way to the caves where Ben and Adam had spent their last night on their scouting expedition. The temperature was noticeably cooler, but walking helped keep them warm for the moment. They were climbing all the time, as they headed for the mountains, but the scenery so far was still a mix of grass and woodland.

"Everybody down. Look over there," hissed Adam urgently.

They all dropped to the ground and searched for whatever it was that Adam had spotted. Perhaps a quarter of a mile to their left was a small herd of deer. From a distance it looked as if there were around a dozen of the animals and that represented the biggest concentration of game they had come across yet.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" whispered Ben to Adam.

"I'm thinking that we could maybe try your second idea for hunting. If you and I can work our way around them and then let the girls and Thomas drive them towards us, we might get a chance with our spears."

A hurried discussion between them followed and then Ben and Adam set off to try to get ahead of the deer. They kept low and Ben tested the wind to make sure they kept their scent from reaching the herd and frightening them off. Once into the thin trees they were able to make better time, but couldn't see the deer any longer.

The boys estimated when they must have passed the herd and angled towards a spot where they hoped they would have a chance at using their spears. Once they found a likely spot, they settled down to wait for the girls and Thomas to do their jobs.

It wasn't a long wait. Crashing sounds told them that the deer were in flight and heading directly towards them. Ben and Adam tensed and held their spears ready, but even so they were taken by surprise by the speed with which everything happened. The deer were almost a blur when they bolted past and neither of the boys was close enough to stab with their weapons. Adam's reactions were the quickest and he managed to hurl his spear at a passing doe, but the deer was too quick for him and he missed by quite a distance.

"Shit, they're fast!" moaned Ben at the missed opportunity.