Chapter 15

Ben and Elizabeth found a sheltered spot near a stream to make camp for the night. Ben started a fire and Elizabeth heated some of the meat they had left. The afternoon and evening had been spent walking and she had returned to her attempts to get Ben to talk to Thomas.

The atmosphere between the two was frosty now, as Ben had eventually snapped and shouted at her to stop nagging at him.

Elizabeth felt Ben was being altogether too selfish. How difficult could it be to simply talk to Thomas and share some of the secrets about how he, Ben, made sure that Sarah enjoyed their lovemaking? Why wouldn't he do that for her?

Ben chose to ignore her as much as possible and curled up in his skins as soon as he had finished eating and had brushed his teeth at the stream.

Elizabeth stewed when she saw Ben turn his back on her, but she curled up in her own skins and was soon asleep.

Ben's dreams were startlingly different that night. He had fallen asleep holding his little pouch in his hand - the pouch that now had a nugget of the silvery-white and the silvery-blue metals as well as the new ball of golden-red metal.

The combination of the three metals made for a remarkable dream. Ben was able to see the surface of the whole planet as it spun on its axis. There were four continents - one much bigger than the others and it was almost split in two by a river that flowed diagonally across it.

Bright pinpoints of light sparkled at various points on the continents and at first Ben was puzzled as to what they were. When he tried to reach out with his mind to one of the lights, his viewpoint shifted and he found himself zooming in close to the planet's surface (imagine using google earth!).

As his focus narrowed he found that he was looking at a canyon of red stone. The canyon had a broad river flowing through it and the bed of the river sparkled with gleaming specks of metal.

Ben guessed that this was actual gold this time and he was able to follow the river to a point where a tributary flowed into it. The gold on the riverbed stopped at this point and Ben switched his attention to the smaller stream and followed it towards its origin.

The stream emerged from the rock of a cliff and cascaded downwards. Ben didn't need to follow anymore as he could make out the rich seam of gold-bearing ore that ran some distance into the red rock.

He pulled back until he was once more able to see the entire planet. As it spun, Ben noticed that there were differences between some of the points of light. The one he had just investigated had a circle of blue around it, but he noticed a few with a red ring.

He chose one of the points of light circled red and zoomed in again to see what this one represented. To his amazement he found himself looking down at the sleeping form of his twin, Sarah. She was surrounded by the others and Ben could see the fire had burned down low.

"Somebody should add some wood to the fire," he thought.

Incredibly, several lumps of wood flew from the stack in the cave and settled themselves down on top of the still glowing embers of the fire.

"Whoa! What just happened there?"

Ben linked his thought to the wood moving and wondered if that was feasible. Was it possible that he could now move things just by thinking about it? He let his focus wander round the cave until he 'saw' that Sarah had let her skins fall away from one shoulder.

Concentrating on the skins, he watched as they moved to cover his twin more completely, just as his thoughts had suggested. He distinctly heard Sarah thank him in her mind.

"Thank you, my love."

"Wow and double wow! I can really move things about, how neat is that?"

Ben focused on zooming out again. He searched for and found another similar red-ringed light quite close by and zoomed in on that.

Eerily, he found himself looking down on himself and Elizabeth sleeping round their campfire. He noticed their fire was burning low too and took the opportunity to add some wood from the surrounding trees.

When he zoomed out again, he saw one more point of light circled in red. Curiously, this point also had a blue ring around it.

"That has to be David," he thought to himself.

It was no surprise that he found himself looking at David when he zoomed in close. This time he was able to wander round the cave that David had made his home. He found the passageway that led to David's supply of iron ore - guessing that was why this point had both blue and red circles around it. He also found David's cold-store and saw that the boy had himself well set up to keep his meat frozen.

The original replicator was sitting against one wall of the cave and Ben could see that David had been busy with it. There were a number of items that could only have been produced by the unit and Ben was interested to see what David thought was important.

The saw was a good idea and he couldn't believe that he hadn't thought of producing one yet. So far they had made do with using the axe to cut wood, but Ben decided that would change soon.

The next thing of interest was a set of traps. These ranged from simple snares to more intricate things with sharp steel jaws and what looked like pressure plates.

Ben toyed with the idea of using his thoughts to move David's replicator, but decided that would just be mean. His own group now had four replicators and they hadn't suffered through the loss of the original. Let David keep it for the moment.

When he pulled back up to his view of the planet as a whole, he studied the geography of the continent that they were living on. He was able to zoom in and out to examine the detail where he wanted to and Ben realised just how useful having a planetary map available in his head would be.

One of the other continents caught his attention due to the fact that it was covered in points of light, many more than the other landmasses. This continent had so many lights it almost looked like the stars in the night sky.

By randomly checking on some of the lights, Ben discovered that this continent was extremely rich in raw materials. There appeared to be an almost unlimited supply of different metal bearing ores, but also other things like gemstones. The lights here were blue, green, orange and purple. He quickly checked some of each. He was still trying to puzzle out in his head, how these strange abilities worked.

"The metals with power are obviously at the root of it, but how do they work? The geology of this planet seems similar to that on Woden, but it's really quite different when you look at it closely. That might explain why we found coal. Maybe carbon was formed differently here from how it happened on Woden? Is there only one way for that to happen?"

"One of the problems of having all these memories to draw on is perhaps an inability to think beyond them, to see that there are different possibilities for how things are, how things happen? Has Woden really discovered and understood all the laws of the universe? Maybe not. Maybe I have to start opening up my mind to the possibility - no, the reality - that some laws are different on this planet."

With that interesting philosophical notion, the view of the planet began to fade and Ben dropped once more into a dreamless sleep.

David's resolve to make the trip to watch the twins was still with him when he awoke. He quickly washed in the little waterfall and then cooked the last of the duck eggs that he had found the day before. The eggs were fried in a small amount of the fat he had cut from the buffalo kills and he used the knife and fork he had replicated to make short work of them.

He took his time thinking about what to take with him for the journey. He had replicated a small backpack and now set about wrapping some meat and placing it carefully at the bottom of the pack. Spare ammunition for the handgun went in next followed by a pot and his utensils. Lastly, he added a small, powerful torch that he had produced and the spare batteries for it.

David felt himself in a strange mood as he set off. There was a sense of excitement bubbling up inside him at the prospect of seeing the others, but that was held in check by his suspicion of them and his belief that they had treated him badly.

His memory of the journey to the valley was clear and he wasn't concerned about getting lost. There was even a bonus in that he wouldn't have to waste time trying to lay a false trail this time, so he estimated the trip would take almost four days.

With little else to do, David kept himself busy by scouring the landscape he was passing through for anything that he might find useful. Any game he came across caused him to circle and then spook the animals so that they ran in the direction of his valley. It would do no harm to move more potential food closer to home!

The first day of the trip was made in bright sunlight. There was a very cold wind, but it was mostly at his back and he was well wrapped up in skins. David had replicated some clothes, but the buffalo hide wrapped round him was also a big help in keeping out the chill.

On the second day he started to talk to himself again, just to break the silence.

"Four days of walking just to look at six two-faced rats, you must be out of your head!"

"You know you need this. Being on your own all the time isn't healthy; you need to remind yourself that other people exist. I mean, listen to yourself. You're having these conversations more and more. Doesn't that prove that you need other people?"

He laughed out loud at that. His own mind was giving him a row for having a conversation with it - that was too weird!

When Ben awoke the first thing he did was to test whether he could use his knew 'ability' while awake. He closed his eyes and thought about the view he'd had above the planet and broke into a grin when it appeared in his head.

The opportunity to check on Sarah was too good to miss and he saw that she was still sleeping. Ben imagined his fingers were lightly stroking her cheek and he saw a smile light up her face.

As he watched, Sarah turned. She was still half-asleep, but that was a gesture that Ben had used many times and she fully expected to find him lying behind her. When she found that she was alone, she sat up looking confused. Her hand rose to her cheek as if to question what she had felt.

Ben grinned and repeated the stroke. Sarah gasped and her eyes grew wide with surprise. She reached for the pouch that held her nugget of the silvery-white metal and instantly Ben heard her question.

Ben zoomed out and then decided to make a quick check on David before Elizabeth got up. He was surprised to see the other boy was already up and about, walking through a valley in the morning sunshine. The little pack on David's back was a new addition, and Ben surmised that the replicator had been pressed into service again.

"I wonder where he's off to today. The pack looks full so it must be a long trip. I hope he's not heading in our direction."

This time, instead of zooming all the way our again, Ben only pulled back enough to be able to study the territory David was passing through. He was able to stabilise his view at a point where both his group's cave and David's valley were both visible and he now had an accurate fix on where the other boy was living.

This view also allowed Ben to pick out some of the landmarks that he and Adam had passed when they had been trying to follow David weeks and weeks before. It looked as if David was heading in that direction, but it would take a day or so before he could be sure.

The sound of Elizabeth waking up snapped his attention back to getting ready to face the day himself. He took one more look, this time at the route he planned to take back to the cave. Again he focused at about the midpoint between zooming all the way to the surface and all the way out and noticed immediately that the snow had moved markedly closer to home. It was still a fair distance away, but it had moved what he estimated was as much as fifty miles overnight. There was nothing else of interest to see and he blinked and opened his eyes to find Elizabeth staring at him.

"What was that, some kind of morning meditation? I've never seen you do that before," she said.

"I was just trying to picture today's route in my head," replied Ben, answering more truthfully than she would ever know.

"Will we make it back to the cave before dark?"

Elizabeth's question brought an idea to Ben's mind.

"I think so, but the days do seem to be getting shorter. I've been thinking that we should perhaps try to get the replicator to produce some really accurate timepieces - watches maybe - so we could keep track of time better."

"Of course! That's a great idea. Why didn't we think of it before?"

"Probably because we had no need for it before, but if we are going to be apart, being able to set meeting times will become important."

The idea had at least brightened Elizabeth's mood and she was positively cheery when they started walking after having something to eat.

The day passed without anything much of interest happening. One important thing Ben learned was how to very quickly close his eyes as he walked so that he could have a scan of the immediate area he was in. This was extremely helpful, as it allowed him to look for potential problems and certainly meant that it would be difficult for anyone or anything to sneak up on him.

He kept track of David's progress off and on throughout the day and grew increasingly convinced that he was indeed intending to pay them a visit. What the other boy's intentions were, he didn't know, but he could see that David was carrying the gun in his hand. That might just be so that he could protect himself quickly if anything attacked him, but it could also mean that he was out to cause trouble with Ben's group. Only time would tell and Ben felt he would have plenty of opportunities to take action before David was a danger.

With his new-found abilities, it should be possible to remove the gun while David slept for example. Without the gun, they would be able to deal with him easily.

There was still some daylight left when they arrived back at the cave. Ben had urged Elizabeth not to stop to eat so they could make better time.

"Why don't we just press on and get something hot to eat once we're back?" he suggested.