So this was Homeworld's wilderness. Tarlac watched Hovan's car
disappear, then checked out his surroundings to see what he'd have to
work with. It was almost uncomfortably warm now, at nearly mid-morning,
but that wouldn't last. The weather was clear; come nightfall, he'd
need a way to keep warm.
The clearing was about six meters across and roughly circular, with
traces of another camp near the northern edge, shaded by the broad
silvery-green leaves of a soh tree. Tarlac grinned at that,
remembering his lessons. A soh tree, with its palm-like leaves and
sticky sap, was pretty good material for a shelter--which was
considerably simpler than trying to improvise clothing.
He'd be spending the night here, so he'd better get started. Taking
advantage of all the shade he could, since Homeworld's sun put out more
ultraviolet than Terra's, he cut sticks for a leanto framework, then
climbed up the soh tree and began one-handedly hacking off the
tough-stemmed leaves. It was hard work, but it shouldn't take more than a
couple dozen of the big leaves to make a decent shelter.
The resultant structure of leaves laid over notched, sap-smeared
sticks, he judged, might possibly last, if it didn't have to stand up
to more than a gentle breeze. It would have to do; he didn't have any
other fastening material, and it only had to survive for one night
anyway.
His next priority was water, which was no problem. This part of
Homeworld's main continent had abundant drainage, and from the air he
had already spotted one of the streams that fed the capital's
reservoir. It was less than a hundred meters away, and it would be his
guide out of the forest, as well as his water supply.
Tarlac had no desire to disable his only means of transportation, so
when he went for a drink, he watched where he put his feet. The water
was good, clear and cold, and Hovan had assured him of its purity.
None of the Traiti worlds had any pollution worth mentioning; Traiti
technology was roughly equivalent to the Empire's, but had been
achieved far more slowly, and the by-products had never been allowed to
get out of control.
Refreshed, Tarlac surveyed his problems. He had water and shelter; he
still needed food, fire, and foot protection, not necessarily in that
order. Food, now at mid-autumn, was as plentiful as water, and there
was nothing he could do about foot protection at the moment, so that
made fire his next priority. There were plenty of likely-looking rocks
on the streambed; some, he remembered from a survival course he'd taken
years ago, might work nearly as well as flint. He waded into the
stream and selected a handful, putting them on the bank to dry while he
planned.
It was just past midday, so he had plenty of time to equip himself,
even with nothing but a knife to work with. He wouldn't need much
gear; it wasn't as if he was Robinson Crusoe, having to live off the
land indefinitely. He'd be out twenty days, at the most. He would
have to have some kind of shoes, though; his feet were simply too
tender for him to walk fifty kilometers barefoot, even through this
open, leaf-carpeted forest. Some kind of long-distance weapon, say a
spear or a crude bow, would be useful, too, and effective enough at the
relatively short ranges a forest allowed. Anything else would be
strictly a convenience. It would be nice if he could rig some way to
carry coals so he wouldn't have to start a fire from scratch every
night . . . He shrugged. That wasn't very likely, and speed was his
main consideration, so it might be just as well for him to travel
light.
By the time he came to that conclusion, the stones were dry enough to
strike sparks if they were going to. He went through them
methodically, hitting each one against the flat of his knife. Two of
the first six did spark, weakly; he set them aside and kept going. The
next five did nothing at all, and he was beginning to think he'd have
to make do with one of the weak ones. Then the twelfth, a small rock
that looked like pinkish quartz, gave a big bright spark that made him
whistle in relief and admiration. Tossing the other stones back in the
stream, he put the quartz in the pocket of his shorts and headed back
for the clearing, picking up dry wood on the way.
He found a gratifying number of animal traces as well, both trails and
pawprints, and he hoped few of them were predators. He might not be
Robinson Crusoe, but he wasn't Tarzan either, and the idea of tackling
a big cat with nothing more than a knife held absolutely no appeal.
Predators, he reminded himself, didn't normally attack unless provoked.
At least the trails meant he had a chance of trapping something, and it
was a sure bet that animal skins would make better moccasins than soh
leaves would!
His leanto was still standing in the clearing, though it looked
ludicrously flimsy. He stacked the wood next to it, then began
scraping leaves and other debris to make a safe spot for a fire in
front of it. He hadn't needed Hovan to tell him that; this part was no
different from his childhood camping trips. He could almost hear his
father's voice, its calm but firm emphasis: "Always be super-cautious
with fire in the woods, son. You don't have any margin for error, no
slack at all."
His father would have liked Homeworld, Tarlac thought; he'd been as
much at home in the woods as he had at the gunnery controls of the
destroyer Victrix, where he'd been killed in the bloody running battle
between Tanin and Cosmogard five years ago.
"Don't worry, Dad," Tarlac said softly. "I'll be careful." He'd been
aboard the Lindner at the time, as he had almost since the war's
beginning. He'd had a Ranger's reserve then, and the detachment he'd
thought was real had shielded him from the full hurt of his father's
death.
His mother had understood, too, when he called her instead of returning
to Terra even for the memorial service. "He wouldn't have expected it,
Steve," she'd said. "He was like you that way--duty first, always."
"If you need anything . . ."
"No, I'll be fine. You've both seen to it that I don't have any
financial worries, and your Aunt Betty will be staying with me for
awhile. But . . . I do miss you, son."
"I know, Mother. I'll come home next time I make it to Terra."
And he had. Tarlac was suddenly very glad of that. He'd been
uncomfortable, vaguely guilty that he hadn't been able to feel more
sorrow, but his mother had been happy to see him and made no effort to
hide it. She'd let him leave without objecting, too, and he could
guess, now, how much that had cost her. If he made it back, he'd have
to let her know he did understand, and show her some of the open love
he'd been unable to express before.
To make it back, though, he'd better stop reminiscing and get some work
done. The fire area was down to clear soil, so he stood and brushed
off his hands on the only cloth available, his shorts. Time to scout
around for food, and the means to trap some animals.
The inner bark of the torva bush--actually a low-growing tree--made a
substitute for rope or twine, according to Hovan. But it was tough by
Traiti standards, and damn near impenetrable for a human, even with a
knife. By the time he'd peeled off a half-dozen strips, one hand was
blistered and the sun was getting low.
He settled on salvis root for dinner, apprehensive about handling a
plant that bore a strong outward resemblance to poison oak, but he was
hungry. The small patch of salvis yielded plenty for him, though it
would have barely whetted a Traiti's appetite. Dessert came from a
toli vine that was strangling a nearby soh tree--orange berries that
looked something like jelly beans and smelled like dirty socks.
Despite Hovan's assurances, he bit into the first one cautiously.
Nothing that smelled that bad had a right to taste even halfway decent
. . . Well, it might not have the right, he discovered, but it
certainly had the taste. He should have remembered Limburger cheese.
These--he grinned and ate another--"Limburger berries" were sweet, just
tart enough to bring out their flavor. They could easily become a
trade item, a gourmet delicacy, if he managed to achieve a peace.
Back at his camp, Tarlac dug a shallow hole for the salvis roots
off-center of his cleared fire area, and covered them with a thin layer of
dirt. He wished he could bake them coated with mud instead, but he had
nothing to carry water in. He swore briefly at the tradition that
demanded a candidate spend the first night where he was dropped off,
but it was a minor inconvenience, and he'd be travelling the next day
anyway.
Scrapings of dry bark smoldered in the sparks made by his knifeblade
and the fragment of quartz, grew into tiny flames, and, with the
addition of large twigs and then branches, became a small fire that
would burn down into coals to cook his dinner. While he waited, he
could set his traps. Snare loops for small game would have to be
sturdier than on Terra, since like most things on Homeworld, the
rabbit-equivalents tended toward the large economy size.
It was dark when he reached camp again after setting the snares and
pausing to dig a small latrine pit. He pushed the coals of his fire
aside with a green stick and built them back into a blaze, which gave
him enough light to unearth his dinner--and he burned his fingers,
incautiously trying to pick up the roots by hand. He called himself
several varieties of stupid while he sucked his fingers and speared the
salvis roots with his knife, setting them on soh leaves to cool. By
the time they got down to eating temperature, his fingers had stopped
hurting, but he still wasn't too happy with himself. All right, it had
been quite a few years since he'd done any cooking, but that was no
excuse--he'd simply been careless. He'd also been lucky that there was
no real damage done.
What was done was done. Forget it.
He wiped his knife semi-clean on his shorts, scraped dirt and rind off
the roots, and ate. They might not be his favorite food, but they were
good enough, and filling. After a handful of Limburger berries, he sat
comfortably near the crackling fire, his thoughts wandering as he
watched the dancing flames.
Hovan. His sponsor. He still didn't know exactly what that
relationship meant, but the Traiti commando had come to mean a great
deal to the human Ranger. More, perhaps, than anyone else he'd met.
He visualized Hovan in forest green, then smiled at himself. Hovan
would never make a Ranger--he was too old, too molded by Fleet
discipline, and far too clan-oriented--but there would be non-human
Rangers someday, and eventually a non-human Sovereign. He liked that
idea. Intelligence was what counted, and the Traiti certainly had as
much of that as any of the Imperial races.
There was no doubt in Tarlac's mind that if he made it through the
Ordeal to end the war, it would be Hovan's doing as much as his own.
Hovan's teaching, his quiet support, and most of all his caring, were
what would bring the Ranger through his Ordeal if it were humanly
possible. He'd have to see that Hovan got the credit he deserved.
It was time to feed the fire and get some rest, if he wanted to make an
early start in the morning. His bed was leaves that rustled under his
weight as he settled down, then lay watching firelight reflect off the
inside of his shelter. It was odd . . . he'd slept alone from the time
he was six until he boarded the Hermnaen, and he'd thought he would
enjoy his privacy here--but he didn't. He missed the sleeproom, the
comfortable presence of his n'ruhar and the sounds of their quiet
breathing as they slept. He smiled drowsily, thinking that he'd shared
sleeprooms with a lot of Traiti, and he'd never heard one snore . . .
As always outdoors, he slept lightly, waking from time to time to feed
the fire until dawn finally roused him for the day. Leftover roots
made an adequate breakfast, and when he checked his snares he decided
that either he was extremely lucky or noxi were even stupider than
Hovan had told him. Three of his snares held prey, the beagle-eared
Homeworld version of rabbits, and one was still reasonably intact. The
two carcasses a derybach had reached before he did meant that at least
one well-fed derybach should have no interest in human prey today, and
one noxi was enough to supply him with moccasins and meat.
Satisfied, Tarlac salvaged his bark strips and returned to camp. He
improvised a spit--a straight limb that would make a good spear, shaped
to a point and fire-hardened--and put a haunch on to roast for lunch.
Thanking whatever Traiti metallurgist had developed a knife alloy that
held an edge under steady abuse, he set about making moccasins from the
tough noxi skin, using his own foot as the pattern, gut for thread, and
his knife as an awl.
The crude lopsided moccasins felt good on his feet; he had soh-leaf
pouches to hold coals and the jerky he'd let the sun dry; and the spit
did indeed make a workable spear. Looking around his camp before he
left, Tarlac couldn't help feeling a sense of accomplishment. His
shelter and equipment might not look like much, but they were his, in
the most personal way possible. It had been a long time since he'd
concerned himself with such basic essentials of survival, and somewhat
to his surprise, he found the past day as satisfying as anything he'd
done for the Empire. He almost hated to leave the shaky leanto.
He set off toward the stream that would serve as his guide and water
supply. He wouldn't get far today, probably only three or four
kilometers, but it was a start, and his need to finish the Ordeal
wouldn't let him delay.
His leanto that night was considerably sturdier, thanks to the bark
strips, and he made camp closer to water, which let him wash his knife
and himself and provided cooking mud. Tarlac couldn't help laughing at
that incongruous idea, even as he slathered a thick layer onto the
day's find of salvis roots. There were more than enough for a human,
though again, not for a Traiti. It might be logical after all to
insist that candidates spend at least their first night in the richly
productive test area near the clearing, and it was an equally good
reason, given Traiti food requirements, for most candidates to choose
to remain there.
The next five days settled into a routine of hiking and foraging,
living on produce and his stored jerky. Other than a brief but heavy
shower the third afternoon, the weather remained good; food was
abundant, if monotonous, and the only hostile wildlife he ran into was
a variety of insect something like an Alaskan mosquito with a decided
taste for human flesh. Except for an occasional feeling of being
watched, and his urgent reasons for being here at all, Tarlac was
enjoying himself. It was hard work, yes, and he looked forward to the
comfort of a sleeping mat and his n'ruhar's presence--but as he built
his shelter for the seventh and probably last night in the wilderness,
he couldn't help feeling some regret that the closest thing he'd had to
a vacation in ten years was coming to an end.