2 cobra 16

 

Chapter 16

 

Someone turned up in a copter; we heard it go over.

“It’s the Trid copter,” said Elizabeth.

It certainly sounded like it.

That Oppenheimer trudged down to meet us meant that it had both waddled and quacked.

“This is intolerable!”

He quacked as much as the old saw about ducks. He waddled too.

But as he was demonstrably was not a duck, I had to sigh about received wisdom.

“It certainly is intolerable,” I said. I put a hard forefinger into his soft underbelly. “Where was the security to stop another attack on me?  Not enough that you permitted one of your contestants to attack me, now I have three crazies with machine guns. Are you allowing this for extra publicity? Have you made any efforts to have the law on this insane family? What are you doing about it?”

He huffed and puffed.

Not enough to blow our little house down; he didn’t really make it into the big bad wolf stakes. More like the mongrel pup who has leaked on the floor during the President’s Address to the Nation.

“I can’t be held responsible for these attacks on you!” he yapped, as if he was trying to blame the cat for the chewed slippers. “If you will go around murdering people....”

“Mr. Oppenheimer,” I said, icily, poking him even harder, “You have just accused me in front of seventy million people of being a murderer. That falls into libel, not slander, as it’s essentially published.”

“I... I... well, they believe you murdered Ichiro Fukuhama,” he spluttered.

“They can believe what they like; belief does not make a fact,” I said. “There are a few people who believe the world is flat. Others have a touching faith that you have never fiddled your income tax returns.”

“I never have!” he said.

“But how do you like being accused of something relatively minor on prime time?” I demanded. “You have taken away my character as well as failing to protect me and the others from a bunch of crazies. I won’t settle for less than a six figure sum, and you can make it payable to Elizabeth. Otherwise you and your company will hear from my attorney.”

“That’s blackmail!” he spluttered.

“No; just what I’ll take as an out of court settlement,” I said. “I suspect if it went to court, your company would be paying a very great deal more for my good name, and you would be footing the bill for them.”

He paled.

“I’ll pay,” he said.

“And do I get an apology for your groundless accusations?” I demanded.

“I... I apologise,” he said.

I withdrew my finger.

“As far as I can tell, whilst Ichiro was messing up royally on his own, I was delayed from getting to City Hall by an attempted suicide,” I said.

Willow had found me an excellent excuse on the line I should have been on to be held up.

“I... I’m sorry,” he said. “It... it was a shock to find two dead bodies.”

“I killed one man who had an automatic pointed at me,” I said. “One of the others went head to head with a bear. I neither know nor care what happened to the third; I presume he’s trying to get back to his base.”

“He isn’t” said Willow’s voice in my ear. “He tried to jog back to the plane, and started sweating. He ran out of steam about two hundred yards short of safety. Amateur.”

It was a good job Oppenheimer wasn’t stripped to his skivvies; he was sweating freely.

Mind, if he had been, I’d have demanded danger pay for experiencing that without brain bleach.

“How many more are there likely to be?” he demanded.

“How on earth would I know?” I asked. “You are the one in touch with the police about these attacks, aren’t you?”

“I... I... I don’t know,” he stuttered. “And... and wearing their clothes, you... it’s not the way the test is supposed to happen!”

“I tell you what,” I said. “When you have this area covered by security, we’ll give you their weapons, and we’ll give up the clothing.  In the meantime, I don’t want to be numbed and slowed by cold if an assault squad is coming for me. We took them as fair bounty from two legged animals trying to do us harm.”

“And another thing!” he squeaked. “Four of you co-operating! It’s unheard of!”

“Can you hear me?” I said.

“Of course!” he yapped.

“Four of us are co-operating,” I said. “There, now it’s been heard of.”

He gave up and went away.

Now we had got rid of Humpty-Dumpty, and Hikaru was likely pulling in his horns and planning to surprise me when I least expected it, we could settle down and dig in. And dig in we did, literally. We used trees boles as pit props and made a proper cave house, with a chimney hole so we could have the fire inside.  It was quite cosy.

I showed the others how to make bone needles, and we started to sew leather and fur clothing.  We weren’t likely to get another bear, but a bear carcase has a lot of fur on it.  I took down a coyote which was ferreting round the discarded guts, and that made more fur. I don’t think coyote are good eating. Still, it doubtless fed something else.

And we’d used the deer brain to cure the bearskin. I was determined we should each go home with a bit of it as a memento.

And Elizabeth’s sister was assured an operation on Oppenheimer.

She cried all over me, and I patted her back awkwardly.

At least she wasn’t in love with me; that would have been awkward.

 

Willow informed me that the igloo had caved in, and that one of the tough guys had done so as well, leaving the last on his own, grimly holding out and roasting the squirrels and rabbits he had snared.

We were living it up in our cave house. Admittedly there’s only so much you can do with venison and bear meat, but when a wild hog fell through the ceiling we had a bit of variety. I brained him with my club before he got over his surprise.  We replaced the roof with one of branches and turfs, and smoked that pig in the chimney. Bacon and gammon – of sorts – made a nice change. If you get it hot enough, it’ll smoke in hours. It was a young hog so not too gamey. Julie brought down some pigeons with the sling as well so we dined like kings, with the addition of some wild leeks in a sheltered hollow, and nettle tops  for vegetables to add to our cat tails. Willow reported that we had a security detail.

“How are we going to work out who wins?” asked Julie.

“Jay kept us alive,” said Dave. “I vote that we go spy on anyone else left, and then I’ll throw in the towel first when he gives in.”

“Me second,” said Elizabeth.

“And though I think I could do it, I bow to the master,” said Julie.

I had, after all, been chatting to the watching drones, explaining how to gut meat and what to keep and what to discard.

By common consent, I went to spy on the last bloke left.

I got there as he decided he had had enough, and set off his bleeper.

I returned with this intelligence.

“Well!” said Dave. “Give it an hour or two. In the meantime, Julie, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”

She blushed very prettily.

“So long as you don’t mind my extreme sports, Dave,” she said.

“Mind?  I’m damned proud of you,” said Dave. “I don’t mind camping with you in slightly extreme settings, but only because it’s with you; my Extreme days are over. And may Norah have an apoplexy,” he added.

“She will, when she learns what your pot is for strolling in fourth,” I said.

He sniggered.

“And somehow I don’t think my betrothed wife will have any trouble from her,” he said. We had bacon and pancakes – made from powdered dried cat tail root with bear dripping – which did not fall apart too badly, and then Dave went out and sounded his squawker. Elizabeth did the same two hours later, and Julie, two hours after that.

I looked at the drone which was watching me packing carefully.

“Are we live?” I asked. It shook from side to side.  I went on, “Are you amenable to a bribe to suffer a ‘fault’ to film, but not transmit yet? You can legitimately say I vanished overnight.” there was a long pause, and the drone nodded.

I grinned. “Well, if you film me as far as going to bed, but instead of withdrawing, hang around and I guarantee you footage you will get awards for.”

It nodded slowly again.

I scattered the remaining fresh meat for any scavengers.

“We don’t want it rotting, and it’s always proper when in the wild to leave it as pristine as the way you find it,” I said. I filled in the latrine pit, and buried any leftover smoked meat I did not plan to carry in a pit lined with pine needles. “Pine needles are a powerful anti-oxidant and drinking pine needle tea combats ageing so I figure it might help preserve food already preserved to some extent by smoking.” I said to the drone. “I am doing this on the south side of the stream  under the bank where there should be no direct sunlight and the running water nearby would keep it cool.  A layer of pine, a layer of meat. I have no idea how long it may be good, but any rangers around might check it out.”

By the time I had tidied up, the sun was going down.

“One more night, I think,” I said. “Good night, viewers.”

Mr. Oppenheimer would curse me, but he’d put it down to me being stubborn.

I went to bed. I needed a couple of hours’ sleep.

 

oOoOo

 

 

I awoke in the dark, but for the fire. That was bright enough.  The moon was gibbous waning, and should not be up for several hours yet.

Perfect.

“Are you awake, drone-wallah?” I asked.

The resting drone whirred into life.

I grinned.

I took a deep drink, and dowsed the fire as well.

“Now I’m going to give a lesson on how to navigate by the stars,” I said. “We’re heading for Quebec; which has a latitude of, as far as I can recall, forty-six and three quarters and longitude a little over seventy one degrees west.” I had looked it up before we left the hotel. “Now, assuming we are in Jacques Cartier National Park, which is north of the city, the helicopter flight was about half an hour, so I reckon we must be thirty or forty miles out of the city. I want to check my longitude and latitude though, and I’ve made something akin to a Roman groma, which predated the sextant. Now, I’ve put a plumb-bob on it to make it easier for me to estimate my angles. And we’re going to find the north star.”

I proceeded to deliver a lecture on how to navigate by the stars. I discovered that by ready reckoning with my very rough instrument I was so close to Quebec that calculating it was not going to tell me more than I already knew; that I was between twenty-five and forty miles north of the city. If I had estimated the angles correctly.

I had at least got an accurate ninety degrees and sixty degrees, forty-five degrees and thirty degrees.

Oh, please. Ninety is a right angle; marked out on sand, it’s easy to work out the rest. A piece of string – sinew – on a stick after measuring  the same length along both axes allows me to mark an arc from each; a line from where they cross to the origin bifurcates it to make 45⁰.  Equally, a circle can be marked out with a marker at the same length as its radius to make a hexagon, one segment of which is 60⁰; that can be divided in the same way to find thirty. And fifteen if you divide it again. I was as accurate as possible for rough materials.                                  

“Well, so long as I keep going south, I should reach it,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ll do it overnight; the ground isn’t totally easy going.” I sniggered. “I imagine Oppenheimer will send out the copter in the morning to inform me that I have no need to hold out any more. I wonder what’s going to go through his head when I’m not there? I could keep going during the day, though it’ll be harder to judge south as I don’t have my watch. You know how to tell which way south is using a compass? No? Well, if you point the hour hand at the sun, due south is half way between the hour hand and twelve. In the northern hemisphere that is. Ok, it’s a little chilly, so I’m going to do what I call wolf pace.” I broke into lope, which was not jarring to the spine as a jog is. It covers ground fast and well. The drone kept up well enough.

The night was coming to an end when I noticed a glow in the sky which was not the dawn... not unless the sun had suddenly started coming up in the west... so I veered off course to take a look.

It was a small settlement, and people were getting up to go to work, which on the outlying edges was home on the farm.

I stole a bit of milk right from a surprised cow – yes, of course I carried my birch-bark cup – and gulped it down, still warm and frothy. There was a likely-looking barn, which had, as I guessed, an upper storey as a hay loft.

“I’m going to take a kip, here,” I told the drone. “I’ll talk at you when I wake up, so take your rig to bed.”

I hunkered down in a far corner. I had no doubt that everyone here knew everyone else, and I would be courting trouble if seen. I had some cold bacon, and went to sleep.

I did not wake with someone sticking a pitchfork in my ribs, which I half feared, but with tiny kitten claws making bread on my chest.  I opened my eyes and looked into the beautiful green eyes of a tabby kitten, with goggles round her eyes. [Yes, I checked later, under her ridiculous triangular tail; she was a her.] She curled up on my chest, yawned, and went to sleep.

I lay as still as I could for the privilege I had been accorded, for a small, new baby creature to show me such trust.

The calico cat which came and regarded me solemnly went away and brought back a squirming black kitten, which she dumped beside the tabby. He bopped his sister on the nose, she woke, boxed his ears, and started washing him.

Apparently I had been given two kittens.

The calico cat went away.

I heard someone downstairs greeting her.

“Hello, Puss. Sure she hasn’t more of the little perishers? I drowned four.”

“She wouldn’t be out here so calmly if she had,” said another voice.

Why, in this day and age, when spaying is quick, easy, and not expensive, do people still leave their cats unneutered if they are not prepared to take on the offspring that result? Poor Puss; she plainly decided that the unwashed, unshaven, unkempt visitor was a safer proposition for her surviving babies than her own people.