Chromosome Quest Read online

  Watching her perform did illustrate the hazard underlying the gruesome legends associated with the original Amazons of yore. Fortunately for them, the dedicated archers among the fur-people were not so endowed as to have those particular problems. Teena, on the other hand, was indeed hindered by her natural assets, forced to use care when loosing her arrows. A moment's carelessness could indeed spoil her aim with crippling pain as the side-effect, but she did not allow the prospect of a painful misfire slow her down.

  Running, in particular, was another area she excelled at, bounding along with a smooth grace I could not begin to match. I could best her on pure speed and raw endurance, but she made it seem smooth and graceful in a way I could not.

  Our route would zig-zag across the land, hop-scotching from castle-to-castle. Many days' journey would merely be a modest ten or twelve miles, but several were more than twenty-five miles, a few were a lot more. I could run ten miles in well under an hour and be confident my companions could keep up with anything I could manage. Twenty-five miles was more of a challenge but manageable. Earthly marathon runners managed to run twenty-six miles in about two hours. I think I was in that class, but unlike runners in a sports contest, I had to carry a pack with all my worldly possessions, weapons, and necessary food and water.

  Even with all of my exercise, conditioning, and supplemental nutrition, I could not manage to run flat out at maximum speed on the longer runs, especially carrying the necessary packs. The longer the distance, the necessarily slower-paced our run. If every leg of the trip were ten miles or so, or even up to twenty-five, we could manage the trip without difficulty. Not only must we maintain an inhuman pace, but we also had to carry our provisions and our weapons. Depending on what we ultimately settled on as necessary, we might find ourselves with a significant burden.

  For the most part, with the nearby inhabited castles, we needed to carry little, as they would welcome our arrival, and gladly to feed us and supply anything we desired in exchange for my influential currency. We nonetheless carried our weapons lest we encounter something nasty on the road. Fortunately, in the more densely populated areas where castles are close together, dangers are few.

  It seems my essential currency was always in high demand. Several insisted as a condition of supporting us, that we stay at least two nights, to better compensate their efforts. We resented the delay, but it was necessary, and we understood their need.

  The problem was the two uninhabited castles and the one for which the status was unknown, which we had started referring to as the 'Dark Castle.' Not only was there no friendly reception to be expected, no food to be provided, but they were also much further from their neighbors. One leg was over fifty miles. Another was almost sixty. Traveling fifty or sixty miles, carrying food and weapons was daunting enough. The Dark Castle was the worst. It sat squarely in the middle of a 150-mile span. It had become relatively isolated over several years as its nearby neighbors had failed, and the distance had limited regular visitation. They had still communicated via telegraph and the occasional extraordinary runner until recently, then they unaccountably fell silent, the last runner failing to return.

  Not only must we cover some 75 miles within the boundaries of the vermin-free daylight hours, we must carry all the food and any other supplies we would need, not just the barely manageable quantity required for the days run, but for the night and the second days run too. And then we must desperately hope that we would find the Dark Castle intact and useful as a shelter. If vermin had breached its walls, we might be profoundly disappointed, and then highly likely become Dino-dinner immediately thereafter.

  This daunting leg of the journey seemed to be barely within the range of human capability. Few athletes could run 75 miles in ten hours under optimum circumstances. Then to rest only one evening and do it again the next day profoundly pushes the ultimate human limits. Add the necessity of carrying the food and supplies needed for the entire trip, and it became even more daunting. We were betting our lives we could do this. One fall, one sprain, one injury and we are Dino-dinner. And then we must survive the night in an unknown shelter that may not even be vermin proof when we find it.

  We decided to make a practice run to gauge the limits of our abilities. We marked off a trail through the woods, thru the fields and gardens, more-or-less following the Criers route, circumnavigating the entire settlement. We started with my old running path, connected to the various trails until, with multiple passes, we could run a sustained distance of just under eighty miles. We loaded ourselves with packs of food and other necessities and spent a day making the run, full-up.

  I noted I was correct in my original assessment of my companions, especially Teena. She was an athlete, quite nearly up to anything I was. I was faster and stronger, but not immensely so. I outweighed her, but despite my greater strength and energy reserves, I only had her bested by a few percentage points on most objective measures. Watching her move was breath-taking. Despite her buxom endowments, she could run with a smooth grace and gazelle-like speed. I enjoyed watching her. In fact, the three of us seemed well matched. Ten hours of hard running left us all equally spent. It also exposed the foolishness of our plans. We might be supremely capable, but even we have our limits.

  The first trial, we ran out of daylight with almost ten miles to go. Had this been the real thing, we unquestionably would have been Dino-dinner.

  We lightened our packs and in other ways streamlined our load and tried again. Better, we just about made the 75-mile minimum, but with absolutely no margin for error. Even so, we had not carried provisions for the next day's run. We rethought, re-planned and tried again. Again, we could only barely make the trip.

  We had zero margin for error, and no hope of effecting the simplest of repairs should our destination not be perfectly Dino-proof. If the door had been broken in, for example, or even just jammed, we might be able to effect repairs if we got there before sundown. With a deinonychus hungrily nipping at our heels, we might not have time even so much as to clean leaves from the threshold to secure the door.

  We tried again and again. Every attempt at this simulated leg of the journey seemed to lean in favor of the dinosaurs. Oh, we might get lucky. Sometimes the big predators sleep late and do not come out right at dusk. Sometimes. Do you want to bet your very life on a slug-a-bed T-Rex?

  There just seemed to be no solution!

  Our hosts are not especially privy to our daily plans and struggles. We had agreed not to burden them with the overall seriousness of our quest. On the other hand, I had spent many hours with our Communications Officers, crafting the messages sent to neighboring castles, as well as paying them for their services in my unique way.

  I think Lolita was becoming moderately annoyed with this. Making desperately needed babies was one thing, but the mere friendly exercise in exchange for rendered services bothered her. Most cultures frown on straightforward prostitution, and I suppose that was the case here. When the end-goal is desperately needed babies, the fur-people held no qualms. Otherwise, was less clear-cut. I faced a demanding bedmate who refused to accept less of my time and attention than her sisters were getting.

  The fur-people are very open sexually and do not seem to have many of the taboos my society revels in, but a simple swap of sexual favors for services when desperately needed progeny wasn't in the offing seemed to push even their boundaries of acceptable behavior. I collected several mild rebukes from Lolita over this, although she stopped short of severe condemnation.

  I think she was just jealous.

  As a result of our time together the telegraph crew had come to develop an appreciation of what we were up to, and one of them suggested that perhaps we should share our problems with nearby castles and ask their advice. They might know a better approach we had not considered.

  I talked her suggestion over with Teena and Petch, and they agreed. We were desperate enough to accept help from any quarter. We crafted our story carefully, both because we wanted to limit t
he information we shared about our plans and because the length of messages we could send was short. Brevity was paramount. After a few rough drafts, we surrendered our message to the telegraphers

  It took five days to transmit, relay around the community and return the replies. Surprisingly, the responses brought a new suggestion to explore. Something we had never even considered; traveling the leg past the dark castle by water. We all felt slightly stupid once the obvious had been pointed out. A sizable river ran not two miles east of our trail, more-or-less the direction we needed to go, from the last friendly castle before the Dark Castle, flowing right past the Dark Castle to the next friendly one.

  We could hike a few miles, take to the water and paddle vigorously downstream, right past the Dark Castle to our destination. A hundred and fifty miles this way seems possible. We thought making 15 miles per hour for ten hours on the water to a sure safe-haven was a better bet than making 7.5 miles per hour on land with no assurance of shelter.

  Without powered watercraft, we had not considered it as going upstream was impossible in the allotted time. But we only needed to go downstream. We are not coming back. With a favorable river current and industrious paddling, it seemed possible to maintain the necessary pace.

  Unfortunately, we had no way to test our paddling skills beforehand and averaging 15 miles per hour over a ten hour period even with a favorable current was still quite demanding. It seemed chancy, but a better bet than the other option. Or so we judged, perhaps too optimistically.

  Returning to our place of origin only became relevant after we had completed our mission. True, it would have to be addressed, if we succeeded, but it was not an obstacle to the more critical issue of the success of our quest. Pushing the challenge of the Dark Castle and its risks into the possible future of a successful crusade was entirely acceptable.

  Finally, we received confirmation that the other two 'Gray' or uninhabited castles were in serviceable condition and habitable. Although they did not currently have permanent residents they both, we learned, actually had small caretaker parties living there, not as a full-fledged family, but small groups determined not to let the semi-abandoned homes fall into ruin. They had agreed not only to support our mission, but fertile candidates would make it a point to journey there to assist our journey and to receive my payment eagerly.

  Only the Dark Castle remained unknown, and we had an alternative solution bypassing it entirely.

  Our extended period of preparation, meticulous planning, and brutal, unrelenting physical training was at an end. We were almost ready!

  Commencement

  We were, as near as we could say, ready. There were still significant gaps in my understanding of our mission. The evening before we were to commence I sat with my companions and quizzed them on many concerns I felt I understood poorly. I came away from that conversation even less optimistic than when I started.

  My first concern was when the portal we were to approach would be open. This goal turned out to be closer than I had thought. The date of the portal opening was precisely sixty days away. That gave us sixty days to traverse more than five hundred miles, on foot through very hostile territory and yet still spend many additional evenings with our hosts along the way, paying them with my sole currency for their help and support, while recuperating from our exertions. A tight window, but one we cannot change. No room for any changed plans along the way. We had to hit that window!

  I also learned that the portal would be open for just under twenty minutes, late in the afternoon of the sixtieth day, and then there would not be another opening for thirty years. This opening was our one shot to make this transition!

  There was, of course, a plan ‘B’ if we cannot reach this portal, but Teena and Petch insisted this was the best hope, and that the alternate promised a much lower probability of success.

  The other factor was that if we somehow missed the portal, we would be too far from a safe harbor. If we were near the gateway but still on Planet Oz when the portal closed, we were Dino-Dinner. It would be much too late, even if we ran for all we were worth unless the local Dinos were seriously slug-a-bed that evening. Also, if we were that lucky and reached the castle before being eaten, gaining admission after sundown was problematical. It was a hard and fast rule that castle gates were never opened after sunset, no matter what, and for a darn good reason!

  We had already established that this was not one of the more forgiving portals. We could take no weapons, indeed absolutely nothing but our muscles, skills and very tender skin through the opening. We would arrive on the far side of the portal unarmed, naked, vulnerable, and would face an implacable foe who had powerful weapons and technology. An enemy who understood the portals and would know that ours was opening and precisely when. We only hoped that since 'Planet Oz' was blind to the enemy, they would not be expecting us. Our chances of popping through the portal undetected seemed slim at best.

  Our mission then was to reach the portal in time, pop through without attracting an instantly fatal attack, somehow find and commandeer weapons on the other side and then mount a frontal assault against one of the most well-protected fortresses in the known universe. Gee Teena, why didn't you tell me all this sooner? Piece of cake. Yeah!

  The discussion that evening got heated. The more questions I asked, the more I doubted we could succeed. Finally, Petchy chimed in with a dark, somber tone.

  “Son, I know the odds are against us. Athena and I have devoted our very lives to this and have vowed to give our all to win against this foe. I have explained before that all humanity is doomed unless we succeed here. The stakes are impossibly high, and the odds are extremely long, yet we do believe we can win. Every complex plan depends, in one way or another, on an element of luck. It will take all the skill we have got, all the effort we can muster and a bit of luck besides and we must court, and use that luck.”

  Teena put her hand on my arm, and in her soft contralto said, “Fitz, we simply must do this!”

  I wilted. “You said that we might find weapons there. Why do you think so? And what sort of weapons?” That seemed a logical question.

  She said, “I have not told you the full scope of our efforts. This fight is a war that has been going on since long before you were born. We have assaulted that fortress many times with different approaches, different strategies, different weapons. Corpses of the soldiers who have tried the frontal assault and lost litter the battlefield on the other side. I have told you that some of the more stable, more dependable portals permit the transport of non-living objects.”

  I nodded.

  She continued, “I have also told you that objects deeply buried inside living tissue can pass through less-forgiving portals to varying degrees.”

  I nodded again.

  “So you understand that by sending many different soldiers through many different portals, with many objects carried one-way or another, we have built a small cache of weapons there. A weapons cache created at a tremendous cost, unbelievable difficulty.

  ”Many brave men and women have died vainly attacking that fortress and in the process left us a few weapons. Weapons we now intend to use.

  “Unfortunately, those who carried those weapons died in the process. No one has ever returned from a direct assault on the enemy. Most of what we know stems from historical records as it existed before humans were forced to leave the planet. We have very little in the way of current intelligence as to what it is like there, what fortifications are intact, what may be vulnerable. We do not know how successful they have been at placing weapons for us. We may find little or nothing. Or we may discover a great deal. No doubt discarded weapons litter the landscape along with the corpses of our fallen, but searching for them will be difficult or impossible with the enemy watching our every move. We must improvise with whatever we can find and take weapons from the enemy when and where we can.

  “The portal we intend to travel through from this world is a portal which has never before been the so
urce of an attack, a gateway which the enemy, hopefully, believes safe. We have always attacked via portals that will allow non-living material, particularly weapons, to pass through. Emerging naked and unarmed into hostile territory is not a promising strategy, and the enemy understands this.

  “This attack is a hail-Mary strategy, one so counter-intuitive and illogical that, we hope, the enemy will be unprepared.

  “The enemy has thus far focused on defending approaches it considers threatening, approaches through which we could bring weapons. They have done so successfully despite everything we have thrown at them.

  “We hope to use the element of surprise. A surprise purchased at horrific cost. That surprise is not only because we are coming at the enemy from a direction thought blind to them, but also because other brave fighters are to charge in a virtual suicide mission from a wholly different, more conventional approach. We will emerge near a fortress that is under siege.

  The fighting will not be near us, but will hopefully serve to draw the enemy's attention, resources and especially the armed bots away from our location. Except for that, we would be swarmed immediately, and have little chance at all.

  “Wonderfully brave men and women willingly forfeit their lives in a charge against that fortress simply to draw the enemy's attention that we may sneak in the back door, as it were. We dare not waste their blood. There is almost no more blood left to spill. The cost of this mission is horrific, and if we fail, it will be a long time before our people can mount another. Our forces will have to mount the next offensive without us because we will be dead.”