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From: mandil_k@hotmail.com (mandil)
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Subject: {ASSM} Masters of the Arches   chapter 17
Date: Sat,  8 Jun 2002 10:10:02 -0400
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.                         Masters of the Arches
                                by Mandil



                               Chapter 17
                                                

Less than two hours later, the canoe entered the mouth of a small
river and once again they were paddling upstream. Since the current
was not that strong, they were able to make good progress in the
general southwest direction. Vincent didn't care too much if they were
deviating from the true south since it was much more important now for
them to get as much distance as possible between them and the spot
where they had spent the previous night and where Kowla's remains
were. He knew that those looking for Kowla would discover his remains
when they began looking for them.

They kept on paddling upstream all day, stopping only for a short time
to eat and to stretch their legs. Only when it was too dark to see
where they were going, did they stop since it was too dangerous and
they had no other choice on the matter. The blinking spot of light on
the map told Vincent that they had covered about forty mile since
their leaving camp that morning.

They were much too exhausted to set any kind of camp on the bank of
the small river. Instead the three of them slept in the canoe, which
had been tied to a tree, that grew close to the water. Beside, with
the canoe still in the water it was much safer since they could not
built a fire to scare away predators.

During the next three days they went upstream on the river which was
getting less and less wide, but still thus far they had been lucky
since they hadn't yet encounter any rapids. Then this all changed and
the river became no more than a deep creek and often they had to walk
beside the canoe since the water was not deep enough.

But by then, judging by the map that Vincent had taken from Kowla,
they had covered another ninety miles and Vincent felt much safer now
since whoever was after them, had much less chances of finding them
for the moment at least.

At no time since arriving in this world, had Vincent seen any sort of
planes or flying machines of any kind. But all the time they were
getting away, he was half expecting to see something like that appear
in the sky. But still at the end of the forth day - after they had
escaped from Kowla -  he hadn't seen anything exept birds in the sky.
This more than anything else convinced him that Valdo probably no
longer had all the technological gadgets he must have had once.
Vincent felt sure that if Valdo had any sort of flying devise, he
would not hesitate to use them while searching for them.

By now, he certainly was aware that Vincent had killed Kowla and that
the trio were trying to escape. Further more he was probably awarenow 
that Vincent was from outside of this world and the only way he had
gotten here must have been by mean of the Simultravel system. So he
should be very eager to capture Vincent so as to make him reveal the
location of the arch.

Yes it must have been very frustrating for Valdo, thought Vincent. He
still had many of the machines and gadgets of his civilization - but
not all of them of course - and yet being the only one left from his
race, only he could really understand these devices and use them
properly.

Of course it was always possible for him to train some of the natives
of this world in the art of using these machines, but nothing short of
a decade of operating and understanding these gadgets and machines
would change the natives way of thinking about theme. Even then they
would still consider their power as magic even it they could learn how
to operate them, and this would be a great handicap since it would
then be only natural for them to fear what they were suppose to
control.

You can't force technology in a hurry unto uneducated and
superstitious peoples. Before devils and monsters fearing people can
accept and use new devises, it is imperative that they do understand
perfectly how these work.

When Kowla had used the transmitter, he was still afraid of it, even
if he knew how to make it work. He had been taught how to operate it
and not to fear it too much, but he still didn't understand how it
worked.

On the fifth day, they had to abandon the canoe since the shallow
water of the small river  would not permit the canoe and its occupant
to float without hitting stones at the bottom. After hiding it in the
dense foliages next to a big rock that did serve as a repair point, -
Vincent figured that if they should pass this way again they would be
able to find it - they proceeded on foot parallel to the river for a
while then they turned directly south.

Their progress was much slower now but on the other hand they were
moving south. After checking his map, he estimated that they had
another three thousands miles to go before they would reach the
equator of the planet. After than they would still have to travel all
the way to the south pole of the planet to find Valdo's domain. It was
much too great a distance for Vincent's liking and he knew that their
chances of reaching that far were not very great.

Looking back in time, ever since he had gotten on the surface of this
planet, Vincent estimated that he had covered a distance of about
fifteen hundreds miles and on many occasions he could have lost his
life. Upon examining his map and taking this distance into
consideration, he could pinpoint on the map fairly accurately the
location of the Simultravel that had permitted him to arrive into this
planet. This was a piece of information that Valdo would love to have
and of course Vincent knew that he was ready to go to a great length
of trouble to get it.

Vincent felt a sense of relief when he figured that with the aid of
the map he could  get back to the arch. But he had given his word to
Brumel - even if she was only a complex computer - and he was not
ready to abandon his promises to search for Valdo. Even if he was to
go back to his own world with both women, Valdo was bound to find the
location of the arch he had use, or the location of another one, -
Vincent felt certain that there were others.  Even if it did take him
another hundred years it certainly did not matter that much to Valdo.

But when at last he would discover its location, it would then be
possible for him to reach Earth. This would mean the end of
civilization there.

No he had to find Valdo and kill him before he could destroy the Earth
or other worlds. Both Nika and Verla showed much admiration and love
for him and he knew that either of them would not hesitate a second to
give her life so as to save his own life.

He was also amazed to see how one woman accepted the other, never was
there a trace of jealousy between them. Almost each night - except
when they were all too tired - he made love to both of them and this
he did in the presence of the other. But it was a common thing here to
have more than one mate; people here didn't consider making love as
the shameful act it was in his world.

Sometimes it was the female that had more than one husbands. When one
of her men was gone hunting - sometimes it was a matter of weeks - she
had her other mate to protect her at home. When a man was very skilful
at hunting or if he had some prestige such as being chief or shaman,
he would have more than one wife, and that was his privilege.

After all, why should it be otherwise, it made a lot of sense since
women got pregnant only when they were ready and willing, and by
taking regularly the anti-pregnancy brew they could go as long as they
wished without getting pregnant. Beside, in all the villages that
Vincent had visited so far, it was always thus. Before a woman was
allowed to have a child she had to have the approval of the committee
of the village.

This did explain why there were no problem of overpopulation in this
place, even if people tended to live a long time and died only when
there was an accident or in wars.

Another things that fascinated Vincent, was the fact that every human
he had met sofar,  whether male of female, was handsome and beautiful.
The Rad virus not only kept the body in top shape but it also
eliminated those imperfections on the face and everywhere on the body
so that every single human was perfection itself in appearance and
performance.

Even the cruel tribes that they had met on their way had been
handsome. Vincent figured that this fact more than anything else
explained the absence of sexual jealousy between partners that were
married to the same mate.

Beside it you were attracted to a certain person and if that person
was not interested in you, it wasn't that bad since you were young
looking and handsome, all you had to do was to look somewhere else and
focus your interest on a different person.

If on the other hand your mate was having an affair with a neighbor,
there was no use worrying about it too much since she or he would come
back to you sooner or later, - after all, time had very little meaning
here - and beside the chances were that you were also having an affair
with someone else.

Marriage was only a temporary association here and it didn't have the
same binding power as it did in Vincent's world. 'Till death separate
us' was not part of the marriage ceremonies here.

Verla once explained to him that in her village, probably all the
women, herself included, had had an adventure with almost each and
every man at one time or an other. But the worst insult - and it had
to be done willingly - was for a woman to be impregnated by another
man than her mate.

Since the village authorities strictly controlled the birth rate - it
was part of their culture to do so - it was thus considered a capital
offence to give birth to a child when it was not your turn, or worse
still to impregnate another man's woman. The penalty in such a case
was death to both offenders and it seemed that it was like that in
most villages.

The temperature was cold during the night and judging by the colours
changes of some of the leaves on the trees, Vincent guessed that they
were approaching the cold season. Since there were seasons it
therefore met that the planet they were on was inclined on its axes or
rotation, just like Earth was, thus creating cycles of warmer and
colder temperature during a one-year period.

What were these ranges of temperature depended much on the degrees of
inclination of the planet. As to how cold it would get, Vincent had no
idea but judging by the short fur on most of the animal species he has
seen, he figured that it would be similar to winters in South Carolina
and of course the further south they went, the less cold it would get.

They tried to hut for furs and food while slowly moving south. The
forest was dense with a mixture of large pins, elms, oaks and a few
other varieties of trees that he didn't recognize. It was slow walking
in such a forest but they did manage to cover close to two hundred
mile in a week time. Then the topography changed and whereas the land
had been relatively flat before, it now consisted of low hills with
rolling valleys in between.

It did reminded Vincent of his native Vermont, except that the animal
life was now extremely rare and when they did see the odd deer or
dog-like wolf, it would run away from them as if the forest was on
fire. Even the few rabbits they saw escaped well before they could
even try to catch them. Vincent supposed that given time he could
probably catch something by mean of a trap but that would mean camping
in the same spot for a day or two and he didn't want to stop since he
had a bad feeling about the region they were now in.

They had gone for two days without eating meat. All of their smoked
meat supply was now gone and they had to eat whatever they could find
such as berries and nuts that were relatively abundant everywhere.

Then they entered a valley surrounded by low hills on all sides. In
the lowest part of the valley, they could see an artificial looking
clearing where no trees grew while the ground was covered with a
strange yellow grass.  They began to cross this valley and soon they
reached a water stream about twenty feet wide that blocked their
progress.

It would not have been very difficult to cross the stream since they
could see that it was just three of four feet deep, but since they
were all tired and the place did appear quiet, they decided to camp
next to the stream for the night, even if it was still in the middle
of the afternoon.

They soon discovered that the waters of the stream had plenty of fish
of all kind and an hour later they were eating their first good meal
in many days. A fire had been lit to dry and smoked some of their
catch, Victor figured that whoever was chasing them had probably lost
their tracks for now and the chances that the smoke from their fire
would be seen was very slim.

Even since they had gotten rid of Kowla, they had been very careful so
as to leave no traces whatsoever which would indicate there passage
over the land. But for the last day they had seen no trace of animals
life and  this fact alone did bother Vincent a great deal whereas both
Verla and Nika said they had never in their life seen such a place so
devoided of all life.

"What is so strange with that?" Said Vincent. "It is possible that
this valley was host to a pack of wolfs or other predators and owing
to their numbers, they could have clean the area of all games."

"But how can you fail to see that it's not only because of the lack of
games that this place look dead?" Insisted Nika. "Even the birds are
gone and except for the fish in the river we are alone in this haunted
valley."

"Yes," went on Verla,"have you seen any insects yet?  I haven't seen
any in many hours."

It was true, they did look in the yellow grass and they even dug a
small hole to try and find anything alive. No ants, no spiders, no
flies and no mosquitoes, and of course no birds.

"I can't explain why," said Verla after a while," but I feel that this
is a wicked place. It seemed that my body and my very soul resent this
place, maybe we should move away."

Vincent knew exactly what she met since he also felt this strange
sensation.

They were all sitting on the grass and everyone was in deep though.
Then Nika finally broke the silence and she said.

"Let us leave before the spirits of the life forms that used to live
here take possession of our body. Never before have I felt the claws
of death closing on me like this."

"We have to stay here a while," insisted Vincent." At least until we
can catch and smoke enough fish. Remember that we have to eat even if
we leave and since there is food here we must stay for a while and
build a reserve."

His women knew that he was right so they stopped arguing. For another
hour they continue to catch more fish using her spear in the case of
Verla while Nika was using a crude net made of leather straps wish was
good for catching the bigger fish. Vincent's job was to clean them and
then spread them on a wooden rack over the fire. Of course he had to
make many trips to find dead branches near the few small dead trees
that were much farther away

Then they were in for a surprise, the sun disappeared below the hills.
The minute that the rays of the sun were hidden, they saw a green glow
that seemed to come from the ground itself. Even the few dead trees in
the distance had that haunting glow. Vincent's women began to shake;
even their voice was trembling as they tried to talk.

"Let us go immediately," said Verla" before the light of death eat our
soul."

"Yes," replied Nika, "this is a cursed place, not met for the living.
We must leave now."

"No, we can't," came out of Vincent's mouth, almost as a shout."Where
will we go? Have you forgotten that it will be completely dark soon?
We don't have enough food and this could be the only place for a long
time where we will be able to get any."

"Please Vincent, let us leave before it is too late. We do have a few
dry fish and we can follow the stream and catch more later."

But Vincent would have nothing of this. "The river goes east to west
and we are going south, we will waste many days if we follow the
river. Beside this might be the only spot where there are fish in the
river."

There was fear and exasperation on the women's faces but neither of
them said another words. They had accepted to follow him and he was
their leader.

When it got darker, the greenish glow became more evident. It was an
eerie sight since if did come from everywhere, it even came from the
ash of the fire. Only the three of them as well as the smoked fish
seemed to be free from the macabre greenish glow.

As the women watched him, Vincent went to the fire and he turn over
the dozen half smoked fish on the wooden rack over the smoking fire.
Then he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks as if something had
suddenly occurred to him. He walked a dozen feet away from the fire,
then he took out his metal knife from his sheath at his side. Next he
got on his knees and he began to dig with his knife. The ground became
harder the more he dug then after four or five inches he was hitting
something solid.

It felt and looked like a glass surface and soon he could no longer
dig in it since it was too hard. He did try a few other hole a hundred
feet apart and he always hit the same glass-like surface at about the
same depth.

Finally, Nika walked next to him and she said. "What is it?"

He now knew what the strange glow was all about and he was afraid even
to talk about it. But he had to explain his discover to his women.

"This place was the scene of a very large explosion an extremely long
time ago. The green glow that we see coming out of the ground is
caused by the radiation that the explosion released. This place is
radioactive and has been so for a great many years. Probably many
thousands of years."

"What is radiation? What does it mean?" 

He knew that there was no use trying to explain to someone that had
never heard of nuclear explosion what radiation poisoning was and that
the soil they were standing on was highly contaminated. Normally they
would have been dead by now. The only reason that they were still
alive was because the Rad Virus was repairing their defectives cells
as fast as the deadly radiation around them was damaging them.

No wonder that there was nothing alive where they were. Most of the
animal life form can detect radiation and they do stay well away from
this valley. They themselves had felt it when they had first arrived
here, but they had ignore the warning.

 From his college physics he still recall that some isotopes of
plutonium or neptunium had a half-life of well over five thousands
years. Atomic bombs could be made with these unstable elements. But he
doubted that this was the case.

A civilization advanced enough in technology to construct a
Simultravel system and invent the Rad Virus, wouldn't use such  crude
devises as these polluting bombs when it was possible to get a much
bigger blast and  a clean explosion using the fusion of hydrogen. A
hydrogen bomb was almost radiation free in comparison to the bomb that
had gone off in this valley.

Unless of course the users of the bomb wanted this place to be
contaminated for a long time and therefore they purposely use a bomb
that cause the maximum of polluting radiation. Yes this was probably
what had happened here thought Vincent.

But why? This place didn't seemed to ever have been populated. There
were no remains of crumbled building and no traces whatsoever that a
city had once been here. Even after a couple of thousands years there
would be man made artefacts that would survive this time span. I
seemed all very strange to Vincent.

He tried to explain as best as he could the cause of the glow. 

"A long time ago there must have been a large explosion here and it
was so hot that it melted the soil. That is why there is a glass layer
a few inches under.  Then as time went on, debris from the forest were
carried on the glassy ground and gradually it made up the soil over
the glass. But things don't grow well in this radioactive ground and
this is why there are no trees, only this yellow sick grass can
survive here. In another few thousands years the trees might grow here
again, buy noy until the level of radiation, or if you prefer the
poison cause by the explosion decrease."

Neither said a word. The only explanation that they could understand
was that the place was haunted and that bad spirits were all around
them.

"I think we are safe for another day at least." Went on Vincent. "If
there were dangers we would have felt the effect by now. We will
remain another day to replenish our supply then we will leave."

None of them slept well that night and the minute that the light of
the day was visible they were up. No one was hungry and they
immediately went to the river to catch more fish. By noon they had a
good supply and after cleaning them, they got busy to smoke them over
the wooden rack..

In the middle of the afternoon they stopped fishing since there
wouldn't be enough time to smoke their new catch. The were all
extremely tired. Nika even mention to Vincent that she couldn't
remember ever feeling so bad in her life. They kept the fire going
late into the night so as to finish smoking the rest of their catch
and when Vincent went to lie on the ground to sleep, he felt as if he
was sixty years old.

He must have pass out during the night. He was awaken by an urgent
need to empty his bladder and when he tried to get up, he found that
he had much  difficulties to do so. It took him half a minute just to
get on his feet and even then his legs, feet and his whole body was
painful. He knew then that it had been a mistake to say in this
valley.

 He immediately tried to shake each woman out of their sleep, but they
were both unconscious and barely breathing.

What was he to do? It was now evident that they all should go as far
away as possible from this place and fast. It was clear that the
radiation was destroying more of their body cells than the Rad Virus
was capable of repairing, and soon  it would be too late for them.

While he tried to walk he felt dizzy, when he shoved his hair back, a
handful of hairs remained in his hand. He had to act fast. To drag
both women for two miles was out of the question, he knew that he
would not be able to even walk that distance by himself. When he
looked around in desperation, his eyes came to rest on the slow moving
water of the little river.

Yes. The river was their only way out of this place. Its water was
cold and the current was slow, but even if it took a couple of hours
to take them to the edge of the forest it was better than staying
where they were.

When he tried to drag Nika's body toward the edge of the water he
discover that his strength was almost completely gone. He couldn't
move her. The distance form where she was to the river was a good
hundred feet and it might as well have been a hundred miles.

Anger and despair were his reaction when it became clear that it would
only be possible to try and save himself. He had to take a decision,
either he could drag his body into the river or die there with his two
women.

                             ( end of chapter 17 )

                         <http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/mandil/www/>            
<mandil_k@hotmail.com>

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Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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