Presently birds began singing again. A cricket chirped nearby.
They were lying on their bellies on a bed of brown pine needles. He rolled to his side and looked at her.
“You okay?”
She smiled. “Yes. How are you?”
“Adrenaline must do something. I feel better now.”
“Good.”
“But our situation isn’t. We’re still a long way from where we want to go, and now they’re looking for us.”
“We’ll make it,” she said.
“Yeah, even I’m beginning to believe it.”
Twenty-five
Someplace
“Isis”
A hand ran soothingly across his forehead. “Here, Jeremy.”
“Jeez. Where are we?”
“I don’t know, but we stopped.”
“Was I out?”
“Just for a minute. We hit pretty hard.”
Jeremy waited for his eyes to focus. When they did he saw a jumble of weeds and leaves pushed up against the view port. He looked around. The deck was canted sharply, but the interior of the traveler looked otherwise undamaged.
“Computer!”
“Someone get the number of that earthquake.”
“You okay, still functioning?”
“I’ll have to run a few tests, but from all appearances I am undamaged, Captain.”
“Good. Report on the condition of the ship.”
“Uh, that’s not so good.”
“How so?”
“Well, for starters,” the Toshiba said, “the main drive is inoperable.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Cracked thermocouple on the primary coil, it looks like. That’s how I interpret the diagnostic readings, but you’d really have to eyeball it to be sure. Also, the graviton polarity generator is nonfunctional. No telling what’s wrong with it.”
“Damn,” Jeremy said.
“Yeah. Also hell and botheration.”
Isis said, “We’ll simply have to fix it.”
“Oh, sure,” Jeremy scoffed. “Yeah, we’ll just get out the old Sears toolbox and make a couple trips to the auto parts warehouse.”
Isis sat down and gave Jeremy an admonitory look. “That’s negative thinking again, Jeremy.”
“Sorry. Okay, we’ll fix it. Computer, d’you have any idea where we are?”
“Not the foggiest. Not the slightest glimmer of an idea. Not even the —”
“Okay! Make a guess, already.”
“Very slim chance that we’ve hit one of the universes listed in the castle data base. The probability is that we’re in one of an infinite number of quantum universes. We could be anywhere.”
“Well, there’re trees.”
“Yes, this world looks Earth-like from first readings. Breathable atmosphere, tolerable temperature range, et cetera.”
“Maybe we’re on Earth.”
“The odds are against it.”
Jeremy sighed. “I guess we should go out and take a look.”
“That’d be a good idea.”
“You sure about the air and stuff?”
“I’m fairly sure you won’t keel over dead the moment you open the hatch. But my sensors aren’t equipped to scope out some of the real possibilities. Hostile natives, hungry fauna, infectious organisms, inconveniences like that.”
“Right. But we gotta go out there.”
“I guess you gotta,” the Toshiba said.
Jeremy unstrapped and got up, bolstering himself with a hand on the bulkhead. “I’ll go first,” he told Isis. “No telling what’s out there.”
“Anything you say, Jeremy.”
“It’s Duke Wayne, as I live and breathe,” the Toshiba said.
“Shut up, you piece of plastic junk, before I smash the crap out of you.”
“Abuse! Abuse! Call my social worker.”
Jeremy went aft and punched buttons on a small panel. The hatch popped open, letting in light and the smell of mountain laurel. He climbed out.
He slid down the flange of the hull and hit the ground. He turned and looked. The interdimensional traveler had landed in a copse of saplings and high bushes in the middle of a clearing. He walked around the bell-shaped craft. The front edge of the flange was hung up on rocks. The hull was intact. Whatever damage there was, it was underneath.
A dirt road ran by not far away. The surrounding woods looked very Earth-like. In fact, it looked for all the world like a deciduous forest of the familiar sort.
He went back to the hatch and yelled for Isis to come out. She appeared, and he helped her down.
“What’s the situation?” she said.
“It doesn’t look so bad, but that doesn’t mean anything. See those trees over there? Looks like we clipped the top of them coming down. And then we whanged up against those rocks. See?”
Isis stooped and looked, nodding. “Bad luck.”
“We could’ve been smeared. We could’ve hit anything, or wound up at the bottom of an ocean or something. We were damn lucky.”
“I suppose that’s right.”
“You bet. But now we’re stuck here.”
Arms folded, Isis turned slowly around, inspecting the surroundings. Her high heels and daring black dress were incongruous in the setting. “It doesn’t seem like such a bad place.”
“Kinda … rural.”
“Yes. I like it. It smells so nice.”
Jeremy sniffed. “Like weeds and stuff.”
“You city boys are all alike.”
“Yeah. I’ll take Manhattan. Or even Queens.”
“What should we do, Jeremy?”
“Well.” Jeremy shoved his hands in his jeans. “I guess we should take a walk down that road and see if we can get help.”
“Good idea. I’d love to take a walk.”
“Wait till I set up the security system, and then we’ll go.”
The road wound down a forested hill. The midafternoon sun was yellow, the sky blue, clouds a fleecy white — everything was as it should be. Tall maples and beech were in full leaf. A crow cawed in the distance.
“I love this place,” Isis said. “I don’t get out much.”
“Me neither,” Jeremy said. “I like to stay in and either work or watch TV. Though I haven’t done much TV watching since I came to the castle. Kinda miss it.”
“What kind of shows do you like?”
“Movies, mostly. That prime-time stuff is junk. Sports. I watch football. Mostly, though, I like to play around with computers.”
“You’re good at that. Don’t you like to go out into the country once in a while, though?”
“Yeah. Sometimes. I used to go camping.”
“With a girl?”
“Uh, no. I told you, I never had much to do with girls. Women. Girls. I never really had one. I mean … Look, that doesn’t mean that I’m …”
She grinned at him. “What?”
“You know. I like girls. Women. They just don’t like me.”
“I like you.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“I do.”
“Well … I do, too.”
“You like you?”
“No! I like you, is what I’m saying. Not just because you’re pretty, either. I mean, you are that. Very pretty.”
“Thank you.”
“What I’m saying is that you have smarts, and guts, as well as beauty.”
“Thanks again.”
“Girls don’t usually … what am I saying? What I mean is, I used to think that a woman …”
“Hm?”
“Forget it. Anyway, the truth is, I’ve never had a girlfriend. Dates, yeah. A couple of those. But then I stopped doing it, because it never led anywhere.”
She took his hand. “Well, you have a girlfriend now.”
“Yeah.”
“Come with me, Jeremy.”
She led him off the road and into tall grass. She bade him lie down. Standing over him, she slipped off her dress. Underneath there was black lace, very little of it.