He wasn't alone in his concern. "Tess," Dee asked as the flitter swung away from the river again, "Where are we? How far from the ruins?"
"You are about thirty kiloms from the edge of the forest," Tess replied. "But I have no way of knowing the number or locations of any settlements. My sensors cannot penetrate the forest canopy. It will begin getting dark in about an hour. I recommend you circle around this village and back to the river, and then begin looking for somewhere to spend the night. I'm sorry. I know it will be uncomfortable."
"That's a monumental understatement. Flitters are made for taking commuters to work, not for camping. We'll probably have to take out those wheels, at least, just so we can fit. But it's still going to be damned uncomfortable."
"At least you will not have to stand guard," Tess replied. "My 'bot will stay on the roof of the flitter to frighten away any predators."
Dee shuddered. "Let's hope they frighten easily!"
Cale grinned. "I'm not worried. We still have our laser and blaster."
Dee's expression turned to exasperation. "Yes, but a pitched battle only half a mile from a village is bound to attract attention."
Cale frowned. "True. So our choices are a loud hooting or a blaster discharge. Not good."
"Perhaps not," Tess replied. "I have read that humans are sensitive to subsonic vibrations. Perhaps animals will also respond to them. Once you ground, we may have an opportunity to try it. My 'bot is capable of generating sounds from subsonic to supersonic."
Cale's frown remained. "I guess that's all we can do. We'll just have to be lucky."
It was uncomfortable. The pervasive gloom was already beginning to deepen by the time Cale found a small clearing and landed the flitter. They struggled to remove the big, heavy wheels to provide room for the humans to curl up and try to sleep.
'Try' was the appropriate word. Besides the contorted positions imposed by the crowded flitter, the forest was far from silent. There was a constant litany of cries, whistles, roars and screams audible even through the flitter's canopy. Neither Cale nor Dee got more than an hour or two of sleep.
Ironically, the night had the side benefit of improving their disguises. By morning, both were wearing creased, wrinkled, dirty clothing. Cale's depilatory was still effective, so he wasn't showing beard, but his hair was rumpled.
Dee exclaimed in horror when she saw her reflection in a puddle, but Cale convinced her that her disheveled hair was in character, and would help keep people from noticing its cleanliness. She contented herself with running her fingers through it, with no noticeable effect.
By the time they got the big, heavy wheels back into the flitter, they were also dirty. Tess complimented them on their resemblance to the passersby in Valhalla, garnering surly, ungracious replies from both humans.
An angry, icy silence reigned in the flitter until Dee again detected human habitation, and Cale began his circuitous detour.
"You are only about a kilom from the edge of the forest," Tess reported. "This may be the village you wish to visit."
Dee nodded. "We're having to detour more widely this time," she said. "That means it's probably a larger village than those we've been seeing."
Cale almost failed to detect the road in time, and barely avoided flying into it.
It wasn't much of a road; more of a two-wheeled cart track, framed by deep, narrow ruts, with a surface of trodden-down vegetation. But for the Giant Forest on Jumbo, it was a superhighway.
Flying slowly only a few feet above the undergrowth, Cale searched for the clearing they needed. After ten minutes, he found it.
The clearing was small, only slightly larger than the flitter. Most importantly, the side facing the road featured a large tangle of undergrowth, rising almost four meters from the ground.
While the 'bot manned the sensors for signs of approaching humans, Cale and Dee emptied the flitter. Then the 'bot drove the flitter straight into the tangle of underbrush, causing an explosion of fleeing small animals. The 'bot would remain in the locked flitter, guarding it. Tess claimed the 'bot would be able to chase away any curious humans with its subsonics.
Cale looked longingly at the rear of the flitter, wishing he could have kept the laser and blaster. But he knew that would not have been wise. After a moment, he sighed and began rearranging the disturbed brush to conceal the flitter.
It took them over an hour to assemble the cart, and another hour to load it. But finally they were able to push, pull, and curse the cart to the road. Once there, they paused long enough to cover the signs of their off-road travel.
Not only was the road crude, it was also not heavily travelled; During the almost three hours they had been working, there had been no travelers on the road. In fact, some of the vegetation in the center of the road was beginning to straighten.
Chapter 4
They had decided to return to the village they had just avoided; it would give them a chance to try out their personas in an isolated location with fewer onlookers. It would also let them find out if their flitter had been seen. For a moment, they were unsure which direction to take, but Tess was able to set them on the correct path.
The village consisted of a gaggle of log huts centered around a trampled-down clearing. There were no large fields, but most of the fifty or so huts had a small garden. Nearly all of them, though, featured large frames near the front door opening, on which animal skins were stretched and drying.
There seemed to be a fair amount of activity in the village, but most of it stopped as they emerged from the forest. After a moment, most of the twenty-odd people visible went back to their activities, but a large, heavily bearded man approached them.
The man wore a fur vest over leather trousers. His feet were adorned in laced-up, soft leather boots, without visible soles. His graying black hair was long and matted, gathered and tied at the back. He was over two meters tall, barrel-chested and hairy.
He approached with a friendly grin. "Get lost traders? Take a wrong turn?"
Cale answered the man's grin with one of his own. "Aye, we did. In which direction is the ruins?"
The man laughed aloud. "Ha! You'll be lookin' for Ham's Town, right? Market day's tomorrow."
Cale nodded. "Yah. Ham's Town. Can we make it back there today?"
The big man's head bobbed. "Oh, easily. 'Tis only three kiloms down th' road, just over the bridge. I'm surprised y'could get lost between here and there." The man's manner was bluff and hearty, but his eyes revealed a shrewd intelligence.
"Actually," Cale said in a rueful tone, "we've been lost in the forest for three days. I can't tell you how glad I was to stumble across the road this morning."
The man's eyes narrowed slightly. "Three days? You've been workin' a cart through the forest for three days?"
Cale nodded wearily. "Aye, and it wasn’t easy. But all we own is on that cart, includin' our emergency supplies."
The man looked doubtful. "Still . . . " he began.
"We still might have left it," Cale added hastily, "but a few weeks ago we stumbled on some ruins that had never been looted. We've made our fortunes if we can get our findings to a large trading center." He mentally kicked himself. He had just told this man that no one knew where they were, and that their cart was laden with rich booty. If the man were anything but perfectly honest, it would be very tempting to make the 'traders' disappear, and to take their loot to Ham's Town himself. And the laser and blaster were in the flitter.
Cale looked around pointedly. "Will you be taking trade goods to Ham's Town tomorrow?" he asked.
The man laughed heartily. "Oh, aye. We've a great lot of furs to trade."
Cale smiled craftily. "Well, can we see them?"
The woodsman's lips spread in a gap-toothed grin. "Oh, aye. I s'pose you have some things to trade, as well."