by G. Howell Text and illustration ©2005 G. Howell

An earlier edition of this story can be read at the author’s website

   “This ain’t no technological breakdown,
   “This is the road to hell…”
   Chris Rea’s voice faded in a burst of white noise, then pulsed back to full strength again as the transistor radio swung like a electronic pendulum from the dash. The headlamps of the world-weary Deuce-’n’-a-Half illuminated the road ahead for fifty meters in the clear night air, the cat’s-eyes down the center glaring back at the truck as the lights swept over and past them. I squirmed on the uncomfortable seat, trying to work some feeling back into my numb tailbone. I think they cut cost in the earlier models: welding the axle directly to the chassis without bothering with suspension.
   “Will you stop squirming like that!” Tenny Dalton shifted gear and glared at me, his face turned into a cragged monstrosity by the faint green glow of the dash. The stub of cigar jutting from his mouth glowed like a malevolent LED. “You got a rash or something?”
   “Not yet,” I groaned and stretched melodramatically, “but it’s only a matter of time. Where are we anyway?”
   “How should I know? You’ve got the map.”
   “You don’t need a map!” I protested, then rubbed my eyes and picked up the flashlight from the dash, illuminating my watch. “Shit. We should have caught up with them an hour ago.”
   “Hey! I’ve been going where you tell me. You sure it’s the right damned road?”
   I leaned back and flashed the battered old angelhead at the map strapped to the dash. “Uh, what’s this road?”
   “Ah… last sign was US29 to Charlottesville.”
   “Uh-huh.” I squinted at the map. “Uh…Yeah, that’s what I’ve got here. How long ago was that? Half an hour?”
   “’Bout that.”
   “Well, next stop’s…” I peered at the confusion of lines, “Lynchburg… I think. That’s not too far now. Might catch up there.”
   “Shit. Better hope we do,” Tenny growled. “Can’t you imagine it? Trundling into camp two hours after the others. A truckload of live ammo rolling around the countryside unescorted, SOP out the window… Shit, Jefferson’d have a field day.” He slapped the wheel in disgust, then reached over to fiddle with the radio as it faded out again. “What the fuck’s wrong with this thing?”
   “You put fresh batteries in it? Try another station. If the coil hadn’t died on us back there there…”
   “Oh, yeah. Whose fault was that? You’re the mechanical whiz kid. You were supposed to overhaul it in the pool. ‘Sure,’ you said, ‘get right on it,’ you said.” He clamped down on the cigar again; the tip glowed furiously as he puffed away on the reeking thing. “And get your feet down.”
   “I did the coil,” I snorted, dropped my feet and made a show of dusting off the scratched metal. “It’d take me years to fix everything on this heap.”
   “Heap?” He actually sounded outraged. “Don’t criticize a classic piece of machinery. “He patted the worn steering wheel affectionately. “She don’t like that kind of abuse, do ya, girl?”
   “Talking to a truck…” I shook my head despairingly. “Have you ever thought about professional help? Or at least a long, long vacation?”
   He laughed and took his right hand off the wheel to flick me the finger. “You’re going to eat them words,” he grinned. “It’s a good truck. I like the way it handles.”
   I stuck my feet up on the dash again, unintimidated. “You’re only saying that cause you keep drawing the short straw. It handles like a four ton lump of shit. I mean, hell, even SLEP didn’t want anything to do with it.”
   “Really?” he asked lightly and the truck lurched over to the right.
   I glanced over at him, “You trying to prove—Oh shit!!” I yelled and grabbed for the dash as a car’s lights glared from around a corner, the driver hit his horn and Tenny held it to the last second. Tires screamed as the truck lurched back to the left side of the road and a seconds later the vehicle itself flashed past us.
   “Jesus Christ!”
   “Might have been,” Tenny said with a glance in the mirror. “I didn’t see.”
   I shook my head. Join the Army; see interesting places; meet interesting people. It’s a man’s life… and then there’s the Quartermasters Corps. It’s a living. It pays more than regular Army, and I was scraping for every cent I could. These days college really costs.
   One of the rules engraved in the rank and file’s unofficial handbook is ‘never volunteer’. Okay. That’s no problem. You don’t have to volunteer; they do it for you. You can wake up one morning and find you’ve pulled a duty riding shotgun on a fifty year old truck on a run from Fort Delvoir out of DC down to Fort Jackson with a couple of tons of outdated military hardware on the bed.
   And then to cap it all was the driver…
   Tenny Dalton: PFC, old friend. Oh, he could drive all right. In fact the way he handled a truck was downright uncanny, as were some of the other things he did. Everything he did he accomplished well and with a slight air of indifference, as though he really wasn’t trying. This applied whether he was overhauling an engine or coming on to one of the noble Ladies in a dive in Jacksonville. Still, they weren’t as annoying as his insistence on smoking: cigars of all things.
   I coughed and tried to fan a streamer of smoke aside. Useless to ask him to chuck it; he’d sooner amputate his right hand. I don’t know where the hell he got them from, but he only smoked Havanas.
   I just wound the window down a bit further and let cold air whip around my face. When the local FM station vanished completely into the sea of static, Tenny spent only a few seconds fiddling with the dial, then snapped it off.
   The engine growled and the transmission grated, then settled down again as the truck started up a grade. The shadows of the trees along the roadside blurred past in the darkness and occasionally the bluish-white smear of the cloud-covered moon was visible through the black crests of trees and mountains.
   With nothing to see or say, I yawned, then settled back to doze. Well, I meant to doze. Not my fault I dropped off completely.
   A slap on my shoulder snapped me out of my slumber. “Davies. Hey! Davies!”
   I yawned, shook my head and rolled my shoulders. Damn kink in my neck, I thought to myself. “Huh? Whassup?” There was no sign of civilization outside. Just trees, darkness, trees, and more darkness. “Where are we?”
   “Somewhere near Roanoke.” He was leaning forward, trying to watch the sky.
   “Oh… what?” I grabbed for the map. “Damnation! You decided to take the scenic route, did you?” How the hell did I sleep through that? “Why didn’t you wake me?”
   That wasn’t a rhetorical question, but he still didn’t answer. “Hey! The power was out when we went through Lynchburg. Lights and everything. I took the wrong turnoff… Look, there’s something weird going on. Check the sky and tell me if you see anything.”
   “Huh? The Martians coming?”
   “Goddammit! Will you look!”
   What the hell is he on about? I shrugged and wound down the window. “Oh, wow man!”
   “You see it?” he urged, just about smearing his face across the dusty windshield in his efforts to see upwards.
   “There’s nothing there,” I told him. “You were perhaps expecting the Hindenburg? You should check those cigars: anything besides tobacco in there?” I grinned and looked up in time to see a bolt of white-blue lighting arc across the sky. Less than a second later the horizon ahead flashed with a white glare that died just as fast.
   “Holy shit!”
   “You see that?” Tenny yelled, his voice too loud in the cab. “You see it!?”
   “Yeah. Weirdest lightning I ever saw… There’s another!”
   “And another!”
   The bolts had all originated at different places in the sky, but they all seemed to finish at the same spot, out of sight down the road. The sky just over the hill was pulsing like a gigantic strobe light. I stared as more pulses of blue-white light snapped across the night sky. The clouds had cleared, the stars bright.
   “No clouds,” I muttered.
   Tenny glanced at me, then fixed his attention on the road again. His fingers flexed on the wheel. “Yeah, I noticed… What the fuck is it?”
   “Ball lightning?”
   “Say what?”
   “Fireballs. A kind of lightning… maybe.” I leaned out of the side window, peering ahead. “I can’t see anything, I… Shit!” I cursed and ducked as the air above my head was ionized.
   That time the bolt came from behind us,’bout ten meters above the road and going straight ahead, it disappeared into the darkness ahead. A couple of seconds later, the sharp crack of its passage hit.
   Tenny hadn’t even noticed the near miss, he was staring at something else.
   Something was forming in the air ahead… no, all around us. No real shape to it, a whirlpool of the deepest blue hanging in the air, like one of those laser light shows. Jagged bolts of cyan and electric blue lighting materialized out of thin air and shot into the vortex, highlighting it and the surrounding landscape in strobing flashes of surreal color.
   We were heading right for the hub of the thing.
   The hood of the truck blazed with dazzling corona discharges and St. Elmo’s fire coruscated around the headlamps and other metal fixtures. The radio blared to life with a scream of static as electrical sparks flared on the antenna.
   “Stop!!” I screamed. There was a continuous, almost subsonic rumble from the mega-high voltage plasma sculpture building in front of us.
   He snarled something back. Bitten in half, the glowing stub of the cigar dropped into the foot well. He had already floored the brake and clutch. Nothing. He jammed the transmission into reverse: A spectacular shower of sparks gouted from the back wheels and tortured metal under the truck screamed, but we kept going.
   I grabbed for the dash and yelped as fat blue sparks kicked me back.
   Whatever it was, we hit it at seventy-five…
   …and kept going, right through it.
   Hit something with an impact that almost broke my neck, the front of the truck leaving the ground, superstructure protesting while the engine noise went off into an earsplitting whine. There was a retort that could only be an axle breaking, then the headlights illuminated flashing glimpses of grass, stones, and trees.
   Pounding and crashing as the crates in the back broke loose. I was thrown against Tenny, then against the door as the truck fishtailed, threatening to roll, then the door broke open and everything was still for long seconds then a giant backhanded me and everything spun, rolling and bouncing against bushes and rocks. Stunned, I didn’t have time to do anything but lie there gasping for air as the back of the truck slewed past, just missing my head.
   It flipped, again and again, rolling and skidding along on its side, sparks flying, canvas flapping and cargo crates tumbling end over end, metal screaming, then something caught and it became a fireball slamming into rocks where it stuck, burning with a vengeance.
   “Tenny?”
   The explosion ripped the night apart as cargo cooked off, more fireballs bursting to life. There was a sound like machine gun fire. Thousands of tiny trails of smoke arced and corkscrewed high into the air and fell back to earth as smoking and glowing debris was hurled away from the mass of flames. Tracers whined overhead like mad skyrockets.
   “Tenny!”
   I lurched to my feet, then promptly keeled over again.

   Warmth on my face woke me.
   I opened my eyes, then closed them nearly immediately, groaning at the morning sun dazzling me. I rolled over onto my hands and knees. The movement startled a family of deer on the edge of the forest. With graceful precision they melted into the trees. I stared after them, then remembered.
   The road… the lightning… the crash… Tenny.
   It hadn’t been a nightmare. Smoke was still curling up from the wreckage of the truck. Blackened and twisted debris was scattered far and wide over across the gentle slope, like driftwood on a beach.
   The shattered skeleton was still ticking and pinging as I picked my way around warped pieces of metal, olive crates with blistered paint and contents data stenciled on the sides, small craters gouged in the earth by ordinance cooking off. Gobs of melted lead and objects that were just identifiable as fragments of shell-casings littered the ground. Actually it was surprising that there was this much left of the vehicle. If so much of the cargo hadn’t been thrown clear as the bed broke up, the truck would probably have been reduced to pieces too small to find.
   Now there was just a framework, the cab scored black with carbon, crumpled like an accordion and tipped to one side. The door on the drivers side was still closed, jammed into place and facing the sky. Where the windshield had been was a hole framed by shards of glass: a mouth with jagged black teeth grinning at me.
   Behind it… Tenny hadn’t gotten out.
   I turned away and vomited, hard and violently; heaving until I gagged on bile, felt it running from my nose. Help. Where was help? Surely someone had seen the fire! The road… there were cars, trucks… I coughed on smoke and puke then ran for the road.
   A few paces into the forest I stumbled to a halt, leaning against the slender bole of a pine. The road! Where was the fuck was the freeway!?
   A road isn’t something that wanders off by itself. People don’t steal them. Still, it wasn’t there. For fruitless hours I searched for it; wandering around in circles, climbing hills and trees. All around me, as far as I could see to the east: trees, trees, and trees, finally fading into the horizon. Westwards were the Smokies, seemingly unchanged in the brilliant afternoon sun.
   There was no—repeat, no—road.
   Numb, not understanding I returned to the clearing to wait. Something else I noticed. The scars the truck had torn into the grass: They ran about forty meters from the wreck before stopping.
   In the middle of a gently sloping grade, covered with summer-gold grass, the tracks just… stopped.

   The night was chill. I curled up close to the small fire, lying there with my eyes open, watching the flames. Strange to be almost killed by fire, to have friend die by flame, then use fire to keep me alive. I shuddered, then closed my eyes and tried not to dream.
   Something that night woke me.
   There was movement on the periphery of the light cast from the dying campfire. Shadows, like circling sharks orbiting just beyond the terminator. Many eyes glowed dull red, feet brushed against grass and pine needles. A low rumbling hung in the air.
   I rolled to my feet, reaching for a knife that wasn’t there. Out of the darkness, like a ghost from the shadows, a gray wolf materialized, head low and growling.
   “Uh, sit boy,” I said.
   It snarled. I yelled as it lunged toward me, teeth bared. It hit me low, tumbling me backwards. I caught handfuls of fur and kicked, sent the animal flying over my head. Sparks exploded into the night and a terrified howling cut the air as the wolf landed in the fire. Coat blazing, it scrambled to its feet and fled. I could see it running across the field like a flare, its fur burning brighter and streaming sparks.
   There were still more of them out there. I took up a hefty branch, only just smoldering, and fanned it in the air until the glowing end burst into flame. Another wolf lunged towards me and I jammed the brand into its mouth. It yelped and turned tail and ran as fire lapped from its mouth, catching on its facial fur. Waving the burning branch, I yelled and charged the remaining wolves. They retreated before me, but stopped when I stopped.
   I turned in time to jab another attacking creature in the eye. It leapt backwards and rolled on the ground, yelping in agony, then bolted blindly for the trees. Now they’d had enough. The pack melted away into the night, in search of easier prey.
   I stood there panting hard. Wolves! Attacking a human! In Virginia!? This was beyond bizarre.
   For the rest of the night I didn’t sleep. Instead sitting by the fire, snapping awake with my heart pounding whenever I began nodding off.

   I used the piece of spring steel to pry the lid off another case from which the stenciled lettering had been obliterated by heat. The top came off with a screech of nails, revealing neatly stacked rows of olive green 81-mm mortar shells. Thank god they still had their handling caps on. If they’d cooked off in the crash, I wouldn’t be writing this. In another case I found the fuzes for the shells. Impact fuzes. Another box yielded grenades. Another a trio of M-60 GPMGs, one with its bipod twisted and carry handle snapped off. Three 81mm mortar tubes survived intact, along with five of the Stokes-Brandt bases. Hell, those things were practically indestructible.
   Case after case I went through. We’d been hauling a miscellaneous shipment, surplus and outdated equipment, everything from ammunition and weapons to socks to the old cans of C-rations. While some stuff’d been turned to charcoal briquettes, a surprising amount had survived intact. I sorted through the mess of crates and boxes, gathered together some bits and pieces to keep me alive and kicking if I had to walk out of here: food concentrates, canteen, pack, knife, and a few other odds and ends.
   However the object I had really been seeking I finally found lying under a bush: a case with the legend M-16A1 GI867503 PROPERTY OF US ARMY stenciled in black on olive green. I tore the box open and hefted one of the black weapons. Inspection revealed no firing pins in the rifle. I had to crack open a case of spares for those. And for the ammunition…
   I knew for a fact that we’d had twenty ammo cases with one thousand twenty four rounds each of the old 5.56 ammunition, about five of the standard IMR NATO 5.56 rounds, another twenty of 7.62mm, and fifteen 12.7mm listed on the inventory. I found twelve metal cases of the smaller caliber rifle ammunition and four catering to the heavier 7.62 GPMG rounds. Although I also found five containers of 12.7mm ammo, they were useless. Even if I did have a weapon of that caliber, I wouldn’t be carrying it around with me. However it might have been useful in case I came up against—say—a hostile tank.
   Not that likely in Virginia.
   I overloaded on ammo: three hundred and sixty rounds of Armalite ammo, enough to fill twelve thirty round magazines. I scrounged six clips and filled those, the excess rounds I loaded into canvas belt pouches.
   Obsolete hardware. Surplus. Scorched and dented, but more than enough had come through to ensure that if those crazy canines came back I didn’t have to worry about being turned into dog food.
   So, from the remains of the truck I came away with an M-16 with an Armalon optical sight and three hundred and sixty rounds of 5.56mm ammunition. A silver-anodized survival blanket sealed in its packet, the small anglehead flashlight that’d also survived intact, one canteen, a couple of C-Rations packs, a piezo-electric cigarette lighter (almost full), a digital Casio watch, a small notebook and ballpoint pen. The small medical kit contained antiseptics, antibiotics, a vial and styrettes of morphine, old fashioned gauze bandages, surgical suture and needles, three syringes (disposable).
   The small tool kit for the M-16 yielded a set of Allen wrenches, a couple of small screwdrivers, some three-in-one oil, and some spare screws, nuts, and firing pins. My sheath knife had the standard Bowie blade with a hollow pommel concealing a spool of approximately ten meters of single-strand nylon fishing line, five hooks, and five needles and thread. A gimbaled compass was built into the pommel.
   My pack was a canvas job; singed, acceptably waterproof and very tough. My helmet was my own, one of the new kevlar coalscuttle jobs. I’d found it near the ruined cab: slightly scorched, but otherwise fine.
   For clothing I had what I was wearing on my back as well as a lifetimes supply of oversized shirts and socks. Didn’t bother me too much. It wouldn’t take me that long to find a house or gas station; somewhere I could use a phone or stop a car. I’d survived basic training so I could live off the land if need be. This wouldn’t be too much different.
   That out of the way I took another two hours to collect the dangerous hardware together and hide it a short distance away in the trees. The branches I cut to cover the pile would die and turn brown eventually, a dead giveaway, but it would keep until someone came for it. Leaving it lying around for some redneck or hillbilly to stumble across wasn’t a fantastic idea.
   Then there was time for a parting look at the blackened mass of twisted metal that was Tenny’s impromptu coffin. That one look into the cab had been one look too many. It was hard to believe that what I had seen had once been a good friend. I swallowed hard.
   “I’ll be back,” I choked. “Promise. Get you a decent burial.”
   A final informal salute, then I slung my pack over my shoulder, plonked the helmet on my head, and set off eastwards. I looked back several times, until the wreck was hidden by trees.
   As the day went on I grew more and more disquieted. There was no way I could have walked that long without seeing some sign of man.
   But I had.
   It was creepy.
   I didn’t sleep well that night. Several times I awoke abruptly, heart beating a tattoo on my breastbone as I strained to hear something that was no longer there. Something seemed very wrong, but I couldn’t place it. I laid back and tried to pinpoint it until I slept again.
   Next day I started east again. Damnation! I was in the middle of some of the most populated land in the U. S.! There was no way that I could walk for any distance without coming across some sign of civilization; a house, a road, a gas station, even a plane… anything. At this rate my next stop would be the Atlantic Ocean.
   I saw more animals: raccoons and red squirrels chittered at me, deer that placidly watched as I passed by. I heard the deep belling of a moose or elk. This far south!? Nothing was right. Was I in the middle of a wildlife park? How?
   Later that day I did come across a road running north-south. Well… not exactly a road, more of a track. Maybe a trail used by rangers. It did seem well used, but the tracks were weird: much too narrow to be car or truck. Perhaps bicycle or trail bike tracks. I shrugged, then decided which way to go. North or south.
   “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe…”
   South I went.

   The twin tracks of packed earth in the grass rose over an exposed and eroded crest then slowly turned and dipped into a broad, shallow valley. Lush greenery—huge trees of every description—cloaked the length and breadth of the valley floor while fields of wind-blown grasses grew along the gentle slopes : turning golden from the summer sun that also coaxed heat-shimmers from the ground.
   And the track simply dipped down to follow the valley, two faint ruts through the long grass before it vanished from sight in the tree line below.
   Sweating in the midday heat and humidity, my shirt stripped away and used as padding between the straps of the backpack and my chafed collarbone, I shaded my eyes with the blade of my hand and looked around. I was starting to feel desperate… and scared! It was impossible, utterly impossible that I could have walked for so long and yet have seen absolutely nobody. Still there was nothing. Not a building or vehicle anywhere. I sighed, spat phlegm, hitched the pack up and started down into the valley.
   It was like something out of the fucking Twilight Zone: There had to be somebody somewhere!
   The steady tramp, tramp of my boots was a continuous, monotonous, mindless rhythm that went on and on. Each footstep raised a small cloud of dusty ocher Virginia clay, turning the olive drab of my fatigues a rusty red. At least nearer the river it was cooler, the more luxurious flora offering some shade.
   Shadows began to stretch out again as noon passed and the afternoon crawled across the countryside. High overhead a hawk circled and hovered before diving for some unsuspecting rodent. I sighed a deep breath, wiped sweat from my forehead then threw the pack and rifle aside and sprawled out in the grass on the verge. For a few seconds I considered taking my boots off, then thought better of it: I’d never be able to get them on again. The water in the canteen was warm—almost hot—but it was wet. I took a mouthful, swilled it around,then spat out a mixture of water and the grit that I’d accumulated. I raised the canteen again and this time took a deep draught. And froze with the bottle against my lips, water spilling down my chin. The faint sound of metal grating on metal.
   I lowered the canteen and listened hard. Wind rustled leaves and birdsong was bantered back and forth through the trees.
   Then it came again; slowly growing louder, more distinct, closer. A faint creaking and the unmistakable rumble of wheels being tested to destruction on the pathetic excuse for a road. It was coming from behind me; back the way I had come.
   “Alright!” I whooped, then my grin faded: there was no engine sound.
   No matter. I fumbled the camp back on the canteen and and grabbed my equipment. Tipping my helmet back on my head I stood to wait for them. The day no longer seeming so stifling, a cooling breeze seemed to have sprung up from somewhere. There were a few questions I wanted to ask whoever this was. One that came to mind was: where the hell was I? a private estate of some kind?
   Abruptly they rounded the corner, shafts of sunlight shining through the canopy above illuminating patches of dust as the breeze wafted it away from wagon wheels and the llamas’ hooves.
   Llamas!?
   I stumbled to a halt and just stared stupidly as they clattered to an abrupt standstill, bleating and tossing their heads. I stared at them, then at the riders.
   Is this a joke!?
   The llamas skittered impatiently and moved forward and I saw it was for real.
   I bolted.
   Branches and leaves tore at my face and arms and roots tried to steal my feet from under me as I stumbled and careened blindly through the foliage with yowling cries sounding behind me. Then there was an embankment rising before me: A near-vertical face of dark, crumbling earth, carpeted with multi-fronded ferns and held together by a labyrinth of tree roots. I hardly slowed as I clawed my way to the top, to fall flat on my face and scramble around to see if they’d followed.
   The road was just visible through the boughs, trunks, and foliage; less than thirty meters away. I wiped sweat from my eyes, liberally smearing myself with dirt at the same time, and saw the riders staring back, gesticulating wildly amongst themselves, pointing towards me.
   “Oh Christohchristohchrist…” I was babbling to myself as I leaned back against a moss-covered boulder, out of sight for the moment. When I looked again, they were still there. One of them had dismounted and come a few paces into the trees. I grabbed for the rifle and snapped the bolt back, safety off, but held my fire.
   Eyes the green of molten emerald held my disbelieving stare and I shivered at the chill that ran up and down my spine on spider’s feet. For an eternity the tableau held; that thing staring at me, our eyes locked. It can’t be…
   And I jumped backwards when the creature turned and barked at the others then it caught its llama’s reins and swung back into the saddle, waving the others on past. They left quickly, the single wagon gathering speed and rumbling off after them.
   For a few moments the single remaining creature on its llama did nothing but watch me, then the furred muzzle wrinkled and sharp teeth grinned at me. My finger tightened on the trigger, but the rider had reined its llama about and was hurrying to catch the others.
   The sounds of their passage faded into the distance.
   Several minutes later, my heart pounding, I climbed back down to the road. There wasn’t a sound, not a sign of the creatures. I stepped into one of the dusty ruts with the rifle at the ready.
   But there were the hoof marks, llama droppings, and thin hard lines like bike tracks gouged into the clay by iron-bound wheels.
   Perhaps I should have gone the other way. Perhaps it would have been for the better, but hindsight tells me that my fate would almost certainly have been a grisly death… or worse. I have spent time in a cage and do not relish the thought of living my life out in one.
   “What’s happening to me!?”
   My scream to the heavens echoed through the trees and hills, scaring birds, but eliciting no other answer. What was going on? I couldn’t explain it and my brain was threatening to curl up and play peek-a-boo from some remote corner of my cranium. I wanted to head for the hills, anywhere.
   But then you’ll never know what happened.
   I don’t want to know!
   Yes, you do…
   Chalk one up for human curiosity. I followed them.

   The river—a broad, shallow stream actually—followed its meandering path through the valley an oversized ice cube had gouged millennia ago as it inched its way down from the polar icecaps, then retreated again. Along its banks, the trees cast their branches out over the water to form a leafy corridor that didn’t quite meet in the middle. Pines: loblolly pines, longleaf pines, slash pines, overcup oaks… My knowledge of botany gave out on me.
   A cormorant—surprised while drying its wings—took to the air as I approached. It dropped off its perch, skimmed the water and climbed away from the stream that continued burbling along its way.
   The road itself twisted and contorted as much as the river as it dodged through and around clusters of trees and boulders: indigenous and erratics. At times it ran along the river bank, while at others it had climbed halfway back up the side of the valley: always following the easiest route. I followed the track, always keeping an eye peeled on forest around me.
   The afternoon was beginning to cool off, the shadows growing longer and deeper when I heard the sounds coming from down the road: ringing of metal on metal through the trees. Animal cries and howls wailed through the valley.
   What the hell!?
   My heart started to pound as I took my rifle into my hands and cocked it. Keeping to the side of the track I moved forward, carefully, like I was walking on glass. Every damn broken twig sounded like a gunshot, but with the noise from ahead, there was no way anything could have heard me.
   Then I rounded a tree and saw them.
   There was a ford here where the track crossed the river. The wagon sat in the middle, tipped crazily to one side, one of the front wheels almost completely sunken beneath the waterline. The driver was a bundle of cloth and limbs lying face down in the water, the current gently butting the corpse against a rock and wafting a trail of red blood away downstream.
   More corpses lay in the shallow current, some still kicking their life away, turning the water to a pinkish froth.
   There were others still fighting.
   They had to be soldiers of a sort, those creatures from the caravan. Wearing stained and battered leather armor, trimmed with blue and silver designs that despite the dirt were still recognizable as a uniform of a kind. They waded knee-deep in the water fighting wildly against others garbed in a hodgepodge assortment of armor.
   And they were losing.
   Hampered by the water and the treacherous footing, they didn’t stand a chance against their opposition safely entrenched along the banks. Swords whirled and gleamed and grew red, another yowling scream rang out and another of the soldiers fell. Now only four of them left against at least ten assailants.
   A couple of the soldiers may have made it out as together they overcame an opponent on the riverbank, then they both twisted and went over backwards, falling with stubby feathered shafts embedded in their necks and chests.
   I ducked as more bandits stalked into view between the trees on my side of the river. Just twenty meters away, their backs to me as they recocked their crossbows. Why were they bothering to get their feet wet assaulting the wagon? They could’ve just shot them all from a distance.
   I sank a little lower behind the tree.
   The last soldier was crouched low and slowly turning to face its opponents as they circled, slowly closing in. Backed up against the wagon there was nowhere for it to run, it had no chance, but it still clutched its sword.
   I began to move out, leaving the cover of the tree to retreat back down the track. The last thing I wanted here was to be involved in a firefight with… with whatever they were. I was out of my league. I didn’t know what kind of shit I was in, but whatever it was, I was in it over my head.
   Two loud cries came at the same time: one a truncated yowl as that last soldier fell, and the other from the archer who spotted me.
   “Ohshit!”
   I ducked automatically and a hastily aimed quarrel fired from the hip bisected the space I had occupied a split second earlier. Shit! I ducked behind a pine trunk and there was a sharp thwok! as a stubby bolt sprouted from the wood near my head.
   Red feathers, I thought as I stared idiotically at the arrow, spun around wide-eyed to see bows being aimed again and started running as another blur hissed past my ear, then a hollow sound and someone hit my pack with a baseball bat and I stumbled, then dove for cover, headlong into the bracken and undergrowth. Ferns and bushes crackled around me as I scrambled on all fours while more quarrels rattled into the thicket over and around me. A fallen log offered some solid protection and I took it, diving over it and hugging the ground.
   There were no more quarrels. Reloading?
   Gasping air as quietly as possible, I struggled out of my pack, wincing as leaves and branches rustled. Red feathers protruded a few centimeters from the canvas. If it hadn’t hit something solid, I doubted my backbone would have stopped it. Bastards. Where are they? What are they doing? I listened, hearing wind in the treetops, water burbling, and a faint growling and the crackling of bracken.
   Again, shit!
   I risked a peek, then hugged the dirt again, mud and slimy leaves rubbing against me.
   They were coming after me!
   Not many options…
   I charged the rifle, checking for a flash of bronze in the breach to make sure a round was seated then gripped the rifle, flexing my fingers against chill metal and feeling the checkered grips grow slippery with sweat. Three of them, with swords, taking it slow. The archers didn’t have a good angle on me. Just three of them, a few meters apart. I took a breath, clicked the safety off and swung the M-16 up and over, not aiming, squeezing the trigger, the rifle kicking like a jackhammer in my hands, plants jigging wildly in the muzzle blast. Not three—four of them, one down, the others staring, now starting to react, screaming, skidding and spinning to the dirt as the bursts of slugs buzzsawed into them. First rounds were low and wild, kicking their feet out from under them. I compensated and hit torsos, heads, splintering bone and shredding flesh. They fell, two howling and threshing.
   Over the log, dodging and firing at the others. They’d frozen, some standing in the middle of the stream, on the wagon, on the far bank, staring wildly. The archers tried to fire, their shots going wide as I hit the deck again and sprayed them with a wild burst. The first one’s head split open like an overripe melon and the corpse crumpled like a deflating balloon; Small, red roses sprouted on the others’ torsos and they died slower. Now the others were turning, running.
   I was on my feet again, staying low as I ran and dodged for the cover of rocks and trees by the stream. One of the creatures I’d first hit was rolling and thrashing in the bracken. I shot it in the head on the way past and it bucked once then was still. A bolt from a crossbow struck glittering sparks from a rock near my head.
   “Fuck you!” I screamed, firing back, emptying my weapon into the fleeing figures: mowing several down like scythed wheat. When the bolt clicked on an empty chamber I automatically buttoned out the magazine, plucked a fresh one from my belt, and rammed it into the well. I emptied half the magazine at shadows running into the trees, kicking dust and wood chips from the trees, sending rounds ricocheting. I don’t think I actually hit any of the bastards. They were fast!
   Then they were gone.
   Ten seconds, maybe.
   Heart still pounding, I looked around, clutching the rifle like it was the only solid thing in the world.
   In the trees, a couple of birds ventured hesitant calls while the stream continued enthusiastically on its way. There was the slow drip drip as the blood from a corpse on the river bank ran down a rock, beaded on the edge as if gathering its courage before dropping into the swirling water. The wagon rocked as the beasts pulling it—bison, I noticed with dull surprise—tugged at their harnesses. The corpses weren’t neat, with chunks of meat the size of baseballs ripped out of them. Blood… it was red. Red and glistening like wet paint. A cloying, fecund smell hung heavy in the air: the flatulence of death.
   A coughing, moaning sound from the water.
   One of the creatures—one of the ones in blue armor—struggled weakly on all fours half in, half out of the water, blood from a gaping slash in its side swirling away with the current. It was dragging itself out of the stream by its hands, kneeling coughing and retching in the mud of the ford.
   When my shadow fell across it, it stiffened, raised its head to see my boots, then shuddered and collapsed on its side with a grunt: eyes closed, one outstretched hand curled half-shut, chest heaving while blood mingled with the mud.
   I was standing above a creature that could never be, my rifle leveled at it and staring in mute shock while my credulity took a beating.
   Putting it bluntly: It was a cat.

   Well, my transport problem—probably the least of my worries—was solved, sort of.
   The hole the wagon wheel had been trapped in had been deliberately dug, deep enough that the wagon couldn’t be pulled out. The axle was a solid iron bar that I sincerely hoped was tough enough to take that kind of treatment. To get the damn thing out I had to drench myself in water that felt like it was runoff from a glacier, digging away one side of the hole with my bare hands until the bison were able to pull the wagon out.
   They were huge, stupid, reeking beasts, these bison. Not the plains variety every American should be familiar with, but rather Wood Bison; a much rarer breed. So rare, in fact, they were an endangered species. Not recommended as beasts of burden.
   Endangered or not, and despite their problems with personal hygiene, they seemed docile and efficient: hauling the wagon from the water on the southern side of the stream and waiting with moronic patience, chewing and farting.
   Hmmm… and people wonder why I hate horses. I shook my head and tried to wring the last of the water from my shirt, then hesitated and looked back across the stream at where a furry body was still sprawled in the mud; one among many.
   Water splashed around my ankles, but there wasn’t a sign of life as I cautiously approached. Motionless, eyes closed, twisted crippled-looking hand clenched in the mud. The wound was a sodden mess, the blood as thick as the mud it was sprawled in. Liquid bubbled in a nostril.
   Incredible—it was still breathing. I poked it with my toe.
   The thing didn’t budge.
   I bent down and touched it cautiously. It didn’t respond. The fur was soggy wet, the flesh beneath nearly hot to my fingers. Kill it? Uh-uh. That didn’t feel right. It can’t hurt me. So, do I just leave it lying here?
   “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” I sighed.
   Now, how the hell do I do this..?
   Gingerly, awkwardly, I scooped the sodden creature up.
   The felinoid was a limp weight in my arms, its limbs completely lax and bumping against my own legs as I lifted. Its head lolled and saliva drooled from a corner of the mouth with its thin, black lips. Water washed around my legs again as I crossed the stream; carefully, unsteady with my burden. The thing was surprisingly heavy; I had to struggle to lift it into the back of the cart. This creature was much shorter than my five foot eleven—probably an even foot shorter, maybe more—but it was solid; not fat either. There was already a blue-armored corpse in the wagon that I hauled out and dumped on the ground to make room for the still-living creature.
   The upper half of the creature was almost completely encrusted in drying mud while the lower was sopping wet where it’d been lying in the water. Covering its upper legs was a sodden kilt made from wide strips of tooled leather, weighted at the lower ends with brass disks. Blood continued to ooze from a slash high in its left side, seeping through the reinforcing strips of the once-ornate leather cuirass it was wearing.
   First, get that armor off. That had me scratching my head: there were no zippers, buckles, or buttons; just leather ties securing it up the left side and on the shoulders. The wet leather had swollen; resisted all attempts to untie them. Finally I settled for cutting them and peeling both the cuirass and kilt off in one piece.
   Judging by the way the plumbing was arranged, it was a she. There were no breasts to speak of, just twin columns of three black teats buried in the fur.
   The sword had broken through the tough-looking skin and cut into the side at an angle before being deflected by a rib, ripping away one of those teats as it went. There was a none-too-modest flap of flesh dangling loose while a lot of blood had pumped out, covering and matting the fur. Still more had been lost to the earth and the river.
   What was lying in front of me was way beyond anything I’d ever covered in my basic medical training. Perhaps nothing serious had been hit; then again, perhaps it had. How was it put together? Was its metabolism anything like mine? What medicines could I use? How the hell was I supposed to know? Stuff like simple aspirin can kill a cat.
   Was it worth it? I bit my lip, then swore and reached for my pack.
   The quarrel was still stuck into it, stopped by a pack of C-rations. I turned the dented tin over in my hands, not quite believing it. Saved by a freeze-dried meal. I knew the stuff was tough, but using it instead of a flak vest..?
   Of course the medkit had wound up at the bottom. I snapped it open, and selected a small plastic bottle of antiseptic and a roll of gauze. Nothing to lose… I used my knife, methodically cutting away the fur and dirt around the wound, washing away filth: clotted blood, mud, and grass with water from my canteen. That wouldn’t be enough.
   The creature stirred and its jaw spasmed as I pried the wound open with my fingers and squirted antiseptic from the squeeze bottle into it. I swabbed it out, then tore open a large sterilized gauze pad, bandaging it tightly in place even as blood started welling again.
   Tossing aside the ruined armor, I stripped one of the cleaner cloaks off a corpse and settled that over the cat, again finding I was hesitant to touch it. Its breathing was rapid, almost panting.
   All the others were as dead as lunchmeat.
   I avoided the messy body with half a face grinning uselessly at the clouds when I examined the corpses. One of the other archers was sprawled in the middle of a bush, his/her chest punctured where the rounds had smashed through. The shock would have killed faster than the wound. S/he was dressed in rag-tag cloak, but the armor underneath looked well used and functional. Red and black. It looked like a uniform. The crossbow lying nearby wasn’t that large or powerful, but that was simply due to the diminutive stature of the user. It was well made: laminated wood and metal, with recurved tines of wood and bone and some kind of twisted fiber. Six quarrels were clamped to the stock; each about twenty centimeters long with a wicked triangular iron tip.
   I weighed it in my hands. Oh, well. You never know when something like this might come in handy… Then another thought struck me and I frowned at the creature in the back of the wagon. Its armor was in pieces. Would it want clothes?
   What am I thinking? Clothes!?
   I shook my head, but still managed to scrounge some stuff from a soldier. It’d been stabbed through the throat, covering the front of the cuirass with blood. Nevertheless, it was in much better condition than the stuff I’d cut off.
   The creature’s sword: a beautifully crafted scimitar. I found it in the middle of the stream where it’d dropped it. I picked it up, shaking and wiping the water and mud off it and holding it up so the sun threw dazzling reflections off the slightly curving blade. Nice piece of metal. I tried a few practice swings and nearly took my own leg off. Hastily I stuck it back in the sheath then tucked it up on the drivers bench, out of reach of furry hands.
   I looked back over the scene. Like something out of a picture: the stream, lush greenery dappled by light and tall trees, patches of sky and clouds. Then there were the figures tumbled like distorted shop mannequins, blue against green, water running over glittering metal and leather, teeth bared in hopeless snarls at the sun. Shaking my head, I tried to figure the reins out. How do you drive bison? To start with, there’s no clutch…

   I made camp several klicks further down the river valley.
   The road split at a junction: one branch continuing eastwards along the river, the other climbing out of the valley, going south. I rubbed my tired eyes then decided not to make a decision, not until I could learn more about my passenger and what was going on.
   It wouldn’t hurt to hang around a few days; I doubted the bandits would be back, and there was a terrible feeling that there wouldn’t be any search parties out looking for me.
   It took a while to find a suitable campsite, but I finally settled on a small, grassy clearing. Close enough to the stream for convenience and far enough from the road that any fire couldn’t be seen. Roughly triangular in shape it was, with a pile of huge boulders—broken and whole—in the northernmost apex, small conifers persistently hanging on in small patches of earth between the rocks. I hitched the bison up to a tree, leaving them contentedly cropping away at the grass. Watching them eat set my own stomach to snarling.
   I didn’t have to go too far to find a rabbit that was too curious for its own good. It was the matter of a single round from the M-16 and dinner was laid on. The rest of the daylight was spent skinning and gutting and laying a fire, then while waiting for a bed of coals I turned my attention back to the wagon and the cat lying in the back.
   The bandages were working. The wound had stopped bleeding, but the fur covering its chest and side was completely matted and plastered with clotted blood and mud. Mud covered its broad face and one of the pointed ears was stuck down against the head. I splashed water onto a rag torn from a cloak and began to sponge away the worst of the blood.
   Still unconscious she flinched away from my touch, her jaw twitched and she voiced a high chittering noise.
   Her eyes flicked open, focused on me, then widened until a rim of white circumnavigated the huge pupils: Green, flecked with specks of copper. A small, strangled noise escaped her and she scrambled backwards into the hay until she was backed up against the drivers’ bench, unable to retreat any further. The face contorted, wrinkles marching up the muzzle as she bared a glistening array of needle teeth, canines, and a curled, pink tongue. Centimeter-long, ivory-colored claws slid from her fingertips.
   The bandages around her chest and shoulder flexed and shifted.
   I jumped out of the back of the wagon and held my hands in front of me, trying to look harmless. If she tried to move any more, that wound was gonna reopen. “Hey,” I coaxed. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”
   “Fegar s’sahrorna nieck herasti… fe, fe!”
   Well that’s what it sounded like. Not a high yowling as you’d expect a cat to make. They were modulated, sibilant sounds, fairly deep, probably due to length of the throat. It was a language, no doubting that. I’d bet her vocal chords were just as sophisticated as mine.
   You, the reader of this journal, will probably already know what I was looking at, but I’ll still take the time to describe what I saw.
   We stared at each other, man to cat, eye to eye. Her head was mounted on her shoulders, she had two ears and eyes, one nose, one mouth, bilaterally symmetrical, but there the resemblance to a human ended.
   Take the classic feline features and humanize them; just the slightest touch. Shorten the muzzle a little. Raise the brow and bring more expressive musculature into the features. The result would be something like the visage I was looking at.
   That face came out into a classic cat’s muzzle, complete with a broad, leathery, valentine-shaped nose and hare-lipped mouth with thin black lips. Sharp, triangular fur-tufted ears were half buried in the mane of fur that grew from the crest of her head and continued on down her neck. One ear was pierced by a single silver earring. Her entire face was covered with the same fawn colored fur that enveloped the rest of her body, highlighted with lighter gold stripes pushing over between the ears to disperse into that mane.
   The arms ended in a hand with four short fingers and a thumb. No fingernails. Instead those claws slid into sheaths in the tops of the stubby fingers. Except for the black pads on palms and fingertips, her hands were completely covered in fur.
   Her feet—especially her feet—were so different from a human’s. More like a cat’s pads. In fact her feet were all toe, her heel the leg joint above them—digitigrade, not plantigrade. Must have balanced on those clawed toes, walking on toe tips only. That sleek, streamlined face was somewhat marred by the mess of blood and clay, but there was no doubting the purpose and intelligence in the being I was staring at. Nor the reality. There was no way that this was some kind of costume; a joke or hallucination.
   “Rsacen esc na fe sfecer?” she sputtered, then shouted to the surrounding silence: “Fares wher’r rse fe! Sae ei!”
   If she was expecting someone to answer—one of her kind—she was disappointed. The branches of the trees hung heavy in the darkness and the stillness, but there was no other sound. She turned back to me, the iris dilated to turn the eyes to wide pools of black.
   “Fe,” she almost breathed the sound.
   “Sorry, but I don’t speak the lingo,” I said with a shrug and a smile.
   She plastered herself against the end of the wagon and bared her own teeth in a grin that was definitely not friendly. My bared teeth she perceived as a threat. I closed my mouth and made placating gestures with my hands. That only served to get her even more agitated. I couldn’t speak to her and she was completely vulnerable.
   “Goddamn it! I’m not going to hurt you!”
   She hissed.
   “Look! Hands empty! No weapons. Savvy? Shit, look! Here, take this.”
   She looked as if she would go catatonic when I drew my knife, her eyes riveted on the watery steel blade. Carefully, slowly, I laid the knife on the wagon bed and pushed it towards her—hilt first—and stepped back to once more raise my hands. Just as slowly she leaned forward, then snatched the knife, both hands wrapped around the hilt as if it were a lifeline.
   “Feel safer?” I asked.
   She was still panting hard, but those eyes had changed: not so much terror, calculating.
   I unclipped the canteen from my belt and sloshed it around a couple of times, then unscrewed the lid and took a sip out of it before slowly holding it out to her. She shrank back, shivering and with teeth bared. I continued to hold it out to her, and after a few seconds, she screwed up enough courage to take it, claws clicking on the plastic, she raised it to her nose and sniffed warily, her eyes still on me. She took a careful sip, then tilted it back and gulped greedily, spilling much of it down her front. Her jaw was just the wrong shape.
   “Hey, watch it. You’ll be sick if you drink it like that!”
   At the sound of my voice she dropped the canteen as though it had suddenly become red-hot. The knife came up again, wavering wildly. Then white membranes slid from the corners of her eyes and her hand flopped heavily to her side.
   But her chest was moving steadily, breath whistling through her nostrils. I found a pulse in the hollow of her neck and it was strong and regular. She voiced a low growling moan when I moved my hand. Just passed out.
   I stood and stared at her for a while. Just leave her; let her wake up and find I hadn’t touched her. That’d be the best way to tell her I didn’t want to hurt her. Shrugging, I set off to put another bit of wood on the fire. It’d been one of those days.

   It was an amazingly clear night, one of those nights when you can literally see forever. The galaxy was a stream of white dust spilled across the heavens…
   And all of the constellations were there.
   I must have sat atop the granite crag for an hour in the dark, just staring at those flickering beacons in the sky. They hadn’t changed at all. That red dot was Mars… That was the sky of Earth in the late 20th century.
   I must be on Earth… so where did they come from?
   Aliens? Huh, I doubted it. If they had the technology to make it from another star to Earth, why did they wear flimsy leather armor, use antique weapons, and ride around on animal powered vehicles?
   Why did I feel so out of place?
   There was something I was missing here.
   The felinoid was still lying in the back of the wagon, asleep in the warm night air. Nearby, the fire I had started had died down to a glowing bank of coals, the skinned carcasses of the rabbits lying nearby: ready to be spitted and cooked.
   Soon the smell of roasting rabbit was drifting through the clearing. I turned the meat on the spit and glanced up to see the felid awake and watching me over the side of the wagon, her eyes flicking from me to the fire then back to me again. She licked her lips and a string of spittle dripped from her jaws.
   Smiling, I reached out to tear a haunch off the browned carcass and then—slowly and carefully, every movement deliberate—I got up and walked to the side of the wagon and offered the meat at arms length.
   Just as cautiously, she snagged the proffered morsel with a claw and after sniffing it, took a small nibble, looked at me, then started tearing at the meat with dagger-sharp teeth, taking big mouthfuls, chewing noisily, then swallowing hard.
   So, she was hungry. Tough little thing.
   And some appetite, too.
   Whilst she was absorbed in satisfying her hunger I sat down on the tailgate, swinging my legs over the side while watching her. She finished the meat and stared back, her eyes catching the firelight and reflecting it, the rest of her matted coat dull and indistinct in the flickering firelight. Her claws were still at the ready.
   “Uh… hi,” I said.
   She flinched.
   “I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Kelly,” I said. She just stared. “Kelly,” I enunciated with exaggerated gestures toward myself and repeated the name twice, three times.
   She blinked at me.
   I tried again.
   “Freh ash an shirai se fe,” she hissed.
   “That’s not your name, is it?”
   “Hers a saf, s’shesaf.”
   I’m no linguist, but that was no language I’d ever heard before. Guttural, with hisses, growls merging with sibilants. All right, I thought I could manage that: “‘Hers a saf… uh… shesaf’ to you too.”
   She jumped as though I’d suddenly grown another head.
   “Hers a saf, s’shesaf,” she repeated slowly, watching me intently. I got the idea. “Hers a saf, s’shesaf,” I echoed her, completely oblivious of what I was actually saying.
   “Sthre ts’ref n’esur s’shesaf, surio saf fe,” she hissed slowly. I tried to repeat her, stuttering and stumbling over the sibilants. She repeated herself twice. Finally I managed the sentence with a modicum of accuracy.
   Her jaw dropped, then closed with a hollow clop.
   I leaned forward, touched my chest and said, “Kelly.”
   Her eyes went even wider as she twigged. That was my name! I had a language of my own! By gum, what a concept! She stared at me, opened her mouth, and gave a croak, cleared her throat and tried again, “She’ae.” The consonants of the ‘kay’ and ‘ell’s lost completely, my name turned into what sounded like a steam leak.
   “No, no, no. Kelly,” I repeated.
   “K’h… K’hy.”
   With that mouth, she couldn’t get the ells at all. I shrugged then pointed at myself, repeated my name, and then pointed at her and shrugged. She got my point and said something that sounded like:
   “Tar?”
   She moved her hand in a gesture that must mean ‘no’: a horizontal slash in the air with the hand open and palm down. “Tahr,” she corrected.
   We went on like this until I got it right. She was willing to let my name slide, but when it came to hers, she wanted it perfect. Afterwards, we tried a few more of her words. With each new one I learned she stared at me; like she couldn’t believe it.
   By now the fire had died down to a few feeble embers; warmer than the moonlight albeit not as bright. I squinted at my watch and decided to call it a night; she needed her sleep.
   With my pack as a pillow, the smooth, metallic creases of the survival blanket over me and the cold ground below, I watched the stars reeling through the familiar sky overhead until I dropped off.

   The morning was perfection.
   I squinted against the glare of sunlight and groaned, finally managing to unwrap myself from the silver folds of the sheet I stood and stretched. My joints popped and crackled, stiff muscles stretched and relaxed again. The felid was still sleeping, half curled up under her cloak. I stared at it for some time, feeling an uneasiness at the very center of my being.
   This was the way my distant ancestors would have felt when a saber-tooth appeared on the skyline.
   Damnation! I clenched my hand to stop it trembling and abruptly turned away from the blanketed figure. A furred, clawed, twisted foot was poking out from under the cloak, hinting at what lay beneath.
   I got out of there.
   For all our civilization we are still primitive at heart I reflected as I crouched by the river. The water was a cold shock against my skin as I dunked my head, then shook it dry. The droplets flew in all directions, glittering in the morning sun.
   We’d come a long way: We have electrically lit homes, kept warm in winter and cool in summer. We travel thousands of kilometers in hours, move mountains out of the way of our roads without really thinking about it.
   That’s right, we hardly ever think about it.
   How many people are there in the world who can say they actually know how an electric light works? How a radio works? Who can even light a fire without matches? For most people, all they need to know is how to flip a switch, press a button, turn a dial. Tasks a moronic chimp can carry out. If their transistor radio breaks down through a loose wire or burned-out resistor, they chuck it out and get a new one: A disposable civilization.
   We’ve reached the moon and sent automated probes beyond the farthest corners of our solar system. There are instruments to explore the macroscopic and microscopic worlds: Electromagnetic telescopes that can detect a nebula’s fart light-years away, microscopes that can give a visual image of xenon atoms we’ve manipulated to spell IBM.
   And still there are those who hang crosses and prayer beads in their shiny new cars. It’s as if they need someone, like an imaginary friend that children conjure up; someone or something to whom you can attribute the inexplicable.
   Damnation! I don’t consider myself an complete ignoramus. I didn’t have to let my emotions and instincts overrule logical thought.
   But that thing gave me the willies.
   I cupped my hands and drank. Water ran through my fingers and dribbled back into the river. Several times I dipped my hands into the stream, then opened them to let the water trickle out. Finally I sat back against a rock that hadn’t had time to warm in the sun, was still cool from the night. The fingers of my left hand trailing in the stream.
   I looked at myself.
   My fatigues were covered with dust and dark stains that could only be dried blood. Not mine. Not even human, but just as red. I stripped off and staked my clothes down in the current then scrubbed at them until my hands were raw.

   The felid was awake when I returned.
   In fact she was out of the wagon, leaning heavily on the tailgate with one hand clutched against the bandages. She stared at me when I appeared and her lips parted slightly in a smile that showed the whiteness of her teeth.
   Returning the smile I took a step forward, then froze when her hand darted into the back of the wagon and came back with a cocked and loaded crossbow wobbling in her unsteady grip. Her eyes wobbled, seeming to lose their focus, then snapping back again. Her grin broadened. I swallowed hard. Remind me to take the string with me next time.
   “Tahr?”
   “K’hy,” she snarled—literally—and gestured sharply with the bow and I slowly raised my hands, freezing motionless again when her ears went back flat against her skull and she barked something at me. Her ears slowly came up again when she saw I wasn’t trying anything. The end of the crossbow jerked and again she snarled something at me: “R’rtsa!”
   What the hell did that mean? I just stood there.
   She snorted and wagged the crossbow at the ground, “R’rtsa!”
   I took a guess and sat down.
   Her ears flicked and she stood there staring at me.
   I stared back, noticing her shifting on her feet, as though she was about to collapse. And that crossbow was wobbling dangerously. I licked my lips. “Rtsa,” I invited, gesturing slowly at the ground.
   She blinked at me, then her ears twitched. Slowly, her face contorting in what could have been a wince, she settled until she was sitting cross-legged, facing me across the remains of the fire. Meters away, she glanced down at the bow, then at me again as if she were trying to decide to use it or not. I hadn’t hurt her; I’d patched her wounds. Perhaps she just felt the need to take some kind of control.
   With my hands still in the air, I carefully pointed one finger at the bow and said, “Fe..? Tahr.”
   Muscles in her face ticked and pulled and she sputtered something at me. The crossbow stayed targeted upon my guts.
   “Shit! Look, you can’t point that thing at me all day!”
   She growled.
   Warily, I lowered my hands.
   She flinched and snarled.
   “Okay,” I coaxed. “I’m not going to hurt you. Tahr.”
   “K’hy.”
   When I moved again she gasped, head going back and eyes fixed on me. I saw her muscles trembling as I carefully—inch at a time—reached out and plucked a single blade of grass, holding it up. “Grass,” I said.
   Her eyes flicked down to the small green leaf, then she said, “Frwuch,” a deep, guttural sound coming from the throat. I repeated it as best I could, then she picked a blade and said a short sentence with her word for grass in it, then pointed at me and said slightly different phrase. I repeated them:
   [have/hold] I grass.
   [have/hold] you grass.
   For a few different items—sticks, pebbles, dirt—we did this. The words were difficult to pronounce. The basic sentence structure was predicate-subject, reversed from English. That threw me several times, but she corrected me.
   Several minutes later she put the crossbow aside in order to use both hands to get a point across. The weapon lay in the grass, easily within her reach, and both of us stolidly ignored it and concentrated upon the language lesson.

   Morning dew was beading on the blanket and grass around my head; tiny crystal beads sparkling in the dawn. I closed my eyes and rolled onto my back.
   Something touched my shoulder.
   I opened my eyes and looked up into a puma’s face, a bobcat’s face, eyes like cold jade with a slit of night etched into them. A hand, twisted, furred and clawed, was reaching for my face.
   With a lurch of terror I tried to scramble backwards, slipped on the wet grass, fell on my back with dew soaking me. The cat kneeled above me, reached for my throat… and gently touched, feeling the pulse racing there.
   “Scre ne fe ther ri seth m’resh,” she hissed, fast, too fast, impossible for me to follow. Her head was cocked to one side like a cat regarding a bird in a cage. The rising sun was behind her, still barely a glow over the horizon turning the streamers of clouds above it russet and gold. Seeing that I was as nervous of her as she was of me gave her that touch of confidence.
   Her hand moved down to touch my chest in the vee of my shirt, touched the sparse gold hair there, then traveled up, stroking my skin. If anything, she looked puzzled. The question she asked I couldn’t understand, so she continued examining me in silence, her hands moving to touch my face. I shivered slightly as she pressed a finger against my cheek, rubbing gently. I could feel the almost-leathery pad on her fingertip grating on stubble. Growing bolder, she traced my jaw, tracing the bones. I flinched when she tried to peel my lips back to examine my teeth: she pulled her hand back, then patted my cheek. So I suffered claws tapping against my teeth, fingers touching my canines. Delicately she bent my nose from side to side, then ran a fingertip around my eyes and eyebrows and ears. Finally she stroked my hair for a while, tugging at it curiously, then sat back, still staring at me as if I were a specimen on a lab table.
   “You [ ]?” she asked.
   “No understand,” I replied. The first phrase I’d learned, and the one I’d be using most for a long time to come.
   Her ears flicked—as though routing invisible flies—then she touched her chest. “I sathe,” she said.
   Sathe. That could be her species name, family name, job, or just mean she was hungry. Well, I took a gamble on it being her species. “Sathe.” At least that word came easily to my lips.
   “Yes. Right. Good,” she approved, then waited.
   “I human,” I hastily provided.
   “H’man,” she tried the word, tasting it. “H’man.”
   I sat up and reached out my hand, to touch her. With a start she pulled away from me. She stood just out of reach, one hand almost unconsciously clutching the bandages over her ribs, that arm cradled in turn by her other. “H’man,” she murmured, then turned and limped back to the wagon.

   Goddamn it! She wanted to leave. With her wound still red, swollen, and threatening to tear itself open, she actually wanted to hit the road!
   “Damnation! No! I’m not going to help you!” I stormed in frustration, slouched back against a tree and crossed my arms. She hissed something back and threw the bisons’ harnesses to the ground in disgust, being unable, in her condition, to lift the wagon tongue. She glared at me, then caught up a crossbow from the wagon.
   For a second I thought she was considering using it on me, but without another glance my way she started off on her own.
   “You’re cracked!”
   I watched her limp off into the trees and disappear from my view.
   “Anyway, the road’s thataway!” I yelled at the forest.
   Christ on a crutch, she’s serious!
   So what? What do I care? If she wants to kill herself, that’s her business. Isn’t it? I mean, it’s not like I owe her anything… Anyway, I wrestled with my conscience for a couple of minutes.
   What can I tell you?
   “Shit! Goddamn it! Wait!”
   I found her twenty or so meters into the forest, perched on a sun-warmed rock and obviously waiting for me.
   “Okay lady,” I gritted my teeth and rubbed the bridge of my nose, forcing the words out, “You win.”
   She bared her teeth at me and hissed slowly and clearly, “We go?”
   “Yeah, sure… We go.”
   She looked down and dropped her hand away from her breast: the bandages were stained red with the blood seeping out under them. “Oh, Christ,” I shook my head. This was one stubborn and determined bitch.

   The beast-lady lay quietly in the back of the wagon, staring up at branches and clouds moving past. I glanced back at her, assured myself the new bandages were still in place, then turned to look out over the mountainous shaggy backs of the bison as they plodded along.
   This Tahr knew where she was going. At the fork in the road she had directed that we should continue eastwards, toward the remote sea. I briefly considered debating this, then shrugged. Why not? I wondered what destination she had in mind and felt the fear again.
   Are there more of them? How many? Where are we going? For Christ’s sake, I don’t have to go along with this! All I have to do was dump her somewhere. I don’t need her… do I?
    I don’t know!
   So we traveled together, strange companions, each trying to come to know the other. Learning her language—Sathe—was hard.
   English was next to impossible for her. Her mouth, all of her vocal apparatus from her larynx to her tongue to the shape of her jaw, weren’t as flexible as mine. With effort I was able to imitate the growls, snarls, and sibilant noises that made up the Sathe language, but she could barely manage a coherent English sentence at all.
   Also there was the fact that she wasn’t human… or that I wasn’t Sathe, whichever way you want to look at it.
   Language is a means to communicate ideas and impressions, its development influenced by the environment, by physiological and psychological traits. This creature I was learning from was mammalian, bipedal, and bilaterally symmetrical. We seemed to have a fair bit in common.
   But whereas my distant ancestors were brachiating primates hastily adapted for lives on open plains, hers were dedicated hunters, perhaps forest-dwelling quadrupeds who—God knows how or when—began to use tools. As we’d evolved from such distant and diverse beginnings, so had our languages. There were terms she used to refer to things she could see at night, to sounds I couldn’t hear and to things I couldn’t smell. Conversely, I was unable to find words for differentiating between certain tints of a color… and there were no words to describe things I had grown up with. Different outlook. Different mindsets. How do you describe color to a blind person?
   Given time I’d eventually come to grips with that language, but for the time I had to live with my questions. And she had to live with hers.
   So the language lessons continued every day as we made our leisurely way east. The grammar wasn’t that hard to pick up, but my vocabulary was extremely rudimentary. I would point things out or have them shown to me, then Tahr would give me her name for them. It was that way I learned the cat… Sathe terms for fascinating things like tree, bush, rock, road, bison, wood, bird, and other things that would come in handy if I intended to live the rest of my life in the wilderness. The only man/Sathe-made things we had to work from were the things we had with us; the wagon, Tahr’s possessions, and my things.
   My things: The contents of the pack, my rifle and clothing. These fascinated and bemused her. She scrutinized everything from the fabric of my clothes to my gun (a puzzle I quickly confiscated, to her obvious annoyance and indignation). She tapped the aluminum of my canteen, tried to bend the laminated steel of my knife blade, stared and poked at the compass mounted at its perspex bubble in the hilt. Just what I could be doing with such things was confusing and frustrating her.
   Looking at it from my point of view there wasn’t all that much, but I was thankful for what I had, especially the automatic rifle. All Tahr had to call her own was her sword and the tattered remains of her armor.
   And the days went by. Sometimes the merciless Virginia sun, sometimes rain that brought the bugs and mud. The lessons continued and increased in complexity, graduated to abstracts, there was more confusion and more late nights sitting around a campfire struggling to grasp a concept. How can you describe something that you can’t simply hold in your hand; something such as thought, hope, or fear? Miming just didn’t work too effectively on a creature who used different body language.
   Things progressed slowly, at their own speed and as I learned more, I was able to fill in the blanks. But it was so maddeningly slow! There’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to ask something but not having the words to do so.
   Apparently there were also questions that Tahr wanted to ask me, and she did try as best she could. What was I? Where did I come from? Things along those lines. Because of that I was slightly grateful for the barrier between us. Despite my equipment she still sometimes seemed to think of me as little more than a well-trained animal: sit, wait, fetch this, fetch that. I played along. It was easier to go with the flow until I found out more about my situation.
   Mid-summer. Hot and dusty after days without rain. Insects buzzed in irritating clouds around the bison. Grit from the road hung around in the air before finally settling in hair, mouth, and clothes. I was itching and covered in an irritating coating of dust and sweat.
   Of course when I had the chance to bathe, I took it.

   As the sun sank low—a red eye over the hills to the west—the moon was already high in the sky. The temperature was starting to drop.
   I pulled my head up from underwater and gasped air, shaking water out of my hair in a spray of droplets. Arggh, cold. Goddamn, it was good to be clean, but I was looking forward to getting back to the campsite where I had left Tahr and a hot fire. I rubbed my hair as dry as I could and turned to where my clothes were drying.
   Sitting among the shadows on the mossy bank with my clothes beside her, Tahr was watching me, one hand pressing lightly against her bandaged ribs. She was regarding me with her head cocked to one side, expression unfathomable. Damnation! How long had she been watching while I was gathering goosebumps in my birthday suit? She continued to watch me as I waded over to collect my clothes. Damnation, she was studying me as… as I had studied her. I felt an embarrassed flush burning up under my skin, then even more embarrassment at feeling like this in front of something that wasn’t even human. I guess she had a right to be curious about something she obviously had never seen before, or perhaps she was feeling hungry. Those greenstone eyes followed my fingers on the closures as I pulled on my damp clothes. “So what are you staring at!” I snapped. “Never seen red hair before?”
   In return she gave me a glistening grin.
   “Damn peeping tom alien bitch,” I muttered as I finished dressing. “Satisfied?” I asked sarcastically.
   She hissed something in obtuse sibilants, struggled to her feet with a open mouthed gasp, then pointed at the water. “Help me?” she mimed washing herself.
   “A cat that likes water, eh? You sure? It’s getting cold…”
   She hissed and fumbled with her kilt, dropping it at her feet. I had to help her into the pool, where she settled slowly, yelping as her wound went under. I’d have to clean that again later on. Soon I found myself scrubbing her back. Actually it wasn’t too much different from washing a dog, but this one cooperated. Caked blood, dust, and mud swirled away downstream. Finally, a soggy arm about my shoulders, I helped her back to the camp and the fire.
   As we huddled close to the fire I couldn’t help but stare at the felid on the far side of the flames. With the wet fur plastered to her skin she took on an appearance somewhere between ludicrous and pathetic. Her inhuman skeleton was accentuated: the long legs and short torso with broad chest. The bones in her legs and arms looked… wrong; twisted about each other the wrong way, perhaps a few too many.
   That ridiculously bedraggled fur slowly dried as she meticulously groomed herself with her claws, puffing out as it did so. By the time a slab of venison was roasting over the coals it was a glowing, glossy tan. Cleaned up she looked much better than before; sleek, warm… cuddly?
   Her pelt was a dark tan with lighter streaks around the ribs and on the stomach. She didn’t have whiskers, but there was that mane: actually long fur that began at the crown of her head and along her cheeks and grew in thick strands down her neck. ‘Small’ was not an accurate description of her size; ‘compact’ would be much more suitable. As I had noticed when lifting her, she was heavy for her size. There was more muscle tucked away there than her stature revealed. Was hers denser than human muscle tissue?
   She glanced up from the haunch she was rapidly reducing to bone and saw me studying her: “Thresss n’rethi ai sa fe r’rescast. Fe’si?”
   I recognized it as a question, but that was all. As I looked away in sudden embarrassment Tahr broke into a stuttering, uncontrolled hiss.
   Laughter?

   Tahr seemed certain she knew where we were. With much waving of hands and drawing with sticks in the dirt, she managed to convey the fact that were near a small place-with-[house?]-many called Traders Meet.
   “Town? Traders… Meet?” I asked, struggling over the pronunciation. You try and imitate what sounds like a cross between a catfight and a leaking boiler. It would get easier with practice. Strange name. Still, I guess it’s no weirder than Los Angeles or Buffalo.
   But a town.
   “Where this? Where town is?” I asked.
   Tahr pointed ahead down the road.
   “No. Not understand you not…” I scratched my head in bewilderment. God, how to ask this? I picked up a stick and began to draw a rough map of the road we had come down, the stream we had just crossed, the river where I had saved her sodden hide. “We here,” I scratched out an X about where we were. “Town?” I asked and passed the stick to the felid. She was staring at the map with a strange expression, then she took the stick and put in a triangle for the town. Further down the road.
   I moved my hand to indicate a much larger area. “Here?” I asked. “Show?”
   Tahr hesitated, then began drawing, filling in the blanks.
   She drew a recognizable map of the east coast, Canada, of Florida, part of the gulf, the Appalachians, the heartland, the Great Lakes. This was America. The States! But where was everybody, everything? It didn’t fit. I opened my mouth to speak, but she wasn’t done yet.
   She was dividing the map up into sections, lines splitting it up into four… no, five parts.
   I stared, perplexed. Tahr pointed to the eastern-most section. “Kerr’sther Hytors,” she named it and started adding more details.
   “Hey! Whoa! Hold it!” Tahr looked up in surprise. “What the fuck’s this!” I demanded in English, jabbing my finger at the map. “This! What’s going on… Oh, shit! What’s the point in asking you!”
   “Kerr’sther Hytors,” she repeated; looking confused.
   I suppose I must’ve looked just as puzzled, staring at her map without understanding. Finally I nodded. Very well, cat, we shall see. We shall see.
   “Kerster Hytors,” I acknowledged, pointing at that place on the map.

   There were five Realms, she explained, and the one we were in was named Kerr’sther Hytors, the Eastern Realm; so called because—no prizes here—of its location on the eastern seaboard. The four other Realms she tried to describe, but there the language barrier slammed in our faces.
   No matter where she thought we were and despite the fact I had seen no sign of civilization for over a week, I was not yet willing to believe that I was anywhere but some obscure backwoods block of Virginia with a town around the next bend. Everything, the flora and the fauna, was absolutely identical. Even the lay of the land was approximately the same: the Appalachians leveling out to the wide coastal plains covered in a mixture of coniferous and semi-deciduous forests. It was just this damned cat!
   Well, she said we were making for a town. When we got there I’d see what was what.
   As my grasp of the Sathe language progressed, I tried to ask some of the questions that had been bothering me for some time:
   “Tahr. Who you? Why you attacked?”
   Her wound was healing well. I had taken the stained bandages off and thrown them away, but that angry red scar would be with her for some time. One of her fingers absently traced it out as she turned to blink at me from where she sat on my right. From what I could read of her expressions,she seemed startled by the question.
   “I [ ] not you give. Understand?” she said.
   I frowned, trying to think that one through. Finally I had to give up. “No understand I,” I said.
   “I do not understand,” she corrected my grammar to Sathe proper and tried to explain. “I like [ ]. I give you thing; you give me other thing. We [trade]. I do this. I trader, [merchant].”
   “You give what?” I asked. “You have no… give things. You have much… Sathe with swords. You no merchant, yes?”
   Her eyes flickered away from me for a second. “One my [mate, husband?].”
   Ah. I had trodden upon hallowed ground here. She was trying to change the subject. I got the message. I dropped my questioning about what she was and instead asked about the unknown word. It turned out it meant a prospective mate, she was [courting?] him, a boyfriend. “Tahr…” What could I say? “I sorry.” It seemed inadequate.
   She looked at me in brief surprise, then turned away, ears down and subject successfully changed. If she was telling the truth about her friend, I was sorry, but I was itching to find out what she was really doing. A trader with no trade goods or even supplies and a number of guards. I believed her story about as far as I could throw the Washington Monument.
   Well, two could play at that game. If she wasn’t being entirely honest with me, then there were a few snippets that I could withhold from her. Not exactly lying, just not offering all the information.
   The next few days drifted by with monotonous similarity. By now Tahr was able to take her turn driving so we took shifts watching the bison—not that they needed much, they seemed to have a natural autopilot; just point ‘em the right way and they keep going—and continued language lessons. In the late afternoon we’d stop and set up camp; a short ceremony where one of us’d start a fire and the other would go and kill some food.
   Tahr would get a fire going with my cigarette lighter (she loved flicking it and watching the sparks fly). If we had nothing from the night before, I’d set off with the crossbow and go hunting small game. Of course the Sathe weapon wasn’t as powerful or accurate as my twentieth century firearm, but it was adequate and spared ammunition for other contingencies.
   We drifted along following this pattern and slowly, one after the other, the days turned to weeks before we came to Traders Meet.

   From the cover of the wooded ridge I looked down onto the walled town lying on the crossroads below. It sure wasn’t Richmond, Virginia.
   The James river was there; faithful to form as it wound blue and serene between hills. And the beautiful countryside of Virginia was all around us, verdant and vibrant green, even if the city that should be there… wasn’t.
   Smoke curled from the chimneys of the wooden buildings below, nothing larger than two stories high. Afternoon sunlight glinted off the glass windows of some of the buildings, the rest all boasted wooden shutters. The entire town was arranged around a large square and it looked like it was market day.
   Small figures scuttled through the streets and amongst the brightly colored stalls in the square. The 4x power magnification of my sight was enough to let me pick out the various colors of the inhabitants’ fur.
   I sank back against a tree and shook my head. I had hoped that I wouldn’t be seeing this, but there it was, large as life. A whole fucking community of furry sapients, slap bang where the state capitol of Virginia should be. Somewhere I’d taken one hell of a wrong turn.
   Shit! I thought this kind of thing only happened to little girls with small dogs.
   “What wrong?” Tahr asked, turning from where she had been sharing the view. She stared at me with her head cocked to one side.
   Oh no! Whatever could be wrong? I’ve just been whisked off to the Planet of the Cats. I’ll have to spend the rest of my life eating Tender Vittles, and she asks if anything is wrong!?
   “No, all fine,” I lied. Understanding Sathe was easier than speaking it, especially with such bitterness choking from the inside. I took another look at the town below, “This where you go?” I waved my hand at the town; offering it to her: “You here. All fine.”
   Good luck, lady. This is where I get off.
   I walked back through the trees to where we had left the wagon, the bison placidly cropping away at the grass.
   “K’hy?”
   I snagged my pack and pulled it on. The M-16 I left dangling by the strap as I set off back the way we had come, my feet dragging up dust.
   “K’hy!” Claws caught my sleeve and stopped me in my tracks, pulling me around. “Where you go?”
   “I go,” I pointed west, the direction I was facing.
   “Where?” Her hand was still on my arm.
   I just shrugged. How should I know?
   “You come with me?”
   I stared at her, then started shaking again. She twisted her hand to disengage her claws and stepped back. “K’hy?”
   “I not,” I said.
   “Please! Much please. I [ ] you [ ] come. Please.”
   Much of what she said was totally incomprehensible to me, but she seemed desperate about something.
   “I not!”
   “Why?”
   “I afraid. I much afraid!” I blurted out.
   She stared at me in what could only be astonishment. Then her hand reached out and gingerly touched my beginnings of a beard. I flinched from her touch and she hesitated, then withdrew her fingers. “Saaa,” she hissed. “I afraid too. Help, please.”
   I looked at her, then at the wilderness surrounding us. There was really nowhere for me to go. It would take me weeks to get anywhere on foot, and now, now I knew I wouldn’t find a human city… I wouldn’t find another human.
   “Yes?”
   I sagged. “Yes.”

   So we entered Traders Meet with me riding in the back of the wagon, disillusioned and scared and trying to look harmless. All my equipment had been shoved under a pile of hay up front. All I had were my clothes… and my knife strapped around my ankle. Tahr’s ears had laid back when she saw me concealing it there, but she’d said nothing.
   Tahr had not wanted me to be too conspicuous, as I would have been if riding up front. She was vague about the reasons, but she didn’t want to advertise the fact I was intelligent—relatively—nor that I could talk. Again I submitted to her wishes and rode in the hay.
   First there were the farms: Small clusters of buildings surrounded by their fields. Cattle—deer, bison, and goats—roamed everywhere. Not surprising when you look at a Sathe’s teeth. What was surprising were the number of fields sown with crops. I’d never seen Tahr eat anything besides meat, cooked or raw. But then, I’d never offered anything else. I guess becoming omnivorous would be a plus in the evolution of a species.
   On the outskirts of the town lay the manors: the homes of the affluent, set among shady, stately trees and grass: not manicured lawns but long, wild grasses that stirred languidly in the heavy breeze. They were beautiful, those estates; white walls with exposed beams stained lamp black—Tudor, I think the style’s called. Big, rambling affairs with glass in the mullioned windows.
   Just outside the town walls were the rundown piles of lumber that the lowest classes called home. They had their own streets; dusty little alleys branching off everywhere. Inside the walls were the rest, the ones who fell into the middle, the lower merchants, traders, dealers, hawkers, along with business of all kinds crammed into the walls.
   Small, narrow streets laid out to no set plan, just placed according to whim and need. Some were cobbled in rough-cut stones while others were just bare earth packed down rock-solid by feet and iron bound wheels. The heavy, pervasive stench of garbage and shit hung in the air, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d been expecting. Periodic gratings in the street meant there was a sewer system working. It also probably meant there was seepage through to the water table. I’d better be careful about the water I drank.
   Wood, brick, plaster, tiles. Buildings with stained whitewash splashed on their walls between old creosote-stained timbers and the second stories hanging out over the streets to form dark, reeking tunnels. Stalls with faded cloth that at one time was probably brightly colored—a few still were—fronted shops. Smoke poured from the stacks of smithies; from the open doors of ale houses came raucous yowling. So like a medieval European fortified town, yet the inhabitants set it apart as markedly different.
   Noise; that was everywhere.
   A modern city has its own pulse; the beat of traffic, sirens, bustling humanity, shouting, engines, planes, music. In the night, halogen and neon lights beckon while spires of reinforced concrete create their own skyline with uncounted millions of illuminated windows. The streets throb to the subway hurtling beneath them and humanity is a never-ending ebb and flow, like the tides, regular as night and day: Vendors, salesmen, loners, delinquents, buskers, businessmen, punks, mavericks, pimps, fat-rich contessas, hookers, winos, teenagers, actors, children, queens, losers, writers, dreamers, drifters… A true city can be a representative cross-section of humanity. It was an exhilarating, terrifying experience to an out-of-towner, but just everyday life to the city-born. This town was alive in its own way. The shouting of peddlers, hawkers, and merchants competing with the bass rumble of heavy wheels and the clamoring of animals. As we passed the city gates I studied my Sathe. She was relaxed, an alert glint in her eye. This was no stranger to city life, she had grown up in a place such as this.
   Maybe even this town?
   The next thing I noticed was how everything seemed to stop as we passed. Everyone dropped what they were doing and stared at us. Well, at me.
   They all looked the same, yet they were all different. The same features: long muzzle, sharp triangular ears, green slit-pupiled eyes, stripped fur, compact bodies with well proportioned limbs. And all seemed different: A different shade of fur: some light, some dark. I saw one female with a pelt of silver-gray. There were scars on the body or nicks in the ears, flecks of gold in the eyes. Sizes varied enormously. Some were about Tahr’s size—fairly large for a Sathe—and the young (would you call them children or cubs?), looking for all the world like ambulatory teddy bears, would come to about hip height on me. Males were slightly larger than the females, with heavier manes, thinner hips, and lacking the unobtrusive twin rows of three teats, but there didn’t seem to be any obvious segregation of the sexes. Females haggled with males over the cost of bread while other males seemed quite content to keep the cubs in line.
   Fashions obviously played a role in Sathe culture, to judge from the riot of color on the felids staring at us. Although many wore nothing but their fur—male and female genitalia hidden by the tufted fur at their groins, hinting at a very relaxed or nonexistent nudity taboo—a large number wore breeches or cloaks in various styles and various colors, ranging from eye-searingly brilliant to mud drab. Nearly every one of them was armed. Daggers, blades, scimitars like Tahr’s looked to be the weapon of preference.
   And some saw me, slapped their neighbor’s shoulder and pointed. More and more heads turned. There was laughter from some, silence from others.
   This isn’t happening!
   The weirdest sensation, like my brain was cringing in my skull, staring out at the world through the eye sockets, yet not really seeing. All I could do was huddle in the back of the wagon and try to make myself invisible. I wasn’t very good at it. I became abruptly aware that my teeth were chattering. In fact I was shaking all over.
   Tahr seemed to know where she was going, slipping into the halting flow of creaking, rattling animal-drawn vehicles, yowling at other wagoners and pedestrians. As we moved slowly through the town we picked up a small entourage of cubs who ran after us. I was the attraction and they scurried after us, hissing and pointing at me.
   She pulled off the street and into a gateway leading to a small cobbled court surrounded by doorways with wooden gates blocking off the lower half. A strong animal smell permeated the air and various animal heads poked out of the stalls; I recognized llamas and bison. Must be a stable.
   As she reined in the bison a portly individual, graying about the ears, ran out of an open doorway and chased our young followers off with shouts and snarls. The cubs avoided him with ease, scampered off to a safe distance and returned the calls with obvious glee.
   Dismissing them with a disgusted wave of a paw the Sathe turned back to our wagon. Tahr jumped to the ground, hissing as the jolt put sudden pressure on her still tender wound and went to meet him. Seen from the back, her walk was a lot like a human woman’s. The fact that she walked on tiptoes with her heels off the ground almost gave the illusion that she was wearing high heels.
   The Sathe looked past her at the wagon, and his eyes met mine.
   With the number of flies that were buzzing around the stalls, you’d think it was rather risky to stand around with your mouth hanging open like that.
   Tahr had to raise her voice to catch his attention. He finally managed to tear his eyes off me and pay her some heed. Their conversation seemed to have a lot to do with the wagon, the bison, and me. They were to far away for me to catch details, but Tahr would say something, the male would sign a ‘no’, until finally they seemed to settle on something. They approached, the stable owned watching me with eyes as green as Tahr’s. He relaxed a bit when I backed away from him as if afraid. It wasn’t all an act. “Is it dangerous?” he asked Tahr
   “Only [ ],” her ears flicked up and down in her version of a smile.
   This was doing a whole lot for my ego.
   He considered a moment, then agreed to let her leave the wagon and bison in the courtyard. After the pair slapped paws in a what I guessed was their version of a handshake, he wandered back into the stalls muttering something to himself.
   Tahr scrambled into the wagon bed and grabbed my pack. She slapped my leg and before I could protest—ask what was happening—whispered, “I back. Not long.” Then she was out of the wagon and off across the courtyard.
   I sighed and dropped back into the hay, squinting up into the muggy sky. God, my head hurt. Too much, too strange, too quickly. I tried not to think about Tahr selling me or handing me over to the authorities. I didn’t know what they’d do to something like me, but spending the rest of my life in a zoo or medieval laboratory was not on my retirement plans.
   What’s happened to me?
   Another planet? Not likely. Everything but the local inhabitants were the same. The flora and fauna identical to that back home. No two worlds in the same universe could have evolved so perfectly, so exactly.
   Not in the same universe, the same reality.
   But there were theories, not necessarily restricted to the bounds of science fiction. Realities are numberless, superimposed on each other like frames in a movie. And like that film each is different. In each of those realities, whenever a certain point is reached—a certain decision is made—another universe is created, branching off from the main trunk like a branch from a tree, a twig from that branch…
   Hah! That theory was so full of holes you could curdle it and call it Swiss cheese, but it was the best one I had. It was the only one I had.
   Two hours passed. Fear passed into exhaustion and despite my predicament I dozed.
   The lurch as the wagon began to move jolted me awake again. Not seeing anyone in the drivers bench I sat up alarmed. A Sathe, perhaps a stable hand judging by the pitchfork he—no, she—was carrying, was leading the bison by the reins, moving them to clear an access way. The movement as I sat up caught her eye. She turned, squalled, and dropped both the reins and her pitchfork as she backpedaled wildly.
   On all fours she crouched on the cobblestones with her mouth gaping, teeth bared, chest heaving. She reminded me of Tahr back when she first laid eyes on me. Over in a stable door another Sathe, I think it was the one Tahr had been talking to, appeared and yelled at the stable hand. She stood and yowled back at him, too fast for me to get a grasp on. He gave a snort and vanished back into the brick building.
   I guess the owner of the place hadn’t briefed his staff on their unusual visitor. I smiled nervously at the stable hand who was scooping up her pitchfork. She snarled and went to catch the reins.
   “Oh, hostility.”
   She sputtered something back at me.
   “Fuck you too,” I said and flopped back into the hay to wait.
   The hay itched, the afternoon sun was hot, and the flies were an incessant irritation. Once and only once I went to stand at the entrance to the courtyard and stare out at the activity on the street. Inconspicuous I wasn’t and I soon retreated back to the wagon as I started attracting attention. I had the feeling that if I stepped out of the bounds of the stables I’d be fair game.
   I was starting to feel slightly nauseous.
   Tahr didn’t get back until late. The sun was low over the stable buildings, the shadows growing. For hours I had been waiting for her, and I was beginning to wonder if she’d ditched me. But she came marching back into the courtyard, my pack slung over her shoulder, engaged in animated conversation with a Sathe decked in heavy utilitarian breeches, several carved, wooden bracelets around one wrist. They clattered as he waved his arm at the wagon.
   I had trouble keeping up with the rapid-fire chatter, but I was able to pick up that she was trying to make a deal of some kind with this guy.
   Currency was something my language lessons hadn’t covered, however that seemed to be the main topic of their conversation. Tahr was trying to sell something.
   Me!?
   The Sathe went around to the front of the wagon where the one in green began to inspect the bison: lifting their legs to check the hooves, inspecting their teeth and eyes. He obviously found something he didn’t like and barked something at Tahr. She spread her hands and hissed in reply.
   The other grunted and moved on to inspect the cart.
   They finally came to a mutual agreement and slapped palms. Tahr came around to the back of the wagon. “K’hy, we go,” she said slowly, beckoning me. “Come.”
   I hesitated, then uncovered the pack and slung it over my shoulder. She caught the crossbow I tossed her and settled its carry strap around her shoulder while I caught up the assault rifle and dropped off the end of the wagon.
   I towered over the two Sathe and the one who had just bought our faithful transport looked me up and down (nervously?). He asked Tahr a question.
   “No, he will behave,” Tahr said. Slow and deliberate enough for me to understand and with a stern look thrown in for good measure.
   I nodded and said, “Okay, Kemosabe,” in English.
   They both looked at me.
   “Very well,” the unnamed Sathe said uncertainly. He reached into a pouch at his waist and pulled out a small leather purse. From this he counted nine roughly-circular gold colored coins, each about the size of a dime, and handed them over to Tahr, who passed them on to me.
   Heavy as gold. I examined them closely, then bit them and looked at the tooth marks in the soft metal. Shit, real gold. Probably not pure, but worth a pretty penny nevertheless. I dropped the weighty gold lumps into one of the cargo pockets down the leg of my fatigue pants. The buyer looked astonished; had he never seen pockets before? “You would give [money] to an animal?” he asked.
   “He is [reliable? trustworthy?],” Tahr glanced at me again, “And who would [mug?] [something] like him? K’hy, come. Follow.”
   I followed her out of the sheltered courtyard and into the street, into pandemonium. On the wagon I’d been above the foot traffic; now I was in the middle of it, buffeted by a sea of colorful, furry bodies.
   Heavily laden wagons rumbled and clattered over the cobbles and clay of the streets while pedestrians scurried out of the way. Sathe shopkeepers yowled and hissed at the passers-by, hawking their wares. Brilliantly textured, dyed rugs, and tapestries hung on display in some shops, others sold bowls and implements, some delicately carved, others crude hunks of wood, while still other stalls sold goods that I couldn’t imagine a use for. The air was heady with the hissing white noise of a thousand cats fighting, the scents of spices, and fur, animals and shit and decaying meat. Flies swarmed around a butcher’s stall, occasionally swatted away by a bored cub wielding a whisk.
   No matter how thick the crowd was a small island of empty space remained about Tahr and I as Sathe melted away from me like ice from a blowtorch. Green eyes stared at me, multicolored, multitextured muzzles turning aside to confer with neighbors. Questions were howled at Tahr and she growled or sputtered her replies. Many times laughter hissed back.
   It wasn’t as if the town was big, and it was primitive—worse than Jersey—but everywhere I looked over the heads of the aborigines there were more. And more. The streets were full of them, as were the buildings. The smells were thick and heavy and often nauseating, so many of them, almost tangible. My senses were overwhelmed, overloaded by too much strangeness too soon. I felt my mind cringing and fought back a rising panic. All I could do was follow Tahr automatically, dodging around a wagon and onto the porch of a large, two-story building with a sign depicting what looked like a blue storm cloud hanging above the front door. A cub cautiously stopped Tahr at the threshold and in neutrally respectful tones asked something to fast for me to follow. Tahr answered and the cub looked from her to me, then scampered back into the building. A minute later a fawn and cream female with grizzled fur stepped out onto the landing, looking Tahr up and down with the air of someone who has just discovered what the dog has trekked across the carpet. I guess Tahr’s stained and battered armor, the tooling all but buried beneath strata of dust, didn’t make for much of a first impression.
   “You want a [room]?” she asked. “You and that [ ]?”
   “I do,” Tahr replied, head bowed.
   She glanced at me. “It is [ugly]! No!” Without another word she turned her back to leave. Tahr looked startled, reached out to touch her arm, then jumped back when the other swung her claws in a vicious slash that just missed Tahr, ears flattened and snarled something too impassioned for me to understand. Tahr straightened and snapped back.
   Their voices rose in volume as the argument gained momentum; fur bristling, snarls and spats like Tesla coils. Tahr was obviously furious and the other female was determined to stand her ground. Finally Tahr gave a disgusted hiss, turned her back and stalked off, snagging my sleeve with a claw to drag me along.
   She smoothed her fur down with a hand as we walked, occasionally glancing at me. I was too stunned by my surroundings to really notice it.
   At the next place—inn—we stopped, the innkeeper didn’t waste time arguing; he slammed the door in Tahr’s face. A few seconds later it opened again, a furry arm snaked out, hung a sign in a crabbed script from the door, then whisked out of sight again.
   Tahr snarled impotently at the door.
   Back on the main thoroughfare again, the jolting unreality of the situation all around me. Tahr was still seething to herself, running her hands repeatedly over fur that refused to lie flat. She looked around, then made a beeline for a nearby stall, unadorned flat planks displaying wicker baskets. The boards bounced as Tahr leaned a closed fist on them, half shouting at the merchant behind the counter to be heard above the street noise. He pointed a fur-tufted finger—small knuckles—up the street and gave directions. Tahr thanked him.
   Again I followed. There was nowhere else to go.
   It was a two-story building with a picture of what looked like a rabbit or hare hung above the door. The sign also had a line of that text: indecipherable, scratch-like marks done in black paint. There was no resemblance to the Greek alphabet English uses; more like a coalition of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese ideographs.
   I had to stoop to get in through the front door.
   Inside there was just enough headroom for me to stand upright, provided I stayed put. To walk about I’d have had to duck under or avoid the oil lamps hanging from the ceiling. Not that there was much room to walk around. Sathe are small of stature and their buildings are built to their scale, not accommodating to my build.
   Most of the ground floor was a common room, a long split-log table and benches in the middle of it. Over the fire hung a black-iron pot, bubbling, filled with what smelled like some kind of stew. A narrow, flimsy staircase led through a hole in the ceiling to another floor upstairs. A couple of doors led to what could have been a kitchen and the landlord’s quarters. The room was also full of Sathe.
   They sat at the communal table, some eating, some just talking; six of them. As I stooped into the room they forgot about their food and goggled. A Sathe, male, fur gray and stippled with jet like a dark ocelot pushed his way into the room from the kitchen, wiping his hands on the apron wrapped around his waist. Abruptly he froze, eyes locked on me, then without shifting his gaze demanded, “What is this?”
   “I ask for a room for a few nights,” she said. “For my [ ] and I.”
   The innkeeper stared at her incredulously. There were a few hisses from the other guests. “You are [ ],” he finally said. “I will not have [ ]! What do you take me for, a [ ]!?”
   “Sir, he is [ ] and quiet. He will be no [trouble]. I [ ] you I can pay!”
   He huffed and planted his hands on his hips, stalking across and looking up at me. His breath reeked of fish and meat. “What is it [ ]?”
   Tahr answered him with a string of words I couldn’t cut through. From then on their haggling became indecipherable; fast and curt, slang and honorifics, vocabulary beyond my primer stage. But Tahr seemed to be getting somewhere; at least we hadn’t been thrown out on our ears this time.
   Finally he feigned spitting: “I [yield?].” He waved a hand at the stairs. “Pay in [ ]. But it had better give no [difficulties]. It is your [responsibility]!” Tahr flipped a gold coin that he plucked cleanly from the air, and led me toward the stairs. The patrons watched me warily.
   Our room was small; little more than a cupboard with one thin mattress rolled up on the floor, a stool, and a small slit in the wall that served for a window. The wooden floor was rough, dirty and the room had a faint but definite odor of pine and urine and wet fur. Great place. The Holiday Inn would seem palatial in comparison.
   That window and a small tallow candle were all the lighting we had. It didn’t seem to bother Tahr in the slightest. I recalled the way in which her eyes caught firelight, how she seemed to have little difficulty moving at night. Cats’ eyes. She could see one hell of a lot better in the dark than I could.
   Tahr glanced around and huffed slightly: “Huh! Well, it will serve. Wait here.” The door swung shut and the piece of wood that served for a latch made a hollow thok as it dropped into place.
   I was in no hurry to go anywhere. It had been a long, weird day. I unrolled the pallet, sat down, and leaned back against the wall to wait. She was pretty quick, back within a few minutes carrying a pair of steaming bowls and two cups on a tray.
   Whatever was in those bowls smelled unbelievably good. I was drooling even before she’d kicked the door closed behind her. She set the tray down and passed me a bowl: a stew of some kind with a weird implement stuck in it, a sort of cross between a fork and a spoon. Tahr watched in un