Tunnel In The Sky

7. 'I Should Have Baked a Cake"

There followed a long silence. "Well," said Jim, "close your mouth before something flies in."

"Jimmy, you're still out of your head."

"I may be out of my head, but not so I can't tell a girl from a boy. When that day comes, I won't be sick; I'll be dead."

"But..."

Jim shrugged. "Ask her."

A shadow fell across the opening; Rod turned and saw Jack scrambling up to the shelf. "Fresh water, Jimmy!"

"Thanks, kid." Jim added to Rod, "Go on, dopy!"

Jack looked from one to the other. "Why the tableau? What are you staring for, Rod?"

"Jack," he said slowly, "what is your name?"

"Huh? Jack Daudet. I told you that."

"No, no! What's your full name, your legal name?" Jack looked from Rod to Jimmy's grinning face and back again. "My full name is... Jacqueline Marie Daudet- if it's any business of yours. Want to make something of it?"

Rod took a deep breath. "Jacqueline," he said carefully, "I didn't know. I-"

"You weren't supposed to."

"Look, if I've said anything to offend you, I surely didn't mean to."

"You haven't said anything to offend me, you big stupid dear. Except about your knife."

"I didn't mean that."

"You mean about girls being poison? Well, did it ever occur to you that maybe boys are pure poison, too? Under these circumstances? No, of course it didn't. But I don't mind your knowing now... now that there are three of us."

"But, Jacqueline-"

"Call me 'Jack,' please." She twisted her shoulders uncomfortably. "Now that you know, I won't have to wear this beetle case any longer. Turn your backs, both of you.

"Uh..." Rod turned his back. Jimmy rolled over, eyes to the wall.

In a few moments Jacqueline said, "Okay." Rod turned around. In shirt and trousers, without torso armor, her shoulders seemed narrower and she herself was slender now and pleasantly curved. She was scratching her ribs. "I haven't been able to scratch properly since I met you, Rod Walker," she said accusingly. "Sometimes I almost died."

"I didn't make you wear it."

"Suppose I hadn't? Would you have teamed with me?"

"Uh... well, it's like this. I..." He stopped.

"You see?" She suddenly looked worried. "We're still partners?"

"Huh? Oh, sure, sure!"

"Then shake on it again. This time we shake with Jimmy, too. Right, Jim?"

"You bet, Jack."

They made a three-cornered handshake. Jack pressed her left hand over the combined fists and said solemnly, "All for one!"

Rod drew Colonel Bowie with his left hand, laid the flat of the blade on the stacked hands. "And one for all!"

"Plus sales tax," Jimmy added. "Do we get it notarized?"

Jacqueline's eyes were swimming with tears. "Jimmy Throxton," she said fiercely, "someday I am going to make you take life seriously!"

"I take life seriously," he objected. "I just don't want life to take me seriously. When you're on borrowed time, you can't afford not to laugh."

"We're all on borrowed time," Rod answered him. "Shut up, Jimmy. You talk too much."

"Look who's preaching! The Decibel Kid himself."

"Well... you ought not to make fun of Jacqueiine. She's done a lot for you.

"She has indeed!"

"Then-"

"'Then' nothing!" Jacqueline said sharply. "My name is 'Jack.' Rod. Forget 'Jacqueline.' If either of you starts treating me with gallantry we'll have all those troubles you warned me about. 'Pure poison' was the expression you used, as I recall."

"But you can reasonably expect-"

"Are you going to be 'logical' again? Let's be practical instead. Help me skin this beast and make a new water bag."

The following day Jimmy took over housekeeping and Jack and Rod started hunting together. Jim wanted to come along; he ran into a double veto. There was little advantage in hunting as a threesome whereas Jack and Rod paired off so well that a hunt was never hours of waiting, but merely a matter of finding game. Jack would drive and Rod would kill; they would pick their quarry from the fringe of a herd, Jack would sneak around and panic the animals, usually driving one into Rod's arms.

They still hunted with the knife, even though Jack's gun was a good choice for primitive survival, being an air gun that threw poisoned darts. Since the darts could be recovered and re-envenomed, it was a gun which would last almost indefinitely; she had chosen it for this reason over cartridge or energy guns.

Rod had admired it but decided against hunting with it. "The air pressure might bleed off and let you down."

"It never has. And you can pump it up again awfully fast."

"Mmm... yes. But if we use it, someday the last dart will be lost no matter how careful we are... and that might be the day we would need it bad. We may be here a long time, what do you say we save it?"

"You're the boss, Rod."

"No, I'm not. We all have equal say."

"Yes, you are. Jimmy and I agreed on that. Somebody has to boss."

Hunting took an hour or so every second day; they spent most of daylight hours searching for another team mate, quartering the area and doing it systematically. Once they drove scavengers from a kill which seemed to have been butchered by knife; they followed a spoor from that and determined that it was a human spoor, but were forced by darkness to return to the cave. They tried to pick it up the next day, but it had rained hard in the night; they never found it.

Another time they found ashes of a fire, but Rod judged them to be at least two weeks old.

After a week of fruitless searching they returned one

late afternoon. Jimmy looked up from the fire he had started. "How goes the census?"

'Don't ask," Rod answered, throwing himself down wearily. "What's for dinner?"

"Raw buck, roast buck, and burned buck. I tried baking some of it in wet clay. It didn't work out too well, but I've got some awfully good baked clay for dessert."

'Thanks. If that is the word."

"Jim," Jack said, "we ought to try to bake pots with that clay."

"I did. Big crack in my first effort. But I'll get the hang it. Look, children," he went on, "has it ever occurred to your bright little minds that you might be going about this the wrong way?"

"What's wrong with it?" Rod demanded.

"Nothing... if it is exercise you are after. You are and scurrying over the countryside, getting in and nowhere else. Maybe it would be better to sit back and let them come to you."

"How?"

"Send up a smoke signal."

"We've discussed that We don't want just anybody and we don't want to advertise where we live. We want people who will strengthen the team."

"That is what the engineers call a self-defeating criterion. The superior woodsman you want is just the laddy you will never find by hunting for him. He may find you, as you go tramping noisily through the brush, kicking rocks and stepping on twigs and scaring the birds. He may shadow you to see what you are up to. But you won't find him."

"Rod, there is something to that," Jack said.

"We found you easily enough," Rod said to Jim. "Maybe you aren't the high type we need."

"I wasn't myself at the time," Jimmy answered blandly. "Wait till I get my strength back and my true nature will show. Ugh-Ugh, the ape man, that's me. Half Neanderthal and half sleek black leopard." He beat his chest and coughed.

"Are those the proportions? The Neanderthal strain seems dominant."

"Don't be disrespectful. Remember, you are my debtor."

"I think you read the backs of those cards. They are getting to be like waffles." When rescued, Jimmy had had on him a pack of playing cards, and had later explained that they were survival equipment.

"In the first place," he had said, "if I got lost I could sit down and play solitaire. Pretty soon somebody would come along and-"

"Tell you to play the black ten on the red jack. We've heard that one."

"Quiet, Rod. In the second place, Jack, I expected to team with old Stoneface here. I can always beat him at cribbage but he doesn't believe it. I figured that during the test I could win all his next year's allowance. Survival tactics."

Whatever his reasoning, Jimmy had had the cards. The three played a family game each evening at a million plutons a point. Jacqueline stayed more or less even but Rod owed Jimmy several hundred millions. They continued the discussion that evening over their game. Rod was still wary of advertising their hide-out.

"We might burn a smoke signal somewhere, though," he said thoughtfully. "Then keep watch from a safe spot. Cut 'em, Jim."

"Consider the relative risks- a five, just what I needed! If you put the fire far enough away to keep this place secret, then it means a trek back and forth at least twice a day. With all that running around you'll use up your luck; one day you won't come back. It's not that I'm fond you, but it would bust up the game. Whose crib?"

"Jack's. But if we burn it close by and in sight, then we sit up here safe and snug. I'll have my back to the wall facing the path, with Jack's phht gun in my lap. If an unfriendly face sticks up- blooie! Long pig for dinner. But if we like them, we cut them into the game.

"Your count."

"Fifteen-six, fifteen-twelve, a pair, six for jacks and the right jack. That's going to cost you another million, my friend."

"One of those jacks is a queen," Rod said darkly.

"Sure enough? You know, it's getting too dark to play. Want to concede?"

They adopted Jim's scheme. It gave more time for cribbage and ran Rod's debt up into billions. The signal fire was kept burning on the shelf at the downstream end, the prevailing wind being such that smoke usually did not blow back into the cave- when the wind did shift was unbearable; they were forced to flee, eyes streaming.

This happened three times in four days. Their advertising had roused no customers and they were all get'ting tired of dragging up dead wood for fuel and green branches for smoke. The third time they fled from smoke Jimmy said, "Rod, I give up. You win. This is not the way to do it."

"No!"

"Huh? Have a heart, chum. I can't live on smoke- no vitamins. Let's run up a flag instead. I'll contribute my shirt."

Rod thought about it. "We'll do that."

"Hey, wait a minute. I was speaking rhetorically. I'm the delicate type. I sunburn easily."

"You can take it easy and work up a tan. We'll use your shirt as a signal flag. But we'll keep the fire going, too. Not up on the shelf, but down there- on that mud flat, maybe."

"And have the smoke blow right back into our summer cottage."

"Well, farther downstream. We'll make a bigger fire and a column of smoke that can be seen a long way. The flag we will put up right over the cave."

"Thereby inviting eviction proceedings from large, hairy individuals with no feeling for property rights."

"We took that chance when we decided to use a smoke signal. Let's get busy."

Rod picked a tall tree on the bluff above. He climbed to where the trunk had thinned down so much that it would hardly take his weight, then spent a tedious hour topping it with his knife. He tied the sleeves of Jim's shirt to it, then worked down, cutting foliage away as he went. Presently the branches became too large to handle with his knife, but the stripped main stem stuck up for several meters; the shirt could be seen for a long distance up and down stream. The shirt caught the wind and billowed; Rod eyed it, tired but satisfied- it was unquestionably a signal flag.

Jimmy and Jacqueline had built a new smudge farther downstream, carrying fire from the shelf for the purpose. Jacqueline still had a few matches and Jim had a pocket torch almost fully charged but the realization that they were marooned caused them to be miserly. Rod went down and joined them. The smoke was enormously greater now that they were not limited in space, and fuel was easier to fetch.

Rod looked them over. Jacqueline's face, sweaty and none too clean to start with, was now black with smoke, while Jimmy's pink skin showed the soot even more. "A couple of pyromaniacs."

"You ordered smoke," Jimmy told him. "I plan to make the burning of Rome look like a bonfire. Fetch me a violin and a toga."

"Violins weren't invented then. Nero played a lyre."

"Let's not be small. We're getting a nice mushroom cloud effect, don't you think?'

"Come on, Rod," Jacqueline urged, Wiping her face without improving it. "It's fun!" She dipped a green branch in the stream, threw it on the pyre. A thick cloud of smoke and steam concealed her. "More dry wood, Jimmy."

"Coming!"

Rod joined in, soon was as dirty and scorched as the other two and having more fun than he had had since the test started. When the sun dropped below the tree tops they at last quit trying to make the fire bigger and better and smokier and reluctantly headed up to their cave. Only then did Rod realize that he had forgotten to remain alert.

Oh well, he assured himself, dangerous animals would avoid a fire.

While they ate they could see the dying fire still sending up smoke. After dinner Jimmy got out his cards, tried to riffle the limp mass. "Anyone interested in a friendly game? The customary small stakes."

"I'm too tired," Rod answered. "Just chalk up my usual losses."

"That's not a sporting attitude. Why, you won a game just last week. How about you, Jack?"

Jacqueline started to answer; Rod suddenly motioned for silence. "Sssh! I heard something."

The other two froze and silently got out their knives. Rod put Colonel Bowie in his teeth and crawled out to the edge. The pathway was clear and the thorn barricade was undisturbed. He leaned out and looked around, trying to locate the sound.

"Ahoy below!" a voice called out, not loudly. Rod felt himself tense. He glanced back, saw Jimmy moving diagonally over to cover the pathway. Jacqueline had her dart gun and was hurriedly pumping it up.

Rod answered, "Who's there?"

There was a short silence. Then the voice answered, "Bob Baxter and Carmen Garcia. Who are you?"

Rod sighed with relief. "Rod Walker, Jimmy Throxton. And one other, not our class...ack Daudet."

Baxter seemed to think this over. "Uh, can we join you? For tonight, at least?"

"Sure!"

"How can we get down there? Carmen can't climb very well; she's got a bad foot."

"You're right above us?"

"I think so. I can't see you."

"Stay there. I'll come up." Rod turned, grinned at the others. "Company for dinner! Get a fire going, Jim."

Jimmy clucked mournfully. "And hardly a thing in the house. I should have baked a cake."

By the time they returned Jimmy had roast meat waitmg. Carmen's semi-crippled condition had delayed them. It was just a sprained ankle but it caused her to crawl up the traverse on her hands, and progress to that point had been slow and painful.

When she realized that the stranger in the party was another woman she burst into tears. Jackie glared at the males, for no cause that Rod could see, then led her into the remote corner of the cave where she herself slept.

There they whispered while Bob Baxter compared notes with Rod and Jim.

Bob and Carmen had had no unusual trouble until Carmen had hurt her ankle two days earlier... except for the obvious fact that something had gone wrong and they were stranded. "I lost my grip," he admitted, "when I realized that they weren't picking us up. But Carmen snapped me out of it. Carmen is a very practical kid."

'Girls are always the practical ones," Jimmy agreed. Now take me- I'm the poetical type."

'Blank verse, I'd say," Rod suggested.

"Jealousy ill becomes you, Rod. Bob, old bean, can I interest you in another slice? Rare, or well carbonized?"

"Either way. We haven't had much to eat the last couple of days. Boy, does this taste good!"

"My own sauce," Jimmy said modestly. "I raise my own herbs, you know. First you melt a lump of butter slowly in a pan, then you-"

"Shut up, Jimmy. Bob, do you and Carmen want to team with us? As I see it, we can't count on ever getting back. Therefore we ought to make plans for the future.'

"I think you are right."

"Rod is always right," Jimmy agreed. "'Plans for the future-' Hmm, yes. .. Bob, do you and Carmen play cribbage?"

"No"

"Never mind. I'll teach you."