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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 120: Cooper 112
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 295
Face down in the dirt, Brian was sore all over and particularly on the side of his head--for less time than it took to realize it. The pain passed. He shifted to a seated position on the ground.
It was a light wood, soft untrodden humus below and a thin canopy above. He stretched his arms and legs mostly from habit, and tried to get a better look at things. He decided that the trees, at least, looked tropical. He thought incongruously that this should surprise him but didn’t. He closed his eyes and relaxed. Of course, everything he owned was with him, although he considered that in his flight he might have dropped something. He hadn’t--but there was something else, something he hadn’t felt since Berkeley: there was another verser in this world.
One lesson he had learned from Tommy and Derek was that if you enter a world and there’s another verser there, that’s the best place to start to find out what’s happening. They already understand what you are, something of who you are, and if they’re already here they’ve probably also figured out at least a little of what’s happening in this world. That scriff sense that told him where his possessions were also told him which direction to go to find the other verser.
Picking himself up and once again checking that he had everything, he set his walking stick to the task of moving him in the right direction. It seemed to be mostly downhill, and although there were no paths the ground was easy on the feet and the trees reasonably spaced, so it was a comfortable trip. He continued scanning. It was obvious that some of these trees had fruit. Hopefully his anticipated contact would know what fruit was safe to eat.
He emerged from the trees and noticed first that the entire horizon was water--ocean water, he surmised, although he had never seen the Great Lakes or any of the inland seas of Europe. Tall grasses covered most of the space, but that there were some areas of exposed rock, and along the shoreline was what appeared to be a sandy beach. As he scanned the scene, two other points appeared.
One was a rising column of steam or smoke to his left. It might have been a campfire, but something about it caused him to suspect that it was a warning that the island was volcanic.
The other, to his right, was the object he had sensed. She stood on a rise that was nearly level ground, and beyond her were bales of grass or straw or some kind of dried vegetation on which had been skillfully burned the rings of bullseye targets. She was a white woman with the physique of an athlete, quite apparent in her jean cutoffs and T-shirt, with long straight dark hair down her back. He would have estimated her to be mid thirties. Her back was to him, and she was holding a compound bow.
He wondered whether this might be the woman of whom he had heard stories--what was her name? Lana? Laurie? Lauren. Both Tommy and Derek called her Lauren.
He thought of calling that name, but then, was it really probable that of all the versers who must be traveling from universe to universe, and all the universes in which they were landing, that he would happen to land in the same world as someone already known, at least by reputation, to him?
Nothing happenstance about it, he reminded himself. We are in Sovereign hands. Still, it was a bit of a distance. He would get closer and then call.
While he was considering this, he saw her raise the bow, aim for the baled vegetation, and draw back the string. There was no arrow there, but there was a sudden flash of light between the string and the bow bright enough that he squinted, and by the time he had refocused he was not quite certain what he was seeing, but it appeared that a hole in the ground where she had been standing was closing.
He rushed over, gauging where she must have been by the relationship to the slope of the ground and the location of the targets. He searched, not quite frantically but certainly intently, and found no trace that she had ever been there.
Relaxing, he tried to feel for her, but it was no use. She was gone.
That, he thought, looked like magic. I’ve always known it was dangerous.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #533: Characters Traveling. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
