Dinosaur World Omnibus Page 33

  But what happened to Cassie Aubin was a travesty. The girl needed help, counselling, a doctor at the very least. She didn’t deserve to be stuck in a swamp where she couldn’t tell at a glance which of her neighbours had molested other girls just as her father had her. She must be living a life of constant fear, Honeywood reasoned, and it was a wonder the girl was still sane, and no wonder at all that she had volunteered to get away from the prison for a while.

  “I’m sorry,” Honeywood said, the words sounding lame even to her own ears. She couldn’t even bring herself to look the girl in the eyes, she was so ashamed of her species. “If there was any way off this rock I’d take you with me, Cassie.”

  “My friends call me Cass, Ash.”

  Honeywood hesitated once more. Perhaps the girl was right. Perhaps it was time to start making friends with the right people. “Sure, Cass. Look, I’ve been thinking. Maybe we shouldn’t return to the prison. Maybe we should just keep walking, see where we get to.”

  “No one does that,” Aubin said cautiously. “Those who tried it disappeared; you and I both know they’re all dead. The safest place is the prison.”

  “And you feel safe there?”

  Aubin looked away.

  “This woman Hargreaves,” Honeywood said with a nod of her head. “She didn’t come from the prison. Maybe there are others like her. Sure, this world is off-limits, but since when has a ‘Keep Out’ sign ever actually kept anyone out? Hargreaves doesn’t have a space craft, but maybe someone else does. Maybe there’s a whole city of people living on the other side of the world.”

  “There’s no one on the other side of the world, Ash.”

  “We won’t know ‘til we look.”

  Aubin was silent a moment, and finally looked up at her once more. There was a fiery determination set into her eyes now and Honeywood found the sudden change in the girl both frightening and stimulating. “We’ll likely be dead within the month,” Aubin cautioned.

  “A month of living verses a lifetime of prison?”

  A slow smile spread itself across the girl’s face. “All right, you’ve convinced me. What about Stiggs and Garza?”

  Honeywood had forgotten about them. “They can do whatever they like. Maybe we should just sneak off without them, I don’t know.”

  “They could come in handy.”

  “Well Garza could.”

  “I think you underestimate Stiggs.”

  Honeywood almost laughed, but saw the girl was serious. “We don’t even know what they’re in prison for, Cass.”

  “I don’t know what you’re in prison for, Ash.”

  “What do you think I’m in for?”

  “Well you obviously killed someone. Drunken anger? I don’t know.”

  “What makes you think I killed someone?”

  “You’re a pit fighter, all you do is kill things.”

  “Yeah, well that’s pit fighting. I never killed anyone, Cass.” Honeywood was hurt the girl could have thought such about her, and wondered whether everyone back at the prison thought the same thing. It would explain why people showed her respect, but she had always assumed that was because of her status as greatest pit fighter they had ever had. “I’ve never killed anyone in my life and I don’t intend to.”

  “So what are you here for?”

  “Aggravated assault. Turned out my fiancé was seeing someone else. So I … well … punched her. A lot.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Tell me about it. My only regret is that I chose the wrong punching bag. He’s likely still laughing at me.”

  “Wow, you really do know how to pick the wrong guys, Ash.”

  Honeywood glowered at her, until she realised Aubin had meant it as a joke. She thought about it, realised it was actually quite funny as well as entirely true. Honeywood had never had any luck with men, ever since she was fourteen and her mother had to lock her in her room to keep her away from some biker whose name she couldn’t even now remember. She found herself laughing at the memory, laughing at the absurdity of life that every man she had ever been with had cheated on her. Within moments the two women were in hysterics together and Honeywood wiped the tears from her eyes once more, although this time they were tears of almost painful joy.

  “God, I needed that,” she said, shaking her head as she re-examined Aubin in an entirely new light. “Come on, we should get back inside. Find out whatever this Hargreaves woman knows of the area before we move off. Who knows, maybe she has a space craft hidden beneath the swamp or something.”

  The two women headed back together, in higher spirits than when they had come out. Honeywood had never intended to make a friend on this trip, and it seemed she had possibly even found something more; it was entirely likely she had found someone with whom she would be spending the rest of her life. It was just a good job she actually liked her then.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Storming out into the swamp was never a good idea, but if Honeywood wanted to get herself killed Garza wasn’t going to go running out after her. He didn’t want her to die of course, he just didn’t care enough to save her. When Aubin had gone chasing after her he wasn’t at all surprised: as unsurprised perhaps as the fact Stiggs had remained behind.

  Hargreaves in contrast didn’t seem at all annoyed to discover her lover had someone else on the go, but then perhaps she was just a realist. Also Hargreaves may have been at least twenty years older than Honeywood but she was certainly better looking. And if Seward had this little love nest out here in the swamp no wonder he was out here so much.

  He did not say any of this aloud of course. What he actually said was, “Any more tea?”

  Hargreaves continued to prove the congenial host, but could not provide much information as to where Seward might have been. She did however produce a crude map sketched over several A4 sheets of paper. Apparently Seward had specific routes he liked to travel, had located certain areas where he could find the best herbs. The maps didn’t mean much to Garza, but then all the swamp looked the same to him, so he allowed Stiggs to take a look. His reasoning was that Stiggs was so used to doing other people’s work for them he would have to have built up a multitude of skills.

  Stiggs devoured the maps avidly and muttered to himself while he leafed through them. Indeed he seemed to be putting them to memory, which was a good thing since Garza very much doubted Hargreaves would allow them to take the maps with them when they left.

  “No idea where he might have gone to then?” Garza asked.

  “He didn’ come this way, sugah. If he stopped by the house ah could tell ya which way he headed, but he didn’ pass here so ah couldn’ tell ya.”

  “And there’s no way to know what he was running out of,” Garza said more to himself. “Assuming he even came of his own volition.”

  “If the dinosaurs wanted him, sweetheart, they woulda jus’ killed him at his café.”

  “I wasn’t really thinking the dinosaurs might have nabbed him.”

  “Yah think there be people out in the swamp? Ah lived here a long while, Mr Garza, and I never seed another soul. Aside from Garret a course.”

  “I wasn’t necessarily thinking of people either,” Garza admitted distantly.

  Stiggs looked up from the maps. The two men exchanged a worried glance before he went back to memorising the sketches.

  The door opened then and Aubin re-entered, followed by an Ashley Honeywood slightly more subdued than when she had gone crashing out. She was distant, aloof, colder than Garza had ever seen her; but at least she didn’t appear as though she wanted to tear Hargreaves’s head off any more.

  Garza could not resist baiting her. “Better?”

  Honeywood ignored him and noticed Stiggs poring over the maps. “Do these help any?”

  Stiggs offered a mild shrug. “We’ll see once we’re out there, I guess. Seward’s a halfway decent cartographer though; he knows how to record landmarks which won’t shift with the changing swamp.”

  “Hold on ah moment,”
Hargreaves said. “Goin’ back ta what yah was sayin’ before. If yah think someone took Garret but don’ think they were people … who do yah think they were?”

  Garza would have preferred not to have to divulge their knowledge of a potentially non-existent race of dinosaur-men, mostly because he didn’t want people to think they had all been breathing in too much swamp gas. Thankfully neither Honeywood nor Aubin seemed about to say anything, so he replied for the group. “I think the main thing is finding him. We can worry about everything else later.”

  Hargreaves looked at him with a frown and he could see she was attempting to work out the meaning behind his words. “OK,” she said slowly. “Jus’ don’ go huntin’ the Swamp Men. Las’ thin’ I need is for you to make them angry with me.”

  “Swamp Men?” Honeywood asked.

  “’Smy name for ‘em. They don’ speak, so I can’ ‘xactly ask them what they call themselves, sweetheart.”

  “You mean the dinosaur-men?” Aubin asked, more than a little afraid.

  Hargreaves nodded in satisfaction that she had gained the truth from these travellers. “That I do, miss.”

  “So you’ve seen them?” Aubin asked. “What are they?”

  “Whatever they are, they keep ta themselves, chil’. They don’ bother me and I don’ bother them. I can tell you they carnivores, or omnivores at least. They never taken any int’rest in eating me though, so ah’ll thank y’all for keeping it that way.”

  “Dinosaur-men don’t exist,” Garza said stupidly, and it even sounded stupid to his own ears. “This world was seeded with prehistoric life. Life that already existed. It wasn’t built to house freaks.”

  “And how did they get the DNA for the prehistoric life to begin with?” Aubin asked.

  “Bones, I don’t know.”

  “You can’t get a complete DNA sequence from the bones of an animal that’s been dead for a hundred million years, Abe.”

  “I don’t know where they got the DNA,” Garza snapped, “but I refuse to believe there are dinosaur people walking around out there.”

  “There was a theory once,” Aubin said. “A theory that the troodon would have evolved into the dominant species of the Earth if the dinosaurs weren’t wiped out.”

  “There are theories about everything; you don’t need any proof for a theory. That’s why they call them theories.”

  “Maybe it’s more than a theory.”

  Garza could see Aubin wasn’t about to let this one go. “Fine,” he said, getting his argument into order and raising a finger. “One; why would the pinnacle of evolution have to involve being humanoid? Are we that arrogant as a species to think every superior animal has to look like us? Look at sharks, or crocodiles. They haven’t evolved since the time of the dinosaurs and they do all right. Two;” he held up a second finger, “evolution is itself a theory and there’s very little direct evidence that it’s even a valid one. Three; this world was built by mankind about a hundred years ago. Even if we put troodons here, how could they have possibly evolved into a humanoid state in less than a century?”

  Aubin was silent and Garza could see he had her. He also realised she wasn’t arguing for the sake of it, but because she was trying to justify what she had seen out there in the swamp and was trying to stay sane and as fearless as possible. He felt a stab of guilt to have thrust it all back in her face like that, but her argument had been rather stupid.

  “So what do you think they are?” Aubin challenged.

  “Swamp gas?” Garza suggested. “We’re all thinking it, just none of us wants to say it. Maybe they’re people in suits trying to scare us. Maybe there are people out there who found out there’s a great big prison nearby and they’re trying to scare us into staying there because they’re quite rightly afraid of us. Primitive tribes always wear animal skins, right? Shamans wear the skins of bears and whatever, thinking they can become possessed by the animal’s spirit.”

  “So where did primitive people come from?”

  “I didn’t say they were primitive, I just said they’d adopted primitive behaviours. And it looks like it’s working too.”

  “Whatever these things are,” Honeywood cut in, “Hargreaves says they’re harmless, and they didn’t kill Cassie so I’m inclined to agree with her. I reckon we should just press on and find Seward. If we don’t run into any of these dinosaur-men, or Swamp Men, I’ll be more the happier.”

  “You’re in charge,” Garza told her. “Stiggs, you done with those maps yet?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes.”

  “Good. Then I think we should be going.”

  “If Garret comes by,” Hargreaves asked, “yah want for me to give him a message?”

  “Yes,” Honeywood replied before Garza could. “Tell him we’ll meet him back at his café.”

  It was a far more civilised response than Garza had expected from her. Hargreaves also seemed somewhat surprised by it, for she hesitated several moments before nodding. “Will do, sweetheart.”

  Honeywood and Aubin left the shack together and Garza felt relieved Honeywood hadn’t struck their host for continually calling her that.

  “Thanks for the tea,” Garza said.

  “Any time, sugah.” Hargreaves smiled. “An’ I do mean any time.”

  Garza managed a quick smile and hastened out. He had a feeling that woman would be more trouble than he could handle.

  Back in the swamp, they headed out under the guidance of Stiggs. He had indeed memorised the maps Seward had drawn up, and pointed out several landmarks as they walked. They had not gone far however before Garza frowned in thought of something. If Seward had made those maps, why then was he presently walking around the swamp without them?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After their encounters with the crocodiles Cassie Aubin was growing a strong dislike of the swamp. Thus far she had been the only one of the party to have seen the dinosaur-men, but now that Hargreaves had verified their existence they somehow became more real to the girl. While in the shack speaking with the older woman Aubin had felt no fear at all; but now they were back in the stifling humidity of the swamp she was once more on edge. It wasn’t that the meagre shack would have offered much protection against a determined predator, but clearly Hargreaves had lived in it for a long time so it was obvious the local wildlife avoided it.

  Wildlife. Aubin was finding it very difficult thinking of the local creatures as ordinary animals, yet that was precisely what they were. Certainly they did not exist naturally any longer, but they were still natural creatures, in their own era. Which was what made the dinosaur-men so creepy. Whatever they were, there was no way they should ever have existed at all.

  It was still daytime, although the overhanging trees cut off most of the light. Night was odd on this world, because it came upon them very suddenly and vanished just as quickly. Aubin didn’t know much about astral physics but suspected it might have had something to do with their close proximity to the gas giant their world orbited. Day or night, it was always scorching, and at last Aubin had discarded the heavy top she had been wearing when she had set out. Beneath she was wearing only a thick brassiere, although modesty mattered little when one was trudging through such a damnable place, and none of her companions seemed even to have noticed her veritable strip-tease. All except Honeywood, who had nodded in something akin to pride that Aubin had taken the plunge and done the sensible thing. Garza had started off topless and Stiggs had his head in a book most of the trudge, and she felt angry with herself that she had not taken her top off sooner. It had been embarrassment because of the men which had stopped her, and neither of them even seemed to have realised, let alone cared.

  She pondered whether she should ditch her trousers as well and see if that got a reaction.

  “What is that anyway?” she barked at Stiggs, not even knowing why she was so annoyed with him. “I thought Hargreaves wouldn’t give us any of Seward’s maps.”

  “Oh this isn’t a map,” Stiggs said as he turned another
page.

  Aubin glanced at the book then. It was small enough to carry on long treks, to fit neatly into a breast-pocket, and looked very much like a diary. “You’re keeping a diary?” she asked conversationally.

  “No. But Seward has. Sort of anyway.”

  Aubin stopped walking, blinking rapidly in shock. “You stole Seward’s diary?”

  She must have spoken louder than she had intended, because suddenly Honeywood had come back to where the two of them were lagging behind and snatched the tiny book from Stiggs’s hands.

  Stiggs did not hide his annoyance at the older woman, although knew better than to try to wrest it from her. “It’s not a diary per se,” Stiggs said. “More a catalogue. Which is why I took it, because it’s useful.”

  Honeywood had flicked through the pages and tossed it back when she realised it was useless to her. With a disgusted grunt directed towards Stiggs, as though it was his fault the book didn’t provide her with an insight into her (former) lover’s mind, she resumed her scouting with Garza.