Challenges and Discoveries
Dec. 30th, 2017 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecat posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
annariel_dwFandom: Primeval
Title: Challenges and Discoveries
Rating: U
Characters: Evan Cross and Howard Kanan
Summary: Evan gets trapped in the Cretaceous where he meets up with Howard Kanan once more.
Notes: Written fortarlanx for the primeval_denial Secret Santa. Many thanks to fredbassett for the beta.
Snow was starting to fall. It wasn't yet the true biting cold of the Canadian winter, but it was cold enough that the snow would settle.
Evan Cross glanced down at his anomaly detector. The numbers were slowly counting down to zero, it would shut in just under a minute. He looked up, intending to share a smile of relief with Dylan that the creatures - a small herd of rather vicious raptors had been safely contained and they would get back before the snow started falling in earnest. But Dylan was looking around a slight frown on her face.
Evan knew her well enough by now to trust her instincts. He shouldered his Taser rifle and began to scan the area. He looked down at the anomaly detector again. Twenty seconds to go.
Something came charging out of the undergrowth. Evan registered a blur of movement, thought it was probably another raptor and then was knocked of his feet. There was a tugging sensation which he associated with travel through an anomaly and then he was lying on his back in bright sunshine. He blinked. The anomaly winked out of existence.
Evan rolled quickly to his feet. The pack of raptors wasn't far off. The straggler which had knocked him through the anomaly called loudly as it ran towards them. Evan raised his Taser rifle. The pack turned to greet their missing companion and then regarded Evan with far from friendly eyes.
Evan scanned his surroundings quickly, aware he couldn't take on a pack of raptors on his own. He was standing in some kind of woodland, though half the trees were flattened and the rest seemed bare of foliage. Something very large and herbivorous had presumably passed through recently. However it at least gave him room to move and trees to climb. Evan slung his rifle over his shoulder and swung up into the lowest branch of the nearest one, just as the pack decided to chance an attack and came swarming towards him. Evan quickly scrambled up into the higher branches.
He stared down at the pack yipping around the base of the tree. He hoped they would lose interest soon and head off for easier meet elsewhere. In the meantime he took stock of the situation. He had his Taser rifle and the anomaly detector (which fortunately could be solar charged), spare tranquilliser darts, a stout knife and clothing that was far too warm for this climate. He was already beginning to sweat profusely inside his parka. In the small backpack he had been carrying he had a reusable water bottle, a small first aid kit, a useless smartphone, wallet and keys.
It could be worse, Evan mused, though it could also have been a lot better. He took off the parka and folded it up so he could sit on it. The raptors were briefly excited by the signs of movement in the tree but he judged that they were losing interest.
Evan surveyed the area. Along the path carved through the trees carved by the whatevers he could see the banks of a river and more forest beyond. At least he would have water. He was less certain about shelter. Somewhere off the ground seemed like a necessity, especially considering what a couple of years dinosaur hunting had taught him about Cretaceous wildlife, but he wasn't convinced he was equipped to build much of a tree house.
About an hour later the raptors wandered off. Evan gave them a long head start and then cautiously climbed down out of the tree and began a methodical assessment of the area. The river was wide. There was a gentle enough slope down the banks and signs that a lot of animals used it as a watering hole which Evan suspected meant there would be predators nearby. Everything else appeared to be woodland for some distance, though there were a lot of paths through the undergrowth clearly made by animals passing through. He didn't see much wildlife, but he could hear it moving in the bushes. He guessed it was assessing him and didn't like to think what it would do once it decided whether he was predator or prey.
He selected a likely looking pair of trees, growing close together with interlinked branches, not too far from the river and not too far from where the anomaly had been. After a little experimenting he managed to rig up an approximation to a rope from a vine and his belt and began hauling fallen branches up into the tree in order to make something approximating a platform that he could sleep on. He was halfway through this, tightening his belt around the latest branch when he was alerted by a change in the noises around him to the fact that something had made up its mind about him. He glanced up just in time to see some kind of therapod charging out of the undergrowth at him. He fumbled to get his rifle off his back. The therapod wasn't too big, not much larger than a man, but still looked much like a small Tyrannosaur and Evan had a nasty feeling that a tranquilliser dart probably wouldn't do him any good in time and a taser charge likely wouldn't be sufficient.
At that moment an arrow flew out of nowhere and embedded itself in the hide on the thing's neck. It faltered. A second arrow followed and it shied and then retreated into back into the bushes. Evan raised his rifle and focused on the area it had vanished, just in case. While the arrows had scared the thing off, he didn't think they'd actually done it much harm.
Evan wasn't entirely surprised when Howard Kanan stepped out of the trees. He looked even thinner than when Evan had last seen him and his clothes were ragged and dirty, but even so he looked fairly healthy. His hair had grown long and a thick beard covered his chin, but it was definitely Howard. He was holding a bow and arrow. His home-made anomaly detector was strapped to his belt. He looked pretty smug.
"How long have you been there?" Evan asked.
"Long enough. I was interested to see how well your platform would work."
Evan didn't dignify that with an answer. His first attempt at a platform, he knew, was going to be pretty primitive but he'd reasoned he needed to get the basics sorted out before he started on any kind of luxury condo.
Howard wandered over to stand next to him and gazed up at the makeshift assemblage of branches up in the tree.
"What were you going to do about a roof?" he asked.
"That was my next problem. Do you have a roof?"
"Yes. I hardly have all mod cons, but I'm certainly a little further on than you are."
"Space for two?" Evan asked. It rankled slightly to ask for help, but he had sense enough to realise that soldiering on by himself just to prove a point would be foolish.
"How did you survive?" Evan asked later that night as he lay squashed up next to Howard on a narrow platform, covered with a soft layer of grass and rushes.
"I brought a good knife with me and a few other bits and pieces. Not much, because I didn't have time, but some stuff."
"You didn't even know what we were expecting to find."
"Some kind of temporal wormhole didn't seem a ridiculous hypothesis."
"Even so."
"I wasn't always a rich, genius inventor you know. My dad was a woodsman. He used to take me out on trips. I learned a lot."
"Is that how you knew how to make a bow and arrow?" Evan asked.
"Yup. I can make a fire, skin a fish, mock up a weapon."
Evan lay quietly, thinking about that. The night was warm. Howard had two shelters up in the trees. One had walls and a roof, but this one was open and they'd elected to sleep on it since the air was still warm. Evan gazed up at unfamiliar stars, constellations yet to take their accustomed places. He could tell he would be relying on Howard a lot and the thought irritated him.
Three weeks later Evan was sitting on a rock by the river fishing with a thin wire Howard had brought with him. Evan still hadn't quite got the hang of it, but the river was sufficiently full of fish that he'd caught a reasonable haul. He was just tugging gently on the line, trying to judge how many fish he might have this time, when the anomaly detector at his belt pinged. Forgetting the fish and the line, Evan jumped to his feet, fingers fumbling with the controls on the detector.
"Howard! Howard!" he shouted as he ran in the direction of the anomaly.
His breath caught in his throat when he saw the spinning ball of light ahead of him. He skidded to a halt in front of it and debated what to do. A quick reconnaissance, he decided. He stepped through. The first thing that struck him was the oily smell on the air, and then the feel of tarmac beneath his feet. It had to be the 21st century, or close enough. Evan didn't pause to see more but headed back through the anomaly and began to run towards their makeshift camp.
"Howard! Anomaly!" he shouted, spotting Howard up on the tree-house platform.
"I know," Howard said as Evan skidded to a halt underneath the tree. He was packing things methodically into the satchel he had brought with him to the Cretaceous.
"What are you doing? Quick!" Evan gasped.
"We don't know where it leads," Howard said patiently.
"We do! I looked! Definitely 21st century, possibly a little earlier, but post-industrial. Hurry."
Howard put down his satchel and shook his head. "No, you go!"
"What? But!" Evan waved the beeping anomaly detector at Howard.
"I have one too you know," Howard picked up the adapted detector he'd first brought with him through the anomaly. Evan realised it was beeping as well.
"What?"
"I don't want to go back to the 21st century, let alone the 20th or 22nd. I'm happy here."
"But..." Evan looked around and took a deep breath trying to think of a good rebuttal even as he tried to understand why Howard might want to stay, "but you don't have any equipment."
"I've got a knife. I had some fishing wire which I hope will still be at the river where you no doubt left it."
"You know what I mean."
"You mean I don't have an indoor toilet, a well-stocked refrigerator and the Internet."
"Don't be silly. You know what I mean. You can't prototype a circuit board here, you can't measure... well almost anything you'd care to measure, let alone accurately, you can't run a controlled experiment. Heck once my notebook is full we won't even be able to record anything."
"Evan, why would I even want a circuit board in the Cretaceous?"
"But don't you want to find stuff out? Don't you want to build stuff?"
"Every day I see new wildlife and find out more about how they live. I've built a tree house."
Evan stared at Howard for a moment and then looked down at the anomaly detector in his hand. The beeping suddenly stopped. Howard sat down abruptly on the edge of the platform.
Evan glared at him for a moment and then stomped off back to the river to carry on fishing.
The sun was beginning to set. Evan knew he ought to head back into the forest and climb back up into the tree house. The raptors were no longer in the area, but there were plenty of predators around and at night he would be at a disadvantage against anything that tried to creep up on him. However he felt he was still too angry to go back and talk to Howard.
"I'm happy here, you know," Howard's voice broke into his reverie.
Howard was standing a short distance away up the river. Silhouetted against the setting sun.
"I just don't understand," Evan said.
"There isn't much to understand. Life is simple here. I'm seeing things no human has ever seen before. Every day is a challenge."
"Aren't you lonely?"
"I was lonely before I ever came here. At least I don't get a lot of opportunity to brood in this place."
Howard walked up and sat down beside Evan. "You should go home. Next time an anomaly opens."
"I'm not leaving you here."
"Why not?" There was genuine exasperation in Howard's voice. "You're not a woodsman Evan, you want people and technology; challenges that involve electronics and software. This is not you."
"It's not you either," Evan retorted, but he could feel the lack of conviction in his words. Howard was happy. Evan groaned. "There's no guarantee another anomaly will open any time soon, anyway."
Howard grinned. "Well we could certainly head somewhere that's more likely. I don't object to a road trip."
"Somewhere anomalies are more likely? We found a place where there were dozens of open anomalies all together. Somewhere like that?"
"Yes, somewhere like that. I found it last year. If you're interested I'll take you there. I don't even mind scouting through a few, but if one's going to the Holocene you're on your own."
It didn't take them long to pack, even allowing for the various tools that Howard had made. They left at first light heading towards a long ridge of hills that were visible above the tree cover. Evan was content to let Howard lead. He'd been watching him the past few weeks and while Howard didn't have Dylan's instincts when dealing with the creatures, he was clearly better tuned to their moods and behaviour than Evan was. They followed animal trails. The undergrowth was too thick to push through, but following trails meant they did need to keep a watch out and be ready to take sudden action to avoid predators.
After an few hours Evan realised that Howard had fallen silent and appeared alert and on edge. Evan suppressed the urge to ask questions and instead listened. After a few minutes he realised there were consistent sounds of something just off to one side of them.
"What do we do?" Evan asked quietly.
"It's probably a raptor. Some of the species hunt in packs and others are solo hunters."
"Does that help?"
"Raptors can't climb trees, remember. I'm just keeping an eye out for a good one."
Evan looked around. The trees growing close to the path were conifers with short branches that did not look particularly sturdy. They kept moving and Evan felt his heart rate rise as the adrenaline started pumping around the system. He scanned tree after tree, none of them had good sturdy branches high enough up to avoid a raptor.
"This will do," said Howard suddenly.
Evan looked at the tree he had selected. It had a long low branch a couple of feet above the ground, but the branches higher up did not look promising.
"Too low surely."
"We're running out of options. Whatever it is, it's about ready to attack."
Howard climbed up onto the lowest branch and then began to shin his way up the trunk, scrambling around the other branches as he did so. Evan looked back along the track. The bushes swayed and a raptor appeared. Evan quickly scrambled onto the bottom branch. He glanced back again. The raptor was now running down the path. He grabbed the trunk and heaved, clamping his feet to its sides just above the lowest branch. The raptor screeched. Desperately, Evan grabbed a small branch above him and hauled up, inching his feet a little higher up the trunk. The raptor snapped at his heels and then jumped, trying to reach him. Evan risked kicking out with one heavily booted foot, while he clung on with his arms. His foot connected with the raptors head and knocked it back to the ground. Evan hauled himself up further. Howard was standing on a narrow branch just above him, holding onto the trunk of the tree. Evan inched up closer and Howard reached a hand down. Evan grabbed it. The raptor righted itself, screeched angrily and jumped again. Howard hauled and Evan scrambled with his feet. There wasn't room on Howard's branch for two of them, so Evan simply wrapped his legs around the trunk of the tree and hung on while the creature jumped and screeched below them.
"There's still some charge in my Taser rifle," Evan said. He didn't think he could cling on to the trunk the way he was doing for the time it would take the raptor to lose interest. He also didn't much like the way the branch Howard was perched on was bending under his weight.
The rifle was slung across Evan's back, but he needed both hands to keep his place on the tree. Howard leaned across but couldn't quite reach it.
"You'll have to shuffle around," Howard said.
Several awkward minutes followed as they struggled to get the rifle into Howard's hands while the raptor stalked around the base of the tree looking hungry. Eventually Howard had the rifle. Standing on his branch with one arm looped around the trunk of the tree he sighted carefully and then let off a single careful shot. There was a crackle of charge. The raptor swayed and then fell unconscious to the ground. Evan breathed a sigh of relief.
The next day they came to another river itself. This was much wider then the one they had left, a vast body of water snaking its way through the landscape.
"How do we get across?" Evan asked.
"We don't. We go downriver. I made a boat. With luck it will still be here."
The boat was a primitive canoe, a hollowed out tree trunk with a crude paddle which Howard had stashed by some flat rocks a little down stream. Evan climbed into it gingerly as Howard pushed it out into the current.
"Do you have a second paddle?" Evan asked.
"Can you use one?"
Evan decided not to dignify that with a retort and simply glared at Howard who had the good grace to look a little sheepish.
"There's a spare tied to the bow with twine."
Evan found the spare paddle and unpicked the knotted twine that held it in place. They swung out into the current. The boat was actually steadier than Evan had anticipated.
"You're a shipwright as well as a woodsman," Evan commented.
"Not really, but I did a project at uni on the fluid dynamics of primitive canoes. It took a fair amount of trial and effort to get this right but, well," Howard shrugged, "I had the time."
Evan breathed in the Cretaceous air and watched as the banks of the river swept passed them.
"It's nice and easy going downstream like this," Howard said. "Getting back up here was hard work."
Evan shook his head. "I'm still amazed you survived."
Howard laughed. "I don't think you are at all surprised I survived. What amazes you is that I like it."
Evan had to acknowledge there was some truth in that.
"It is beautiful," Evan conceded.
The sun came out and shone down on the river. A huge sauropod ambled up to the bank ahead of them and leaned down to drink. Some kind of pterosaur circled in the sky above. Evan vaguely wished he'd done more than learn the basic orders of prehistoric creatures and so would have been better able to label those he now lived among. A gentle breeze ruffled Evan's hair and he scratched at the beard that was growing on his chin.
"Mind you, I wouldn't object to some modern sanitation," Evan added.
Howard laughed. "You'd happily live here if you thought there was a new breakthrough in photonics, or temporal physics or something similar to get your teeth into. I've just discovered that I relish a different set of challenges to the one's I thought I did."
"You really like it here? You really enjoy just figuring out how to survive?"
"Sure do."
They paddled on in silence for a while.
Mid-afternoon they rounded a bend in the river. The mountains closed in and it took on more of the character of a gorge. Howard directed them to pull into the shore.
"We've got a bit of a climb now, up and over a pass. We should set up camp."
"Is it safe?"
Howard shrugged. "We'll have to take the chance."
They picked a sheltered spot in the lea of a large boulder and made a fire. As usual a fishing line cast out into the river, gave them a decent haul for supper. Evan had become better at sleeping on hard surfaces since arriving in the Cretaceous and he slept long and easily under the strange stars.
In the morning they climbed up the mountain. It was not, in truth, that high and by lunchtime they had reached the pass. The day, up to that point, had been cloudy and they were walking in fog much of the time, but as they began their descent the clouds lifted, the sun came out and the fog cleared.
Evan gasped.
Below them, in a grassy plain were dozens of anomalies. As he watched some blinked out of existence and others opened.
"I couldn't believe it when I first found it," Howard said.
"Have you been through any of them?"
"A few. I didn't go very far. I was working on trying to figure out a pattern to them, so I could predict opening patterns, but we're a bit higher up here and it got too cold in the winter to be practical which I why I went back down to the plain where we met up. I was thinking I should come back here soon anyway, carry on the work."
"So you're not just here for the survival challenge," Evan said.
Howard grinned ruefully. "Not entirely, no."
They began walking down the side of the hill towards the anomalies.
"Any idea which lead to the 21st century?"
"Didn't find one when I was last here, but that doesn't mean there won't be one."
Evan considered his options. "You could use a tent, you know, and some warmer clothes. Then you could stay here all year."
"Are you trying to tempt me back with promises of creature comforts?"
"No, not exactly, I'm saying if one opens to the 21st century we should get you some better supplies. Pick your challenges Howard, you don't have to be some survivalist hero."
Howard was silent for a moment before he said, "Well a decent sleeping bag would be nice."
Evan stopped still and turned to face him, holding out a hand. "It's a deal then, you stay here and study the anomalies at this end. I'll get you proper supplies. We'll figure out some way to keep in touch."
Howard shook his head but grasped Evan's hand all the same. "I don't think that's going to be very easy."
"Nothing worthwhile ever is."
They shook hands and then together they walked down the hill to the anomaly junction.
Title: Challenges and Discoveries
Rating: U
Characters: Evan Cross and Howard Kanan
Summary: Evan gets trapped in the Cretaceous where he meets up with Howard Kanan once more.
Notes: Written for
tarlanx for the primeval_denial Secret Santa. Many thanks to fredbassett for the beta.Snow was starting to fall. It wasn't yet the true biting cold of the Canadian winter, but it was cold enough that the snow would settle.
Evan Cross glanced down at his anomaly detector. The numbers were slowly counting down to zero, it would shut in just under a minute. He looked up, intending to share a smile of relief with Dylan that the creatures - a small herd of rather vicious raptors had been safely contained and they would get back before the snow started falling in earnest. But Dylan was looking around a slight frown on her face.
Evan knew her well enough by now to trust her instincts. He shouldered his Taser rifle and began to scan the area. He looked down at the anomaly detector again. Twenty seconds to go.
Something came charging out of the undergrowth. Evan registered a blur of movement, thought it was probably another raptor and then was knocked of his feet. There was a tugging sensation which he associated with travel through an anomaly and then he was lying on his back in bright sunshine. He blinked. The anomaly winked out of existence.
Evan rolled quickly to his feet. The pack of raptors wasn't far off. The straggler which had knocked him through the anomaly called loudly as it ran towards them. Evan raised his Taser rifle. The pack turned to greet their missing companion and then regarded Evan with far from friendly eyes.
Evan scanned his surroundings quickly, aware he couldn't take on a pack of raptors on his own. He was standing in some kind of woodland, though half the trees were flattened and the rest seemed bare of foliage. Something very large and herbivorous had presumably passed through recently. However it at least gave him room to move and trees to climb. Evan slung his rifle over his shoulder and swung up into the lowest branch of the nearest one, just as the pack decided to chance an attack and came swarming towards him. Evan quickly scrambled up into the higher branches.
He stared down at the pack yipping around the base of the tree. He hoped they would lose interest soon and head off for easier meet elsewhere. In the meantime he took stock of the situation. He had his Taser rifle and the anomaly detector (which fortunately could be solar charged), spare tranquilliser darts, a stout knife and clothing that was far too warm for this climate. He was already beginning to sweat profusely inside his parka. In the small backpack he had been carrying he had a reusable water bottle, a small first aid kit, a useless smartphone, wallet and keys.
It could be worse, Evan mused, though it could also have been a lot better. He took off the parka and folded it up so he could sit on it. The raptors were briefly excited by the signs of movement in the tree but he judged that they were losing interest.
Evan surveyed the area. Along the path carved through the trees carved by the whatevers he could see the banks of a river and more forest beyond. At least he would have water. He was less certain about shelter. Somewhere off the ground seemed like a necessity, especially considering what a couple of years dinosaur hunting had taught him about Cretaceous wildlife, but he wasn't convinced he was equipped to build much of a tree house.
About an hour later the raptors wandered off. Evan gave them a long head start and then cautiously climbed down out of the tree and began a methodical assessment of the area. The river was wide. There was a gentle enough slope down the banks and signs that a lot of animals used it as a watering hole which Evan suspected meant there would be predators nearby. Everything else appeared to be woodland for some distance, though there were a lot of paths through the undergrowth clearly made by animals passing through. He didn't see much wildlife, but he could hear it moving in the bushes. He guessed it was assessing him and didn't like to think what it would do once it decided whether he was predator or prey.
He selected a likely looking pair of trees, growing close together with interlinked branches, not too far from the river and not too far from where the anomaly had been. After a little experimenting he managed to rig up an approximation to a rope from a vine and his belt and began hauling fallen branches up into the tree in order to make something approximating a platform that he could sleep on. He was halfway through this, tightening his belt around the latest branch when he was alerted by a change in the noises around him to the fact that something had made up its mind about him. He glanced up just in time to see some kind of therapod charging out of the undergrowth at him. He fumbled to get his rifle off his back. The therapod wasn't too big, not much larger than a man, but still looked much like a small Tyrannosaur and Evan had a nasty feeling that a tranquilliser dart probably wouldn't do him any good in time and a taser charge likely wouldn't be sufficient.
At that moment an arrow flew out of nowhere and embedded itself in the hide on the thing's neck. It faltered. A second arrow followed and it shied and then retreated into back into the bushes. Evan raised his rifle and focused on the area it had vanished, just in case. While the arrows had scared the thing off, he didn't think they'd actually done it much harm.
Evan wasn't entirely surprised when Howard Kanan stepped out of the trees. He looked even thinner than when Evan had last seen him and his clothes were ragged and dirty, but even so he looked fairly healthy. His hair had grown long and a thick beard covered his chin, but it was definitely Howard. He was holding a bow and arrow. His home-made anomaly detector was strapped to his belt. He looked pretty smug.
"How long have you been there?" Evan asked.
"Long enough. I was interested to see how well your platform would work."
Evan didn't dignify that with an answer. His first attempt at a platform, he knew, was going to be pretty primitive but he'd reasoned he needed to get the basics sorted out before he started on any kind of luxury condo.
Howard wandered over to stand next to him and gazed up at the makeshift assemblage of branches up in the tree.
"What were you going to do about a roof?" he asked.
"That was my next problem. Do you have a roof?"
"Yes. I hardly have all mod cons, but I'm certainly a little further on than you are."
"Space for two?" Evan asked. It rankled slightly to ask for help, but he had sense enough to realise that soldiering on by himself just to prove a point would be foolish.
"How did you survive?" Evan asked later that night as he lay squashed up next to Howard on a narrow platform, covered with a soft layer of grass and rushes.
"I brought a good knife with me and a few other bits and pieces. Not much, because I didn't have time, but some stuff."
"You didn't even know what we were expecting to find."
"Some kind of temporal wormhole didn't seem a ridiculous hypothesis."
"Even so."
"I wasn't always a rich, genius inventor you know. My dad was a woodsman. He used to take me out on trips. I learned a lot."
"Is that how you knew how to make a bow and arrow?" Evan asked.
"Yup. I can make a fire, skin a fish, mock up a weapon."
Evan lay quietly, thinking about that. The night was warm. Howard had two shelters up in the trees. One had walls and a roof, but this one was open and they'd elected to sleep on it since the air was still warm. Evan gazed up at unfamiliar stars, constellations yet to take their accustomed places. He could tell he would be relying on Howard a lot and the thought irritated him.
Three weeks later Evan was sitting on a rock by the river fishing with a thin wire Howard had brought with him. Evan still hadn't quite got the hang of it, but the river was sufficiently full of fish that he'd caught a reasonable haul. He was just tugging gently on the line, trying to judge how many fish he might have this time, when the anomaly detector at his belt pinged. Forgetting the fish and the line, Evan jumped to his feet, fingers fumbling with the controls on the detector.
"Howard! Howard!" he shouted as he ran in the direction of the anomaly.
His breath caught in his throat when he saw the spinning ball of light ahead of him. He skidded to a halt in front of it and debated what to do. A quick reconnaissance, he decided. He stepped through. The first thing that struck him was the oily smell on the air, and then the feel of tarmac beneath his feet. It had to be the 21st century, or close enough. Evan didn't pause to see more but headed back through the anomaly and began to run towards their makeshift camp.
"Howard! Anomaly!" he shouted, spotting Howard up on the tree-house platform.
"I know," Howard said as Evan skidded to a halt underneath the tree. He was packing things methodically into the satchel he had brought with him to the Cretaceous.
"What are you doing? Quick!" Evan gasped.
"We don't know where it leads," Howard said patiently.
"We do! I looked! Definitely 21st century, possibly a little earlier, but post-industrial. Hurry."
Howard put down his satchel and shook his head. "No, you go!"
"What? But!" Evan waved the beeping anomaly detector at Howard.
"I have one too you know," Howard picked up the adapted detector he'd first brought with him through the anomaly. Evan realised it was beeping as well.
"What?"
"I don't want to go back to the 21st century, let alone the 20th or 22nd. I'm happy here."
"But..." Evan looked around and took a deep breath trying to think of a good rebuttal even as he tried to understand why Howard might want to stay, "but you don't have any equipment."
"I've got a knife. I had some fishing wire which I hope will still be at the river where you no doubt left it."
"You know what I mean."
"You mean I don't have an indoor toilet, a well-stocked refrigerator and the Internet."
"Don't be silly. You know what I mean. You can't prototype a circuit board here, you can't measure... well almost anything you'd care to measure, let alone accurately, you can't run a controlled experiment. Heck once my notebook is full we won't even be able to record anything."
"Evan, why would I even want a circuit board in the Cretaceous?"
"But don't you want to find stuff out? Don't you want to build stuff?"
"Every day I see new wildlife and find out more about how they live. I've built a tree house."
Evan stared at Howard for a moment and then looked down at the anomaly detector in his hand. The beeping suddenly stopped. Howard sat down abruptly on the edge of the platform.
Evan glared at him for a moment and then stomped off back to the river to carry on fishing.
The sun was beginning to set. Evan knew he ought to head back into the forest and climb back up into the tree house. The raptors were no longer in the area, but there were plenty of predators around and at night he would be at a disadvantage against anything that tried to creep up on him. However he felt he was still too angry to go back and talk to Howard.
"I'm happy here, you know," Howard's voice broke into his reverie.
Howard was standing a short distance away up the river. Silhouetted against the setting sun.
"I just don't understand," Evan said.
"There isn't much to understand. Life is simple here. I'm seeing things no human has ever seen before. Every day is a challenge."
"Aren't you lonely?"
"I was lonely before I ever came here. At least I don't get a lot of opportunity to brood in this place."
Howard walked up and sat down beside Evan. "You should go home. Next time an anomaly opens."
"I'm not leaving you here."
"Why not?" There was genuine exasperation in Howard's voice. "You're not a woodsman Evan, you want people and technology; challenges that involve electronics and software. This is not you."
"It's not you either," Evan retorted, but he could feel the lack of conviction in his words. Howard was happy. Evan groaned. "There's no guarantee another anomaly will open any time soon, anyway."
Howard grinned. "Well we could certainly head somewhere that's more likely. I don't object to a road trip."
"Somewhere anomalies are more likely? We found a place where there were dozens of open anomalies all together. Somewhere like that?"
"Yes, somewhere like that. I found it last year. If you're interested I'll take you there. I don't even mind scouting through a few, but if one's going to the Holocene you're on your own."
It didn't take them long to pack, even allowing for the various tools that Howard had made. They left at first light heading towards a long ridge of hills that were visible above the tree cover. Evan was content to let Howard lead. He'd been watching him the past few weeks and while Howard didn't have Dylan's instincts when dealing with the creatures, he was clearly better tuned to their moods and behaviour than Evan was. They followed animal trails. The undergrowth was too thick to push through, but following trails meant they did need to keep a watch out and be ready to take sudden action to avoid predators.
After an few hours Evan realised that Howard had fallen silent and appeared alert and on edge. Evan suppressed the urge to ask questions and instead listened. After a few minutes he realised there were consistent sounds of something just off to one side of them.
"What do we do?" Evan asked quietly.
"It's probably a raptor. Some of the species hunt in packs and others are solo hunters."
"Does that help?"
"Raptors can't climb trees, remember. I'm just keeping an eye out for a good one."
Evan looked around. The trees growing close to the path were conifers with short branches that did not look particularly sturdy. They kept moving and Evan felt his heart rate rise as the adrenaline started pumping around the system. He scanned tree after tree, none of them had good sturdy branches high enough up to avoid a raptor.
"This will do," said Howard suddenly.
Evan looked at the tree he had selected. It had a long low branch a couple of feet above the ground, but the branches higher up did not look promising.
"Too low surely."
"We're running out of options. Whatever it is, it's about ready to attack."
Howard climbed up onto the lowest branch and then began to shin his way up the trunk, scrambling around the other branches as he did so. Evan looked back along the track. The bushes swayed and a raptor appeared. Evan quickly scrambled onto the bottom branch. He glanced back again. The raptor was now running down the path. He grabbed the trunk and heaved, clamping his feet to its sides just above the lowest branch. The raptor screeched. Desperately, Evan grabbed a small branch above him and hauled up, inching his feet a little higher up the trunk. The raptor snapped at his heels and then jumped, trying to reach him. Evan risked kicking out with one heavily booted foot, while he clung on with his arms. His foot connected with the raptors head and knocked it back to the ground. Evan hauled himself up further. Howard was standing on a narrow branch just above him, holding onto the trunk of the tree. Evan inched up closer and Howard reached a hand down. Evan grabbed it. The raptor righted itself, screeched angrily and jumped again. Howard hauled and Evan scrambled with his feet. There wasn't room on Howard's branch for two of them, so Evan simply wrapped his legs around the trunk of the tree and hung on while the creature jumped and screeched below them.
"There's still some charge in my Taser rifle," Evan said. He didn't think he could cling on to the trunk the way he was doing for the time it would take the raptor to lose interest. He also didn't much like the way the branch Howard was perched on was bending under his weight.
The rifle was slung across Evan's back, but he needed both hands to keep his place on the tree. Howard leaned across but couldn't quite reach it.
"You'll have to shuffle around," Howard said.
Several awkward minutes followed as they struggled to get the rifle into Howard's hands while the raptor stalked around the base of the tree looking hungry. Eventually Howard had the rifle. Standing on his branch with one arm looped around the trunk of the tree he sighted carefully and then let off a single careful shot. There was a crackle of charge. The raptor swayed and then fell unconscious to the ground. Evan breathed a sigh of relief.
The next day they came to another river itself. This was much wider then the one they had left, a vast body of water snaking its way through the landscape.
"How do we get across?" Evan asked.
"We don't. We go downriver. I made a boat. With luck it will still be here."
The boat was a primitive canoe, a hollowed out tree trunk with a crude paddle which Howard had stashed by some flat rocks a little down stream. Evan climbed into it gingerly as Howard pushed it out into the current.
"Do you have a second paddle?" Evan asked.
"Can you use one?"
Evan decided not to dignify that with a retort and simply glared at Howard who had the good grace to look a little sheepish.
"There's a spare tied to the bow with twine."
Evan found the spare paddle and unpicked the knotted twine that held it in place. They swung out into the current. The boat was actually steadier than Evan had anticipated.
"You're a shipwright as well as a woodsman," Evan commented.
"Not really, but I did a project at uni on the fluid dynamics of primitive canoes. It took a fair amount of trial and effort to get this right but, well," Howard shrugged, "I had the time."
Evan breathed in the Cretaceous air and watched as the banks of the river swept passed them.
"It's nice and easy going downstream like this," Howard said. "Getting back up here was hard work."
Evan shook his head. "I'm still amazed you survived."
Howard laughed. "I don't think you are at all surprised I survived. What amazes you is that I like it."
Evan had to acknowledge there was some truth in that.
"It is beautiful," Evan conceded.
The sun came out and shone down on the river. A huge sauropod ambled up to the bank ahead of them and leaned down to drink. Some kind of pterosaur circled in the sky above. Evan vaguely wished he'd done more than learn the basic orders of prehistoric creatures and so would have been better able to label those he now lived among. A gentle breeze ruffled Evan's hair and he scratched at the beard that was growing on his chin.
"Mind you, I wouldn't object to some modern sanitation," Evan added.
Howard laughed. "You'd happily live here if you thought there was a new breakthrough in photonics, or temporal physics or something similar to get your teeth into. I've just discovered that I relish a different set of challenges to the one's I thought I did."
"You really like it here? You really enjoy just figuring out how to survive?"
"Sure do."
They paddled on in silence for a while.
Mid-afternoon they rounded a bend in the river. The mountains closed in and it took on more of the character of a gorge. Howard directed them to pull into the shore.
"We've got a bit of a climb now, up and over a pass. We should set up camp."
"Is it safe?"
Howard shrugged. "We'll have to take the chance."
They picked a sheltered spot in the lea of a large boulder and made a fire. As usual a fishing line cast out into the river, gave them a decent haul for supper. Evan had become better at sleeping on hard surfaces since arriving in the Cretaceous and he slept long and easily under the strange stars.
In the morning they climbed up the mountain. It was not, in truth, that high and by lunchtime they had reached the pass. The day, up to that point, had been cloudy and they were walking in fog much of the time, but as they began their descent the clouds lifted, the sun came out and the fog cleared.
Evan gasped.
Below them, in a grassy plain were dozens of anomalies. As he watched some blinked out of existence and others opened.
"I couldn't believe it when I first found it," Howard said.
"Have you been through any of them?"
"A few. I didn't go very far. I was working on trying to figure out a pattern to them, so I could predict opening patterns, but we're a bit higher up here and it got too cold in the winter to be practical which I why I went back down to the plain where we met up. I was thinking I should come back here soon anyway, carry on the work."
"So you're not just here for the survival challenge," Evan said.
Howard grinned ruefully. "Not entirely, no."
They began walking down the side of the hill towards the anomalies.
"Any idea which lead to the 21st century?"
"Didn't find one when I was last here, but that doesn't mean there won't be one."
Evan considered his options. "You could use a tent, you know, and some warmer clothes. Then you could stay here all year."
"Are you trying to tempt me back with promises of creature comforts?"
"No, not exactly, I'm saying if one opens to the 21st century we should get you some better supplies. Pick your challenges Howard, you don't have to be some survivalist hero."
Howard was silent for a moment before he said, "Well a decent sleeping bag would be nice."
Evan stopped still and turned to face him, holding out a hand. "It's a deal then, you stay here and study the anomalies at this end. I'll get you proper supplies. We'll figure out some way to keep in touch."
Howard shook his head but grasped Evan's hand all the same. "I don't think that's going to be very easy."
"Nothing worthwhile ever is."
They shook hands and then together they walked down the hill to the anomaly junction.