The next morning, Mr. Bundersmith again took the kids to school. They didn’t go to first period this morning though, but collected in their team rooms with the seniors who would serve as their guides on the field trip. Then they loaded up onto the monorail train for the trip to the Saguaro Cactus Park, located deep within the Maxxim campus. There were 105 freshmen on the trip, divided up into groups of five. Each group was guided by a senior. Dennis Brown led Astrid and Christopher, as well as Alicia Noble, Madison Laurel, and Bud Collins. Each of them carried a small backpack, containing their lunches and their personal digital assistants.

Supervising the entire gathering was Dr. Franklin the Geology teacher, Dr. Ikeda the Biology Teacher, History teacher Mr. Hoffman, and five parent volunteers.

Technically there wasn’t a monorail station in the Saguaro Cactus Park. However there was a platform forty feet in the sky and a stairway leading down to the desert floor. The students and teachers climbed out of the train and made their way down to assemble into their groups at the foot of the stairs, as the monorail whooshed away.

“Alright guys,” said Dennis, taking charge. “We’re going to walk about two hundred yards due east. There’s an outcropping just above a dry riverbed there where I think you’ll find some great samples.”

The freshmen dutifully followed him through the sand, around rocks, prickly pear cactus and towering saguaros. Alicia and Madison happily snapped pictures of the various plants, squealing excitedly when they identified a teddybear cholla. Astrid made note of the various cactus varieties too, but she really wanted an example of the wildlife. She began looking in the many holes around the bases of the cactus plants.

“Watch out there,” said Dennis. “There are five different kinds of rattlesnakes around here and I don’t want either one of us bitten by any of them.”

“I don’t want to be bitten either,” said Astrid. “But I wouldn’t mind getting a few snapshots.”

When they reached the dry riverbed, she found not a snake, but a large chuckwalla lizard that had taken refuge in a crack on the rock face. She took a dozen photographs and recorded her findings on her MX-360. The beast was about eighteen inches long, and its orange colored body indicated that it was a male of the species. She tried coaxing it out of the crack, but the lizard closed its eyes and ignored her. By the time lunch rolled around, she had photos and notes on half a dozen different lizards—no snakes or tortoises though.

As the six students sat on a large rock, in the shade of the outcropping and ate their lunches of ham and cheese sandwiches, they compared their findings. Bud, who was the only student in the group besides Astrid working on desert animal life, had found and photographed coyote, rabbit, and kangaroo rat tracks. He and Astrid shared their data by bumping their MX-360s together. An hour later, Dennis guided them all back to where they had started, to find another monorail train waiting to take them back to Rachel Carson High School.

“I hope you found plenty of interest, Astrid,” said Dr. Ikeda. “I’m expecting something great from you.”

“I think I got everything I need,” replied Astrid.

Toby and Denise approached the staircase from the west and gave Astrid a wave. They both looked just as pleased with their field trip as she was. When she saw Austin trudging back in the rear of his group however, his face was clouded over by a frown. Once everyone was aboard the train and it was on its way, she stepped forward to where he was sitting to see what the problem was.

“Um, nothing,” said Austin. “I’m just worried about… um, putting all this stuff together. I never had to write a really big assignment, um, paper, like this before.”

“Don’t worry,” said Astrid. “You’ve got lots of time and I’ll be glad to help you.”

Austin nodded, but looked far from happy.

They had just finished eating when the phone rang.

“It’s for you, Astrid,” said Mr. Richards.

“Hello,” said Astrid, putting the phone to her ear.

“Astrid, please you must come at once. We need you.”

“Mrs. Diaz? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Valerie,” replied her friend’s mother. “She’s very sick.”

“Did you call Dr. Lower?”

“No, no. It’s my other Valerie.”

“You mean Robot Valerie?”

“Aye, si,” said Mrs. Diaz. “She feels week and she won’t eat ever since you turned her into a robot.”

“I didn’t turn her into a robot!” said Astrid, exasperated. “She’s always been a robot.”

“Please come and help her.”

Mr. Brown gave Astrid and Denise a lift over to the Diaz home where they found Valerie and her mother wringing their hands as Robot Valerie lay rather stiffly across the sofa.

“I tried to get her to eat some chicken soup,” said Mrs. Diaz.

“She can’t eat,” said Astrid, more exasperated than ever. “She’s a robot.”

“But she’s so week and she feels so sick,” said Valerie.

“Did you plug her in?”

“What do you mean?”

Astrid lifted Robot Valerie’s right arm and pressed a small recessed button. A compartment door opened and she pulled out a retractable cable. Unlike the rest of the United States which used NEMA 1-15 two prong or NEMA 5-15 three prong electrical outlets, Maxxim City and Maxxim Industries used an Excalibur interface plug, a smart plug capable of channeling a wide variety of power levels and data at the same time. Astrid plugged the tiny square plug into a matching outlet on the wall of the Diaz living room, right behind the end table.

“I feel better,” said Robot Valerie.

“I’m surprised you managed to go this long without a recharge,” said Astrid. “Why didn’t you plug yourself in?”

“I didn’t know I had to.”

Even though they spent a great deal of time away from each other during the day, the whole gang always got together in the Quad at 12:00 for lunch. Astrid had been looking forward to lunch since she read the menu that morning just after the Pledge of Allegiance—Sicilian broccoli and cauliflower pasta with pine nuts, whole grain garlic bread, tossed salad, and yogurt parfait. Toby, Denise, and Valerie were already sitting at their usual table when she and Christopher sat down.

“So, how’s it going?” asked Toby.

“Fine,” said Christopher and everyone agreed.

“I heard Mr. Kramer is sick,” said Valerie. “I guess we’ll have a substitute today.”

“I don’t like substitutes,” said Denise. “We always end up behind. Then we have to work all that much harder the rest of the week.”

“You won’t get behind today,” said Toby. “My dad is your sub today, so count on extra homework.” He laughed. “I’m glad I don’t have Geometry.”

“You just wait,” said Valerie. “When my dad subs, he’ll have you swimming extra laps.”

At Rachel Carson High School, all parents were required to serve six days a year as faculty or staff members. For Toby’s father, who was a structural engineer, that usually meant teaching Math. Valerie’s father, head of security for Maxxim Industries, usually either taught a Physical Education class or served as a school safety officer.

“Hey, what’s going on over there?” wondered Denise, indicating a table across the Quad from where they sat.

“It looks like Mark McGovern is picking on that kid,” said Christopher. “He picked on me last year because I have dark skin.”

“He picked on me because my mother is from Mexico,” said Valerie.

“He picked on me because I have two dads,” said Denise.

“He calls me a nerd all the time,” said Astrid.

“Well, he never picked on me, because I’d sock him in the teeth,” said Toby. “Do any of you know that kid? He was in my Swimming class last hour.”

“He’s new,” said Valerie. “He was in our Art History Class.”

“I’m sick of Mark McGovern,” said Toby, and picking up his tray, he started across the common area. The others quickly grabbed their food and followed.

“Excuse me,” Toby told Mark.

“What?”

“You’re in my way.”

When the boy stepped back, Toby sat down next to the new kid. The new kid was a little on the chunky side and had a buzz cut. Christopher, Valerie, Denise, and Astrid filled in the rest of the spaces.

“I didn’t know this was the loser table,” said Mark.

“It was,” said Toby. “But then you left and it wasn’t again.”

The boy balled up his fist and stared at Toby for a moment, but Toby just stared back. Finally, Mark turned and walked away and the gang all turned their attention to their new table mate.

“Hello,” said Astrid. “What did Mark the mook want?”

“He’s in my Algebra class and he’s been teasing me all day about my name.”

“What’s your name?”

“Austin Tretower.”

“Austin’s not a funny name,” she said.

“Tretower is a bit funny, you have to admit,” said Toby. “That doesn’t mean people should tease you about it though.”

“It’s not any funnier than Bundersmith,” said Christopher.

“Bundersmith isn’t funny,” countered Toby.

“No, it isn’t,” said Astrid, who had spent more than a few hours pondering the possibility of being Astrid Bundersmith someday.”

“Help! Help! We’re all going to die!”

“Stop it, Dad,” said Astrid Maxxim as she steered her father’s car.

“Somebody save me! For the love of Mergatroid, save me!”

“Stop it, Dad.”

“Oh, the horror! Oh, the humanity!”

“I’ve already stopped, Dad. The car is parked. It’s right between the yellow lines.”

“It’s really over?” asked Dr. Roger Maxxim, peering out the car windshield at the massive Research and Development Department building in front of them. “I’m still alive?”

“You are so very funny,” said Astrid. “You should have been a comedian instead of a mad scientist.”

“I’m an inventor,” said her father, as they both climbed out of the car. “I am an inventor just like your grandfather and your great-grandfather and your great-great-grandfather. And you will be too.”

“I already am.”

“Yes you are.”

They were parked in Dr. Maxxim’s personal parking space next to the R&D building, a half-mile wide, fourteen story structure that dominated the northwest corner of the Maxxim Industries campus. The campus, sprawling across 180,000 acres of the American southwest, featured machine shops, office buildings, factories, power plants, and its own airport. It was here, where for the past forty-two years, thousands of Maxxim products had been developed and produced, making the Maxxim family very wealthy and making the world a better place in which to live.

Dr. Roger Maxxim was a tall man whose brown hair was only just beginning to show a touch of grey at his temples. He wore a pair of sturdy glasses, behind which were creases that could more honestly be called laugh lines than wrinkles.

Dr. Maxxim’s daughter Astrid was startlingly cute, with shoulder length strawberry blonde hair and very large blue eyes. At five foot five, she was exactly in the middle of her class when they arranged themselves by height for their class picture, which still made her four inches shorter than her mother. Like her father, she wore a white lab coat over her street clothes.

“You see,” said Astrid. “Look at that parking job. That’s just about as good as a person could get.”

“It’s pretty good,” her father agreed.

“It’s good enough that I should be able to drive all the time.”

“I let you drive as much as possible, Astrid.”

“I could drive a lot more, if I had my own car.”

“Astrid, the minimum driving age in this state is eighteen,” replied her father. “You know this. You also know that you have only just turned fourteen.”

“But Dad, I could just drive here at Maxxim Industries. It takes forever to get around here. I wouldn’t drive anywhere else. Honest.”

“No,” her father said. “In the first place, Astrid, it’s against the rules. In the second place, what would I say to all the other people who work here and are parents of fourteen year-olds? And in the third place, your mother would kill me, so that’s really all the places that I need.”

I had a terrible time getting any sleep the remainder of the night, but by morning I had convinced myself that there was nothing to worry about.  The jungle girl had left me before, I reminded myself, and she had always returned.  She was probably hunting another meal for us.  When the sun came up, I busied myself with my morning rituals and then sat down to wait.

When she had not returned by what I judged to be eleven in the morning, I decided that I could make myself useful.  Kanana had fed me fruits back at her fortress.  Therefore, there must be fruit available for the picking in the jungle. I would search the immediate area and see what I could add to our shared meals.  I searched for about two hours, but found no fruit, no mushrooms, no vegetables.  The only thing I found to eat was a scorpion and I was no more inclined to put it in my mouth than I had been the day before, when Kanana had found its twin.

After mashing the urine-colored creature beneath my boot, I looked around and realized that I had no idea where I was.  I had wandered out of sight of the fire pit and the broken hammock, and I could no longer see through the trees to the savannah beyond.  We had set up just inside the boundary of the trees, so it should have been an easy proposition to find the boundary between forest and grassland, if not my campsite.  This was assuming of course that I knew which direction either of them lay.

I thought that the grassland was south of the forest.  Had Christopher Columbus been correct and the world round, it would have been easy enough to navigate by using the sun, but as the sun is always directly overhead, it was no help at all.  I had heard that moss grew on the north sides of trees, but for the life of me, I could find no moss.  Therefore I made my best guess and started through the trees.  After walking for an hour, I decided that I was walking in a circle.  This was the fate of one moving through a forest or swamp without a fixed point of destination.  Everyone has a dominant foot and they, usually without realizing it, tend toward that direction.  I had learned a remedy for such a situation when I was in the jungles of Cuba.

I cut a tall but narrow sapling and stripped it of leaves and branches.  Then laying it down, I followed it as though I was following a compass needle.  Then I reached the end, I picked it up and laid it down again.  I was creating a path for myself and this kept me from turning one way or the other.  It did slow me down quite a bit though, and it was late afternoon when I finally saw the savannah through the trees.

I was at the edge of the woods, not knowing whether my original camp was to the left or right of me, not knowing how far I had travelled, and most importantly, not knowing where Kanana was and why she hadn’t returned.  Thinking about it, I decided that it wasn’t important that I wasn’t in the exact spot in which I had started.  I couldn’t have travelled very far, and Kanana’s skills in navigating the jungle were surely such that she would be able to find me were I ten times as far as I could walk in a day.

These thoughts soothed me for all of thirty seconds, for just as I stepped from the edge of the forest, I was surrounded by a dozen fierce looking natives, each with a stone-tipped spear pointed in my direction.  They looked very much like the Tokayana people of the coast, copper-skinned with jet-black hair, tall, graceful, and muscular. Unlike the citizens of Abbeyport, these warriors wore clothing of animal skins—usually nothing more than a loincloth, but sometimes a vest or pants.

I was weighing the possibility of pulling out my pistol and shooting one or two of them before they stabbed me, when the largest among them reached out and snatched the weapon from my holster.  This fellow, who was evidently in charge, tall and I had to admit, handsome, said something to me and pointed across the grassland.  That he was ordering me to move was emphasized when he poked me with his spear.  I gave no argument, but started walking, surrounded by my captors.

I marched all day long through the waist high-grass, and while I was constantly on the lookout for any opportunity in which to escape, none came.  Every so often, the warriors allowed me a drink of water from an animal skin canteen, but they gave me nothing to eat until that night.  When we at last stopped beneath a little copse of trees, they handed me a piece of dried meat.  When I had finished it, I was bound hand and foot.

I didn’t sleep much that night.  I was uncomfortable.  I was worried.  And I was constantly watching and listening for any sign of Kanana.  None came.  In the morning, after short preparations, we started off again.  Though they untied my feet, this time they left my hands fastened behind me.  Though again I was given water, this second day took quite a toll on me.  I was weak, and it became increasingly difficult to pay attention to what I was doing.  I tripped several times.  By the time we came to a halt on the second day, my shoulders were so sore that I could barely lift what small bit of food I was given.  Thankfully when I had eaten, though they tied me again, this time they did so with my hands in front of me.

On the third day, we reached the village of the warriors in whose grasp I now found myself.  I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I certainly didn’t expect what I saw. Village was not nearly a lofty enough word to describe it, though perhaps city would be too extravagant. Five hundred round huts were gathered together inside a great wooden palisade.  In the very center was a small hillock and at its top, a hut, similar to all the others, though larger.  This town, as I shall now call it, had been built at the juxtaposition of the grassland and the forest.  Now though, neither looked very close.  The ground in and all around the town had been beaten to bare earth by a thousand footfalls, and all that remained of several miles of what had once been forest were the burnt stumps of large trees with tilled farmland running between them.

The warriors led me to the center of the town, where I was surrounded by the citizens, men, women, and children all chattering away in a language that I didn’t understand.  Several men and women approached and examined me.  I assumed they were local dignitaries because their clothing was finer and more highly decorated than most.  They poked and prodded me and then apparently gave orders for my disposal.

We stayed in the tree house for three more days.  I spent most of that time up in the tree, but wasn’t completely the pampered pet I often felt myself to be.  When Kanana brought home food, I sometimes prepared it, and since I knew much more about the art of cooking than she did, I at least found my own cooking more palatable.  I spent more than a few hours teaching words to Kanana, and she was an attentive and energetic pupil.  She also took to kissing me often.  I don’t know how often she thought of her mating idea, but for me, with her running around unclothed; it was hard to think of anything else.  She was no longer covered with a thick layer of mud, but had dusted herself with reddish tan dirt.  The effect was to make her look even more naked than she was, as impossible as that sounds.  And I began to realize just how strong Kanana was.  She would run and jump and lift things that would have been a challenge for a strong man, let alone a woman.  She was slender, but beneath her skin were muscles like steel coils. Still, every part of her seemed to fit so well together that I couldn’t imagine her being anything but what she was.  Every once in a while, she would ask me a question.

“Where Henry Goode’s home?”

“It was in Boston… America.  I suppose I don’t really have a home now.”

“There Giwa… el-eph-ants in Boston?”

“No, no elephants in Boston.  Neither are there any lions or crocodiles.  No hippopotamuses either.”

“Hippo-po-po?”

I cupped my hands by my ears and flipped them around to imitate the ears of a hippo.

“Dornar,” she said, nodding.  “Dornar danger.”

On the fourth day after the crocodile attack, Kanana examined my leg and pronounced me on the way to recovery.  I had been watching the teeth wounds fairly closely myself and was both pleased and surprised that there seemed to be no sign of infection.  I knew from firsthand experience that infection could kill a man deader than a bullet or a knife.

We climbed down the tree and walked through the forest, back to the edge of the grassland.  Skirting along the edge of the trees, we traveled in what I calculated to be a roughly southeast direction.  The elephants that I had seen here previously were gone, but there were plenty of other animals.

Near noon, we found a large log lying across our path.  Turning it over, Kanana stabbed around in the rotting wood with her knife, and then reached down to pull out a large scorpion.  She held it out toward me.

“Henry eat.”

“Eat?  Eat that? I cannot imagine any circumstance in which I would put that in my mouth.  It would sting me.”

“Kanana cut harbi.”  She held it closer to my face.  It’s tiny pincers snapped.  “See? No sting.”

“I shall not eat that,” I said.

She shrugged and popped it into her mouth.  She chomped down on the arachnid and a bit of its insides squirted out from between her lips.  She scooped them back into her mouth with a finger, chewed several times, and then swallowed.

“Does it taste good?” I asked.

“No,” she replied simply, and turning, continued onward.

An hour later, we stopped to rest beneath a small tree that sat out on the grass away from the rest of the forest.  The sun was warm, but the little tree provided enough shade.  I was just starting to feel drowsy, when Kanana got up and stepped over to a small green plant growing amid the brown grass. Kneeling down, she dug into the ground with her knife.  I stepped over to watch her.  About twelve inches below the surface, she uncovered two large tubers.  Cutting them away from their roots, she pulled the vegetables out and peeled them.

“Henry eat,” she said, handing me one.

I took a bite to find something very much like a mild radish, but with a much greater water content.

“This is good,” I said, feeling my thirst quenched more than my hunger abated. “I’m getting hungry.”

“Kanana say eat harbi-togo.  Henry not eat.”

“We don’t eat bugs where I come from.”

“Not in Boston,” said the jungle girl.  “In Boston we eat what Henry say.  In Kanana’s land we eat what Kanana say.”

A loud bellow a short distance away brought all conversation to a halt.  We looked up to see a great shaggy form lumbering toward us.  It looked like a frightening cross between a bear and a horse, and though it wasn’t quite as big as Giwa, it was fully as large as the bull elephants of Africa. Though I had never seen one alive, I knew from my visits to the Boston Society of Natural History what it was. It was a megatherium or giant sloth. I also knew that it was a plant eater.

As I watched, it stood up on its hind legs, stretching to a height of twenty feet, and bellowed again.  Kanana grabbed me by the sleeve and jerked me almost off my feet.

“Run,” she hissed.

“It’s a sloth.”

The gigantic monster shifted from its slow walk to a sort of jog.  Still holding onto my sleeve, she turned and ran toward the trees, pulling me along with her.  I stumbled a few steps, but regained my footing and ran along with her. Looking over my shoulder, I could see that we were easily outdistancing the megatherium, and I wasn’t running as fast as I was able, so I knew that Kanana wasn’t.

“It’s big and all, but it’s a herbivore, isn’t it?”

“Utuga bad all the time.  Utuga kill lion.  Utuga kill Giwa.  Utuga eat plants, trees.  Sometimes eat meat.”  She slowed to a brisk walk as we reached the tree line.  “Henry eat what Kanana say.  Henry run when Kanana say.”