Robert & Linda Evans - Time Scout

Five days into their wretched journey, they ran out of food-and Koot van Beek fell seriously ill. He woke with a high fever and terrible chills.

"Malaria," he chattered between clenched teeth.

"But we took anti-malarials!"

"Not ... not a sure-fire prevention. G-get the quinine tablets."

Margo dug out the medical kit with trembling hands. She read the instructions again to be sure, then dosed him with four tablets of chloroquine and covered him with one of their sleeping bags. They had no food left to help him regain his strength. The river banks were barren of anything that could be shot and fetched back as food.

Where are all those stupid animals when we need them? I'm hungry-and Koot may be dying!

She'd have shot anything that remotely resembled food in a heartbeat. She'd even have cooked one of those lousy drowned carcasses, if she could've gotten close enough to one to snag it. She bit her lips and tried to cope with an overwhelming sense of failure. When they stopped for the night, pulling the raft onto the flood-ravaged bank, Margo sat in her miserable corner of the raft and held her head in her hands and started admitting the hardest truths she had ever had to face.

I am not smart. Or particularly clever. Or honest, not even with myself. Kit and Malcolm, everyone was right. I was crazy to think I was ready to scout.-...

Proving herself to her father seemed utterly pointless now. What had she expected him to do? Take her in his arms and weep on her neck? Tell her the three words she'd wanted to hear all her life? Fat chance.

Sitting there in the darkness, Margo had ample time to review every mistake she'd made, every selfish word she'd uttered, every lamebrained, dangerous risk she'd run because she hadn't learned enough: She'd nearly let a Cape Buffalo kill her because she was too busy thinking how picturesque it was to realize her danger. Koot had warned her and she'd chosen to ignore him. What was it Kit had told her? Don't put wild animals on some moral pedestal bearing no resemblance to reality?

And she'd nearly killed Malcolm in St. Giles. And in Rome, completely on her own ... Margo had come to realize she'd come close to being killed in Rome, too, without ever realizing it. She could've stumbled into far less scrupulous hands than Quintus Flaminius' -- and his care of her could easily have soured. That lancet they'd used to bleed her could've infected her with something awful, or they might literally have bled her to death, or ...

Margo's whole experience as a time scout was one unmitigated disaster after another, with some impatient guardian angel finally throwing hands in the air in disgust and going back to whatever heaven guardian angels come from.

All of which left her utterly alone with no supplies on a flooded river miles from help, with a dying man and a scared down-timer on her hands. The only thing that kept her going was her sense of responsibility. She hadn't left Achilles completely without resources and she wouldn't give up on Koot and Kynan, either. Somehow, she'd get them out of this mess she'd made.

Six hours later she woke Koot and dosed him with two more tablets. He complained of a raging headache and fell asleep again. Margo dug out her information on malaria and a flashlight. When she read the list of potential symptoms, Margo felt a chill of terror. The Plasmodium falciparum strain of malaria, which included among its symptoms severe headaches, could be quickly fatal Not treated properly . They were several hundred years as well as a hundred or so miles from the nearest medical clinic.

Kynan crouched down at her side and gestured to Koot.

"He die?"

Margo shook her head. "I don't know."

The Welshman's dark gaze flicked to the river. "Bad Place."

"Yes. Very bad." She drew a ragged breath. "We have to keep going." She pantomimed paddling and pointed down the river.

Kynan nodded. His expression was as grim as Margo's fading hopes. Somewhere deep inside her, Margo found the courage to keep going. At dawn, they shoved off again. The Welshman wordlessly picked up Koot's heavy Winchester rifle and checked it as he'd been taught, then took up a guard stance in the bow. Someone had to watch for hippos while the other one steered. Margo didn't feel like arguing over which job she was best suited for. She took up position in the stern and did her best to keep them on course.

Margo was three-quarters asleep under a starry sky when their raft eddied down the last few miles of the Limpopo. Kynan Rhys Gower shook her gently and pointed. Margo blinked and rose awkwardly. She ached everywhere, making movement difficult, and the hunger gnawing at her had left her muzzy-headed. She stared down the moonlit river for several moments before realizing why it looked so wide.

They had come within sight of the sea.

"Oh, thank God!"

Then another frightening thought hit her.

The mouth of the Limpopo was nearly a hundred miles up the coast from Delagoa Bay and the gate. A hundred miles on a raft on the open sea with no real way to steer and no food or water?

"Kynan! We have to get to the bank!"

Kynan puzzled out her meaning, then nodded and began to paddle. Margo dug her paddle into the current until her shoulders and back were on fire. They moved slowly nearer the bank-but not fast enough. The current was sweeping them inexorably out to sea. Maybe they could swim for it ....

Koot couldn't swim. And when she looked closely, Margo saw the gleam of crocodile eyes in the water. Terror choked her breath off. We'll drift into the Indian. Ocean. My God, we could end up anywhere ... At the last moment, she thought to fill water cans with river water. Then they were wallowing in rolling swells. The current carried them farther from land.

"A sail," Margo muttered, "we need a sail..." Malcolm had taught her how to sail. But not how to build a sailboat out of a PVC and Filmar raft. "Doesn't matter. Gotta have a sail."

Margo dug for the remains of their flying wing. Not much was left. It would have to do. Margo loosened one of the broken PVC pipes and rigged a mast, using cables to tie it in place, then tied the remaining Filmar in place as a rude sail. Wind bellied it out. The raft still wallowed-but in a new direction. For a time, they made little headway. Then they left behind the influence of the Limpopo's strong current and eddied slowly down the coastline, blown slightly shoreward by the wind hitting their sail.

Kynan poured river water through their filtration equipment and used the coleman stove to boil it. Margo was so thirsty she would cheerfully have drunk the ocean dry. He poured a cup and handed it to her. Margo sipped the hot water

And spat involuntarily.

Salty ...

She stared in rising horror at the cup. She'd scooped up river water .....ut she'd waited until they were almost in the mouth of the river to do it. The water she'd retrieved was brackish. And that water was all they had aboard.

She shut her eyes, wishing she could blot out the terrors closing in on her as easily as she did sight of the accusatory cup in her hand. Koot was dying, they were adrift at sea with no water and no food ...

"Margo?"

She opened her eyes. Kynan's brow had furrowed in the starlight "Water not good," she said shakily. "Salt"

He frowned and tasted it, then spat. The furrows in his brow deepened. Between them, Koot moaned. Margo checked him and bit her lips. He was extremely weak. When she tried to move him, he vomited over the side, then soiled himself with uncontrollable diarrhea. His skin burned under her hand. Margo poured sea water over him in an effort to bring down his temperature. He moaned and shivered, then subsided into delirium.

Gotta get him back to the gate. HOW?

The raft wallowed in the swells, ungainly as a beached whale. Kynan vomited over the side, too, then wiped his lips and looked embarrassed Margo dug out another scopolamine patch and stuck it behind his ear, then dosed herself against seasickness for good measure. She wasn't sure she ought to risk dosing Koot, then decided he was so close to death she might as well chance it. If she could keep him from vomiting, maybe he'd survive?