The Brave New World 40 Attack of the Pterodactyls

The sun beat down mercilessly from a cloudless sky, but Rafi Susanto was shivering. He was on his first visit to the New World, and he didn't like it.

He was squatting on the ground, half-hidden by the enormous fern that also concealed two sailors from the Golden Dawn. He was naked, and his skin was covered my scratches and bites of many insects. The gigantic mosquitoes, bigger than the palm of his hand, were especially fierce. When he'd killed one, it burst to release a glassful of blood.

Fortunately there were no mosquitoes on the hill beyond the beach. They had a hell of a time getting there. The scouts sent earlier had found a path, but it still involved a lot of slaloming between thorny plants and getting through a swarm of the giant mosquitoes. They couldn't run fast, there was sharp stuff scattered all over the place, and they were barefoot. All of them collected a couple of thorns per foot anyway.

"It's important you get onto that hill," Cruz had told Susanto. "You won't get the picture from the beach. There is also something else. You know I have numerous mining interests. I own two mining companies and over a dozen mines all over the world. Well, that hill has some interesting mineral deposits. You'll see yourself, when you get there."

Susanto did. On his way up the hill, he'd passed a couple of rocks with gold veins clearly visible in the stone. He'd stopped at the first one to scratch and check and yeah, it was gold. He showed the vein to the crewmen accompanying him, and they got excited, more excited than he had been.

Fucking fools, he'd thought. There is more to life than gold.

Susanto could afford to think like that because he was already sitting on a pile of gold, back on Earth. It was smaller than Cruz's pile, but still quite substantial. Definitely enough to retire on comfortably. I could be cruising around the world in a yacht twice the size of the Golden Dawn, thought Susanto. I could be having a great time instead of skulking naked in the bushes, scared shitless.

There was much to be scared of in what he'd seen so far. The size of the land he'd found himself on scared him. It was much, much bigger than Henderson's Island. Of course he knew about the Pacific archipelagos in the New World; he'd read the documentation as carefully as he read his annual financial statement. But reading about something and experiencing it were two very different things.

That was his biggest mistake: he had let Cruz talk him into replicating in the New World while they were drinking cocktails and nibbling at canapes. It had made him let his guard down. He saw what had happened to the crewmen back on Earth when their New World alter egos suffered, or died. It had been highly unpleasant to watch, and all that screaming had really gotten on his nerves.

He knew the New World wasn't a place for a man of his delicate sensibilities. It was those fucking gimlets. He'd made them extra strong to perk Cruz up. They were very tasty, and he was on his third when Cruz talked him into going to the New World.

He looked at the view before him and shuddered. The hill fell away to reveal a plain relatively sparse in trees. And on this plain gamboled some of the scariest, most repulsive creatures Susanto had ever seen.

They were too far away to make out details, but they seemed to be gigantic birds. They hopped around, occasionally rising into the air on huge wings, then swooping down again with the long beak opened wide. They seemed to be feeding on something on the ground, something Susanto couldn't see. It didn't matter. He'd seen enough.

He turned to the crewmen and noted with satisfaction that the high spirits produced by the gold find were gone. They both looked as apprehensive as he felt himself.

"Okay," said Susanto. "We've seen enough. Let's get the hell out of here. Manuel, you lead the way back to the beach."

To his irritation, Manuel didn't budge. He looked sullen instead, and said:

"Senior Cruz promised to call us back after an hour."

"Jesus Christ," exploded Susanto. "Who is your boss - Cruz or me? And haven't you worked out yet time flows faster here, moron? I mean relative to Earth. It could be hours here before he wakes us. Get your ass up and get going."

"But the big mosquitoes - "

"Fuck!" shouted Susanto. "Get moving or I swear I'll fire your ass the moment we get home."

The two sailors got up and instantly froze, staring wide-eyed at something behind Susanto.

He turned around and saw that shouting like that had been a bad move. A few of the giant birds were aloft, and headed his way.

He immediately broke into a run, shouting at the sailors to follow him a little bit later - it was good to have them running at the back. He hissed and cried out with pain as his bare feet hit sharp stones strewing the slope.

He had almost reached the entrance to the path through the jungle that led to the beach when the giant birds caught up with them. One cut through the air in front of him and he saw that they resembled bats more than birds. But the batbird that flew in front of Susanto had a very long beak, and when it opened to let out a rasping screech he saw that it contained dozens of sharp teeth.

"Run!" he screamed at his crewmen, and followed his own advice. He heard their feet thudding on the ground right behind him. Then he heard a horrible, human scream.

It acted on him as if it had switched on an afterburner. Susanto had already been running quite hard, but now he shot forward like an Olympic sprinter. He reached the beginning of the path in a series of leaps and bounds that would have aroused envy among cheetahs. Then he immediately swerved into the jungle, screaming when a plant tore into his skin but continuing to press into the thick vegetation. He knew its density would protect him from the gigantic, batlike birds.

He heard the buzzy whine of an approaching giant mosquito and rapidly changed direction as it came near, then turned again as it closed in for a second strike. That was the best defense against those things - keep moving fast, and swerve just as the mosquito was preparing to sting.

There were more of them coming, he could hear them, he could see some too. He had to get back onto the path! It was impossible to run fast enough to evade the mosquitoes inside the jungle. Susanto turned twice in quick succession, and was lucky to hit an opening among the plants that allowed him to speed up.

Then he remembered about the flying monsters and almost stopped dead in his tracks.

He felt the feathery touch of the mosquito landing on his back and then the hellishly painful sting as it inserted its probe to suck his blood. He screamed and turned round and threw himself down on his back, squashing the insect. He immediately scrabbled to his feet and ran to the path, not caring any more about the flying monsters, or indeed any other monsters he could encounter. If he didn't get away from the mosquitoes, they would suck him dry of blood.

As it turned out, it was the mosquitoes that saved him.

He ran out onto the path and immediately turned in the direction of the beach and managed to run only a few steps before something hit the back of his head and tore his scalp. There was a wave of horrible stench and a blow on his shoulder from one of the huge wings and the batlike bird suddenly appeared in front of him and he saw that it also had a feathery tail shaped like a lizard's.

Flying dinosaurs! He remembered now that he'd read about them in school, looked at the colorful, awe-inspiring pictures. He recalled that they were called pterodactyls, or something like that. They'd tear him to pieces once he was out in the open, on the beach! He was running to his doom!

He almost stopped but changed his mind when he heard one of the crewmen scream behind him. He kept on running even after he'd fallen over once. Then he fell for the second time, just a short distance away from the shore - he could already hear the sea.

As he was picking himself up, he looked back and saw a pterodactyl swoop down on a giant mosquito and snap at it with its beak. It missed, and circled back to have another go. It wasn't interested in Susanto.

He turned away and walked the rest of the way to the beach. He was too tired to run any more anyway, and his feet left bloody imprints on the ground.

When he got to the beach, he looked around and saw a deep crevice between two rocks not far away. He went over and squeezed almost all of his body in. His feet and calves were out in the open, but he'd picked up a stone and planned to smash it against any head that tried to take a bite out of his legs.

He stayed there for what seemed like a long, long time. His crewmen did not appear. The beach was idyllic in the sun.

He suddenly felt very, very tired. He fell asleep...

... And woke up on the silvery mat laid out in close proximity to the mini bar. It had been a clever strategic move on his part to place it there.

Cruz was sitting in a deckchair nearby. He looked startled.

"Rafi?" he said. "I was to wake you and the others in fifteen minutes."

Susanto looked around and saw that the two crewmen were sleeping peacefully on their hiber beds.

"You didn't wake them up?" he asked, pointing.

"No. They threshed around a little at one point, but then they calmed down."

"What about me? Did I throw myself around?"

"No. Well, maybe a little. And you moved your legs as if you were dreaming about running. But it only lasted a couple of minutes, and you became peaceful again. So I saw no reason to wake you up."

"I see," said Susanto. He felt sure Cruz was lying. He'd probably sat there and watched Susanto suffer and enjoyed it. And the crewmen in the New World were probably dead,: that was why their originals were sleeping so peacefully back on Earth.

He got up and walked over to the bar.

"Care for a drink?" he asked.

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