"You know, Matt, I could really use some good news here."
He looked up at her. "The red light flickered a while ago."
"It did? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I don't know what it means. I'm hoping it's detecting something. Some fluctuation in space-time. If the green light comes on, maybe it will work again."
"How do we make it come on?"
"Trial and error, I guess. That's the best I can say. Keep moving."
Susan glanced at the sun, then to the west. She gazed longingly in that direction, then back to the elephant trail, which still led steadfastly eastward. She looked at Matt helplessly, and shrugged.
"First things first," he agreed. "Find a water supply before we start to get thirsty. It made sense this morning, and it still makes sense."
NEITHER of them had a great picture of Los Angeles in their heads. As new arrivals who had spent most of their time working, they knew the neighborhoods where they had lived and worked, and some other places where people of good income went to shop and dine: Santa Monica, Westwood, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Venice. They had made a few excursions into Valley communities. But except for a trip or two to the airport neither of them had ever driven as far south as Century Boulevard, and in fact had seldom been south of Venice. In the same way, Western Avenue was the eastern limit of their known territory. Neither had ever set foot in downtown Los Angeles, though they knew where it was, had seen its skyscrapers in the distance.
Matt wasn't sure how much good it would have done them, considering that the things an urban dweller would note about his surroundings would be streets and buildings, all of which were now gone... that is, none of which were here yet... but he didn't see how it could have hurt. Twelve thousand years wasn't enough to have changed the large features of the area. No new mountains had been built in that time, and the canyons would be only slightly less eroded now than they had been in the twenty-first century. The Santa Monica Mountains had been then, and were now, visible from anywhere in the basin, and were basically unchanged as to their gross outlines. Yet even there, his memory was not much help. You looked at those mountains, and what you noticed was the Hollywood sign, and thus knew your position roughly. With the sign gone, with all roads and houses gone, the Hollywood Hills were fairly nondescript. He could see several low points. Was that one where Laurel Canyon would be, or was it Coldwater Canyon? Without knowing where such prominent features of the terrain were, how could he hope to venture a guess as to their present position?
And did it really matter?
He knew there was something over to the east called the Los Angeles River, but he seemed to recall it was something of a joke. In the twenty-first century it was a wide, flat, concrete ditch, a favorite of Hollywood film directors for staging car chases, dry most of the year except for a trickle down the middle.
Los Angeles was a desert then, and it looked like a desert now. The shallow arroyos they had crossed were all bone dry. That might be seasonal. In some thousands of years a man named Mulholland would dig a long series of aquaducts and L.A. would bloom with imported palm trees and tropical flowers, but right now the dominant vegetation was sagebrush and scrawny live oaks.
He didn't know how far they had come. He had tried counting steps, and quickly lost count as his mind drifted to other things. Maybe he could estimate the length of their journey by time... but how many miles could a man walk in an hour? He had only a vague idea of their speed.
And to make it even more hopeless, the path chosen by the elephants was far from a beeline. Susan seemed to think they were on the scent of water, but if they were, the scent must be coming from several directions, maybe shifting with the wind. They had meandered north for a while, then turned back east, then north again, then east. He hoped they knew what they were doing. ONE good thing: though the trail was growing colder as they fell farther behind, there was little danger of it vanishing overnight, or even over the next two or three days. And Susan said the elephants would surely stop to browse, whether they found water or not. He was wrapped up in thoughts like that when he almost ran into the giant yellow bear.
He stopped in his tracks and Susan ran into him.
"What's the..." Then she got a look at it. It must have been twenty feet tall. Susan whispered
something.
"What?" Matt whispered back.
"Sloth. Giant ground sloth."
"Sloth? Like those things that hang in trees? You gotta be—"
"Related," she hissed. "Be quiet. I don't think it sees us."
The thing was turning, ponderously. Way, way up there was a head—it had to be a head, it was at the end of a neck like a tree trunk—that was comically small for its gargantuan body. But small is a relative thing. Matt figured the tree branch it held in its jaws was about the size of his thigh, and it didn't look very big there.
About the time he had that thought, the creature bit through the branch like a toothpick, and spit out the remains. It was facing them now, looking down with big, soft brown eyes that held no fear.
"Let's back away," Susan suggested, in a whisper.
"Good idea."
They began a slow retreat, and the sloth watched them. Then it took a step in their direction.
"Should we run?" Matt asked.
"Best not to, unless we have to," Susan decided. "I figure he could catch us if he wanted to."
The animal took another step, then another... and Matt realized that it was running toward them. Its huge size made the movements seem slow, but each stride was enormous, and it was suddenly a lot closer to them.
"Run!" Susan hissed. Matt didn't need any prodding. He took half a dozen quick backward steps, afraid to turn away, then he did turn, and ran as fast as he had ever run in his life. Behind him he heard the sloth crashing through brush, and the sound of Susan's footsteps. Wait a minute. Guys didn't run ahead of girls, that just wasn't done. He half turned as he ran, and Susan nearly ran over him. He was so startled that he tripped over his own feet and hit the ground, hard.
"You okay?"
"Skinned my elbow," he said. "Nothing serious."
They watched the sloth, who seemed to have completely lost interest in them.
"Just scaring us off, I guess," Susan said. "It's so big I'll bet it doesn't have any predators, at least
not when it's full-grown."
"Looks like it could pretty well crush a saber-tooth."
"No kidding. Did you see the size of the claws on that thing?"
"Three on each hand. Long as my arm."
"He's pretty well tearing up that tree."
They watched, from a good distance, as the giant sloth stripped leaves and bark from a tree.
"Wonder why he came after us?" Matt asked.
"Maybe it's a female, maybe there's a cub nearby."
IN the next two hours they encountered a lot of wildlife, though none as dramatically. Several times they saw what looked to be ordinary jackrabbits darting in and out of bushes. Once a wolf regarded them for a while from a distance of a hundred yards, then trotted off. Twice they encountered small herds of deer. They looked like ordinary deer to Matt. He supposed a man who had spent a lot of time with deer in the crosshairs of his rifle might have spotted differences in these animals and modern ones.
He had never hunted. He might have to learn. Could he figure out how to make a useful bow and arrows? A spear? Could he learn to throw it hard and far enough to bring down a swift, alert deer? He suspected he could get mighty hungry while acquiring that skill. Maybe traps would be better. How did one make a rabbit trap?