The trouble was, he didn't know exactly where he was. This New Mexico simply did not look like anything he remembered. He folded the map. Then, realizing that he was hungry, he plucked some of the fruit. The big, heavy globes were still yellowish, not quite the ruby red of ripeness, and they were more tart than he liked. He tossed most of the fruit across the fence for the Taurs in the soyfield: They probably liked that stuff better than he.
And then the first car appeared on the road.
It was really a light, four-wheeled truck. In the back, gripping the roof of the cab, stood a tall young male Taur, still bearing its horns, and the driver was a young woman in overalls and a visored cap.
She pulled up behind Krake's three-wheeler, peering into the grove. "Hello there," she called. "Having trouble?"
He shook his head as he approached, but he was hardly looking at the girl. His eyes were on the Taur. The huge, strange creature was bobbing its head, too. Krake decided it was nearly mature, its horns already sharp-pointed and, even in the sunlight, with a hint of the adult glow that would soon suffuse them. Its purple-blue eyes were fixed on Krake. The space captain jumped back as the Taur vaulted lightly over the side of the truck, sniffing at the strange human.
"Easy there, Thrayl," the young woman commanded. The Taur obediently backed away, and she said, "He won't hurt you, you know."
Krake kept his eyes fastened on the animal. Curiously, he wasn't afraid. There was something about the way the Taur held himself, the way he gazed at Krake out of those immense purply eyes, that was reassuring—almost as though the thing liked him.
He turned to the young woman. "I don't know much about Taurs," he began—and then, as he got his first good look at her face: "My God!"
The Taur made a worried noise, and the young woman drew back. "Is something wrong?" she asked. "Are you all right?"
"All right?" he repeated. Then he shook his head. "I—I was just surprised, that's all. You, uh, you look a lot like somebody I used to know, and it was kind of a shock there for a minute." He collected himself and went on to finish the sentence, still staring at her. "I started to say that I don't know much about Taurs," he apologized. "I've seen them, of course, but we didn't have much contact with them on my ship." She looked even more surprised at that, as though he had said he were unfamiliar with sunrises, or with rain. Then, belatedly answering her question, "I'm fine, I just took a break from driving. My name's Francis Krake. I used to live around here."
"Moon Bunderan," she responded, offering her hand out of the window. She looked at him curiously. "You used to live around here, and you don't know much about Taurs?"
"It was a long time ago."
"It must've been," she agreed skeptically, but she opened the door and climbed down. She was very young, he saw, not much older than the Taur bull who was dancing nimbly around on his four-toed feet, keeping his great eyes fixed on Krake. And she was not, he realized, really very much like the woman he had taken her for at first. On the other hand, she was definitely rather pretty—a fact which was getting more and more important to Francis Krake, in the unaccustomed company of all these humans on Earth—though there was a look of worry in her face that he didn't understand. As she turned to close the door he saw that her hair was brushed smoothly into a pony tail. There was no implant scar on the back of her head.
"You're not a memmie," he said, a little bit startled, a lot pleased.
"No, of course I'm not," she said, surprised in her turn. "Why would I be? We don't have memmies here, except a few in the cities. And," peering up at him, making the same discovery, "you're not either."
He grinned. "Sorry. I said I've been away for a long time, and at the airport almost everybody I talked to wore a memo disk. I didn't mean anything by it."
She nodded to show she accepted his explanation, and then said suddenly, "I could have been, though. I thought of it once."
He looked at her doubtfully. She said, "It was because I wanted to be a doctor. We used to have one—he delivered me, and he was our doctor for years."
"And he was a memmie?"
"No! That was the point," she explained. "I loved Dr. Tetford more than any other man but my father, and I wanted to be like him. But when he died there wasn't anybody. One of the ranch hands volunteered to take his place. I hated that idea—but he did it; he went to the city, and got a slot cut in his head, and when he came back he had the disks to stick in his skull. Oh," she said, in justice, "he was all right as a doctor, I guess. But he was still the same ignorant herder! And—I just couldn't be like him."
"No, of course not," Krake said, looking at her with either curiosity or sympathy, he wasn't sure which. He changed the subject. "Maybe you can help me. I'm looking for a place called Portales."
She blinked at him. "Portales? But you're on the Portales ranch now."
He blinked back at her. "I'm not talking about a ranch. I mean the town."
She shook her head. "There isn't any town called Portales anymore," she said positively.
"But I used to live there."
"Mister," she said, "nobody's lived there for a long time. It isn't even a town anymore. My dad's grandfather said the floods got it a hundred years ago—"
"Floods! In Portales?"
She nodded. "After the Turtles built that undersea baffle in the North Pacific. It was because of the Dry Time," she explained. "My dad's grandfather used to tell us about it. There was irrigation farming here once. Then the aquifers were just pumped dry—no water left at all. The desert came back. There wasn't any way to liye here then, so people just moved away—"
"You were talking about floods, not drought!"
She nodded earnestly. "That was why the Turtles did all that macroengineering. They wanted to make it possible to farm here again—to do us good, you see. So they built the undersea baffle that diverted a warm tropical current past the Aleutians and through the Bering Strait, and—"
"Miss Bunderan," Krake said sharply, "why are you telling me all this?"
She was frowning at him, obviously wondering. "I'm explaining why the town's gone. When the weather really began to change, there were some really bad floods. The whole town just got wiped out. I don't think there's much left."
"I still want to find it," he said stubbornly. "Meanwhile, I need a place to camp for the night."
She studied him appraisingly. "All you want is a campsite?"
"That's right. I've got all the gear in the car. I just want a place to set up my tent." He hesitated, then offered an explanation. "I guess you could say I'm on a kind of a vacation here."
She nodded, then reachcd a quick decision. "You could probably just camp anywhere you liked around here. Nobody's likely to chase you, as long as you don't start a brush fire or leave too much junk around. If you want permission, you're welcome to camp anywhere on our land."
He looked at her curiously. Flushing, she said, "Well, it's not our land, exactly. A Turtle company bought up all the old deeds after they changed the climate—seemed fair enough, people say, because it sure wasn't worth anything before that."
"So they helped you by changing the climate. And now they own the land," Krake said, his tone non-judgmental.
"My dad says it's fair," she said firmly, and that closed the question. "Anyway, he's foreman on the ranch, but right now he's off at the far end with my brothers. I know they'd be glad enough to have you. Our headquarters is just about ten kilometers down the road, at the fork. If you take the left-hand road it'll take you to where the town used to be. At least, I think it will. There's a stream there for water. Tell me, what are you on vacation from?"