Snatched by cmsix

Chapter 1

The feeling had been with me all day and I didn't know what was causing it. Somehow I just felt like someone or something was watching me, but I knew that wasn't possible. No one could be watching without me knowing.

Since my arrival on Margata I'd been lucky, no doubts about that, but I didn't need to rely on luck anymore. I'd become a first class woodsman in my time here, even though I'd had to use the learn by doing approach. Believe me, it was the only approach available.

No, I wasn't here of my own volition. I didn't know why I was here, I didn't know how I got here, and I didn't really know where I was, exactly. Well, I knew where I was in relation to where I'd been last night, and last week, and I even remembered everywhere I'd been since I'd arrived, about eighteen months ago. The trouble was I didn't know what planet I was on, or at least I didn't know where it was in relation to earth, the planet I'd been born on. I did know its speaking inhabitants called it Margata.

This heavenly body was a lot like earth, and I was thankful for that at least. It had forests, streams, lakes, mountains, rivers, oceans, prairies, and deserts. I'd seen all those with my own eyes. There were edible plants and animals, a sun to give me daylight and two moons to put light on the subject when the sun was down. In fact the moons were the first things to let me know for sure that I wasn't still on earth.

On the second night of a planned two week stay for mostly fishing but some hunting, in Alaska, I had been removed from Earth, whether I wanted to be or not. All I knew for sure was that someone with a lot more on the ball than any earthman had wanted me here. I hadn't had a hint so far of what they wanted me here for.

In my original condition, preflight - or pre-whatever-happened - I wouldn't have lasted two weeks, well with a lot of clawing and scratching I might have made four. Plans and preparations had been made though.

That last night on earth I'd slipped into my two-man tent and into my artic sleeping bag on my twin bed sized airbed and gone almost instantly to sleep. I'd been planning to get up early for my first fishing session.

Of course I had plenty of food and supplies to last for two weeks, the amount of time I planned to spend in the first place. I had my synthetic stocked sporterized M1, my Glock, and more ammunition than I could possibly need in two weeks. I also had my fishing tackle and plenty of lures. For a recreational camping trip I was well prepared.

When it came down to moving to a different planet entirely, I was not well prepared. Two weeks worth of food will not suffice to allow time for acclimation to and learning about a different home planet.

After my first day of some disbelief and mostly panic, and a night I had a hell of a time sleeping during, I got some relief the next morning. There was new information in my head. I know that sounds stupid but that's the best way to put it. I just knew things I hadn't known when I went to bed and tried to go to sleep the night before.

For instance, that's how I knew I was on Margata, the forth planet out from its sun. That's also how I knew qaka, a roe deer size and type animal, was good to eat. That's how I knew zwangi were the easiest fish to catch and probably one of the best to eat, and also how I knew they'd usually hit a Tiny Torpedo, a top-water lure commonly used in bass fishing.

My new knowledge later let me know that mendop, the apple-looking fruit I was thinking of trying would make me sick for days and that the kwaldap was a sort of citrus clone that was very good for me and tasty too.

I didn't even know what all I now knew, because things only popped up when they seemed needed. Like the mendop info made itself available seconds before I pulled one off its bush to take a test bite.

Mendops could be eaten, by the way, but they had to be thrice boiled first, draining away the water each time, a little like poke salad. I also knew that they were even more edible if fried in bacon grease. Of course I wasn't clued in on exactly where to get bacon grease, or bacon either.

This store of knowledge, combined with several timely warning jolts, had saved my ass many times since my second morning here. I'm still firmly convinced that during my first days here I must have been in some type of protective custody situation. Else one or more of the Kwagi would have stumbled on me, and that would have surely been unhealthy for me in the state I was in at that time.

Kwagi were what they called themselves and they were decidedly odd to my way of thinking. They looked like, or very like, a normal human from earth and they seemed to operate on a near identical basis, albeit on a several thousand years in earth's past basis.

They were slightly larger than humans, with most of the men coming in at six foot five or a little better and most of the women ranging from five-eight to six feet.

At six-two and two hundred and forty five pounds, I was a fairly large man on earth. I'm a shrimp here, since I haven't seen an adult male Kwagi that looked an ounce under two-eighty.

To me they seemed smarter and farther along than what I'd thought Cro-Magnon might have been. They seemed to live together in small groups of thirty or so and they either built crude structures or lived in caves if they were available. Of course there was a ritual song and dance when a male wanted to join an established group.

Said ritual was why I hadn't attempted to join any of the groups I had managed to keep from encountering. You see, to join you had to fight your way in.

It normally wasn't a fight to the death or even to serious injury. Winning was not required for entrance, and after the fight, if you were banged up alarmingly, you would be tended to as if you'd been a member all along, even if you weren't going to be allowed to join the group you'd still be nursed back to good health.

These amenities didn't keep me from noting that the fight was usually between the newcomer and the largest member of the established group, or Calak, as they called their small tribes. You fought the largest man, or rarely a slightly smaller man who was probably a much better fighter. You fought the Zakat - the Calak's leader.

All this knowledge had been gathered by me or revealed to me from my new facts. Other provisions had also been made to help me get along on my own here. Most of them, the tangible things, had been in the cache of supplies and equipment that had joined my other supplies the night of my trip, but some had appeared at times when whoever or whatever put me here decided I needed them.

That first day of don't know whether to shit or go blind was pretty much a nonproductive time for me. I didn't even notice that all my camping supplies and equipment had come with me and had in fact been supplemented, and I didn't bother to do anything but fret and worry, not even eating one bite.

By the next morning I was very hungry and even that subsided when I started looking in my things for food, because my things had changed. I'd had them all in traditional camping type storage. You know what I mean, an enormous backpack and a couple of large duffle bags. The M1 was in a hard case and so were both my rods and reels. My remaining fishing gear was in a large tacklebox.

When I discovered that my things had made the trip and started digging in them for food I found them all now stored in what had to be custom made aluminum cases and a large trunk of the same manufacture. It was the size of a big steamer trunk and it was designed to stand on end and open like a steamer trunk did. It even had a set of drawers on one side and a type of closet metaphor on the other.

With only a little examination and fumbling around, I found that all the cases would interlock and ride in a well-balanced state on the two wheeled loading type dolly that had been provided. The dolly was designed for rough terrain in that it had pneumatic tires approximately eighteen inches in diameter and they looked like nothing so much as extra heavy duty bicycle wheels.

A cursory inventory showed me that I had about twice as many sets of clothes as before, nearly three times as much food and oddly I had a thousand extra rounds of ammunition for my M1 and fifteen hundred more rounds for my Glock. I was happy when I saw this since it came up from my new facts that the M1 would be perfect for hunting both the qaka, one of which I'd seen at a distance, and the thaka, a large herbivore seemingly of the bovine persuasion that did not taste just like chicken.

I'd spent three more days in my first location before I got an urge, that I'm not sure was mine alone, to move on. After packing all my equipment and placing it on the dolly as I'd been subtly informed it should be, I left, heading in the direction my new senses told me was north by northwest.

Somehow, the dolly seemed to be perfectly balanced and to travel in near silence. I was sure I was making more noise than it did, and I'll brag and say that even then I was a pretty good woodsman.

Later I found that I must be every bit as good in the woods as I thought, because I walked up to within a hundred and fifty yards of one of the thakas as it grazed in a large clearing. Knowing that this was a chance for some fresh meat that I would surely need soon, I stood the dolly up, unslung my M1, and took a rest against the space age steamer trunk. Just before I fired I got my first jolt.

You wouldn't really call it a jolt, I guess. It wasn't painful, but it was a noticeable quick tensing and releasing of all the muscles along my backbone, something you wouldn't normally do very often, if ever. It did get the message across that I probably shouldn't fire. I didn't, but wondered why it had been ill advised. I took hold of my dolly again and moved off, resigning myself to more of my precious packaged food again tonight.

As often happens, things made more sense in the morning. After making a pot of coffee and frying some previously freeze dried sausage, I happened to notice a new aluminum case lying on the other side of my dolly/trunk combination. Someone had left me a gift in the night.

Examining it, I got an inkling of the reason for what had happened to me yesterday just before I was about to fire. The six-foot long by eighteen-inch square case held a compound bow, two dozen arrows, plus other supplies and equipment for bow hunting. Probably the report from the shot I'd been planning to make would have been troublesome.

The arrows had screw-on points and screw-on fletching units, and the shafts were made of some material that I couldn't identify. There was also a separate case with a hundred extra arrow shafts, dozens of extra arrow points and fletching units. No doubt they were disassembled for more compact storage, since my cart was now going to be a little bulky.

The shafts weren't metal, or didn't seem to be, but they weren't carbon fiber either. I don't guess it mattered as long as they worked as expected. A few seconds later I laughed when I noticed a three-foot diameter foam type arrow backstop, complete with a target and a folding stand to hold it in place for practice.

I was fairly competent with a bow, even though I hadn't had one with me for the hunting and fishing vacation I'd thought I was taking in the first place. Even being an accomplished archer didn't mean I could pick up a new bow, one unlike any I'd used before and with arrows I'd never tried before, and be accurate without at least a little practice.

After eating a little more and finishing off the coffee I'd made, I set the target up and put practice points on the arrows to give the new bow a try. It was amazing.

Any archer can tell when he's using a quality bow; this one was better than any I'd ever had. Its action was smooth and powerful and the bow seemed custom made for me by someone who knew what they were doing. It probably was.

With a couple of hours practice I was good enough to take game. I know I could have easily taken the thaka I'd been about to shoot yesterday. Later in the day I got a qaka from a little farther out, but it was pretty much a non-event.

Gutting and skinning the qaka was less trouble than a whitetail deer would have been and in an hour and a half I had it cut up and was cooking a haunch. I had it spitted over a small fire and when I wondered if there were parasites here that might cause me trouble in undercooked meat, my new knowledge let me know that there were none that could infest me.

Ah yes, my first qaka kill, I remember it well even though it had been eighteen earth months ago to the best of my reckoning. That was then as they say and this was now.

I no longer worried about finding food since it was plentiful - walking, swimming, or growing. The game here was slow to learn that I could kill them from such distances and the fish were downright whores for almost any artificial lure.

Qaka and Thaka did have a good understanding of the dangers of getting into spear casting range of Kwagi hunters and they were constantly watchful. I assumed they considered me more of the same. My arrows were almost always their last surprise. I hadn't had even one get away from me yet.

The Kwagi didn't do that well, though they did well enough. They were usually armed with what seemed to be fairly high quality spears tipped with the expected flint point. The ones I'd observed, usually from high up in a tree, were good hunters. Still it was a lot more difficult to get within fifty yards that seemed to be their normal comfortable range.

The Kwagi also needed more kills than I did since there were many more mouths to feed. I know that a group of thirty or so isn't that large, but it does require a lot more meat than a group of one.

I felt fairly safe watching from a tall tree if I could arrange it, because I never saw the Kwagi climbing any. It seemed to me that they would want to sometimes, to get a better look around if nothing else, but I never caught them at it, and I had observed them often.

I was planning to petition a Calak for entry as soon as I decided on the one I thought would be the most promising. A petition with my fists, as it were. I hadn't made up my mind yet though, and I'll admit I was still trying to figure out the details of their mating customs and find the available female that seemed the most attractive.

Up to now I hadn't been able to tumble to the details. Things would be rocking along swimmingly with nothing that seemed out of the ordinary to me, and then a couple would be paired off and the marriage ceremony underway without anything going on beforehand. Nothing I could discover anyway.

There was no obvious courting ritual evident and by the light of two silvery moons I never caught any of the unattached slipping around at night. It seemed that by mutual community consent a couple would just pair up one morning and the festivities would begin shortly. These shindigs always lasted three days and they usually covered the same ground.

The bride and groom would pair off one morning and stay together all day, talking and flirting and the like. Any duties they might normally have were on hold while almost all the rest of the Calak made preparations for the feasting the next day that would last into the night.

Bright and early the next morning there would be a short ceremony by the Matatu, their medicine man equivalent I think, and then the couple would still stay together but the eating would begin for everybody. About midway through the afternoon the drinking would begin.

I don't know what they drank but I do know that it got them very drunk and I also know that the Matatu was the one responsible for making it. Of course it had to be made ahead of time, and I'd observed that Matatus usually spent three or four days out of each week working on the process.

It seemed there was always a large skin container over a fire and it was used only for this process, also, there was always someone tending the fire, day and night. They didn't stay with it the whole time but the older children would share the duty of sending someone to visit it often.

When a Matatu decided that a batch was ready, they'd smother the fire with soil, let things cool off, and then dip the brew, gajee, out with a wooden bowl that was only used for this process. They poured it into bags that I knew were made from thaka stomachs, because I'd watched Matatus making them.

At any rate, the drinking lasted until few could stand on their own, usually fairly late into the night. There were always a few who were not allowed to get roaring drunk and were cut off from the gajee supply about an hour before sunset.