“Ok Gordo, walk me through this again. Because it seems to me like you are trying to convince me to help you create a fountain of concentrated piss, and thats… ” I raised my hands, exasperated. Working with Gordo felt like a mirror opposite of working with Baba. Where Baba was patient and mentally to the point of being patronizing in his lessons, Gordo was manic and erroneously assumed I grokked his hair-brained schemes as fast as he dished them out.

  “Nitrates, Jack. Sodium salt,” he gestured at me with enthusiasm that seemed worrying, coming from a man who was on the brink of death just a few days ago, and still had a gaping wound in his side.

  “Ammonia!” he exclaimed, as if he invented the substance himself. “Don’t you get what that means?!”

  I sighed, inwardly. He was like that since we let him out of the hut and showed him the Duplicators. Yes, they now had a capital letter, Gordo spoke about them with enough feverish reverence to merit it. It was love at first sight if I ever saw one, a die-hard nerd encountering a clearly fantastical object that just happened to be immensely useful in conjunction with his greatest passion.

  “Swear on my Mum’s grave Gordo,” Candace shouted from the distant tent the girls erected for their privacy. “If you stink up this place worse than it already reeks, thanks to your rootin’ experiments, I'm tossing your arse back into the river.”

  “Your mother is alive,” Gordo said matter of factly. “You told us yourself.” he immediately ducked without even looking, when a half-eaten nutty bar flew over his head.

  “Jack,” he followed, with more sensible energy this time, “I know you are not a chemist, but you are a reasonable, technical guy. With ammonia, we can have significantly better disinfectants. We could use it to tan leather, dye stuff, create fertilizer for farming, or even make explosives! Especially if we manage to separate other nitrates as well.”

  “Leather tanning - that makes sense, doing it the primitive way drove me nuts. But I don't think we need the rest. There is no need for us to farm, thanks to the Duplicators. And why would we need dye or explosives? We are not planning to start a war or tie-dye our shirts.”

  “Lets dye shirts!” Nata said. “This white is boring. And it get dirty!”

  “We might as well dye them, since we need to tailor everything from scratch anyway. Your tunics suck, Jack, were you making them blind, or drunk?” Candace emerged from the tent. Just like the girls, she turned a copy of my tunic into a knee-length dress by narrowing the sleeves and adding something they called a ‘princess’ seam’ on the back. Together with the makeshift leather shoes, and hose-leggins they invented, they looked positively medieval.

  “Ingrates!” I mumbled. Gordo rolled his eyes. He himself did not fit into my clothes, being considerably girthier than even my billowing tunics and pants waist allowed, so instead he wrapped himself into several blankets of white silk. Reclining next to the Duplicator under a tarp canopy, he looked like an idle Roman patrician or sheik in his serai. That is if he was not surrounded by shelves upon shelves of clay jars filled with the outcomes of his various experiments.

  “What about explosives Jack? I could give you gunpowder by the end of the week, crude ersatz for dynamite by the end of the month?” He looked at me with pleading eyes, like a child begging for an extra plate of cookies.

  “What do I need explosives for? Are we at war with Russia or something?”

  “Russia would win!” Nata chimed in, and both she and Sveta started humming their national anthem with a mock salute.

  “Uh,” Gordo spoke in a theatrical whisper. “For the …. bird.”

  Ah. there it was. The moment my guests, or rather new housemates settled, I told them everything that had happened to me since my arrival. They nodded through my story, having experienced similar horrors and challenges of their own. But my description of the terror bird spooked them. Hyenas, wolves, otters, even bears, were predators they could easily fathom fending off, if we armed ourselves and worked together. But the damned dinosaur was just too big, too tough. Our spears, traps, slings and arrows, if we ever got to making decent bows, would only slow it down a bit.

  For now, our shaky alliance with the otters was the only thing that could potentially let us defeat it, if it came to a fight on our home turf. But out there in the woods? We stood no chance. Does not matter if there were five of us or fifty, and what spears we brandished, the beast would plow through us like a bulldozer and tear us limb from limb, the way it did to the unicorn herd.

  “I guess this is one option to consider,” I tentatively acquiesced. “But I'm concerned with the, uh, warhead delivery system. We can’t just lob dynamite sticks at the thing while running through the woods. We would be just as likely to blow ourselves up, or mistime it and have it explode only after the bird ate us. Can’t we try something simpler, like maybe Molotov cocktails? I know you plan to make alcohol soon, and we have plenty of combustible fats to fraction.”

  Gordo winced and shook his head. “Trust me, I considered it. Fiery death is a fresh idea in my mind, since as you recall, I ended up here precisely because I died in an explosion of acetone fire.” He chuckled to himself. “Fire would normally be my go-to solution, if not for the fact that from your description, the beast is pretty fearless, and unlikely to just flee at the sight of a flame. I don’t think I can produce fuel burning hot enough to just kill the bird instantly, and nothing short of instant kill makes sense in this hypothetical situation. I’d rather fight a feathered tyrannosaurus, than a feathered tyrannosaurus that is also angry and on fire.”

  I raised a finger. “Poison? I bet you considered it.”

  “Yes,” he nodded enthusiastically. “That would be optimal, if we could find something fast-acting enough. Maybe catch a viper and milk it, then multiply the venom. We need to catch several snakes and-”

  “No snakes, Gordo!” Candace shouted again, and lobbed another nutty bar at him. This time she scored a hit, but the man simply grabbed the projectile and started devouring it with gusto.

  “Let's start with poisonous plants and mushrooms maybe?” I volunteered.

  “For one,” he pointed at me with the half-eaten bar, “I don’t know anything about poisonous plants, let alone mushrooms, and not sure how we could investigate this safely.”

  “Surely it would be safer than snakes though?”

  “The snakes need not be alive. And some of them produce relatively fast-acting neurotoxins, which is something we need.” He finished the bar and flecked the crumbles off his chest. “I considered the idea of poisoning an animal carcass with slower-acting toxins and using it as bait, but I don’t think this bird you described eats carrion. At least not reliably enough to matter. We need something quicker.”

  “What about guns?” said Candace, who meanwhile meandered into Gordo’s makeshift lab, and picked up a polished chunk of steel from the pot. A chunk of real, decent steel me and Gordo spent a whole day and night processing out of my miserable excuse of iron bars using the best of his knowledge and my dubious quality muscle. We painstakingly surface-carburized a purified chunk of iron, then folded and forge-welded it countless times using potash flux Gordo came up with. The result was an approximation of the ancient pattern-welded steel, that supposedly had the optimal combination of hardness and elasticity possible for primitive metallurgists to achieve. It was our beautiful child of hard labor and ingenuity that Candace was now pawing.

  “Give me that.” I pulled it out of her hand, polished it with the hem of my shirt and carefully put it back into the pot. “You’re getting caramel flakes all over it. That’s sample contamination.”

  “Good man.” said Gordo proudly and beamed at me, nodding with approval. He was more than a bit of a mad scientist, a caveman alchemist if you will, but his laboratory was neat, clean, and perfectly organized. Which was understandable, since he spent the last few days breaking down the natural ingredients I provided into their baseline components, plenty of which were caustic, flammable, poisonous, medicinal, strongly adhesive, or all of it and more. For each, he could think of a dozen uses that were supposed to revolutionize our primitive lives, as he never failed to inform us profusely.

  “I can make gunpowder, no problem. I can probably design a simple, crude hand-cannon. But I do not have enough skill with metalworking to actually make one. Forging it out of steel is out of question, that is way above our skills. If we ever get our hands on tin, and pure enough copper I could make bronze, but I don’t have the faintest idea about casting bronze cannons. Or casting anything for that matter.”

  “You can make cannon of wood!” Nata shouted, clearly listening to our conversation.

  “No, I can’t, wood does not have the material properties to withstand the-”

  “Yes, yes! Nata is correct.” Sveta joined. “We know from history lessons. Tzar Peter the Great made wood cannons. This is fact.”

  “No, no,” Gordo shook his head, “this makes no sense. Wood alone does not have the tensile strength…” he frowned, and suddenly looked like he really needed to pace about, but couldn’t, “we would have to wrap it in steel, and even then… if only we had something like kevlar, some extremely strong fiber to laminate… ” his eyes got wide, staring at the spider silk blanket wrapped around his torso.

  “I'm sorry Nata, you are of course, entirely correct. We can do this. In fact, we will do this.”

  I patted him on the back.

  “Now, now, let's shelve our artillery experiments for later, when we have more mundane problems covered, and you are not bedridden. We need to step up with our pottery development, disinfectant, and most of all, you promised me cement. Which was supposed to be very easy to make, so where is it? If we pour ourselves a new house out of reinforced concrete, that would go a long way making us safe from predators and the coming winter as well.” I learned that when Gordo was on a roll of mad alchemy, it was easier to redirect him than stop him outright.

  He frowned, clearly understanding that he was being gently manipulated, but could not resist the lure of a new challenge. Flailing around, and muttering to himself, he picked several clay jars, mortars, pestles, and bark dishes.

  “Gather ‘round children, Uncle Miguel will teach you some science. Exciting!”

  The sisters groaned at the much-overused joke. We have been all roped into being his assistants for a while now, and had the burns on our tunics and singed nose hair to show for it.

  “I promise, this will not be like the last time,” he hastily added, “nothing is likely to explode or catch on fire.”

  “Ow!” I yelped, when my sweaty finger stung from the contact with some chalky powder. I instinctively put the hurting digit in my mouth, burning the tip of my tongue.

  “Ah, please don’t do that again, Jack.” Gordo waged a finger at me. “As a rule of thumb, we do not stick our fingers in unknown substances, nor do we eat them.”

  “Aww! Muh Mhth!” I muttered through tears and spat.

  “You’ll be alright, this was just caustic lime. First-degree burn at worst.” he quickly handed me a clay vial. “Here, gargle with this, it will help.”

  I did.

  And nearly hurled.

  “What…” I muttered, barely containing the contents of my stomach.

  “For your peace of mind, let's just say it was… vinegar. Yeah. Let's stick with that, boludo.” he winked at me.

  As I spat and heaved, he continued.

  “So what are we making, class? We are making concrete, hurray!” He was clearly enjoying himself. “Everybody grab a tray and a stick. Let's mix some ingredients, and see what happens.”

  We did as he told us, with cautious expressions on our faces.

  “Now, what is concrete? It is cement and sand and gravel mixed in just about equal thirds. But what is cement then?” He pointed at my pained face.

  “Cement is a reactive agent combined with a binding agent. Our reactive agent, which does have some binding properties as well, is the highly basic, inedible calcium oxide, also known as caustic lime. Less smart people than us would have used campfire ash which would be a mixture of calcium and potassium oxides, but we can do better than that. We triple-burned calcium-rich clam shells to achieve as pure calcium oxide as possible in these conditions, and stored it in an airtight and watertight jar. When in contact with water, like the one we will be pouring into it, or saliva of some foolish people, it turns into a highly reactive solution and releases a non-negligible amount of heat.”

  He did just that, sprinkling water onto the small mound of whitish powder on his tray, which started hissing and bubbling like a drain cleaner being poured down the pipe.

  “Now, as this wonderful magic is going on, we will quickly add our extra binding agent, purified bentonite clay!” he tossed a handful of mustard coloured dirt into the bubbling mess, and stirred. The bubbling sounded more goopy now.

  “Now, boring people with equally boring civic engineering degrees would tell you we are doing it all wrong, that we should process the lime dry and separately, but we will not listen to them, as they are a universe away. The way we do it is the way of the ancient Romans, you mix it hot to make it last.”

  We did the same with our batches, with similar results.

  “Now, we should add sand and gravel, yes? But that would be boring!” He brought another, slightly bigger tray. “We will use kiln-slaked glass foam, ground to dust, which Jack and I produced as a side project while making steel. It's the closest thing to the famous Roman pumice we have, and is, if anything, superior.”

  He poured the crunchy mass into the goop, and mixed it. The resulting concrete was a bubbling, gritty mess with lime bubbles in it.

  “It look gross.” Nata commented. “We did it wrong?”

  “She has a point,” I added. “I poured some foundations in my time, pretty sure concrete should not look like that. We made…quicklime porridge with foamy suds in it?”

  “Trust me,” Gordo was positively shining with pride. “it is perfect! We shall build a new Colosseum out of it!”

  We eyed him skeptically.

  “Ditch the toga, Gordo, ” Candace commented. “it makes you hallucinate you’re Julius Caesar. ”

  Regardless of his delusions of Roman grandeur, we helped him cast a small cinder block out of the goop, and prepare the ingredients for the new batch.

  “So what now?” Sveta asked, poking a still moist concrete block with a stick. “When it will be ready? Tomorrow? Tomorrow’s tomorrow?”

  “Overmorrow.” I corrected her.

  “That ain't a real word, you dag,” Candace snorted.

  “Oh, not that fast, rather in about forty days or so, it should cure.” Gordo said cheerfully.

  “What?!” Candace balked, “By then we would be arse-deep in snow, you loon! We need something quicker-”

  She trailed off. There was a loud noise of something crashing into the riverbank, right next to the jetty. The crash was soon followed by angry cursing in several languages, and then the unmistakable growling chorus of the otter pack readying to strike.

  No. No no no no…

  I shot up and ran towards the river.

  My mind was so focused on the terrified voices in front of me, that I almost missed the sight of Candace sprinting past me like a hunting cheetah. She ran up the pine log and froze in place, making me nearly crash into her.

  We ran straight into a battle, which was seconds away from turning into carnage. A huge raft, easily four times the size of mine, was rammed into the reed thickets and over the pine, its prow high up in the air. A bundle of people was sliding down the wet logs and straight toward the maws of a pack of otters.

  A huge man, nearly the same size as Baba, grabbed the rest in a bear hug and with a bout of hysterical strength, hoisted them up and away from the growling jaws.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  One person, a lean, balding man with muscles even less impressive than mine, slipped his grasp and landed in the water. He had a wooden club in hand, and raised it in desperate defense.

  “No!! Stop! Don’t!” I leaped at the man, trying to grab his arm, but it was too late. Before I managed to cross the last two steps toward him, his clumsy blow connected with the head of the closest otter.

  “...no.” was all I managed to breathe out. The pack exploded forward, maws snapping over his pale flesh. In a split second, the man was torn open from the groin up, and his right arm, the one holding the club, vanished. One mercy, the explosion of violence flung him like a ragdoll, and slammed his head over the raft hard enough to crack his skull and snap his neck, instantly ending his misery. Another second later it was over, the otters stopped their violence as abruptly as it started, and the corpse pitched forward like a man readying to well-deserved sleep.

  Only then I noticed that the woman closest to the killed man was shrieking a high-pitched wail of absolute terror.

  Then she did the absolute worst thing she could do.

  She leaned forward and grabbed the corpse.

  Fast like a striking snake, the closest otter burst forward and closed its maw on her fingers.

  “No!” I roared, and did something very, very foolish.

  I placed myself between the woman and the otter. It snarled at me, spewing fresh blood and finger chunks, teeth bare centimeters from my face. But a split second passed, and it did not attack me.

  So, kissing my idiotic ass goodbye, I snarled right back at it and headbutted it into the neck.

  It recoiled, more from surprise than pain. I did not have time to blink before it hit me back with the side of its muzzle, with enough force to rattle my teeth, and then closed its maw on my shoulder.

  It was not a violent bite, merely a warning by otter standards. Still, if not for the multiple layers of spider silk, it would have cracked my shoulder blade and dislocated the joint. I yelped in pain, but managed to turn the sound into another growl.

  ‘Well, fuck you, then,’ I thought through fear and pain and bit it back, on it’s fluffy and vulnerable ear.

  It let go of me immediately, and backed off with a painful croak.

  I snarled again, and lunged forward.

  The otter, which I now saw must have been a juvenile, scampered back, until it was again shoulder to shoulder with its pack.

  The humans wear dead-silent. The otters eyed me curiously, immobile as statues.

  The only sound was a hoarse roar coming from my own throat.

  The pack parted, and the Alpha emerged from the water, as big as a crocodile, and twice as deadly. She bumped aside the juvenile, and faced me. Her enormous black eyes gazed right into mine, and my growl instantly died to a whisper. Her gaze sent me a simple, primitive message that easily crossed the barrier of language and species.

  Back off. Or die.

  I looked away, and flopped back onto the raft behind me, exposing my throat and belly. She made a show of sniffing me all over, as to remind me, and everyone around, that she could just as easily have eviscerated me with a single bite.

  I heard Candace exhale, only just now. Then a soft whimper from the woman who just lost half of her hand.

  “Nobody moves until they leave.” I whispered.

  The dead man was gone.

  He was quietly pulled under the water and vanished when we were distracted, as if by a cheap parlor trick.

  All that was left was blood, blood everywhere.

  The water, the raft, and the people on it, everything was painted dark crimson.

  The otters disappeared soon after, no longer interested in us. The woman clutching her mangled hand uttered a heaving cry, and vomited before fainting. I was about to hurl too, but my teeth were closed shut with fear.

  Something grabbed me from behind, and pulled me out of the water.

  I whirled back and was ready to attack, before I noticed it was Candace embracing me in a forceful hug.

  “Snap the fuck out of it!” She muttered. “Look at them!”

  For the first time I truly saw them. The injured woman was soft-featured and plump, her blood-splattered face slack with shock. Two Arabic-looking men, one tall and broad, another diminutive and wide-eyed with fear, were trying to lift her up. The heavyset, pink-faced giant jumped off the raft, puffing under his prodigious mustache. He was soon followed by a hard-faced Asian man with a buzzcut, a skinny Asian boy with a wild mop of hair, and lean-bodied, middle-aged White woman with pale blonde hair and an utterly calm face of an ice queen. All but the last woman held wooden clubs, but only the mustachioed man looked like he still meant to use it.

  Possibly use it on me.

  “Shore. Now.” I barked, pointing at the bleeding woman. “We have bandages, supplies. Come on.”

  He hesitated for a split second, but followed.

  “Gordo!” I shouted before we even crossed the waterline. “Casualty! Disinfectant, painkiller, now! Nata, Sveta, bandages! Blankets!”

  Again, Candace bolted past me and stormed into the hut. She emerged carrying a load of blankets.

  We laid the bleeding woman next to Gordo. She moaned and started shaking.

  “Talk to me, Miguel,” I shook him, “what do we do?!”

  “How the fuck do I know, Im a chemist, not a doctor!”

  The big man kneeled next to us.

  “Tourniquet?‘ he asked, squeezing the woman’s wrist to slow down the gush of blood.

  “On fingers? How?!”

  The man with a buzzcut pushed past us, muttering something. He took a jug of clean water from Candace, and poured it over the bleeding hand. It revealed a jagged line where the fingers were supposed to be. Save for the lonely thumb, all were cut off as if by an industrial guillotine.

  “Báichī! Yúchǔn de yīngyǔ!” he muttered, waving his hand in desperation, pointing at the jars around. “Shénme.... fire water! Medicine help water!”

  Gordo handed him a small flask. The man smelled it suspiciously, winced, but proceeded to clean the wound with it. The woman spasmed with pain, and had to be restrained.

  “Is he a doctor?” I asked the big one, who seemed like their leader.

  “Nah.” he shook his head. “Butcher. I think. Or maybe a goat herder, or both, I don’t know. But he patched up a few people.”

  Nata brought a ball of silk thread and a fishbone needle. The man looked at it, at the ragged wound, and gestured at his own, thick, calloused hands.

  “Me no good. No good this!” He grabbed the wounded hand and pressed the edges of the wound together. “Woman do. Now do!”

  Nata froze, paralyzed. The icy blonde pushed her aside gently and took the needle and thread off her hands.

  “It’s alright, I’ll do it.”

  “You’re a nurse?” I asked.

  Her lips spread in a thin, wry smile. “Not a nurse.” She immobilized the woman’s forearm between her knees, and started sewing without hesitation. “A bit different trade, I'm afraid. But I did patch up a few broken girls, now and then.”

  Mercifully, the patient fainted again, long before she finished. For a solid minute nobody said a word, we just sat around her in exhausted silence. I noticed the kids, not just our girls but the new boy too, were soundlessly sobbing.

  Kids. Hah. Nobody could afford to be a kid in this world.

  The big man measured me with a wary gaze. I noticed his club never left his hands.

  “You in charge here?” he asked.

  “In charge? I’m n-”, Candace squeezed my thigh, “yeah, I suppose I am. This is my camp. Started it three months ago, then found the others. Or rather they found me. I’m Jacek Mularski, but you can call me Jack.” I offered him my hand.

  The big man grabbed it in his meaty paw. “Jacek Mularski?” He pronounced it flawlessly. “ Nice to meet ya. You a Polack? I knew a few of you folks, plenty of Poles in the Force. Even met a Jacek before.” He thumbed his chest. “William Donahue, MPD. I'm a cop from Minnesota, or at least, used to be. Now I’m, huh… a chief, I suppose, of the group of survivors across the river.”

  “How many?”

  “Seventy four, last time I checked…seventy three now, now that Larry…” his face grew darker for a minute, but he calmed himself down with visible effort.

  “...fuck. What the hell is going on?” Candace joined in.

  “I was hoping you could tell me.” He rubbed his face forcefully, as if trying to squeeze out emotional exhaustion out of his head. “All we know is the same goddamn story. We die, usually dramatically. We wake up in the woods, or the swamps, or neck-deep in the river in this forsaken place. I tried to save as many people as I could reach, but whatever is depositing us here is picking up the pace. Half the time we find corpses. And of those found alive, probably less than a fifth knows how to survive in the woods, the rest are just mouths to feed. Oh, and we pretty much ran out of food this morning, and cannot keep up boiling water to be safe for drinking, so the folks that aren’t weakened from the cold and dysentery are half-starved. Last but not least, we have packs of hyenas circling our camp, snatching people away in the middle of the night.”

  I was both impressed, and deeply saddened. William did a better job than me without literal magic devices to help him, and yet…

  “We have plenty of food,” I almost shouted, ignoring Candace who pinched my thigh again. “And clothes, blankets, and bandages. Even tools!”

  “Great. We just need to figure out how to get my people here. Without them drowning or being eaten,” he answered, not taking his eyes off me.

  “Now, wait a minute, mate,” Candace interjected. “You’re not getting over seventy people here. We can help ya, fine. But if you swamp this place with a horde of rando bludgers, who by your own words are starved and desperate out of their wits, were gon’ have a fuckin’ drama over here.”

  Donahue rose to his feet, suddenly looming over both of us.

  “D’all due respect Ma’am, I ain’t leaving my people to starve half a mile from this…” he gestured at my hut, Gordo’s lab, and the pile of goods next to it, “ this corn-utopia.”

  “Cornucopia?” I volunteered.

  “What I said. I hear ya reservations ‘bout it, and I understand, but by me, you can shove it up your…”

  Candace jumped to her feet fast like a spring-loaded trap. Her face was a hair’s breadth from Donahue’s, her teeth barred as if to bite his throat out.

  “Listen, ya fat wanker. We will do our best to help ya. Jack right here,” she gestured at me, “the absolute mad, reckless cunt he is, just jumped in front of a pack of cannibal otters to protect your ungrateful arses. So I'm bloody certain we showed ya enough of our good will. But you're not going to bring your whole lot here. Defo ain’t happening.”

  They battled stares for a few seconds, like grossly mismatched boxers before a bout.

  “Guys, please.” I was never all that good at diplomacy, but several years of being a dad of two unruly boys at least taught me something. “Calm down. You are both smarter than … this.” I had to physically push them apart.

  “Candace is right, I think.” I waved away Bill’s objections. “I'm not saying we won’t allow any of you here. We're not cruel. But we need to be practical.”

  “What's practical about letting my people starve and freeze? You clearly have more resources than seem possible, you’re hiding something.” Billy crossed his arms and frowned at me.

  “Let's show them, Jack.” Gordo said, raising painfully. “and then figure out together what to do next.”

  Candace shot him a deathly glare, but I nodded for him to continue.

  “Mister Donahue, let me show you something,” Miguel continued, and led the cop to the tree stump and the Duplicators. The rest of the newcomers followed, leaving the injured woman asleep on a pile of blankets. When they saw the Duplicators, their eyes went wide. With surprise, fear, suspicion, and in the case of the young boy, with glee rivaling Gordo’s.

  “This is how I survived, and why we have what we have,” I said, and nodded at Gordo, who tossed a stick into the Duplicator, only for two sticks to shoot out of the other, and bounced off the roof tarp.

  “Uff da!” Donahue shouted and backed off. “What in Jesus’ name is that?!”

  “As you said, our corn-utopia.” Gordo said with a grin, and patted him on the shoulder. “We call these, the Duplicators. We can endlessly duplicate food, clothes, bandages, whatever you want or need.” He nonchalantly tossed a handful of pinecones into the Duplicator to reinforce his words.

  The icy blonde interjected. “I do not understand then. Why can’t we all move across the river and join you? You could produce more food in minutes that we would need in a day. ”

  The young Asian boy sheepishly shook his head. “I am sorry, but Mister Jack and the other lady are right. It is a people problem and a math problem. Math problem we can solve. People problem we cannot solve. You know this William.”

  “Keito, you better explain. ‘Cause you're straining my patience right now.” Billy said gruffly. The boy, Keito, moved away from him, stepping closer to Gordo.

  “Math problem is hard. But not impossible.” Keito looked at Gordo, searching for a fellow soul who would understand him. “We are finding more and more people. First two in a week. Then four. Then eight, sixteen, then more, and now we have eighty. Will be more in the future. What is the word?”

  “Geometric progression” Gordo supplied.

  “Yes!” Keito continued. “But this, Duplicator? It can only make things as fast as we put in. When we make food, we do not make water for drinking. When we make water, we do not make clothes. When we make clothes, we are not making material for houses.” He gestured wildly, trying to mime a graph. “One math goes up. Other math stay flat. Disaster.”

  Gordo nodded, having figured out the same thing.

  “So what do you propose?” I felt like siding with Billy on this. “We cannot just abandon these people. Your people.”

  Keito paused looking for a way to explain. “We must make growing math with what we have. Progression.” he started rummaging through our wares, with no protest from otherwise neat freak Gordo. “We must make clothing for everyone. This cannot be helped. But not make food and water all day. This is not progression.” He grabbed a spearhead, some thread and a fishing hook. “Make tools for hunting, tools for fishing. Food-making tools. Tools to make houses, tools to make clothes. Tools to make tools!” He brandished my hammer, but squinted with barely masked disgust, and laid it down. “Maybe not this one, this is crap. Give people tools to make their own geo-metric progression.”

  “Don’t see why we can’t move our peeps across the river first. And do all that here, safe from the hyenas.” Billy crossed his arms, radiating disappointment and weariness, undercut with anger.

  “As your protege said,” Gordo interjected with a sigh, “This is a people problem. If we cram over eighty people, and more coming, around this,” he pointed at the Duplicators, “there will be violence in less than a day, deaths and worse in a week.”

  Billy frowned and shook his head. “I can control them. We have a decent system in place.” Even as he said that, both Keito and the smaller Arab man shook their heads.

  “We do not, William.” Keito challenged him, but did not dare to look up. “You keep people from fighting by beating up the bad ones with your club. Or have Hashké point a spear at them. They listen because they are afraid. And because you, Hashké, Marike and Vikram know how to help them survive. Give them food. But when they see the Duplicators, they will think they no longer need you. And they will understand that there is only one of you, and seventy of them.”

  Billy did not seem to be sold on the idea, and neither was the rest of his entourage, but they did not have a good counter-argument, only the worst one.

  “The way I see it,” Billy said with a cold edge to his voice,” the numbers crunch a bit differently. I have four strong and capable guys with clubs. Jack here has himself, a cripple, and three ladies, two of them kids. I could just say the Duplicators are mine to use as I see fit, and I get to decide how many people move here and when.” He did not move his club from where it was resting on his shoulder, but the message was clear.

  “Sod that,” Candace spat. “That's a load of copper talk, all words, no action.” She backed out a step, standing right next to a bunch of spears racked under the tarp tent, and put her hand on one. “And if yous dumb enough to try, my quid is on the team with actual rootin’ spears not rando sticks. ”

  “Come.” I just said to Billy, matter-of-factly, and led him back towards the river.

  I crouched down, picked a big pinecone, and tossed it into the water a few meters away from their raft. It hit the surface with a loud plop, sending circles to spread on the mirror-flat surface. Seconds later, the circles were disturbed by several distinct v-shaped waves. A giant furry shape burst out and grabbed the pinecone. For a few heartbeats, there was a pandemonium of screeching, splashing otters fighting for the prize. Then, just as sudden as it erupted, the chaos stopped and a dozen pairs of black eyes homed in on me and Billy. I nodded at them, and they vanished.

  “Do not threaten me or mine again, William.” I said calmly, holding back a spine-freezing bout of anxiety. “There will be no second warning.”

  He eyed me with a mixture of suspicion, fear and anger, and stormed off to join his group. He passed by Candace who strolled past him with a vulpine smile and an iron-tipped spear nonchalantly perched on her shoulder.

  “Fuck me sideways, Jack. I’ve seen blokes bluff with a bad hand of cards, but that was bluffin’ with a handful of soddin’ checkers. Think he bought it?

  I shook my head. “Unlikely, but I hope it was just enough to make him doubt his chances. But it's not exactly a bluff. If these guys decide to harm us, the ruckus might just as well cause the pack to rush in to investigate. And most likely eat everyone.”

  She nodded. “As much as I hate the furry bastards, this is oddly comforting.” She looked across the river. “I don’t see, then, how they could bring anyone across, much less the whole lot. They try to move a substantial number of people to our shore and some galah is bound to whack a curious otter over the head again, and there will be mayhem. ”

  I scratched my head, pondering. “Best we can do is to send Billy back with a raft packed with supplies, and have him promise he won’t be starting shit with our furball allies. I'm not against him sending people our way, provided he makes sure to only send the smallest, most harmless and best behaved of them, which are unlikely to resort to violence when the otters try to sniff them all over.”

  She smacked her lips and shook his head. “He won’t go for it. He’s a copper, it would boil his fuckin’ blood to take orders from someone else, especially a civvie, and to lose control of the most vulnerable of his crew.”

  I tried to object, but she stopped me.

  “Plus, this plan of yours means that with every raft going back and forth, there will be more desperate, angry, and well-armed blokes on the other side of the river, resenting us more and more by the minute, and more rootin’ damsels in distress on this side, and that's defo not good odds for us.”

  “So, what do you suggest?”

  “We need to arm our damsels,” she winked at me, swirling her spear. “And get some well-armed and violent blokes of our own.”

  I sighed and looked at the green horizon of the woods. “Speaking of which, where the fuck is Baba…”