The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (92 page)

Lawrence found it almost discouraging to see how smoothly and effortlessly Caroline worked. She led him to a good source of fuel and set him to gathering what he could while she picked and prepared a campsite. She arranged the kindling and used her rock to sharpen a stick, which she set into a knot in one of the fuel logs and twirled rapidly between her hands. Friction gradually heated the stick, until the barest ember glowed at its tip; then she carefully fanned this and transferred it to the kindling, which was soon blazing. The whole process took less than an hour, but he doubted if he would be able to do it himself with all the time in the world.
"That was half-assed," Caroline confessed as they fed the fire. "You really need calluses to do that, but I'm not going to bother developing them. Once we kill something and get some sinew, I'll make a fire bow."
"Kill something?"
"A project for tomorrow. Meanwhile, there's plenty we can eat." With the fire well-started and plenty of sunlight remaining, they went gathering. Although a lot of the things Caroline pointed out were pretty unappetizing, Lawrence had to admit that she was right when she said damn near the entire forest was edible. Since as yet they had nothing to put their collections in, they tasted and ate as they walked, sampling dozens of different greens and nuts and berries and, in Caroline's case, not a few insects. She also pointed out some of the
inedibles
, so he'd be able to recognize them.
The night sky was so dazzling that Lawrence thought he might never go to sleep. He kept Caroline up for hours asking the names of constellations and stars, and how to read the important messages they held. In the night they heard wolves howling, and Caroline had to spend some time convincing Lawrence predators were unlikely to take an interest in them. Finally she simply took his mind off the problem by seducing him again, and after fucking they drifted off to sleep snuggled together on the grass beside their fire.

Days passed.

Because the weather was temperate Caroline gave clothing and shelter a low priority. They drifted away from
ChipTec
in search of water, which Caroline insisted they would need for a variety of purposes other than drinking. They found a stream on their third day, and then Caroline finally went hunting. Her skills in that regard were downright scary; she had spotted two rabbits and beaned them with that simplest of all weapons, a rock hurled with deadly accuracy. There were also fish in the stream, and Caroline had fashioned a spear to catch them. She had shown him the trick of weaving thread from the fibers of certain plants, and set him to work making fishing lines. She also used some of the thread to sew, using a needle made from a shard of bone.
Lawrence was disappointed to hear that loincloths would have to wait, though; it was more important to make pouches for holding and carrying things, particularly liquids. He was surprised to hear that water could be boiled over fire in such a rawhide bag. Caroline hadn't even gotten around to making a knife yet, and their situation had become pretty comfortable.
He had learned what kind of firewood to gather, several ways to catch fish, and how to gut and cook a small animal. Their next major project would be to kill a large animal such as a deer, not so much for the meat (though they would certainly preserve and eat it) as for the hide, from which they could make serviceable moccasins and cover a small lean-to. It had already rained on them once, not hard, and they had simply taken it as an opportunity to try the pleasant experiment of screwing in the rain. But eventually they would face a real storm, or at the very least winter would arrive, and Caroline was carefully getting them ready to face those challenges.
After only a week their activities had assumed a comfortable rhythm. Lawrence was content to let Caroline run the show, doing as he was told and learning what he could of her vast knowledge. She was recreating the entire surprisingly intricate technology of the stone age, one step at a time. It was surprising how many things one took for granted until one had to make them from scratch. The value of a needle and a few meters of thread, for example, had taken on a significance Lawrence would have found incomprehensible for most of his life.
Lawrence watched her work in the firelight, carefully shaping the tip of a fish spear into a barbed wooden hook. No matter what she did her hands moved with precision borne of long practice. Had she not been thrown with him into this empty world, he doubted if he would have lived more than a few days. But already she had taken him from the depths of despair to a kind of contentment he had never even realized was possible. She had shared with him her knowledge, her confidence, and her body, and in return he had only offered his tentative self-pity. But now he was learning a new emotion, one he could not honestly say he had ever experienced before. He was falling in love.
Falling.
He had once before felt something like this, but it had been a poisoned, narcissistic love, a love he had thought was for Prime Intellect but which had really been for his own sense of accomplishment. Lawrence had not
fallen
in love with Prime Intellect; he had guided himself gently and reliably into that state on the cushion of his own skill. Lawrence was falling in love with Caroline, though. She was temperamental, strong, unpredictable, and in many ways dangerous. He never knew from one moment to another what she would do. He had no control over her; was, in fact, at her mercy for his very survival. And yet he loved her, and this reckless out-of-control love was an entirely new thing to him.
Caroline caught his eyes and perhaps noticed the strange light there. "Penny for your thoughts?" she teased.
"You mean a copper penny?"
She laughed, a beautiful sound. "I guess not."
"I was just wondering if there's anything you aren't good at."
"I'm not much of a computer programmer," she laughed, then sighed when she saw his hurt expression. "I didn't mean it that way. I'm sorry."