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There must be weapons in there...
But there was certainly food in the park, and Corbell was faint with hunger. With some reluctance he climbed back into the car and tapped out the number Mirelly-Lyra had given him: inverted L, inverted L, nameless squiggle, delta.
Like the woods beyond the city, the park was spreading into the streets. The car stopped over a patch of tangled vines. He stepped out, having precious little choice, and found himself thigh-deep in the tough vines. They pulled him back like a nest of snakes. He waded out.
Hunger had never done anything for Corbell's disposition. It made him irritable, unfit to live with.
A wall of greenery twice his height ended just ahead of him. On the theory that there was a real wall under that tangle of vines, Corbell walked to the end, turned, and entered the park proper.
There was no obvious difference. It was as dark as the inside of a mouth. Jupiter's horizontal light couldn't reach through trees and buildings. Corbell wished for a flashlight, or a torch; but he didn't even have a match. CORBELL Mark II, bare-ass naked against the wilderness, would not be hunting prey tonight.
But fruit, now... these could be fruit trees. The Norn had said they were. Corbell stood beneath a tree and ran his hands through the branches. Something round bounced against his wrist.
It was pear-shaped, bigger than a pear, with thick, rough skin. With his teeth he stripped some of the covering away. He bit into creamy avocado flesh, milder in taste than avocado.
He ate it all. He threw away the skin and pit and felt through the branches for another.
A furry tentacle dropped familiarly around his neck.
Corbell grabbed. Sharp teeth closed between his neck and shoulder. The pain sickened him. His closing right hand slipped along fur, was stopped by a thickening... a head. He wrenched at it. The teeth came loose, the tentacle came loose and immediately wrapped new loops around his forearm. By starlight he saw a small snarling face. He was strangling a cat-tail.
The little beast could as easily have torn his eyes or his jugular. It was trying to bite him now. Even so, he didn't especially want to kill it.
He banged its head against a branch. Its grip loosened. A pitcher's fastball gesture flung it away. It coiled on the ground, lifted a head to study him. He was too big. It went away. He had suffered a muscle tissue wound, but it wasn't bleeding badly. Still, it hurt. Corbell sent a curse to follow the cat-tail. He found and ate two more avocados. Good enough. He went back to the car, locked himself in, and went to sleep.
the first day
Corbell made his breakfast on tiny apples and apple-sized grapefruit. The cat-tails had disappeared. He sat quietly while he ate, and was rewarded. Squirrels (maybe; they moved fast) popped into view and vanished. A bird ran out of the woods, stopped short in front of him-it was as tall as his shoulder, dressed in the autumn colors of a turkey-squawked in terror and fled.
Presently he picked up a thick branch, knobbed at the end. A machete was what he really had in mind, but the club had a nice heft. He went exploring.
The park was a jungle of delights. He found fruit trees and nut trees and trees that grew fist-sized warty things whose taste he would have to try, later. Pineapples and coconut palms fought for room. String beans grew on vines that were strangling some of the trees. On a hunch Corbell pulled up some smaller plants and found fat roots: potatoes or carrots or yams, maybe. He was seeing them by reddened light; for a million years they had been adapting to that reddened light and the twelve-year Antarctic day; of course they were unrecognizable. But they might be edible, if he could cook them, if he could start a fire. Or find one.
The ground floor of World Police Headquarters was clean and empty. Corbell found no dead bodies, no guns left lying about, no uniforms. Even the desks were gone. He was disappointed. He had hoped at least to clothe himself.
He tried an elevator. It worked.
Over several hours of exploring he found that the twenty-story building was bare to the walls, from the empty hangars under the rooftop landing pad, to the wonderfully filigreed cells in the fifth through seventh floors, to the offices on the second. Nothing remained that wasn't part of the structure itself.
But the elevators worked. He kept looking.
Where desks had been he found slots for trash. He tracked them to their outlet: metal trash cans, empty. He carried a can out to the car. It was the closest thing he'd found to a cooking pot. Now if he could find water... and fire.
He'd already been through the big room on the tenth floor. There was an acre of flat surface in here: tabletop along all four sides, a big square table in the middle with bins under it, doors with shelves behind them. Now, searching more carefully, he opened long panels and found knobs under them. He turned all the knobs as far as they could go, hoping to turn on a burner. This could be a kitchen.
He went down to the car. He came back with a generous armful of dried grass, and the club.
Most of the kitchen mechanisms must have stopped working. A snug and solid door proclaimed a cupboard to be a refrigerator. Some of the flat surfaces had to be griddles; but they weren't hot. A small glass door with a shelved recess behind it was hot. An oven. Corbell stuffed the grass into it, and waited... and waited... while the grass smoldered... smoldered more... and, suddenly, burned. He opened the door and set the club in the burning grass. When the grass burned out the knob on the end was barely smoldering. By then Corbell had found an exhaust fan. He let that blow on the coals until he had a small flame.
The rain started as he reached the car.
The car refused to move unless the doors were closed... with the club inside with Corbell, smoldering. The small flame had gone out. The rain fell tremendously, as if it wouldn't stop until the world was all water. Smoke inside and rain outside: Corbell couldn't see at all.
Fortunately the ride was short. The car settled over the exact same patch of tangled vines. Corbell pushed the trash can out into the rain, but he stayed in the car with the doors open, blowing on the coals.
The afternoon rain went on and on. When the club stopped smoldering Corbell didn't care. All the wood in the park would be soaked by now. He waded out into the wet and got his di
Again he slept in the car. A cramped, damp, wakeful night followed a miserable day. In this jungle of delights, this wilderness in which everything that grew seemed intended to serve man, Corbell had failed to make fire even with the help of a kitchen oven. Robinson Crusoe would have sneered.
But the cat-tail bite was healing. No fever: He had escaped rabies and tetanus.
Tomorrow. Try again tomorrow.
the second day
...was bigger, better, faster. He took the car to World Police Headquarters. He carried two armfuls of damp scavenged wood into an elevator and up to the kitchen. He put them in the oven. He'd forgotten to turn it off yesterday; it saved him time now. He turned on the exhaust and left.
A little searching found him a second trash can. He took it up. The logs were smoldering, burning in places, but still wet. He left them to it. The kitchen was full of smoke, despite the exhaust fan.
Impatience got to him. There were not even flames on the blackened logs now. He opened the oven door, letting in air. The gasses caught with a soft whoosh. Corbell leapt back slapping at his hair and eyebrows; but no, they hadn't caught.
He had to tear a door off a narrow cupboard. It was the only tool he could find. With the door he harried the logs out of the oven and into the trash can. He took the cupboard door along, too. Flat metal, it might serve somehow.