Alec decided upon waking that it would be imprudent to make any sudden moves. Without doubt, he remained committed to excising himself from what looked to be a terrible social situation. First, though, he needed to get the lay of the land, to make a brief study of the way of things in this new world.

His overall feeling of wellbeing when he awoke that morning made deciding anything difficult.

Perhaps it was the terrible waste that his Earth had become, but there was something balmy and sweet about this new place. The entire world around him screamed of health and life. But even with the folk moving about, there was a calm and a—he didn't know the right word. There was a "patience" about the place, as silly as that word sounded.

And, good lord, he felt good. So good. With all the exercise he had taken of late, he should be sore beyond words. But he felt healthy and fit, strong in ways he couldn't describe. This new body—this old body—was filled with life and energy. There was no explanation of what had happened to him, what had transformed him. He took a few minutes after he sat up to simply breathe the air.

Then he got up without thinking and began to run. It had been so long since he'd been able to run, been able to make steam at anything faster than a rapid hobble. So great were the emotions in him that within the first few strides he needed to stifle the impulse to scream. The sensation was overwhelming, simply indescribable.

He sped off in no special direction, and for a time he lost himself in his exertion. At every passing moment, he felt as if exhaustion finally would overtake him. But it did not. There was no telling how far he ran, and the only thing that brought him back to himself was the realization that he was racing down a dirt path along the stream, and there was no one else about. The memory of the pack of wolves they had encountered the previous day brought him back to himself, and he slowed, stopped, and took a careful look around.

He was alone.

Well, no problem there. He may have run for miles but at least he wasn't lost. Common sense had kept him near the stream, and he turned back on his path, first at a jog and then again at a steady run. He was careful enough this time to count his pace and to try to mark the passing of time. By the time he returned to the vicinity of where he had started, it was to the realization that he'd run close to 10 miles all told.

He barely felt winded. The others weren't about by then, so he ambled down to the stream to clean himself a mite. He was half afraid to remove his clothing, so uncertain was he at what he might find there. But the single-piece suite required just a little effort to unfasten. In just a moment or two a seam appeared that hadn't been visible before, and the upper part of the garment dropped to his waist. There were a few folks around, but he'd never been modest, especially after nearly a decade living with soldiers. Soon he was buck naked and splashing about in the cool water of the stream. It was heavenly.

After a good and long scrubbing, he at last found his nerve. The spot where he was bathing was in a wide pool about three feet deep. He allowed the pool to calm, and then carefully regarded the man looking back up at him. He'd caught a glimpse of that face in the stream near where they'd woken, but now he saw the full thing, the whole Monty.

Alec just about fainted. The man looking back up at him was the picture of youthful health, broad shoulders, thick black hair, and a full and vigorous shape to his face. How was this possible? How was any of this possible?

After a few minutes of turning and regarding himself at all angles, he looked up with a start. No one was watching him, but a sudden sense of embarrassment afflicted him at the way he'd been behaving.

And yet, and yet.

His stomach growled, and there was no ignoring it. There were fish aplenty in the stream, but he had no mind to fish by hand. And Ayman had told them all that fruit trees and natural tubers abounded in this place. But what else had he said? That the influx of newcomers in recent months had put pressure on the local food basket.

No problem. The path he had run earlier was littered with trees whose limbs were heavy with fruit. After pulling his clothes back on, he ambled in that direction. If the sun was any indication, the trail he'd followed went off to the southeast. About ten minutes of easy strolling found him near a grove of apples. Farther from the trail, there were berries, pears, and on the ground a plethora of wild onions. And were those mushrooms?

Should he be cautious? Alec had been raised by a grandfather who was old-fashioned and a bit of a survivalist. Such an upbringing had taught him much about surviving in the woods, and about what could be eaten and what could not.

"Screw it," he finally said.

On the Earth of old, everything he saw was not just edible but healthy. There was no reason to believe that onions were poisonous on this world. So he found some sticks and vines and took about 20 minutes to cobble together a fairly decent basket, which he filled with whatever he found there that looked appetizing. To his surprise, the potatoes he found looked nothing at all like the wild varieties that he'd eaten in the past. They appeared very much like the golden spuds a person might pull from the family garden, if only somewhat smaller.

In just a short time, he was ambling back toward the village with a basket cradled in his left arm. He'd found a nice sturdy stick near a deadfall. It was far heavier than he might need for a walking stick, but the thing appeared to be of rugged oak, and some flint he saw near the stream might produce a cutting edge sufficient to trim it down some.

This land seemed to abound in everything, perhaps too much so. His years travelling as a geologist and engineer told him that the stone he saw near the stream and along outcroppings in the earth were untouched. He would not be surprised at all to find raw ores and other minerals near the surface. At first blush, it did not seem to his eye that this world had been mined in any significant way.

But the amount of foodstuffs laying around and easy to hand didn't seem quite right, either. There were fruit trees, bushes with berries, and all other tidbits aplenty. But they didn't appear evenly distributed. It felt very much like they had been laid out, not in straight rows as one might plant a garden, but there was to his eye a certain logic to it. It sounded silly even to Alec, because he didn't have the foggiest notion what that pattern might be. But the more he looked around, the more certain he was that the apples, pears, peaches, and lemons that he'd found had been placed there by some conscious hand.

He had no proof of it. He just felt it. He knew it.

That was another thing he needed to sort out. But given the long list of things that perplexed him, where the food he was eating came from was very low on the list, indeed.

As he ambled back toward the settlement, he did regard everything carefully, several times stopping just to look at some rocks or to dig into a hillside. Near the water, he found a fair amount of flint. Along his path, which wasn't too far from the stream, he found what he was certain to be copper oxide and what might have been silver bearing galena and a few small and rough nuggets of what could have only been native silver.

This whole land appeared untouched by the hand of man. But that couldn't be right. Hadn't Ayman said that there were folk here when the first of the refugees like them had begun to arrive?

How long ago had that been? Ayman had been there for years, but only hours had passed for his wife.

Well, there was nothing a healthy breakfast wouldn't solve, so he took a short stop and picked gingerly at the fruits in his rough basket. He'd never thought of onion as a breakfast food, but it had always been a favorite, and it had been years since he had any. He had a little bit of everything, including a small bit of raw potato.

If nothing else, it seemed highly unlikely he would starve.