The silent, vibrating alarm of his PDA finally woke Mark. Thankfully, the region of this world where the Spindrift had landed was a relatively high valley in the middle of a mountain range in the tropics, so he was only a little cold, but the rest had done him good. He got up, re-packed his rucksack, and after drinking a little water from a bladder, he undid the barricade on the burrow’s mouth and got out to peer at the now empty and silent street. He not only had to worry about discovery (or being stepped on) by plodding giants (in his experience, children were especially pesky as they were way more observant of their surroundings than adults were), but also he had to be on the lookout for cars, bikes, cats and dogs and of course, birds of prey like hawks by day and owls at night. The most perilous part was now ahead of him, as he had to cross a wide street, and he’d be horribly exposed during the crossing, but there was no way around it. The block Zava lived in was an island between streets. He darted from the tree, covering the sidewalk towards the base of a light post in a dash.
One of the disadvantages of getting around while being so small in a city inhabited by giant beings was that being very near to the ground got you closer to smelly litter on the streets, even smellier giant droppings from giant animals and, as in the case of the surroundings of the post, splash from urine from giant dogs, the stains of which Mark avoided studiously while he approached the colossal octagonal concrete rod; the last thing he needed was to meet Zava soiled with dog piss. The street was silent and seemingly deserted. No cars or motorcycle lights were evident nearby. Mark realized probably the best way to cross, as per past experiences, was to hop down from the sidewalk to sprint as fast as he could the 100 meter-wide street and then climb to the other sidewalk, and sprint for cover from there. He already saw across a small, squat bush in bloom near the stairway to Zava’s place that he could hide under. Taking a last look to both sides of the street and seeing and hearing no one and nothing, he carefully jumped the two meters down to the tarmac and sprinted across as if his life depended on it, which it probably did; as he started running he thought he heard a blaring siren in the distance.
As he was nearing the middle of his mad dash across the road five seconds later, he saw, with the corner of his left eye, a pair of lights turning a corner and appearing still a bit away and the booming siren (was that the SDI? Had someone spotted him and reported?) of a patrol car approaching at breakneck speed, in what to Mark would be several hundred kilometers per hour. The black silhouette and the headlights became larger in fractions of a second, the siren earsplittingly loud now and he just had made it to the yellow line in the middle of the road and still close to 50 meters to go… he tried to run faster but he was at his limit already… near panicking, he saw the car almost upon him, its color indistinct, Mark could only see a looming dark gigantic shape approaching… and to his horror he realized that, for whatever reason, the car was not keeping to the right lane, but was cruising in the middle of the road! Adrenaline helped him squeeze a bit more speed from his pumping legs; he ran and looked straight ahead, as there was no point in trying to duck or dodge the incoming wheeled behemoth… he just hoped the driver had not seen him and that he made it out of the course of the giant tires in time or he was done for.
With a deafening roar of its mammoth engine and a whoosh, the car sped past him. The air it displaced in its passing swept Mark out of his feet and propelled him forward. The turbulence turned him around in the air and he landed on his ass, getting the wind half knocked off his lungs. He laid there for a few seconds, stunned and unable to stand, as the ululating racked blazed away. He was now only twenty meters away from the curb. He rose to his feet slowly, moving every limb gingerly to check nothing was broken. Besides his scrapped hands, only his pride was hurt. Walking slowly, he closed the distance to the curb, and climbed it huffing and puffing, then jogged to the bush he had spotted before, his heart still racing. He got there and stopped under cover of foliage, bent over with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. Once again, as if often happened with him and his now former crewmates, what should have been a simple task as crossing a street became a death defying experience, because everything here was so damn big.
Once he recovered a bit, he came up a little out of the bush and stared up at the 50-meter stairs going up the second floor and to Zava’s doorstep. This was NOT going to be an easy climb, but as the house and the stairs were a little away from the street and in a kind of recess in the block, he would not feel or be so exposed to the prying eyes of a giant passerby.
About half an hour later, panting again, he made it to the second floor, climbing the last of the twenty-six steps, arriving at a small, white tiled landing; dawn was breaking. Looking to his left into the hallway, he, to his dismay, saw that there were two numbered doors there… which was Zava’s? He was too worried and upset when entering it in Zava’s hands, and too dumbfounded with conflicting emotions when leaving it after spending the night there; then, Zava had carried them out in a small purse to avoid anyone seeing them and informing the SID, which would have put not only them, but even Zava in serious trouble. As he stood in the entrance to the apartment row, looking in turn from one doorstep to the other, puzzled, a new worry crept into his mind as he suddenly spotted a glaring hole in his plans: He, who prided on thinking of everything when making any plan and being detail oriented to the point of anal-retentiveness, had been this time so obsessed and single-minded, that even after months of moping, he forgot to think of things as simple as the fact that Zava might not even live here anymore; she had taken for granted that she would be there, waiting for him. BUT, he now realized with a sinking feeling, he had heard her mention to Betty, as the two girls chatted before sleep, that she was about to enter college; on Earth, and particularly in his home country, it was often the case that young people left their hometown (sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles away) for the big city to attend Universities. If that was the case and she had moved away, she was lost to him, as it was not like he could ask the neighbors! And even if he might by any miracle find the name of the University she attended, how would he find the location (he could not go to the library and ask for a phone book or an encyclopedia either, and even if he got to the right shelf, he doubted he could even get the heavy tome out of there and open it), and more to the point, how would he travel there to find her? Going to a bus terminal or an airport to sneak into a bus or plane in a place full of hundreds of clomping giants, giant police and huge moving vehicles was a recipe for disaster. And if a trek of a few giant miles like the past few days was an expedition on its own, what would it be, in this giant alien world, to travel alone through hundreds or perhaps thousands of miles of hostile country? Impossible! He felt his shoulders slump (maybe if he managed to steal some money he could buy a couple of stamps, a box and some tape and mail himself in a parcel, he thought with an inner sad chuckle).
But he was getting ahead of himself. Perhaps she was still there! He started walking to the nearest door…. As he did, another worry that had been lurking there popped up in his already muddled head: a young woman as attractive as Zava would not spend much time alone, maybe she had gotten a boyfriend already! How ridiculous would he feel if he appeared now, after half a year, and she had already been committed to a man her size, much larger and stronger (and less broke) than a doll-man like him? He had put all his eggs in this business of finding Zava, and perhaps, much unlike him, he had plunged in a situation way over his head with way too many things that could go wrong (he had a plan for the broke part,though). After all, even without a boyfriend, she could still laugh at him and send him packing, that is, if she did not just as easily get rid of him by calling the authorities (there was a reward for capturing little people), or even worse, as Zava had jokingly suggested that time, she could decide to keep Mark as simply a pet, in a cage or a vivarium, treating him like a small, defenseless animal she could ignore at will or take out to play when she felt like it, while she kept on with her life with big persons that for her were real and not dismissible doll-men.
But the ship had literally sailed, in his case. By now the Spindrift would be well out of reach. There was not going back, so trusting to the same luck that had kept him alive and free for the last three years in this planet, he got to the nearest doorstep and contemplated how to make his entrance. The huge black metal door seemed to be quite tight and there was no way to get under it even as his size. No windows on this side of the apartment. Getting a little away from the door, which he saw was knob-less with a rather small, flush keyhole, he looked even higher to see a doorbell button, a small ornate bronze doorknocker in the center and what seemed to be some kind of extractor fan a little above the door and to its right. Based on past experiences when sneaking into giant buildings, this seemed to be his best shot at entering the premises, if it was not for the fact that the fan was over 30 meters above his head. Although he had some knotted rope and a collapsible grappling hook in his backpack, he knew that a 15-meter-high throw was the best he could manage in a good day, so the fan was well out of reach; knocking on the door was also not a good idea, it was likely he would not be even heard and what if this was not Zava’s apartment? Now, he knew that these kinds of apartment rows usually had a balcony opposite to the side of the building the entrance door was on. He walked back to the stairs, and surely enough, he discovered to the left of the stairs below the railing, that there was a small ledge protruding from that side of the building. Approaching carefully, he saw that the ledge seemed to go all the way to the opposite side of the building and possibly around into the balcony area. The ledge was about a meter wide (to him), slightly sloping (presumably so water and muck did not accumulate on it) from the building down and looked to a narrow alley and a hedge below. It did not seem too difficult to traverse the ledge, and the only obstacles were some dry leaves swept there from the neighboring trees and stuck to the ledge by the lingering damp of the cool night. If he were to slip and fall, however, although the gravity in this planet was only about 70% that of Earth, he was pretty sure that plummeting to the ground 50 meters below would be almost certainly fatal. Steeling himself, he took off his backpack, he strapped it to his chest and stepped carefully into the ledge, testing with his feet for slippery patches.
After a couple of minutes with no major incidents he traversed the full length of the ledge, finding a drain pipe that went sideways from the adjacent balcony to the ledge, he squeezed through, dragging his backpack behind him, and found himself in the balcony itself. Looking up (where else?) he saw a strange horizontal circular contraption hanging from a pole mounted high across the balcony. From it, several undergarments were hanging down, presumably to dry, gently swaying like giant flags in the light morning breeze. With deep relief, he saw that they belonged to a female, but was it Zava? The next balcony, visible from his position to his right, had no such visible signs of occupation. The balcony’s sliding doors were open, but a mesh screen prevented the entrance of bugs or small critters (like me, he thought wryly) through the door. He tried to move the sliding mesh panel, but it would not budge, as from his position so down below he could not get the necessary leverage, or it was secured up there, he could not be sure. Resigned, he got his knife out of its sheath; it slode out noiselessly.
“Well, Zava, I promise I will pay for o at least try to mend later what I’m about to do right now, sorry for this…”. After a slight hesitation, he plunged the razor-sharp blade into the mesh at slightly above head-height and, with a smooth downwards motion, he cut a vertical slit all the way down to the frame of the mesh screen, then turning the knife sideways to his right and cutting another meter in that direction before withdrawing the knife and sheathing it back. He then turned aside the gap so created and entered the apartment, backpack in his hand.