“You two will walk from here. I can’t tow you around no more. Don’t fall off a cliff or nothin’.”
I blink in the sunlight. We are surrounded by evergreen trees. The rails we’re perched on stretch into the distance but stop perhaps a quarter mile away with a wooden barricade. Train tracks. I turn around to find that an enormous time gate has been rigged up behind us, but the train tracks don’t extend past the gate. This track is a dead end.
Jorge pulls the blindfold from Piper’s face as well, and I’m able to get a better look at her. Her eyes are bright like Mym’s, and her face, while currently dirty, seems full of youthful optimism. She doesn’t seem discouraged by our circumstances. She looks up and meets my gaze, then scans the area around us.
“Where are we?” she asks.
“You don’t recognize it?” Jorge says. “This is your native land. At least it might be one day. Right now it’s still part of Mexico.”
I study the mountains in the distance and the long hills. “Is this California?”
“Good guess, guero,” Jorge says. “You got it.”
Birdsong is resounding through the trees. We don’t seem to be near any sort of civilization.
“What are we doing here?” I ask.
Jorge reaches into his pocket and pulls something out. He holds out his hand. On his palm is a stone about the size of a walnut. An unmistakable metallic vein runs through the center of the stone. Gold.
“We’re here to get rich,” Jorge says. “Well, I am anyway. You’re here as a bargaining chip.”
Voices emanate from the woods, and I turn to find a group of young Native Americans emerging from the tree line. A few of them are wearing western clothing, and several are carrying sifting pans. One is holding a pickaxe. They linger near the trees, watching us from a distance.
“Wait a minute . . . you brought us back to the California gold rush?” I ask as Jorge puts away his ore.
Jorge shakes his head. “Nope. Gold rush isn’t for another ten years. We’re here early. We’ve got a few things to change.”
9
“A clock is a valuable possession, not only as a means of telling time, but also as something to ignore on particularly beautiful days.” -Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2002.
“I’m going to untie your hands for one reason and one reason only. I ain’t gonna be helping you take a piss.” Jorge waves a long knife at me. “But you try to do some stupid shit? Guess who gets hurt?” He aims the knife at Piper. “We clear?”
“Crystal,” I say. “You won’t get any trouble from me.”
I suspect I’m lying, but if it gets my hands untied I’m good with it. He cuts the ropes and I rub my wrists. What sort of trouble I get into remains to be seen.
“You go do any business you need to do over in the woods there. Then you come on back.” He keeps a firm grip on Piper’s shoulder with one hand, while still holding the knife with the other. I don’t have a choice but to comply.
I take my time at the edge of the woods, scanning the trees and looking for anything that might help us. All I see is a few deer droppings and a lot of poison oak. Jorge was right about one thing, it’s going to be hard for Mym to find us. An unlicensed time gate jump to the early 1800s? Rural Northern California before it even became a state? Records here will be spotty to say the least. Nobody even knew how to govern this land till after the gold rush. A decade beforehand this was all just Native American land and a few sparsely populated white settlements. I reluctantly wander back up the hill to the train tracks and Jorge.
“Which timestream are we in?”
“I’m sure you’d love to know,” Jorge replies. He gestures for me to come closer and zip ties my hands. This time they are in front of my body at least. He then clips a locking carabiner and a long piece of cable around my wrists. The other end gets locked to the flatbed rail car. He considers his work for a moment, then, seemingly satisfied, turns to Piper. “Okay. Same deal, okay? You do your business, then you come right back or your dad here pays the price. Got it?” He aims the knife at me for emphasis.
Piper nods and looks at me, then she turns back to Jorge. “Where’s the toilet paper?”
“You don’t get no toilet paper,” Jorge says. “You gotta squat.”
“What if I need to go number two?”
Jorge sighs, then moves to one of the cases loaded atop the train car. He rummages through several before finally returning with a roll of toilet paper. “Okay, here you go. Don’t use too much. That’s hard to get around here.”
She doesn’t say anything but turns and heads for the woods. She picks her way slowly through the trees.
“Don’t go so far!” Jorge shouts.
“I don’t want you to look!” Piper shouts back. “That’s gross!”
Jorge looks at me, then shakes his head. “My old lady wanted more kids. I told her she’s crazy.”
“You leave them behind for this job?” I ask.
Jorge appraises the cargo. “Nah, she left me first. But she’s going to regret it when she finds out I’m a millionaire.” He starts unpacking some of the gear. One crate appears to be full of metal detectors.
“You’re going to mine this land? All of it? One guy with all the gold in California? How do you plan to manage that?”
“Won’t be just me, guero. I got a whole army here. This is Washo Indian land. More tribes to the west. They’re all going to be in on it. We get that gold, we hide it away. Ain’t gonna be no gold rush around here for the white folks. We’re gonna rewrite American history.”
“You’re going to talk hundreds of Native Americans into doing your bidding? What do they get out of it?”
Jorge grins. “I’m from the future, holmes. I got everything they need.”
My eye catches movement in the trees on the far side of the grove. Piper is coming down the hill, flitting from tree to tree and making her way toward the time gate.
“Hey, what’s that mountain range right there?” I blurt out, pointing away from Piper and across the valley.
Jorge looks that direction. “That’s Lake Tahoe that way. Sierra Nevadas.” He considers the view. “But maybe not no more. I think maybe that’s going to be Lake Jorge now.” He grins at me. “Maybe Lake King Jorge. We’ll see.” His gaze lowers to the trees. “Where’s that kid got to?” He cups his hands. “Hey! Chiquita! Hurry it up!” I glance over my shoulder to where Piper is fiddling with the time gate. She has the control panel open and seems to be meddling with something.
“You know how kids are,” I say. “Love to take their time.”
“Well, I ain’t got all day,” Jorge says. He checks notifications on his phone. “Once I get the call, it’s game on.”
“What call?”
“The one that says we got what we want. The one when your old lady gives up the goods.”
I frown. “What happens then? You let us go?”
“Sure thing, guero. We’ll let you go.” Jorge laughs. “If you can find your way home from here, be my guest. But don’t be looking to me for no favors. I’ll be busy getting rich.”
He turns around and looks at the time gate. My heart jolts in my chest, but I relax when I see that Piper is no longer there. Jorge goes on with his preparations. A few minutes later, Piper emerges from the woods down the hill, still carrying the roll of toilet paper. She has wisely torn some squares off and let the end of the roll dangle free. She politely hands it back to Jorge.
“Took you long enough,” he says.
“There’s nowhere to wash my hands.”
“That’s your problem, kid,” Jorge says.
She holds her hands out again to be retied. “Yours too.”
Jorge stares at them skeptically, then reties her wrists while trying to avoid touching her hands.
Once Piper’s hands are retied, he attaches her to the train car the way he did with me, then gestures to the group of Native Americans lingering near the edge of the woods. They follow him back up the hill to help unload the
gear.
There are two train cars linked together. The one we’re attached to is a flatbed mostly piled with waterproof crates and racks of cylindrical power cells. The second is a standard boxcar, and when Jorge gets the doors open and extends a ramp from it, I’m surprised to find it holds a fleet of electric dirt bikes. I had assumed these would be shocking to the locals, but I’m wrong. This is clearly not the first time Jorge has visited, because the dirt bikes are met with raucous cheering.
As the bikes are rolled down the ramp, several of the natives take turns hopping on and starting them up. Before long, the young men are racing around the grove. The gleeful joyriding continues until one man takes a turn too sharply and topples off his bike. Jorge shouts at them in a language I don’t recognize, and they reluctantly put away the bikes and get on with unloading.
Piper and I retreat to the shade near the base of the boxcar. She gets close to me and whispers, “Do you have Breadcrumbs?”
“What?”
“Can you leave bread crumbs when they take us somewhere?”
“Where would I get bread right now?” I ask.
Piper sighs. “No, the app. Breadcrumbs. Do you have it?”
“Oh. They took my phone, remember?”
“But they didn’t take your glasses.”
I reach into the inner pocket of my jacket and find that I do indeed still have my sunglasses. The left lens has been cracked, likely as a result of my fall, but the interior of the lenses still powers on.
“It should be in your apps menu,” Piper says. “Do you see it?”
I don my sunglasses and toggle through various apps. Sure enough, the Breadcrumbs app is available. The GPS is inoperative, but the app says it’s still capable of mapping my movements over the current terrain. It offers a generic map to be filled in. I turn the app on. A slice of bread character pops up in my vision and waves, then relegates itself to the upper corner of my lenses next to the power meter. My lenses are still three quarters of the way charged so I’m grateful for that.
I stash the glasses away again when I hear footsteps.
Jorge and two other men are toting weapons now. These are no Old West revolvers. They appear to be something akin to an AR-15 rifle. I don’t know who they are defending themselves against, but I’m happy the guns aren’t aimed at me.
“Time to mount up.”
When Jorge detaches us from the train car, we are led around the back to an all-terrain vehicle fitted with knobby tires and a massive antenna. It’s powered by six of the cylindrical power packs and has a gun mounted on top. Jorge clearly isn’t messing around.
Jorge secures Piper in the back seat of the ATV, then locks my wrist to the passenger seat rail. He doesn’t bother to buckle me in though. I’ll be toast if we roll over.
The ATV has a small trailer attached to the back that bounces along behind us as we head downhill. The group stays mainly to an overgrown dirt track that weaves its way among the pines and ultimately leads us to a stream. The ATV and dirt bikes alternate between the bank and splashing through the stream itself, depending on whichever offers a clearer path. Before long, our caravan of historical oddities arrives at a broader branch of river with a long stretch of gravel bank. We aren’t the only ones here.
All along the riverbank, locals of every age are using sifting pans and plucking bits of gold from the river. Men, women, and even toddlers are going about their work. The real spectacle is the camp that has been set up along the riverbank. An area of trees has been cleared and now holds an array of solar panels perched at a jaunty angle to catch the late afternoon sun. A number of other structures have been erected in the area as well. These are round huts made of vertical wooden planks lashed together. I notice all the doors are facing east.
The camp is crowded. Kids run to greet Jorge after he parks the vehicle, and Piper and I get our fair share of curious looks. Jorge leaves us in the ATV and goes to converse with an older, native man who looks like he may be the leader of the group, a chief perhaps. I turn around and address Piper, happy to finally have a moment alone. “What were you doing at the time gate? You think you can work it?”
“It’s a bunch of preset destinations. Most of them are used up already, but there are a couple left. I think we could use it to jump to a different time than we came from. Maybe even a different place.”
“How long do you think it would take to get it up and running?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs.
“Crap.”
Jorge walks back over and unlocks us from the ATV. He hands us off to a pair of young men who lead us to one of the huts. We are tied to a structural pole of the interior wall and then promptly abandoned. A few minutes later, an old, mostly toothless woman is led in and sat down on a cot across from us, presumably to watch us. She smiles benignly and waits. The young men exit again and their voices recede into the distance.
After several minutes of awkward silence, the old woman rises from her chair, extracts a pipe from a little bag hidden under her skirt, and shuffles over to the fire. She selects a smoldering twig from the edge of the fire, then uses it to light her pipe. After several long draws, she shuffles back to her chair and settles into it. I’m not sure what’s in the pipe, put it doesn’t seem to be helping her stay alert. After a few minutes she’s staring off into space in a sort of languid stupor.
I turn to Piper and whisper, “You have anything near you we could use to whittle at these zip ties? I’m not sure this lady is even looking at us.”
The old woman has the same expression on her face as when she first sat down, but the hazy color of her eyes makes me wonder if she can even see across the room. Piper pulls back the edges of the rugs we’re sitting on and probes the hard-packed earth beneath us. After a few minutes of searching, she comes up with a jagged little stone. With my eyes still on the old woman, I instruct Piper to whittle at the zip ties around my wrists. It takes some effort, but she’s able to saw through the thick plastic of one of the ties. When one of my wrists is free, I’m able to make short work of the other bonds. I get Piper free as well.
“Okay. That was easier than I expected,” I say. I watch the woman on the cot for any sign of alarm, but she is just smiling in our direction. Her eyelids seem a little droopier than before. I think she may be falling asleep. Still seated, I begin slowly inching my way toward the doorway.
When I reach the wooden door, I nudge it with my elbow, but it doesn’t open. Peering through a crack, I see that someone has secured a leather thong around the handle. Piper finds another chink in the wall and whispers, “They’re down by the river. I think they’re weighing the gold.”
I get to my feet and work my way around the perimeter of the hut, searching for another way out. “Keep an eye on them. If anyone heads this way, you let me know, okay?”
“Okay.”
The boards making up the walls of the hut are all securely fastened. Short of an axe, I don’t see how we can make it out. Finally my eyes fall on the hole in the ceiling where smoke from the nearly extinguished cooking fire is drifting lazily up into the twilight.
“Hey, how good are you at climbing?”
Piper looks back to me and then up at the hole in the ceiling.
“If I give you a boost, do you think you could make it up there?”
She looks skeptical but walks over to me. “You promise you won’t drop me?”
“Not on purpose.” I glance at the old woman who appears to be fast asleep now. “I think it’s our best shot.”
“What if they see me?”
“Try to peek your head up, then climb down the back side of the hut. If you come around the side away from the river to open the door, they shouldn’t see much.” I reach into a pile of blankets similar to the one the old woman has wrapped around her. “And if you disguise yourself, maybe no one will notice.”
“What do we do once we’re out?” Piper asks.
“One step at a time,” I reply. “You get us out, I’ll figure out a
way to get us back to the time gate.”
Piper steps closer, and I go down on one knee to get her onto my back. I get her positioned atop my shoulders, holding her knees, then carefully get to my feet. Piper clutches at my head desperately as I wobble, but once I’m balanced she relaxes her grip.
“See if you can reach it,” I say.
She stretches for the roof but can’t quite touch. She uses the top of my head to balance and gets one foot on my shoulder, then the other. I grip her ankles as she stands.
“Got it!” she says as her hands grasp the blackened wood at the edge of the opening. I push her feet as high as I can until she can get her elbows and then one knee up through the opening. She scrambles out the hole with what I hope is not enough noise to attract attention.
A fair amount of dust has fallen from the ceiling and is drifting down around the old woman like a descending fog. She coughs once in her drowsed state. Piper sticks her head back into the hole and whispers, “Okay, I think I can do it.” I toss one of the blankets up to her and she catches it, then disappears from view.
I listen to the scrapes and thumps of Piper moving down the slope of the back wall, then catch little glimpses of movement through the chinks in the boards as she works her way around to the door. The leather thong seems to give her some trouble. She’s still working at it when suddenly she freezes. The next thing I know, she disappears.
“Piper?” I whisper through the crack. “Are you out there?”
There are voices outside but not hers. A group of women walk by chatting to one another and shepherding a half-dozen tiny children along in front of them. I wait patiently for them to pass. A minute later, Piper is back, her fingers working frantically over the leather.
Something snaps and I spin around to find the old woman standing directly behind me. My heart jolts in my chest. I’m terrified that she might suddenly sound an alarm, but instead, the old woman grins a toothless smile at me and holds out her arms, offering me a blanket.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 168