by Lou Cadle
I wish to God that M.J. had left the girl behind. The failure to dress right would have been a perfectly sound rationale for leaving her in the air-conditioned comfort of the museum. And had M.J. made that call, Hannah’s life would be better right now. And Garreth’s would be too.
Though that wouldn’t bring the little horse back. If she shoved Dixie through the timegate—another pleasant fantasy—Garreth would still be grieving. And the poor schmuck would probably grieve Dixie too. She had a bad feeling that even this cruelty on the girl’s part would not have entirely erased his crush on her.
Teenagers.
She could feel herself getting angry, feel her blood pressure rising, and she made herself take some deep breaths. Help Garreth first. Help everyone else grieve or adjust. Make sure they were all safe and didn’t take any needless risks while they were grieving. Those were her jobs. Dealing with Dixie would have to wait.
Hannah rose to her feet and turned to make sure Claire was okay. She was, standing six feet back from the lake, and checking her fishing pole and line. Then Hannah went back to see if her clams were still there. They were. Nothing had disturbed the little dam she had built, and they were ready to be collected to take back for lunch.
She turned to face the others. “Everyone okay? Need any help with anything?”
“If Claire could start cleaning the fish,” Rex said. “Sorry, but it needs to be done.”
“No need to apologize.”
Claire was already on her way to meet Rex. Since the incident with the ants, she was cleaning the fish next to the lake, dumping the fish guts directly into the water. The risk was that it might attract lake predators. But after the one interaction with the ants, they thought it was the lesser risk. No one had been wandering far into the lake.
Only Traveller.
Hannah felt another twinge of sadness. She knew when she closed her eyes tonight, she’d see it all over again, the shadow in the murky water, the crest of reptile skin, the splash. She’d feel the tail whipping through her palm. The only good news was, maybe it’d supplant the visions she had of the nimravid pulling bloody guts out of M.J. the last time she had looked at that.
It struck her for the first time that the whole lot of them were going to be suffering from PTSD. Probably already were. Maybe Garreth’s inability to stop his sobs could be explained by that. Maybe even Dixie’s cruel words. Laina’s withdrawal into equations and silence. All symptoms.
But wasn’t that what life had been like for humans, and for their ancestors, for hundreds of thousands of years? Maybe PTSD was normal, and it was the other way of living—safe and unbothered, free of trauma, never even having to witness a human death firsthand—that was the aberration, a 20th century aberration affecting a quarter of the planet that had come to seem the new normal...when in fact it wasn’t. This was normal, violence and death.
The morning’s work went on. Dixie and Bob never reappeared, so Hannah asked Laina to take over water-filtering duties. She was clearly irritated at having to give up her drawing in the sand, but she did it.
A second net’s worth of fish, and they were ready to pack it up. It wasn’t yet noon. Everyone was somber. No one teased or made jokes. Garreth apologized for crying more than once, and everyone reassured him it was okay. When Ted was done with his work on the net, he came over and slapped Garreth on the back a couple times, hard enough to stagger the smaller boy. Nari hugged him. Zach shook his hand and said something that made Garreth tear up again.
They walked back with the food to the campsite. Bob and Dixie were there, tending the fire. Hannah saw him give Dixie a pointed look, and the girl reluctantly stood and turned as everyone approached.
Dixie cleared her throat. “I’m sorry I was rude, everyone. Garreth, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” It was well rehearsed but delivered flat.
No one believed its sincerity, Hannah was certain.
Garreth said, “It’s okay. Forget it. I will.”
Hannah worried that was no less than the truth. He’d forget it too soon, and be kind to the girl, and again he’d be rebuffed or insulted. Before that happened, Hannah needed to figure out how to deal with the damned girl, what to say, what to do.
For the short-term, she’d simply keep the two apart, for as many hours of the day as she could.
* * *
Three days later, she still had no great idea of how to talk to Dixie, though the thought of what to do had occupied every spare minute. She thought it was probably best she had waited, though. The emotions of the day they had lost Traveller had tapered off by now. Except for Garreth, everyone seemed to be back to normal. Perhaps the soccer game was a little more subdued, the laughter a little quieter. But they were returning to a familiar pattern.
Except for one thing. Apart from Nari, people were keeping their distance from Dixie. Maybe that was a more effective punishment—or behavior modifier—than anything Hannah could say or do.
If she saw a sign of remorse in the girl, she might have let the topic drop. But she didn’t. And before the next problem came from that quarter, she wanted to head it off. So the next morning, she went with Dixie alone to collect water from the pool.
The repairs to the pool had held up fine. She told Dixie to fill all the bottles.
“What are you going to do?”
“Supervise,” Hannah said. “I’m in charge, so it’s my prerogative.” She would also keep watch for the terror crane, though it was early, and overcast, and she thought they wouldn’t see it before they left.
She watched Dixie, and rehearsed her words, and finally spoke. “I’m still very angry at you.”
Dixie looked up. “For what?”
“For being so unbelievably mean to Garreth.”
“Gawd. Mr. O’Brien already went over this. And I apologized, didn’t I?”
“I don’t believe that those words came from your heart.”
“What does it matter? I said them.”
“It matters,” Hannah said. She fell silent, hoping the girl would actually listen and consider the words.
Dixie capped a bottle and dipped another. She capped that one and then threw it down and jumped up. “I don’t know why you’re all over me! I didn’t start it!”
“Am I all over you? I thought I’d spoken very quietly.”
“Everybody’s always blaming me for shit. It’s not my fault.”
“That you spoke so cruelly? I think it is your responsibility. Who else’s?”
“I wouldn’t have if he wasn’t bugging me all the time!”
It was everything Hannah could do not to raise her own voice. “Bugging you how?”
“‘Do you want my windbreaker, Dixie? Can I help you with that, Dixie? How are you today, Dixie?’ It’s awful.”
“Yes, I can see how terrible those things are to hear. I’m surprised it didn’t outright kill you when he said them.”
Dixie flushed, about the only hopeful sign so far. “I’m not into him!”
“That’s abundantly clear.”
“I’m a nine, and he’s like a five.”
“Oh, Dixie,” Hannah said sadly. “You’d have to work a year to climb up to a one.”
“What the fuck do you know? You’re not even a five yourself. Maybe you should fuck Garreth if you like him so much.”
Hannah still hadn’t raised her voice, and she barely managed not to again as she said, “If I tied you up out there, and let the terror crane eat you today, do you think anyone would mourn you? If you do, think again. You’ve earned that. People hate you, and you made them.”
“You hate me. I know that. You’re jealous, you bitch.”
“I think from now on, you should call me Ms. Kates. Everyone else can call me Hannah, but not you.”
“Or what?”
“We’re not in the 21st century, Dixie. You’d do well to remember that.”
“I know we’re not! I know it! I know it every day!” She was shrieking. “You’re so stupid you think everyone else is
too!”
Hannah waited until the girl’s face had gone from puce to pink before she said, “I don’t think you’re stupid, Dixie. I just think you’re a bad person.”
“And I think you’re pitiful.”
“Pitiful I may be, but I’m the leader here.”
“No one elected you.”
“If we held an election, would they elect you instead? Is that what you think of yourself?”
“Maybe we should. You might get a surprise.”
“I might,” Hannah said pleasantly. “But for now, it’s my job to keep this group together, and functioning, and as happy as we can be considering the situation we’re in. And right now, my biggest problem in making that happen is you.”
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be nice to your precious little Garreth.”
Hannah reached out, quick as a snake, and grabbed the girl’s arm. She squeezed, as if she could squeeze the life out her. When Dixie pulled her arm, Hannah pulled back and squeezed even harder. “You will be nice to him. Do you understand me?” She let her anger out on a leash this time, let it show in her tone and on her face. “You will stop hurting that boy.”
“Or what?”
“It’s not the old world, honeybunch. There’s no child protective services.”
“You can’t do anything to me.” But the wince when Hannah applied more pressure to her arm suggested that she knew better.
“I can. And I might. So every time you open your mouth from now on, before a single word comes out, I want you to think about that. Think of who you’d call if I beat you. Think of who’d go to bat for you.” She let go of the girl’s arm.
“You hurt me,” she said, rubbing her arm.
“You hurt Garreth.”
“I’m going to tell.”
“And I’m going to bow when they applaud,” Hannah said. “Now finish your God. Damned. Job.”
Dixie glared for a minute, but something in Hannah’s face had her backing down in seconds. Still rubbing her arm, she sat and did as she had been told.
Well, that hadn’t gone quite as planned. And maybe Hannah had gone too far with those threats. But it had sure as hell felt good.
Chapter 36
“The timegate is going to reappear again,” Laina announced over breakfast a little over a week later.
The group was still feeling the effects of Traveller’s death. And everyone had seen the bruises rise on Dixie’s arm where Hannah had gripped her. No one had said a word to her about it, not even Bob, but she had gotten some sidelong glances, speculative more than angry or fearful.
Hannah had not explained, excused, or apologized. She realized the irony of the fact that, like Dixie, any apology she gave would be entirely hollow. Unlike Dixie, no one was compelling her to speak the lie—the privileges of adulthood. She had hurt the girl, yes. But as far as Hannah was concerned, the girl hadn’t been hurt enough. Hannah was only concerned that she had damaged the group in some way, not about Dixie.
Slowly, though, and despite what had happened the day of the horse’s death, the group dynamics had shifted back to normal. She had even seen the first signs of Garreth being solicitous about Dixie, which set her teeth on edge. But it was his choice. Maybe the kid was diagnosably a masochist. Hannah wanted to interfere, but she didn’t. For one thing, she didn’t think it would do one bit of good to warn him off.
So things had been normalizing. But now there was this. Laina’s announcement.
“I know where, and I know when,” Laina said. “It’s going to appear, right on the plateau where we last saw it.”
Ted said, “How do you know that?”
“I know,” Laina said.
They all talked over each other:
“You can’t.”
“How?”
“You’re nuts.”
“When?”
Finally, Bob clapped his hands and called for silence. “Okay, everybody. Let’s take this slow and be logical. Laina, you have the floor. Explain how you came to this conclusion.”
Laina could be seen to gather herself, order her thoughts, and then she began to speak. She explained her theories, but after a few sentences with terms like “affine space” and “hyperbolic functions” and “Minkowski spacetime,” Hannah couldn’t follow her and stopped trying. She wasn’t sure if that was because the girl was crazy or brilliant. “I don’t understand one word in ten of what you’re saying,” she said after the girl had wound down.
Rex said, “I understand about one in three.”
Bob nodded. “I’m sure you’re bright, Laina, and you might have figured out more than a little. But I don’t see how you can be so sure of this.”
“Let me show you.” She grabbed a stick from the fuel supply, sat down, and began to draw formulas in the dirt next to the steam pit. Bob, Rex, and a few others gathered around her. Hannah hung back and watched their faces. Everyone but Bob and Rex looked more and more confused, and after ten minutes, even they did. The others were shuffling around, looking bored or hopeful or just confused.
“Laina,” Bob finally said. She went on drawing in the dirt. “Laina.” He touched the girl’s arm, and she jumped and was silenced. “Sorry, but I’m not following you. Rex?”
“She lost me five or ten minutes ago,” Rex said, looking ashamed to admit it. “Are you sure, Laina?”
“Positive. I know how it works—and have some general ideas why. But the why doesn’t matter. The patterns matter. It’s like....” She thought a second. “Like you don’t need to know anything about how electricity works to learn that traffic lights turn from green to yellow to red. A little kid can detect the pattern. I'm seeing the pattern of the timegate. That's all.”
Rex furrowed his brow. “It’s geometrical, then?”
“Spatial, in the sense of an N-dimensional hypermanifold of...” And she was off again, losing Hannah entirely before the sentence had even gotten going.
Laina finished with words Hannah could understand. "I know when the timegate is returning. And I know which way is forward, and I know which way is back."
That set off everybody again. Hannah couldn’t hear herself think as everybody was talking at once, and so loudly it made her head hurt. Or maybe it was Laina’s incomprehensible explanation that had done that.
She waited until the noise had reached a calmer pitch and asked Laina, “But what if you’re wrong?”
“I’m sorry?” She had been answering someone else’s question.
“What if the gate appears, and you say, ‘go through right now, right there,’ and we do? And it spits us out a hundred million years in the past. Or spits us in the future, and humanity is gone, and it’s a nuclear wasteland or something?”
“That won’t happen. I mean, it could be that a nuclear wasteland will happen. I can’t predict anything like that, but we won’t go that far. Not in one jump. It’s impossible.”
“You sound certain, but I’m not.”
“You don’t believe me?” Laina wasn’t offended by it—at least not that showed in her voice—but perplexed. “Look, it’s right here.” And she pointed to a row of symbols on the ground.
“I don’t understand that. Nobody understands it. Only you do. So what you’re asking is for us to take it as a matter of faith. You can’t ask us to believe the math or science of it because nobody here has your level of skill with that. You’re asking us to believe in you.”
“And you don’t.” Laina frowned. “Why?” Again, she didn’t sound offended. Just confused.
Hannah hesitated and then decided the truth was needed. “Because I don’t know if you’re brilliant or insane.”
Laina’s eyes widened. “Insane? I’m not insane.”
“Which is exactly what an insane person would say.”
She blinked at that. You could almost see the wheels turning in her head. “I guess what they say is right. You can’t prove a negative. And I can’t disprove that.” She looked around at all the others. Everyone had fallen quiet a
nd was watching. Some faces were hopeful. A few looked as troubled as Hannah felt. “Do you all think I’m crazy?”
Garreth said, “I don’t.”
“Neither do I,” Jodi said.
Claire said, “I want you to be right.”
Rex said, “But if nobody but you can follow the formulas, how do we know if you are?”
Laina stood up, dropped the stick she had been writing with, and dusted her hands off on her pants. “Simple. At least the first part is, as simple as can be. I tell you when the timegate is going to appear again, and when it does, you’ll know I’m not completely out of my mind.”
“You know that?” Rex asked.
“I do. It’s coming tomorrow morning. The days are a little shorter here than what we’re used to. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed. But in our hours, the hours your watches are tracking, it’ll appear tomorrow, and again in 27.4329 days.”
Chapter 37
“Why?” Rex said. As Laina tried to explain to him, Hannah tuned them out. Maybe Laina was right. Or maybe she was bat-crap insane. But it certainly shouldn’t hurt to go to the plateau, at the time she instructed, and wait for the timegate to appear.
Should they go through the timegate? If it appeared, and Laina was proven right, should they take that chance?
This place was no better than the last, the Oligocene. There the saber tooths weren’t the only predators, just the ones they had encountered in a way that cost them. Here, there were the lake monsters and the terror crane, as well as the flesh-eating ants.
But it wasn’t a choice between Oligocene and Paleocene. That wasn’t all of the story. If they could jump, and jump again, and jump again with each appearance of the timegate, if Laina was right about that, they could get back to their own time. Back to the time of antibiotics and ambulances. Back to grocery stores and cellphones.