A Dawn of Mammals Collection

by Lou Cadle

  It surprised her that the boots fit pretty well. The jeans were too big around and too short, but they were much better than the girl’s frayed shorts. Hannah commandeered those to use for patching and repairing other clothes.

  Over brunch, Laina talked about the timegate and her most recent calculations. “What I’m really worried about,” she said, “is that I won’t be able to get us anywhere near the moment we left.”

  “How close can we come?” Nari asked.

  “I don’t even know if I can get us to when people were there at all. A million years is a long time to us. And if you allow me just half of one percent error, that means in a twenty-million-year jump, I might be off by a hundred thousand years. Maybe human beings might barely have made it to the continent. Maybe it’ll be a hundred thousand the other way, and we’ll be extinct.”

  Rex said, “And the world a nuclear wasteland.”

  “I really don’t want to overshoot,” Laina said. “I’m not sure that maybe....”

  “Maybe what?” Hannah said, when the girl didn’t finish.

  “We might not just blink out of existence. I can tell you the mathematics, but I can’t tell you the rules. I can’t even guess at them. Maybe we can only go back to where we were, and no further. But I have a bad feeling about trying to overshoot.”

  Jodi said, “Maybe if we overshoot, we go back to the exact moment we left, though.”

  “That’d be convenient,” Laina said, “but I don’t think we should count on it.”

  Bob said, “There’s no reason to worry yet, right? If we can’t jump more than twenty million years at a time, then we have two more jumps to get home. Maybe between now and then, you’ll figure out more, Laina.”

  “Maybe,” she said, but she sounded less than certain.

  Bob looked around at the worried faces. “Let’s try not to obsess on it right now. Instead, we should continue to survive, and stay healthy, and learn more skills. I wouldn’t mind turning over the rock-breaking to you, Rex. You might be able to re-invent flint-making like I’ve not been able to.”

  “The scrapers work fine,” Jodi told him. “Really good, in fact.”

  Ted said, “And the hand axes. They were useful.”

  “We have six more weeks, at any rate,” Bob said. “Two here, and four the next place. And the next jump after that might be into a colder world, so we need to think of that too.”

  “Like normal cold?” Nari said. “Or ice-age cold?”

  “Ice ages were around for a while. Not just the one we all know about, with mammoths and the rocks left behind by the big ice sheets and all that.”

  “Moraines,” said Rex. “I think that’s the name of them, right? When the sheets scrape stuff along?”

  “Right,” said Bob. “From where we are on, the world gets colder. Not every single day. There are ups and downs. But overall, through the Cenozoic, the climate shifts so it’s colder on average. And then the ice ages come and it gets really cold.”

  Hannah said, “So we need to start thinking of making warmer clothes. Jackets. Bedding too.”

  “So far,” Laina said, “we seem to be following the normal year. Like it was June when we left, and it seems like the beginning of September now, with the fruits getting ripe.”

  “So it could be colder next jump. October, if that holds up,” Rex said. “Will it, Laina?”

  “I don’t know. We’ve only jumped three times, and it could be a coincidence. We might jump into January next time, for all I know.”

  Hannah said, “But the idea of preparing for harsher weather is a great one. Let’s all think about that today and see what we come up with.”

  Chapter 25

  For the next several days, they did that. The ashfall tapered off within two days. Most afternoons it rained. They got a break from the rain every three days or so, which gave them just enough time to dry out clothes and boots, and then the rain fell again.

  After Ted’s feet began showing the beginning of what looked to her like a fungal infection, she suggested everyone go barefoot if they could manage it. There was some complaining about picking burrs out of feet, but that was only an irritant, not a real danger. Their feet would toughen up soon enough.

  She assigned a different person each day to go with Bob on some simple task, like gathering fallen cashew fruit. She outright refused to let him go on hunting trips or anything more strenuous. He chafed at the restrictions, but she held firm. “Take the recovery slow,” she said. “Before you know it, you’ll be back to normal, and you’ll hardly remember having a couple weeks of restricted movement.”

  He seemed better, though sometimes pale at the end of a half-day’s work. She worried that there was a circulation problem of some sort, but whatever it was, it was well beyond her ability to doctor. After many days of keeping her eyes out for some, she found a stand of willow trees and gathered its bark. She was able to dose him with willow bark tea twice every day, as well as brew some up for Zach when he sprained an ankle.

  Zach insisted on being of use while he was recovering from that, so she let him fish every day. Claire said she appreciated the break, but Zach wasn’t nearly the angler Claire was, and by the second day, everyone was grateful when the hunting team came back with another kill, a young camelid they’d found wandering the grasslands alone.

  “Maybe the mother got sick and died,” Rex said.

  “Or eaten,” Claire said. “Though why a predator would go for the mother and not the easier calf, I can’t explain.”

  It was a clear day, and so they set the fire up by the lake and fried up some camel steaks for an early supper. The bulk of the meat would go into the steam pit overnight. Some was put aside for their continuing experiments with jerky and preserving meat with smoke.

  By the time the sun fell behind the trees, only Jodi, Zach, Ted, and Hannah were still at the fire, cleaning the dishes and banking the coals for the night, debating what the best distance from the heat would be for overnight smoking.

  “We might have to get up in the middle of the night to adjust it,” Jodi said.

  “I’ll do it,” said Hannah.

  “No, that’s okay. I’m happy to,” Jodi said. Then she yelped.

  Hannah was about to ask what was wrong when she heard the crashing in the trees behind her.

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw a hell pig. Just one, but that didn’t mean more weren’t on his heels.

  “Get in the water!” Hannah yelled, turning and scampering backward.

  Ted ran for a tree. In seconds he had swung up to the first branch.

  Hannah dashed for the water. Jodi was already in. She had somehow remembered to grab her club.

  “Zach!” she yelled. “Hurry!”

  Hannah turned again and saw Zach was on his knees next to the fire. He must have tripped. She froze in place, torn between getting herself safe and helping Zach.

  Before she could make her decision, Jodi was splashing past her, out of the lake, her club swinging overhead. She and the hell pig converged at Zach, just as he made it to his feet. Jodi’s club came around and bounced off the long snout of the predator.

  “Get in here!” Hannah yelled.

  “Don’t!” Jodi said, slamming the club in an overhand arc and smashing the hell pig’s nose. “Mess! With! My! Boyfriend!” With every word she hit the animal.

  Zach was pulling at the back of her shirt, trying to get her into the water. Jodi was in full berserker mode, smashing the animal for all she was worth. Zach had her moving backward, but she was fighting him, obviously wanting nothing more than to deal the monster more blows.

  A swing landed on one of the animal’s flanges, and Hannah could hear the bone snap.

  It was too much for the hell pig. It turned tail and ran.

  “Get into the water!” Hannah said, and finally the two did, wading in until they were waist deep. Then Zach swung Jodi around and kissed her soundly.

  Hannah realized that Ted was laughing, up in the tree. She loo
ked beyond the beach but saw no more predators coming out. “Ted, do you see any more of them?”

  He couldn’t stop laughing for another several seconds. Finally, he said, “No! But did you see Jodi?”

  “I saw her,” Hannah said, and then she started to laugh too, from relief.

  Ted swung himself out of the tree. “My hero!” he said, in a falsetto voice.

  Zach and Jodi broke their clench. Zach said, “Damn right. She saved my butt.”

  They were all grinning and full of the high of defeating the beast.

  And she couldn’t deny it: Jodi truly had been magnificent.

  Chapter 26

  The days to the timegate’s appearance ticked down. They continued to learn better ways of surviving, and one morning Hannah gave a short class on CPR, bearing Bob’s glare the whole while.

  Laina reminded them from time to time about the timegate coming, as if they were likely to forget. One morning she said, “Just five days away now.”

  Hannah said, “We should start early, I think. Give ourselves three days to get there.”

  “How do we eat for three days without fishing?”

  “We can cook meat to carry for the first day or two. For the last one, I’m not sure.”

  “Isn’t the smoked meat working?”

  “We’re better at it, but I’m not that sure it’s safe to eat after 72 hours.”

  “We can hunt on the way,” Ted said.

  “If we do,” she said, “we should allot four days for travel.”

  “So we’ll carry food for two days and then hunt to feed ourselves the last two?” Jodi said.

  “Yes, that’d work.”

  Bob said, “What if we don’t find anything to hunt?”

  “Then we’ll go hungry. I’m more worried it won’t rain all that time.”

  Dixie said, “I’d like it to not rain.”

  “We need it to,” said Nari. “For the water, right?”

  “Right,” Hannah said. “We can soak up rain from the grass with our shirts, or gather it in the Mylar blankets and survive. Food, we can do without for two days. But we need water every day.”

  “I wish we could figure out a watertight basket design,” Nari said.

  “The pitch might eventually be made to work,” Jodi said.

  Rex said, “I’ve been thinking about a design for lids for the bowls. A simple twist-on lid that would allow us to carry liquid without spilling any.”

  Bob said, “If we’re going to allow four days, then we’re talking about leaving tomorrow, right?”

  Everyone looked to Laina. “Yes,” she said. “It will be mid-afternoon when it comes. So we should leave tomorrow afternoon.”

  “We’re lucky it doesn’t arrive at night,” Rex said.

  “That’ll happen,” said Laina. “At some point, we’ll probably have to jump at night. But it will still be visible, I think, even at night.”

  “Let’s worry about this jump before we worry about the next,” Hannah said. “Okay, then. We have a lot of work to do in a day.”

  Ted said, “One day and several hours.”

  “True,” she said. “We need plenty of food, and we should pack whatever we can this afternoon, though most of the packing will have to wait until tomorrow.” When you didn’t own much, every bit of it was important to your survival.

  “If we’re going to try and smoke some fish,” Rex said, “we need to cast the net right away.”

  Within moments, the kids had figured out what they needed to do, and without Hannah’s urging or direction they had divided up the tasks. She and Bob were left alone.

  “You’ve done well with them,” he said. “Look how capable they’ve become.”

  “I had almost nothing to do with it,” she said. “They grew up on their own. I just taught them what I know.”

  “And encouraged them to think for themselves, and to innovate.” He said, “And they trust you.”

  “Surprising, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  “Everything I’ve screwed up at. Letting Garreth die. Hitting Dixie.”

  “Well, yeah, you shouldn’t have done that to Dixie, no matter what a trial she is. But you know Garreth wasn’t your fault.”

  “My head knows it,” she said. “My heart has a more difficult time.”

  “You’ll heal,” he said. “We all will.”

  She didn’t argue, but it seemed a platitude that didn’t really apply. They had moved on, adjusted to Garreth’s absence, yes. But she’d never be over it, not entirely.

  “But Dixie’s another matter,” he said.

  “I lost control,” she admitted. “But I can’t go quite so far as to say she didn’t deserve getting smacked.”

  “You didn’t only smack her,” Bob said.

  “No.” She wiggled her fingers. She no longer wore the splint, but her finger ached where she had broken it against Dixie’s face. It probably had healed wrong. She could still use the hand fine, but she imagined if she lived to Bob’s age, she’d feel it all the time and regret not having had medical care.

  “You really don’t like Dixie,” Bob said.

  “No. The feeling is mutual, but I didn’t like her from the first moment I saw her, dressed wrong, obviously worried far more about her looks than being logical and safe. And the more I knew her, the less I liked her.”

  “I see that. But why? She’s just a teenager. Teenagers can be petty, and thoughtless, and selfish. I should know. I’ve taught several thousand of them.”

  “She reminds me of my own teenage years,” Hannah said. “And the mean girls I had to deal with then. Sounds stupid, I guess, that I carry a grudge for half my life.” She realized something. “My god, I think I’m thirty-four now. I’ve had a birthday. Or would have.”

  “Many happy returns.”

  “So for more than half my life, I’ve carried this resentment.”

  “Maybe it’s time to let it go.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Did they tease you over something about your looks? Were you fat, or had acne, or were you too poor to afford good clothes? Those are the usual reasons.”

  She shook her head. “We weren’t any too rich, but my dad sent a check every month. We were clothed.”

  “Then what was the issue? Just scapegoating? Bullying for no reason?”

  “There was a reason.” Her sister. She didn’t want to think about it and changed the subject. “I wish we’d figured out a way to process those cashews. They’d be a safe food to carry—not just for four days, but for four months if we’re lost in time for that long.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Bob, confined to the cabin, had been the one to experiment with the cashews and the one to discover why they shouldn’t be eaten raw. The coating of the nuts had a nasty, caustic substance in it. Bob’s hands weren’t blistered any longer, but there were fading scars from his attempt to get the nuts out of their dangerous shells.

  “We need gloves to do it.”

  “At the least,” he said. “Masks and goggles and plastic aprons would be good too.”

  “Maybe we’ll find another sort of nut next place. Walnuts or something easier.”

  “The Miocene again.”

  “I hope not back to the saber tooth nimravids,” she said.

  “Could be. Could be worse,” he said. “Well, the berries aren’t going to gather themselves. Want to do that together?”

  “Yeah, for the morning. Then I want to organize the gear, and repair any backpacks that need repairing.” The basket backpacks worked great for a while, but they didn’t hold up like the woven or synthetic materials of the 21st century packs. If used, if stressed with a big load of meat, they needed almost daily repair.

  * * *

  By the next afternoon, they were ready to go. Everyone wore a pack of some sort. She had tried to keep Bob from carrying anything, but he had insisted, so he had a basket backpack filled with every size of cord, from the thinnest lines of twisted grass to fou
r-strand braids.

  Leaving the cabin was surprisingly emotional for Hannah—and she wasn’t alone in this. “We did such a good job building it,” said Jodi, patting a wall affectionately.

  “We can do it again the next place,” Ted said.

  “But it’ll never be this one, the first one,” Jodi said.

  “Yeah,” said Rex mournfully. So much of his thought was reflected in the design, it was no wonder he was particularly attached to it.

  “Ready?” Hannah said.

  “Let’s go,” Bob said, adjusting the woven straps of his backpack one last time.

  They walked out of the woods that had protected and sustained them for nearly five weeks.

  They went slowly for the first day. She made them take several rests and kept a close eye on Bob. He looked okay, but she worried he wouldn’t mention if he started feeling bad.

  They were rained on, but it gave them the chance to collect water from the grass, so much that their water bottles were filled again by the time they bedded down for the night on damp grass.

  They put on still-damp boots the next morning, shivering in the cool of the dawn, and set off again, down a hill and back up. At the crest of the hill, they saw before them the largest group of camels they had seen, several females with young, grazing. The animals kept their distance but didn’t leave the valley.

  “We could hunt for one,” said Ted, looking at them.

  “We have the smoked fish.” They had carried enough dry wood to build a fire tonight to cook the fish, as she didn’t yet trust that their smoking was preserving it sufficiently. Another time, she might risk the experiment of eating it and seeing if anyone was ill, but not now, when they needed to hike another day and a half to get to the timegate.

  Bob slowed down in the afternoon. Hannah called a halt early, not worrying about their pace. They’d still beat the timegate by a half-day. She had left early for just this reason. The afternoon rain came later, and was lighter, but it was still enough to soak up sufficient water to slake their thirst. She agreed that Ted could take out a group hunting, but they came back empty-handed.