From the log of Capt. Juniper Jones
Security Detail II
Know I should report in this thing more often but never feel like there’s anything important to write. How many times can I describe the game and weather? I figure Duarte and Bolzano got us covered in the reports department. Plants, animals, natives, they’re all over it.
Wish that damn Hunter would get back with his damn belt. I’ve gotten used to being happy. That’s probably too strong a word. Let’s say I’ve gotten used to not feeling like shit.
Contented. It’s good as any to describe my life lately. We have settled into Rome more or less permanently. Our tours of Africa and the Eastern Europe are behind us. Most of the locals, both animals and natives, have learned to respect our space. Got a new lady who reminds me of my first girlfriend back in Erie. Same looks and build, easygoing sense of humor. Not that it’s anybody’s business, but I’d be lyin’ if I said she wasn’t a tiger in the bunk.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is the longest I’ve gone without being depressed since the jump. Also the longest I’ve gone since Galway without a zap from Hunter to clear the clouds in my brain. They’re forming. Can’t seem ‘em yet, but know they’re in there, getting ready to rain all over the parade.
Flower might not want me when I’m feeling low and mean.
Damn it. Where is Hunter?
CHAPTER TWO
From the log of Hunter
Ethics Specialist
62 A.D.
How many thousands of years has it been since I had an English thought or spoke an English word?
Yet here I sit with my legs crossed in the mud and misting rain composing a journal entry in the old language. I reckon you fools on The Team wouldn’t have the wherewithal to decipher this mash-up if I employed any of the Asian dialects I have been speaking lately. Even the pidgin Latin prattled in these hills two days’ walk from Rome might be unrecognizable.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
How quickly my fingers warm to the task. They must have memories all their own for I have only vague recollections of typing. No doubt the nano factories swarming through my body play a role. They always do.
I should have dug this bloody computer up long ago. Though soundless without my sodding belt, there are silent movies to watch and books to read. I never expected it to boot on after so many years buried in the stony hillside. It boggles the mind. All it took was a bit of kinetic energy, a few good shakes and an hour exposed to the cloudy skies before the flat white device popped to life as if we had turned it off a fortnight ago and not 30,000 years.
I can still see Dr. Maria Duarte sliding the computer into its rock coffin at the back of the cave. Having gotten her way, the botanist was in a good mood, chatty as we filled the cavern with soil and rubble. She laughed off how hard we were making it for me to retrieve the device if I changed my mind.
This is one of those memories I have chewed upon many times so it’s hard to say how much truth is left in it. The mind has a tendency to bend and shape remembrances through the years, particularly mine it seems. I wasn’t aware how much shading of the truth I had done until I sampled a few of my former associates’ journal entries this afternoon. I thought we were friends. To hear them tell it, I was a boorish prick most of our short time together. Why don’t I remember it that way?
Certainly I got up to some hijinks, toppled their apple cart a time or two, but, to my mind it was always for their own good. Their bitter words do not jibe with my memories. Outnumbered four to one, and in such endless detail, I’m beginning to accept it is I who might be mistaken.
Those were the days when I was still under the spell of the security belt, and my guns gave me leave to do as I pleased. The belt went wonky less than 200 years after my jump back to the Paleolithic. The guns lasted longer, perhaps 1,000 years, but certainly not long enough. Oh what I would give to have a working force field and a pulsar in my hand. This new lot wouldn’t sass me once I fried an instigator or two.
My gang of Mongols and mongrels is disappointed beyond all proportion by its meager haul. Apart from this computer, which they showed no interest in, their month of digging earned only a few tiny gems, Neanderthal bones, spear points and a pile of Cro-Magnon doodads like ivory moon calendars and shapely Venus carvings. Despite my daily assurances of booty, the gold diggers uncovered no gold.
I mustn’t have been paying attention when my son Salvatore and his friends prepared the cache so long ago. I expected much better pickings. Whenever I bury treasure, I don’t forget to include treasure! It’s not like there wasn’t any available! My goodness, back in those days you could trade a wolf pelt or pouch of shelled nuts for an emerald the size of your fist.
We haven’t reached the point of mutiny, but having been through this many times before, I can see it’s going to be a close-run affair. My bedraggled, sulking companions have taken to the shadows, wives filling the ears of husbands with nonsense. I brought them thousands of miles from home for stone spear points? Rome is close enough to smell. Why are we hiding like badgers in a dusty den?
I don’t need to hear them to know what they are saying. Some things never change.
Far in the valley below, a crew of Roman stonemasons is having a difficult go of trying to wheel a rough marble column along the stream bank. They must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, for the path they are following is barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Clad in togas and sturdy sandals, the buffoons have no idea the danger they are in. I haven’t a doubt in the world my crew is licking its chops, contemplating a raid to vent its anger.
The masons employ a bulky wooden cart drawn by a team of four oxen. The oversized cart is crisscrossed by a network of heavy rope slings that cradle the column and protect it from the jouncing. When I was a boy, history books made such a big deal about Roman ingenuity and resourcefulness. Having recently spent several lifetimes in China and thereabouts, I must laugh. If the Han emperor wanted to transport marble from some outlying quarry, he would have had these hills leveled and a deep canal dug to make the job efficient. By using water, his engineers would have minimized the risk of breaking the column in half as it seems, judging by the cries echoing though the trees, these numbskulls have just done.
Three times I have twirled the birdcall that means “hold steady,” and so far my charges obey. I’m going to have to find them some gold.
From the log of Hunter
Ethics Specialist
62 A.D.
Well, Team Leaders, have you noted the date posted on the header of these entries? It’s more a guess of the year than a sure date, but close enough. Any questions rolling through your pea brains? Having stolen your timeship and hijacked an unwilling crew, it hardly seems possible for me to disappoint you further. I’m afraid I must.
The history archives in this machine confirm what I already knew–what I first heard in Calcutta and stupidly bankrupted myself to rush back with my entourage to confirm. I’m late to the party. Yes, I missed them all. Jesus, Augustus Caesar, Marco Antonio, Cleopatra and all the other giants who helped shape the Western World. Nero’s in bloody charge!
If it helps you feel better, the news makes me sick. Who wouldn’t want to meet such heroic figures in the flesh, to experience such seminal moments in mankind’s history? This era has been circled on my proverbial calendar for millennia. I planned to see Christ perform miracles! Or confirm, once and for all, that his good deeds have been exaggerated. (When I have free time, I’ll file reports detailing what I have heard and what I have been able to confirm.)
For heaven’s sake, the Etruscans hadn’t even usurped the small enclave that is now the bustling, shit-filled city of Rome when I embarked on what was to be a quick stroll to China and back. Reflecting on the journey, counting the wives and estates, wars and periods of peace, I must have been lollygagging in the East for 400 years! Where did time go?
Time and its tricks! Back when I tried explaining
to Salvatore and Duarte about the power of time, the way it swirls around great people and earth-changing events to prevent change, they thought I was spouting bollocks.
Something kept me roaming the Orient, gaining and losing fortunes from Osaka to Bombay for centuries. Was it time having its way or my ineptitude? Or, my innate sense of survival? It’s dangerous at the top. I’ve learned the nearer to the big man you are, or heaven forbid, you are the big man, the more likely it is you’ll be poisoned, stabbed, garroted, drowned or any of the many other creative ways they find to eliminate you. Poison is the worst for me–a wretched death followed by a long, horrible recovery. An African sorceress once slipped me a mushroom so toxic it left my voice raspy for years.
Speaking of assassinations, I’ve convinced my associates to trust me one more time. We’re winding our way north in search of a particular Umbrian rock. If the fortune of gold and jewels I buried back in the Bronze Age is no longer squirreled beneath the stone, we’ll not only be bankrupt, I’ll probably be murdered.
The last of our ready cash was spent on new clothes and footwear. It chaffs my Mongols to walk, to know their precious horses and tack are languishing on the other side of the world. I couldn’t afford to buy mounts and won’t let them steal any.
For now, we’re far better off sticking to the trees, living off the land. Some nights, we raid farmers’ gardens to augment the game we kill, but the last thing we need is to attract the attention of the army or local cohorts. Life is cheap in Nero’s Rome. I have no intention of becoming a gladiator or, worse yet, lion food.
The day I shepherded my curious bunch through the Eternal City has left a foul taste in my mouth. Just as the history in this machine predicts, Rome is an overpopulated, poverty-stricken tinderbox where life can be worth less than a stale loaf of bread.
To be fair, I also spotted opportunity, but it’s going to be a few centuries. North is where we can make our fortunes and wait out the coming storm. Once there’s enough dosh in my pockets to pay bribes and get the wheels of commerce moving, I’ll outfit my crew properly and we’ll make a sweep through Germania and up to Brittany.
That’s the plan at least. For now, we walk. To distract myself on chill nights, I read journal entries posted by my onetime associates. I’m happy to find not all of our time together was filled with acrimony. Much of what I have read lately is set in Rome, which is logical since the area served as our home base for the better part of a decade.
Salvatore set up shop in a roomy cave atop Palatine Hill. I wouldn’t call him “soft,” but with his penchant for fine dining he did put on weight. Whenever he hosted a party there was always a honeyed pie of some sort. Salvatore had a way with wines, oils, salame and prosciutto. We could always count on a song or story after supper.
The African-American soldier named Jones kept a modest camp about 80 meters away. Situated near the source of a small spring, his watertight lean-to boasted a simple stone hearth and excellent sight lines of the surrounding terrain.
Opting to live apart from their modern associates, lovers Paul Kaikane and Maria Duarte settled on a crescent-shaped sea island in the Mare Terrino. North of the Tiber River’s mouth and some six kilometers off the sandy Italian coast, their modest fiefdom was free of bears, large cats and the prying eyes of natives. They seemed happy to be alone together–Duarte with her studies and reports, and Kaikane with his precious boat, which began rotting the day we launched it in Galway.
Like a child of divorce, my native son, the gray-bearded storyteller Leonglauix, split his time between the three homes. There was always the worry he would regale other natives with tales about our advanced gadgets and abilities, but I don’t think he ever did.
To say we had let our guard down around the Cro-Magnon would be a gross understatement. Living together, sailing on long voyages, it was hard not to. By the time we reached the shores of Italy, he already had a decent understanding of English, had watched movies on a computer and was finally starting to comprehend Salvatore’s admission of when and where we really came from–The Future.
Duarte went ballistic over that slip of the tongue. She had rules for everything. When I was in camp, I was supposed to check my belt and guns at the door. As I have admitted, the technology made me a poor dinner companion. Even so, I could not set them aside completely. While my modern companions put down roots in Italy, I could not stop exploring. Alone, I circled the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa on journeys that took months and sometimes years. Wearing equipment that nullified fatigue, protected from all dangers, I could run thousands of kilometers without stop.
Upon returning to Rome, it may have taken me a few days to unstrap my belt, but I usually did. And once the nanos in my body calmed down, I was usually thankful to be free. Life was chugging along rather smoothly in Rome, but even in 30,000 B.C., nothing runs smoothly forever.
CHAPTER THREE
TRANSMISSION:
Jones: “Old man’s got his eye on a new mutt.”
Kaikane: “Bolzano posted odds?”
Jones: “Even money, less than half a year.”
Kaikane: “How long the last one live? Two days?”
Jones: “Two fucking days before numbnut rushed a lion. Gone before old man could teach him squat.”
Kaikane: “Not before he bit me.”
Jones: “Little fucker got me too.”
Kaikane: “Gray Beard said it himself. Good riddance.”
Jones: “Roger that.”
Kaikane: “This new dog any good?”
Jones: “Don’t sound like it.”
From the log of Maria Duarte
Chief Botanist
“Andiamo!” We go!
I turned expecting to see Cpl. Bolzano. Instead, there was Gray Beard striding into camp. The twinkle in his eye said he knew he tricked me. The man is a natural mimic. Pinching his hands and shaking them shoulder high, he kept the joke going by dragging out a perfect “Bravo!” The word rolled off his tongue as if he were the half-brother who grew up in a palazzo.
“There is a man with dogs to trade,” he continued in Green Turtle dialect sprinkled with English. “To the ‘north’ and ‘east.’ This news is ‘five’ days old. I must hurry to see if the man will trade a dog to me. I want you and ‘Surfer Boy’ to come. This clan may be ‘rowdy.’ I asked Jones to come. He said ‘Fuck that.’ I asked Salvatore. He said ‘Hell no.’ ‘Andiamo!’ You, me, ‘Surfer Boy,’ we go?”
Team leaders would poop their drawers if they heard him. It’s not like we purposely teach him English and Italian. He just picks stuff up, especially from the boys. That’s not fair, I shouldn’t single them out. I’m as guilty as they are.
His 10 favorite modern words or expressions are: 1. Bravo! 2. Fuck that. 3. Fuck them. 4. Andiamo! 5. North. 6. South. 7. East. 8. West. 9. Yes. 10. No. 10a. Fuck no!
By my count, his modern vocabulary now surpasses triple digits in words. Our only consolation is the old storyteller doesn’t use them around other natives. They wouldn’t know what he was saying. And he promised me not to. He knows our friendship will suffer greatly if he breaks that oath.
But what’s to hold him when we leave Europe? Promise or no promise, he’s been contaminated beyond repair. Besides being sired by a modern human, the clan leader has sailed the seas with us on a double-hulled canoe, watched movies on Sal’s computer and regularly makes fire with my magnifying glass. He accepts and understands we somehow come from the future. Even if we have to shanghai the wily storyteller, he must be brought along if we ever sail to North America.
“Andiamo! I need you with me.”
Paul and I had nothing against taking a journey with our elder, it was the trip’s purpose that made us try to beg off. The last thing any of us want is another yapping, shitting, biting dog in camp. A new mutt is bound to complicate things when we sail west.
I’m not going to worry about it yet. His recent attempts at dog ownership have been woeful. Not only has he been unable to find a canine even h
alf as intelligent or loyal as the bitch these past seven years, only one of the substitutes stayed alive longer than a year. That dog was crushed by a hippo.
Gray Beard wants a pack animal that listens, learns and can be trusted on the trail without a leash. Every pooch he’s adopted has been hell-bent on running away and being eaten. Compared to domesticated dogs of the 23rd century, the wild creatures mankind currently utilizes are closer to wolf in temperament and trainability. Some have chewed through their tethers, while at least two, I’m rather certain, were set loose by a Green Turtle clan member that shall go unnamed. All I’ll say is that if that person hadn’t done it, I probably would have. Who wants to listen to a dog with no redeeming qualities bark all day and night?
Gray Beard said it himself, in English, when his last furry canine broke its line and charged a lion that it spotted slinking along the base of the Palatine. “Good riddance,” he muttered as we sat on the summit and watched the vultures fight the hyenas for what was left of the dog. Having traded two of Paul’s ivory fishhooks, a sack of honeycomb and a high-grade piece of unworked flint for not quite two days with the animal, he was angry for making such a bad deal.
We showed good manners by not mentioning that dog as we made our way from Rome to the round crater lake that will someday be called Lago di Bracciano. It was a beautiful, two-day journey roving through wide valleys and negotiating hills that weren’t hard to climb. Despite his bowed legs and slightly bent back, Gray Beard set a pace that left Paul and me aching at the end of the first day. True, we were carrying all the gear and trade goods, but he’s twice our age. Tooting on his bone flute at regular intervals to warn predators of man’s approach, sniffing the wind, studying the birds and deer for signs of danger, he led us steadily northeast.
Rome Page 3