Rome

by Matthew Thayer

  I gave him a leather sack full of gold and jewels and we linked arms in the Roman manner to seal the exchange. He was an honest thief, or what passes for one. What a shame it was to have to slip back into the camp during the night to suffocate the greedy bastard with his own pillow. Once my gold and jewels were recovered, I set his tent on fire.

  If I’ve learned one thing in 30,000 years, it’s to never leave loose ends.

  From the log of Hunter

  Ethics Specialist

  63 A.D.

  Reading these Dear Diary entries from 30,000 B.C. has made me nostalgic. The private insights of Salvatore and his friends have awakened feelings I considered lost to the sands of time.

  Too bad this computer doesn’t contain missives from all of the interesting people I have known through the years. Just the wives and business partners alone would make for fascinating reading. How about the potentates, generals and clan leaders? I’d like to read what they had to say about me my behind my back.

  Half of what these “friends” express is blatant distrust and the other half is outright accusation. To be fair, most of their complaints are merited. I’d forgotten what a cheeky bastard I was! No doubt the security belt played a role.

  I have reached the time period when the gang and I have decided to set sail for the New World by way of Syria. Among their entertaining admissions of fear and love are a few less-rosy bits of my own. This afternoon I discovered a private entry I must have squirreled away from Duarte and the others. It was in a folder titled: Things To Do . . .

  From the log of Hunter

  (aka–Giovanni Bolzano, Dr. Mitchell Simmons)

  Ethics Specialist

  It feels odd to compose words on this bloody computer once more. I believe I’ll bring it with me on my next long run. The routine of filing reports, putting thoughts in logical order, has its benefits, even if Dr. Duarte is trying to spy on me.

  My colleagues think I traveled to China and back. Don’t know why I lied, just did. What difference does it make if those twerps have the truth of where I’ve wandered? I wager they would be more interested knowing I got back nearly two months ago. Eavesdropping on their meetings and candid conversations, observing their daily slogs through monotonous, predictable lives, I ascertained their fears and desires.

  Yes, I was quite the Nosy Parker. Once I had a firm lay of their land, I left for a quick dash around Southern Italy to gather gifts. Roundup completed, I paused high on the flanks of the Monte Lepini to allow my mind and body a full week to recover from the effects of the belt before making my return to Rome. I hadn’t been back 30 minutes when Salvatore asked what I’d been doing in the south. For a moment, I thought the manky nutbag had caught me out. No worries, he was only spouting nonsense in the wake of a minor disaster in his cave.

  Luring the bear into Lupercal, inciting its gluttonous riot without getting mauled was, by far, the most dicey part of my plan. Once that was accomplished, everything else has fallen into place like clockwork. The only hiccup was Jones asking me to aid him with his depression. I put on the belt and nearly couldn’t bring myself to take it back off. The nanos detest the risks of living without armor.

  Little buggers needn’t worry. We set sail for Syria tomorrow. It won’t be long before they’re reunited with our belt, the protector.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TRANSMISSION:

  Kaikane: “There’s nothing you could have done.”

  Duarte: “But–”

  Kaikane: “Come on, Babe, you can’t let it drag you down.”

  Duarte: “I know that! You think I don’t know that? It’s just . . . so hard.”

  Kaikane: “Like you said before, you’re a healer, death comes with the job.”

  Duarte: “Little guy was about the same age as Rhino would be.”

  Kaikane: “I noticed.”

  Duarte: “His mother hasn’t shed a tear.”

  Kaikane: “Noticed that too.”

  From the log of Maria Duarte

  Chief Botanist

  Working the edge of this morning’s low tide, Paul and I were lost in our own thoughts, silently gathering sponges, clams and edible seaweed from drained pools and the exposed sand of a half-moon beach. We’re collecting sponges these days for personal hygiene. We use the softer ones to wipe our butts. If that’s too much information for you folks in Team HQ, I’m not sorry.

  One particular stretch of shoreline south of the Tiber has become our favorite gathering area. Approximately 820 yards south of the river, there’s a right fork in the coastal trail that takes you up the narrow neck of a peninsula of sand dunes, exposed coral fields and random outcroppings of rounded basalt mounds we call the “Dragon’s Teeth.” The dunes follow the rim of a once-great barrier reef that grew for who knows how many millions of years to fill in the gaps between the teeth. Lowering sea levels have left the coral high and generally dry.

  Curved like a protective arm around 32 square miles of salt marsh and an inland freshwater lake that is now bone dry, the spit serves as a natural dike to moderate the sea’s ebbs and flows. Local Cro-Magnons don’t like how prone the peninsula is to flooding, how quickly terra firma becomes a string of islands when peak tide and westerly winds align. Wolf packs, bears and big cats also stay away, which makes it a perfect place for us to round up supplies for our upcoming voyage.

  While the drought exacts a heavy toll upon the land’s plants and animals, the Mediterranean knows no such deprivation. Resources along the peninsula’s seaward rim are rich beyond imagining. From giant conch shells to mussel beds without end, we never know what we’ll stumble upon. Today it was an abandoned Cro-Magnon mother and her three emaciated children. What sorrowful sights.

  I’m not sure if the chance meeting was our fate or their dumb luck. Though our collection bags were overflowing, we carried our search for trade shells and foodstuffs to the end of the sand anyway. Reaching the rocky point at the end of the beach, we were about to turn around and head for home when a weak cry amid screeching gulls caught our attention. The mother and her kids were 20 yards away, sprawled just barely above the high tide line, dying in the sun.

  Waving a broken spear in her hand, collapsed on her back in the coral rubble, the woman flailed weakly at a cloud of mangy seagulls. Perched up in the trees, vultures stoically let the gulls do the dirty work.

  I can’t blame the mother for mistaking us for marauders the way we charged up the beach shouting and throwing chunks of driftwood. Unable to understand a word, already at the end of her rope, she must have been scared out of her mind. Scared enough to try to kill me. Once again I was reminded why you cannot let your guard down in this crazy world, even for just a second.

  I was shielding her kids from the gulls, swinging my gathering bag over my head, when she sat up and tried to stab me with an antler knife. No newcomer to battle, she targeted my femoral artery. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and reflex alone brought my bag down in time to block the thrust. Apart from trying to bite me, the skinny, brown-haired woman was too weak to put up much of a struggle as I pinned her to the ground with a knee and twisted the weapon away.

  Standing, I spread my arms low with palms turned upward in the universal sign of “We mean you no harm.” Pulling a half-full water gourd from my bag, I handed it to her.

  “Paul, we need to get these people into the shade, they’re roasting,” I said.

  “We move these kids, she’s gonna go nuts again. Look at her watching us. Leave them be. Let’s get a fire going. I’ll build a shelter over them after we clear out these damn birds.”

  I didn’t have my helmet on so I can’t state the exact time we found the family, but the sun was already past its apex so let’s say 2 in the afternoon. By 2:15 we had lighted a smoky fire and by 3 Paul had constructed a lean-to network of driftwood poles covered with dry dune grass. The yellowed, eight-foot-tall grass pulled free of the sand in easy clumps–a simple solution for once!

  Paul shuttled the kayaks to a cl
oser hiding spot, speared a sea turtle and split its shell to make a shallow pot. Swapping out stones heated in the fire for the rest of the day and well past sunset, we brewed broths and seafood stews for our patients.

  I lost count of how many times Paul ran to our secret spring (the kayaks) to refill the gourds with filtered seawater. Kayak water doesn’t taste the best, but the mother and children absorbed it like dry sponges. Once we began offering the children water and things to eat, the mother surrendered them to my care. The kids are in worse shape than she is, the oldest boy in particular. I don’t expect him to survive the night.

  Lack of a common language rarely stops Cro-Magnon for long. After the ice was broken and a grudging trust established, the mother and I used hand sign, facial expressions, grunts and a few snippets of common trade dialect to introduce ourselves and share our basic stories. She said her name was Boj-Koj. The eldest boy was Boj-Doj, the middle girl Boj-Loj and the youngest boy Boj-Moj. I estimate the kids’ ages to be 9, 8 and 5. The woman with stringy hair and sunburned skin is about 25 years old. Her teeth aren’t too bad, just a few chips here and there, some bleeding in the gums.

  I have made a few assumptions to connect the dots of her fragmented tale of woe. It appears they were discarded by their clan when she refused to leave her dying boy behind. The clan is from the north, where the drought is just as bad, or even worse than it is here. A vain search for freshwater and sustenance led the nomads down Italy’s eastern coast to its southernmost point. They found the heel of the boot to be equally parched. The boy fell ill during the return trip north along the western shore. It sounds like he ingested tainted water. His body is too weak to overcome the parasites swarming his gut.

  Abandoning a mother and her babies registers extraordinarily cruel to modern minds, but Paul and I have seen this drama play out enough times to know it is common. Survival of the clan trumps the needs of an individual. Occasionally, if the gravely ill clan member is a revered elder or a person with an important skill like healing or storytelling, a tribe will halt its wandering long enough to let them either recover or die. It helps if the crisis occurs in a land with abundant hunting and gathering. Clans will show great patience for leaders hooked by boars’ tusks or shamans stricken by pneumonia.

  However, during periods of stress in this pragmatic Cro-Magnon world, no person is important enough to drag the clan into oblivion. Sickly children, especially newborns who have not yet earned standing within the group, are particularly vulnerable. As heartless as leaving a baby on an ice floe sounds, it is the foundation of a system that not only keeps the species alive, but also keeps it evolving forward.

  Boj-Koj challenged that system and her clan crossed the Tiber without her. As I sit in the sand typing on this computer, she sleeps like a toppled statue, arms around her two youngest, holding them close to her chest. Well fed and watered, all three have begun showing signs of recovery.

  The older lad is not able to keep any food or liquid down. At first, his gut violently rejected even the smallest drops of water we dribbled between his crackled lips. By the end of the evening he was too weak to wretch, let alone open his mouth or swallow. My medicine kit contains nothing powerful enough to cure him. It is frustrating that everything I have for treating pain and indigestion must be taken orally. All I could do was pound out a salve of aloe and herbs to treat his sores and cracked lips, create a cloud of smoke to bring him sleep.

  Lying on his back next to me, the boy’s breath grows shallower with each exhale. It won’t be long now. I must wake the mother. She will want be with him when he passes.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Kaikane: “Be careful around her.”

  Duarte: “She won’t hurt me, not now.”

  Kaikane: “You don’t know that.”

  Duarte: “Yes, I do.”

  Kaikane: “How?”

  Duarte: “I feel it.”

  Kaikane: “Very scientific. Just be careful.”

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  Burial must be an all-woman deal in the mother’s clan. No men or children allowed.

  Every time I try helping, she clucks and flaps her arms like a quail to chase me away. She and Maria have the boy laid out on a bed of wet seaweed next to the fire pit. My job is to keep an eye on the little ones and stay the hell out of the way. The kids have been no trouble. The brother and sister roused just long enough to munch some fish jerky soaked in water and down a couple baked seabird eggs before laying their heads back on the sand and conking out. This was after daybreak. The kids could see what was going on. Neither one made a move to go down and say goodbye to their brother.

  It seemed like one of those scenes Maria keeps telling me I should make a record of. Though I seriously doubt anybody’ll ever read this junk, I’ve decided to pull out my computer and find a shady place to crank out this journal entry.

  “It’s almost his time,” Maria said on her way to wake the woman. Kneeling, she brushed sand and seaweed from the mother’s hair to wake her. In the moonlight, I noticed Maria maintained a decent defensive position in case the woman popped up with another knife. Despite her oversized heart, my wife is learning.

  The dying boy was burning up earlier in the day. Now his skin was cool to the touch and faded to the color of ashes. He never opened his eyes again. The mother made me stay by the fire while she and Maria knelt over the boy. Only the rise and fall of his narrow chest let me know he was hanging in there.

  After he died and she chased me out, the mother started a lecture that continues even now, hours after her son’s death. The sun’s up, the tide’s come in again and she’s still talking to him.

  I don’t get the words, but by the cadence and the way she shakes her finger to make a point every once in a while, it sounds more like instructions than the family lineages Green Turtles drone over their dead. I think she’s telling him all the stuff he never got to learn. Some of these tribes believe in life after death. Maybe she’s trying to give him the tools to make it as a man in the next world. Or maybe she’s scolding her oldest son for leaving her behind. I’ll have to ask Maria when she’s done helping. She picks up languages way better than I do.

  What an amazing woman I married. There are times I still can’t believe she settled on me. All it took was a shipwreck and the death of 95 percent of the Einstein III’s crew to narrow the choices down to where I had a chance.

  Three guys I beat out like to pull Maria’s chain, especially when she calls them on shit. Hell, Sal would be back to teaching the locals opera if Maria wasn’t around to ride herd on him. It’s not easy for her being the commanding officer, but everybody’s settled into their roles by now. She has no choice but to play hers.

  Maria is the group’s moral compass, worrywart and official workaholic. I bet she’s written thousands more reports than the rest of us combined. There’s a lot on botany and a ton of everything else, details about the people, dialects, religions, family histories, wildlife, art, tools, weapons, weather patterns and just about anything else you can think of.

  Like most soldiers, Bolzano and Jones are always trying to see what they can get away with. And they’re quick to gripe when things don’t go their way. Now that Hunter’s back, he too makes jokes when she’s just out of earshot. It bugs me, but it’s more playing games than real meanness. Sal has probably been pranking on his teachers, leading the revolt, since he was a little kid in Milan.

  Jones’ experiences haven’t left him a big fan of authority. It’s not like he wants to take over. He’s been the big honcho and likes it better in the ranks.

  Those guys should see her now. Though she’s been up all night and must be bone tired, Maria has been told to trim and clean the dead boy’s toenails. That’s what she’s doing. Every time Maria finishes a chore, the mother stops her ranting just long enough to give her another. Maria’s cleaned him from head to toe, trimmed and washed his hair and brushed his teeth with a cedar stick. She gathered the seawe
ed for the bed and keeps the fire fed. When the mother’s voice gets raspy, my bride gently gets her to drink water from a gourd.

  If they hear about this, the guys will probably bust her chops, tease that she only did it to gather data for her next report. They don’t see all the kindness and respect she shows to strangers–even after they’ve tried to kill her. These aren’t the first people we’ve helped and I know they won’t be the last. Maria and the old man have developed what I guess you would call “reputations” as healers. Clans travel long distances to seek them out.

  The guys have no idea how much of the people’s pain Maria carries in her heart. This boy is going to hit her hard. She has a tough time letting go of stuff like this. She’ll keep wondering what she could have done to save him.

  He was about the same age Rhino would be right now. We haven’t had a chance to talk about it, but that must be going through her mind. Maria doesn’t often mention the adopted son we left in the north and I know better than to bring him up. There’s nothing but sadness down that road.

  It looks like the mom is ready to move on to the next part of the funeral, which is a good thing because the heat is starting to crank up now that the wind’s died. It’s going to be another hot one. Vultures circle lower and closer. As long as we keep our fires going I think they’ll hold off, but who knows with those ugly bastards. They have been waiting and watching a long time.