Opalescence

by Ron Rayborne

  Relief flooded through him as he looked out the narrow opening. His heart beating and breath coming hard, he placed a hand on the door and prepared to open it, moving it just a bit to assure himself that that he could, but no more. Dietrich, alerted to his arrival by the noise of it, the unavoidable explosive sound of air being displaced, could be standing out there right now, ready to end his life, fulfilling his vow to kill anyone who attempted to find him. The thought of Julie being held by the maniac filled Tom with rage. He turned around to find the gun that had been placed under a net next to him. It was even darker in the cabin now that his eyes had adjusted to the light from the outside. He imagined Dietrich now heading toward him, not waiting for him to leave. He had to find that gun!

  Taking a risk, Tom pushed open the door a little more, and now the expanded shaft fell on the weapon. Rushing over, he pushed the release on the netting and grabbed the gun, swiveling back to meet Dietrich. But he wasn’t there. Likely, casually sitting just outside. Tom crept to the door and peered out. What he saw shocked him. A mass of greenery with blue sky in the background. A waft of warm air lightly blew in. There were sounds, as well. Unfamiliar sounds. Sounds he’d not heard in a long, long while. Bird song. A variety of bird song. Sweet bird song. But he didn’t have time for this!

  Slowly, he pushed the door open, looking around for the big man, until, finally, it was thrown wide.

  No one. No one and nothing except the big, wide world, his arrival apparently undetected. Good!

  He seemed to be in a small clearing in the middle of a forest. Light streaming in from above made the leaves on the trees shimmer green and gold. They flickered in the breeze, occasionally letting in spotty sunlight that danced warmly on Tom’s face. On the ground were a variety of flowers. Blues, reds, yellows, whites. Then he noticed something else, the air, the very air around him was filled with a lovely fragrance, a whisper of perfume. It was so delicious to breathe, just to breathe it.

  It was a shock. He knew he’d never in his life breathed air so fresh. It literally seemed to be filling his being. Invigorating him. This is what air was meant to be, he realized. Not the polluted brown stuff he was used to sucking down. Involuntarily, he smiled.

  There was a sound of water. Flowing water from nearby. He looked in the direction it was coming from, a ravine shadowed by numerous trees. Tom walked over to it, enjoying the satisfying crunch of leaves underfoot. A pleasurable feel. Crunch, crunch, a snap of some small twig, to the edge of the coulee. Below, perhaps a foot or two, was a small stream. Water rolled along, bumping over rocks and boulders melodiously, carrying stray leaves. Where the sun touched the waters, they looked like liquid glass, flowing in smooth arcs, confidently. Water, the blood of the earth, reaching everywhere, giving life, just as it had from time immemorial.

  A big leaf floated slowly by, raft-like, and upon its surface, a beetle walked. Tom crouched to look at it. When the beetle got to an edge, it seemed to be testing the margin to see if it was safe to disembark, then, finding water, would walk along further as if it might find land there. Tom stood and followed for perhaps twenty feet. Finally, the leaf caught on the rim of the bank and there rocked in the current, threatening to dislodge again and continue the voyage downstream. The little beetle found the spot where the leaf was touching and, tentatively, put one foot down on the other side, then hurried over and was gone under a thick mat of forest detritus. One life, one little life in a world of so many. In the great stretch of time, this little beetle was insignificant as could be. But to Tom, it had great value.

  Farewell my friend, farewell.

  Tom looked up into the canopy. Through it. Morning. The morning of the world. He felt drunk with it all. Then he remembered Julie. Snap out of it.

  He looked around again. Any sign of them. But there was nothing. Nothing that would betray their path. Where could they be? A thought hit him. Turning around, he wondered if something was wrong. He turned around and around. Something was wrong. This was not the place he’d seen in Karstens’ video.

  Oh no.

  He’d been sent to the wrong time. On an earth four and a half billion years old, the time machine had accidentally gone to another era. Another time. Gone were the open, grassy hills he’d seen. That pastoral parkland dotted with peaceful grazers. That sweet vista of harmony rimmed by the sea. This could be millions of years before, or after. After continents had drifted, mountains fallen, and forests grew. It could be anytime.

  Tom shot a look around and spotted a hillock, maybe 600 feet high. Immediately, he headed for it, so as to look out over the landscape, praying that he was wrong. In short order, he found himself winded and had to stop to take a break. He realized that he was in terrible physical shape. Exercise was not something he’d ever taken much interest in before. Now he’d pay for it. It took Tom the better part of an hour to climb that 600 hundred feet, coughing and hacking as he went. His lungs ached.

  When finally he made it and looked out, he was stunned. Not a hill at all, he was near the top of a fairly high wooded mountain of maybe two thousand feet, the Strong Box having landed in a flattish area on its northern face. The altitude had been hidden from him by close-set trees and shrubbery. Now he saw below — a vast sweep of greens, yellows, blues and pinks unlike anything he’d ever seen. His heart sank like a rock in a pond. This was not the place he’d seen in the video. Not at all. Instead of open grassy hills was forest, and in the distance, a low plain, narrow and long, bordered by woodland. Far away to the right, he could see blue, which must be the ocean, but it was farther away than that which Karstens had shown him.

  At that moment he sank to his knees and began to cry.

  Tom was part way into a good sob when he suddenly remembered the locator that Karstens had given him. He hastened down the side, almost falling over his feet on the way. Evidently, he startled something large, for it bounded away in the brush, escaping his view. That unnerved him, and he continued the rest of the way down a bit more carefully, eyes wide with apprehension. At the bottom, he discovered that he’d lost the Strong Box. It was nowhere to be seen. In his rush, Tom had gone down willy-nilly and now could not remember the way he’d come. Never had panic so intimately known a man, for not only was the locator in the Strong Box, but so was everything else he was going to need to survive here. In this God forsaken jungle, he thought. Tom cast about desperately, but all was seemingly a tangled mass. Nothing looking familiar. Even the stream he’d seen earlier was gone. Too late, he remembered the advice of his instructor at the Institute: Always watch where you’re going. Always find landmarks. Always know the way back.

  Tom cursed himself. They’d gone to a great deal of trouble, even risking their lives to get him here, to give him a chance of finding Julie. He’d be damned if he was going to give up so easily, like a spoiled child. Then, again, his father’s advice: when people are afraid, they stop thinking. But what to do? He’d have to retrace his steps back up the mountain. He looked up; Yes, maybe from up there I’ll remember the way. And so, up again he went. This time it took longer.

  Reaching the top, Tom bent over for a rest, then looked around, but could not recognize the way he’d originally come. Then he looked out at the scene he’d spied before. He remembered that, when he’d come up the first time, the view was directly in front of him. He stood as he’d stood then, looking out. Then he turned around and looked back the opposite way. A ray of hope shot through him. He recognized the oddly shaped branch on a tree he’d walked out from under before. He walked to it and looked down. The way was choked with vegetation, yet he thought he could see some impression in it from his passing. Turning around again, he looked toward the far off view, to see if the angle was right. Yes, it did look familiar.

  This time, Tom set off thoughtfully, attentively. Instead of a haphazard, headlong rush, he poked, scanned, and crept along painstakingly. After a few minutes, he let out a loud yelp of glee when the unnatural angles of the Strong Box came into view, dark amid the green of the fores
t. Now he picked up his pace.

  The heavy door was still open, but, for safety’s sake, he decided to prop it with a stick, just to make sure it didn’t close again with him in it. In a compartment on the floor was a container, and within it, a plethora of items Karstens and others had thought he might need. In another was food, but this was only a temporary stash. He would have to learn how to find his own food, he thought with a shudder.

  Tom opened the first container and hauled everything outside where he could see it. A backpack, sleeping bag, clothes, medical equipment and assorted electronic gadgets. He tossed things around, trying to find the locator. Finally did. PinPointer, it said. Before Julie and Dietrich left, they had been fitted with bracelets that emitted a strong signal, in case one of them became lost. Each of them had a PinPointer that he/she could use, which would show the other’s position on a small screen and estimate the distance between them. All one had to do was to keep the point of light which represented the other person at the bottom center of the screen to know that they were headed in the right direction. When they finally closed in, the point of light would slowly move toward the center, until, standing next to each other, it would be directly in the middle. It was deemed failsafe — provided one did not remove, lose, or break either the bracelet or the PinPointer.

  Hastily, Tom turned it on. Nothing. No. He stood and held his arm out, moving around in a circle. Still nothing. Then he thought about the summit again. Grabbing a pair of binoculars and making a careful look as he went, he slowly headed toward the top of it for the third time. When, at last, breathing hard and an awful ache in his side, he came over the rise, he turned around to make sure he would know the way back. Then he continued on.

  Beep.

  He caught his breath. There was a rocky outcrop in front of him. To its left was the panoramic view he’d stood over before. He walked that way.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Tom let out a jubilant cry. Julie was alive and he’d made it! He looked at his screen. There, just as was supposed to be, were two dots, a red and a green. Each pulsing rhythmically like the beating of two hearts. His relief was palpable and his knees shaky. He sat quickly before he fell. He’d made it! Karstens had not let him down, God bless him! Now all that remained was to find them, and with the PinPointer, that should be easy enough. He’d steal Julie away before the Neanderthal discovered her missing. Then he’d think of what to do next.

  Tom’s smile was so large it was painful. The PinPointer continued to beep. Tom looked at it. Then he noticed that the dots were not together. There was some distance between them. How much, he couldn’t tell. In the way he was shown, Tom pulled out the estimator and laid it over the screen, then moved the compass, placing one end of the estimator on each point.

  Must be some mistake. Forty-four miles. Forty-four miles between them? Why would that be? Unless...

  He remembered what he’d been told; Dietrich was red, Julie green. And there were forty-four miles between them. Then he wondered, if there are forty-four miles between them, how many were there between him and Julie? He pushed a small button on the side of the PinPointer. He, too, had a locator bracelet. Instantly, the red and green lights shrank to minuscule dots at the very bottom, while another light, a blue, popped on at the top of the screen.

  Oh no.

  His heart sped up. Pulling the estimator back out, he took the measurement, blinked, took it again. It can’t be. He pushed the little button on the PinPointer’s side that said, “Map.” Around the colored lights, an outline, black on white, of the state of California now appeared, a depiction of its shape as it was during the Luisian, with the name of future cities and distinctive features noted for reference. And there it was; there was no doubt about it. He was six hundred and fifty-three miles away. Six hundred and fifty-three miles! As the crow flies. In this world, it might as well be ten thousand. Tom let out a roar.

  The silence that followed was startling. It seemed all the earth grew quiet as if to give this strange new biped his due. He had something to say, and the world waited for him to say it. The quiet unnerved him. Finally, though, tentatively, a chirp here, a peep there, and before long, all was as it was before.

  Tom sat down there on the summit and looked out. Looked in the direction the PinPointer said his wife was. Six hundred and fifty-three miles away. All he could see was country. Of course. What else would there be? He began to think of his situation, of the enormity of it, of what he had to do. The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became. It was impossible. He simply could not do it. He’d never make it. And there was something else. Something very odd. According to the PinPointer compass, Julie and Jaqzen were north of him, for there was the needle pointing at the big “N.” Yet, he was sure he’d been looking south — after all, there was the ocean on his right. If he were looking north, it would be on his left. Additionally, the map showed Julie in southern California, while he was in northern. It made no sense. On the other hand, he worried, maybe the device had broken during the transference.

  Slinging the lanyard around his neck, he lifted the binoculars, and, scanning below, Tom surveyed the open spaces. Between him and them was unbroken forest. It looked like it went on for miles, after which was the start of long, flat, grassy areas, fringed by still more forest. That stretched on as far as he could see, and appeared to be dotted with innumerable bodies of water of various sizes. Far to the left and running south was higher land, not mountains per se, but a gradually rising flatland with low hills and valleys. Flowing between them and running down into the lowlands were rivers that ended in lakes or continued on south for a long, long way. From here, those highland hills looked like roundish mounds and everything covered in green: grass or other soft ground-cover. Much further south, the shallow hills became true mountains that continued into obscurity. On the right was more forest, with areas of relief here and there.

  Distantly to the west, past the woodlands, was the long, thin, blue stretch he’d seen before. The prehistoric Pacific, he decided. A little further out in that sea, he could just make out prominences; islands, he assumed, running north to south.

  Adjusting the focus, Tom again looked to the view ahead of him. While other, lower mountain chains were visible, especially near the far southern coast, on the whole the impression was of quasi-flat, eroding land, sprinkled with gentle hills here and there. Of dense forests with long ribbons of grassland, opening sometimes onto wider parkland, and other times, a semi-arid landscape, running through them. Farther still, beyond the plains, he could barely make out a fine, bright, turquoise line. It looked like water, too.

  Above it all was an expanse of azure sky and huge, puffy, white clouds. And there, flying high above the pristine valley, were birds, large, light-colored ones, and smaller, copper-brown versions, silently drifting in wide, lazy circles.

  To a man used to gray and brown, it was shocking, all this green and blue, all this life. Overwhelming, even.

  Tom tried to make sense of it. Was this, indeed, California? If so, where? Those low hills, what were they? And that line of turquoise blue ahead stumped him. But it must be, for the PinPointer map confirmed it. He turned to look behind him. Dark, unbroken forest to the horizon. He was glad he wasn’t going that way.

  Then he thought about that. Going. He’d have to leave. He’d not planned to be away from the Strong Box, had intended to use it as his base. But now? He’d have to. There was no other choice. North or South, he’d follow those lights. The thought chilled him. Tom knew next to nothing — okay, nothing at all — about outdoor survival. He was in sorry shape, weak and full of self-doubt. What’s more, he knew there was no way he’d be able to pack enough food to last him the time it would likely take him to go six hundred and fifty-three miles. Six hundred and fifty-three miles! He couldn’t stop thinking about it. God, that was a long way! How did he end up so far off?

  Then he remembered a sound of shooting just before everything went dark. Something must have been changed.
He imagined a body falling over a dial, possibly turning it. Probably. He remembered Karstens and hoped he had not been caught in the crossfire.

  What Tom didn’t know was that, besides being dislocated in space, he’d also been displaced in time; luckily, though, it wasn’t by much. A further turn of the dial and he could easily have ended up in an ice age. As it was, he was three months past the time he was due to land.

  He remembered something else then. Reaching into his pocket, he felt a now familiar smooth shape; pulled out the opal. Just as beautiful as ever. It felt warm in his hand. Warm as the day. It gleamed and glistened. He put it back in his pocket. Somehow, it comforted him, this memento from his time. What was it that Karstens had said? It began its formation in the middle Miocene. That’s now. So it had come full circle. Back home.

  Fearful as he was, Tom felt a drive to be underway. Just follow the blips, he thought. He looked again at the way ahead, down, down the mountainside and through that congested forest, tight with tall trees. Tried to see a way through it, finally spying a thinnish, lighter area, illuminated from above. An open path, cut off from sight here and there by the canopy. He followed it with his eyes, yes, a path, possibly a wildlife route.

  Finally, it came out onto the grassy plain, and there, at its mouth, was a collection of black dots.

  He hadn’t noticed them before, but now as he looked out, he saw them, like scattered specks, some singly, but most in groups. He raised the binoculars again. They were herds, large and small. Farther out onto the plain were more of them, thinly dispersed, as if they did not feel safe being too far out on the exposed savanna. A few groups, though, other kinds of animals, increased in numbers. There were more pockets of forest near bodies of water, and around them, more of the small black flecks he knew must be wildlife.