by Ron Rayborne
When he was about to fetch the filter, he suddenly thought of the stream that must feed this pool. In the tall grass he’d not seen it. Then he discerned an area of turf slightly higher and thicker than the rest. Instinctively, he knew that was where the water flowed. Walking to it, he heard the burbling, the sound increasing as he advanced. And there it was, fresh, clean and flowing. Tom drank deeply, then sighed. From now on, he’d look for moving water first and use the filter only as a last resort.
When he looked up, Little One was walking along the bank of the pond near him, water up to her belly. Ears forward, she was trying to see something in it. Unexpectedly, she pounced. Then again.
“What‘cha got there?” Tom asked. Briefly, she glanced at him, the pond weed Potamogeton draped across her nose, then back to the job at hand. He strolled over and she looked up at him, now sitting down in the water. Then she barked at whatever it was she’d seen. Something moved there. A fin. It made for deeper water. Fish. Hmm. Another bark and something splashed on the other side. A couple more splashes, and Tom looked. Rocks jutted out of the water. On some of them were frogs, throats pulsing rapidly.
Splash! Another one in.
Tom yawned. The sun was hot, and he was sweaty. Maybe he should go in for a wash. He looked at his watch. Wait, he didn’t have one now. Squinting up at the sky, he guessed the time to be past noon. He looked around. Still the camels stood looking back at him, waiting for him to leave their waterhole so they could get back to things.
“Oh, all right,” he said. “Let’s go, Little One.” Tom reached down to pick her up, then saw that she was dripping wet. He sighed again. Maybe she’ll follow me, he thought. He set off walking while looking back at his Aelurodon.
“Come on, Little One. Let’s go!” he said encouragingly. She sat and watched him.
“Let’s go, Little One! Let’s Go!” He walked off a little further. Apparently, she didn’t understand the concept yet of following a human being. Tom slapped his hands on his thighs, still calling for her. When she continued to sit there, half in water, Tom said, “Okay, I’ll carry you.” Walking back, he stooped to pick her up. Water ran off her. He squeezed her fur to get most of it off, then lifted her with a grunt. She helped by stepping behind his head and lying down on top of the pack, paws over it, next to his neck, as if she understood that this was the way they were to travel. Water trickled down his back.
“That’s just cold,” Tom said. Then to the assembled fauna, “We’re going now. Thank you for letting us use your waterhole.” They stared back glumly.
Tom walked on for another hour before Little One fell off the pack, lulled by the rhythmic movement of her human’s stride. She let out a little cry, though fortunately she was unhurt. Tom took out a shirt, and, tying the arms around the pack, fashioned a sling that was less than ideal. Still, it worked, and Little One didn’t object.
By another hour, he was getting hungry and lowered the pack to get some food. Freeze-dried again. And again, Little One turned up her nose at it. This was more concerning. She had to eat, but wouldn’t think of eating his simulfood, as he thought of it. Well, eventually she’ll get hungry enough and have to. He’d let her wait. Done, Tom was left again with the issue of what to do with the packaging. Earlier, he’d just stuffed it in one of the pockets of his pack. Now he stuffed again. So what was he going to do, haul garbage all across the Miocene world? He could just dump it. He could...
He couldn’t. True, it would be a vanishingly small amount, making minuscule difference to the environment, but no, he wouldn’t do it. Should he dig a hole and bury it, a miniature landfill, his gift to this pristine world from the future? No, that was out too. His options were dwindling. For now, he’d carry it, until he thought of something better.
About then, he noticed something climbing on the front of his shirt. A tiny insect of some sort. It was headed smartly upwards, up toward his head. He flicked at it, but it remained on him. He flicked again, but this time it grabbed on and hunkered down. He didn’t know what it was. Grabbing it, he pulled, pulling his shirt away a bit. Wow, strong little guy, he thought. Finally, it came loose. Next, he made to shake it off his fingers, but again it managed to hold on. Frowning, he flicked again. At last, it was sent flying. Tenacious, Tom reckoned. Wonder what it is.
Then he saw another. Up it walked. Dang! He grabbed the P.I.
Deer Tick
Phylum: Arthropoda
Biting insect. Frequents warm, moist areas, dead wood. Holds onto the ends of tall grass overhanging trails until a host brushes past, then climbs on.
There followed a list of hideous diseases they carried. Tom’s eyes widened. He shivered, briskly dropping his pants and checking himself. Jeez! There was one on him, on his thigh, IN HIS SKIN!
“EIYEE!” he yelled.
He grabbed and pulled, but it held. Panicking, he consulted the P.I., which advised not to slowly pull it, but to do so in one quick movement using a particular tool. Tom, anxious, removed the pack, setting it and Little down, then, unzipping, began hurling equipment onto the ground, finally finding the medical kit. It wasn’t there. He had no such tool. Wonderful! He HAD to get that bug out NOW! Pinching his skin, Tom carefully lifted the tiny abdomen, then, gripping near the head, gave a swift pull. Out it came. He shook his hand violently. It was gone. A red mark told where it had burrowed in. He consulted the P.I. again. It warned about pulling, said that there was a danger of leaving the head inside, thus causing infection. Lovely. Too late for that now, he thought. He looked again. Didn’t see anything else there. Stupid, he thought, I got lucky.
Tom promptly worried that he would catch one of those horrible illnesses. The P.I., though, told him that ticks had to be attached for 24 to 36 hours before they transmitted disease. That relieved him somewhat. Off came the rest of his clothes. Checking, he found another walking on them. He gulped. Then he felt a minute itch on the back of his head at the base of his scalp. He touched it, and sure enough, found a bump that he was pretty certain shouldn’t be there. He took hold and pulled. Luckily, it wasn’t attached and came out of his hair easily. It immediately set out up his hand. He shook it off.
Dang! Tom thought, Better watch for them! Nasty little buggers.
Satisfied that he’d gotten rid of all of them, Tom scanned his clothes inside and out for others, then put them back on. Then he thought of Little One. She’d been watching Tom from her secure place in the sling. Tom undid it and lifted the little aelurodon onto the ground and began to search through her fur. He found two more, neither attached. Wait. There was a large, gray protuberance in her right ear. A big, fat tick. Full of blood, no doubt. Likely from before. Scowling, he got a corner of the shirt and again grasped, paused, and pulled. Little One let out a yelp. And there it was. He threw it far away. A drop of blood formed in Little One’s ear.
“Sorry about that. You’ll thank me when you don’t die tomorrow.” Tom fetched the antibiotic cream and applied some. Disgusting, he thought, Ticks.
On advice of the P.I., Tom tucked his shirt into his pants, and his pants into his socks. Then he thought about what the P.I. had said: “Frequents warm, moist areas, dead wood. Holds onto the ends of tall grass overhanging trails”. OK, that’s just about everywhere, he mused, looking around him. Tom imagined the meadows on every side crawling with ticks. Shuddered. A blemish on paradise.
Happily, that turned out not to be the case. To be sure, there were ticks aplenty, but they were found mostly around the larger waterholes and along the trails leading to and from them. Tom discovered that, if he avoided these areas, the ticks virtually disappeared. He wondered how the wildlife coped with them. Were they covered in ticks? As he walked and observed, he contemplated the situation. Surely there must be some adaptation, else how could they survive? Some immunity, probably. Then he noticed something else; something he’d not really noticed before. Birds sitting on the backs of the animals. Hopping about them, even clinging to their sides and legs. Picking at their fur. Ah, it dawned on
him, tick pickers! Not only that, Tom also noticed that there was an increase in birds around the water holes. Whole flocks flying in and out of the grass. They weren’t there just for the water. It was natural pest management; in a world allowed to be in ecological balance, things rarely got out-of-hand.
Tom kept onto the older, wider trails rather than the newer, narrower ones; those where he was able to avoid overhanging brush.
The grass, he now perceived, was not uniformly tall. There were areas where it had been shorn short, areas where grazers had stayed, cut, then moved on. These areas, too, provided respite. Relieved about the pest situation, Tom again allowed himself the luxury of elation.
Abruptly, as if on cue, he observed a dust devil off to his right. Looking that way, Tom saw that one animal was chasing another. He ran to the top of a hillock for a better view. “Ran” being a relative word with his heavy backpack; it was more like a clumsy bounding. Panting, he reached the top, maybe ten feet high, and saw that the chase was still in progress. Meanwhile, a whole herd had taken flight, their hooves thundering over the land.
It was clear that the pursued was getting the better of the pursuer. Finally, the latter broke off. Almost immediately, however, one of the other fleeing animals, a small pony-sized horse, strayed too near the larger predator which, making a giant leap, seized it and held on. This greatly slowed down the other, which now kicked madly at its hunter, whinnying loudly. The hunter took a hard kick to the chest, which was enough to dislodge it. But having tasted blood, it refused to be dissuaded and launched again at its prey. Eventually, the horse fell under the other’s greater weight. The hunter grabbed it by the back of the neck and bit down hard. At that point the horse stopped moving. It was over.
Tom was sad to have witnessed it. Still, he knew that this was the natural order of things. Everything had to eat. At least it looked like there were a lot more herbivores than carnivores. The loss of one would not make a dent in their total numbers. But that would be small consolation to the victim or its family.
The beast sat, panting, while the rest of the herd, now at some distance, regarded it warily. Soon it set to eating. Little One, who had been watching this, decided to check things out and began walking in that direction. Tom jumped up, for he had previously been sitting, and picked up his little beastie.
“No, no, no,” he said, “do you want to be the after dinner snack?” Nevertheless, Little One wanted to go. Then she began to whine. Holding her in his lap, he petted, quieting her. On a hunch, he got out the P.I., focused and snapped a picture. He thought it looked familiar. Aelurodon, it said. Is that it? Tom wondered. She thinks that’s Mama.
“Good call, Little, but that’s not your mother,” he said. Then a thought occurred to Tom. Little One needed food, and there was food. All they had to do was get it. But how? He thought of the gun, but lost his nerve. What if he only wounded the animal? Seemed to be his new worry. He decided to wait and hope the big aelurodon would finish soon and leave.
So, wait they did. In the meantime, the sun moved farther west and the shadows began to lengthen. After an hour or so, the big aelurodon lazily got to its feet and sauntered off. Tom waited until it had dropped down the other side of a knoll and out of sight, then he rose and walked to the kill. There were other, smaller predators now tearing at the carcass, but seeing Tom, they shrank back. It helped, he supposed, that the backpack made him look larger than he really was. When they reached the kill, Little One was eager to get to the ground and eat. Tom set her down and she speedily set to work. Poor thing, he thought.
While she ate, Tom got out more of the rations he’d brought. Even for his time, though, it wasn’t great food. Now it was positively repellent. Tom looked at the kill in front of him. A thought passed through his mind: Maybe I should eat some of this. Then, No, he thought, I can’t. Still, he knew his rations would only last so long. I’ll have to find another way soon, he told himself.
He looked at the dead horse on the ground. Again, much smaller than normal, or at least normal for the Anthropocene. When we had horses, that is. Though its predator had eaten a large section of the stomach and flank areas, the rest was left untouched. While the body was a solid goldish color, the neck and legs were striped. Then he saw something that took him aback. The feet were different. He thought that horses had hooves, but this one had three hoof-like toes on each foot, a largish one in the middle and two others about half its size on either side. He furrowed his brow. Strange. He looked again at the head; certainly looked like a horse. Wait! He recalled Julie mentioning this trait in early horses.
Tom spotted something on one of the feet. The rear left foot on the side the horse was lying on. He walked over to it, incurring a small growl from Little One, muzzle already red with blood. “Don’t worry, it’s all yours,” he reassured. He stooped down and peered at the foot. Ah, I see. The outside, or farthest away of the three toes, had been ripped nearly off. It must have caught it on a rock in the frenzy, or maybe that kick. In any event, that was likely why the horse was so easily taken down.
Sitting there on the side of the little bank, a warm, comfortable breeze blowing his hair around and tousling the grass, he again pulled out the P.I. It was getting darker, but he paid no mind. He pointed it at the creature. Unfortunately, its savaging by the aelurodon made an exact identification impossible. Several potential names came up, at the top of which was Archaeohippus, a member of the horse family. So, ancient horses, these horses, were three-toed, he marveled. Evolution. Yes, Julie had talked of it, and now he was witness to it: Species adapting to changing environments, themselves changing to fit in, becoming new species. Adapt or die. Life in flux. Where the environment itself was unchanged for relatively long periods, the species therein tended to be as well. But when it was remodeled or reshaped by various processes, often the species that lived there were reworked, too.
Tom glanced up, noticed the sky darkening, then stood and climbed the little hillock that he’d been resting on. He looked out toward the west, toward the sunset. From where he was, he couldn’t see the ocean, but knew it was fairly far away. Over it, the sky was shot through with deep ruddy hues interlaced with blues and oranges. A brilliant ruby sundown, courtesy of abundant volcanic gases and ash, and the dust of billions of running hooves. Farther east, the first stars began to show. A wonderful evening. He’d better make camp, he told himself. At least now he wasn’t in the middle of a forest at night, but out on the open plain.
Tom turned on the PinPointer. There were all three dots. The distance between him and Julie had shrunk to 644 miles. Not much of an improvement. Tomorrow he’d have to set out in earnest.
He decided to camp where he was, giving Little One the chance to eat freely during the night. Tom worried that his diminutive charge might wander away while he slept, so he tied a string around her neck, not too tightly, but sufficient to hold her. He made the length enough for her to reach her food, about 15 feet away, then tied the other end to a low branch on a small shrub. Little One wasn’t too happy with that and pulled mightily, trying to get it off, finally sitting down at the very end of the line with it pulling on her head and looking none too comfortable. Tom laughed at that, then picked her up and lay her next to his sleeping bag. Immediately she went back to pulling on the string.
“Relax, Little,” he urged, then decided to let her get used to it. Tom got his lantern and journal, blew up the inflatable pillow, then crawled into his sleeping bag.
Night was coming on swiftly, and with it a whole new world, the nocturnal world of the middle Miocene. As the sun had been setting, the occasional random call from this or that beast became more frequent and urgent. Long, low bellows and high, short bleats. Mothers calling their wandering offspring back, to stay nearby for protection. Mothers are the same all over, Tom thought, and so, evidently, was fear of the night. There were yips, barks, and howls from some dog-like animals, he guessed. Infrequently, there were sounds of roaring or trumpeting. That unnerved him, and he pushed hims
elf deeper into his bag. Next to him he’d placed the gun, just in case.
When things finally began to quiet down, he peeked out and was stunned by what he saw. Along with the sound of crickets and frogs singing came a new and totally unexpected excitement. One by one, all around him, all around the grasslands where he bedded, tiny lights began to pop on. Moving lights. Suddenly one would zip by just inches above, then another, and another. Tom sat up and looked out. Indeed, the world was alive with them, lights whizzing by on straight paths or suddenly diving into the grass. While a luminous off-white predominated, other colors accented it, reds, blues, greens and yellows. Next to him in the grass he noticed one tiny speck in motion. Picking up his flashlight, he shined it on the speck hoping to find out what it was. A tiny glow-worm, no more than an eighth inch in length, rhythmically switching its minuscule lantern on and off, on and off, in its quest for a mate.
As if in reflection of the wonder below, was an amazing cosmic display above. Most obvious, the huge arm of the Milky Way shone out brightly, and within it, a million stars of varying sizes and hues sparkled and shimmered as if in heavenly song. The rest of the sky, though, seemed to compete for splendor. Numberless points of white, yellow, red, blue, and green. He thought he could even make out the spiral shape of other galaxies and a few colorful nebulae. From time to time, a small dot of light streaked across the heavens, and he would catch his breath when it ended in fiery glory.
At last, the moon decided to make a showing. Full. Large. Closer to the earth by hundreds of miles in the Miocene. On the horizon it looked positively huge. Its warm, cinnamon color fading to a faint rose as it climbed, and then to white when the day’s dust settled. Tom was amazed to find that he could actually see individual craters clearly. There it was, the moon, the very same moon that would shine on his own sorry world fifteen million years hence. The same moon that watched over Julie now.