Opalescence

by Ron Rayborne

  Out again, Julie tied the rifles loosely to the top of her pack, then lifted, struggled and fought to get it on. God, it was heavy! She wouldn’t be able to carry this load for long. But she had to lose them, for her sake, as well as the safety of the indigenous wildlife.

  Which way, then? She’d have to decide now. Looking south was a long, somewhat broad ridge, mostly open, but with patches of low growth and trees. It appeared to run for miles in that direction. Behind her, the forest thickened. To her right, in the distance, was the sea and that long, sloping prairie leading to it. It tempted her. Finally, though, she decided to follow the ridge south where she would have a good view all the way around.

  A noise. She turned to look. Jaqzen, still out, making a slight grunting. Fear washed over her, fear and unease. She wondered if she’d made the right choice. Maybe she should have done him in, then she wouldn’t have to live the next thirty days wondering if he was lurking nearby, ready to strike. No, she thought, I’m not a killer. Best to go, then. With her foot, she closed the door of the Strong Box. It shut with a decisive click. She meant it as a message. Stay away. You do not belong here. You are not welcome here.

  Then turning around, and bending slightly under the load, she set out.

  Julie walked in rapture. Eden, surely this is it. Soon as she was out of sight of the box, her fears, and even thoughts of Jaqzen, evaporated. The warmth of the sun felt so good on her skin. It had been a long time since she’d felt it unfiltered by dirty air. She was walking through knee-high grass. She studied it. It was grass, she was sure, yet it was also somehow different. There were tiny flowers on the top and sides of the blades, fuchsia and white in color. A zephyr of sea air blew continually and they responded in waves that ran up the slope and stretched out on over the top. Her hair, too, blew out to her left. Julie thought she could smell it now, the sea, that certain salty flavor that spoke of the tide, of waves crashing and gulls crying, of hot sand and slumber. How she wished Tom was here.

  Though she shifted the rifles periodically from one shoulder to the other, she was tiring rapidly under their weight. They were sapping her energy. She had to unload them soon. Twenty minutes out from the Strong Box, Julie decided the time had come. Looking around instinctively to make sure she wasn’t being followed, she sat down on the ground, then, with the weight of the pack resting there, she slipped her arms out of the straps and stood. A feeling of lightness made her steps springy.

  To her left and down the ridge on that side, the vegetal growth was tight. Chaparral. She knew it was evolving, adapting to the coming change in climate. In time it would cover so much of California’s landscape as to typify the state in the minds of non-Californians. But that was a long, long way off, as far as she was concerned. A lovely, sage-like fragrance, typical of the chaparral community after a balmy summer’s day, wafted to her nose. Ah, Salvia clevelandii, she thought, Musk Sage, with its peculiar, ball-shaped flowerheads and splendid blue florets. Hummingbirds were zooming around them, competing for a taste of its nectar.

  Reaching out, she touched it, felt it, loved it. You’ll have a long, noble history here, she thought.

  There were other plants below, too. Lots of Coyote Brush, and here and there, familiar Yuccas stood out with tall loads of creamy white flowers that people would later call Our Lord’s Candle. And unfamiliar plants. Flowering in crimson, violets, and yellows. What are they, she wondered? Even to her specialized scientific mind they were new. One, a delicate vine that crept over the other, harder-edged plants, had tiny orange flowers. Bees large and small zipped in and out among them, thrilling to the variety of choice, eager to gather as much of the precious nectar as their diminutive bodies could carry. To pollinate. Julie thrilled.

  Surely a world like this will last forever. It has to, it felt so right. A brief memory from the far future threatened to mar her reverie, a world so horribly different as to be almost alien. The memory didn’t last. This is now. This is real. This is truth.

  She remembered why she stopped, walked back to the pack and untied the rifles. Heading to the overhang that swept down the left side of the ridge, she hefted one, gauged the trajectory, leaned back, then swung hard. Silently the rifle flew over the tight, tangled wood, turning in a quiet counterclockwise as if in slow motion. It seemed to take minutes to sail outwards, then down, down it went, never to be recovered. Maybe one day, one day in the far future, someone would find the barely discernible impression of what looked like a gun in a rock. It would be brought to the attention of authorities, then stuck in a category with many others. An “Oopart” they’d label it. An Out Of Place Artifact. A convenient place to store — and forget — disturbing anomalies. Perchance my footprints will be there too, she thought.

  Seizing the other, she hurled it as well. Soundlessly it went over the side, until it, too, was out of sight. This was followed by the pistol. Lastly went the lead she’d removed from Jaqzen’s revolver. With its disappearance went her anxiety about the senseless slaughter he had schemed. Every bullet gone was a life saved.

  An eagle glided over the area, perhaps attracted by the unusual sight. She drew in her breath, held it, watching. A whisper of breeze ruffled its feathers. There were shadows from the sun on the pines below. And warmth. A squirrel running across the ground, then up a tree. The scent of pine, of ... impossibly clean air. The oxygen here, she recalled, is richer, exceptional. She exhaled, a feeling almost of intoxication.

  Julie turned and headed back to her pack. With the extra weight gone, it was substantially lighter. Still heavy, but welcome. When she shouldered it now, she wasn’t bent. I can handle this. Looking around her again, just to take in the sights, she smiled, then set out once more on her path down the ridge, which undulated into remoteness.

  As she walked, Julie picked out the names of animals. As expected, there were numerous horses about, downslope to her right. Herds of them of various sizes, mostly abiding with their kind, but, she observed, there was also some co-mingling. At this distance, she could only guess the species, soon giving that up. It was strange that fossils were more recognizable than the real thing.

  Closest to her, browsing in the shade of some large oaks, were Protohippus and Archaeohippus, diminutive horses of two hundred fifty and a hundred thirty pounds respectively. Farther on, near the lee of a large pond, was a small herd of Desmatippus. Down a side flank of the mountain and spreading out a long way was a large herd of Scaphohippus, an abundant, small, three-toed horse, standing three feet at the shoulder. They seemed to be less group oriented than the others. Within their throngs grazed Acritohippus. At the edges and within the forested areas was Hypohippus. It weighed in at five hundred plus pounds.

  She searched, but failed to find Miohippus. And that would be as expected, since it would have recently become extinct. You never know, though, Julie thought, one could still turn up.

  She topped a little rise, then descended through a saddle. She noticed that the ridge was gradually lowering, with other ridges branching off at perpendicular angles, each a temptation to follow, to explore. After a few minutes, she topped the other side of the saddle and saw spread before her a spectacular panorama of ocean and cliffs, perhaps five miles away. A wide, shallow bay, fed by a river, cut several miles back into the land. It was bordered by low, green hills that seemed to run to the horizon. Above it were enchanting, cottonball clouds set in a deep blue sky, the bluest sky she had ever seen, and just below were large birds gliding in graceful arcs. Julie sighed. Then she looked closer, paused, and removed her pack. She was after her binoculars. Finding them, she focused on the gliders. Her heart sped up. She adjusted the glasses, and her jaw dropped. She let out a loud whoop now and laughed.

  The birds were indeed very large. White chest and head, with bicolored, gray wings, to a non-expert they would have appeared to be merely some sort of large pelican or gull. Julie knew better. This was Osteodontornis. With a wingspan of twenty feet from tip to tip and a standing height of four feet, it was one of the la
rgest birds ever. And there it was, sailing above the blue of the sea as if it had always been and would always be. Julie clapped her hands and danced around a bit then, there on the ridge, in the middle of the Miocene.

  Those horses closest to her lifted their heads to stare at the strange sight. What is this biped? What is it doing? After a moment, though, sensing no danger, they went back to grazing, but kept a wary eye out all the same.

  Julie snapped a button on the binocs and it became a camera. Again she zoomed in on the osteodonts and began to photograph. What a job I’ve got! she thought.

  As the day wore on, the temps rose, and Julie unscrewed the cap to her water bottle and began to drink the last from it, then stopped herself. Why was she drinking water from her time? True, it was the best you could buy, but... she poured the rest on the ground, then headed toward a spring she’d noticed. Cold, clear water bubbled up from below. Tentatively, she bent and sampled it. It tasted of earth. Fresh. Delicious. Forgetting the filter, she drank, and drank more, she then flushed and refilled her bottle. Tiny bits of dirt and organic matter swirled around. Its clarity was not to code. But this was clean dirt. She remembered as a child her father had explained the difference: there was clean dirt: natural soil, which contained minerals we needed and organic matter that, for the most part, we had evolved with. That’s why you could drink spring water and not get sick. Then there was dirty dirt. That was anything polluted, usually by man. Oily, chemically, radiologically, you wouldn’t drink it unless your life depended upon it, and even then maybe not.

  To be sure, there would be plenty of instances, she knew, where she’d use the filter. A standing pool of water could be stagnant. Even flowing streams could be havens for bacteria like Giardia if infected wildlife had eliminated into them. But springs could be counted on. Generally streams, too, were fine. One could create a makeshift filter in a stream by digging a path for some of the water to flow into, and within that, two or three little bowls in succession. Each would act as traps to catch debris, etc. By the time the water was out of the last one, it was generally cleaner.

  Julie removed her shirt and bra. The warm air felt cool on her breasts, which were wet with perspiration. With no cover though, the sweat would quickly evaporate and she knew better than to hike bare in this sun. She did not need a sunburn, so after hanging the bra on the top of her pack to dry, she re-donned the outer long-sleeved shirt, but left it unbuttoned. It felt freeing to allow her breasts to bounce and sway with the motion of her gait.

  Although she estimated the height of the ridge upon which she walked to be no more than perhaps a thousand feet, she could clearly see the land around her on all sides. For the most part, it was lower, flatlands and foothills, with some mountainous terrain near the coast: the ancestral Santa Anas, she assumed. Far to the northeast, though, it rose again to a lovely grandeur: the nascent Sierras. At 8,000 feet, give or take, they stood at roughly half the height of her time. With sustained uplift, they’d continue their ascent to the sky. Yet, with the Pleistocene glaciations still millions of years away, Yosemite’s famous domes and prominences weren’t there yet.

  She could guess the plant life there: at no higher than 1,500 feet grew oaks, and reaching to 2,500 feet would be Cypress, Big Cone Spruce, Douglas Fir, and Tanbark Oak. These would spread down the central west Sierran slope. Within this community would be Madrone, Ironwood, Pacific Wax Myrtle, some fan palms, Sapotaceae, Pinon pine with their edible, highly nutritious nuts, and the lovely Rhododendron. Also found would be good old avocado, a luxury she’d not enjoyed in many years. She wondered about them, hopefully she’d find out soon. On the eastern side of the Sierras at the lower margin of mixed conifer forest would be a live oak woodland savanna. Species of oak found there would include Canyon Live, Mesa, and Interior Live Oaks. There would be a number of Poplars as well, including alexanderii, a small-leaved cottonwood; subwashoensis, aka Verdi poplar, and payettensis. In the northern Sierras would be Sequoias, of course, and Arborvitae, Fir, and growing below them, masses of Red Huckleberries, and on and on. No doubt she’d also run across many species still undiscovered by modern man. The prospect of uninhibited exploration excited her scientific mind.

  By an hour later, the ridge had lowered considerably and along with horses, she began to see myriad camel species. There was Nothotylopus, and Australocamelus, a specimen she recalled that weighed in at 320 pounds. Pliauchenia and Michenia mudhillsensis, which ran to 500 pounds. And there was Rakomylus. Most abundantly were the big Aepycamelus, which stood ten feet tall and weighed up to 1,800 pounds.

  Finally, she saw the huge Zygolophodon. Herds of the mammoth, five and a half ton proboscidean were lingering around a large mud hole, playing, spraying, and rolling in it. Others were pulling bark from some yellow-flowered acacia trees exactly like their distant descendants, the elephants, would do. The Zygolophodon, like their, at his point, rarer proboscidean cousins, the Gomphotheres, in fact aided the spread of grasses and the evolution of horses and other cursorial fauna by their stripping of bark and felling of trees. At one time, their arrival in North America was used as a marker of the beginning of the Barstovian era. Before their entry, all was dark, dense, closed jungle and forest.

  Julie sat now, lower down on the western slope of the ridge, tall grass blowing around her, concealing her, and listened. This is what a natural world sounds like. Smells like. Feels like. All sensation. Scents and fragrances. Visual and aural. Nothing harsh, abrasive or offensive.

  A large, clumsy beetle buzzed past her nose and she jerked back, startled, then laughed. It felt good to do. It’d been too long since she had. She lay back in the grass, her shirt falling open, the sun caressing her skin. All kinds of insect sounds were around her. In fact, Julie now noticed that very fast flyers zipped here and there just over the tops of the grass. Sometimes one would collide with a blade taller than normal and instantly be down. In a minute, it would climb back to the top, lift its wings and be off again on its mission of urgency.

  Spying through her binocs a hidden canyon covered in sycamores and shadows to the left of bay, she momentarily thought that it could make a good camp. Still, she was only about three hours from the Strong Box — and Jaqzen. Probably too close. She wanted to see it, though. But first, the bay itself called to her. The sea marked the long line of a transform fault that would later become the San Andreas fault system, the demarcation between the North American plate, which was moving southeast, and the Pacific Plate, which was moving northwest. The future coast ranges were still under water or emerging as islands.

  She sat up, got a drink from her bottle, then stood and hefted the pack on her shoulders again. Then she set her feet in the direction of the part of the bay closest to the canyon.

  It took her two hours to get there. She followed faunal paths that twisted and turned, bent and curved, zigzagged and meandered.

  Rarely were they straight for long, except when she finally got to level ground. She could have saved half the time just cutting across the waving grasses, but was interested in these trails. Eventually, though, she reached the bay, a graceful sweep of sand and surf.

  To stand here, she thought, and see nothing but blue expanse, hear nothing but seabirds and the lap and pound of waves on the shore is otherworldly.

  There was a large, roundish boulder to the right of the upland and its shaded ravine, and, as Julie approached, a dozen turtles slipped off it and into the water with a dozen soft splashes. She removed her shoes and walked with them in her hands, stopping when she saw the giant leatherback turtle, Psephophorus californiensis, on the far side. A huge thing, it was three times the size of modern leatherbacks. It turned its head to regard her, probably wondering what she was, then made its sluggish way back to the water. Soon it was gone.

  Julie decided to go for a swim, too, and removed her clothes, setting them down on one side of the boulder. Then she stuck a speculative toe in and found, to her surprise, that the water was warm. She didn’t know why she was surprised as
she knew it would be. Gently, she launched and loved the feel of Miocene water on her skin. Under the surface, sounds disappeared, only pearly beads of air, both from her and gases from the decomposing detritus buried below, made any note. It was ethereal.

  O Land, O Earth, O Sea, O Skies, how beautiful you are to my eyes.

  Julie swam there for the better part of an hour. Finally, she reached down and took some sediment and began to scrub the oils from her skin. A Miocene sea bath.

  O the water falling from my hands, through my open fingers, like a cascade of stars, sparkling, twinkling, glittering, back home to the sea.

  Overhead the osteodonts glided, landed on prominences, and walked awkwardly near their grassy nests. Their call was not what she’d expected. Julie had assumed it would be loud and raucous; instead it was more like quiet chatter, reminiscent of sea gulls. This, though, could be punctuated with sudden shrill exclamations if another flew too close. But that was the exception.

  Julie walked out now, dripping water, Rachel Welch-like. Only this was 15 million years B.C. She lay down on the warm sand, in the shelter of a low cliff. Closed her eyes. Fell asleep.

  By and by, she awoke to find a group of very strange creatures nearby. They were ambling out of the water and looking uncertainly at her. They looked almost like sea elephants. Julie sat up, amazed. Desmostylus. Apparently, she’d appropriated their resting area. She stared back, smiled.