Trail of Bones

by Mark London Williams

  Jefferson sits down on top of the barrel and looks at me. He’s big. Well, lanky and tallish. Probably big enough to play basketball. At least, at this point in history. Everyone else seems pretty short. Do they even have basketball? Or do they just play soccer?

  “Are you, in fact, an American?”

  The question catches me off-guard. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be an insult, or what.

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “Then might you know who I am?”

  “Well, you’re Thomas Jefferson. You were president.”

  He gives me a quizzical look. “I am president, young squire. Not that being president is necessarily the most desirable thing, mind. And since you know my name, who might you be?”

  “Eli. Eli Sands.”

  “You seem very comfortable talking to a president, Master Sands.”

  “Sir, if I told you the reasons I’m not quite as shocked as I ought to be, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  Jefferson cocks his head. I don’t think my part of the conversation was going like he expected. “I am glad, young squire, that presidents can be trusted and regarded as equals. That is as it should be. But I prefer not to talk politics. Enough of that awaits me at home, when reelection time comes round. What brings you out west, young man?”

  “Pardon me, Mr. President, sir.”

  “You may call me Mr. Jefferson.”

  “Mr. President Jefferson, sir. But I thought I heard we were somewhere around Missouri?”

  “Yes.”

  “So we aren’t in the West.”

  “How not?”

  “The West is California, sir. Oregon. Washington. Utah. Arizona. Hollywood. Las Vegas. And my own home.”

  “Some of those names are Spanish territories. Some are Russian. Some I’ve never heard of—Hollywood? In any case, none of them is part of America. As yet.” He shook his head. “And where is home for you, my strange young foundling?”

  “In the Valley of the Moon. Near San Francisco. California.”

  “The Moon, you say? And California, another name from a fairy tale, I believe.” Jefferson pauses. “That girl, that escaped slave, who helped heal you. She is known to you?”

  “You mean Thea?”

  “Her slave name appears to be Brassy. A runaway from New Orleans. Are you claiming she is yours?”

  “Mine? Mine? My slave?” Now I am shocked, for completely different reasons, which maybe he still wouldn’t believe. “You mean, because Thea’s skin is a little darker than mine, you think—?”

  Now it was my turn to cock my head. People say you can’t know the future, but history always throws surprises at you, too. I was going to have to be careful: this was another tricky part of the past to be stuck in.

  “Mr. President—“

  “Jefferson.”

  “President Jefferson. I’m sorry. But that question kind of offends me.”

  Jefferson now stares at me as if I was some kind of Barnstormer character. He stands, finds an old cracked mug in the tent, kneels by the barrel, pops a big cork plug from near the top, tips it, pours a little, pushes the cork back in, sets the barrel straight — then sits on it again.

  He sips from the mug. “Normally, I prefer French wine. But such are the concessions of research in the field. I trust the good Captains will not begrudge me a little of their grog. Besides,” he adds, “I understand Sally and Brassy used some of this to minister to you and bring you ‘round.”

  “They did?” I lick my lips and move my tongue, to see if there are any funny tastes in my mouth.

  Jefferson is still trying to figure me out. “So then, young man, are you some kind of abolitionist? Did you help Brassy escape? Because I will tell you, as much as I’d hoped to leave politics behind for a while, anything to do with this slave business will put me in a delicate position. Even out here.”

  “It’s really not so delicate, sir. Slavery is just plain wrong.” Could I get arrested for talking to a president like that? “Can I see Thea?”

  “I’m afraid, after what happened to my Treasury agent, Mr. Howard, that may not be possible.”

  “What happened to Mr. Howard?”

  “He tried on your headdress, squire.”

  “You mean my Seals cap?” Oh, no. That will scramble the time-charge of this Howard guy’s protons. I hope he hasn’t vanished. Or gone crazy.

  “It seems to cause a kind of fever in the wearer. If it spreads, you may yet cause the president himself to be quarantined.” After another sip, Jefferson leans over. “Master Sands, you are clearly a young man of great means and wiles. But you may yet have to be remanded to United States custody until we understand the nature of your being here.

  “You see, even putting the matter of slaves aside, my sending of Captains Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery on a journey west is itself a finely tuned political matter, and I must orchestrate it well. My goal is to have them explore the areas of my Louisiana Purchase, a fine expanse of territory I have just bought from the emperor Napoleon, to record scientific curiosities throughout the far west, and most importantly, to discover a direct water route to the Pacific. The American experiment is expanding toward those shores.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Many in Congress expect this expedition to fail. They expect the Corps to fall prey to bands of hostile Indians, or fierce giants, or other creatures that may roam out there. They think I am ridiculous to fund this expedition.”

  He rubs his forehead and sips his whiskey, then makes a face. “I really should have brought more wine from home. This is much too rough. But it will serve.” He lowers the mug. “The atmosphere in Washington is so rancid now that I decided to slip out of town myself, incognitum, as it were, accompanying the Corps nearly as far as St. Louis, their true launching point, in order to pursue a small hobby.”

  “What hobby is that, sir?” I try to concentrate on Jefferson, but being kept from Thea makes me edgy, plus, there’s suddenly a lot of shouting outside — both the human and the horse kind.

  “Bones, Master Sands. Bones.” He turns toward the tent flap. “What is that contemptible racket? Are there no quiet mornings to be had anywhere in this country?”

  The morning gets even less quiet. Mr. Howard barges into the tent. He’s bathed in sweat, and his eyes are bulging.

  “Terrible lizards, sir!”

  “Shouldn’t you be getting medical attention, Mr. Howard?” Jefferson asks.

  The cap may not have made him disappear, but it’s sure affected him.

  “Sir, I cannot rest when we have information on just how dangerous the future of this expedition — and therefore your electoral future as president—might be!”

  “What information is that?”

  “I repeat: ‘Terrible lizards, sir!’”

  Jefferson sighs. “Which lizards, Mr. Howard?”

  “A French fur trapper has just wandered into camp! His name is Banglees. He spent last winter in the Dakotas with the Mandan Indians and the Hidatsas! Said they were telling stories about a big terrible lizard in the wild who walks like a man and talks! He said he tried to track the lizard down, but an awful snowstorm came up and he almost froze. He says now the lizard may have saved him. Claims it was some kind of creature asking him for an orange, and when he came to, he was back with the Indians.”

  Jefferson shakes his head. “Has this Banglees been wearing young Master Sand’s fever hat, perchance?”

  “Sir!” This Howard guy says nearly every word like he’s warning people about a fire. “We may have to cancel the expedition! We may have to arm them with cannons!”

  “Perhaps you should return to bed rest, Mr. Howard. And perhaps I should attend to this… Banglees.” Jefferson rises to his feet, sets the mug down and manages to smile at me, a little. “Perhaps, Master Sands, I am not as far from the president’s office as I had hoped. We shall resume later.”

  But it was hard for me to pay much attention to President Jefferson right then. I was figuring
out how I could talk to this French fur trapper guy myself.

  To find out more about a lizard who asks for oranges.

  Clyne.

  Clyne is out there somewhere. He’s been discovered. And he’s in danger.

  Chapter Four

  Clyne: Arrak-du

  February 1804

  This may be my last homework report for two reasons, both of which accelerate my head-spindles and give me brain transgressions.

  The first of the reasons is this: The plasmechanical material from my home world of Saurius Prime, the breakthrough substance that makes so much Saurian technology possible, appears to be infected with slow pox.

  I grant that this is a conclusion based on field research, using radically imperfect equipment and gerk-skizzy methods.

  Or perhaps gerk-skizzy is too unkind. But I have had to rely on an old science project trick from Third Step Elemental School.

  “Imagine you are in the arrak-du,” our teachers would tell us, “the lost lands, and you must confirm the essential nature of a new specimen you have found. How would you proceed?”

  One of the solutions to that problem is to fashion a basic microscope lens out of a sheet of ice. It takes much patience and long sitting, and adept use of one’s claws. Due to the distortions that come with slight ice-melt, I have made three of them over the last pair of days, in order to confirm my results.

  I was prompted to do this for several reasons, among them: the anomalous behavior of the Saurian time-vessel, which resulted in abrupt ejection for my friends and me from the Fifth Dimension; my return to Earth Orange, human year sometime in their nineteenth century, but with no trace of my human companions nearby; strange interjections from the lingo-spots, which are suddenly operating on broader frequencies and seem to want to participate in — and not merely translate — conversations; and the fact that I am surrounded by vast tracts of snow and ice and have little else to do at the moment but work on possible extra credit.

  In fact, I may just fashion a fourth ice lens, and take another small sample of the lingo-spot material from behind my ear, to confirm these results once more.

  I have been consulting the National Weekly Truth, one of the journals of news and logical deduction distributed in Eli’s time. I have kept a crumpled copy in my chrono-suit, the one with the heading LIZARD MAN IN THE WOODS!, with an artist’s rendering that follows, saved as an additional piece of evidence that my time here on Earth Orange was real, and not the fevered imaginings of someone off in an interdimensional arrak-du of their own.

  Though I wonder if now I’ve ended up in a mammal arrak-du: of the few humans I’ve encountered here, none seems to have heard of oranges.

  Meanwhile, the Weekly Truth provides some helpful medical background:

  FIVE THINGS THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW

  ABOUT SLOW POX!

  1. This isn’t the “slow pox” of the Middle Ages — famously seen during the

  outbreak in Alexandria around the year 400. This is a mutant strain

  that escaped from a government lab!

  2. There is no cure — but if you survive, you’re immune.

  Remember: this new form of slow pox attacks not just the

  blood but brain function, too. You might wind up a zombie

  subject to outside control!

  3. Aliens don’t catch slow pox! Could the sudden reappearance

  of the disease be the first attack in an imminent invasion from

  outer space? Is our government helping aliens turn taxpayers

  into zombies?

  4. The effects of slow pox work…slowly! But the disease is

  still spreading, despite what you hear from less reliable news sources!

  5. Government detention centers are coming soon! Slow pox will

  be the excuse! Will you be the victim? Not if you read the

  National Weekly Truth and stay informed!

  This is my theory: Part of what makes plasmechanics a “smart” technology is the material’s ability to adapt and change according to prevailing conditions. Not just through computation, but by incorporating biology. That’s how the lingo-spot is able to interact with the vibrations and synapse-firings of the wearer in order to translate.

  From what I know, slow pox acts on mammal blood and brains: it causes much lobe confusion. It mimics the cellular reproduction of nerve endings and makes a false version of the nerve tissue, which reroutes and distorts the signals. This often leads to paralysis. Similarly, in the bloodstream, real cells are poorly replicated, so that the blood itself becomes a kind of wasteland, unable to clean itself or run freely through vein systems.

  A bad set of conditions, biologically speaking. It makes Searing Scale Syndrome seem like a picnic, in contrast.

  In fact, I initially thought slow pox had infected that mammal Banglees, when I came across him out here in these ice fields.

  Instead, he was almost frozen. Cold-flummoxed, by letting his campfire die down while he dozed.

  After I helped respark the flames and thaw him out, he blinked at me several times.

  “Eh — you mean, I am not dead?” he asked.

  “Evidently not,” I told him.

  “Then how is it you are here, mon ami, if I am not? Are you not from Heaven, or the other place?”

  I wondered if “Heaven, or the other place” referred to some kind of arrak-du.

  “I have taken some very engaging missteps in space and time,” I told him, “which have all construed to bring me here.”

  “You mean you are lost?”

  “I am doing extended field research.”

  “Ah, well. If zat means you are lizard people, I suppose it ees my job to kill you and take your skin and skull with me.”

  “Your entire employment is based on a graphic recipe for harming me?”

  “I am a trapper.”

  He tightened the mammal furs — borrowed permanently, it appeared, from other mammals — more tightly around himself and moved closer to the flames.

  “But I am also cold, and I have been out a long time, so I am tired. And while I am not convinced complètement zat I am alive or zat you are real, I will spend the next hours until sunup talking to you, if for no other reason than to make sure I stay awake.”

  “Then we will talk of—”

  Nika-tc.

  The word came out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. “Home.” Saurian for “home.”

  But it didn’t feel like I was the one saying it.

  It felt like the lingo-spot.

  Though I’ve never known a lingo-spot to use Saurian before.

  “You will have to make more sense than zat, mon ami, whether you are imaginary or not.”

  Banglees and I talked of many things, including the stories of the lizard people. Once he thawed, he seemed much nimbly again with the kind of zrk-kttl energy I have come to expect of mammals, and in the morning, he was on his way.

  I believe I have met the lizard people, and they are me. I wonder, though, if there are others?

  Since then, the lingo-spot has still occasionally whispered to me of arrak-du and nika-tc.

  And looking through the slightly distorted ice lens I have fashioned to recheck my results, I think the slow pox has affected the cellular structure of the plasmechanical substance by allowing a mutation that the microtechnology then tries to “fix.”

  Which is to say, slow pox virus caused pretend nerve cells to form based on the slightest electrical impulses between cells. The engineered micro-machines then “repaired” this suddenly growing tissue. And somehow made it work.

  The slow pox mutation is, in this instance, allowing a nervous system to form.

  And therefore, allowing the plasmechanical tissue to function at an even higher level of intelligence.

  That might explain what happened to the Saurian time-vessel.

  But this is all untested theory, and there is little equipment here to verify results, until I get home.

&nb
sp; Nika-tc.

  If I get home.

  Can lost lands become home, if one is stranded in them long enough?

  Which brings up another question: If the plasmechanical tissue was fabricated on Saurius Prime, how could slow pox affect the Saurian biology?

  Slow pox affects mammals.

  The only mammals we have there are small— and scurrying. Are we using them for science in ways I am unaware of, or has the slow pox virus mutated already?

  Because of a previous exposure to Saurians?

  “Many Lights?”

  I turn, gerk-skizzy myself, caught by surprise.

  I didn’t hear my friend approach.

  Like the other humans I have seen up here, he is bundled up in the borrowed skins of other mammals. But unlike the other humans, he is the only one I now call friend: North Wind Comes.

  “Many Lights — they are hunting you now.”

  He calls me Many Lights. I have learned his tongue. I have also, alas, given him some of my lingo-spot, for better understanding.

  I now must hope that I haven’t given my friend slow pox as well.

  Which brings me to the second reason this may be my last homework assignment: If the plasmechanical material itself is infected, there may be no way back to Saurius Prime.

  “They are hunting you now, Many Lights, and I believe they mean to kill you.”

  However, staying may not be so easy, either.

  Chapter Five

  Eli: Up River

  May 1804

  I’m in St. Louis, it’s raining, and I’m being sent to a pirogue.

  “The boy should be with the dugout crew! Let him row!”

  “Put him with the keel boat and he can help us push our way up river!”

  Now I just have to figure out what a pirogue is. The keelboat, though, you can’t miss: it looks like a barge, made of big wooden blocks — kinda squared off, right down to the cabinets plopped down one end. Least, I think they’re cabinets — all the men from Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery are stuffing things into them.