A Long Time Until Now - eARC

by Michael Z. Williamson

  “Go on,” she prompted, and went to tie the one Ortiz carried.

  He made another fifty yards, another pause, smelling stinking goat, feeling it breathe in panic. He’d much rather wrestle the injured cat.

  It took a good twenty minutes to reach the corral. He chose an inward point of the fence, reached the corner, heaved the goat up, waited while Caswell untied its feet, and dropped it in.

  Ortiz rolled his over the side, and they went back for the last. Caswell had it pinned, and clutched the net to keep it down. The two men grabbed it front and rear, and carried it like a casualty. He had an arm under its chin to stop its biting, with it in a half chokehold. He was sweating heavily in his jacket, despite the cool air.

  At the fence, Ortiz lowered the legs and he shifted. He got arms under the bristly hair, hooked the legs firmly, and heaved. It struggled and kicked him in the thigh, the balls and the guts. He grunted, clamped down on it, and hefted it like a kid with a puppy. Its gyrations did little, then.

  He kicked something as he walked, and realized the damned thing had dropped a deuce on his boot. Of course, the old slick boats would have shed it better than the sueded finish on these.

  “Crap,” he said, and realized the irony.

  He fairly tossed that one over. It rolled, stood, and brayed at him.

  “Yeah, fuck you, too, pal. You’ll be over coals in a week, if I have anything to say about it.” He couldn’t blame the animal, but he didn’t want to be friends with dinner, either. Much better to hate them.

  “How many are we going to get?” he asked Ortiz.

  “Eventually we need breeding stock, and we’ll eat the kids to keep the milk coming.”

  “Yeah. Cheese. Someone here said they know how to make it.”

  “I do,” Caswell said. “Spencer says he does, but I expect like a lot of his skills, it’s stuff he’s read about and not actually done.”

  “Well, we’ve all got some of that. Like Oglesby and sex.”

  Caswell gave him that stare.

  Bob said, “Look, I’m sorry. I joke about stuff so I don’t get pissed off. I’ve got goat crap on my boot, bruises on my groin and thigh, goat smell all over me, and no cigarettes.”

  Ortiz saved him. “I figure a half dozen for now, and we’ll expand the pen, but we’ll need to make sure they’re fed and watered. Someone has to come dig a pond in that low spot and start bringing water in, until we can run a pipe.”

  “Good point. Don’t want them to bind up their guts and die.”

  “Just toss all the food waste here, and all the trimmings off the trees. We’ll recover some sticks we can burn.”

  “I’ll do it. Hey, the two of you are going to get me my breakfast cereal. You are my heroes.”

  They got three more goats into the pen, and even though it seemed they could climb out, the animals ran around, then butted the fence, then settled down to munch grass.

  “Not the sharpest spoons in the drawer, are they?” he said.

  Ortiz said, “They’re not. But we’ll need other animals eventually. Still, this will make it easier to get a few things.”

  That done, he looked across the stream at the site. The north wall was half done to the stream. Progress. They needed to find some way to trade with the Urushu for something other than medical care.

  He walked down to the stream to wash the stink off. Cold stream water was better than warm goat. He did wish the water was deeper, though.

  Felix Trinidad was glad Alexander had found the cat. She seemed to be taking it harder than the others, and given her age and family, and her fitness, something to help her relax was probably a good thing. Chopping wood took a lot of stress off, but she really didn’t seem fit enough for much of it. She dragged branches, but that wasn’t the same as hacking bits off.

  Or maybe he was just atavistic. It worked for him, but possibly not the others. Also, he needed to pay less attention to the females. They weren’t available, though he’d love to jump Caswell, but she didn’t seem like the type to go for men at all. A very angry, closeted lesbian, if he had his guess. Even if she did anything with men, it wouldn’t be with him, and it wouldn’t be very good. She was a large bundle of negative emotions.

  Alexander was just depressed, and it wasn’t all separation. She had a fairly tough façade, but was not at all happy. The combination of being the oldest, and female, and with health problems meant she’d never fit with the rest, either.

  Though she had that faintly mousy presentation. She was probably a firecracker in bed. But it would be up to her to make the call.

  She seemed to get along best with Spencer, who was closest to her age. She didn’t notice Felix, found Oglesby annoying, didn’t like Dalton’s religious presence, and definitely didn’t care for Devereaux. She might consider the LT, but kept a very professional shell.

  Which was a long-winded way of wondering when he was going to get laid. These women were off limits, so the interaction with the natives needed to continue until they could bring some in for socializing. And those women were tall, which was just fantastic. If only he could persuade them to be interested in a shorty like himself.

  Back to the wall. They had one side, half of another, two natural obstacles—the creek and ditch—and several piles of brush. The more they got built, the better he felt. Spencer was correct about that. They needed their own territory, their own secure area, and they’d have both less labor and more comfort.

  They had some fittings to install, that he’d helped carve. If the LT’s design worked, this would be a hinged gate.

  Spencer said, “Trinidad, you’re the little guy, you’re voted.”

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s always Felix up the pole.”

  He grabbed the post, braced his feet, and shimmied. He reached up for the pin and thong holding it to its neighbor, and hoisted himself to the top of the wall. He was breathing a bit as he wedged a foot between poles. Barker tossed up the headpiece to him, a tumbling, rough-hewn block. He caught it and he wiggled it down the gatepost. It had been preshaped by drilling with the power drill from the toolbox, filing, chiseling, and finally just spinning it around and around the post until it fit. It had two holes cut for dowels.

  The three men below shoved and pushed the gate section into place. He slid the headstock down, twisted until the dowel holes lined up with the recesses in the gatepost.

  “Hammer,” he called, and Barker lobbed it underhand to him. He tapped the dowels in until they started to mush on the ends.

  “Try it,” he said.

  The pivot worked smoothly enough. They opened the gate both ways. The inside would be reinforced with a crossbar and logs set into the ground. Nothing the natives had should be able to open it, and most animals would detour around. A stampede might be a problem, but even then, after a few bumps, most animals would go past, not blindly into a wall of logs.

  Barker walked the gate in and out, and it was surprisingly smooth. The rough spots had been well worn. Socketed top and bottom, it was a functional hinge.

  “Good job, Bob,” he said.

  “That was Sergeant Spencer’s work.”

  “Still a good job. Can I get down now?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.” The poles were biting into his ankles. He dislodged himself carefully, stepped back and dropped.

  “We’ll put the second door up tomorrow.”

  “Good. Once we do some more trenching it will be awesome.”

  Spencer came over. “There’s going to be braces that prevent the doors swinging back, top and bottom. Then a crosslet bar in case we need extra reinforcement. And a sill.”

  He asked, “Punji spikes in the trenches?”

  “I am considering that, yes.”

  Hah. He’d been joking.

  So he added, “Also vines and twine to tangle whoever it is.”

  Spencer said, “Right, but we also need to start on stone walls. Constant improvement.”

  That . . . sounded odd.

>   “Who are we trying to defend against?”

  “Anyone or anything. There’s thousands of them, ten of us. Enough bodies can climb over, or ram through, or maybe they’ll learn to control rhinos. I don’t know. Since we can’t get back home, we want a castle, fields full of serfs, a noble class of us and kids, who are well-educated, and then we’ll see about windmills for electricity, teaching people to mine metal for us. As far as we can go. Unless you want to eat grubs and baluts and chase native chicks.”

  “The native chicks are starting to look pretty good. But yeah, we might as well work on being tops.”

  “Visitors to the north!” Oglesby called. “Large group, a dozen or more.”

  Elliott ordered, “Be ready, stay in camp. I want someone covering the gap.” The south wall was twenty feet shy of the stream while they figured out what to do about that.

  “I have it,” he said, and grabbed his rifle from the log he’d leaned it on.

  “What loading?”

  “Magazines in, chambers empty,” Spencer said.

  He climbed up the ladder on the back of Number Eight and got a good view downslope. Barker came up next to him. Oglesby was in the turret of Number Nine. He did a quick scan by eye. Spencer came up, and Elliott too, and settled next to him. Caswell and Dalton had the east covered from behind logs. Ortiz and Alexander were watching the north from the brush pile.

  “More than a dozen,” he said. “Sixteen? And those are some other group, not the Urushu.” It was less than a kilometer, but there were trees down there and assorted terrain features covered in scrub. Visibility was about twenty percent.

  Barker said, “They’re significantly more advanced.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I’m looking at the bindings on their spears, and the cut of their clothing. And they have bows. And dogs.”

  Yes, and he should have caught that. “Yeah . . . think they’re going to move in?”

  “I expect so. Likely some advance or scouting party.”

  He said, “Well, this is a major river valley. There’s bound to be both transients and settlers.”

  Spencer said, “Be glad we got as good a spot as we did.”

  He turned and said, “I was joking earlier, Sergeant, but I agree. We need to work on some stone, and mortar.”

  Elliott said, “Slaked lime we can do. Water and sand we can do. I’m trying to remember the rest.”

  Spencer said, “And it would be much better to get flat stone, or find some way to cut it. I can crack it and burn it, but it takes so damned long.”

  Barker was still watching the travelers. He said, “Those dogs bother me. They’re not wolves. They’re dogs. Domesticated.”

  Elliott looked quizzical. “Okay?”

  “So how do they have domesticated dogs? We haven’t seen any others.”

  “They may be first in the area.”

  Ortiz called up, “I don’t think so. Breeding dogs took centuries. They’d be all over. What do they look like?”

  Barker said, “Wolfhounds or large malamute types, but definitely dogs.”

  Ortiz was standing, but stayed in position. “I might be able to tell if I could examine one.”

  Felix was intel. He wanted to talk to them.

  Elliott had the binox and was studying them.

  He asked, “Can I take a look, sir?”

  “Yes, here,” the lieutenant said and handed them over.

  “I’m next,” said Barker.

  “Then me, goddammit,” said Spencer.

  “I’m behind you,” Alexander said. She held her camera with telephoto. “Strap around your neck first, and for gods’ sake, be careful.”

  “Got it,” Spencer said, taking it and carefully looping the strap over his head.

  Felix zoomed in on the visitors. “They’re less Asian looking, more European looking. Shorter. Less robust.”

  Barker said, “Agreed.”

  Spencer said, “I hate to jump to conclusions, but if they’ve got bows, dogs and small stature, it suggests they’re post-agricultural revolution. We know bows existed nine thousand years ago. Before us, I mean. Before that it gets sketchy. We know dogs started about now, but took a while. We know people got smaller after agriculture from eating more grain and less meat. And of course, all that is entirely speculative now that we’re on the spot.”

  Felix said, “All I know is they’re more advanced. I see bows, lighter throwing spears, shoulder bundles, the dogs, and the clothing is more sophisticated. It has actual sleeves and leggings.”

  Elliott asked, “Do they see us?”

  “I would assume so. We’re hard to miss. Though possibly they think we’re just some odd landscape formation. No, wait, they’re looking this way. Huddling, passing messages back and forth as they move. So they’re aware of us, but want us not to be aware of them.”

  Elliott said, “Then let’s keep quiet, and goddamit, I wish I had enough troops for patrols.”

  Spencer said, “After we finish the walls, maybe. Another month.”

  “It’ll be almost winter then,” Elliott said, “I want two on watch. I am not trusting them. One up here during the day. Two at night.”

  “Still think I’m crazy about the palisade and ditch, Trinidad?” Spencer asked.

  “I didn’t think you were crazy,” he said, a bit defensively. “I thought your schedule was a bit rushed.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “They’re moving on,” Felix said. “But I assume they’ll be back.”

  “Definitely,” Spencer said. “Sometime.”

  Something occurred to him. “Are these the other visitors the Urushu mentioned?”

  Spencer flared his eyebrows. “Possibly. They said they were wizards who talked to animals.”

  Dalton said, “If they’re lost in time, how many others are?”

  * * *

  That was something to consider, Sean Elliott thought. There might be other groups displaced. Some of them could be from forward in time.

  Well, so far, no one wanted a fight. God nor aliens had come down to tell them how to live. Either they were being left alone, or it was a bizarre natural occurrence. But had some kind of breach caused a bunch of stuff to come through in the same place? No, they’d have seen others. So not the same place, but within a few hundred miles?

  He asked Spencer, then realized he should also ask Trinidad, who was intel. The man was so quiet, and Navy, and, yeah, he’d been defaulting to the old white guy. Or was it just that Spencer was older and knew this stuff? No, Devereaux was studying astronomy, and calculating the calendar. He should be talking to him, too.

  He’d been inadvertently racist. Just a bit, but there really wasn’t room for it here. They were all one people for this.

  “Okay, everybody, formation around dinner. And it smells good. Stew?”

  “Antelope,” Caswell said. “With wild onions, some kind of pine bark and needle, some chopped cattail, plantains and a bit of what I think is burdock. It’s safe, I ate some.”

  “Excellent. Bob Barker said he would be looking for fish and wild rice in the river.”

  Barker said, “And I still will. I want to get the wall finished even more now, though. Sergeant Spencer wants more firewood.”

  “How’s that going?”

  Spencer said, “We have the brush piles and we can chop more logs. They need to season. I figure the dead of winter we drag a log or two into the tepee and just feed them in toward the middle.”

  “How much do we need?”

  “I read a story somewhere about a guy in a cabin in the Canadian Northwest. He had eight cords.”

  Eight? “That’s a crapton of wood.”

  “It is. But if it’s too much, we have it next year. If it’s not enough, it sucks at least, kills us at worst.”

  As if to emphasize it, Dalton put another split piece of wood on the fire.

  Ortiz asked, “Can we ask the Urushu?”

  Oglesby said, “They all gather in that large lod
ge and have a half sleeping, half orgy winter. I already asked.”

  “We’ll skip that,” he said.

  “Please,” Alexander said. She turned and tossed a bit of food down by the bank of the stream.

  Dalton asked, “Are you trying for a pet?”

  “If you must know, yes. We need something furry to hug.”

  Dalton looked as if he were about saying something, but she was right. They didn’t have partners or spouses. They needed something for companionship. It was either adopt Urushu children, or pets.

  The cat limped slowly out of cover under a bush, crawled low, and snatched the food. He squirmed back into a hollow.

  “Sergeant Devereaux has the date fixed.”

  “Sort of,” Devereaux said. “I may be off by up to a week. I think I’m within two days. We’ll know on Twenty-One December. For now, I’m calling it October Third.”

  “What year?” Dalton asked.

  Devereaux said, “Thirteen thousand, two hundred ninety-six BC.”

  Dalton about dropped his food. He stopped in mid chew.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “Of course I am. There’s no way to tell. But you believed me.”

  That had to be a poke at Dalton’s Creationism.

  Dalton took a moment to swallow, looked half amused and half disgusted, and said, “Bastard.”

  Devereaux said, “So we’ve got a month before it starts getting cold, not just cool.”

  Trinidad asked, “How cold will it get at night?”

  Devereaux and Spencer exchanged glances.

  Spencer said, “This should be a small climate optimum between the Older and Younger Dryas. The temperature in those dropped back to Ice Age levels within three generations. This should be a bit warmer, more moderate, and lusher, and so far, it is, compared to what we had back in A-stan. This assumes we have the timeframe right, that the research I read is right, and I remember it right. Winter will still be down into the sub-freezing range at least, though.”

  That was a lot of maybes, but winter was winter.

  “I endorse the plan for a lot of firewood,” Elliott said, to make sure people knew. “It’s always useful as a barricade and windbreak, and fuel for next year. Stack it deep.”