A Long Time Until Now - eARC

by Michael Z. Williamson

  His phone chimed then, and he raised it to look at the message. A frigid draft blew into the bag as he did so.

  ALL: Extreme cold inbound. Advise tepee.—Gina.

  He replied with “ok” and lay back. It would take a few minutes to warm his shoulders up again, and that was with two logs glowing on the hearth.

  The cold still sucked, and that was like nothing he’d grown up with, but he’d learned to deal with it. These extreme spells, though, were miserable.

  Spencer had mentioned the possibility of sheet metal for stoves that would radiate heat better, if the Cogi could help. Eventually, maybe. They had made a lot of progress.

  He sighed. The tepee was open, and it wasn’t going to get any warmer tonight. He might as well move now.

  First was to reach, stretch and grab his coat down from the hook. He shimmied in, waited for it to warm up, then unzipped the bag and got vertical fast, stepping into his athletic shoes from long practice.

  He backed out the door with the rolled bag, and jogged through the maze to the tepee. Then he had to hike it all under one hand to open the tent flap and wiggle in.

  “I got it,” Oglesby said, and held the hide aside for him.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Spencer was dressed, and rushed out with him to get the foam pad and roll of hides. That got the essentials over, and he left it all in a pile in his arc of the tent while standing almost in the fire to warm up. He shivered and let himself smoke like a haunch of meat.

  Then it was time to lay out his hides on the bed of fleece and leaves that Gina and Barker had built for everyone, lay out his bag, and decide if he really needed to piss or not. He did, so he ran back outside and to the streambank.

  There was nothing quite like draining your bladder while standing in snow with cold wind blowing over your dick. He felt his jaw ache from clenching teeth, forced it to relax and then felt his teeth chatter, and pulled his PTs up fast as he turned back toward the tent.

  Up at the Cogi corner, that looked like Caswell stepping into their tent.

  Very interesting.

  There was a rationale to it. She didn’t want anything to do with her own unit, which he understood, and the ancients were exotic in all definitions, and less than glamorous. The future men, though, were built like gods and not attached.

  Her presence there wasn’t information he’d share with anyone except possibly Elliott. Anyway, she might have some mundane reason for being there.

  Maybe.

  CHAPTER 38

  Winter was a lot easier the second time, though having better lodging and more firewood helped a lot.

  Bob Barker admired the second tepee, or what would be one. It had two covers and overlaid poles. After every snowfall, they untoggled the front, and shoveled in as much as possible. The pile was four feet deep now, and a good fifteen feet across.

  The Cogi’s shovels changed shape into scoops. Otherwise, panels of bark, two regular shovels, and a cooler had to suffice.

  He had a scoop, as did Dalton. They threw snow into the tent and two of the Urushu stomped it down with improvised snowshoes.

  “Harder,” he said. “Pack it to ice.” He pantomimed and they nodded.

  Behind him, Negrus, a Roman, and Ikaya, one of the Urushu, piled up snow for him to shovel in, then retreated for more. Beyond them were five others. This wasn’t efficient, but it would hopefully last all winter.

  From the side, watching, and occasionally throwing a shovelful, was Arnet.

  “We got fridge.”

  “How big?”

  “Half cubemeter.”

  “Better save that.”

  “Nod. Tryng to ask device how to connec to zis pile n chill.”

  “If you can find a way to do that, that would be great. It would last all year for sure.” He had no idea how such a device would work, but if they had it, great.

  “Should anyway. I work math.”

  “Glad to hear it. We’ll see how right you are in fall.”

  Arnet almost snorted in disdain.

  “I’m right. Easy math.”

  He didn’t have to answer because a snowball hit him. He turned to see Ortiz shaping another one.

  “Thirty seconds,” the man said, “then back on the job, motherfucker. Better throw fast.”

  Next to him, Dalton grunted and pivoted the shovel so it catapulted a bucket of snow in a high arc.

  Ortiz said, “Mierda” and backed up fast, but kept watching the incoming fall. Bob took that moment to scoop up snow, crunch it into a ball, and heave.

  It was a great shot, until Ortiz ducked from the falling snow and took the ball straight to the cheek.

  “Oh, shit.” He ran forward, waddling in thick clothes, snow and undergrowth. Ortiz was on all fours, shaking his head.

  “Serves me goddam right,” the man said, and stood slowly. He had a hell of a welt, with scratches, on his left cheek, just above his beard.

  “You okay, man?”

  “Yeah. Let’s get back to it.”

  “We’ll have a real game later. We can build a snowfort.”

  The snow cone was six feet and packed when done for the day.

  He enjoyed his hammock in his tepee. He didn’t mind the tent being used as a clinic space, inclement weather chapel or dining room. He didn’t really mind everyone piling in for comfort in the cold. It did get frustrating in a hurry, though. Tent fever, like cabin fever.

  It was easier this winter than last. On all but the coldest nights, everyone’s log hooches were plenty warm. So when they did have these extreme arctic blasts—this was the third one this winter—there was a scramble to move in, shift around, get comfortable, then a few days later they’d move back out. That meant using a floor bed so he wasn’t dangling above people, and he rolled it up so they could throw up ponchos for privacy. You could imagine you were alone, despite the shifting and snoring.

  At least those events kept the bedding fresh.

  The cabins would be warmer once they built proper doors from split wood, with hinges, and sealed them with leather.

  Gina had managed to train the cat to excrete around the perimeter of the camp, so he stopped spraying the tent poles. That had been pungent. There was still a hint of it, but under the hides, the sweat, the smoke, it was barely noticeable. Cal patrolled around, letting everyone have a skritch, before he retreated to sleep curled against her legs. Lucky cat. Cal had slept on his pallet one night last week, and it had been very comforting. The little fella was cute, and brought dead things to them every couple of days. He understood dead game meant salted liver, and obviously thought that a very fair exchange.

  A week later, he had people piling in again, letting in cold, thumping around. He helped Caswell drag in her bag, last of all. She did like privacy, but she was hours behind the others. She was out of breath, too, and her hair . . . hmmm.

  Well, he wouldn’t mention that. She might have been alone, or perhaps she’d found someone local.

  “Impending Christmas and New Year’s again,” he said.

  “Don’t remind me. It’s still not something I look forward to.”

  “Yeah.”

  This year, holidays had been much more notional. Each one reminded them of their old homes. What did July 4th matter here? And Christ hadn’t been born on 25 December anyway, and to celebrate it 11,000 years before he was born was just silly. Thanksgiving sort of remained. New Year’s was mostly a calendar function.

  He realized he didn’t know when anyone’s birthday was, other than his own, and he’d never shared his. It just really didn’t matter.

  “We’re going native,” he said.

  “I don’t understand?” she said, as he helped her adjust the bag and her thick fleece blanket. The people who didn’t have those were very jealous. Spencer’s featured the Cars movie characters, borrowed from his son, and he caressed it often, but it sure was warm.

  He said, “Most holidays, our birthdays, forgotten. Old foods. We’
re more and more part of this time.”

  “But never will be completely.” She rolled out her bag on the pile of furs and boughs.

  “Any kids will be. We’re going to be those strange old people with the knowledge and the magic devices.”

  She said, “Better a tribal elder than a ragged hermit.”

  “Aye. Still, I’m less depressed about being here, and that’s sort of depressing.”

  She shrugged. “It is. Except I can’t get up the energy to care that much anymore.”

  “And that,” he agreed.

  Three days later everyone moved out again. He kept stew cooking inside for people passing by, or coming off watch, or Doc’s patients. His lodge was sort of the local inn, and it was the winter kitchen. It was light enough daytime even with the smokehole reduced, and at night he had four little LED lights, the batteries constantly charged by Arnet and Gina. Except one had failed entirely two months back. Eventually they’d all burn out.

  He shrugged. It was what it was.

  Despite the cold he went to the lathe and turned another bowl, kicking the pedal, scraping the wood, and letting the pole unwind the spindle. Spencer had laboriously hammered and ground him three steel chisels from socket extensions from the tool box: a gouge, an inside scraper, and a parting tool. Others would have to wait on more iron and more charcoal.

  Every morning they did PT. They filled their Camelbaks and refilled the boiling pot. Once a week they did laundry, more essential than ever now that all the deodorant and soap had run out. They were using wood ash and gazelle fat for soap, though Caswell thought she could make something from vegetable oil, eventually.

  Stand watch, cook meals, carve wood, make arrows to replace the lost ones, with sharpened bone points. He brushed his teeth religiously, held workshops with the Urushu and Gadorth to swap skills, and slept. It was a living. It was even occasionally fun.

  It was becoming routine.

  Martin Spencer hated Excel, but they couldn’t spare paper. He’d reluctantly learned how to create slides.

  It wasn’t hard, just annoying. He was in the fucking Stone Age, using Excel. That was so Army it was . . . something.

  Spring this year led to a frenzy of planting seed they hoped would sprout. Rice went into an excavated swamp upstream. Dandelions had been moved into a plot last year, and came up. The wild onion did well, and they spent hours cleaning bulbs and sorting them. The pine shoots were back, and some mulberry type berries. Martin planned to use some of those for wine again.

  He was glad to provide that service, and wished he could find sweeter stuff. Though he also needed to get that still going this year. He didn’t want to loot the truck, though.

  Possibly he could freeze distill again this winter. Or even process something with specific gravity in the cold, since they had a ten-foot-high chunk of ice in the ice tent. A year-round still would be nice.

  His guts were hanging in there. The Cogi’s processor was able to refine a calcium tablet from bone that helped keep the acid under control. It was palliative, rather than preventative, but it beat dreading eating and dreading not eating for the agony each brought. He was still in pain, but it was an easier medication to take and worked better than just bone meal. It was like chewing Tums, nonstop.

  Each page was a note to himself, about firewood, charcoal burns, food levels, water supplies, new projects. He spent an hour or so every couple of days talking to the LT and Gina, offering advice on projects, estimates on needed resources, and letting Elliott decide what to pursue, while Gina logged it into a schedule.

  To make it worse, his eyes, near perfect, were starting to lose their close focus. He could see the screen fine, could beat metal fine, but he couldn’t closely eyeball projects under a couple of feet away. There weren’t likely to be any glasses here in his lifetime.

  He was only too glad to go to the forge.

  There was good news there. The Cogi had furnished him with a sealable pipe. It wasn’t quite ceramic, and wasn’t quite plastic, but it threaded airtight. Iron ore plus some lime and charcoal in the pipe, pumped for several hours at heat, carburized into steel. With better quality material, he was hammering out much better artifacts. They had two more axes, and he hoped to finish a proper adze in a few days, to help with shaping logs.

  He had an appointment for the next day, to talk to a Roman smith. The idea was fascinating from an historical perspective, and humbling from a professional one. He needed to talk to a man from two thousand years prior to get straight on the task, a man who had no idea what martensite, body-centered cubic structure, or molybdenum were. At that, he had no idea how to refine molybdenum.

  It was still chilly, and even though he’d adapted to being outdoors, he enjoyed the heat emanating from the glowing mouth of the fire. That and his leather apron kept him comfortable enough, though his feet were chilled. Also, his boots were starting to split. He knew how to make heavy welted soled shoes, and would need to do that, too. Perhaps he should try to forge some needles.

  Then he needed chisels, a real anvil, real tongs . . .

  There was nothing romantic about the Dark Ages. Or about getting old.

  “Dinner and formation,” Barker called.

  Dinner was planked fresh trout with salt, and enjoyable, if a bit dry, but they had lots of it. It didn’t feel as filling as steak and potatoes, but it was still good. The Cogi sat back away from the others, out under a portable umbrella. After those initial greeting hugs, they’d kept their distance.

  Elliott said, “Okay, Sergeant Spencer is having a Roman guest tomorrow, to talk about forging. So let’s try to impress him. Part of this diplomacy is slipping hints about how awesome we are, and of course we can wipe out entire cities from miles away.”

  It was Trinidad who said, “I’m concerned they’ll know it’s an act, and also realize we don’t have the tools we need for our high-tech stuff.”

  “Yeah. Don’t overdo it, but do hint a bit. Let’s talk while we eat.”

  Spencer decided to eat first. They’d talk about this for hours, just to kill time, and he’d hint to Elliott as to what to say.

  Ortiz said, “If you run out of Latin, use Spanish. Not that degenerate German you English speakers like.”

  And off they went.

  Oglesby asked, “Aren’t there Germans in Mexico?”

  “Yeah, we don’t let them speak that crap. It stops them from taking over.”

  Martin had expected Nazi jokes within five minutes. He was wrong. It had taken ten seconds.

  He didn’t have popcorn, but he did have rice cake. This was going to be entertaining, and hopefully not any more of a disaster than any other Army function.

  Publius Horatius Naevius tesserarius and blacksmith, arrived at the Americani camp with his two escorts, Aelius and Camillus. He was rather nervous, since the banduka the Americani had could rip holes through logs and armor, but passage had been guaranteed and they met him with an open gate.

  He was impressed with the Americani. Their camp palisade was taller and stronger than the Roman one, and they had only the ten people. The Americani were respectable. The barbarians in camp weren’t worth much even with proper tools. They were doing odd chores, as they did for the Romans.

  He was cautious of those two others, the “Cogi.” He didn’t like that name. What exactly did they know? He’d seen them only at a distance, and their gear was even more bewitched, almost godlike.

  He was met at the gate by the one who looked almost Latin, who said, “Toma tus armas a Optio Regina Alexander ahi dentro.”

  He parsed that, and carried his arms to the command hut, which appeared very much to be some sort of wagon with a lot of doubled wheels.

  The Roman influence on this future culture was obvious. But was the optio tribuni really named Regina Alexander? That was a rather arrogant name for a woman, nevermind the ridiculous concept of women in the Army.

  “Here are my arms, Optio,” he said slowly. Their language was bastardized with Germani and
some other stuff, but they could communicate well enough slowly. But by the gods, they were terrible with cases. Imperative could be deduced, and sometimes Accusative, but that was about it. Nominative and Genitive might as well not exist. It was an awful language.

  “Gratias,” she said, and pointed. “Put hic.”

  She sat at a stool with three illuminated tablets in front of her. They glowed from within, due to some magic from the gods they’d learned to control, like fire only smaller and cooler.

  On the leftmost, she touched an image and moved it. It just followed her finger. On it were letters. Latin letters.

  Of course an optio was literate. He just had trouble imagining a woman optio.

  “Your army also requires staff to be literate, I see.”

  “Omni est,” she said. Gods, it was comprehensible, but savage. But all of them?

  “All of you? If you are from a headquarters that is a useful thing.” They were all tesserarii or optii, none of them pedes.

  She obviously thought over her response, before she carefully said, “Integer pedes literate. Nos mandate it to scribo.”

  “Impossible!” She must be joking with him.

  “Very possible. We commence educating it at ano quarto.”

  She tapped small stones in front of the tablets, and more words appeared, very fast, so much faster than scribing them or cutting them. He watched for a moment. She dragged another stone and a section lit in blue, disappeared, and appeared on the rightmost screen.

  “What are you inscribing?” he asked.

  “I am recording our levels of commisaria and loges.”

  She had a fine arse, excellent teats, and that striking straw-colored hair with blue eyes. A northerner for certain. A barbarian woman. Yet she was optio to the tribune, literate, and apparently a soldier.