Skyra turned to Lincoln. “We will go to your camp. When the sun shows itself next, we will leave you and go back to our tribe.”
10
Shelter
47,659 years ago - Day 1
Lincoln paused what he was doing to stare at Skyra and Veenah. Skyra had removed Veenah’s fur garments and had led her sister out several meters into the river. Now Skyra was removing her own furs. The women’s bodies were noticeably thicker than a human’s, with wider hips and shoulders, but they had their own unique proportional balance. In fact, Lincoln mused, they were downright stunning to watch.
Skyra placed her garments carefully on the rocks, then she helped Veenah sit in the knee-deep water before sitting down beside her. Skyra splashed the cold water onto her sister’s face and hair and began wiping away blood and dirt. Veenah stared ahead as if she were oblivious to the efforts. The two nandup women were supposedly twins, but Veenah’s face was so swollen that the resemblance wasn’t obvious.
“Boss, should I get Derek or Virgil to do this?” Jazzlyn asked. “You seem a little distracted.”
Lincoln chuckled. “Sorry, Jazz.” He went back to taping gauze to the side of her head, which wasn’t easy with her long braids in the way. He had been forced to remove most of her external ear—it was too mangled to try to sew back on. According to Maddy’s medical database, success of such a procedure would be unlikely anyway. Fortunately, the worst damage appeared to be external, and she could still hear well.
Jazzlyn said, “You do know those girls are not of your species, correct?”
“Just because I’m staring doesn’t mean I have intentions. You’re staring too. Besides, our two species are compatible—modern humans have almost three percent Neanderthal DNA.”
“Speak for yourself,” she said. “Some of my ancestors happen to be of South African descent. My Neanderthal DNA is just a hair over half a percent.”
Lincoln tore off one last length of tape and stretched it over the gauze from her temple to her jaw bone. “My point is still valid.”
Virgil and Derek approached, followed by Ripple.
Virgil was holding a stone-tipped arrow in one hand. “I decided I’d better remove it,” he said. “I was afraid—considering Maddy is mostly blind now—she would walk into something and drive it in deeper.”
“How’s she doing?” Lincoln asked.
Virgil tilted his head back toward where he had left Maddy standing beside the T3 boulder. “Hard to say. There seems to be some locomotor deficiency in addition to the loss of vision. Other than that, though, she appears to be intact. We brought a few solar chargers, but we have no spare parts or specialized tools for drone repair.”
Lincoln sighed. He reminded himself again that Maddy was just a drone. He turned his attention to Ripple. “I’ve got about a thousand questions for you, but this one’s first. How in the hell can you fly?”
The drone signaled that it was processing the question. “You designed me, Lincoln.”
“I’ve never even considered giving my drones the capability of flight, but that’s not my question. I’m asking how you can fly. I saw you do it. You obviously don’t have rotors, and you didn’t use any kind of compressed gas for lift. How do you even get off the ground?”
“To put it simply, I use a form of magnetic levitation.”
Lincoln shook his head. “Impossible. You said I created you when I was fourteen years older than I am now. Effective maglev technology is way more than fourteen years beyond our reach.”
“You do not give yourself enough credit, Lincoln. You possess more ingenuity than you realize.”
Lincoln felt a cold tingle in his skin. “You’re telling me that I’m responsible for breakthroughs in maglev tech? I’ve never even dabbled in the stuff.”
Ripple remained silent.
“How does it even work?” Virgil asked.
“Lincoln has looked at the issue in ways that no others have considered. Such is the nature of his brilliance. Instead of only considering the possibility of using magnetized strips embedded in the surfaces of roads, he focused his attention on the relatively insignificant magnetic properties of existing rocks and minerals. In typical Lincoln Woodhouse fashion, he proved something others considered negligible to be actually sufficient. A considerable magnetic force can be teased from the native stones that are present in almost any rock, sand, or soil substrate. This magnetic force can be used to counteract the force of gravity, as well as for propulsion. This is why I cannot levitate more than two meters above the surface. Of course, I can do this for only a short time, as it is energy intensive. Then I must build up my charge before levitating again.”
Lincoln exchanged a puzzled look with Virgil. Out in the field, his current drones, including Maddy, could receive a trickle charge with external solar chargers. Ripple obviously possessed no external chargers, nor did the drone have visible solar panels integrated into its shell. “How exactly do you build up your charge?” he asked.
“Honestly,” Ripple said, “it is quite perplexing to explain my functions to the very man who designed and created me.”
“Again, how do you build up your charge?”
“You equipped me with two methods, in the event that environmental conditions become unsuitable for one or the other. The first is asymmetric temperature modulation.” The drone paused while two identical rods the thickness of a pencil slid out from its anterior abdomen and stopped at about thirty centimeters long. The end of each rod then spread out into a flat paddle, looking vaguely like a duck’s webbed foot. “These are my temperature probes. I need simply to place the probes on or in two materials that differ in temperature by at least 4.7 degrees Celsius. The greater the difference, the faster I can charge.”
“How fast?” Virgil asked.
Ripple began withdrawing the probes. “If you were to lie down here, I could insert one probe into your mouth or anus and the other into the cool soil beneath one of these rocks, providing a temperature difference of approximately twenty degrees Celsius and allowing me to top off my charge in forty minutes.”
“Damn,” Lincoln said. “What’s your second method?”
“The second method often makes the first method unnecessary. In fact, the second method is in operation now, as we speak. You designed me to make use of the good old piezoelectric effect, in this case as it applies to sound waves. Essentially, you equipped me with nanogenerators that harvest ambient sound waves and turn them into electric current. Again, you were the one, and the only one, to refine the technology.”
Lincoln exchanged another look with Virgil. “How could I possibly have done all this in only fourteen years? Thousands of researchers have been working on these issues for decades.”
Ripple hesitated briefly. “A valid question. Some have suggested that perhaps you have used your T3 to jump drones into the future to gather data on technological advances.”
“You’re kidding. I’ve never considered jumping anything into the future. I’m not sure it’s even possible.”
“You also said you have never considered giving your drones the ability to fly, yet here I am.”
Lincoln rubbed his forehead. This entire day had been so jarring to his perception of reality that he wasn’t sure he could trust his own eyes and ears. He turned to gaze at Skyra and Veenah. The two Neanderthals were now on their feet and stepping carefully back to their fur clothing on the riverbank. Their clean skin glistened in the light of the descending sun.
“I’ve got a fabulous idea,” Derek said in his booming voice. “Instead of talking about temperature modulation and harvesting ambient sound waves, why don’t we discuss what we came here for? I’m all in on this mission, Lincoln, but it seems to me we’ve done what this drone wanted us to do. It left the message to convince us to jump here to save Skyra and her sister.” He nodded toward the women putting on their clothing. “Mission accomplished.”
“I’d also like to point out,” Virgil said, glowering down at Ripple,
“that we risked our lives—and Jazzlyn lost an ear—yet you have not told us why these Neanderthal women are so important. I find this to be a bit annoying.”
“What he said,” Jazzlyn added.
Ripple’s ring pulsed, indicating it understood it was being addressed. “As I have explained, success of your endeavors is dependent on the sequence and timing of explanations. Yes, you have saved the lives of Skyra and her sister, but there is more to be done to prevent the demise of future civilization. I ask that you trust me on this.”
Derek let out a grunt. “It’s your goddamn drone, Lincoln. Can’t you order it to tell us everything?”
Virgil shook his head. “It’s not that simple. Lincoln codes all his drones with a certain amount of autonomy. It’s part of what allows them to—”
“I know all that!” Derek thundered. “I’m not stupid. Isn’t there some way to override that bullshit? Turn it off or something?”
“The short answer is no,” Lincoln said. “At least not outside of our lab.” He turned to Ripple. “As you probably know, I’m skeptical about the idea that we are now in the same universe we jumped from this morning. My Temporal Bridge Theorem is solid, in my opinion. Therefore, I’m skeptical our actions here could have any impact on the specific future we jumped from.”
“You are wrong,” Ripple said matter-of-factly.
Lincoln blinked. Then he blinked again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It simply means you are wrong. Your theorem is wrong. Your actions here do indeed impact the future you jumped from. You have the power to prevent the demise of your future civilization.”
“That’s impossible,” Lincoln said, trying to control his agitation. “We can’t be in the same timeline.”
“You are wrong. You must have had your doubts if you were willing to jump here.”
“If Lincoln is wrong,” Derek said, “then we should be able to set up the T3 right now and jump back to the same future we left behind. Then we can go on with our lives.”
Ripple shifted to look up at Derek. “That would be a grievous mistake.”
“Then what are we supposed to do now?” Jazzlyn asked.
Ripple shifted its view from Derek to Jazzlyn. “Skyra insists on returning with her sister to her tribe’s camp. This will be dangerous for both of them. There are aspects of the Una-Loto tribe you would not understand.” The drone shifted to face Lincoln. “You must not allow Skyra and her sister to go back to their tribe.”
“Why?” Lincoln asked.
“As I said, it would be dangerous for them.”
Lincoln turned his attention to Skyra and Veenah, who were clothed again and were approaching the group. Skyra had one arm around her sister, who still seemed unsteady on her feet. “We have washed in the river, and we are ready to go to your camp,” Skyra said. Beside her, Veenah stared vacantly at the ground.
“This is our camp,” Derek said. “We just haven’t set up our shelters yet.”
Skyra glanced around at the river and surrounding scrub trees. “We cannot stay here. When it is dark, many creatures come to the river to drink. Other creatures come here to kill and eat them—cave lions, long-tooth cats, hyenas, wolves.”
“Well, I guess we didn’t think about that,” Lincoln said.
She made a face that looked like a pained grimace. “I do not know how you strange bolups are still alive. Maybe your meat is smelly and bad to eat.”
Lincoln almost smiled. “We come from a very different place. Where we come from we don’t have to worry about being killed by wild animals.”
“If no animals are there, what do you hunt and eat?”
This time he allowed a brief smile. “That would take some time to explain. If it’s not safe to stay here, maybe we should first decide where we’re going to set up our camp.”
Ripple spoke up. “This morning Skyra and I saw a tall arrangement of rock outcrops and hoodoos, riddled with crevices and cavities, any one of which could provide suitable shelter. It is just over a kilometer away.”
Lincoln eyed Skyra. “Do you think your sister is strong enough to walk there?”
Skyra and Veenah spoke to each other in their native language. The words were rhythmic and punctuated every syllable or two with a soft click. Rather than being brutish and coarse, the language was pleasant to listen to.
“Veenah will walk to the rock hill,” Skyra proclaimed.
Lincoln and his team removed a few non-essential items from the gear duffel and stuffed them into the duffel of body bags. The body bags were useless without the T3, so there was no point in hauling them elsewhere. Ripple volunteered to guide Maddy by emitting sound pulses Maddy could follow but were barely audible to humans. Derek hoisted the gear duffel onto his back by putting one arm through each of the handle straps. The bag was five feet long and not designed to be a backpack. Derek grimaced at the weight, then he nodded and said, “It’s only a kilometer, right? Let’s get this trek out of the way.”
As Lincoln sat cross-legged on a sleeping bag he’d placed on the bare rock, he gazed at Skyra. She was staring into the campfire’s flames, and the fire’s glow accentuated the size of her eyes and intensity of her expression. He wondered what was going on in her mind. Did Neanderthals even think in the same way humans did?
Veenah, now sprawled behind Skyra, had fallen asleep even before the others had finished collecting firewood. Lincoln hated to think about what the woman had endured at the hands of her human captors. Then again, maybe the experience had been just another event in a lifetime of brutal acts and depravity.
He glanced out the opening of the rock chamber—the chamber could hardly be called a cave, as it was only four meters deep. He could see the sun dropping behind distant hills. After the group had located a cavity that met Skyra’s standards of defensibility, they had gathered firewood from two dead scrub trees near the hill’s base. As Skyra had explained, the fact that the dead trees hadn’t already been picked clean indicated that neither bolups nor nandups frequented this hill of jumbled boulders. She had also explained that, while burning a fire during the night might draw the attention of predators, it would keep those predators from actually entering the chamber to attack. She had even suggested that Derek use his lighter—his fire stick, as she called it—to start the campfire.
Also, Skyra had located two relatively straight branches, each about a meter and a half long, and had sharpened the tips. She now kept the two crude spears at her side, ready for use, and Lincoln found their presence to be comforting.
Jazzlyn couldn’t stop messing with the bandage over her mangled ear. Lincoln watched her scratching at it and tapping it with her finger, perhaps proving to herself for the umpteenth time that she could still hear with that ear.
Derek was sitting with his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands and eyes closed. Every few seconds his lips would move, as if he were talking to himself.
Lincoln was most concerned about Virgil at the moment, who was visibly trembling as he tapped the screen of his watch. In this place, without connectivity other than to the T3, his watch could do little more than tell time, ambient temperature, and a few of his own biological parameters. Virgil was tapping the watch’s screen forcefully as if frustrated that he couldn’t access the web.
“Virgil, you okay?” Lincoln asked.
Virgil shrugged. “Yes and no. Am I the only one dwelling on the fact that we killed people today? Even though I was once accused of killing my own family, I’ve never actually killed another human being before.”
“Neither have I,” Derek said without opening his eyes, “and no, you’re not the only one.”
“You did not kill the bolups,” Skyra said.
Virgil shot her a frown. “I’m pretty sure I did. I felt my weapon hit flesh at least three times.”
“You did not kill. You struck the bolups, you made them confused, you made them afraid, you made them fight without their strength, but I did the killing.”
Derek’s eyes we
re now open. “She’s probably right. I made a few good hits, but mostly I just managed to block the hits coming my way. Skyra was busting skulls left and right.”
“I sure as hell didn’t kill any,” Jazzlyn added. “I was almost killed myself.”
Lincoln considered this. During the fight he had been confused and terrified. He probably hadn’t done significant damage to Veenah’s captors. He had, however, glimpsed Skyra’s stone blade making contact. In fact, he doubted he’d ever be able to erase the sight of it from his memory. “We’re happy you got your sister back,” he said to Skyra.
She turned and gazed at Veenah sleeping on the slab of stone. When she looked at the others again, she had pulled her lips back in the same way humans would when examining their teeth in a mirror. Lincoln had seen her do this only a few times—it seemed to be how she smiled.
“Tell us about your tribe,” he said. “What is your life like with your people?”
Her smile disappeared. “You ask strange questions. My people are not your people, so why do you ask about them?”
“I’m just curious.”
“What is curious?”
“It means I like to learn about things. I think you’re an interesting person, so I’d like to know what your life is like.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “I am different from the others of Una-Loto. Veenah is different too. Some of the others want to kill us. Some do not care. Veenah likes to stay in Una-Loto camp, but I go away from Una-Loto camp when I can. I go away and hunt and walk and sing and wash myself in the rivers. When I go away from Una-Loto camp I talk to Ripple. My tribemates have not seen Ripple. They would not understand, and they would kill Ripple. They would kill me also.”
“I’d like to hear you sing,” Lincoln said. “Will you sing for us?”
Obsolete Theorem Page 11