Past Imperfect (Jerry eBooks)

by Martin H Greenberg

  By the time I reached the top, I was panting and drenched with sweat. I sank to my knees on the rocky soil to rest, peeled off my shirt, and tied it around my waist. My lips were raw and swollen, my throat parched. I tried to remember when I had last taken a drink of water, then barked a short, self-pitying laugh at the answer—ten million years ago! I knew I couldn’t go much longer.

  I struggled to my feet. That keypad was my only hope.

  Though I had achieved the cliff summit, the ground continued to slope upward at a gentler angle. I wasn’t a tracker, and without the beach’s soft sand I saw no clear footprints, but I guessed that Sanders would have gone straight up that incline, following the path of least resistance.

  At the top of this gentler slope, I stopped again. My breath caught in my chest. I raised a hand to shield my t gaze from the harsh sun, which was approaching zenith and stared wide-eyed with disbelief, hope, even a certain gratitude. I’ve never been a religious man, but I gave thanks to God.

  I was not hallucinating, and it was no mirage I saw. Below me sprawled a shallow valley, and though the grass that waved in the wind was brown and withered, still it was grass. Here and there, a few gnarly trees clawed and twisted their way up from the earth.

  But there was more! From my vantage, I gazed upon a collection of thatched huts, and moving among those crude dwellings—no sight was ever more welcome!—men. I ran headlong down the rocky hill, slipping and sliding in the loose stone and dust, screaming and waving my arms for attention. Faces turned my way; hands rose to block the sunlight and shield squinting gazes. No one moved, though.

  And when the first blades of crisp grass pushed up from the soil under my shoes, I also stopped as if paralyzed in mid-step. They were rough-looking, most of them bearded with long hair, though a few were bald. Their clothes were tattered rags if they wore clothes at all. The majority of them appeared gaunt, thinly malnourished. Still, they were many, and I was one.

  As I stood there, halfway down the hill on the edge of that unlikely Eden, I realized that they were like Sanders, convicts and prisoners from their own times, sent—launched, as Sanders had put it—on a one-way journey to a prison without bars or barb-wired boundaries, without guards or wardens.

  I recoiled at the elegant cruelty of it.

  Yet, if I felt sympathy for these men, it was dampened by the next logical realization. What kind of criminals would warrant such punishment? Only the worst, of course—murderers and killers, the hardened and habitual felons, the sociopaths deemed beyond rehabilitation. Men like Sanders, who might have killed me for a wristwatch.

  I swallowed. I was not a violent man. In my entire life I had never struck another person in anger. I had never thought of myself as a coward, but neither had I ever really tested my courage. It was a wholly new and unfamiliar fear I felt now as I stood looking at those creatures. It was the fear a sheep felt surrounded by wolves.

  But I was no sheep. A sheep might have run away. I didn’t have that option. I was half mad with thirst, and they had to have water. At a more cautious pace, I entered their compound, doing my best to hide my trepidation behind a glower as wary and dangerous as theirs.

  There had been perhaps ten men moving about when I had first started down into their midst, but more had emerged from the huts, alerted by the others, twenty, then thirty or so. I saw no women among them, nor children. Only men. I distrusted the silence with which they greeted me, but neither did I speak.

  As I approached the center of their ring of huts, another figure emerged from the farthest hut. He was a wild-looking creature, whose face was half-hidden behind a gray beard, and but for a white scrap of cloth tied around his loins, he was naked. His rangy strength was quite apparent, as were the numerous moles and skin cancers that marked his shoulders.

  He regarded me with a cool, blue-eyed authority, and I knew at once that he led this band. I drew my own sunburned shoulders back and lifted my head as he came toward me. There was almost a look of amusement in those eyes, and I thought again of wolves and sheep.

  I tried to introduce myself, but when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a rasping croak. A wave of dizzying weakness overcame me suddenly. My legs turned rubbery, and I sank to my knees. The world spun.

  He leaned down, gripped my chin in a not-ungentle fashion, and raised my head. For what seemed like long moments, his gaze bored into me. “Carry him inside,” I heard him say.

  I was seized by my arms and legs and borne across the compound to his hut and there deposited on a pallet inside. I blushed and burned with shame at the indignity of it, but there was little I could do. My strength had completely left me. Someone even supported my head when a wooden ladle of cool water was held to my lips.

  I sipped, determined not to make a greedy fool of myself, and managed finally to rise up onto one elbow. “I’m not usually so helpless,” I said when I found my voice again. My throat still felt raw and painful, and I sipped some more. “The heat . . .”

  “The thin air is worse,” my host interrupted. He squatted down on his haunches on the opposite side of the hut and dismissed the men who had carried me with a gesture. “Deprived of sufficient oxygen, your body tires more quickly. It gets to all of us at first. Most of us adjust.”

  I started to tell him I had no intention of remaining long enough to adjust, but then thought better of it. I felt his gaze on me, but it held no malice. I relaxed a little and sipped more water. He waited silently until I finally finished the ladle. I couldn’t help examining it before I passed it back to him. I turned it over, ran a finger along the smoothly polished wood. “Carved from a single piece,” I commented. “Nice work.”

  “We’re lucky to have a wood-worker in our camp,” he said, as he took the ladle and dropped it into a wooden bucket. “We put a premium on men with useful skills.”

  I rubbed a hand over the back of my skull. My head ached furiously, from the sun and the heat, I assumed, and the exertion. “There was another man who should have come this way before me,” I said. I described Sanders. “He took something from me. I have to find him.”

  “We don’t tolerate thieves among us,” he answered quietly. “We can’t afford the trouble they cause. But no one else has come this way today.”

  “Then I’ll be going. Thank you for . . .” But my legs folded before I got to my feet. My host caught me, and eased me back onto the pallet.

  “Rest.” It was an order. He was a man used to giving orders. “The afternoon sun is hotter than hell itself.” He looked at me with frank appraisal. “You wouldn’t get very far.” Then he added, “I doubt your friend will either. I’ll send someone to take care of your cuts.” He paused at the entrance and gave me another of those strangely penetrating stares, as if he were evaluating or judging me, then he left.

  I lay back on the pallet. It was soft enough for a woven mat of grasses and leaves, and I soon fell asleep. I dreamed of the keypad and of Sanders beating me, of his fists crashing down at my face. I dreamed of pain and woke flailing at the air.

  “Ease! Ease!” Gentle hands lightly but firmly caught my arms. The dream-image of Sanders’ face faded away, and another came into focus. The naked black man that leaned over me slowly smiled as I stopped struggling. “I express sorrow,” he said, his accent and manner of speech even stranger than Sanders’. He held up a small clay pot containing a pungent-smelling salve. “I should have brought wakefulness before offering healing. No intention to startle or bring fear.”

  I touched a spot above my left eyebrow where Sanders’ fists had made the deepest cut and found some of the sticky salve there. “That stings!” I grumbled. I took the small pot and sniffed it, wrinkling my nose at the aroma. “What the hell is it?”

  He shrugged as he took the pot back. With the tip of his finger, he applied another dollop to the corner of my mouth, and I tried not to wince. “It is what heals,” he answered simply. “No botanist among us. One doctor long ago with . . .” he hesitated, as if searching for the right word
s, “. . . herbal skill. He went to cancers shortly when I came.”

  My face was apparently a mess. So were my knees and hands and elbows. With deft care, he treated cuts and scrapes I hadn’t even been aware of. The stinging lasted only moments before giving way to a pleasant numbness. “Do you have a name?” I asked as he worked.

  “Call me Ishmael,” he answered. “The Boss give me that name. He said it was because I came from the sea.” He inclined his head and grinned. “It is some joke,” he continued. “I don’t understand it.”

  “It’s from a book,” I told him, “called Moby-Dick. It’s a nineteenth century work. . . .” I stopped suddenly. Ishmael had placed a tiny clay lid on his pot of medicine and set it aside. He seemed suddenly interested in my shirt, which was still tied around my waist, and he ran a palm over one of the sleeves.

  I allowed him to examine the fabric. “Ishmael,” I said, “what century are you from?”

  He inclined his head again thoughtfully, and I had the abrupt impression that he was interpreting my question into another language. “Twenty-seventh century is mine,” he answered at last.

  My host interrupted us, ducking low as he came through the hut’s entrance. He was sweaty and streaked with dirt as if he’d been at some hard work. “How is our guest, Ishmael?” he asked. “Awake, I see.”

  The black man retrieved his pot and prepared to leave.

  “Samendy was very tender, very harmed.” He looked back at me and made a crisp nod. “He will heal to make many more questions.”

  When my host and I were alone again, I sat up. I rubbed my neck. In truth, though, I hurt in just about every part of my body. “I assume you’re the one he calls ‘the Boss.’ ” He rolled his eyes. “Not my idea,” he answered. “We give each other names here and keep the one that sticks. Our old identities, the times and places we each came from, they don’t mean anything here. We don’t talk about them much.” It was a subtle caution, and he changed the subject immediately. “Do you feel up to a walk, and maybe a bath? It’s only a dip in a lukewarm spring.”

  “I should be leaving,” I told him. “I’ve got to find Sanders.”

  “You’ll need something to eat,” he replied. “Food is being prepared now. Please, walk with me.”

  He possessed a strange mixture of intensity and charm that made him a hard man to resist. I began to see how he had risen to lead this unlikely tribe of exiles and criminals from many times. I really wanted to be after my keypad, but the promise of food proved as strong as any physical chain or bond, and when he held out his hand, an oddly personal gesture I thought, I nevertheless let him help me to my feet.

  He introduced me to his followers as he showed me the compound. They all called him, “Boss,” or “the Boss.” The wood-carver, whose name was Queequeg, shook my hand and grinned shyly. Starbuck was their stonecutter, and he took pride in showing me the assortment of flint-flaked knives and crude axes they used for tools. Ahab was their cook; he wasn’t one-legged, but he was quite lame from a broken leg that hadn’t healed well.

  “You must be quite enamored of Melville,” I said to my host. “It’s nice to know at least one classic has survived the ages when so little else has.”

  He didn’t answer, but led me to the outskirts of the compound to show me a large wooden trough and the narrow clay pipe system that carried water from farther up in the valley. “I designed the piping myself,” he said proudly. “I showed them how to work the clay, and they did the work. It breaks regularly and requires constant patching, but when resources are scarce, one makes do.”

  We followed the piping northward up the valley. The worst of the afternoon heat was past as the sun had slipped beyond the western slope. I untied my shirtsleeves and slipped the garment on, letting it hang open and loose. He watched me with an unfathomable look in his eye. I thought perhaps he wanted the shirt for himself, but he didn’t ask.

  The piping led us to a natural spring that bubbled up from a rocky outcropping. I appreciated how cleverly my host had designed his system, letting gravity transport the water farther down into the deepest heart of the valley. I had wondered as we walked why he hadn’t established the compound closer to the spring’s source. Now, looking back, I understood how the valley walls, themselves shadowed and shielded the compound from that huge, cruel sun, allowing direct exposure for only a few hours each day.

  A shallow pool had formed around the spring. My host untied the dirty white rag he wore around his waist, cast it down beside the pool, and submerged himself. I undressed more slowly, folding my filthy trousers with needless care, placing my shirt beside them, then removing my boots and underclothes. He scrutinized me as I stripped; I slid into the water without meeting his gaze.

  “I can’t remember when I last saw so many clothes on a single man,” he said. There was a quiet mirth in his voice.

  “Most of us arrive with a coverall and shoes, or perhaps trousers and a shirt. But those wear out quickly.”

  “I’m appalled at what’s been done to you,” I snapped, surprised by my own sudden intensity. “A marvelous tool for research has been abused and twisted to a vicious purpose.”

  His eyes narrowed sharply. I shrank back to the edge of the pool and turned away, knowing I’d made some mistake, but uncertain of what it was. Yet my flash of anger hadn’t abated. It infuriated me that my technology, my monumental work, had been perverted into this pathetic excuse for penal reform. I turned back again and forced myself to look at his skin cancers, at the undeniable signs of malnutrition that even “the Boss” couldn’t disguise.

  How could I explain the overwhelming rage I felt? Whatever the crimes of these men, surely this was no just punishment. Those blue eyes that peered at me from under wet ropes of gray hair, from a face lined and weathered and reddened, why didn’t they accuse me? Why didn’t they judge and condemn me? How could he not see my guilt?

  We laved and washed ourselves in silence, then he took his scrap of a loincloth and washed that, too. Following his lead, I washed my own shirt. When we spread our clothes on the rocks to dry, I settled back once again to relax in the water while he seated himself on a stone with only his feet in the pool.

  He studied me from his perch. “You’re a man of thought and intelligence, Samuel Enderby,” he said softly. “I don’t get much chance to talk with someone like you. Most criminals are disappointingly dull, or worse, stupid.”

  I remembered that Ishmael had spoken a broken form of my name. “How do you know who I am?” I asked. Perhaps I should have felt some alarm that he did, but I didn’t.

  A smile split his gray-bearded face, and he looked askance, as if embarrassed. “You mumble in your sleep. Ishmael and I overheard.”

  I leaned forward to brace my elbows on my knees, and he mistook me. Holding up a hand, he reassured, “No, no—no secrets I promise you, my friend. Only your name, and Sanders, and some cries as if you were being beaten in your dreams.”

  “I was,” I admitted. He’d called me friend. I didn’t quite know how to react to that. “I’ve never experienced such a beating before.”

  “And you never will again,” he responded, his gaze turning hard. “It only takes one beating like that to make you tough, to turn you hard. It leaves you with a kind of madness, a determination to kill the next son of a bitch who ever tries.”

  For the first time I saw in those eyes and on his face, in the way he clenched his fists on his thighs, the look of the killer, and for the first time, I feared him. Yet, at the same time, I felt an iron in my belly that hadn’t been there before, an almost reflexive instinct that told me he was right. He might have attacked me right then, and he might have beaten me savagely—but he wouldn’t have found it so easy as Sanders had.

  He relaxed and leaned back, changing the subject as he rolled his gaze up toward the rose-tinted sky. “I remember people.” He said it so quietly that I wondered if it was to me he spoke or to himself. “Crowds of people. Masses of humanity.” He closed his eyes.

>   I spoke with the same softness, watching him, because he fascinated me. “Do you ever wonder where they all went? What became of mankind?”

  He shrugged and stirred the water with a toe. Then he looked up again and waved a hand in a broad gesture. “Out there, perhaps. When I have any hopeful moments at all, I hope out there. I dream of them sometimes, scattered among the stars, thriving.”

  He licked his lips and drew a breath that betrayed his weariness. I looked at his cancers again and thought he didn’t have long to live. “Or maybe we’re all that’s left,” he continued. “There’s evidence that a massive solar flare brushed the Earth a million years or more ago. Some of the upper strata are fused. The seas are empty, as if all life had been boiled out of them. And there’s the moon.” He grinned suddenly. “Or rather, there isn’t the moon anymore. What a cosmic joke it would be if, by being projected so far into the future, we are all that survives. The gods would be laughing.”

  “You were a man of science,” I observed, wishing I had some name to call him by, because I could not quite manage boss, “and a philosopher, as well.”

  He rose from the pool, startling in his naked, emaciated glory. “I was someone else,” he answered. “I can’t even remember who.” He turned and snatched up his loincloth. “I don’t want to remember.”

  I got out of the pool, too, and though my clothes were still damp, I pulled them on to keep from looking at him. “Why are there no women in your camp?” I asked as I tied my shoelaces.

  The question astounded him. He threw back his head, braced hands on his hips and laughed heartily until my cheeks burned with embarrassment. “You don’t get ice water in hell, Samuel!” He laughed again and started down the hill, tying his wrap in place as he went.

  Some inner voice warned me to run away, to make an immediate escape for my own good while his back was turned, yet I hurried after him. We strode into the compound side by side without speaking another word, and I could tell in the faces that turned toward us, the lean and wasted faces, that I’d been accepted into their ranks. I rebelled at the idea, even as I wondered what name I might be given, or if I would be given another name at all.