by DG SIDNA
TWENTY-NINE
The creature licks my cheek with a long, slimy tongue. Absolutely. Fricken. Disgusting. A goat. May as well be a demon. Seriously. Just look at him. The tacked-on ears. The ridiculous jaw undecided if it wants to hang to the left or to the right. And those eyes—those creepy, unnatural eyes. How anyone can relate to creatures with horizontal pupils and the musty odor of my grandmother's couch is honestly beyond me.
Goats are the worst.
He's hovering over me like a total creepster. I know why—he wants to see if I'm dead or alive. Not out of any sense of compassion, mind you. It's just that from his perspective, if this is the type of grazing pasture prone to dead girls from New Jersey inexplicably falling from the sky, it's probably a pasture best avoided in the future. When he starts chewing on my bra strap, however, I decide it's time to put my foot down.
"Scram, you vile monster," I bark.
He nods and wanders off. Apparently I've been given a clean bill of health. As he walks, he occasionally flings his floppy ears back and forth to ward off gnats. A tiny bronze bell around his neck rattles each time he does this.
Looking over, I see that he's part of an entire flock, a motley crew of stubby-legged goats of various colors, all a little disheveled from life in the desert, all a little bored.
The discovery of a teen girl has no doubt been a particularly exciting highlight to what were ordinarily very drab wanderings for this gang of freakish-eyed hoofsters.
I sit up and dust myself off. I cough in surprise when I realize one of the goats is not a goat at all, but is a little boy. A goat herder! I don't think I've ever actually seen one before—granted it's not exactly the most common profession in the wonderful state of New Jersey. This little boy certainly looks the part, though. He's dressed in the simplest tunic and twin belt, armed only with a walking stick. He has deep, charming eyes, chestnut colored skin, and perfect dark hair.
He's staring at me with an oddly blank expression.
"Are you in charge here, little boy?" I ask him.
I get nothing in return but that stare of childhood fascination. After a moment he runs over to me, touches my gold hair, and then hops back among his crowd of goats for protection. Likely he saw me materialize out of nowhere. Whether I'm demon or angel, he's apparently not yet sorted.
"They're highlights," I tell him while pulling on a long curl. "But that's our secret, alright?"
I smile.
Nothing.
The boy whispers gently to himself, "Ishtar, summa awil-um lu immer-am."
I look around. For all my detective skills lately, I can't venture a guess where I am. One sun. A big desert, a lot of craggy rocks. Mars maybe? The heat makes me think it may be Venus.
Do people live on Venus in the future?
And if so, why did they bring so many goats?
"What planet is this?" I ask the boy.
Nothing but his wide-eyed stare.
“Summa awil-um lu,” he whispers to himself again.
"I'm sorry, kid. I seem to have lost my magic translation ring."
Someone calls from just over the next rise. "No, you haven't, deary."
"Careena?" I call back in relief. "Is that you?"
She and Rhoda both come over the rise. They're covered in even more dust than me. Rhoda looks weak and tired, but she's standing on her own. She's zipped her jacket to hide the large gash wound underneath.
"Careena," I ask. "Where are we?"
The old woman looks around. From atop her rise, she has a much better view than I do. "A desert of some sort, by the look of it."
"Is that so?" I say with a bit of teenage derision.
She studies the landscape harder. "Well, perhaps more of a river delta. I can I see the river just there."
"But you don't know which river?"
She puts her hands on her hips as if insulted. "Of course, I know which river. What sort of time traveler do you take me for? It's the lower Euphrates." She hesitates. "Or is it the Tigris?"
I'm surprised. "This is Earth?"
"Aye."
"And the year?" I ask.
"2233."
Rhoda scans the landscape now as well. "The Euphrates. So then we are in Iraq? My grandmother was Iraqi. She'd have born around this time. Tell me, old maid, are we far from the city of Basra?"
Careena is noticeably vague. "Yes and no."
"What does that mean?" I ask. "And I thought Earth was rich in the future. Why can't that little kid afford pants?"
He's whispering to himself again. I can only make out the words Inanna and Enlil. Maybe those are the names of his goats?
"Well, you see—" Careena begins.
Rhoda turns to the little boy and poses a question in Arabic. She gets the same blank stare I got. She tries again in Farsi.
Nothing.
"Are you sure this is Iraq, old maid?"
Careena throws up her hands. "Look, I never said this was bloody Iraq."
Rhoda and I are both confused. "But you said—"
"I said it was 2233."
"Yeah?"
"And it is. It's 2233 BCE," she says.
"Oy."
She clarifies. "Iraq won't be founded for a few thousand more years. This is the Kingdom of Sumer."
It takes a while for that to sink in. "Why the hell did you bring us here?"
"It wasn't by choice, freckles. I tried to get us back on the Ark Royal, but those wankers got a blast off just as we jumped. We're lucky to even be alive. Hecate got all kinds of scrambled."
Rhoda observes, "Yet, from nothing more than a desert, you know precisely where and when we are."
"Aye, we didn't end up here completely at random," she tells us. "This was my last assignment, the one I was dragging my feet on while trying to avoid Soolin's firing squad. Hecate must have defaulted to here in all the confusion. And good thing she did. The alternative was to scatter us across fucking oblivion."
"Great. So send us back," I say.
She gives me a long, serious look. "I'm afraid I can't, deary."
"Why not?"
"That blast, it fried the RGMs that power Hecate. She's deader than a hedgehog. It's the reason you can't understand that little boy. My earrings can work as a backup translator, but they're fried too."
"But wait," I argue. "I can understand you just fine. And Rhoda speaks Persian. Without Hecate, I shouldn't understand either of you."
"Yes, well about that," Careena sort of mumbles. "You see, I may have scrambled your all's brains a bit when I brought you two to the Valeyard. So, um, congratulations. You're both speakers of 31st Century English, with sophisticated Tegan accents no less."
"Who gave you permission to do that! Also, why would you do that?"
Careena is losing her patience. "So we wouldn't have another incident like the one on the Stellar Pearl. You remember how well that turned out, don't you?"
She does have a point.
"How do we fix the ring, old maid?" Rhoda asks.
"We don't. The ring is fine. But the RGMs are burned out. And there are none on Earth, never have been. So unless you can mine dark matter density clusters inside nova remnants to get us a femtogram of the rarest mineral in existence, I'd say we should start teaching ourselves Sumerian and take some goat herding lessons from that tot. The good news is, it will be hard for Soolin to find us here, since not a lot of the historical record from this century survives into the future. And the ale ain't bad either. I know some nice brewers in Uruk."
I shake my head. "That's not good enough, Careena. I'm not spending the rest of my life here with these creepy, fricken goats. You understand me? No goats."
Careena's look is solemn. "You're asking me to work a miracle, luv. I'm not giving up on you, I'm really not, but we're out of options."
I poke a finger at her chest. "No, you're getting us out of here."
"We can't, not without RGMs."
"Fine," I tell her. "If that's all you need, then I'll get them for you."
; This confuses her. "And just how on Old Earth are you going to do that?"
I smile. "Easy. I'm going to finish your assignment."
She looks at me curiously.
I explain. "I assume you were sent here because of a jumper, right? And a jumper needs a vest to jump, right? And a vest is powered by these stupid RGMs, right?"
I watch as the light bulb goes off in her head. "You may be onto something."
"Of course, I am." I say proudly. "So. I'm going to find this dirtbag jumper of yours, I'm going to kick the crap out of him, and then we're going to use his vest to get the hell out of here. Because, I'm serious, Careena. I've been exploded, I've been shot at, infected by alien vines, held hostage, and forced to eat literal shit pancakes for breakfast. But I'm drawing the line at goats. You got that? No goddamn goats."
Rhoda nods in agreement. "I also do not like ungulates."
"See," I say. "So, what was your assignment?"
"It was a tough one," the old woman admits. "In this era there's little in the historical records to go on. As I recall, Blue flagged Red over some changes in a Cuneiform tablet piece that ended up in a national museum in Baghdad. I suspected an archaeologist type, they're common in this period. Unfortunately, I was too busy drowning my sorrows to ever go have a proper look for him."
"Well, it looks like the universe is giving you a second chance."
"Great. Just what I wanted. More work."
"Careena!"
"Fine. Fine." The old woman turns to the little goat herder, who isn't much taller than his goats. "Hey, goat boy, which way to Isin?"
"Isin?" the boy repeats. It's a word he appears to know.
"Yes, Isin."
He points toward the river to the south.
"Good, lad. Here, have a ginger sweet."
She tosses him an unwrapped candy from her pocket.
He sticks it in his mouth and smiles with amazement.
I make a face. "How long has that been in your pocket?"
"Does he look like he cares? Now come, if you're not going to let me drink the rest of my life away on Sumerian ale, we should go have a crack at saving the fucking world."
THIRTY
We make our way down to the river. Along the way we pick up a shadow. Or thirty shadows, to be more accurate. The boy and his army of bearded goats follow behind. I have a feeling he's trying to be stealthy, still perhaps believing us mystical beings and therefore not wanting to draw our ire. But with all the bleating and tiny bells, it's hard to miss him only a dozen yards behind us.
As we hike along the riverbanks of the Euphrates, it dawns on me where we are, where we truly are—the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, the southern tip of the Fertile Crescent of antiquity. The lands to either side of the river are moist, fertile, covered in grass, and stretch for as far as the eye can see. They are wedged between other rivers, other tributaries, snaking through what must be a delta pouring out into the Persian Gulf. It is from these bountiful waterways that some of the earliest civilizations ever known have arisen. This isn't Mars or Venus as I had first suspected. This is the Garden of Eden.
We follow a well-trodden trail and eventually pass a small village on the river banks. This is as far as the little boy can follow, for the village, it turns out, is his own, the name of which I'll sadly never know. The homes are all mud structures fortified with stone. The hamlet appears neither rich nor poor. It simply is.
We take the briefest break here. The sun is punishing and the rest welcomed. We're offered tea and fresh bread. Before departing, Careena trades with one of the local women. She's perhaps a cousin to the boy, or an older sister. I dare not imagine that she may be his mother; she can't be much older than me or Rhoda. Careena is showing her a crayon, drawing figures on a stone, much to everyone's joy. The trade comes easily after that.
"Put these on," she tells us. She's procured three shawls, long enough to wrap one's entire body. All are red though mine is the most rich and beautiful, perhaps to hide my sandy-gold hair. More importantly, the shawls hide our outfits.
"It's strange enough for the locals to see three ladies in trousers," Careena explains. "But if our time bandit sees us, he'll be gone in a heartbeat."
I do as she suggests.
"Old maid," Rhoda asks. "You carry around crayons in your pocket?"
I chime in, "You should see all the junk she has in those pockets."
"Silence, you tarts. That was my last Razzle Dazzle Rose. I loved that color."
As we leave the village, our business here finished, the little boy runs up to me one final time. He hands me a bone token, with carvings on either side. I think he may have etched them himself. Before I can react, or even give a thanks, he runs back to the safety of his flock, watching us go with those large, dark eyes.
"Looks like someone's got a crush," Careena says.
I only smile. The gesture was sweet.
We pass a few more settlements as we follow the river. Each is tied in some way to the fertile offerings of the Euphrates, like babes attached to teats. Though rustic, they are not at all as harsh or filthy as I would have imagined the Bronze Age to be. Flower patches are lovingly placed alongside homes. Stone streets are well maintained. Children play while parents perform chores.
And though those chores are manual, they could be completed with a certain sort of leisure. For here in this world there were no deadlines from head office, no quotas to accomplish, no calls from corporate department heads, no boards of directors requesting piles of progress reports. The only nagging executives here were the simple necessities of life.
An hour or two later and I see Isin on the horizon. It is a sight no less awe-inspiring than the futuristic towers of the Valeyard or the ivory tranquility of New Harmony. I wasn't sure how a Sumerian city would be, but now that I've seen this one, I can imagine in my mind's eye nothing else.
Defensive walls rise like cliffs against the river, a river filled with boats, human activity, and the flurry of commerce. A canal, which Careena tells me is named the Isinnitum, forms a moat, before shooting off straight as an arrow into the countryside, feeding an extensive network of irrigation channels, the fruits of which have allowed for the rise of civilization.
Much of Isin itself is sandstone and hard edges; square towers rise over rectangular gates. But there is color here too, the green of hanging vines and treetops, the reds and yellows of tapestries and banners blowing triumphantly in the winds.
The jewel on the crown of this mighty metropolis is visible even from outside the city; it is the central temple, a sort of massive ziggurat, a leveled pyramid the ambition of which is so staggering that it causes the hairs on my neck to rise. Entire levels of the ziggurat are manicured with orchards, like gardens in the sky. On the highest level, placed at the very footsteps of the gods, is a small temple of marble.
"Welcome to Isin, ladies," Careena says.
We line up with what must be hundreds of others waiting to pass under the main gate. They are travelers and merchants, farmers and peasants, pilgrims and seekers; some arriving by foot and others by boat; some coming with goods on carts to sell, others carrying with them offerings for Nininsina Bau, Goddess of Healing, patron deity and divine protector of the city.
Once inside the great walls, the urban chaos is no less mesmerizing. Everywhere I look there are carts and stalls selling fruits and vegetables. Small animals and lizards are fried openly on sticks. Incense and prayer are being offered on nearly every corner. Sculptors in temple gardens are hard at work carving the busts of great protective beasts, creatures with the heads of bearded men, the wings of eagles, and the bodies of lions.
Rhoda is the first to ask. "So what exactly are we looking for, old maid?"
"Anything that might give away our jumper. If he's an academic, as I suspect, he'll be better than most at fitting in. But you'd be surprised what can give away a person from the 31st Century. Posture. Gait. A Rolling Stones tee-shirt. I generally look at people's teeth."
I s
hake my head. "Really? Dental hygiene? That's the best you got for us?"
"I admit, we haven't got much to go on," she says. "The tablet that got flagged was a treasury ledger. Very little of it survived, so there were no names, unfortunately. But Forensics believed it likely belonged to a money changer. All the cities around here mint their own coins, so exchanging them is a common business. I suggest we start our search in the main markets."
Our first day passes with little luck. Once night rolls around, we rent a room of straw mats from an old woman who is kind enough to prepare us a dinner of warm soup. We don't stand out nearly as much as I feared we would. It's a large, cosmopolitan city, attracting arrivals from all over the Middle East, so the fact that we cannot speak Sumerian, or dress a little odd, is of little suspicion to our host.
We continue our second day moving from market to market. It's amazing all the things that I see. Hideous turtles the size of bicycle wheels. Live goats and birds tied to posts. Farming implements. Hand-crafted cookware. And a disproportionate selection of religious and magical paraphernalia. The crazy preacher on the street corner is not a modern invention. Not by a long shot.
The temples here do, however, fascinate me. Besides the patron goddess Nininsina, there are several temples to lesser gods as well, each offering their own divine favors. Careena informs me that each of these temples has been placed at very specific points within the walls. Were one able to view the city from above, they'd see that the temples map out a constellation, one the Sumerians call the Steer of Heaven. And which I know in my time as Taurus the Bull.
I also learn from Careena a little about the politically divisive era that we've entered. The Sumerian city-states, long proud and autonomous, have only recently fallen under the control of the powerful Akkadian dynasties to the north. The two powers, now interwoven, will constitute the largest and most powerful empire humanity has ever known to this point.
Unfortunately, their destiny will end like all great empires. They'll reach too far across too many lands, claim too much of the shared Earth as their own; in the end their decline will be violent, unheroic, and final.
By the third day, we start losing hope. Though I don't fully understand all the mechanics, I know that we're invariably tied to the present even now, that time passing here means time is passing for us there too. Tegana will have dispatched her fleet to the Valeyard by now. Whatever Patmos has planned, he can't be far away from achieving it. And there's no way to warn anyone.