by Boyett, J.
Veela, too, had finally recognized the look of Dak’s face for what it was. Maybe it was something about having spent time with the two guys that allowed her to finally see it. Maybe it had been harder to see during her long weeks alone with Dak, when he was both her savior and the only other living human she knew of. Or maybe he was changing, so that that unconcerned, unreachable aspect was becoming more prominent, less hidden.
Besides, in addition to Veela’s growing worry that he might be sociopathic, she was feeling less and less assured that his intellectual prowess was going to be enough to keep them alive. Dak was clearly a hell of a physicist, but Veela wasn’t so sure about his practical abilities. A month ago she’d still been in awe of him, what with his last-minute rescue of herself and his inspired, mad time-travel gambit. But, though he’d apparently gotten the hang of the ship and its weapons, she’d gradually come to realize with dread that he was nearly as klutzy as she was, and in some ways perhaps even worse with machines. As long as he paid attention, everything went fine; but sometimes he seemed not to deign to pay attention. It was as if he simply couldn’t be bothered to deal with problems that were excessively simple. The upshot was that he was the kind of guy who could figure out how to travel forty-five thousand years back in time, but might have no idea that his flashlight’s battery was running low.
“At least take their gags off,” Veela was saying, again.
“No,” said Dak. His voice had the mildness of someone who does not need to argue or persuade, who knows as a matter of course that his plans will be followed, his opinion deferred to (eventually, at least). “And have them start barking at me again?”
“I’m sure the Jaw won’t, at least.”
“Veela, dear, how would you know? You were unconscious when I intervened—thereby, by the way, saving your life. Both of them barked up a storm. Had to be stunned. Then had to be restrained.”
“You waited long enough to save my life. Or even answer my fucking hail.”
“I told you, I needed absolute concentration while trying to decipher the code locking up those drones and weapons. That took priority. I thought you’d be happier to hear that I gained access to them.”
Instead of looking happy, Veela narrowed her eyes. “It seems convenient that you managed to also fix the landing apparatus just at that moment.” Maybe he wasn’t really so klutzy after all, she speculated.
“It was lucky, certainly. That primitive was going to kill you. I trust the meds took care of the swelling? And the painkiller’s working?”
“No offense, but I can’t help wonder if there was ever a problem with the apparatus at all. Maybe you just knew that if you picked me up I’d insist on bringing the guys with me, and you didn’t want the distraction. Or maybe you didn’t want me to be distracted, from expanding my grasp of their language.”
“In fact that suggestion is quite offensive, since it’s tantamount to calling me a liar, but no matter. As always, I am an open book. You’re welcome to check the data records, if you’d like to confirm the malfunction and my repairs.”
Veela tried not to bare her teeth. “Unfortunately, I don’t currently have the expertise necessary to check those records. But once everything settles down I intend to start teaching myself.”
“A fine idea. Let me remind you, it was not I who stopped you from commencing such study during our long voyage to and from the Cantor-Gould Collider. You were the one who chose to spend that time moping.”
Veela couldn’t protest. He was right, the cold-blooded prick.
The other subject of their conversation was the purple-capped mushroom. There was a chemical in that shroom of theirs that, after repeated doses, permanently muffled brainsong. Without impairing cognitive function, it seemed to render brains mute.
That was how humans had been able to survive in the caves with zombies. Once the humans’ brainsong went quiet, the zombies were as blind as they were; blinder, since the humans had the benefit of their intelligence.
“That’s why that zombie deer went for me, and not the guys,” said Veela. “In the dark it couldn’t see any of us well. But me, it could still hear.”
“I suppose it is possible that, primitive though they are, this attribute might potentially render our guests useful as scouts, once we go into the caves,” mused Dak. “Of course, we no longer have much need of scouts, now that I’ve got the extra drones working.”
Veela returned to her earlier point. “Anyway. I’m not sure you had to restrain them.”
“Oh, no? What do you think they would do to me if they were loose? Look at that one, look at his eyes.”
Veela looked at Chert. It was hard not to admit Dak had a point.
But all she said was, “They were scared, Dak. Can’t you put yourself in their shoes?”
“I’m afraid I’d have to revert quite a way to put myself in their shoes. Which, by the way, they have yet to invent.”
Veela just looked at him. Motherfucker. “Just let me talk to them.”
“Oh, you’re welcome to talk to them! Only, leave the gags on, please. I’m not in the mood to put up with any more of that racket.”
All right. Part of Veela wanted to rebel, to point out that Dak had no actual rank, and that while neither of them could be called experts on the natives, she was still a hell of a lot closer than he was. But she didn’t say anything. Dak was the one who really knew how to pilot the ship, though she could fake her way through it. He was the only one adept enough with the laser cannon to know how to blast zombies without starting a forest fire (not that she would much regret a forest fire if it managed to wipe out the zombies, but still). And Veela wondered more and more if he would feel the slightest hesitation, if it suddenly struck his fancy to abandon her and start a new life in Canada or wherever.
She tried to give Chert a reassuring smile, to let him know there were no hard feelings. That wasn’t necessarily true, but she thought things might go more smoothly if they put behind them the fact that he’d tried to kill her by bashing her in the back of the head with a rock. She wanted to keep the Jaw on her side, and killing his father didn’t strike her as the best way to accomplish that. Chert looked back at her like he didn’t give a shit whether she had hard feelings. He’d regained control of himself and gave no more signs of fear; captive that he was, he watched her and Dak with an almost royal disdain.
She rolled her chair over closer to them. At first she wondered what new thing was suddenly freaking them out; then she realized it was the rolling chair. They’d never seen anything like it. She thought about trying to explain its function, and how it worked. But if she let herself get hung up on swivel chairs, how would she ever get around to time travel, the zombification of the human race and all other vertebrate life, and the destruction of the universe?
She gazed into the Jaw’s eyes, staring out at her from inside his gagged and immobilized head. In spite of his fear, she saw trust there. He knew it wasn’t she who’d stunned him, who’d tied him up, it wasn’t she who chose to leave him that way. That trust awoke in her a sense of obligation.
She opened her mouth to speak, then said nothing. It wasn’t a mere problem of translation. The Jaw and Chert had some notion of time; as, say, the medium actions moved through. But how to explain time travel to someone who had no conception, not only of science, but of history?
She gave it a first shot: “Dak, and I. We come from after.”
The Jaw frowned in confusion. After what?, she could practically hear him asking. The difference between his expression and Chert’s was that Chert looked like he hadn’t expected her to make sense, and so wasn’t disappointed.
“After everything,” she said.
They kept looking at her, with no sign of comprehension. They didn’t look like they even comprehended that that was the end of her sentence.
Veela was about to try again when Dak preempted her: “I think I have a solution to the communication problem.”
His smug tone made her skin crawl. S
he turned to face him. “I would be very interested to hear what that is.”
Chert was impressed by her expression. He had no idea what was going on, but she hadn’t looked half as fierce when she’d fought any of those zombies.
Dak was showing them something that looked to Chert and the Jaw like another strange nut, like the one he’d lived in when he was small. Veela recognized it as a modified communicator. “It’s a translator,” said Dak, pleased with himself. “I’ve been having the computer record and collate your conversations with the primitives, and now we have the ability to talk directly to them, without bothering with the clumsy, human-powered translation process.”
Veela looked at the communicator dubiously. “You just whipped that up?” she said. “Cyber-centric linguistic analysis has always been one of the more challenging programming fields. I didn’t know you had a strong background in artificial intelligence.”
“Well, anyone can read a few books on the subject, Veela.”
“Kind of my point.”
Dak was annoyed. “Excuse me, but I think I can handle making a communicator that understands the most primitive known human language. Did I not save us from a zombie apocalypse and bring us back through time forty-five thousand years? Do you think making a communicator is likely to be more complicated than that?”
Actually, Veela was certain it was. Physics, as far as she could tell, was vastly simpler than linguistics, regardless of which field she personally understood better. Physics’ relative simplicity was what allowed one to make predictions about the behavior of physical objects—try making such precise and detailed predictions of linguistic events, and see how far you got. A star was a much simpler phenomenon than a haiku, and translating a haiku from Japanese into French was a more complex operation than traveling back in time. It was just that traveling back in time required vast shitloads more money and energy.
She didn’t mention any of this to Dak, though. For one thing, he wouldn’t have wanted to hear it. For another, maybe he really was the genius he thought he was, and the communicator would work fine. To Dak and Chert, she said, “This nut, translate Dak’s words, it will.”
Dak flicked a toggle on the communicator, took a white fold-out tray from a compartment hidden in the wall, set the tray up beside the Jaw, and put the communicator on top of it. Chert and the Jaw were much more astounded and intrigued by the fold-out tray than they were by the communicator. “There!” said Dak, clapping his hands together in pleasure and smiling at the captives. “Now you’ll understand me.”
In the People’s tongue, the communicator said, “Now under me you shall stand.”
Chert and the Jaw glared fiercely at Dak. They already knew they were his prisoners and subject to his will, but did he have to gloat? Veela frowned at the communicator. There had been something wrong with its translation, but she didn’t speak the People’s tongue well enough yet to be sure what it was.
“My name is Dak,” Dak explained.
The communicator said, “Dak is mine to be naming.”
Now the captive men’s faces went from anger back to confusion. Veela knelt between them and began murmuring translations of Dak’s speech as best she could; Dak seemed oblivious to her aid.
He continued talking, and she tried to keep up: “In the future, about forty-five thousand years from now—or ‘winters,’ I think you people call them—anyway, in the future, there was a zombie plague that swept across the Earth and all its possessions, and which wiped out all human life except for myself. And Veela, of course, whom I rescued.
“How did the plague come about, you ask? It sprang originally from a noble intention—that eternal human desire to extend one’s span and influence. In fact, when you think of it objectively, the so-called zombie plague represents a huge advance for the biological sciences, and for all mankind. For does it not seem to have accomplished the primary goal of the project directors: personal, individual immortality? There are some deeply unfortunate side-effects, obviously. But I’m confident that my colleagues would have overcome those hurdles, if only they’d had the chance to proceed with their research in a professional, orthodox fashion.”
Veela had quickly given up trying to translate exactly what Dak said and was simply murmuring her own account to the men. That was confusing enough. She intended her words for both paleolithics, but unconsciously favored the Jaw, so Chert heard less of the explanation. The nonsense issuing from the communicator was distracting; its rendering of “a professional, orthodox fashion” was particularly Dada-esque. Things would have been easier if the communicator had been switched off, but Veela knew Dak would take offense at the suggestion.
He kept talking: “My colleagues in the biological sciences had managed to produce a serum that did indeed cause immortality in mice, rats, and then primates. Of course, it was a zombie immortality, such as you’ve seen. The subjects, while potentially never susceptible to death, wander through a dim world, seeing everything through a black haze of hunger, devoid of thought, devoid of emotion, devoid of personality. Though the body lives on, the mind is in such shambles it scarcely deserves the designation ‘mind’ at all, and in fact the mind possessed by the subject prior to his or her ingestion of the serum genuinely has ceased to exist. All that having been said, you have to admit that it was a very impressive start!
“Now, these unfortunate side-effects were, of course, kept on a need-to-know basis. For one thing, if the state of the newly-immortalized subjects had gotten out, it might have created a certain nervousness among less daring segments of the population. Also, there were funding issues to be considered. And then, of course, the project as a whole had to be kept secret, because, even once the immortality serum had been perfected, obviously they would not have been able to administer it to everyone. Even with off-world immigration, the Earth was already over-crowded—only a carefully selected elite would have been eligible for immortality.
“At the same time, rumors made their rounds. In the end, the secrecy served only to garble what information was leaking out. People knew there was an immortality serum that seemed to work—they didn’t realize it changed you into a zombie. One enterprising lab employee, a rather low-level one, managed to nab a vial of the serum. By the time lab security realized what had happened, the young man was already at the New York Mega-Terminal, a major transportation hub. He drank the serum and flew into something of a rage, biting people left and right. But, with the early strain of the plague, it took more than a day after being bitten for the victims to change into zombies themselves. Meaning at least a dozen of them were able to get on airplanes and go to their far-flung destinations. And that, as the expression puts it, was all she wrote.”
As Veela murmured her own account in the People’s tongue, she remembered all the times she’d been annoyed that Dak was safely back on the ship, and reflected that now she was glad he’d been separated from the guys. He showed an almost psychotic lack of awareness that the two paleolithic-era men might need more context than this. He would have made a shitty ambassador, just as he made a shitty linguist. She had managed to catch his big miraculous revolutionary translation program’s version of “vial of serum”: it came out as “cupped-hands of spirit.” Jesus Christ. Though that was better than its rendering of “all she wrote” into a pre-literate language.
The other thing that bugged her was that Dak spoke as if he’d been on the inside of all these developments. But he’d had nothing to do with it—he was a physicist, a scholar of an unrelated discipline—he’d been at a totally different university than the one at which the zombie plague had been concocted. What he was telling the guys was a mixture of public knowledge, public rumor, and stuff they’d pieced together during their long weeks in space. Yet listening to him now, Veela grew more and more certain that he was remembering himself as having been, if not actually on the team that had been researching immortality, then one of its close advisers.
Dak had paused, and seemed to be thinking of what to say. Wh
ile he was quiet, Veela murmured to the Jaw, in the People’s tongue, “Not all he says, exact truth. Later, explain I will.”
Veela had no fear that Dak would understand anything she said in the People’s tongue. However, it had not occurred to her that, once he himself had stopped talking, his translator would focus on her, the quieter, secondary speaker, and try to render speech back the other way. But as soon as she’d finished speaking, it said, “He lies. I’ll explain later.”
Dak froze. So did Veela. His eyes drifted over to catch hold of hers. After a long moment, he smiled strangely.
“I lie, do I?” he said.
“I told you,” said Veela, angry because she was frightened. “Your translator doesn’t work.”
She was about to go into a list of its errors and their philosophical and sociolinguistic roots, but Dak waved his hand in dismissal. “Never mind, never mind,” he said, “it means less than nothing.”
She could feel the anger trying to scratch its way out from behind her face. Somehow she hadn’t been angry like this even when Chert had left her to fend off that zombie on her own, in the hopes she would die—at least she could understand that from Chert’s point of view, she was an alien invader. Dak was supposed to have been her partner, though. “Since the communicator’s garbling everything,” she said, “maybe we should turn it off and concentrate on me translating for them....”
“Yes, but I don’t know what you’re saying, do I?” he snapped.
He paused a moment, pacing, collecting himself. Then he stopped before the two captives, hands behind his back.
He said, “Of course, our escape into the past incurred its own unintended side-effects.”
He began pacing again.
He paused, and his eyes darted back and forth between Chert and the Jaw. “Tell me,” he said. “Have either of you ever wondered why you’ve never met a time traveler from the future, until us?”
For one thing they had their gags on, so obviously they couldn’t answer. For another, the idea that these two paleolithics had spent a lot of time idly wondering why they’d never been visited by time travelers from some distant post-industrial future was clearly absurd. Dak seemed to take none of this into account. He kept looking at them like his question hadn’t been rhetorical, apparently waiting for a reply, and then, when they said nothing, he shrugged and continued his pacing.