"Uh oh," Trina said. She quickly hit a series of switches, pulled a couple of levers and pushed some buttons. It looked frighteningly random to me. She waited, thought, then did it again.
"Oh, my," she said, and yanked a long lever.
A booth-sized enclosure appeared, made of shimmering curtains of purple light. I was impressed. Apparently the Boffs were too, if the way they showed that was by charging.
"Wow, it worked," Trina said with more amazement that I wanted to hear. “In," she said simply.
In we went. There was an odd-looking octagonal control panel here, and Trina stared at it for an uncomfortably long while. Her finger hovered over an enticing, round, blinking green button, then moved away.
"No," she said.
"No?"
"That obvious button, blinking 'press-me,' is a trap. A trick. It would either kill us, scramble our genes and turn us into insects or eggplants, or send us to the dawn of time. Oh Oh humor."
"Very funny." Now, in their ancient crosshairs, I developed a new attitude about those cosmic pranksters. I watched the Boffs approaching. Kurl, the Great Green Hope, was in the lead. He plainly was thrilled at the prospect of adding us to his collection.
"Ah-" I began.
"Hush," Trina muttered. She pulled a tattered slip of paper from somewhere inside her suit, and stared at it. She seemed puzzled for a moment before she shrugged and began to slowly input a set of coordinates on the awkwardly-shaped panel. It looked like it hadn't been designed for human hands. Of course, it hadn't.
"Twenty-eight seconds," I said. Ned had calculated distance and closure rate, and was now giving me a digital countdown. How depressing.
Still Trina twisted and tugged and pushed and pulled at big and small switches and levers. I tried to ignore the slapping crawl of thousands - no, millions - of tiny Boff feet. The thought of all those little feet dancing on my grave made me tired.
"Everything OK?" I asked.
"Fine, fine," she replied, uncertainly.
The Boffs began to squeal. It sounded like a thousand hurricanes pouring across a million bottles.
"I think we should leave," Ned advised.
Trina pressed a tiny, almost-hidden, dull-yellow button, and an opaque, pale-green disk appeared beneath us. She grabbed my hand and centered us on it.
"Ready?" she asked brightly.
"Very," I admitted.
"Off we go. Next stop Earth, 10,641 bc," she said. The nearest Boffs were six tentacle lengths away.
Five.
Trina pulled a small, recessed, almost hidden purple knob. A deep hum began.
Four.
"It's gotta be better than here."
Three.
The curtains of purple light shimmered.
Two and a half.
Two.
Two.
Two.
Two and a half.
CHAPTER 17. CATFOOD
It almost wasn't any better. In fact, it was almost worse. To say nothing of that initial moment of frozen time, when everything ground to a slow halt, then began to slip backwards, plus the thoroughly unsettling sensation of being instantaneously squirted across half the galaxy and a handful of millennia, a transition which took an uncomfortably long time despite the insistence of the theorists that it required no time at all, at least not in a measurable sense, since there were no appropriate units of measure, we materialized five feet above a steep sandy slope and after an unexpectedly hard landing began rolling down the grade like tires.
But that wasn't the bad part. The bad part stemmed from the fact that cats have an irresistible urge to chase things that move. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised to learn that they inherited that interesting trait from sabertooth tigers, or some common ancestor. The reason I wouldn't be surprised, naturally, is that sabertooth tigers share that same urge.
This fascinating tidbit of natural history was something I gleaned only after we tumbled and spun and rolled and tossed for a while down our prehistoric hill. Despite our tumbleweed trajectories, the sky was blue, the grass was green, the air stunningly fresh, and the bilious land of Boff was nowhere to be seen. So despite the likelihood that we would soon be splatted against a rock I was rather content.
Contentment is something many people seek. I no longer do. In my life, at least, contentment should almost invariably serve as a warning sign. For example, it was at that contented moment that I suddenly spied a great tawny beast closing in on us with huge loping strides. The polished light of a preternatural sun glinted off long curved white fangs. Sabers, I thought idly as I rotated. They really do look like sabers. And each time I rolled around, those twin razor glints were much closer. But I was trapped in a helpless tumble, an appetizer on the roll.
We thumped against an embankment and crashed to a halt in a heap, the big cat closing. I scrambled madly for a rock. After all, this was the Stone Age. I quickly learned that that term is a misnomer, for there was not a single rock handy. I decided to settle for a stick, and found just as quickly why this was never called the Stick Age.
"Aaaaaaah!" shrieked Ned.
"Nice kitty," I screamed inanely.
The cat slowed, perplexed. Perhaps it was confused about just why it was chasing a tangled mass of human and vegetable.
A moment later it decided that it really didn't matter, and gathered its giant haunches beneath it, teeth bared, killing in its pale eyes.
I was still fumbling for a weapon. A handful of sod and dirt was the best I could hope for. I supposed that the term 'the Dirt Age' lacked the cachet of 'the Stone Age,' but it was certainly more accurate.
Too late, I saw. Time slowed but stubbornly refused to stop as the cat launched, a tawny missile of sinew and muscle and bone and, most of all, those long eponymous fangs. A fate fit for a caveman!
A long dark furrow of earth erupted just in front of the cat, accompanied by the piercing wail of an out-of-tune maser. The cat reversed course without seeming to slow and rocketed back the way it had come, a furry comet streaking across the hillside.
I hadn't fired, of course. And this went well beyond the power of positive thinking. Which meant—
Trina. She was lying cool and calm on the ground in a prone shooter's position, the black plastic wedge of a maser cradled by the red-lacquered nails of her fine-boned hands. An asparagus no longer.
"Perfect," she said. "No disruption of the time stream." She rose, flipped the tuning knob, and handed me the maser. It was mine.
"Where did you get this?" I said.
"That?" She said quizzically, and indicated the maser.
I shook it. "Of course this."
She shrugged innocently and girlishly, which was doubly misleading. "I found it near the Hall of Marvels. In a small chamber cluttered with offworlder weapons. Probably from other unwelcome visitors to Boff."
I gritted my teeth. It was surprising they weren't worn down to flat nubs by now. "You didn't think to mention it when all those Boffs were charging us?"
"Didn't I?"
I glared at her.
"Well, there was no time. Besides, getting into a battle wouldn't have helped us. We had to leave. Which we did. And here we are."
That was true - we had arrived on Earth. Ancient Earth. And there was something even better.
"We're humans again," I said. And it was gloriously true. We were both bipeds, in full primate glory. The only remains of Boff-land were the thick clods of rubbery orange-brown mud that clung tenaciously to our boots, were clotted in our hair, and which be-grunged our clothes. I ignored these and gazed at the attributes which clearly identified Trina as a mammal.
"Care to celebrate the return of the body corporeal?" I asked, stepping slyly towards the usually willing wench.
She stepped back. "After we save the planet."
That was an excuse you didn't get often.
I reached down to my boots and picked off an especially large chunk of brown-orange mud. We were covered with the stuff - apparently the aspara-suits h
ad leaked a bit, perhaps while spending all night in Orna's cesspool.
I glanced at the sky. "Well. Just where in Zot are we?" I wondered.
Ned appeared - a grimy old-time sailor holding a rusty sextant - and made a show of staring up at the sky through the sextant, which he frequently turned back and forth. Finally he dropped it and began pointing at the sky with his arms, as if forming sightlines and measuring angles.
I groaned.
"We are," he announced, "in what will be Southern Mexico. Central America." He recited the coordinates.
I repeated them for Trina's sake. "Is that where we want to be?" I asked.
"Not quite," they chorused together.
"Just how far off," I wondered aloud, "are we?"
"Two hundred and nine kilometers," Ned answered.
"About two hundred kilometers, I'd guess," Trina said.
I plopped to the earth. It was rich and loamy, with a ripe lush odor. Someone more poetic might have imagined it to be the rich scent of a fertile world soon to bloom with humanity, a race on the cusp of coming of age. To me, it smelled like a field. A field far from where I wanted to be.
"Two hundred kilometers," I groused. "How could that happen? How? We have three days. That's almost seventy kilometers a day. We'll never make it. At least on Boff, we could take a bus. There won't even be any buses here for ten thousand years. We're going to have to run. For three days. And even then-"
"Sorry, Diz," Trina shrugged. "I couldn't read one of the numbers on the paper, so I had to do the best I could. You know, improvise. We were short on time."
"We're shorter on time now," I carped, before her words sank in and I ground into a mental reverse gear. "Wait a sec. You said you improvised? With the coordinates?"
"Diz, I had to! The data sheet was damaged when you crashed our lifeboat!"
That little blame-transference wasn't going to take. "Wait a minute. Back up here just a bit. Your tour guide needs to understand something. The Time Oscillator sends us through time and space, right? Obviously so, since we're here."
She shoved a hand through her hair. It was the long black arrangement she usually wore. Her default hair. "Yes. Of course. Same thing." Idiot, her tone said.
"But you couldn't read one of the coordinates."
"No."
"So you improvised."
"Yes." A testy nod. Aha. I was getting somewhere.
"And if you were wrong? Might we have missed the planet? Materialized in space, sucking vacuum? Plopped into the sun? Missed the whole system?"
"Well, I wasn't wrong by much," she said defensively, looking beyond me. "So I suggest you get over it, and move on to the next problem."
"Oh. You mean how we're going to travel 200 kilometers in 3 days?"
She was still gazing over my shoulder. Now she began shaking her head slowly, as if it might come off. Which, I was about to realize, was exactly the case.
"No. I mean how we're going to keep the local savages from having us for dinner." Her eyes were focused behind me.
I turned slowly. Forty stone-age warriors, clad in animal skins and clutching obsidian-tipped wooden spears.
I felt for my maser.
"Don't," Trina hissed. "We can't kill any humans! The time stream! The continuum!"
The warriors moved closer, encircling us.
From the way they pointed and thrust their spears, they obviously didn't have any such reservations.
If you've never had the pleasure of being stuffed inside a small wooden cage and hauled for long hours over bumpy trails, but you've been curious about it, let me save you some trouble right now. Don't bother. It's painfully uncomfortable. Tight. Cramped. Awkward. Maddening, even.
Our hosts, however, were slightly more interesting. In both physical form and mental capabilities they were fully evolved humans. They just happened to have rather poor hygiene and to be dressed in animal skins. One in particular, a rather sallow-looking chap, was the spitting image of a ship captain I'd once robbed. The resemblance was so great that he actually made me nervous - I was afraid he'd recognize me.
But of course, I had the perfect defense: no ship existed yet, and the robbery was over a hundred long centuries in the future. I kept telling myself that, but the ship captain kept looking at me strangely and fingering the bone knife at his waist. Did I remind him of someone too? It seemed a bit too coincidental. But that's one for the temporal theorists. Cyclical tempo-convergences, or something.
I surveyed the rest of our crowd. I had always thought of prehistorics as relatively short and squat, but both men and women were tall and lean, toned and hard, no doubt from the same authentic primitive privations which later generations would attempt to emulate for the sake of health. I had also always thought of prehistorics as relatively clean. Wrong again. All were caked with mud and dirt, and draped with poorly-cured skins and hides. En masse, the group smelled like the concentrated essence of every swarthy armpit on the entire muggy planet of New Egypt. It was like a test run for a new olfactory weapon.
The only lucky thing was that prehistory was windy. The air ripped and tore and yanked at us, as we were hauled up one jagged ridge and down another. The land was steep and cruel, endless switchbacks and interminable climbs. I almost preferred being carried, except for the tiny cage. But perhaps worst of all, we weren't going towards where we needed to go: the Etzan's landing site. We weren't going away, either, but perpendicular to the direction we needed. Not that it really mattered, with 200 kilometers to go.
Then, from far ahead, came a shout, and another group of natives appeared at the far side of a clearing. A ripple of excitement ran through our crowd, as the two groups faced off across the clearing. A deep, swollen silence filled the air. The wind through the palm tops seemed to boom. The pause was so pregnant I expected its water to break.
"Some native ritual, perhaps," I remarked in a scholarly tone.
"Shut up, Court," Trina said.
I asked Ned if he could hear anything, ignoring my resentment at the fact that his hearing was superior to mine, though he used my ears.
"You don't want to know," he murmured.
A loud shriek split the air, and suddenly the two groups burst at each other. There were a great many of the newcomers. Our band - at least that's how I now thought of them, in a demonstration of the human tendency towards to see the world in terms of us and them - was clearly outnumbered.
I waited expectantly. Warfare? All-out pitched battle? Parley? Party? Orgy? Supper time? I had no idea, and watched the two groups approach each other. They made a variety of mock-combat gestures as they circled warily, stamping legs and beating chests in eerie silence, slowly closing. When they finally met, they went through greeting rituals that reminded me of two dogs meeting on the street. They didn't actually sniff each other's butts, but it was a near thing. Then they froze. The moment stretched; the tension was thick. Then at some unseen signal they all abruptly relaxed. A great hub-bub ensued, with much shouting and yelling, some screaming, and even laughing. It went on for some time - an impromptu party in the jungle. A family reunion of sorts. Coconuts were cracked; drinking skins produced. There was a great deal of vigorous trading; skins and nuts and fruits and seashells were exchanged. Through it all we were roundly ignored, our cage parked under a palm. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, "our" tribe turned and walked off. They didn't look back.
"Ned?" I said urgently. "What's going on?" I figured that he might have been able to track the conversations, or at least enough of them to follow things.
He had. He appeared before me in full native regalia. I noticed that he had taken a few liberties to bring his own sense of artistic flair to his ensemble. Most of the natives were dressed in something, though many were naked. Ned wore only a necklace of bones around his neck, a grass hat, a bone through his nose, decorative armbands, and some body paint. This, no doubt, was so that he could show off his finest attribute - a manhood the size of a python. I fully expected him to trip over it.
"Do you want the good news or the bad news?"
I imagined - as vividly as possible, since Ned would be viewing it - a pterodactyl swooping from the sky and seizing Ned's fleshy rope in its bony talons, then carrying off his whole wriggling native package. I didn't mind mixing eras; after all, it was my imagination. It was my little way of saying I didn't want to play these games. In case that wasn't clear, I said, "Never mind. I'll figure it out for myself."
But Ned wouldn't be dissuaded. "The good news is we're going to be heading in the right direction, over that ridge." He pointed grotesquely, and not with his arms.
"That is good news," I said, surprised.
"Well, don't celebrate just yet,” he said with disgust. "The bad news is we've been sold."
"Sold?" I said out loud.
"We're slaves?" Trina said incredulously.
Ned exhaled humorlessly. "No, not exactly."
"We're not slaves," I said reassuringly to Trina.
"Then what are we," she barked. Apparently she was less calmed by my reassurance than I had hoped.
Ned heard her question, and answered it. I made him repeat himself. Twice.
"So, congratulations," Ned finished. "You've really outdone yourself this time. Who would have guessed you could pull such a thing off?"
Trina saw the expression on my face, and began cursing at me. This was her little way of encouraging me to tell her.
I took a deep breath, and then repeated Ned's description word for word. "We're, ah, sacrifices.”
“I know we’re making sacrifices, Court, but what I want to know is-”
I held up a hand and she stopped. “No, no. We are sacrifices. You know, still-beating-heart-ripped-out-and-shown-to-you type stuff."
CHAPTER 18. HEARTTHROB
Our new hosts called themselves the Ahulans. And they weren't bad at all, except for that part about being neolithic savages with a predilection for ripping the beating hearts out of perfect strangers. Of course, that may be more civilized than yanking the hearts out of your friends, relatives, or acquaintances. But it isn't so palatable when you're the stranger.
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