The Scattering

by Jaki McCarrick

  As members of the tribe began to return to the valley, howls of grief, loss, confusion echoed throughout the hills. Such sounds might have hailed from any modern war-scene: women and men screaming, long confusing silences, inappropriate laughter from children and the mad. As we approached, we saw that Dara’s mother lay with the dead. Dara ran and flung herself down onto the bloody heap. More than ever, I could see the need to complete my mission here; our violent story had already begun. If there had ever been an Eden-like time on this earth, I was convinced it was not now and not here. Perhaps such a time had never existed on earth, at least not when hominids had been on it. It was clear that I needed to complete my task. I resolved to turn back and climb to the top of the mountain and release there the contents of the vial into the air. The day was bright and windy. The most perfect day on which to have found my backpack (and the vial). But I did not turn back.

  The males of the tribe were gathering. They were pointing to the hills opposite. Dara was cradling her dead mother and hawk, her salty tears such that the ice around her had begun to melt. The males collected numerous long sticks procured from oak and pistachio trees, which they now flaked and made sharp. I thought they looked pathetic. The group who had come, led by the antler-headed male, was wilder, savage, far less domesticated, and so had less to lose. There was no match. Quickly, I had an idea. It was as if my modern self with all his cold clear thinking had suddenly awoken. I grabbed an oak branch, and, with a strand of grassy rope, I quickly made a crude-looking bow. The young males looked on, curiously. I took a smaller branch, sharpened its tip with flint – and this was now an arrow. I fired my crude bow-and-arrow at the snow and it went through at speed. The tribe quickly got to work. The females joined in, their deftness (as was evident from their work with the skins) bringing skill to the task, and production gathered pace. Within half an hour the invaders began to make their way once more into the valley. The tribesmen fired their crude arrows at the approaching gang. It was no use. Suddenly, the antlered male lunged at Dara. I did not think. I unzipped my bag, pulled out the gun, took aim and fired. The antlered male fell to the ground, his flesh desiccated onto the ice. One of the other invaders ran towards him. I fired again, and he too was blown aside. I fired two, three, possibly four more times. The gang rapidly dispersed, some on horseback. Others were captured by tribe-members and crushed with stones about the head, or impaled on their own spears. I ran towards Dara. She seemed dazed. The tribes-people flocked towards me, happy, elated, as if I was now their guardian or hero. I had interrupted a skirmish, something they had probably seen many times before (and which, without my interference, was likely to have resulted in far less carnage), and I should not have done. I felt sick. Surely it would have been better to have released the virus than to have shown them the gun and its power? But wasn’t I going to release it anyway? (The truth was, I was confused. I had broken the number one rule in the mercenary’s handbook and had become profoundly caught up, emotionally and otherwise, with ‘the mark’.)

  Dozens of bodies, blood, dead animals: I had brought this.

  A group of males gathered from the tribe; I heard them speak in their primitive singsong language and knew by its tempo (and the males’ physicality) that their anger was fierce, their intent equal to it. They split off into smaller groups and followed the last of the invaders. My standing amongst the tribe was different now. Old males and females bowed their heads; hunters met me with suspicion, as if I had somehow usurped their power. Dara sat sobbing with the hawk. Before dark, I walked her to her own cave. When she had fallen asleep, I took the bird and buried it up by the ditch with the harebells and wild violets and the melodious song of the nightingales for company.

  *

  One night, when Dara was sleeping, I walked up to the place of the hawk, sat and thought, my backpack on my back. I had made up my mind that I could not complete my task, after all. I would go this night and return, if I was able, to my own time. This ancient tribe of mountain people, who were mainly peaceful, who had treated me with immense curiosity and suspicion – but also kindness – did not deserve exposure to the unearthly microbes in my flask. The more I related to them, the more contact I made, especially since encountering Dara (and all that had come with that), the more I could not complete my mission. I realised now that militant as I had been, I was the wrong choice. I found that I could not be blind to them. I saw them as my own, and every instinct inside me would not let me spill that vial.

  I sat on the edge of the bank and looked down at the valley, at the dark and sorrowful ice. The night was still, except for the low and constant rumble of the waterfall, the whinnying of horses in the valleys and mountains beyond.

  I made a quick inventory in my mind of what illicit glimpses into the future I had given them: I knew I had been reckless in what I had chosen to teach the tribe. (I was well aware that each lesson, however small, could inestimably change the course of history.) Yet I could not bear to watch them suffer while in a position to help. I’d shown them how to make pottery from clay and water and how to fire it (the gourds being so utterly useless); shown them, too, how to make wine from berries and brew coffee from seeds and beans. But perhaps most reckless of all was the weaponry-making I’d taught them. I knew there was evidence of the development of bows in Spain around the same time, and I held tightly to this fact so as to allay my guilt.

  The moon was yellow and full in the direction of the POD, and it cast a warm glow over the valley. I would miss this place. I made a mental note: if I did manage to make the return journey to my own ravaged world, I would, if I was able, come back one day to these very mountains and search for the valley.

  Dara: the thought of her troubled me. Even so, I turned from the quiet place of the hawk and began my descent. I was stronger than I had been in spring, though I had gained much fat on my stomach so that I must have appeared pot-bellied. As I descended, I noticed that the ground was much grassier than it had been, for further down the mountain the ice had begun to retreat. I was certain as I went on that I could smell something fragrant and familiar: roses. Possibly some early wild-rose strain. I knew paleontologists had believed the rose older than man, older than the dinosaur (having found evidence of the flower from the tertiary period). I stopped, briefly, to look for a rose or rosebush, as if the flower stood for something, the hardy, determined spirit of the earth, perhaps, but I could not trace the source of that perfume.

  There was a natural staircase of turf-banks and rocks, though occasionally I had to hang off the edge of a sheer bluff in order to descend. (When I had first climbed these mountains they had been thick with snow.) There were numerous night birds chattering and singing. I recognised the hooting of owls and remembered the sweep of that first owl across the moon when I arrived. I sensed I was close to the POD. The air was saltier, and there was a new sound in the air, a hypnotic to and fro, a familiar crash and fall: the unmistakable sound of waves.

  I felt a new hopefulness, an eagerness in every step. I realised how much I looked forward to seeing the modern brilliance of the POD, built by the men of my time. I felt my brain come alive, sharpen; the sleepy, fur-buried bliss of the valley begin to fall away like shed skin. I was both excited and sad, because I knew that the valley’s comfort and quiet had healed me and made me happy, yet I was also happy to leave it.

  Just as I saw the journey I had yet to make, I heard a scramble in the bushes behind me. I thought I was again under attack and reached for my bag. (Such was the sense of slumber in the valley these past months, I had forgotten to keep my gun close.) The bag fell to the ground and my assailant pounced, unzipped the bag and held me down, keeping the gun close to my mouth.

  *

  From where she had found the strength to hold me down I do not know. Perhaps, it was that I was so weak, so much weaker than I’d been when I first came. The blow to my head all those months ago had been almost fatal. I had been impatient with my recovery, though realised now that it had probably been miraculous
, due most likely to the herbs she had applied – plants about which we’d only folklore in my time (variations of burdock and cloudberry). Dara sat back in the Mesopotamian dark and held the gun out, as she had seen me do. Her hands shook, and I saw that her thick, long fingers were unable to grasp at the trigger. She knew I had come from very far; surely she suspected that one day I would want to return there.

  ‘I’m going home, Dara.’ I said. ‘Home.’ I pleaded with my eyes for her to understand. She laid the gun on the ground and kicked it towards me. I could see she was furious and did not want me to leave. But I had to return; if only to inform those who waited for me that I was not the man for the job. I could not destroy the tribes, not even to save the earth I loved so much; a mercenary with more resolve than me would have to be sent. And even then, I hoped such a man or woman would set the dials a little further on, so that this tribe could live out their years, so that Dara could live out hers.

  She stood up, and in the moonlight I saw she’d been crying. And once again in this ancient place, I felt shame. The kind of dark, twisted shame that is only felt by the people of my time. She gestured to the land around us, to the mountains, still cloaked in snow, as if to say, here was home. She took both my hands and laid them on her head, as if to say, here was home; she placed my hands and hers across her fat, protruding stomach, as if to say, here was home. ‘Orvey,’ she said quietly. (I had heard that word in the valley before, and knew very well what it meant.) I could not speak. I had never felt anything quite like it, this deep cloying certainty at the pit of my stomach. She was with child, and in an instant I felt as bound to them both as a flower is bound to its stem and root.

  We walked towards the beach. Here, much of the ice had melted, and though in my time this was a large saline lake, here it was a real sea – tidal, blue, endless. The water crashed against the rocks and low cliffs. Great sheets of ice were washed up and dashed back again, and were eventually liquefied by the tide.

  I turned into a wooded area before the low dunes. I saw the chrome and graphene shell of the POD shine out between the dark barks of the trees. I came upon the open space where I had landed. The POD looked magnificent. It had been a while since I had seen the beauty that modern man could create: we made these dazzling, miraculous machines, most of which we used in the business of killing. How had we imagined works at once so beautiful and cruel?

  Dara was curious; she crept around the machine not knowing what to make of it. I pressed my hand on the locking device and the door opened. I indicated to her to remain outside as I entered alone. Inside, all was as I had left it. A pristine homage to a world that was addicted to control, yet completely out of control. I laid down my backpack on the small fibreglass counter. I took out the flask with the vial and placed it in its lead container and locked it: without a key the container could only be opened by some kind of terrific blast (nuclear would do it). I looked around, wondering if there was anything I needed. There was nothing I needed. I exited and re-sealed the door. I leaned all my weight against it and pushed. About the size of a small wardrobe, the POD toppled over the bank and onto the sand with ease. From the beach, Dara and I pushed and rolled it over three, four times, like a huge heavy beach-ball, until it reached the water. She watched her reflection bending and doubling in the chrome as the POD turned over, and we laughed.

  The contents of the vial would remain inside the POD, possibly for eternity. I watched the machine float for a while as the tide took it further and further out to sea. At some point it would go under and find its way to the bottom, where, one day, thousands of years hence, Persian divers might wonder what strange aliens had come to visit these shores.

  Dara joined me at the edge of the water to watch the bright machine, now half a mile out, sink beneath the white surf. Eventually it slipped from view. I would never go back now.

  As the two of us ascended the mountain, I could no longer hear the waves, and the smell of salt was soon replaced by the sweet, minty scent of the pistachio trees. I thought of this tough dark-haired woman climbing beside me and of the child we would soon have. I decided then that I would tell our children to put their faith in the earth, but not to command it. To read it, work with it, share it. I promised my own age I would impart these things, and hoped as I walked with Dara into the mouth of the valley, the sea far behind us, that our children, and theirs, would remember.

  Footnotes

  * = In the late twentieth century the Nicaraguan government established the country’s first drive to educate the deaf. A school was set up, and within a short time, over 400 deaf children were in attendance. However, the government could not afford to staff the school with trained sign-language teachers, so, instead of conventional signing the children were taught rudimentary Spanish, lip-reading and more everyday gestures such as finger-spelling and counting. Needless to say, the program was not a success. Though, within a few years an amazing thing happened. The children, left to communicate with each other, had begun to develop a sort of pidgin language (sign and vocal). Whatever they had learned from their teachers they would build on, developing their own combinations and permutations of the signs and words they had been taught. The teachers also observed that the younger children in particular absorbed the new pidgin so that it began to spread amongst this group (essentially, a controlled group) like wildfire in a dry forest. Researchers were invited to observe. The Nicaraguan government was alerted and in a few years the school became something of a scientific sensation. For it had accidentally become a laboratory for the study of the origin of language. An area of science, which, over the centuries, had caused endless debate, where no two scholars could agree and no theories were alike, to the extent that in 1866 the Linguistic Society of Paris thereafter banned debates on the subject, the effect of which set the solving of this mystery back hundreds of years. Research disseminated from the Nicaraguan Deaf School ‘experiment’ suggested to later scholars that language had most likely developed among Homo sapiens who were ‘contained’, settled, where trust could be developed and words held real and consistent currency. This skill – as opposed to mere vocalisation (which had originated with Homo ergaster) and genetic propensity to language, suggested by the presence in more recent hominids of the Foxp2 gene, occurred, it seemed, only when humans lived as a tribe. Scholars concurred at last that language was the last aspect of ‘modern man’ to develop because it was the most mysterious: the inside of a person exposed completely to another in sound and expression, and for H. sapiens to do this at all, there would need to have been around them a degree of peacefulness and trust. Otherwise, hominids may well have had to do with an unorganised system of ape-like squeals, or, perhaps, even a strange kind of silence. The tribe I was now observing had clearly developed real lexical structure, which I could not understand per se, but, as the days went by, I could, if I tried hard enough, follow its subject-verb-object word order. Watching the tribe ‘speak’ in this way, I wanted to scream down the funnel of time, to tell my own world that they had not taken care of what had been so beautifully, perhaps even randomly, born, and that had early H. sapiens been more nomadic (as earlier hominids had been) may never even have happened.

  * = Developed in Milan University by a brilliant team who had arrived at an intense synthetic compression of the common cold virus, a virulent mutation with the power to rapidly corrupt the human immune system. The virus had been tested in freezing conditions, at around -40ºC, proving itself ideally resilient and fit for purpose.

  Trumpet City

  ‘if your theory about the chakras is true, then every blue thing’s a voice’

  JEN HADFIELD, NIGH-NO-PLACE

  Joe tried to tap out his solo by the window in the bar at Connolly. It was difficult to concentrate as two men were arguing in the corner. He had noticed them arrive, befriend each other, then within twenty minutes and a few pints, lather each other with abuse. It had given him a dark feeling, as if the rough, pitiless voices of the drunks had stirred up something from
his past. He glanced out at the North Star Hotel. Behind it a lone yellow crane moved across the skyline and it made him feel more hopeful. As Joe’s attention drifted from the violent banter of the two men towards the rare sight of new construction happening off Sheriff Street, the tune came clearer in his head and he quietly tapped it out as far as the middle.

  When his shift was done, he took down the case from his locker and slipped out of the station by the stairs. He hadn’t told the lads about the band. He knew they knew he played, but figured that, like Ange, they considered his band days long behind him.

  On Capel Street he checked his watch: fifty minutes early. He walked passed McGeogh’s and stopped outside a white, glass-fronted building from which people were spilling out onto the pavement. Peering in, he saw well-dressed men and women holding glasses of wine. They were talking and looking at paintings, which, from the street, looked to be a series of depictions of the city. It occurred to him that he had spent his whole life in the city yet never been inside those walls. Of course he knew there were other worlds in Dublin, but felt apart from most of them, just as he did the trainloads of people that would pass him every day on the tracks at Connolly.

  He went into the café that the band would sometimes take their breaks in. Seated, he tapped out his ‘Flamenco Sketches’ solo on the Formica-covered top of the café bar, but still he couldn’t get right in his head what Miles Davies had played. There were other distractions now, the usual, more pleasant ones. For in each of the tracks on Kind of Blue Joe could hear (and see) what he loved about America. (For Joe, America was still a place where you could make the best of yourself. Not like Dublin, where, in recent years, horizons were so low for almost everyone he knew.) And in ‘Flamenco Sketches’, Joe heard and saw rain. Not the thin, malefic rain of Dublin, but rain that fell in long, full, open drops, like pieces of chandeliers. It was the kind of rain he imagined fell in New Orleans or New York or Chicago, where, in some parallel universe, he might now be living. He’d be joyously rehearsing in some tall building and he would look out and see this gloopy rain, and around the corner there would be a long, neon-lit café where people would be taking shelter. He could smell things in the tune, too: cigarettes, sweat, maybe something illicit like marijuana or morphine. There was a danger to what he could smell in the music, and he liked that. He liked that a lot.