Cretaceous Dawn

by Lisa M. Graziano

  “Very good. Yorko has already told us her opinion. Let me tell you mine.” Dr. Shanker stopped to think, scratching at his beard. “A thousand miles is a long way to travel with any kind of accuracy. But we’ve made the journey before; sixty years ago, maybe? A hundred years? And at that time, apparently, we did have a compass. We came here. We came to these caves and we stopped, and one of us reverted. I put my trust in my previous self: I vote we stay here. We’ll either revert within the next few days, or we’ll live here forever.”

  Julian was already losing interest in the discussion. He was hungry, tired, and his head ached. It was getting late; there would be time tomorrow to sort out details. Looking around at the other two in the fading light of the evening, he noticed suddenly how scruffy they were. Dr. Shanker was hideous with his swollen face and thick, matted beard. The dinosaur-skin sack was still tightly wrapped about his rib cage. His clothes were barely recognizable as such, and would not last much longer.

  Yariko was little better. Her face was dirty and streaked with sweat. Her arms were bruised, scraped, and not very clean. Her jeans were covered with dried mud and her T-shirt was no more than a bleached, gray rag. It did not conceal much, either.

  “Yes?” Yariko said, smiling faintly and pretending to adjust her clothes. “You have a problem with my attire?”

  “No,” Julian mumbled, embarrassed. “It’s just . . . you could use a bath.”

  Yariko smiled. “Then I’m in the right company. I’ve never seen a dirtier face than yours.”

  “What do you mean?” Julian said indignantly, putting a hand to his face. “I need a shave, but—”

  “Whitney,” Dr. Shanker interrupted, “find a stream and dip your head in it.”

  They found running water not far from the caves, behind a stand of low, twisted trees. Yariko called the trees the shower curtain, and the analogy wasn’t bad. The stream tumbled over a mass of rocks just above their heads and fell in a fine spray into a rocky pool. It almost looked as though it had been arranged that way.

  Julian would have loved a cold shower then and there but Dr. Shanker was hungry and insisted on dinner first. They managed to kill a dozen small lizards that were warming themselves on the rocks, trying to catch the last of the evening light. The creatures were mostly skin and brittle bones, but all together made a decent meal. Hilda contentedly crunched on the leftovers.

  Dr. Shanker carefully banked the fire rather than scattering it. “Might as well keep the heat,” he said, and yawned. “I can hardly keep my eyes open. That bath will have to wait until morning. You two go ahead. Watch out for predators and don’t let the fire get out of hand.” With that advice he staggered into the cave, Hilda right behind him.

  Yariko and Julian sat for a while outside the cave, beside the embers of the fire. The red light of sunset faded and stars gradually appeared. After a while Yariko reached for Carl’s sack. They had carried it along, not knowing what useful things might be inside. She pulled out the strange musical instrument and laid it across her lap.

  “There are two ways to hold it,” she murmured, gently touching the wood. “How did he play it?”

  “Upright.” Julian gestured to show the position.

  Yariko set it upright in her lap, plucked tentatively, and smiled at the result. Then she tried an experimental chord with her left hand. “Amazing,” she said. “It’s tuned essentially like mine.” She played a melody, a sad wandering tune, leaning forward with her ear close to the instrument, and smiling.

  The last time Julian had heard music from that instrument it had brought Yariko to mind with painful longing. Now it evoked images of Carl. He listened, marveling at how they had passed down Yariko’s music to their children, and they to theirs. It was the last thing he would have expected to be treasured in a world where basic survival was of such primary importance. What had it done for them, these people hunting with spears, dodging Tyrannosaurus rex, competing with the fierce raptors for food? But perhaps it was not surprising after all. Music was one of the most basic forms of human communication, developed long before written language existed.

  After a few minutes Yariko stopped and carefully replaced the instrument in the sack.

  “I have a present for you, Jules,” she said. “I made it myself.”

  She got up and stepped carefully into the dark cave, one hand outstretched to feel along the wall. When she came out she had several of Carl’s ponchos folded over her arm.

  “That’s not the present,” she said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  She took Julian’s hand and led him toward the “shower,” the stream that tumbled down over the cliff, where she laid the hides on the stony ground. Then she took something out of her pocket and held it out. It looked like a small stone, a smooth grayish lump. Julian prodded it suspiciously with a finger. It had a waxy feel.

  “Soap,” she said. “Drippings and ashes.”

  “That’s your present?” he said, skeptically. “Homemade soap?”

  “Trust me,” she laughed. “You need it pretty badly.” Then her voice became serious. “Jules, I missed you. All that time I was alone out there, I couldn’t stop worrying. I didn’t know what had happened to you. I didn’t know if I’d see you again.”

  “I was frantic about you,” Julian said, and he put his arms over her shoulders and hugged her fiercely. “Yariko. It’s wonderful to have you back. And you’re never going anywhere without me again.”

  In the near-total darkness under the bright stars they helped each other to undress. The night air was warm and still under their private cliff. They felt safe, protected, and very much alone together. Standing under the small cascade they wet each other’s bodies with handfuls of water. The stream was cold and they stood close to keep warm, massaging the soap into each other’s skin and hair.

  Yariko gave a little cry as the soap slipped out of her hand and disappeared into the darkness. “No matter,” Julian murmured, pressing his soapy body against hers. When he kissed her he tasted blood and realized that the cut on her cheek had opened. He moved his lips over her face to her mouth, and her chin, and then down her throat. The ground was cold and hard under their bare feet and Julian pushed her back until she was lying on the hides.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid struck the Yucatan peninsula in the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico, leaving a huge impact crater. This disaster is permanently recorded in a layer of rock that is rich in soot, dust, and debris, and also iridium, a signature element of asteroids. Heat and fiery fallout killed much of the life in the western hemisphere; dust rose to the atmosphere and produced a global blackness lasting from months to years. Ecosystems all over the earth collapsed. Half of the plant and animal genera disappeared. In the next layer of sediment, there are no dinosaur bones. The titans that had reigned for a hundred and fifty million years had vanished, and the living world was forever changed.

  —Julian Whitney, Lectures on Cretaceous Ecology

  Julian woke at the same moment as Yariko. The cave was filled with a thin gray light. He was so used to sleeping in the open that he was disoriented at first; but then the evening came back to him. They’d taken the hides into the second cave, leaving Dr. Shanker and Hilda alone in the other.

  Some sound had woken them. After a moment it came again: Hilda’s barking, and then Dr. Shanker’s voice coming faintly from outside, telling her to sit still and stop jumping on him. Julian smiled and propped himself up on one elbow to gaze at Yariko. Her hair was sleek and shiny after the bath, and she smelled of wood smoke. He traced her cheekbone with a finger and realized suddenly that Carl’s face had seemed familiar because it had the same shape as hers.

  “Yariko,” he said.

  “Yes?” She lifted her arms and encircled his neck, smiling. The lines and puffiness of the night before were gone and she looked absurdly young with her bare shoulders showing above the covers.

  “What was this animal you said followed you?”

/>   “The animal? The T. rex, of course.”

  “How long was it trailing you? What did it do?”

  “It stalked us for about a week. Sometimes it would disappear for a day or two, and then it would show up again. At first it kept at a distance and watched us. But then it started to come closer each time, and Hilda would go crazy. I’d have to drag her into the bushes and try to hold her muzzle to stop her from barking. I was sure we’d be eaten. It didn’t attack us until that last night. I don’t know what it wanted. I suppose I should be grateful, though.”

  “Why grateful?”

  “She may have scared off something else, one night. Something that looked a little like the dromaeosaurs, but smaller. I looked up from my fire and there it was, just staring at me from about thirty feet away. I didn’t even know how long it had been there. It was creepy, so silent. Then that T. rex blundered by. I only caught a glimpse of it through the trees but I felt the ground shake. It woke up Hilda and scared away the other animal. You know, the T. rex frightened me less. Isn’t that strange? Maybe something so huge is a little beyond our comprehension. Carl seemed to know it, almost; as if they were friends.”

  Julian nodded. “He did seem to know her pretty well. They’d been together a long time. Decades, I think. She was following us, too, you know; she must have been traveling back and forth between your camp and ours. An animal like that can cover a lot of ground quickly.”

  “But isn’t that ironic,” Yariko said. “If only it could have talked. I could have sent you a message. I thought I would never see you again; and all that time, it knew perfectly well where you were. What did it want?”

  “I don’t know.” Julian felt sad again. “She seemed drawn to people, or at least to Carl. She’d lived around his hill his whole life, you know. Maybe her whole life, too.”

  “You think she was domesticated?”

  “No, not exactly. But she was clearly used to humans, and to finding food near them.”

  A voice from outside interrupted their conversation. “Anyone for breakfast?” it said, and Hilda barked.

  The morning was strangely quiet, altogether different from the physical strain and danger of the previous two months. They caught small animals, mainly lizards, and gathered edible plants that grew out from the cracks in the rocks. They saw no dangerous predators in that elevated, stony terrain.

  But the quiet seemed deceptive to Julian. He became nervous as the sun climbed higher. The suspense was more difficult to take because there was no longer a physical task or goal to occupy them. He wanted to take Yariko’s hand and run with her away from the caves, from any possibility of reversion, from the uncertainty and the possibility of separation or death. But instead he suppressed the panic and forced himself to do the little routine tasks that they’d worked out; cutting brush for fire, gathering water and food, carefully marking the near edge of the reversion area.

  Dr. Shanker was already regaining his strength, although his limp was worse again. The bitten ankle must not have been quite healed when he strained it again carrying Carl’s bier. One side of his body was badly bruised and turned a sickly brownish yellow, but his lungs seemed to be healing well and he was almost his usual active self. After breakfast he did a hundred pushups and then went off to wash his face in the stream.

  He seemed a quieter person than previously, less full of himself and more considerate. Occasionally his ego would reemerge, but by and large he had improved. Julian did not think anybody could have maintained a sense of personal importance against the things they had seen and lived through.

  Late in the morning they paused in the busy work to enjoy the clear sky and sun in front of the caves.

  “Only one day to wait, now,” Dr. Shanker commented. “Assuming of course the vault wasn’t destroyed and is still set for our return. Either way, by the end of tomorrow we’ll know that we’re here for the rest of our lives.”

  “Is that what you hope?” Yariko asked.

  He thought for a moment, passing his hand over his face, and then said, “No, I’d rather go back. I miss my own world. I miss my lab. Although. . . ,” he paused, looking down into Hilda’s panting, smiling face. “She’s got ten or twelve more years in her anyway, which is about all I’d have if we stayed. . . .” Then he smiled. “Should we take a vote? Whitney?”

  Julian thought about the dangers of the present world, compared with the modern world overrun by man. There were no cars in this time, no money, no overpopulation; the landscape was not burnt, clear-cut, paved, or otherwise devastated by human activity. For himself, he could almost have stayed in the Cretaceous. Part of him longed to.

  But what would life be, if they stayed? Survival only, living from day to day. Their line would dwindle and die out after a few generations. In the twentieth century, he could at least make a difference in the world. He would teach, and have children. He, Julian Whitney, would make his own infinitesimal contribution to the course of human thought and evolution. Here, he and all his descendants would disappear, as if they had never been.

  Julian weighed the different issues in his mind and they came to a balance.

  “I’d rather stay here,” he said lightly, taking hold of Yariko’s hand. “I’ve got everything I want.”

  “In that case, I’ll stay too,” Yariko said, laughing. “You can go back, you and Hilda, and give everyone our best regards.”

  “I’ll make sure you get half the credit for the Nobel Prize,” Dr. Shanker said. Then he grew serious. “Wishes aside, we need a plan in case we don’t revert. We can’t spend the winter here; I know there’s not much seasonality, but even now there’s hardly any food and this miserable brush won’t provide enough firewood. We’re almost through the stack of wood inside.”

  “There’s Carl’s hill,” Julian said. “It’s safe enough from predators, and only an earthquake could seriously damage it. The hut’s roomy enough for the four of us, and the corral could hold a small herd of animals.” With his words a great longing for the hill came up in him. He wanted only to go back there, and live as Carl had lived.

  “Of course,” Dr. Shanker said. “After all, we built the thing, didn’t we?”

  “What about that T. rex?” Yariko asked. “It may have gone back there. I’d rather not face it again.”

  “Maybe we injured it and it won’t live,” Dr. Shanker said.

  Julian shook his head. They had hardly scratched Corla. She might die of hunger in the desolate landscape of the hills, but Dr. Shanker certainly could not have killed her. Julian suddenly knew that he wished her well. An animal such as that should not die of anything as slow and humiliating as starvation. They owed her something: her eerie presence at the end of their journey had kept off the smaller, more dangerous predators. She had done as much as Carl had to get them here. He found himself wondering how long such creatures lived. She might be more than a century old; she might have known the versions of them who had come here before.

  “T. rex or not,” Dr. Shanker said, “in two days we had better start back. Or rather, you two can. Hilda and I are planning to be out of here and back in the lab.”

  But stochastic processes, as Dr. Shanker would have said, or chance as most people would call it, can play tricks on everyone. Julian was cutting up brush for a fire to smoke the meat of a small dinosaur, in case they needed packable food for a journey back to Sentinel Hill, and as he worked he pondered the strange geometric diagram in the cave. He couldn’t help feeling that it was important.

  They already knew the day of their time window: the third day after the new moon. He and Shanker had carefully paced out the nearest regional boundary, with Yariko inside the cave shouting out the measurements from various landmarks. There was always the chance they were a little off, but as long as they were well inside the estimated boundary they should be safe. What more was there to know? Why couldn’t he stop worrying?

  Because, Julian’s mind answered itself, you’ve spent two months fighting your way west against a deadlin
e, and now you’re unable to sit back and relax, knowing you’re a day early. It doesn’t feel right.

  Yariko could be heard humming to herself as she sat near the cave skinning the animal to be smoked. Julian smiled at her domesticity: his wife, his partner, skinning dinner at the entrance to their cave, humming a little tune, a Japanese tune that Carl had played on his instrument.

  He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm—he was sweating in the full sun as he tried to chop the tough, twisted brush—and looked up at the azure sky. There was no morning shade in this tree-less place. Fortunately the sun was nearly as high as it would get, and shade would soon be creeping out from the cliff face. The moon, still very thin but noticeably larger than it was yesterday, was keeping pace with the sun as it rose in the sky. Three days from the new moon . . . the moon rose later each day as it waxed and fell behind the sun, until it shone out at night when full . . . the new moon . . . the crude axe dropped from Julian’s hand with a thud, scattering his careful pile of brush.

  “Yariko!” he yelled, or rather shrieked, and he ran toward her, painfully wrenching his ankle in his haste.

  Yariko jumped to her feet, the bloody animal dangling by one leg from her hand. “What is it? What did you see?”

  “The moon!” he cried, pointing up at it. “The new moon! It is three days past the new moon. Today, not tomorrow. Today is the day.” Julian was panting as if he’d run a mile instead of forty feet.

  Yariko looked bewildered. “Are you sure? I remember seeing it two days ago, when . . . before Carl . . . I remember seeing it rise, just before the sun. It was new. In the cave it says reversion was on day three—”

  “This is day three!” Julian almost shouted. “The new moon isn’t the sliver we saw that morning. A ‘new moon’ is when none of it is visible, when the sun lights up the side away from Earth. Yesterday, when we got here, was the second day after the new moon, and today is the third.”