Time spike

by Eric Flint

  Predators were predators, and meat was meat. Simple enough. But so far as the Cherokees had been able to discover, none of the food plants they were accustomed to growing had come through the Quiver. The one and only exception was a small patch of corn they'd found-which their men were guarding like hawks and upon which their women were lavishing tender loving care. They'd located the town, in fact, right next to the patch, even though the location was far from optimal in many other respects. Nourishing that small patch of corn and turning it into a staple overrode everything else. But there was nothing else they'd always depended on. No squash, no beans. No acorns. Jeff Edelman said that was because almost every edible plant that human beings had domesticated in their history had been what he called angiosperms-and the angiosperms apparently hadn't evolved yet. That enormous group of flowering plants that had come to dominate the Earth by the time humans beings showed up were simply absent here, so far as he could tell, except an occasional little patch like the corn. And that was obviously a transplant produced by the Quiver. There weren't even any grasses yet. Some variety of fern usually provided the ground cover.

  Jeff had fretted over the problem. According to him, the angiospermsshould be here. They'd emerged in the late Mesozoic and by the end of the Cretaceous had come to dominate the world's vegetation.

  They shouldcertainly exist in a world that had tyrannosaurs in it. The solution Edelman had finally come up with was, from Andy's point of view, simply to change his terminology. It turned out, he explained, that they were actually in an earlier stage of the Cretaceous than he'd thought originally. And what he'd thought were tyrannosaurs were actually allosaurs, their somewhat smaller ancestors. They didn't look much different, after all. "Well…" He'd scratched his chin.

  "Probably they're something in between allosaurs and tyrannosaurs.

  Allosaurs are a little too ancient, really. Their heyday was the late Jurassic, and I don't think we've gone backthat far." Apologetically, he added: "The fossil record really is pretty spotty. The truth is we have no real idea what creatures might have lived in great big chunks of geologic time." Andy had smiled. "Has it occurred to you, Jeff-I'm not arguing the point, mind you-that your new theory isn't too different from insisting that a personnel department is really a human relations department?" "Smart ass." Jeff's eyes ranged over the landscape of the Really New World around them. "The problem is that there's something fundamentally screwy about this universe. We've got too many things from too many different periods all mixed together.

  What I'mhoping is that we'll eventually discover the effect is geographically restricted." "Meaning?" "Meaning that the Quiver scrambled time for a relatively small area of southern Illinois-insofar as you can use the expression 'southern Illinois' to refer to that area of the globe all through geological history." The gaze he now bestowed on the horizon was a longing one. "You know, if I could take a few guys with me and explore maybe fifty or a hundred miles away from here, I'm willing to bet everything would settle down.

  I could tell you then, for sure, if we're in the late Cretaceous or the early Cretaceous or some part of the Jurassic or what." "Forget it. Look, Jeff, in the end it's really an academic question. Call them tyrannosaurs or allosaurs, who cares? We've still got to figure out how to deal with them, if they come after us. And we can worry about what to call these plants around us after we figure out which ones we can eat." Jeff scowled. "Yeah, fine. But have you contemplated the alternative, if the effectisn't geographically limited? That would mean that we're in a universe that apparently has no logic at all, at least for a geologist and a biologist. Hell, for all we know, the Aztec winged snake god Quetzalcoatl might come flapping over the horizon tomorrow. Or dragons instead of whatever-you-call-ems." "I'd settle for a field of wheat, whether it's got winged snakes or not.

  The Cherokees would be ecstatic if some squash turned up-and they'd take the dragons in stride." They were now in a world of conifers, ferns, horsetails, cycads and gingkos. The Cherokee women were fuming.

  Generations of practical learning and lore and skills-gone with the wind. Not really, though. The specific skills might be gone, but the generic skills that underlay them were still there. Yes, the women groused incessantly, and the curses they rained down on the new plants they experimented with would have made sailors blanch. But they'd already figured out how to grind up something that looked like big pine nuts into a sort of gruel that they could use to make a cornmeal substitute or fried flat bread. They called it "nutmeal." The stuff needed to be leeched, since the raw taste was very bitter, and the end result didn't have much taste at all. But it had become their staple food-and, lately, they'd found some herbs that brightened it up a lot.

  Andy didn't have much doubt that, given a little time and peace, they'd eventually produce a full diet that, along with the meat and fish the Cherokee hunters brought in, was nutritious and plentiful enough that people could live on it indefinitely. Including Andy's people, whose skills in these critical areas were far more primitive than the Cherokees'. But that still left the problem of "time and peace." Both of which, unfortunately, were in shorter supply than food. He figured it was time. Watkins liked to ponder a problem, and Andy respected that. But he'd pondered it enough. "Have you decided, Chief?" Watkins smiled. "And when did you start being formal, Captain?

  If I remember right, it was 'Geoffrey' less than an hour ago." But he knew the reason for the sudden formality perfectly well. He looked away and, after a moment, finally started talking. "The proposal is attractive in many ways, certainly. Each party provides the other with what it lacks most. We provide you with food, eventually clothing, those sorts of things. And you"-he glanced at the pistol holstered to Andy's hip-"provide us with the firepower we will need to deal with monsters. Human and otherwise." He looked away again. "All the more attractive because the disparity is so great on either side. Our muskets and bows and spears are fine for hunting, but if this Spanish man de Soto's army is as large as you say, they bean't enough. The Spanish will have muskets too. Maybe not as good as ours, but good enough. I used a matchlock as a boy. Clumsy fucking thing, but it worked. Their crossbows and swords will easily match our bows and spear and war clubs. Worst of all-" He glanced at the town. "-I don't have that many warriors. Not more than thirty-five, really, and even that is… what's your expression?" "Stretching it. Or pushing it."

  "Yes." He smiled again. "On the other side, the disparity is every bit as great. Meaning no disrespect, but except for your Lieutenant Hulbert I don't think any of you out here in the wilds can… what's that really delightful expression? The one Hulbert uses so often?" "Find our ass with both hands." "Yes." His smile widened. "Astonishing, really. What sort of superstitious savage doesn't understand that a big bug is food?" Andy laughed. The reaction of the modern Americans-any creed or color; it didn't matter in the least-when the Cherokees had passed around a big platter of roasted grasshoppers at the first welcoming feast, had been a sight to behold.

  His, too. He still thought it was yucky. But he'd eaten the stuff.

  That night and ever since. The grasshoppers-that Jeff insisted really weren't grasshoppers but an earlier species of Orthoptera, as if that made it any better-had become a staple of the Cherokee diet only slightly less important than the meat and fish the hunters brought in and the nutmeal. Every Cherokee child had been assigned the task of hunting and catching the big insects. Which they did gleefully. For them, it was a great game. The nineteenth-century U.S. soldiers in Kershner's squad refused to eat the bugs at all. But by anybody's culinary standards, those men were Neanderthals. So far as Andy could tell, they were firmly convinced that the only food fit for human consumption was salt pork and potatoes sauced in hog lard, and were deeply aggrieved that the Really New World didn't seem to have a single pig or potato in it. "So what's bothering you, Geoffrey?" Andy asked quietly. "I understand why you'd have hard feelings toward the United States, believe me. I was born almost a hundred and forty years after the Trail of Tears, but it
's something that's still remembered.

  And with a great deal of guilt, now. But-at least for us, if not you-that was a long time ago. The attitudes of Americans in my day has changed enormously since then." Watkins made a little motion with his hand, as if waving something down. "That's not really the problem, Andy. Yes, it's very fresh for us still." He took a long, slow, almost shuddering breath. "My wife was killed by that Trail of Tears, and she died not more than a few weeks ago. And she wasn't the only one in my band of people who died on the Trail. Many did." He nodded toward the town. "Walk through there and talk to any Cherokee, and you will find a similar story. And for them, as for me, it happened just a few weeks or months ago. Not a century and half." He made the same little hand motion, but much more peremptorily. "But we're not little children, who can't react to anything except emotionally. Even during the Trail of Tears, we were constantly dickering and bargaining with the Americans over the details-and sometimes we got what we wanted. Even from that fucking asshole Van Buren. Or at least some of it. Many more of us would have died otherwise." He fell silent. Brooding, maybe, it was hard to know. Watkins was certainly not what you'd call "inscrutable," but he did come from a somewhat different culture. Andy had had to remind himself of that more than once. You simply couldn't assume that you were interpreting facial expressions and so-called body language quite the right way. So, he waited again. After about a minute, Watkins stirred. "I'm not worried about the past, Andy. And it bean't necessary for you to keep reassuring me that the America you came from had changed its attitudes. That's obvious to anyone but an idiot. All I have to do is turn my head right now and contemplate the fact that about half of the people you have with you carrying those marvelous guns have black skins. In my day, black people were slaves-for us as well as the whites." He chuckled, rather harshly.

  "All things considered, it's probably a good thing that the Cherokees you encountered here were my band. Not that mine was the only one that favored traditionalism, by any means. If you'd run into John Ross or any of the bands of rich Cherokees, I can imagine things would have gotten tense." Andy scratched his chin. "Yeah, they probably would. I can just imagine Brian Carmichael's reaction-worse still, Leroy Ingram's-when they saw a dozen black people being used as slaves."

  "Speaking of Carmichael," Watkins said, "will you tell him to please restrain himself a bit? He's starting to annoy the older people. Well, the most traditional ones, anyway." Andy made a face. "Yeah, I'll speak to him again. Won't be easy, though. Brian's a very nice guy, but he's firmly convinced now that the Quiver was God's way of telling him he'd been slacking off." Carmichael really was a nice guy.

  Easygoing, friendly, genial, good-humored, everything you could ask for. He'd been popular among the guards since the day he started working at the prison. Even a lot of the cons had liked him, at least the black ones. The problem was that he also belonged to a fundamentalist church that took missionary duties seriously-and he'd had a bad conscience for years that he hadn't really done his fair share of that work. So, now, he was making up for it with a vengeance.

  Thankfully, he wasn't patronizing, in his attitudes. It might be that Brian saw himself as bringing the word of God to heathen Cherokees-the fact that most of them were already Christians didn't matter, since they weren't the right kind of Christians-but he wasn't at all snotty about it. In fact, he considered them what you might call a high-class clientele. His church had done most of its missionary work in the slums of East St. Louis. Brian was preachifying to stalwart and upright folk, compared to gangbangers. At the very least, he didn't have to worry about getting mugged. Still, it could get annoying, simply because the man didn't know when to quit. Having even the nicest and friendliest person in the world jabbering at you endlessly about the need to save your soul gets tiresome after a while. If anything, the Cherokees had been more patient with Brian than people from Brian's own time would have been. They were used to missionaries jabbering endlessly. The real problem, Andy suspected, was one aspect of the overall problem-that he was pretty sure Watkins was still circling. Part of the reason the Cherokees were patient with jabbering missionaries was that they'd put them towork. They could jabber all they wanted-as long as they also set up a school and taught the children how to read and write. But how do you make a schoolteacher out of an armed man who belonged to what amounted to a military force, instead of a church? Analien military force, to boot. Maybe not hostile, but still alien. Andy was pretty sure, by now, that that was the core of the issue, for Watkins. Not Brian Carmichael, by himself, but the problem he embodied. He decided to just bring it all out in the open, since Watkins still seemed reticent. They really didn't have much time. He'd been willing to spend days negotiating, but he wasn't willing to spend weeks. More to point, he couldn't, whether he wanted to or not. Leaving aside the threat posed by de Soto, he couldn't leave less than seventy guards back at the prison to watch over thousands of convicts for much longer. "You want me to give you people. Or swap them." Watkins eyed him sideways. "People-and some of your guns." They'd been sitting together on a log. Now, Watkins swiveled to face Andy more squarely. "Yes, that is the problem. Not the past, but the future. It doesn't matter what a people's attitudes are. Well. It matters, but it's not enough. Power also matters. In the end-we chiefs all knew this, had known it for two or three generations-the real problem we had with the Americans of our time wasn't their attitudes toward us." He barked a laugh. "Ha! Trust me. I can name ten Indian tribes whose attitudes toward us were just as bad if not worse. The real problem was that the Americans were powerful enough to simply push us aside. It wasn't even a fight. A squirrel can't fight a buffalo. When the Red Stick Creeks tried to fight, Sharp Knife crushed them." Sharp Knife was their term for Andrew Jackson, Andy had learned. When they weren't referring to him as a fucking asshole. Slowly, Andy drew the pistol out of his holster and looked at it. He had it in the palm of his hand, not held by the grip.

  "Geoffrey, our power over you today-if we exercised it, which I have no intention of doing-would come entirely and simply from this. And the rifles, of course. And the fact is, this is a very finite resource. That's a lot of the reason I want to make this alliance and go after de Soto. Now. While we still have enough ammunition. By this time next year…" He shrugged, and slid the pistol back into the holster. "This gun and all the others will just be so much scrap metal. Fancy-looking, but still scrap. We have no way of making new ones. We don't even think we can make new ammunition that they could use. Maybe a little, but certainly not enough to rule anyone unilaterally. That's one of the reasons I lie awake at night worrying about the prisoners. I hate spending any ammunition on de Soto, with two and half thousand convicts to keep under control. But I figure I don't have any choice. De Soto's on the loose, and at least the convicts are locked up behind bars." Watkins shook his head. "You are being too shortsighted, Andy. It may be true-I'm not questioning your statement-that you can't make new guns like that. But your people will still start outpacing my own, when it comes to such things, as time goes by." He waved his hand at the town. In some indefinable manner, the gesture including everything, not just the buildings. The meat being smoked, the nutmeal being made, the little patch of corn, even the children Andy could see in the distance, eagerly picking their way through some short horsetails looking for grasshoppers. "We are very good at this," Watkins said softly. "Much better than you are. But you have things we don't, and they go much farther than guns." Andy made a face. "I suppose. But-" "What is this thing you call a 'machine shop'?" Watkins asked abruptly. Andy began to explain. And, as he did, finally began to understand what the Cherokee chief was getting at.

  "You see?" Watkins said when he finished. "Even in one of yourprisons -a place you put the worst people you have-you have the means to work with metal and make complicated machines. And I can tell you more, because I have spoken to many of you and listened very carefully when you told me things that you yourselves did not even think about. For here is what else you have." He started
counting off on his fingers.

  "Even in one of yourprisons, you have a library. Even in one of yourprisons, you have what Jenny Radford calls an infirmary. Even in one of yourprisons, you have vehicles that make the fanciest carriages in the Washington D.C. of my time look like a child's toy." He grinned, then. "Speaking of which-I know you have at least one, so don't pretend you don't-I will insist as part of any bargain that we get all the ones called a 'Cherokee.' Call it a penalty for being presumptuous." Andy laughed. "Okay, fine. I think we've got three of them, if I remember right. That belong to the prison, anyway. Some of the guards might have one as a personal vehicle out in the lot. You'd have to dicker with them about that. But I'm warning you, Geoffrey.