Time spike

by Eric Flint

  Rod blew out some air and rubbed his face. "We needed this like we needed a hole in the head." He thought about it for a moment. "Okay, then. What's the magic number? How manydo you need?" Edelman shrugged.

  "Nobody really knows, is the only honest answer. The minimum, of course, is the Biblical two. Adam and Eve. But even in the Bible, their sons found wives somewhere else. Where'd they come from? Even the Lord Almighty doesn't seem to have known the answer. We sure as hell don't." Hulbert glared at him. "Will you puh-lease stop being such a damn academic? Give me a ballpark figure, Jeff." "Sorry. Can't even do that. The problem is that the number seems to vary, from species to species-and nobody's ever put it to the test, with human beings." Hulbert's glare didn't fade at all. Jeff sighed. "Look, I can put it this way. Leaving out of the equation for the moment whatever number of Indians are out there other than the Cherokees, I figure we've got somewhere around two hundred females, all told, who are capable of having children. Please note that I'm being wildly optimistic, in that I'm presuming that each and every one of them is capable of bearing a child and is willing to do so. I've already told Andy that if and when the time comes that we have to declare a public policy, I'm ducking behind the podium and lettinghim tell Bird Matthews that she's gotta start screwing guys." Rod laughed. One of the guards, Bird Matthews, was a confirmed and I'm-not-kidding lesbian. She was cheerful about it, not belligerent, and she wasn't a "militant" in the usual sense of the word. In fact, she was quite popular with the other guards, of either sex. But she'd made clear the I'm-not-kidding part by organizing a small motorcycle club that called itselfDykes on Bikes. They even had the logo on their motorcycle jackets. "Okay, point taken. But let's assume the two hundred figure is valid. What then?" "Well, like I told Andy, I'm not positive. But I'm pretty sure that's not enough. Not in the long run. It's not a simple matter of arithmetic. Obviously, if two hundred women each have two daughters, and those daughters each have two, etc. etc., you wind up with a problem of overpopulation faster than you might imagine. But people are complex packages of DNA, on a genetic level, they're not numbers. If the original breeding stock is too low, you run into what's called a bottleneck problem. That won't just apply to us, either. Any of the animals that came through in small numbers, such as the horses, are looking at a bottleneck too. "Even something as random as genetic drift can screw you up. All it takes is one or two bad mutations and you can find yourself dying off. It's not so much an arithmetical problem as a statistical one. Theoretically, a species could survive with an initial breeding stock of one male and one female. It's just that the smaller the pool, the worse the odds get."

  He looked at the small fire in the chimney they were sitting by, for a moment. "On the other side of the coin-again, with the caveat that this is really just an educated guess-I think that two thousand females would be enough." "Oh, swell. We're screwed, then." A bit grumpily: "And don't lecture me about my choice of words. We're still not even in the ballpark." "Not… necessarily. We have no idea how many little Indian villages or hunter-gatherer bands are out there.

  But I can tell you this much. I think it has to be a fair number."

  "Why?" "Because the Quiver-whatever it was; which we don't know and I doubt we ever will-wasn't just a temporal phenomenon. It was also a spacial phenomenon. And it looks to me as if the spacial dimension involved in its effects-call it the radius-got larger the farther back in time it went. Or maybe it started way back in ancient time and came forward, narrowing as it went. Either way, if you were to plot the Quiver in three dimensions, it would look like a cone rather than a cylinder." "Run that by me again." "Think about it, Rod. Who got taken in our day? Just us. The prison, and a little bit of territory around it. Go back almost a hundred and seventy years, and who got taken among the Cherokee? I've asked, and the answer is interesting. Chief Watkins and his people weren't all gathered together in one small area when they got snatched by the Quiver, the way we were. They were strung out along a trail-and the soldiers were riding point quite a ways ahead. Still, most of them got snatched. The only ones who didn't, in his band, were a group that had been bringing up the rear a long ways behind, and the soldiers who were with them. Which was most of them." "Ha. I'll be damned. I hadn't even thought about that."

  "Don't feel bad," said Andy. "Neither had I." "Jeff, have you tried to figure out-" "Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Of course I've tried to figure out what the radius must have been. As near as I can tell, at least a half a mile and maybe even a mile. The problem is that nobody knows exactly how far back the group that didn't get taken were lagging. The soldiers were a good quarter of a mile ahead, though, according to Sergeant Kershner. So no matter how you slice it, the territory involved was a lot bigger than the prison area." Idly, he picked up a stick and fed it to the fire. "Okay. The next group of people who got snatched, that we know of, were de Soto and his army.

  Please note the use of the term 'army.' Fine, a small army-but you don't cram even a small army into a small space. Not when you're on campaign, for sure-and every report we've gotten about the Spaniards seems to indicate they're foraging constantly. What little we've been able to squeeze out of the one Spaniard we captured seems to confirm that. No matter which way I look at it, I figure it has to have been a lot bigger radius than the one the Cherokees were in, much less us."

  Another stick went into the fire. "I get the same results when I look at the animals, except it's even more extreme. We haven't seen more than four deer-and yet, between us and the Cherokees, we've seen three allosaurs. There's no way to explain that ratiowithout presuming a steady increase in the radius of the Quiver as it went further and further back in time." "Uh… sorry, I'm not following you."

  "That's because you're not a biologist. One of the laws of biology is that predators are always outnumbered-a lot-by prey, and the bigger an animal gets, the scarcer it gets. Especially predators. That's because big predators need a very big hunting range." It didn't take Rod, with his extensive outdoor experience, more than a second to grasp the point. "Jesus. What's the hunting range of something like a grizzly bear or a tiger?" "Tigers, I don't know. And I don't remember the specific numbers for big bears. It's different anyway, for male and female bears. But I do know the numbers, from the lowest to highest, are all measured in square kilometers. Hundreds of square kilometers."

  "Gotcha. And a big bear weighs what, approximately? Half a ton?" "Not quite, although a few individuals get even bigger that that. The biggest are the southern Alaskan brown bears. If I remember right, the males average somewhere around four hundred kilos. Call it nine hundred pounds." Hulbert nodded. "What do you figure an allosaur weighs? And spare me the lecture about variation. I know that.

  Ballpark figures, Jeff, ballpark figures. For right now, that's plenty good enough." Edelman smiled. "They're at least three times bigger than a large male Alaskan brown bear. Probably closer to five or six times bigger, on average, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them got up to four or five tons. Which would make them eight to ten times bigger." "Four deer and three allosaurs…" Rod mused. "Yeah, I see your point. There's simply no way you could have found three allosaurs in an area the size of the prison, or even that stretch of trail the Cherokees were on." "Not unless they were having a convention or a rock concert. No, by the time the Quiver reached the Cretaceous, the radius had to have been something like fifty miles. Probably more, and maybe a lot more. We have no reason to think that the three allosaurs we've seen or heard about are all there are." Rod pondered the matter, for a minute or so. "In other words-this is the gist of it, stripped down to the essentials-the future of the human race in this world depends ultimately on the most primitive people in it. Those pre-Mounds Indians out there, in their villages." "Yup. Just like the Bible says. The meek shall inherit the Earth." Rod scratched his cheek. "Andy, since you're the big shot, I do believe I'll follow Jeff's example. When the time comes, I'm ducking behind the podium while you tell an assembled crowd of prison guards and prehist
oric hunter-gatherers that they've got to start dating." All three of them laughed. When the laughter died down, Edelman shook his head. "It won't have to come that, thankfully. This is a generational problem, not something measured in years. And while I don't know nearly as much history and anthropology as I do biology and geology, I do know one thing. There has never been a time recorded in human history or told about in myths and legends, when two groups of human beings met for the first time, that they didn't start screwing each other." He leaned back on his stool, looking very complacent. "Besides, that's what adolescence is for. Let our teenage descendants deal with it, the snotty worthless brats." Rod sighed, and ran fingers through his hair.

  "But we can do what they can't. Keep those Indians alive to begin with." "Yeah, that's right," said Andy. "Look at it this way, Rod. We had a job to do in our old world, and all that seems to have happened is that we're picking up the same job in this one. Protecting people against the worst people." Rod chuckled, softly and without much humor. "I don't think the term 'correctional officer' was ever intended to be applied to Spanish damn-the-bastards conquistadores.

  But, okay, I see your point. When do we leave tomorrow?"

  Chapter 38 Susan Fisher sat down next to Jenny. She didn't say anything, just sat on one of the stools positioned in front of the stone bowls the Cherokee women used to grind the nutmeal. Jenny nodded at her, her mind still distracted. She and Andy had had a very heated, whispered argument this morning. She hadn't been happy at all that he wasn't taking her along on the expedition to fight the Spaniards. But, in the end, she had agreed. Andy was right, and she'd known it all along. She'd just had a fierce emotional reaction to the idea of being left behind. Especially, to the idea of being separated from him. In the type of battle that lay ahead, her supply level made her skill level almost useless. She could do more good staying behind than as a field surgeon. Which, given what she had available, wouldn't mean much more than amputations-and the Cherokees had their own people who knew how to do that. Andy had made the alliance with Watkins, but he figured it was still shaky. If not for Watkins, for many of the other Cherokees. And Watkins' authority as their chief was very far from absolute. The Cherokee power structure wasn't exactly what modern Americans would call a democracy, but that was mostly a matter of formalities and custom. It was far closer to a democracy than a dictatorship. For that matter, it was far more democratic than any number of supposedly democratic institutions in their own society.

  Andy thought Jenny could play a key role in solidifying the alliance.

  Leaving aside the fact that the Cherokees respected her medical knowledge, Jenny was the most experienced person in the group when it came to dealing with other cultures. So, she stayed behind. And did her best to control the knot in her stomach. The first order of business was not to be rude. Susan Fisher would have come here for a reason. "Can I be of help, Susan?" She forced herself to turn her head from looking at the horizon where the expedition had gone to the woman next to her. She had to look down, too. Fisher was a tiny woman, although Jenny was sure she would be strong as an ox. In her endurance, at least. She'd watched the woman-her, and several other Cherokee women-working a mortar and pestle for hours, grinding the nutmeal. Her knarled hands were wide and calloused. Her hair, still black, framed a face that was at least fifty. She was obviously a woman who had worked hard all her life, and it showed. But her voice was soft. Almost musical. "Eat, first. You ate nothing this morning."

  The medicine woman handed Jenny a small piece of some sort of food.

  "It is not much for taste. It should have dried berries in it, but we haven't found any berries. It will fill you, though." "What is it?"

  Jenny asked, curious. She really couldn't tell what the stuff was.

  Dried meat of some kind, obviously, was one major ingredient. But it didn't feel like jerky. She took an experimental bite. Didn't taste like jerky, either. "Pemmican. I'd say it was the Cherokee version of it, but that's probably silly. There's not a single thing in it we would have used back home." Pemmican. Jenny knew what it was, theoretically, but had never eaten any in her life. Never seen any, so far as she could remember. It was a concentrated food that, in one form or another, had been used by many tribes in North America. And then, later, adopted by European explorers, trappers and fur traders.

  It was a mixture of rendered animal fat, dried meat, and berries.

  Grains and seeds could be added too, if she remembered correctly. The combination sounded a little gross, especially the rendered fat, but pemmican was a concentrated food supply that would last without spoiling for a long time, and was quite nutritious. It would be a valuable addition to their resources. As for the taste… Best not to go there. "It's good," she said. "It's fucking terrible. We need berries. And the fat's not right. You want bone marrow fat for good pemmican, and there's not enough in these lizards. So we had to make do. The meat…" The little woman shook her head. "Lizard meat.

  Deer would be much better. But it'll do, for the meantime." Jenny nodded, forcing herself to continue chewing. Food was important to a people. They were emotionally attached to their diet and took offense when foreigners criticized their eating habits. But she had a feeling the pemmican was going to be one of those things she would have a hard time getting used to, even if Susan and the other women found berries or a substitute. But maybe not, if the fat were different. She thought it was the rendered fat that gave it that rather nasty taste. Perhaps fat taken from mammal bone marrow would be different. After all, sheliked the grasshoppers. Because of the years she'd spent in South America, Jenny was far more cosmopolitan in her culinary tastes than the prison guards; most of whom, like Andy himself, had been born and raised in southern Illinois or nearby. There were any number of good things to be said about the men and women from small towns and cities in America's heartland. An adventurous spirit when it came to food was not one of them. As she'd already figured out from watching Fisher in the various discussions that had taken place, the little woman was not one for idle chit-chat or beating around the bush. "The captain. Andy Blacklock. He is your husband?" Jenny gave a small sigh. Women always wanted to know who you were paired with and how tight that bond was.

  It didn't matter what race or what religion or what part of the world they came from. She forced herself to give Fisher a smile. She knew it was a pathetic imitation of the real thing. But it was the best she could do. She knew why women asked. It was because at some instinctual level women knew it was important. It was what kept the human race going. "No, he isn't. I'm a widow. My husband died almost three years ago. Andy and I… We just met very recently, right after the Quiver. Ah, the Great Wind." That was the Cherokee term for the disaster. "And things have been so hard-pressed since that we haven't been able to decide… Well. To be truthful, we haven't really even talked about it." They hadn't even had sex yet. Partly because of the pressure; partly because there'd been so little privacy; but mostly, she thought, because both she and Andy understood that once they took that step everything would lock in. She didn't think Andy was nervous about that. She certainly wasn't, she'd come to realize at least a week ago. Still, it made both of them a bit cautious. The bar had been raised very high, so to speak. She regretted it now. If she'd known Andy would be leaving to fight a war, she'd have ended the dilly-dallying. She might never see him again. Fisher nodded. "Smart woman. Three years is a good time to wait between husbands. I waited three years after my first husband died before I went and got another." Fisher sat quietly for a while, watching the children trying to coax a small, furred creature down from a tree. The creature was having none of it. "How did your husband die?" Normally, Jenny would have resented the blunt question, coming from someone who was almost a complete stranger. But the medicine woman wasn't prying; she was trying to get to know her. And the only way to know who a person was today was to know what things had happened in their past. "My husband was a doctor, and we were working in Brazil, down in South America.

  We'd been ther
e for a little over two years. We were scheduled to stay until the end of the third year, but we became infested with one of the local parasites. As soon as we realized what was wrong, we came home, back to the states. But it didn't help. There was nothing anyone could do for him. He was gone in less than four days. I was sick for months, and off work for a year." "You had no children?" Jenny shook her head. Fisher took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "Stephen McQuade has explained to me that the world you came from was very different than our own. I am curious. He says a nurse in your time is not the nurse of my own." Jenny started to laugh. "Oh, heavens. Yes, he's right. Things have changed a lot. I still give baths, and help a patient to the bathroom, but I do a lot more than that. I've probably had more education than the best physician working in the most modern hospital in the eighteen hundreds." Fisher nodded. "Hospitals are where the whites go to die." Jenny knew that wasn't prejudice. Fisher was right. Until very recently, historically speaking-certainly in Susan's stretch of the nineteenth century-hospitals were death houses.