by Will Hubbell
Pandit first noticed the wave as a darker line on the dark Montana Sea. It puzzled him, for it seemed some-how distorted. He was about to warn Sara when he saw it was pointless. It was the tsunami's gigantic scale that made it look wrong. As it rolled toward them, Pandit could see fires miles inland wink out. Sara was, as yet, unaware of their approaching destruction, her eyes were solely on him.
"You are so beautiful, Sara," said Pandit. "I told Rick you were a goddess. Now I know it is true." Sara smiled at his words.
"I need to hold you, Sara."
Sara emerged from the sea and walked toward him with a conscious sultriness. As she left the water, it began to flow away rapidly, first exposing the beach and, then, a vast expanse of seabed. Sara turned and saw the tsunami. It was the size of a dark mountain. She ran into Pandit's open arms and he embraced her. "I cannot save you this time," he said softly. "But I will be with you until the end." Sara pressed her perfect body against Pandit's chubby one as he took one last glimpse at the oncoming wave. It blotted out much of the sky. It was black, except for its very top, where foam cascaded down in waterfalls. The foam's whiteness reminded Pandit of the mourning clothes at a Hindu funeral. Pandit turned his mind from the advancing destroyer and concentrated his entire being on Sara—her smooth softness . .. her smell... her warm vitality. He caressed her back, wishing to still her trembling. She stopped shaking. The calmness of surrender came over them both. Sara gazed into Pandit's eyes with a look he recognized as the gods' parting gift.
21
THE INTERIOR OF THE PLANE SLOWLY GREW HOTTER AND
hotter, yet no one suggested turning the environmental con-trols back on. None dared to say their comfort was worth any of the precious store of energy. They removed as much clothing as modesty allowed, then suffered without com-plaining. Joe and Rick stripped to their shorts. Con briefly thought of removing her shirt also, but did not. That she would even consider it depressed -her, and she resolved to resist the erosion of civilization. They arranged the pile of clothes and supplies in the rear of the plane to make it as comfortable as possible, then lay upon it. The space was cramped, but the inclined floor permitted them to lie nowhere else. Lying there, sweating and torpid, each felt the heat ra-diating from the others' bodies. In those conditions, it was impossible to truly rest. All the while, it grew darker outside. Only talk kept their minds from dwelling on their discomfort.
"Rick," said Joe, "you seemed to know what was going to happen, I mean the earthquake and all. How come?"
"Paleontologists have been studying the K-T event for al-most a century."
"Why do you keep calling it that?" asked Con.
"K-T is an old geological name for the stratum that divides the Mesozoic Era from our own. The 'K'
stands for ' Kreide,' German for 'chalk,' and the T* stands for 'Tertiary.' "
"How enlightening," said Joe dryly.
"Even before Luis Alvarez proposed that the K-T bound-ary was evidence of a meteor impact, scientists knew it marked the end of an era," said Rick.
"So that meteor is what killed off the dinosaurs?" asked Con.
"Paleontologists have been debating that ever since Al-varez," said Rick. "Probably that observatory was built to finally settle the question."
"Then the people who built it must come back!" said Con with excitement.
"They won't," said Joe. "Sam wiped it out in the future."
"How can that be?" asked Con. "It still exists. We were there. And who's Sam?"
"Sam was the guy Green stole the time machine from," said Joe. "He's the one who changed history to eliminate the observatory."
"I still don't understand," said Con.
'Time flows in only one direction," said Joe. "Any change in the flow of time affects only events upwhen from that change. It's sort of like dumping dye into a river—only the water downstream gets colored. It doesn't matter where you come from, only where you dump the dye. Sam changed history sometime in his past, but our future."
"You don't know that for a fact," said Rick. "There are other possibilities."
"Returning to the island would waste our time and the plane's power," said Joe flatly.
"How can you be certain?" asked Con.
"I knew Sam. He wouldn't have left things to chance. He changed history, all right. I'm certain about another thing, too. I don't want to meet any more people from the future. Even if it were possible."
"Why?" asked Con.
"Judging from Sam, they'd treat us like dirt," said Joe.
"He was just one person," said Con. "Humanity's bound to improve."
"Is that so?" retorted Joe. "If you believe that, why don't you visit what's left of the Holy Land?"
"That's ... that's a special case," said Con.
"Because it proves my point? I could come up with oth-ers," said Joe. "Rick said we'd go to someplace that's safe. That island's not on my list."
Rick silently watched the exchange and wondered why Joe was so against returning to the island. Ultimately, he realized, it doesn't matter why. Joe's opinion carries the most weight. Only he can fly the plane. While Rick was not convinced that history had been altered, he was also disinclined to return to the island. Passively waiting to be rescued ran against his temperament. It also seemed like a foolhardy gamble. Joe might be right, he thought, or time travelers might take weeks or even years to return.
"We're better off relying on ourselves," said Rick, "than counting on a miraculous rescue."
"Yeah," said Joe.
"Then what chance do we have?" said Con. "We're only three people, and this meteor just killed all the dinosaurs."
"It didn't kill them all," said Rick, "at least not yet. Some people think the impact and the extinctions were just coin-cidences. That's what everyone's been debating since 1980."
"Now that you're the foremost authority in the world," said Joe, "maybe you'd give us your opinion on the matter."
"I think the effects of the impact precipitated the mass extinction," said Rick.
"So we're in for a wild ride," said Joe.
"I'm afraid so," replied Rick.
"May I ask how wild?" said Joe.
"First, the debris from the impact and the soot from the fires will blot out the sun. Photosynthesis will stop."
"For how long?" asked Con.
"Estimates vary," replied Rick. "Several months, at least."
"Several months?" said Con in despair.
"Why do I think that's not all the bad news?" said Joe. "You said something about cold."
"Without sunlight, the Earth's surface temperature will slowly drop below freezing."
"Winter in the middle of summer," said Con bleakly.
"That's one reason why we should head for the southern hemisphere. It's fall there, and the change won't be as drastic to the ecosystem."
"So things should be okay there," said Joe, "once the sky clears."
"There's also the problem of acid rain," said Rick. "The nitrogen-oxygen compounds formed in the impact will be converted to nitric acid. The ocean's chemistry gets thrown off for a millennium. There's also a period of global wanning caused by greenhouse gases."
"In short, all hell breaks loose," said Joe.
"Why did we ever leave the island?" said Con, the dis-couragement heavy in her voice.
"The dinosaurs perished," said Rick, "not because they were primitive or inferior, but because their world changed too rapidly. Their adaptations worked against them, and they died out. Human beings are flexible and smart. We'll find a way to survive."
Rick began talking about changes in vegetation, the "fern spike," and the proliferation of wind-pollinated plants over insect-pollinated ones. He sounds like he's lecturing a class, thought Con irritably. He's talking about my future, not some science experiment. Now that the excitement and the terror of their escape had subsided, thoughts of that future weighed heavily upon her.
Con saw that her choice to flee with Rick was not the result of any deliberation. At the t
ime, her only thought was that they were escaping death. Fear had caused her to flee— fear and Rick. Now she faced a life as the only woman among two men. She could see so many potential problems and conflicts, it made her head spin. Will I have children? The idea of childbirth under such conditions was frightening. A more frightening question arose. Will 1 even have a choice in the matter? Con realized that the norms of society would no long apply. The three of us are society. She contemplated the two men lying so close to her in the enervating heat. Rick had set out to kill a man. Joe had helped Green escape. She wondered what they would be capable of when civilization wore off. It worried her that she didn't know.
"Rick," said Con, "let's talk about something besides this damned K-T thing. Tell us about your brother."
'Tom?" said Rick. His hand automatically caressed the worn knife sheath that hung on his belt. "He was mother and father to me after my folks were killed. I guess he's the reason I love fossils. Every kid is crazy about dinosaurs, but who has a paleontologist to tuck him in at night?"
"So you never grew out of it," said Joe.
"No, never. You know, despite everything, he would love being here. The K-T fauna were Tom's specialty. A lot of people assume the mammals all made it through, but Tom was able to show ..."
"God, Rick!" said Con peevishly. "Do you have a one-track mind?" She turned to Joe and, hoping to steer the con-versation back toward civilization, asked, "Do you have a family?"
"I'm divorced," he said. "My daughter lives with her mother."
"What's your daughter's name?" asked Con.
"Nicole, Nicole Corretta Burns," said Joe in a soft, mel-ancholy voice. "She'll be fifteen this August seventh."
"You must have married young," said Con.
"While I was in graduate school. Nicole was born a year later." In the dim light, Con could see Joe shaking his head. "I wanted to give my girl everything."
"What children really want is love," said Con.
"She had that, but she didn't have my time," said Joe rue-fully. "Frank, my college roommate, and I started a small
R&D company, and we put everything, our whole lives, into it. We developed a neural interface that we were sure would make our fortunes."
"You sound bitter about it," said Con.
"Yeah," said Rick. "What happened?"
"We needed capital, and Frank brought in Peter Green."
" Green was your investor?" said Rick.
"No," replied Joe, "Green hooked us up with a bunch of Russians. I should've figured they were mobsters, but Frank assured me they were legitimate. Guess I wanted to believe him. I kept fooling myself until the drug raid."
"Drug raid!" said Con. "What did drugs have to do with it?"
"Frank had agreed to work on stimuplants in exchange for the financing," said Joe.
"Electronic drugs?" asked Rick.
"Hooked up with the right chip, the neural interface made the perfect stimuplant. It was the state-of-the-art high. They were making them right under my nose."
"And you didn't know?" asked Con.
"No, but tell that to a prosecutor, especially after Frank turned up dead. They said it was suicide, but I'm not so sure. Anyway, I lost my family, the business, and my reputation. The only person who helped me was Green."
"Green?"
"Yeah. He said he didn't know about the Russians and felt bad about what had happened. He paid for my lawyer and hired me when I got out of prison."
"That sounds out of character," said Con.
"He was just getting his hooks into me. I did little jobs at first. Gray stuff. Reverse engineering. Security overrides came later. The deeper I was in, the dirtier the jobs got."
"Why did you put up with it?" asked Con.
"I was going to leave, and Green guessed I was. One day he picked up Nicole's picture from my desk.
'Cute kid,' he said, 'but it's an old picture.' Then he gave me a new picture, taken with a telephoto lens. Oh God!" cried out Joe, in re-membered anguish and rage. "My little girl! All the while, Green had on this big grin, pretending he was giving me a gift instead of threatening my baby."
"And you helped him and Daddy escape?" said Con.
"I did what I had to do," said Joe.
"But..."
"That's the one thing I won't talk about," said Joe. "I have my reasons."
"Joe..."
"You and Rick are my family now," said Joe, "and I'll do anything for you. Except talk about this morning. Please re-spect me on this."
An awkward silence followed. Finally, Rick broke it by saying, "We should try to sleep. It'll cool off, and we'll want to be rested when we dig out the plane." The suggestion excused everyone from further conversation. Con lay still in her sweat-soaked clothes and tried to get some sleep, but it was impossible. It was too hot, she was having hunger cramps, and her mind raced from one fearful scenario to another. Perhaps it was too early to sleep. She had no idea what time it was. It might be only afternoon, although it was darker outside than any night she could remember. The red glow had left the clouds, and there were no stars or moon in the uniformly black sky.
22
AFTER WHAT SEEMED LIKE HOURS OF TROUBLED THOUGHT,
Con drifted into an uneasy sleep. She dreamed of Sara and Pandit. In the dream, Sara wore the dress Con had felt was so shamelessly revealing. She no longer wept. Instead, she was placing strawberries between her teeth and feeding them to Pandit. She turned to smile at Con, red juice running down her chin and on to her breasts. "I told you," said Sara smugly. "You should've stayed on the island." Con woke up thinking her breasts, too, were stained with berry juice. A sweat-soaked tee shirt clung to them instead. As she sat up, she felt the need to relieve herself. Rick and Joe were both snoring, and she tried not to disturb them as she rose and groped for the door.
The darkness was almost absolute. The only light came from a faint orange flickering in the clouds. She stepped on Joe, but he only grunted. She could not see him, but she heard him move as he changed positions. Even more cau-tiously than before, she felt for the door. After several minutes, her hand touched a raised button. She pressed it, and an opening formed in the plane's fuselage. The smell of smoke immediately assaulted Con's nose. It was strong and acrid and caused her eyes to sting. Fortu-nately, Joe had programmed the door to recognize her, so it would close when she left the plane. Con quickly stepped outside. The ground beneath her bare feet felt hot and baked. Rick said it would cool off, she thought. She wondered when that would be. The smoke explained the flickering glow in the clouds; it was the reflection of distant fires. The air was as hot as before, perhaps even hotter, but, at least, it was dry. In the privacy of darkness, Con pulled off her shirt. She felt some momentary relief as the perspiration evaporated from her torso. She spread her damp shirt over a fern bush to dry before walking into the brush. The foliage that had been so green and lush when they landed, felt withered and dry now. It crackled beneath her feet. Touch and sound were the dom-inant senses in this shadowed world. Con glanced back to-ward the plane and was alarmed that she could barely make it out. A few more steps and she would have lost sight of it entirely.
When she woke up inside the plane, she thought about going to the river to bathe. Now she realized how dangerous that would be. She could hear the river in the distance and smell its muddy wetness, but it was totally invisible. Bathing risked getting lost. She thought of her first morning on the island and of floating among the ammonites. That blissful, sunlit moment seemed ages ago. It was another world, she reminded herself. That a shallow, mud-choked stream seemed inviting was almost loo ironic to bear. Con squatted among the ferns, feeling like a savage. / bet-
ter get used to this, she told herself. She knew it was but the first, and probably the least, of many indignities. When she stood up, the hunger cramps that had kept her awake so long returned with redoubled force. Thinking of food, she recalled that people ate fern shoots. Fiddleheads, that's what they're called. She remembered seeing them listed once o
n a restau-rant menu. There, they were served with Hollandaise sauce. Con groped among the fronds, feeling for coiled shapes. Her fingers touched something that felt right, and she tugged it from the plant. It was stiff and dry and had a woolly skin, but she stuffed it in her mouth. It reminded her of a dried-out asparagus. Eagerly, she sought more. She moved from one fern to another, seeking to sate the gnawing emptiness inside. Most of the few fiddleheads she found were too bitter to eat, but she continued foraging. Every once in a while, she glanced anxiously toward the plane to make sure she could still see it.
Her search took her farther and farther afield, for most of the fiddleheads had already uncoiled into fronds. Yet, the plane was still visible because the orange reflection on the clouds had grown brighter. The smoke was thicker also. Con's eyes watered from it. She looked upwind and could see the foothills for the first time. Their tops were silhouetted against a hazy orange glow. A hot, smoky wind began to blow, rustling the dry leaves. The fires were no longer dis-tant.
Con stumbled through the brush to the plane and put on her shirt. It was already dry, but it felt oily against her skin. The opening appeared in the plane as programmed. Con called into it. "Rick! Joe! Fire's headed our way!"
Two bleary, sweat-soaked faces were illuminated in the plane's opening by the orange glow. "Oh crap!" said Joe wearily.
"We'd best start digging," said Rick. His tired voice sounded dispirited. Rick vanished, then emerged from the plane with the three spoons. "Remember what happened to Joe. Let's not push ourselves too hard," he said.