The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF

by Mike Ashley

  “Els has told me she is a ‘hunt boy’, even though she’s a girl,” I explained. “Apparently boys began their apprenticeships as hunters by being decoys who lure dangerous game back to the tribe’s ambush.”

  “That makes sense,” said Tormes. “There were several children in the tribe, but the only teenagers were girls.”

  “Like in all societies, women could become honorary males in times of sufficient need,” added Marella.

  From the speakers I could now hear the sound of an engine. The tribe suddenly grew fearful and huddled together. The engine stopped.

  “The police?” asked Marella’s voice. “Already?”

  “No, they were sending a military helicopter,” explained Tormes. “Wait a minute! Someone might have called Ramoz to double check if he knows about those fools.”

  There was a distant gunshot. The camera swept giddily up to the top of a ridge, where a figure was waving a gun and shouting.

  “Ramoz,” said Tormes.

  The farmer worked the pump action of his shotgun then fired into the air again. The camera swept back down to the carcase, but there was now nobody visible. Marella tracked Ramoz as he came running down, his shotgun held high. He reached the kill site, dropped his gun, waved his hands at the carcase, then at the fire, then at the sky. Finally he fell to his knees, clutching at his hair.

  “He looks upset,” commented Marella.

  “I hope those idiots stay hidden,” said Tormes’s voice quietly.

  “Real risk of a homicide here,” agreed Marella. “Stay low. If he spots us he might think we were involved.”

  “If he kills someone we certainly will be involved. I can see the headlines now: MINISTER’S WIFE AND LOVER WITNESS MURDER. Stay silent. I’m calling the police again.” There were more cellphone tones. “Cadiz, Tormes again. We have a dangerous situation. The farmer has arrived, armed with a shotgun. Yes, he’s really distraught. No, he’s hugging the head of the dead bull. The hunters have fled, but—”

  At the edge of the screen the decoy girl stood up and waved her arms. She was again naked. Ramoz snatched up his gun and shouted something incoherent. The girl presented her buttocks to him. This was too much for the farmer. He levelled the gun and fired. The girl went down.

  “Cadiz, we have a fatality!” Tormes cried.

  Ramoz ran through the grass to where to girl had fallen. Suddenly spear-wielding hunters boiled out of their cover and lunged at him. The shotgun boomed one more time, then there were screams. The men stood over the fallen Ramoz, and their spears seemed to rise and fall for a very long time. The women and children arrived and gathered around the girl’s body, wailing.

  “Cadiz, we have two down now, both presumed dead.”

  Now there was the sound of another engine and the whirr of rotor blades, just as Ramoz’s head was lifted high on a spear point. The field of the camera suddenly gyrated crazily.

  “Cadiz, tell the pilot to home on the plume of smoke from the campfire,” Tormes called above the sound of Marella retching. “No, that’s just the sound of my assistant being sick.”

  Marella had dropped the camera, and the screen just showed out-of-focus grass. The video was stopped, and my uncle stood up.

  “Nothing more of interest was recorded by Marella’s camera,” he explained. “The helicopter landed, and the crew found the mutilated body of Ramoz lying beside a naked girl. Luckily for her, the shot missed, but she hit her head on a rock as she stumbled and was knocked unconscious. There was no sign of the tribesmen who killed Ramoz.”

  “I left the field at once, and drove back to Cadiz unseen,” said Marella. “The trouble is that dozens of people have now heard replays of the phone call where you can hear me vomiting and José talking about his assistant.”

  “I was taken out on the helicopter,” said Tormes. “Carlos, we can say that you panicked about being left alone with the killers still loose, so you fled the scene.”

  “Two guards were left there, but they were wearing camo gear and were not easy to see,” said Marella.

  “It is a lie, but no harm is being done,” said Uncle Arturo.

  I nodded, but said nothing. In a year or two he would suddenly be given some very significant promotion. It was the way of the world.

  “Everything that the Rhuun used or wore during the videotape we have just seen was just dumped,” said Tormes. “They stripped naked and fled.”

  “Presumably wearing jeans and T-shirts,” said my uncle.

  He started the tape again, and a scatter of stone axes, spears, scrapers, and pelt cloaks appeared on the screen, marked off by police cones and crime-scene tape. The scene switched to an archaeological dig, showing a very similar scatter of stone tools.

  “This has happened before, here,” concluded Tormes.

  “What has?” I asked.

  “I am open to suggestions,” said Tormes.

  The video ended with footage of Els waking up in the clinic, and of three burly orderlies having a great deal of trouble restraining her. The heidelbergensian girl was at least twice as strong as a modern man. She could win an Olympic medal for weightlifting, I thought, but would she be banned for not being human enough? The others now left, and I sat watching replays of the extraordinary video to fix the story in my mind. As my uncle had said, it was a lie without victims. I made a necklace of paperclips as I watched. Presently Marella came back.

  “I have come for the tape,” she announced. “Seen enough?”

  “I have a good memory,” I replied. “It’s in the job description for a linguist.”

  She folded her arms beneath her breasts and strutted around the table, looking down at me haughtily. I knew what she was going to say.

  “I should have had the credit for that video,” she said.

  “That credit comes with a very high price tag,” I replied.

  “True, but I have lived in my husband’s shadow for too long. Being part of this discovery will bring me fame, and I will be part of it. The story will be that I came to the clinic with a headache, saw Els being restrained, and was told by staff that she was just a badly deformed girl. I noticed that she had a very strange language, so I contacted some experts at a university.”

  “Better than nothing,” I said.

  Suddenly Marella sat on my lap, put her hands behind my head and stared at me intently. There was neither affection nor lust in her expression, but in mine there was probably alarm. She jammed her lips against mine, then pushed her tongue between my teeth. After some moments she pointedly bit my lip, then stood up and walked back around the table again, her arms again folded.

  “I can do anything to you, Carlos, remember that.”

  Els was strong, Marella was powerful. I had not taken Marella sufficiently seriously, but, like Els, I had never met anyone like her. She removed the cassette from the video player.

  “Try to cross me, try to rob me of my role in this discovery and I shall produce this, the original tape, sound and all. Remember that.”

  She left. Like Samson, she was both powerful and vindictive enough to destroy everyone concerned with Els, including herself. Power is a product of our civilization, but one can have it without strength. Suddenly I felt a lot closer to Els.

  I got no sleep that night, which was taken up with learning my role as Tormes’s supposed volunteer, and learning my lines. A press release about Els had been prepared and distributed by Marella, who was very good at publicity and knew all the right contacts. Just before dawn I looked through a clinic window, and was immediately caught by the beams of half a dozen spotlights. Security guards and police were already holding a line on the clinic’s lawns. Tormes came up behind me.

  “There is to be a press conference on the lawns,” he said. “The Cadiz authorities want a share of Els before she is taken away.”

  “Professor, the very idea of a press conference is a quarter million years in her future!” I exclaimed. “What do they expect?”

  “You can translate.”

/>   “No I can’t. I can barely communicate—”

  “Well try! Els is a star. Already we’re getting offers for movie contracts and marketing deals.”

  “Marketing? For what? Stone axes? Or maybe hide cloaks?”

  “Carlos, use your imagination: She came a quarter of a million years for Moon Mist fragrances has been suggested—”

  “Tell me you’re joking!” I cried. “I can’t permit this.”

  “You have no choice. You signed a sworn statement that you were my volunteer assistant, and that you shot the video of Els’s tribe killing Ramoz and his bull. Now get her ready to be a media star.”

  “How?” I demanded. “She could – she will – get violent.”

  “So? Good television.”

  A pinpoint of hate blazed up within me. He was powerful, but he had no strength. He could hurt Els, and I was her only defence. I could hear the distant crowd like the rumble of an approaching thunderstorm as I stepped back into the walled garden. Els called to me, then ran up and took my hands. She pressed them firmly against her breasts. I managed a smile. This was a obviously a bonding gesture, meant to remind me of the pleasures of staying with her. She was strong, yet powerless . . . and had neither strength nor power. I presented my necklace of paperclips to her, but was not surprised that she was more perplexed than delighted. She had no concept of ornamentation at all. Her hairpin feathers were functional; they merely kept hair out of the way during the hunt. I put the necklace around her neck. She scratched her head.

  “Har ese,” I said, lacking any words for lucky or charm. Good hunt. To my surprise Els suddenly smiled broadly.

  “Di,” she replied, then added “Carr iyk har.”

  A couple more questions revealed that although har meant “good” and ese meant “fight or hunt”, when said together and quickly they meant “luck in hunting or fighting”. So, the Rhuun had a concept of good and bad fortune, yet there were many other things for which Els had no words. Metal, wheel, god and press conference were all unknown concepts for her. I heard the approach of the helicopter that was to whisk us away to Madrid. There was certainly no heidelbergensian word for that. The sound made Els fearful, but I held her hand.

  “Els, Carr rak,” I explained. Els and Carr are going to flee. She immediately brightened at the prospect. “Hos,” I added. Follow and pointed to the door.

  “Thuk ong,” she said fearfully. Death cave. To her the interior of the clinic as a dangerous cave.

  I tried to explain that she was about to see frightening things, but that they would not hurt.

  “Carr lan?” she asked.

  Lan meant both help and protect.

  “Carr lan,” I replied, but I knew that I had a problem.

  In the Middle Pleistocene, anything that was frightening was dangerous too. The idea of fear for a thrill did not exist. The idea of a thrill did not exist, either. To be frightened was to be in mortal danger. In the distance I could hear the sounds of sirens and an increasingly large crowd. Els was like some huge cat, a dangerous predator who was stronger and more of a carnivore than I, but for all that she was curiously vulnerable.

  She followed me into the clinic’s interior, holding my arm tightly and cowering against me. The lights had been dimmed and the corridors cleared. We walked briskly. Someone must have told the waiting crowd to be silent, but we could still hear the helicopter’s engine. Els kept warning me about cave bears. We walked out through the front doors into daylight – and the waiting crowd roared.

  Els panicked and tried to drag me back inside, but the doors had already been closed and locked behind us. Microphone booms, cameras, flashing lights, the helicopter, guards and police with batons, more people than Els had ever seen in her life, even a press helicopter approaching over the rooftops. Els tried to drag me across the lawn. I tried to stop her but she was too strong. Guards broke ranks to block her path and journalists surged through the breach in the line.

  “Carr! Tek orr brii!” she shouted.

  I dodged around in front of her, pulled my hand free from Els and tried to wave the approaching mob back. There was a loud pop and Els ceased to exist. I turned to see her cloak collapsed on the grass, along with her wooden hair pins scattered, an ankle beacon-circlet, and a necklace of paperclips.

  That turned out to be the beginning of a very long day. Garces, Tormes, and Uncle Arturo were near-hysterical, predictably enough. The police already had the area sealed off, but it did them no good. Els had simply been snatched into thin air. Several dozen video cameras had caught the disappearance and although the angles were different, the event remained the same. In one frame Els was there, in the next she was gone and her cloak and hair feathers were falling.

  Of all people directly involved, Marella alone was willingly giving interviews. Aliens had snatched Els away, she declared in triumph. Her abduction had been caught on camera. Aliens had brought her to twenty-first century Spain, then snatched away again. To Marella’s astonishment, her theory was given no more credence than several others. A public survey favoured a secret invisibility weapon being tested by the Americans, followed by a conspiracy by our own government, a divine vision, alien abduction, publicity for a new movie, and a student stunt.

  For the rest of the week forensic teams studied the area in microscopic detail, scientists scanned the area for any trace of radiation, and the lawns became a place of pilgrimage for psychics, religious sects, and UFO experts. I viewed the videos hundreds of times, but there was nothing to learn from it. In one frame Els was in mid-stride; in the next she was gone and her cloak was being blown inwards by air rushing to fill the vacuum where her body had been. Astronomers scoured the skies, observers on the space station scanned near-Earth space on every frequency that their equipment could monitor, and warplanes were almost continuously in the skies over Cadiz, but nothing was found.

  A full two weeks later I was going through the folder of papers and statements that I had been given in those last hours before Els had vanished. There was a copy of the absurd marketing proposal for some perfume that Tormes had told me about. She came a quarter of a million years for Moon Mist fragrances – and then I had it!

  “Carr! Tek orr brii!” she had called to me. Carr. Walk to the full moon.

  The Rhuun could walk through time. Els had been telling me that she was going to walk through time to the next full moon.

  For a long time I barely moved a muscle, but I thought a great deal. There was massive development at the rear of Els’s brain. Why? For control of movement? For control of some subtle fabric in time itself? Step through time and escape your enemies. Escape famine, reach a time of plenty in the future. Why follow herds of wild cattle when you can wait for them to return by travelling through time? They skipped the long glacial epochs, they visited only warmer periods. The worst of the Saale and Weischel glaciations must have been no more than a series of walks through tens of thousands of years for them. If the hunting was bad, they walked a few decades. If there was too much competition from neanderthal or human tribes, they walked to when they have left or died out.

  They visited the Spain of the neanderthals, saw the coming of humans, and saw the neanderthals vanish. That might well have made them wary of humans. Three thousand years ago they might even have seen the Phoenicians build western Europe’s first port city where Cadiz now stands, then watched as the Iberian Peninsula became part of the Roman Empire. With the development of farms came more trusting, placid cattle and sheep, although there were also farmers to guard them. However, all that the Rhuun had to do was walk a century or so into the future whenever farmers appeared with spears, swords and crossbows. Perhaps Ramoz’s shotgun was their first experience of a firearm, so they thought it would not be hard to defend their kill.

  Homo sapiens evolved intelligence and had believed it to be the ultimate evolutionary advantage, but there are others. Mobility, for example. Birds can escape predators and find food by travelling through the third dimension. Homo rhuunis can
do that by travelling into the fourth. Perhaps human brains are not suited to time walking, just as our hands and arms are better at making machines than flapping like wings. Could a time-walking machine be built? Would Els be vivisected by those wanting to find out?

  What to do, how to do it? I felt a curiously strong bond with Els. I had a duty to protect her, and I owed no loyalty to Tormes, Marella or even my uncle. I was already outside the law, yet in a way that gave me a strangely powerful resolve. I had nothing to lose.

  Nineteen days after Els vanished I was ready, waiting in a car beside the clinic’s lawns. A borrowed police car. My uncle was at home, fast asleep thanks to a couple of his own sleeping tablets in his coffee. His uniform was a rather baggy fit, but I had no choice. Every so often I started the engine, keeping it warm. On the lawns, a dozen or so UFO seekers loitered about with video cameras, mingling with the religious pilgrims, souvenir sellers, security guards, and tourists. People always returned after an alien abduction, so the popular wisdom went, and so those who followed Marella’s theory were ready. All but myself were concentrating on the skies, where the full moon was high.

  There was a loud pop, and Els was suddenly standing naked on the lawn. Before the echoes of her arrival had died away I set the car’s lights flashing, then scrambled out and sprinted across the lawn calling, “Els! Els! Carr lan! Carr lan!”

  She turned to me. Everyone else merely turned their cameras on us, not willing to interfere with the police.

  “Els, hos Carr!” I cried as I took her by the arm. She did not want to approach the police car with its flashing lights. “Els, Carr lan!” I shouted, not sure if my intonation meant help or protect. She put a hand over her eyes and let me lead her.

  Els had never been in a car before, and she curled up on the seat with her hands over her face. I pulled away from the clinic, turned a corner, and switched off the flashing lights. Two blocks further on, I transferred us to a hire car, and after twenty minutes we were clear of Puerto Real and in open country. Using Ramoz’s name I had located his farm in the municipal records, and by asking the locals in the area I had confirmed that the Field of Devils was indeed on the dead farmer’s land. It was a fifty-minute drive from the clinic. I had practised the trip several times.