"Intermittent glaciation period,” said Dr. Taleghani, all thoughts of being sick forgotten. “Before the complete advance of the desert. Oh, this is magical!"
"We're going through the seasonal cycles so rapidly,” said Mehmet, “nothing can register except aggregate color. Look closely at one spot, you may be able to catch a glimpse of a tree trunk."
For the space of an eye blink the valleys between the hills were covered with water, then with faint green, replaced by more water, then green. Floods and ice fields that lasted for years passed in instants, each successive flood revealing more and more of the brick-red rocky cliff.
"The escarpment,” said Gordon.
"This is the way to excavate,” said Taleghani, nodding enthusiastically. “None of the evidence is disturbed and we get right down to what we want to see."
Gordon looked at the floodwaters below, the storms and ice averaged with calms into a smeared pale gray blanket from which the red cliff reached toward the flashing skies. As Mehmet slowed the movement back in time, the scene below was one of absolute devastation—almost a moonscape. Suddenly there was a flash that momentarily blinded them. When Gordon's vision cleared, he saw they were above a forested valley cut by a meandering river, a bend of which swung by the base of a tall red cliff. The cliff was much higher and shaped differently than before.
"There's your meteor strike, Doctor,” said Mehmet, tapping with his finger upon a data screen. “Impact fix is automatically logged into your locators. Look toward the south."
Gordon turned. In the distance was a huge mountain—the cone of an inactive volcano, its craggy flanks white and heavy with snow and active glaciers, the exposed rock cliffs appearing hazy blue. It was a massive peak, dominating the landscape.
"Kebira Mountain,” whispered Dr. Taleghani. “Oh, I wish Numair—Dr. Hussein—could see this!"
The flashes in the sky slowed, revealing the vegetable life along the banks of the river. As Gordon looked at the distant mountain, he felt a strange sadness in his chest. The mountain towered above everything, its icy summit glittering in the sunlight. It was the kind of mountain that would be sacred to a people who needed to see their gods. Gordon had seen Mount Taylor, the southernmost of the Four Sacred Mountains called Tsoodzil in Navajo religion. It too was an ancient volcano, its sacred stone the turquoise. Mount Kebira was about the same height above sea level but seemed so much more impressive because the lands surrounding Mount Kebira were only hundreds of feet in elevation instead of thousands. This mountain would be a god to anyone living in its shadow.
Mehmet looked up from his instruments. “I show 194 days from our arrival window until impact. Your original window arrival and departure set appears good, Doctor. A very good guess."
"Excellent, but that's rather more time until impact than I'd thought."
"You'll get in your full three weeks on the ground,” said Mehmet, “and with a good safety margin in case of mishaps.” He pointed at a readout. “There are two additional useable return windows from near here, Doctor. The next opens forty-six days after the first. The return there is a place close to the west coast of Mexico called Ahome. Ninety-two days after that a window opens that returns in Tokmak, Ukraine. Not ideal, but useable."
Gordon looked to his right, toward the base of the cliff along the riverbank. Dr. Taleghani had been right in his interpretation of the AHDI survey images. It was a village, most of the dwellings round. Some appeared to be made of sod, others of wattle and daub, a few large tents made of painted leather. The houses had single entrances facing east and thatched conical roofs with smoke holes in their centers, making the homes resemble traditional Navajo hogans. Some of the round shelters had larger round shelters attached to them. Two of the round structures, located toward the center of the village, were much larger than the others. Gordon could easily count more than two hundred houses, with more hidden by folds in the forested hills. More square wooden and mud structures, skin shelters, and lean-tos. Away from the village, tucked away in draws and along the river shore, he could see the glint of an occasional fire. It was bloody London, as Dr. Taleghani had said. Several thousand persons living in close proximity spoke of agriculture, trade, numbers, writing, community social organization, clans, law, common defense, perhaps even a larger organization—a nation. And all this before any of it was supposed to exist. Of course, all this was wiped out, hidden beneath an ocean of mud before anything these villagers were, did, or imagined could contribute to the future.
"What are you thinking right now, I wonder,” said Dr. Taleghani. Gordon turned and the archeologist was feasting his eyes upon the village he had theorized and had now proven to exist. “When you see that, Gordon, how advanced they are, what does it make you wonder?"
"I was wondering how many times over the millennia have humans used intellect, effort, and industry to reach up from barbarism and want, only to be knocked back down by chance circumstance."
"Fascinating evolutionary question. If we could ease the regulations on timespanning, we could find out. Theoretically, we could trace your family tree on back to the bacteria in the primordial sea."
"Or to Adam and Eve, or First Man and First Woman from the Black World, or Unkulunkulu's creations, or Ymir's children, or visitors from another solar system stranded on Earth,” said Gordon.
"Which is it, I wonder."
"Not enough persons wonder,” Mehmet chimed in.
Taleghani looked at Gordon. “Give us your take on the future, Mr. Redcliff."
Gordon smiled and shook his head. “Doctor, I don't believe a desire for truth will ever overcome the investment so many have in what they hope is true."
"Perhaps our little expedition will aid in lessening that investment.” Dr. Taleghani rubbed his hands together. “Look at all this. I'm jumping with excitement. Is this what it's like for a Christian child Christmas morning?"
"I wouldn't know,” answered Gordon as he looked at the instruments on Mehmet's hull panel. Using the common calendar, it was one hundred and thirty-nine thousand years and change BCE. The image of the red cliff fuzzed into a mix of meaningless colors.
"Approaching the window,” warned Mehmet. “Buckle in.” As they secured themselves in the couches, fuchsia and white ribbons of vapor reappeared above them. The vehicle suddenly yawed as though the craft had been shoved by an ancient wind, which made Mehmet's head snap up to look at the instruments on the hull panel. Then the hull was slammed by a force that made it scream as it cracked. Before anyone could utter even a cry, sudden coldness flowed over them. As he lost consciousness, the film of tears on his eyes freezing, Gordon thought that this must be what it feels like to be dipped in liquid nitrogen.
* * * *
Pain like inflatable devils trapped inside Gordon's eyes attempting to eat their way to freedom, then deeper pain as something gnawed at his guts. He was the giant, Coyote deep inside him, cutting off pieces of his guts to feed the starving people trapped there. Coyote asked where the giant's heart was and someone pointed at the volcano rumbling and smoking in the distance. Coyote took his knife and cut a great hole in the giant's heart, the lava flowing from the wound.
As the giant died, Coyote led the people to freedom....
* * * *
There was the smell of wood smoke, herbs, and cedar. Sounds of movement came to him, a soft musical voice whispering something between a song and a prayer. There was a gentle hand on the back of his neck, a taste of warming broth, a glimpse of tear-filled eyes, then he returned to the universe of soft whirling darkness, yellow eyes watching him from the deep shadows, two silver figures shimmering then vanishing in the light of the fire, his life force wasting away as the witch people sang the Hard Flint Song.
He was facing north, the direction of evil, and all was coming to an end. Something had gone wrong, he was dying, and the witches had come to pull him into the maze. He reached out his hands to the old man and the young man—Hosteen Ahiga and Phil Andreakos. But they were both as dust caught by
a witch's wind. Two others, though, were waiting there for him. One had eyes, the other a mouth. The mouth called his name.
* * * *
He felt himself edging from darkness into twilight—the smell again of wood smoke. The air moved and an icy breath touched Gordon's right cheek. The pain in his head soared almost beyond feeling. He allowed the pain to push the dream images from his mind's eye. Gordon tried to move, but he was too weak. More smoke as the gentle wind shifted. Oakwood and cedar burning. He closed his eyes and inhaled. Pleasant odor. The smell of the pueblo away from the village, back in the hills. And Hosteen Ahiga. A scent of winter. Iron Eyes always smelled of wood smoke in the winter.
"God'n? God'n?"
A voice.
He thought about opening his eyes. The thought itself hurt, so he stopped doing that. The right side of Gordon's head felt as though it had stopped a freight train. The air was cold on his face, though, snowflakes touching his brow, cooling it. He felt a flake on his nose and tasted one on his tongue. He opened his eyes to tiny slits, a blur of images spinning to his right. He forced his eyes to focus on one thing—a vertical stick—until the remainder of visible reality settled down.
Vertical stick. Its upper end forked. End of a cross pole in it. Support for the lean-to in which he found himself. Firelight reflected from the pole's surface. Dark beyond the pole: Snow, trees, and shadows. It was night. Snowing lightly, the flakes small and dry.
He turned his head gently to his left, the pain in his head making him lightheaded. When he could risk opening his eyes once more, Gordon saw in the swim of images that he was in a lean-to thatched with cedar boughs. Looking to his right he saw that the open side of the shelter faced a fire in a ring of stones. The biggest of the stones, a gray plate the size of a car wheel, was on the far side, reflecting the heat into the lean-to, a pair of ghostly images beyond the rock plate dissolving in the light. The ground outside was white with a thin coating of snow. He could feel he was on a warm pelt-covered bed of more cedar boughs, their fragrance mixing pleasantly with the smell of wood smoke. Gordon was covered with a blanket of fur and also by a very warm human body. He risked glancing down.
"God'n? Mina ah tu?"
He forced his eyes to focus. There was the face of a young woman among the fur covers looking up at him. Middle twenties, maybe. Her complexion was a tannish-sandy caramel, quite fair, her hair straight, pinkish brown in the firelight, and braided with little white dried flowers. Her face was roundish, her dark, almost Asian eyes separated by a very Roman-looking nose. “Squanto?” he asked in a rough whisper.
She looked surprised, grinned, placed her hand against the fur of her coat, and said, “Nom. Nomat. Pela. Peh-la.” She placed her hand on Gordon's breast and said, “God'n.” Returning the hand to her own breast she repeated, “Pela."
"Pela,” he repeated. Gordon studied her face and it seemed like it was in the wrong time. Pela was no stooped-over, heavy-browed, shaggy-haired Neanderthal. But, then again, her people had all been wiped out without leaving a discoverable petroglyph or tooth by which to remember them. A good question for the archeologist.
He gingerly raised his head and tried to look around. The woman took his chin in a firm but gentle hand and drew his gaze back to her face. She was shaking her head, sadness in her eyes. “Tallygan, Mimmit,” she said as she held up two fingers, shook her head, then placed the palm of her left hand against her left cheek, closed her eyes, and tilted her head over on her left side. With two fingers of her other hand she pinched her nose shut. It didn't look to Gordon as though the two Egyptians had made it.
With a great effort he propped himself up on his elbows and gestured with his head in one and then another direction, regretting both movements.
"Eta?” she said.
Where. Gordon nodded. “Eta."
Pela pointed toward the foot of the shelter. Limb by limb, Gordon struggled from beneath the furs, stood, and steadied himself by holding onto the trunk of a sapling as a wave of faintness and nausea hit and passed. Opening his eyes once again, he looked into the darkness. Pela was standing beside him wearing a suit of furs. He had only a moment to admire the furs when the cold suddenly cut through his light desert clothing like a thousand razors and began running his headache into the red zone. He sagged, wrapped his arms around his shoulders, and peered into the dark. From where he stood he could see two crude graves that had been scraped into the soil, the dirt and stones heaped upon the bodies, a dusting of new snow on the fresh dirt. “Hell,” he whispered to himself as sadness filled his heart. The archeologist and his former student had paid a steep price for Coyote's lesson.
He squatted and pressed his thumb and index finger against his eyes. By the time he took his hand away, a small part of the pain and dizziness had subsided. He looked at the graves once again, then noticed beyond them a strange shape reflected dully in the firelight. A few meters past the graves, jammed at a crazy angle between the shredded trunks of three cedars, was the hull of the timespan capsule, the side facing him crumbled like a sand sculpture too long past the sculpting. The hole in the hull made an opening larger than the hatch door that was now so much dust lost in the falling snow. As he watched, another piece of the hull dropped from its place to the dust beneath.
He had only begun to wonder what they must be thinking at the empty gantry at Site Safar when the world starting spinning again. The invisible electric ice pick slammed into his right eye and he clutched at his head. There was a tug at his arm. “God'n?"
"Pela.” He waited until the pain in his eye eased, stood, then turned and looked down at the woman. The top of her head came up to the middle of his chest, and she had a white fur cap on her head that would've been the envy of any fashion model in Paris or New York. She handed him a white fur robe that had a hole cut in it for his head. Pela held it up for him to put on, which he did. His shoulders and upper torso immediately began to warm. She indicated with her hands and the hat on her own head that she was making a hat for Gordon from the circle she had cut from the fur he was wearing and from some other pieces. Very special hat.
He nodded toward the graves. “Taleghani, Mehmet,” he said. Squatting down he drew a disk in the snow and a crown of flames around it and pointed up in the sky.
"Ekav,” she named the sun. With his finger Gordon traced a path across the sky from one horizon to another, perpendicular to the lay of the bodies in the graves.
"Nom,” she answered, tracing the path of the sun from one end of the graves to the opposite horizon. It took very little time after that to determine in which direction the doctor and his student's heads were pointed. They both pointed east. Suddenly he felt very tired and remarkably silly. What did it matter in what direction a corpse was buried in this time? Mecca wasn't even a settlement yet, Abraham's deal with his god still a hundred and thirty-five millennia in the future. The ancient Babylonian gods Abraham rejected to follow his god weren't even theories. Neither was Babylon. Still, the east was sacred. The rising sun does that to those who want to move in tune with the universe.
Pela tugged on his arm to coax him back to the lean-to. He showed her with his hands he would remain for a time and she should leave him be. She nodded and returned to the fire. Gordon saw a log on its side, went over, brushed the thin layer of snow from its top, and sat on it heavily, facing the graves. When he was certain he wouldn't pass out, he pulled the fur up around his neck and ears.
He had known the archeologist and the Timespan pilot only a few hours. “Didn't take me long to get caught up in the doctor's vision, though,” muttered Gordon. He lifted his right hand and touched his right temple. There was a large scabbed-over cut there that extended up into his hairline. After touching the wound, he sniffed at his fingers. They smelled like pine sap. Pela had treated it with something. Gordon lowered his hand to his knee.
"So, Doc,” he whispered to Taleghani's grave, “what's Plan B? Hang in here and hope Harith and Mehmet's old man can organize a rescue?"
How
long to arrange for another timespanner, he wondered. How long to get permission for a rescue? There was a return window in twenty-six days, but when would be the next arrival window? Before the end of the twenty-some days. And the next? It could be in fifty days or five months. Meanwhile what?
Strange sounds in the night answered his questions—something between a moan and a whisper. He wasn't sure he hadn't made the sounds himself. And meanwhile? He smiled as he imagined the archeologist standing before him. “Meanwhile,” he whispered, “don't do anything permanent.” Do nothing that might be projected into the future. Watch out for those grains of sand.
He studied Taleghani's grave, attempting to focus on it through a brief pass of ripples like heat waves above a blistering hot road. “So, Doc, Plan B is to sit around waiting for a ride or until Mount Kebira blows up all over me."
Gordon slowly stood, fighting waves of dizziness, then turned and looked through the trees across the river to the village. He could see only the white cones of thatched roofs dusted with snow. Deep in the trees to his right were the whispers of moving paws. He glanced in that direction, his heart quickening. He smiled at the reflection of yellow eyes looking back at him. “You've taken me down a path this time, Coyote,” he said. “The lesson, though, is still a little unclear."
Reality began to pitch and yaw with his weakness and he turned and stumbled back to the lean-to. Once there he gingerly climbed beneath the covers next to Pela, fully dressed in her furs. After a moment he began exploring his own body with his fingers, looking for injuries. Legs, neck, head, and back sore. Nothing broken. Nothing cut but his head, which seemed to have borne the brunt of his trauma.
His watch and silver belt buckle were missing. No, there was a bit of the buckle left in the hand-tooled leather where it had been attached to the belt. Half of the prong had been left dangling in a hole in the belt's tongue. He picked it out and looked at it. The silver surface was dull, resembling a cold solder joint. Holding it between two fingers, he squeezed gently. The piece of silver instantly transformed into powder. That was what must have happened to his watch, he realized, and to the capsule. He called to mind the sensation of the capsule moving that had alarmed Mehmet so. One of the dimensions they'd nudged into on the way to Pela's village must have nudged back.
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