Irin’s thoughts drifted back to Pret. Wil hadn’t said anything upon his arrival, so it could have been the usual lunacy. But Wil was also known for avoiding discussion of subjects that frightened him. The caves. Pret had brought up the caves where other workers extract the teepin and teegrin used to make solid. It was where Irin’s brother, Tilleten, had died when Irin was still new.
Wil had dreamt it several nights prior but had said nothing, opting instead to act strange and stare inexplicably at Irin’s brother whenever he was around them. When Tilliten finally pressed him, Wil said that he was afraid Tilliten would be “hurt… surrounded by solid.”
No one listened. They assumed he was mimicking his father’s routine of declaring foreboding prophecies. But Irin knew that Wil was different, that if he ever found the courage to actually mention something, it was because it was real. What Irin didn’t know was whether the next night could be changed if you knew what was to occur. It certainly didn’t change anything for Tilliten. The cave collapsed on him and he died, surrounded by solid.
Irin switched arms again and watched the liquid seep from Wil’s end. He looked back at the vat of solid to be sure the other end remained submerged. The vat was almost half empty, but the tube was sinking with it. Irin continued.
A while later they had one full layer completed. The door had formed perfectly over its protruding mold, but the window was only half complete. As usual, its underside would need its own pouring and smoothing to complete the shape, and to join the bottom of the main structure into a single dome.
Irin futilely wiped his head with his k’yot sleeve. Beneath it his skin felt irritated and more sweaty than usual. He thought that clothes under a k’yot would likely help with this. He walked to the edge of the hardening dome and looked down at the border trench. The dirt men had dug it deeper than usual, likely a new rule after the overturned house incident. A screamer should not be allowed to raise an entire house, Irin thought.
“It looks good,” Wil observed. “Let me work on your arms.”
Irin unfastened the holdstrip from his k’yot middle and let the heavy jacket fall from his shoulders. He kept it on his lap so as not to get muddy from mixing sweat and dirt. Wil stepped behind him and began massaging Irin’s swollen arms.
“I spoke with Pret earlier,” Irin said.
Wil snorted, “I hope it wasn’t too long…”
“He told me of a dream he had. You know what I speak of?”
Wil was quiet.
“He spoke of a ypritl. He says there is a giant one that will one day destroy the valley.”
“I had the same dream,” Wil admitted. “He thinks it real because we both had the dream. You know he grows crazier every night.”
“He did mention you growing taller than the valley, or something of the sort…”
“Yes, and I protect the valley from screamers the size of the moon. You understand my reservations believing this new dream.” Wil switched to Irin’s other arm.
“He said you came to him about it first.”
More silence.
“Wil?”
Wil moved away from Irin, “It can’t be real, Irin. It’s… it’s devastation. Complete. Nothing left.”
“And if it’s real?”
“If it’s real we all die. No new are ever born. Since the last outside tribe joined us, it would mean the end to all people. If it’s real, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“We could leave the valley,” Irin said.
“There would be no time.”
Irin stood up. “What do you mean? When does it come?”
Wil looked at him with despair.
“Speak!”
“If it is real… single half batch full batch. During daylight.”
Irin had thought the prediction to be far in the future, that he would have the opportunity to work on the oldest men: discuss new expeditions to seek potential locations for a second city, assemble the smartest and bravest, to plan! Panic burned through his head. Sixty-nine nights before absolute destruction.
“Irin, please. It was just a dream. If you tell others, they will either mock me like my father, or be frightened, and with nothing they can do about it. Let us pretend we never discussed it.”
“We have to go.” Irin said as he paced. “Everyone has to leave the valley.”
“And go where? We can’t take houses with us! Beyond the valley, it is only screamers! Others have tried to explore further. Everyone learns as they grow from new to old, Irin… Pwin-T is safety, but Pwin-T is prison.”
16
“BAFFLING… ALL OF IT…” TUNI said with a look of wonder.
“What?” Dr. Rheese said from the kitchen area as he took the teabag from his cup. “You didn’t grasp all the fascinating details? Beakwings, screechers, and kwottletwigs? It all seems quite straightforward to me.” He smiled and tasted his tea.
Pete dropped his pencil along with his till now unfailing diplomatic manner. He turned to Rheese. “Doctor, I’m not exactly sure about the point of your constant sarcasm and belittling remarks. This is your discovery, and the investigation into its origin should be your highest priority, I would think.”
“Absolutely,” Rheese replied. “I suppose I’m just not all that excited about the color of the rocks on the ground or the gummed rantings of some supposedly long-dead old man. The point of this Matthew’s visit to our humble dig site, as I understood it, was to verify the age of the artifact. I do not think we are any closer to that goal than we were before his arrival. Hell, it could be another ‘triple-batch-half-batch’ before we get anything useful out of this.”
“It won’t be that long, Doctor,” Matt replied.
“You anticipate something of magnitude in your next viewings, do you?”
“I anticipate not being here. Dick.”
“I think we all need to get some sleep,” Pete cut in. “I’ve got good notes on all of this evening’s new information, and it’s nearly midnight. I’m planning to wake Matt at the crack of dawn. Anyone else who wants to sit in, get yourselves together early, ’cause I’m not playing alarm clock for anyone else.”
Rheese returned the artifact to its plastic case and locked it in the safe.
“Generator off, ten minutes,” Enzi announced, and left the motor home.
Tuni fetched her toiletry bag from her suitcase and returned to wash her face in the RV’s sink. As she entered, she saw Matt and Peter standing in the back. Matt had a pillowcase over his head, tied around the neck with a string.
“Tell me honestly,” he asked Peter. “Does this look stupid?”
“It’s good to know you have a sense of humor about your situation,” Peter replied as he shucked off his pants.
“Beg pardon, gents!” Tuni blurted as she averted her eyes.
“Afraid this is fieldwork, Miss Saint James,” Pete declared. “We have to get used to the close quarters.”
“Are you saying I should feel free to change into my nightdress right here?” she asked in a coquettish voice.
Matt stood still and listened; the pillowcase remained on.
“Absolutely. There’s no gender discrimination out here,” Peter assured her.
She sighed. “Very well…”
Matt jumped into action, fumbling with the shoelace around his neck and ripping the pillowcase off his face. Pete and Tuni burst into laughter.
“Sorry, Matthew,” she said. “I’m just washing my face and returning to my tent to get some privacy from you dirty-minded men.”
Dr. Rheese poked his head out from the high bunk beside Tuni and said with singsong pleasantness, “Would you all mind shutting your gobs and turning off the bloody lights? Thank you.”
Tuni shuddered at the unwanted glimpse of gray-haired chest. Hurriedly drying her face, she turned for the door. “Ta-ta, all.”
She spotted Enzi standing by the big, rubber-wheeled generator.
“Are they done in there, Miss Tuni?” he asked.
“I believ
e so, yes.”
Enzi turned a knob and flipped a few switches. The rumbling engine went silent, and the light tower quickly dimmed. A moment later they met halfway between her tent and the equipment trailer.
“So, Enzi, how do I know an elephant isn’t going to come rampaging out of the woods and trounce my tent with me in it?”
“No elephants ’round here, miss. That one not belonging, for sure.”
“Thanks, I’ll take your word for it.… So what do you think of all this? The artifact and the people Matt tells us about?”
Enzi raised his eyebrows and shook his head slowly, an expression of overwhelm on his face.
“It is too much, you know,” he said. “Like he going to another world and leave his shell on the seat in there. He is like wizard—and he read my mind, too. I hope he will tell me my future before you both go away.”
Tuni chuckled. “I don’t think he can see in that particular direction.” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder and whistled. “Backwards only.”
Enzi frowned, deep in thought, and nodded.
“So where do you sleep?” she asked.
“Right over there in the trailer. I keep ramp down and shotgun close by. You safe out here, okay?”
“Thank you, Enzi. I do feel safe with you watching over us all. Night!”
She unzipped her tent and entered as Enzi unrolled his sleeping bag on the metal trailer floor and rolled up a shirt to use as a pillow. He reached up and touched the shotgun on the rack to be sure it was still there. Enzi wondered if Matthew would really leave tomorrow night. And if not, what would the professor do to get rid of them all? Enzi knew that Rheese wished to resume their search for diamonds, and Enzi wanted it, too. But the magic he had witnessed in the motor home—it meant something.
Tuni stared up at the roof of Peter Sharma’s tent. Outside, the chirping of crickets and the plaintive call of a nightjar were the only sounds. She hoped Mr. Pups was well fed. He was surely sleeping on her pillow every day despite the stern warning she had given him as she left.
She felt for Matthew—this would be a difficult night. His motivations around the artifact had changed admirably, but he remained adamant about departing tomorrow. If he did, wonderful—she would join him with pleasure. If he decided to stay, though, what would she do? It wasn’t just her cat that beckoned her home, but the cleanliness of her apartment and the warm comfort of her bed.
She was proud of herself for keeping up a tough-woman image before the group, shrugging off the bugs, the dirt, the heat, and the residual stench of death, when it all bothered her enormously. She had listened in wonder to Matthew retelling his experiences. She could see it all in her head and had hung on his every word. Matthew clearly was beginning to care about these long-dead people, just as she did. As her eyes watched a flying beetle of some sort bounce up and down on the roof of the tent, she wondered whether there could be a happy ending to their tale.
Was that Matthew’s real apprehension? The people were clearly all dead and had been so for ages. Was that what it was? Was it that he didn’t relish reaching the story’s inevitable end—which could only be Irin’s death, however it might come about? Perhaps it was as Matthew had mentioned on the jet: he didn’t like feeling forced to use his ability—likely the legacy of his father’s selfish, ill-considered decisions.
Tuni turned on her side and closed her eyes. She chose to hope that Matthew might decide to stay for one more night, and then she settled down to sleep.
Peter tried to lie still in the queen-size bed. Staring at the cloth-covered wall just inches from his face, he hoped Matt would be able to sleep. Pete had asked him if he wanted the wall side or the open side, and Matt called open. Though they faced away from each other, giving the other as much space as possible, Peter could feel the presence of another person in the bed. Surely Matt had the same sense of him, though multiplied by ten.
He remained disappointed that Matt would be leaving tomorrow, but he understood—Matt was, after all, an unwilling participant in all this. People were depending on him to experience things that made him uncomfortable, and under conditions that probably felt anything but safe. Matt had said years ago that he had always had this crazy paranoia—one of many—about someone doing something to his body while he was unconscious. That was why he preferred to do his sessions by himself. And here they all were, hovering over him and staring at his bare hands and expressionless face, when he would prefer not to be doing it at all! So it was just a bad situation from beginning to end.
“You still awake?” Matt whispered from behind him.
“Yeah,” Peter replied softly.
“I think the asteroid thing is real.”
“Oh, yeah?” He liked that Matt was thinking about it in bed and not just fantasizing about escape.
“Yeah. There is no question in Irin’s mind. Do you?”
“If you do, then I do. You were there. I just hope we have enough time with you to find out.”
Matt lay silent and never replied.
The pillowcase over his head irritated his nose, so Matt pulled it forward to make a small pocket of air between his face and the cloth. He had tucked his sweatpants into his long tube socks, and Pete had helped him tie the gloves to his wrists, with the shirtsleeves tucked tightly into them.
As he lay thinking about Irin and his constant intense emotions, he wondered how long the impressions would go on. It was apparent that the ever-present concerns of living in this village ensured a never-ending flow of thoughts and feelings. All were well imprinted into the artifact. When did it end?
If it were Matt’s choice, he would take the piece of k’yot with him and read it from the reclined seat of the private jet on his way home. Well, maybe not—eighteen hours in that world would be a little much. He recalled experiencing much worse for much longer, then immediately chided himself for going there and tried his best to shut it out of his head. But her sobbing, dirty face and streaming tears wouldn’t leave his thoughts. His breath trembled, and he hoped Peter wouldn’t hear or feel it. He could hear her… Think of something else, anything else! Think of the silver coins somewhere in the Atlantic!
There they are: a typical pirate story treasure chest, sitting in white sand, deep under the ocean. A happy little crab scuttles by, and my hand reaches out to open it. Bubbles rise from it, of course, and inside… oh, so shiny. Are those pearls, rubies, and emeralds in there, too? Delightful. Oh, my, and diamonds? But, I couldn’t… Okay, if you insist, my little crab friend. Diamonds. Enzi was thinking about diamonds. Why was Enzi thinking about diamonds when the elephant was trampling into the site? Who knows? Back to my fabulous treasure…
Rheese, snoring in his small bunk, dreamed of a screeching monster with an ostrich bottom half and Velociraptor neck and head, chasing him along the banks of the River Thames and snapping at his ankles. He tripped over a bench and fell into a garbage bin of rotting meat, whereupon the monster began devouring his protruding legs.
Peter’s wristwatch beeped three times before he pinched the button to silence it. It was six thirty a.m..
Through the miniblinds of the RV’s narrow rear window he could see that the eastern sky was brightening, though the sun had not yet crested the tree-lined horizon. He sat up in the bed, tilting his head so as not to bump it on the ceiling. Matt still had his back to him and was in the same position he had gone to sleep in. Peter reached over to Matt’s shoulder and touched it.
“I’m awake,” Matt said in a normal voice.
“Oh, good—my watch?”
“No,” Matt replied as he slid out of bed. “I didn’t really sleep.”
“Oh, no way! Sorry about that. Was I snoring or anything?”
Matt tugged the bow knot, releasing the shoestring tied around his neck, then removed the pillowcase from his head.
“Nope. I guess I just had a lot on my mind. So, straight to work?”
Peter looked at Matt’s droopy eyes. “I think we have time to get some instant coffee i
n you.”
“I don’t drink it—gets me too wired. Bad memories. No worries—let’s just do this.”
Peter slid down and grabbed his bag from the corner as Matt ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head.
“How about a little breakfast?” Peter asked as he pulled out a fresh pair of jeans. I’m starving.”
Matt pulled a knit cap down over his ears before violently rubbing his face.
“Yeah, that’ll work. Tumtum’s a rumblin’, as my mom used to say.”
They pulled on jackets and passed Dr. Rheese, snoring away. Outside, they poked through field cases of nonperishables under the food tent and decided on a breakfast of tortillas, honey-roasted peanuts, and raisins.
“Any coffee to be had around here?” Tuni asked, poking her head out of her tent.
“At your service, milady,” said Pete. And firing up the propane stove in the cook tent, he put on a pot of water. From across the site, they heard the sound of the generator motor turning over and then putt-putting to a stop. Enzi stood beside it, yanking a pull cord. It started on the third try, and the familiar background rumble returned to the clearing.
As he joined them at the food tent, Pete said, “Hope we didn’t wake you, Enzi. Coffee?”
“No, sah. And yes, please, for the coffee.” He turned to Tuni. “You sahvived?”
She smiled at him, “I did. Thank you.”
In a few minutes, the sun blazed through the treeline. Looking at Matt, Peter cocked an eyebrow.
“Let’s do it,” Matt said, grabbing one last tortilla to devour on the way to the RV.
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