“I think you should let your k’yot middle hang off your arms,” Orin suggested. “The solid is tearing at your skin—let your clothes straps be your cushion.”
“It’s a good idea, thank you,” he replied. “But Nilpen has fallen behind, and I can’t stop and hold up everyone behind us.”
“Here,” she said to him as she put her hand on one of the n’wip poles. “I’ll pull it as best I can while you take your k’yot down.”
The man looked at her strangely, then started to hand her the long poles, when Irin stepped in front of them.
“Here, let me,” he said.
“Oh, Irin… ,” the man said in surprise.
“It is all right, Irin. I can pull it for a moment while he fixes his k’yot,” Orin persisted.
“You are a good woman, Orin, but I would not be a good man if I allowed it. Go ahead, my friend,” Irin said, taking the poles.
Orin looked at him with frustration. “Well,” she added, “I think you’ll need to let all the n’wip men make this adjustment, for the k’yots chafe the skin and will rub their shoulders raw before much longer.”
“A good thought,” Irin said as the other man fumbled with the holdstrip. He had clearly never worn a k’yot before this journey. “How do you feel? Are you in need of food?”
“Yes, I think everyone is, but they will continue until you think it safe.”
“Yes, but they’ll slow,” Irin sighed. “I’m afraid I don’t know what is best: stop and let everyone eat as the daylight draws near, or push on and eat when we arrive.”
“When do we arrive?” Orin asked him.
“I don’t know,” he replied. He glanced at the other man, who now had his k’yot middle down and was poking tentatively at his shoulders and grimacing. Irin felt the way the k’yot threads rubbed against his own shoulders, and realized that it had been a mistake to have them don the protective wear. How many other decisions had been mistakes? There had been so many, he couldn’t think of them all.
“Orin,” he said, “please go quickly down the line and tell every man pulling a n’wip to open his k’yot as he has done.” And moving aside, he let the man back under the n’wip poles.
The man grimaced with pain, but he looked at Irin and sighed. “Much better,” he said.
Irin pulled Orin’s ear close to his mouth and whispered to her, “I think there may be other problems like this. I can’t… will you help me?”
She turned and spoke soothingly into his ear, “You have done well, man of mine, but I’ll go and help with the little things. You have a much larger n’wip on your shoulders.”
He looked at her eyes and believed her words. No one had died or even been injured, they had lost no supplies, and they had come a great distance. But what of Wil’s vision? if Irin should die, would others as well? Wil would have mentioned it, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t want any more details; he wanted it out of his mind. He wished Wil hadn’t told him.
“If your second doesn’t return soon,” Irin said to the n’wip puller, “you must tell someone to find him or find a replacement. Do not wear yourself out, understand?”
“Right, I won’t,” he replied.
Irin continued ahead at double speed and told the other two n’wip pullers at the front to adjust their k’yots as Orin had suggested. He had the seconds change theirs first before relieving the pullers.
A short time later, he had passed all the fighters and was reaching the front, when he saw that the trail split in two. One path curved off sharply to the left, and the other veered slightly right. Irin wondered which way the scouts had gone.
“Which way do you suppose they went,” asked Pwig as they approached the fork.
They heard footfalls, and a scout appeared from around the left bend, jogging toward them. He was pointing with his lightstick toward the right path, waving that the left was no good.
“That path ends after only a few turns,” the scout panted between breaths, “so this is really our only choice.”
“Good work, Iwwi,” Irin told him. “Why don’t you rest for a bit while Owwi and Iwwint catch up to you?”
He raised his chin to Irin and dropped back.
“Do you hear that?” Wil asked as they walked. He turned his head to listen.
Irin heard it: running footfalls. A few seconds later the other two scouts appeared, lightsticks bouncing in the air as they ran over a small ridge where the canyon walls finally dropped away. Shrubs and small trees grew in the hollows, and outcrops of stone like the Gathering Rocks rose here and there.
The scouts arrived, panting, and Irin and Wil gave them water from their bags and let them catch their breath.
“Over… the ridge,” the first scout finally gasped. “The mountains continue, but the stone is rougher and pitted.”
“Yes,” the other agreed, “and small caves everywhere.”
“Little creatures,” the first continued. “Like big crawlers, but bigger and with hair…they run around in the caves and brush—there!” He pointed to the right, and they all spotted a long, sinuous animal with dark hair, scurrying from one bush to the next as they passed.
“They are like crawlers,” Pwig agreed, and he walked toward the shrub.
“Leave it, Pwig,” Irin said. “There may be an all batch of them hiding behind these plants, just waiting to feast on you. That one was the bait, luring you in.”
“I think not,” Pwig replied humorlessly, but he returned nonetheless.
“Tell me more of these caves,” Irin said to the scouts.
“There is a large one some distance up from the ground. It looks like we could climb there, but we didn’t try.”
“Did you look inside any of the smaller ones?” Irin asked as they continued walking.
“I poked my lightstick in one,” said the first scout, “but it ended after only a house-length.”
“And were there many of these smaller caves?”
“They are everywhere, just over this ridge, where it grows rocky again.
“Very well,” said Irin. “Thank you. Take a rest and rejoin the line before the fighters at the rear.”
Irin had an idea about these small caves. Perhaps he could divide the company into smaller groups, perhaps two houses together, and put them in different caves with two fighters guarding each. If an attack came, they would all be separated, and the losses would be minimal. He would tell all fighters to go to the cave where the attack was happening and combat the killers there; the other caves would be safe. But then, they might attack more than one cave at once, he thought. He had enough men ready to fight them if that happened. Irin just hoped there would be no more than three screamers, perhaps four at the most. Any more, and it would be hard to fend off an attack—if, that is, they could fight one off at all. No one ever had; he was only guessing.
The front arrived at the beginning of the “rough rocks,” as the scouts had described them. There was no visible trail through the area, but it looked as though they could get the n’wips through. The surface was still covered in dirt, and though the ground sloped steadily downward, the grade was hardly noticeable.
Irin pointed to those behind him to branch out and have everyone rest along the rocks while he, Wil, and Pwig surveyed the area. He told Norrit to have everyone unpack the night’s meals from the n’wips.
“Get everyone eating and drinking their water. Even if they say they are not hungry or thirsty. They may just be too tired.”
“And when will you eat, Irin?”
“We will return soon—don’t worry about us.”
27
“HE’S GOING TO DIE SOON,” MATT said to Tuni as Rheese put the artifact back in its case.
“When?” Tuni said breathlessly. “Is he hurt? Did you feel it? What happened?”
“Wil’s new vision—he said he saw Irin’s death and that it’s soon. But I don’t know if that means in an hour or a few days… if we’re to continue believing Wil’s predictions.”
“Oh…” T
uni lowered her head. “So that’s going to be it, then.…” She took a deep breath. “How do you feel about that, Matthew?”
“I’ll tell you how I feel,” Dr. Rheese interrupted, standing up after closing the safe. “That this fellow from a hundred million years ago—who croaked a hundred million years ago—is going to die? Well, I’ve gotta say I’m pretty bloody torn up. I thought we might be able to track him down on Facebook after this was all said and done. P’raps meet for tea…”
“You’re a bloody arsehole, Mister Rheese,” Tuni replied, aware that being called “Mister” instead of “Doctor” would infuriate him far more than “arsehole.”
He paused in the doorway and sniffed, “Realists are often considered such, Miss St. James.” The door swung shut behind him.
Tuni slumped back down in the seat, her face compressed with fury. Matt said nothing, writing down his impressions from the session and waiting for her to relax a bit.
“To answer your question,” he finally said, “I feel kind of sick about it. I’m afraid of how it happens—well, happened. I’m afraid of when. And I also feel the same drive now about this that he does. I don’t know if it’s just from being in his head and feeling it for so long, but I really need them to be safe. I need them to rebuild their city someplace else. It’s stupid. Rheese is a dick, and I hate to say it, but he’s right.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Tuni replied. “I feel it too, what you said… Though I’m sure I don’t feel it as strongly as you do. I’m actually more interested in Irin living on. If Shinehead hadn’t ruined it, it would have been nice to imagine that I could one day have met Irin in person. Obviously impossible, but one can imagine it, no?”
“Yeah.” Matt smiled a little. “I wish I could introduce you.”
“Oh, you have, dear. You have, absolutely.”
Their eyes met for a moment. “I guess the campfire’s going,” Matt said to fill the silence.
Tuni nodded absentmindedly.
“Hey, you awake?” Matt said, standing up.
“Sorry, dear,” she said, snapping out of her daze. “I was just thinking something.” She stood up beside him.
“Tell me, then,” he replied.
“No, just thinking about… what might happen. C’mon, let’s go.”
They stepped outside as Tuni asked for more details.
“Just a lot of walking. Right now they’re stopped and are looking at a bunch of little caves. He wants to split everyone up to sleep during the daylight.”
“Matty, Matty, Matt-Matt!” Peter shouted from the fire. Someone had made a ring of rocks a short distance from the food tent and put benches around it, and a fire was blazing merrily away.
“Petey, Petey, Pete-Pete,” Matt replied with somewhat less enthusiasm. Peter was drinking a beer.
“Man, everyone here keeps asking about you!” Peter continued. The new team laughed. Matt tried to settle Pete down before he said something he shouldn’t. “We could learn soooo much more if we had everyone on the same page if you know what I’m talking about…”
“Not sure I do, Pete.” Matt leaned close to Pete’s ear and whispered. “And you need to cool it. They’re all staring at us.”
Pete flipped around and inspected the group—indeed they looked like an audience waiting to see the magician open the box.
“You people are bloody nosey!” Pete barked, only half-joking.
Tuni put her arm in Matt’s, in what, for the briefest second, he took to be an affectionate gesture.
She whispered, “He’s a bit tilted.” Matt nodded, and her arm disappeared.
“Yeah, hey, everyone!” Matt said cheerfully. “Nothing mysterious here, please move along, talk amongst yourselves…” The others made convivial gestures and comments of “no worries,” and their various conversations resumed.
Moving closer to the fire circle, Matt realized it was getting pretty cold. His mind must have been getting accustomed to being warm outside at night, so that in contrast, it seemed especially cold here. He looked around at all the happy, naive faces glowing in the firelight, heard the babble of apparently worry-free conversations, and felt as though the others had no idea what was going on right now. But it wasn’t going on right now, exactly, though it certainly was for him. He thought he should be back where he belonged, with Wil and his brother, Pwig, finding a safe place for his people to sleep. How meaningless this campfire was, he thought, and then he felt a sudden twinge of guilt that he was going to abandon them for his own distant, safe retreat in North Carolina.
A muffled buzzing interrupted his thoughts, and he felt for a second that his timer was pulling him out of himself. Rheese had begun telling a story, and most of the team appeared to be listening. Peter popped up off a bench and fixed his eyes on the RV. Matt heard the sound again and realized that it was the sat phone ringing. He saw Peter get up and jog to the RV.
The door closed behind Peter, and Matt turned back to the fire. He caught Tuni’s eyes, and she waved for him to come and squeeze into the small space between her and one of the new guys. He hated being crowded between people, but then, when would he get to be forced so deliciously close to Tuni again? He walked around the benches and excused himself as he scrunched in next to her.
“Hello?” Peter said into the sat phone.
After a brief silence, a deep voice said, “Who is this?” in an accent that might be Kenyan.
“Um, this is Peter Sharma. Who’s this?”
More silence.
“Where is Rheese?” the voice finally replied.
“He’s around,” Peter answered curtly. “Who is speaking, please?”
“You work with Rheese?”
“Rheese works for me,” Peter said, his annoyance obvious.
“Ah-h,” the man said with a chuckle, “you tell Mistah Rheese we have what he need. But the price will be double.”
Peter frowned. What the hell was this about? “Sure, I’ll let him know,” he said. “And what exactly are we talking about? Which need, exactly?”
“The equipment… What you say your name again?”
“What did you say yours was?” Peter countered.
The deep voice paused for a moment, and the line went dead.
Was Rheese trying to source the lost equipment from some questionable source? Peter had already said he would take care of it, but maybe he was trying to make points by getting it faster. But for double the price? Well, it was still grant money, and Peter wasn’t going to let it be squandered to pay off some mysterious Kenyan godfather just so Rheese could kiss some asses.
Rheese poked at a flaming chunk of wood with his stick as he continued his tale. “Now, don’t think this was going to be an easy excavation simply because we had millions of pounds to blow!” Everyone laughed. “None of you have ever met him—he’s just an old codger nowadays—but bloody Dan Mitchellson… that was his full name, see, Bloody Daniel Mitchellson…”
Peter slid into his seat across the fire from Rheese.
“Mitchellson was an angry bastard,” Rheese continued. “This man would shout at you and tell you things about your mum that you wondered how he would know, if you get my meaning. So… Mitchellson and me, we’re hiking up the little sand hill and we’re gonna raise the balloon again to get a better overhead of the Sphinx. Bastard loses his footing, and I see him fluttering backward with his pipe still clenched between his rotty choppers. I reach out for him—kinda half-effort, though, if you know what I mean…” Here Rheese winked and smirked left and right. “. . . but mainly ’cause I don’t want him taking me with him on a lovers’ roll down to the bottom. It was all soft for the most part, but knickers full of sand wasn’t what I was looking for. I watch his legs and then his thinning hair, and there’s his bloody feet again, until finally he starts to slide on his back, headfirst, the rest of the way. I’m having a spit of a time holding back my laughter at this point, not knowing if he’s hurt or not, and then his slow slide stops suddenly as if his head hit somethi
ng. I start sliding down on my boots until I get to him, and sure enough, his eyes are open, pipe still in his mouth, and he’s shaking his head at me as if I’d pushed him.”
“And was that it?” Colette asked in her breathy French accent.
“Was what what?” Rheese replied.
“What stopped his slide—was that the entrance?”
Rheese nodded. “It was the upper right corner, yes. And crafty bloke later says how his instincts had guided him to the spot, and there you have site seven-four-four-three-tango-X-ray, the famed Sarcophagi Preparation Chamber. His story got better and better over time.”
“The one I heard,” a bearded young man said, “has Professor Mitchellson searching the area alone with a garden trowel for two years before he came upon it.”
Rheese threw his head back and laughed out loud. This made others laugh, though they could not say precisely why.
“I hadn’t heard that one yet,” Rheese chuckled. “But I’ll tell you sometime what he was really doing for those two years, young man.…” He raised his cigar to his lips and puffed.
The campfire was quiet for a moment as everyone’s eyes returned to the flames. The sounds of pops and crackles seemed to begin again, as if they’d been paused.
Peter stood up and walked around the fire. He tapped Rheese on the shoulder and nodded for him to follow. A short time later, shouting erupted from the RV. No one could really understand what was said, but it was pretty clear that something had happened on the phone call that annoyed Peter greatly.
Tuni looked for Enzi’s face and found him sitting on a folding stool some distance back from the fire. His eyes were locked squarely on the RV, and he appeared deep in thought. She hoped he would look her way, but moments later he got up and walked away.
Then the blonde American girl, Felicia, blurted out, “Nature hike!” and hopped up. There were a few groans, but several seemed to welcome the proposition and trundled off to their tents to fetch flashlights and jackets. Now alone on the bench with Tuni, Matt realized that his close proximity to her had been appropriate only when forced by the lack of room. He scooted away nonchalantly, wondering how long she had sat there on the end of the bench, hoping he would move.
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