by Chuck Dixon
“What makes string theory bullshit?”
“This universe is unique. I mean down to the smallest, smallest detail. You change the distance between the nucleus and satellites of an atom, and life couldn’t exist anywhere. I mean, nowhere, anywhere. And those teeny, almost immeasurable distances are the same right here in front of us as they are a trillion miles from here. A hydrogen atom is exactly the same no matter where you go.”
“There’s a point there?” Dwayne said.
“Damn sure is a point. This didn’t happen by accident. It had to be a plan. Right down to the finest specks. And someone did all that work.”
“What about all those parallels where life didn’t happen?”
“Where’s the proof of that?”
“It’s a theory.”
“A fucking theory with no proof. That means it takes faith to believe in it.”
“Takes faith to believe in God, Jimmy.”
“Doesn’t it take that much more to believe in a world you’ll never see than it does to believe in the one you’re looking at right now?” The bottle sloshed as Jimmy used it to point at the amazing sunset turning the sky from peach to vermilion and the water a sea of gold behind the ship.
“Kind of hard to argue with that,” Dwayne said.
Those thoughts occupied Dwayne on his long, leisurely swim back to where the squat pyramids stood black against the stars. He drifted silently to the edge of the pier behind the grand pyramid. Hands gripping the stone edge, he raised himself up until his eyes were above the ledge.
A pair of guards sat either side of a broad entrance that led to the inner chambers of the pyramid. They were still, heads resting on arms propped on their knees. Their clubs lay in the dust by their feet. The night air had chilled. They were draped with sewn skins.
Somewhere inside the pyramid, the priests slept. Eagle Head was in there somewhere with Dwayne’s bracelet on his skinny wrist. He’d never been allowed inside and had no idea what the interior looked like. He could take down the sleeping guards easily. Only then to get lost inside the pyramid and never find the priest he was looking for.
As he watched the entrance, he could see the shadows inside pale. A glow came from within, and a priest emerged, carrying a burning taper on the end of a stick. Pre-Columbian flashlight. From his hidden vantage, Dwayne watched the old guy shuffle away from the pyramid to a lean-to set in some escobilla trees. It was too dark to see which of the priests it was. His head was bare. Without the headdresses, the priests all looked the same.
Dwayne levered himself out of the water to move along the pier. He crept to the shadows cast from some shrubs closer to the lean-to. From the sounds within, grunts and splashing, the old man was on the shitter. Everyone else on this island pissed and crapped wherever they happened to be. Turned out the priests had their own privy.
Peering through the stalks of brush, Dwayne watched the old man leave the lean-to and wobble back to the pyramid a few pounds lighter. He waited until the priest was out of sight inside the structure before breaking cover to return to his hut. The priests were elderly, he thought, they were probably up a few times a night to go to the latrine. That meant he could take Eagle Head in the open if he timed it right.
As a plan, it had its own problems.
One lesson always stuck with Dwayne from Ranger training. A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
16
The King and His Court
A mallet head emerged from the tree line followed by ten tons of gristle and sinew. Pig eyes the color of dull amber glowed with malice and hunger. A double wicket of gleaming daggers lined its long jaws. It didn’t roar. It gurgled and hissed, thick flecks of foam spraying between champing teeth and from flaring nostrils.
It was a biped saurian of some variety, moving bent forward on sturdy legs. A head the size of a compact car lowered, clawed forelegs scrabbling to help it forward. Its rough hide scraped sections of bark from the thick growth of redwoods as it passed. The impact shook pine cones free from the treetops to fall to the forest floor like hail.
It was in direct pursuit of the three men now sliding down the muddy slope for the anchorage. It was only slowed by its need to find a course between the close-set mammoth evergreens. The last of the crocodilians scattered from the path of the charging newcomer. They leapt into the water with staggering speed to vanish in the depths about the reeds.
Shan and the two Rangers waded into the bloody chum along the bank. Boats was already making a torpedo path for the raft dancing atop a swell offshore. Unable to start the twin Evinrudes mounted in the stern, the Macedonian was paddling madly to bring the Zodiac closer to his friends.
The big saurian broke from the trees and raced headlong over the open clearing of ferns that led down to the banks. Atop the raised ground, Jimbo and Bat Jaffe emptied two magazines each at the big fucker lumbering down the slope. It didn’t slow. It didn’t notice. The heavy Beowulf rounds were pinpricks, penetrating the pebbled hide to a depth insufficient to cause mortal damage. Jimbo shifted his aim to the head. In spite of its size, it presented a difficult target as it swayed back and forth on the gimbal of a long neck with each stride. The angles of the skull planes deflected most of the rounds. Jimbo doubted he was even annoying it.
“Bat, you got to go while I cover you,” Jimbo said. “Who’s going to cover you?” she said.
“Maybe Jesus. Go.” His smile was fierce. His eyes were hard. To help her along, he gave her a shove. Bat moved down the trail they used to reach their perch. Behind her, the M4 barked again and again.
The beast waded to its haunches into the bloody water lapping the banks. Ignoring the tiny figures wallowing away from it, the saurian dipped its head to sink chisel-edged teeth deep into the flesh of a dead croc. It took the entire carcass in its jaws and lifted it from the water with a meaty crunch.
Boats was the first to reach the raft and rolled over the nacelle onto the deck. He had the twin engines belching then purring. He and Shan helped pull Chaz on board, choking and spitting. Lee hung back to wait for Bat entering the shallows along the shore. The water was covered over in a swirling haze of insects drawn by the stink of fresh blood. Lee ignored Boats’ shouts to come back. He reached out a hand for Bat, who was swimming to him. He took her wrist and pulled her close, half-carrying her onto the raft. She didn’t resist even as he shoved her over the hump of the gunwale and into the Zodiac. He climbed in after and stood on the deck, searching the fringe of palms above.
“Get down here, Cochise!” Lee called up to Jimbo, standing on the ledge above, rifle in his fists.
“There’s still crocs in the water!” the Pima shouted back.
“There’s always gonna be! You gonna make them extinct?”
“I’m gonna cover your exfil!”
“Get your red ass down here, or I’m coming up there and drag you down!” Lee’s face was flushed with anger.
“Fuck it, then,” Jimbo said. He tossed the rifles down to the raft and, with a running start, leapt clear of the ledge to hit the water feet first. He was submerged long enough to catch a fleeting glimpse of dark reptilian shapes resting on the floor of the marsh at the base of the reeds. He kicked for the surface, accepting the grips of his friends who hauled him on board the Zodiac. Once out of the water, Boats hit the throttle, and the raft headed for open water, bow lifted high.
“Sure got cornholed on that one! Total clusterfuck!” Boats shouted from the helm.
“We still need the water.” Lee was shouting to be heard over the roaring engines. Bat sat silent and shivering close against him despite the tropical heat.
“I have other pumps and generators, but we’re fucked for more hose! It’s all back there!” Boats nodded toward shore where they could see two more biped saurians, smaller than the first, stepping out of the forest. They would be joined by others and feeding for days.
“They T-rexes, you think?” Chaz said.
“Who gives a flying fuck?” Boats’ face was as red as
his beard.
“Jesus!” was all Jimbo could say for the longest time. Over and over again.
“We’re all going to get very thirsty,” Morris Tauber said. “And the reactor most of all,” Parviz said.
It was a rare general meeting that was attended by the Iranians, but they crowded into the chartroom with Mo, the Rangers, Boats, Geteye, and Shan. The bulkhead door was propped open, and the fans stirred the muggy air. With everything now being rationed; they were conserving electricity by not running the AC.
The shore team had showered as best they could with buckets of sea water. The adrenaline rush was wearing off now, and the exertions of the day settled into their joints and muscles. A growing surprise at still being alive was the only comfort they could enjoy from what turned out to be a disastrous day.
“That’s why we’re here. We need everybody’s ideas on how to work this out,” Lee said.
“The sea water is for shit. The filters can’t handle it. Even if they could, the evaporators can’t keep up with what we need,” Boats said. He was drinking right from a bottle of Maker’s.
“And the evaporators require power we cannot spare,” Quebat said.
“What did I just say?” The SEAL glared at the little Iranian who recoiled.
“Back off, sailor. We’re all just trying to help. It’s a simple logistics problem,” Jimbo said.
“It’s a science problem, and it’s far from simple,” Morris said.
“Isn’t there better water somewhere, Mo? Near the poles maybe?” Lee said.
“That’s a good theory but, no. The whole planet is at tropical temperatures. There are no ice caps at either pole. No ice anywhere. Ironically, there’s more open water on the planet in this period than any of us have ever experienced. And all of it is unsuitable for our purposes.”
“We could build larger sieve filters and fill them by hand.
Bucket brigade it, right?” Chaz said.
“Shit. That sounds like work.” Boats took a pull of bourbon.
“There is still the presence of salt in the water,” Parviz said. “We cannot cool the reactor with such water. The intakes would corrode quickly. The reactor would shut down and overheat. We do not want this.”
“No one wants to say it, but we might be looking at abandoning the Raj as our only option,” Lee said. “We head out through the Tube into friendly waters and scatter like roaches.”
“When and where?” Jimbo said.
“Pick a place. Pick a time. Maybe you and Bruce could play Lone Ranger and Tonto somewhere,” Chaz said.
“A modern cargo container ship left derelict in the Cretaceous with an active nuclear reactor on board,” Morris said. “That’s the kind of temporal anomaly we’ve been trying to avoid all this time. Not to mention leaving a time travel device to be found.”
“You told us we didn’t need to worry about that shit here, doc,” Lee said. “You said we were on the right side of the extinction event. No butterfly effect this far back.”
“Sure. Sure. An asteroid’s heading this way right now. Due to arrive in a few million years. It’ll take out the dominant species and clean the slate. Any animals you killed today have no descendants. No harm done. No ripple effect. But even tens of millions of years might not be enough to hide evidence of a ship this large even if it winds up as a stratum of rust somewhere where there should only be fossilized remains.”
“This shit makes my head hurt,” Boats said.
“It might be our only out, Mo. I’m not willing to die here just so some geeks never make a Reddit page about the million-year-old mystery boat,” Jimbo said.
“It is more urgent than this, gentlemen,” Quebat said. “We are days from meltdown if we cannot cool the reactor.”
“So, shut it down,” Lee said.
“We have explained this until you are blue in your face,” Parviz said. “Even were we to shut it down, the core will not cool without many, many thousands of liters of water. Clean water without salt.”
“And your little engine that could melts right through my hull,” Boats said.
“Precisely,” Quebat said with a nod.
The men sat about the table without speaking. Lee gestured to Boats, and the SEAL handed over the open bottle for Lee to take a swallow. From there, it made its way around until Morris poured the dregs into his coffee mug.
“You’re thinking too conventionally.”
All turned to Jason Taan, leaning in the open hatchway, wearing a crooked smile.
“You have something useful to add, Taan?” Lee said.
“You have a time travel device on board, do you not?” Taan said.
“Yes. Yes, we do,” Morris said. A grin opened up on his face that only further confused the others around the table.
17
An Anti-history
Wahid wasn’t a learned man. He was limited to what he saw and heard in his own experience. Trying to put together a larger picture of this world was frustrating with the illiterate Arab as a source. Wahid shared what he could recall of his life with Dwayne.
He had been conscripted at a young age into the army of the Mughans. From his description, Dwayne surmised that these might be the Mughals, the descendants of the Mongol khans who ruled India all the way into the 18th century. In this version of history, the Mughal lords were not brought down by a combined army of British and native Indian troops. Dwayne recalled from some novels he read that the army that defeated the last of the despots was led by the Irish general Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington. None of that occurred here, and the Mughals expanded their realm to most of Asia and eventually the new world which they called Altaghazar, the Golden Land.
Their supreme raja, the Nahja Khan, sent an armada of warships to create a military presence on this new continent. They subjugated the native population, mostly using the tactic of annihilation. The natives who weren’t killed fled east and south. Wahid had no idea how long ago any of this occurred. “Before the time of my grandfathers” was the best he could do.
Boats loaded with slaves were brought as well to lay roads and build settlements. Wahid described walled cities to the north. There were port and river towns with roads connecting them all. That took centuries. The Mughals were firmly established on the western continent with some settlements east of the Gazhra Nuhru, the Rockies.
Farther expansion east was halted by the Verangi. These people looked a lot more like Dwayne, according to Wahid. Tall and fair-haired and wearing pictures on their skin like his tattoos. These men maintained a series of forts running north to south. In some sections, there was even a high ramparted wall that ran for hundreds of miles uninterrupted. War was near constant along this divide. It ebbed and flowed over the years in a stalemate that sounded like it had been in place for hundreds of years.
Dwayne remembered that the Norsemen who came down out of Scandinavia during the medieval warming period found their way south through Russia to Constantinople. There, many of them enlisted as mercenaries to the last Caesars of the eastern Roman empire. They took the name Varangians. Probably the source of Verangi, the name for the men who would become the Normans and the Rus. With his beard filled in over the past months and hair almost to his shoulders, Dwayne had no doubt he looked akin to these invaders.
Dwayne had so many questions, but Wahid was a reluctant storyteller. Unimaginative and inarticulate, the guy couldn’t fill in a lot of blanks for the Ranger. It was making Dwayne crazy. These long days with nothing to do but swim and tour the same hundred acres was making him antsy. Nothing to read and no one to talk to but a sullen slave soldier.
He did learn that Wahid worshipped Ba’al and had never heard of Islam or Allah. There was no worship of Christ or Buddha. The gods of the Mughals were roughly the same as the Hindu pantheon. Wahid knew little about that.
The absence of any monotheistic religions confirmed for Dwayne that this was another world with a history corrupted by Sir Neal Harnesh. He had his own experience on a world l
ike that and with Harnesh’s army of ruthless hunter/killers. His wife, Caroline, had theorized that Harnesh’s grand scheme was to invade the past and create a continuity in which the leaders of the world’s great monotheistic religions were either never born or died young. That was the reason that Sir Neal sought out two theoretical physicists like Caroline and her brother Morris Tauber to create the device that allowed for travel into the past.
The motivation for Harnesh’s actions was to ultimately create a parallel world where he would replace God himself as a figure of worship. That was the working scenario, anyway. Maybe the guy was just a really angry atheist. In any case, he had influence over who knew how many worlds that were almost like his own but not quite. And, to support this totalitarian utopia, Harnesh raped the natural resources and wealth of the past.
Of course, the Rangers were guilty of some of that themselves. They’d financed their getaway by using their time-travel advantage to uncover prehistoric gold in Nevada and pirate treasure in the Aegean Sea. But they’d done their share of good as well.
On one of their rogue missions into history, the Rangers prevented the death of a teenaged Jesus Christ. That event would have forever altered the course of their own history to make the kind of existence that Sir Neal was working toward.
The theft of the Tauber Tube and their many efforts to thwart his plans had made them enemies of the man. He was on a constant hunt for them across space and time. His killers got close in Mexico until Dwayne led them away and, ultimately, wound up in this alternate timeline.
It made sense. The bracelet device that brought him here probably had presets. That was encouraging in a way. It meant that there was probably a setting that would take him back to his own version of reality. He only had to get the bracelet back from the priest who took it. And hope it was still working. And hope that activating it would take him home.
And Harnesh’s men could be hunting him here. Though they knew approximately where he left The Now, they had all of time to search in for him. Then again, they had all the time in the world to look for him. Literally. He had to get away from this place and put more geographical distance between himself and where he left the grid on the Baja.