Read A Long Time Until Now Online
Authors: Michael Z Williamson
Tags: #fiction, #science fiction, #time travel, #General, #Action & Adventure
A Long Time Until Now (13 page)
Then she paused. Two of the women had stepped out, but were starting to dance. They wore wrapped skirts, draped half-ponchos and beaded headbands that looked to be made of shells and bone. “Headdresses,” she said, and zoomed in for a shot.
It was an odd dance. It had tempo and beat, with both claps and stomps, and some percussion with sticks and sections of bark.
Then the singing started, and it was a slow chant, not very melodic, but oddly resonant. Then it sounded like a bullroarer.
“Oh, throat singing!” Caswell said.
“Dammit,” Gina swore, and fumbled with the camera. She was a still photographer, not a videographer but . . . dammit.
She pulled her coat around and over her head, ducked down, and flicked the screen on. Options, settings, there, video. She closed the screen.
Now the two women were singing, too, holding hands and stamping feet while echoing deep sounds from their throats, almost like didgeridoos.
They moved into an arm-to-arm embrace, and Caswell said, “That’s almost like the Inuit. Even to the headbands.”
The others were also chanting, softer, somewhat harmonically, and the percussion softened to background, but still palpable.
The Paleo people had much smaller personal spaces than modern people. But even so, these two had to be close friends or relatives.
Or . . .
She kept videoing, and around her, she could almost hear the held breaths.
The two women danced arm in arm, face to face, cheek to cheek. There was a harmonic resonance with their voices that close together that added shimmery sounds to the echoey resonance.
Their eyes were closed and they were in trance, like some club dancers or meditationists.
Then they were supporting each other, one leg raised, wrapped around the other, in a remarkably stable and almost erotic stance. She wished she could get some stills, too. The symmetry was striking.
They hit a harmony and kept the chant going in stereo. They were very close to each others’ notes, but there was a faint warble, like tuning an instrument. Phase cancellations? Yes. Ethereal. And they were more than close, they had hands on each other and inside their minimal clothing.
Devereaux muttered, “Goddamn.”
She always felt embarrassed watching people make out, but she kept rolling. She could put about twelve minutes on each of these cards, and she had ten cards with her, but she had already filled three. She might be able to load some to her phone.
Caswell said, “That’s a new one to me. Sensual touch between close associates or sister-mates is not unusual, but I’ve never heard of sexual contact. But it seems more for feedback than sex.”
Gina wasn’t sure. Their breathing turned to panting a couple of times. Their hands writhed all over, not just on erogenous zones, but there was definite masturbation involved.
“Given the casual way they touch here, it’s not that shocking.” Talking about it clinically was the only way not to be embarrassed.
“No, but I haven’t heard of anything like it.”
Then the women flowed apart again, the deep singing continuing, but the intensity and volume slackened slightly.
That wasn’t all. Someone had a curl of bark stuffed with some kind of leaf. They applied a glowing stick, waved it to flame, blew it to char, and inhaled deeply of the thick, oily smoke emanating from it.
Oglesby said, “Uh, yeah, what do we do, LT?”
The LT hesitated, and Spencer said, “Under the circumstances, have a polite whiff and pass it on. Fake it if you need to.”
Oglesby was first, and accepted the scroll gravely. He held it up, drew at it with his mouth, and almost coughed.
“Strong,” he said, as he passed it to Devereaux. “I don’t know if it’s weed or what.”
Devereaux did cough, and seeing as how she was allergic to smoking and found it disgusting, Gina made a token show of waving it under her nose, arched so it looked like she expanded her chest, and passed it.
Caswell inhaled a sip through her nose, as Oglesby said, “Oh, shit, whatever it is, I got a buzz.”
Caswell sniffed a bit deeper, coughed. Her hands shook as she passed it, and as soon as Barker had hold of it, she sneezed.
“Oh, that was nasty.”
Barker took a deep drag and didn’t seem at all bothered.
“Not quite pot. I wonder if it’s some fungus on a leaf?”
Spencer didn’t seem fazed. Ortiz and Trinidad passed it quickly, and Dalton faked it very badly. The LT lingered over it, not inhaling but making a good show, before passing it to the shaman, who took it with a flourish and grin.
There was more chanting and drumming, and two couples wandered away from the fire circle. Then another.
“Looks like they’re breaking up, LT,” she said.
“Yeah, we’ll stick around a bit. Watch out for anyone trying to pair up with us.”
Spencer said, “The Sun Lemur would not approve.”
Devereaux said, “Sister over there has a nice shape to her. I’d be happy to help with some diplomacy.”
Elliott said, “I’m sure you would, but there are a lot of reasons why it’s a really bad idea at this point.”
“Yeah. Including diseases we have no idea about.”
“Did everyone hear that?” Spencer noted.
There was zero chance she was going to involve herself with any of these men. They were aesthetically pleasing, but socially disturbing, and she was married. The idea of strange, Stone Age STIs made them even less appealing.
The barkajoint came round again, and she waved it past her face. Oglesby looked disoriented, and Barker was almost out of focus.
“Yup, I’m betting on some form of ditchweed with some mushroom sprinkles,” he said. “Wheee.”
It was hilarious to see him stoned.
Caswell said, “Maybe morning glory, too. Mild hallucinogen.”
Gina was still recording.
She ducked under her coat, switched back to still, swapped memory cards, placing the one very carefully in a case in a dedicated sealed pouch on her gear. She could swap cards under fire in seconds. Then she got a shot of Barker standing, staring at his hand.
Looking around, she realized all the Paleos had gone to their huts, and it was a bit cool.
Spencer said, “Goodnight, everybody. Alexander, we’re on first watch.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Sitting by their dim inside fire, she wished she had a real video camera, and the ability to check all the images here. She had her laptop and the solar charger, but was reluctant to let the Paleos see anything that wasn’t just a chunk of material. They were at the truck anyway. It would have to wait.
Spencer said, “We’ll have Oglesby and Barker on last, so they have time to sober up.”
“Are they in trouble?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, we needed to be social with our hosts. They had two hits each. But that stuff must be strong. I had one toke and I felt it for about twenty minutes.”
“So we’re leaving tomorrow?” She was of mixed feelings.
“If we can. We’ll see if they can recommend a place for us. And we’ve learned a bit here.”
She said, “We have. I’ve learned I don’t want to live with them. They’re very nice neighbors, and good fences make good neighbors.”
“Indeed. I’m also worried about the younger males wanting to shack up.”
“Only the younger ones?”
He raised an eyebrow. “There’s nothing like the personal habits and the physiques of the thirty-year-olds to make me appreciate the simple beauty of my right hand,” he said. “They age fast.”
“They do, but they don’t seem to age past that. From twenty-five on, they all look the same.”
“Yeah, but their twenty-five is a well-worn fifty for us.”
She raised a hand at a noise, but it was a voice, and sounded as if someone was well impassioned.
Spencer caught it, too.
“People who live in grass houses shouldn’t throe moans,” he said. “Throe with an E.”
She tried not to choke and failed.
“I shouldn’t be laughing,” she said through a sore throat and leaking eyes. “We can’t get home.”
“It doesn’t seem like it. So we need to deal with it.” His eyes were wet, too, much as he was trying to hide it.
“I’ll swap bad jokes for a bar of dark chocolate.” She missed chocolate, and was going to miss it a lot more. Even Hershey would be welcome now. As for Ghirardelli . . .
“Yeah. Coffee. Oglesby and Barker want smokes, I want coffee. Goddamn I want coffee.”
They wanted their families, but weren’t going to say that. So . . .
“There is coffee. All you have to do is reach the ocean and paddle five thousand miles.”
“I’ve thought about it. But our home isn’t there yet. It would be all raw wilderness and no more familiar than this.”
She said, “And I don’t know the history of coffee in South America.”
“Ethiopia, actually. We could walk there, in theory.”
“Oh, right.”
Either way, it didn’t matter. They were in the middle of Central Asia, with no guidebook for the trip, and no way home.
They stared silently at the skin door.
In the near distance, they could hear dogs or wolves growling and fighting over the offal from the hunt. It had been tossed into the woods.
CHAPTER 7
Sean Elliott felt a lot stronger mentally than he had last week. They were still lost, with almost no resources, but he had an idea on the environment now, and at least a summary plan. That didn’t make it easier to pack up and leave the native village. The huts, fire and people made it a home of sorts, and now he was taking his element off to create their own camp. There were over a hundred people in this village. He had ten.
But, those ten had skills. They had a translator, a medic, a vet tech who could be another medic, two people with SERE training, who were both reenactors of different historical eras. Barker knew a bunch of Native American primitive skills. They had someone who knew sociology, and a couple of skilled hunters. Then, Trinidad had grown up in a remote village and knew about wells and animals also. Sean was an engineer. Between them, they had the brains to make it work. He wasn’t sure if they had enough muscle.
There was nothing to be gained by remaining, though. This wasn’t their culture and hopefully never would be. He needed to jump now before he chickened out.
“Ready, Oglesby?” he asked.
“Ready, sir,” the man said, and held up his notebook. He’d done an impressive job with the language in only three days. Hopefully, they could make their point known.
“Caswell?”
“Got it, sir.” Caswell had suggested donating some plain wooden pencils. They were biodegradable, would wear out quickly, and were gimmicky. They didn’t do anything charcoal wouldn’t do for these people, but they’d hopefully be appreciated.
Outside, he sought the chief, hoping the man was up, even though it was early. There wasn’t any real schedule here. The natives hunted, trapped fish, played, lazed about, had sex, and ate as they wished.
But the chief was awake, and responded to Oglesby’s greeting, along with the shaman. A couple of others loitered nearby, and moved in closer. They weren’t quite too close this time.
Caswell stepped forward and held up a pencil. She had a small piece of rawhide and a stick, peeled to clean wood. She took out a sharp rock flake and scraped a point on the pencil, then marked on the stick, then the leather.
There were oohs and ahhs. She gave them the one to play with, and there was much giggling and pointing, waving and excitement.
Then she handed over the rest of the dozen, unsharpened.
This time there were cheers. The visitors had finally given them something neat.
She stood stoically with a panicked look on her face as the chief grabbed her shoulder, tried to cup her through her armor, and patted her ass. She took his shoulder, slapped his buttock lightly, and stepped back.
It took a few moments to get their attention back from the pencils, while Oglesby stepped forward with his notebook.
He used a combination of pantomime and native words. “We (gesture) ugyi (point at hut) build (gesture of piling sticks). Va!se (point at river) runs west (point) from the east (point). Where should we (gesture) go (arms forward and out) to build (gesture) ugyi (shrug)?”
There was a modern sounding exclamation of “Ah!” and a huddle. It sounded like a flock of birds throwing nuts at trees, but in only a few moments, three people stepped forth, one woman and two men. They were from the party that found them, and hunted the antelope.
“Rish,” one of the men said, pointing east. He ran to his hooch, emerged with a small wrapped bundle and a spear, and started walking.
“Crap. Folks, grab your gear fast, we’re marching!”
Luckily their three guides moved at a leisurely walk, and waited a few yards out for the troops to catch up. They looked bemused. As soon as they saw the last troop out of the lodge—Alexander—they turned and resumed trudging.
Their pace was not brisk, but steady. They stayed above the wood line of the river, along the high steppe. Occasionally, game would leap away, and once a large wildcat.
“Damn,” Alexander said, from behind her camera.
“Alexander?”
“Lions, sir. A pride of four females and a male. Up the hill that way.”
“I see, barely.” Lions. Yet another animal that would eat them.
That rise right there was where the trucks were. He didn’t want to try to answer questions about them, even though they’d likely been seen by some party or other. He lagged down toward the trees, and it worked. The hunters didn’t stray far up, and kept walking.
It was another two miles across hummocky terrain above the river and the forest that edged it before they came to a wood line running south and uphill. It grew low and rugged, with some straight trees right along the edge.
The lead hunter chattered something, and Oglesby said, “He says, ‘good camp here.’ It seems pretty good to me, sir, and well away from them.”
“It’s workable. Thank them, and tell them we’ll meet again soon.”
Oglesby spoke back, clutching hands with each of them, and they departed.
They were such a simple people, and he meant that in a good way.
Elliott said, “I want to look uphill before we pick a spot, and we may bivouac for a day or so before finalizing.”
“Final.” That word. They were choosing their homestead in a place that would be Afghanistan in about 12,000 years.
They strung out in patrol formation and worked their way uphill. The slope was gentle. The terrain was prairieish with knotty trees here and there, bushes, clumps of heavier grass.
“Looky there,” Elliott said as he crossed a rise.
Ahead was a merging smaller stream and a line of small trees.
“Good?”
“It means there’s enough water. We don’t want to be on the river because of floods, and we don’t want to be too far from it—we need water and sanitation.”
They moved up, a bit closer together, but always looking around and feeling that creepy wrongness.
The line of trees was on a watercourse that was more a ditch than a side stream, though it likely held water during wet season. It was spongy and full of moss and small trees, birch or something like it, along with brush and thorns.
Alexander said, “Thorns mean it stays wet.”
“Good,” Elliott nodded. “So let’s move downhill just a bit, a hundred meters or so.”
Gina Alexander watched as he led the way, with that zoned expression again, though it wasn’t panicked this time. He just looked lost in thought. That was good. He seemed to be taking charge. Even if he wasn’t a great leader, he needed to be some kind of leader, or step aside and let Spencer do it.
At almost exactly a hundred meters by her estimate, the LT stopped and stood, then turned slowly around, shifting his weight and gazing. He mumbled to himself and pointed.
Spencer opened his mouth to speak, but Alexander nudged him and shook her head. He gave her a quizzical look. She raised a finger to tell him to wait. She’d seen her husband assess problems like this. And that made her sob again.
After about three minutes Elliott spoke.
“I don’t like the slope, but it’s what we have. We need to decide between a low spot to minimize wind, and high ground to give us a field of fire. Unless anyone has a good reason not to, I’m choosing that hump there. We’ll make that our camp for the duration.”
No one objected.
Alexander saw what he was doing. That wasn’t a bad choice. They had the stream to the east, what looked like a seasonal ditch uphill to the south, the river less than a half mile to the north, enough exposure for sun, decent position for observation. They had a line of trees along the watercourses, and a copse a bit downhill in what was almost a meadow. It might not be the most comfortable, but it was probably the best combination of resources and tactical location.
“Okay,” he said. “I’d like to leave a detachment here while the rest get the vehicles. Five to go, which is a ground guide, and a driver and gunner for each, and swap off. It’s only a couple of miles. It should be a one-day thing, starting in the morning. For tonight, I want a low fire, three up at any time on watch. We’ll dig hasties and bivouac, unless someone is eager to build a lean-to.”
“Looks clear enough for tonight,” Dalton said.
She’d rather have some kind of overhead. Much rather. She could work something with her poncho and some sticks, or even with dug earth and the poncho, but they were all in a group, it wasn’t likely to rain, and she didn’t want to stand out nor go to that much effort.
“Where’s the latrine?” she asked.
“The stream. South of that rock there,” Spencer said.
The lieutenant nodded. “Yeah, for now. Keep it downstream from there. We’ll get water upstream. Everyone done with assplosions?”
She was, but that reminded her that her ass was still burning, itching, oozing. It could have been worse. She could have been stuck in a convoy vehicle. But it wasn’t pleasant.
Dalton raised his hand and spoke.
“Sir, may I offer an invocation?”
“I would like that, yes. Please be brief.”
Dalton looked around, bowed his head, and said, “Heavenly Father, we thank you for guiding us to our new home. Bless our labor, courage and teamwork through the coming adversity, so we may thrive. Amen.”
“Amen,” replied most. Devereaux, Trinidad and Ortiz crossed themselves.
Dalton added, “And for some of us, this is in Jesus’ name.”
Spencer was silent. Alexander felt uncomfortable. Christians always had to make it about their God.
Barker said, “Sir, I’d like to kindle the First Fire this evening. It’s a tradition we have.”
Yes. If they could pray, she could have a holy fire. Barker was a good guy. She’d ask him about her rituals, too.
“I’d like that, too. When?”
“I need a couple of supplies. Alexander and I can do it. If we’re going to cook, I’d say I start by seventeen hundred.”
“Let’s get hasties dug and some sort of barricade first.”
“Roger that, sir.”
They dug hasty positions in a circle around where the fire would go, earth ramparted out, and dragged some scrub from the ditch. Barker and Trinidad went to work on some local bushes with their machetes, and they had a kraal of sorts. It did help psychologically define their territory, and it would slow wolves. It might not stop lions. Her hands were sore after her turn with Barker’s E-tool, but she felt better.
Rich Dalton threw himself into digging. These were a bit better than hasty positions, because he expected they’d expand them later. If not, they’d work for latrines, storage or trash.
“Dalton,” the LT said. “I see a lot of goats. Please shoot us some dinner.”
“I’d rather have steak, but we won’t do it with these damned things,” he said, shaking his M4. Hell, it was barely enough for people even if you did hit. But he took a walk east and leapt the stream at a spot only eight feed wide or so, with Trinidad following. The grass was thigh deep, thick and tangled, and threw up dust and occasional angry bugs as they trod. The dust coated his uniform in short order.
He looked over at Trinidad’s machete, held out in the man’s right hand.
“Are you going to chop it up on the spot with that sword?”
“That’s right, man. You shoot, I chop. They can have leftovers.” The short man grinned a big white grin in his brown face.
“Cool. Well, I see some right over there, but eventually they’re going to get scared of us.” He choose one fat one that was nearer than the rest.
“Maybe we can pen some in and farm them.”
He thought that was a good idea. “Yeah, a small farm would be good, but I think we have to build a bunch of stuff first.” He lived in Louisville, but there were enough farms around he’d seen plenty. They wouldn’t be ranching this year. Next year, though, if they were still here, definitely.
He aimed, breathed, squeezed the trigger, and the goat thrashed and fell. He thought he’d scored a headshot, but it might have been neck.
Then he realized the goat wasn’t fat, it was nursing. Some little kid came braying out, squealing about his momma. Crap.
Hating himself, he lined up and shot, and Junior became hors d’oeuvres.
Trinidad clapped him on the shoulder. “Eh, they’re small. We’ll chop them up there. Here’s one of your brass.” The Filipino dug a bit more, and found the other.
At least God provided plenty of food for now, though he wished for a salad. And a soda.