A Long Time Until Now (26 page)

Felix zoomed in on the visitors. “They’re less Asian looking, more European looking. Shorter. Less robust.”

Barker said, “Agreed.”

Spencer said, “I hate to jump to conclusions, but if they’ve got bows, dogs and small stature, it suggests they’re post-agricultural revolution. We know bows existed nine thousand years ago. Before us, I mean. Before that it gets sketchy. We know dogs started about now, but took a while. We know people got smaller after agriculture from eating more grain and less meat. And of course, all that is entirely speculative now that we’re on the spot.”

Felix said, “All I know is they’re more advanced. I see bows, lighter throwing spears, shoulder bundles, the dogs, and the clothing is more sophisticated. It has actual sleeves and leggings.”

Elliott asked, “Do they see us?”

“I would assume so. We’re hard to miss. Though possibly they think we’re just some odd landscape formation. No, wait, they’re looking this way. Huddling, passing messages back and forth as they move. So they’re aware of us, but want us not to be aware of them.”

Elliott said, “Then let’s keep quiet, and goddamnit, I wish I had enough troops for patrols.”

Spencer said, “After we finish the walls, maybe. Another month.”

“It’ll be almost winter then,” Elliott said, “I want two on watch. I am not trusting them. One up here during the day. Two at night.”

“Still think I’m crazy about the palisade and ditch, Trinidad?” Spencer asked.

“I didn’t think you were crazy,” he said, a bit defensively. “I thought your schedule was a bit rushed.”

“Fair enough.”

“They’re moving on,” Felix said. “But I assume they’ll be back.”

“Definitely,” Spencer said. “Sometime.”

Something occurred to him. “Are these the other visitors the Urushu mentioned?”

Spencer flared his eyebrows. “Possibly. They said they were wizards who talked to animals.”

Dalton said, “If they’re lost in time, how many others are?”

That was something to consider, Sean Elliott thought. There might be other groups displaced. Some of them could be from forward in time.

Well, so far, no one wanted a fight. God nor aliens had come down to tell them how to live. Either they were being left alone, or it was a bizarre natural occurrence. But had some kind of breach caused a bunch of stuff to come through in the same place? No, they’d have seen others. So not the same place, but within a few hundred miles?

He asked Spencer, then realized he should also ask Trinidad, who was intel. The man was so quiet, and Navy, and, yeah, he’d been defaulting to the old white guy. Or was it just that Spencer was older and knew this stuff? No, Devereaux was studying astronomy, and calculating the calendar. He should be talking to him, too.

He’d been inadvertently racist. Just a bit, but there really wasn’t room for it here. They were all one people for this.

“Okay, everybody, formation around dinner. And it smells good. Stew?”

“Antelope,” Caswell said. “With wild onions, some kind of pine bark and needle, some chopped cattail, plantains and a bit of what I think is burdock. It’s safe, I ate some.”

“Excellent. Bob Barker said he would be looking for fish and wild rice in the river.”

Barker said, “And I still will. I want to get the wall finished even more now, though. Sergeant Spencer wants more firewood.”

“How’s that going?”

Spencer said, “We have the brush piles and we can chop more logs. They need to season. I figure the dead of winter we drag a log or two into the tepee and just feed them in toward the middle.”

“How much do we need?”

“I read a story somewhere about a guy in a cabin in the Canadian Northwest. He had eight cords.”

Eight
? “That’s a crapton of wood.”

“It is. But if it’s too much, we have it next year. If it’s not enough, it sucks at least, kills us at worst.”

As if to emphasize it, Dalton put another split piece of wood on the fire.

Ortiz asked, “Can we ask the Urushu?”

Oglesby said, “They all gather in that large lodge and have a half sleeping, half orgy winter. I already asked.”

“We’ll skip that,” he said.

“Please,” Alexander said. She turned and tossed a bit of food down by the bank of the stream.

Dalton asked, “Are you trying for a pet?”

“If you must know, yes. We need something furry to hug.”

Dalton looked as if he were about saying something, but she was right. They didn’t have partners or spouses. They needed something for companionship. It was either adopt Urushu children, or pets.

The cat limped slowly out of cover under a bush, crawled low, and snatched the food. He squirmed back into a hollow.

“Sergeant Devereaux has the date fixed.”

“Sort of,” Devereaux said. “I may be off by up to a week. I think I’m within two days. We’ll know on Twenty-One December. For now, I’m calling it October Third.”

“What year?” Dalton asked.

Devereaux said, “Thirteen thousand, two hundred ninety-six BC.”

Dalton about dropped his food. He stopped in mid chew.

“You’re shitting me.”

“Of course I am. There’s no way to tell. But you believed me.”

That had to be a poke at Dalton’s Creationism.

Dalton took a moment to swallow, looked half amused and half disgusted, and said, “Bastard.”

Devereaux said, “So we’ve got a month before it starts getting cold, not just cool.”

Trinidad asked, “How cold will it get at night?”

Devereaux and Spencer exchanged glances.

Spencer said, “This should be a small climate optimum between the Older and Younger Dryas. The temperature in those dropped back to Ice Age levels within three generations. This should be a bit warmer, more moderate, and lusher, and so far, it is, compared to what we had back in A-stan. This assumes we have the time frame right, that the research I read is right, and I remember it right. Winter will still be down into the sub-freezing range at least, though.”

That was a lot of maybes, but winter was winter.

“I endorse the plan for a lot of firewood,” Elliott said, to make sure people knew. “It’s always useful as a barricade and windbreak, and fuel for next year. Stack it deep.”

Spencer said, “We need to finish that smokehouse ASAP and get to smoking meat, salting meat and drying meat. We can use it as a sauna, too. Eventually it’ll be a hot water spa, with a tub.”

Ortiz said, “Goddamn, we could rent excursions here to rich Manhattan bitches for a grand a day.”

“Yeah, if we could.” Dammit.

He spit out a bit of gristle, and tossed it over where the cat was. Hell, they might as well have a pet. They planned to domesticate food animals, after all.

“So what about domestic animals?” he asked.

Ortiz said, “We need to clip bird wings, and build some cages out of willow sticks or something else skinny and straight. We move those around where we plan to plant crops and the guano will prep the ground. Goats are easy, we have the fence, and toss enough stuff for them to eat. Rabbits can go in cages framed in wood and meshed with the Kevlar RPG mesh off the vehicles. Bigger stuff we should just let graze. There’s enough of them hunting isn’t a big problem.”

Elliott said, “Okay, moving on, Doc’s been doing great work with everyone. So give us your background.”

Devereaux leaned back on the log he sat on, hands behind his head, and stretched.

“Armand Devereaux, Sergeant, New York National Guard. Second year med student. I took a break from school to raise more money and look after my mama. I’m a combat medic. This was my first deployment. I was supposed to be doing some local charity stuff for a month, then going home. I’m fucking pissed about that.

“Anyway, I’m from Queens, joined up to get the college, get out of the city, and looks like I did.”

He paused a moment and took a drink from his Camelbak. He was almost never without it.

“I’ve got a good basic kit and few extras, but it won’t last forever. I know I’ve said that. I’m glad I can help our neighbors, and all of you, but you’ve got to stay hydrated, keep clean, be careful. I sound like your mom, don’t I?

“Goddamn, I miss home,” he said, and stopped talking.

Elliott quickly said, “Thanks. And thanks for helping with the calendar. Knowing what time of year it is is going to save us. Oglesby, you’re next.”

Oglesby said, “I’m a Specialist, I enlisted early and finished AIT right after high school. I’m an Urdu translator but I’m pretty good with Arabic as well, and some Hindi. I’ve always liked languages and I’m familiar with roots and development. That’s called ethnology. I’m out of Campbell, and I was supposed to rotate home in three months. Guess I missed that.

“I’m drawing up glossaries and dictionaries so you can speak without me, just in case something bad happens.”

“I guess that’s about it. I have a younger sister and parents, and I really don’t want to talk about them.”

Elliott said, “Hey, translation is critical. You made our entrance a thousand times easier. Don’t sell yourself short.”

To all, he said, “You all hear how we have all these skills, right? It turns out we know a lot more than we thought we did. We’re constructing a camp, we’re fed, we’re getting more variety of food. Doc’s doing a great job with us and the locals. We’re making progress on developing relations with them without letting them too close too fast. It’s working. It will get better from here.

“I’m going to say again that I’m both leader and chaplain. Anything you tell me in confidence stays with me. If you can’t talk to me, talk to Martin Spencer. If not him, find someone else. Cover for each other. Let’s not split into factions and let’s not squabble like siblings.”

“If I may, sir,” Spencer put in.

“Go ahead.”

“Shaving and haircuts are obviously already nonreg. That’s fine. Keep them neat for now. I’ve been shaving about twice a week, and it works well enough. I’m kempt without being too strack. I can cut hair reasonably well, male and female. Let me know and I can help you trim down. A couple of us have scissors and I may be able to sharpen them, and I have knives and sharpening tools.”

Sean ran a hand through his own hair, which was civilian thick, though he kept it whitewalled around the ears and blocked in back. His beard he kept trimmed short, but scraggly, between growth and uneven clipping. It didn’t feel professional. He’d ask about a monthly haircut or even head shaving.

“We should keep using the soap and such from that care package as long as it lasts. I don’t care if you only bathe once a week, but wash your damned hands after taking a dump and before eating. And I know a lot of you aren’t brushing your teeth enough. Doc has pliers, or we can drill it out with a hot wire and jam it full of pine tar, and repeat monthly. You don’t want that. Back to you, sir.”

“Anyone else?”

Caswell said, “I made a roof panel for the latrine, of grass and leaves. That gives us three sides and a roof. I’ll need help with a door.”

“I can do that,” Spencer said.

Barker said, “As soon as we can split a couple of logs, we’ll make a proper one with planked walls and roof. It’ll add some insulation, too.”

“Good,” Elliott said. It would be nice to take a crap in private.

Alexander said, “If I did it right, I got wireless working on the laptop, as a hotspot. It means we can use our phones for a couple of hundred meters as long as we’re in line of sight.”