A Long Time Until Now (49 page)
Read A Long Time Until Now Online
Authors: Michael Z Williamson
Tags: #fiction, #science fiction, #time travel, #General, #Action & Adventure
Progress was slow, and he was very glad he’d mandated not using the sleeping bags. They’d have had to abandon them to be prizes to some Roman.
In the monochrome, he sought the game paths, actually saw deer and elk sleeping and stirring as they hiked past, jumped as a rabbit darted across in front of him. The shadows were a stirred, mixed mess of dark, and using the IR illuminator on his light didn’t help much. That showed one clear area with stark shadows, and blacked everything else out in contrast. Fifteen minutes later, he had to piss again before he started dribbling in fear.
He was glad to see flashes of false dawn to the east, the trees slowly turning gray and ghostlike through fog, which were just as horroresque, but at least hinted at daylight.
He was still a city boy, even if that city was ten people in a couple of tents.
They passed the former Urushu village well after sunrise, circling uphill and around past the animal pens. They waved at a couple of distant parties, and kept humping.
He slowed once they were clear of the village, and paused for a moment, behind an outcropping with scrub.
“Ortiz, can you grab some of the jerky out of my ruck? Left pocket.”
“Got it.”
It was bland jerky, unseasoned except for salt and mustard, but it was meat and it gave him something to chew on rather than his lip. Then they moved on. There was clear sign of some predator in the brush, wolf or possibly hyena. They’d never seen a hyena here, and he wasn’t sure if they had been, but there’d been some ugly looking canines that might be.
About midmorning they sighted home, its wooden walls a comfort.
Sean Elliott was not happy. A firefight with the Romans was not going to help. He agreed with Spencer it was likely unavoidable.
Regardless of what philosophers thought about the utopian lives of primitive people, they were so far craven, superstitious, short-sighted and dull. They were very clever at tools and adaptation. They had little grasp of social interaction.
The Paleo people had only immediate needs and enough resources to meet them. The Neolithics understood property and wanted control of it, which he understood. It would be nice to get along with them, but they just hadn’t been interested, and now the Romans had them, too. And the Romans wanted to be in charge. The East Indians were too few to matter, though would have made better allies. Except they’d likely be able to figure out how a rifle worked if they got hold of one.
If they could all just be rational and cooperate, they’d do a lot better. But everyone wanted to be in charge.
“So it’s us and the Urushu village against the rest of them?” he asked Spencer. The two sat in the cab of Number Nine for privacy. It felt odd to sit in a vehicle seat after all these months.
Alexander could hear them, from the back, but she’d proven very discreet.
Spencer said, “Yes, sir. About a hundred Romans, about half that many Neolithic levees with spears and presumably Roman discipline, and a few Urushu women they snagged as comfort women and household servants for the leaders.”
The man spoke in a rush, and sipped bark tea fast, followed by devouring some soup. He still shook. He placed his canteen cup and wooden bowl down in the footwell.
Sean added, “Plus the Indians.”
“Yes, sir, but they don’t seem to have much say in the matter. The Romans had their muskets. We only saw them at a distance, as here.”
“You think they want to do the same with us.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what they want, sir. Control of the weapons and exotic pussy. Pardon me, Alexander.”
From the back, she said, “I understood just fine. You know why I always have a knife.”
Sean said, “Yeah, if I had a company, or even a solid platoon, they’d know the score. As it is, they aren’t scared enough.” He kept running into shortage of manpower.
“The new leader is. The pilus prior apparently didn’t think our rifles were that much different from the muskets, and had no idea we could see in the dark. He was clumsy.”
“You think the other one is more stable?”
Spencer unzipped his jacket, and shrugged it off.
Sean decided it was warm, too, and they could continue this in the public area. It wasn’t that busy, and the rest needed to know the score. He opened the door and climbed out.
As they walked the whole twenty feet to the kitchen area, Spencer answered his question.
“He may be, but I have no idea what the other NCOs will want. I don’t remember if they took votes on these things, or if they’ll do so regardless of custom.”
Crap. This was bad.
“Should we leave? Or have the Urushu move here so we have more bodies?”
“Sir, if they come here, the Urushu would either be slaughtered, run off or get in the way. The Romans wouldn’t be impressed. What bothers me is we can stop the Romans.”
“You think so?”
“If they come in formation, even a turtle, they’ll stomp in, expecting a few casualties. We need twenty good shots each to exterminate them, five shots each to break even their discipline, and there’s a good chance we’d take out more than one with each burst from the Two-Forty or a Two oh Three shot. The Fifty would demolish them. But what then? Do we want to wipe them out? They have experience exploiting land like this for food and other resources. We need to ally and learn from all these groups. We could do a charcoal burn with the Romans, and work on reducing more iron.”
Dalton muttered, “Always with the iron.”
“Hey, fuck you, Corporal!”
“Enough.”
Sean did believe Spencer could produce iron, but it wasn’t going to be soon, and they had other, pressing needs.
He said, “I agree we want alliance if we can. For now, we stay here, they stay there, and we finish reinforcing. I wonder if it’s even worth the goat pens, though. They’re going to be wiped out in every raid or encounter.”
“We still should, sir,” Ortiz said. “In between, it’s easier than hunting.”
That was logical. But damn. “Okay. But we’ll just stay here and keep an eye out. Hopefully, that little fight convinced them to not be stupid.”
“I hope so, sir. I don’t know. At least they’ve had a direct demonstration. I think our new policy needs to be to make sure they see our God Tools. Lights, screen images, knives that don’t need sharpening, all of it.”
Spencer said, “I think you’re right. They’ll have to wonder how it works and why it never runs out of charge, and what we can do.”
He thought for a moment, to let it all sink in, and ran it through his mind again.
“I’ll look at it more later. Write it up for Alexander’s log, summaries from each of you, give her the photos.”
“Yes, sir.”
Next item. “I want to reinstitute PT. A run around the compound once a week, and some kind of team activity.”
Spencer nodded. “Makes sense, sir. Cohesion.”
He asked, “Do we have a ball to go with the bats in the back of Number Eight?”
“We do, and we looked at that, but were afraid of losing it in the rough. I was thinking of stitching something up, or a football type thing instead, to throw.”
“Yeah. Crap.” His brain was really lagging today.
Moving on, he said, “We managed to dig the latrine a bit deeper, so there’s an actual pool. Right now, turds seem to float for a while, but they don’t stick on the rocks and stink. That wasn’t a fun job. Luckily, the Urushu were happy to help.”
“That’s a nice plus, sir.”
“We reinforced the walls and roofs with more weavers. It should block wind better. We started digging a hole for a bathtub, and you can see we got another cabin roughed out. That’s for you and me.”
Spencer glanced over. “Sir, I recommend we be in different hooches with different roommates. We don’t want an attack to take us both out at once. With Barker in his tent and each of us somewhere else, our chain is more secure.”
That . . . was obvious. He blushed.
“Yeah, that makes sense. Good. In any case, we have some progress.”
“Great to hear, sir. We have all summer to get ready for winter again. And I’m looking forward to a hot bath. The Romans had already built that, but it wasn’t safe to partake.”
“That alone would be worth teaming up if we could.”
“If we could, yes.”
He wanted to be reassuring. So he said, “Well, the mission was a success for intel and planning. I still hope we can work something out with them, but it’s going to take a while for them to get used to the idea.”
“Or to get as comfortable as Roman units ever got at the end of the Empire, and see no advantage in fighting us.”
“Or that. I hope to avoid killing more if we can. We need to save the ammo.” A dozen firefights like that, they’d be out of ammo.
“Roger that, sir.”
He also didn’t want slice the throats of any more casualties. He wasn’t going to mention that, though. Their faces would haunt him forever.
CHAPTER 28
Jenny Caswell did the best she could to produce an herb and vegetable garden. The rooty things were definitely carrot family, but the carrot was an odd mutation, cultivated for only about 4000 years. These roots were edible when small, before turning woody and tough.
There were dandelions, plantains, mint, and some spring fruit coming in, but it would be a while before those developed. Still, they could have some starch from the tubers and blanched acorns they had on hand.
“What do you think about rice?” Ortiz called down from the goat pen.
“Got any?”
“No, but Bob thinks he can harvest it off the river like the Urushu. Can we build a rice paddy?”
“It’s possible, but we’d need to dig out a field up here and it wouldn’t be much.”
“I like rice. I never got into potatoes that much.”
That was not uncommon for Central Americans and Asians. They’d be happier than she would. She loved rice, but potatoes were tasty things with scallions and sour cream, and she could do that here, if she had potatoes. Rice wouldn’t work as well.
Her rake was hand lashed from a sapling root. Her hoe was an E-tool, and that hurt to bend so much. It was good exercise, but Lord, her back ached as she split and carved heavy clods. The blade bounced off a rock, and the handle bit into her flesh.
“Ow.”
“Yo!” Barker called from below. She turned to see him coming upslope with four Urushu, and wiped hair from her eyes before sucking on her dinged knuckle. She should probably have Alexander trim her bangs again. She’d done an okay job last time.
“Hi.”
“Fish trap is complete,” he said. He held a bundled hide.
“Cool. How well do you think it will work?”
“This well,” he said, holding up the bundle and opening it. There were a dozen large trout in it.
“Damn.”
“They swam right in. It’ll need periodic maintenance, and has to be cleaned out or they’ll starve and scare the others.”
“It went together fast, though,” she said.
“We have a silty bottom and I have a hammer,” he said, pointing to the sledge held by one of the Urushu. “Then we used the anti-RPG mesh off Number Eight to reinforce and net it up. So it will need regular cleaning, but it will definitely catch fish.”
Some of the Urushu had fish, too. She recognized one named Tyuga, and he grinned as he showed her two really fat ones. It was a friendly grin.
“Great,” she said. Fish would be better than mammal, both in taste and in ethics. She hated killing anything with a face. Fish had less of that.
“I’ll cook it in goat butter, if we can churn some,” he said. Churning meant clabbering it in a bottle, then shaking it thick, and pulling it out with a spreading stick. He nodded and headed through the gate.
She went back to digging, but it was a lighter task.
That evening, they ate fresh fish fried on hot rocks with salted goat butter and wild garlic. It was fantastic. They even showed the Urushu how to do it, and since butter was beyond their experience, they were amazed.
“Om nom,” Tyuga said. A pidgin was developing, and that one was an obvious onomatopoeia.
“Yes,” she nodded agreement, while plucking a chunk of flesh off the skin. It was fabulous, and less guilty, and delicious.
She hoped the butter wouldn’t affect their guts. It was processed from milk, but even with the cooking and chemistry change, it might still cause a lactose reaction. Hopefully not.
Alexander had sweetbreads fried in butter, and said, “These are almost palatable.”
“Are they helping?” Doc asked.
“I really don’t know. I needed adjustments to the dosage every six months anyway. So I know I’m off, but not how far, or in what way.”
Jenny felt sorry for her. That had to suck even worse.
After dinner, she said, “It’s Equinox in two days. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I was thinking of something instead of a ritual.”
“Oh?”
“Party. Tunes, food, wine, dancing in the compound.”
She was sure Elliott would refuse, but he leaned over and conferred with Spencer.
“Sounds good,” he said with a smile. “We can invite the Urushu. A shame we can’t invite the others. I’d like them to see it.”
“Ah, a PR thing, sir?” Alexander asked.
“Yeah, proof of technology.”
Jenny asked, “How many are we inviting? Security issues and space come to mind.”
“Whoever is here. It can be their secret.”
So a party it was, on Thursday night.
Oglesby told the Urushu to join them for a spring ritual. There were seven in camp, three of them women. One was a hunter, one along to help cook, and one seemed to be the lover or partner of the injured man, who’d gotten a nasty foot infection. They understood drainage and cleaning, but not sterile procedure, debridement and suturing. Doc had taken care of him, but the man could only sit and watch.
Dinner was more fish, smoked this time, and bacon and ham, with cheese. She had gotten goat cheese to work. It was mild, like a salty cottage cheese but a bit firmer. It was still good. They’d find variations, she was sure. Barker planned to smoke some.
“We need to watch their lactose intake, Doc,” she warned. If they got sick it would be nasty, as well as potentially bad.
“Yeah, she’s right. A taste each only.”
Spencer said, “Oh, God, yes. Don’t want a re-match of the Vikings and proto-Micmac.”
“I take it it was bad,” Elliott said.
She said, “Lactose tolerance comes along after animal husbandry. The Neoliths are probably safe. The Romans are. Not the Urushu.”
Doc said, “Goat should be easier, and cheese and butter are processed.”
“Right.”
Oglesby said, “I told them we need permission from our spirits to serve them the goat milk food.”
“Aw, dammit,” Spencer said, and high-stepped into the middle again. He did that well, took it seriously, and was respectful to the Urushu in context. He wasn’t all bad, just prejudiced by his upbringing.
He pointed west. “The setting sun says we can serve them, as soon as it touches that pole. A taste only, I must warn, sir.” He indicated with thumb and finger. “It will please the spirits.”
Bob said, “Everyone should be discreet and go with small bites. I don’t want them feeling slighted either, even if I could explain the biology.”
“I can,” Doc said. “They wouldn’t get it.”
They waited a few minutes for the sun to touch the fence, then distributed the cheese and bacon.
The Urushu had heard of the bacon, and a couple had tried it before. They seemed ready to change religion or start an orgy on the spot, once they tasted it and the cheese.
Then Spencer brought out wine.
Alexander said, “Let’s make this a toast, each as we wish, to springtime and renewal.”
They drank deeply, and the stuff was sour, bitter and nasty, but alcoholic. The burn started and she forgot how bad it tasted.
One of the laptops had been faced out the back of Number Nine, and Alexander had reluctantly let Trinidad plug in his iPod, which had a lot of music.
A slow, steady beat with lots of percussion started, and turned into something sonorous and trance-y. The Urushu stared in fascination at this magic thing.
“It’s dance music,” Alexander said. “Sort of. Come on. Dance.”
She started moving back and forth, and Caswell saw what no one else did.
Twelve males gave Alexander their undivided attention. Particularly to her swaying hips. She limped a bit on her scarred foot, but she still had that roll that women could do and men couldn’t.
Yeah, she was going to sit this one out.
She loved dancing, and this would be great, but, no. Worse, Spencer was the one up top on watch.
She sighed and scrambled up.
“Not dancing?” he asked.
“Not right now. Too much to eat, maybe.”
“I’ve never been a fan of butter for frying fish.”
“That could be it,” she said. Whatever. She didn’t want to talk.
The Urushu were confused and disturbed by the music, staring around, pointing at the box. They chattered to Oglesby, he sounded reassuring. Ortiz and Trinidad started dancing with Alexander, if you could call rhythmic shifting of weight “dancing.” Then Trinidad started doing some sort of movement probably derived from Kali or Arnis.
Once reassured, the Urushu started stomping feet and getting into it.
She took a scan around the horizon, as the sun dropped. The long shadows showed some herds of sheep and goats, a family group of cattle, and falcons dropping into the grass for crepuscular snacks. The crickets started up, and a couple of them were inside the truck cab. It echoed.
In short order, Doc was dancing with the Urushu huntress. He did have a fantastic figure, and he’d been popular with them all along.
Ramon had programmed some good beats. The trance got louder and segued into techno. By then, the Urushu were perfectly cool with the magic music, as long as it had beat. A cup of wine made its way around, and the dancing got more energetic and less coordinated. It was cool, and she shivered while they sweated.
Alexander was back to back with Dalton, not quite grinding. Oglesby and Doc were in a circle with the Urushu and their women.
The volume was enough to cause vibrations in something that rattled.
She took another scan of the horizon, as did Spencer. The music might be keeping wildlife away. There was nothing past the goat pen, except a distant huddle of wild sheep.
Spencer asked, “What the hell is that whomp whomp sound?”
“Probably Skrillex,” she said.
“Is that a band or a style?”
“That’s the band. The genre is dubstep.”
“Oh,
that’s
dubstep,” he said. “I’d occasionally heard it, but never known the name.”
“Seriously?”
“Really.”
“What do you think of it?”
“It sounds like Optimus Prime fucking a dishwasher.”
She fell flat on her back in hysterics. Oh, goddamn, that was hilarious, and yet she could see it.
Then she realized he was staring down at her, and that look, and she sat up again, fast.
“I may try to dance a bit,” she said, and headed for the ladder.
She slid down the ladder, landed hard and staggered back, then joined the circle of Urushu. She felt safer between their hulking heights than with the soldiers.
A colored flash started. It was Spencer with one of his lights, switching from blue to red to green to white LEDs.
The Urushu cheered. They’d never seen colored lights before, and green and LED blue were unlike anything nature would offer in a sunset. They stood and stared.
Elliott bowed out and went to the tent, followed by Barker. The younger troops kept at it. Then Ortiz went up top to relieve Spencer, who went to bed also.
She knew her judgment was suffering from that awful wine, and if hers was, everyone else must be plowed. It was near midnight, the drumbeats and bass making her dizzy and euphoric, when she grabbed Alexander and said, “I’m going to crash.”
“Okay!” The woman looked drunk, and Jenny hoped she was careful. There were two other females, though, so she should be fine for now.
She brushed her teeth behind the trucks, took another look at the capering figures in the firelight, and crawled into the hooch.
She kept her rifle off safe on the shelf next to her pallet, and made sure she had a knife in reach, too.
Unlike Doc, she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of attention.
She missed her mother and brother, but being so isolated here brought her to lonely tears.
