Come Back Page 11

  She tried to explain what was known about the other people, the forest people, but it was difficult. They had metal tools, plus some sort of extra knowledge and they lived in the far north which I took to mean at least fifty miles off. They never came near the river and they captured anyone they could. Her English was insufficient to tell me what she wanted to, but it was enough. She was quite aware that she could not survive alone, and we were in a part of the forest she didn't know, so much I had surmised, but she showed me an unexpected facet of her character by leaning over and grasping my hand in her warm fingers.

  "Linda not kill. Know forest men not kill." She said this earnestly, with sympathetic eyes.

  "I hope so." I said gloomily. "Oh God, I hope so."

  She had collected masses of ferns and long grasses for bedding, indeed she made the depressing hole we were sheltering in almost home like. We sat comfortably on this impromptu mattress after this long session of question and answer, me nodding in the warmth. Suddenly, she sat up and leaped over to kneel behind me, her fingers quivering as they gripped my shoulder. "Brun!" She hissed in my ear, pointing to the darkness outside.

  A low rumbling from the other side of glowing embers of the dying fire was followed up by a dark shape that moved through the undergrowth. It was mister bear or maybe Mrs. bear, brought to our spot by the smell of our pork supper. She certainly knew about bears and she was not happy, especially when I made her kneel in front of me so I could rest the rifle barrel on her shoulder. My left arm wouldn't work so I had to have a rest. The bear showed up in the night sights nicely, a big animal walking uncertainly from side to side on all fours. I didn't want to shoot, bears are bad tempered enough and if he chose he could be on top of us in seconds. Regrettably, he was obviously a hungry bear because he overcame his dislike of the fire and rumbled towards us.

  "Daveed!" She shook and started to whimper, not surprising as the bear was looking right at her. He stopped at the sound of her voice and I snarled at her to keep still.

  The shots were magnified by the cave, booming out. The tracer rounds flicked by the bear's snout and he reared up on his hind legs, letting out a thunderous growl, and abruptly turned around, disappearing at speed into the black woods. A long series of crashes and slowly diminishing rumbles announced that he had decided to seek a snack elsewhere. I took the rifle off her shoulder and laughed gently. Bears are inquisitive but they don't like fire and loud noises, certainly not tracer rounds whistling past their ears. It had been a reasonable gamble and besides, I don't like killing animals we can't eat.

  Slinging more wood on the fire, I settled down to sleep but found she was not altogether convinced of the bear's departure and cuddled up to me in a disturbing way, her body curves fitting nicely, her breath warm on my back. Strange thoughts eddied through my head. We, I, kill her relative but after a couple of days she's ready to snuggle up? Maybe she was leading me on in more ways than one, all this talk about going north. Presently, her even breathing proclaimed she had gone to sleep, a trick which I wished I could copy. Bad, twisted dreams greeted me when I did, so I just watched the fire slowly die and listened to sounds from the forest. Squeaking and scratching noises, the flapping of wings from something that kept out of sight, rustles in the undergrowth. I knew that very few animals would get close to a fire unless starving or wounded so I laid there and thought about things, about Max and Linda and Quissac.

  Her fingers shaking me were the next memory, so I did sleep, and the arm was not so bad when we greeted the morning, her face curiously relaxed, calm, almost serene, as if she had just passed an examination she knew she would but had hidden doubts that were now removed. Collecting our meagre belongings into the packs, I checked with the map. If Jules and Marie were on time and hadn't met the forest kidnap gang, they would be there today.

  She refused to wear the shirt but she did wash herself very thoroughly and trim her nails with a twig, brushing her teeth with energy and delight when I gave her the spare toothbrush from my pack. They knew about cleanliness but did they know about Godliness? Did she think I was a God? Her slightly slanted eyes and the way she moved told me she knew I was no God.

  I took the spare rifle, balancing it across the pack while she carried the ammunition. It was a heavy load and we had six miles to go. An hour after dawn we started off, me leading with a steady pace, threading my way through the foliage, the sun making patterns on the forest floor as we moved along. Soon, she began to talk, a long series of questions that whistled past my ear as she stumbled along just behind. How did we make our clothes? Where did the weapons come from? What was the black box with pictures that Linda had?

  That question made me stop dead. The data box! It hadn't been among the debris so either she still had it or...or what? Melanee stared at me with puzzled eyes but I couldn't explain, it would take too long to demonstrate radio and quantum computer theory, even if I understood it myself, which I didn't.

  Streams constantly crossed our path, some mere trickles through the dirt, some two-foot-deep miniature rivers. At the second of these clearly well-established streams, she cast along the banks and pulled up an unappetising looking weed, jumping into the stream as she did so. I watched, fascinated as she rubbed the plant between her hands and dipped it in the water. Bubbles appeared, a froth. Soap! That plant must have saponin and she knew, she was using it to wash properly. Without any modesty, false or otherwise, she scrubbed herself clean while I stood sentinel, the rifle across my forearms. Finished, she gave me a

  sly look and pulled up another of the plants, holding it out. It was a hint. I certainly hadn't had a soap since the ship and for all I knew my personal scent would have killed the bear if it had got any closer.

  The stuff was odd but it got the dirt off and stung like real soap when I washed the wound. Peering at it, I decided to leave off the dressing. It was clean, the inflammation had gone down, and granulations were forming. Tearing off the shirt arm, I let it take the air and stood refreshed after my very unusual bath, being closely watched by a near naked young woman who seemed intent on making sure I scrubbed every inch.

  "Come on, Jane." I muttered, feeling more like Tarzan every minute. She gave me a beautiful smile, clipped the pack on her back and waited for me to go. I shook my head and moved off, wondering what the hell was going on in her mind. Was she simple or very complicated?

  The unending canopy passing overhead and the procession of tree, ferns, bushes, some in brilliant flower, all formed a dreamy background as we made our slow way towards Quissac. Stopping for an hour around noon, we carried on until the map and the compass told me we were there. She peered earnestly both at the map and the compass, her curiosity not satisfied until I let her peer through the aperture in the prismatic compass to see the degree figures floating in front of her. She took the compass away sharply, staring at it, then me, but I just grinned at her, not wanting her to find out that without my fancy gadgets, I was just as lost as she was.

  The forest thinned out; a patch of high grass dotted with flowering shrubs taking its place for maybe two hundred and fifty or more yards before the trees started again. Over to one side a pile of masonry that might once have been a wall poked its head over the waving stems. I paced slowly round, taking bearings on the hilltops I could see. This was, had been, the cross roads that Jules knew, so where were they?

  There were animal tracks crossing the field of grass. Over the dense woodlands behind us, a bird, two birds, suddenly a black swarm of winged shapes, a chattering noise that subsided as they all seemed to settle out of sight in the canopy.

  "Tallac." She told me, gazing at the birds before sweeping her eyes round the empty field. "Mm stay here? Meet Zhools?"

  "Yeah." I felt suddenly very weary, lost and homicidal. How could it all have gone wrong so quickly and why hadn't I been there to sort out the baddies? "We build a fire." I decided. Jules and Marie would see that or smell it surely?

  Picking a spot near that pile of stones, I gathered wood while sh
e dumped her load and stalked off somewhere. Every time she did this, I wondered if she would come back and it came to me how bad it would have been without her these last days. The fire soon gathered strength and I built it high. There was enough firewood lying around to toast every damned pig in France, so I stacked it on and watched the column of smoke rise in the windless air. Over the stone ruins we had good views all round, so I waited, leaning comfortably in the hot sun, waiting to see two familiar figures come out of the forest.

  After hours she came back, carrying two rabbits plus a pile of fruit and leaves, looking careless, even happy. Unnoticed by me, she had taken one of our long combat knives, the ones with the wicked serrated edge. She could have stuck it in my back last night and I wouldn't have known a thing. The blade flashed in the sun as she skinned the rabbits, glancing up at me with her slight smile. When they were roasting, she gave me the knife back, running her fingers with some awe down the gleaming metal.

  "How make? Metal?" Her vocabulary was increasing to the point where she could ask awkward questions all day long.

  "How old are you?" I demanded. Was I talking to a teenager or a mature woman?

  Numbers were a mystery but using fingers plus squiggles on the ground, she picked up the idea remarkably quickly, so quickly I suspected that she knew about counting things before. Glancing up from her laborious calculations, she gave me a slightly embarrassed look.

  "Mm twenty-two summers." She said clearly, watching for some signs of disapproval that were obviously expected. Twenty-two? It seemed perfectly all right to me, so I smiled at her.

  "I am thirty-one. You understand?" I drew lines to show how aged I was.

  She frowned. "Linda? She more twenty-two? No have man." Linda had a man, so I frowned at her in turn but then her difficulty explained itself. She didn't have a man. At her advanced age that took some explaining in her world, hence the expressed intention of her ex-companion to make her his own. And why no man? Her answer was awkward but puzzling. She had dreams, dreams of strange birds in the sky and monsters on the ground. It was all very disturbing for the powers that be in her society, so they decided she was too much of a risk to marry off, any offspring might have worse dreams. Loren, seemingly, was more interested in her better points than dreams which just shows you how wrong he was.

  But what dreams of past glories could she have? I stared at her with a bemused face. "Who was your mother?"

  She didn't know, and the father she did know turned out to be a substitute. She was a foundling, a very unusual event. She was a most unusual woman, I knew that, but it appeared she was much more unusual than she knew herself. Her people were an unambitious tribe, fishing and eating fruit, a singularly idyllic and bovine existence, but she wasn't one of them. Who was she?

  My musing did not go very far because a shout floated across the clearing. Jumping up, we saw the grinning figure of Jules approaching at speed, followed by Marie. They were overjoyed to see me but gazed at Melanee's splendid proportions with some astonishment.

  Telling them the news was not good, but they had to know. Marie grasped my hand in sympathetic anguish while Jules looked stricken. My shooting activities they received with some disapproval which mutated when they realised how they might themselves have been caught by the mysterious forest press gang.

  "We look at Nimes." Jules told me, glancing at Marie.

  "It 'as all gone." She said. "Everywhere there is forest, grass." She wrinkled her brow. "We do not understand."

  They had found ruins but not much, just hills were where buildings had been. They wandered for over a day, comparing notes and jotting down plant details. I trotted out Bradley's theories and Hilary's doubts about cement deterioration to their intense interest, causing a rapid conversation in French that Melanee listened to with a frown. I had told them of her arrival and progress, but they were wary of her, glancing at her out of the corner of their eyes.

  "We agree with Bradley." Jules waved his hand at the surroundings. "The trees, they would have grown, yes? But four 'undred years is not enough for the buildings, the towns to disappear."

  Marie fished out their data box. "I take many readings. And I talk to the ship." She said, tapping away at the screen touchboard, Melanee watching her with profound interest. "We 'ave figures for coastal erosion, ice cap growth, magnetic drift."

  "Magnetic drift?" I repeated. She was on to something there. Why hadn't we thought of it? The magnetic pole moves, it isn't constant. Any deviation should tell us things.

  "Oui. You see?" She displayed the screen. "North magnetic pole is moved. There is a three-degree shift but that does not mean too much, it could be sunspot activity." I grunted agreement. "But it does not 'appen overnight, no?" She cocked an eye at me and put her head on one side, like a bird.

  "But," Jules said firmly. "We 'ave better data. Look at the coastal erosion figures. And," he leaned over and tapped in a further command. "We tell it to look for continental movement. You know England sink into the sea, yes? Pity it did not do it long ago, eh?" He chuckled. "But you see? The sinkage for East Coast was known."

  They both looked at me expectantly as I scanned the figures, Melanee's shoulder pressed up against mine as she stared at the green symbols. "Jesus H. Christ." I breathed.

  "Ah, you see now." Marie said, her face suddenly ageing from a pretty thirty-year-old to a careworn older woman.

  "What is wrong?" Melanee nudged me, alarmed at our serious faces.

  "Nine thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven years." I said slowly. "I can't believe this, I can't."

  We sat and stared at each other's eyes in the bright afternoon sun, the fire sending up sparks, the wood crackling. It all seemed so normal, so natural, the world around us just as it was in all our memories. But it wasn't. We had been away for nearly ten thousand years. Everything we thought we knew, everything we meant to do, everything we hoped for was dust, dust nearly a hundred centuries old.

  Chapter 10

  THE CAVERN

  How could we be asleep for ten thousand years? It was impossible. We stared at that tiny screen with its rows of digits as if it was a large, venomous snake.

  "The Deep Sleep? It couldn't last that long." I croaked.

  "The program." Jules said slowly. "You know how it works? The body goes into stasis, yes? A balance of energies, a trickle of life."

  "It could last forever if the program keeps running." Marie added. "This," she pointed at the screen in front of her. "It makes sense but nothing else does. We know about continental drift, coast erosion, polar magnetism, radiation decay."

  "What radiation?" I demanded. Melanee looked from one face to another, sensing the disaster but not understanding why we were so stricken.

  "We sent up a rock analysis." Marie explained. They had certainly been more inquisitive and more aware than we had. "You know about zircon grains? Yes? They contain the element zirconium, they are crystals in igneous rocks. The ship knows about them and zircon contains uranium and the decay of uranium to lead is a known quantity." She gazed at me as if I was somehow able to put things right if only she could make me understand. "Uranium 238 decays to lead by two and a half percent in a hundred million years. By comparing the decay in the sample we get a known time frame."

  "Ten thousand years since we left." Jules nodded. "We know about these things because in assessing plant life you need to know the, how you say? The ancestry, the fossil record, we find the mother of all plants, yes?"

  "Jesus, God." I wiped my face with a rag and stared at the still forest. "What do we do?"

  Jules leaned forward. "The Captain, and Selena, they know something, they stop you looking through the program, yes?"

  "So what? Even if they knew, what difference does it make? We're alone on a world that's been dead for thousands of years." Despair was creeping over me.

  "It accounts for everything." Marie said, picking up a handful of the sandy ground where the grasses struggled against the wall. "No cities, no traces of any roads, nothi
ng."

  The silence leaped on us as we avoided each other's eyes. We were stranded with no hope of finding anything. "Please," Melanee had learned that useful word from me. "Not understand. Numbers too big."

  "Too big for me too, girl." I muttered. "You want to know? Well, I'll tell you. A thousand of your lifetimes ago we, the people like you and me, there were millions of us and we got clever, we sent a ship to another star. Up there." I pointed to the blue sky. "Me and Jules and Marie and the others we went on the ship and now we come back and we find... Christ." I put my head in my hands. "Linda." I groaned. "I've got to find her, I've got to."

  "Mon ami." Jules put a hand on my shoulder. "The Quissac complex, it was over fifty levels down and the archives, the survival areas, they were deep frozen. It was a..." He hesitated and shot a quick sentence at Marie who nodded.

  "The deep freeze equations, you reduce to near zero and it is self-sustaining." She spoke earnestly. "David, we must go there. If we can find an entrance, we can maybe turn off the generators, open the atmosphere to the ambient levels."

  "Take bloody years to thaw out." I grunted. "Even if it hasn't all melted a thousand years ago."

  "Why do you think Sorenson go to Montana, eh?" Jules asked sharply. "There is a whole civilisation buried, waiting for someone to find it."

  "After ten thousand years?" I knew about the deep freeze. Chill enough ground and it takes centuries to thaw out, the machines used no moving parts, merely trapped the heat from ground, the old evaporator principle, a giant heat exchanger. Just how they did it I didn't know and didn't care.

  "I do not understand how the ship tell us four hundred years." Jules commented, frowning.

  "Selena and Max and Mark, they were all on the design team." I told him.