Detour to Otherwhen ©
by K Pelle
Chapter 14
Morning - Day Three:
I had gone to bed with the sun and according to my wristwatch I didn't wake up until about an hour before sunrise. Although I knew I should probably try to sleep longer, I knew I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, so I decided I needed to get my head in order and review our situation. I think perhaps that was when I acknowledged the fact that I was actually the leader of our group and realised that I'd become responsible for the lives and welfare of a couple dozen people. When I had originally agreed to be in charge of the group, there had only been six of us. Then Mimi and I had found that Chuck, Maybelle and their three kids had also been shifted through time. At the same time we'd found that Wally and Matty Sam had also made the trip. To say that I was relieved about finding that all of them had been shifted through time along with us is putting it mildly.
Next we'd met Mark, Louise and Meredith Lowden on the road and not much later we'd discovered that we had stone age savages for neighbours. That meeting with those churlish natives was the fact which convinced everyone to move to the valley for protection. We'd hardly managed to start that task when Meredith had given birth to a baby, so within a few hours our original group of six castaways had swelled to seventeen people.
That wasn't all though, yesterday morning I'd met the Jensen family. Since it was apparent that they were going to be flooded out, we invited them to move to the valley and added another nine people to our group. That meant a total of twenty-six individuals would be living in our valley which was simply too few people to be able to maintain anything near our former standard of living. Considering the personalities within our new group, I had to admit that most of us were a relatively stable bunch and we had many of the skills we'd need to survive, but we were bound to be short of one or two abilities that we'd dearly miss. As the go-to-guy, my main job was going to be keeping everyone alive and considering Anna's warnings about the probable reaction of our savage neighbours, that was an extremely worrisome thought.
On top of that I think I'm going to end up feeling as if I'm walking a tight rope just to keep a lid on people's tempers. I'm going to have to learn to have more tact in order to deal with some of the personalities within our group though. Hell, I even lost my temper yesterday when Mark Lowden created a situation. Now in some ways he was right, because he is certainly the most highly educated of our group. He may be the most intelligent as well, but I knew he'd be a failure as a leader because he has no idea how to guide people without acting as if everyone else should be subservient. On top of that he's prejudiced and almost everyone in the group has some native blood or has had to deal with prejudice in one form or another. I think it was his prejudice and his superior attitude that set me off yesterday, but I'm going to have to learn to hold my temper because we need Mark since he's a fully trained doctor. Okay, really he's a surgeon, and even then he's a specialist, a brain surgeon for cripes sake, so he's not accustomed to normal surgery. Unfortunately Mark Lowden doesn't appear to be willing to adapt to our situation, at least not if yesterday's display of his opinions is any indication of his personality.
What we actually need is a general practitioner, someone who is familiar with normal medical procedures. In other words we need someone who could treat a fever, put a bandage on a wound, or set a bone and put a cast on a broken arm. Thankfully Fran has already shown she can do that and she'll be invaluable as an EMT who can step in to fill many of the functions of a GP. Besides that she's familiar with native medicines, which is a huge bonus because we have so few over-the-counter medications. In fact we may have to consider her to be our main doctor, but I'm sure from what I've seen already, she'll grow into the job. However I'm going to have to make sure to emphasize the idea that any surgery that needs to be done will be Mark Lowden's job. Maybe that will be enough to satisfy him, otherwise I don't know what I can do to please the man, because I'm certainly not going to step aside and let him try to lead our group. That would simply be stupidity on my part, since he'd have everyone fighting and squabbling in no time flat. Not only that, but his idea of dedicating the unfinished log house to be a hospital reserved for surgery is sheer stupidity since we don't have the time, the material, or the need for that.
I know it was hard on him to hear my views when I lost my temper with him over his demands, but damn it, he'd upset the whole crew and we simply can't afford to waste time or materials on useless projects. I'll have to apologise to him for losing my temper, but I'm not going to give in to him in any way other than to accept his help as a surgeon. Even then I'm going to insist that he needs to brush up on his knowledge since Louise has told me that he has all the medical books he needs to do that. Hopefully I can get him to accept that as a necessity, otherwise we'll just have to try to work around his attitude. Unfortunately I doubt if our group will be very accepting toward him if he doesn't try to ease up on his prejudicial attitudes because they're not good for morale.
About then I snorted and realized that I was thinking my way into a bad mood, which wasn't something I wanted to do that early in the morning. Instead I should be thinking of something pleasant, like the look of happiness on Mimi's face when I told her she could be responsible for the dairy herd. Actually finding the dairy cattle and herding them into the pasture was a huge boost toward our future health and well being. Besides, having milk and cream would certainly make a big difference to our breakfast menu. I chuckled to myself at an odd thought, Wally had both chickens and pigs, so maybe breakfasts won't change all that much either.
Unfortunately the thought of breakfast reminded me once more that we'd soon run out of coffee and even regular tea. Crap, what were we going to do for our group's morning caffeine hit? Perhaps we could grow Labrador Tea - if we could find any of the plants growing in the area. If we did find any plants, we could transplant them to that wet area we'd seen down by the lake, that would help to ease my caffeine addition. I was going to have to talk to Ellen and Fran about that idea. In fact I decided to do that quite soon, because by bringing up the idea now, I could be sure that everyone would keep their eyes open for any locally available food or medicinal plants.
About then I considered the time and recalled that Fran and Ellen were on watch that morning, so I slipped out of bed and got dressed. As I stepped outside I took a deep breath and smelled the fresh-cut grass from the day before, but then I discovered that the grass was wet. There must have been a rain shower last night to make the air smell fresh and clean, but at the moment it was a bit foggy so that would account for a heavy dew on the grass. After a quick trip to the bushes to take care of my body's morning demands, I detoured to the Jeep and picked up my laptop since I'd left it plugged in to recharge overnight.
Then I joined the Fran and Ellen who were on watch and sitting at my old picnic table.
That's when I noticed a few changes that had been made to the area. Someone had put up a few
posts and a framework to hold a tarp overhead, then they'd added more tarps for back and side walls,
as well as a small wood burning heater at one end of the table. All of those were good ideas
because now the people on watch could stay warm and dry without ruining their night vision.
Since the girls had a small coffee pot keeping warm on the tiny stove I was able to have a small
cup of coffee while we discussed what they'd found in their search of our inventory.
(Author's Note; Because I felt our conversation was important, I recorded
it so I could refer to it later and I've included part of that discussion here.)
"I was wondering if you had an idea of what we have in the way of medical supplies?" I asked Fran.
"We don't have a lot of medical supplies, but I did bring some and there were a few items that others brought, so I've included those in my present list. There are small amounts and several different formulations of common pain killers. Quite a lot of antiseptic liquids and salves, gauze, bandages and other supplies of that sort in the various first aid kits. Oh and I have about two dozen small doses of morphine, a little penicillin and some sulpha drugs, but only small amounts. However, there are several local herbs that will help us a lot. I don't have anything much in the way of surgical supplies, but then I didn't expect to do many surgeries. I have a few scalpels, some needles, and a few sutures, but I'm hoping that Dr. Lowden will have more supplies and will handle any surgeries," Fran paused then, bit her lip and looked at me with a strange expression on her face.
"Yeah, you've got something else to say, don't you."
"I guess so," she sighed heavily. "Joe mentioned a few things that may have a bearing on our potential pain medications. Shortly before he brought me out here, he'd been involved in an arrest and seizure at rollover accident and there were some materials which were confiscated from the wreck that he locked in his trunk. What with everything else that went on, he never had a chance to unload them back at the detachment, so all that seized material is still in the trunk of his car. There are some guns involved, but as far as I'm concerned, the controversial and possibly important material he has are the drugs. He said he impounded something like two kilos of marijuana, some hash, a package he thinks might be morphine and a large vial of what he believes are marijuana seeds.
"Now, I want you to understand, I learned to hate drugs when I was a teenager and saw what various drugs did to my friends and relatives. Crystal meth destroyed some of my family and crack killed my older sister when I was about fifteen, so I hate fucking recreational drugs. However, we're perilously short of strong analgesics if anyone does get badly injured. On top of that Canada did legalize extracts of Cannabis sativa indica for patients with extremely painful diseases like MS or cancer, so I think it would be wise for us to grow a little . . ."
"If you're asking my permission, I'm going to say that it's really not my business, it's your decision to make." I interrupted her. "I happen to react badly to marijuana smoke, so I don't want to . . ."
"Oh no, I'm not suggesting that we encourage anybody smoke it." Fran waved off my protest. "Cannabis really is far less effective when it's inhaled, besides that, the smoke is harsh and bitter which can cause irritation of the throat and damage to the lungs. Besides, the active ingredient, commonly known as THC, is partially destroyed by very high temperatures, so smoking cannabis is actually wasteful as far as analgesic effects are concerned. The best and longest lasting effect is gained by ingesting it orally along with a carbohydrate based nutrient such as bread or cake. People who need to use cannabis often bake it into brownies or cookies and swallow it that way."
"Well, I don't . . ." I paused and frowned then, but mostly because I'd just noticed the way she'd dropped her accent. Suddenly she'd lost her 'injun' style of speech, as if when she was talking about medical matters she had to speak as an educated nurse, not an uneducated native, and that surprised me. Hopefully my break as I considered her changed pronunciation and wording wasn't noticeable, but then she might have thought I was pausing to think about what she'd said.
"What I was starting to try to say was that if you need marijuana for medical reasons, I can't see any reason why you can't grow some, okay? I don't need a blow by blow description on how to use it and why you need it, but I will say that I don't really like the idea of us growing large amounts of a drug that we know can be abused badly. I'm going to insist that you and Tom are in charge of making certain that it isn't overused or abused; in other words, you two will be our drug cops."
"Well, I guess we kinda would be anyway," Fran looked at me rather strangely. "I mean it's what we did before as cops, but can Tom be in charge of that sort of thing? I think I'm going to have my hands full with a lot of other problems."
"Oh? What do you mean? Is someone sick?"
"Oh no, at least not that I know of, but medically we've been dropped into a situation where we could present a danger of infection to the present population and they could be a danger to us. You see microbes, diseases and other pathogens change and mutate over the passage of time. We won't have much resistance to the pathogens of this time frame, but even worse than that, the people here won't have any resistance to the diseases that we carry in our bodies. You know what mumps, measles, chicken pox and TB did to the local natives in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the situation could be just as bad or even worse now. On top of that, we simply don't have the necessary supplies to prevent or cure any disease that does happen to appear. I may be able to treat the symptoms of some of the sicknesses that may develop, but I won't be able to do much to cure them. I don't have any penicillin, sulpha drugs or anything of that sort, and most important, I don't have any preventative vaccines. Hell, even if I did have any medications, I don't have any way to store them safely and on top of that I'm not really trained to use those medications correctly."
"Yes, we know that Fran, and we don't expect you to perform miracles, but compared to the shaman and medicine men of this time, you're a genius with a massive education. Just remember that these people won't understand that what is attacking them are microbes, viruses or bacteria. Since they can't see what's doing the damage, they're going to blame the problem on evil spirits and try to drive those evil spirits out with dances, sacrifices and rituals."
"Yeah, I realize I'll have to learn to deal with witchdoctors and their rituals," she frowned. "However, since I'm a woman, they probably won't even let me get close to anyone who needs to be treated anyway."
"So what? All that means is that if you want to treat the sick, you're going to have to become a better witch doctor than they are," I grinned. "Talk to Anna, and come up with a costume and a procedure that will allow you to help. Now we've managed to wander away from your statement about what Tom had impounded and although the medical properties of marijuana are going to be important, I'm more concerned about the weapons. Just what did he have in the trunk of his car and where did you store them?"
"Oh, I don't know that, since we haven't seen them. The avalanche he was in screwed up the trunk lid so we couldn't open it."
"So, this whole discussion has been about a speculation, not about a proven fact. You don't even know if the seeds are for marijuana or not, right?"
"Well, I haven't seen any of the confiscated materials, but I'm sure Tom would know what he found," Fran frowned heavily.
"Um, can I interrupt and say that I can identify both the plant and the seed of Cannabis indica or Cannabis sativa?" Ellen said quietly. "The woman who was teaching me about native plants has MS, so she has a permit to grow enough medical marijuana for her own use. I've helped her plant, grow and harvest marijuana. Of course since we were living in BC, she grew the cross of the two species, but the seeds all look similar."
"Why am I not surprised that you would know all about it?" I chortled, suddenly in a much better mood. "By the way, Miss Horticultural Specialist, just how much planting material have you come up with?"
"Are you talking about me?" Ellen asked in surprise.
"I sure am, and since you guys have insisted that I'm the boss of this bunch or I could use local terms, and say as the chief of this tribe, I get to give out titles to my crew leaders. Ellen, you are now our Horticultural Specialist and main gardener and you'll be working with Wally Sam, who will be our main farmer, or rather our Agricultural Specialist. Fran is one of our two Medical Specialists and she's also one of our Security Specialists. Mimi is one of our Veterinary Specialists and our main dairy farmer. Anna is my Cultural Anthropologist and practical planning assistant. Tom is Chief of Security and my tactical advisor, as well as our head mechanic. Chuck will be our rancher and work with Wally Sam to look after the horses and beef cattle, and they'll probably do any blacksmithing we need. Meanwhile Maybelle and Matty Sam will be our Culinary Specialists, in other words our cooks and mother figures. I'm sure I'll come up with titles for the Jensens too, but I know they were dryland farmers and they do have some excavating equipment they know how to operate. As for me, I guess I'm just head of the complaint department and the guy who has to try to figure out how to make everything work so we can stay relatively happy and healthy."
"Yesterday, while you looked like you were half asleep after your horseback trip, you were sitting there getting that all planned out, with a job and a title for everyone, weren't you?" Ellen laughed. "I wondered why you got so quiet and thoughtful when you first sat down at the table last night."
"Actually, I was considering all of our advantages and disadvantages, but I decided we're in darn good shape, considering what has happened to us. The only worries I have are being overrun by our savage neighbours or running out of essential items that we might need. We're going to have to conserve our irreplaceable supplies and make them last as long as possible, but once they're gone, we're going to have to find or make substitutes. Fran has already taken a look at that idea with her ideas about medical supplies, but we're all going to have to work out ways to make do with what we brought along with us or we can find locally. Other than that I think we're in great shape, because I see a lot of chance for all of us to stretch ourselves a little. If I'd been given a choice about coming here, I don't think I'd have taken it, but since I didn't have a choice, I really do like the people who did end up here along with me. What we'll need to do is going to be a lot of hard work, but I'm sure we can manage and I think we have the skills and talents to not just survive, but to do very well," I paused then and grinned. "Now that I've given my first pep talk, does anyone have any questions?"
"I do, Joe, when you were talking about essential things that we should save, were you thinking mostly about food and medicines?" Ellen asked instantly.
"Actually, I was thinking about a lot of things. There's food, medicines, ammunition, diesel fuel or gasoline for the vehicles, and well . . . just about everything else we brought with us. Heck, if we're stuck here permanently, we're eventually going to wear out our clothes, then we'll have to learn to tan hides and learn how to make clothes out of leather and furs."
"Well, I think I told you that my family has a thing about guns, and that I'm a good shot with a shotgun, but that's a hobby. I spent my whole life living and working on an organic farm, so I was going over the things I'm more familiar with handling. If we think about it, there are a lot of native food plants that we can grow, but we have seed for several food plants in the camper," Ellen commented.
"I was hoping we did."
"Oh, we do," she grinned at me. "First off, there's a big bag of wheat Anna brought along to grind into flour so she could bake bread, but we could skip bread for a while and plant the wheat instead. If we did that, we'd probably harvest a few hundred times as much grain as we have now. As well as that there are the things like the dried beans and dried peas which she bought to soak and use for soups and stews. Heck, I even bought some popcorn, so we can grow that and grind it for cornmeal. It won't be the best corn to make cornmeal, but it will be better than nothing. All of those are seeds that can be planted as they are and they'll produce both food for the winter and seed for next year. We have potatoes that we bought at that organic place outside of Medicine Hat. Not only do they have eyes, but since they were sold as organic they won't have been chemically treated to stop them from sprouting, so if we plant them we can grow more. We bought green onions there too and they were sold in bunches with part of the roots and tops still attached. Then we have all sorts of biennial root plants like carrots, beets, turnips and radishes. If we replant them fairly soon, they'll grow and if we let them get to full size, they'll flower and set seed. We can save the seeds from them to plant next year, but we can also use some of them like the mature onions for food. There are lots of things that we have in the camper that we can use either as seeds or as starter plants."
"You know, those are all very good ideas," I nodded. "Good thinking, but another idea might be to check through those bags of feed Chuck brought for the horses. You might find seed for things you wouldn't have anywhere else because those bags came from a grain cleaning plant, so there could be seeds from all the different grains grown around Fort Macleod. As well as that, you might want to talk to both Matty Sam and Louise Lowden about what plants they have in their gardens or what spare seeds they have around their houses."
"Oh, those are both good ideas!" Ellen grinned. "Thanks, I know growing things is going to be a hard job though, because we're going to have to find some decent garden soil and animals are probably going to be a problem. In the first place we need to fence the fields to keep the farm animals out and any garden we grow will have to be fenced even better than that to be enough to keep the deer and rabbits out."
"That's going to be quite a problem, because any fence would have to be darn high to keep out leaping animals like deer and it would have to be darn strong to keep out big brutes like bears. On top of that, animals might not be the worst problem," Fran commented.
"Really?" she frowned.
"Nope. The worst problem just might be the natives if they show up, because they are hunter-gatherers who range all over these hills and valleys looking for food. I know Joe said it was hard to get into the valley, but if they do come and look down from the cliffs this place is going to look like paradise to them, so they may decide to try. If they do decide to try, they're almost certain to manage to get down here. Once you have natives in the valley, how would you stop them from coming into your garden and stripping it bare?" Fran asked.
"I didn't think of that, but I think that problem should be everyone's. I still think we need to make friends with them and show them better ways to do things," Ellen said quietly.
"That won't be easy," I sighed. "There are so many things about us that are different that it's almost an insurmountable problem on its own. We're going to have to learn their language, their culture, their customs and we'll even have to learn to understand their religion, just so we don't do something that will offend them."
"Since we have better weapons, can't we just chase them away from our garden?" she frowned.
"Not really," I sighed. "First off, there aren't enough of us, so keeping them away during all hours of the day and night, for months at a time would be a major problem and in the long run it would be a catastrophe. If we did that they'd decided we were enemies and we wouldn't be safe no matter where we went. Eventually they'd sneak up and kill us one at a time, which means we wouldn't be safe no matter how well we guarded ourselves. No matter which way we look at it, the biggest problem we have is numbers. There are almost certainly more of them living nearby than there are of us. A few of the smaller bands might even decide to cooperate, get together and become an army that would simply overwhelm us. I'm afraid warfare isn't going to be the answer to any of our problems."
I paused and looked around the table, then turned to Anna who had awakened and was just joining us.
"Good morning, Anna. What do you think of the local natives? Do you think they're going to be a major problem for us?"
Anna frowned at me, looked around at the others, then sighed heavily. "Well, I'm afraid that in all the archeological records I've ever seen, the native tribes of the prairies weren't known for being passive. In fact for thousands of years the prairie tribes conducted wars and raids on their neighbours. War and conflict ruled their way of life. No matter what time period we're now in, the strongest and fiercest warriors will be the rulers, period. Which means that all of us had better forget two words that were common back home - women's liberation. In this time and place, women probably have no rights except what they could earn as food gatherers and bed warmers. Most men used their greater strength to subdue women to a subservient role."
"Huh, we'll see about that," Mimi snorted as she wandered over to join us. "The first guy that tries to force me into his bed will get a broken arm and a sore head."
"Mimi, if some big buck hits you and you retaliate, you'd better be prepared to kill him, because if you only humiliate him, he'll get a weapon and do his best to kill all of us," Anna frowned at her.
"Well, he'd better be damn good then, because if he attacks me with a weapon, I'll take it away and then do my best to utterly destroy the son of a bitch."
"Mimi, calm down," I snapped at her. "I'm not about to give you orders about how to conduct yourself in a fight. In other words, if you have to fight to save yourself or anyone else, feel free to do your worst, but just remember, in primitive societies the strongest and fastest in the tribe is usually the leader. If you pick a fight and I find out you did it intentionally, I'll be the one setting you on your ass, but unfortunately, you might be good enough that I'd have to hurt you to do it."
"Oh come on! You're big and strong, but size doesn't mean a lot to me," she retorted. "I've been studying karate for five years and I have a black belt."
"Look kid, since the one and only time I got beat up, which was when I was twelve years old, I've spent part of every Wednesday night and many Saturday afternoons in a dojo, learning tai-chi and taekwondo. I've never worried about belts, but up until we left home, the sensei and I sparred with one another every week. If the sensei wanted to make me work harder than usual, he'd pick two of his black belt students for me to spar with. During those sparring matches none of us held back much, just enough to be careful not to cause each other any major injuries," I smiled. "And, just so you know, I was usually the one who ended up still standing."
"I didn't know that," she looked at me with a lot more respect. "Would you spar with me sometime?"
"In our present situation, I'm not sure that would be a good idea, because I've never taught anyone. We have no protective gear for you to wear, and that means I'd have to hold back, which might affect my timing, and there would be a good chance one of us would get hurt. If you want, we could work on the forms though and I can teach you all tai-chi. That will help us to keep in shape."
"Actually, Joe, I think it might be a good idea if you and Mimi would do what you can to teach all of us to protect ourselves, and that should include sparring so we all get some practise," Anna commented. "The stronger and fiercer this whole group is, the more likely we are to survive. Of course, it would appear effective to the tribes of this time if a small woman was attacked by a man armed with a knife, and she subdued him with nothing more than her bare hands. However, there are bound to be repercussions to such an affair. In primitive societies a show of strength like that would be bound to induce either respect or blind fury."
"Yes, but if the guy did go into a furious rage, what then?" I snapped.
"Well, in the scenario I was envisioning, either you or the woman who was involved would end up challenging him to an unarmed fight. But remember, we're dealing with tribes who virtually revere strength and cunning, and they fight dirty, so anything can happen during a fight. The whole point I'm trying to make is that a fight is for all the marbles, there is no middle ground, and a fight might mean someone would get killed or at the very least, taken as a slave," Anna frowned then. "What I'm trying to say is that we need to be stronger and more cunning than any opponent, and we have to be ready for almost any sort of problem. We simply can not afford to give up the advantages our training and technology will give us, so we have to be prepared, but at the same time we have to be very careful not to jump the gun."
"In other words you're saying just what I was, don't get into fights over small things, but be ready to protect yourself at all times."
"Yes, but I'm trying to make a larger point as well. The groups we're going to encounter are not like anything we're accustomed to meeting. We're going to be dealing with primitive people who will likely have no concept of fairness, democracy, cleanliness, equality or almost any of the civil concepts we've been raised to expect. Outside of this valley there is a world of brutality, slavery and other horrors, but here and now that is normality. We're accustomed to civilization and have been thrown into an era of barbarianisms, so our ethics and morality are at odds with the world," Anna paused then and looked around at everyone before she turned and pointed in the direction of the far hills. "The erosion on those hills, compared to the amount of erosion in our former time reads like a book to me, so I know what I'm talking about. We're thousands of years in the past and there were no civilized societies on the prairie at any time, not until the white men arrived and imposed their form of civilization on our forefathers. I don't know about anyone else, but if possible, I'd like to change that little detail by leaving behind a society which might last for several thousand years."
"That sounds great, but how do you plan to do it?" I demanded and I noticed Fran and Mimi nodding in agreement.
"I'm not certain," Anna admitted. "There have been several forms of long-lasting societies, like the Egyptians, who literally spawned the Greeks and Romans. However, the only society I know of which has lasted anywhere near as long as the one I envision, started in Asia, thousands of years before any of us were born. It was started by a warlord name Chin and the country that was formed is still known as China, so remnants of that society are still around. In other words, the great civilizations of the world we left behind us really started in two places, China or the Mediterranean and both of those got started about 3000 BC. I told you that we are at least 5000 years in the past, which coincidentally is approximately 3000 BC. I'm relatively certain that we are presently living in a time which is either within the same era or perhaps several centuries previous to the development of those two other societies. Theoretically, in no more than a century or two it might be possible to develop a civilization which would surpass anything that Europe developed for thousands of years. To be honest, I'm really not that worried about what our descendants do, but I'd really like to give them a head start, so they can be better prepared in the future than our ancestors were. In fact, if we teach our descendants well and if they wish to do it, they could meet Columbus with motorboats and machine guns instead of canoes and flint tipped spears."
"Okay, I can agree with that!" I nodded heartily.
"So can I!" Ellen growled, which surprised me. "And you needn't stare at me with a look of surprise on your faces. I mean, if the natives met Columbus on the beach and sent him packing, there would never have been the massive slave trade which brought my dark-skinned ancestors to America. I'd love to be one of those people standing on the beach, but I'd rather be at sea in a big nuclear submarine, complete with a dragonhead mounted on the bow and a flamethrower in its nostrils. That way I could scare the shit out of the silly old twit, Columbus. I'd chase those high-and-mighty pricks back to Spain and Portugal, then rampage up and down the coasts of Europe for a few months just to head off any further exploration. After all, if there was a real dragon that chased the explorers home or sank their ships right in their harbours whenever they bothered us, who'd be stupid enough to go exploring along our coastline?"
I couldn't help it, I broke into laughter, but I gave her a thumbs-up gesture.
"Well, that is what I'd like to do!" she stated sharply, but followed that statement with a giggle and a blush.
"Actually, playing on people's superstitions is an established strategy of some of the greatest generals," Anna smiled at her. "In fact thinking of that, I almost wish one of you was an amateur astronomer, because I would suspect that one of the items of worship of the people of this time is the sun. What would seem more magical to these people than someone who could tell the sun to hide it's face behind the moon?"
"You mean predicting a solar eclipse, don't you?" Ellen asked.
"Of course she does," Mimi snapped. "And if the people she did it to happened to be sunworshippers, the person who made the sun do what she wanted would be revered as the ultimate shaman, just because the sun would follow his or her orders."
"Now wait a minute, Anna. Are you suggesting that we start a new religion of some sort?" I frowned.
"Well, I'm not sure that I'd want to change anyone's religion, but I suppose you could call my idea a different philosophy. You see I'd like to change the prairie natives from a hunter gatherer society who don't own any property they can't carry on their backs, to a herding and farming society who have semipermanent residences. By introducing horses, cattle, vegetables and grains, we can change the way the people live. Having grains and meat easily available, along with more solidly built housing, would make winter survival much less of a desperate situation. As it is now, one poor hunting season can mean starvation for a small group or even a whole tribe. Of course convincing a wandering tribe to make that sort of change won't be easy and it certainly won't happen in a short time."
"I don't know if I understand what you want to try to do, could you explain it to us?" Ellen asked.
"It sounds simple, but the facts of the situation make the attempt much more difficult than any description I could give. Really, it's all a matter of work ethic and essentially it's an outlook on life. Hunter-gatherer societies exist on a feast or famine basis. Sometimes food and game are easy to find and everyone lives high on the hog, but at other times food is tough to find and game is scarce, so people go hungry and many even starve. For a herding and farming society, grain can be stored for the lean times and stock can be kept alive until it needs to be slaughtered for food. Of course farmers have to be prepared to protect their crops when they're growing, so they need to stay fairly close to home. At the same time they need to herd their animals to fresh graze quite often, but with horses that isn't a difficult job. The combination of grain, cattle and horses make life a much more viable situation for a larger population in any one area.
"Now I haven't worked out how to sell the idea to the present people living in the area, but I'd sure like to try, because once you have a permanent population in one place, trade develops. Hot on the heels of trade, crafts such as pottery, weaving and tool making will develop as people learn to trade their skills and crafts for food. As the various skills develop, they induce more trade and that leads to demand for more production of trade goods, which leads to technological development. All of that depends on permanent settlements, which is ultimately dependant on farming, but before farming can develop, that hunter gatherer mind set has to be changed in some way."
"Well, while I applaud your enthusiasm and envy your goals, right now I'm much more concerned with keeping all of us alive and well. We need to be able to look after ourselves before we try to change the world or even the tribes who live in this part of the prairies." I frowned, paused for a moment and then shook my head. "Now I'm not saying that we should forget your ideas, but I am saying that our own needs should be met first. That means we have to reach a maintenance level for food, shelter and security for the foreseeable future. So we're all going to have to work quite hard for a while, because we need to build permanent homes, we have to plant and grow whatever crops we can and we need to provide for our animals. On top of that we need to improve the security of the whole valley, especially the gully road, since it happens to be the weakest point of access to the valley at the moment."
"But there's that big gate at the bridge, couldn't you just put a lock on that?" Ellen asked.
"Well, that might hold a person back for short time, but not for long. That gate was meant to keep animals in, not people out. I can think of five or ten ways to get past that gate without using any tools and that doesn't include the easiest way of all – which is to ignore both the bridge and the gate by following the gully. That does mean the invaders would have to climb down the wall of the gully, but that's no major feat. After that all they'd have to do is avoid any obstacles or pitfalls as they moved along the bottom of the gorge."
As I was talking, I noticed Mimi wander off toward Anna's camper, but at the same time Ellen was watching the sky, then pulling out her laptop and making some notes. That's when I realized the sky was growing lighter, but this morning the fog would mean she couldn't get an accurate time reference.
"How is that working out, Ellen – I mean the time recording thing?" I asked.
"Great, except for the fog this morning, but we can work around that," she smiled. "I snuck a copy of your program and reworked it a bit so I can use it as a basis of a database and spreadsheet. Yesterday it was right on the money, or so close I can't complain about anything. I do have one question though, even if you're right about that precession thing, it probably won't show much change for a while though, will it?"
"I really don't know, but I think you'll start noticing differences in a short while," I shrugged my shoulders. "To be honest, I was never that interested in making a real study of the solar syatem to learn much about it. I only learned the bare basics so I could write a science fiction story about time travel while trying not to look totally silly."
"Well, you knew more than I did and the files you had on your laptop about precession helped me to find our new north star last night before the clouds moved in and it started to rain a bit."
"Oh, do we have a north star?" I asked.
I didn't get an answer to that question though because just then the whole sky off to the northeast of us lit up like a beacon. It was a humongous flare, so high and so bright that I could see shadows from the cliffs on our side of the valley in spite of the fog. In fact that flash was so dazzling that I had an afterimage of the flare dancing across my vision even after closing my eyes for several seconds. I was still seeing that afterimage when the sound hit us, a loud boom, followed by a rolling thunder sound that worked its way around us on all sides as it moved from northeast to southwest.
Then an earthquake hit, only it wasn't really a quake. Instead it was just one prolonged jerk – a lifting motion – the same sort of feeling you get in a fast-moving elevator after you've pressed the button for the top floor. I had been starting to get to my feet, but that quake hit and I sat back down hard, really hard, so hard that the chair I'd been sitting on creaked in protest.
Anna wasn't so lucky, she'd been sitting on one of Chuck and Maybelle's plastic chairs and it simply collapsed when she dropped back, but she wasn't hurt and managed to stand again almost instantly.
"What the hell was that?" Fran demanded as she got to her feet, ready to move if she had to.
"I don't know, but it's too far north to be over at Wally's place, and it's much too far north to be near the Lowden's house." I answered as I stood as well. "There is a road that runs up that direction though, so I think I'd better drive over there and see what's going on. Anna and Ellen, please stay here. Anna, you'd better wake up Tom, if he managed to sleep through that, but check to see that he wasn't hurt. Ellen, you might grab a flashlight and see if all the animals are okay. Fran, grab your shotgun and a first aid kit, you're coming with me. We'll take the Jeep and head over to Wally's, then probably the Lowden's. I want to check that everyone is okay. After that we'll go have a look at what caused that bright light."
"Mimi and I are up and we're okay, Joe," Tom called from near Anna's camper. "We'll check the animals, but if you're going to Wally's, you should take your dog along, just in case something really bad happened and you need to hunt for someone."
That was good advice, so I grabbed my rifle and called Bruno. By the time I had the dog loaded in the space behind the back seat of the Jeep, Fran was sitting in the right-hand seat with a first aid kit by her feet and was checking that her shotgun was fully loaded. We had to stop twice on the way up the gully to roll boulders out of our way, but other than that the road to Wally's was completely clear. Everything at his ranch looked okay, but Chuck came rushing up to the Jeep as I pulled in and stopped.
"You got any idea whut the hell happened?" he barked as I opened my door and stepped out.
"Nope, but we were watching the sunrise through the fog and it looked as if there was a huge explosion over toward the northeast," I answered. "Is everyone here all right?"
"Yeah, the bang was so loud and the earthquake so hard that it shook everybody out of bed, so we checked first thing and ever'body is okay, but we dunno 'bout Mark cuz we can't find 'im."
"Where's his minivan?"
"Oh shit, it's gone, cuz it was over by his big trailer last night. I'll bet he went and dun sumpin' stupid."
"That's a bet I won't take!" I sighed. "I guess I'd better go have a look and see what I can find."
"Umm, how 'bout if Wally an' me come along, but maybe we'd better take his pickup an' follow ya so we have two cars an' aren't all stuck in one place."
"Sure, that's fine."
"You goin' over to where you saw the light come from, or are ya goin' over t' Mark's place first?"
"Where the light came from, I think. Just guessing, I'd say it was from somewhere near the wide spot in the road where Wally turned around on the first morning we were here, so maybe it was down in that gully Wally didn't want to approach," I frowned slightly. "I can't imagine why anything would blow up over there though, as far as I could see it was just a big gap in the road."
"Mebee there was natural gas or oil in the ground an' that fiery thingamabob you were lookin' at over to Mark and Lou's broke inta it?" Chuck offered with a shrug of his shoulders. "I dunno whut it were, cause we din't see it, but it sure shook us awake in a hurry."
"Yeah, us too," I nodded, then got into the Jeep and turned around.
As we drove up the hill and turned onto the rocky area Fran pointed out the tracks left in the rain dampened surface, our tracks left behind when we'd driven over and a second set that came from Wally's place and turned east.
"Good eyes, gal," I commented.
"Hey, I'm a cop remember," she snapped. "Only I should have seen those when we drove in."
"You had no reason to look for them when we came over and on top of that it was foggy. The sun wasn't all the way above the horizon either, so they didn't stand out then, at least not the way they do now."
"If you're trying to give me an excuse, I don't really need one," she grumbled softly.
"I was really giving myself and excuse," I snorted. "Remember, I'm supposed to be the great hunter and tracker in the crowd, well, except for Chuck. He makes me look like an amateur."
"Yeah, but even in this damn fog, I'll bet I can tell you about when those tracks were made."
"So can I, shortly after the rain stopped, but I'd have to ask when that was."
"A bit before five this morning," she smiled slightly. "Hey look, the doc closed the gate, so he wasn't trying to stir up trouble for Wally by letting his cows out."
As soon as I stopped to open the gate, she was out of the Jeep and checking the tire tracks, but she stopped me from driving through.
"Come over here and have a look at this," she called.
She pointed out where the tracks had turned toward Mark's place, but then had come back and driven past the gate. Not only that, but she pointed out that the minivan had been lightly loaded on the first pass, but when the vehicle came back, the tire tracks showed that it had been heavily loaded.
"I wonder what the hell he had in there?" I pondered as I wandered over for a closer look at the tire marks.
"I haven't a clue, but it was something he got from his farm, so we'll probably be able to work it out if we go over there."
"No, we won't head over there, not yet. We're looking for Mark right now, not snooping to find out what he was doing," I sighed, then sniffed the air before I bent over to scoop up a bit of soil and held that out toward Fran. "Smell that."
"Phew, that's diesel fuel, and you can see it was dribbling out steady, so his van must have had a fuel leak."
"His minivan burns gasoline."
"Oh, shit! I wonder if he had a bunch of that pure ammonia fertilizer crap on his farm?"
"Well, he did have a mini ranch and he might have fertilized his pastures this spring. If he did and if he knew the right things to mix with it, that might have been what exploded."
"Aw fuck. Do you think he's the kind of guy who would commit suicide?"
"Maybe," I sighed heavily. "A few days ago he was a big wheel brain surgeon with a great job, but yesterday I ripped into him about the fact that brain surgeons weren't worth much here and now. Do you think maybe my diatribe pushed him over the edge?"
"Oh, don't be stupid. You just told him the truth. Somebody had to do it, because he was driving everyone else nuts with his wild ass schemes of building a brain surgery in the log house. Didn't you hear what Louise said about him after he snuck off, or weren't you listening? She was saying that the hospital had put him on a short string because he was being such a prima donna in the last year or so. I don't know if she said anything about any other stuff when you were around, but from what she said later on, it sounded like she was almost at her breaking point and was thinking of divorcing him before all this shit happened."
"Well, I did hear some of her complaints, but I'll be honest, I try my best to keep my nose out of people's private affairs if I can, especially when it comes to family squabbles," I sighed, then turned toward the gate since Wally and Chuck had just driven up.
I walked over and paused by Wally's door.
"We were checking the tire marks," I said then explained what we'd noticed.
"Yup, he did buy a big load of nitrogen fertilizer last year, but his hired man only spread part of it because some of the fields were too wet to drive on, so he had a couple of tons left over. You saying you think he mixed it with diesel fuel to make an explosive?" Wally frowned. "I know where he stored, it, so why don't I go over to his place and see if he was there this morning. At the same time you can go see if he's over at the big gorge like you figger."
So we split up. Wally and Chuck drove off to the south toward Mark's farm, while Fran and I went north toward the drop off that Wally had called the big gorge. We didn't have to drive that far, maybe a couple of miles and I stopped about at the same place as Wally had on that first day, then Fran and I got out of the Jeep and walked. I'd let Bruno out, and both Fran and I had our guns, so we felt relatively safe as we followed the tracks of Mark's minivan. I couldn't see that much had changed from the previous time I'd looked on that scene, not until we rounded a tight curve and we found the road had been cut into the side of a cliff. From that point on the road ran downhill and we could see that the tire tracks of Mark's minivan appeared to drive right off a sharp edged cliff. We couldn't possibly miss those tire tracks either, since they were baked right into the soil of the dirt road. In fact everything within a hundred yards of the point where the road met the cliff edge was either baked or burnt. I wasn't sure how far the damage extended, because the fog still swirled around us and I wasn't about to approach the outer edge because I knew there was a drop-off there.
I don't know what had really happened and I don't have a clue what Mark intended to do, but I did make a few assumptions using what I did know and what I could see. I have to assume that the minivan was moving fast enough and had enough momentum that it was carried all the way into that strange 'electrical force field' or whatever it was that surrounded us. However, other than those tire tracks, we were unable to find any sign of either Mark or the van in the vicinity of the point where he appeared to have driven off the cliff. As a result I'm also forced to assume that Mark intended to commit suicide, but I don't know that for a fact.
After Fran and I had studied the area for several moments we walked back to my Jeep and drove toward the Lowden's old home. We were almost there when we met Wally and Chuck and they pulled off to one side of the road.
"Ya din't find him, didya?" Wally barked as I pulled up beside his truck and rolled down the window on my side.
"No, but why did you assume that?"
"Because t' dirty bastard left a note nailed on t' garage door and a bomb hooked up to a timer in t' house. He mighta bin a smart doctor, but he din't know fuck all 'bout bombs er guns. Here, you read t' note," Wally handed me a slip of paper.
I didn't work hard all my life to start taking orders from a bunch of stinking half-breeds.
I'd rather die first. Tell the shithead thanks because he showed me how to fix
this thing.
I just need to give the whole place a big kick in the pants and we'll all go back
home.
He might have blocked the end of our road, but I know an even better place to do the
job.
If that doesn't work, it's still okay, they won't ever use my books to make their
lives easier.
The surprise I left in the library will fix that and if I'm lucky, it will fix the
shithead too.
Lou, sorry to leave you with those breeds since this might be Goodbye,
Mark
"Okay, I guess I'm the guy he calls the shithead, but what did he do in the library?"
"He piled five bags o' monia nitrate fertilizer in the middle of the floor, slit the top o' the bags an' dumped in a bunch o' diesel fuel. The stupid ass loaded a shotgun, cocked the trigger and tied a string ta a windup alarm clock taped onta the butt o' the gunstock, then he jammed the shotgun barrel down inta the middle bag. The alarm went off an' pulled the trigger, but nothin' else happened." Wally snorted. "The dumb turkey fergot t' safety on t' shotgun."
"Damn, if he was that prejudiced and vindictive enough to try to destroy the books that might help us, then I'm not really sorry that he killed himself. The only bad part is that I'll have to tell Louise and Meredith that he's dead," I frowned at the thought.
"No, you won't!" Fran snarled rather fiercely. "You forget, I'm a cop an' that sorta thing is one o' the duties I got trained t' do, so it's my job. Then if we burn that letter an' get them bags o' fertilizer outta the house, I might be able t' leave out a coupla things an' make it sound like it mighta bin an accident."
"Don't bother tryin' t' hide anythin'," Wally snorted and looked quite upset, but then I could hear that in his voice because he'd slipped into a pronounced 'injun' dialect again. "When we all come runnin' out after t' big shake, Lou looked over where Mark's minivan had bin. She just shook her head, an' mumbled 'bout her dumb husband prob'ly killin' hisself, so mebee he tol' her 'bout whut he were gonna do b'fore he left. Only I think she'da warned us if she knew anytin' fer sure."
"Well, I think we should tell her just what we've seen and let her draw her own conclusions, but I don't think we should burn the note he left either, not yet. She might want to see it for some reason or another and if anyone burns it, I think it should be Louise. By the way, did you move those bags of fertilizer and diesel out of the library?" I asked.
"Nope, we took the shotgun away though." Chuck answered.
"Okay then lets go back there and do that, but at the same time I want to look over the buildings and what not. If Mark was the kind to set up a bomb of that sort, I wouldn't put it past him to leave a few other surprises behind," I sighed. "I hate to think badly of the guy, but . . ."
"Yeah, I know what ya mean," Wally snorted. "Who'da thought he'd even do whut he did? I mean he was a decent neighbour, not really a nice guy, but not an asshole either. At least not until we ended up gettin' shifted here, then he just seemed to go crazy."
"Well, he was suddenly in a strange situation and he didn't seem to adapt well, but we can talk about that later. We're burning daylight and we might not have any to waste, because we don't know when our new neighbours might find a way to invade our territory." I said shortly, then started the jeep and drove off.
"You worried about the local natives?" Fran asked quietly.
"Yeah, I am. Remember though, I saw several of them on the first day we were here and the first one to see me was going to attack me with a stone-headed axe. From the way he acted then and the rest of the group acted afterward, I'm afraid the words 'stranger' and 'enemy' might be interchangeable in their language."
"How are we going to be able to get along with people like that?" she was frowning heavily.
"Your guess is as good as mine," I sighed as we turned off the road and into the Lowden's yard.
Wally and Chuck drove in moments later and it took a few minutes to carry the bags of fertilizer and diesel mixture out of the house. The others spread that mixture on a bare section of the old drive way while I made a small torch by wrapping a stick with the rag I'd used to wipe up the worst of the diesel fuel spilled on the floor in the library. We stood back several feet and I lit that little torch, then Wally insisted on being the one who tossed it on the explosive mixture. Spread out the way it was, the mixture burnt with a huge flash, a loud whomp and a lot of black smoke. It caused a brief ground quiver and a small pressure wave, but there was no massive explosion since it wasn't contained.
That pressure wave and ground quiver might have been stronger than I first thought though, because suddenly a few trees on the far side of the driveway began to lean away from us. I held my breath, expecting them to be destroyed by heat and lightning, but that didn't happen. Instead the trees leaned further and further, the ground around them quivered and split, then everything slid sideways and dropped over an edge I hadn't realized was there. Then both trees and soil fell away, virtually disappearing into the rapidly dissipating fog. I was astonished at first, but as the fog cleared I realized the view from that driveway had changed from two days before. The trees and bushes that I'd seen on the far side of that strange lightning-filled gap in the ground just days before were no longer there. In fact that gap seemed to have disappeared as well.
I moved closer and stood near the edge of the soil that had broken free, but made sure I was standing on a section that hadn't been disturbed. Then I stared down and realized I was looking at the tops of trees that had blocked my view two days before, and those trees had towered fifty or perhaps seventy-five feet above my head. I knew where I was standing wasn't really all that safe, but I simply had to try to understand what had happened. As I stood there staring in wonder, I recalled the earlier happenings, first that bright light, then the rolling thunder sound that had worked its way around us and finally that strange lifting sensation.
I had to conclude that the shock when the minivan and its contents exploded was enough to trigger the earthquake, followed by the massive lifting motion right afterward. From what I could see the area we live on seems to have raised upward by at least a hundred feet from where it previously sat. In other words we are probably living atop a butte now, but are there sheer cliffs surrounding us on all sides? I certainly hope so, because the earthquake and the associated lifting motion appear to have'grounded' that 'electrical force field' which had surrounded us and fenced out our wild neighbours. If the cliffs weren't extremely steep and there was an area where the local natives could climb up to our level, then we were going to be vulnerable to attack. Not only that, but if the soil near the edge of our level broke away, an avalanche would happen and that might form a ramp they could climb, so an attack might come at any time. Having seen the way those guys had acted toward strangers I knew that if there was a way they could attack us, then they would.
Then a second thought brought another worry, since we were suddenly a hundred feet higher than our surroundings, did we still have a water supply or were we above the local water table now? I didn't even know what the source of water for the river or the artesian well had been, but if we were suddenly without water, we were in even worse trouble.
What the hell had Mark done to us? Were we still safe or not? Dammit, I'd thought we were starting to see our way clear of our worst problems, but now I had even more worries than I'd had before.