Obsolete Theorem

by Stan C. Smith

  They stared at her, obviously wary. “Una-Loto!” several of them replied.

  Skyra glanced at Gelrut. He was still on his feet, glaring at her. He tried to speak, but his words turned into bubbling, animal-like utterances as blood ran down his chin onto the furs of his cape.

  She turned away from her tribemates to follow Lincoln. Then she hesitated. Ripple was still lying motionless a few paces away, perhaps dead. Skyra darted over, grabbed Ripple by one leg, and ran after Lincoln with the creature dangling over her shoulder, its body slamming against her back with every stride.

  16

  Running

  47,659 years ago - Day 3

  Lincoln’s feet were killing him by the time he was halfway up the hillside. He kept going anyway. He tried stepping on the sand between rocks and found that it was impossible. Each step was becoming more painful than the last. He had managed to grab one of his shoes, though he’d been too terrified to stop to put it on. As he was picking up the shoe, he’d dropped his loose arrow, leaving him with the bow, quiver, and only two arrows.

  Finally, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder. Skyra was now running up the hillside after him. So far, the murderous tribesmen weren’t following. He looked down at the shoe in his hand. It was the left. Glancing down the hillside every few seconds, he fumbled with the double knot until it came loose then shoved his foot into the shoe and hastily tied the laces.

  He glanced at Skyra—she was carrying something heavy over her shoulder. Lincoln squinted. “What the hell?” he muttered. Skyra was carrying Ripple.

  He considered descending the hillside to help her, or at least convince her to leave the drone behind, but the thought of taking extra steps with even one bare foot made him change his mind. Besides, she was making surprisingly steady progress on her own.

  As he waited for her to catch up, Lincoln considered what he would do if the other Neanderthals came after him. His bow and two arrows wouldn’t do him much good. He would have to run. If he had his clothing, he could wrap his shirt around his foot. Even a sock would be better than nothing. However, he was naked other than his left shoe.

  As Skyra drew nearer, Lincoln watched her tribemates far below. Some were staring up the hill toward him, others appeared to be exchanging words. Lincoln could still see one of the men he’d shot lying motionless on the ground. He hadn’t intended to kill two tribesmen. It had been an accident, not that it mattered—it wasn’t like he could apologize to the tribe for killing two of them instead of only one. They would come after him, and the chase would surely be brief. It wasn’t fair that almost a decade of running sixty kilometers per week wouldn’t help him when he needed it most. Missing a shoe, he wouldn’t make it another half kilometer.

  “You must keep running,” Skyra said when she was twenty meters from Lincoln. “My tribemates must see you running. Run!”

  The urgency in her voice convinced him to turn and hobble the rest of the way up the slope. Near the hill’s summit he felt a jagged rock slice into the skin of his right sole. He grunted and paused.

  “Run!” Skyra ordered. She was now ten meters behind him.

  Lincoln had no choice but to trust her, so he gritted his teeth and continued up the slope and onto the relatively flat hilltop. When he was halfway across the plateau, he glanced back. He and Skyra were well out of sight of the other Neanderthals now, so he paused to inspect the bottom of his foot. The skin was split and bleeding in two places. He cursed under his breath.

  Skyra came to a stop beside him. She lowered Ripple to the ground and put her hands on her knees, her chest heaving.

  “I assume they’re going to come after me and kill me now,” Lincoln said. “Why did you follow me?”

  Skyra spoke in spurts between breaths. “It is my right to kill you myself.”

  He stared at her. “Is that what you intend to do?”

  She shot him a glance. “That is what I wish my tribemates to know. They know that now, but when I do not return they will know I did not kill you. We must keep running.” She hefted Ripple back onto her shoulder. The drone was only slightly smaller than Maddy, but Skyra lifted it as if it were no heavier than a bag of potatoes.

  “I’m sorry about your sister,” he said.

  She stared at him for a moment, and Lincoln saw in her large eyes a hollowness that wasn’t there before. She glanced back again as if making sure her tribemates weren’t coming over the hill’s edge. When she turned back to him, the hollowness looked more like raw determination. “Veenah’s strength is within me now.”

  As he watched her eyes, Lincoln realized he had no right to complain about his bleeding foot. “Well, I don’t really want you to kill me, so I guess we need to get as far away as possible. Which direction should we go?”

  “I want to go to your home land, where I will not worry about being killed by creatures or taken by bolup men.”

  A surge of emotion swelled in Lincoln’s chest, momentarily throwing him off guard. This strange, deadly, magnificent nandup was beyond anything he had imagined encountering in this place. He was now naked and almost completely vulnerable, but Skyra saw in him a way to start a new life. At this moment, under her fervent gaze, he wanted nothing more than to possess the strength to make that happen.

  “I will take you to that place,” he said. He turned and began hobbling to the east, to where he hoped to find his team and the T3 waiting.

  Skyra walked beside him. Soon she started jogging, the drone’s shell thumping awkwardly against her back.

  Lincoln picked up his pace to keep up. Every step was excruciating, but he pushed the pain from his mind. After all, what the hell did he know about suffering?

  When Skyra stopped to rest on the broad summit of the third hill, Lincoln found a flat rock that wouldn’t cut into his bare butt and sat down to catch his breath. He put his bow and quiver on the ground then looked back over the hills. Still no sign that the hunters were in pursuit.

  Skyra lowered Ripple to the ground and pointed to Lincoln’s bleeding foot. “You are leaving a trail my tribemates will follow.”

  He folded his leg to inspect his foot. The sole was covered with too many punctures and gashes to count. “Not much I can do about it.”

  She pulled her cape up over her head then sat beside him with the garment in her lap. Her exposed breasts somehow made Lincoln feel less self-conscious about his own nudity.

  She began pulling at a cord that apparently had been used to attach the pieces of fur together. “Skin of the lynx,” she said. “It is soft and easy to wrap. I will make for you a dayun—a footwrap.” She got the end of the cord loose and began pulling it out through holes in the hide.

  “I don’t want you to destroy your own cape for the sake of my foot.”

  She shot him a sidelong look. “This is a nandup cape. We put extra furs on our capes to use when we need them. You need a footwrap.”

  Lincoln let out a silent sigh of relief. The agony of running on the rocks had become almost too much for him. Assuming Skyra would need at least a few minutes to separate the skins, he crawled over to Ripple. “You risked your life to bring this drone,” he said. “Why?”

  She didn’t lift her eyes from her work. “I do not know drone.”

  “I mean Ripple. We call these things drones.”

  “Ripple is my friend.”

  Lincoln stared at the drone. Did Skyra even realize this was a machine and not a living being? Was her mind even capable of understanding that a non-living thing could think and talk? He had noticed she seemed almost oblivious to technological devices like his watch and the butane camping stove. In fact, her tribemates had even ignored his watch even though they’d torn everything else from his body.

  It occurred to Lincoln that he had long ago allowed himself to consider Maddy a friend, although he knew full well that everything Maddy did and said was a result of her coding. It was certainly possible Skyra could believe Ripple was really her friend.

  He grabbed Ripple’s leg and
turned the drone so its ventral side faced him. “What the hell?” he muttered. The drone was far lighter than he had expected. He positioned his knees carefully in the sand between rocks and picked up Ripple. No wonder Skyra had been able to carry the drone so effortlessly. Ripple weighed no more than ten kilograms, perhaps only a quarter of Maddy’s mass.

  He laid the machine back on its side. At some point in his future, for some reason, Lincoln became determined to give his drones the ability to levitate and fly. The drone’s minimal weight made sense—the levitation problem couldn’t be solved without drastically reducing the weight. He sighed. It all seemed so impossible. How could he have accomplished all this in only fourteen years?

  On Ripple’s belly was an access panel, similar to Maddy’s. This panel even had the same four locking knobs, each with six possible positions. He put his fingers on one of the knobs. Was it possible he still used the same four knob positions fourteen years later? He was certainly a creature of habit, so maybe. He turned all four knobs to the positions for the combination he currently used.

  The panel popped open.

  He blinked. “Seriously?”

  The control touchscreen was slightly larger, but the hard button arrangement hadn’t changed. He powered the screen on and scrolled through the main menu. The menu contained several items he’d never seen before, such as Maglev Settings, Charging Options, Power Management, and Autonomy Settings.

  He felt an almost overwhelming urge to explore these, particularly the last one, but there wasn’t time. He found Reboot Options at the bottom of the list, tapped it, and worked his way through the same set of choices he was already accustomed to. Finally, he tapped Reboot.

  The screen flashed a series of updates, each appearing for only a few seconds: System Check… Data Integrity Check… Damage Assessment… Sensory Mods Check… Cognitive State Analysis… and finally, Unit Integrity Confirmed Following Blunt Force Attack From Indigenous Environmental Constituent.

  Lincoln started to smile at this last one, but Ripple spoke up. “I was less than four minutes from an auto-reboot, but I wish to express my thanks to whomever accelerated the process manually. I sense I am over two kilometers from where I was attacked. May I ask how I arrived at this location?”

  Lincoln lifted the drone to its feet. Ripple turned until its vision lens faced him. “Ah, there you are, Lincoln. I am pleased you are still alive. May I ask how I arrived at this location?”

  Lincoln nodded toward Skyra. “You need to thank Skyra for that. She carried you.”

  Ripple turned and stepped closer to Skyra, who had paid little attention to Lincoln’s efforts to reboot the drone and was still working on the skins of her cape. “Thank you for carrying me,” Ripple said. “The loss of your sister is a regrettable tragedy. You must be experiencing emotional turmoil. However, your survival is even more important than before. Where are your tribemates? How were you able to leave them behind and come this far?”

  Skyra pulled a piece of fur loose from her cape and gestured for Lincoln to give her his foot. He sat his bare butt on the gravel and placed his right foot in her lap, then he gritted his teeth as she brushed away sand and rocks that were stuck to the blood. She positioned the skin against his foot one way, then tried several other arrangements until she apparently found one she liked. She plucked up the cord she’d removed from her cape and twisted her mouth to one side, perhaps considering how best to secure the skin to his foot.

  “Skyra, you are ignoring me,” Ripple said. “I am sorry about Veenah’s death. I tried to—”

  “I know what you tried to do, Ripple! I told you many times to never show yourself to Una-Loto tribe. When did you go to Una-Loto camp?”

  Lincoln looked from Skyra to Ripple then back to Skyra. What was she talking about?

  Ripple hesitated, probably calculating the most placating response. “It was sixty-one days ago. I understood your importance. I understood Veenah’s importance. I thought I could frighten your people and convince them they should never harm you or Veenah.”

  “Sixty-one days ago?” she almost shouted. “My tribemates have become even more cruel to me and to Veenah. Some of my tribemates have said they want to kill me and Veenah. These things have happened more. Do you know how many days these things have happened more?”

  Ripple hesitated again. “I am sorry, Skyra. I made a mistake.”

  Skyra laid the lynx skin flat on the ground. She pulled one of her stone knives from the sheath on her wrist, placed the sharpened tip against the skin, and repeatedly twisted the knife to drill a small hole. Lincoln and Ripple watched her silently as she drilled two more holes. She wrapped the skin around Lincoln’s foot again and began threading the cord through the new holes.

  Lincoln considered what he’d just heard, and he was even more curious now to explore the drone’s Autonomy Settings. Presumably, Ripple had devised its own plan to frighten Skyra’s tribe—without Skyra’s knowledge or permission. Lincoln had routinely coded his drones with some level of autonomy. This was essential for carrying on coherent, engaging conversations as well as for making quick decisions while evaluating environments during jumps into the past. This drone, though, consistently displayed an almost disturbing level of autonomy. It had been hatching complex schemes that might not even work. Lincoln racked his brain to imagine why he would code his future drones with this level of independence.

  “Did your tribemates let you and Lincoln go?” Ripple asked.

  “Yes,” Skyra said, focusing intently on the footwrap. “They let us go so that I could kill Lincoln.”

  “But you haven’t killed Lincoln.”

  She ignored this.

  “Are they coming for you?”

  “Yes, probably.”

  “Then we must go,” Ripple said. “We are only two kilometers ahead of them.”

  Skyra finished threading the cord through the holes and pulled the cord tight. She deftly tied a knot of some kind then jiggled the entire wrap, apparently to see if it was tight enough. A slight growl emerged from her throat.

  Lincoln handed her his quiver. “Maybe you can use this strap.”

  She sawed through each end of the leather shoulder strap and tied the strap around Lincoln’s ankle, firmly securing the loose lynx hide to his leg. This time the footwrap hardly moved when she tugged on it. She shoved Lincoln’s foot from her lap, got to her feet, and replaced the cape around her neck and shoulders. The skins again concealed her breasts and belly, which again increased Lincoln’s awareness of his own nudity.

  “Your foot will hurt, but this dayun will help you,” she said to Lincoln. “Soon you will have to run, or you will be killed by Una-Loto khuls.”

  Lincoln got up and tried putting pressure on his foot. Yeah, it definitely hurt, but the wrap would at least prevent additional cuts. “How do you know your people are coming after us?” he asked.

  “They are coming, Lincoln. I told the Una-Loto hunters I would kill you and return. I have not returned. Some of the hunters will stay with the woolly rhino to take its food and its fur and bones. Hyenas and cats will steal it if they leave it. The other hunters will come for us. They will take me back because I am in my ilmekho. They will kill you because you killed Gelrut and Vall. Then they will kill you again because you are a bolup.”

  He sighed and looked out over the hilltops to the east. “Ripple, how far is it to where we left Maddy and the others?”

  “Approximately twenty-four kilometers, based upon magnetic pole triangulation. Based upon visual data from the last two days, my estimate is closer to twenty-seven. We must take into account, however, that two kilometers of this estimate are dependent on magnetic pole triangulation of our present position relative to where I was brutally attacked, resulting in—”

  “That’s okay,” Lincoln said. “It’s close enough.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. Twenty-four kilometers, naked to the elements, with an injured foot, running from murderous Neanderthals. Shit. He ran his hand over his sca
lp and down the back of his neck, realizing for the first time that his ponytail was no longer braided. He sighed and opened his eyes then took several steps back to the west, eyeing the sand and gravel at his feet. In addition to the blood trail he’d left, even his untrained eyes were able to pick out several of his and Skyra’s footprints. Now that Ripple would be walking, a third set of prints would help reveal the group’s trail to the Neanderthal hunters, who were no doubt skilled at tracking.

  On top of all this, there was the uncertainty of using the T3 a second time. Was it even possible to jump forward instead of back? The equations had told him yes, but jumping forward had never been tested. He shoved these doubts to the back of his mind—no point in tackling more than one impossible problem at a time. He turned back to Skyra. “I guess we better get going.”

  She lifted a hand and pointed over his shoulder. “Una-Loto.”

  He spun around. Four hunters—little more than specks at this distance—were crossing a hilltop two hills back.

  Speed was going to be their biggest issue. Lincoln could see this by the time his group had ascended and descended three more hills while fleeing to the east. At the top of the second hill, he had turned back to see that the pursuing hunters had closed the gap substantially.

  His makeshift footwrap was holding up, and he had found a steady running rhythm despite the searing pain he felt every time his right foot hit the gravel. Skyra, on the other hand, was slowing down. This was partly because she was reaching exhaustion and partly, Lincoln suspected, because Ripple was slowing down.

  The drone had started out by levitating at shoulder height, moving ahead faster than Lincoln and Skyra could run. Not surprisingly, this energy-intensive mode of travel could not be sustained farther than the top of the first hill. The drone had proven in the last two days that it could walk at a steady pace for many kilometers, but apparently running was a different matter.