Gripping her spear tightly, she raised it into position. She closed her eyes and considered asking the woolly rhino and cave lion to give her strength. She opened her eyes. She had already taken the woolly rhino’s strength, and now she possessed Veenah’s strength. If Skyra lived until the sun hid among the hills at the end of this day, perhaps she would never again ask for what was already within her.
The men outside fell silent.
Skyra spoke in the Una-Loto language. “Gelrut! There are many bolup men in this cave. They will kill you and Durnin and Brillir if you come in. You must leave me with these men. They have already celebrated my ilmekho and have put a child in my belly. You are my tribemates, and I do not want you to die today. Go back to Una-Loto camp.”
The men remained silent, and several long breaths passed.
A snarling growl came from the cave entrance. A stone-tipped spear appeared then began striking the rock sides, slamming back and forth, up and down, attempting to clear the path of anything that might be in the way.
“God almighty,” Virgil said as the spear whacked against the stones so fast that Skyra’s eyes couldn’t follow it.
A body dove into the cave beneath the striking spear. Skyra drove her spear downward, but the body was already past her, and the spear’s tip hit the rock floor between the man’s legs. She stabbed again, barely missing an ankle. In less than a breath, Brillir was on his feet, drawing back his khul. He swung wildly without seeing what he was swinging at, then Lincoln thrust his spear into Brillir’s chest, driving the hunter back into the boulder wall.
Skyra turned back to the opening. A second hunter was already diving in under the striking spear. She thrust downward again, but her spear’s tip caught the hunter’s waist-skin and could not penetrate the thick rhino hide. She struck again, this time hitting the man’s leg below the knee.
The spear that had been striking the rock entrance disappeared. Skyra knew the third hunter would be coming through next, so she ignored the screaming and fighting behind her and raised her spear again.
The entrance darkened. Instead of waiting, Skyra thrust her spear downward. The tip struck the man’s head just as he appeared, but it bounced off the side of his skull and hit the rock floor. The weapon cracked in half from the force.
The man came to a stop and rolled over. It was Gelrut. He looked up at Skyra and let out a garbled cry of anger, spitting blood from his mouth and nose. She raised her broken spear to strike again, but he swung out his arm and swept her feet from beneath her. As she started to fall, something hit her from the side, throwing her head and shoulder against the cave wall, and she landed hard on Gelrut’s chest with another body on top of her.
Skyra’s vision was blocked by thrashing bodies. Gelrut shoved her off, and her face hit the stone floor. The body on top of her scrambled over her head. She looked up and realized it was Durnin. Gelrut started backing out of the cave. Durnin lunged toward the opening, and Gelrut dragged him the rest of the way out.
Skyra got to her hands and knees and saw that Brillir was still in the cave, fighting for his life as Lincoln and the others hit him with rocks and jabbed at him with their spears.
By the time Skyra got to her feet, Brillir was trying to crawl to the cave opening. She kicked him onto his side. As Lincoln and Virgil thrust their spears into his legs and torso, Brillir seemed to realize he wasn’t going to make it out of the cave. He stared up at Skyra, wincing every time a spear punctured his body.
“Wakhatum,” he grunted. It was a word Una-Loto men called women who were taken by bolups but never tried to escape to return to their own people.
The word hit Skyra like a blow from a khul. She stared at Brillir as his strength poured out of his body, forming a puddle on the rock slab. She gestured to Lincoln and Virgil to stop stabbing the man. Then she kneeled, grabbed Brillir’s hair, and forced him to look at her. She spoke in the Una-Loto language. “You were cruel to my birthmother Sayleeh. You were cruel to Veenah. You were cruel to Skyra. You will not be cruel again.”
His eyes remained fixed on her for a few more breaths, then his face relaxed. Skyra released his hair, and his head thumped against the stone slab.
Skyra heard a rock hitting the cave floor behind her, followed by a drawn-out moan. She turned to see Derek collapsing to his knees.
“Ahhh… this place is a goddamn nightmare,” Derek said, rubbing his face with his hands. He then let out another long moan.
Lincoln dropped his spear and kneeled beside his tribemate. “Focus, Derek! Listen to my voice.”
Skyra growled, picked up Brillir’s dropped khul, and turned back to the cave entrance. This was no time to think about the strange bolup who sometimes believed he was an animal. She crouched and peered out the cave opening. Gelrut and Durnin had left blood streaks on the rock slab, and the streaks disappeared to one side just outside the opening. The two men were hurt. They were probably still assessing their wounds. Within a few breaths they would decide what to do next.
Skyra shifted her grip on the khul, finding the best spot on its handle for her fingers. She sucked in a chestful of air and tensed her muscles, preparing to lunge through the opening. It was time to kill.
“Derek, stop!” Jazzlyn’s voice shouted. “Hold on to him, you guys!”
Skyra blew out her breath and spun around. Derek was grunting and thrashing out at Lincoln and Virgil, who were struggling to hold him against the stone floor. Derek arched his back and threw out an arm, tossing Virgil against the cave wall. He then bit into Lincoln’s shoulder.
“Ow! Dammit, Derek, stop!”
Snarling like a cornered cave lion, Derek pushed Lincoln aside, got to his feet, and charged Skyra. She started to swing her khul at him, but the crazed bolup knocked her out of his way and scuttled through the opening. Growls and shouts came from outside the cave.
“Oh, crap!” Lincoln said, and he started for the opening.
Skyra dove through before him and rolled to her feet. Derek was locked in a vicious fight with Durnin, and the two were rolling across the ledge. Derek got too close to the edge and started to tumble. Just before going over the edge, he grabbed Durnin’s hair, pulling the nandup with him, and they both disappeared.
A breath later, Skyra heard the two bodies thumping and rolling on the boulders below.
A movement to her side drew Skyra’s attention. Gelrut was getting to his feet and pulling his khul from the sling on his back. Lincoln was just coming out through the cave opening, and Gelrut flicked his eyes toward the bolup. Gelrut grabbed his khul’s handle with his other hand and raised the weapon as he stepped toward Lincoln.
Skyra lunged at her tribemate and swung her khul. This was a true nandup khul, with a heavier blade than a bolup’s khul. Skyra heard her blade break the bones in Gelrut’s arm. He grunted and dropped his own khul. She raised her khul to kill him but then hesitated. Gelrut was staring at his arm as if he didn’t understand it was now ruined. He lifted the arm and watched his hand and wrist dangle loosely. Then he turned his eyes to Skyra. He tried to speak, but only bubbling grunts came out—Lincoln’s arrow the day before had destroyed the inside of Gelrut’s face.
Lincoln stepped up beside her and grabbed her raised arm. “Look at him, Skyra. You don’t really need to kill him. I know he took Veenah from you, but… you don’t really need to kill him, do you?”
No, Skyra realized, she didn’t need to kill him, but she wanted to. She wanted to feel her khul take away the stinking nandup’s strength.
“If you want him to suffer, maybe you could just let him go,” Lincoln said. He released her arm and looked around. “Where’s Derek?”
Skyra stared at Gelrut’s face—his slack, blood-covered lips, the holes on either side of his nose, now starting to turn black, and the hatred in his eyes. He had always hated Skyra and Veenah. That hadn’t stopped him, though, from challenging the other dominant men to be the first to honor Skyra’s ilmekho.
“Oh God, Lincoln, he’s down there,” Jazzly
n said. She and Virgil were now out of the cave, looking over the edge.
Skyra lowered her khul.
Gelrut tried to speak again and only choked, spraying blood at Skyra’s face.
She grabbed him by his fur cape and dragged him, stumbling, to the end of the ledge. Lincoln and his tribemates were already climbing down through the narrow gap there, so she waited until they were clear of the slope, then she shoved Gelrut over the edge. He slid and rolled over the rocks to the rock slab below. While Lincoln, Jazzlyn, and Virgil made their way toward Derek’s body, Gelrut headed the other way, crawling over boulders and sliding down slopes on his belly. Skyra watched him descend the hill until he disappeared around the edge of a jumble of rocks.
She leapt from boulder to boulder and caught up with Lincoln and the others as they arrived at Derek’s body. Between two rounded rocks, the bolup was face-down on top of Durnin.
Virgil and Jazzlyn grabbed Derek’s legs, dragged him out from between the rocks, then rolled him over.
Derek moaned and squinted against the sun’s glare. “What the hell happened?” He raised his head and looked up. “Oh no. What did I do this time?”
While the others kneeled and started talking to him, Skyra slid between the two rocks. With her knees on Durnin’s belly, she pulled his head up by his hair. His eyes were closed, but his lids twitched a few times. She felt the back of his head—his skull was cracked, and the fragments moved when she pressed on them. “I have smelled a cave bear on this hill of rocks,” she said in the Una-Loto language, although she doubted Durnin could hear. “Soon the cave bear will find you. I would like to watch the cave bear take your strength, but I will be far away. I will go with my bolup friends to a place where I will not have to fear predators or men.”
She released Durnin’s head and backed out of the space between the rocks. She got to her feet and gazed toward the base of the hill of boulders. Gelrut was there, just sliding down a rock onto the sand below. She watched him as he began walking slowly over the rocky plain. Maybe he would die before he made it back to Una-Loto camp, or maybe he would live. Skyra no longer cared one way or the other.
18
Who Made Who
47,659 years ago - Day 4
While he checked Derek for injuries, Lincoln summarized for his team what had happened to him and Skyra since they’d left. When he finally finished, he stood back and shook his head, surprised he’d found nothing more serious than bruises and scraped skin. The Neanderthal’s body had been quite effective at cushioning Derek’s fall.
Jazzlyn was staring at the tribesman’s body, which was wedged between two massive boulders. “Uh, I think that guy’s still alive. Should we, you know… do something?”
“Do not kill him,” Skyra said.
Jazzlyn frowned. “I wasn’t really thinking about killing him.”
Skyra stepped between Jazzlyn and the body. “Leave Durnin as he is.”
Derek spoke while gingerly prodding a nasty rock burn on his forearm. “A few days ago I was all gung-ho about this adventure. I’m over it now.” He glanced at Skyra and then at Lincoln. “Should we be expecting more attacks?”
“More Una-Loto hunters may come,” Skyra said. “We should go.”
Derek, Jazzlyn, and Virgil all turned to Lincoln. “We?” Virgil asked.
Lincoln nodded. “She’s coming with us.”
After several seconds, Virgil said, “Um… is that a good idea?”
Lincoln didn’t feel like trying to explain. He wasn’t even sure he could explain. “She’s coming. I suggest we gather the gear and get our asses to the T3.”
After a round of exchanged glances, Virgil, Jazzlyn, and Derek headed back to the gap to climb back up. Derek was limping but not complaining.
“I am going with you,” Skyra said.
Lincoln wasn’t sure if this was meant as a statement or a question. “Yes, you’re coming with us.”
They followed the others up, and by the time he and Skyra entered the cave, Derek had already dragged the dead Neanderthal onto the ledge. Maddy was now pacing around the chamber, apparently using her memory of previous movements to navigate the space, although this wasn’t preventing her from stepping in people’s way as they gathered the gear.
“How are you doing, Maddy?” Lincoln asked. “Things were pretty hairy earlier, and I didn’t have a chance to speak to you.”
Maddy stopped pacing when she heard his voice. “Lincoln, you do know that violence should always be a last resort, do you not?”
“Yeah, I know that. Sometimes there isn’t a choice. Especially in this place.”
“Yes, in this place. You must leave this place as soon as possible.”
“That’s the plan.”
Maddy remained silent for a moment, and Lincoln glanced at her. The drone’s red LEDs were spinning one direction and then the other. “Something on your mind, Maddy?”
“You must leave me here.”
Lincoln frowned. His team members quit what they were doing and turned to Maddy.
“You can walk, can’t you?” Lincoln asked.
“Not effectively, and you cannot carry me. I will slow you down.”
“We’ll manage.”
“Lincoln, I am insisting.”
“The hell you are! Who made who?”
“You coded me to defy your orders if I ascertained it could save your life. I insist you leave me here. Perhaps you will remove my cognitive module and take it with you. It weighs only 233 grams.”
Without another word, Maddy scuttled across the rock slab and out the cave opening before Lincoln realized what she was doing. A few seconds later he heard her crashing onto the rocks below.
“Maddy!” Lincoln ducked out to the ledge. Within seconds the others were at his side. They stared down at Maddy’s broken body. She was cracked open, and two of her legs had broken off.
“Shit,” Derek said. “She didn’t give us a clue she was planning to do that.”
Lincoln realized he was holding his breath. He let out a long sigh. He reminded himself again that Maddy was only a drone. However, she was a drone that had systematically learned by speaking to him and to others for over three years. That depth of learning could not be replaced easily.
“Maddy was your friend,” Skyra said. “Maddy is now dead.”
Lincoln closed his eyes for a moment. Skyra had a way of stating the obvious truth, even when the truth was something he had failed to acknowledge. “Yeah, Maddy was my friend.”
Virgil put a hand on Lincoln’s shoulder. “You want me to go down there and pull her module?”
“No, I’ll do it.”
“Well, at least grab some clothes from the gear bag first. You’re sunburned and scratched from head to foot. We’ll pack up the rest of the stuff and meet you down there.”
“Yeah, man,” Derek said. “You’d be doing us all a favor to get some clothes on.”
Lincoln looked at one of his shoulders and muttered a curse. He hadn’t even noticed he was sunburned.
The duffel bag contained an extra set of clothes as well as a pair of lightweight running shoes for each of the four team members—extra hiking shoes had been ruled out as being too bulky. Lincoln removed his remaining hiking shoe, pulled on a set of clothes, and carefully removed his makeshift footwrap. There was no bottled water left to wash the cuts, so he slathered on half a tube of antibiotic cream, pulled on a pair of socks, and put on his running shoes. He shoved the single hiking shoe and footwrap into the duffel bag, just in case he needed them later. He grabbed a multi-tool from the bag and got to his feet.
“You guys okay?” he asked his team. They were silently deflating sleeping pads and stuffing them into tiny bags. The three seemed a little shell-shocked. He couldn’t blame them—the body of a Neanderthal man they’d been forced to kill lay just outside the cave, and another was in a heap on the rocks below. They were also probably weary from being scared shitless for three days straight.
“Sorry, but we ate al
l the food supplies,” Derek said, nodding to a pile of foil wrappers at the rear of the chamber.
“That’s okay. You had to eat. We didn’t exactly come prepared for a long stay.”
Derek nodded. “You go on. We’ll catch up.”
Jazzlyn looked up from packing a sleeping bag to flash Lincoln a half-smile.
“We’ll be back to the T3 soon,” Lincoln said. “Whatever happens then, it has to be an improvement, right?”
They all nodded.
Lincoln left the cave. When he reached Maddy’s broken body, Skyra was already there on her knees, examining the drone.
“I do not understand this creature,” she said, peering into the wide crack on Maddy’s shell. “It does not have blood. It does not have a heart. Does Ripple have blood and a heart?”
He kneeled beside her. He took one look at the drone then stuffed the multi-tool into his pocket—he wasn’t going to need it. “Some other time I’ll try to explain what Maddy and Ripple really are.” He pried the crack open until a large side panel of Maddy’s shell popped off, exposing her processors, a few of the high-torque flux motors, and the high-lithium-diffusion battery pack. It took him only a few seconds to reach in and pull Maddy’s cognitive module from its port.
The module was the size of a cell phone, and he held it up for Skyra to see. “This is actually Maddy’s brain.” He tapped his own forehead. “You know, the part that allows us all to think. I hope to put it in another body when we get back to my home.” Lincoln had doubts this would ever be possible, but he kept them to himself.
Skyra stared at the module with no expression, again perhaps incapable of understanding that Maddy could be anything other than a living creature.
Lincoln got up and carefully put the module into his pocket that did not contain the multi-tool. The module was in a carbon polymer case, but he didn’t want to take a chance of damaging it. He stared down at Maddy’s remains. This would be the fifteenth drone he had left in the past, possibly to be found by future archeologists. He had never worried too much about it before because he’d always believed the drones to be in a different timeline from the moment they were sent back. Now he didn’t know what to believe.
Obsolete Theorem Page 20
