Neanderthal

by John Darnton

“Harder to tell, but I’d say he’s signed on for the duration. And when you come right down to it, he’ll do whatever you want to do.”

  Susan sighed and smiled weakly.

  “Great,” she said. “Just the way I always imagined my life would end. Wandering around heaven’s door, looking for the absent­minded professor and the Abominable Snowman.”

  When they reached the top of the crown, they were stopped in their tracks by the spectacle. A flock of silver-black birds skirted them, fast and low, and left behind a cry that was as thin as a vapor trail. It was dizzying to be thrust up into the sky with clouds churning and dipping all around them.

  Matt dropped his backpack. “Made it, Ma! Top o’ the world!” he yelled, thrusting his two arms out in his best Cagney freeze-frame.

  When Susan laughed, a full-throated laugh, Matt spun half around, grabbed her by one arm, and pulled her to him. She tilted her face up and he kissed her, quickly. Her eyes were open. He kissed her cheek. She moved her head slightly, back to his lips, and this time kissed him long and deeply, then moved closer, inside his arms.

  Rudy came into view behind them, clapped his arms together, did a little dance, and hurried to catch up to them. “Aha, I knew it. I was putting down bets. I have a nose for these things.” He dropped his backpack and bustled around, genuinely happy for them.

  “Rudy,” said Susan fondly, “here’s an expression from the nineties: Chill out.”

  “Chill out? Chill out? What’s it mean?” He was delighted.

  “Cool it. Remember that one? It’s like ‘cool it,’ only more serious.”

  “Chill out. How heavy.”

  They sat down and waited for Van. Matt and Susan were silent and suddenly awkward, but Rudy kept up a steady patter. They had to wait a long time, and when Van finally clambered up the slope he was panting heavily. His face was pale and his head was rocking with the effort of catching his breath. He collapsed beside them and cradled his head with his hands.

  “I’d think all that smoking would prepare you to do without oxygen,” Matt said.

  Van glared at him but was too breathless to reply.

  They decided to split up the weight of Van’s load, and Matt began unloading his backpack. He discovered the NOMAD.

  “Well, what have we here?” he said, holding it up.

  Susan picked up the device in one hand, examining it. “Fancy,” she said. “I’ve seen one of these before. It’s for satellite transmission, isn’t it?”

  “Have you used this?” Matt was barely able to suppress his anger. Once again Van had been playing them for fools.

  Van shook his head, opened his mouth to speak, then dropped his eyes, seeking refuge in frailty.

  “It’s not a bad idea to have a satellite link,” said Matt, “but I don’t see why you kept it a secret. And it’s too heavy. We can’t carry it any farther.” He put it down on a ledge, unpacked other gear next to it, formed it all into a mound, and then piled rocks on top of it. “I’ve always wanted to bury a computer,” he said.

  Before covering it completely, Matt checked the dial. The switch was turned to the OFF position. He had no way of knowing that this meant the transmitter was sending an automatic tracking sig­nal, and Van did not enlighten him.

  Matt pulled out a shovel from the pack and added it to the pile. Finally Van managed to speak. “Figured I’d need that for my grave,” he said.

  “Bullshit. You’ll outlive us all,” said Susan.

  Van knew he was in a bad way. He felt he was inexorably suffo­cating. From time to time a wave of panic shuddered through his body; he could feel it coming, then build and course through him like an electric current. He was both sweating and cold. In Barba­dos he once watched as a group fished a dying man out of the ocean. The diver had the bends and he lay for a while on the beach and then expired, looking directly into the sun with wide eyes. The man, he had learned, was an accomplished scuba diver who had made hundreds of dives, gone down hundreds of feet, and explored countless underwater caves. No one knew what had happened this time, only sixty feet underwater. A fellow diver theorized that he had been seized by an insurmountable panic and suddenly broke for the surface.

  Van could understand that now, only there was no surface to rush toward. His defenses were lowered, and so all kinds of crazy thoughts penetrated. He knew this on some level, but the knowledge did not diminish their hold over him. He felt, with a certainty that was hard to explain, that the others were against him. They were intentionally setting a rigorous pace so he would tire and fall behind. The radio computer was a blunder they would regret. Let them take everything. They had no idea, not the smallest inkling, of what was happening. He could see what they were up to. They couldn’t fool him. Just give me time, he thought. I know how to even the score.

  That night they camped at the bottom of a gully protected on two sides by fallen boulders. There was no wind, but the cold still pen­etrated like shards of glass.

  Van’s head was pounding and he felt another wave of panic wash through him. For some reason he began thinking of his father. “Sickness is a weakness and weakness is a sickness,” his father used to say.

  Later, when he was trying to sleep, he had a bout of Cheyne­Stokes breathing from the altitude. The moment he drifted from consciousness into sleep, his breathing cut off. When the emergency center of the brain took over, his body was racked by shud­ders as he took in great gulps of air and awoke in a panic, drenched in sweat. It happened three times during the night.

  They walked all the next morning, and by afternoon Matt’s mind began to wander again. It was like having a daydream, only longer and a bit more intense, and the line between fantasy and reality was more fluid.

  “Matt, Matt!”

  Susan was calling to him from behind. He turned slowly as he walked, still in a fog.

  “Look! Look down.”

  He did. He saw nothing out of the ordinary—rocks and scree scattered about, the tips of his hiking boots moving inexorably ahead, one after the other through dust.

  “Look around! Don’t you see it?” Susan’s voice was more excited than alarmed. It carried sluggishly in the thin air and seemed to come from far away.

  Suddenly it struck him: He was on a path! It was rudimentary, and here and there it disappeared in the dusty patches, but there was undeniably the outline of some kind of trail.

  He bent down. There were no footprints as such, merely a dark­ening of the earth. Up ahead where the ground rose slightly, the path remained packed down, curving slightly to avoid a rocky surface.

  Susan caught up with him, breathing heavily. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Hard to say. There are no prints at all.”

  “Could be some kind of animal, like mountain goats. On the other hand, there are no droppings.”

  “Strange, the way it just seemed to start up out of nowhere.”

  “Just like Kellicut wrote,” Susan said.

  Rudy joined them, and then, after a long time, Van. Rudy was exhilarated by the discovery, but Van took it darkly. “Well,” he said, with a sigh of resignation and exhaustion, “at least we know we’re on its turf now.”

  That evening they built their campsite in an oval cutout on the rocky slope.

  It had been a rough day. The path had widened a bit and grown more distinct. After four hours it had crossed another path, and then another. Matt had stood for long minutes at each juncture, trying to decide which one to take. Finally there had been so many new paths that he had given up and simply tried to keep going more or less in the same direction.

  The sky darkened rapidly. Rudy, who appeared less tired than the others, appointed himself in charge of dinner, precooked pasta and dehydrated vegetables. It took him half an hour to collect enough bits of wood for a small fire. “Best to make a little fire, move close, and get warm,” he said.

  Matt and Susan hadn’t touched since their kiss on the ridge the previous morning. Not that Matt hadn’t thought of it. Fantasies of
sex with her had continued to slip in and out of his head, but exhaustion, hunger, and cold had intervened. Now Van and Rudy were asleep in their bags, their backs to the fire. There were no sounds except for the distant whine of the wind. Even the fire was silent except for the hiss of burning embers.

  Quietly, Matt unzipped his sleeping bag. The air felt cold but not freezing on his shoulder. He reached over, felt for the zipper on Susan’s bag, and slowly moved it downward. His hand moved in­side. He took his time, moving up and down, then deeper, until he felt the wall of her body. When his fingertips touched her T-shirt he pressed down to the flesh beneath, then moved closer.

  She was awake, he could tell. Her breathing was coming in short irregular bursts, but she did not move. He caressed her stomach through the shirt in slow circular movements, moved up to her right breast, cupping it, then lowered his hand slowly to her belly. He felt a slight intake of breath, but still she did not move.

  He moved his hand up again and felt her nipples harden between his fingers. Slowly he lowered his hand and slipped it down to her mound of pubic hair. As he did so, she shifted and turned toward him. With her arms outstretched, she pulled him to her, and he felt the hard edges of his desire rake through him.

  Then came the cry, so loud and inhuman that it flooded Matt with adrenaline. He pulled his hand out of Susan’s bag and leaped to his feet before he was even aware of its source. A shadow was thrashing about—Van in his sleeping bag, rolling over and over, screaming.

  “What is it! What’s the matter?” Matt ran over and held him in place by his bended knee. When he unzipped the bag Van rolled out, hugging his stomach, a contorted bundle. Then Matt heard another sound, a low groan, coming from Rudy.

  “Poison,” gasped Van. “We’ve been poisoned.”

  “Quick, drink this!” It was Susan, holding a canteen to Van’s lips. He sipped.

  “Another,” she commanded. “Right now.”

  She went to Rudy and did the same, then gave Matt some water and took some herself. Slowly Van and Rudy felt the ache in their stomachs receding.

  “It’s not serious,” said Susan. “It’s the vegetables. You didn’t add enough water. They weren’t hydrated enough, so when we ate them and drank tea they began swelling inside.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Matt. He stood up and walked over to peer down at Rudy, who managed a sheepish smile through his groans.

  The next morning, with the sun stuck behind a thick blanket of clouds, there was an even deeper chill to the air. They dressed in layers of polypropylene fiber underneath windbreakers.

  They had been under way about three hours when they came to the ravine, hidden from sight down an incline. At first it looked like only a dip in front of the rock face that rose up steeply on the other side, and Matt nearly stumbled into it.

  “Looks about thirty feet across,” said Matt.

  “Too long for the ropes, even if we could hitch them onto some­thing on the other side,” said Van.

  “Think it’s Kellicut’s ravine?” asked Susan.

  “Impossible to say,” Matt answered. “There could be dozens of them up here. Still, he only mentioned one in all his travels, so maybe we’ve hit it.”

  The going was harder and slower now that they were off the path. Matt led them up and down rocky ledges and around piles of boulders. Soon, despite the chill, they were sweating and stripped off some of their layers. Several times Van lost his footing and fell, cursing. As they walked they kept the ravine in sight.

  After two hours, they rested for lunch—beef jerky, washed down with hot weak tea.

  Van sat immobile, as if a single movement was wasted motion. “Have you noticed,” he said, “that up here pleasure is simply relief from total deprivation, a slight lessening of pain?”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure.” Susan laughed, shooting a quick look at Matt.

  “Gotta take a piss,” said Rudy, and wandered off. A few minutes later they heard him shouting, and he appeared around a cor­ner of rock, his pants unbuttoned, waving both arms as if he were doing jumping jacks. They rushed over, and as they got close he began pointing frantically.

  Ahead, just around the corner, so close they could have hit it with a stone, was a strange structure stretching like a thick band across the full breadth of the ravine.

  “That’s it!” shouted Susan. “What did he call it? ‘A link to another world.’

  “A bridge,” said Matt.

  They ran closer, then instinctively slowed and proceeded cautiously, step by step, looking around for signs of life.

  The span was crude, about thirty-five feet long, constructed of tree branches and leaves wrapped together and held in place by thick vines. It was a looping cylinder about two feet wide, sagging precariously in the center and then rising up to a rocky ledge on the other side, where it was attached to poles stuck into the ground.

  Matt and Susan stared in awe, but Van was matter of fact. “It ain’t the Brooklyn Bridge,” he said. “How do you get across that thing?”

  “You crawl,” replied Matt.

  “But will it hold?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “Actually there are four ways to find out, because there are four of us.”

  “Who’s going first?” asked Rudy.

  “We could draw straws,” said Van.

  “This isn’t ring-a-levio,” said Matt.

  Susan was busy examining the tangled attachment of vines on the near side, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Matt, look at this. We’ve never seen anything like this before. It surpasses anything we know about Mousterian culture. Look at the complexity of those knots.”

  Matt squatted next to her. “I don’t know,” he said. “If they used ropes or vines like this thousands of years ago the stuff would have decayed long ago. It never would have survived for us to find it.”

  She stood up abruptly. “I’m going first.” Her words had a tone of finality. “First because I’m the lightest and second because I’m the one who wants most to get across.”

  No one disputed her.

  They retrieved their backpacks and sorted through them to lighten their loads. Among the items they decided to leave behind, stored in a small crevice, were tins of food and two tiny pup tents. They covered the crevice over with rocks to keep the cache hidden.

  Susan stashed her jacket in her pack and tightened the drawstrings around her legs and arms for flexibility. She threaded a rope around her waist and, leaning over the ravine, looped it around the underside of the span and tied it loosely. She tied another rope to her belt and tossed the end of it to Matt, who secured it around a boulder.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said and smiled weakly. “Remember, if anything goes wrong, I want co-authorship of the paper.”

  “You got it,” replied Matt.

  “When I get halfway across, yell out to me and I’ll untie the rope so you can haul it back. It’s not long enough to make it.”

  She began warily, hugging the cylinder of sticks and debris, rising up and crawling a few inches, then leaning her arms down to swing the guard rope ahead a few feet like a logger going up a tree trunk. Progress was slow.

  When Susan got ten feet out, the contraption began to sway in a widening arc like a pendulum, and she stopped and clung tightly until it slowed. Then she shifted her movements. It rocked gently front to back, but it held. Once she looked down; quickly she closed her eyes and rested for a while.

  Halfway across she picked up speed and fell into a rhythm. Matt kept an eye on the rope and when it became taut he yelled out to her. Without a backward look, she reached down to her belt and untied it. The end sank down quickly into nothingness and Matt felt an unexpectedly heavy tug as he pulled it in.

  When Susan made it to the other side, she stood up and gave them a V-sign.

  Rudy followed, and then Van. Halfway over Van pulled in the safety rope and tossed it across to Susan. It took him four attempts to get it to her.

  Going last, Matt
was on his own. There was no rope to hold him.

  A quarter of the way across, he felt a wave of vertigo engulf him. He stopped and clung to the branches. It was cold, and the wind whipped his fingers. He could hear the cries of birds—above or below? He rested, then summoned up his strength and went on. As he neared the end, he felt blood coursing through him and a giddi­ness that took over his whole body.

  “Piece of cake, huh?” remarked Van.

  They sat for a long time, recovering. Finally Susan spoke. “Whoever made this thing, was it human?”

  “How did they get it across the first time?” asked Matt.

  “Imagine the effort involved,” said Van.

  “And why? What pushed them to do it?” asked Susan.

  “Something’s motivating them,” said Matt. “Something is making them leave their precious retreat. But what?”

  “Trading? Getting food for animal skins?” suggested Van.

  “I doubt it,” replied Susan. “That’s hardly enough to overcome centuries of hiding and self-imposed exile.”

  “They’re after something.”

  Matt knelt down by the bridge, peered underneath it, and whistled. He called the others over and pointed to a stake protruding out of a pile of rocks that supported the abutment. “Look at that. It’s a lever. If you strike that, the rocks tumble down and the whole damn contraption falls into the ravine.”

  “Like an eject mechanism,” added Van. “Whoever built this wanted to be able to blow it away in an instant.”

  “So they want the outside world, but they’re afraid of it too,” said Susan. “That’s inconsistent.”

  “Let’s work it out,” Matt went on. “Assume for a minute that they’re aware of our presence—and I think that’s a fair assumption. Why didn’t they destroy it to keep us away?”

  They were quiet for a while. Finally Van said, “Only one expla­nation. They want us to come.”

  Looking down at the ground ten feet away, Rudy made his second find of the afternoon. “And we’re not the only ones,” he said, pointing down at cross-hatched imprints on the ground. “Look, more boot marks.”