Footprints of Thunder

by James F. David

  “All right, all right!” Carl shouted to the forest.

  Then to Ellen and Ripman he said, “This isn’t over. Now you go, and you go fast, or I’ll shoot you in the back just like you did Bobby.”

  As soon as they climbed on top of the log, the dinosaur spotted them and picked up its pace. Its enthusiasm spoke of an acquired taste for people, Ellen realized,

  “Hurry it up!” Carl shouted behind them. “Hurry it up or I’ll shoot you!”

  Ripman was slowing them down. His swollen face impaired his vision, and Ellen had to help him climb and guide him toward the forest. But if she held his arm too firmly or too long, Ripman pushed it away. When they went around the foliage of the last fallen tree, they ran into the forest.

  Now a familiar voice whispered to them, and a hand motioned from a tree. Ellen guided Ripman there and around the other side.

  At the sight of her son her knees went weak and she collapsed into his arms. After a long relieved squeeze Ellen opened her eyes to see Cubby holding a pistol.

  “Hello, Mrs. Roberts.”

  The voice wasn’t as deep as the one shouting from the forest, but she realized both were Cubby’s. He smiled at her, then turned to Ripman.

  “Ripman, you look like crap.”

  Ripman turned his head to look at Cubby with his good eye. “We’ll all be crap tomorrow if that dino eats us today.”

  In her relief Ellen had forgotten about the dinosaur. She leaned out around the tree to see Carl and Kishton climbing over a log, moving fast. But so was the dinosaur.

  “It’s coming … they’re coming.”

  Cubby leaned around the tree and fired three times at Carl and Kishton, who were running the length of a trunk to reach another tree and dove between the two logs. Cubby fired another shot before the gun clicked on an empty chamber.

  “Time to go,” he said and ran off through the trees.

  As they followed Cubby, semiautomatic rifle fire echoed through the trees, quickly drowned by roaring and bellowing. Carl and Kishton were putting up a fight.

  Ripman’s breathing was heavy and ragged and he stumbled frequently. Ellen and John bracketed him, taking turns supporting him, but he didn’t tolerate their touch for long and pushed their hands away.

  The rifle fire continued behind them, the sharp cracks and pops competing with the screaming roars of the enraged dinosaur. Then a tremendous crash and splintering drowned out the gunshots. When the new noise faded, the rifle fire and the screams were gone.

  Cubby pulled up behind a tree and plopped down, pretending to catch his breath but keeping his eye on Ripman. He remained standing, leaning against the tree, but slowly sank onto his bottom like the rest of them, looking down to avoid eye contact. Ellen knew he was in pain, some of it physical, but most of it emotional. He hated needing their help,

  After a few minutes, Cubby took charge again.

  “Let’s get going. Maybe we can still make it to my house.”

  “Your house?” Ellen asked. She was puzzled. Could Cubby’s house be in this primeval forest somewhere? “Your house is still here?”

  “It’s over that way a few miles. We saw my dad’s church yesterday, isn’t that right, John?”

  John responded with a reluctant nod, and Ellen realized there was something her son was holding back. Ellen looked around the woods. It was like nothing she’d ever known. Some of the trees were the size of the biggest redwoods in the nation, and there were thousands of them. The plants were strangely unfamiliar, and the insect and small animal life seemed alien from an ancient world, one ruled by dinosaurs and gone for sixty-five million years. Yet Cubby talked of going home, home to a parsonage. The impossibility of what had happened hit her hard.

  “Well, if you’re sure it’s there, and it’s not too far, I guess we should head for it.”

  She said it without conviction. Her own inclination was to make directly for the nearest piece of confirmed civilization. At last Ripman lifted his eyes and used the good one to stare at Cubby.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s there, and I wouldn’t say it’s not there,” he muttered thickly through his swollen lips.

  Cubby turned on him angrily.

  “I’m not buying that rapture crapola of yours, Cubby,” Ripman continued, “I’m just telling you what I’ve seen. I’ve seen Portland too, I’ve seen it come and go.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Cubby snarled in his deepest voice.

  “It means what it means. Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not. Even if it is there it doesn’t look right.”

  “I saw it. John saw it.”

  “That right, John?” Ripman turned his good eye to John, defying him to support Cubby. “Did it look all right to you?”

  “It was there … but it was … hazy.”

  “See, John saw it. Now give it a rest, Ripman, we’re going to my place.”

  Ripman turned his head back and forth, reading facial expressions with his good eye.

  “If it’s there why haven’t we run into any of the people from Portland?”

  “It’s too far away, that’s why.” Cubby spoke with conviction, but no one shared his certainty.

  “It’s not that far away. You’re sitting on Mount Tabor.”

  Cubby’s eyes went wide and he mouthed “Mount Tabor” silently. Ellen had been to Cubby’s church on several occasions, and she knew it was on the hill just south of Mount Tabor. Now, Ripman stood and threw a rock into the forest.

  “That means your house is about that far away. You see your house? Your church? It’s gone, Cubby, gone. Get used to it. Better yet, get out of here. You don’t belong here, none of you do. Get out of here before you get me killed.”

  Ripman collapsed back onto the ground, pulled his knees to his chest, burying his head between his knees. Ellen impulsively reached out to put her arm around him but held back. Her gesture would only add to his pain. Ellen didn’t know how to comfort Cubby either. She only knew that it was time to get out of the forest.

  She turned to John to ask for his support, but a new noise pulled their attention to the sky—the distinctive thump, thump, thump of a helicopter, flying low. She, John, and Cubby spread out looking for a thin spot in the canopy to attract the attention of the pilot. Ripman remained under the tree with his head between his knees. The thumping got louder when the helicopter was nearly overhead. Then leaves began fluttering out of the trees, hundreds of them, blocking her view. As they drifted toward her she realized these were long elongated leaves, and that evergreens have needles, not leaves.

  The whirling blades were directly above them when the first of the leaves drifted down to head height. Suddenly the leaf changed course and swooped to Ellen’s shoulder. She turned to find an eight-inch lizard staring her in the face, its tongue slithering in and out. It was a mottled green with a brown bone collar around its neck. Spines, extending from its neck on either side, were folded flat along its body. Screaming, Ellen knocked it from her shoulder, but its claws snagged her blouse and it hung upside down by its back legs. Then it extended the spines from its side, stretching the attached webbing wide. Its claws released and it rolled and glided to the ground, reared on its back legs and ran into the underbrush. Other lizards landed nearby and ran off, some scrambling up trees and disappearing into the foliage. Another scored a direct hit on Ellen’s head, its claws enmeshed in her hair. Ellen, in panic, tried to pull it free, and when it came loose with a hunk of hair in each fist, Ellen flung it to the ground, where it ran off with the others. The lizard flights diminished, and when the air raid ended the helicopter was gone.

  Tears filled Ellen’s eyes. She resolved then and there to take no steps that didn’t lead out of this hell. She saw the same desire in her son. Cubby looked mostly confused, and Ripman was still hiding his emotions. Ellen regarded the boys in a new light. They were still young in many ways, struggling for an identity, not sure of their direction. She had depended on them, and they had saved her. Ripman had tried to sa
ve Angie too; he’d been remarkable, and so had her son. But now they needed her. She was going to lead them out of there.

  Before she could act, she heard a new sound, growing louder. Cubby and John looked at each other accusingly.

  “It was your bike,” Cubby said.

  “Uh-uh! It was yours,” John replied defensively.

  Ellen didn’t have time to ask what they were talking about. Cubby pulled Ripman to his feet and into the forest while John grabbed her arm and dragged her along behind. The sound grew loud enough for her to recognize. It was a motorcycle.

  63. Oscillations

  Einstein’s failure to explain time’s arrow … is closely linked to the concept of causality … the notion that effects never precede their causes. Consider a world in which causality is violated, it might mean that a pebble could levitate off the ground so that you could grasp it; worse than that, you might be struck down by a stone before it fell, or kill your own grandmother before you were born.

  —Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, the Arrow of Time

  Washington, D.C.

  PostQuilt: Wednesday, 1:15 P.M. EST

  The PresNet was rich with data now. Scientists who had been absent from their labs studying local phenomena were back on-line providing reports. They were still mostly descriptive but some included analysis and theorizing. Unidentified plant life, unusual microscopic sea life, dinosaur sightings—the reports went on and on. They were fascinating and seductive but Nick needed to concentrate on cause, not effects, so he programmed his computer to screen for messages on Gomez’s theory.

  That theory was receiving both support and criticism. A physicist at the University of Virginia had organized commentary into confirming responses and invalidating arguments. Nick skimmed the listings, but there was none for E. Puglisi. A few minutes later a messenger delivered an envelope.

  It was from E. Puglisi. Nick tore it open and extracted a thick stack of photos and a two-page typed report. Puglisi wrote in an efficient style and, like a good science writer, began with a summary of the entire report. Nick read the summary, excitement building with each word. When he finished, he dropped the report and thumbed through the pictures, finding the photo the summary referred to but unable to see the details. His hands shaking nervously, he brought a magnifying glass down over the crater named Flamsteed until it came into focus. There it was.

  Nick leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, trying to take in the implications. He had been somewhat vague when he asked Puglisi to make the survey, but Puglisi had immediately taken the initiative. Puglisi’s report noted that he and his colleague Chen-Slater had reasoned that only three types of changes to an airless body like the moon could be passed from the future to the present. Changes from internal events, like moonquakes. Changes from celestial events, like meteorite impact. Or man-made change. Puglisi and Chen-Slater found only the third kind.

  Nick leaned back over the photo to make sure he hadn’t imagined it. It was there, in the crater. A rectangular structure, so symmetrical and sharp-edged there was no confusing it with natural phenomena. Something from the future was now on the moon. What could it be? Nick wondered, his mind racing through endless possibilities. Most likely, he thought, it’s part of a permanent moon base. But in the future we would know the time displacement was going to occur. Knowing that, wouldn’t we take steps to make sure a base would not be constructed in a location to be displaced? Or at least built under the surface, where the effect doesn’t seem to carry? Of course it could be from such a far future that civilization had lost its collective memory for this time. Perhaps civilization collapses, only to rise again. Or perhaps the structure was placed there deliberately to travel to the past—to Nick’s present? Would future scientists be able to predict the time displacement that accurately?

  A knock interrupted his thoughts, irritating him. “Come in!”

  Elizabeth came through again, this time accompanied by Samuel Cannon. Nick had exchanged pleasantries with the CIA director on occasion, but never had closer contact. He and Elizabeth pulled chairs up close to Nick’s desk and leaned forward, talking in low voices. As usual Elizabeth’s face was impassive, but Cannon’s look told Nick this meeting would be all business. With her usual bluntness, Elizabeth jumped right to the problem.

  “Nick, the President is going ahead with Gogh’s plan. The cruise missiles have been armed and the terrain mapped. They are going to launch as soon as the timing is right.”

  “What about the site selection? Aren’t they going back to the Security Council to consider sites?”

  Elizabeth and Samuel Cannon exchanged glances, and then Cannon answered in a subdued voice. “There is nothing to be considered. The site has been selected. It’s the Portland site. They can’t confirm the dinosaur report in Alaska, and the glacier site is too near the Canadian border. Besides, the glacier might be from the Ice Age. We have no way of knowing.”

  Nick knew what he meant. Everything suggested the time displacements were all from the Cretaceous period, but if the glacier was from the Ice Age there might be people somewhere there. It was unlikely that killing them would alter the present, and if it did who would know? Nick understood the danger, however. Severing a lifeline in the ancient past would kill all succeeding generations. Who might be eliminated from history by such an act? While you might want to eliminate Hitler or Stalin, you would also risk Jesus, Gandhi, and Einstein. But if you killed Einstein, would we have nuclear weapons at all? Perhaps Hitler would have developed them first and won World War II. And if we didn’t have the bomb, how could we drop it to kill Einstein in the first place? Nick’s mind reeled for the second time in a few minutes. He understood why they were avoiding the Alaskan site—still, risking the population of Portland for an untested theory was immoral.

  “But Portland is a city. Can’t you convince the President to wait for confirmation on the glacier site?” Nick argued.

  “Nick, the President is only listening to Gogh. Gogh is telling him what he wants to hear, and what he wants to hear is that he can get his wife back. Nick, do you think this will work—this bomb theory?”

  “I’ve been monitoring the debate over Gomez’s—Gogh’s theory, and only one in ten physicists support it. The rest are suggesting modifications or outright doubt about its validity. No one is supporting Gogh’s idea that simultaneous nuclear detonations will return things to normal. It’s also not clear that the explosions will actually take place in the past. Those bombs could be delivered to our present.”

  Elizabeth exchanged glances with Cannon again, and when she gave him an encouraging look, he nodded reluctantly. “There’s something else you should know,” Cannon continued. “This is classified, you understand? We sent a team into Atlanta to try to locate and recover the first lady. They never came back.”

  “What? How did you do it?”

  “The first attempt was an air drop. We sent up an aircraft that orbited the Atlanta site until they got a good solid image of the city below them. Then they parachuted in. We monitored the descent from the ground and from the aircraft. Everything went normal, their chutes opened and they descended into the city. Then the city was gone again and we never heard from them. We’ve been trying to contact them ever since.”

  Nick’s concern made his voice quaver. “Sorry about your men, but that could partially support Gogh’s theory. If we deliver the warheads when the past is … present … then the warheads may go off in the past … but of course that would be in this present … or would it?” He berated himself. He had only confused them and embarrassed himself. Changing the subject, he asked about the other incident.

  “The ground team monitoring the drop had a good vantage point and reported that as the parachutists dropped into the city they saw that kind of fuzzy transparent look the city has. The crazy thing is the ground team reported that from their vantage point the city appeared off in the distance, but the aerial shots showed the ground team’s position as in the city. Since we had
radio contact with the ground team, we sent them toward the heart of the effect—Atlanta—and told them to maintain radio contact. We had positive contact until, suddenly, they were gone.”

  “We get nothing now,” Elizabeth added, her voice uncharacteristically tremulous.

  Nick was puzzled. Dinosaurs, like the ankylosaur in Montreal, were coming out of the displaced segments into Nick’s present, but apparently the people from the present made only a one-way trip. Nick wondered whether the dinosaurs could go back. Could movement be only from past to the future? That would be consistent with time’s arrow. If so, then was Atlanta displaced to the future, and was that why Cannon’s people could not come back? But what of inanimate objects? Would they have the same restrictions? Probably, Nick realized. He was thinking in terms of the human disruption that could occur if one traveled to his or her own past.

  Like most people, Nick was psychologically unwilling to meet himself in the past. But in one sense people were nothing more than organized chemicals. Would chemicals from the future meeting themselves in the past cause disruption? Not likely; but if the disruption occurred in a forward direction, then Gogh’s bombs could be carried into the future. That is, if the effect was not disrupted by the blast. He resisted speculating out loud again. Elizabeth and Cannon came to him for his expertise. It’s disquieting to people when experts act human.

  “I’ll put this information on PresNet. Maybe someone can make sense of it.”

  When Elizabeth and Cannon looked as if they wanted more, Nick wasn’t sure what to give them.

  “This means the timing is crucial,” he added. “If the bombs are delivered when the present is—present, then the bombs will go off over Portland. If the past is present, then everything in the present will be intact. Of course the past will be incinerated.”

  Nick meant it to be reassuring. There was nothing more he could do. And apparently Cannon and Elizabeth had lost their influence. What Nick needed was sweet lemon rationalization. No matter how sour things turned out he was going to make the best of it.