by Sandy Nathan
Jeremy’s stomach lurched. Not the tear treatment. “I don’t hate you. I’ve got some really important projects going and need space.”
“And I wanted to speak to you of some vitally important things.” She sighed.
“Well, you still can.”
“It makes no sense if we are not to have a collegial relationship. I will proceed on my own.” She stood up. “I might as well go back. Grace wanted me to help with Sammy. And it is growing dark.” She headed for the door.
“No, wait, Honey. I’ll walk with you.” He picked up his rifle and put on his gun belt with two pistols. He refused to suffer the way he had the last time she walked home by herself.
The area around the mill had been logged out, so he and Honey walked across an open stretch at the start of their journey. The trail meandered through the stumps. Pine trees grew at this end of the mountain, another anomaly of the landscape. Pines were OK for construction, but not as durable or fire-resistant as redwoods. The redwoods were way upstream. They cut the pines because they were easier to get to. The forest smelled nice, especially in the crisp air.
Jeremy’s breath made puffs as he walked. The sky was clear, which it usually was unless it was raining. Winter hadn’t really come on yet. Stars were starting to emerge above them. Not much of a moon that night, so it would be dark, but the setting would have been beautiful if he’d been with Ellie. Or if he’d been less nervous about getting Honey home. Jeremy hustled her along the trail, holding her elbow.
“You do not need to be solicitous of me, Jeremy. I do not require your assistance. I can get home quite safely by myself.”
Jeremy’s lips compressed. “I’m going with you.”
At the end of the clearing, they entered the forest proper. They’d made sure they could drive the truck and trailer through the trees so they could get the lumber to the settlement. The logging road was wide all the way to the cliff.
The forest’s rim was like something his mother’s gardeners might have created on the estate—hard-edged like the manicured hedge around the maze, completely dark just inside the boundary. Still, the path was wide.
The mountain died into the forest about a half-mile from the mill. The huge rock mass seemed to collapse into itself as it hit the ground, creating ledges and crevasses that went all the way to the top. Giant shards of granite stuck up.
He’d seen Honey the first time when she made her way down one of the ravines. And he’d shot the mountain lion when it leapt at him from a ledge. That one, right there. Jeremy looked at the boulder above him. He knew that cougars mated for life. He looked up again. Was that lion’s mate up there, waiting to take her revenge?
Then they had passed that danger point. They trudged along the trail. The forest was very dark. He wished he’d thought to bring an electric lantern.
Sure enough, the wolves began howling. The howls were to the west. Everything wild came from the west.
“Stay behind me, Honey.” Jeremy shoved her behind him as the howls spread out. The howls came from both sides now, and from the rear. The wolves were following them, getting closer. He could see the wolves’ eyes flashing in the darkness. The howling kept up. So many canine voices; he had never heard so many. And then they grew silent.
A wolfish scream would rise and fall once in a while, coming from a distance. Then closer. They were finally so close that the animals had no need to call to each other, except to bring in outliers.
“Ellie … Honey,” Jeremy said. “Can you really run faster than a wolf pack?”
“Yes.”
“They’re all around us, except for the front. I think you’d better run home alone.” The eyes flashed everywhere. He’d never seen so many. “Run home and get Sam and the others. I’ll watch your back.”
“I don’t want to. I’m not afraid …”
“Well, I am. Get out of here now. I’ll fight them off.” He had his rifle ready and the safeties off of both pistols. “Go! Get Sam! Get help.” He shoved her and she finally jogged away. The forest’s darkness swallowed her within a few feet.
Jeremy stood, rifle raised to his cheek. The wolves’ eyes were like fireflies, sparking and disappearing. He couldn’t get a clear shot through the trees. Fuck! he thought. Try and do a good deed and get eaten by wolves. She couldn’t be at the cliff yet. No help would come.
The pack leader walked brazenly out of the shadows. Jeremy fired off a shot, but the damn wolf spun out of the way. Wolves were slinking through the trees all around him, completely unafraid.
His heart beat so fast that he was sure the wolves could hear it. He thought about that first day when the wild dogs almost got him. But these were wolves, and he didn’t have a rabbit skin to throw them. His mouth was dry; he’d been breathing through it. His shirt stuck to his back.
“OK. Come and get me,” he shouted, leaping toward the place the alpha male had been. Nothing was there. He turned around. Flashing eyes told him the wolves had encircled him. They moved forward silently. They would kill him silently. Two iridescent silver orbs appeared within feet of him. The pack leader.
“Stop this immediately!” Honey’s voice broke the silence. “I told you that he was my friend. You are not supposed to eat friends.” She stepped in front of the big male, who backed away. “We went over this before. You do not eat me or my friends. I thought you understood.” Her eyes flashed and glistened. She stamped her foot. Jeremy had never seen Honey angry. “Now go home. There are many tasty deer in this forest, as well as other prey animals. You don’t need to eat people.” She stamped her foot. “Go!” They went.
“How did you do that?” Jeremy stood stupidly, staring at her.
“I’m not human. They will not eat me. They understand me quite well. I used words for your benefit, but they already knew what I meant. I discussed you with them the last time I was here.”
“Oh.” He struggled for words. “You really are safe here.”
“Yes. It is you who are not safe. I must walk you home now. I do not know what other predators might be lurking. I do not know all of them.” She marched up to him and took his elbow. He shook her off.
“No. I can get home. You’ve taken care of the wolves. There’s not much else that can hurt me. I’m armed. I can shoot. You can go home.”
“No. I will not leave you.”
“Yes, you will. I’m fine. They’re probably hysterical up on the ledge, worrying about you. Go home.”
“Come home with me. Then you’ll be safe.”
“I am safe.”
“No, you’re not.” They stood facing each other, both with their feet planted and bodies rigid.
Jeremy broke the silence. “OK. I’ll flip you for it.”
“What is ‘flip you for it’?”
“I’ve got this old coin,” he pulled a 2012 half-dollar from his pocket, a priceless collector’s item. “I carry it for luck. It’s got a heads and a tails.” He showed her. “I’m going to toss it. It if lands heads up, you go home and leave me alone. Tails, I’ll go with you.”
“That gives me a fifty percent probability of winning. I would prefer better odds. I would prefer that you came home with me and stopped this foolish wrangling.”
“Fifty percent chance or no chance. I’m turning around and leaving in five seconds.”
He won. “See you later, Honey. Keep out of trouble.” Jeremy walked briskly up the trail, heading for his shack. It was really dark. He wondered why he was being so stubborn. No, he knew. He would not teach her about computers and didn’t want any tinge of friendship or intimacy to make him feel that he should.
Though saving him from a pack of wolves was a compelling point.
He stumbled over a root. Maybe he should have gone home with her. It wasn’t that far from where he’d left her. Seeing his mom and Sam would be nice. Seeing all of them would be nice. Except for James, of course. And Mel.
Suck it up, Edgarton, he thought. Soldier it through. You know you don’t want to be around her. You know what
will happen. You’re happy living by yourself, working hard. You’re doing good work.
He had reached the jumble of rocks where the mountain collapsed into the plain. It was true that she was very nice and had saved his life. And had powers that Ellie didn’t. He’d never seen Ellie make friends with a wolf pack. Honey wasn’t Ellie.
Still, she’d turn into a wasp, like Ellie, and the whole thing would begin again.
He didn’t hear anything when it happened. Something huge and heavy hit his right shoulder and threw him down. He could smell the cat’s rancid piss smell. She grabbed his shoulder with her teeth and raked him with her claws, but couldn’t tear the Russian commando jacket. She clawed at him, trying to turn him on his belly so she could bite the back of his neck.
The death bite. Crushing the back of the skull and top of the spinal cord meant death in seconds. Predators were born knowing how to do it.
Jeremy tried to swing his rifle at her, but it was useless. She was too close to shoot or club. He pulled his legs up to shield his belly. She was doing her best to gut him with her back feet.
A snarl rose over the sounds of their battle. The cat backed off, a long, low moan escaping her throat. A similar moan hovered in the air, coming from a ledge above him. He heard a thud as something jumped off of a rock outcropping. Shit. Another cat. Jeremy looked up, but couldn’t see anything.
A chorus of snarls and moans followed, the cat letting go of him and facing her adversary. He scrambled to his feet and backed away. The howls rose to a crescendo, when the cougar abruptly squatted, peed where he had lain, and walked away.
Jeremy stood mute.
“I told you that I should go with you,” Honey marched up to him. “Look at you; you can’t walk home without getting into trouble.”
Jeremy blinked. “I guess you’re right. What did you do? Are you friends with the mountain lions, too?” He rubbed his shoulder where the cat had raked him. He’d be bruised, but the skin wasn’t broken.
Honey shook her head with disgust. “I did something I never do.”
“What?”
“I lied to her. I told her that you were my mate and that I would kill her if she hurt you. Neither is true. You don’t even like me.”
He rubbed his face. “Well, I’m liking you a lot more. Thank you for saving me.”
“Twice.”
“Yes, twice. Thank you. I think I’d like to go home and go to bed now.”
“Yes. I will accompany you.” She marched off, holding Jeremy’s elbow.
When they got to the shack, Jeremy shuffled from foot to foot. “Would you like to come in for some more soy bread? And water?”
“No, thank you. The others undoubtedly are quite distraught over my absence. I will go home now. And I am perfectly safe by myself.”
“You could stay here. I can reach them on the wireless.”
She stood up. “No. That would be improper. We are not married and should not cohabit without a chaperone. We are not friends. You won’t even shake my hand.”
Jeremy reached out his hand. “Ellie … Honey, I’d be honored to shake your hand. And be friends.”
She took his hand and he felt electricity surge through him.
“Um. If you’d like me to teach you about computers, I’d be happy to.”
She made a little hop, beaming. “Oh, wonderful! I will come back tomorrow and you can begin to teach me. I need to discuss something else with you, as well.”
“What?”
“Quantum physics.”
72
He had hauled the beefiest computers to the shack where he lived. Jeremy wasn’t being lazy during his exile from the community. He was working hard trying to figure out how to let Willy Fish, Will Duane’s tech guy, know where and when they were before their world fell apart. That required that he figure it out first. But now, he had to deal with Honey. Teach her, but not get involved.
“OK, Honey. This is a computer.”
“Of course. I’ve been using one at home. This is a more advanced model than any we have. It promises much more power and computational ability. Do you turn it on like this?” She deftly powered up the machine.
Jeremy sat in his chair, bent over the keyboard and hit a few keys. “Yep, that’s how you do it. OK, Honey. This is code.” The black screen was covered with white writing. More writing in bright colors was interspersed with it.
“Oh. That’s very interesting. The screen is black and the writing is white. That is the opposite of the computers we use. Why is this line bright pink?”
“That’s because it’s a command. All the colored writing tells the computer what to do.”
“Show me how to write code.”
“That’s complicated. It takes years to learn.”
“We have years.”
He smiled. “You’re right.”
She stood next to him while he sat at the keyboard, her thigh pressing on his shoulder. She was warm. He pulled away. She didn’t seem to notice. Her face was working like she wanted to tell him something important. She leaned over.
“The real reason I wanted to learn about computers has to do with something Grace told me in confidence.” She dropped her voice. “She said that someone named Bud Creeman once lived here. He agreed with Grace that this place is not natural. It seems natural to me; I have never seen another world. But Grace pointed out the discrepancies in the types of flora and fauna, as well as the diverse rock formations. I realized that such phenomena were abnormal. Bud and Grace felt that this world may decompose one day. Do you think it will?”
“Yeah. I do. That’s what I’m working on down here. Honey, let’s sit down over here and we can talk.” He motioned her over to his living area, the rough-hewn sofas with pads.
“Grace said that a person named Will Duane, who lives in the 21st century, knows a physicist who has created a time machine; she is a Dr. Schierman. She and Will Duane may be able to transport us to the 21st century, thus avoiding our being annihilated when the planet breaks apart.”
“Yeah. I’m trying to figure out where we are and how we can communicate with them.”
“I would like to help you.”
“Thank you, but it’s an advanced programming job.”
“Well, I have had some thoughts about it. Programming is part of it, but we’re really facing a problem in theoretical and applied physics. Post-quantum physics. We’re talking about time travel. That is a tricky concept, but with the Kobayashi theorem, and the work done by the Kobayashi school …”
“Who is that?”
“Professor Fumio Kobayashi was the leading theorist of quantum physics after a man named Alfred Einstein established the discipline. Dr. Kobayashi lived two hundred years after Dr. Einstein. Kobayashi’s work, and the work of his students, was repressed by your government because he succeeded in finding particles that were only theoretically possible to Einstein.
“He found many particles, tachyons, for one.”
“What are those?”
“They’re subatomic particles that move faster than the speed of light. He also discovered and documented photons. You understand that Post-Einsteinian physics says that light is not a wave, but packets of particles called photons.” She leaned toward him, ensnaring him with her earnestness.
“Photons originating at the same light source have an instantaneous link. No matter how far apart they might be, the same thing happens to all the particles from the same bundle. That means they have instantaneous communication all over the universe …”
“Where did you learn all this, Honey?”
She ducked her head modestly. “Well, as I said, I don’t sleep much. In addition to the language arts, I also worked my way through the mathematics component of your recorded lessons.”
“You did all this in one year?”
“A little over. I don’t sleep at all, really.” She leaned forward and whispered. “I don’t like the others to know because they become concerned about my health. I don’t need to sleep. I
study all night. One night, I was experimenting with one of the computers and managed to access one of your satellites with stored data from the universities of the old Earth. This was very old information, concealed in your time. Your rulers could see the implications of Dr. Kobayashi’s physics.”
“What are the implications, Honey?” Something deep inside Jeremy, prior to words or thoughts, stirred. She was smarter than him. He’d never known anyone smarter than him.
“But don’t you see, Jeremy, photons, with their instantaneous communication, pose a real, theoretical basis for time travel. And Kobayashi’s school found photons, physically, not theoretically.” Honey beamed, waving her hands exuberantly. “There’s more. Subatomic particles called kaons move backward in time.”
A jolt went through him. “You’re saying that we can go back? That time travel is possible? It’s something we humans can do? Not just the goldies?”
“Yes! The theoretical framework for time travel exists. If Kobayashi found the particles, so can you and I. There’s more. Superluminal loopholes. They can scientifically account for instantaneous time travel, backward-in-time travel and faster-than-light travel.” As she spoke, she became more excited, her voice rising in pitch and her body quivering.
“We can do it, Jeremy! I can understand most of the math, but a study partner would be nice. We have so many things to do. We need to determine the time/space coordinates of the people in the 21st century and prepare on our end.”
She looked down and said shyly, “I thought we could collaborate.”
“You think you can duplicate what Kobayashi did?”
“It will be very hard, because we do not have a laboratory. But I think that’s the only way out. That and praying that the people on the other side do work that complements ours. But if they are led by a physicist, I think she must be thinking along these lines.”
Her shoulders dropped a bit and she looked wistful. “I would like to help you so much. Grace told me about New York City. I would like to see New York City, and other places. She told me about parties. I want to go to a party with many people and wear pretty clothes.