by Robert Brown
Finally, the calendar day caught up to the date of our original collision, and once again the ship was aloft, and ready for our final effort.
BOOK II
THE END OF DAYS
Once again we were hit with a sudden wind, pummeling our airbag and rigging like someone threw a switch and turned on a tornado. There was a horrible ripping sound, almost like some monstrous scream, followed by ropes twanging, and something huge and wooden finally tearing lose.
A second later, I saw a four foot section of carved wooden railing swinging towards me on a piece of lanyard, and smash through the starboard window of my cabin. That would take three days to fix, at least – but we were getting quick at rebuilding. Or we wouldn’t bother to fix it, our adventure was just about at an end.
Soon the ship came to a swinging stop. Through the broken glass I could see it was a bright, clear sunny day. The wind was from momentum of the earth as we jumped through time. The actual weather here was hot, arid, and still.
I half-ran from my cabin, out onto the deck, snatching my spyglass as I did. On deck the rest of the crew was beginning to emerge from the portholes and stairways. I met up with Daniel at the railing. We extended our spy glasses in unison, and focused toward the ground.
Below us was a vast expanse of yellow grassland dissected by the remains of a freeway, cracked and ancient-looking in the hot sun. It was half-covered in dust and dirt, with bushes grown through the many cracks in it. About a mile up the road, in the direction we were heading, was a huge cloud of dust being kicked up by a caravan of vehicles. Massive semi-cabs, pulling three, four, and sometimes five different trailers behind them. The first trailer was a painted caravan-house like a huge gypsy wagon but with many floors and windows, the second was a flat bed trailer with greenhouses, and the third had a huge tank of water or fuel, and so on. They called these “hauls”, and each family had at least one. This huge and colorful mobile town looked like someone crossed a victorian house with a circus train, overgrown and over-adorned.
The huge semi-trains were surrounded by smaller vehicles: rusty and haphazardly modified SUVs, small beat up jeeps, odd handmade contraptions of varying design, a dozen motorcycles, and ten or so mounted horses and camels. The motorcycles and mounts were at the tail end, driving a herd of cattle, llamas, and a few dozen yards behind them were…
“Tigers? Are those tigers in the grass? Along the roadside slightly behind the caravan?” Daniel asked with excited concern.
“It looks like it. They seem to be stalking the herd!” I said.
At that moment there was a flash of movement. By the time I refocused my glass, it was over. A tiger - no a cheetah! - had left its hiding spot in the grass, and overtaken one of the bikers. The bike now lay on the ground, tires still spinning, and the black-leather-clad biker on his back kicking, with the body of the large cat extending from him, its face buried resolutely in the biker’s neck. A few moments later the biker stopped kicking as other cheetahs gathered around and waited patiently for their turn to eat.
The other bikers and mounted riders started firing their rifles, not at the cats but into the air to drive the cattle faster.
“Not much we can do for him. He’ll be dead before we can get there,” Daniel said, lowering his glass.
The other cats had stopped pursuing the caravan, and were now gathering around the kill. Tigers, several lions, and at least six cheetahs waited to calm their hunger.
“Even still, let’s catch up with that…what is it, a wagon train? Something is seriously wrong. If something like this occurred in 2006, a wagon train of semi-trucks driving cattle and attacked by a mixed pride of predatory cats, I think I would have heard about it! We should be over a major highway in Idaho, yet it looks like we’re in the middle of the African Savanna, over a road abandoned for a hundred and fifty years! Besides, they’ve already spotted us by now, I’m sure. We didn’t emerge in cloud cover, which means we are nowhere near the time and place of our original collision with the Ophelia as we had hoped.”
Within a few minutes we had overtaken them. The occupants of the caravan were waving to us from the tops of their vehicles, as if we were a common sight! I descended by rope ladder onto one of the vehicles, where there stood a handful of young men with odd looking but decorative long rifles and wide bladed crescent swords. The men looked aggrieved, most likely due to the recent attack.
They stood around a white-bearded man, with an elaborate facial tattoo, and decorative scarring. They were all dressed in colorful cloaks over baggy pants tucked into enormous boots, and vests of leather and wool, with ornate embroidery. Their skin color varied, ethnically they obviously came from many origins, yet culturally they were the same. The same style of cloths, the same piercings and long knotted hair, and henna tattoos on their necks, faces and hands…the same fire behind their eyes.
“I wish you’d arrived a few minutes earlier. A few shots from you may have scattered the beasts and saved our rider,” said the old man in a gravely and shaky voice that nevertheless inspired confidence and charisma.
“I’m sorry. We only just spotted you when the beast leaped,” I said.
“Well, it’s behind us now. Miles behind already, as are all things in our past. Only one direction to look when you’re moving, and that’s forward.” He paused here, possibly to make sure I had understood all the levels of meaning behind what he was saying.
Then he continued, “Your ship is beautiful – I’ve never seen anything like this. Where did you acquire it?” asked the bearded man. The elaborateness of his garb and his age told me he was in charge, and a man whose days of working with his hands were behind him. The younger men were obviously his guards.
Not having the foggiest clue where or when we were, I needed to not reveal something that I would regret later. I choose to speak honestly, but cryptically. “We are from a very long way off. You could say there is much time between our homeport and us.”
The old man raised an eyebrow as if to say, “You think you are more clever than I am?” What he actually said was, “Fine, keep your secrets, I don’t want ’em. I didn’t mean to make you nervous, just making chit-chat. Shall we skip the chatter and get to it?”
“Okay,” I said, feeling bested, and waiting to see where this was going.
He pulled out a small hand-written book, flipped open to a bookmarked page, and began to read aloud, “Let’s see then, iodine, sewing needles - heavy, salt and any other spices you have, but especially salt. A big stew pot or something that will work as one. A couple dozen spoons. Light bulbs for this size fitting.” Here he held up a broken flashlight that looked at least fifty years old. He went on, “Although I’m not sure cities would be allowed something like this?” Here he waited for me to respond.
“May I see your list?” I was starting to get the idea. “Yes, I have a lot of this, I’ll see what we can spare. As I said, we’re from a long ways off, and I’m sure we’ve got some things you might not be accustomed to seeing. Speaking of which, I’m primarily looking for news, and food, if you have some to spare. And a bit of lumber,” I said, glancing up at a conspicuous hole in the belly of our ship. Sailors were looking down through the hole at us like tourists staring out the windows of a bus.
“I assumed about the food and lumber. Isn’t that why you Skyborns always visit the Neobedouins? If you could grow and breed your own food and materials aloft, you’d have no reason to sell us medicines and what not, would you? But normally I’d be asking you for news. How long have you been aloft?”
“That…that has a complicated answer. Sorry, I’m not trying to be secretive, I’m just not sure how to answer that without telling a very long story. We’ve been aloft that long,” I said in response to the annoyed look he gave me.
“Well, stay for the night. Tonight is our tether dance and we can talk then, and exchange news at the feast.” Having nothing but salted pork on crackers and a few mealy apples for the last two weeks, a feast sounded very good. I graciously acce
pted these colorful people’s hospitality.
As the sun stained the side of our faces with orange light, the vehicles started to circle. A huge fire was made, food was cooked, and music was played within the circle. Our crew started to descend from our damaged airship to meet the nomads. Cushions were brought in to sit on, and low tables were brought out, and the food was laid on them.
Around the fire, young men and women, with bodies as lean and muscular as young horses, tied their painted bodies together with long leather ropes. Like this they danced in round the fire, at times lifting each other from the ground, or hanging by their ropes from large posts that had been planted in the ground.
Wow, if we could just get some of these people to dance at our concerts, I thought to myself. It’s like we’ve come to the circus at the end of the world!
At one point they untied the ropes, and dipped them in a pot of oil. Then they lit the ropes, and spun them, and continued their dance with the ropes on fire.
“I can tell this is your first time at a tether dance. It’s the look on your face: you skyborn have to be so much more careful with fire then those of us who live down in the dust.”
“It’s truly impressive. Your tribe has very skilled…dancers?”
“True, dance, yes. But it’s also a martial art. Perhaps not a stealthy one, but certainly effective at repelling man and beast.”
As I contemplated this, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Tanner walking toward the group of musicians, violin in hand. After a while, he traded his bowler hat to one of the nomads in exchange for one of their tribal looking head pieces. It was something that looked like a Native-American headdress, had it been made out of belts and old pieces of machinery. I wondered whose belts they had been, and how they come to be without a belt.
The old man spoke. “You hinted that you were from further away than we’re used to. I’ve been watching your crew and I think I see. At first, I was concerned, as some of you seem very ‘military’. My mind was set at ease, though, when I saw that you were not all Victorians at all.”
At this he pointed to one of our riggers, who was photographing the dancers with a digital camera we picked up in my time. We had a few such devices with the crew, but not many since Calgori never put much priority on freeing up a place to charge the devices. “You have devices that have not been legal since before Victor the First’s reign, and that began long before my time! You try to hide them, but I see.” He smiled cleverly and said in a quiet voice, “These things don’t look old, or say, they don’t look worn. Newer and cleaner than anything I’ve seen, and definitely illegal. That makes me curious.” Here I must have been squirming, as he added, “You have nothing to fear here. We are the last of the free peoples and we would do nothing to take away your freedom. I also don’t have any need to lead my tribe on a treasure hunt that would simply make them a greater target for the sky pirates, so I’m not trying to pry any map out of you.” He thought for a moment before continuing. “Still, I think these are not artifacts from the ruined empire – they don’t look old. Tell me your story, if you trust me, and I will give you news to calm the look of confusion on your face.”
I think I did trust him. And, in fact, I now needed information from him as much as the Ophelia’s original crew needed news from me when they found themselves stranded in a future they didn’t understand. So I spoke, “You’re right. We are not from here – in fact, I’m not even sure where we are. I would have said we were in the mid-west of the United States of America, based on the geography. But things are different; the colorfulness of your people, the wild animals, well, this seems like no place I’ve heard of before!”
“How could you have gotten so far, without seeing the route you took?” he asked. This was a clever question. Was he starting to guess at our story?
I sighed, “When I say we are not from here, I don’t mean this place. I mean this time. The devices you have seen are not the most impressive things we have. On our ship is a machine that can take us through time. Most of my crew is from the 1900s, which is when the ship was built.”
I sat quietly now to gauge his reaction. He said nothing, but stared intently waiting for me to continue. “We’ve been journeying through time, trying to undo the ‘wrongs’ of humanity. We came to this time to try to stop the death of our friends, but I’m afraid we might have missed, since this is not the place we expected.”
“This is a fascinating story you tell! Do I believe in Santa Claus, though we’ve all been told he’s pretend, even when we met him?” He looked very excited now, and I was very confused, “I wouldn’t have believed it, except I have seen the things you have that should never have been. Nothing like that has been seen in two hundred years, if it ever was…and two hundred years ago they had nothing as clever, for things have not changed much since the 1950s, with the exception of things we’ve found out here in the wastes that have been abandoned by the Emperor.”
“Wait…two hundred years since 1950!? How could that be!? If the year is 2150, how is it that you have not seen something as ordinary as a digital camera? Tell me the history of the world as you know it, tell me everything!”
“Well, it’ll be hard to guess what you don’t already know, but here is how things are. Emperor Victor the Third sits in an Eden he created, surrounded by beauty, comfort and technologies the rest of the world is not allowed. His castle is more fantastic than anything built before his time, or the time of his fathers, and their time has been very long.”
“He loves animals more than people, and so he keeps his people caged, and saves the freedom of the outside world for the beasts. The cities he controls are vast filthy mazes, where he keeps every neighborhood behind a wall, and only lets his officers and members of the upper class travel between them.
“They police the cities, looking for anyone doing anything out of the ordinary. Anyone progressing. If he finds anyone doing anything new, especially making anything new, he locks them up in huge cages. In this way he assures that none of the people in his cities do anything different than they have for the last two hundred years. That’s why we call the city folk neo-Victorians. They have not changed in fashion and technology since the Victorian times. Also, they are followers of the Emperor Victor. They strut around, preening in their tuxedoes, and top hats, and hooped gowns – fat, filthy and caged like pet peacocks.”
“Around each city, of which there are perhaps three on the American content, is a huge wall. This wall keeps the people in. But occasionally people escape, and they do their best to live out here in ‘the Wastelands’. WASTELANDS! HAH! That’s what the Viccies call the lands of the free peoples. The lands of the Neobedouins and the Skyborn. But the real secret the city folk don’t know is its beautiful out here. Beautiful, and free.
“You see, the emperor loves the beasts more than any people, and so the beasts own the world between the cities. Here they graze, they hunt, they breed, they feed on each other, and they feed on any of the land-born tribes and our herds. The Sky born stay aloft, like yourself, floating in ships that range in size from five person homes, up to whole cities! They come down only to trade with us for food or other supplies which they can’t make themselves.
“We Neobedouins don’t go aloft, because that makes you a target. The Skyborn are always fighting with the airships of the Emperor, since they are easier to find. You see, a hundred years ago, when the Emperor first came to power, the world was a different place. The world was crowded, and filled with cities, and people, and too many cars jamming the roads at all times day and night. He outlawed freedom in the false name of Environmentalism. He said it was for the Sake of the Planet. All were forced to live in his cities, and he outlawed living outside the cities. Since living outside is outlawed, only outlaws live outside!”
Here I interrupted with a question. “But, how did this Emperor come to power? How did the people of the world let him?”
“At first he became a president, back when there was that sort of thing. He said t
hat presidents could not actually fix the world, because Congress prevented them from making changes. Congress, he said, was corrupt, and under control of corporations, so he had Congress eliminated. He then created laws to prevent him from having to give up his power at the end of his term, then he unified the nations of the world, all under his name. This was not always peacefully done, but often he had approval of his people. Create a common enemy, and people will approve of attacking them.
“Once he had total power, he began the depopulating. He told the people the world was becoming overfull. He said he had ‘Seen the future first hand’ and it’s a nightmare of concrete mazes filled with angry, sickly people. He told whole towns he had to relocate them, for environmental reasons, to stop polluting, or stop killing some beast no one had heard about before then. He said he needed to relocate them. People were loaded onto huge trains and taken into the national parks he had been expanding. The people were then released, only to be fed upon by the beasts he had been breeding.
“With humans as an unlimited food (their were nearly four billion people at that time) the beasts numbers swelled, especially the predators, and feeding on so much human flesh made them grow immense and strong. Now lands between his cities are overrun with things that feed on men, since man has been the most abundant food source for the last one hundred years. Of course, that food source is now waning.”
“His son, Emperor Victor the Second, upped the ante. He started bringing back species that had died out naturally. Prehistoric monsters that put lions and tigers to shame. Not all of these are predators – some Neobedouins pull their wagon trains with beasts that make elephants look petite. But there are also meat-eaters the size of a truck that wander the plains, and even our beast dancers are not skilled enough do anything but run from those nightmares.”
