Gibraltar

by Matthew Thayer

  The Neanderthals’ presence on the beaches and bays during our trip south, as well as the abundance of aggressive short-haired mammoth, relegated us to the status of island-hoppers. Thankfully, there always seemed to be an atoll, cay, or beautiful deserted island when we needed one. Only once were we forced to spend the night at sea, and that gentle sail was lit by a full moon and rather romantic.

  When it came time to beach the boat for this hike inland, Paul parked us on an island not more than one mile off the coast. Free of all animals except the requisite colonies of seals, penguins and millions of seabirds, it was the perfect place to disassemble our catamaran, bury the sails and components under cairns of rocks and paddle to the mainland in our kayaks.

  Paul was nervous about leaving the kayaks behind, but I’m certain they will be fine. They are locked up and set for stealth, wedged within a tumble of boulders at the base of a seaside cliff where no mammoth or Neanderthal would have reason to wander.

  The journey inland wound steadily uphill, through forests of paperbark trees rising like flagpoles to support a canopy thick with sweet fruit well out of reach of even the tallest mammoth. The tree’s bark is white and peels off in sheets. As detailed in report (IP-56923), the bark is acidic, rich in toxins. Animals and bugs leave it alone. The bark also seems to serve as a defense against fire, with outer layers burning and smoldering, but protecting inner layers.

  Beneath the umbrella-shaped trees with their thin trunks and Queen Anne’s lace tops, most lowlands that are not flooded marsh are free of scrub and underbrush, though plenty of sunlight filters through. My hypothesis is the ground has been cleared by fire. These southern Neanderthal are not shy about starting blazes for hunting or for entertainment. More on that later, first I must write about two of this land’s birds, the crazy moa and menacing eagles.

  Early on the first day of our hike, we began walking through circular depressions, dimples 10 feet in diameter and two feet deep. There were so many, Paul said it reminded him of the skin on a 20th century golfing ball. The question of who or what formed the dimples had us tossing theories back and forth until we came upon a pair of black and yellow moa scratching for bugs. Or they may have been building a nest, we didn’t have a chance to find out before one of the seven-foot-tall birds caught a reflection off the meteorite club in Paul’s hand and charged.

  Propelled by the wicked talons of their size-26 feet, the running birds were on us in a matter of seconds. “Drop the club,” I shouted as the moa zeroed their attention on Paul’s hand. The strange creatures pecked the club’s shiny, metallic head savagely with their triangular, foot-long beaks as we backed away, holding our spears out in front of ourselves like pikes. Twice they charged us, putting on a show with tiny wings spread wide, neck feathers fluffed, and twice they returned to their shining prize.

  Once assured we were suitably cowed, the birds began an odd, circular dance around the club. Scratching and digging as they pranced, warbling and leaping into the air, the birds started forming another 10-foot-diameter depression. Paul was not about to let his precious weapon go without a fight. Selecting his favorite throwing spear, he turned to me and said, “You take the one on the right and I’ll take Mister Nasty Pants on the left.”

  We were drawing our arms back to cast spears when an eagle the size of a house silently swooped down from the canopy to grab my target by the neck and carry it away. The other moa took one look up at its mate locked in the eagle’s claws, then tucked tail and ran for cover.

  “Holy shit,” Paul said. “Did you see the size of that thing?”

  “It was an eagle,” I said. “With a wingspan of at least 18 feet.”

  “All of that. Holy fuck. Jumpsuits?”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Retreating to the meadow’s edge, we shucked our packs and began the process of gearing up. Moving swiftly yet surely, as The Team trainers no doubt taught him, Paul quickly shimmied into his tight-fitting suit. We scientists could have used some of that training–my wandering mind almost got my guts ripped out.

  My computer was stacked atop my gear. Like a dummy, I pulled it out to type a few quick notes about the birds and their odd nests. There I was, struggling to find the words to provide an accurate description for how big and powerful they are, when I glanced up to see the surviving moa galloping straight for me.

  Churning its massive legs through the tall grass, beak set in a determined grimace, the bird’s dark eyes never left me, even as it hopped over a fallen tree. It was far too late to wriggle into my suit and there was no place to run. Its neck feathers were splayed, guttural noises clucking from deep in its throat, as it leaned into its sprint like some sort of rooster from hell. Hefting my longest spear, I steeled myself for the fight.

  The bird was no more than 12 feet away when an invisible bowling ball slammed into its side. Though the surprise attack staggered the bird, it did not stop it. Momentarily confused, not hurt in the least, it strutted two circles to find what hit it. There was nothing to see, so it resumed its attack on me.

  “I’ve gotcha, babe,” said Paul, his amplified voice cutting through the air. Suddenly a spear floated up to jab the bird in its neck. The spear probed for vulnerable spots as the moa kicked out with its terrible claws and jabbed with its mighty beak. Following the flight of his spear, I charted Paul’s leaps and rolls as he avoided the assaults and launched his counterattacks. The voice from his speakers began to grow frustrated as the jabs failed to injure the creature, or even draw a trickle of blood. “It’s like he’s wearing armor,” Paul shouted. “Get back!”

  The moa had maneuvered between us. With a whirling turn, springing high into the air, it launched itself in my direction. I raised my spear, braced for an impact that never came. Again, Paul propelled himself like a battering ram to knock the bird off course. This time, however, when he picked himself up off the ground I could clearly make out Paul’s outline. His suit had begun to glow.

  Standing toe to talon with the moa, Paul cycled his suit through its various shock-and-awe settings. A light translucent shimmer seemed to elicit the bird’s most calm response. Bright glowing induced a fit of clucking as it scratched at the ground and began taking prancing steps around my man. Extending his spear to maintain a tenuous neutral zone, Paul slowly led the bird across the meadow, in and out of its golf-ball-shaped dimples.

  “You could take a few more notes,” he called out with a grim laugh. “Or maybe you oughta put on your dang suit.”

  I took his advice and geared up in record time. The moment I muttered “I’m good” over the com line, Paul disappeared, leaving the confused moa bird strutting alone in the middle of the field.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Duarte: “This is incredible. Look at them all.”

  Kaikane: “Sure like their fires, don’t they?”

  Duarte: “Yes, even children play with the flames.”

  Kaikane: “Poor Sal, he would do backflips if he saw this.”

  Duarte: “So true, from the start, Corporal Bolzano has been the one keen on studying Neanderthal. We really must bring him back here someday. He would have a field day.”

  Kaikane: “Like a pig in mud.”

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  Man, I hate that jumpsuit. My body still has the tingles and it’s been at least 12 hours since I took the damn thing off. Five days is too long in a suit. Hell, five minutes is too long.

  Maria conked out about two minutes after I woke up. She’s curled tight in her leather sleeping tarp, pressed hard against the cliff. I split my time between making sure she doesn’t roll off the ledge and spying on the Neanderthals. Most of the clan is bedded down, but a few night owls are still up, taking turns adding wood to the rip-roaring fire they have going by the mouth of their cave. They could be guards on duty for all I know. It’s hard to tell with these Spanish Flat Heads. I have no idea of how smart they are, or what they are capable of.

  Up nort
h, whenever we saw Neanderthal, it was usually just a flash of their hairy backs as they ducked into the brush to escape our Cro-Magnon buddies. Those Flat Heads were wary and frightened. I never considered them much of a threat. Down here is a whole new ballgame. These guys walk around like they own the place, and in a way, they do. Even mammoth give them a wide berth, and those unwoolly dudes don’t take crap from anybody or anything else.

  If Maria and I hadn’t seen enough of the mammoths fighting and charging as we sailed along the coast to know they were not to be messed with, a tough old bull gave us a good reminder on our second day hiking toward the hills. A herd of camel-looking animals, thousands of the humped, long-legged things, were foraging along the eastern shore of a cattail-rimmed lake when the bull and his entourage of three females and a couple calves showed up on the opposite shore.

  We were hidden up in the trees having lunch, enjoying the view of the pretty water and surrounding meadows. I didn’t think much of it when the bull mammoth waded out into the half-mile-wide lake and started swimming across. Maria said something like, “I wonder what he’s up to?” The bull crossed quietly, then paddled around the shallows with just the tip of his head and trunk showing, until he found a willow thicket to use as a screen as he climbed up the bank. I swear, that mammoth tiptoed to within 20 feet of those camels before they had any notion he was after them.

  You wouldn’t think an animal that stands 15 feet tall and weighs 13 tons could be so quiet, or so dang fast. One of the camels finally spotted the bull dripping water on the lake bank and sounded the alarm. Before the herd could turn and run, the mammoth was laying waste with his mighty trunk and short tusks. The camels bolted, galloping for their lives around the edge of the lake, and the bull ran right with them, swinging his head, whipping his trunk like some sort of harvesting machine. The camels reached the stream feeding the lake to find the bull’s three females had set an ambush in the trees.

  It was a sickening sight really, all those dead and dying animals. I reckon they killed about a third of that herd, and didn’t eat one bite. Once they finished stomping the life out of everything they could run down and catch, the mammoths settled into the lake for a muddy soak. It was such an unusual thing to see, I expected Maria to count everything and take a bunch of notes, but the bleating of those wounded camels must have been as hard on her as they were on me. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  “Roger that.”

  We kept climbing higher into the valley for three more days, always keeping the tall peaks of the Sierra Nevada to our right. Around noon, we reached this cave right where Maria’s computer said it would be. She said it was an important site, a place where scientists found some bones and carbon-dated charcoal fragments or something to guess that Neanderthal lived here at this current time. Hats off to the brainiacs who came up with that brilliant theory. For once, they were spot-on correct. Sal would give them “three bravos.”

  Maria says we owe it to The Team to hang out for a few days and study this clan, maybe sneak down and take a look inside the cave. She wants to watch them hunt and steal a few of their tools so she can draw sketches.

  The way clouds drift in from the south to block out the stars has me wondering how much hunting the clan does in the rain. Pretty sure we have a real toad-floater headed our way.

  TRANSMISSION

  Duarte: “Barometric readings say the rains will start in just more than three hours. Three hours and 12 minutes, to be exact. Look at those purple clouds churning to the south.”

  Kaikane: “I’d say sooner than that. Two hours, it’ll be coming down.”

  Duarte: “Care to wager a foot rub?”

  Kaikane: “I’ll take that bet.”

  From the log of Maria Duarte

  Chief Botanist

  This fourth day before the full moon was certainly one of our most productive and exhilarating in a long time. It was the kind of day that makes me appreciate being a scientist on this mission. And tonight, well, tonight, I thank my lucky stars to be a woman in love. Even the torrential rains and swirling winds outside our narrow cave provide a perfect final curtain to the day we spent with the Neanderthals of Cueva del Boquete de Zafarraya.

  It was in the faint glow before dawn when Paul and I scaled down from our ledge. Positioning ourselves atop a cluster of lichen-covered boulders 48 feet from the mouth of the cave, we were invisible in our jumpsuits as the clan slowly roused. Two men who had spent the night maintaining the fires retreated to the shadows to curl up in beds of powdery dust, while their clan mates stretched and groaned themselves to wakefulness.

  Having become accustomed to most of Europe’s landmarks bearing little or no resemblance to how we remember them from the 23rd century, it was not surprising to find the cave far different from when I visited it in the year 2226. I was a graduate student at the time, and my host was also my boyfriend, Dr. Carlos Padilla, the world’s authority on the botany of nuclear strike zones.

  We were quarreling on the day we visited the cave with his brother Olaf the anthropologist. Or, more specifically, we weren’t speaking to each other. The oddly-named brother pretended not to notice our tension as he conducted his tour.

  This cliff face fronting the triangular cave bears the same yellow striations and smudges I remember, but time has yet to cleave many tons of rock from the vertical surface. The cave is much wider and taller now. Amazing to think how day after day, layer after dusty layer, the floor will inexorably rise toward the ceiling.

  I am not an authority on geology, but it looks like some long-ago upheaval formed this cave. The earth’s crust was thrust upwards to create a sort of rock pup tent. The top of the cave seems to be a breaking point, where flat strata snapped in half to form a triangle.

  The Spanish hillside is rounder and less worn than it will be in 32,000 years, and it certainly sports much greener vegetation. Trees, vines, grasses, this zone is really quite lush. The area fronting the cave is already littered with gray stones sloughed from above, and it still commands a stunning view across the Zafarraya Gap, but it is flatter and more accommodating as a campsite than I recall. There are also far more springs, seeps and ponds nearby. This is such a wet world.

  The Zafarraya Gap is a deep break in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a pass through which virtually all things crossing the range, everything from clouds to antelope, must travel. From our vantage point, we witnessed countless herds headed south toward the sea. It was mostly camel, bison, spotted horse, goat and a new-to-our-eyes striped deer navigating the tall fields of grass, berry patches, larch and widely-spaced paperbark trees. But there were also mammoth, hyena, rhino, fox, wolf, lion and too many other species to count.

  Flocks of migrating birds headed for Africa also utilized the gap in the mountains. The air was filled with the calls of duck, goose, cormorant, starling and at least 100,000 other types of bird flapping through, preparing to bid adieu to Europe and make their brief flight across the Straights of Gibraltar to Africa.

  I was startled out of my reverie by a skirmish not far from our perch. A young Neanderthal was squatting for a bowel movement within view of camp when another clan member, beige-haired and powerful in stature, pushed the lad backwards into his own feces. Each time the frustrated hunter tried to rise, he was pushed down to the ground. The tormentor appeared to stand a bit higher in the pecking order. None of the other men or women rose to stop his abuse. In fact, they seemed to enjoy the lesser man’s predicament. Hooting and pointing, a crowd of 23 gathered to watch.

  When the offender was finally permitted to stand, he ranted and dashed about, shook his fists in the air, but made no attempt to mount a counterattack. I interpreted the exchange as a basic human societal correction–“Hey dummy, don’t poop where I sleep.”

  Gray Beard claims Neanderthal are like many animals that molt in the spring and then lay on thick coats for winter. It is November, so perhaps that is why these are the hairiest Neanderthals we have yet seen. Coarse hair sprouts from torsos, leg
s and outside portions of arms. The only completely hairless spots showing pinkish skin are cheeks, noses, foreheads, underarms and soles of feet. Graying elders appear to go white around the face first, then continue with a flour dusting across their shoulders and finally down the back.

  The average height of the men is about five-foot-six, and the women about five-foot-three. Stout legs and trunks, powerful shoulders forming the base of long, heavily-muscled arms, I estimate the average weight of males to be 190 pounds. With their sloped foreheads and wide noses, to say they looked like a cross–two-thirds modern man and one-third gorilla–would be an over-simplification, but fairly accurate. Toolmakers, fire starters, clan builders, they also spend a goodly amount of their time picking insects off each other’s scalps and eating them. The Neanderthals of Zafarraya are loud and boisterous when the mood suits them, which is often, but they can also be calm and contemplative.

  The group showed its quiet side as a robust pair of elders, a male and female, emerged from the cave. More salt than pepper in their hair, shoulders draped with lion skins, the duo made a show of studying the roiling clouds to the south and sniffing the air. After an exchange of hand sign I did not understand, they waved the strapping, beige-haired hunter to join them in conference at the edge of the camp. They convened atop a flat boulder that afforded a sweeping view of the valley below. There was much pointing and gesturing, pantomime. Facial expressions appear to play an important part of how these Neanderthal communicate. Each verbal exchange is accentuated by facial affectations such as wide eyes, tongues stuck out or teeth bared. While the vocalizations are short and simple, the expressions run a wide gamut of creativity and finesse.