Bordeaux

by Matthew Thayer

Jones: “One way to find out.”

  From the log of Maria Duarte

  Chief Botanist

  Dead wolves, all gunshot, littered the sand. Most lay clustered along a stretch of beach where 12 crosses stood above 12 empty holes.

  The bay had become the domain of the wolves. One pack, probably latecomers, nervously roamed the sand and rocks, climbing over downed trees and skirting ever closer to the dying embers of a long fire built between a pair of fallen oaks. Bones and meat smoldered in the coals. Martinelli had kept his promise to burn the natives and scientists.

  Another 60 or more of the brown, black and gray canines lolled about, apparently gorged to the point of exhaustion. They showed no recognition of our presence as we inspected the scene.

  “How do you read this, Jones, what do you think happened?”

  “Not sure. Spent shell casings all over the beach, and look here.”

  He knelt in the sand near the line of graves, pointed to a cluster of metal shards.

  “I think this is where one of their guns failed. Looks like a firing pin to me. I don’t see any other sign of them. No broken shovels, kayaks or other tools. They held the wolves off for a while, long enough to get their chores done, then dragged the boats to the sea. You can see by the tracks, all three men left here alive and, I’d say, uninjured.”

  Fierce snarls filled the air. We whirled to face a pair of males engaged in combat not more than 15 feet away. A salt and pepper beast had the upper hand, its mighty jaws locked around the throat of a brown wolf, pinning it to the sand as it flailed to defend itself with its back legs kicking. Several animals, perhaps from the brown wolf’s pack, rushed in to nip at the aggressor until he released his hold. He sent all challengers scampering for cover with a snarling display of his mighty fangs.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Kaikane: “Do you think we could tame a wolf?”

  Duarte: “Make one a pet?”

  Kaikane: “Not so much a pet. A work dog, or guard dog. I’ve been thinking about what you said about pulling our kayaks across an ice floe. It would be good to have dogs to help pull.”

  Duarte: “Domesticating a wolf is tricky business. Their brains are wired much differently than the modern dogs we once knew.”

  Kaikane: “The Cro-Magnons on the river, the women and kids, their dogs looked a lot like wolves. Smaller, shorter snouts, but similar.”

  Duarte: “What color were they?”

  Kaikane: “It was all happening so fast, let’s see. Kind of red and black and gray, I guess. Pointed ears, like German Shepherds with thick coats.”

  Duarte: “What else did you observe?”

  Kaikane: “Not much.”

  Duarte: “Try to remember, what did you see?”

  Kaikane: “The clothes the people wore were nicer than I expected. They all came running straight toward me. Pointing and jabbering. Behind them, I saw round huts or tents, tan and smooth, far up on the bank. Smoke from fires.”

  Duarte: “What else?”

  Kaikane: “I think I smelled food cooking.”

  Duarte: “What kind?”

  Kaikane: “Lasagna and meatballs. I’m pretty sure. Lots of garlic. Served with a cucumber salad and a dill curry sauce.”

  Duarte: “Really?”

  Kaikane: “Yeah, really.”

  Jones: “Don’t ya listen to this guy. Full of shit sometimes.”

  Kaikane: “Only sometimes? OK, so maybe my stomach’s playing tricks on me. These berries are good, but I’m still starving.”

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  It was a quiet hike back to where we had stashed the kayaks in a briar patch thick with purple raspberries. Adjusting our visors to make the sour fruit stand out like Christmas lights, we’d pick a handful, then flip up the shield so we could shove them into our mouths.

  I wasn’t the only one who was still hungry when we launched onto the quiet moonlit waters. Bone tired, we rounded the arm of our protected bay to find the two spare kayaks and the rest of our gear on fire.

  “Trap! Turn around,” Jones said, hustling us back out to sea.

  No gunshots rang out as we circled wide to land a mile down the coast. Jones insisted Duarte and I guard the kayaks while he hiked back to investigate. Three hours later, he returned to find us sitting in the shade of a willow tree. Muddy and tired, he ducked under a gap in the willow’s branches to take a seat in a patch of low ferns.

  The attack had been a hit and run, he said. We lost both spare kayaks, as well as our crappy blankets, ropes and tarps which were pretty much useless anyway. Jones said there was no reason to return to the bay. Our inventory had been reduced to the clothes on our backs, three kayaks, six cutting-board computers, our trusty paddles and a few odds and ends that were turning to dust.

  “How about tracks?”

  Duarte had her helmet off and was sitting against the willow’s trunk in the dappled, morning shade. We had spent our time alone in conversation, skirting serious, life-changing issues, and slowly getting to know each other. Jet-black hair fell to her shoulders in waves. Brown eyes and smooth olive skin were highlighted by bright white teeth that made her rather plain face light up when she smiled. A rarity in the 23rd century’s racial blending, she said she was 100 percent Portuguese. First generation raised in San Francisco after the Great European Drought forced her family to leave Portugal in 2204.

  “It was the Italians all right,” Jones said. “At least one went up the stairs to set the kayaks to detonate. They left no notes or messages except the obvious one. I think they primed the boats as a booby trap and birds set them off. Feathers everywhere.”

  “I guess this clears up any doubts we had about the Italians being our close friends.”

  “Agreed, they’re the enemy. But why did they pull a chicken-shit prank and not try to finish us off themselves?”

  “My, aren’t we modest.”

  “What?”

  You really don’t see it?”

  “See what?”

  Duarte’s laugh had no happiness in it.

  “They’re scared of us. Or at least they’re scared of you two. Martinelli just hates me. How many times did you knock those fellows on their asses in the past two years?”

  Jones gave me a sideways smile.

  “I’m aware of your reputations as the baddest dudes in martial arts class. I looked you both up on my computer’s personnel files. Jones the decathlete and decorated military officer. Kaikane, judo expert, three-time national high school wrestling champ and pro surfer. All that.”

  TRANSMISSION:

  Kaikane: “What do the files say about Martinelli?”

  Duarte: “Says he’s cocky, but always plays the odds. He seems to be adept at saving his own skin. Raised rich in the small city of Pistoia, outside Florence, he’s a spook and a mountain climber, not an infantryman. I’m betting he’ll avoid a direct confrontation, probably either take off or, given another opportunity, chop at us and wait for nature to do his dirty work.”

  Jones: “Fuck that. Let’s build a fire and cook something decent to eat.”

  From the log of Maria Duarte

  Chief Botanist

  Jones extracted several flints, about three pounds each, from his rucksack as we finished lunch. Our feast included two dozen clams steamed in seaweed, assorted greens, pine nuts, six fat frog legs and a foul-smelling turtle Kaikane tossed away after one bite. At Jones’ insistence, we ate while ensconced under a fallen pine tree about 150 feet uphill from where our fire smoldered by the willow. Tucked away in the shadows, he had excellent views of the wave-ravaged coastline, and all approaches to our location.

  Below us, a small brook meandered over rocks, from pool to pool until it reached the wave zone, a muddy bank where it sluiced straight down to the sea. The willow grows by one of the pools about 100 feet above sea level. It is part of a jagged line of demarcation stretching north and south as far as the eye can see. Trees, grape vines, bushes and fields of gr
ass uphill of the line remain standing, while everything downhill is either twisted in half, knocked over, or washed completely away. Most of the shoreline is a tangled mess of logs, debris and rotting carcasses. But a few beaches, like the one directly below our hiding spot, are absurdly pristine little pockets of sand and rocks. Some fluke of the currents sucked away every bit of flotsam and refuses to bring any back. Sparkling in the sun, the Atlantic stretches off to the horizon. Its waters are stained muddy brown out to about a mile from shore where the chocolate soup abruptly gives way to cobalt blue.

  Jones was nervous as a cat while we collected our food and cooked over a smoky fire. He mostly stood sentinel, scanning for threats, while Kaikane and I did the work. The clams were easy pickings, laying exposed at low tide. Ignoring the complaints of gulls and terns, we collected a substantial pile of the palm-sized bi-valves in less than 10 minutes. They steamed perfectly, nestled in clumps of seaweed, sputtering and smoking over hot coals. What I wouldn’t have given for a carafe of hot butter and a loaf of sourdough bread. Paul killed three frogs with three well-aimed rocks and cooked their legs skewered on sticks over the fire.

  “I love barbeque,” he said, smacking his lips over the last leg.

  “Of course you do,” I replied. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

  “What are you talking about?” He rolled his eyes toward Jones. “Now she’ll insist there’s a barbeque conspiracy.”

  “In a way, it was a conspiracy,” I said. “A deep affection for outdoor cooking was one of the basic prerequisites outlined by the selection committee.”

  Kaikane flipped the frog’s long slender bones on top of the shell pile. “Love of burned meat was mandatory?”

  “Let’s put it this way, it didn’t hurt you. All recruits were rated, one to 100, in more than 2,000 categories. To make the team, you had to score high in just about everything. We knew a good portion of the team’s daily fare would consist of wild game and seafood cooked over an open fire, so we automatically passed over anyone with an aversion to barbeque. The selection committee could afford to be picky.”

  Jones bounced a clam shell off one of the nearby kayaks. “If you were so picky, tell me why the team was so short on blue eyes and blonde hair. Is mocha skin somehow judged optimum? Or didn’t they want to send precious white people on an expected disaster?”

  “Who knows, really, but I doubt it. Competition was fierce. The official thinking was threefold. One, Cro-Magnons are believed to have migrated to Europe from Africa by way of the Mongolian Steppes. We reasoned that a medium-skinned research team would have the best chance of blending in on the continents where we expected to find mankind. Of course, we hedged our bets. I’m sure you noticed the diversity of the team. Secondly, with our limited medical facilities, skin cancer was a big concern. We were not sure what type of atmospheric conditions we would encounter, so the more melanin in your skin, the higher your score. But you couldn’t have too much, lest you not produce enough vitamin D if we jumped back into the darkness of an ice age. Finally, and this may sound wishy-washy, great value was placed on certain genetic combinations. Old blood lines. I’m talking about genetic markers down to the DNA level. For whatever reason, they liked our blood.”

  The ethnicity files in my computer said Jones had nearly equal portions of East African and Germanic heritage. Kaikane’s father was a British Isles mixture of English and Scots, while his mom was a proverbial island melting pot of Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Tongan, Samoan and Portuguese. Certainly not enough Portuguese to suit my mother.

  Poor mom. In the heat of our last conversation, I blurted that with all the Moorish, Greek and Roman markers in our family’s DNA, Duarte women must have been spreading their legs for non-Portuguese men for years. She had recently scared off my last boyfriend, and I’d had too much wine.

  Jones tossed another shell, banking it off the kayak. “So dark skin wasn’t enough to save my captain’s bars, but it did help get me on the team. I feel so fortunate. Check these out.”

  Hefting a pair of flints, he handed each of us one to inspect. A few more brick-sized flints and three stout deer antlers emerged from the bag to be spread on the ground before us.

  “It’s past time to make tools and weapons,” he said.

  I was assigned lookout duty while the two men went to work. They spent about an hour combing the hillside, searching for raw materials. They returned with a half dozen stout poles salvaged from a shattered yew tree, a large wad of willow bark strips and a few well-shaped pieces of driftwood.

  I mused on the vagaries of fate as Jones and Kaikane efficiently began knapping the stone, striking with antlers and stone mauls as they were taught in training. Before the jump, if I had been asked to choose two comrades to be marooned with, I probably would have picked a pair of my brightest colleagues. We may have had some great conversations, but I wonder if we could have survived more than a week.

  It seems my wagon is now firmly hitched to a pair of worker bees. There will be no nitpicking over peer-review papers or spirited scientific discussions emanating from the ship’s comfortable library. These are strong, diligent and capable men, intelligent in their own ways. They throw bones and shells and ride mountains of water. I could have done worse.

  I emerged from my reverie to catch Kaikane staring again. Our eyes locked briefly before he turned his attention back to the antler spear point he was attaching with willow bark to a staff of yew about seven feet long. Rays of late afternoon sun slanted through the pine’s boughs to cast a column of light across his broad, handsome face.

  “Paul, tell me again about the Cro-Magnons you saw along the river.”

  TRANSMISSION:

  Bolzano: “I have never been so hungry.”

  Amacapane: “So eat something.”

  Bolzano: “I have no food.”

  Amacapane: “Go find some.”

  Bolzano: “I am afraid. Will you come with me?”

  Amacapane: “Lorenzo will be back soon, let’s wait for him. Then we’ll leave the fire.”

  From the log of Cpl. Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  Disaster. The ship, its equipment and nearly all of the crew are gone. Destroyed. Torn asunder by a pair of giant tidal waves from the northwest.

  I am sequestered alongside two others of the crew in a shallow cave not far from the river. A bonfire raging at the cave’s mouth keeps carnivores at bay. For now. The wolf pack has our scent. Howls and yips echo out of the dark to set our nerves on edge. The beasts harassed us through the night, darting within the glow of the fire in flashes of teeth and yellow eyes. Could they know our rifles are broken? That the sergeant’s pistol is nearly out of ammunition? We throw rocks and wave firebrands.

  Two terror-filled days have passed since the tidal waves. I share the cave with my countrymen, Sgt. Lorenzo Martinelli and Cpl. Andre Amacapane. When the waves hit, we were ashore, providing support for a scientific detail. Three additional members of The Team survived the waves, all Americans. We have lost contact. I fear they are dead.

  For reasons I do not understand, the Americans split away not long after the waves hit. Tensions were running high after the tragedy. There was a confrontation on the beach between Sgt. Martinelli and a female scientist. This happened soon after the waves. I was busy extracting bodies from the litter of the beach and did not hear what was said.

  She ordered the sergeant to burn the dead, then paddled away with two soldiers. We haven’t seen them since. Sgt. Martinelli has searched the coastline, and even paddled out to sea in the middle of the night to hail them on the com lines.

  The waves struck from nowhere, out of a beautiful blue afternoon. There were no tremors from an earthquake, no warning, save the sea pulling back as the killers drew near. Thankfully, I noticed the pullback in time to point it out to the rest of the shore patrol. I aimed them toward a low hill and followed up the trail to make sure everyone was safe. The hill p
roved just high enough for us to survive. We arrived at the top as the first wave hammered the coast with such force the ground shook beneath our feet.

  From the hill, we had a clear view of the ship. The crew endured the first wave. The second was too big and carried it under. I have been in a state of shock ever since, living in a strange dream which never ends. I see and do things I never thought possible. Digging graves and fighting wolves, shooting a rifle until the barrel grows hot and the magazine blows up in my face. We escaped the beach at the last instant, wolves nipping at my kayak as I pulled it to the sea.

  In a kayak, in the dark, the ocean teems with unseen menace. From the deck of the ship, it was beautiful and awe-inspiring. Sharks, killer whales, giant squid and immense schools of tuna which churn the sea into a froth were mere curiosities when viewed from a perch 20 feet above the waves. Not so when you are sitting in a narrow tube with your buttocks below sea level. Between each stroke there is a pregnant pause to allow your imagination to work overtime.

  A fish jumps nearby and you wonder what is chasing it. Shark fins knife straight toward the boats, then disappear under the surface meters before collision. We three landlubbers escaped across the bay and up the coast, every moment expecting a leviathan to rise up and take us down in one bite.

  “This is madness,” Lorenzo exclaimed finally. Our boats had just been overtaken and passed by a fast-moving pod of whales, humpbacks, I believe. The giant animals, more than 20 of them, swam directly through our formation. Although there was no overt aggression by the whales, the commotion of their passing so violently rocked the boats, they filled our seat compartments with cold seawater. Arched backs rose up between us as big as mountains. Smooth black skin, littered with barnacles. Mighty tails wider than our kayaks are long. Foul smells of rotting krill with each explosive exhale of their breath. “Whooooosh! Whooooosh! Whooooosh!”

  All we could do was keep paddling and hope they would not smash us with an ill-timed swipe of tails or pectoral fins–or rise up to capsize us with their immense backs. In the end, they passed without a touch, and were gone. Our breathing slowly returned to normal as we sat and watched them race up the coast.