I can only imagine how vulnerable Jones feels without the ability to turn a switch and disappear from this dangerous world. Though my suit is starting to smell rather ripe, I’m not ready to risk taking it off.
Speaking of getting undressed, Paul has been bugging me to join him for a swim in a nearby stream. Now that Gray Beard and Jones are both mobile and able to stand watch, I’m running out of excuses. He has found a secluded pool where the clan apparently bathed and washed their belongings. The water is shallow, warm and free of the menacing giants which lurk below the big river’s surface.
I’m not sure why I resist. We have grown quite close through these trying times. When he’s gone hunting or off searching for materials to make tools, I find myself glancing up the river, awaiting his return. I study his hands and face when he’s not looking. His laughter is one of the things that gets me through the day.
TRANSMISSION:
Kaikane: “I saw the prettiest sight today.”
Duarte: “Another rainbow?”
Kaikane: “No. I was hunting frogs along the edge of a pond about a mile over that way. Hidden in the cattails and reeds waiting for them to surface. I was half-watching a family of otters play when this shaft of sunlight beamed straight down through a hole in the clouds maybe two miles down the valley.”
Duarte: “Sounds nice.”
Kaikane: “It was. After a while, I saw it was moving, and finally realized it was headed my way. I had speared all the frogs we needed, so I just sort of kicked back and watched. That hole in the clouds passed right over the pond. For about 30 seconds, the entire place was bathed in bright, warm sunshine. I tried to run with the light, but couldn’t keep up. I love stuff like that.”
From the log of Paul Kaikane
Recreation Specialist
I punched Jones in the mouth today. We were fishing in one of the pools nearby. A good spot for trout. I rigged up a couple reed baskets at the end of long sticks and we had more than enough fish for dinner when out of the blue Jones started ragging on Duarte.
“She’s not much of a doctor if you ask me,” he said. “Did she get her degree at a community college or what?”
I saw how hard she worked to save his life. The words made me hot. I did my best to control my temper, though, because Jones has not been himself. He mopes around camp and barely says a word. He answers questions with grunts, or by just walking away.
“You don’t know what you’re taking about,” I said. Trying hard to keep my tone light. “She stayed up two days straight taking care of you. She barely left your side for more than a week. I thought you were dead at least twice, but she brought you back with sheer willpower–that and every trick she could pull out of her computer. A few times, I thought it was hopeless, but she wouldn’t give up.”
Jones flung his net into the stream.
“I think some of the so-called ‘medicine’ she gave me fucked up my arm. And really, what the hell do you care? Now that I’m lame and out of the picture, you two seem to be cozying up real nice. Those mooneyes you shoot each other make me wanna puke.”
That’s when I popped him. Bad arm or not, I just lost it. One second he was standing and the next he was lying in the dirt with me shaking my fist over him.
“You and I have been friends for two years. You’re one of the only people I trusted on the whole Team. You talk about us making you puke? Find a mirror, take a look in it.”
I scooped up the cedar limb strung with fish and stomped off toward camp.
TRANSMISSION:
Jones: “How’s your hand?”
Kaikane: “Still sore. How’s your mouth?”
Jones: “Too big sometimes. Are we cool?”
Kaikane: “Yeah, we’re cool. What’s up, Jones?”
Jones: “Maybe I needed some time alone to get my head straight. Maybe I still need more time. I’m not a quitter, but I was close. Real close. I couldn’t do it though. I won’t quit you guys. Not yet.”
Kaikane: “You don’t know how good that sounds. We need you. Gray Beard is a horrible conversationalist. I can’t get a word in edgewise.”
Jones: “Where are they?”
Kaikane: “He was describing how they hunt mammoth. At least that’s what I think he was talking about. There was enough pantomime to convey the message. He took Duarte to show her where they do the killing. Some little valley near here.
Jones: “And you just let her go off with him? Alone?”
Kaikane: “They had the dogs with them.”
Jones: “You know what I mean.”
Kaikane: “After a slow start, he’s warming up to us. Especially her. Maria has really been studying him. He seems to enjoy it. She goes around pointing at trees and things and he gives her the proper word or hand signal in his language. She says they only count in individual numbers up to five and then they start counting by fives. They use the same word for five and hand.”
Jones: “I bet he would like to get his hands on her.”
Kaikane: “No, I trust him. Anyway, she could probably kick his ass. Maria’s wearing her jumpsuit. If things get dodgy she can disappear.”
From the log of Paul Kaikane
Recreation Specialist
We didn’t see Jones for five days. He wandered in today late in the afternoon. Dropping a pair of skinned rabbits by the fire, he plopped down on one of the log benches by the low table where I was rubbing sandstone along the rim of a new turtle shell bowl.
He watched me work in silence until I finished. Dirty and tired, he was dressed in his standard-issue skivvies and his jumpsuit’s boots. Tufts of rabbit fur clung to the skin of his arms and legs. I was in my tan underwear too. Some 23rd-century designer’s concept of leather boxer shorts and shirt. I shucked my jumpsuit several days earlier and was not missing it one bit. It felt great to be free of its weight and for my skin to breathe.
I caught Jones’ eye. “Wanna go swimming? I know a place.”
TRANSMISSION:
Kaikane: “How was the hunting?”
Jones: “Didn’t do much. Found a cave dug out of a low hill a couple miles over that way. Hung there most of the time.”
Kaikane: “See any deer?”
Jones: “Plenty. You fuck her yet?”
Kaikane: “None of your business really, but no. We’re getting to know each other.”
Jones: “How quaint.”
From the log of Lance Cpl. Juniper Jones
Security Detail II
Back in camp. Still can’t sleep. Arm throbs. I’m never comfortable. The more pressure I put on myself to sleep, more impossible it becomes. When I do nod off, even for a few minutes, it’s all whirling, fever dreams. Anxiety level is high.
Could’ve killed Kaikane today. Left his guard down. Would have been easy.
TRANSMISSION:
Kaikane: “Did you see this writing on the tabletop?”
Duarte: “I don’t see any writing.”
Kaikane: “Carved in the edge, look here.”
Duarte: “What is it, Roman numerals? X-M-A-S I-N N-I-C-E S-B.”
Kaikane: “Christmas is nice? S.B. must be Sal Bolzano.”
Duarte: “It’s not ‘is,’ it’s ‘in.’”
Kaikane: “Christmas in nice. Doesn’t make sense.”
Duarte: “Christmas in Nice! As in Nice, France. He’s given us a clue.”
Kaikane: “Or set a trap.”
From the log of Maria Duarte
Chief Botanist
Gray Beard and I returned to camp to find Cpl. Jones back from his travels. Looking thin but fresh after a swim, he gave us a small wave from the fire where he sat turning two rabbits on a spit. Beside him, four fat trout wrapped in grape leaves baked atop a flat rock. The smells set my mouth watering.
Placing my reed basket of nuts, fruit and plover eggs down, I gave Jones a hug. I told him it was great to have him back, how much we worried. There were no “I’m sorrys” or “Thank-yous” from Jones. He is as sullen as ever. When I inspected his arm,
I found there is a bit more range of movement. Shoulder rotation and flexibility of his fingers have improved slightly. Still no bend in the elbow. I asked if he had been doing his physical therapy and he answered with a nod.
During dinner, we showed Jones the inscription.
“How many months away is Christmas?” he asked around a bite of rabbit. The meat was tough compared to the trout. “Four, five?”
By my reckoning, Dec. 25 (four days after the winter solstice) would be in 172 days. I told him so.
“Any idea which direction they headed when they left?”
We both turned toward Paul, caught him using a fish bone to dislodge a piece of rabbit from between his front teeth.
“This rabbit’s a good workout for the jaw,” he said.
“I’ll try to catch more tender animals next time. With one arm.”
“We should figure out how to make stew, or find a way to steam the meat. Slow cooking, I think it’s key with lean meat like this.”
“Which way did they go?”
“We’ve been through this before. I don’t know for sure, there were tracks everywhere, but I think they went north. I remember being surprised by how many new prints there were on the north shore, heading into the swamps.”
“Any boot tracks, signs of the Italians?”
“No.”
We hashed it out, jabbing sticks at a rough map of France I had sketched in the sand. The possibilities are infinite. If XMAS meant Christmas, was he referring to the upcoming date this year, or next year? Did we really want to find them? Yes.
They could paddle their kayaks around Spain, or leave their boats behind and set off overland. As the crow flies, Nice is a bit more than 450 miles off to the east.
Paul supports the Spain theory, says it is what he would do. Jones and I think it sounds like a long time on the water. More than 2,000 miles. We feel it is more than likely that the inept fools kept to land and attached themselves to a clan for safety and survival.
“Gray Beard says the herds move north fast, then sweep east before turning south for winter,” I said.
“He told you that?”
“More or less. I believe it is what he meant.”
“I wish we knew where they were,” Jones sighed.
On a hunch, I went over to where the old man lay curled up with the dogs sleeping. I gently shook his shoulder, motioned for him to join us by the fire. He wiped the sleep from his eyes as I used a piece of charcoal to sketch out a quick map of Europe on the split-wood tabletop. Though fascinated by the process, Gray Beard could not grasp the concept, even with a lot of pointing to the river and then to the squiggly line which represented it on the map. I added the Alps and France’s interior mountain range, the Massif Central, Lake Geneva, the Pyrenees, rivers, oceans and seas, until he floored us by pointing to the longest river on the map and saying, “Rhine.”
He could tell by our stunned expressions and gasps of wonder he had done something surprising and good. He and I have gotten to the point where we can conduct basic conversation with hand signals and pantomime mixed with the 30 or so words I have learned of his dialect. Our talks have many stops, starts and frustrating dead ends. This was the first of his words to match one of mine. I wonder how many of our words, customs and names owe their roots to these ancient people. I had been taught that Rhine came from the Celtic word renos, meaning “raging river.” Guess that was wrong.
Using his word for migrating herd, I moved my hand across the map and gave the signal for the question, “Where?” The look which crossed the man’s face could have been pulled by a mechanic in my old hometown, or by a college professor contemplating a grad student’s hypothesis. Cupping his chin in one hand, scratching the top of his head with the other, he muttered to himself as he studied the map. The bone moon calendar was soon extracted from his scrip for careful study against the current, three-quarter moon which had just risen.
He pointed to the area near where future man would one day build the beautiful city of Tours along the Loire River, and gave the word for “now,” or “this day, this time.” Continuing in a clockwise circle, he showed the month-by-month migratory path of the great Western herds of Upper Paleolithic Europe. He claimed all of the herds made the Rhine their Eastern border, although some other migratory animals, mainly mammoth, often crossed the river to continue roaming East. The Eastern herds circled counterclockwise and the Rhine was their Western border. Both herds moved down opposite sides of the river in late summer. The Western herds grazed the northern edges of the Alps in the early fall, then followed the Rhone River valley to their winter feeding grounds in Southern France and the Iberian peninsula.
Using an age-old pantomime for cold weather, Gray Beard clasped his arms around himself and pretended to shiver in explanation of why most herds do not go all the way up to the English Channel or North Sea, and why they head south for the winter.
It was not yet mid-July. If the Italians were headed north with the clans, but wanted to reach Nice by December, they would most likely pass down the Rhone River valley by late November. Conjecture to be sure, but it was all we had.
It took quite a bit of pantomime to switch Gray Beard’s gears from the movement of the herds to the movement of us. I finally got through to him we wanted to know how long it would take for us to walk to the Rhone and then south to the sea coast of the Riviera. He was not very familiar with the Mediterranean coastline, but said he traveled through the area a few times when he was a boy. I think that is what he said.
He closed his eyes, mumbled to himself as he flexed his right hand open and closed, visualizing the distances and difficulty of terrain. We were four hands (20 days) away from the Rhone and then three hands (15 days) from Nice. It sounded ambitious. Working it out later, I figured he expects us to cover about 15 miles a day.
He was yawning. I waited until he settled back in for the night before I pulled out my computer and its high-resolution topographical maps. I found the one I wanted and showed Paul.
“See here where the Rhone runs through Avignon. They wouldn’t turn east before there. It’s a straight shot from here. Once the Rhone reaches the Mediterranean Sea, they’ll follow the French coastline to Nice. Let’s hope they don’t get past us into Italy. We’ll never find them.”
“You know they’ll be headed for their homeland,” Paul said. “Martinelli’s a mountain climber. If they’re going to Italy, what makes you think he won’t go straight through the Alps, from Zurich to Milan? I’ve taken that route by train a few times. It’s a lot shorter.”
“Without the St. Gotthard Tunnel it wouldn’t be so easy. No, I thought about that, too. I wouldn’t put it past Martinelli for trying, but it will be too late in the year to take a whole clan through the Alps. If it is just the three of them, they may chance it.”
“You two are getting ahead of yourselves,” Jones said. “The note says Nice. They don’t need to climb no mountains to get there, so why expect them to? Keep it simple. Find a place at Avignon and wait to see if they show up.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said. “Hopefully, we can stop them there. ”
Jones cleared his throat.
“Stop them? In what way are you going to stop them?”
His dark eyes bore straight through me.
“Best-case scenario?” I stalled, withering under his gaze. “We set a trap, capture and disarm Martinelli, Bolzano and Amacapane. Perhaps hold a military trial. Keep it clean.”
“Kill them. That’s what you mean, right? Forget clean, let’s keep it real. Those three men must die. Why can’t you say it?”
“You’re right.”
“And you are very coy, Doctor,” What about all the clanspeople? And your new pal Gray Beard? They’ll all have to go too, won’t they?”
“Hold on,” Paul said. “What are you talking about?”
“Sometimes ya sure are slow on the uptake, surfer boy. I repeat my question, Doctor, what are ya going to do about them? I’m betting you’v
e already decided. Too many new ideas rumbling around their heads. Hell, Duarte, you showed that man how to make a map tonight. I know you’re not stupid, but it seems as bad as Italians doing magic tricks for them.”
“He draws maps in the dirt all the time.”
“This was different and ya know it.”
“I was so caught up in the moment, I never thought.”
“Cut the act. You signed his death warrant right there on the table. These people are badly contaminated. What is your plan?”
“I don’t have one, yet.” I admitted it slowly. Short of mass murder or a catastrophic accident, I saw no way to stop the dissemination of information. “Your point is well taken.”
“Well taken, huh? Bullshit. The way I see it, when the time comes, if I’m still alive, you’ll turn to me and say ‘start killing.’ You fuckers’ll leave the dirty work to me.”
“That is not true,” I said. “I’m still hopeful there is a way to deprogram them, turn the clock back to its proper setting.”
“Keep dreaming,” Jones said as he stood. “I’ll take first watch.”
TRANSMISSION:
Duarte: “Why is he so angry all the time?”
Kaikane: “Jones has never been the warm fuzzy type. He says what’s on his mind.”
Duarte: “He seems different, changed.”
Kaikane: “We’re all different.”
From the log of Paul Kaikane
Recreation Specialist
The wind shifted during the night. Blowing straight from the south.
Trees were rocking so hard while Jones and I did physical training this morning we had to stay out in the open to keep from getting rained on by falling branches and bird nests. We were heaving spears at a deer-sized target of reeds bound with grape vines when Gray Beard trotted up, pointed to the gray clouds sweeping from the south and said, “Furn.” As if we knew exactly what that meant. In frustration, he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me uphill, stopping part way, he motioned Jones to follow. “Furn!”
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