by Joan Lennon
And then he raised his head and looked across at them, sidelong, with an expression in his black eyes so malign it made them shudder and gasp.
The Queen gave her hateful chuckle and flicked the Traveller negligently in the Kelpie’s direction, like a treat to a dog. It landed precisely on a shapely, outstretched hand – and immediately changed. Its surface showed strangely crystalline now, and it made a brittle, crackling noise as it spun. When the Kelpie threw it into the air, the first rays of the sun caught it and it sparked for the briefest instant like cold diamond… then it dropped into the waves at no great distance from the shore and was gone.
When they looked back, the Queeen had already sent the beautiful Kelpie away. He walked gracefully to the main vortex – to it, and then straight on into it. The whirling wall took him and it was as though he’d never been there at all.
For a moment the three G didn’t speak. Nobody wanted to say how enthralled they’d felt. Then Market shrugged.
‘Wouldn’t have worked,’ he grunted. ‘My mother would never approve of me dating somebody prettier than she is.’
The others grinned sheepishly.
‘Right,’ said Gladrag. She turned her back on the Queen, who was still staring at them. ‘Is this disc of ours working yet?’
At first, there was nothing… then the view cleared – and there was sound!
‘Look – I can see him!’ she crowed. ‘He’s talking!’
‘Thank goodness – the boy’s alive again!’ said Interrupted.
‘But where are they?’ Market fussed. ‘It looks like a flipping Ice Age!’
‘It is a flipping Ice Age,’ said Hibernation quietly.
The others looked over at her, bemused, but before they could ask any questions, they saw the expression on her face change.
‘Who is that? What’s that pointy thing? Not another weapon!’
The three G drew back in horror. From her position by her own disc, the Queen gave a low, triumphant, whinnying laugh.
‘Dead again!’ she shrilled.
‘Wait! Not yet! Listen!’ Market turned to Gladrag urgently. ‘Is that who I think it is? Big eyebrows, furs, pointy sticks? The grunty stuff? Come on, girl, is any of this familiar to you?’
Gladrag’s eyes went wide. ‘It’s been a while…’ she said.
‘LISTEN!’
Hibernation bent right down over the disc, listening and watching intently. She stayed that way for so long, the Kelpie Queen’s suspicions erupted again and she stalked over to them.
‘What are you doing? You’re only allowed to observe – you’re not allowed to interfere –’
Gladrag lifted her head and smiled sweetly at the agitated demon.
‘Interfere? Why should I want to interfere? They’ve just made Hurple a god!’
‘WHAT?!’ chorused two G and a royal Kelpie.
‘Just how did that happen?!’ yelped Market.
Gladrag seemed to be having trouble keeping a straight face. ‘Well, apparently’ she said, ‘the Ferret for “impertinent bipeds” is made up of syllables that sound remarkably like some of those used by Neanderthals.’
‘So… they were so impressed by a ferret who could say, “Ugh. Look. Eat.” they decided to deify him on the spot?’
‘Well, no. That’s not exactly what they think he said.’
‘What did they think he said, then?’ yelled Market.
‘Er, a rough translation would be, “Worship me or die.”’
There was a short pause.
‘That’ll do it,’ murmured Interrupted.
The Queen swore in frustration and stomped away.
‘Well, this is going to be interesting!’ said Gladrag, turning back to the viewing disc with quite some satisfaction.
‘But, Gladrag… can I ask… how do you know this stuff?’ Interrupted leaned closer to her and asked in a quiet voice. ‘How do you know about Neanderthals?!’
Hibernation looked embarrassed. ‘Long story’ she muttered. ‘Tell you some other time.’
And with that, Interrupted Cadence had to be content.
Inside the Traveller…
In the whirling dark, there was no Pinkerton Hurple, no Professor of Human Studies. There was no store of knowledge or human memories. There was no gift of tongues, acquired over time.
In the whirling dark, there was no time, only a small animal, with a small animal’s infinite capacity for fear…
10 The Fourth Tide
The surface of the sea showed like a great slushy soup in the chill light of dawn, the half-frozen water dragged sluggishly back and forth by a setting moon. The narrow shore was littered with ice-slick rocks. Steep hills, their tops obscured by a cloud of freezing fog, came down almost to the water’s edge. A valley split them, where a river had cut its way to the sea.
When the Traveller emerged out of nowhere and dumped its payload, Adom and Jay were holding Eo upright on either side, and Hurple clung to the boy’s neck. The G sagged like a dead weight between them. They lowered him on to the cold ground, and Jay slumped down beside him and started to wail, while Adom turned aside and was sick. Hurple climbed on to his pupil’s chest and peered anxiously into his face.
He was willing the boy’s eyes to open – he was expecting the boy’s eyes to open – but that didn’t stop him from falling over backwards and landing on the ground when the boy’s eyes did open!
Eo pushed himself up on his elbows and shook his head muzzily.
‘What’s all the noise about?’ he complained. ‘Why is it so cold?!’
The shock of seeing Eo really, actually, truly alive again was enormous. It wasn’t that Jay and Adom hadn’t believed Hurple when he said the death was only temporary, not exactly – it was just, well, something else altogether to see Eo sitting there with his eyes open, blinking and breathing and everything.
Hurple let his own joy show by jumping up and down on all four legs at once, only to discover he was jumping in a puddle of ice water. With a yelp, he bounded out and shook himself, hard. In the frigid air, the Professor’s wet fur froze almost instantly into spikes, so that he looked like a long, skinny, bad-hair day, all over. He was cursing in fluent Ferret, but at the sound of his companions’ giggling, he switched to furious Human.
‘What are you sniggering at?!’ he snarled. ‘What’s so funny, eh? Eh?!’
The laughter stopped abruptly.
Hurple humphed, surprised, but gratified. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘That’s more like it. That’s –’
He trailed off. It was becoming clear to him that he didn’t have the young people’s complete attention. With a sudden feeling of dread, he turned slowly round… and saw a dozen stone-tipped spears levelled at Eo, Adom and Jay.
‘Not again!’ the ferret moaned.
As fast as his frozen fur would let him, he ran over and swarmed up Eo’s legs, shedding tiny icicles as he went. From the boy’s shoulder, the ferret opened his mouth, showed all his sharp little teeth and snarled – and the response was pretty dramatic.
The spears were instantly lowered; the spear-wielders dropped to their knees; and (in a language Hurple had learned from Hibernation Gladrag, who had acquired her knowledge from a rather embarrassing escapade in her younger life which she didn’t like to talk about) their leader said to Eo,
‘I am TakK. Tell the god we heard his words and do not wish to die. Tell him we will worship him.’
Three human types and a ferret gulped audibly.
As soon as it was clear there was no immediate danger of bloodshed, Jay had a quick whispering session with Hurple, pressed a combination of keys on her implant (her computer’s knowledge came from the astonishing advances in archaeology over the centuries, which made it possible to recreate an entire language base from studying the insides of fossilized skulls), waited a moment and then transferred the language download to Adom’s still-pink but rather bedraggled wrist computer.
‘What are they?’ whispered Adom to her anxiously.
; ‘They’re Neanderthals,’ said Jay. ‘Which means they don’t live in houses, which means we get another Tide’s worth of being outdoors with no thermostatic control whatsoever.’ She was shivering hard. ‘I’m downloading everything we know of their language for you now. I’m not surprised that thing you’re wearing doesn’t have it – not a lot of call for Ice Age lingo for the kiddies.’
Adom looked confused. ‘Um?’
‘It’s an Ice Age – as in, it’s cold and it lasted an age. And the Neanderthal people lived in one.’
The spear-holders, who had gone into a whispering huddle of their own, were… different. Even the tallest was quite a bit shorter than any of their visitors (with the exception of the Professor) and they were also a lot stockier. They were wearing clothes made of skins, and one of them had the bodies of some dead animals over his shoulder, which suggested this was a hunting party. They were all well blessed with hair, and also with an over-abundance of forehead.
Adom had never seen anything like them before. ‘They’re… people?’ he exclaimed, louder than he meant.
‘Shhh!’ hissed Jay angrily. ‘Don’t be so rude!’
Adom blushed scarlet, but the Neanderthals showed no sign of having heard what he’d said.
‘Yes, they’re people.’ Hurple answered his question. ‘They’re the strand of humans your lot are going to displace.’
Adom drew closer and whispered behind his hand, ‘I don’t understand – if they’re people, why do they look like that?’
‘Cold adaptations,’ said Hurple.
‘What?’
‘It’s quite a sensible design when you think about it. Short, well-built bodies retain heat better than tall, skinny ones. Big noses have a better chance than little ones of heating up cold air before it hits the lungs, helping keep up vital core temperature.’
Adom didn’t argue, but he didn’t look completely convinced either. ‘And the huge eyebrows?’ he asked.
‘Sex appeal.’
‘No wonder they died out,’ snorted Eo.
‘Eo!’Jay glared at him. ‘Shut up!’
Adom shook his head. ‘This doesn’t make any sense. How can they be people and die out? If people died out, then there wouldn’t be a me or an, an anybody!’
‘Watch it!’ warned Jay. ‘They’re coming over!’
‘If the god will follow us?’ It was TakK, the leader, speaking again.
Hurple gave Eo a nudge with his nose. ‘Tell him that will be acceptable.’
‘You speak Neanderthal – he speaks Neanderthal – why don’t you tell him?!’ Eo muttered crossly.
Hurple leaned over and delicately took a bit of Eo’s ear between his teeth. He didn’t exert any pressure. He didn’t need to.
‘OK, OK – good reason – let go – I’ll do it!’
TakK received the god’s message through the mouth of his slave, bowed and started inland, up the river valley.
‘He doesn’t actually look at you – did you notice?’ whispered Jay. ‘He doesn’t talk directly to you and he doesn’t look directly at you.’
‘Well, it’s understandable,’ said Hurple, preening. ‘I am. pretty divine, I must say.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Jay.
The hunting party set a cracking pace that left the three non-Neanderthals panting. There was no more than the suggestion of a track clinging to the edge of the river, and as they headed further up the valley into the hills, it didn’t get any smoother. While the hunters practically ran up the icy incline, the children stumbled and scrambled and clung to each other on the slipperiest bits.
Over the roar of the water, Jay said breathlessly, ‘They must think we look pretty weird. Shouldn’t they be completely freaked by us?’
Hurple shook his head. ‘No, they’ve seen people like you and Adom and… you and Adom before. Homo sapiens sapiens – that’s your lot – are already about at this time, though not yet much of a threat. The Neanderthals may not think you’re very pretty, of course, but they aren’t bothered by you. Anyway, gods can choose any slaves they wish, and as long as they think I chose you, you should be quite safe!’
‘Your slaves?!’ Eo exclaimed.
‘Well, if it keeps them from poking us with those spear things, I for one am happy in my slavery, O Great God of All Weasels,’ Jay said.
‘You carry him, then,’ snapped Eo.
Hurple gave him an odd look and shook his head again. ‘No, I don’t think so. I think I need to keep you especially close. They may not be bothered by Adom or Jay, but I have a feeling they don’t know what to make of you!’
Eo muttered something under his breath the others didn’t catch, and slogged on up the valley.
They had climbed to the level of the fog-cloud now. Ice particles spangled their hair and eyelashes, and every out-breath added to the opacity of the air. The sound of voices hardly travelled at all, and the four peered around them nervously in this alien landscape. General conversation stopped. Only Eo and Hurple were still able to talk to each other easily through the blanketing mist – and they continued to mutter the whole way. The Professor seemed to be filling Eo in on what had been happening. Judging by the way Eo’s voice rose from time to time, the others could tell he wasn’t very happy with what he was hearing.
‘We didn’t get anything better than that?! – What do you mean, I was dead?! – What were you all doing?! – This is the Fourth Tide already?!’
Hurple kept having to shush him.
Then, unexpectedly, they found they had climbed above the layer of freezing fog into a world made sparkling by the slant rays of the rising sun. The valley widened out and the landscape became less rocky, with winter-bare bushes and further on a stand of trees. In spite of all the tension, the sudden brightness made them want to smile. The Neanderthals seemed more relaxed here as well and paused in their upward race.
TakK approached them and spoke to Eo: ‘Ask the god to give us a little while to go ahead and announce his coming to our people.’
‘A breather – great!’ panted Jay.
‘You may tell him we will wait here for his return,’ Hurple intoned pompously.
‘Yeah, right,’ grunted Eo. But he passed on the message anyway, and the hunting party loped off again, into the trees and out of sight.
‘This divinity business is really getting up my nose, you know that?’ grumbled Eo. ‘I can’t believe we’re wasting our time on this bunch – what on earth can they give us that’ll help? They must be even stupider than they look if they think you’re a god!’
There was a taut silence. Hurple climbed stiffly down on to the ground and stalked away from him.
Eo kicked at a stone and hunched his shoulders in the cold air. He pulled back one sleeve to scratch and saw the sores were still there.
‘Not even being dead gets rid of those!’ he snarled angrily, and covered them up again.
It was a moment before he noticed nobody else was talking. He looked round to see the others all staring at him.
‘Well?’ he grunted. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Jay squared up to him aggressively. ‘That’s just what I’d like to ask you!’ she said, hands on hips. ‘What’s the matter with you? Ever since you died you’ve been a real pain. Well, no, I guess I mean ever since you stopped being dead. You weren’t too bad when you were, you know, actually dead.’
Eo glared at her for a long moment, and then suddenly seemed to go all boneless. He slumped to the ground and wrapped his arms round his knees. He buried his head and started muttering.
‘What…? We can’t hear you,’ said Adom.
‘It’s not my fault!’ he lifted his head and wailed. ‘It’s not And anyway – isn’t being shot enough? Can’t that be enough? Professor?’
‘That’s not how it works, boy’ said Hurple gently. ‘You know that.’
‘Tell us what’s got to you, Eo,’ urged Jay.
‘What’s got to me?! Do you know what Tide this is? Do you?’ Eo croaked at her. He couldn
’t have looked more tragic.
‘Yeah, urn…’Jay frowned. ‘It’s –’
‘It’s the fourth! The Fourth Tide! That’s four out of six, and no flipping miracle yet – not that I’ve noticed. But hey I might have missed something, on account of being dead for a while. But I didn’t, did I? Four out of six and who’s shown up to fix this mess? A couple of kids, a useless bit of ammunition, and now what? – We’re trapped with a bunch of pea-brained Stone Age morons who are going to help us how? Lend us some pointy sticks?’
Actually, Neanderthals had, on average, larger brains than a modern human’s…’ Hurple began.
And then you tell me they’re all just going to die. They’re a dead end. So now I have to be upset about them. too. And what if they’re a dead end because of one person, like maybe that’s what’s happening to the G, and I’m the one person, and it IS my fault, and then I got sent to find help and I didn’t even do that right…’ He looked round, a stricken expression on his face. And now I’ve insulted you all and you should just walk away and leave me to die properly!’
‘That’s just stupid talk,’ said Adom in a firm, authoritative voice. ‘Dead man talk.’
There was a new confidence in his voice. Everyone turned and stared at him. Adom stared right back.
‘Well, he was dead! he said. ‘That’s not a little experience. Why should he just bounce straight back from that? He won’t – not without help.’ He spoke directly to Eo. ‘We’re going to surprise you, Eo. We’re probably going to surprise ourselves at the same time. We’re the perfect combination for a job like this – we’ve got a crazy shape-shifter who can’t shift shapes – a genius not-quite-novice who’s too thick to read – and a bald woman technical expert who’s so far managed to break pretty much every bit of technology she’s brought with her. And that’s not even mentioning the services of a god. There is no possible fashion in which we cannot succeed…
‘Trust me – I’m practically a monk!’
‘‘Never trust anybody who starts a sentence with “Trust me”F Hurple and Jay chorused. And for the first time in far too long, Eo gave the beginnings of a proper smile.
