~~~
About thirty-five thousand years later...
Sunrise; an orange pinkness sliding across the underside of the sparse clouds: brightness at the beginning of a cold sharp February day. Heavy white frost, like icing, clung to each stiff blade of grass and draped every pine tree around the site as if it were Christmas. A blanket haze of silent mist hanging over the frozen ground.
Katie lent against the Land Rover and drew deeply from her first cigarette of the day as she surveyed the scene, her warm exhalation hanging in the still air; her breath an addition to the mist.
She liked to be alone on the site well before the other archaeologists and students arrived; it made her feel like it was her discovery and hers alone. Strictly speaking this was true, she had been surveying the area for evidence of Neolithic remains when she had found the first tusk. Her trowel grating against its fossilised hardness as she had dug deep beneath the clumpy grass and into the stiff chalk of Norfolk earth. Geophysics sensors had revealed their shapes, relatively deep below the surface, on a slope in a wooded area. She was not, however, an expert in vertebrate palaeontology; her expertise was human archaeology. So, inevitably with such an important find, she had had to call in all sorts of other experts, and now she felt like the discovery had been taken from her by the myriad of people who seemed to swarm the site everyday. This of course was an unfounded feeling, she knew she would take great credit, especially as they had found unprecedented evidence of human habitation within metres of the tusks.
Katie threw her cigarette butt behind the Land Rover and walked past the big yellow digger that had excavated the top layer of the slope. She entered the large plastic tent covering the dig through floppy curtained plastic doors. The heaters that prevented the ground from freezing too much hummed comfortingly in the background.
The tent was divided into three sections. At one end there was the largest tent covering the fourteen uncovered mammoth tusks, intact jaw bones, several large femurs and other bones, lying in the white chalk trench, each one still yet to be lifted. Then there was an adjoining tunnel and service tent which led to another smaller tent where another trench had revealed an interestingly shaped Pre-Neolithic fire-pit, unlike any uncovered before, together with other smaller trenches which had revealed more artefacts of human habitation, including a few finely fashioned, partially preserved wooden artefacts that could be arrowheads, arrows or spears.
She crouched next to the tusk trench, pushing her long red hair back behind her ears. This had always bothered her; why so many tusks and bones? No other site had revealed anything like this. Mammoth finds were mainly single; whole animals or parts of single animals and this was very different, parts of several animals, in one place, almost as if they had been carefully arranged into some kind of pattern. She knew from the palaeontologists that mammoth bodies were most likely to have been left alone when they died, or so they thought. Never in such large group of animals.
The palaeontologists felt that some catastrophe must have claimed a family group or part of a herd; a flash flood, forest fire or some such. But there was no evidence in the soil of anything like a flood or fire, as far as they could tell. And besides, these weren't whole remains, merely parts of the skeletons. Although a flood may have washed the remains to this location.
Katie just didn't buy that explanation. She argued that the find must be evidence of some kind of human ritual, humans that hunted mammoths and then perhaps used the bones as part of a religious rite. An offering to the gods perhaps. Although she knew that she had little evidence of that. She stared for a while, and then reached to touch the first tusk with her slender fingers. The one she had first discovered. What could it mean? Why had they arranged it just so?
Just then she heard the rustle of the curtain door, and turned her head to see who else had arrived at the site so early in the morning. In the doorway was a man she had never seen before, he was quite tall and and wiry. His face looked gentle to her; a slight asian slant to his eyes, longish hair and very white skin. He was wearing an odd orange jump suit with pockets and attachments, and he smiled at her as he pushed his glossy brown hair from his face.
She stood up, puzzled, and was about to say something but he spoke first.
"Hello, do you have a cigarette? If you don't mind..."
His voice was soft but had an odd firmness about it; perhaps because he spoke with an accent she couldn't quite place.
Oddly she found herself pulling the packet from her pocket.
"Yes...sure...but we can't smoke in here," she said,
As she sidled closely past him through the curtain door she caught his scent, sweet and musky but unlike anything she knew of.
Outside she lit two cigarettes and handed him one.
"You shouldn't really be here, you know," she said, "access to the site is restricted,"
He looked into her eyes as he dragged on the cigarette.
"Yes...I know," he said, "but you aren't going to tell are you Dr Jones?"
He cocked his head and smiled a disarming smile and, unnervingly, she found herself smiling back.
"Who are you exactly? And how do you know my name?" she asked softly.
He paced up and down a moment, smoking the cigarette, as if thinking about his answer.
He pointed to her with the cigarette and continued,
"I had to do my research before I came here, so I know all about you and this dig Katie," he paused and smiled that same smile again, "and as for who I am, I decided I liked your name when we met before, so my name is Jones, just like yours,"
She found herself giggling at this, despite the absurdity of the conversation.
"If we had met before, I am sure I would have remembered it!" she said, covering her mouth as she echoed his smile.
"You will," he said, smiling again as he paused, "you will,"
She wondered why she was acting like a teenager, and looked at the ground not knowing what to say. It made no sense. She could feel the heat of the rosy blush rising in her cheeks.
He took a deep drag on the cigarette,
"Hmmm," he said, blowing the blue smoke slowly into the cold air, "they don't make cigarettes quite this good where I come from,"
"And where exactly do you come from? And why are you dressed like that?" she asked, taking a step closer.
"Well, that would be an interesting conversation," he replied slowly looking at the ground by his feet, "but one I will leave, if you don't mind, for a later date,"
He looked up and smiled at her again. The same disarming smile.
She was going to ask him what he was doing here but he spoke first, a soft serious tone to his voice;
"Do you want to know what it means?"
He dropped the still lit cigarette on the floor.
"What does what mean?" she asked,
"The mammoth tusks..." he replied, motioning for her to return to the tent.
Jones held the curtain door for her as they both entered and she could smell his enticing musky smell again. They stood side by side by the tusk trench.
"Fourteen tusks and all those jaws and femurs. Arranged in a linear pattern entwined with more bones that join them together," he said, "It spells a word, except it's incomplete."
Katie laughed, her hand against her mouth.
"I am sorry..." she said, "But that's ridiculous. You can't possibly know that. We have no evidence of any written language until much, much later in history. Much later than when these mammoths were around!"
"I do know that Katie..." he said, pausing,
"How?"
"...because..."
"because?"
"...because I wrote the message."
Now she just stared incredulously at him and strangely, for the first time, she felt uneasy in his presence.
"Let me show you," he said, climbing around the trench. He quickly took a large trowel from the side of the trench and began digging.
"Hey! You can't do that!" she said, stepping fo
rward.
"Wait," he said, holding up his palm to try and calm her. He dug faster, revealing quickly the edges of another white shape; a fifteenth tusk lying at an angle above the other tusks and bones. Katie stopped and stared.
"How did you know it would be there?" she asked.
Jones smiled again, looking down at the tusk.
"Like I said, I put it there...I wrote the message,"
Katie felt a bit stunned; a slightly piqued anger rose up within her.
"Ok, 'Jones' or whatever your name is," she said, heavy sarcasm in her tone, "you couldn't have put it there, it has been buried undisturbed for thousands of years...but let's just say you did, and you are some kind of miraculous time traveller, which I don't believe for one minute...for arguments sake lets say you did put these bones here and it's some kind of a message, in some kind of primitive language or other, what does it say? Pray do tell?"
"Well..." said Jones slowly as he began to dig further around the tusk he had uncovered, "you are correct about the language being old...well from my perspective anyway...but it is certainly not 'primitive'. I wrote this message in 'Floomish'; an ancient tongue used by builders and engineers that simultaneously contains grammar, instruction and design of objects. For example this word here in your language might mean 'drone' or 'pod' or 'rescue' but these definitions are too simple; the accents to this message are coded and meant for a specific machine and designed into it are instructions. Basically this was 'help, rescue me' written into a long lost beach, but telling only a specific rescuer,"
Katie looked at the ground and shook her head. Obviously she couldn't believe anything he said, but then somehow he had known where the final tusk had been. Her mind was swimming with the unreality of his words.
By now Jones had begun to loosen the heavy fossilised tusk from the chalky dirt and begun to pull it free.
She climbed awkwardly around the trench and put her hand on his arm.
"I can't allow you to do that," she said firmly,
"Oh Katie, you know you will let me," he said looking into her eyes,
"And what makes you so sure?"
"Because you know deep down inside that you can trust me. And besides...if you don't allow me to take this one tusk then this message might be decoded by the wrong people and that could be very bad for this planet, at this time. And you know...also deep down inside...that this precious, lovely little blue planet isn't ready for that yet...if it ever will be,"
He smiled and with his free hand he brushed her hair behind her ear and cupped the side of her face. She felt dizzy at his warm touch and could almost taste his heady scent.
"Err...yes...I guess..." she found herself saying, and somehow as she stared into his eyes, she knew that she would let him take the tusk.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek softly.
"Thank you my dear Katie," he said and with that he stood up, lifting the cumbersome heavy tusk as he did, shaking away loose clumps of chalky earth. Later Katie would wonder how he could lift such a weighty fossilised object as easily as he did.
Outside the tent he paused for a moment, and she asked him where he was going.
"Well," he said, turning to smile his wry smile again, "I would say 'home' but I don't really have one of those, so let's just say I am going to relax for a while, I haven't done that in a very very long time. It's been nice to meet you again Katie, shame we couldn't spend more time together. We will next time...you'll see. Thanks for the cigarette; you have such good ones here!"
With that he turned and walked into the trees, carrying the ungainly tusk over his shoulder.
As he walked, Jones let out a sigh and resisted looking back at her. He pressed a control on his suit and the tiny red poison dart canister he had got from Erica retracted back into the suit; at least he hadn't had to tranquillise her or worse; that would have been risky. He also switched off the control/seduction pheromone release, and the two tiny clear tubes that had been emitting unseen gas retracted back into the shoulders of his suit. He felt a twinge of regret at deceiving such a clever and beautiful woman with such a crude enhancement of his own scent, but, as ever, needs must. About half a klick away he entered the clearing where he had landed the shuttle and clambered up the access ramp carrying the tusk, wondering if he would ever need to return to such innocent and unspoiled times in the life of this wondrous planet. It was the mother planet, and he had been born here after all, albeit in the future, and who could tell what the future, or the past for that matter, would bring?
Katie stood for a while after watching the bizarre orange-suited figure disappear into the trees. She couldn't figure it out. Why had she trusted him? This strange man?
She heard the tyres of another Land Rover grating on the gravel of the dirt track; some of her fellow archaeologists arriving for the morning shift. The sound roused her mind and as her head began to clear she realised she would have to explain to them what had happened and why the dig had been disturbed. This was all so awkward and difficult. She ran into the trees in the direction that Jones had gone.
A few minutes later she entered the clearing. Breathless, she stopped running, and lent on her knees. She could hear a discordant whining noise above her and twisted her head to look up at the sky. There she could see the white streak of a vapour trail. It looked odd because it was going straight upwards rather than horizontally. The whine slowly disappeared to be replaced by the morning silence of the forest. Katie tried to catch her breath, her hands still on her knees, and she looked back down at the ground around her. Then she noticed it.
There was a very large circle of recently disturbed earth, like someone had dug a very large round hole and then filled it in again. Puzzled, she stood for a moment thinking, before she turned to walk back to the site, taking one last look at the clear blue sky and brushing her lustrous red hair back from her face...