A Long Time Until Now - eARC

  “Not our problem.”

  Barker said, “LT, I have an idea on an offering.”

  “Go ahead?”

  “If we can get a bird, I can fletch some darts for them. They have spear throwers, but not bows. Their darts have a bit of fluff at the back for stability, but that also slows them down. Feathered darts won’t be much of an advantage, but will be an improvement.”

  He thought about it. Hospitality, yes. But giving them a new technology seemed risky.

  “I’m worried about affects to the timeline.”

  “I agree,” Spencer said.

  Devereaux said, “I worry about staying alive now.”

  “Yeah, really, how do we hide two MRAPs in the layers?” Alexander asked. “Do we slowly scrape the metal down with rocks?”

  Trinidad said, “What about guns? Do we never use them to hunt? Do we take native women? Or spend the next fifty years squatting in a cave like hermits and jacking off?”

  Everyone was scared, and so was he, and he understood it.

  “Okay, Barker, do it.”

  The voices continued.

  “At Ease!” he snapped. “I said ‘At Ease’!”

  They quieted down.

  “Our hosts are staring at us. Oglesby, say something polite, we’re going to bed. You can all sit in the dark and meditate on this.”

  Spencer said, “Oh, I got the Maglight back. Batteries dead. They’re uninterested anymore. I think they’re also disappointed. So, Barker, definitely do those darts.”

  A sudden stabbing pain caught him low in the guts, overlaid with a punching sensation.

  “And here come the shits,” he said, as he ran for the wall, pulling at his belt.

  Oh, god, it hurt. He could feel it percolating, boiling in his belly. Sweat burst out as he pulled at his pants and twisted to get his ass over the wall.

  The eruption was hot, sulfurous, liquid that burned like acid. It splashed off the rocks, onto his pants, shirt, balls and thighs.

  He had only a moment to wince at how disgusting it was before round two spewed out. Then he realized he was sitting on a wall used by god knew how many other people, and pissed on, and . . .

  Devereaux was standing a few feet away. He didn’t need a fucking audience.

  The third bout caused his stomach to flop, but he felt mostly empty, wrapped in cool darkness. He gasped, panted, and clutched at his belly. He felt nauseated, pained, dizzy. He wanted it to stop.

  Devereaux handed over something white.

  “Bleach wipe, sir.” He sounded completely calm and professional, and Sean appreciated it.

  “Yeah. I need regular paper first. A lot of it.”

  “Here.” The medic handed him a roll. He tried to be frugal, but his hands were smeared with liquid shit in short order, and he used a third of a roll, then the bleach wipe on his balls and hands.

  Devereaux asked, “Do you have spare clothes?”

  “One uniform. Glad I did.” He’d have to wash this one, and clean his hands again, and bathe.

  “Okay. Can you walk?”

  “Yes. I’ll change in the tent.”

  He eased forward and upright, and waddled toward their lodge.

  He did not feel particularly welcome to the Stone Age.

  Jenny Caswell was scared.

  It wasn’t being in the Stone Age, but that was scary enough.

  She was suddenly the prize woman in the world. The natives hadn’t seen anyone like her, and her hair set them off. To the Americans, she was young, female, and that was enough, even if she wasn’t as well developed as Alexander, and she was at risk, too. The local men wanted an exotic mate, her teammates wanted someone clean and familiar. There were eight men, and a lot of men, and only two women with the exotic looks, and Alexander just seemed to disappear into the crowd. Looks had nothing to do with it. Presence was all it took. She was present.

  At some point, she expected to be raped, possibly gang raped. Not within a week, but after a month or more, one of these men, or a pair, were going to decide she was their property. The LT might stop them. Spencer wouldn’t. She knew that look when she saw it.

  She couldn’t live alone, and there was no way to partner up with any one of the men; that would just lead to fights and stupid male dominance shit. It was a patriarchy in microcosm.

  Alexander would be second, but either way, both of them were going to be sexually assaulted, and spend a lifetime as effective sex slaves.

  The only other option was to find some native man and move into this village, or another. And while they were well-built, no way. They stank, they were uninteresting socially or intellectually. She might study them as a thesis. She would not involve with any of them.

  And there was no birth control. She’d be pregnant, and delivering Stone Age babies. She hadn’t ruled out childbirth, but it was definitely a “later” thing. Now it was a “now” thing.

  She sat back to the fire, hunched in on herself. She’d taken first watch because she wasn’t able to sleep.

  A worse thought was that she might acquiesce to being nothing but a sex toy, rather than fight it, or let the men fight over it. There was no moral persuasion she could use, no chain of command other than a very flaky LT, who was a potential threat, and a senior NCO who was a bigger potential threat.

  She was not suicidal, but there was the possibility that her death would prevent a number of social battles that could kill the others. She didn’t want to go there. She could imagine that a couple of the men might, if they didn’t get what they wanted.

  Spencer was on duty next to her. He evidently saw her tension, because he whispered, “Things allright? Anything you need to talk about?”

  “No.”

  “I think you mean, ‘yes, but not now,’” he replied. “I’m here if you need. Or let me know if you need someone else.”

  “No one can help,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know,” he agreed. He probably assumed she meant being lost, and that was true, too. She might discuss this with Alexander. In fact, she needed to. Spencer, though, needed to be kept at whatever emotional distance she could manage.

  She noticed something and said, “Huh.”

  “What?” Spencer asked.

  She pointed to an item on the rock ledge of one wall. “Hollowed out stone with moss.”

  “Oil lamp?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  In a few moments, they had it on the hearth and lit. It burned with a sputtering, low flame with a lot of blue under the bright, but it easily doubled the available glow to that of a good nightlight.

  “It’s clay,” she said as she saw it better. “Unfired ceramic.”

  Spencer said, “They’re so good at some things, so clueless about others.”

  She said, “I think they say exactly the same about us.”

  “You’re probably correct.”

  He probably didn’t even understand the risked he posed, from that position of privilege.

  She did.

  CHAPTER 6

  Felix Trinidad couldn’t shut his observations off. They were down at the beach on the river to get clean. They’d all had diarrhea, all their clothes were at least sweat-crusted, and they were sticky, slimy messes under their uniforms. They’d changed socks daily, because Doc insisted, and underwear twice. They were still out of clean clothes. There wasn’t even any way to air them out in the sun, with grabby native hands all around.

  They had a couple of bars of soap, and cold water. It was better than some COBs, much better than some places in the PI, and he felt a lot better after a cold splash, a soaping and a cold rinse. He ignored the naked men around him easily, though some of the urbanites were more tense than he was, and he felt that. The water was too shallow for modesty. It wasn’t great for shaving, either, but his face itched terribly. When he was done scraping, it burned and stung.

  Farther out the river was deeper, and quite broad. Not as big as the Mississippi, but maybe the Mindanao, but younger and faster. He w
ondered if the natives crossed it or if it was a hard barrier.

  He didn’t mind grit and leaf debris as he redressed. He realized how filthy their uniforms were, though. He almost itched, but figured it was in his mind. The other uniform he’d brought had been cleaned with soap, wrung out, and was over a tree branch to dry.

  The natives were fascinated by the layers of clothes and armor, the softness of fabric rather than leather, and the Multicam patterning. They had no idea what the weapons and other gear were, but knew they were something special. Caswell was guarding the men’s gear as they plunged.

  “Hurry up,” she said. “It’s cold water, not a hot tub, for fuck’s sake.”

  “I’m dressed,” he said, as he finished fastening his armor. They didn’t bother with helmets, but they still felt safer wearing armor.

  “As soon as the guys are done, you and Barker are covering me and Alexander,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  That was interesting. They’d used Spencer for several days. Now she wanted Barker and him. Why the change? Possibly he was perceived as less of a threat, and Barker was more familiar with native crafts.

  She hadn’t liked Spencer’s advice to buddy up. Apparently that was personal for her.

  So he’d have to be very discreet, getting an eyeful of her naked, and never mention it.

  Downstream, there was a web of stakes and sticks, and two men were pulling fish out of it, into baskets. That was a labor saver. Wherever they settled would have to be on a watercourse, and that would be a useful tool to have.

  Rank was only one way of sorting people by status. Knowledge was another. Sergeant Barker was probably the best at skills for this environment. Spencer and Caswell seemed useful, too, at least on social matters.

  Felix would have to analyze everything he could to help.

  Barker came over, also dressed, and checked his weapon.

  “Hell, we don’t need these in camp,” he said. “Fobbit central.”

  “It is. But we do need to watch the locals. They’re after the stuff.”

  “And our women.”

  “I noticed.” Yes, several of the men were on the bluff looking down at the river. He took a quick, professional glance.

  Caswell was lean and fit, but he liked a little more curve. She had a great ass, though, and he shouldn’t think about that.

  Alexander had curves, almost too many, but worth looking at. Nice tits.

  They were both pale as ghosts.

  Well, he’d file that for later “analysis.” Meantime, he did need to keep kids away from gear.

  He couldn’t do anything about the whistles from above. He didn’t think the girls liked them.

  Doc yelled, “Before you leave, brush your goddam teeth. I don’t want to pull them with a Gerber plier.”

  The man was right, but damn, he was annoying.

  Bob Barker found his mood improved. They had feathers, and he found something close to willow saplings, straight and even. He cut five, barked them and scraped them, and left them in the hut. Pine sap wasn’t hard to find. Some way of cooking it, however, was. He finally settled for rolling it in a chunk of gut. There was so much leather and gut around that no one tracked it. They had more every day.

  While that heated near the low daytime fire, he sliced pheasant feathers along the shaft, scraped and trimmed, all with his Leatherman tool. Three elfin kids sat and watched in fascination, jabbering away to each other. There were a lot of sounds in the language, but not a lot of what sounded like words. They had enough sounds and tones for a small vocabulary.

  The sap boiled until it oozed out of the tied gut, then burst it, and he worked quickly, using a twig to smear some on the shaft, slap down a feathered vane and stretch it taut, then press along its length with the butt of the twig. He burned himself on the hot pitch on the third one, and swore. He repeated eighteen times, because he flubbed three fletches and had to repeat.

  He realized Spencer was watching from his right, and Caswell from his left.

  “I need to peel a bit of sinew to tie them with,” he said.

  Spencer asked, “What about a tight ring of rawhide?”

  “Yeah, that would work, but sinew is better.”

  He’d peeled some from a bone earlier and had it soaking in a hide-lined hollow in the ground.

  “And that’s how they discovered tanning,” he said.

  “Mmm?”

  He explained as he worked. “The chamber pot in the lodge is a hole lined with a hide. They close up the hide in the morning and dump it out, then rinse it. Hide plus fat plus piss equals tanning. Anything they didn’t scrape fully would wind up tanned, and be very supple wet, very hard when dry. Once you know that, you have leather. Then when you use it as a windbreak or cover, the smoke colors and softens it.”

  “Ah. Makes sense. Isn’t that something everyone wondered about?”

  “How it developed? Yeah. And now we know.”

  “And no way to get rich off the idea, even if there were much money in it.”

  “Well, have Alexander take some photos.”

  “I am,” she said from behind. “If we do get back . . .” she stopped and paused for almost a minute, hiding her wet eyes behind the camera as she pretended to shoot more photos. “I’ll have lots of information.”

  The sinew being soft enough, he peeled off a cordlike strip with his blade. He made a loop, a tuck, pulled, wrapped, poked and pulled again. The front of one fletching was done. He ran a twist around and along the feathers, then made another terminal wrap at the rear. He’d made hundreds of them over the years, for friends. Now he had to make them to work.

  “They can add their own points,” he said. “Now, how do we want to demonstrate these and gift them?”

  “Throw them at a target.”

  “So I need to tip one of them. Slate will work.”

  He found a broken piece near one of the walls, and beat it into a very rough point. He wanted weight as much as anything.

  That done, he bored into the tip of the shaft, melted more pine tar, and set the tip in place, adding a wrap of sinew as supplement.

  It was already evening and the sun sinking behind trees when he stepped to the eastern wall, set his finger into the hollow he’d carved there, cocked back and hurled.

  The yard long, inch-thick dart flew a good fifty yards.

  The kids cheered. They were different kids from earlier, but they knew he’d been making something.

  One of them ran out, brought back the dart, and shouted enthusiastically. He pulled the kid’s fingers off the fletches, said, “No!” and threw it again.

  By the third throw, most of the adults had gathered.

  Spencer said, “Start with the chief.”

  “Yeah. Oglesby?”

  Oglesby stepped forward with him, and started chatting.

  “I said you are Bob Who Makes Things. The Sun Lemur has approved of us showing them your spears that fly with feathers like a bird. I think that’s what I said.”

  “Cool. Now tell him this one is a gift. He may wish to replace the tip. It needs to be stone for weight.”

  The chief brightened immensely on receiving a gift, and held it clumsily, but aloft, and shouted approval.

  “Let me show you how,” Barker said, and moved in, and damn, the man stunk. He’d sweated into the breechcloth. On the other hand, Bob was pretty ripe again despite his dip in the river.

  “Finger here, hold here, lean back, and throw.”

  The chief managed a good thirty yards, and there were more cheers.

  “Now find me the senior male and female hunters.”

  Barker presented one each to them, and they did even better. He gave a slight bow as he waved the other two darts in a broad arc, then handed them to the chief as well.

  At once, the shaman and someone he recognized as a stone knapper were handling the shaft, caressing the feathers and sniffing at the glue. They had the idea. No doubt their first few dozen would suck, but they’d learn soon
enough.

  Spencer said, “I think that went a long way toward the balance sheet.”

  Yeah, they were a lot more interested in the soldiers now.

  That evening turned into another party. There didn’t seem to be any days of the week here, nor any schedule other than hunt, fish, dry some food, eat the rest, chop the bones and hide up for use, and hang about playing games. It was almost an idyllic life, and the meat made the bastards tall. But goddam, he wanted a bushel of apples and a salad. It had been nothing but meat and a few nuts and a handful of berries for the duration.

  Tribal rites weren’t anything new, but these were unlike any he’d seen, of course.

  They gathered around the main fire again, and several conversations went on at once. There wasn’t any real order until the headman stepped up and said something, in lyrical tones. He came over, placed a hand on Barker’s head, and held aloft his new, cherished dart. He shouted something, and there was a cheer in response.

  Unable to think of anything else, Barker stood and said, “Thank you,” with a nod and his hands open. He hoped he hadn’t been adopted or something, or if so, he didn’t suddenly have some obligations.

  Around the circle, several somethings were being passed hand to hand, apparently food. People nibbled as they came around.

  The first was dried, salted liver. It might have been salted in blood or urine; there was a sharp tang to it.

  The second was very dry, very tough, very chewy. He didn’t have the jaws these people did, and had to work and twist to tear off a bit. After five chews he was pretty sure it was dried gut. He kept chewing, made a surreptitious pass with his hand and got rid of it. Gah. They ate anything here.

  Then the entertainment got interesting.

  Regina Alexander used her camera as a shield. Behind it, she could observe anything calmly, even enemy fire or death. The locals had no clue about technology at all, and as long as she didn’t use flash or view screen, she could shoot as she pleased. She’d slapped a band aid over the LED and not had the problems Oglesby had with his flashlight.