Expedition Beyond Page 17
“Smell the flowers, Des. Don’t they smell sweet?”
He nodded.
“Look at the ocean. Isn’t it beautiful?”
He nodded.
“Can Adeyo bring drums to the rally?”
“Yes. Lots of drums.”
“The queen will attend,” said Anastasia.
Des stopped. “What?”
Anastasia smiled. “The queen will attend the rally.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure.”
Things were falling into place. “I really need to work on that speech.”
E-shandra was packed; there were hundreds of warriors on the sand floor. Some captains had their groups practicing moves with war clubs; others were blowing darts into targets of papyrus on baled straw from forty meters away.
Des climbed the steps to one of the 5-by-18-meter wooden platforms, which swayed from his weight—there was no railing. The bench seats were five meters below and behind him—close to, but not touching, the platform’s supporting beams. The platform extended towards the center so the far edge was twenty meters above the wooden benches; it was suspended from the domed ceiling by thick hemp rope attached at its corners. A causeway and six steps led from the platform to an oval doorway and a room fifteen meters square. Through the room was another doorway with a wooden staircase descending to the beach. Across the stadium was an identical rostrum with a doorway that led to another small room, seventy meters away from Des.
He hung a soundstick on each rope as high as he dared to reach. Holding the microphone in one hand and the sound pack in the other, he turned it on.
“Testing.”
The soundsticks squealed with feedback. A few warriors looked up from the stadium floor, worried.
Des turned off the sound pack, removed the speakers and retreated towards the causeway. He swung to the planks below, and hung speakers in the rafters on each side, so they were eighty meters apart, as warriors watched him from below.
Back on the platform, he clipped the microphone onto his shirt and placed the sound pack in the pocket of his shorts. He flipped on the switch and rolled the volume to maximum.
“Your attention, please.” His voice reverberated around the arena. Everyone on the floor stood motionless and gawked. A war club or two dropped to the sand.
“The owner of snow Glider Three, snow Glider Three: Your lights are on. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s program is brought to you by me; I am Des.” He raised his hand.
There was a chorus of “Yes, sir!” from below.
Des sang and moved around the platform as if it were a stage. “When I was a little bitty baby, my mama would rock me in the cradle.” He threw out a fist towards the roof.
“Yes, sir!” Even the new ones were shouting now.
“In those cotton fields back home.” Up went his fist.
“Yes, sir!” reverberated around the stadium.
“That’s the end of today’s show.” Des turned his back to them.
Suddenly, he jumped around to face them, crouching low with his feet wide apart; whipping his arms, he shouted, “Yi, yi, yi, yi!”
They exploded back with “Yi, yi, yi!”
Des went to the floor, going from group to group, pumping up their emotions. He slapped hands, touched the arms of unfamiliar warriors and patted the backs of those he recognized.
One group was bashing fruit propped up on logs with their war clubs. Des stopped to watch.
“Na, na, na!” he scolded.
He commandeered a war club. First, he pointed at his temple, then at the side of an orange. In slow motion, he swung the club towards the fruit, then over the top and past it.
“Stand back, stand back.” He motioned to them. “Come on, it’s like baseball—hit ‘em hard and follow through. Hey, batter-batter, swing!” Des hit the orange with force; it flew through the air and landed thirty meters away. “Make it fly!”
“Yes, sir,” the warrior said as Des returned her war club.
Alée’s warriors were working with dart guns.
“You can do it, B`ahta! Come on, blow! Anastasia, tell her to blow harder.”
When Anastasia translated, Alée clucked mercilessly at B`ahta.
B`ahta made a sour face, then puffed into the gun. The dart plopped out directly in front of her.
Des picked up the dart and glared at B`ahta. “You’re…not trying!” He reloaded her gun. “Anastasia, tell her that she has to blow harder. Puffing is okay, but she should puff with more force.”
He handed the gun to B`ahta while Anastasia translated.
B`ahta puffed; again, the dart fell to the sand.
Anastasia rolled her eyes and Des grimaced. He shrugged in resignation.
“Anastasia, tell B`ahta I have a more important job for her. I need a lookout on the beach, near the water, someone who can be inconspicuous.”
“What is inconspicuous?” Anastasia asked.
“Blend in and not arouse suspicion. This person would watch for the beasts and alert us when they are coming. It’s a very important task; everything relies on it. Ask her if she feels up to such a significant job.”
When Anastasia translated, B`ahta straightened her back, raised her chin and smiled.
“Yi.”
“Anastasia, tell her to stay on the beach and figure out how best to be inconspicuous. She should also think of a signal to relay that the beasts are coming.”
B`ahta’s short, round form left E-Shandra. Des was amazed she could actually lift and carry her war club.
“Des, I thought Adeyo was the watcher for the beasts?” Anastasia asked.
“Well, yes, but in the war business, it’s always good to have back-up. Besides, it will give B`ahta a job to do that she can be proud of.”
“What is back-up?”
“An extra person doing the same thing. Now we have eyes both on the mountain and on the beach to watch for beasts. Let’s get to work. How do you say, ‘I want to touch you’?”
“Oh, Des,” Anastasia said.
“No, really, I want to know.”
Des drank from a stream, his only sustenance that day. They’d left the village and walked along the coast in the opposite direction from Oom’s hut.
“How much farther is the timekeeper?”
“Not far,” Anastasia called back to him.
They soon came to a river too deep and too swift to ford. Anastasia led him on a climb three hundred meters up from the beach. She stopped by a mountain cleft partially covered by foliage.
“Is there food inside?” Des asked.
“Who could be hungry with all that is happening?” she asked, puzzled.
Des raised his hand, but she had already disappeared inside the cleft.
Des called into the opening, “Are there any peligroso animals in there? Anastasia? Yoo-hoo?”
The opening led to a downward-sloping tunnel lit by torches. Des felt soft soil underfoot.
“Who keeps the torches lit?” he asked when he caught up with Anastasia.
“The timekeeper expects us.”
Apparently you don’t meet the timekeeper unannounced.
The passageway was two hundred meters long. It opened into a limestone cave one hundred fifty meters in diameter pillared with stalactites and stalagmites which rose a meter from the sandy ground. Des moved among them to the center of the cavern, where he saw a circle of rectangular upright slabs of granite fifteen meters tall. These were joined at their tops by granite beams four meters thick and twenty meters long; above them was darkness. Des heard only the sputtering of torches and a gentle swooshing sound.
“This is where the timekeeper lives?” His voice echoed, muffled.
When it faded, there was again only the sputtering of dozens of torches and a distinct whoosh. Something—or s
omeone—was slipping ghost-like around the stone formations, flowing past them, then appearing elsewhere.
Anastasia began, “He is—”
“Shy,” Des said. “Tell him I won’t harm him.”
A specter approached, his thin four-meter-high form enhanced by an ankle-length feather robe fluttering behind him. He had waist-length, flowing white hair, and his complexion was paler than Des’ and furrowed by deep wrinkles.
“Des, this is the timekeeper,” Anastasia said.
The timekeeper stood silently for only a second, then disappeared.
Anastasia led Des over to the granite columns whose lintel stones formed a circle eighty meters in diameter; the columns were fifteen meters apart. The inside surfaces of both columns and lintels were laminated with magnetite, and the slightly concave sand floor was etched with parallel lines.
Des guessed each lintel weighed two hundred and fifty tons; he wondered how they had been lifted.
A meter-wide spiculate lodestone, suspended by rope anchored somewhere far above the lit portion of the cavern walls, whooshed across the sand, just missing a pillar before receding towards the other side. The pendulum had drawn a parallel line in the sand adjacent to the others.
“Des?”
“Hold on. Let me think.”
This archaic clock fascinated him. The pendulum had traced a scalloped edge—Des thought each arc was one degree of the circle’s circumference. Pointing to the last-completed scallop, he said, “This is yesterday.”
“Abba.”
“High noon, lunchtime.” He rested his finger outside the arc’s apogee.
Anastasia smiled.
One degree, one day, Des thought excitedly. He swooped his hand around the entire circle. “This is one year. One year, to return to here.”
“Abba,” Anastasia said.
There were 360 degrees in a circle, and 365 days in a year. That was pretty damn close. And maybe the Earth’s rotation around the sun added a fudge-factor that would make this clock as accurate as his Timex. The timekeeper was measuring time through magnetism. Des remembered that he was directly beneath the magnetic North Pole, so he was on the “bar” of the magnet of Earth. Was that important to the lodestone pendulum, or was it simply being pulled around the circle by the magnetite on the columns and lintels?
“Beautiful, magnificent.” Des noticed the tall figure had appeared again, behind Anastasia, so he directed his comments to the native. “Excellent. Simply amazing. I am impressed!”
The timekeeper folded his arms and bowed.
“And the years...do you keep a record of the number of years?” Des asked.
Anastasia showed Des two marble tablets held at chest height by a marble column. He examined the unfamiliar marking system.
“What is ten years?” he asked.
Anastasia indicated a down slash followed by a horizontal stroke gouged into the marble surface.
“One hundred years?”
She pointed to a down slash followed by two horizontal strokes.
Des guessed it was a binomial system. One tablet was devoted to counting single years, and the other had grouped years. He added the recorded time: One hundred, two hundred, five hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred. He kept counting. When he’d finished, he was convinced the tablets represented over six thousand years!
But Anastasia’s ancestors had fallen from the Earth’s surface only five hundred years ago, during Spanish exploration. Whose ancestors began tracking time here?
“Can we come here again? I have questions I’d like to ask, once I think about what I’ve seen today,” he asked her.
“Anytime.”
“Please thank the timekeeper for showing me his clock.”
As they were leaving, Des reflected that this machine was somehow familiar, something that was deeply imbedded in his memory. Standing sarsens, holding up lintels, curved in a circle.
Then he stopped in amazement, recalling the glossy photographs in an archeological magazine. What was different here? The pendulum rope and supporting wooden structure would have been burned or rotted away by time, the magnetite and lodestone stripped for other uses. Add centuries of decay to the encircling stones, erosion and earthquakes. This had to be the same. The photographs had been the ancient, mysterious stone circles in Britain. Des now knew they were constructed to chart more than mid-summer and mid-winter by the stars. No matter what else had happened there, or was buried there, the elemental purpose was to measure time.
Stonehenge was a clock.
Chapter 23
LATITUDE 82° 10’ NORTH
LONGITUDE 73° 42’ WEST
LAPTITUDE 68%
Month 3, Day 1; 1310 UTC, 7:10 PM LTD
Des knew it was well past dinnertime when they reached the village; he was ravenous.
Anastasia’s sister blocked the doorway, her tapping foot an ominous sign. Bethenna allowed Anastasia to pass, but stepped in front of Des with a frown. She retrieved his pack from just inside the door and thrust it into his chest, then she went inside.
Fine measure of a woman, Des thought, throwing me out of my own home. He was incensed, and his hunger rose pitilessly; the sum total of his day’s meals had been water from a stream. He was also tired and sweaty and wanted to soak in a bath.
Des went to the side of the house. Using his pack as a pillow, he lay down on the stone bench and closed his eyes, then he heard someone approaching. He opened his eyes. Bethenna’s children each held a banana, which they offered to him.
“Ah, e-yah-ho,” Des said, accepting the fruit, which he devoured as they watched. “E-yah-ho, good.”
Some great general he was—no place to live and reduced to taking food from children.
He was still ravenous. He stared at the peels, then ate them, too.
The kids were aghast: eyes wide, mouths open.
So, they think I’m an oddity. Des scratched his beard, his chest, and then his sides. “Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo!” He made noises like a monkey.
Instead of being amused, the children screamed and ran.
He lay back on the bench, thinking about how he could ask Bethenna for Anastasia’s hand, particularly after having made such a great first impression. If Anastasia’s sister wouldn’t approve of him, he’d just have to get used to outlaw in-laws.
He drifted into sleep.
Sometime later, someone touched his face and he bolted upright. It was Anastasia.
“They have left. You can bathe now.”
Des focused groggily. “Left? Where?”
“Gone for awhile.”
Des stood and hobbled wearily through the door. Anastasia left him alone. He undressed and stepped into the tub; the water was warm and soothing. Anastasia brought in a tray with fruit and nuts and papaya juice. He consumed all of it.
He dunked his head underwater—life was getting better. When he resurfaced, Anastasia was there, naked and wet, kissing him. She rubbed flower essence on his back, chest and stomach.
“Can’t we just kick your sister out?” Des moaned, lathering up her breasts with suds.
“No, Des,” she cooed.
“Maybe I could take her out to dinner and, you know, butter her up,” he suggested.
Anastasia looked shocked. “You would eat my sister?”
Des howled with laughter. “That might be a good idea, but no, I won’t eat your sister. But maybe I’ll nibble on you!”
He kissed her hungrily. When he entered her, she sighed deeply.
The floor got soaked.
Des walked with five warriors, Alée and Anastasia to a small, grassy clearing outside the village where an old cow was tethered to a post. He could see the open sores on her legs from sixty meters away.
“Hit her here,” Des said, slapping his rump.
Alée nodded.
Alée put the loaded dart gun to her mouth. She blew, there was a thunk; the cow bellowed and swished her tail.
Des could see the poisoned projectile sticking out of the cow’s hindquarters as she continued eating. He waited a long three minutes. The cow just chewed her cud.
“Well, now we know. We better start working on plan ‘B’.”
Des turned to leave, motioning for the others to follow.
“Des,” Anastasia called from behind him.
The ground shook; he turned.
The cow was down, all four legs rigidly extended, dead.
Des bowed his head. “We had to know,” he told Anastasia.
Alée’s troops covered the cow with sticks and branches. Soon, the carcass was engulfed in flames. As the fire spiraled skyward, Des was grim. He knew the dead, dumb animal was symbolic of what was to come. Some of his warriors would certainly die in the upcoming battle.
His warriors. He sat cross-legged, a blade of grass between his teeth.
Alée squatted close to Des as Anastasia and the others piled more branches on the smoking carcass. She patted Des’ knee. Her beautiful, dark eyes were filled with determination as she nodded.
‘Asa ni-ca saya!” Anastasia said, hurrying back to Des, her complexion reddened.
Alée rose, but Des was deep in thought and hardly noticed.
“Anastasia, tell Alée I want her warriors in the water today. They need to test their weight belts and learn how to breathe through the bamboo.”
Anastasia translated; Alée nodded.
Des continued, “Tell her we need rope to climb into the boats. Also, grappling hooks, something to grab onto the boats and keep the ropes taut. And pouches to keep the darts and poison dry.”
Anastasia spoke. Both women tensed.
Des looked from one to the other, slightly confused. “Does she understand?”
“She understands,” Anastasia said through clenched teeth, her face flushed.
“Tell her we need teams of two—only the best. I need the best at climbing, the best at swimming underwater, and the best at shooting dart guns. Teams of two will stay together to protect each other. Two teams will climb onto each boat, one from either side. After they’re on and secure, six more teams follow them. Sixteen warriors on a boat, forty-eight in all.”