Eschaton 1 – The Other End of Time

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Patsy

When everyone had eaten, Pat and Dan took off on their mission of exploration. It surprised no one to see that they were walking hand in hand as they left. No one said anything, though-well, no one but Jimmy Lin. "Hey, guess what?" he said, grinning, pointing to where Pat's laundry still hung on the tree. "The lady left her underwear behind. Probably figured it would just get in the way?"

Nobody responded but Patsy, and she said only, "Shut your mouth." She turned her back on him and walked over to where Patrice was sitting cross-legged on the ground, studying some carved wooden objects pulled out of the yurts. "It's none of his damn business what they do," she said-then, lowering her voice, "Although, you know?, he's probably right. How about that bath?"

"In a while," Patrice said absently, looking at a piece of age-darkened wood as long as her forearm, one end flattened and rounded. "Rosaleen wants to go along, but she's resting. Patsy? What do you think this thing is?"

Patsy considered the question. Although the object was worn and chipped at the edges, she was pretty sure of its identity. "I'd say a snow shovel-if they ever had snow here," she hazarded. "Some kind of a shovel, anyway." She squatted beside the other woman, poking through the little pile of artifacts. Most were wood-the shovel, a rod with a pointed, fire-hardened end (too thick to be a spear; maybe a digging stick?), something that looked like a salad fork, several things that didn't look like anything Patsy recognized at all. What wasn't wood was glassy rock-one pretty obviously a sharp-edged knife, the others harder to identify. "They didn't have any metal, did they?" Patsy discovered. "Sort of like the Stone Age?"

"More like pre-Columbian America," Patrice said thoughtfully. "Those yurts are pretty well built… and doesn't this look like writing?" She flipped over an oval chunk of wood, and it was true, there were things that looked like wobbly characters incized on the wood. "Makes you wonder who these people were."

But Patsy didn't want to wonder about these unknown people. They were tall and skinny; they lived in tents; they farmed- there was the remains of an overgrown produce plot along the stream-and they were gone. That much they knew, and the only important fact in the lot was the last one. The Skinnies were gone. There was no chance they would ever know anything more about them; but when Patsy said as much, Patrice got a funny expression. "You're sure of that? You don't think we'll all meet up again at the eschaton?"

Patsy gave her a hard look, and got up to put some new pebbles in the fire to heat. That was another thing she didn't want to think about.

Then, when Rosaleen woke up and announced it was time for the adventure of the bath, there was another one. Patrice helped Rosaleen to the "ladies' room" in the bushes; Martin, gathering wood for the fire, decorously diverted himself to a part of the grove they hadn't investigated, and a moment later appeared again, looking perturbed. "There's something odd here," he called. "Come look."

As the others straggled over, Patsy saw what he was talking about. "It just stops," she said, looking in wonderment at the vegetation. It did. The gnarly trees they had used for firewood stopped short, in a mathematically precise straight line; the branches on the near side swooped and dangled in all directions, but on the side away from them the branches were bent at sharp angles. Past them was a growth of quite different vegetation, equally dense, but thick shrubbery rather than trees. There was no point where a shrub crossed into tree territory or a tree branch into the shrubs'.

Rosaleen studied the line of demarcation for a moment, then painfully lowered herself to grub at the ground. A moment later she had revealed the same sort of line that had surrounded their cell, metal and glassy segments alternating. "Do you know what I think?" she said wonderingly. "I believe there used to be one of those walls here."

"I think so, too," Martin confirmed. "And it had to be here for a long time-long enough for the trees to grow up against it."

Patsy was craning her neck to see what was past the shrubbery, and what she saw made her catch her breath. "Look at that," she called. There was open ground there, but planted- planted in regular rows of tall stalks.

"It looks like farmland," Patrice said, staring. "And there's a path-and, hey, what's that thing over there on the ground?"

The thing along the path was definitely a machine. It had three wheels, bicycle-size, though the spokes were wood-the whole thing was wood, as far as Patsy could see, and it had a sort of basketwork thing in the middle. A farm cart? But if there was a farm, where was the farmer?

That was the next shock. There was a stirring among the tall, ruddy-leafed stalks, and a creature appeared, holding half a dozen banana-shaped fruits (or husks, or something) and staring at them.

It was nothing Patsy had ever encountered before, though even at first glimpse there was something about it that looked vaguely familiar. What it looked like was a scale model of one of the ancient big-bodied, long-necked dinosaurs, maybe the kind that was called apatosaurus-though in this case an apatosaurus that was covered with curly hair all over its body, strands poking out from the colorful embroidered shirt and kilt it wore on its tubby, watermelon-size body, and curly bangs that hung over its tiny, lashed eyes-and a very small apatosaurus, at most a couple of meters from the end of the tail that rose behind it to the little head on the end of its sinuous, long neck. It stood on its hind legs, and its front legs-no, Patsy decided, you'd definitely have to call them arms and hands-were holding what it had just collected.

If the watchers were startled, the creature was petrified with fear. It made a sharp mewing sound, dropping its harvest, and flopped itself onto the machine in the path. Patsy saw what the basket was for. It supported the creature's belly as it lay flat, its legs pumping reciprocating levers that turned the rear wheels, its hands on a tiller that evidently guided the wheel in front. As the vehicle rolled away the long neck swayed around so that the fear-filled eyes could stare back at them.

When he was out of sight Patrice shook herself. "He doesn't look like one of the Seven Ugly Dwarfs," she said thoughtfully, "and he's definitely not a Beloved Leader. But I could swear I've seen somebody like him before."

Patsy had the same feeling. She said, "Maybe he's a prisoner like us. Maybe there are other intelligent races of captives around-even those things in the water last night, maybe?"

"Oh, hell, no," Patrice said positively. "This thing had a velocipede and it wore clothes; they didn't."

Rosaleen sighed and turned, automatically reaching for Martin's arm. "Think about it, Patrice. If you live in the water, what do you need with a velocipede? Or clothes, for that matter. People like us wear clothes to protect us against the weather, but there isn't any weather underwater. In any case, it's time for my bath."

Martin looked alarmed. "That's risky. Maybe that thing went to get help."

"Yes, perhaps so," Rosaleen said, "but it's time for me to clean myself up a bit. You've all been very polite, but I really need a bath."

"We'll take a couple of spears along," Patsy promised.

"You'll take me, too!" Martin insisted.

"We will not" Patrice said indignantly.

But in the long run prudence won over modesty-what was left of modesty, after those long nude days in their first pen. The compromise they finally reached was that Martin would come along to carry Rosaleen to the bathing pond, while Jimmy Lin stayed behind to keep an eye on the place where they had seen the dinosaur with the velocipede. Then Martin would stay nearby as long as they were in the water; but he would concede enough to their modesty to sit with his back to them. "And no peeking," Rosaleen called good-naturedly as they began to undress.

Patsy was the first to be naked, but she paused before getting into the water, appalled at the sight of Rosaleen's nude body. The woman was skeletal. Her breasts, never ample, were mere flaps of flesh; her ribs showed; her hip joints protruded, and so did her knees and elbows.

Patrice had begun helping Rosaleen toward the water; Patsy turned away in embarrassment and splashed in. The water was still cold, but bearable. After the first shock Patsy began to swim. She couldn't help glancing around at the woods every few moments, but, really, there wasn't much to fear. Was there? And it was so wonderful, so fine, to be free in the cleansing water after all that time of filth and deprivation…?

She rolled over on her back to look back at where Patrice was helping Rosaleen in the shallows. She noticed that Patrice was holding one of Dan's metal spears, and wondered if she shouldn't have one, too-wondered a moment later whether she wasn't being reckless in swimming out so far from the others. Treading water, she looked around.

That was when she saw the tiny pairs of eyes on the surface of the pond, three or four sets of them, nearer to the other bathers than to herself.

She screamed a warning and didn't wait to see if they would respond. She began to swim as fast as she could toward the shore. Yells and screams spurred her on; when she reached the bank she stood up to look. Martin was there already, splashing fully dressed in the shallows, furiously stabbing at something in the water with his own spear. She didn't see the eyes; she did see the water swirling there as though something large were moving under the surface. Patrice was hurrying Rosaleen out of the water, peering back over her shoulder in panic.

Patsy began to run along the bank toward them, pausing to catch up another spear from the stack beside their clothes. Martin might need help…

Martin did need help. Something huge and slate gray erupted from the water behind him; he screamed something-in Spanish, Patsy thought, though she could not make out the words- and fell back into the water. "Oh, God!" Patrice cried. "It got him!"

Patsy didn't hesitate. She splashed into the shallows to where Martin was half floating, half resting on the muddy bottom of the lake. She didn't see the creature that had attacked him. There was a stain in the water-blood? From Martin? But it was some distance away, and the surface was swirling there; something was there and bleeding. When she reached Martin's body it was motionless. Dead? Patsy tried to imagine what it was like to be killed, to die suddenly, without warning…

But maybe he wasn't dead. The spear in one hand, she wrapped her fingers in his long, coarse hair, trying to pull him ashore. The man weighed twice as much as she. She was barely able to move him, and his face was underwater, time passing; if he hadn't been killed by the amphibian he might drown. When Patrice splashed in to join her she let her take over with the task of pulling the general toward dry land, while she remained in the water, on guard with the spear, watching the swirl of bloody water. Across the pond something was heaving itself out of the water; a good sign, Patsy thought hopefully. They were running away. The thing didn't really look like a hippo, more like a walrus; and it galumphed across the ground in its pinniped fashion. It stopped, turning to look at her with those protuberant eyes, then leaned forward, scooped up some mud, formed it into a ball and threw it at her with its finlike paws.

The mud fell far short, splashing in the middle of the pool. Patsy almost laughed at that pitiful display of hostility. Why, they're as frightened as we are, she thought. It did not occur to her that there had been several of the creatures.

She didn't even see the one that was coming up behind her.

She never saw it at all, only felt the sudden touch of something cold on her back, and then the sharp agony of an electric shock; and then Patsy Adcock's question was answered, and she knew at last what it was like to die.