Turning the Grain

Illustrated by Mark Evans

The best-laid plans can go very ugly....

The sun’s rim edged above the desert horizon, brushing the tops of the plateau’s night-chilled cliffs with pale gold. Gilf Kebir’s day creatures began awakening, noted the light, and moved toward the promise of warmth. Night things backed deeper into shadows, away from the moisture-sucking heat of Egypt’s Western Desert, away from the ever-present eyes of predators. In one such shadow Gordon Redcliff raised the front detector cover on his rifle’s electronic sight and swept the wadi below. The ones down there had finished their work: seven shooters just this side of the narrows on the rocky trail climbing to the plateau where the expedition camped. Two more shooters in the shadows up on the wide slope above the narrows. From his perch, the shadowed ledge hidden from below by the reflected glare of the sun on the cliff face adjoining it, Gordon studied the faces and positions through his scope.

The shooter closest to Gordon’s position had a rocket-propelled grenade in addition to his Kalashnikov. Both weapons leaned on a rock to the fellow’s right. RPG was lighting a cigarette, his bearded face craggy, the eyes searching the shadows above a hawklike nose. His face indicated a lot of mileage: the Iran thing, probably. He was about the right age. RPG wore a gold chain around his neck with a crucifix on it. Probably not a Christian, though—at least, not in good standing. RPG was the back door. Gordon shifted the sight picture to the slope above the narrows. Of the two there, the younger one with the pale skin and delicate features, the tails of his gutrah folded over his head in anticipation of rising temperatures later in the day, he was the boss. He wore his ogal cool, cocked forward so that the front of the black band sat on his eyebrows. He was facing east and downhill, kneeling and touching his forehead to a cloth.

Cool’s companion was older, more secular, less fashionable. He wore only the tagiyah on his head, the white cap pushed back, his falls of tangled black hair in his face. Incongruously, he was wearing a black and white Red Sox jacket over his thoub against the desert’s night chill. He squatted, his elbows resting upon his knees, waiting and listening. From a less connected family perhaps than Cool’s, and certainly a slob, but Red Sox was wired: the group technology geek. He was the sapper, the one with the remote. Red Sox controlled the front door.

Below them among the rocks, growing impatient in the chilly shadows, RPG and the six other gunmen, all costumed as Bedouins, were talking among themselves, smoking, wandering behind outcroppings to relieve themselves, but always avoiding that narrowest point in the trail: the bend. That’s where, under Red Sox’s direction, they had installed the front door in the hours before sunrise. There had only been the one truck—running electric and silent in the dark—that had brought them and their explosive device. Nothing else had been in the vehicle. No provisions for hostages. Perhaps one Christian, one Muslim, and a few secularists. At least the murderers had figured out how to get along, mused Gordon.

There was a crackle in his headset; Dr. Hussein speaking in Arabic: “Gordon, we have all the samples, equipment, supplies, and shelters packed. We should be ready to leave for Site Safar as soon as morning prayers and breakfast are concluded. Dr. Taleghani is anxious for us to return. Is the route clear?”

“In a moment, Doctor,” replied Gordon quietly into his mouthpiece, also in Arabic. He felt a scorpion crawl across his hand but didn’t look away from his scope. “I’ll need Captain Mansouri at the head of the wadi in a couple of minutes. There will be something to report.”

There was a slight hesitation. “Another ambush?”

“Yes.”

A note of frustration. “How do the devils find us?”

“The sky is crowded with eyes, Doctor, and most of them are for rent. I’ll have the wadi clean in a minute.”

“Wait.” Another pause. Gordon blinked his eyes and smiled slightly as he continued watching the gunmen below, knowing his academician boss needed to allow his eccentric compassion fantasy to run a bit before reality reined it in. “Gordon, might they be open to some—I don’t know—perhaps they might consider some sort of negotiation? We could pay them something for their trouble if they’d leave us alone. If Captain Mansouri’s men—”

“There are nine shooters, Doctor,” interrupted Gordon. “Seven are armed with high-powered assault rifles, one in addition has an RPG. Another is controlling an explosive device planted at the bend in the first narrows. Their plan is to disable the first vehicle in the convoy, blocking the trail, then disable the last vehicle, trapping the convoy in between. Then the shooters attack the vehicles from both sides, killing everyone.”

“Certainly we are worth more alive than dead.”

“I don’t think they’re into comparative investments. These fellows are not hostage takers.”

“You know this?”

“They’ve made no provision for hostages: no food, no bindings. Only one truck.” The scorpion skittered off Gordon’s hand in pursuit of game of its own. “Five minutes, Doctor, and please have someone start up one of the heavy vehicles.”

A final grudging pause. “Very well.”

Twenty seconds later the sound of a four-ton all-terrain diesel started up far behind Gordon, the whine of the eight-wheeler’s starter motor and the clatter of the initial diesel exhaust reverberated loudly from the stubby hills at the edge of the crater across the plateau and into the wadi. On the slope above the narrows Cool wrapped up his prayers and spoke quickly into his handset. He gathered up the cloth he had been using, then he and Red Sox rushed behind a rocky outcropping and squatted. Suddenly everyone was in place, hidden on either side of the trail above the bend, safeties off, weapons aimed and ready, extra magazines within easy reach, and all as still as death. RPG was settled in a draw fifty meters up from the bend near where the rear vehicle should be when the convoy stopped. A very practiced crew: motionless, disciplined, professional, and therefore predictable.

The four shooters on the near side of the trail would have the longest journey to get away from Gordon’s fire, the ones on the far side the shortest. Far side goes down first. Cool and Red Sox didn’t appear to have anything heavier than pistols with them. They had no place to go, in addition, but toward Gordon or up the slope toward a sheer cliff once the shooting started. Red Sox and Cool go down last.

Noticing Gordon and trying to get away from his fire was only a remote possibility in any event. None of them should be able to hear any of Gordon’s shots. He was over a kilometer away. For the few seconds it would take to kill them all they would be momentarily deaf after Gordon triggered off their front door charge. Nine shots, possibly ten. Should only take five or eight seconds. Eight if he had to change clips to go for that tenth shot.

Gordon’s Stryker M-3 semiautomatic sniper rifle had an eight-round magazine of 9mm magnum shattertips. He already had one round up the spout. An extra magazine was on the right of the sandbag he had filled that was cradling his left forearm as his hand held the forward grip of his M-3. Next to the mag, connected by a thin cable to the rifle, was a remote disrupter, looking very much like an early cell phone, its stub of an antenna pointed toward the wadi. He reached to the rifle’s electronic sight and turned on the recoil compensator. It would maintain his sight picture and aim between shots while the weapon’s gas mechanism automatically ejected a spent cartridge and chambered the next.

Of the three shooters on the far side of the trail, the most difficult to hit would be the one in the center. Of all of them, Middle Man knew best how to hide. Ex-military or ex-terror vet. None of that Christian or Jihadi action for him; his god was terrain. It chose where he went, how he stood, and what he did. All that was visible of him was an edge of the right rear quadrant of his head. He was the one who might make that tenth shot necessary: the first round to get him exposed, the tenth—after Gordon had dispatched the others and changed magazines—to put Middle Man out of his misery. Gordon centered the sight’s kill dot on that spot, took a breath, let part of it out, and pressed the disruptor trigger on the rifle’s front hand grip. The charge down in the narrows exploded with a roar and Middle Man surprised Gordon momentarily by standing straight up in astonishment at the early detonation, exposing the upper third of his body. Nine shots and five seconds later the last echoes of the explosion still had not completely faded from the wadi. When they had, all was still down at the narrows.

Gordon ejected the empty magazine and loaded the full one into his weapon, pulling the bolt to chamber the first round. He placed the safety on, emptied his sandbag, disconnected and pocketed the disrupter, collected and pocketed the ejected brass and the empty mag. Getting up into a squat he noted the black scorpion had crushed the beetle it had been after with its claws and was preparing to pick it apart.

“Bon apétit,” he said to the insect as he duckwalked backwards from beneath the ledge, swishing the cloth of his emptied sandbag to remove the evidence of his passing. Once he was clear of the overhang, he stood, folded and pocketed the ochre-colored bag, slung his rifle, and climbed up to the head of the trail. Once there he paused and looked around.

The mesas reminded him a little of pueblo country, but without all the lights, casinos, strip developments, and golden arches. The sand sea dusting the edges of the plateau was almost lifeless. None of the wild sage, pinon pines, or junipers of New Mexico. Hunks of hazy gray-green glass littered the sands, though: part of the reason for Dr. Hussein’s expedition. As the gravelly surface of the plateau crunched beneath his desert boots, Gordon keyed his headset. “It’s all over, Doctor.”

A lengthy pause. “Things went well?” Dr. Hussein asked at last.

“No trouble,” answered Gordon.

“Nine dead?”

“They aren’t our dead, Doctor. That makes it a good morning’s work.”

Gordon knew that the geologist wanted to say what he had expressed before: that he wished Gordon would feel at least a little badly about having to kill—and having to kill so many. Gordon hadn’t the need, though, and couldn’t explain why to the satisfaction of those who thought he should.

“I called in my conclusions about the crater to Dr. Taleghani last night,” said Dr. Hussein at last. “I’ve just heard back from Site Safar. There has been an unfortunate development: one of the expedition members has been injured and needs to be replaced. Dr. Taleghani needs a special kind of bodyguard—good with languages. Tonight in fact. I suggested you.”

“What about you and your staff, sir?”

“Our work for the project is concluded. As soon as we arrive at the dig, Bethany and I will be returning to Cairo on the chopper. The rest of the staff will follow on the regular truck run. Pending your agreement, I said you would be excellent for what Dr. Taleghani has in mind. You are very quick with languages.”

“Thank you for the reference. If you’re firing me, I’ll need the work.”

“Have you ever met Dr. Taleghani?”

“Just in passing at the dig.” Gordon heard a Land Rover making its way from the camp to the head of the wadi trail. The vehicle came around a low hill and continued toward him. The sand-and-black-colored security car pulled to a stop on the trail in a cloud of dust at the edge of the plateau. “Here’s Captain Mansouri. Signing off, Doctor.”

The dust cloud moved slowly forward of the Land Rover, dissipating as it enveloped the vehicle and moved out over the wadi. The captain’s angry voice came from the vehicle, bellowing at the hapless driver once again that if the fellow would brake more gradually they wouldn’t have to eat so much of their own dust. The driver grinned and nodded. “Idiot!” Mansouri roared in Arabic as he climbed down from the vehicle and slammed the door.

He walked around the Land Rover and looked at Gordon. Mansouri always tried to make his comments to Gordon sound mocking, but it always came off as petulant. “Ugh, Chief Killum-Every-Damned-Body-In-Sight,” greeted the captain, insultingly using his take on American Indian pidgin English. Despite being a graduate of UCLA, the Egyptian security commander took every opportunity to insult Gordon in an obviously passive-aggressive display of inadequacy, as Gordon’s old college girlfriend the psych major would have put it. Mansouri was the commander of the joint Egyptian-Libyan security force that provided protection for the geological expedition to the Kebira Crater bisected by the Egyptian-Libyan border. He was a squat, powerfully built man wearing khakis, desert boots, and one of the wide-brimmed white straw hats favored by those in the expedition. His upper lip carried a thick black mustache, his brow a permanent frown. The stub of an unlit cigar was jammed in his mouth. He wouldn’t ask why Gordon didn’t call him before the fight. The subject had come up before. The captain had only himself and four men, none of whom were particularly proficient in marksmanship or combat. They needed to stay with the trucks and out of harm’s way. Still, it bruised the captain’s pride a mite.

“I take it, Crazy Horse, General Custer and the Seventh Cavalry lost again,” quipped Mansouri.

Gordon frowned and slowly shook his head, his arms folded high across his chest as he stared with hooded eyes into the endless wastes of the north cliffs. “Umm, Kemosabe.” He pointed toward the distant horizon with a flat hand, palm down, all fingers extended. “Scout see four white-eyes escape, Captain. All with AK-47s. Need you and long knives help Chief rootum out of rocks.”

Mansouri stood there, bug eyed, until he saw Gordon’s smirk. “You are as funny as cancer in an earthquake, Redcliff,” said Mansouri. “Hell, you could do standup in a damned graveyard. Chief Shecky Horse. You should have been at Little Big Horn, man. You would’ve killed ‘em.”

“You seemed to be complaining about me doing all the work myself, Captain. I thought the prospect of a little action might cheer you up.”

Mansouri’s face reddened. “My complaint was not having not enough to do, Redcliff. What bothers me is ... oh, it’s the monotony of your precision.”

“I’m too consistent?”

The captain raised an arm and pointed down the trail into the wadi. “I’ll go down there in a minute and what am I going to find, Chief? Any wounded? No. Anyone I can question? No.”

“Do you want prisoners to question, Captain? Guards, paperwork, medical facilities and personnel, provisioning, confinement? International incidents?”

Mansouri held up a hand. “You made your point. How many this time?”

“Nine.”

“Nine men drilled right through their coconuts. Am I correct?”

“Only eight, Captain. One was shot in the heart.”

Mansouri’s eyebrows went up. “What is this? Have you added a mad splash of abandon to your terminal artistry?”

“It was just the way things worked out. Fellow stood up. Fortunate for him.”

“Fortunate? I must hear this one, Chief. Tell me about this dead man’s lucky streak.”

“The original position he took didn’t give me much of a shot—just the right rear quadrant of his head.” Gordon gestured with his hand tapping the right rear of his own head. “The hit would have been disabling, for sure, but knocking off a corner of his head along with a bit of brain tissue with a shattertip would have been quite painful for the fellow before I could finish off his companions, reload, and get back to him. Eight or nine seconds can be a hellishly long time when you’re dribbling brains—”

“Please,” protested the captain as he winced and held out his hands, palms facing Gordon. “Please.”

“Sorry, Captain. Thought you wanted to talk shop.”

Mansouri waved a disgusted hand at him. “Let’s get on with the report,” he continued in Arabic as he pressed the record key on his belt recorder and punched the auto time and date marker. “Gordon Redcliff, Dr. Hussein’s personal bodyguard. When did you first see those who were preparing to attack the expedition?”

“Five days ago following the convoy from Site Safar,” Gordon answered, also in Arabic.

“And you said nothing to me?”

“They hadn’t done anything, Captain. It could have been tourists heading down to Wadi Hamra.”

Mansouri raised a skeptical eyebrow. “When did you know they weren’t tourists?”

“I knew for certain last night. I watched a truck leave them off down in the wadi then go back the way it came. They were using night vision instrumentation.”

“You were here waiting for them?”

“Yes.”

“So, how did you know they’d try an ambush here?”

Gordon thought a moment. “Arguably it’s the best spot on the route. They needed a choke point where they could stop the convoy and attack, no one able to get away. In my opinion this is the best place on the route. They apparently agreed.”

Mansouri held up a hand and pointed around. “From where were you firing?”

Gordon raised an arm and pointed down to the ledge beneath which the scorpion was now most likely feasting upon its beetle.

“The attackers. Where are they?”

Gordon pointed down into the wadi. “Down by the narrows.”

“Narrows? What narrows?” Mansouri squinted and shielded his eyes from the rising sun, most of the wadi still in shadows.

“Captain, do you see the second butte coming down to the road on the left?”

“Ah ... I see it.”

“There, down at the bottom.”

“That far?” Captain Mansouri squinted, frowned, took a range-finding monocular from his belt, held it to his left eye, and looked through it. “There they are.” He muttered a curse and said, “According to this, that’s over one and a half kilometers from here.”

“That’s what I made it,” Gordon agreed.

“And, for the record, you said nine of them.”

“Yes.”

“All dead?” The captain raised one eyebrow and looked at Gordon who didn’t answer. “Silly question,” remarked the captain. “What about the truck that brought them? Should we expect it to return?”

“Probably not. They were wired. The party with the truck would have a clear-code they’d need to receive before returning. The truck is probably tucked away in another wadi. When they don’t get the clear-sign by a certain time, they’ll probably dump anything incriminating and take off. Perhaps you can locate them through satellite.”

“Humph! By the time I could get clearance and access, that truck driver and his friends will be across the border making love to their camels.” He looked through his monocular again, his lips moving. “I count seven.”

“Look just above the bend on the slope,” said Gordon, “behind that reddish outcrop.”

“And two make nine.” Mansouri lowered the monocular, lifted his hat by the front of its crown, wiped nonexistent perspiration from his forehead with the back of his right forearm, and replaced the hat. Depositing the monocular in its holster, he took his handset from his belt and called in the preliminary action report to his Egyptian headquarters at Mut and to his Libyan headquarters at Al Kufrah. A chopper would be coming in from Mut to haul off the deceased. Once Mansouri was finished, he turned off the recorder and said, “I’d best have a look.” He glanced at the sky, a single hand held out. “May Allah let them be Egyptian.”

“Have something against your own countrymen, Captain?” asked Gordon.

Mansouri snorted out a laugh. “If they are Libyan, it will take weeks to sort through the red tape. If they are bloody Iranian, Palestinian, or Saudi my grandchildren will have to file the final report.” He cocked his head toward the Land Rover with its driver. “Want to ride down and have a look?”

“I already looked,” said Gordon as he began walking the trail toward camp.

“Were they bandits?” called Captain Mansouri to his back. “Or was it tribal, political, or religious?”

“Probably,” Gordon called over his shoulder.

Early that afternoon, after an uneventful run from Gilf Kebir, Dr. Hussein’s expedition pulled into Site Safar deep in the sand sea north of the Kebira Crater and three hundred meters lower in elevation. After packing a few things, Dr. Hussein and his wife bid good-bye to Gordon and to a few colleagues, climbed on a waiting helicopter, and flew east. Afterward, Gordon secured his weapons in the ordinance truck, his leather pack and other gear in his own tent, and headed toward site headquarters.

As he passed the red sandstone escarpment that served as the site’s visual centerpiece, the unusual color of it reminded him of cliffs in the Jemez Mountains, a lifetime and another world away. He watched them digging at the base of the escarpment for a moment, thinking of the pueblo and Iron Eyes. The old man had spent his life within two hundred kilometers of Jemez Pueblo, yet he had carried the wisdom of the universe. If there had been more time. If he had opened himself to the old man sooner. If Nascha hadn’t been so crazy-sick. If: a Bilagana head-game word.

Men laughing interrupted Gordon’s thoughts. A few of the diggers were taking a break with tea and conversation. When Gordon had been on site and not needed he would sometimes join the midday majlis as the workmen gathered to eat lunch and offer their biting critiques of the archeological effort.

“Salaam ‘aleikum, he would say to them all and they would stand and wish him ‘aleikum asslaam. Once the new faces were introduced and everyone settled, conversation would turn to the wondrous things they had seen at the dig that day. Stone-faced, they would sip their tea and talk gravely of fantastically important finds. “Pieces of pottery and glassware in great abundance,” they would say, citing important period names such as Bakelite, Marmite, and Smuckers, rivaling even the great Corning find of the previous week. “Fine jelly glass, chicken bones, and Coca-Cola bottles—the ancient glass ones!” And they would all ooh and aah at the wonder of it all—then laugh.

Said one, “It was obviously an ancient nest of the rare hundred-winged buffalo chickens of the Kentucky period.”

Added another, “They look as though they had been attacked by a tribe of the equally rare hundred-legged extra crispies.” More laughter, and they would spin archeological send-ups about the Paleo-chicken-cola Culture and the fine museum they would build one day in Cairo to house their valuable finds.

The big discovery one day was a worn-out tire from a WWII German truck. One of Rommel’s Afrika Korps Fritzies had really taken a wrong turn back in WWII. The big fear had been that they would also find Fritz, which would have shut down operations and cost the expedition more precious time and resources to repatriate the deceased veteran’s remains. Fortunately the Afrika Korps driver managed to change his flat, drive off, and die elsewhere.

Hundreds of meters to go, though, before they got down to the important layer. Said one, “The sands will take this hole and refill it before the consortium finds enough money to empty all of it.” Meanwhile, it was a gig. “Smoke, drink coffee and tea, move the desert from here to there, send some money home, and no one is shooting at you,” said one fellow, who immediately grinned toothlessly at Gordon. “Forgive me,” he said, “no one is shooting at me.” More laughter.

Purposes and dreams, thought Gordon. Getting through the day alive is a noble purpose—putting bread on the table. In his own mind he had a curiosity to see what happens next. Gordon nodded once thinking again of Hosteen Ahiga. Perhaps if he had gotten more time with the old man Gordon’s purpose might have been more noble.

If this. If that. As another teacher, Sergeant Grubbs at Fort Benning, had said, “If a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his ass every time he jumped.”

Bilagana wisdom.

Someone at the dig recognized him and waved him to join them. Gordon paused only to wave back. He turned and looked toward the processing shelter. An aged Egyptian in western clothes was pacing back and forth nervously in front of the large reflective environmental shelter, the fabric blinding beneath the unrelenting sun. As Gordon approached, the man stopped and with only the briefest nod of his head, waved him beneath the cover of the shelter.

“Thank you for coming so promptly, Mr. Redcliff. Dr. Hussein said you are comfortable in Arabic.”

“Yes,” answered Gordon. There was a hardboard floor beneath his feet, gritty with sand. It was a few degrees cooler beneath the shelter, which meant that it was almost hotter than Hell.

“Excellent. I am Dr. Taleghani.” The man walked to the desk in the tent being used for the dig’s headquarters. The desk was heaped with files, loose papers, and odd bits of pottery and bone. The archeologist began sorting through the mess, obviously searching for something. Taleghani was as dried and supple as an old bowstring. As did most Egyptian academics, he favored western dress in the field, from hikers and jeans to a white cotton shirt, blue denim vest, and bleached straw hat.

Gordon slowly looked around the shelter’s interior, noting the lights illuminating the worktables to his right. The sides of the shelter were rolled up to allow the furnace-hot air from Egypt’s Western Desert to drift languidly beneath one side of the enclosure and out another. A dozen or more archeology students—mostly Europeans in various states of dress among a forest of water bottles—were at the tables, cleaning, sorting, and studying the detritus gleaned from the dig’s upper scrapings. They appeared to notice neither heat nor anyone else’s presence. Some brushed, some picked, some probed, some sketched, and some tapped furiously upon keyboards. There was a very old, very worn-out truck tire leaning up against one of the tent poles. Someone had scribbled some English on it in yellow chalk: Eat out your heart, Heinrich Schliemann!

“What a muddle,” said the archeologist. “My assistant pinched a nerve in his back and is in terrible pain,” he explained. “Everything is a mess.”

Gordon glanced past the busy worktables to the base of the escarpment where the small legion of diggers and sorters toiled still beneath the unrelenting hammer of the sun, gathering up existence’s litter a layer at a time. Over Taleghani’s left shoulder, however, was something new. Just over a kilometer southwest of the escarpment there was what appeared to be a timespanner and next to it three large generators mounted on truck beds. The generators were quiet, the site’s modest power requirements being handled by a small portable generator near the cook tent.

The timespanner looked like a large turquoise blue can stuck in a cylindrical black metal spiderweb. As only a former military sniper could, Gordon admired patience. The T-span being there, though, was evidence of something other than patience. Someone didn’t want to wait years for his peek at the past. He looked to the man who had asked Dr. Hussein for his services. Dr. Ibrahim Taleghani was searching a second time through the same stack of files.

Not a patient man. Curious trait for an archeologist. Gordon shifted his gaze to the timespanner. He had been a young boy when the excited announcements came of the first successful experiments at spanning time. Time travel: someone had actually done it. The excitement and wonder, though, had been immediately swallowed by the overwhelming tide of scientific, political, environmental, and especially religious hysteria against this form of transportation and investigation.

What if this? What if that? Was man really meant to? Was this really what God had in mind? What kind of pollution were we spreading by these edges into other dimensions? What might we be bringing back? Timespanning became every nation’s favorite political football, every religion’s evidence of the existence of faithlessness, every criminal’s nightmare, and almost every scientist’s harbinger of the end of life as we know it. To young Gordon, timespanning became like space travel and genetics: rich dreams, exciting possibilities, and grand promise buried beneath oppressive restrictions, narrow-minded regulations, and prohibitive costs. Timespanning was wrung dry of anything resembling adventure or even useful results.

“What Christ meant here was that to be not a Christian was to be denied Heaven.”

“Oh yeah? Well, let’s ask him.”

“Oh, no, no, no.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, no, no, NO.”

But what about these issues tearing humanity to pieces? Who’s right? Who’s holy? Who really was chosen? What did God really say to Abraham? What were the Ten Commandments before they were edited, or did Moses just make them up? Did that bush really burn? As the weight of his own body pulled the spikes through his wrists, what exactly did that carpenter say to God before he died, and who was he talking to if he, indeed, was himself God? Was he even there?

“Let’s go find him and ask.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no.”

Well, what about the uncountable versions of the Prophet’s revelations collected by Zayd? What were those truly revealed by Muhammad? What did he really mean by them?

“Why not go and ask the guy?”

“Forget it.”

Can printed texts, interpretations, temples, and rituals stand up to a real-time examination? Would our actions today be condoned by those whose names we use to justify them?

“Hey, there’s one sure way to find out.”

“Absolutely not. N-O-T.”

Timespanning control was internationalized, priorities rearranged. Licensing was taken over by a commission controlled by the United Nations, overseen by committees of the world’s religious, environmental, and scientific communities, and relegated to a highly restricted long-distance sightseeing enterprise. Countless forbidden areas, in addition to the religious ones. It was still a point of Egyptian national pride, for example, that Cleopatra should resemble an Egyptian and not a Greek, the Ptolemys notwithstanding. Until they could get a stand-in back there, no one was going to do any looking at Queen Cleopatra. Until the real past could be made to conform to the accepted histories and beliefs, investigation would not be allowed.

“Mr. Redcliff?”

Gordon shifted his gaze to Dr. Taleghani. “Doctor.”

“You were looking at the timespanner.”

“I was.”

Dr. Taleghani drummed his fingers on his desktop for a moment, then removed his reading glasses and looked up from Gordon’s file. “When I talked to Dr. Hussein, I wasn’t aware you were an American.”

Gordon returned the statement with a steady gaze.

Taleghani nodded and pursed his lips. “Dr. Hussein says you gave quite a good account of yourself when those bandits attempted to ambush his party coming back from the Kebira Crater. There have been other attacks, as well, I understand.” He fixed his gaze on Gordon. “I can’t imagine what you must feel having to kill that many men.”

“It’s called recoil.”

Taleghani’s eyebrows arched. “Are you just trying to sound cold-blooded?”

“Stating a fact, Doctor.”

“You feel nothing about them?”

“Doctor, empathizing or identifying with someone who is trying to kill someone I am protecting changes nothing except my reaction time.”

“Still, they are human beings.”

“Who were prepared to kill Dr. Hussein and his party, including myself.” He shrugged and held out a hand. “Doctor, I accept that everyone had a mom, once laughed at Mickey Mouse cartoons, had pimples, needs love, toyed with religion, and wants a better life. Everyone also has choices.”

“And if the choice is between killing you or seeing a child go hungry?” demanded the archeologist.

Gordon lowered his hand. “It’s still a choice.”

After a pause, Taleghani said, “Dr. Hussein recommends you very highly.”

“A live client on his way home to retirement is a bodyguard’s best reference.”

The archeologist glanced down at a record form, and back up at Gordon. “You fought in Iran—for the American Allies.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Orders.” Gordon smiled. “I’m an American. I was in the United States Army. The Army was ordered in to support the Septemberist Student Movement.”

“You were a sniper.”

“I also peeled potatoes, cleaned grease traps, and picked up cigarette butts.”

“The point is, you killed Arabs during your tour of duty.”

“Persians, too, Doctor.”

Taleghani frowned. “Did you kill many?”

“Not as many as the Iranians and the Arabs killed,” responded Gordon. “Forgive me for being blunt, Doctor, but does this conversation have a point?”

Despite the archeologist’s dark complexion, a touch of redness came to his cheeks. “I thought you should know, Mr. Redcliff, I fought on the other side in that war. I opposed American intervention in Iran’s—”

“I don’t care,” Gordon interrupted. “That war is done. As I understand it, Doctor, the job you want me for is to keep you safe on an expedition. If you also want to argue past American foreign policy you’ll need to take on extra help. It is not an interest of mine.”

The archeologist appeared to be having a debate with himself. Gordon waited with no discernable expression of emotion until the man’s internal conversation came to an end. At last Dr. Taleghani said, “Your Arabic is excellent.”

“So is yours.”

Taleghani’s eyebrows went up. “Your manners are atrocious!”

Gordon cracked a brief smile. “I am, after all, an American.”

The archeologist laughed against a desire to remain very severe, which made the laugh louder. “Very well, Mr. Redcliff,” he said as he got his laughter under control. “Very well, tell me this: How long did it take you to learn Arabic?”

“Why?”

“Indulge me, please.”

Gordon shrugged and thought. “Once I got to Kuwait and among people speaking the language, one or two days to get around on my own. In two weeks I was working with Iraqi regulars without an interpreter and without getting any unintentional giggles. I eventually bought a grammar and speller and taught myself to read and write the language.”

“You also worked with the Septemberists, training their snipers. You must speak Farsi.”

“Yes, and Spanish, German, French, English, eleven Native American languages, and all four dialects spoken by your excavation crew at the site. I can get around in Japanese and Mandarin, but I’m not fluent.”

“It is curious the American army didn’t make you a translator or put you in intelligence.”

“It was tried, Doctor.” He thought a moment then shrugged. It had been difficult enough getting the US Army to understand that an eighteen-year-old warrior needed to do war, and that war to a mind that young and angry had nothing to do with talking, listening, or interpreting.

“Are there any religious sensitivities of which I should be aware?” asked the archeologist.

“I believe in whatever the fellow holding the gun on me believes.”

Taleghani’s eyebrows arched. “Rather cynical of you, isn’t it?”

“Doctor, in a world where worshiping the same god by the same name but wearing the wrong hat gets people killed every hour, it’s simply a matter of survival.”

“And if no one has a gun on you?” pressed Taleghani.

“Then that’s my business. It requires no special icons, equipment, times, foods, clothing, prohibitions, or holidays.”

Taleghani pursed his lips and looked expectantly at Gordon. “Very well. What would you need from me?”

“The biggest mistake, Doctor, is keeping me in the dark. Make sure I know what’s going on with as much detail and warning as possible. Don’t play tricks on me. Fooling me is no great accomplishment and it can get you killed. If you want to leave your protection behind, just tell me and I’ll leave you a body bag and start sending around my résumé. Don’t give me any stupid orders, and don’t do anything stupid yourself. If you can manage that, I might be able to keep your party alive.”

“God willing,” gently admonished the archeologist with a smile.

Gordon smiled back. “Doctor, if you find Allah is working for your enemies, this is something you need to warn me about in advance.” He held his head back. “Isn’t it time you told me about the expedition?”

“Frankly, Mr. Redcliff, I’m still making up my mind if I can trust you.”

“I can help. If you’re looking for a buddy, a cheering section, or a fellow believer in the sanctity or greater glory of whatever, I will be a big disappointment. If you want to walk through Hell and have a good chance of coming out the other side with nothing worse than a singed mustache, you may find me useful.”

The archeologist glanced down at his papers and said, “I once took an oath to kill every American in the world.”

“By yourself?”

“No.” The archeologist laughed and shook his head. “No, of course not. It was as part of an imaginary pan-Islamic effort to cure the world of its sins. I was fourteen.”

Gordon grinned. “Then we’re even, Doctor. When his father was arrested for drunk driving in Santa Fe, Bobby Two Crows and I swore to kill every white man in the world.”

“I’m hardly white.”

“You’re white as snow to two ten-year-olds in the pueblo who used the blame, fear, and hate they lived in every day to define the universe.” For a moment Gordon remembered when they came to take Bobby away to El Rito for torching a liquor store in Bernalillo. By the time Bobby got out of El Rito, Gordon was in the Army. By the time Gordon got out of the Army, Bobby Two Crows had been dead seven years from a drug overdose.

Gordon raised his gaze and looked at Dr. Taleghani. The archeologist returned Gordon’s gaze for a moment, then nodded. Gordon raised an eyebrow, cocked his head toward the T-span, and the archeologist nodded a second time and commanded those at the work tables, “Get back to work. And let this be a lesson to all of you.” Dr. Taleghani weathered the confused looks as he led the way from the tent. As they left, Gordon could hear someone tuning in a Tel-Aviv station playing Shantel golden oldies.

They sat alone on the sand in the shadow cast by the timespanner gantry eating box lunches provided by the cook tent. Gordon’s meal appeared to be couscous flavored with raisins, nuts, and dates stuffed into pita bread along with shaved lettuce, olives, and a side of green horseradish. This was accompanied by a can of cold tea. From their places they watched the excavation workers haul baskets of dirt and debris up from the base of the escarpment to the fine sorting screens, the immediately visible artifacts having already been recorded and recovered in place. Dr. Taleghani swallowed a mouthful of his sandwich, chewed impatiently, and washed it down with tea.

“The old Landsat Thematic Mapper images gave us the original hints regarding paleorivers under the sand sea in Western Egypt. Have you heard of the Accelerated High Definition Imager satellite? AHDI?” He pronounced it “oddie.”

“Yes. The Army uses it for military geology.”

“Well, AHDI shows that red escarpment over there is the top of a four hundred meter cliff. At its base, far below this cursed sand, was a navigable river that flowed through grassy savannahs and forests of oak, birch, and cedar. It joined another river that went across all of North Africa and eventually drained into the Atlantic. In those times the higher elevations southwest of here had hundreds of active glaciers. There was a short growing season in the lowlands and in winter the rivers would freeze.”

Although no one was near them, Dr. Taleghani lowered his voice to a confidential level. “The AHDI satellite imager showed, along the banks of this river, at the foot of that cliff, evidence of a human settlement—an actual village!” The archeologist’s eyes seemed to light up. “Carbon dating from deep drilling samples shows they were cooking fish and yams in this village approximately one hundred and forty thousand years ago.” He smiled and glanced down. “I’m rather excited by this.”

“I guessed.”

“We’ve never found evidence of settled community life dating this far back. A few bones and stone tools, cave paintings, nothing going back more than sixty thousand years, and those only rather wild suppositions based on dubious evidence. Nothing at all in the Western Desert save the rock art in the Gilf Kebir caves. The provable settlements we have found—barely qualifying as being Paleolithic—show small groupings of fifty or fewer persons, the settlements being little more than shelters of convenience like caves or nomadic hunting camps.” He pointed toward the escarpment. “At the base of that cliff, along the river, and in the near hills we’ve found more than three hundred stone foundations for dwellings.” He stared at Gordon, his eyebrows arched. “Three hundred.”

“Yes,” said Gordon.

“That doesn’t even consider shelters without foundations. Nomadic tribes probably used such a place during summers as a trading center. That would easily treble the fixed population numbers. In Paleolithic terms, my boy, this is bloody London!” He sighed and shrugged, his head moving from side to side in a show of reluctant tolerance. “Of course, there are skeptics who say that the house foundations, ditches, paths and such we’ve detected are simply natural geological formations and flood debris that took shapes familiar enough to modern eyes to be mistakenly interpreted.”

“Another ancient face on Mars,” offered Gordon.

“Exactly. The rock circles I’ve interpreted as foundations are very regular, and I must admit one large circle with three concentric rock circles within it has me a bit puzzled. Very large. Perhaps it was a theater. Regardless, because this little corner of the past was completely wiped out in a catastrophic meteor impact and subsequent mudflow, we can now pin down with a fair degree of accuracy—”

“The second Kebira meteor impact,” interrupted Gordon. “The one that ate the mountain.”

The archeologist nodded. “The first impact was probably thirty million years or more ago. It must have been a devastatingly spectacular occurrence. Dr. Hussein theorizes that it was a close airburst of an asteroid large enough and hot enough to create all that desert glass that’s so common south of here. It also opened a fissure through to the mantle, allowing the formation of a relatively short-lived volcano of perhaps as much as three thousand meters in elevation above the Gilf Kebir plateau and as much as thirty kilometers across at its base.”

“With the second impact, Doctor, what size of a disaster are you talking about?”

“Think of perhaps two hundred Mount Saint Helenses going off at once. It may even have been responsible for ending that period of glaciation.”

“It’s the second impact you think you have pinned down as to when.”

“Within a few hundred years. We’ll be able to narrow that down to minutes.”

Gordon cocked his head toward the timespanner. “With that.”

“Yes. I’ve gotten permission to take a timespanner back for a look at the village at an as yet undetermined point before the impact takes place. On the way there we’ll fix the time of the impact. Dr. Hussein’s computer model shows the village and the entire river valley hit by intense radiant energy immediately after the meteor impact. The shockwave within minutes. If it’s in winter, the local snow pack would already be melting by the time the mudflow and debris from the uplands arrived at the village. The streams and rivers would already be full.”

“Instant devastating flood.”

“Yes.” Dr. Taleghani waved a hand in a gentle arc of dismissal. “The important thing for us is to get in before the impact, have enough time to observe, and then get out again with our data.”

“That’s how you got permission,” said Gordon. “The flood.”

“Yes. The theory is that any possible influence such an intrusion might risk will be canceled out by the devastation before it can introduce any effective changes that would be projected to the present. That is, if we can find insertion windows within the desirable time frame. In other words, we don’t have to worry if the wrong grain of sand gets turned if we know it’s going to get buried beneath hundreds of meters of muck until the present.” He glanced at Gordon. “So I am authorized to go back and have a look.”

“Have a look,” Gordon repeated, a slight mocking tone to his voice. He studied the archeologist’s face until the man looked down at his lunch box. Glancing from Taleghani to the escarpment, from the escarpment to the gantry, and from the gantry back to the archeologist, Gordon nodded, picked up a handful of sand, and let it trickle out between his fingers. “I believe I warned you about keeping me in the dark, Doctor. But perhaps you haven’t done that. A bodyguard who is good with languages. Perhaps I am to use your crossword puzzle book to swat camel ticks that manage to sneak into the capsule—”

“Yes, yes, of course I want to leave the capsule, Mr. Redcliff,” the archeologist interrupted with an angry whisper. “If there is an inhabited village on that river bank, I must visit it. I must see the individuals who live there, record them, speak with them, hear what they can tell me.”

“And that is what you don’t have permission for,” pressed Gordon.

The archeologist looked down. “Yes.”

“Does Dr. Hussein know about this?”

Taleghani nodded once. “I’ve been talking about this ever since we got the AHDI images and realized how close this site is to the Kebir Crater. Numair attempted to discourage me, but he is also my friend.”

“He did seem awfully young to retire,” said Gordon. “Getting out of the desert fast to protect his pension?”

“He has a family to support.”

“And you?”

Taleghani shook his head. “No. I have no family.”

“What about the T-span operator?” asked Gordon.

“His name is Mehmet Abdel Hashim—a former student of mine. He’s been in it with me from the beginning. Mehmet wants to touch the past and fortunately he does have family. His father is on the board of the International Temporal Span Authority.”

“Does Mehmet’s father know about the trip you’re planning?”

“Not all the details.” Dr. Taleghani studied Gordon’s face for a moment and asked, “Do you have family?”

Gordon paused, wrestling with an answer that revealed more about himself than he wanted. “No one,” he said at last, his gaze on the tip of the escarpment. There had been an insane mother, a father who stuck around only long enough to make a joke, the wise man who taught him as much as Gordon had been willing to learn, and the spotter during the war who he learned to love as a brother. All dead now. There had been the Dinéback in the pueblo, but he and his mother had never really been welcomed as a part of that.

The archeologist dismissed the subject with a quick wave of his hand. “The departure window all our planning depends on opens here late this evening,” he said. “It was cutting it very close waiting for Dr. Hussein’s findings, and now Harith and his back ... We cannot keep the timespanner waiting for Harith’s back to mend. We must leave tonight.”

“Weapons?”

“Harith has arranged for protection, including some weapons. The matter of defending us is ultimately up to you, though.”

“How big is the expedition?”

“You, me, and the T-span operator, although Mehmet goes back with the unit.”

“Goes back?” Gordon inquired with an arched eyebrow.

“Yes. He drops us off on top of a hill outside the village—right beneath where we are sitting, in fact. Then he returns here to the present and returns for us at the next window.”

“This tale gets better with each telling, Doctor.” Gordon fixed his gaze on the archeologist’s eyes. “How long?”

“That depends on exactly when the meteor hits and what local departure windows are connectable to present time arrival windows. There are several sets of theoretical windows we’ve tentatively incorporated into our planning ranging in time from twenty-one to twenty-five days. We won’t be able to set our times and locations exactly until we get there. No one before has ever timespanned this far back.” He examined Gordon’s face. “Three weeks in prehistory, Mr. Redcliff. Aren’t you excited?”

“Positively giddy.” Gordon frowned as he turned a few considerations over in his mind. “In Iran, Doctor, what did you do in the war?”

Taleghani held out his hands at the seemingly irrelevant question. “Why?”

Gordon smiled. “Indulge me, sir. I’m lashing up a small but carefree band of brothers in preparation for a possible upcoming fracas. If you’ll pardon the expression, I need to pick chiefs and Indians.”

“I was an intelligence officer attached to Egypt’s Third Field Army Headquarters. My principle duties involved interpretation of satellite surveillance imagery.”

“In officer’s training, did they teach you any hand-to-hand combat? Basic infantry skills?”

“No. I didn’t go to officer’s school. I received my commission directly when I was called.”

Gordon’s eyebrows went up.

“Unless they had already gone to officers’ school, few of us called up for staff support positions had time to train. Bloody shock and awe. It was pretty much get my uniform issue, one boot on, one arm in a sleeve, and report for duty. There wasn’t time for any niceties such as combat training. There was a pistol range qualification,” said Dr. Taleghani. He looked away from Gordon’s face. “Are you thinking this expedition itself is one of those stupid things you warned me against doing?”

Gordon held up a finger. “Risky, perhaps. Going without any weapons and with flowers in our hair, that would be stupid. Your pistol qualification, Doctor: how did you do?”

“I was afraid you were going to ask.” Taleghani looked down at his lap. “My pistol instructor told me to keep an electric shaver in my holster and not to charge the batteries except under expert supervision.”

“You’re not joking.”

The archeologist looked up at Gordon. “I was an officer—a major. No matter how abominable I was with a pistol, that was quite disrespectful for a sergeant, I thought.” He shook his head apologetically. “He was quite justified in his assessment, however. I am afraid I’m a scientist, not a warrior, Mr. Redcliff. Do you still want to be my bodyguard?”

“I’ve already taken on the job, Doctor, although you do seem to stack the challenges rather precariously. Can you run?”

“Run?”

“Are your legs in good shape? You look healthy. Running may be our best defense.”

“Well, sir, I run two miles every morning,” the archeologist said proudly. “Even in the sand. When I was nineteen I earned a position on my country’s team in the Orlando Olympics.”

“When you were nineteen.”

Dr. Taleghani frowned. “I received a bronze in the eight-hundred-meter event. How did you do?”

“When the Olympics were held in Orlando, I got suspended from summer school for punching Tommy Wilson in the nose.” Gordon smiled wryly. “I was nine years old. Tell me, what changed from when you were fourteen and swearing to kill Americans and when you were nineteen and running in Orlando?”

“I discovered Egyptology.” Dr. Taleghani grinned. “Egyptian universities have the best field trips and museums in the world, but no one goes after Egyptology like American academics—and I will never admit I ever said this,” he added. “While I was studying in the US, I also tried out for Egypt’s track-and-field team. Wonderful years.”

“Doctor, have you given any thought to what you’re going to face once we return to Site Safar?”

“When we return?”

Gordon nodded. “I don’t care what kind of song and dance your operator Mehmet has memorized to lay on the media and the powers that be, and I don’t care who his father is. As soon as Mehmet comes back with that T-span can empty, everybody from the T-span czar and the secretary general of the UN to those antiquities caliphs in Cairo, not to mention a few governments around the world, and every priest, monk, rabbi, mullah, shaman, and witch doctor are going into vapor lock. I expect us to be met by something resembling a firing squad.”

“Do you want out?” asked the archeologist.

“I can always plead I was following orders, Doctor. But if they come at you with the police or the army, I can’t do anything about that. Can you have the arrival take place somewhere else? Somewhere unannounced?”

“A slight problem with that.” The archeologist gave Gordon a wan smile. “The nearest alternate window is just outside Tripoli nine days ago.”

Gordon smiled. “I doubt you could move that quickly even when you were nineteen, Doctor. When’s the next window here?”

“Four hours after we leave there’s a return window within meters of where we are right now. That’s one of the advantages to doing this on site. Mehmet will bring the vehicle back through that window while we’re investigating the village. The next window here is thirty-one days later, local time.”

“After that?” asked Gordon.

“Here at the site a window will open approximately eight months from now, but I’m fairly certain the departure window for it won’t open until after it’s probably a hundred meters beneath that debris flood. Other locations are inaccessible for one reason or another.”

“For instance.”

“Well, countless windows are available in space. Unfortunately we do not have that kind of recovery system, not to mention transportation. Eighteen minutes before the window is available here at the site there is one available quite near the bottom of the Marianas Trench southwest of Guam.”

“And we don’t have earplugs,” Gordon commented.

“Among other things,” confirmed Taleghani. “A day after that a surface window opens in Gaza near the remains of the football stadium, and it’s likely neither one of us would survive that.”

“You were on the same side in the war. You are Muslim, aren’t you?”

“As you phrased it, Mr. Redcliff, I am but I wear the wrong hat.” The archeologist raised a hand and patted Gordon’s shoulder. “We will be fine once we return here to the site. I hope to extinguish everyone’s indignation with a bit of wonder—call it showmanship. Tell me—may I call you Gordon?”

“You’re writing the checks.”

“Gordon, are you familiar with a historical figure named Squanto? He was an American aborigine who was kidnapped in 1605 by one George Weymouth, brought to England, and shown to—”

“I know who Squanto was.”

“Good. I plan to return to our time with one of those villagers, Gordon. We’re going to bring back our own Squanto. I’d like your thoughts on that.”

In English Gordon answered, “Holy crap.”

Gordon found the supplies had been well thought out. The archeologist’s youthful anthropology, language, and martial arts assistant, Harith Fayadh, had included Ka-Bar fighting knives, a Detz .44 magnum bolt-action hunting rifle with optical telescopic sight, an old-fashioned but very reliable S&W .38 Special revolver, and a very modern Fedders M2 shockcomb. Gordon decided to keep the Detz rather than use his own rifle. The Detz was a simple, rugged, reliable weapon. Gordon’s Stryker was quicker and deadlier but relied upon sophisticated electronics. If something went wrong, the Stryker would be so much dead weight. The Detz could be repaired with just about anything from a penknife to a coin. The optical sights were rugged and removable.

Harith had thrown out his back at the dig, the pinched nerve in his spine causing terribly painful spasms. A blessing in disguise, as Dr. Taleghani informed his cot-ridden assistant when they visited him in the tent he shared with three archeology students who were at the sorting tables. “You have all the information regarding the expedition, my boy. If something should happen to us while we’re back there, we will be depending upon you to get us safely home.”

Harith nodded once brusquely, glared at Gordon, then fixed his gaze on a tent pole holding his corner of the shelter above the sand. “Please stop this juvenile sulking, Harith,” requested Dr. Taleghani as he sat on the edge of the young man’s cot. “It’s quite tiresome.” He patted Harith’s shoulder. “Now, tell me what is troubling you so, my boy.”

“An American sniper,” he hissed, glancing at Gordon. “His only skill is murder.”

Dr. Taleghani burst out with a laugh. “What nonsense is this? Gordon is a bodyguard, and he is very good at what he does. He is also quite gifted in learning languages, which is my principal reason for finding him valuable.”

“I have black belts in karate and tae kwon do. What belt do you have?” Harith asked.

Gordon pointed to the hand-tooled leather belt with silver buckle depicting a winking Coyote in his belt loops. “A black Hosteen Ahiga.”

Harith rolled his eyes. “Really. Eight ninety-five at your Wal-mart?”

Gordon glanced at Dr. Taleghani. “I see I have been misinformed about Egyptian manners.”

“There is no need to have manners with a murderer,” retorted the young man. “Doctor, this man is evil. I saw his record. He murdered for the Septemberist gangsters and spawned more murderers like himself.”

With an ill-concealed expression of astonishment, Taleghani leaned back and looked at Gordon. “I apologize. I’m afraid I’ve not been aware of my assistant’s depth of feeling about the war.”

“He’s a little young to have been in it,” observed Gordon.

“My father wasn’t,” countered Harith. “Perhaps you are the one who killed him.”

“Perhaps,” acknowledged Gordon. He studied the young man for a moment then walked until he was standing on the opposite side of Harith’s cot. “Where was your father killed? And when? Were you told?”

“Tabriz. The last year of the war.”

Gordon shook his head. “That’s one death I’m not responsible for, Mr. Fayadh. My unit never made it north of Malayer and I spent the last year of the war in a hospital.”

“And I am to believe you, of course,” Harith said sarcastically.

Gordon shrugged. “I would lie if there was a point. There is no point.”

Harith closed his eyes, the muscles in his jaws flexing. “Do not tell me the war is over.”

Gordon grinned as the memory of an Iranian captain he once met touched his mind’s eye. “No war is ever over, Mr. Fayadh,” he answered. After a pause he squatted, looked into the pale young man’s dark eyes, and said, “When I was a boy, much younger than you, every morning in the dark before sunrise my mother would take me to the top of Bear Rock. There she would stand, cursing the gods she imagined, beating a medicine stick against the rock, demanding the sun to appear. She called the sun Glittering Man. Some believed her to be a witch, but her only goal was to bring light to the world and end evil.”

Gordon thought back to the schoolhouse and the boys and girls taunting him about his mother, the witch. He had fought back, eventually. First it was with fists. Eventually he told them he was studying to become a witch himself, and that his studies would require him to kill someone, preferably a child. In middle school he once cut off a bit of his own hair and taped it to a filing card with the name, address, relations, and habits of Lee Waters, an eighth-grader and the ringleader of the school’s bullies. He allowed the card to be “lost” in the hallway between classes, and it eventually found its way to Lee Waters.

“What is this?” demanded Lee during the next class break, his hate-filled eyes dark and small in the boy’s angry face.

Gordon turned from putting his books in his locker and glanced at the card. “That’s for making medicine—you know, spells and curses. I have cards like that for everyone in school.” He had gone on to describe evil-wishing magic and how he needed hair, fingernails, blood, or such from a person to bury with corpse flesh to pray them down into the dirt. Lee took the card and put it deep within his own pocket. Gordon smiled. “That’s all right. I have more.” The bullying ended, but the terrible isolation continued.

“My mother called her gods Glittering Man and Blood Woman,” he said to Harith Fayadh. “I would help my mother raise Glittering Man from the night with my own curses. As the edge of the disk cut the horizon, my mother Nascha would sing her chant demanding the gods to bring down pain, death, horrible sickness, confusion, and all the punishments on the evil ones in the world. Just in case the spirits were forgetful, she would recite for them all of those evils. Mrs. Potts, the lady we bought eggs from, was evil.”

“An egg lady? Why was she evil?” asked Harith.

Gordon pointed with his forefinger at the side of his head. “Mrs. Potts was wall-eyed. She never had it corrected and always favored looking at the world through her left eye. My mother believed that was the egg lady’s evil eye.”

“What nonsense,” said the youth with unconcealed contempt.

Gordon pointed at Harith. “You are also one of the evil ones my mother begged the gods to kill.”

“Barbarian rubbish,” protested Harith. “I am not evil. And how would she know me?”

“You are Arab Bilagana, the child of Arabs. To my mother, that made you evil.”

“She believed Arabs to be evil because they’re Arabs? Deluded woman.”

“Look at it through her eyes. Arabs caught Africans and sold them to British and American slavers. The freed descendents of those slaves joined the US Army and became cavalry soldiers on the western frontier. The Anglo Bilagana and the Zhini buffalo soldiers fought against my mother’s relatives’ ancestors.” Gordon grinned. “So those Arabs and all of their sons, daughters, and countrymen until the end of time, according to my mother, are evil and should be exterminated.”

“And this is how you believe?” asked Harith, his expression testimony to the ridiculousness of the proposition.

“No,” Gordon answered. He took a deep breath and let it escape from his lungs slowly, as he looked out from beneath the rolled-up edge of the small tent to the endless dunes of the sand sea. “I do not believe in evil.”

“What an astonishing thing to say. You don’t believe in evil? In this world? Have you spent your life with your head beneath a rock?”

Dr. Taleghani began to rebuke his assistant, but Gordon stopped him with a look and a slow shake of his head. He faced Harith. “I used to hate evil when I was a child living with my mother, Mr. Fayadh. I now consider such a belief a childish superstition.”

“Why should you not fly in the teeth of thousands of years of God’s words?” said the young anthropologist. “Hear me, Allah. Gordon Redcliff doesn’t believe in evil. Your work is done.” Harith laughed at his own joke until his spine bit a little more deeply into an inflamed nerve. When he was finished wincing he said, “So, if you don’t believe in evil, Mr. Redcliff, in what do you believe?”

Gordon closed his eyes then reopened them a moment later. “I believe in ignorance, stupidity, laziness, fear, greed, cruelty, insanity, cowardice, corruption, indifference, and disease. I don’t believe you and your descendents should be exterminated unless and until they raise a hand against me or those I want to protect.” He looked back at the boy and there was a smirk on Harith’s face.

“If I might borrow a good old Yankee American expression,” Harith said in English, “so what?”

Gordon nodded and continued in English. “I’ll tell you what, kid. It is advice I got from a very wise man many years ago. He said it doesn’t matter what kind of family, racial, tribal, national, political, or religious bullshit your head is filled with or how long it’s been there, you can still pick your own path.”

“And now my faith is insane? What I believe is bullshit?” Harith spat back, wincing as his passion plucked the strings of his abused spine.

“I didn’t say that. I’ve read the Quran, however, and nowhere in it does it say that Americans are evil.”

“When it was written, there were no Americans.”

Gordon grinned widely, held up a finger, and wagged it back and forth. “Not according to my mother.”

A tiny smile fought its way through Harith’s self-imposed outrage, then he nodded. “Very well. I will give your mother that one.”

Dr. Taleghani said to his assistant, “Harith, enemies are not enemies forever unless you choose to make them so.”

Harith glanced at Gordon. “Tell me, Mr. Redcliff, do you really want to go on this expedition?”

“Very much.” Gordon faced Dr. Taleghani. “It sounds much more interesting than sifting sand or drilling holes in rocks with Dr. Hussein.” He looked back at Harith. “Your boss is quite an adventurer.”

“Possibly I’m a bit jealous of you.”

“Possibly,” agreed Gordon with a grin. “I imagine we’ll bring back a wealth of images and information for you, though.” He glanced at Taleghani and the archeologist nodded back. “And something else, as well.”

Harith glanced around to make certain no one had overheard the American. Satisfied they were the only ones within earshot, he lowered his head back to his pillow and said, “Take care of our adventurer, then, Mr. Redcliff. I truly envy you what you will find.” Harith frowned as he stared at nothing for a moment then focused on Gordon’s face. “You do not believe in evil. Do you not, then, believe in good?”

“Opposing moral forces stalking me, urging me on and off some other-imposed path of righteousness like the old Goofy cartoon?” asked Gordon.

“Goofy? I do not understand.”

“A Disney character, a cartoon dog. In this old cartoon I saw as a child, Goofy constantly has a good little Goofy on one shoulder and a bad little Goofy on the other. One Goofy is dressed like an angel, the other dressed like Satan, each little Goofy counseling big Goofy to do things good or bad according to their respective agendas. No, I don’t believe in that.”

“You reduce human morality to a Goofy cartoon?”

“No. The animators did that. I just happened to find the rendering insightful.”

“Then why are you here? I mean, in the world—in life? What is your mission?”

“Aside from protecting your boss?” Gordon thought for a moment. “Making my way between the bombs, doing what I can do.”

“Toward what end?”

“To find out what happens next.” As soon as he said it, Gordon knew his answer to be facile. There were a few details for Harith and Dr. Taleghani to sort out. While they sorted them, Gordon rested his gaze upon the escarpment, turned the conversation in his thoughts, prodding at the young man’s question.

Mission. Reason for being. What was the mission of Gordon Redcliff’s life?

He had taken on many missions during his life. His longest mission had been to help his mother raise the sun, kill evil, and carry her overwhelmingly insane burden of historical hatred. When she died, although he thought her insanity died with her, he’d lifted the burden to his own shoulders. That lasted, twisting his own life and outlook, until the middle of his first tour in the most recent war and the aftermath of the bloody fall of Esfahan.

In the mountains south of the former Persian capital, Gordon and his new spotter, a twenty-three-year-old kid from Long Island named Phil Andreakos, had been temporarily detailed to keep an eye on a captured IRI army captain. Andreakos and Gordon had a solid business relationship that had racked up an impressive record of kills, but they had never become close. Watching the Iranian captain, however, was a way to structure a bit of time before being sent out on their next mission. A soldier was a soldier to Andreakos, hence he felt obligated to make the IRI captain’s time with them as pleasant as possible. The three of them sat outside the intelligence officer’s headquarters in the shade of a hill. Andreakos and Gordon were both sitting on empty ammo boxes. The captain was in his early thirties, his hair prematurely touched with gray at the temples, his uniform touched with the dust and wear of an infantry officer. He sat on the ground leaning against a weary-looking juniper. After a few minutes Andreakos asked the captain in Farsi if he could get him some water or something to eat.

“Never from the hand of a Greek,” spat back the captain, turning away his head. Andreakos stared back, his mouth slowly opening.

From a Greek? he mouthed to Gordon, a big grin starting on his face. He turned to the Iranian officer. “I can get you tea, some falafel, a bagel, maybe one of the guys has a birthday cake.”

“Are you deaf as well as ignorant? Never! Never from the hand of a Greek!” The captain held out a shaking hand at the surrounding mountains. “Don’t you know where you are? Have you no clue?”

Andreakos couldn’t let it be. He could understand why the Iranian captain might hate Americans, Brits, Iraqis, Israelis, Indians, Turkmen, Pakistanis, Lebanese, or Kurds. But what did he have against Greeks? Greece had even sat out the past four Middle East wars.

“Why, pray tell?” prodded Phil.

“Alexander!” retorted the captain, as though Phil was the most ignorant of peasants, then he spat in the dirt.

Andreakos sat back on his ammo box. “Alexander?” he repeated. “Like, in The Great?”

It was the funniest thing Phil had ever heard. This guy was still pissed off about a war that had happened twenty-four hundred years before either of them or their governments had been born. The captain apparently blamed Phil and all the other Long Island Macedonians for at least part of it: The murder of Darius, the destruction of the Persian Empire’s golden age, the sanctity of Persian purity defiled, defiled, oh merciful Heaven, defiled by the Greeks! The horror! The horror!

Phil couldn’t get over it. He prodded the captain into reciting lists of atrocities committed by Greeks against Persians. The Iranian captain couldn’t see through his hatred and shame long enough to notice that Phil was putting him on and having the time of his life.

Oh, that’s so horrible, Captain. I’m mortified. So ashamed. Please. Tell me more.

It was better than television. The antics of the pair finally crumbled Gordon’s unremitting poker face driving him to laughter. It was either laugh or explode. Before he could allow himself to laugh, though, Gordon had to choose that different path the way Hosteen Ahiga had said. He had to release his mother’s hatred, as well as his own, and let it fall from its own weight. He had to let go of Wounded Knee, The Long Walk, Mrs. Potts’s evil eye, the infected blankets, the murder of Narbona, the governor of New Mexico’s Hawaiian shirts, Fort Defiance, Jay Silverheels, the disappearance of the buffalo, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Squanto, the twenty-four dollars in junk jewelry, the buffalo soldiers, Injun Orange Funny Face Drinks, the sheep killers, the Washington Redskins—crimes and evils real and imagined committed against people he never knew by people who had never existed or were long dead and gone. Then he laughed. He’d never laughed so hard in his life. He laughed so hard he was crying, which angered the IRI captain even more, which made him seem even more ridiculous. The Iranian didn’t know, however, that Gordon was mostly laughing at himself—himself and at the human race. After that Gordon allowed himself to become friends with the Long Island Greek. Brothers.

Wars end only when memory ends. Missions, though, are mercurial, assigned, and ultimately chosen. So what was the mission? What was Gordon Redcliff’s purpose on the planet? Was it even necessary to have a mission beyond getting through the day without compromising oneself or falling for one of the Trickster’s jokes? That seemed to be Hosteen Ahiga’s purpose. Gordon was moving from one desert to the next, one conflict to the next, and for what purpose?

When Dr. Taleghani was ready to leave, Gordon stayed behind and looked down at Harith. “I apologize for my earlier answer to your question about why I am here. I answered as I did because I didn’t have the words. A stupid thing to do. Now I know the answer: to find a mission. That is my mission on this planet, Mr. Fayadh: to find a mission.”

The young man studied Gordon’s face a long time and then nodded at what he read there. “A noble and lonely quest, Mr. Redcliff. May Allah in his wisdom help you find it. I am Harith. May I call you Gordon?”

“Yes.”

“This is an English name, correct? Gordon?”

“Yes,” he answered. “It is English.”

“I’m curious about something. If your mother thought the Arabs evil, whatever must she have thought of the English?”

“Please do not be offended, Harith, but you are still too young to hear what my mother thought of the English,” he answered. Harith laughed.

“Then how came you by the name?”

“My father. That was before he left us and went to live in Los Angeles to become a Hollywood Indian. It was the night I was born. Never met the man until I was eighteen. Before I reported for the Army I went to Los Angeles, looked him up, and asked him why he named me Gordon. He said he got it from an old movie, Flash Gordon.”

“What?” Harith said disbelievingly.

“He said my mother told him that when I was born she would charge me with defeating all evil that exists. Flash Gordon, he said, defeated evil and saved the universe. Then my father laughed at me and went to work. He was playing the role of an Oglala Lakota chief named Red Cloud. That was the only time I ever saw him, except in the movies.” Gordon smiled. “My father was from Bear Enemies People in Santa Clara. Chief Red Cloud spoke his Lakota with a Tewa accent.”

Harith smiled. “Take care of my boss, Gordon Redcliff. He is a very good man of great vision.”

“I will do my best. Take care of your back. In case we don’t make it back according to plan, we are going to need some big help.”

Harith winced as he held out his right hand. Gordon took it. “Good luck, Gordon Redcliff. Allah willing, may you find what you seek.”

Inside the capsule, Dr. Taleghani introduced Gordon to the T-span operator. Mehmet Abdel Hashim had a jutting chin, brilliant white teeth, a flowing black pompadour, and the immature beginnings of a beard and mustache. The young pilot eagerly adjusted instruments mounted into the metal hull and checked calculations while Gordon and Dr. Taleghani, unobserved by others at the camp, loaded and stowed the supplies they’d need for their stay. Once the supplies were loaded, there was little to do but wait. Gordon decided to try qualifying the archeologist on a few weapons. He took his leather knapsack containing the .38, shockcomb, and ammo, slung the Detz, and brought the archeologist out into the dunes to practice on a makeshift target made from pasteboard.

At a range of three hundred meters, Gordon put the eye out of a mouse in a pest control advert he fixed onto the cardboard with a bit of tape. He put two more shots through the same hole and proclaimed Harith’s zeroing of the weapon adequate. Dr. Taleghani wouldn’t even consider touching the rifle. They moved up to ten meters and Gordon reached into the bag for the .38 and a box of ammunition.

They only used up four rounds before Gordon called a halt to the exercise for health reasons. Dr. Taleghani was becoming a nervous wreck as Gordon tried to get him not to shake, not to close his eyes, to look at the target through the iron sights, and slowly squeeze the trigger all at the same time. On the last two shots Taleghani was still shaking but now more violently and also had his face turned away from the target besides having his eyes tightly closed. In addition, the safest place on the desert that day appeared to be right in front of that piece of cardboard. Other than the original zeroing shots, it had suffered not a single perforation. Looking down at the cardboard, Dr. Taleghani said ashamedly, “I will hear no comments about electric shavers!”

“I wasn’t going to say a thing,” said Gordon. “But I think I understand why Harith included a particular weapon in our inventory. It’s called a shockcomb.”

“It sounds a terror.”

“No sound to it, Doctor. Nothing jumps, nothing explodes, no recoil.”

“It sounds promising,” acknowledged the archeologist.

Gordon went to his knapsack, replaced the .38 and the box of shells, and removed what looked like a silver comb with a greenish pistol grip. He held it up toward the archeologist. “This is a shockcomb. A hearing-sensitive, brain-damaged, spastic neurotic with advanced glaucoma and a migraine could fire expertly using this thing.”

“Despite the unfortunate characterization, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the doctor, taking it from Gordon’s hand. “It’s incredibly light.”

“The same technology that produced the T-span makes the shockcomb possible. There’s no real metal to it. Last I heard, it’s classified. If I really was in US Intelligence, I’d be real curious where Harith obtained this.”

“The boy is quite resourceful. What does it do?”

“I only did a familiarization course with one of these. Technically it shuffles or compresses selected time-space, briefly allowing whoever operates it to move, change things, or escape unobserved. In brief: aim, pull the trigger, and run like hell. To the observer, you look like you vanished when what you’ve actually done is slow the observer down. In another mode you actually do vanish. We only have one of these.”

“What will you use?”

“I’ll take the .38 and the rifle. Back to your weapon, Doctor. Besides minor space-time puckers, at extreme settings a shockcomb can kill. See that switch? The weapon has a focused range of twenty meters and a spherical range of almost three meters.”

Dr. Taleghani held up a hand. “Focused? Spherical?”

“Yes. If you want to move someone else in limited space-time, use focused mode.” He touched the switch illuminating a tiny white light. “To move yourself through limited space-time, use spherical. It literally places you on the edge of an alternate dimension for a nanosecond, which will seem to you like anywhere from five seconds to half an hour, depending on the intensity. It picks you up and puts you down up to six hundred meters away.”

“So, is this is a matter transmitter? I thought science had taken a vote and decided this was impossible.”

“Next you’ll be telling me the Earth orbits the Sun, Doctor. Actually, it is more of an interdimensional matter hitchhiker rather than a transmitter. Regardless, in spherical mode make certain you don’t have part of someone else within range when you pull that trigger. Whatever’s in range goes; whatever isn’t stays. Messy.” Pointing to another switch below the first, he said, “This is the intensity switch.” Indicating the color-coded settings, he showed the positions for safety, space-time movement, and killing. “Remember to check your switches before pulling that trigger.” He set the selector switch to spherical and the intensity switch to red.

“What’s that?”

“Suicide,” answered Gordon. He turned the intensity switch down to the 10 on the indicator. “Here. Stand close.”

Frowning, the archeologist stood next to Gordon, who aimed the comb at the piece of cardboard. “See our old target?”

“Yes.” Gordon pulled the trigger and the cardboard, apparently, vanished. “Where is it?”

“Look down.”

Dr. Taleghani looked down and they were standing on the cardboard. “Amazing!” He looked up at Gordon.

“That was spherical mode. Let’s try focused.” He adjusted the switches, handed the weapon to the archeologist, and began walking away. When he was fifteen meters from the archeologist, Gordon turned and faced him. He held out his arms. “Very well, Doctor. Aim, fire, and move.”

Dr. Taleghani aimed at Gordon, pulled the trigger, and seemed to vanish. From behind him, Gordon heard the archeologist say, “I like it!”

They tried it out a few more times, then Gordon turned off the weapon and placed it back in his pack. “One thing more: each assembled shockcomb has a standby function that, unless it is reset every so often, makes it fire on its own: high energy in extreme tight spherical mode.”

“It puckers itself out of existence?” said Taleghani, holding out his hands. “For what possible reason?”

“If an absent-minded professor, for instance, left one of these things out in the timestream, what might happen?”

The doctor’s eyebrows arched. “Well, with no effort at all, whoever found it could become a wizard, always supposing he didn’t kill himself first.” His expression changed to one of confusion. He said in a very quiet voice, “What’s the point of the thing if they never allow anyone out of a capsule?”

“The weapon design preceded the regulations, Doctor. However once they saw what it could do, the powers that be decided to keep it and use it. I have it set for seventy-two hours.”

“How does it recharge?” asked Dr. Taleghani.

“Just turn it off and leave it out in the sun,” said Gordon. “Next to a hot fire will do even better.”

“I’m feeling much better about my contribution to our chances of survival, Gordon. Much better.”

“Want to make another try at that .38? Never hurts to have a backup.”

“Don’t be absurd,” answered the archeologist.

Just before departure early that evening, representatives of the International Temporal Span Authority, the consortium, the media, and the staff of Site Safar were in attendance, along with the head of Egyptian antiquities, representatives of the Egyptian and Libyan governments, and Mehmet’s father. Captain Mansouri was even there, a frown hanging above the cigar stub stuffed in his face. Security this time, however, was courtesy of the Egyptian army. A company of regulars ringed the gantry and stood posts among the crowd while two more companies surrounded the entire site making certain there were no unwelcome publicity seekers, bomb-tossing or otherwise. Anything planning to cross above the site closer than fifty kilometers in altitude would be fried from the sky, according to the air force general who was attending.

There were television cameras and politicians, hence there had to be speeches. Both governments were in trouble with their peoples, and the Safar Project’s time span would be the farthest reach into the past that had ever been authorized. Perhaps the romance of this possible brush with another era might take peoples’ minds off the violence, sickness, and want stalking the streets of both countries’ cities.

In the blinding light cast by the TV and excavation floods, Dr. Taleghani waved and said a few cryptic words of farewell into the PA system—words that would be much less cryptic when the archeologist presented his living fossil Neo-Squanto to the world. Gordon wondered what their visitor would make of this sight, these people, these times, and what they would have to do to get the fellow to come along with them. They hadn’t talked about kidnapping, although the original Squanto had to be taken by force.

Harith Fayadh was at the edge of the small crowd, being helped by one of the European archeology students, a blond fellow wearing white shorts, a faded yellow tee shirt, and a bleached straw cowboy hat. Harith wore only the white ankle-length dishdashah. Gordon nodded at Harith and the young fellow nodded back, revealing nothing by his expression save disappointment, a bit of anxiety, and a lot of pain. Wishes and prayers for a safe journey came from this one and that one, and finally Mehmet Abdel Hashim leaned toward the sound pickup and called time. “Dimensional windows and tide wait for no man,” he quipped, causing a ripple of nervous laughter in the crowd. Mehmet’s father, a tall man with his son’s good looks, applauded and beamed proudly at his momentarily famous son.

As a number of reporters shouted questions at the same time, making all of their voices unintelligible, the three climbed the black gantry stairs, entered the capsule, and Mehmet pulled shut the hatch and sealed it. The tiny crowd did not dissipate. After all, the travelers should be back in under four hours local time, as far as they knew. Just going for a peek.

“You, Mr. Redcliff,” said Mehmet, tinting the view plates against the glare of the floodlights, “have you been out before?”

“As a boy in Philadelphia. I got to see the signers of the Declaration of Independence.”

“What did you think?” He flipped three switches that started the large generators.

“My friends and I thought it was a rip-off—a gyp. We wanted to see Custer’s Last Stand.”

Mehmet’s handsome features frowned as he looked from his gauges at Dr. Taleghani. “And you, Doctor?”

“I too have been in a timespanner, Mehmet, much larger than this one. It was in Cairo at the university when I was a student. My friends and I also believed ourselves gypped. We were shown a lot of dust and desert with an occasional horse and rider vanishing into it. We had supposedly witnessed Muhammad’s army of ten thousand on its way to persuade Mecca to submit to Islam. It could have been a cheap Hollywood production, from what little we could see.”

“What did you want to see?” asked Gordon.

Dr. Taleghani grinned like a mischievous schoolboy. “Allah forgive us, we were Egyptian boys. We wanted to see Cleopatra.”

Mehmet grinned widely and nodded. “I personally wanted to see Nefertiti. I did, however, get to see T.E. Lawrence and his Bedouins blow up a Turkish train.”

“Was it as good as the motion picture?” asked Gordon.

“No,” answered Mehmet. “The lighting and audio were terrible and no close-ups. Reality has much to live up to.”

Gordon nodded. “That’s been my experience.”

“Very well,” Mehmet continued, “then both you barnacle-encrusted time mariners know there will be no perceptive spatial movement until we get to when we are going. Do not touch the hull once we start punching dimensions. I’ll warn you when we start. Hull materials will become intensely cold. It won’t be cold long enough to affect the capsule’s air temperature significantly, but it will be cold enough to burn you rather severely should you be touching the wrong thing at the wrong time.” He held up a pair of thin white cotton gloves.

“I wear these just to be safe.” He nodded toward the formed plastic couches behind which they had stowed much of their supplies. There was a pair of white cotton gloves on the center couch and the couch to their left. “You may as well be seated. In a little over thirty-eight minutes—God willing—we should have you when you want to be. Then after we unload I go back for three weeks of unmitigated grilling and endless browbeating and guilt from my father for leaving the two of you behind.”

“What if they ground you and the operation?” asked Gordon. “What happens to us?”

“We have rather good leverage should something like grounding the T-span happen,” said Mehmet, smiling at Dr. Taleghani. “Leaving you there for three weeks or so won’t affect anything in the present. Anyone you might come into contact with will most certainly be eliminated by the combination of the shockwave and the floods resulting from the Kebira impact.”

“Leaving us back there for years, however,” said Taleghani, his hands held up in innocent helplessness, “who can say what effects we might have? If we don’t get picked up on time, perhaps we might just get it into our minds to strike out on our own, make a run for it, get outside the flood area, perhaps bring some of the locals with us. I fancy I’d get tired cutting meat with a stone knife and might let slip how to find iron and make things out of it. Might even have central air conditioning before long.”

“That would put a spin on that old grain of sand,” said Gordon.

“We couldn’t really do such a thing, of course,” said Dr. Taleghani. “Place all of human history and accomplishment at risk? The dynasties of Egypt? The pyramids? Unthinkable, although,” he smiled, “not unthinkable to the authorities, I trust. They’ll let Mehmet return for us.”

Taleghani sat in the center couch and Gordon sat to his right. After an uneventful thirty seconds during which Mehmet stood at the wall and studied his small panel of instruments, the view plates seemed to mist. White and fuchsia vaporous streams appeared in cones extending above the cabin’s overhead view plate to an infinitely distant vanishing point. “As far as those on the ground are concerned, we’re gone,” Mehmet announced. He finished checking his instruments and faced them. “In a few more minutes the stage will be finished with orientation. We’re not just going back a few hundred years, so there is much to calculate concerning the movement of the African plate, the movement of Earth within the movements of the solar system, galaxy, and universe.”

“What is next?” prompted Taleghani.

Mehmet took his place in the remaining couch, raising a small instrument panel from his left armrest. “Once we’re oriented, we’ll fold into the general location of the escarpment, run our time, fix our windows, then I’ll steer through the arrival window neat as you please and put down where you want us to land.” Suddenly the cones of vapor vanished, revealing that the travelers were suspended high above the silica glass dunes under a full moon at night. Gordon and the archeologist got out of their couches, both of them looking down at the sands through the view plates.

“Mehmet,” said Dr. Taleghani, momentarily backing away from the hull, “what happens if I get sick?”

“Please don’t, Doctor. Whatever isn’t splattered all over you, me, and Mr. Redcliff gathers on the inside walls of the protective field. When the field collapses, the film collapses with it—all over the three of us. You must have brought some sandwich bags. If not, use a pocket.”

“It might make sense to stop looking down,” suggested Gordon.

“I agree,” said Mehmet. “Please, Doctor. We’re ranging the dimension edge. Get back in your couch and close your eyes.” As Gordon and the archaeologist returned to their couches, Mehmet’s hands became busy upon the controls as flashes streaked across the sky, everything taking on a turquoise hue. “Moving back,” he said. “Very well ... Punching dimensions now. Touch no metal.”

The turquoise hue abruptly went to orange, then midnight blue. Mehmet looked at his passengers and Gordon held up his gloved hands, as did Dr. Taleghani. “Excellent. A few days per minute accelerating by levels until we’re close to ten millennia per minute. That’s about as fast as I can take it with this portable. As we guide in to the proper time, I’ll fine tune the locater, get the exact time on that meteor impact, then we’ll sort and pick the window sets we’ll use.”

The view plates showed the dunes beneath began creeping, then walking, then flowing backwards across the desert as the passage of the sun and moon became a blinding river across the sky. Soon the dunes themselves became a blur, then vanished, leaving behind what appeared to be a gently hilly landscape stained ochre moving to pale green.

“Intermittent glaciation period,” said Dr. Taleghani, all thoughts of being sick forgotten. “Before the complete advance of the desert. Oh, this is magical!”

“We’re going through the seasonal cycles so rapidly,” said Mehmet, “nothing can register except aggregate color. Look closely at one spot, you may be able to catch a glimpse of a tree trunk.”

For the space of an eye blink the valleys between the hills were covered with water, then with faint green, replaced by more water, then green. Floods and ice fields that lasted for years passed in instants, each successive flood revealing more and more of the brick-red rocky cliff.

“The escarpment,” said Gordon.

“This is the way to excavate,” said Taleghani, nodding enthusiastically. “None of the evidence is disturbed and we get right down to what we want to see.”

Gordon looked at the floodwaters below, the storms and ice averaged with calms into a smeared pale gray blanket from which the red cliff reached toward the flashing skies. As Mehmet slowed the movement back in time, the scene below was one of absolute devastation—almost a moonscape. Suddenly there was a flash that momentarily blinded them. When Gordon’s vision cleared, he saw they were above a forested valley cut by a meandering river, a bend of which swung by the base of a tall red cliff. The cliff was much higher and shaped differently than before.

“There’s your meteor strike, Doctor,” said Mehmet, tapping with his finger upon a data screen. “Impact fix is automatically logged into your locators. Look toward the south.”

Gordon turned. In the distance was a huge mountain—the cone of an inactive volcano, its craggy flanks white and heavy with snow and active glaciers, the exposed rock cliffs appearing hazy blue. It was a massive peak, dominating the landscape.

“Kebira Mountain,” whispered Dr. Taleghani. “Oh, I wish Numair—Dr. Hussein—could see this!”

The flashes in the sky slowed, revealing the vegetable life along the banks of the river. As Gordon looked at the distant mountain, he felt a strange sadness in his chest. The mountain towered above everything, its icy summit glittering in the sunlight. It was the kind of mountain that would be sacred to a people who needed to see their gods. Gordon had seen Mount Taylor, the southernmost of the Four Sacred Mountains called Tsoodzil in Navajo religion. It too was an ancient volcano, its sacred stone the turquoise. Mount Kebira was about the same height above sea level but seemed so much more impressive because the lands surrounding Mount Kebira were only hundreds of feet in elevation instead of thousands. This mountain would be a god to anyone living in its shadow.

Mehmet looked up from his instruments. “I show 194 days from our arrival window until impact. Your original window arrival and departure set appears good, Doctor. A very good guess.”

“Excellent, but that’s rather more time until impact than I’d thought.”

“You’ll get in your full three weeks on the ground,” said Mehmet, “and with a good safety margin in case of mishaps.” He pointed at a readout. “There are two additional useable return windows from near here, Doctor. The next opens forty-six days after the first. The return there is a place close to the west coast of Mexico called Ahome. Ninety-two days after that a window opens that returns in Tokmak, Ukraine. Not ideal, but useable.”

Gordon looked to his right, toward the base of the cliff along the riverbank. Dr. Taleghani had been right in his interpretation of the AHDI survey images. It was a village, most of the dwellings round. Some appeared to be made of sod, others of wattle and daub, a few large tents made of painted leather. The houses had single entrances facing east and thatched conical roofs with smoke holes in their centers, making the homes resemble traditional Navajo hogans. Some of the round shelters had larger round shelters attached to them. Two of the round structures, located toward the center of the village, were much larger than the others. Gordon could easily count more than two hundred houses, with more hidden by folds in the forested hills. More square wooden and mud structures, skin shelters, and lean-tos. Away from the village, tucked away in draws and along the river shore, he could see the glint of an occasional fire. It was bloody London, as Dr. Taleghani had said. Several thousand persons living in close proximity spoke of agriculture, trade, numbers, writing, community social organization, clans, law, common defense, perhaps even a larger organization—a nation. And all this before any of it was supposed to exist. Of course, all this was wiped out, hidden beneath an ocean of mud before anything these villagers were, did, or imagined could contribute to the future.

“What are you thinking right now, I wonder,” said Dr. Taleghani. Gordon turned and the archeologist was feasting his eyes upon the village he had theorized and had now proven to exist. “When you see that, Gordon, how advanced they are, what does it make you wonder?”

“I was wondering how many times over the millennia have humans used intellect, effort, and industry to reach up from barbarism and want, only to be knocked back down by chance circumstance.”

“Fascinating evolutionary question. If we could ease the regulations on timespanning, we could find out. Theoretically, we could trace your family tree on back to the bacteria in the primordial sea.”

“Or to Adam and Eve, or First Man and First Woman from the Black World, or Unkulunkulu’s creations, or Ymir’s children, or visitors from another solar system stranded on Earth,” said Gordon.

“Which is it, I wonder.”

“Not enough persons wonder,” Mehmet chimed in.

Taleghani looked at Gordon. “Give us your take on the future, Mr. Redcliff.”

Gordon smiled and shook his head. “Doctor, I don’t believe a desire for truth will ever overcome the investment so many have in what they hope is true.”

“Perhaps our little expedition will aid in lessening that investment.” Dr. Taleghani rubbed his hands together. “Look at all this. I’m jumping with excitement. Is this what it’s like for a Christian child Christmas morning?”

“I wouldn’t know,” answered Gordon as he looked at the instruments on Mehmet’s hull panel. Using the common calendar, it was one hundred and thirty-nine thousand years and change BCE. The image of the red cliff fuzzed into a mix of meaningless colors.

“Approaching the window,” warned Mehmet. “Buckle in.” As they secured themselves in the couches, fuchsia and white ribbons of vapor reappeared above them. The vehicle suddenly yawed as though the craft had been shoved by an ancient wind, which made Mehmet’s head snap up to look at the instruments on the hull panel. Then the hull was slammed by a force that made it scream as it cracked. Before anyone could utter even a cry, sudden coldness flowed over them. As he lost consciousness, the film of tears on his eyes freezing, Gordon thought that this must be what it feels like to be dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Pain like inflatable devils trapped inside Gordon’s eyes attempting to eat their way to freedom, then deeper pain as something gnawed at his guts. He was the giant, Coyote deep inside him, cutting off pieces of his guts to feed the starving people trapped there. Coyote asked where the giant’s heart was and someone pointed at the volcano rumbling and smoking in the distance. Coyote took his knife and cut a great hole in the giant’s heart, the lava flowing from the wound.

As the giant died, Coyote led the people to freedom....

There was the smell of wood smoke, herbs, and cedar. Sounds of movement came to him, a soft musical voice whispering something between a song and a prayer. There was a gentle hand on the back of his neck, a taste of warming broth, a glimpse of tear-filled eyes, then he returned to the universe of soft whirling darkness, yellow eyes watching him from the deep shadows, two silver figures shimmering then vanishing in the light of the fire, his life force wasting away as the witch people sang the Hard Flint Song.

He was facing north, the direction of evil, and all was coming to an end. Something had gone wrong, he was dying, and the witches had come to pull him into the maze. He reached out his hands to the old man and the young man—Hosteen Ahiga and Phil Andreakos. But they were both as dust caught by a witch’s wind. Two others, though, were waiting there for him. One had eyes, the other a mouth. The mouth called his name.

He felt himself edging from darkness into twilight—the smell again of wood smoke. The air moved and an icy breath touched Gordon’s right cheek. The pain in his head soared almost beyond feeling. He allowed the pain to push the dream images from his mind’s eye. Gordon tried to move, but he was too weak. More smoke as the gentle wind shifted. Oakwood and cedar burning. He closed his eyes and inhaled. Pleasant odor. The smell of the pueblo away from the village, back in the hills. And Hosteen Ahiga. A scent of winter. Iron Eyes always smelled of wood smoke in the winter.

“God’n? God’n?”

A voice.

He thought about opening his eyes. The thought itself hurt, so he stopped doing that. The right side of Gordon’s head felt as though it had stopped a freight train. The air was cold on his face, though, snowflakes touching his brow, cooling it. He felt a flake on his nose and tasted one on his tongue. He opened his eyes to tiny slits, a blur of images spinning to his right. He forced his eyes to focus on one thing—a vertical stick—until the remainder of visible reality settled down.

Vertical stick. Its upper end forked. End of a cross pole in it. Support for the lean-to in which he found himself. Firelight reflected from the pole’s surface. Dark beyond the pole: Snow, trees, and shadows. It was night. Snowing lightly, the flakes small and dry.

He turned his head gently to his left, the pain in his head making him lightheaded. When he could risk opening his eyes once more, Gordon saw in the swim of images that he was in a lean-to thatched with cedar boughs. Looking to his right he saw that the open side of the shelter faced a fire in a ring of stones. The biggest of the stones, a gray plate the size of a car wheel, was on the far side, reflecting the heat into the lean-to, a pair of ghostly images beyond the rock plate dissolving in the light. The ground outside was white with a thin coating of snow. He could feel he was on a warm pelt-covered bed of more cedar boughs, their fragrance mixing pleasantly with the smell of wood smoke. Gordon was covered with a blanket of fur and also by a very warm human body. He risked glancing down.

“God’n? Mina ah tu?”

He forced his eyes to focus. There was the face of a young woman among the fur covers looking up at him. Middle twenties, maybe. Her complexion was a tannish-sandy caramel, quite fair, her hair straight, pinkish brown in the firelight, and braided with little white dried flowers. Her face was roundish, her dark, almost Asian eyes separated by a very Roman-looking nose. “Squanto?” he asked in a rough whisper.

She looked surprised, grinned, placed her hand against the fur of her coat, and said, “Nom. Nomat. Pela. Peh-la.” She placed her hand on Gordon’s breast and said, “God’n.” Returning the hand to her own breast she repeated, “Pela.”

“Pela,” he repeated. Gordon studied her face and it seemed like it was in the wrong time. Pela was no stooped-over, heavy-browed, shaggy-haired Neanderthal. But, then again, her people had all been wiped out without leaving a discoverable petroglyph or tooth by which to remember them. A good question for the archeologist.

He gingerly raised his head and tried to look around. The woman took his chin in a firm but gentle hand and drew his gaze back to her face. She was shaking her head, sadness in her eyes. “Tallygan, Mimmit,” she said as she held up two fingers, shook her head, then placed the palm of her left hand against her left cheek, closed her eyes, and tilted her head over on her left side. With two fingers of her other hand she pinched her nose shut. It didn’t look to Gordon as though the two Egyptians had made it.

With a great effort he propped himself up on his elbows and gestured with his head in one and then another direction, regretting both movements.

“Eta?” she said.

Where. Gordon nodded. “Eta.”

Pela pointed toward the foot of the shelter. Limb by limb, Gordon struggled from beneath the furs, stood, and steadied himself by holding onto the trunk of a sapling as a wave of faintness and nausea hit and passed. Opening his eyes once again, he looked into the darkness. Pela was standing beside him wearing a suit of furs. He had only a moment to admire the furs when the cold suddenly cut through his light desert clothing like a thousand razors and began running his headache into the red zone. He sagged, wrapped his arms around his shoulders, and peered into the dark. From where he stood he could see two crude graves that had been scraped into the soil, the dirt and stones heaped upon the bodies, a dusting of new snow on the fresh dirt. “Hell,” he whispered to himself as sadness filled his heart. The archeologist and his former student had paid a steep price for Coyote’s lesson.

He squatted and pressed his thumb and index finger against his eyes. By the time he took his hand away, a small part of the pain and dizziness had subsided. He looked at the graves once again, then noticed beyond them a strange shape reflected dully in the firelight. A few meters past the graves, jammed at a crazy angle between the shredded trunks of three cedars, was the hull of the timespan capsule, the side facing him crumbled like a sand sculpture too long past the sculpting. The hole in the hull made an opening larger than the hatch door that was now so much dust lost in the falling snow. As he watched, another piece of the hull dropped from its place to the dust beneath.

He had only begun to wonder what they must be thinking at the empty gantry at Site Safar when the world starting spinning again. The invisible electric ice pick slammed into his right eye and he clutched at his head. There was a tug at his arm. “God’n?”

“Pela.” He waited until the pain in his eye eased, stood, then turned and looked down at the woman. The top of her head came up to the middle of his chest, and she had a white fur cap on her head that would’ve been the envy of any fashion model in Paris or New York. She handed him a white fur robe that had a hole cut in it for his head. Pela held it up for him to put on, which he did. His shoulders and upper torso immediately began to warm. She indicated with her hands and the hat on her own head that she was making a hat for Gordon from the circle she had cut from the fur he was wearing and from some other pieces. Very special hat.

He nodded toward the graves. “Taleghani, Mehmet,” he said. Squatting down he drew a disk in the snow and a crown of flames around it and pointed up in the sky.

“Ekav,” she named the sun. With his finger Gordon traced a path across the sky from one horizon to another, perpendicular to the lay of the bodies in the graves.

“Nom,” she answered, tracing the path of the sun from one end of the graves to the opposite horizon. It took very little time after that to determine in which direction the doctor and his student’s heads were pointed. They both pointed east. Suddenly he felt very tired and remarkably silly. What did it matter in what direction a corpse was buried in this time? Mecca wasn’t even a settlement yet, Abraham’s deal with his god still a hundred and thirty-five millennia in the future. The ancient Babylonian gods Abraham rejected to follow his god weren’t even theories. Neither was Babylon. Still, the east was sacred. The rising sun does that to those who want to move in tune with the universe.

Pela tugged on his arm to coax him back to the lean-to. He showed her with his hands he would remain for a time and she should leave him be. She nodded and returned to the fire. Gordon saw a log on its side, went over, brushed the thin layer of snow from its top, and sat on it heavily, facing the graves. When he was certain he wouldn’t pass out, he pulled the fur up around his neck and ears.

He had known the archeologist and the Timespan pilot only a few hours. “Didn’t take me long to get caught up in the doctor’s vision, though,” muttered Gordon. He lifted his right hand and touched his right temple. There was a large scabbed-over cut there that extended up into his hairline. After touching the wound, he sniffed at his fingers. They smelled like pine sap. Pela had treated it with something. Gordon lowered his hand to his knee.

“So, Doc,” he whispered to Taleghani’s grave, “what’s Plan B? Hang in here and hope Harith and Mehmet’s old man can organize a rescue?”

How long to arrange for another timespanner, he wondered. How long to get permission for a rescue? There was a return window in twenty-six days, but when would be the next arrival window? Before the end of the twenty-some days. And the next? It could be in fifty days or five months. Meanwhile what?

Strange sounds in the night answered his questions—something between a moan and a whisper. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t made the sounds himself. And meanwhile? He smiled as he imagined the archeologist standing before him. “Meanwhile,” he whispered, “don’t do anything permanent.” Do nothing that might be projected into the future. Watch out for those grains of sand.

He studied Taleghani’s grave, attempting to focus on it through a brief pass of ripples like heat waves above a blistering hot road. “So, Doc, Plan B is to sit around waiting for a ride or until Mount Kebira blows up all over me.”

Gordon slowly stood, fighting waves of dizziness, then turned and looked through the trees across the river to the village. He could see only the white cones of thatched roofs dusted with snow. Deep in the trees to his right were the whispers of moving paws. He glanced in that direction, his heart quickening. He smiled at the reflection of yellow eyes looking back at him. “You’ve taken me down a path this time, Coyote,” he said. “The lesson, though, is still a little unclear.”

Reality began to pitch and yaw with his weakness and he turned and stumbled back to the lean-to. Once there he gingerly climbed beneath the covers next to Pela, fully dressed in her furs. After a moment he began exploring his own body with his fingers, looking for injuries. Legs, neck, head, and back sore. Nothing broken. Nothing cut but his head, which seemed to have borne the brunt of his trauma.

His watch and silver belt buckle were missing. No, there was a bit of the buckle left in the hand-tooled leather where it had been attached to the belt. Half of the prong had been left dangling in a hole in the belt’s tongue. He picked it out and looked at it. The silver surface was dull, resembling a cold solder joint. Holding it between two fingers, he squeezed gently. The piece of silver instantly transformed into powder. That was what must have happened to his watch, he realized, and to the capsule. He called to mind the sensation of the capsule moving that had alarmed Mehmet so. One of the dimensions they’d nudged into on the way to Pela’s village must have nudged back.

Titanium into flour, silver into talc—what must physics be like in that other place, he wondered. Gordon decided that when he was able he’d inventory what he had left in the way of weapons and supplies. Anything that used metal was probably going to be useless. Tonight, however, he would rest and try to learn a few words of another language: body parts, camp items, terrain and weather features, animals, plants, foods, a few verbs, an adjective or three. After that, maybe tribes, organization, defenses, weapons, what’s going on in Pela’s world, who calls the shots, and what gods justify insanity in this time and place.

Sooner or later he would have to address the big one for himself: stay in the village where Harith and the timespan bigwigs knew when and where to find him, or get the hell out of London before the meteor hit and turned the village into a bloody mud bath. And did he even want to survive almost a hundred and forty thousand years out of his own time?

He gestured toward his mouth, then pointed at his head.

“Chola,” answered Pela, touching her own head. “Amu,” she continued as she touched her mouth. Later, as she pointed at body parts, snow, things in the camp, and said the words, Gordon tired and the pain filled his head until it took him deep into the shadows and left him there.

The new sun came up soft and peach-colored, the beams of the new day caressing the freshly fallen snow through the cedars, the sound of a distant rooster greeting the light followed soon by the momentary barking of a dog down in the village. Gordon listened to the sounds, allowed his gaze to note and record every aspect of his surroundings before it settled on the wisps of smoke from the fire’s coals climbing into the icy air. Wood smoke. The smell of it brought Hosteen Ahiga before his mind’s eye, the old man in the reservation hat always outside the New Meeting House on the Jemez Mountain Trail near Buffalo Hill Road, sitting on a bench next to the Coke machine, smoking cigarettes. Adults driving by would wave, call out greetings. Those walking by would nod their heads in acknowledgement, present a new wife, husband, baby, or a child who had accomplished something special. The only response they’d ever get from the old man was a nod. Once in a rare moment he would repeat the name of a presented child. His gaze, however, was always fixed out there on some vista invisible to other eyes. Young boys making fun of him would call him Iron Eyes Ahiga and say the old man waits for the return of Goyaaté, the leader the Bilagana called Geronimo.

That February afternoon when Gordon was eleven, after another day fighting in school, he ran away from the place and hitched a ride to the trail, hoping to get a ride down to Route 44 and from there to anywhere. Life as a Pueblo Indian sucked, and life as the son of a Navajo witch sucked even more. Walking south toward Buffalo Hill Road, Gordon passed by the meeting house and saw Hosteen Ahiga next to his Coke machine, sitting, smoking, staring with unblinking eyes at whatever it was he was seeing. The old man had on a heavy olive-colored wool coat with dull rust-colored horizontal stripes in homage to the winter.

Unfocused anger was Gordon’s constant childhood companion, its occasional focusing landing him in most of his difficulties with authority. At that moment the apparent unremitting serenity of another angered him more than anything else. He climbed the meeting house steps and stood in front of Hosteen Ahiga. The old man smelled like wood smoke. Gordon stared with his own unblinking gaze into the old man’s eyes. After a minute of this futile attempt at staring down Iron Eyes, Gordon began to suspect the old man was blind. He was not, however. At last Hosteen Ahiga said, “Grandson, my mother was Joan Blackdeer of the Coyote Pass People. My father was George Ahiga of the Folded Arms People. You are Gordon Redcliff. Your mother, Nascha, was born to the Coyote Pass People, which makes you Coyote Pass. Your father—”

“My father is gone,” Gordon rudely interrupted the old man.

Hosteen Ahiga’s face cracked the tiniest of smiles, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening. “Fathers and mothers never go completely, Grandson.” His eyebrows went up as his shoulders gave an apologetic shrug. “That’s DNA for you,” he added.

Gordon, fighting to keep his angry expression and attitude, said, “What about my father, old man?”

“Niyol Redcliff was born to the Bear Enemies People in Santa Clara. Eleven years ago he stood where you are standing and told me he was going to Hollywood to get into movies.”

“Did he tell you, Grandpa, why he ran? Why he left us?”

The old man nodded, his unrelenting gaze fixed on Gordon’s eyes. “He said your mother was crazy as a corset full of frogs, and he couldn’t stand it anymore.”

Gordon blinked and looked down. “Why didn’t he take me?” he asked.

Hosteen Ahiga allowed the question to answer itself as he shifted his gaze down the Jemez Mountain Trail, windrows of dirty snow beneath darkening clouds that promised yet another winter storm. He looked back at the boy. “Your mother is sick, Gordon. There is nothing anyone can do for her except be there.”

“The Christians over on Mission Road say they pray for her,” said Gordon. “Prayer is talk, and talk is cheap.”

The front rim of the old man’s hat dipped slightly. “As I said, there is nothing anyone can do for her except be there. Being there was too much for your father.” Hosteen Ahiga leveled his gaze at Gordon. “Perhaps you are stronger.”

Gordon looked down the road that promised to leave all his nightmares behind. He heard the old man say, “Coyote teaches much, Grandson, but his lessons are expensive. The Trickster’s wisdom is to lead us down paths right into trouble just to show us why those aren’t the paths we should have traveled.”

“Useful knowledge delivered too late, you mean,” cracked Gordon.

“Better late than never,” countered the old man. “But when a path seems attractive, take a moment to ask yourself why it seems that way. It might be that it is the path you should follow. Maybe, though, what makes it attractive is something that needs fixing here. Every path has a lesson for those sharp enough to see it.”

Gordon sat next to the old man in the cold for two more hours, the new storm fast upon the pueblo, listening to the old man, watching the snowfall, hearing from Hosteen Ahiga many of the things he should have heard from parents, grandparents, uncles, teachers, and friends. Then Gordon turned up his collar against the storm and walked across the river up into the foothills to Nascha Redcliff’s hogan. The next morning before sunrise, standing with his mother in the new snow upon Bear Rock, Gordon helped Nascha bring up the sun and defeat evil.

Seven years later, near the end of Gordon’s senior year in high school, Nascha Redcliff died in her sleep. Hosteen Ahiga, one of his sons—Jim Ahiga—and council member Michael Sweet came and did what no one could do when Gordon’s mother was alive: bring her into the Diné. Naked except for moccasins and ashes, Hosteen Ahiga and Michael Sweet washed and dressed Nascha’s body. By the time they were done Gordon and Jim Ahiga had finished chopping through the logs on the hogan’s north side. Iron Eyes and Mike passed Nascha’s body through the corpse hole where it was received by two Bilagana funeral home men who took care of the burial. Hosteen Ahiga plugged up the smoke hole and Mike Sweet boarded up the east-facing entrance, abandoning the hogan forever to Nascha’s ghost. Before the sun was down, Nascha Redcliff’s body was buried and Gordon was sitting next to Hosteen Ahiga on the meeting house bench waiting on the bus to his future.

“Now she is Diné,” said Gordon.

“Better late than never,” said the old man, a twinkle in his eyes. “Mike said the school would send you your diploma.”

“Thank you for your help. I didn’t thank your son or Mike Sweet. Could you tell them how much I appreciate their help?”

Hosteen Ahiga nodded. “I will tell them.”

The exaggerated hiss of the bus stopping across the road signaled the need to end goodbyes. Before Gordon could say anything to the old man, Hosteen Ahiga handed the boy a small package wrapped in blue cloth and tied with a thin strip of leather. “Take this, Grandson. In the times to come, wear it when you can.”

Gordon opened the package and in it was a black hand-tooled leather belt with silver tip and buckle. The leather in the belt’s center was worked and stained into an image of Coyote. The rest of the belt was dotted with stars against a night sky. The buckle also carried an image of Coyote, one eye closed in a wink. On the inside of the belt was the maker’s name: U. Ahiga. “You made this? Are you U. Ahiga?”

Hosteen Ahiga nodded.

“This is beautiful. Thank you.” Gordon put on the belt. After admiring his present, Gordon frowned and looked at the old man. “What does the U stand for? What’s your first name?”

“Ulysses. My father named me after Ulysses S. Grant.”

“Why? He was a terrible president.”

“True. But Ulysses S. Grant was a great warrior, Grandson, who wrote a great book that my father read from cover to cover and finished the last page just before I was born.” He grinned widely and laughed. “I much prefer Iron Eyes.”

Laughing, Gordon got on the bus that would take him to the Army recruiting station in Albuquerque. He took a seat, waved at the old man through the window, and saw the old man wave back as the bus pulled away. In basic training five weeks later he was notified that Ulysses Ahiga had died in his sleep two days before. He had been just short of his ninety-sixth birthday. Wood smoke: Hosteen Ahiga always smelled like wood smoke in the winter.

“God’n head,” said Pela, interrupting his reverie. Gordon turned and looked at this woman from another time lying next to him. She tapped the side of her own head with the heel of her left hand, “God’n head full ashili.” With her hand she made like a multi-legged creature crawling across the ground. Bugs. Pela drew a picture in snow. Ants. His head was full of ants. He smiled. His head was overfilled with thoughts, worries.

“Pela sees much,” he said. He looked at her crestfallen expression. “That is good,” he quickly added. Her smile returned.

“God’n head hurt better?”

“Some better.” He held the thumb and index finger of his right hand closely together.

“Tahi,” she said.

“Some better a little,” he answered her.

She pulled down the furs covering her, climbed over Gordon, and began coaxing the fire to life by placing scraped birch bark, dried grass, and tiny cedar slivers on a few coals and blowing upon them. When she had a flame, she began adding sticks. “God’n ants what?” she asked, without looking back at him. What was he thinking about?

“Old man.”

“Father?”

“Tribe elder; gifted in years.” Gordon tried to represent what Hosteen Ahiga had meant to him with the words he knew in Pela’s language. Still much to learn. “Good man,” he said. “Like father.”

“How many summers?” she asked.

He thought for a moment, then flashed nine sets of ten fingers at her followed by five fingers of one hand and one from the other. She appeared stunned at the age Gordon claimed for the elder. “Much gifted in years,” she said.

Gordon pulled down his cover, rolled painfully to his side, struggled to his feet, and stood holding onto the lean-to’s cross pole for support until a wave of dizziness passed. As he reached down to get his white fur poncho, every muscle in his back and legs protested.

He slipped on the poncho, a pain in his right shoulder making him grunt. With his fur poncho on, he grabbed again at the cross pole as another wave of dizziness washed over him. When he could again risk opening his eyes, he saw on the bed of cedar boughs his new hat. He bent over a second time and picked it up. The circle Pela had cut from the white fur poncho to make a hole for his head served as the top of the head covering. Its sides, however, were made of a deep black fur that felt like mink. He touched its softness with his fingers, stroked it against his cheek, and smelled the herbs with which Pela had treated the pelts. It smelled of balsam fir. He placed the hat on his head, and it fit comfortably over the tops of his ears to keep them warm. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Pela looking up at him.

“God’n like hat? Want change? I fix.”

“I like hat.” He didn’t have the word for perfect. “I like hat very much.”

A river of pain flowed behind his eyes, he held the cross pole tightly as his knees sagged. As the pain lessened, he felt her standing next to him. “Head hurt not so better,” he said with a smile. Time. He didn’t have the word for time. “Better a little soon.” He squeezed her arm.

She nodded, feigned business as usual as she turned and added another stick to the fire. He frowned against the pain, thinking that Pela was waiting for something. The thinking was hurting his head right then, and he turned and began pulling himself toward the graves, one halting step after another. Once past the shelter, he stood looking across the valley with its still unfrozen waters.

Gordon looked down at the river, reviewing his lessons from Pela. The river’s name was Avina. She was the goddess who gave them water, fish, reeds, sewing thread, medicinal and beauty herbs, shellfish, skin mud, and building mud. Avina cleaned their clothes and bodies and rose once or twice a year to replenish the intervale lands for planting. The gentle river gave no hint that soon she would become an endless towering column of mud, rocks, and shattered trees that would seal this entire valley with death.

He looked up at the sky: Davimo, god of the day sky. Smoke climbed up to the god’s face from dozens of smoke holes. He heard a voice. As Pela worked at the fire, preparing to cook, she was singing to something up in the sky, but not Davimo. She would be singing to Tana, the winged wolf-woman goddess of maidens and widows. In this age, no woman considered herself complete without a man. Conversely, no man considered himself complete without at least one woman. In his entire life, Gordon had never felt complete. Perhaps, he mused, it was the lack of a woman. Allowing the thoughts to fall from his mind, he turned and looked at the graves, momentarily seeing again those heat ripples rising from a cold and lonely place.

As near as he could understand from Pela’s description, Mehmet had been missing part of his head. He’d probably caught a piece of the imploding hull as the metal weakened, Gordon speculated. Pela said Taleghani hadn’t had a mark on him. Old guy, though. Probably had a chest full of modern medical miracles—replacement valves, pacemaker, wire leads. Suddenly everything metal powders and stops working, stops conducting electricity. The former Egyptian major who couldn’t be trusted with a loaded sidearm and who wanted to bring Squanto from the past to speak to the future was now alongside his devoted student, groceries for prehistoric worms.

“My religious sensitivities,” muttered Gordon to himself in Towa, recalling Taleghani’s question from another age. He pulled the remains of his belt from its loops, held it out, and looked at the leather image of Coyote. Gordon draped the belt around his neck, looked up, held out his arms, faced his palms toward the sky, and searched below the tree branches for shadows. After a moment, one of the shadows seemed to move.

“I see you, Coyote. You reach back even to here,” he said. “No such thing as a joke too old for the Trickster, eh?”

The shadow didn’t move.

“So, here I am, Gordon Redcliff, your tool and plaything. I’m still on this side of the dirt and once again have no explanation for that. Since I am still alive, however, I have two small requests to make of you, Yellow Eyes: one new, one old. The new request is this: Give up just a little bit of your joke. Let the ghosts of the two Bilagana, Ibrahim Taleghani and Mehmet Abdel Hashim, let them walk among Pela’s people so they can see and learn what they can before the meteor hits, the mountain shatters, and Pela’s people vanish. Ibrahim and Mehmet paid a big price to touch this part of the past. Is it so much to ask to let them steal a look at what they paid so much to see?”

He lowered his hands and looked up from the shadows to the few clouds hanging motionless before the rising sun. “The old request, Trickster? It is what it has always been: Before you close my eyes for good, Coyote, let me understand the joke.”

Gordon pulled the fur wrap more tightly around his shoulders and stood for a moment in silence. The shadow in the deep woods moved again and then was gone. After a pause, Gordon walked beyond the graves to where the timespanner vehicle had been. All evidence remaining of the vehicle consisted of three crazily tilted cedars, their facing trunks stripped of bark and branches, and a lumpy pile of greenish powder at their bases lightly covered with snow, strips of gray plastic molding and gasket material sticking up from the mound here and there. Some of the lumps were chunks of hull that hadn’t powdered completely. A touch was all it took. He dug into the powder with a stick and his hands. It was like playing in hellishly cold, coarse, dry wheat flour. He felt something hard and pulled up something large and plastic. The couches were still whole. They’d make great patio furniture for some leisure-burdened ancient, once leisure and patios were invented. He pulled the other two couches from the dust and placed them aside.

He found the plastic containers of food bars and water as well as his pack and the doctor’s. The thin plastic was cracked and shattered. The food supplies that were not encased in metal appeared all right as well as a few of the medical supplies. His personal knapsack was made entirely of leather and was in excellent shape. Taleghani’s knapsack relied upon metal rivets, buckles, and rings and had fallen apart. Something red and sticky had burst inside, as well, and had eaten the fabric. Inside the pack were the remains of Taleghani’s changes of clothes, camera, and recording devices—all useless.

The rifle’s plastic stock, the lenses from the scope, the smokeless powder from the ammunition now contaminated, and the shockcomb were all that remained of the weapons. He regretted the loss of the fighting knives. He had noted Pela doing her cutting with a flint knife. Gordon saved the lenses from the scope and placed them in his bag.

From the bottom of his pack he picked up the small olive-colored locater and adjusted down the readout screen’s light intensity level. It still worked. It was based on the same technology as the timespanner and shockcomb. The assortment of readouts, it had been explained to him by Dr. Taleghani, would let them know when the window is about to open, where it is exactly, and would let Mehmet know where they were when he came back to find them and good old Squanto. All automatic.

“Except that the fellow who can read the instrument is dead, the pilot who is to come looking for us is dead, the ship that is to pick us up is so much powder, and Squanto apparently has other plans.” There was one part he could read, however: 191 days until impact. He glanced at the shadows. Yellow Eyes was back, looking at him, whispers of paws in snow, the Coyote People maintaining their watch. Gordon poked through Taleghani’s pack until he found the doctor’s locater. Its case had been eaten through by the red goo, and the screen was dead.

If a rescue ever were attempted, Gordon could still be found. Once found and returned to Site Safar, however, the authorities would be looking for someone to blame for the deaths, for the unauthorized intrusion into the past, and for the destroyed vehicle. “I wonder who that will be,” Gordon muttered facetiously to Coyote. He replaced the working locator in his bag and opened one of the energy bars. As soon as he tore the wrapper a foul odor assaulted his nostrils. He opened another. All of the food was either spoiled or contaminated. Something in the food or in the wrappers had reacted badly when the vehicle’s metals altered properties. He’d have to rely upon local fare.

One leather bag, one shockcomb, a set of lenses for a low-power telescope, a time locater, a change of clothes, the Widow Pela, and one hell of a disaster coming in a matter of just a few months. There was a moment of dizziness, the images of his two fellow travelers flashed before him, then all pain left him as he watched the snow-covered ground rush up to smack his face.

“God’n? God’n all good?” came Pela’s voice through the fog. As the pain filled his head he opened his eyes. It was dark again and he was in the lean-to, Pela’s seated form silhouetted by the fire behind her. She must have dragged him there. He guessed he must outweigh her by twenty or twenty-five kilos.

“A little good,” he said. He thought on it, the pain beginning to diminish, becoming a dull presence rather than a stabbing insistent maniac. “Better good,” he said gingerly sitting up. “Food?” he asked her.

Pela grinned widely. “Food good.” She turned toward the fire, reached, and brought back some kind of toasted bits of meat stuck on a cedar stick. The pieces of meat were bigger than if they’d been from a mouse. Rabbit, maybe. He pulled a piece from the end of the sharpened stick, and it was rabbit spiced with something resembling chili and honey. With it came a wooden cup filled with a hot tea brewed in a fired ceramic pot. Before he knew it Gordon had cleaned the stick, which was all the compliment Pela needed. She presented him with another. While he ate, she gave him his numbers and showed him how to write them. The system resembled Roman numerals without the subtraction. A four was four vertical slashes. A five was a big dot resembling a fist. A ten was two fists crossed at the wrists—an X. Fifty was a hollow box and a hundred, a solid box. “Old man, like God’n father,” she said, and marked ninety-six in the snow:

[] XXXX*I

After praising her cooking and thanking her for the food, he closed his eyes, images of ghosts merging with Pela’s songs to Tana and fading memories of school numbers. Before he drifted off, he opened his eyes barely to slits, his gaze drifting to the fire. Shimmering beyond the reflective stone plate were two transparent figures standing there, watching him. Then they seemed to dissolve into the night. Gordon closed his eyes.

The old ones in the Diné believed in ghosts. Even the Christians in the pueblo carried the fear. Gordon remembered telling Phil Andreakos that snipers cannot afford to believe in ghosts. With the body count his unit was racking up, they’d have to issue spectral hotels to house all the ghosts generated. Simpler not to believe in them. “But,” Gordon’s spotter had observed, “not believing in ghosts won’t get rid of the ones that are real.”

It was a put-on. Phil used to kid the other troops in the unit about him and Gordon taking scalps on the battlefield, hanging them on their lodge pole, absorbing their mystical powers. They didn’t even have a lodge, much less a lodge pole, but Andreakos loved putting on the replacements. Phil once found a dead horse outside Ahvaz and cut off its black tail and mane. He’d dangle little clumps of hair bound with rawhide from the tree outside their tent, wear them from his battle dress, and give them as little gifts with a deadpan stare saying, “The Great Spirit grant you this warrior’s strength.” Then Phil would hold his hands out, embrace the skies with his dark-eyed gaze, and chant gibberish. Ha te, makka me te hey, ya ya and so on. The recipients of these gifts would sometimes ask Gordon about it and he would always give them the same response: an Iron Eyes stare from an expressionless face. He’d nod once and say, “Andreakos really know how to sharpen knife.”

A French reporter got wind of it somehow and the international news media went into multiple orgasms about US troops scalping dead Arab and Iranian soldiers, selling the scalps as souvenirs. Then a lone sensible reporter had a belated DNA done on one of the “scalps” and it turned out to be one hundred percent Arab all right—Arabian horse. The company CO called Gordon and Andreakos in, but as soon as the captain clapped eyes on the pair he burst out laughing. They gifted the captain with a prime scalp for his lodge pole.

Ha te, makka me te hey, ya ya.

Gordon felt the smile on his face. The memory of the Long Island Macedonian was alive in Gordon’s memory. Ghost enough. He opened his eyes again and glanced at the fire. The shimmering images had seemed to emerge from some other plane of existence. He wondered if they were hallucinations from being whacked in the head. Perhaps they were leftovers from his brush with that other dimension. Maybe they were indeed the wandering spirits of the dead—

The images emerged from behind a rippling curtain of existence, the light waves passing through them distorted. The two figures seemed to turn toward each other for a moment, then face him again. Gordon closed his eyes. Real or not, he needed to rest. As he allowed the sleep to take him, he smiled and whispered the Chant of Fulla Bull he had once learned from that great warrior and U.S. Army shaman, Scalper of Dead Horse:

Ha te, makka me te hey, ya ya...

The next morning all his hallucinations and mental wanderings had left him, along with his headache. He gingerly poked at his head wound, tried to make the headache come, but it was gone. For the first time, Gordon felt he was mending. He told Pela he wanted to walk, to see, to talk, to eat. She rolled a few food items in a skin, placed it in Gordon’s pack, slung the pack over her shoulder, then took his hand and slowly led him through their camp to a trail through a dense growth of cedars. He found walking the trail difficult, his headache returning and spiking in intensity after a few stumbles. After awhile the crisp clean air in his lungs, the stretch of his muscles, and the change of scenery diminished his headache to tolerable levels. As he had been trained to do, he cleared the cobwebs of his past and the speculations concerning the future from his mind and concentrated on his surroundings. Hosteen Ahiga and the instructors at sniper school agreed on at least one thing: Now is when everything happens. Twice he saw Coyote watching him from the shadows. Once he saw a beam of sunlight distorted by something invisible passing before it.

On the other side of the wood was a clearing that opened onto a bluff overlooking the southern range of hills, most of them more than fifty percent cleared for agriculture, the fields connected by narrow paths—no wheel tracks; no houses or huts. The farmers and their families lived in the village, Gordon presumed. On the horizon, towering majestically above the misty white plateaus, rose the mountain—Black Mountain to Pela’s people, none of whom had ever seen the mountain black. “Old-old ones, tell old-old stories,” Pela said to him. “Long before snows, Ekav make mountain from fire. Mountain cool black. Black Mountain. Then snows come.” She grinned widely as she showed Gordon a log upon which he could sit and rest. “Now mountain white,” she said, pointing at the vertical faces. “Cliffs black.” Gordon looked back at the peak and seated himself on the log.

The morning sun sparkled from several of the glaciers busily carving cirques in the old volcano’s flanks. Pela sat next to Gordon and unwrapped their food. Dried fruit, nuts, a bit of jerked venison. She held her hand out toward the sun. “Ekav kiss high flat lands,” said Pela, lowering her hand. “Ekav’s kiss bring Yomi Black Mountain Mother up from flat land in fire. Mountain Mother touch sky waters and birth Avina, spirit of river; Ekav touch ground and birth Kaag, spirit of land and growing. Davimo, god of day sky, touch Mountain Mother and birth Walking Man and Walking Woman. Walking Man and Walking Woman come down from mountain and begin Black Mountain Clan. All clans come from Black Mountain. Pela Black Mountain.” She looked up into Gordon’s eyes, a question on her face. Credentials time.

“Gordon born to Coyote Pass People,” he said, noticing as he did so a slight mist of confusion cross Pela’s eyes. He hadn’t their word for coyote. Maybe there weren’t any coyotes here and in her time. “Dog with shadow tail.”

Pela took on the English word, Coyote.

“Born to Coyote Pass People; born for Bear Enemies Clan,” he said.

“From where?” she asked with a confused frown.

He raised his right arm and pointed toward the west. “Very far away.”

“How long?” she asked.

Her people had horses. Land distances were measured in days riding a horse. How many days would it take to get to the New Meeting House steps in Jemez Pueblo a hundred and thirty-nine thousand years in the future riding a horse? “Too long to go back,” he said.

Too long to go back, he repeated to himself as weakness seemed to fill his body. “Tired,” he said to Pela. She wrapped their remaining food and they returned to camp.

After a sleep in which dreams brought him back to Bear Rock and his mother angrily dressed down Glittering Man for the sun’s repeated failure to scour evil from the world, Gordon awakened to Pela’s quiet singing. It was a story song about a young girl who wanted to become a flower and a flower who wanted to become a girl. It was a Trickster tale Iron Eyes had told him back in the pueblo. Instead of a young girl, Iron Eyes’s tale was a young boy and instead of a flower it was a jaybird. The Trickster’s lesson was the same: Walk in beauty, the path of beauty to be found not in feathers or petals but within. Gordon was wondering what Hosteen Ahiga would make of this land, this woman, and this situation when the light beyond the fire shimmered and distorted. Two figures, he was certain.

Do you hear me? He said to them in thought. The images faded, seemed to meld for a moment, then separate. “You understand me?” he asked in Pela’s tongue. She turned, looked at him, and realized that he was not talking to her. “Hal tafhamunii?” he asked the images in Arabic.

Pela looked to where Gordon was speaking. “Do you see them?” he asked her.

“No,” she whispered. “What God’n see?”

Right then it was nothing. The images had faded away. He shook his head in answer to her question. “My eyes play tricks,” he said as he gently tapped the right side of his head. “Head hurt make me see things.”

“See Pela work, God’n,” she said.

Pela was working on a white bear skin she had taken from a substantial pack of pelts she kept at one end of the lean-to. With a sharpened bone punch, a bone needle, some kind of vegetable fabric for thread, braided leather cords, a bone hair pick, and her flint knife, she was creating a beautiful white fur coat. “Killing coat,” she said. “White for winter hunter.” She glanced knowingly at him. “Look like bear, look like snow, stay still, bear no see you.” She cocked her head slightly in the direction of the fire’s far side.

He nodded at the woman’s wisdom and set his gaze to searching among the shadows beyond the fire. Winter camo training. If you and your weapon are white, and if you lie flat and motionless, you look like snow. If you stand and move, you look like Frosty the snowman. If you are made of light waves and can only be seen when you move, don’t move if you don’t want to be seen. Gordon removed his covers, stood, and asked Pela to tell him about the coat she was making. While she talked he walked around the fire and searched among the trees and shrubs.

The coat had been commissioned by a hunter of the eastern Many Horses Clan named Afeht, three days ride, Pela told him. Afeht paid Pela in advance for the coat with a healthy packhorse four winters old. “Too cold for horse sitting toahmecu,” she said, waving a hand at the night. “Horse with Bonsha. Bonsha sister of dead husband. Bonsha feed horse while Pela sit toahmecu.”

Gordon continued searching and asked. “What is toahmecu? Why Pela on hill?”

She was silent for a long moment, then Pela explained as she worked. She had been married before to Iveleh the pointmaker. Iveleh had been collecting flint nodules three summers before at Tall Bird Cliffs deep in Yellow Claw Country to the south and had been killed in a landslide. Pela had given Iveleh no children and she was now an old woman as her people reckoned such things: twenty and eight summers. She made winter outerwear, had a thriving trade, owned a bit of property, and could cook and keep house. However she wasn’t a terrific prospect for marriage, she insisted Gordon understand. No possibility of sons. “Too old, so they say.”

She nodded her head toward the shadows and Gordon shook his head and returned to the lean-to.

“Pela,” she continued, “trap animals, stretch and cure pelts, make caps and coats and snowsuits, and die alone. Pela not like alone and go to village naticha, Tonton Annajaka.”

A naticha appeared to be something like a shaman or witch doctor. Very wise woman. The naticha prescribed god-waiting, or toahmecu. Pela did just like Tonton said. She needed to pray to Tana to bring her a man and go to a place where her prayers could be fulfilled, if the god so chose. Such prayers and waiting required a tall hill. Her cousin, Shayvi Woodman, owned this hill, and it was the tallest hill south of the Avina. It also faced the red cliff on the opposite side of the river. On the other side of the south cedars the hill had a view of Black Mountain. Powerful spiritual place. “Crops on Shayvi’s Hill almost as good as water bank crops,” she claimed.

“What is power of the red cliff?” Gordon asked, putting aside the light distortion entities for the moment.

“Up high on red cliff ledge, God’n, where men go, meet, perform rites, talk with Wuja, white bear god of men, fatherhood, and hunting. Higher on cliff, next ledge, girls welcomed as women, perform rites, talk with Tana.” Pela pointed toward the north. “High, high on top of cliff Tonton Annajaka speak with Itahnika—” She pointed at her own eyes, “—seeing spirit. Naticha see from Itahnika there what Pela must do.”

So, on Shayvi’s Hill Pela set her fire, built a lean-to, spread her spices, and prayed for Tana to pull down from the night skies what Pela could not seem to obtain for herself from the land. Pela then god-waited. She had been camped there for thirty-one days and nights filling in the idle times between praying and caring for herself by filling a few garment orders.

Then from a blinding blue flash of lightning entered Gordon Redcliff and his mortally wounded brothers in their crumbling turquoise flying boat. Pela was distressed that Tana’s gift had come at such a terrible price, the deaths of Mehmet and Taleghani. In her singing that first night with Gordon she had asked Tana for Gordon to forgive her the deaths of Gordon’s brothers. Mimmit was all dead when she pulled him from the falling-apart boat. Tallygan was still some left alive a little.

“Taleghani, Pela, before dying, he see you?” Gordon asked her, pointing at his own eyes.

She nodded. “Tallygan see Pela.” She thought for a while. “Tallygan say Pela,” and she continued in heavily accented Arabic, “very—very beautiful.”

Gordon told her then what the words meant. He assured her that Ibrahim Taleghani had died a happy man just to have seen and heard her, to have felt her touch. He also told her that the death of his two companions had not been of her doing.

She frowned and after a long silence she looked at Gordon. “You man thinking for Pela, God’n? Gift from Tana? You no say.”

Hard to argue with a goddess, thought Gordon, particularly one who delivers the goods with such spectacular production values. He wasn’t sure though what she meant by “man thinking for Pela.”

“Pela, was Iveleh man thinking for you?”

She nodded and held up her left hand with all fingers spread. “Five moons Iveleh wander between choices, then he think for Pela.”

“Gordon no understand thinking for Pela.”

Pela screwed her face up in an expression of attempting to solve a difficult problem. At last she smiled and nodded. “God’n hunt?” she asked.

He nodded, his gaze fixed on the fire. “I hunt.”

“Before God’n throw spear, he need to close with prey. Get close, no?”

He nodded. She could have instructed snipers at Benning.

“Before stalk, God’n look at all animals, then choose one for kill. After God’n choose, he think for prey before throwing spear.”

Stalking. Thinking for was getting inside the prey’s head, knowing enough about the quarry to tell what it was thinking. Was this one worth the hunt? Was Pela talking about engagement? Or was it a stage in which a prospective mate thinks about it, considers it, gets inside the quarry’s head. An engagement to be engaged? “Pela thinking for Gordon?” he asked.

“Yes.” She placed a hand on her breast. “God’n thinking for Pela?”

He glanced down at the fire and said, “I know not.”

“Ask Wuja,” she urged. “Ask shadow-tail dog.”

“Coyote,” he reminded her.

She leveled her gaze at him. “Ask Coyote. Pela must know. When God’n know he thinking for Pela, Pela must know.” She went back to her sewing, her look of concentration designed to conceal her feelings.

“If I don’t, Pela, will you sit toahmecu after now?”

She shook her head and sighed. “When God’n strong we go to village. Pela go home.” A great sadness crept into her voice. “Toahmecu done. Pela go home.” She cocked her head toward the shadows beyond the fire, her expression querying him regarding his creature search.

He shook his head.

That night Gordon watched Pela sleep. His gaze traced her eyelashes, the line of her lips, the turn of her nose. Dr. Taleghani had been correct. She was very beautiful. Pela: daughter of Cualu and Tahm of the Black Mountain Clan. Pela Sleih: Pela of the Furs. He caught himself thinking what it would be like awakening in this existence without that face as his first sight, her voice removed from his day.

He settled back and stared at the night sky above the dying fire. Gordon had been with women before. There was that psych major in Arizona when he had gone to college for a brief period after the Army. Before her was the high school English teacher in Columbus when he had been in sniper school at Benning. In between was that watercolor artist in Port Elizabeth in the Namibian Containment that crisped a third of southern Africa. They were all emotional parking places, though. The romantic love thing—commitment, attachment—had always eluded him. He’d never felt a sense of belonging anywhere with anyone—except through a sniper scope.

Over his life he had seen men who said they were in love. Some acted very silly about it. Some had been very dangerous. The sanest ones had been married. So too had been the most miserable.

Hosteen Ahiga had outlived three wives. He had loved, he said, the first and the last. The second he had married out of obligation. “She was a Christian woman,” he had said. “She talked with scorn about spirits I walk with. I must go to church and believe as she believes if I want to be saved and have her love.” He shook his head. “I don’t listen to her when she talked like that. I walk in beauty, my heart is calm. So then she wants a divorce. That’s best and I agree. Before she goes to the lawyer, though, she come down with sickness. All over in a few days. Her heart, says the Bilagana doctor down in Albuquerque. She had a Christian ceremony. I went to her church one time for that.” He turned his unwavering gaze toward Gordon. “They tell me, ‘Take off your hat.’ I went home.”

Gordon looked at Pela’s face again, uncomfortably reflecting that the most intimate relationships in his life had been with those images in the crosshairs just before squeezing a trigger. Pela had saved Gordon’s life, she cared for him, she had buried his comrades, she’d dressed his wounds; she was, as Dr. Taleghani said, very beautiful. Pela wanted him, she was a woman of substance who knew her way around in this world, and Gordon wouldn’t hurt her even for a ticket back to his own time. And there might still exist just such a ticket. In the future her God’n might just pick up and vanish. There would be no way he could bring her back with him. The Timespan chiefs would eat off their own faces first.

The future—Gordon reached to his pack, found the locater, and looked at the readout. Pela’s future was going to end in one hundred and ninety suns. Certainly simplified things. What if the marriage doesn’t work out? Six months. You can do anything for six months. Besides, he thought, what might it be to have an actual home? Aside from the insanity of Nascha’s hogan and the rough comradeship of Army barracks, he’d never had a home. Romantic love. Perhaps he could learn how to do that before the mountain vaporized. “That would be a gift,” he whispered to himself.

Pela wasn’t looking for a proposal. The custom, as he understood it, was to think about it. The Black Mountain Clan’s way of having a prospective suitor “think about it,” though, involved a number of things from qualifications, relationships, and ceremonies that had both man and woman think “for” each other, which was something more than thinking about someone. In thinking for, one considers the step one is contemplating—turning over the possible future relationship like a gemologist examining a rough stone from all angles, noting the flaws, attempting to see what could be made of it.

Gordon looked into the shadows past the fire, knowing that Yellow Eyes was keeping watch. There is the path, Coyote was saying with a wink of his eye. It’s beautiful, fur-lined, and chock full of healing promises. Gordon Redcliff could live happily ever after, maybe—or at least until those fellows from the future come looking for him or the floods come for him—

The reset alarm on the shockcomb invaded his thoughts, beginning as a low whine and increasing in pitch and volume until it achieved an ear-splitting magnitude. Gordon quickly reached in and hit the reset. He looked at the indicator. Another four seconds and it would have puckered itself, the locater, and Gordon’s change of underwear out of existence, not to mention a good bit of his right thigh.

“Pela hear scream, God’n.”

He looked at her. Pela’s eyes were open and they were very clear, very deep. “A thing of mine. I need to fix it sooner. Feel bad to wake Pela,” he apologized. Gordon studied Pela’s eyes seeing in them a strange mix of fear and longing. Something more, as well. Belonging. He felt as though he belonged with this woman.

This moment had been coming at him for a lifetime, it seemed. His surroundings couldn’t be more strange, yet he had a sense of belonging he had never before felt. He knew that when—or if—they came in a Timespan can to get him, they could either bring Pela back with him or leave him there with her.

“Perhaps I am your gift, Pela,” he said at last as he placed a hand on her cheek, surprised to be comfortable in meaning what his words said. “Perhaps, Pela, you are my gift. Gordon is thinking for Pela. Does Pela still think for Gordon?”

As her eyes welled with tears, Gordon wondered if Coyote was revealing yet another turn in his elaborate trick. Pela suddenly turned her head and buried her mouth in Gordon’s open palm, holding it to her lips, kissing it as she nodded. “Pela thinking for God’n,” she said, then whispered it again, “Pela thinking for God’n.”

There was a tender feeling in his heart, affection, a tiny crystal of joy and love that was instantly shattered as Pela turned her lips from his palm and let out an eardrum-shattering combination of screams and hollers in the direction of the village, the echoes bouncing off the cliff and facing hills.

A moment of silence, then more screaming calls came from the village below. Pela screamed back. The phrasing and pronunciation were different than Gordon had learned up to that point. It was a kind of yodeling. Gordon pieced some of it together: Pela was announcing to her clan sisters in the village that Tana had granted Pela’s wish. Pela had been gifted with a fine, strong, big, dark man from a strange place. Really big. Really dark. Really strange. He was thinking for her now and she was thinking for him.

Her sisters yodeled back their congratulations, their thanks to Tana for their sister, and their prayers and good wishes. Then they yodeled the news on to the ends of the village and beyond. The calls went on and were relayed for almost an hour. Long after Pela slept, Gordon remained sitting before the fire, catching occasional glimpses of the shimmering images, waiting for the secret visit from the village he was sure was coming.

The came long after moonset. Motionless in the shadows, the figure stood near the trailhead examining Gordon. He kept his gaze upon the figure as she moved nearer the fire. Her dark hooded garment brushed the ground and was made from rich sable. Within the hood was a woman’s face, her age hidden by the paint she wore. The right side of her face was black as soot. The left was colored burnt orange. “You know me,” she stated at last, her voice thin and reedy.

“Tonton Annajaka,” Gordon answered. “You sent Pela to sit toahmecu praying for a man to share her life.”

She nodded.

Gordon raised his eyebrows. “This face of mine not same face you sent up this hill, Tonton Annajaka.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed for an instant. “Different,” she said, giving him the word for “not same.” She touched her left thumb momentarily to her tongue, and waved her fingers at her right temple. “Pela’s call to village say your name, God’n.” She gestured toward his trousers and boots. “God’n from where?”

“Hard question,” he said as he held out his hands toward the fur he had placed to his left, indicating an invitation for the naticha to sit.

Tonton hesitated a moment then walked around the fire and sat cross-legged upon the fur facing him. She reached out her hands, bent forward, and placed one hand over Gordon’s heart and the other over his eyes. He could suddenly smell a sharp odor of death. Tonton Annajaka lowered her hands and sat back, her eyes wide. “I know you, God’n, from old dreams of storm to come.”

“You see much, Tonton Annajaka.”

“I would understand what I see.”

He laughed. “This is my prayer, as well. The spirit I ask answers with fog.”

“You talk in fog and brambles, God’n Redcliff.”

He glanced down, thought for a moment, and said, “I come from after now. That is the truth I have.”

The naticha moistened her lips, let her gaze slip from his face, turned her head, and looked back at Pela in the lean-to. The widow was sitting amidst her furs, her face ashen, her gaze fixed on Gordon. Without looking away from him, Pela nodded in quick respect to Tonton, and said, “Forgive Pela, God’n, for hearing talk not mine.”

He reached back and took her hand. “If I talk where you can hear, the talk is yours.”

She moved to the edge of the bed of cedar boughs and sat kneeling, holding Gordon’s hand to her face. “Pela understand true? God’n born after now?”

“Yes.”

Pela turned to Tonton. “Tana bring God’n to me from after now?”

The naticha studied Gordon for a long time. At last she said to him, “How far after now you born, God’n? Bean-by-bean.”

He smiled at the term for “exactly.” Reaching back to his right, he took his leather backpack from where it rested at the edge of the bed and pulled it next to him. He took the locator from the bag, checked the date, and placed the locator back in the bag. With a piece of charcoal from the fire, he began building a number upon one of the stones from the fire circle. First, one thousand, multiplied by one hundred and thirty-nine on the left, then added to one hundred and fourteen on the right.

[]XXX*IIII X[] [] XIIII

“This many summers,” he said, “two moons, twenty-one days from now.”

The naticha studied upon the number Gordon had written while Pela looked at Gordon, her eyes frightened. He took Pela’s hand and faced Tonton.

“I saw great storm coming, God’n,” said the naticha, a slight tremble in her voice. “When Itahnika gave me my eyes, I first see it. You bring this storm?”

“No,” he whispered, his eyes closed.

“But you see it,” she insisted. “You know it.”

Gordon sighed. “I have seen this storm, Tonton,” he answered. “I know it is coming.”

Tonton stared into the fire for a moment. “You talk with Tonton more?”

“Whenever you wish, naticha.”

She looked at him as he raised a hand, palm facing down, and passed it once across the space between them. “We speak no more of this until we talk more.”

“Yes, naticha.”

She looked at Pela. “About this, speak no more.”

“Yes, naticha.”

Tonton rubbed out the number Gordon had written upon the stone. She then stood and walked silently from the fire.

Pela wrapped her arms around Gordon’s left arm and rested her head against his shoulder as the naticha was swallowed by the shadows. He pulled the bearskin cover from the bed and wrapped it around both of them. They sat that way, watching the fire, until Ekav touched the goddess of the night sky birthing the new day.

After a breakfast of yams and rabbit, Gordon visited the graves. He squatted between them, wondering if the two shimmering images he saw were Coyote’s fulfillment of his prayer for his two dead companions. Had the spirit world been touched by that other dimension producing a couple of interdimensional ghosts?

“Perhaps I walk in dreams,” he said to the quiet as he stood. “We go to the village today, doctor. I’ll see what I can learn.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadow move just into the cedars. Whatever it was, it left in a hurry. Gordon stood and walked to the edge of the trees, his eyes instinctively checking the new snow for tracks finding wolf, squirrel, rabbit, birds, and the impressions of human feet too small to be his and too large to be Pela’s. The impressions were smooth, moccasin-like. Gordon silently followed the human tracks to where their distance increased, showing the visitor running. Likely they belonged to Pela’s designated gift from Tana.

He saw the shimmer of distorted light edge from behind a wall of existence. “Do you understand me?” he asked.

The image seemed to lift an appendage made of the same distorted light. “Are you carried by something from a dimension we touched?” Half suspecting he was hallucinating, Gordon watched as the thing seemed to wave again. There was, however, no proof that he was crazy. “If your spirit can travel between times as well as dimensions,” he said to the shimmer, “tell Harith perhaps my mission really is simply to see what happens next.” He turned and headed back to the fire where Pela was packing.

After they were both loaded with Pela’s furs, tools, and what remained of her provisions, they began making their way along the path to the village. On the way Gordon noticed several little homesteads of sod and rock, domesticated horses, goats, even a cow. All of the animals had heavy coats. In one place they passed there was a bin made of woven willow branches half-filled with grain that looked like barley. No evidence of wheeled vehicles.

As they approached a tiny sod house tucked into the side of a bank beneath an overhanging rock flanked with banks of juniper, a man who looked to be in his thirties came from the door curtained with patched animal skins. The fellow wore what looked like a suit of Pela’s furs, although his were dark brown. On his neck he had a striking necklace of blue beads with one large fluted gold bead in the center. The man stopped, Pela and Gordon put down their bundles, there were introductions, and the meaning of the man’s name was Kom Beadsigns, born to Cleft Mountain Clan. Relating the mother’s clan was for Gordon’s benefit. Pela told Kom of her toahmecu, her gift from the winged wolf. With downcast eyes she told about Gordon’s dead brothers.

Kom touched his tongue to the pad of his left thumb and nodded sadly at the possible marriage’s terrible cost. “How little the spirits know us,” he observed. “Five deaths in a sickness, two more in a hunt—good men—another with flints after hot words.” Then his face brightened and he related that his son Ta Avi’s man-raising ceremony was that evening at the clanhouse. He said that there are places at the fire that could stand filling.

Kom Beadsigns touched a small bundle to his forehead and said to Pela, “Kom grateful for fine suit Pela you make my son.” He handed her the bundle, which Pela took and touched to her own forehead in thanks.

After he had bid farewell and offered his wishes that the spirits’ wisdom should gift them in their thinking for each other, Kom returned to his house. Pela had Gordon hold his palms together. Using them for a table she slowly unwrapped the bundle. There were hundreds of colored beads in it, some of glass, some of bone, some stone, some gold, some cut from something resembling porcupine quills. They were black, gold, turquoise, red, green, blue, purple, brown, yellow, and white.

“God’n,” she said as she rewrapped the beads and grinned widely. “I make you such a shirt.” She laughed, looked at him with tears in her eyes, and laughed again. “You show me Coyote?”

He pulled the belt from around his neck and showed her the face of Coyote that Hosteen Ahiga had hammered into the leather. She placed her right palm against Gordon’s heart and said, “Coyote kind to you?”

“Kind?” Gordon raised his eyebrows. “Coyote is the Trickster. He teaches through mistakes and pain.” He had never thought of Coyote as kind. He smiled. “Coyote kind enough to let us meet, Pela.” He placed a hand upon her shoulder and squeezed. “Coyote kind enough.”

“No man have such a shirt,” Pela said. She squeezed Gordon’s arm, laughed, they hefted their bundles, and continued toward the village.

Thinking for someone required preparation. As it began, Pela and her relatives and women friends could not be bothered with an idle male underfoot. Gordon was not supposed to be there in any event, so Pela asked the sister of her dead husband, Bonsha, to bring Gordon to attend Ta Avi’s man-raising ceremony. Bonsha was portly, unusually tall, her suit of Pela’s furs worn with the fur in and beautifully intricate red, black, and yellow beadwork out. Her face had heavy dark features taken to easy frowns and easier smiles. At that moment, her face frowned.

“God’n, how many summers you have?” bluntly asked Bonsha.

“Thirty and eight,” he answered.

Her frown deepened as she brushed her right cheek with the back of her right hand. “You have a boy’s face.”

“From where I come, some men do not have hair on faces.”

Her eyebrows went up. “It is a choice?”

“For some. For some not.”

Bonsha’s frown grew deeper still, and then she shrugged and smiled. “Pela say you gift from Tana. Pray Tana make you useful, kind, and respectful as well as gifted, God’n.”

“I will, Bonsha.”

“I make oil lamps,” she informed him. “And God’n?”

Gordon thought on it. “I am looking.”

The clanhouse was a very large kiva-looking structure with a single east-facing door curtained with symbol-covered skins. The walls were made from vertically arranged tree trunks patiently trimmed, scraped, carved, fitted together, and wrapped with vines. Joints were tied with dried rawhide, gaps filled with dried mud and grass. The building towered above nearby buildings, but was only a single great room, the center of the floor sunken in three circular levels, the concentric tiers paved with flat stone making the room resemble a theater in the round. The center of the roof was supported by four wooden columns, each column made from a single tree-trunk, the wooden surfaces displaying the marks of endless chipping and scraping with flint edges. Light was provided by ceramic oil lamps in niches around the wall and hanging from the roof supports by thongs. Gordon glanced at Bonsha and pointed at one of the lamps. Bonsha smiled widely and nodded. “My work,” she said proudly, sweeping a powerful arm indicating the interior of the clanhouse. “All of them.”

She seemed to waiting for a response from Gordon. He studied Bonsha’s face for a moment, then held his hand out toward the lamps. “Your gift to clanhouse?”

Many smiles from Bonsha as she secured credit for her gift and at the same time gestured the gift’s unimportance. Gordon looked toward the center of the space. Heat was provided by a fire pit in the center of the floor, the smoke exiting from a hole in the center of the roof. Men, women, and children occupied about half the tier seats, the children occupying the top ring, the farthest from the fire. There was a buzz of conversation among those there—friends and relatives getting reacquainted. Bonsha guided Gordon down to the lowest tier. In several groups there stood eleven men and five women. Before she introduced Gordon to them, Bonsha explained to him those on the bottom tier were all gifted in that they had either reached or surpassed their thirty-second year. The men would sit separately from the women in this particular ceremony because upon the conclusion of the rite, the gifted men would take Kom Beadsigns’ son up the cliff to the men’s ledge to spend the night beneath the sky getting Ta Avi acquainted with the society of men and to introduce him to Wuja, white bear god of men, fatherhood, and the hunt. After introducing Gordon to the gifted, Bonsha returned to attend to Pela’s preparations.

Gordon turned to the nearest man with a question. “We are to spend the night on the ledge? In the cold?”

“Ta Avi, born in winter,” said the man, a pea farmer named Riff. He shook his head and lifted a hand and dropped it in resignation. “Bring plenty furs.”

Abo, a mucker, tugged at his own gray-streaked beard. “Your face, God’n. Where is your man hair?”

Once again he explained, half-wondering if his eventual tribal name would be Baby Face Redcliff.

As Gordon sat in the center of the arc of gifted men, a slender young man in raggedy furs brought him some hot tea in a cup made from hollowed wood. The boy had curly black hair, intense grey eyes, and a face whose expression marked him as outcast. Gordon thanked the boy, who held his gaze for a moment, then turned and climbed the tiers to the uppermost ring. Gordon sipped at the tea, which tasted pleasantly like licorice. One of the gifted men named Nubav offered Gordon a tiny white root from a pouch he carried. Gordon expressed his thanks, but declined not knowing what it was. When he glanced around at the growing crowd, Gordon noticed the boy who had given him the tea was studying him. The attention in the hall turned to another side of the ring.

Ta Avi, son of Kom Beadsigns, sat on the top ring on the east side along with other children. Ta Avi’s furs were decorated with colorful dried flowers and magnificent abstract beadwork. His father came down the tiers and sat in the gifted ring, his face covered in smiles. He greeted Gordon and thanked him for honoring his son. Soon a large man sat to Gordon’s left. He almost resembled artists’ conceptions of Neanderthal Man—heavy brow, low forehead, shaggy beard and hair—except for the well-done suit of furs he wore. They were heavier than usual, white with what appeared to be random streaks of gray and blue color, which would function outside on the snow as camouflage. He wore similarly colored fur-lined laced moccasin boots. Gordon nodded at the man’s furs. “Pela’s work,” he said.

The man nodded. “Pela my wife’s sister.” He placed his hand against his chest. “Pela only take three winter bear skins for making wraps. They keep me warm when the winds howl across the ice and game make me travel far, yet leave me free to throw spear or swing club. Ghaf, hunter.” He extended his hand, grabbed Gordon’s wrist, Gordon took Ghaf’s wrist, and they shared a single bone-crushing shake. “Good woman, Pela,” Ghaf said. He placed his open palm over his own heart. “I wed Pela’s sister, Lolna. Two sons, Taghaf and Ru.”

He nodded toward the south and made a rising gesture with his right hand. Two boys stood, the younger one on the top ring, the older on the ring just below. Both of them were clad in bear-hunting camo. Ghaf’s genes mixed with Lolna’s appeared to have advanced his children from Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon.

“They are fine-looking sons,” said Gordon.

Ghaf nodded and his sons resumed their seats. Ghaf pointed at the fire pit. “The one placing the flour cakes: their mother and Pela’s sister.”

Lolna was clearly related to Pela. She had the same dark almond eyes and brownish hair, the same round face and straight nose, her hair a lighter brown worn in a ponytail. She concentrated on her cooking. Ghaf had a thoughtful expression on his face as he licked the pad on his left thumb and studied his wife.

“Something wrong?” asked Gordon.

Ghaf shrugged, wiggled a finger at Gordon, and shrugged again. “It is life.” He continued studying his wife.

More adults and children entered. There were pea, bean, and mushroom growers, herb gatherers, herdsmen, fishers, chicken and duck growers, sod cutters, muckers, mat weavers, and even two men who were competitors of Pela’s in the local garment trade. There was, of course, the entire guild of bead cutters and casters from the local clans, some even from Yellow Claw and Black Shoulders lands far south, Big Tree and Cleft Mountain in the west. The bead sign makers and their families wore their finest necklaces, bracelets, and beadwork. Deals for beads, materials, and tools were being made against the circular wall, outside the tiers.

At the sound of a wooden drum struck twice, the room silenced, some of those still standing took places in the tiers, and all eyes turned toward Ta Avi. The young man stood and with a strong voice expressed his desire to live as a man among men, seeking the wisdom of those willing to share it. He nodded toward Ghaf and resumed his seat upon the top tier.

The hunter licked his left thumb, lowered his hand, and said to all, “Manhood is not the power, joy, and magic it seems to the boy. Nor is manhood the pain, disappointment, and dreary burden it seems to the man.”

He received grunts of approval for his words from around the circles, and Ta Avi Beadsigns studied upon the words, nodded, and looked at a Gifted One with gray streaked black hair and a much grayer beard. He was a fisher named Yoliv. The man licked the pad of his left thumb and said, “Tomorrow is full of questions. A father makes children early and often against life’s uncertainties. Keep love warm and generous when you’re young. There is time enough for sleep and sore backs after the gray and the true love come.”

Yoliv received laughter and grunts of approval for his words from around the circles, and Ta Avi Beadsigns studied upon the words, nodded, and looked at Gordon. All eyes turned in Gordon’s direction and he returned the looks, surprised that he, a stranger, had been invited to contribute wisdom of his own. After a moment he smiled as he remembered a story he had heard from Hosteen Ahiga.

“One day a boy came to a very wise man and said to him, ‘Old man, I am confused. I do not know if I am ready to become a man. There are so many things I do not know.’ The old man nodded and said, ‘Confusion marks you as a man. Back when you thought you had all the answers you were still a boy.’”

Gordon received substantial grunts of approval for his words from around the circles, and Ta Avi studied upon the words and nodded, and nodded again, but with a smile.

Late that night, high above the village on the men’s ledge, Gordon, Ta Avi, Ghaf and a few of the other gifted gathered before fires, ate, huddled beneath furs, told stories, offered advice, and answered Ta Avi’s questions about manhood, women, marriage, trade, child rearing, the gods, and the hunt while they awaited Ekav’s appearance above the eastern horizon. It had long ago been that each boy entering manhood would have to single-hunt and kill a great bear, but Wuja had passed along that Walking Man and Walking Woman’s descendents had been successful, far outnumbering his own. Bear killing as a rite, he said, was for a time when all men were needed for the hunt. The Great White Bear charged each livelihood other than hunters to establish its own rite for manhood. For Ta Avi Beadsigns it was to contribute something new to the craft of bead making. He showed the gifted men his contribution. With fingers burned from drops of molten glass, Ta Avi showed the gifted his beautiful necklace of red glass beads veined with gold, glass and metal fused together, no two exactly alike. “I have done this with yellow glass, green, and blue, as well.”

All of the gifted, including Gordon, placed orders for Ta Avi’s new beads. It was judged by the gifted on the ledge that night that Ta Avi had “slain his bear.”

The temperature dropped sharply, there were three fires against the cold, Ta Avi excused the gifted who needed to seek shelter, and soon only Ghaf, Gordon, and the bead maker’s son looked out over the village toward Quona, the moon, as it illuminated the glimmering white tower of distant Black Mountain.

“You are hunter,” Ghaf said to Gordon, holding a finger to the corner of his right eye.

“I have been hunter of a kind.” Gordon shifted his gaze from the mountain to Ghaf. “I was a warrior.”

“You hunted men,” Ghaf said as he studied Gordon’s face. “Now in your summers, God’n, what will you do? That Pela will not stand an idle man around the house.” All three of them laughed.

“Maybe hunter or fisher. What game do you hunt, Ghaf, along with winter bear?”

Ghaf gave him the word and drew the picture of a deer. “Deer is good. Antelope.”

“What was your most exciting hunt?” asked Ta Avi.

The hunter threw up his hands. “Ah!” Ghaf bent forward, smoothed the snow, and drew in the snow a picture of an elephant or wooly mammoth. He put in a very small hunter next to the creature. “Running Mountain they call it in Big Snake Country,” he said. “Long ago my father took me to join with Black Shoulders hunters down into the Big Snake, a land filled with angry stinging insects, birds that blind you with their colors, and serpents that crush and eat a man whole.” He licked his left thumb and shook his head. “We told hunt story at fires for many summers after that. Two Black Shoulders hunters trampled, running mountain bellow like thunderstorm. My father, Ijev Ni, brought down mountain.” He grinned. “His son Ghaf got in a poke or two with his spear. So much meat we shared with everyone. Black Shoulders People keep tusks for carving and medicine, bones for building. They show us how to cut and dry meat for keeping. We pack five strong horses with dried meat to bring back to village, more on our own horses. No one hungry that winter.” He grinned widely showing a healthy set of teeth. “Best hunt.”

Ghaf leaned forward, put two more sticks on the fire, checked to his left and saw Ta Avi yawning. “Big day for Kom’s young man.” He held his right hand, palm open toward Ta Avi. “May Ta Avi’s way always be clear, woman always loving, children healthy and respectful, and you deserving of it all.”

The new man nodded his thanks and said, “May you always have hunter’s eyes, Ghaf, and some of my years for your gifts to me and to the clan,” answered Ta Avi.

Both the hunter and the bead maker pulled their furs about themselves, leaned back against the cliff face, and closed their eyes to sleep. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire.

Gordon tucked his fur around his legs, put another fur around his shoulders, pulled his hat down over his ears, leaned back against the cliff face, and looked at the moonlight reflected from Black Mountain. He pulled over his knapsack, held it between his knees, reached in, reset the shockcomb, and checked the charge. Eighty-eight percent. On the locater he could see the dim reflection of the readout, but there wasn’t any point in looking at it. He already knew how much time was left. He closed the bag, moved it close to the fire to recharge the instruments, then leaned back and looked to the shadows.

He saw the reflection of a pair of yellow eyes far to his right and turned his head a bit more. The eyes came closer, the dark shape of the thing carrying them outlined by the reflection of the fire on the red cliff behind it. “Wolves are Coyote People,” he said to the creature. “Welcome, Sister.” There was meat next to the fire and Gordon reached out and picked up a piece with a bone in it. He was going to throw it to the animal at first, but instead he held it out. “I came a long way to feed you my dinner, Sister.”

The animal came closer, and it was a wolf with a luxuriously thick coat, gray above the eyes and in the ears, mostly white below. The eyes were unblinking. Gordon extended the hand holding the meat, the animal backed away slightly, then returned. It took another step and another. With each step its gaze at Gordon’s eyes wavered not a millimeter. Closer the muzzle of the animal came to Gordon’s hand, closer still. Its tongue licked at the meat, brushing Gordon’s fingers. The wolf took the meat, carried it away a few steps, then settled down to eat, its powerful jaws crushing the bone.

Gordon looked to see Ghaf’s hand stealing toward his stone knife. He said to the hunter, “I have invited my sister to eat with us, my friend. Attacking her would be inhospitable.”

“I hope those furs Pela made you don’t belong to anyone your sister knows,” the hunter quipped as he fell back to sleep chuckling.

Gordon looked over to the wolf and she was licking her front paws, the meat gone, the bone splintered and clean. He watched her until his eyelids grew heavy and he slept.

In his dream the wolf spoke to him. She said, “Nascha is at peace now. Our mother is healed of her sickness and now walks in Beauty. All of them walk in Beauty.” He saw his mother, Hosteen Ahiga, and Phil Andreakos together in a world of green and blue, soft lights and gentle winds.

He awakened and the wolf was gone. Ghaf the hunter and Ta Avi still slept. Sitting cross-legged in front of Gordon was Jatka, the boy who had brought him tea in the clanhouse.

“Why does your face have no hair?” asked Jatka. “Do you cut it?”

“The people I come from don’t grow face hair.”

“Not even gifted?”

“No. Answer me a question, Jatka. You seem older than Ta Avi. Why do you still sit upon the high tier?”

“I have no one to feast me up to this ledge, God’n. No parent to offer me to the clanhouse.”

“What happened to your parents?” asked Gordon.

Jatka glanced down, then back at Gordon. “Both dead. Tchama, my mother, was Black Mountain. A singer. She died in childbirth.”

“Your father?”

“Also a singer. He was Yellow Claw.” Jatka looked into a shadow. “When I had ten summers, he tried to kill me.” Jatka looked back at Gordon. “He died with my flint in his neck.”

After a long silence Gordon asked, “Did he blame you for your mother’s death?”

“Every day.” The boy looked into his shadow once more. “Some villagers blame me for my father’s death. He was very popular, a great singer.”

“Do you miss him?”

“I miss having a father.”

“Jatka, my father left us the day I was born. My mother was Coyote Pass People. She was sick until she died.”

“You took care of her?” asked Jatka.

“Yes. She walked in bad dreams but many in my village thought she was a witch and feared her. Because of that I was not a part of life. There was a Gifted One who spent time with me, though. I loved him.”

Jatka shrugged, stood, and looked down at Gordon. “I just wanted to know why you have the face of a boy.”

Gordon nodded. “Are you a singer?”

“No. I do things around the village, mostly for Tonton Annajaka. In return she teach me about herbs, roots, and powders. Thank you for speaking with me.” Jatka turned and walked toward the western end of the ledge, vanishing into the shadows. A pair of unblinking yellow eyes looked back at Gordon.

“Is that the path you would tease me onto, Coyote?” he asked as he closed his eyes and snuggled into his furs. “What would your lesson for that be, I wonder?”

Jatka had been more respectful than Gordon had been at his age when he had gotten into Hosteen Ahiga’s face. To belong nowhere, caught between fear, scorn, and indifference, condemned to loneliness and to carry the guilt of his father’s death. Perhaps Coyote was showing the boy how much he could bear without breaking.

He wondered if Ibrahim Taleghani had thought for even a second about how he would keep himself sufficiently detached from the people he found at the base of this cliff to make it possible to leave them to their fate. Or had they not been people at all to his mind? Perhaps to the scientist they were only subjects from textbooks, theories, drawings of heavy-browed, dull-witted Neanderthals hunting, eating, grunting, killing, and making little Neanderthals.

Gordon pulled the furs more tightly about his neck and closed his eyes against the sight of the mountain. As he drifted back to sleep, Gordon reminded himself that—even if Dr. Taleghani spirit was watching with the aid of another dimension—the scientist’s regard or lack of it for these people no longer mattered. Gordon’s feelings did.

At the sound of loud shouting, Gordon jumped up, wide awake, the sunlight hurting his eyes. It was Ghaf doing the hollering. The hunter was on full yodel down to the village, bringing news of their night on the ledge with their new man, Ta Avi Beadsigns, who cut beautiful red-and-gold beads and would earn enough from last night’s trading to set himself up smartly. Ta Avi, who bravely slept right through a visit by God’n’s sister, a female great wolf who ate from God’n’s hand and licked his fingers and left them attached to his hand all the same.

After Ghaf had finished reporting the news, Ta Avi walked over and looked at the paw prints in the snow at the west end of the ledge. When Ta Avi returned to the fire, he squatted before Gordon and asked, “Do you command wolves?”

“I command no one, Ta Avi. I have many brothers and sisters, though. Wolves are Coyote People.” Gordon saw the ones who had left the ledge as the night grew colder now returning to claim their places next to the living legends of the sleeping bead maker and the wolfman. One of them, an old shaggy-headed mat weaver called Doven, ended the ceremony by making a prayer to the sun. He took barely warm ashes from the edge of a fire, washed his hands and arms in them, then took a smoking brand from the fire, turned and began making marks on the cliff wall. He began with what looked like a large numeral 6 followed to its right by a smaller o. Doven continued writing, from left to right, until there were five lines of characters, each line apparently separated into words. Once written, Ta Avi began reading the prayer out loud.

“Ekav, in the name of Wuja, god of men...”

It was a prayer that listed the functions and responsibilities of manhood as individual, husband, father, exchanger of value, producer, and contributor to the common defense. It stated that Ta Avi, under the supervision of the gifted and the Great Bear, had fulfilled the requirements and asked the sun god for his blessing. Ta Avi and the gifted then left the ledge as Doven once again scrubbed his hands with ashes, Gordon watching him.

“Doven,” said Gordon to the mat weaver, “what is that sign?” He pointed at the 6.”

Doven stood, shook the ashes from his hands, smiled, and nodded. “Sign of Ekav.” He pointed at the sun’s edge peeking over the eastern horizon. “Sky traveler, bringer of light and life, healer, father of crops, father of all clans.” He retrieved his piece of charcoal, went far to the left of where he had written his prayer, and drew another 6 on the wall and pointed to his ear with his left hand. “Also is eh sound sign.” To the left of the 6 he drew what looked like a T with the right half of the crosspiece missing. “Sign of Pash, goddess of forests. Also is p sound sign.” To the right of the 6 Doven drew a chevron with the point downward. “Sign of Loka, guardian spirit of ehlodomak.” It took some signing and drawing pictures in snow, but Gordon learned ehlodomak was the physical underworld of caves and caverns. To the right of Loka’s v sign Doven drew a short horizontal line—a dash. “Avina’s sign,” he said. “Avina is goddess of river. Sound sign ah.”

Doven drew a line beneath all four signs from left to right. “Pee-eh-el-ah. Pela.” He grinned at Gordon. “Pela,” he repeated.

Gordon found two sticks, added them to the fire, and moved some of the cooked meat from the night before close to the heat to warm it. Finished with that, he stood next to the mat weaver. “If you have the time, Doven, I would learn all the sound signs.”