"Time to go," he said quietly to Gary. Hartshorn nodded, pulled back slowly and got to his feet. A few seconds later they reached the Cherokees in their position. "Time to go," he repeated. The two Cherokees obviously heard him, but they didn't take their eyes off whatever they were looking at in the distance; which, whatever it was, was considerably to the west of the village. "Look over there," said Kevin. "With your binoculars. We think that's smoke." Rod pulled his glasses from their case and scanned the western horizon. He took his time. And, sure enough, he saw smoke. There was a thin line of an dark-white haze blending into the darker smoke and steam released by the volcano further out. It was very faint, so much so that he hadn't spotted it earlier. Someone was burning wood, was the most likely explanation. Just to be sure, Hulbert watched the area for a full three minutes. Okay, it wasn't a forest fire and it wasn't a thermal vent. It was definitely confined, not growing, and was most probably manmade. A campfire, was the most logical explanation. He did the calculations in his head. Two miles out-a couple of hours for observation-two miles back: It looked like they would be eating a cold supper again tonight. It also looked like they would be late reporting in. "Fucking bastards,"Hulbert muttered. They were lying on their stomachs watching the Spaniards. They were close enough to hear what was being said, if it was said loudly-and the Spaniards were being loud. Quite obviously, they were not in the least bit concerned that the noise they made might alert somebody. De Soto's name had come up once or twice. Another name that kept cropping up was Moscoso. And that was the bastard he was talking about. Hulbert's Spanish was weak.
He had what he had been exposed to on the job, plus the two years he had in high school. That was it. And these guys had one hell of an accent. And most of the words being said made no sense. The parts that he thought he did understand made his blood run cold. There looked to be about three or four hundred well-armed Spaniards all together.
Between bits and pieces in the prison's library and the history that a few of the guards remembered, they'd been able to put together the basic facts about de Soto's expedition. So, Rod knew de Soto had started his trip through North America with almost seven hundred men.
He also knew only three hundred and eleven survived to make the trip home. Disease had taken a large number of them out, including de Soto himself. But most of those who died had done so in battle with the Indians. For three and a half years, the Spaniards, unable to carry enough food for their trip, robbed every village they came to. They also enslaved the people they captured, and took anything that might be of value when they retuned home. Most of the men Hulbert watched were dressed in bold colors. Their shirts were made of a combination of cloth and leather, and some of the shirts were padded at the shoulders. Most of their pants were short breeches that were flared and stuffed. They wore long, tight-fitting stockings, and thigh-high boots. He didn't think much of their taste in clothes. A lot of it was stupid and impractical for traipsing through a wilderness. But the things they covered those clothes with were not. Most of the footmen wore morions-multi-peaked, steel helmets with short, down-turned brims. They also wore padded vests calledescaupil, a sort of armor made of nothing more than cotton, yet could stop an arrow. Other footmen wore the brigandine vests. These were the precursors to the prison's own bullet-proof vests-sleeveless shirts with steel plates riveted in place to protect vital organs. The horsemen wore helmets and a cuirass to protect their chest, abdomen and back. Some wore arm and leg armor. Others wore chain mail and gauntlets. They were well armored and well armed. They carried steel swords, matchlock guns, crossbows, and lances. Hulbert was a crossbow enthusiast and knew the damage the weapon was capable of. These men would not be easy to defeat, and Rod didn't think for a minute it would be possible to negotiate anything with them. The bastards had a couple of hundred Indians roped together by the neck, mostly women and young girls, being marched through the tangle of trees and brush. Each of the prisoners carried a basket filled with food, tools, blankets and everything else the marauders thought they might need. Another, much smaller group of male Indians worked at keeping a small herd of pigs from wandering away. That would have been a tough job under any circumstances. With the pigs the Spaniards had brought with them to America, it was almost impossible. They seemed half-feral and had probably been selected for their endurance more than anything else.
They certainly didn't look much like the pigs Rod was accustomed to seeing at county fairs. One of the pigs had gotten away and escaped into the brush. The man called Moscoso had apparently decided the Indian closest to the animal was responsible and needed to be punished. He began cursing and beating him savagely with a quirt, until the Indian was writhing on the ground pleading for mercy. Even then, Moscoso didn't stop for at least half a minute. This went well beyond even the harshest notions of discipline. It was pure and simple cruelty. Throughout, Hulbert ignored the Indian and studied Moscoso, making sure he could recognize the man anywhere he saw him, in any kind of reasonable lighting. When the time came, he'd see to it personally that Moscoso was a dead man. "We can't just leave those Indians they way they are. We have to do something to help them,"
Hartshorn said. Hulbert glanced at the man and shook his head. "We'll help them when we can, Gary. But not today. We're outnumbered almost a hundred to one." Hartshorn looked ferocious. "Sure, not today. But what about after the sun sets? We can go down and tie them. Man, what I wouldn't give for a half dozen grenades. These sonsabitches are worse than anything we have behind bars inside the prison." "We can't," Hulbert said between gritted teeth. "There are too many of them, and too few of us. I don't care if it's noon or midnight. If you want to save lives, Gary, we do nothing. We have to get back to the captain and Watkins. They have to be warned." He started crawling back the way they had come. Just a few feet down the hill he stopped and whispered, "The Cherokee town isn't far off from the creek the Spaniards are following. They outnumber the Cherokees even if you include all the women and children and old men. Watkins only has three dozen or so warriors. These guys are all warriors. They'll find the Cherokees and destroy them. And when they're done, they'll move on like a swarm of locusts. Eventually, they'll run across the prison."
Hulbert forced himself to take several slow steady breaths. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge. He was not going to risk being seen. Too much depended on them coming home. They had to start moving now. He knew he could get back to the town before de Soto could get close enough to be a threat to the Cherokees. A group as large as the Spaniards, and driving slaves, wouldn't be able to travel more than a few miles a day through this type of terrain. Ten, at most. If he pushed, and he intended to push damn hard, they should be able to get back in plenty of time to warn Blacklock and Watkins. For a moment, he considered trying to warn the villagers they'd been observing. But that just wasn't possible, in the time they had. The language barrier would make communication impossible in any period short of several days, and for all he knew he could wind up frightening them right into the arms of the Spaniards. He could only hope they were maintaining their own scouting parties and would spot the Spaniards in time to escape into the wilderness. No. The four of them would report back to Blacklock and Watkins. They were in charge, and it would be their decision.
Chapter 37 Andy Blacklock shook head. "Rod, we can't go back to the prison. Not yet. The way I understand it, another village is about to wiped off the face of the planet. This planet, not the one we came from. This planet, that doesn't have very many villages to start with.
And we have to rescue those people already enslaved, too. You said yourself most of them were women and girls." Lieutenant Hulbert set his jaws. "Look, I understand your reaction. Believe me, I had the same reaction myself-and then some-watching those thugs brutalizing people. But you're not looking at the whole picture, Andy." They were sitting in the cabin the Cherokees had provided them. Rod nodded toward the door. "Since tying up with Geoffrey's people, we have women and children and old people. Damn it, we could lose them. And if we do, we will never have it again. We will never see an old man or old woman and a baby on the same day. There's more at stake here than just us. Andy, it's like you've said a hundred times, our future-who we will be-is on the line. We have to pick our battles, and make sure we win them. We can't risk a loss. If we die trying to help that village, then there won't be anyone to protect this town or the people we still have at the prison." He stopped, and took a deep breath. Obviously, trying to keep his temper under control. This was the first time since the Quiver that Rod and Andy had had a serious disagreement, and neither one of them wanted to risk escalating it into a shouting match. Andy took a deep breath himself and looked away. "Okay, Rod.
But you're the one who's not looking at the whole picture. This isn't simply a moral issue. It isn't even simply a strategic or tactical issue, in a narrow military sense. It's quite possibly a matter of life and death for every human being on the planet. Not now, but generations from now." Rod frowned. "That seems awfully melodramatic, Andy." "No, it isn't. We've got a problem-and you can spell that with a capital P-that I hadn't even thought about until Jeff raised it with me privately, the same night you left on your expedition. And it's about as crude and simple as problems get." He looked at Edelman, the third man in the cabin. "Tell him, Jeff." "Rod, I'm worried about the genetic pool." "Huh?" "Genetic pool. Breeding population. There are various terms for it. But what they all come down to is that if the numbers of a species drop too far, that species is doomed. It either goes extinct quickly, or it starts developing such serious genetic problems that its chances of survival get really dicey. That's why population numbers is the key benchmark they use to declare a species endangered." By the time Jeff was done, Rod had his eyes closed. Andy understood the reason. He'd done exactly the same thing when Jeff had raised the issue with him earlier. Closed his eyes and did the math himself. The arithmetic was pretty damn stark. A little over two hundred guards and nurses, the majority of them male. And of the females, a good percentage were no longer young enough to have children. Certainly not more than one child. Two thousand plus convicts, all of them male-leaving aside any other consideration, such as the fact that some of them were psychotic. Somewhere between three hundred and seven hundred Spanish conquistadores. All of them male. A small number of U.S. soldiers. All of them male. About three hundred Cherokees, evenly divided in terms of gender but with a number of the women beyond child-bearing years. "Well, aren't we screwed?" muttered Hulbert. Jeff chuckled humorlessly. "Probably a poor choice of words, given the circumstances. Aren't wenot screwed would be a lot closer."
Rod blew out some air and rubbed his face. "We needed this like we needed a hole in the head." He thought about it for a moment. "Okay, then. What's the magic number? How manydo you need?" Edelman shrugged.
"Nobody really knows, is the only honest answer. The minimum, of course, is the Biblical two. Adam and Eve. But even in the Bible, their sons found wives somewhere else. Where'd they come from? Even the Lord Almighty doesn't seem to have known the answer. We sure as hell don't." Hulbert glared at him. "Will you puh-lease stop being such a damn academic? Give me a ballpark figure, Jeff." "Sorry. Can't even do that. The problem is that the number seems to vary, from species to species-and nobody's ever put it to the test, with human beings." Hulbert's glare didn't fade at all. Jeff sighed. "Look, I can put it this way. Leaving out of the equation for the moment whatever number of Indians are out there other than the Cherokees, I figure we've got somewhere around two hundred females, all told, who are capable of having children. Please note that I'm being wildly optimistic, in that I'm presuming that each and every one of them is capable of bearing a child and is willing to do so. I've already told Andy that if and when the time comes that we have to declare a public policy, I'm ducking behind the podium and lettinghim tell Bird Matthews that she's gotta start screwing guys." Rod laughed. One of the guards, Bird Matthews, was a confirmed and I'm-not-kidding lesbian. She was cheerful about it, not belligerent, and she wasn't a "militant" in the usual sense of the word. In fact, she was quite popular with the other guards, of either sex. But she'd made clear the I'm-not-kidding part by organizing a small motorcycle club that called itselfDykes on Bikes. They even had the logo on their motorcycle jackets. "Okay, point taken. But let's assume the two hundred figure is valid. What then?" "Well, like I told Andy, I'm not positive. But I'm pretty sure that's not enough. Not in the long run. It's not a simple matter of arithmetic. Obviously, if two hundred women each have two daughters, and those daughters each have two, etc. etc., you wind up with a problem of overpopulation faster than you might imagine. But people are complex packages of DNA, on a genetic level, they're not numbers. If the original breeding stock is too low, you run into what's called a bottleneck problem. That won't just apply to us, either. Any of the animals that came through in small numbers, such as the horses, are looking at a bottleneck too. "Even something as random as genetic drift can screw you up. All it takes is one or two bad mutations and you can find yourself dying off. It's not so much an arithmetical problem as a statistical one. Theoretically, a species could survive with an initial breeding stock of one male and one female. It's just that the smaller the pool, the worse the odds get."
He looked at the small fire in the chimney they were sitting by, for a moment. "On the other side of the coin-again, with the caveat that this is really just an educated guess-I think that two thousand females would be enough." "Oh, swell. We're screwed, then." A bit grumpily: "And don't lecture me about my choice of words. We're still not even in the ballpark." "Not… necessarily. We have no idea how many little Indian villages or hunter-gatherer bands are out there.
But I can tell you this much. I think it has to be a fair number."
"Why?" "Because the Quiver-whatever it was; which we don't know and I doubt we ever will-wasn't just a temporal phenomenon. It was also a spacial phenomenon. And it looks to me as if the spacial dimension involved in its effects-call it the radius-got larger the farther back in time it went. Or maybe it started way back in ancient time and came forward, narrowing as it went. Either way, if you were to plot the Quiver in three dimensions, it would look like a cone rather than a cylinder." "Run that by me again." "Think about it, Rod. Who got taken in our day? Just us. The prison, and a little bit of territory around it. Go back almost a hundred and seventy years, and who got taken among the Cherokee? I've asked, and the answer is interesting. Chief Watkins and his people weren't all gathered together in one small area when they got snatched by the Quiver, the way we were. They were strung out along a trail-and the soldiers were riding point quite a ways ahead. Still, most of them got snatched. The only ones who didn't, in his band, were a group that had been bringing up the rear a long ways behind, and the soldiers who were with them. Which was most of them." "Ha. I'll be damned. I hadn't even thought about that."
"Don't feel bad," said Andy. "Neither had I." "Jeff, have you tried to figure out-" "Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Of course I've tried to figure out what the radius must have been. As near as I can tell, at least a half a mile and maybe even a mile. The problem is that nobody knows exactly how far back the group that didn't get taken were lagging. The soldiers were a good quarter of a mile ahead, though, according to Sergeant Kershner. So no matter how you slice it, the territory involved was a lot bigger than the prison area." Idly, he picked up a stick and fed it to the fire. "Okay. The next group of people who got snatched, that we know of, were de Soto and his army.
Please note the use of the term 'army.' Fine, a small army-but you don't cram even a small army into a small space. Not when you're on campaign, for sure-and every report we've gotten about the Spaniards seems to indicate they're foraging constantly. What little we've been able to squeeze out of the one Spaniard we captured seems to confirm that. No matter which way I look at it, I figure it has to have been a lot bigger radius than the one the Cherokees were in, much less us."
Another stick went into the fire. "I get the same results when I look at the animals, except it's even more extreme. We haven't seen more than four deer-and yet, between us and the Cherokees, we've seen three allosaurs. There's no way to explain that ratiowithout presuming a steady increase in the radius of the Quiver as it went further and further back in time." "Uh… sorry, I'm not following you."
"That's because you're not a biologist. One of the laws of biology is that predators are always outnumbered-a lot-by prey, and the bigger an animal gets, the scarcer it gets. Especially predators. That's because big predators need a very big hunting range." It didn't take Rod, with his extensive outdoor experience, more than a second to grasp the point. "Jesus. What's the hunting range of something like a grizzly bear or a tiger?" "Tigers, I don't know. And I don't remember the specific numbers for big bears. It's different anyway, for male and female bears. But I do know the numbers, from the lowest to highest, are all measured in square kilometers. Hundreds of square kilometers."
"Gotcha. And a big bear weighs what, approximately? Half a ton?" "Not quite, although a few individuals get even bigger that that. The biggest are the southern Alaskan brown bears. If I remember right, the males average somewhere around four hundred kilos. Call it nine hundred pounds." Hulbert nodded. "What do you figure an allosaur weighs? And spare me the lecture about variation. I know that.
Ballpark figures, Jeff, ballpark figures. For right now, that's plenty good enough." Edelman smiled. "They're at least three times bigger than a large male Alaskan brown bear. Probably closer to five or six times bigger, on average, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them got up to four or five tons. Which would make them eight to ten times bigger." "Four deer and three allosaurs…" Rod mused. "Yeah, I see your point. There's simply no way you could have found three allosaurs in an area the size of the prison, or even that stretch of trail the Cherokees were on." "Not unless they were having a convention or a rock concert. No, by the time the Quiver reached the Cretaceous, the radius had to have been something like fifty miles. Probably more, and maybe a lot more. We have no reason to think that the three allosaurs we've seen or heard about are all there are." Rod pondered the matter, for a minute or so. "In other words-this is the gist of it, stripped down to the essentials-the future of the human race in this world depends ultimately on the most primitive people in it. Those pre-Mounds Indians out there, in their villages." "Yup. Just like the Bible says. The meek shall inherit the Earth." Rod scratched his cheek. "Andy, since you're the big shot, I do believe I'll follow Jeff's example. When the time comes, I'm ducking behind the podium while you tell an assembled crowd of prison guards and prehistoric hunter-gatherers that they've got to start dating." All three of them laughed. When the laughter died down, Edelman shook his head. "It won't have to come that, thankfully. This is a generational problem, not something measured in years. And while I don't know nearly as much history and anthropology as I do biology and geology, I do know one thing. There has never been a time recorded in human history or told about in myths and legends, when two groups of human beings met for the first time, that they didn't start screwing each other." He leaned back on his stool, looking very complacent. "Besides, that's what adolescence is for. Let our teenage descendants deal with it, the snotty worthless brats." Rod sighed, and ran fingers through his hair.
"But we can do what they can't. Keep those Indians alive to begin with." "Yeah, that's right," said Andy. "Look at it this way, Rod. We had a job to do in our old world, and all that seems to have happened is that we're picking up the same job in this one. Protecting people against the worst people." Rod chuckled, softly and without much humor. "I don't think the term 'correctional officer' was ever intended to be applied to Spanish damn-the-bastards conquistadores.
But, okay, I see your point. When do we leave tomorrow?"
Chapter 38 Susan Fisher sat down next to Jenny. She didn't say anything, just sat on one of the stools positioned in front of the stone bowls the Cherokee women used to grind the nutmeal. Jenny nodded at her, her mind still distracted. She and Andy had had a very heated, whispered argument this morning. She hadn't been happy at all that he wasn't taking her along on the expedition to fight the Spaniards. But, in the end, she had agreed. Andy was right, and she'd known it all along. She'd just had a fierce emotional reaction to the idea of being left behind. Especially, to the idea of being separated from him. In the type of battle that lay ahead, her supply level made her skill level almost useless. She could do more good staying behind than as a field surgeon. Which, given what she had available, wouldn't mean much more than amputations-and the Cherokees had their own people who knew how to do that. Andy had made the alliance with Watkins, but he figured it was still shaky. If not for Watkins, for many of the other Cherokees. And Watkins' authority as their chief was very far from absolute. The Cherokee power structure wasn't exactly what modern Americans would call a democracy, but that was mostly a matter of formalities and custom. It was far closer to a democracy than a dictatorship. For that matter, it was far more democratic than any number of supposedly democratic institutions in their own society.
Andy thought Jenny could play a key role in solidifying the alliance.
Leaving aside the fact that the Cherokees respected her medical knowledge, Jenny was the most experienced person in the group when it came to dealing with other cultures. So, she stayed behind. And did her best to control the knot in her stomach. The first order of business was not to be rude. Susan Fisher would have come here for a reason. "Can I be of help, Susan?" She forced herself to turn her head from looking at the horizon where the expedition had gone to the woman next to her. She had to look down, too. Fisher was a tiny woman, although Jenny was sure she would be strong as an ox. In her endurance, at least. She'd watched the woman-her, and several other Cherokee women-working a mortar and pestle for hours, grinding the nutmeal. Her knarled hands were wide and calloused. Her hair, still black, framed a face that was at least fifty. She was obviously a woman who had worked hard all her life, and it showed. But her voice was soft. Almost musical. "Eat, first. You ate nothing this morning."
The medicine woman handed Jenny a small piece of some sort of food.
"It is not much for taste. It should have dried berries in it, but we haven't found any berries. It will fill you, though." "What is it?"
Jenny asked, curious. She really couldn't tell what the stuff was.
Dried meat of some kind, obviously, was one major ingredient. But it didn't feel like jerky. She took an experimental bite. Didn't taste like jerky, either. "Pemmican. I'd say it was the Cherokee version of it, but that's probably silly. There's not a single thing in it we would have used back home." Pemmican. Jenny knew what it was, theoretically, but had never eaten any in her life. Never seen any, so far as she could remember. It was a concentrated food that, in one form or another, had been used by many tribes in North America. And then, later, adopted by European explorers, trappers and fur traders.
It was a mixture of rendered animal fat, dried meat, and berries.
Grains and seeds could be added too, if she remembered correctly. The combination sounded a little gross, especially the rendered fat, but pemmican was a concentrated food supply that would last without spoiling for a long time, and was quite nutritious. It would be a valuable addition to their resources. As for the taste… Best not to go there. "It's good," she said. "It's fucking terrible. We need berries. And the fat's not right. You want bone marrow fat for good pemmican, and there's not enough in these lizards. So we had to make do. The meat…" The little woman shook her head. "Lizard meat.
Deer would be much better. But it'll do, for the meantime." Jenny nodded, forcing herself to continue chewing. Food was important to a people. They were emotionally attached to their diet and took offense when foreigners criticized their eating habits. But she had a feeling the pemmican was going to be one of those things she would have a hard time getting used to, even if Susan and the other women found berries or a substitute. But maybe not, if the fat were different. She thought it was the rendered fat that gave it that rather nasty taste. Perhaps fat taken from mammal bone marrow would be different. After all, sheliked the grasshoppers. Because of the years she'd spent in South America, Jenny was far more cosmopolitan in her culinary tastes than the prison guards; most of whom, like Andy himself, had been born and raised in southern Illinois or nearby. There were any number of good things to be said about the men and women from small towns and cities in America's heartland. An adventurous spirit when it came to food was not one of them. As she'd already figured out from watching Fisher in the various discussions that had taken place, the little woman was not one for idle chit-chat or beating around the bush. "The captain. Andy Blacklock. He is your husband?" Jenny gave a small sigh. Women always wanted to know who you were paired with and how tight that bond was.
It didn't matter what race or what religion or what part of the world they came from. She forced herself to give Fisher a smile. She knew it was a pathetic imitation of the real thing. But it was the best she could do. She knew why women asked. It was because at some instinctual level women knew it was important. It was what kept the human race going. "No, he isn't. I'm a widow. My husband died almost three years ago. Andy and I… We just met very recently, right after the Quiver. Ah, the Great Wind." That was the Cherokee term for the disaster. "And things have been so hard-pressed since that we haven't been able to decide… Well. To be truthful, we haven't really even talked about it." They hadn't even had sex yet. Partly because of the pressure; partly because there'd been so little privacy; but mostly, she thought, because both she and Andy understood that once they took that step everything would lock in. She didn't think Andy was nervous about that. She certainly wasn't, she'd come to realize at least a week ago. Still, it made both of them a bit cautious. The bar had been raised very high, so to speak. She regretted it now. If she'd known Andy would be leaving to fight a war, she'd have ended the dilly-dallying. She might never see him again. Fisher nodded. "Smart woman. Three years is a good time to wait between husbands. I waited three years after my first husband died before I went and got another." Fisher sat quietly for a while, watching the children trying to coax a small, furred creature down from a tree. The creature was having none of it. "How did your husband die?" Normally, Jenny would have resented the blunt question, coming from someone who was almost a complete stranger. But the medicine woman wasn't prying; she was trying to get to know her. And the only way to know who a person was today was to know what things had happened in their past. "My husband was a doctor, and we were working in Brazil, down in South America.
We'd been there for a little over two years. We were scheduled to stay until the end of the third year, but we became infested with one of the local parasites. As soon as we realized what was wrong, we came home, back to the states. But it didn't help. There was nothing anyone could do for him. He was gone in less than four days. I was sick for months, and off work for a year." "You had no children?" Jenny shook her head. Fisher took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "Stephen McQuade has explained to me that the world you came from was very different than our own. I am curious. He says a nurse in your time is not the nurse of my own." Jenny started to laugh. "Oh, heavens. Yes, he's right. Things have changed a lot. I still give baths, and help a patient to the bathroom, but I do a lot more than that. I've probably had more education than the best physician working in the most modern hospital in the eighteen hundreds." Fisher nodded. "Hospitals are where the whites go to die." Jenny knew that wasn't prejudice. Fisher was right. Until very recently, historically speaking-certainly in Susan's stretch of the nineteenth century-hospitals were death houses.
To start with, they were usually filthy. The care was frequently worse than no care at all, since it consisted of things like bleeding that often made the patient's condition worse. A person actually had less of a chance to survive if they entered one than if they stayed home and weathered it with nothing but the help of a friend or family member. And the death rate in childbirth of wealthier women who used doctors was far worse than that of poorer women who just used the help of a midwife. "You do not make your own medicines, though, he said.
That seems strange to me." "No." She decided not to try to explain, right now, all the complexities of a modern medical and pharmaceutical industry. "In my day, that was specialized work. It was done by doctors called 'pharmacists.' " The American Medical Association would scream bloody murder if they heard that. But the AMA wasn't here and Jenny's opinion had always been that a good pharmacist was worth ten mediocre doctors anyway. "I know a few of the old remedies, but not many. And"-she waved at the woods around them-"those I do know, I don't know how to find." Fisher nodded. "Yes. It is the same for me. I know some of the old ways, but not all. And the plants I used are now gone." They sat silent, grieving for their losses. Fisher for her small herb garden, and Jenny for her telephone and pharmacy. "If there is fat left over after making the pemmican I will make an oil to keep away the insects. I do not know if it will work with these strange bugs, but I will try just the same. This place is so different from home, but it is also the same in many ways. There is a bog not too far away. A half-day's walk from here. It will be very useful." Jenny's estimate of the little Cherokee woman's medical skills went up steeply. It would be foolish-really foolish-to underestimate Susan Fisher. Because she was right. Bog-water and moss were the two most sterile things on the planet now. Her mind was racing. A bog was the first step. It would give them sterile dressings and an antibacterial rinse. Her thoughts twisted and turned. "Sea water. Do you know how far we are from the ocean?" In a pinch seawater would work as an I.V. solution for short-term stabilization of a patient. Doctors, caught in the middle of battle without their usual supplies had resorted to ocean water. It hadn't worked as well as whole blood or plasma, but it had saved a lot of lives. Salt water had also saved more than one burn victim. Fisher shook her head. "We have not seen the ocean. Not even any big lakes." "That's okay. There has to be an ocean. In fact, Jeff Edelman says the world today probably has a higher sea level. There was even a big sea some of the time, he says, in the center of-"
Luckily, she caught herself before she said United States. In Fisher's time, the United States ended at the Mississippi River-and the land beyond it had been promised to the Cherokee. Another promise that would eventually be broken. "In the middle of North America. If it's there, we'll find it sooner or later." Jenny stretched, feeling her gloom vanishing. "Most medicines from my time still came from plants and animals. If we put our heads together, I bet we could get some of them back. We will just have to experiment a little."
Chapter 39 "Stay low," James Cook whispered to Boyne. He used his left hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. The sun had set an hour ago, and a small fire flickered and glowed in the darkness. From the small rise he and John were hidden behind, they could just see down into the clearing below them. There were a half dozen strangely dressed men sitting around the flames. They were wearing some kind of body armor too. It looked like metal. "Did you see the shape they left that couple in?" Boyne made the sign of the cross. "Man, they're worse than the animals back at the prison. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. That poor woman was raped and mutilated. And her man, he died even harder. I think they were trying to get him to tell them something. God knows what. Those people didn't look like they had a pot to piss in." James didn't answer. Boyne was hissing between clenched teeth and the sound was barely traveling to him, but he still wished he would shut up. He needed to think. He'd thought the men in the camp were Mexicans, at first, but Boyne said they weren't. They had the wrong accent-the "s" sound was almost a "th"-and he could make out most of what was being said. The men were Spaniards and they were following somebody they called de Soto. Apparently, they weren't happy with his leadership, but they weren't willing to buck him. James tried to figure out what to do. The easiest and simplest answer was just to leave. The six men sitting around the campfire weren't maintaining any guard. That seemed strange to James, since there was always the risk of huge predators even if they weren't worried about people. But everything about the way those men carried themselves exuded arrogance. Whatever the reason, the Boomers could avoid them easily. Except for him and Boyne, the rest of the group was waiting about fifty yards to the rear. All he and John had to do was slip back, collect the others, and they'd be on their way. There was a partial moon, which gave enough light to see. They could travel through a good part of the night, even carrying Elaine, and be a mile or two away by sunrise. On the other hand…
Jamesreally wanted their weapons. Sure, they looked like antiques, but those were still guns. They had swords, too, and some sort of odd-looking spears with big blades on the end. Odd-looking or not, though, they were obviously far superior weapons to the spears the Boomers had jury-rigged. Those were nothing more than sharpened branches or poles with shanks attached to the ends-and not too well attached, at that. He knew they'd been lucky, so far. In the two days since they made their break from the prison, they had only encountered one large predator. And that wasn't a dinosaur or anything nearly that big. It was just a big, chunky looking cat of some kind. About the size of a lion and scary enough, with its huge canine teeth. But they'd stood their ground with the half-assed spears they'd made, and after growling for a while the cat went on its way. The problem was that while the men at the campfire seemed arrogantly careless, James didn't have any doubt at all that they were tough and experienced fighters. All of them had their swords readily available, and all but one still had their guns in their hands. Even caught by surprise, this could be chancy. All the Boomers had was the pistol Bostic had given them. True, it was a good weapon. A Glock Model 22 with fifteen rounds in the magazine. Still, it would be one gun against six. Then, there was a third factor, that he was sure wouldn't have bothered Danny Bostic in the least but bothered him a lot. The Spaniards had three captives. Children, a boy and two girls, the oldest of them maybe ten and the youngest maybe six. They were probably the children of the couple that had been murdered. James had wondered what they'd want with such young children. It was conceivable they were keeping the girls for sexual pleasure, even though the youngest was no more than eight years old. But although the kids looked bruised up a little, they didn't seem to have been harmed otherwise. John Boyne cleared up the mystery for him. "They're planning to sell them into slavery when they get back to the coast," he whispered. "I guess the stupid fucks haven't figured out yet that the Caribbean isn't there any more." That made sense. James knew from stories he'd heard from his grandfather that the Spanish had enslaved Indians when they first stumbled across the New World. They didn't start bringing black slaves from Africa until later. "Oh, screw it," he muttered, more to himself than Boyne.
"John, slip back and get Kidd up here. I need the expert's opinion."
Boyne flashed a smile, quite visible in the moonlight. "Okay, but I can tell you what it'll be." Geoffrey Kidd arrived soon. As dark-skinned as he was, James didn't spot him until he was less than five yards away. The man moved almost silently, despite his size.
Boyne came up behind him. When the two of them were squatting next to James, just out of sight of the men in the clearing, James explained the situation. "If we fight, you'll have to do most of it, Geoffrey," he concluded. "You've got the pistol." Kidd had wound up getting the pistol because the general consensus of the Boomers was that Kidd was the best gun-handler among them. It turned out the reason he was serving a life sentence was because he was a contract killer for whichever set of gangsters met his price. He'd been charged with only one first-degree murder, though, after he was finally caught, even though the police suspected he'd done at least five. He still might have gotten the death penalty except the prosecutor didn't really care that much. Everybody Kidd had murdered had been a gangster also. Life without parole was good enough. Kidd didn't say anything, for maybe a minute, as he studied the men sitting around the campfire. "Don't need anybody but me," he said. "But I'm warning you. There won't be too many rounds left when I'm done. With that armor they're wearing, I'll have to double-tap all of them." He smiled thinly. " 'Course, I'd do that anyway." James wondered if he was bragging. Probably… Not.
The fact that Kidd was openly gay convinced him he wasn't boasting.
James had never hung around with gangsters and didn't really know that much about them. But what he did know was that being macho was pretty much a given in that crowd-so it stood to reason that a gay man who could make a living at it was probably every bit as good as he claimed to be. "Okay, then. What do you want the rest of us to do?" "Boyne's already here. Bring up Dino and Elroy. All three are real good with shanks. Them and you can follow me in and cut whatever throats need cutting. I probably won't need 'em but I might, and by then I may have run through the magazine. But-I'm stressing this, so pay attention-make sure you don't move until I holler. While I'm shooting, I don't want anything around me but targets." "Be careful of the kids." Kidd curled his lip. "I ain't worried about the kids. They're off to the side, tied up to that tree. I'm worried about Injuns rushing in. Crazy Injuns, like the kind that would threaten a man holding a gun with a pitiful little shank. Down in a fucking basement, where the ricochets would get anyone the shooters missed." James smiled. "Okay. We don't move till you tell us to." He turned to Boyne.
"You heard him, John. Get Dino and Elroy." By the time Dino and Elroy got there, Kidd had disappeared. He'd just taken a few steps and vanished. "How soon?" Morelli asked. "Hell if I know." James' headshake was a rueful sort of thing. "I was an E.M. T, remember?
Don't ask me how contract hit men go about their business. I never even had to clean up after one. I did get plenty of shootings and knifings, but they were just hothead stuff." "Just wait," Boyne hissed. "Won't be that long. Kidd's probably set already. He's just waiting to give you two a chance to get here." About a minute later, it all broke loose. James didn't even see Kidd coming out of the darkness until he'd already shot the first Spaniard. The first thing he saw were the gun-flashes. The gunshots didn't sound like much, really. Bang-bang and one Spaniard went down, gushing blood from his neck. James was sure he never saw the man who'd killed him. Bang-bang.
Another Spaniard down. Some of the blood spouting from his neck went into the fire and started hissing. Bang-bang. Another down. The same neck wound. James was a little surprised. He'd thought Kidd would go for head shots. The men still had their body armor on but they'd taken off their helmets. Bang-bang. Another down. This was the first man who'd started reacting before he got shot. The other three had been killed so quickly that James didn't think they'd had any real idea that they were in danger, beyond-starting with the second man-a completely unconscious rush of adrenaline. But even the fourth man hadn't managed to do more than start getting one leg under him. The fifth man had good reflexes. Instead of trying to get up like the other one had, he just grabbed his gun and flung himself to the side.
Bang-bang. The man screeched and clawed his leg-but still didn't let go of the gun. "Well, fuck you too!" Kidd snarled. Bang-bang. And that was that. The last man was on his feet, bringing up that big clumsy rifle. No, it was probably a musket. Kidd moved quickly, circling to the man's right, making it awkward to bring the musket around. James was expecting the same double-tap, but Kidd shot the man in the leg instead. Right about mid-thigh. That was enough to stagger him, even if he somehow managed to stay on his feet. But he dropped the gun.