C
hert stared at the Jaw. His head was still immobilized, and the strain of keeping his eyeballs turned toward his son was starting to hurt. He was watching to make sure the boy managed to retain his sanity. Truth be told, he was probably also concentrating on him as a way of maintaining his own.
They were bound in a cave of cool stone that gleamed like ice or crystal. Embedded in the stone walls were winking, multicolored stars, mainly green, red, yellow, and blue. Chert couldn’t begin to make a tally of everything he saw, even without being able to budge his head. Never in his life had he seen so many made things.
For he didn’t doubt the things here were made, by someone. Even the cave itself—why someone would want to
make a cave
, he could not imagine, but he was certain someone had fashioned the walls, floor, and ceiling; they were so outrageously regular and smooth. It must have taken a whole band of people years, merely to chisel and polish the walls. The People had gotten a lot of use out of Gash-Eye and her predecessors, but Chert was developing a dim glimmer of just how much use a stronger group might be able to squeeze out of slavery, on an impossibly grander scale.
The things he and the Jaw were sitting on were made things, too. Naturally, he could not see his own, but he could see the Jaw’s—it was made up of four long, thin, white, cylindrical stones, attached to a flat stone that the rump rested on, and then another flat long cool stone that pressed against the sitter’s back. Chert would have guessed that the purpose of this last stone was to have something to attach the bindings to. But Dak and Veela sat on similar things, that also had the stone that pressed against the back, and they were not bound. Instead of having the four long thin stones for the structure to rest upon, their sitting-things were supported by one thick cylindrical stone, and the flat stones under their rumps were able to spin upon the cylindrical stone, so that Veela and Dak could turn as they sat. Chert didn’t know what the purpose was of being able to do that, but as an engineering feat it was fearsomely awe-inspiring.
As for what his and the Jaw’s bindings and gags were made of, Chert had no idea. Some kind of hide, he supposed. They were blue.
Seeing how at-home Veela was in this fabulous, unimaginable environment, Chert felt more afraid than he ever had before in his life. She seemed to have shrugged off his blow to the back of her head—Chert thought that had something to do with the strange object Dak had stuck her neck with when he’d kidnapped Chert and the Jaw—it had been a thing like a rigid ice-colored pine needle, and Veela had awoken at its touch.
They were inside that floating stone, he understood. It had come down from the sky just as he was hitting Veela. It had come down so fast, like some great spirit had dropped it—but then it had somehow landed light as a feather. Then Dak had stepped out of it and pointed something at Chert and the Jaw and they’d fallen down, unable to move.
Chert was glad he was gagged, because if he hadn’t been he might have pleaded with Veela, might have assured her that he would never, ever have threatened or challenged her if he had realized just how stupendous were the resources she had access to. He was glad he wasn’t able to say those things.
Not that she was in charge. Dak clearly was the one deciding things, and though she seemed to be trying to get him to change his mind about something, she was having no success. They were speaking their own language, of which Chert and the Jaw knew nothing, except a few words like “math” and “zombie.” Chert wondered what they were arguing over. He imagined she wanted to kill him, and Dak was resistant.
Right at that moment, Dak was repeating, “I just think we should get rid of them.”
“No, Dak!” Veela said yet again.
But Chert had no idea those were the words coming from their mouths. He rolled his eyes towards the Jaw again. His son seemed to have calmed, though he still didn’t look at Chert. They wouldn’t kill the Jaw, too, would they? Ungrateful bitch! To leave the Jaw tied up that way after he’d been so loyal to her, after he’d defied his own father for her sake!
He looked at Dak again. Although he, like Veela, was taller than an average human, Chert had no doubt that this was the little man Veela had been carrying inside the strange, indestructible nut: his voice was the same, and every once in a while in the midst of the babble he made out that Veela was calling him “Dak.”
He was in some ways an ordinary person, albeit obviously no kin to the People with his curly hair and unbelievably pale skin. There was something almost extraordinarily bland about him. Chert found it difficult to guess his age—of course, never could he have guessed that the well-preserved, well-fed, well-rested Dak, with his lifetime of climate-controlled environments and preventative medical care, was older than him; but there was more to it than that, and people from Dak’s own time and place had been known to think there was something blurry about him.
In addition to his blandness, Chert found the man almost offensively soft. His skin looked like it had never been touched by wind or sun; Chert kept staring at his hands, which looked more delicate than feathers; there was a certain looseness to his mouth and, though Chert had never seen the expression before, he instinctively recognized it as that of a man who had never suffered.
Chert reminded himself that he’d sworn to kill this man. Focusing on that, on his anger and on the insult he’d suffered, helped stave off and redirect his fear.
Veela, too, had finally recognized the look of Dak’s face for what it was. Maybe it was something about having spent time with the two guys that allowed her to finally see it. Maybe it had been harder to see during her long weeks alone with Dak, when he was both her savior and the only other living human she knew of. Or maybe he was changing, so that that unconcerned, unreachable aspect was becoming more prominent, less hidden.
Besides, in addition to Veela’s growing worry that he might be sociopathic, she was feeling less and less assured that his intellectual prowess was going to be enough to keep them alive. Dak was clearly a hell of a physicist, but Veela wasn’t so sure about his practical abilities. A month ago she’d still been in awe of him, what with his last-minute rescue of herself and his inspired, mad time-travel gambit. But, though he’d apparently gotten the hang of the ship and its weapons, she’d gradually come to realize with dread that he was nearly as klutzy as she was, and in some ways perhaps even worse with machines. As long as he paid attention, everything went fine; but sometimes he seemed not to deign to pay attention. It was as if he simply couldn’t be bothered to deal with problems that were excessively simple. The upshot was that he was the kind of guy who could figure out how to travel forty-five thousand years back in time, but might have no idea that his flashlight’s battery was running low.
“At least take their gags off,” Veela was saying, again.
“No,” said Dak. His voice had the mildness of someone who does not need to argue or persuade, who knows as a matter of course that his plans will be followed, his opinion deferred to (eventually, at least). “And have them start barking at me again?”
“I’m sure the Jaw won’t, at least.”
“Veela, dear, how would you know? You were unconscious when I intervened—thereby, by the way, saving your life. Both of them barked up a storm. Had to be stunned. Then had to be restrained.”
“You waited long enough to save my life. Or even answer my fucking hail.”
“I told you, I needed absolute concentration while trying to decipher the code locking up those drones and weapons. That took priority. I thought you’d be happier to hear that I gained access to them.”
Instead of looking happy, Veela narrowed her eyes. “It seems convenient that you managed to also fix the landing apparatus just at that moment.” Maybe he wasn’t
really
so klutzy after all, she speculated.
“It was lucky, certainly. That primitive was going to kill you. I trust the meds took care of the swelling? And the painkiller’s working?”
“No offense, but I can’t help wonder if there was ever a problem with the apparatus at all. Maybe you just knew that if you picked me up I’d insist on bringing the guys with me, and you didn’t want the distraction. Or maybe you didn’t want
me
to be distracted, from expanding my grasp of their language.”
“In fact that suggestion
is
quite offensive, since it’s tantamount to calling me a liar, but no matter. As always, I am an open book. You’re welcome to check the data records, if you’d like to confirm the malfunction and my repairs.”
Veela tried not to bare her teeth. “Unfortunately, I don’t currently have the expertise necessary to check those records. But once everything settles down I intend to start teaching myself.”
“A fine idea. Let me remind you, it was not I who stopped you from commencing such study during our long voyage to and from the Cantor-Gould Collider. You were the one who chose to spend that time moping.”
Veela couldn’t protest. He was right, the cold-blooded prick.
The other subject of their conversation was the purple-capped mushroom. There was a chemical in that shroom of theirs that, after repeated doses, permanently muffled brainsong. Without impairing cognitive function, it seemed to render brains mute.
That was how humans had been able to survive in the caves with zombies. Once the humans’ brainsong went quiet, the zombies were as blind as they were; blinder, since the humans had the benefit of their intelligence.
“That’s why that zombie deer went for me, and not the guys,” said Veela. “In the dark it couldn’t see any of us well. But me, it could still hear.”
“I suppose it is possible that, primitive though they are, this attribute might potentially render our guests useful as scouts, once we go into the caves,” mused Dak. “Of course, we no longer have much need of scouts, now that I’ve got the extra drones working.”
Veela returned to her earlier point. “Anyway. I’m not sure you had to restrain them.”
“Oh, no? What do you think they would do to me if they were loose? Look at that one, look at his eyes.”
Veela looked at Chert. It was hard not to admit Dak had a point.
But all she said was, “They were scared, Dak. Can’t you put yourself in their shoes?”
“I’m afraid I’d have to revert quite a way to put myself in their shoes. Which, by the way, they have yet to invent.”
Veela just looked at him.
Motherfucker.
“Just let me talk to them.”
“Oh, you’re welcome to talk to them! Only, leave the gags on, please. I’m not in the mood to put up with any more of that racket.”
All right. Part of Veela wanted to rebel, to point out that Dak had no actual rank, and that while neither of them could be called experts on the natives, she was still a hell of a lot closer than he was. But she didn’t say anything. Dak was the one who really knew how to pilot the ship, though she could fake her way through it. He was the only one adept enough with the laser cannon to know how to blast zombies without starting a forest fire (not that she would much regret a forest fire if it managed to wipe out the zombies, but still). And Veela wondered more and more if he would feel the slightest hesitation, if it suddenly struck his fancy to abandon her and start a new life in Canada or wherever.
She tried to give Chert a reassuring smile, to let him know there were no hard feelings. That wasn’t necessarily true, but she thought things might go more smoothly if they put behind them the fact that he’d tried to kill her by bashing her in the back of the head with a rock. She wanted to keep the Jaw on her side, and killing his father didn’t strike her as the best way to accomplish that. Chert looked back at her like he didn’t give a shit whether she had hard feelings. He’d regained control of himself and gave no more signs of fear; captive that he was, he watched her and Dak with an almost royal disdain.
She rolled her chair over closer to them. At first she wondered what new thing was suddenly freaking them out; then she realized it was the rolling chair. They’d never seen anything like it. She thought about trying to explain its function, and how it worked. But if she let herself get hung up on swivel chairs, how would she ever get around to time travel, the zombification of the human race and all other vertebrate life, and the destruction of the universe?
She gazed into the Jaw’s eyes, staring out at her from inside his gagged and immobilized head. In spite of his fear, she saw trust there. He knew it wasn’t she who’d stunned him, who’d tied him up, it wasn’t she who chose to leave him that way. That trust awoke in her a sense of obligation.
She opened her mouth to speak, then said nothing. It wasn’t a mere problem of translation. The Jaw and Chert had some notion of time; as, say, the medium actions moved through. But how to explain time travel to someone who had no conception, not only of science, but of history?
She gave it a first shot: “Dak, and I. We come from after.”
The Jaw frowned in confusion.
After what?
, she could practically hear him asking. The difference between his expression and Chert’s was that Chert looked like he hadn’t expected her to make sense, and so wasn’t disappointed.
“After everything,” she said.
They kept looking at her, with no sign of comprehension. They didn’t look like they even comprehended that that was the end of her sentence.
Veela was about to try again when Dak preempted her: “I think
I
have a solution to the communication problem.”
His smug tone made her skin crawl. She turned to face him. “I would be very interested to hear what that is.”
Chert was impressed by her expression. He had no idea what was going on, but she hadn’t looked half as fierce when she’d fought any of those zombies.
Dak was showing them something that looked to Chert and the Jaw like another strange nut, like the one he’d lived in when he was small. Veela recognized it as a modified communicator. “It’s a translator,” said Dak, pleased with himself. “I’ve been having the computer record and collate your conversations with the primitives, and now we have the ability to talk directly to them, without bothering with the clumsy, human-powered translation process.”