Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

BEASTS IN THE GARDEN

ARCHANGEL PROJECT : CONVERGENCE I

C. GOCKEL

COVER ILLUSTRATION & DESIGN: TOM EDWARDS

INTERIOR ILLUSTRATION: C. GOCKEL

Copyright © 2024 C. Gockel

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, subject “Attention: Permissions,” at the email address below:

cgockel@cgockelwrites.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-961865-10-5

Created with Vellum

CONTENTS

About this Book

Get sneak peeks and exclusive content

The Memoirs of Dr. Hana Morgenstern and John Miller

1. John

2. John

3. John

4. John

5. John

6. John

7. Hana

8. John

9. John

10. John

11. John

12. John

13. John

14. John

15. John

16. John

17. John

18. John

19. John

20. John

21. John

22. John

23. John

24. John

25. Hana

26. John

27. John

28. John

29. John

30. John

31. Hana

32. John

33. Hana

34. John

35. Hana

36. John

37. Hana

38. John

39. Hana

40. John

41. Hana

42. John

43. Hana

44. John

45. John

46. Hana

47. John

48. Hana

49. John

50. Hana

51. John

52. Hana

53. John

54. Hana

55. John

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Also by C. Gockel

Contact Information

ABOUT THIS BOOK

When John Miller signs up for the rescue mission to the Proxima Centauri outpost, he expects to find his former lover, Hana, the brilliant physicist behind the invention of near light engines, dead.

Instead he and his team find Hana missing and a large part of the outpost destroyed.

John's team suspects suicide. John knows Hana would never give up so easily.

John and Hana are very different people. Their relationship was a fluke born of proximity and convenience. But when he discovers her Hail Mary attempt to return to Earth through a dangerous, experimental faster-than-light portal, he has to follow her.

But it isn't where Hana has gone that is the real surprise. It's when.

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“… since time immemorial and forever more … races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on Earth.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
as translated by Gregory Rabassa

THE MEMOIRS OF DR. HANA MORGENSTERN AND JOHN MILLER

There has never been a species as similar to us as these "humans." Yet, the differences between us remain vast, and the danger is significant.

I believe that the accounts of Dr. Hana Morgenstern’s and Jonathan Miller's journey, though complex and seemingly irrelevant to the People at times, is indicative of the way forward.

I have done my best to transcribe their thoughts as they relayed them. As you absorb this, please note that a human Earth year is equivalent to 0.0625 orbits.

Corewing Lotus

62,525 Orbits S.D.

1 JOHN

“Her coffin is empty.”

Kim’s words, piped into my suit, cut through the fugue of my respirator, pumping in oxygen, and sucking out carbon dioxide.

Shhhhhhh … Whoosh.

The Dreamer’s “coffins,” the dark spacer nickname for cryo-chambers, were out of place in the station’s communal living area. But their ship had been damaged during landing, and the vital life support equipment they were supposed to port over was, too. The station at least had adequate radiation shielding. Porting the cryo-chambers over, and sleeping until our rescue mission arrived, was the Dreamer’s crew’s last hope of survival.

Hana’s was the only chamber of twelve that was dark.

I hadn’t expected her to be in it. Hana wouldn’t have gone quietly into the good night. She’d have struggled until her last breath to find a way to survive. She wouldn’t be able to help herself. Give Hana a mental puzzle, and every neuron in her brain fired like Chicago fireworks on the Fourth of July—unscheduled and everywhere, non-stop and brilliant, until she’d figured it out.

I hadn’t expected how much gazing down at her empty coffin would affect me. The “coffin” had been designed for her and her alone. The muscle saving, body encapsulating gel retained the imprint of her body, slight and slim. If I gazed too hard at the indentation left by her slender fingers, I might have lost it.

So I didn’t. I kept the light on my helmet aimed at the level of where her heart would be, where the monitors were warped and misshapen, and the cracks of the coffin’s damaged Plexiplate spiraled out like a spider web. And I focused on my breathing, unnaturally loud inside my helmet.

Shhhhhhh … Whoosh.

Shhhhhhh … Whoosh.

A light bobbed. Dr. Vishnar’s voice cracked through the speaker in my helmet. “She may have walked out the airlock.”

“No,” I said.

Vish turned to Kim. “Could you blame her?”

I wondered if my speaker was off.

But Kim’s eyes met mine from across the coffin, and I realized Vish was ignoring me.

I raised my eyebrows and looked heavenward, the closest I could get to a shrug in my suit.

Kim’s brow furrowed, and I recognized righteous anger on my behalf. He was a good guy, Kim.

Vish said, “We should deploy a drone.”

“We should check the place out first,” I said, not because he’d listen, but because I wanted it on record that I said the responsible thing.

Vish tapped the side of his helmet. “I'll have Lo get the drone ready—”

Normally, Vish’s unwavering commitment to pretending I didn’t exist made me chuckle. I wasn’t in that kind of mood. Kim snapped with the frustration I felt. “Let’s check the place out first.”

“All right,” said Vish.

Unlike me, Kim had an M.D. and a Ph.D. after his name.

We passed the other coffins of Hana’s crew. Winking green lights let us know all was well with them, and Kim confirmed the readouts didn’t lie. They slept peacefully. The electricity in the station was out, but their coffins had shifted fine to backup power.

We hadn’t expected the electricity to be out. I expected a doozy of a short was the cause.

After being cooped up on a ship, the living area felt immense, even if it was only the size of an ordinary living room. It had head room. Built in an array of interlocking titanium domes by robotic pioneers before Hana and her crew arrived, the ceiling was nearly two stories high at the apex.

Vish halted just before the airlock to the next dome. His head lamp illuminated crew snapshots pinned to the wall. “Dr. Morgenstern wasn’t just a Nobel recipient—she was beautiful.” His voice was wistful.

Dr. Morgenstern.

Hana.

She was in almost all the photos. But one drew me in. Hana was at the edge of the frame, and you could see her clearly. She was a little skinnier than my taste, not particularly well endowed in the T and A department, and she wasn’t wearing a lick of makeup. She’d pulled back her thick, curly, dark brown hair in a ponytail. Her narrow eyes revealed her Japanese ancestry. It was hard to say if her slightly aquiline nose hailed from her Japanese side or her Ashkenazi side. Her full lips were unsmiling.

It was not an open or expressive face.

She wasn’t really my type.

“Yes, she’s beautiful,” I said. My gaze fell on her left hand. She was wearing a cheap little snow globe bracelet, the kind with a stretchy, plastic spiral cord that slips around your wrist. You can pick them up at most cheap souvenir shops the world over. She used her precious personal space and weight allowance on that kitschy piece of plastic crap?

My throat got tight.

I focused on breathing.

Shhhhhhh … Whoosh.

Shhhhhhh … Whoosh.

I barely heard Vish say, “I got to meet her in person. At the Inter-time Symposium.” He huffed out an awed laugh. “Did you hear they nominated her for another Nobel in medicine?”

Kim raised an eyebrow. “She worked on the Near-Light Project at the University of Chicago. John did, too.” He was trying to get Vish to acknowledge the “uneducated” backwoods blue-collar type. It wouldn’t work. In Vish’s mind, I was only there because Vlks, the founder of Near Light and a co-sponsor of this mission, was “eccentric.”

He was right. Vlks was eccentric, and the only reason I was there. Vlks believed diverse crews were more able to deal with crises.

“Did you know her, John?” Kim asked.

The scar that covered more than half my back prickled.

It was an honest, reasonable question.

It was not the time for it.

“I ran into her a few times,” I said. Noncommittal. Cool.

Vish frowned, his thick brows coming together like dark wings. Gesturing at the door to the next dome, he said, “The electricity’s out. You have a crowbar for that?”

I hefted one of my two toolboxes. Planet-side, there was real gravity, and after gravity faked by acceleration for months on end, there was a comforting rightness about the way the tools rattled and shifted inside. “Sure do.”

* * *

It was true. I bumped into Dr. Hana Morgenstern, Nobel Prize recipient in physics and nominee in Medicine at the University of Chicago a few times.

The first time was completely by accident. I didn’t recognize her in front of me at the campus coffee shop. All I could see was her thick black hair, pulled back into a ponytail, and that she wasn’t wearing a coat, even though it was January.

The coffee shop was unusually quiet, and I was looking around, trying to figure out why.

And then those narrow shoulders in front of me crumpled. Hana turned around, but I still didn’t recognize her. Wiping her eyes, she murmured, “Excuse me,” and ran out the door. A blast of frigid air followed in her wake.

The coffee shop went from hushed to dead silent.

A barista, holding two steaming cups, looked at me with wide eyes. “I just finished her order.”

The whispers started, but nobody did anything, as though they were afraid. I felt like I was in a holo-fantasy, and a dark and powerful wizard had just left the premises.

Seeing my name scrawled on one cup, I said to the barista, “I'll take hers to her.”

She seemed relieved to hand it over.

A few minutes later, I found Hana standing on the lawn. In the frigid air, her breath curled around her face. Seemingly oblivious to the cold, she clutched her hands behind her back and stared at the dead winter grass as though she’d lost something.

I don’t remember what I said to her. Probably, “You forgot your coffee.” Human memory isn’t perfect. But then she looked up, and I do remember her eyes. The weak winter sun was shining directly on her face, and her irises glowed the same color as cherry wood, the outer ring around them very dark. The effect was striking.

A second later, I recognized her. Her picture was all over campus. She was a physics superstar even then, and besides doing research, she consulted on the Near-Light Project—the first mission to take spaceships near the speed of light. The project had me, a former Navy nuclear submarine engineer, working at a university that was harder to get into than the big-name Ivies. Hana hadn’t won her Nobel then, but even I had heard the rumors that she was on the short list, and that it was only a matter of time.

“Thank you,” she said, wrapping her hands around the cup. And then she blurted, “My brother died. I just haven’t figured out how to compartmentalize it yet.”

I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me, or herself, but my heart went out to her. For Nobel Prize winners and Navy engineers, a beloved brother was the same. “It never works like that,” I replied. “Not for me.”

She looked up at me as though I might have the answers to the deepest questions in the universe. The scar on my back prickled again.

“What do you do?” she asked.

I’m not so arrogant as to think I know the answer for everyone. But I said what was true for me: “Let it in … everything.” I had to speak to many psychologists after the sub accident and when joining Vlks. They talked about “working through trauma,” but I don’t believe trauma is something you work through. It isn’t a dark tunnel with a light at the end. There is no other side of the mountain. It gets easier, or you get used to carrying the weight, but denying the weight never works.

She bowed her head and sobbed.

Accepting grief might be the first step, but no man wants to make a woman cry. I reached out, almost touched her, then thought better of it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it worse.”

Pulling a tissue out of her pocket, she said, “It is just that’s exactly something my brother would have said.”

She blew her nose.

I wasn’t sure what to do.

“I'll be all right,” she assured me.

“I know you will,” I said with forced cheer.

She didn’t move.

I extended my hand, because that was what you do when you meet someone, and sometimes normal niceties help in difficult circumstances. “John Miller.”

She took it. Her fingers were cold and damp with tears and snot. I shook them enthusiastically to show how little I cared.

“Hana Morgenstern.” She sniffed.

There was a banner hanging from a light pole right next to us with her name and picture on it. I couldn’t help chuckling. “I feel like I’ve seen you before …”

“No.” Pulling her hand away, she practically fled.

I felt bad for her. I knew the journey she was on and didn’t envy her. And she seemed very alone. No one had jumped to help her at the coffee shop. I hadn’t considered before then how isolating fame could be.

I didn’t expect to bump into her again.

* * *

We didn’t find Hana’s body in the engineering lab, the last place we looked.

Vish and Kim were surprised. I wasn’t.

But the huge, blackened circle in the middle of the floor had me perplexed. I scanned the ceiling. There were smoke stains there, too, but not as much. There was some wiring dangling from above, cooked and curled into fantastic shapes by heat. I scanned the rest of the dome. My heart rate picked up. I had half expected Hana to make her own near-light vessel and send herself home. She had the skills. Hana had resorted to building a lot of her own equipment throughout her career, and she had the robots that built the station to help, a thorium-pill reactor to power them, and materials for planned additions to the station. If she could have engineered herself a smaller CO2 scrubber from the remnants of the main one … But that was an asinine hope. If she could have created a scrubber, she would have stayed here. She wasn’t one for unnecessary physical risks.

I turned around in a slow circle. Let it in. Let it all in. Later.

Shhhhhhh … Whoosh.

Shhhhhhh … Whoosh.

My suit had its own self-contained CO2 scrubber. It was state of the art. We’d picked it up at Moon Station after taking on this mission, years after the Dreamer left Earth. If the suits on the Dreamer had had the tech allowing me to breathe, Hana might have survived. My heart pounded in my ears.

Vish saved me by asking, “Did something happen to the extra plating during the landing?”

“What?” Kim said.

Vish’s headlamp bounced around the dome. “There should be more titanium plating here for additional domes.”

My gaze fell on the materials salvaged from Hana’s ill-fated ship, the Dreamer. Next to those were stacks of titanium and insulated sheeting brought by the first unmanned vessel, each sheet stamped with a small emblem of Earth’s moon. Moon Station was where their ore had been mined and they’d been manufactured, and where the money and resources for these interstellar missions came from. Cut into the shapes needed for dome construction, there were circular top caps, flat bottom sheets, and interchangeable wedges in three widths to accommodate domes of various heights.

The piles of spare sheeting only went as high as my knees.

“I think you’re right.” My headlamp bobbed back to the scorched center of the floor, and my mind went to the snow globe on Hana’s wrist. My heart leaped in a tangled beat of hope and fury. I wanted to scream, “Don’t make me hope like this, Hana!”

Kim wandered to the center of the dome and stared down at the floor. “What—?”

“She tried to go home,” I said.

Kim turned to me, his headlamp flashing in my eyes.

Vish said, “She stepped out the airlock. Cryo sickness was probably responsible. They shouldn’t have required them to be in a deep sleep for so long.” He took a deep breath. “Such a shame.” He turned toward the door. “Kim, you’ll help me move the cryo chambers into the ship.” Tapping his helmet, he said, “Lo, fire up the drones and imprint them with Dr. Morgenstern’s description—no, ignore that last order, just have them look for a body—send them out for a scan of the surroundings.”

Heading to the airlock, Vish said, “John, see to fixing the power and get the CO2 scrubbers online. Then haul the damaged ARV over here.”

Kim hung back, headlamp still shining in my eyes.

I knew that later I’d be answering questions.

But I needed to get the power online and get the station’s main CO2 scrubber fixed. I’d need both if … I growled to myself. It was stupid to get my hopes up. If she’d tried what I thought she’d tried, success would be a miracle.

Still, I arrived at the station on a spaceship that was traveling near light-speed. That was, in part, a Hana-made miracle.

Maybe she’d pulled off one more.

2 JOHN

I was sitting sans helmet in the brightly lit communal area of the station. The coffins had been taken to our ship, the Starlight, and fresh oxygen was whispering through the air vent.

The Starlight smelled like fresh and stale sweat, food, and old socks, despite the most up-to-date tech in air filters. The station smelled worse.

It smelled like metallic dust. Not like humans.

Swirling instant coffee in my thermos, I tried to read the book I had opened on my scroll. The words blurred on the display, and I rolled it up and slipped it in my pocket. I stared at the Starlight through the view screen instead. The Starlight looked like the old-timey space shuttles of yore: airplane shaped with short, stubby wings and a horizontal stabilizer. Unlike those old shuttles, she landed on her stern. Metal telescoping beams extended from her hull to hold her upright. Encircling her were the silvery exterior of the technological advancement that made it possible for a 737-sized spacecraft to land on its butt and lift off a planet with Earth-like gravity: time bands. Hana did not invent time bands, although her mathematical squiggles led to their creation.

The time bands on our ship created weak “bubbles” in time. Without the grip of time, gravity was less of an obstacle. When I left Earth, they were thinking about making flying cars with the things.

Besides enabling physics-defying liftoff and landing, once our ships were sufficiently removed from time, the bands allowed them to travel at near light-speed—or rather, near light "velocity." Speed, as I’d had drilled into my head repeatedly, isn’t a "thing."

Paraphrasing Einstein, "There is not enough energy in the universe to propel something with the mass of a spaceship at the speed of light—or even at any velocity approaching it."

He was not wrong.

Technically, the Starlight’s engines did not propel her at the speed of light. They propelled her at normal velocities, but those normal velocities happened within the weak bubble in time produced by the bands.

If you are like me—and you’re probably more like me than anyone else aboard the Starlight, at least when it comes to how the lump of jelly between your ears works—when you think of bubbles in time, you immediately think of time travel. The bubbles don’t work like that. Time is a river flowing to … well, who knows? You might think of the end of the universe if you're an astrophysicist. Maybe you think it flows to God if you’re religious. Or maybe you’re like me, agnostic and wishy-washy, and think it might be both.

Time is a river, and time bands lift your boat partially out of the water. You’re still in the river. You’re still fighting the current. But you’re going to reach higher velocities than if you were more deeply submerged in the water.

All metaphors are fallacies, and that metaphor breaks down in some convenient ways. When time bands are engaged and a starship hits an object while traveling at near light-speed, the object is drawn along the surface of the bubble instead of impacting with the ship.

Also, acceleration is experienced on board the ship as a long equation of the actual acceleration of the vessel. Which is a lot of words to say, onboard acceleration is experienced like a very comfortable Earth-like gravity. While accelerating, the stern of the ship is the floor; while decelerating—not really a word, but you know what I mean—the ceiling becomes the floor. If abrupt acceleration is required, time bands can be moderated to keep from crushing the ship’s occupants into pancakes.

Unfortunately, with time bands, time dilation still occurs. Nothing is perfect.

Beyond the Starlight sat the remains of the Dreamer, her bow buried in the planet’s iron-rich red dirt. Time bands hadn’t saved her.

There was a whoosh from the airlock to my left. Kim, Lo, and Lo’s wife, Carmela, tromped into the communal area carrying supplies from the ship. Carmela gazed up at the ceiling and breathed deeply. “It feels like a palace.” She smiled at me. “Well done, John.”

I raised my thermos in acknowledgement of working lights and CO2 scrubbers.

Kim dropped his crate, and I saw it coming. Vish was on the ship, along with the awakened survivors of Hana’s crew on their way home. They were not pleased to be leaving, but some bigwigs back on Earth and Moon Station blamed the crash on effects of long cryo-sleep. We didn’t have access to the scans and tests needed to clear them for duty. Without Vish, Kim felt he could speak freely.

“What do you mean, Doctor Morgenstern’s on her way home?” It sounded like a demand. Or maybe a challenge.

Vish’s voice crackling through speakers on the monitor saved me from having to answer. “Base command, Starlight is ready for takeoff.”

Command was Kim. He acknowledged Vish, and for a few minutes, we were saying our goodbyes and giving our well wishes.

And then we watched, tense and alert, as the Starlight’s bands engaged. Light got a little funny around the ship, and she shimmered, as though we were seeing her through waves of heat. Her thrusters engaged next—it was nothing as dramatic as a space shuttle lift-off—just a flash of orange at her stern and she rose, the metal supports pulling inward. And then full thruster power engaged. There was a little more orange, and she sped up and away.

We watched until she was only another star in the sky. Carmela said, “It is still amazing to see.”

We all agreed, and I was rising to get a little more stale-tasting instant coffee when Kim said, “So … back to what we were talking about before. What did you mean when you said, ‘Doctor Morgenstern’s on her way home’?”

Gesturing vaguely with my thermos, I was about to say something about her research being the tipoff, but Lo blurted out, “John knows her better than anyone.”

“How so?” said Kim.

I scowled at Lo, but he wasn’t looking in my direction. “They dated for almost a year.”

Carmela gave her husband a look that he didn't see or didn't understand.

Lo was from the boondocks of China. His parents were peasants without ties to the ruling party. He hadn’t had access to the fancy schools that Chinese city kids had and taught himself almost everything he knew, including English, online. Lo just had that type of hungry and agile brain. He had worked his way to the United States, literally, taking illegal jobs wherever he could while traversing the Chinese and Vietnamese countrysides, before boarding a boat to North America. He got a perfect score on the ACT and an almost perfect score on the SAT and, with the story of a lifetime, got a full-ride scholarship to Princeton. There he met his beautiful, highly educated wife from an old money family. Not a family with a helicopter pad on the roof of their home, but a family with live-in maid quarters and guest houses.

He thought since I was from the boondocks of the U.S. with a family without connections, I was like him. My relationship with Hana—to his eyes, like his with Carmela—probably cemented that idea in his head. He didn’t understand the vagaries of class in the United States, God bless him. It was not background or race that really set us apart in the U.S.

I wasn’t like Lo, and wasn’t like Kim, either, even though we were both in the U.S. Navy. I was an enlisted engineer. Kim was an officer in the SEALs who had multiple degrees at elite institutions. Kim was a good guy, and he tried to see me as a human, maybe even a human who had done some incredible things—although I’d say I survived more incredible things—but there was a divide between us greater than officer and enlisted.

I stared into my coffee.

“No,” Kim said to Lo. “You’re kidding.”

See what I mean?

“It is true!” Lo insisted.

“Carmela?” Kim asked. “Your husband is—?”

Carmela sighed. “Honey, it is not polite to talk about people’s personal lives.”

Lo sniffed. “John was good for her!”

The scar on my back prickled. I wasn’t sure I’d go that far. Trying not to look at Kim and the brief flash of enmity there, I said to Lo, “So you going to help me figure out what she was up to?” I knew my limitations, and understanding Hana’s professional brain was one of them.

“Of course!” Lo said immediately.

“Thank you, brother,” I said in Mandarin with the intonation of his hometown in Sichuan. I picked it up speaking to him on our years-long trip.

He flushed. It is always nice to hear your mother tongue.

3 JOHN

I was right.

Hana had tried to get home. Not with anything as mundane as a near-light spaceship.

She had tried to create, for lack of a better description, an instantaneous portal. She hadn’t reached her destination. If she had, we would have heard about it by light beam. Our ship approached the speed of light, but light beams between Earth and the station traveled at the speed of light, minus any brief relays needed to bypass solid objects. If Hana had arrived at Earth, there would have been a message awaiting us on our arrival, at the very least. More likely, if Hana had made it to Earth, there would have been enough time to recreate the portal and drop a welcoming committee at the station to meet us.

At one of the buoy stations we’d stopped at on our trip, we’d picked up an Autonomous Robotic Vehicle—ARV—damaged by space debris. We’d picked it up to get it out of the way of future ships. We used it to recreate the chamber she’d designed for her portal and added some special modifications dreamed up by Lo.

Lo was outside the ARV that we called the “pod” welding. I was soldering wiring in an electrical panel beside the interior airlock, breathing in the fumes of the flux, when Kim stuck his head in. “It is a lot bigger than I expected,” he commented, ducking to enter. The pod was spherical, but the interior was bowl shaped—if you imagine a bowl on its side cut from the tip of a sphere, not through the center. The wall with the airlock was straight. Beyond it was a small chamber with enough room for two drones, one small human, and a door through which the drones could exit into vacuum, and a human, if she was small, with narrow shoulders, could be retrieved. The piloting section of the pod had enough room for about three people if they squeezed.

“Mmm…” I said, squinting at the circuit I was working on.

“Why is there so much room in here?” Kim asked. “We’re not sending anyone or anything after her. We’re sending this pod to document damages to her pod.”

Setting my iron on its stand, I studied Lo’s schematics on my scroll, confirming the next connection. “If it works, we’ll send drones for her.”

Kim took a breath. By “her,” I meant Hana’s body. It had been years since Hana disappeared. Maybe there wasn’t a body to recover. Maybe there was just a clump of dust on the other side of … whatever.

The schematic on the scroll blurred, and a memory came to me of Hana, in a cafe, half her face illuminated by a beam of sunlight. She was shaking her head, eyes on nothing, saying, “The hydrofoil metaphor doesn’t work … it’s two dimensional. Time is intrinsically tied to the fabric of the universe. You can’t escape one without escaping the other.”

A lump formed in my throat.

She’d come up with long strings of numbers that proved you can escape both time and space and arrive anywhere instantaneously. That was the discovery that gave her the Nobel Prize and led to the development of time bands. But according to Hana’s equations, the way we used time bands on our ships was rudimentary—what hash marks are to Arabic numerals: archaic, sometimes useful, but not useful in complex equations.

I think of Hana’s conception of the universe as being like a snow globe. Inside the globe, there is time—that’s the water. Outside the globe, time doesn’t exist. That’s air. But if you create a bubble of air on the inside of the snow globe, within the air bubble time would not exist. Depending on the size of the bubble, you could go anywhere within the universe instantaneously.

The question was how to create a bubble. She’d believed she’d found the answer in some changes to the configuration of time bands, and other under-the-hood modifications.

Lo agreed.

Kim sighed. “You know … if you use drones, I’m going to have to inform HQ and get permission.”

Besides the ARV, Lo and I were using bits and pieces of the Dreamer and our spare time to make our pod. The only station resources we were using was power, but the thorium-pill reactor had more than enough to spare. So, Kim indulged us. The drones, however, were another matter.

“If this works, you’ll get permission.”

Kim chuckled. “Yeah, you’ve got that right.”

It would be the greatest discovery since atomic fission. Kim’s and Lo’s names would be added to Hana’s in the history books—Lo because he was doing the heavy thinking and Kim because he was the leader of this mission. Which was part of why Kim indulged us. Also, he probably figured it was good for morale if we had hobbies.

His smile faded. “But it isn’t likely to work. You shouldn’t get …”

“Get my hopes up?” Pushing up my safety glasses, I wiped my eyes. “Finding Hana’s … my hopes aren’t up.” I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Finding Hana’s remains.”

I’d broken up with Hana before I left for space. I’d had in my mind that someday I would go back to Earth, and she would have settled down with some nice, nerdy guy who could understand when her gaze got distant, and she started talking about the finer points of gravitational pull on quantum fluctuations or the methods used in the latest paper purporting to prove how much the speed of light had changed since the beginning of the universe. She’d know then that I was right, that we weren’t suited for each other, and that my leaving was the best way it could have ended. Hana would be older than me, because of time dilation, but in my mind, she’d aged well, deeper laugh lines, some gray hairs. She would have filled out, and on her, it would have looked good.

Then I found out she’d gone to space. I’d wondered if she and I would meet up aboard a space station somewhere. Wondered what had prompted her trip. Deep space isn’t some place perfectly-on-the-level people go. I say this as someone who spent years in the black. She’d said nothing about leaving Earth. Maybe she’d changed her plans because her parents had gone on an eight-year mission to Europa—and maybe they’d done that because her brother Ken had died—Hana wasn’t fantastic at handling emotions, but she came by it honestly.

And then I’d heard about the Dreamer’s crash. A part of me had harbored hope. In the months I’d worked on Lo’s pod, that hope slipped away. Lo thought Hana’s pod worked, but that it didn’t wind up where it was supposed to, so she’d died of asphyxiation without a way to come back. Not that it would have mattered if she could have returned, since the station’s CO2 converter hadn’t been working.

I planned to bring her back. Somehow. It was the mission, and Hana deserved it.

“We were asked if we had any connection to Dr. Morgenstern when this mission was being planned,” Kim said.

My eyebrows rose. “You were?”

“You weren’t?”

I shook my head. “No one asked me.” Lo could have said something to the directors, or Carmela. Maybe they had just assumed that someone had asked me? The people who put this mission together, soliciting sponsorship from Vlks and various governments, weren’t from the University of Chicago, and I was in a different league than the other crew members. They probably didn’t even think about it.

Kim rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You got quieter the closer we got to this place. I knew something was up.”

I knew that was true.

“You lost a lot of … I can understand you needing to find Dr. Morgenstern,” Kim said.

He was referring to the accident on the nuclear submarine that made me a “hero” and was partially the reason for my ticket to outer space. I lost a lot of brothers and sisters on that sub. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said, because I couldn’t say that I hoped I’d somehow find her here. Alive.

I went back to soldering. Kim watched me.

“You were … It was serious?” He shook his head.

I paused my soldering and gave him the side eye.

“Sorry, that’s insensitive.” He wiped his forehead. “To you, she must have been … real. To me …”

“It was insensitive,” I said. “But I get it.” Because I did. Hana, to me, was … herself. To people in the sciences, she was a star. Think of the most famous pop star you can imagine. Now imagine that the guy who does your office building maintenance, who isn’t particularly handsome, definitely isn’t rich, and isn’t connected, is dating her.

Was dating her.

Sometimes I hardly believe it myself.

* * *

So how did a “redneck,” “hillbilly,” “white trash,” and all around “uneducated cracker” wind up dating one of the, if not the most, celebrated minds of our time?

Like the legend of Leonidas the Spartan whose, “Go on, come at me bro” turned the tide of the Greco-Persian war and probably many a Darwin Award, it started with a dare.

I was working on the Near-Light Project with designers, physicists, and engineers. I’d always been the brainy one growing up, the too-smart guy, the one who read weird books—lots of them—and talked too much about them. I am not a genius. When I enlisted, the U.S. military tested me and all other recruits pretty thoroughly, so that’s official. Still, I did respectably.

More than that, I have some talents that I am proud of. I have a great sense of rhythm, perfect pitch, and a knack for languages. The perfect pitch and rhythm come in handier as an engineer—no degree, small ‘e’—than you might think. I can hear and feel the rhythm of engine failure before it gets serious and before sensors picked it up. It is great when I’m believed.

The Near-Light engineers—capital E—at the University of Chicago were perfecting the time band configurations, the thorium-pill reactor that powered them, as well as the engines that produced the relatively modest amounts of thrust needed to launch and propel ships. I was helping, mostly by showing how a smart, but not-as-smart-as-them guy, couldn’t make heads or tails of their readouts and schematics. I once heard Vlks, the trillionaire, bona fide genius piece of shit, say of me, “He’s not dumb enough to help you design it to be truly dummy proof, but”—he saw me glare at him and said, “—um, let’s make these easier to read.”

That was typical of him. And whatever, I could put up with more for the opportunity to go to space. I didn’t let it get under my skin.

What got under my skin was just being around my coworkers. These were guys who weren’t professional coders because, “Computer programming is too easy. It’s boring.” So, they were rocket scientists who wrote new computer languages to do what they needed their systems to do. It is not fair to say they read mathematical formulas like I read Dr. Seuss. But they read them the way I read Faulkner: with some difficulty, but overall comprehension. Even the lowly undergrads and grad students working on the project without pay understood more of the theoretical stuff than I did.

For the first time in my life, I felt dumb.

I also often felt alone. I actually got along with most of the tenure track profs. Hell, I got along better with them than they did with each other—I wasn’t competition and could help them fix stuff. The biggest divide between us was their life stage. They were older and married with kids.

The undergrads and grad students closer to my twenty-five years of age were another matter. I wasn’t one of them, and sometimes I think they thought my lack of smarts was contagious.

You might think that all the guys on the project, undergrads at the University of Chicago, a “Little Ivy,” would all be hopeless bookworms without experience with the real world. But truth is, the Ivies and Little Ivies love a good story. Escape from a lifetime as part of a cult in the Sierra Nevadas, hike through the desert to take your Graduate Records Examination while nursing a rattlesnake bite, and they’ll throw money at you. Take Lo, for example. He had four offers.

But you wouldn’t be completely wrong about the bookworm tendencies, either. A fair number of students never experienced an interrupted internet connection and had every activity carefully scripted, including their extracurricular activities. They got good grades and high test scores and were groomed by their elite private and public schools to be part of, well … the elite.

But sometimes, some of the courage and spontaneity it took for an unscripted life wasn’t a skill they’d learned, although alcohol could be a mitigating factor.

The day I asked Hana out, it was lunchtime, and there was no alcohol to be had in the courtyard. It was a brilliant, sunny March day, kind of unusual in Chicago. Although it was not warm, and snow still melted in shady nooks and crannies, it felt warm. I’d taken off my coat and was eating a sandwich and drinking a lemon ice tea, figuring I’d probably suffer for the lack of a coat with a cold later, but the sunlight felt good.

Some undergrads of the type who had not crawled through the desert, or motor biked across Southeast Asia, came out and began eating near me. Near me, not with me—the girl who had crawled through the desert or Lo would have joined me. I think these guys would have stayed further away had it not been that the strip of sunshine was so narrow. They worked on the project with me but weren’t friendly.

One of them was talking about a girl that he was interested in. I could have pretended I wasn’t listening, but they were pretending I wasn’t there, and I was finding them more annoying than usual. Partially because the shadow of one of them was cutting off my sunshine. All petty things I should have been above, but I’m not saying it was my finest hour.

“Just ask her out,” I said, loud enough they couldn’t pretend I wasn’t there anymore.

“What?” said the guy who’d been moaning—if not literally, figuratively.

Gesturing grandly with my sandwich, I said, “Ask her out.”

“I don’t even know her,” he replied.

“So, ask her out to get to know her,” I said, taking a sip of my ice tea.

One guy said, “No way.”

“He could be accused of sexual harassment,” said another.

I rolled my eyes. “To be harassment, you have to create a threatening work environment. You’re not her boss; she isn’t even on the project. Just ask her out. Make it casual, a cup of coffee or something.” I took a bite of my sandwich and became philosophical. “But you have to try. You have to face rejection. Over and over. It’s the only way.”

The guy hogging my sunlight gulped, and I don’t think it was because he was eating.

I didn’t roll my eyes. “Dating is a numbers game. Eventually, someone will say yes. And after you’re rejected a few times, you get used to no. It’s no big deal.”

A guy snorted. “Sure. I dare you to ask out the next woman who shows up on that corner.” He gestured with his drink to the opposite corner of the building about 200 yards away.

“Sure,” I promised.

Which was when Hana walked around the corner of the building and promptly headed off in another direction, putting her back to us.

“It’s Dr. Morgenstern,” one guy whispered.

I winced. “No, not her. I’ve talked to her before. She’s not random.”

They roundly booed me.

“You said anyone!” a Wise Guy said.

They were right, and she would reject me, which would prove my point about rejection being no big deal. Hana and I had crossed paths once more since that first encounter. We’d conversed long enough for her to discover an online degree in theology is all I have to my name. She hadn’t hidden her disdain well.

Rolling my eyes at them, I jogged off to intercept her. “Hana,” I called out.

Spinning at her name, she stared at me a beat, and then said, “John?”

“That’s me,” I replied, surprised that she remembered.

She blinked up at me, the tiniest furrow on her brow. She was around thirty, but younger-looking. Softer. Not just because she was female, but because of the very different lives we’d led. I knew about her life—from her wealthy CTO dad, and her mother, who was an internationally renowned textiles expert, to her upbringing in Tokyo. She’d had a very safe, scripted childhood. The only thing off-script was the death of her brother.

“Would you like to go out sometime?” I asked.

Her head jerked back, as though that was the most unlikely thing for me to have said. “Like on a date?” she asked.

“Yes, like on a date,” I replied. This wasn’t rocket science—and she was good at rocket science.

The furrow in her brow got deeper. “Are you trying to convert me?” she asked.

“Wait, what?” I shook my head, blindsided.

“Are you trying to convert me?” Her eyes narrowed.

I scratched behind my ear. At that second not-so-good meeting, we hadn’t just talked about my lack of a “real” degree, we’d also talked about her atheism and my agnosticism.

“I’m agnostic … we don’t have missionaries … that I know of?” I replied.

Her frown vanished. “Oh, that’s right.” She stood up a little straighter. The wind whipped a lock of hair into her mouth, and she pulled it out, drawing my attention to her lips. She wasn’t wearing lipstick, but they were nice lips, bow shaped and plump.

“Why are you asking me out?” She cocked her head to one side. The question and the head tilt on another woman might have been flirtatious. But Hana might as well have asked, “What leads you to this conclusion?”

I would have had a ready answer for flirtation. Hana’s coolness knocked me off kilter, but I was there to teach a couple of boys about accepting rejection. No need to prolong the pain or the lesson. Jerking my thumb over my shoulder, I said, “I told those gentlemen that rejection was no big deal. They dared me to ask out the first woman who walked around the corner.”

She frowned. “This is some sort of bet?”

“What? No, there was no money involved.”

“It is still … still … objectifying … I don’t like it.” She rolled on the balls of her feet and looked at the ground.

“Ah …” I managed.

Her eyes got wide, as though she’d made a discovery. “I feel … Used.” She said the word as though it was a revelation to her.

I held up my hands, palms out in supplication. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I intended.”

Scowling up at me, her head tilted in the other direction.

Dropping my voice half an octave, I said, “Reject me, fair maiden. Wound my pride and seize your revenge.”

The scowl intensified. “If you meant to get rejected, how would your pride be wounded?”

I scratched my chin. “Um …”

“I’m going to take you up on your offer.”

I blinked. “You are?” Had I just stumbled into a bad romantic holodrama?

“Wait. Are you a vegan?” she demanded.

Nope, I’d escaped ridiculous romantic comedy territory. “God no. I hunt deer.” I added the last to end the conversation fast.

She exhaled, and her shoulders relaxed. “I want a hamburger. A real hamburger, not deer, it’s too gamey. I don’t want imitation meat, though, and I want it cooked medium rare, not some …” She waved a hand. “Overcooked gray meat-like material that could be anything.”

I had not expected this plot twist. “I know a place?” It came out as a question.

She touched her lips. “I don’t like places that are too loud.”

It was a loud place, but … “We can go early?”

“When?” she asked.

“Tomorrow … five-thirty, I can meet you here?”

“We’ll call a cab?”

“I have a car and can drive?” I wasn’t sure why I was still answering questions with questions.

She stared.

I stared back.

She huffed. “Normally I go Dutch, but in this case … I feel like …” She bit her lip. “You should pay for … for … being rude.”

I had not been rude, and I snorted. “I would pay anyway.”

“Why? Are you controlling?” she asked with an air of academic inquiry.

“Because I asked you out,” I replied, although in truth, I’d mostly done all the paying in previous relationships. I’d also been accused of being controlling, but I think the word my exes wanted was “bossy.” My exes had a lot of problems. I was an engineer. It was impossible for me not to try to fix those problems.

Crossing her arms, she looked sideways. “I’m sorry there was no money involved. I would have enjoyed you losing.”

“Sorry to let you down,” I replied dryly.

She nodded decisively, like she’d just finished an unpleasant but necessary task. “I will see you here tomorrow at 5:30.”

“Will do,” I replied.

Bowing her head, she scanned the ground. “I was thinking about something when you interrupted me.” Her left hand moved in the air, like she was playing an invisible piano. She was an accomplished pianist. It was common knowledge. “Oh,” she whispered. Her eyes widened, she spun around, and walked away, her hand playing that invisible piano the whole way.

Frowning, I walked back to my lunch crew.

Wise Guy smirked at me. “Not so great being rejected, eh?”

I put my hand through my hair. I should have made a joke, but I was too confused. “She accepted?”

“Wait, what?” one guy asked. “How?”

“Why?”

I could have assumed an air of surprised insult, but I shook my head. “Damned if I know.”

“She probably won’t show,” said another guy.

Rallying, I said, “You’re probably right, but I won’t let it get me down. And then I will have succeeded in my goal.”

“What goal was that again?” someone asked.

I raised my hands to the heavens, playing the part of the clown I knew I was to them. “Proving rejection isn’t anything to be afraid of!”

I was counting on her not showing. The way things started, it couldn’t go any way but awful.

But Hana showed up.

4 JOHN

Lo and I were playing with a control panel inside the pod when Kim called from outside. “Guys, I’ve got some bad news.”

He didn't sound worried, like there was a fire or something. He sounded annoyed. Neither Lo nor I moved. Staring down at the readouts on his scroll, Lo said, “It looks good.”

I exhaled. We’d spent a lot of hours on the onboard computer for the pod and its interface. Kim hadn’t asked us why we needed an accessible computer interface in a computer-manned pod destined at most for drones.

We needed an onboard computer interface because Lo designed the pod for human occupants.

Lo’s reasoning went like this: “We don’t have enough materials to make two pods, and if this one is successful, we’ll want to try it ourselves, so let’s make it right the first time.”

“Less haste, more speed,” Carmela had said. She’d noticed the interior control panel, and I think, with some justification, worried about it. Remember that trek Lo took overland from China, through Vietnam, and across the Pacific to the U.S.? And she had to know about the crazy places I’d gone and the crazy vehicles I’d gone to those places in. To her credit, she hadn’t voiced those fears to Kim.

“Yes, exactly!” Lo had exclaimed. “We can only build one, so we must do it right!”

“Yo, guys,” Kim said, and I heard agitation in his voice. So did Lo.

Our eyes met again, and Lo said, “Coming!”

Rolling up our scrolls and putting them in our pockets, we scrambled to squeeze through the small opening and emerged in the engineering lab.

Grimacing, Kim said, “I have to put the kibosh on this project.”

“What?” said Lo.

Kim blinked.

“‘Kibosh’ means he has to stop it,” I said.

“But why?” Lo asked. “We’re not using anything that’s needed right now and—”

“We’ll need the materials later,” Kim said. “Especially the drones.”

I shifted on my feet. Yes, hauling materials this deep into space was difficult. But the point of this mission was to recover the Dreamer’s team, alive and dead. Spending a few drones on Hana wasn’t too much to ask.

“But the prototype worked!” Lo insisted.

We didn’t build a huge man-sized pod without proof of concept. We’d built a smaller pod, the size of a soccer ball, and pre-programmed it to jump to the solar system’s fifth planet and back. It didn’t make it to the fifth planet—we weren’t actually sure where it wound up—but it popped out of the chamber and made it back planet-side. Granted, it didn’t hit its return target. It wound up 2,000 clicks away.

“I’m frustrated too,” Kim said, putting a hand through his hair.

Lo fumed. “And we just fin—”

I elbowed him. I did not plan to. It was like my arm moved of its own accord. My heart beat fast in my ears. “Leave Kim alone,” I said to Lo. “This was an order from above.” I caught Kim’s eye.

He locked his hands behind his back. “I included descriptions of your prototype in my light beam log to DS1,” he said, referring to Deep Space 1, the first of many unmanned rendezvous points between the station and Sol System. Built by ARVs and their drones, most were not much more than spinning warehouses for spare fuel, food, water, oxygen, and light beam relays. “Just got the order from Vish to shut it down.”

“Vish.” Lo muttered a swear in Mandarin. “He’s going to take Hana’s and my invention and claim it as his own. We won’t get any credit for it.” He pointed at Kim. “You won’t get any credit for it.”

I felt my skin heat. That was probably the explanation for it. I snapped my hands behind my back before Kim saw them curl into fists … and saw Kim’s own fists curl. Yeah, he analyzed the situation that way too, and was also pissed, but he was following orders.

He shook his head and pointed at our pod. “There is nearly a hundred million dollars’ worth of time bands in this thing. If it got lost like the prototype, we’ll be on the hook. I'll be on the hook.”

“The prototype didn’t get lost—we know where it is—and this won’t get lost, either,” Lo said. I raised an eyebrow at the confidence in his voice. The pod was a mystery to me. I knew the ins-and-outs of its circuitry and its physical structure and could access its computer and read the screens. I did not know how it actually worked. Lo tried hard to explain it to me. Hell, even Kim did. When Lo was talking—or shouting in excitement, waving his hands around for emphasis—I understood. I held onto the idea for a few minutes, and then it slipped away, like water in my hands.

Lo continued to protest, “It will go to where Hana is—I didn’t send the prototype to her coordinates because I wanted it to jump to a place we could see—”

“And we didn’t see it,” Kim pointed out. “We have no idea where it went.”

“We know exactly the coordinates Hana went to—”

“They could be the center of the sun,” Kim shot back.

Lo shook his head. “I programmed the gravitational sensors to avoid suns and black holes—just as she did. She went somewhere too far from Earth for her beacon to be heard.” Waving a hand, Lo insisted, “None of that matters. It will return to exactly the same place our prototype landed.”

I blinked. He hadn’t wanted the prototype to return 2,000 clicks away. I supposed he was just comfortable with that location. At least it was a known known, even if technically wrong.

“They want the time bands on a new flitter the day the next team arrives. If they don’t get it, we’ll be on a return ship home,” Kim said. He sighed. “I'll send a light beam transmission directly to Earth. We’ll get credit for the discovery.”

“And Hana,” Lo said.

Kim nodded. “And Hana.”

I swallowed. But we wouldn’t get Hana, and that was the whole point.

Scratching behind his ear, Kim said, “You finished it. What a waste.”

Damn, he caught that. My mouth started moving, and I lied as smooth as water, without knowing why. “Nah, finished the secondary power battery install.” Hana had only used the station’s reactor and a battery from one robot for onboard lights and computer, probably because she was running out of oxygen and didn’t have time to scavenge the Dreamer’s batteries. She took a one-way trip. Our pod had enough juice for two trips.

Kim’s brow furrowed. “I thought you finished that weeks ago.”

“We did, but I messed up the integration.” I didn’t. “The circuitry’s complicated.” That, at least, was the truth.

Lo rubbed the back of his neck, mumbled the Chinese equivalent of “um,” and then said, “Yeah.”

“Hmm …” said Kim. “Well, the bands have to be off the thing, and I'll be needing you to fabricate a new flitter for the arriving team.”

“Taking it apart won’t be as hard as putting it together,” I said. “And it is getting late.”

“No, no need to start today,” Kim agreed.

“I want to take a thorough holo record of it,” Lo said.

“Sure, sure,” said Kim, turning away. “You’ve got a week.”

He left the workroom.

Lo said, “You didn’t need to lie. A week is enough time to do the holo-doc.”

My throat got tight. That was not why I lied. I lied on instinct, without thinking, and my brain was catching up to what my heart knew from the start.

* * *

Hana showed up for our date.

Her hair was pulled back in the same ponytail she always wore. She might have been wearing a touch of lip-gloss.

I was surprised she showed—I didn’t know her then, how literal she is and how she can be stupidly honest.

But I learn from my mistakes. She’d done the unexpected before. It seemed reasonable to have some sort of general idea of places to take the conversation in case she did show.

We exchanged generic hellos—she seemed a bit robotic, but not angry about the circumstances of our meeting—maybe she’d decided a free hamburger was worth the “rudeness”? I directed her toward my car, and I asked what I hoped was a decent ice breaker. “Why did you think I was trying to convert you?”

“You seemed too nice.”

None of my exes thought I was “nice.” Controlling, know-it-all, and emotionally unavailable—the last was probably true at the end of our relationships when I’d decided I’d had enough—but never … “Too nice?”

“Well, yes, bringing me my coffee, giving me advice on … on …” she gulped. “My brother.”

I remembered how no one had brought her coffee out to her. “That wasn’t being nice. That was common courtesy.” Shaking my head, I opened her car door.

She paused and looked up at me. “But if you were the only person who did it, then how was it common?”

She slipped into the seat, and I shut the door, puzzled not by the question, but at her tone, as though she really didn’t know.

Walking around the car, I remembered the silence in the coffee shop, as though they were afraid of her. They probably were afraid of her. In a sea of the super accomplished, her accomplishments still made most others small, and yet she’d been human, vulnerable, crying, and maybe that didn’t compute. I could have pointed those things out, but I thought of her small shoulders, the cold that day, and how alone she’d looked. I didn’t feel like dissecting all that and risking making her feel that isolation again.

So I got in to my side, put us in gear, and said, “So nice means out to convert you?”

“My ex-boyfriend was vegan.”

What sort of idiot brings up an ex on the first date? That is a rule everyone knows. I played along, though. “How did you live without hamburgers?”

She shook her head and frowned. “I hated it. … And after a while, I realized he was mean.”

“Nice to animals, not nice to people. A common type.” I pulled out of the lot.

“Is it?” Hana asked. “Oh, well, then he joined that Three Books Cult, and he got nice, but he was always trying to convert me.”

The Three Books was a new thing at that time. Its leaders were Christian, Jewish, and Muslim and saw their true enemy as not each other, but technology and the secular world. They were Luddites, but like all religions, had redeeming qualities. Their communities looked out for each other. They got their kids offline for unscripted gatherings and outdoor time.

“I’m not a member of The Three Books,” I said. Traffic was moving at a good clip. We pulled onto a major road, and I couldn’t help myself. “But I lied. I am a missionary of the church of Fundamental Agnosticism.”

Twisting in her seat, she leaned against the door, eyes wide.

“Have you heard about our lord and savior, Carl Sagan?” I asked.

She blinked once, twice, and then put her hands to her mouth and bent over, laughing. “You’re teasing me.”

“He was a smart guy,” I said, shrugging and looking away, trying to play it cool, but proud of how easily she’d laughed. It was a nice laugh, completely unaffected. She wasn’t what I thought of as gorgeous, but in that moment, she looked beautiful.

She looked out the window. “That’s right. He was agnostic.”

We left the main drag and entered a neighborhood where every other lot was vacant or had a rundown house with graffiti on the side of it. She didn’t comment or ask if it was safe. At the time, I thought it showed fortitude. Later, I’d realize she probably didn’t even put together that the neighborhood might be dangerous.

We pulled up to an ancient bungalow that almost looked like one of the vacant places—graffiti on the side spelled out “Carter’s” in big, exaggerated letters surrounded by flames. The other bungalows on the street had large, ground floor bay windows, but all the glass at Carter’s had been replaced with bricks. The only signs of life were solar panels on the roof, and that the lot next door was filled with gravel instead of weeds. A few well-maintained old internal combustion engine machines parked there. I pulled into the lot, and she said, “This is the restaurant?” Curiosity, not disdain or disbelief, shone on her face, and she was beautiful again.

“Best burgers in town,” I said as we got out.

She started toward the front, but Carter himself came out of the back door, drying his hands on a towel. “John Miller! Welcome, welcome! And this is your guest!”

I introduced them. Tucking the towel into his crisp red apron, Carter smiled, his teeth bright white against his weathered black skin. He held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

Hana’s face lit up when she accepted it, seemingly just as awed as if he were the owner of a fancy four-star place. “You’re the owner!” Later I’d realize just how difficult Hana found it to feed herself, and it would make perfect sense. It was not that the woman couldn't boil water, but she tended to forget she was boiling the water, boiled it away, and was left with the hard water deposits to scrub—if she was lucky. On a bad day, she would forget she’d put the pasta or vegetables or what have you in the boiling water, boil away the water and burn the pan’s contents until nothing was left but charcoal. True stories. Plural.

“I am!” he said and beckoned us in the back door. Hana didn’t seem to notice that it was stainless steel and bulletproof. To be fair, it was painted to look like the wall. The dining room was invitation only. Carter’s was mostly a takeaway place.

Carter sat us down in the converted living room of the old bungalow, wooden floor creaking under our chairs, ceiling fan spinning above. We placed our orders, and I was thinking things were going pretty well, especially considering how things had started. And then Hana tilted her head, narrowed her eyes, and said, “So when you said you were fundamentally agnostic, what does that mean?”

Uh-oh. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to talk religion on a first date?” I responded.

She leaned back in her seat, face expressionless. “I did not know that rule.” Her head tilted the other way. “Of course, since you seem to be in the habit of asking random women on dates, I suppose you’d have been on more than me and would be more likely to know the—” She made air quotes. “Rules.” She shook her head and gazed at the table. “I still think it was objectifying.”

“You’re getting a free meal,” I replied. “And delightful conversation.”

“I haven’t eaten yet,” she replied.

“At least you’re not saying the conversation isn’t delightful.” I think I saw the corner of her lip twitch at that. “If it was so objectionable, why did you take me up on it?”

Her shoulders fell. “I said I would. And Carmela said you aren’t an ax murderer.”

“A ringing endorsement.”

She shrugged. Her eyes narrowed. “I heard you told the undergrads that dating was just a numbers game. So that makes me a number.”

I got a little snippy, even though I shouldn’t have—we were dodging the religion bullet at least. “Until I get to know you, yes.”

“You should get to know someone before you ask them out,” she replied.

“How can you get to know them if you don’t ask them out?” I countered. “At work? We’re supposed to be working, right?”

“Seeing how someone treats others in the workplace is a good place to start,” she said. “Ken said—I’ve heard that.” Ken was her brother who’d passed away.

I found some of the combativeness going out of my tone. “I agree, but it is faster and more efficient on a date, and if you broaden your sphere of potential partners to more than those you’re with regularly, you’re more likely to find someone who—” Will sleep with you. “—is compatible.”

She stared at me. “I suppose that is logical.”

“I am a logical guy.”

“Do you believe in God?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied automatically. I couldn’t believe in the God of the Prosperity Gospel I grew up with, who determined the amount of one’s wealth and health by one’s virtue and one’s suffering by one’s amount of sin. That was the same sort of belief that bred the indulgences of Russia’s monarchy, created revolutionary atheists like Joseph Stalin, and nearly drove me to despair. I saw far too many good people lost to hold on to that belief.

“That is not logical,” she said.

I gave her my standard response. “There is a portion of the brain that’s responsible for the sensation of transcendence.”

“That doesn’t prove there is a God,” she observed.

“No, it doesn’t. But proving the existence of light to those who lack eyes would be impossible.”

“You’re saying I lack this region of the brain—”

“More likely, it is undeveloped,” I replied.

“But light is measurable. Even the blind can read the results of a light meter.”

“Do you believe every phenomenon in the universe is measurable?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you believe we are measuring every phenomenon?” I asked.

Hana’s eyes got distant. “No.”

I smiled at that in relief. For a moment, I heard my commander’s voice in the sub, before the accident, “All the readouts are fine,” and felt the wrongness of the throb of the engines beneath my feet.

“You have a drawl,” she said, snapping me to the present. “You’re from the South?”

“Originally. Born in Georgia,” I replied, glad to change the subject. “But I spent most of my formative years in Wisconsin.”

A furrow appeared between her brows. “They just had a bust up of an illegal plastic-diesel distillery ring there.”

I detected censure in her voice. My eye twitched.

It was a good thing Carter dropped off our food then, or I might have popped off on a rant right there. But burgers on buttery rolls with crisp fried onion on top, lemony garlic green beans, and Hoppin’ John softened me.

“This burger is just what I meant when I said I wanted real meat,” Hana said.

I almost smiled.

And then she said, “I just don’t understand how the Wisconsin authorities turned a blind eye for so long.”

The correct response was, “Mmm …” I knew that. But it wasn’t like the date was going fabulously anyway, or ever had the potential to go fabulously.

“Well, actually …” I said, and became the caricature of a fat, obnoxious, know-it-all in an ancient meme.

We argued. Me passionately. She had a typical dispassionate upper-class attitude that can get under my skin. She argued without visible sign of emotion, which I took to be a sign of disdain.

But just as we were finishing our plates, and what to me was an uncomfortable silence settled over the table, she said, “Your perspective is so interesting. I didn’t realize that the Fusion Reactor delays did that.”

Fusion Reactor delays meant that Carter’s illegal diesel-powered generator had kicked in about halfway through dinner. She didn’t notice its faint, but distinctive, chug-a-chug-a out back. Why would she notice? In her normal life, the delay wouldn’t affect her. It was something she might read about. Maybe. The University of Chicago had its own battery power and state-of-the-art solar rooftop arrays—Carter’s panels were secondhand, and his ancient battery backup was only good for making sure that when the main array went down and his diesel gen kicked on, there was no flicker. His part of town wasn’t an economic “hub.” The people who lived there weren’t rich. They might complain when their power went down when there was no wind or sun, when it was too hot or too cold for the grid to keep up, or when it was the day before school got out and everyone was powering their EVs up for long hauls—but no one would lose any campaign contributions over it.

“How do you learn all of this?” she asked.

I stared at her for too long, trying to understand if she was serious. Which was when Carter came around and told me that after the help I’d given him with his electricity woes, there was no way he was allowing me to pay. Hana perked in her seat.

When we were leaving, she said, “If more businesses had people like you to help with their wind and solar installations, they wouldn’t need diesel!”

“Mmm …” I said. I’d helped Carter fix his diesel generator—replaced a part with one I fabricated with my 3D printer—kept the old one working with duct tape while I did it. I’d also helped the people who produced the illegal diesel for the illegal generator with recycled plastic waste fix their “still.” Fabricated a couple of gaskets for them and helped them avoid down time by mending the old ones with superglue in the interim. No one at the University except Vlks and Lo knew about it. Vlks because he was a micromanager extraordinaire and spied on everyone he recruited. The duct tape and the super glue really impressed him—they were part of why I got the job. Lo knew because he recognized the chug-a-chug-a of Carter’s generator right away. He designed a cover that made it quieter, kept it insulated in inclement weather, and devised a scrubber for the exhaust that cut down on the smell. Lo also ate free at Carter’s.

I turned the conversation to more mundane stuff. And actually succeeded.

I didn’t kiss her when I dropped her off at the front door to her building. I maybe lingered a bit, because she seemed to enjoy herself when I gabbed on about ridiculous childhood adventures—building a treehouse out of things I found at the dump, trying to build a wood burning car in the barn one winter—you know, things you do when you’re not rich and your outdoor time is unscripted.

She laughed at all the right places, and I thought about kissing her.

“So it wasn’t all deer hunting?” she asked with a smile.

“That didn’t faze you,” I noted.

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“A lot of people find hunting distasteful,” I said.

Her eyebrows rose. “It seems kinder in some ways. At least the animal knew freedom. They didn’t spend their whole life in a stall.”

I could have gone into how maybe cows appreciate a warm stall with friends and plenty of hay more than freedom. Freedom comes with coyotes who will skin baby cows alive and eat them while they cry out in pain. But I contained myself.

She winced. “And the deer die quickly.” Such a logical comment. She looked really beautiful then.

Her brow furrowed. She looked at her watch, and her eyes widened. “Oh, I have to go to bed now. Thank you for dinner.”

And then she spun, opened her eyes wide for the retinal scanner, entered her building, and disappeared.

I watched, bemused, not knowing that she meant exactly what she said. Instead, I thought something uncharitable about her: that she’d just realized that she was having a good time while slumming it with a “rude” uneducated bumpkin, so she’d made a hasty retreat.

I didn’t have hard feelings, though. I’d actually enjoyed the arguments we’d had, despite her robotic manner. At least she’d never gotten mad at me, and she acknowledged when I had a point. Also, she was beautiful when she laughed, and she’d appreciated Carter and his place.

Despite the cheap holo dramedy reason for the evening, and except for that awkward ending, it might have been one of the best first dates without sex I’d ever had.

Not that it could have gone anywhere. She was obviously not the type for casual sex. We came from very different worlds and weren’t suited for each other. But it would make a good story someday. I went on a date with a theoretical physicist once. She went on to win a Nobel Prize. She was quirky, but sweeter than you might have expected. Completely oblivious to the world around her …

She texted me the next day to say what a great time she had, and she hoped we could do it again. Who did that? Who didn’t play it cool for at least a week?

But I had enjoyed myself, and we hadn’t even kissed. So I asked her out again.

Why care that we weren’t suited, and it couldn’t be serious? I was leaving the planet in a year.

5 JOHN

I sat in Hana’s sleeping nook, a bed tucked against the wall with storage underneath, and a screen on one side pulled down for privacy. It had been mine since we arrived, luck of the draw. It didn’t smell like her. She’d been gone too long, but there had been the imprint of her head on the pillow. She’d slept in this small space while she wondered if she was going to die, and while she made her plans to escape.

I surveyed my gear: rucksack, some SMREs—short for “Space Meals Ready to Eat”—canteen with water, hygiene kit, first-aid kit, a spare set of clothes—losing my bowels from both ends in a space-time hop seemed a real possibility. My scroll lay next to these items, open and downloading as much of the station’s library as it could hold. The return trip would have me landing 2,000 clicks away next to our prototype, and I was going to have time on my hands. I’d have something to do with my brain while I waited for Kim to rescue me.

There was also a rifle and ammo.

Yeah, those shouldn’t have been there. You might ask why I had a rifle and ammo with me. Because the first mission that launched me into space wasn’t this corporate-government collab, it was a mission run by an eccentric trillionaire to test the first Near-Light spacecraft. He saw my job as being security and engineer. He gave me the damn things, saying, “You’re the only one I trust will use it if he needs to. None of the others have the guts.”

Yes, Vlks was a bona fide genius. No, a projectile weapon isn’t a smart thing to have on board a spaceship. To be fair, it was a semi-automatic .30 AlloFoam Sentinel, ASF, with expanding “blossom” rounds, and three magazines of ammo. ASF blossoms leave “alloy foam” behind them on impact to prevent puncturing a hole in a habitat. Within the target, they expand, “blossoming” within the wound so they don’t pass through it. A gunshot from the ASF would damage the structural integrity of a habitat, and the foam would have to be reinforced, but it theoretically would prevent a puncture and subsequent leak in a water or oxygen tank, or a hull. Yes, I took it without argument. Vlks would have kicked me off the project if I’d complained. I did ask if he expected us to run into aliens. Looking me dead in the eye, he said, “It could happen.”

“Judging by the caliber, you expect them to be big ones,” I replied.

He glared. “And you’ll be stopping by Mars Colony on the way back. Bunch of commies. I don’t want them stealing my ship.” Mars’ first colonists weren’t commies. Vlks was just pissed that the consortium that ran the colony was dilly-dallying about giving him the resupply contract … probably because the initial Near-Light trip to Oort wasn’t complete.

No one checked my bag when I boarded the Starlight—there weren’t that many people in space at the time we left Sol System. There was a certain level of trust that no one would be this stupid. We’d spent four years at near light-speed—with time dilation, that was nearly eight years Earth time. Maybe things were different in Sol System by that point. I had planned to give the rifle and ammo to Kim … and then I didn’t. Was kind of embarrassed for Vlks, or myself, for not rejecting them from the get-go and hauling the thing around since the mission to Oort, and the subsequent missions I made to Mars before joining this voyage.

Outside Hana’s cubby, Lo was arguing with Kim about the decision to dismantle the pod. A door slid open and shut, and then they were gone.

Hana hadn’t had a choice about whether to take the jump.

I did have a choice.

Death was not my biggest fear. I wasn’t really afraid of injury. If the thing broke down, I’d be dead pretty fast, and if it worked, I’d come back with Hana’s corpse. I’d return 2,000 clicks away, but besides the CO2 scrubber, my suit could recycle water from human waste. I'd be set for as long as it took Kim to come and retrieve me in the rover, swearing at me all the way. After that, he’d stick me on the next ship out.

I was afraid of prison. Confined spaces weren’t my worry, obviously, but in prison I’d have to throw my weight around. It seemed … tedious. I’d have plenty of time to read, but I wouldn’t have 24/7 access to a library, and it wouldn’t be a very good library, either. From friends who’d been in, I’d heard you’re only allowed five books at a time. Torture.

For a moment, I hesitated.

And then I smiled grimly. Even if I was prosecuted back on Earth for theft, Vlks would bail me out. I didn’t understand how the pods worked, but I knew how they were put together. He'd probably put me right back to work at the University of Chicago.

I’d be home. I leaned back against the wall. I was tired and ready to be home. Ready to stop running. I had been ready four years ago, but then I heard about Hana leaving and about doubts of the safety of extended periods of cryo-sleep. Lo and Carmela had told me they were worried about Hana’s mission, and I knew through the grapevine about Vlk’s worries about the government-corporate collab that was being put together as a follow up. So I volunteered to come.

Vlks sent me to protect his investment, but I was there for her. To bring her home.

Going home without her would be a failure of our mission. I could go after her, so I should. Vish’s scramble for a technological coup be damned.

When, if I lived, and Kim sent me back to Earth, I’d arrive just after Vish, with word of the prototype and my success—a witness to Lo and Hana’s genius and Kim’s leadership skills. Lo and Kim would thank me. And Hana would be home.

Death was the only thing I risked.

It was a stupid risk. But it was closure.

I didn’t get that for a lot of people I’d lost.

Kim was probably right. I was probably overcompensating for everyone I lost in the sub but staring at the blinking green light on my scroll, I felt at peace. Transcendent. That part of my brain Hana maybe didn’t have must have been lit up like Christmas time. “You protect fools and small children, right, Lord?” I shook myself and stared at the rifle and ammo. I wasn’t sure why I would need them, but I thought I’d rather they not be found if I was vaporized.

The blinking green light on my scroll went solid. Rolling it up, I slipped it into my pocket and started packing my provisions. I felt like I was outside my body, not fully in control. I’d felt this way a few times in my life. Every time in a situation when my life was on the line. In every instance, it saved me. I was hyper-aware in that state. My thoughts came in rapid fire and were crystal clear. I almost broke the rifle apart, but no one was in the communal area at that moment, and that wouldn’t last long. I didn’t have much time.

Gear gathered, I slid the screen back to confirm I was alone. And then I got up and marched into the engineering lab, sliding the airlock doors shut behind me. I opened a small hatch beside the door and disengaged some wiring. Nothing hard to fix, just enough to stall. The pod sat in the middle of the floor. It was spherical, kept in place by blocks. We had disengaged the connection to the reactor, and it was dark, but the hatch was open. The single circle of time bands on its exterior glinted faintly.

I threw my rucksack inside and walked over to the locker where my suit was stored. I took it out, shoved it unceremoniously into the pod, and grabbed my toolbox next, hauling it over and stuffing it next to the suit—Lo had his own tools, and we had spares from the Dreamer. Then I set about reengaging the reactor couplings. Light winked on within the pod. I squeezed in through the narrow hatch and closed it behind me, popping my ears with it.

I put the toolbox in the airlock with the drones—couldn’t have it floating around in zero G. I added my rifle, but my suit didn’t fit. Shutting and securing the airlock, I turned to the computer interface. Beginning a “pre-jump” diagnostic, I pulled up the initial “jump plan,” the pod’s equivalent of a “flight plan.” Lo had programmed two, one to just a few meters past Hana’s jump point and one for the way back. Everything was set.

All of this I'd done like an automaton. But then I stared at the interface, and a lump formed in my throat. There was one other thing left to do before I left. I pressed a button at the top of the screen. Waited. And then I said, “I just want it known for the record, that neither Lo nor Kim, nor anyone on this station is responsible for my actions. I do this on my own.”

Kim’s voice flared from the tiny speaker above the interface. “John, what are you doing?”

“Going after Hana.”

For a moment, I knew how crazy I was being.

And then I thought of the last time I’d seen her, on the day the Starlight had launched for Oort. We’d broken up at that point—a horrible, messy break-up, because I was an idiot, or because I was in love, or both—but she’d promised to be there, and Hana showed up.

I was furious at her for it and grateful.

I was furious waiting for a response in the pod—at Vish for canceling the mission and at myself. Maybe a little at Kim for not keeping Vish’s order to himself.

There was a flicker of static on the speaker. I heard Carmela in the background. “The workroom door is jammed.”

Lo’s voice cracked in the pod. He spoke in Mandarin, “Brother, don’t do this. We need to test it. …”

But we were never going to get that chance. The out-of-the-body feeling came over me again.

“I trust you, Brother,” I told him.

I couldn’t turn back. I was going after Hana. I was going to complete my mission.

A green light showed up next to the pre-jump check. I pressed a button. The interior of the pod had two time bands arranged on either side of the external band. The light within went from bright to blinding, and before I could have regrets …

There was no sound.

And then the pod was falling.

I was supposed to be in space.

6 JOHN

Before I could worry about what the pod was falling to, it hit something, slowed, and rolled. I hit the wall, the ceiling, and the other wall—my tools slamming against the cabinet sides—and then the pod bounced. The tools banged in the cabinet. My teeth rattled. My helmet hit my shoulder, and I grabbed my suit just before we rolled again. I was on the floor, the wall, and the ceiling again … and then there was an ominous crack. I couldn’t worry about a breach because I was hitting the wall again, air exploding outward from my chest.

A moment later, my lungs inhaled automatically. Air—cold, damp, and sweeter than anything I’d tasted in years—exploded into my lungs.

The pod rocked forward, backward, and came to a halt on its side. The internal lights were dark, but the hatch was cracked open, revealing misty treetops. Birdsong burst into the tiny space, and I heard something else, running water, maybe?

I swallowed. I was alive. I was breathing. I must be on Earth, which meant …

I missed Hana.

My head spun at the risk I just took. And I missed her.

Dear God …

And then I heard Hana’s voice. “Let me go!”

A shout, masculine and low, answered her in a language I didn’t know, but I knew the sound of anger when I heard it.

I was outside of my body again. The smooth surface of the airlock was the floor, thank God—my toolbox didn’t fall on me when I opened it. Grabbing the rifle, I went to the hatch and peered through the sights. I saw Hana not far away, being dragged by four men with broad shoulders and long red hair up a slope into an area thick with trees. She was twisting in their arms, the front of her coveralls ripped open. The metallic flavor of adrenaline flooded my mouth, and I roared, “Let her go!”

If they got into the trees, they’d be out of my sight, but two of the men dropped Hana and turned toward me. One hefted a spear, cranked back his arm to throw, and …

I shot him. Recoil raced up my arm, but Earth gravity kept me from jerking back too much, unlike on Mars, when I’d tested the weapon out on the dunes. He staggered, his spear dropped, and he fell. The second was lifting his own spear. I shot him, too, the first shot still ringing in my ears.

The other two guys dropped Hana and ran. There was something wrong about the way they moved, something off, but almost everything was wrong. Only one thing was right. I clambered out of the pod, shouting, “Hana!”

She sat up. Her hair was a curly dark cloud behind her, her pale face stricken and confused.

I wanted to run to her, but I caught myself. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I raised my rifle and surveyed the world through my sights. The pod was on a slight rise beside a river. In the direction Hana’s attackers ran, there was a tree line. Downhill, in the other direction, I couldn’t see much—more trees, definitely, but dense fog enveloped them, and I couldn’t see far. Rocky terrain made me think we might be in the mountains. The pod’s path to the river was obvious, broken undergrowth leading up a hill perpendicular to the river. A gentle rise in the terrain saved it from a dunk. Were we in a river valley?

Not seeing anyone else, I crept past the two would-be spear throwers, keeping my body low. Neon orange alloy foam was plastered to their foreheads, but there was no blood at the entry wounds. The sides of their heads were different. The blossom bullet had exploded the fissures at the sides of their skulls, and blood and brain gleamed in the cracks. Still, their faces were weirdly intact. They were Caucasian, with blue eyes, long red hair, thin, scraggly red beards, broad faces, broad bodies, and broad everything else. They could have been twins. They wore leather tunics with belts over leather pants, leather straps crisscrossed their chests, and they wore tied leather cords as belts. The first time I killed a man, it hadn’t been in the line of duty—it had been in a hand-to-hand combat situation, stateside, after my accident. I’d thrown up shortly afterward. I didn’t throw up this time, and I repressed an urge to bash their heads in until their own mother couldn’t recognize them. Fuckers had tried to hurt Hana.

“John?” Hana called as I got closer.

My stomach clenched. My grip tightened as I fought the urge to lower my rifle. I wanted to stop; I wanted to just stare at her and make sure she was real, but she wasn’t safe.

“Can you get up?” I asked.

“I think … so … how?”

“No time. Get in the pod,” I barked.

Hana pulled away from me. Her ripped coverall gaped. Fury bubbled in me, not at her, but at the two who got away. It penetrated my thick skull that she was probably in shock. I forced myself to be calm. “Baby,” I said, keeping my rifle trained on the trees, “they could come back. We need cover. The pod can resist spears.” My brain screamed, why do they have spears?

Hana nodded and got to her feet, shaking so bad she stumbled, barely recovering in time.

I started to lower the rifle to offer a hand.

She gestured no, wrapped her arms around herself, and headed toward the pod. I crab walked sideways beside her, keeping my attention on our surroundings.

Hana asked, “Do you think we landed in one of those places that has protected tribes? I was aiming for the exosphere, but the distances are extreme, and no one has done this before, and I’m more a theoretical physicist. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised I’m off a—” She stopped, and her gaze slipped to the two bodies. “You shot them.” Her tone was flat. I don’t know what I expected her to say, but it wasn’t what came out of her mouth next. “What if you get in trouble? Not every nation has the U.S.’s self-defense laws and—”

They were abducting her, probably going to rape her, and that was what she was worried about? She has the sweetest, most convoluted brain.

“I would shoot them again. We’ll deal with that later, okay?”

She nodded and headed toward the pod. I scanned the forest where the men disappeared. Birds called. A twig snapped. I raised my rifle. I saw nothing but knew something—or someone—was out there.

A wolf howled, and something that sounded like a big cat replied.

I revised my last thought.

Lots of things were out there.

* * *

Hana reached the pod but couldn’t get into the hatch. I made a quick scan, lowered my rifle, made a loop of my hands, and said, “Leg up.”

She put her boot in, and as I lifted her, I breathed deeply. She smelled like the soap on the station. I felt a cold coil in my gut.

“Do you need help?” Hana asked from the top of the pod.

She was alive. I felt like laughing, despite everything. I knew something was very wrong, but what was right almost overwhelmed me.

“Nope, hon,” I said, noting how easily I fell into endearments after years apart. I grabbed my rifle and vaulted headfirst up to the hatch, caught the edge, pulled myself through, and landed on my feet.

“How did you get to me so fast?” Hana asked, shakily sitting down.

It was at that moment that all the rightness hit me, and the question didn’t register. I crouched in front of her, and she got all blurry.

Her hand came up and touched my face. “Don’t cry. I’m fine.”

Which was when I realized I was weeping.

I caught her hand. It was just as soft and smooth as I remembered. I started to babble. “I kept hoping you were alive. I knew you had one more miracle left in you.”

“There’s no such thing as miracles,” she said. “Only physics.”

Because of course she would say that. I choked.

“John, I’m fine.”

She’d thought she was going to die, built her own damn miracle portal to Earth, and was attacked by savages. She was not fine. But I knew it would take her at least a few days to realize it. I’d be there for it when it did. Vlks would post my bail if the international community came after me for shooting protected rapists.

“We have a beacon,” I said. “I’ll activate it.” But I didn’t move. I just looked at her, her delicate chin, high cheekbones, and her narrow eyes, her lips without the faintest hint of color that I very much wanted to kiss. She didn’t look like she’d aged a day, much less years. Of course, she’d spent four of those years in cryo-sleep.

Her gaze locked on a place below my chin, and she crumpled into my arms. She tucked her head below mine, and I couldn’t kiss her, but my arms wrapped around her, my hands tangled with her unbound hair, and it was all good. Her body was taut with tension, but beneath that she was soft, and she was warm, and her hair was like silk. How long had it been? With time dilation, it was hard to count the years. Two years to Oort and back for me—that would have been like four for her, except during that time she’d went on her own light-speed journey and spent nearly four years in cryo-sleep. My mission had been formed before her journey to the station was complete, when the cryo-sleep accidents started happening. For her, with time dilation, and cryo-sleep … my body was too busy remembering her to do the math.

There had been other women in the time we’d been apart, but it had been a long time since I’d had human contact that meant so much.

“Where do you think we are?” she asked, voice muffled by my embrace. “You told me about reserves for tribes. But I don’t remember their locations.” I blinked, remembering telling her about protected areas for tribes that hadn’t had contact with the modern world. It was about keeping the tribe members safe from modern diseases—even friendly contact had decimated villages.

Something cold snaked its way around my gut, and the feeling of wrong came back, despite the weight of her against me. “There are some reserves in the Amazon and on North Sentinel Island,” I replied.

She shook her head against my chest. “We’re not in the Amazon. It must be North Sentinel Island. It isn’t tropical out there.”

North Sentinel Island is part of India’s Andaman Islands, an archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. It is very much tropical.

It hit me that her hair was silky and clean, with only the odd bit of leaf. Her clothing was dirty, as you would expect from someone who just got in a fight in the forest, but it wasn’t filthy, like it had been lived in for years. Besides the tear in the front, it was intact. And she smelled like the station soap.

“How did you get to me so fast?” she asked again, and this time I felt the question all the way to my bones.

“It has been—” I caught myself. I just had a feeling. “How long has it been since you arrived here?”

“I …” she’d been rocking subtly against me but stopped. She pulled up her sleeve and looked at her watch. “Forty-eight minutes.”

My heart stopped. The Starlight, my ship, had been years behind her arrival at the station.

Hana kept talking. “My light sphere broke open on landing, and I heard water. I didn’t know what else to do, so I walked toward it. Those men … they grabbed me soon after. They tried …I think … but then a tree fell, and there was a thump—”

Those noises were probably my pod hitting a tree and crashing to the ground.

Hana continued, “They got angry, but scared, I think, too, and they dragged me up the hill. Your pod rolled down, and you came out and shot them.”

I pulled back. She searched my face.

I said, “Lo knew your coordinates, so when he designed our pod, he programmed it to arrive a few meters from yours.”

I didn’t say, so we could collect your body with drones.

“How did he get my coordinates so fast? I was light-years from Earth.” She blinked. “Oh, you were already on the way … and Lo, he was already working on a pod of his own.” She nodded. “I shouldn’t be surprised that someone else would create one simultaneously.” A smile, fast and fake, crossed her lips.

I swallowed. “Lo used your schematics. We found them once we reached the station. He only modified them a bit. We left Sol years after your mission. The message of your ship’s crash reached us at about the halfway point.”

She shook her head and pulled away. “No, that doesn’t add up.”

It did if the one thing that no good physicist believed was true.

“John, you must be making some mistake.”

It was incredibly condescending. “Hon,” I said tightly, “the years pass strangely in space.” It was not just a matter of time dilation. It was a matter of the lack of day and night, other than a scheduled dimming of lights, and the lack of seasons. “But not strangely enough I don’t remember the last decade of my life.”

She retreated further. “I think you need to set up the beacon,” she said, frowning. She met my eyes, and her gaze was pitying. “I'll testify on your behalf. You know that, right?”

Setting up the beacon was a good idea. I could also set up a proximity alarm—Lo designed it to alert of space debris and trip the external band to deflect impacts—but it would detect the natives, and I could disable the band light-up. I needed to run a diagnostic, too. The fall and trip down the mountain had to have knocked a few things loose.

I crawled over to the interface and slid my hand across the surface. Nothing happened. My heart skipped a beat. I pressed harder, and it flickered on, but all but one of the batteries were offline. We’d have to fix that if we wanted to jump.

Going to the hatch, I glanced at the sky. I thought it might be morning. It seemed brighter than when I’d arrived, even though the mist was thicker. It was going to rain. We’d have to close the hatch to prevent water from getting inside. I tested pulling the hatch closed. It got stuck. I mentally cataloged my supplies—I had duct tape but sealing it from the outside would not help the person doing the sealing. I had epoxy glue—superglue for space men—I could fill the gap with enough of the stuff, but then I would be out of epoxy, and opening the hatch again to get oxygen would be a pain. I could dismember my space suit and spread out the torso section to make a cover, but then we’d be out of a space suit, and we might need that, too. We’d need the CO2 scrubber in the helmet and the waste recycler. Taking apart the suit wouldn’t damage those, but I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Which meant…

Going back to the airlock, now a cabinet in the floor, I opened my toolbox and retrieved a utility knife.

I glanced at Hana, kneeling beside the computer interface. She’d already found some sort of math app I was only vaguely aware was loaded. She’d gotten her scroll unrolled too and was scribbling formulas on it with the index finger of one hand. With the other, she was playing an invisible piano. She does that when she’s thinking.

I cursed, grabbed my rifle, and hauled myself out of the hatch. I hung half-in, half-out for a moment, scanning the surroundings, and then clambered out and to the ground.

She didn’t respond, and I knew she was in her own world, “math land,” a “deep think.” She was trying to figure out what I was sure of.

The thing no good physicist would ever say could happen had happened.

At least one of us had traveled through time.

7 HANA

Sitting on the floor of what John called a pod—and what I’d called a “lightsphere”—I stared at the hatch John had vanished through. Pulling my knees to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them. I was shaking too hard to control the interface, maybe even too much to stand, and my thoughts were skittering around too fast for me to focus.

I was in shock. Shock that I was alive. Shock that I was on Earth—I should have been in Earth’s orbit, not planet-side. Shock that I’d nearly been abducted. Shock that my abductors were dead.

I tried to get a hold of my thoughts, and more importantly, and with more difficulty, my feelings.

Was I shocked that John had killed them?

No.

John had killed before.

* * *

My parents were not pleased when they found out I was dating John. It wasn’t just his lack of a “real” degree, his being of a different faith—my mother wasn’t born into the faith, either. It was because they believed he was a lunatic American “gun rights activist” and murderer.

He wasn’t an activist.

He did have guns.

He’d also shot a man.

If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have gone out on that first date. Normally, I would have searched the internet for a potential date’s history. But I’d talked to Carmela, Lo’s wife, after John lost his dare and asked me out. She’d shared my vexation at the circumstances and said I absolutely should get a free hamburger out of the deal. Lo, overhearing, but not understanding our consternation at the circumstances, had declared, “You will have a great time! He’s interesting … and a nice guy!”

Carmela had sighed. “He’ll be a gentleman at least. Make him pay for that childish prank.”

With no fears for my safety, I didn’t look him up. And then we had a good time, and I didn’t look deeper. Maybe I knew subconsciously I wouldn’t like what I found?

My mother had no reservations about digging into John’s past.

“Do you know you are dating a murderer?”

Sitting on the bench on the University of Chicago’s campus, scroll unfurled on my lap, it was the first thing she said when I accepted the video call. I stared at her in the inset on my screen, not comprehending. It was summer in Chicago; the humidity was nothing like that of Tokyo in August, but it was still hot, and my skin was damp. The desperate mating calls of cicadas in Hyde Park almost drowned out my mother’s words and made the moment feel surreal. John was not a murderer. He walked freely and worked on the Near-Light Project.

My mother read my expression, because she said, “It is true. I looked him up. John Miller.”

“It is a common name.”

“Is there more than one working on the Near-Light Project?” my mother demanded.

I pursed my lips. “No. But I think you are mistaking my John for someone else.”

A video link appeared on my screen. “Look at it! It was him,” my mother said.

Sighing, I clicked on the link.

It happened in a convenience store. John was standing, holding some cheap plastic bags that looked like they had been used more than once, the way the handles had stretched. Looking up at something to the right of the camera, his face was calm, but focused, as though he was reading something. An armed man came in with a pistol raised. His hand jerked, and I could tell he’d fired it to John’s left. The man walked by John—or attempted to—his pistol sagging subtly. In that moment of weakness, or inattention, John slipped the handles of the bags over the pistol and the man’s hands, catching the man’s wrists, yanking them to the side and jerking the loops of the bags’ handles tight. The pistol dropped. They struggled. John’s knee went into the man’s gut—or maybe his groin—and the man tumbled. A man from behind the counter ran out to assist, but John’s eyes got distant.

John bent down, picked up the pistol, fell to one knee, and shot someone out of view of the camera. The entire time, John’s expression didn’t change.

I stared at the screen, not believing what I was seeing.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” my mother demanded.

John and I were lovers at that point. And more than that … friends. My friend was warm and friendly toward me and the world at large. My friend was emotional and outgoing in ways that I wasn’t and maybe could never be. He wasn’t this person in the grainy security footage, except the footage wasn’t that grainy, and he was close enough to the camera to be recognizable.

“There has to be a mistake,” I said.

“It is him,” my mother said. She’d never met John in person or vid call and only knew about him when I had casually mentioned that I was dating someone from the Near-Light Project to keep her from nagging me about my lack of a romantic partner. Saying “someone” wasn’t good enough, and she’d drilled me for his name.

But that man in the vid wasn’t him. John was gentle and kind and chivalrous. Even when we got into arguments about politics, he always had a twinkle in his eye. I always thought “a twinkle in one’s eye” was a figure of speech, but it isn’t. I had mulled over the matter a few times. Was it just that he was never angry, and his pupils didn’t dilate, and a wide iris refracted light differently than a full, angry pupil?

“As lawless as the United States is, they don’t let murderers roam freely,” I said, and then cringed, remembering a discussion with John about Chicago doing just that as a matter of course too often.

“Hmph,” said my mother. “Your father said you should get a restraining order.”

“I’m not getting a restraining order,” I said.

“Hmph,” she said again. “It is late here. I’m going to bed. I know you will be logical.”

It wouldn’t be logical to be hasty. My fingers shook as I traced the website address, cut off the latter part of the URL, and found a news vid that explained the situation in more detail. After John had tackled the first man, an accomplice had shot at John. That shot wasn’t shown on the security camera. The accomplice had missed. John hadn’t. I read everything I could find on the trial and the dismissal of all charges. In Japan, John would have done jail time. In the U.S., it had been deemed self-defense. There’d been a fundraiser to pay for his legal fees and a writing campaign on his behalf.

He’d never talked about it. No one on campus had talked about it. It had been a few years ago, and when I did my own search on “John Miller Near-Light Project,” I got several screens full of articles on Vlks, and mentions that Vlks had tried to build a team with a diverse group of people from widely different backgrounds, “such as Navy veteran John Miller.”

I tried “John Miller Navy Veteran” and didn’t find the story, either, even scrolling through hundreds of results. In frustration, I tried “John Miller Navy Veteran Criminal” … and then I did find something. The family of the robber he had shot—the robber who had shot at him—tried to sue John for wrongful death. A quote from one of them was, “It is criminal that a man can murder someone about business that isn’t even his!” In Japan, John’s self-defense might have put him in jail, but the family of a criminal wouldn’t have been so brazen. Their lawsuit had at least been dismissed.

I stared at the article for a few minutes, the words blurring, and then I opened the text app on my scroll and scribbled with my stylus, “‘John Miller Navy Veteran Criminal’ was your first search, wasn’t it?” I sent the message to my mother.

I expected her to be asleep, but her answer was immediate. “You are too trusting. Too easy to be taken advantage of.”

No denial there. None.

I tasted bitterness in my mouth. I wasn’t a good judge of character, or maybe I didn’t trust my judgment. I had been suspicious of the vegan-later-turned Three Book cultist boyfriend. I had pushed my suspicions aside because he was respected in his field, and he had been kind to me … at first. But he had pushed me to donate to charities and invited me to expensive charitable events. Since we went Dutch, that had me directly feeding the coffers of his causes. I’d stayed with him much longer than I should have, and in the end, he’d broken up with me after laying down the ultimatum, “I can’t be with someone not part of The Three Books.”

It was like a get out of jail free card, and I took it.

Later, Carmela and Lo had both said of the Cultist variants of, “We don’t know how you stayed with him so long. He was so controlling.”

Of course, I hadn’t trusted John at first, either.

My mother was half wrong. I wasn’t trusting, but I was easily taken advantage of.

But up to that point, John had been kind—not in an eager-to-please way, he liked—loved?—to argue about politics and history, but in the other ways: always being on time, opening doors, cooking for me, and bringing me snacks after he realized I often forgot to eat.

I never had to wait alone in the dark if he said he would meet me somewhere, or worry about a door crashing in my face, or be duped into donating to a cause which I wasn’t fully invested in.

The cruelty came later.

* * *

Rocking on the pod floor, staring up at the misty gray sky, it occurred to me that no matter how badly our relationship had ended, I wasn’t surprised to see him.

8 JOHN

Pushing Hana’s “Hana-ness” out of my mind, I hefted the AFS on my shoulder and turned in place, noting the trees and the ground cover. It was chilly, the chill I associated with early spring, when the ground holds onto the winter’s cold and even warm, sunny days can’t make up for it. The buds on the trees, the low ground cover, and the near lack of insects attested to my guess of the season.

The low ground cover didn’t look right. For a frightening moment, I wondered if we were on Earth at all. But I tossed that thought aside. I recognized the tree species, and then there were the humans … but something was off. I lowered my rifle and trod closer to the men I’d shot.

I hadn’t practiced shooting in years, except in virtual reality games on the ship, but Hana’s attackers had been close, the rifle’s aim true, and muscle memory had kicked in with astonishing ease. I shot them both through the head. The best place to aim is the heart, but their pale faces had been luminous and easier to see against the trees; their brown leather tunics had blended with the backdrop in the haze of my rage. I approached the first cautiously. The rounds had gone in cleanly. The alloy foam had done its job filling up the point of puncture at his temple and not letting any blood escape.

A chill crept up my spine.

He was human … but …

His brow was too low and too thick, and his nose was very wide. His upper jaw protruded, but his lower jaw receded. His eyes were open to the sky and seemed extremely large, but maybe that was just a dead man’s stare affecting my judgment. He was definitely shorter than I’d thought, maybe five-four or five-five, but damn, he was built. I’m a big guy, six foot and a little change, and exercise is my mood enhancer, the drug that kept the monkey of depression off my back, at least since the scars healed enough after the sub accident. This guy’s shoulders dwarfed mine. My eyes fell on his hands. Even his fingers were big, and I swore they were wider at the tips. I glanced slowly over at his buddy—or brother. He had the same features. They could have been twins.

I picked up the nearest guy’s spear. It was heavier than I expected, with a wicked, long stone tip, I guessed made for thrusting, not throwing. But a thing that heavy, with such a long blade, was made for big game. I did not want to get within thrusting distance of anything that the spear was designed to kill.

A bird called in the woods. Lifting my rifle, I scanned the trees. Seeing nothing, I untied the knot of his belt, withdrew my utility knife, and cut the tunic from his body. The leather was buttery soft, but I noticed something odd. The seams weren’t held together by stitches or buttons, but by glue. I flipped him over and whistled. The straps crisscrossing his back were for a bag that appeared to be some sort of large ungulate’s stomach and probably filled with water. The belt had a pouch. I put both to the side and peeled off the tunic. He wore shoes of a sort—they weren’t the delicate leather moccasins I associated with Native Americans. They were simple bags of hide, very worn and almost falling apart. I took them off, thinking maybe I could use the leather as scraps. When I did, I noticed they were stuffed with dead grass. Someone else’s shoes he’d purloined? I laid out the tunic, threw the shoes in the center, along with the bag and belt. A moment later, I repeated the same on his buddy. The guys didn’t smell as bad as they could have. Not that they smelled great, their bowels had released when I killed them. But they didn’t stink like men who’ve been out in the field and hadn’t bathed for days. Their stench was mostly in their clothing. They’d had a basic hygiene routine. I glanced at the stream, thought of the snowy mountain peaks, and imagined that routine was pretty chilly.

Another bird called in the trees. A twig snapped too close. I lifted my rifle again, and this time through the sights, I saw a retreating figure, a spear clutched in his hand.

He’d run away. He knew the rifle was dangerous, even at a distance.

I lowered the rifle, threw the items I’d reconnoitered over my shoulder and wondered how the Hell I was going to get Hana to believe that we’ve both traveled back in time.

* * *

“We didn’t go back in time,” Hana said, not turning away from the computer interface. “It is impossible.”

“It is obviously not impossible. Years went by in our time. Forty minutes went by here. That’s time travel. Why not another few thousand years?”

Hana turned away from the screen. She cast a nervous glance at the spears I brought in from the outdoors, leaning with their points outside the hatch. They held the hatch and a leather flap I duct taped to the exterior pod open enough for ventilation. It wasn’t raining yet, but the mist was thick enough to leave everything it touched damp. Still, we were mostly dry, prepared for the worst, and just a little cold.

“Because you can’t …” she said, gesturing with her hand, not meeting my eyes.

I rubbed my temples.

Hana was—is—a genius. People don’t like to admit how fallible geniuses are.

Back in the Middle Ages, might made right. I have a theory that somewhere between the Industrial Revolution and the Silicon Revolution, society decided bright made right, with “bright” specifically referring to IQ. IQ points help with problem solving, especially the type needed for computer programming, and I guess it is natural to assign superiority to a skill set that makes up the backbone of your economy. But “bright makes right” ignores the problems that go along with that skill set. When Truth smacks an average person in the face, they have to accept it. The person with a high IQ has the brainpower to do feats of mental gymnastics that can explain any lie they want to believe.

“It is convergent evolution,” Hana said. “That’s when—”

“When unrelated critters develop the same parts, I know.” I may not be a bona fide genius, but I went to high school.

Hana’s eyes went vacant. “We’re not on Earth. Those aren’t … aren’t … cavemen. They just look like cavemen.”

I wiped my face with my hand. “With red blood, five fingers, five toes, bilateral symmetry, and reproductive anatomy consistent with Earth mammals, in particular Homo sapiens?” I got a good look when I cut off what was now serving as our rain-curtain. “That does not make sense. Even friggin’ kangaroos have two peckers, and they were only separated from the other continents by a few million years.” Or maybe it was one pecker split at the end. Either way, my point stood.

Hana curled in on herself, and I realized how her day had gone, and how insensitive my tangent was.

“I’m sorry,” we both said at once.

I blinked.

“I’m being condescending,” she said.

“I’m being insensitive,” I said.

She met my eyes. “It is just that, it … it doesn’t make any sense. You have to trust me on this, like I’d trust you on a translation or … or pitch. This is my language.”

That was an appeal to expertise. It’s a fallacy of logic, for good reason. Experts are more prone to bandwagon thinking than non-experts, and tribalism, too. It was not the time to bring that up.

“If …” I said. “If … time travel had occurred, would Lo’s coordinates for our return trip still work?”

“Time travel didn’t occur, so yes, they will work,” she said.

My eyebrows hiked.

She turned back to the interface. “The more immediate problem is that five of our six batteries are offline. It looks like there are at least a few joints we’ll need to re-weld, circuits to repair, and worse, we’ve got a crack in the hold here …” She pointed at the screen. “It’s not big, and I think that your mini-welder and the amount of filler we have will do.”

“We’ve also got epoxy,” I said. “And duct tape.”

She grimaced. “I think we may need the epoxy for gasket repairs. The soldering iron and mini-welder are going to require electricity, which is going to drain the batteries, but I think we can recharge them if we create a water wheel. But in order to do that, we need to salvage parts from my light sphere.” It took me a moment to translate “light sphere,” to “pod,” and then I almost laughed. She said all that smooth and professional-like. We were thousands of years back in time—or in her mind, on another planet—our return was stymied by significant damage to our ride, and she already had a plan to deal with it.

I looked up at the gray sky. “Is your pod going to be damaged by rain?” I didn’t like the idea of heading off into the mist. I was not sure if it was morning or evening, and it would be easy to get lost either way. Also, I was pretty sure Hana was in shock.

“No,” said Hana. “The way the damage was sustained, the electronics will be safe from rain.”

Another thought occurred to me. “If the cavemen get to it—”

Hana shook her head. “If the North Sentinelese people move away the dirt and leaves I used to block entry, they’ll get an electric shock.”

I blinked at her.

She gazed back innocently. “Only a small shock. I didn’t want someone to find the pod and hurt themselves.”

She’s considerate like that.

I sighed. “They’re paler than I am. North Sentinel Island is in the tropics.”

Her mouth set in a hard line. “Isn’t their population isolated? Inbreeding can produce any number of mutations that are deleterious to the bearer. They may compensate for lack of melanin with pigments—”

“Except this isn’t the tropics.” And they hadn’t been wearing any pigments.

“We didn’t go back in time!” she snapped, but she sounded scared more than angry.

I bit my tongue. Before we could do anything, we had to fix the pod. There was no point in arguing about it.

My eyes fell to my suit, and the waste recycler at the groin. We could use it to purify the water. But one recycler wasn’t fit for the needs of two people, and I also didn’t want to burn out the filter or the battery.

I revised my priorities.

Before we did anything, we needed to survive.

9 JOHN

“What am I doing up here?” Hana asked, perched on top of the pod with the rifle on her knees.

Dense mist still hung in the air. Impenetrable to our gazes, it shrunk the world to just a few eerie meters. I could hear the calls of birds and critters beyond the range of my vision.

Scanning the ground beneath the nearest pine, I searched for dry kindling. Glancing up at Hana, my eye caught on a dead branch, just above my head, wide as my arm and longer than my body, complete with dry needles attached. Unlike the ground matter, it was not damp from contact with the earth, and the branches above had kept it drier than I could have hoped. Excellent.

Eyeing the branch, I replied, “You’re watching for the return of our friends. If you see them, you’re going to raise the boomstick and aim.” The perimeter alarm wouldn’t work with me up and roaming about. Or it would, but it was not smart enough to recognize me, yet, so we’d turned it off for the moment.

“Did you just call this gun a boomstick? Are you sure you’re not the caveman?” She made a joke, which meant she was holding up relatively well. Of course, she didn’t believe we’d traveled back in time. Also, it was Hana. It would all hit later.

“It is not a gun, it is an AFS.” Jumping up, I caught the branch. My weight was enough to bring it crashing down. I took it closer to the pod, where I’d cleared a bit of the brush and arranged a circle of stones.

“I don’t think I can shoot them,” Hana said.

“I know you can’t,” I replied. “It is a biometrically activated boomstick.”

“Then—”

“They know enough to be afraid of it already,” I replied.

“Oh.”

I began breaking the dead branch into smaller pieces.

“What are you building a fire for?” she asked.

“I’m going to boil water,” I said.

“In your canteen?” she asked.

“That and …” I nodded at the stomach pouches I’d retrieved. “Those.”

“How do you cook in a bag?” she asked.

“Hang it over the fire,” I replied. “Although I may drop hot rocks in to speed it up a bit.”

“Oh,” she said.

Something howled in the distance.

Hair prickling, I peered in the howl’s direction, but saw nothing but the fog.

“What if I see something that isn’t a cave—a person?” she asked.

“Give me the boomstick,” I said, bending back to finish arranging the kindling. “A wolf is unlikely to recognize the power of boom. At least at first.”

Sitting on my heels, I held the soldering iron to the needles. They caught fast, and the wood followed, despite the damp air.

I tossed the canteen up to her. “Here. Finish.” It was only half full at that point.

Fumbling, she caught it and drank. When she passed it back, there was still some water left. Draining it, I went over to the river. Dipping the canteen into the current, I found the water frigidly cold and crystal clear. I wanted to set the canteen aside and drink from my hands, but protozoans are common in mountain rivers frequented by herbivores, and we couldn’t afford diarrhea and vomiting. It was a shame my first-aid kit didn’t come with iodine tablets.

I noted the river was shallow, not much deeper than my thighs. I could probably walk across, but it would be bloody cold. I dumped the contents of the stomachs into the river and watched the dregs get caught in the current and flow away. I filled the stomachs with fresh water, rinsed them several times before filling them again and returning to the fire pit. I set the canteen in the center of the blaze—something I never would have been able to do with a standard issue, plastic military canteen, but it was an expensive titanium alloy, designed to survive decades in space, be durable, easy to clean, tolerate intense heat, and be antimicrobial. Too bad it wasn’t anti-parasitical.

That set, I went about creating a tripod frame and suspension line out of other pieces of wood I’d collected. Once it was all arranged, I turned to Hana. “You can go back inside and get to work. I'll watch out for our friends while I let the water boil.”

She gingerly handed me the boomstick and slipped inside. Casing the perimeter, I kept an eye out for anything that moved.

I saw nothing, but the birds had gone quiet.

We were being watched.

* * *

I reentered the pod after the water had boiled longer than I thought it needed to and just as the rain began in earnest.

As I entered, Hana set the soldering iron aside, laying it on a rock she’d requested for the purpose. She began putting a panel she’d pulled off back on and then walked on her knees over to another bit of paneling she’d pulled apart. The pod had one outlet. It wasn’t connected to the battery that was still functional. She’d remedied that while I was out boiling water. The outlet was no longer where it was designed to be and it wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

She glanced up at the hatch. “It is getting darker,” she said.

I gazed up, noting the pitter-patter of rain on the pod and felt some satisfaction that we were still dry, and the hatch wasn’t leaking. “Yep,” I agreed, and went back to work. I’d gathered some dry wood and wanted to sharpen some of the sticks with the utility knife. I’d opened the pouches “the Boys,” as I’d dubbed our cavemen, had carried. They were filled with sharpened rocks. I supposed they were beautifully crafted and high tech for their time, but they were crap compared to the generic steel utility blade from my toolkit. The pouches had some animal gut twine that I was hopeful would be useful, though. I planned on creating snares to catch small game.

Hana leaned against the floor that was the wall and pulled her knees to her chest. She wore my spacesuit. It was warm. I planned to use the emergency blanket from my first-aid kit when it was time to sleep.

“I didn’t see the drone manned test pod before your arrival,” Hana said.

Surveying the stick I was sharpening, I said, “We didn’t send one to your coordinates.”

“What?” Hana said.

I blinked up at her.

“How did you know it would be safe?” she asked.

We didn’t. But I didn't want to say that. “We had a prototype—and it worked great—well, it got a little off course somehow, but we knew the pod wouldn’t wind up disintegrating on jump.”

A tiny furrow appeared between her brows. “Describe this prototype and how off course it got.”

I did, and she said, “I can’t believe that they let you come after me.”

I stared at her for a moment and then looked down at the stake I was making. “Well …”

“John?”

And then I had a brilliant thought. “Hey, did you know you were awarded a Nobel Prize in absentia?”

Her mouth dropped open.

Yep, that must have been while she was in cryo-sleep—or shortly after she vaulted herself back through time. The message from Earth would have been delayed four years. I only heard about it halfway to her outpost. It was all the talk at a deep space mining outpost orbiting a rogue planet halfway between Earth and the station.

She smiled. A little. “Oh.”

I almost sighed in relief. But the smile disappeared before it should. And I got it. Why should she be overjoyed? We were in a situation, and it was far removed from the Nobels. Hana knew that even if she didn’t believe we’d traveled backward in time.

She rocked a little and looked at the space between her knees. “I still don’t understand how they could allow you to—”

You know how you sometimes know you’re digging yourself a metaphorical hole but have no idea how to stop? I didn’t want to tell her that they didn’t allow me, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything to say. Also, I found it hard to lie to Hana. It’s not hard to lie to her—she is way too trusting—but that is why I hate to do it.

“And you were nominated for another in medicine,” I said. Granted, Kim said it was probably because she was reported “missing,” and it might have been politically motivated to draw attention to the fact that long-term cryo-sleep might have troubling side effects. I was not sure the botched landing of her spaceship had anything to do with her cryo-sleep—although Vish, Vlks, and even Kim assured me it did.

She scowled. “In medicine? I don’t deserve a Nobel Prize in medicine.”

Notice she was not surprised, nor did she express she was undeserving of a Nobel in physics. I didn’t even say it was physics. She just knew.

“But you found out why the cancer therapies weren’t working,” I said.

She shook her head, and her scowl intensified. “No, I just programmed an AI.” She’d programmed the AI to scan medical research for a reason anti-pancreatic cancer therapies weren’t working in 1.3% of cases. She had the AI determine what the subjects had in common, pursuing both environmental and genetic factors. It was an international, multilingual hunt that discovered the answer was both. She’d then had the AI propose treatments to handle the half dozen errant proteins that caused the problems—and one of them had worked. She’d spent months obsessing over this project. I was there. It was how I knew she wouldn’t just lay down and die without trying to find a way home.

“It worked, and that’s what matters,” I said.

“It was too late,” she replied.

Too late for Ken, her brother. “He would have been proud of you.”

She whispered, “I thought we would all—” She looked up at me. Her head tilted. Uh-oh.

“There was a prototype that didn’t work,” she said.

“It worked!” I said.

“Not as expected. How could they order you to come after me?” Her gaze got sharp. “You could have died!”

“I volunteered,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a lie.

“That wouldn’t make you undead.”

Going for a laugh, I squinted one eye, curled my lip, raised my hands at awkward angles, and slurred, “Deffffffinnnnitely nottttt undeaddddd.”

Hana rocked forward. “That is not funny. We may never get back.”

I thought of the men dragging her earlier, and my body got hot. “It is already worth it!” I didn’t mean to shout.

Hana jerked back.

I ground my teeth. I couldn’t apologize, but I dropped the volume of my voice. “I mean it.”

She rocked back and forth and shook her head. “I don’t understand you,” she said, and I didn’t know if she was talking about me jumping after her, or so many other arguments we’d had.

Arguments that too often ended with her saying, “Why are you shouting?”

And me shouting back, “Why aren’t you shouting? Don’t you care?”

She took a shuddering breath, and I knew what was coming next. The backdrop may have been completely different, but we’d been here before.

“Whoa,” I said, sliding toward her, raising my arms to give her a hug, but then I hesitated. Her shoulders were trembling.

Setting my hands down, I said, “I’ve short circuited you.” It was an old joke.

She laugh-cried into her knees. “I’m not a robot.”

“I know.” I did by then. It took me a while to understand her emotions ran deep, even if they didn’t always show up on the surface. But you can’t bury everything forever.

She lifted her head and wiped away a tear. In a stoic voice, she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be—” She hiccuped. I watched as she sucked in on the word crying.

“Of course you shouldn’t be,” I said, deliberately amping up the sarcasm in my tone so even she could hear it. “You just spent a month … or was it two? … thinking you would die while suffering from extreme loneliness and probably oxygen deprivation. You single-handedly invented and built a magical space seed to transport yourself across the galaxy, stepped into it not knowing whether you would live or die, had it shatter around you, and then were attacked by cavemen.”

“They’re not—”

“And then to top it off, your jerk of an ex shows up.”

That made her laugh-cry again. My heart constricted. I was a jerk at the end, which was why it was funny. I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “You should absolutely not be having an itsy-bitty little breakdown. I mean, it was just a day at the office.”

She growled at me. “You’re not breaking down!”

I counted down on my fingers. “I knew that I would most likely not die. I had hope that I would find you—and I did, and you’re alive and that did make me cry, remember?”

She sniffed so loudly I knew there was another mini breakdown coming.

I hastily added another finger. “And I had a choice! Choice makes all the difference.” That came out with a lot more conviction than I expected.

She took a steadier breath and nodded.

I was afraid to breathe, afraid to move. I wanted her not to hurt anymore. She wiped her eyes and looked up at me. Her face was red with crying, her nose was swollen, and my mouth went dry. I wanted her so much I was afraid to move because of what I might do.

And then the perimeter alarm went off.

We had an intruder, and I had a distraction. I whispered a prayer. Thank you, God.

* * *

The sensor picked up the intruder downstream from our location, which meant I had to scramble up out of the hatch and over the top of the pod. Frigid air, just above freezing, hit my lungs and skin. I slithered up the pod’s slope to the roof, and my clothes were soaked with icy rainwater in an instant.

Through my sights, I spied a woman. Doing nothing to hide herself, she approached one of the corpses. It was getting darker, but I could still see well enough to notice her clothing: a sort of asymmetrical wrap that hung from one shoulder, and a short cape over that. She had no weapons that I could see, but a belt with a fat pouch hung at her hip. She was wiping her eyes, as though she had been crying. Like the men, she had red hair. She had the same enormous eyes, broad nose and broad features, but her brow wasn’t heavy, and her jaw wasn’t developed. She was short, probably as wide as me, side to side, but it was all muscle.

Her eyes flitted up to me, her face crumpled, and then her gaze dropped to the ground where I’d moved the bodies. I’d dragged them downstream so they wouldn’t infect our drinking water, but between the rain and the fact that I couldn’t dig a hole at a safe distance without exposing myself to a spear throw, I hadn’t disposed of them properly. I had been hoping I could get rid of them after the rain stopped.

Hana crawled up beside me. “What is she doing?”

I shook my head. “Not sure.”

The woman murmured something, and then dropped to her knees, so one of the men’s head was between her thighs. Bending low over him, she said some quiet words, and then threw back her head and wailed. It was a heart-rending, mournful shriek that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise and put to my mind the legends of banshees. Another woman came out of the trees, went to the other man, and joined in an eerie chorus. I shivered. And not just with the cold.

They were mourning their dead. I’d have been more sympathetic if their dead hadn’t been in the process of abducting Hana. I sighed. I doubted the women were a threat, but I couldn’t go back inside while they were there. “You don’t have to stay outside,” I said to Hana.

“I think I do,” she replied, but slipped back inside the pod.

A few minutes later, she returned with the reflective emergency blanket and draped it over me. “Stay still,” she said, and tucked it around my body so it didn’t slip away. I felt myself warming in the cocoon. “Thanks,” I said.

She murmured acknowledgement and asked, “Should I watch the other direction in case it is a ruse?”

I didn’t think their cries were anything more than grief—but maybe among their kinfolk there were some who would take advantage of the distraction to seek revenge. I would if I was facing an invader with a boomstick. Granted, my first response to a strange person landing in my backyard wouldn’t be to attempt to rape or kill them. “Probably,” I said.

Rolling over, Hana turned around and sat up.

The rain continued, the night deepened, and with no stars or moon, the world was pitch black. The only light came from my watch. Hana went back inside and came back with a flashlight. Occasionally, she swept it in a wide arc. The wailing women didn’t even acknowledge it.

It was over an hour after sunset before the wails became something that was more of a chant. The language had a smattering of tongue clicks and guttural sounds and was like nothing I’d heard before.

They were obviously human. Obviously in grief. And I was getting bored. I was tempted to fire off a few shots into the air just to get them to move on. I sighed. Again. And then the first woman reached into her pouch and took out a stone.

“Huh,” I said.

Hana brought the flashlight beam around—she had it set to diffuse instead of spotlight, so I got a dim view of the entire scene. The other woman was also taking out a stone. The stones were a little larger than their hands, and sharp at the downward end.

“What are they doing?” Hana asked.

I shook my head. “No idea.”

The first woman gave another great wail. She lifted her rock high in the air with both hands and then brought it down on the crown of the man’s head. I blinked. The second woman did the same. Over and over, they struck the dead men’s skulls, until there were the sickening cracks of bone and wet slurps. The women put their stones aside, and openly weeping, delicately reached in with their fingers, took out hunks of brain, and then they put the brain in their mouths.

“Holy shit!” I said and scampered backward. Hana flopped onto her belly and joined me.

“Why …?” she gasped.

I took a deep breath. “Polynesians—ate—will eat, their dead. Not uncommon as a death ritual. The brain is very fatty. Great source of calories.” I said this to talk myself down, but still couldn’t move up the pod and watch.

“I meant why did they break their skulls at the crown, instead of just picking apart the …?” she waved a hand. I understood. Why not just pick apart what the boomstick’s blossom bullet had already started? I thought of the chanting, and answered, “Because it is a ritual.”

“Yuck,” said Hana. “Yuck, yuck, yuck.” She was a Nobel winner in physics, not literature. She was also not wrong.

“Yeah, and also a source of Kuru,” I said.

“Kuru?”

“Mad cow disease, but with people,” I explained.

“Delicious.”

Because it was a way to delay the inevitable—namely going back to stand watch—I babbled, “They think Kuru is the reason most religions have taboos against eating human meat. At least in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Aztecs and Incas never got that memo—they were cannibals—which might be an indication that their cultures were primarily Polynesian in origin.”

“Huh,” said Hana, moving up the pod for a better view, showing more fortitude than I felt. “There are more!” she gasped.

I hastened to follow her. More of the people were coming out of the dark, all women and children. They helped drag the bodies away and then paused just past the trees. The children dipped their fingers into the skulls of the dead and ate, looking ravenous rather than reverent.

I gaped.

They finished their grisly snack and then carried the bodies off. Through the sights, I watched them loop around the pod and head up in the direction the men had taken earlier.

Hana and I slid back down the pod and into the hatch.

“You’re soaked,” Hana remarked. She was snug in my space suit. Her hair was wet, but otherwise, she was dry. Her brow furrowed. “You won’t get hypothermia, will you?”

If I was hypothermic, the cure would be curling up naked together under the emergency blanket. But I wasn’t. “No, but I’ve got to strip off my wet clothes,” I said.

“Okay,” Hana replied. She lay down on the floor and faced away from me. I stripped off my clothes, folded them up, set them aside, and then wrapped myself naked in the security blanket. I’d warm up quicker without clothing. The emergency blanket didn’t have the comfortable heaviness of an actual blanket. I thought of the hides I’d procured; the spare one was tucked in the cabinet. I could sleep on that, but after watching the man have his brain eaten, I held off. I lay down flat on my back beside Hana. She was so close, but curled in the opposite direction, she could have been light years away. Maybe it was always that way between us.

“John,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“There was no one else I’d rather be in this situation with,” Hana said. And maybe there wasn’t so much distance between us after all.

10 JOHN

Hana screamed. I woke up in a flash and sat up. The perimeter alarm hadn’t gone off. The hatch was secure. I looked over at Hana.

“No,” she said, her eyes closed. “No, let me go.”

I exhaled. She shook and cried in her sleep.

“Hana,” I whispered.

“No, no, no,” she whimpered. Her body trembled.

“Honey, wake up.”

Her body froze. Her eyes opened.

“Nightmare,” I said.

She let loose a breath. “Oh.”

I lay back down and shut my eyes, but I felt a wash of adrenaline, and I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep. Hana was unnaturally still.

“John,” Hana whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Would you just hold my hand?”

I wanted to pull her tight into my arms. Instead, I slipped my hand out of the emergency blanket, into the cold, and over to her. She wrapped all her fingers around three of mine—she always said my hand was too big, and that was all she could comfortably hold. The smallness and softness of her hand surprised me for the hundred thousandth time.

We lay like that for a while. Outside, the calls of birds grew louder—the voices almost familiar but the songs wrong.

I shifted slightly, and she said, “I can’t sleep.”

“Me, either.” I glanced at the hatch, cracked open to let in air and a sliver of night sky, and thought I saw a faint light. “I think it’s close to dawn.”

“What are our plans for the day?” she asked.

I exhaled, thinking it over. “We need to get to your pod to scavenge materials. But we also need food, and we need to boil more water.”

She squeezed my hand. “I suppose we should ration the SMREs. There are only three in my light—pod?”

We’d shared one of mine the night before. I’d packed fourteen.

“Right,” I said. We had to be careful. I was fairly confident I’d be able to find fish and game, but I’d seen nothing but cavemen so far, and I wasn’t impressed by their diet. “Let’s plan on getting up to your pod today. We’ll get your gear. You can start planning repairs.”

“I think I need to work on the generator first,” Hana said.

I winced, thinking of the battery. The things we’d need it for—welding and soldering—were heat intensive, and therefore, energy intensive. “Right. We go to the pod. You build that generator. I'll finish creating the snares I was working on last night.”

“Sounds like a plan.” She sounded tentative, but she squeezed my fingers.

I thought about it. “If an opportunity to get food wanders across our path, we take that first.”

There was a rustle. “I understand,” Hana said, and then, “It is getting lighter.”

“Might as well get to it,” I said.

Hana released my fingers and rolled to the side. “I won’t look,” she said.

I didn’t say, “I don’t mind.” She was not protecting my modesty. She was protecting herself.

“Right,” I said, and found my spare clothes in the dim light.

A few minutes later, rifle slung over my shoulder, I crawled half-out of the hatch. All the air left my lungs in a frosty cloud.

The day was crystal clear, without a cloud in sight, and for the first time, I could see where we were. I’d imagined we were in the mountains—but “mountains” is too timid a word to describe the surrounding landscape. Snow and ice-covered peaks jutted up to the north and south of us like the jaws of Earth itself. The river cut west through a pine and grass draped valley. It got larger toward the basin, and then disappeared in the far distance, twisting around terrain that rippled up into more snow draped mountains.

I pulled myself to the top of the pod and sat there for a moment, trying to get my bearings. I didn’t recognize the mountains, from experience, from postcards, or the nature screen savers Lo favored aboard the Starlight. Too steep to be the Rockies, they definitely weren’t the East Coast’s ancient, rolling Appalachians.

There was no sign of human habitation. No jet streams. No cottages clinging to the slopes. But to the southeast, up a steep slope of pines and ice pack, I spied a plume of smoke trailing into the sky. Perhaps seven or eight hundred yards away, it was in the direction the Boys had run.

I turned to the northeast, my eyes fell to Earth, and my breath caught. Across the river was a clearing. That wasn’t what caught my attention. Coming out of the trees, as though just waiting for me to wake up, were moose. Or, if we were in Europe, according to a German hunter I’d bantered with one time, “elch.” There were four of them, and as they approached the river, they casually tore at the grasses that were further ahead in their growth in the open.

Hello, food.

Hana half rose. “Wha—”

I held up a hand, quietly pulled my rifle to my shoulder, and gazed through the sights.

A moose lifted its head from the river, spooked by Hana’s utterance or my presence half out of the hatch. Its ears twitched, and it shied away from the water, putting its body exactly perpendicular to my sights. The perfect shot. I took it.

There was the familiar boom, the recoil, the faint smell of gunpowder, and the not-as-familiar whiff of AlloFoam. The moose scattered, except for my quarry. It took a few steps and fell, a bright spot of sticky orange foam on its side.

I climbed up to the top of the pod, surveyed the dim dawn through my sights, saw no predators—two-legged or otherwise—and jumped down.

Hana poked her head out behind me.

“You shot it! We have food! Now we can go to my pod.”

I stared back at her, and my jaw dropped open.

“What?” she asked.

“No, now we have to skin and dress it.”

“How long will that take?” she asked.

I shook my head. “We won’t be going to the pod today.”

* * *

The first obstacle to getting the moose was getting across the river.

“Do you want to use your suit?” Hana asked, head poking out of the hatch.

I considered it. It would keep me dry, but I’d be less maneuverable in it. Also, if I damaged it, we’d lose a source of water purification, waste treatment, and CO2 scrubbing, all of which we might need later. “No,” I said reluctantly, remembering how damn cold the water was. I frowned. I’d have to carry the moose back in pieces. In the meantime … An animal howled. A raven rawked … Other critters might get it.

Hana asked, “Can you paint what you need to do in broad strokes so that I can help?”

“You can keep watch—”

“No,” Hana said. “I’m not sitting on top of the pod while you do all the work. Besides, you’ll need the boomstick.”

The animal howled again. She had a point.

I gestured toward the moose. “I need to get over there and cut the moose open before another critter gets it. After that, I’ll need to ferry the meat across. Then we’ll need to cool it—”

“Why cool it?” Hana asked.

“To prevent bacterial growth.”

“Won’t cooking it kill that?” she asked.

“I want to smoke it to preserve it. Smoking takes a long time. It will be too long in the danger zone,” I said. I’d have to dig a pit to smoke it in and collect more firewood.

Hana tilted her head. “What is the danger zone?”

“That’s the meat temp—”

“I got that. What is the dangerous temperature?”

“Above 40 degrees—4 degrees C,” I said, getting grumblier, as I thought about the moose waiting to be dressed. “Look, I have to get to it.” Before anything else did. Besides ravens, vultures, wolves, and big cats, it was warm inside the moose; all the bacteria in its guts held in check by its immune system were about to have a party.

“It is warmer than that outside now,” she said.

“I’ll put it in the river. Stay inside or close to the pod.” I turned and walked to the river. At the river’s edge, I bent down and touched the water. It was more than cold enough. My jaw clenched, anticipating the trip across. Stripping down to my skivvies and boots, I had a sudden thought and went back to the pod. Scowling, because I hate being absentminded, I knocked and called out, “I need one of the belts … The one with the bigger pouch. They’re in the cabinet.” The cabinet that had turned to floor storage since the tumble down the mountain.

“I'll get it,” Hana said. Rummaging ensued, and a moment later, she poked her head back out, belt in hand. Her lips parted in question, but no words came out.

“Water’s cold,” I said gruffly. “I can’t afford my spare clothes getting wet.”

“Of course,” she said. Passing off the belt, she disappeared back into the pod, quick as a flash.

I didn’t have time to wonder about her reaction. The sun was rising higher, and I could feel its warmth where it touched my body. It would be warming the moose, too. Slipping my utility knife into the pouch of the belt and tying it at my waist, I headed off across the river.

* * *

It took about two hours to dress the moose. It was not hot out, but by the time I was done, the sun on my back had me sweating. I stared down at my haul. She was young, not much older than a year, and not pregnant. After a long winter, there wasn’t much fat on her, but she had a bit left in her hump and along her ribs and neck. Those, the heart, liver, tongue, and brain were the parts I was most eager to keep. We could survive without carbohydrates, but not without fat.

“John!”

My heart rate picked up. I had my rifle in hand before I turned to her voice. Hana was just across the river, holding up what looked like the spare tunic of the man I’d shot.

“Will this help you carry the moose?” she shouted.

She was about two hundred yards from the pod, and my heart lurched.

I splashed across the river. “It is dangerous to get so far from the pod.” Maybe not in the U.S. wilderness, where mountain lions and wolves are inclined to keep their distance, if not the grizzlies. But we weren’t in the modern United States. The predators—and lucky for us, the prey—hadn’t been hunted to near extinction and hadn’t learned to fear humans. Also, if I was right about when we were, the predators would be bigger than the ones we were used to. Hana’s small form strolling across the clearing would be an enticing, seemingly risk-free treat.

Lowering the tunic, she said, “I’m armed.” She pulled out my can of WD-40 from her hip and the lighter from my toolbox.

Splashing closer, I blinked at her.

“Aren’t animals afraid of fire?” she asked.

I put it together that she meant to light the WD-40 spray and turn it into a blowtorch.

“Yeah, that would scare them—if they didn’t sneak up behind you, pounce on you, and kill you first.” Which they would.

She blinked again. “They could have done that to you.”

I scowled at her.

I’m not sure she noticed, because when she spoke again, her voice was perfectly flat. “But they couldn’t do that to either of us because I reprogrammed the proximity detector to recognize us and alert us to anything else.”

My mouth opened. No words came out.

Hana said, “You left it on, and it was beeping, because of you … and I didn’t want to turn it off because I understand that someone—something could come out of the forest without you being aware, or me, so I reprogrammed it.”

My jaw snapped shut. To do that, she had to go “under the hood” of the interface and into the code Lo created. Of course she could do it. Probably faster than me, and I was familiar with Lo’s poorly documented code with its hair-pulling whimsical variable names in Anglicized versions of Mandarin.

Hana kept going. “I think I can also create a … a … trip wire? I think that was what it is called? I can make the pod door transmit an electric shock unless it’s you or me opening it—like I did with mine. If you think that’s a good idea?”

“That’s … that’s a good idea,” I said. And both were things I should have thought about. With any other woman I’d dated, they were things I’d have to do myself. Women coders exist—of course they do—it is just they are a rarer breed. Women tend to gravitate toward vocations that let them interact with people, and men to things. That things versus people preference shows up in babies. But it is all about probabilities, not about individuals.

She gave me a fleeting smile. She wore her own coveralls again. The front still gaped open, showing her undershirt. “Do you want the bag?” she asked, holding up the folded tunic. For the first time, I noticed the leather straps attached to it. She’d turned it into a giant, ungainly backpack.

A backpack meant fewer trips. “Yeah,” I said. “That will be useful.”

“I also laid your clothing out to dry,” she said.

I looked over her shoulder and saw my wet clothes draped over the pod.

“Thank you.” I smiled.

She smiled back in a sort of delayed reaction.

Taking the backpack from her, I headed across the river, amazed by how well we were working together.

My amazement didn’t last.

* * *

Hana and I were digging the fire pit, me with my crowbar, Hana with the claw of my hammer. My belly was comfortably full. You shouldn’t smoke meat when it is warm, but you can cook it. We’d seared enough of the heart for today and tomorrow. We’d cooked it well past “well-done.” By “we” I mean me. We were wherever we were and whenever we were, and we’d fallen back into an old pattern: me doing all the cooking.

It had been gamey and tough—partially because of the overcooking method. We couldn’t afford toxoplasmosis. And it would have been better with more salt than we’d had in the little packet that came with the previous night’s SMRE. But it was food. Hana didn’t complain. Thinking about it, in our year together, she’d never complained about anything I cooked, even if I spiced or blackened it past edibility. She’d always thanked me, no matter how it turned out. She had done that today, too.

Hana interrupted my thoughts. “How long did it take your prototype’s signal to reach the station after its first jump?”

The temperature was dropping, and my sweat was turning icy on my brow. I shrugged and buried the crowbar as deep into the sod as I could. “I don’t know. It was instantaneous, I guess.” I tossed the sod aside. Ravens squawked in the distance. A wolf growled near the remains of the moose. One had tried to cross a few minutes before. It had been much bigger than wolves get in our time, but Hana spooked it with a shot of her WD-40 flamethrower. Afterward, I started a fire smoldering close to where the moose was chilling in the icy shallows, and the wolves were staying away. I glanced up to confirm. Yep. They were sticking to the remains I abandoned across the river. They were enormous, the size of bears. I counted five of them.

The wolves made me think of other predators. I glanced up the mountain. A thin trail of smoke was trailing into the sky up the hill in the direction the caveman ran.

Hana persisted. “You said you sent it to the system’s fifth planet. A signal should have taken at least seventy-three minutes unless it was a light beam.”

“Not a light beam,” I grunted.

“At least seventy-three minutes,” Hana mumbled, picking at the sod ineffectually. She moved a gumball-sized stone out of the pit. We worked in silence for a few minutes more. Or I worked. Hana picked. Stared at nothing. Picked a little more.

There were some experts in our time who defined IQ as an individual’s ability to adapt to their environment. I met a lot of high-IQ individuals during my time in the Near-Light project and hopping off into space, and I want to say for the record, that is bullshit. People with high IQs can adapt to highly technical environments. If Hana hadn’t gotten a Ph.D. in physics, she’d have worked her way up the ladder in Fintech—or, more likely, invested her own money with some sort of Black Swan algorithm and made millions. Or she might have become one of those social media personalities who tear scientific papers apart with the power of statistics, except that might have required wearing lipstick.

High-IQ people are good at dumb things that take a short amount of time—Hana having the forethought to put my clothes out to dry, for instance. But dumb things that take a lot of time are hard for them. They get bored. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule—Eric Hoffer, the philosopher longshoreman, for one.

Hana was not Hoffer. I was almost about to suggest she do something else when she said, “Do you remember where the fifth planet was relative to the station at the time of the jump?”

Burying my crowbar into the sod again, I shook my head. “It wasn’t on the other side of the sun,” I said, “that’s all I know.”

“How long did Lo expect the signal to take?” Hana asked.

Wiping my brow, I considered, noting how much I’d dug and how little Hana had. Every time I looked at her, her gaze was vacant or some place in the distance, the hammer hanging limply in her hand.

“How long did he expect it to take?” Hana pressed again.

I buried my crowbar into the sod again.

“It is important.” Hana’s voice trembled.

I looked up at her. For the first time, I noticed how red her eyes were. Almost like she was about to cry. “What is it, Hana?”

Her hand danced in the air between us. She closed her eyes. “It is just … I’m not sure Lo’s return jump will work for us.”

“Sure, it will. It worked for the prototype,” I said. It had to work.

“You said that it didn’t wind up where you expected,” she replied, gaze dropping to the ground.

“Yeah, off by 2,000 clicks, but that is nothing.” Unless, of course, the pod cracked open. We only had one spacesuit. The O2 recycler would be enough even for both of us for a while, but we wouldn’t survive the near-vacuum conditions planet-side. I nodded to myself. “We’ll reinforce the hull. It will be fine. They’ll have a flitter built by then. It will take them only a few hours to reach us.”

Closing her eyes again, she took a deep breath. “How long did Lo expect the signal to take?”

I felt that cold snake wrapping around my insides again. “Eighty … Eighty-four minutes and a little change?”

Hana nodded to herself. “Eighty-four minutes. Did you ever get visual confirmation of its destination?”

“No.” I violently shoved the crowbar into the sod. “Like I said, it didn’t go to its destination—it was somewhere closer, obviously, but that still leaves a lot of space.” I stopped, a sudden thought occurring to me. “Unless it did go to its intended destination. If it had gone to the fifth planet but back in time …”

Hana hit the sod so hard with the hammer that chunks of sod flew through the air. “It must have gone somewhere else.”

“If it went back in time …”

“That would violate all the rules,” Hana said, shaking her head.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

She looked up at me, her expression one of unguarded hope.

I put down the crowbar. “Hana, the prototype made it back. We will, too.”

“You have a lot of faith,” Hana said. The last word hung in the air.

“And you don’t?” I asked.

Hana’s brow furrowed. “Not the same type.”

11 JOHN

I slept beside the moose meat that night so I wouldn’t have to bother hopping out of the hatch if—when—we got visitors. The weather had gotten cold enough that we’d taken the moose out of the water and put it nearer to the pod. Putting your food right next to your campsite isn’t a good idea without predator-proof canisters. Without canisters, it’s better to hang it from a tree at a distance—but I had nothing to hang the several hundred pounds of moose in or the rope to hang it with.

So … it was by the pod, not cool enough to smoke yet, but getting there in the near freezing air, even with the fire burning close by. To keep myself warm, I’d carefully pulled the stitches out of the bag Hana made and wrapped the hide around myself. I also sat strategically between the cooling moose and the fire.

Hana had insisted on sleeping outside with me, but I convinced her to stay in the pod. If the perimeter alarm went off, I needed her to tell me the direction of the intruder—at some point we’d turn the pod into a hotspot, and I’d be able to pull up the proximity detector info on my scroll, but something was busted, and our scrolls weren’t connecting to the pod.

The proximity detector went off before the sun had even set.

In the dim of twilight, I couldn’t quite make out what it was. From my vantage, it was an enormous shadow that lumbered on all fours. It looked like a bear, but wider and taller than any bear I’d ever seen, alive or stuffed. I tensed. Polar and brown bears will stalk and eat humans, and grizzlies are famous for their unstable temperaments. I raised my rifle, but whatever it was grunted and vanished before I even found it in my sights.

A few minutes later, my heart was still pounding when the stars winked into existence overhead. The moon rose in the east, as it does in spring and autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. I was not surprised to see it was Earth’s moon, complete with the man in the moon’s face … although I thought it looked slightly different. My eyes got hot. I pulled the hide tighter around me and tried to sleep.

I dozed off and on all night. The forest was alive with sounds, not all of them familiar—and the ones that were familiar—wolf howls, and the screams of big cats—were distinctly carnivorous.

I was in that fugue state where you’re not sure if you’re asleep or awake when the proximity alarm went off again. My eyes opened, and for a moment I was dazed and unsure of where I was.

Hana shouted from within the pod. “John, it’s close, getting closer. Just to your right! John? Are you awake?”

Just then, the glowing eyes of a wolf met mine. Everything came back, and my survival instincts kicked in at high gear. I didn’t raise my rifle. Jumping up, I picked up a long stick on which I’d tied one of the “shoes” of our dearly departed, dried grasses and all. I’d smeared the “shoe” with moose brain, inside and out. I dipped it in the fire, it flared to life, and I waved it at the wolf, shouting at the top of my lungs. The wolf turned tail and ran. Stamping my feet, I shook myself, adrenaline on my tongue, and every nerve a live wire. I glanced up. The sky was crowded with stars, the way you can only see in the desert or the ocean, far from light pollution. I blinked and rubbed my eyes. I spotted the Big Dipper, but it wasn’t quite right. The dipper part was skewed, and the handle was too straight.

Hana gasped.

I turned. She was hanging half in, half out of the hatch, WD-40 and the lighter clutched in her hands. Her eyes were on the stars. “Oh, no,” she whispered, and dropped back inside.

I heard her moan.

For an instant, I didn’t move. But then I went over to the hatch and peeked in. Hana was sitting on the floor, knees tucked in, arms around her legs, rocking back and forth. I looked again at the sky. She had to have seen our moon and knew we were home. But no one had answered the beacon. She was thinking about that. Turning back to her, I cleared my throat. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head in the negative.

I sighed. “We’re on Earth.”

She shook her head in the negative. “Not our Earth.”

My heart rate picked up. It was one thing for me to think about it; it was another thing for Hana to confirm it. “Yeah, not quite.”

Not looking at me, she said, “How can you be so calm?”

“I’m not.”

She lifted her head, and her gaze locked with mine. She was so silent I broke down. “What are you thinking, Hana?”

“About the Pleiades,” she said, gaze falling to her knees. “I can see all seven of them. Easily. That means …” she gulped.

I let out a breath. The cold snake in my gut tightened its coils, and my heart rate picked up another notch. It was one thing to imagine; it was another thing to know. “I know what that means.”

My legs felt weak. I shakily pulled myself into the hatch and sat down beside her. She put her head on my shoulder but didn’t say a word.

I knew what seeing the Pleiades meant, because she told me.

A long time ago.

Or maybe, it is more appropriate to say, a long time ahead.

* * *

Our second date was hiking at Starved Rock. In our time, Starved Rock was an Illinois state park, and maybe it still is. Illinois is flat as a pancake, but after the last ice age, glacial melt cut through Starved Rock’s sandstone bluffs, forming striking cliffs and waterfalls.

I didn’t mean to invite Hana. But I’d had a bad night and needed to get out of the city and she was cute and beautiful when she laughed. During our first date, she’d said she was raised mostly in Tokyo, but that she enjoyed getting out of the city to hike in the mountains. So the day after that first surprising after-the-first-date text I sent her one. Hey, I’m going to Starved Rock tomorrow. It’s an Illinois state park. Great hiking trails. Want to come? I’m leaving at 06:00. The early hour was essential, as anyone who knows Chicago traffic can attest.

Her reply came about an hour later. It looks beautiful. I’d love to go! I’m up at that time anyway. Later, I’d realized she’d spent that hour researching the place before accepting. She did like our first date, but if she hadn’t been interested, there was no way I could have gotten her to go short of kidnapping.

Hana was interested in Starved Rock. When I say interested, I mean intensely. She had questions about everything. At the time, I had a near encyclopedic knowledge of Midwestern plants, fungi, animals, bugs, and fish. Not from reading any encyclopedias. Okay, some from reading encyclopedias, but mostly from regular hunting and fishing trips with my dad and foraging with my stepmom. They loved nature and learning, and trusted the government about as far as they could spit into the wind. They wanted us kids to be able to live off the land, but that’s another story.

I felt embarrassed by how much I was talking, but she kept asking questions. I caught a Northern Leopard frog and a beautiful rat snake for her, and she actually appreciated it.

I was a little bit in love. Especially after the snake.

By the time we were driving home that night—after a late dinner, my treat, I had invited her—we hadn’t even kissed yet. In the midst of my nerding, I hadn’t forgotten to make a move, precisely, but I just hadn’t found the right moment. Somehow, “That little wasp lays her eggs directly into its host. The eggs hatch, and then the babies eat the host from the inside out … and by the way, want to make out?” just didn’t seem right.

Despite this egregious error on my part, I am an infernal optimist and things seemed like they were going well. Odd. Nerdy. But well. I looked over at her, and she was gazing at the sign for the Seven Sisters Hotel, and I thought I saw longing on her face.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked. I wasn’t expecting her to proposition me—although I would have taken it—but I thought maybe I’d get a, “I’ve had such a wonderful time; I wish it wouldn’t end,” and maybe a sideways glance at the hotel.

Instead, what I got was, “The name of that hotel reminds me of the Pleiades.”

“The what?” I asked.

“The Pleiades constellation, the Seven Sisters. But the constellation only has six visible stars. One hundred thousand years ago, there were seven stars visible to the naked eye. The Aboriginals of Australia and the Ancient Greeks both called it the Seven Sisters, and both had myths surrounding why the seventh sister went missing—even though the Aboriginals were cut off from other humans for at least 50,000 years. They think it may be the oldest known human myth.”

Normally, that is the sort of obscure historical fact that I geek out on, but at that moment, the wind whooshed right out of my sails.

* * *

“A hundred thousand years …” Hana whispered. “At least.”

Hearing her say it stole the breath from my lungs. My heart beat in my ears. Her head was warm on my shoulder. Lust and fear were so tightly wound in me I couldn’t tell which was which.

“It is impossible,” Hana said.

“Well, obviously not, hon,” I said, exasperated with her and longing for her at the same time. It had been so long … or so far ahead.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

I knew what to do. “We keep going. We build your water wheel and generator, we take apart your pod to get the parts we need, and we fix this pod.”

“It will take us all of tomorrow to smoke that moose …” She huffed. “If it takes so long to find and prepare food, how will we do anything else?”

Her body was warm beside mine; it cut through the chill that had crept into my bones sitting outside. “I’ll worry about the food. You worry about putting the pod back together.”

She exhaled. “Taking care of me again. Just what you never wanted.” She said the words without any edge to them. But I heard my own voice saying them, and it cut. I said it, during the last few months of our relationship, when I realized I didn’t want to leave and was trying desperately to find fault with us and with her. I even knew it at the time.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand you.”

She’d said that many times before. The thing for me to say was, “You don’t have to understand me, just love me.” I’d said it before. Jokingly. When our relationship couldn’t last more than a year. In the pod, 100,000 years before our relationship ended and began, my mouth went dry.

I was saved from having to answer or think about why I couldn’t speak by the sound of the proximity detector. Hana scooted over to the interface. “Hominids,” she whispers. “Five of them.”

We could safely endure an attack within the pod.

Tightening my hands on my rifle, I growled. “They are not getting my moose!”

12 JOHN

There were three men on the side of the pod with the moose, and two behind it.

Slipping out of the pod and to the frosty turf, I raised my rifle and peered through the sights. Between the light of the moon, stars, and the ASF’s “night sight,” I could see them clearly enough. They had the short stocky stature of every other caveman I’d seen. One of them was white-haired, stooped, and had a crooked shoulder that hung too low. Their eyes were enormous—seeing their eyes open and alive beneath their heavy brows, I knew I wasn’t imagining it. They stood about one hundred yards away, spears clasped loosely in their hands. I didn’t think they could throw them far enough to kill me, but I could kill them. I suspected they didn’t know that.

I called to Hana, perched on top of the pod. “What are the two doing behind us?”

The faint light of the flashlight flickered in the periphery of my vision. “Watching,” she replied. “Holding spears, aimed at the ground. A little more than one hundred meters away.”

I could shoot these three, run around the pod, and kill all of them before they were close enough for a killing throw, but they weren’t lifting their spears or making any other threatening moves.

With a deep breath, I lowered my rifle.

One of the cavemen grunted, clicked, and whistled in my direction, low and calm.

“I can’t understand you,” I said to him.

He said something else, the syllables not as guttural, the clicks higher pitched. Another language? He seemed to stutter on the words.

“Still don’t understand you, Buddy,” I said.

He lifted his head and whistled but didn’t raise his spear.

The men on the other side of the pod whistled back.

I called to Hana, “What are they doing?”

“They haven’t moved,” she replied.

The guy in front of me whistled again, and then he backed up a step.

His companions tensed. He turned around, showing me his back, and walked away. After a few moments, the other men copied his movements, the oldest man walking with a limp.

Hana called out, “They’re leaving!”

“Yes,” I said.

She slid down the pod. “What happened?” she asked.

“I think we just declared a truce,” I said.

“Are they … human?” she asked.

I thought about it. The stars had confirmed that we were on Earth, 100,000 years ago. I read too much, but human origins had never been a particular interest. Ask me about Thucydides’ theories of war and Donald Kagan’s interpretation of them and I could tell you. Still, I knew enough to take a guess about who—or what—our friends were.

“I think they are Neanderthals,” I said. “They interbred with Homo sapiens, but mostly died out.” I knew that much.

Hana said quietly, “So, not human?”

“Not human, but kin,” I said.

Violent, cannibalistic kin, but kin that could reason, too, and declare a truce.

Without my rifle, I’d trust that truce about as far as I could spit into the wind.

“John?” Hana whispered. “Should we be concerned about altering the past?”

Sci-fi prepared me for this question. “Either we are in a separate past that will set off a chain of events for a separate future, or we are in our past, in which case this has already happened.”

Hana said, “So either way, it doesn’t matter.”

Something, somewhere nearby, died loudly and in agony.

“What matters,” I said, “is surviving.”

* * *

The proximity detector went off again, just at dawn. Leaning against the pod, I bolted upright. The flap over the hatch flew back, and Hana whispered, “Moose!”

I raised my rifle and gazed through the sights. I saw them. They were in range, and I could have killed another one, but hesitated. If our friends were out there, retrieving my kill would mean having to kill all of them.

A whistle sounded upriver, across the river from the moose. The animals lifted their heads, and their eyes rolled. Two Neanderthal children rushed across the river, waving sticks and whooping at the top of their lungs. The moose took off toward the trees. Just as they reached them, a large bull reared backward in such alarm it was as if its two hind legs had left the ground. An instant later, two Neanderthal males thrust spears into its chest. Four Neanderthal men came out of the trees and attacked the animal, thrusting their spears at its neck, just above the bones of its ribcage, and the beast cried out in shock and pain. It was still moaning as it toppled to the ground, hooves helplessly churning the air, the Neanderthals thrusting their spears at it.

Hana made a tiny sound of dismay, and I kind of wished I’d shot it for them. A single bullet to the “kill zone”—the heart and lungs—had killed my moose, but the kill zone is protected by ribs. My blossom bullet shattered through bone, thanks to Vlks and his belief in big aliens. Clearing the ribs would be more difficult with a spear, making the neck a more efficient target. The beast continued to moan for a few more minutes. They did kill it before butchering it, which was more than the moose would have gotten from wolves or coyotes. So there was that.

I counted thirteen Neanderthals: an elderly male, two males in their twenties or thirties, one with a noticeable limp, and two males I didn’t think could be out of their teens, two women, and kids. They all had the same red hair and pale skin. I watched them butcher the moose and divvy it up. It was a beast; I’d guess at least 1,500 pounds, and they hauled it off in a few trips, one of the younger males, the women, and kids doing the porting. As they made the last trip, the old man slumped over. The two younger men glanced at each other. For a moment, I wondered if I’d see murder and more cannibalism, but the old man got up and staggered after them, his face flushed.

The fire they’d been nursing up the mountain, outside their cave—or tents, or wigwams, or whatever—got bigger, and the trail of smoke that marked it got thicker.

Not expecting to get back to sleep and hoping our neighbors were otherwise occupied, I started hunting for more wood for our own fire. Once I had a satisfactory supply and had a nice steady blaze going, I wandered around the clearing, looking for edible plants. I found some wild garlic and leeks. I also found some dandelions and harvested a few, roots and all, figuring I’d boil the roots like carrots in stew. In our time, I would eat the greens raw, but I vowed to cook everything that went into our mouths while we didn’t have access to antiparasitic meds or oral antibiotics.

While I did all this, Hana sat beside the smoke pit, scroll out, scribbling on it with her stylus, her brow furrowed, her expression troubled. I didn’t like the troubled expression.

“It is just a matter of using Lo’s coordinates to get back, right?” I said.

She glanced up at me. Birds trilled.

“Maybe?”

That didn’t inspire confidence.

There was a part of me that wanted to fall apart, but despair and defeat are the worst sorts of monsters. I refused to engage them. Lo’s coordinates would work. I gazed up at the mountains, at the peaks and trees still blanketed by snow, and down into the valley. There were fewer trees in the valley, and lots of green.

I lifted my chin. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. I looked at the river. He leadeth me beside still waters. The waters weren’t still, thankfully. They’d rev up our batteries. I looked at the moose. My cup runneth over.

“We could be dead in the vacuum,” I said. “This is better than that. Way better.”

“We might just be prolonging our death.”

The sun was warming the morning. I was breathing fresh air, and I laughed. “Isn’t that what all of life is, prolonged death?”

Hana narrowed her eyes at me.

“Come on,” I said, throwing out my arms to encompass the entire world. “Think of all the 100 percent organic free-range food we’re going to eat.” I held up my dandelions by the stem, showing off their thick, dirty, crooked roots. “Do you know how much some people would pay for these organic veggies?”

She huffed and shook her head, but a ghost of a smile played on her lips … And then she sort of choked and her shoulders trembled.

Oh, no. Crying Hana was worse than cannibalistic cavemen.

“Hey, now,” I said, going over to her and sitting on my heels. “Don’t cry.”

She sniffed. “That’s right, you hate it when girls cry. You’ve said that before.”

I was befuddled. “I have?”

Hana wiped her eyes. “You said your last girlfriend used to cry at restaurants.”

I guess I did at some point talk about my exes. Not during the first date, though. “That was different. They were crying because I was”—I made air quotes, trying to lighten the mood—“‘judgmental’ and ‘controlling.’”

“You’re not judgmental or controlling,” she said.

I remember snapping at her, in the month before I left, if you’re so upset, why don’t you show it? “I was judgmental.”

She shook her head. “No, we just come from different cultures, and sometimes it is hard to understand communication that isn’t words.”

A lump formed in my throat. “That’s a very charitable explanation for it.” But I thought about how body language was different across cultures. Disney said a smile meant friendship for everyone, but even that isn’t true. In some cultures, depending on the relationship or context, a smile can be interpreted as untrustworthy or disrespectful. Eye contact denotes truthfulness in some cultures, disrespect or aggression in others.

“But accurate, I think.” She tilted her head, eyes still red, but tears gone.

I pride myself on all the words I understand, and how good I am at reading a situation. But I missed the situation closest to me when I dated Hana or couldn’t acknowledge it.

A log in the smoke pit cracked and shot sparks. The air between Hana and I felt charged. I wanted to kiss her and thought she wanted to kiss me. I felt like she was holding back, and maybe that’s why I held back.

Or maybe I just needed to get some things straightened out in my head first.

I put my hand on her shoulder. “You’re going to figure it out,” I said. “And we’re going to be fine.”

She smiled faintly. “You’re good at surviving.”

She might have been talking about the sub. She might have been talking about other things. I dropped my hand and rubbed my eyes. “Yeah. I think I’m going to put more wood on the fire.”

* * *

It was getting close to sunset, and I had a thermometer in the largest piece of moose meat. One-hundred forty Fahrenheit, sixty Celsius—not hot enough yet. I like rare meat, but we couldn’t afford the risk. Pulling the thermometer out, I gave it a shake and scowled. I’d been smoking the moose for over twelve hours, and it still wasn’t all done.

“Where are we going to keep all of this?” Hana asked.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” I replied.

I had. There weren’t great options. “Without vacuum sealing or refrigeration, it will not keep as long as it could. I was hoping that the interior of your pod might be cool and dry enough to extend its life.” I didn’t bring all of the moose across the river, just the best parts. Still, it was too much for our pod. Or rather, too much for us and it.

Hana tapped her lip, her brow furrowed. “I think so. I didn’t bring down any trees when I landed. It is safe from direct sunlight.”

I nodded. “Then we’ll keep as much as we can here and keep the rest in your pod.” I grimaced. “It would be better if we had salt.”

Unfortunately, the tiny packets that came with my SMREs wouldn’t cut it, even if we opened all of them.

Hana just shook her head at that. Her eyes slid to the moose pieces still hanging over the fire.

“I’ll be spending the night outside again,” I said.

Her eyes met mine and lingered. I wanted to kiss her again. But she looked away, her gaze distant, and then she walked toward the river. Sitting down, she took out her scroll. I watched her drop something into the water and then watched her play that invisible piano. She was thinking about something. Since the main problem in our life was getting home, I didn’t want to interrupt her.

Also, I knew if she wanted to kiss me, she’d tell me so.

* * *

The first time I kissed Hana happened on our second date. I was dropping her off hours after the story of the Pleiades and my subsequent disappointment. I had parked outside her building, but she hadn’t gotten out of the car yet.

“This was a very fun day,” she said.

I agreed.

“Was it a date?” she asked. “I know our first date was a date because you were dared to ask me out. But this time, I’m not sure. You invited me, but I can’t tell if we are just friends.”

Her and me both. But I’d never been one to linger in the friend zone. “It is a date,” I said, wondering if we were having a cultural misunderstanding, or just a Hana-me misunderstanding. I hadn’t been as obvious in my intentions as I usually was … Hell, I’m not sure I’d had intentions when the date had begun, other than to get out of the town, see some trees and bugs, and walk beside water that wasn’t channeled by concrete and steel. And I hadn’t wanted to be alone.

“Do people from Wisconsin not kiss on the second date?” Hana asked.

I blinked at her.

Her brow furrowed. “I read somewhere that every state is its own culture, and I have never dated someone from Wisconsin.”

It was such an odd way to put it. I didn’t laugh, but I grinned. “Wisconsin guys will kiss on the second date.”

She sat up straighter. “Oh, well.” She smiled and did this little wiggle that wasn’t sexy … just cute. Like I was ice cream or something. So I leaned in.

* * *

The sun set.

I was still watching a significant chunk of the moose cook. You don’t smoke meat on high heat, but I had let the fire get too low. Wood doesn’t burn as evenly as charcoal, and I didn’t account for that, or I didn’t compensate for the dropping temperature. Or something.

I was wishing that I could put an ear bud in and listen to a book. I had something on Neanderthals on my scroll; I was sure of it. But not staying focused on the present, and where I was, and the Neanderthals up the mountain seemed like a death wish. At that thought, a wail like a banshee echoed down from the mountain.

I pulled back from the fire pit and swung my rifle around.

Hana, still sitting by the river, jumped up, her scroll’s light illuminating a look of horror on her face.

Another wail joined the first.

Walking sideways, keeping her eyes on the mountain, Hana crept beside me. “What is it?” she asked.

I lowered my rifle. “Someone else died.”

Hana sighed.

A half hour later, the chanting began, the same one they used before they split the dead guys’ skulls. I was close to the fire, but I shivered just the same.

13 JOHN

It was midday on the fourth day before we headed up to Hana’s pod. We packed a fair portion of the moose in my pod. It took a while, and it was going to smell like moose meat in there forever. Hana was carrying moose in our improvised sack because I was carrying the toolbox, more moose in my rucksack, and my rifle.

After four days, Hana’s trail wasn’t obvious. I’ve heard that Native American and African hunter-gatherers can follow a trail four days old with ease, but I’m neither of those. We were going off of Hana’s memory, but I was leading because I had the boomstick.

We’d been searching the woods for over an hour, though Hana said she only walked for about seven minutes. Granted, we were going slowly, because spears thrown from behind a tree could kill us, even though I had a boomstick. I didn’t think that the Neanderthals could have taken apart a pod that Hana booby trapped, but I was beginning to wonder. How smart were they? They had set a pretty ambush for the moose the other day. I wished I’d read about them last night. I turned to Hana.

Shifting the makeshift bag on her shoulders, she shook her head, shrugged, and blew a loose bang from her eyes. I turned away, lifted my rifle to try peering through the sights, but it didn’t work. I just saw trees and leaves at higher magnification.

Hana sneezed.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose. A cold? The flu? Death? A tiny part of my brain knew I was overacting, but I spun around. I almost dropped my toolbox. Shaking her head, Hana mouthed, “not me.”

Setting the toolbox down, I raised my rifle, this time with intent to kill. Lots of species sneeze. Neanderthals, of course, but just about every mammal. And a sneeze can mean different things. In dogs, it is a request to tone it down. I’m not sure about wolves. In African hunting dogs, one of the most vicious and successful predators of the savanna, it is a call to hunt. Or a suggestion. They vote on whether to hunt by sneezing. Like other canines, they’re famous for eating their food while it’s still alive. I didn’t hear any answering sneezes, but the thought of us being eaten before we were dead had me tasting metal in my mouth, and my finger itching on the trigger. I turned slowly in a circle, eyes surveying the undergrowth, alert for any sign of movement.

And then Hana tapped my shoulder.

I jerked my head in her direction, scowling.

The pack she was wearing wasn’t comfortable—I should know. I hauled a moose in it across the river—and she held the straps to keep it from cutting into her shoulders. She gestured with her thumb and rolled her eyes up toward the treetops, her expression … quizzical. I followed her gaze. Sitting thirty feet up in a maple tree was a Neanderthal child. He or she was facing the other direction, their tiny bare shoulders exposed and white as bone against the foliage. Their hair was bright red, but short.

We both stared at the kid, who seemed completely oblivious to us. Weren’t hunter-gatherer types supposed to be almost supernaturally aware of their surroundings?

His or her shoulders rose … rose a little more, and then they sneezed. A long sniffle followed the sneeze.

I looked at Hana. She looked at me. We both shrugged. But then suspicion came over me. I held up a finger for Hana to wait. Moving agonizingly slowly, I stepped over my toolbox and crept toward the tree. With the same deliberate slowness, I began to climb. The child didn’t notice me until I was nearly seven feet below him or her. The kid shouted, slipped and half tumbled down the opposite side of the trunk, turned, and sprinted—right into Hana. She caught his wrists, spun him around, and pulled him close. The kid struggled, writhing like a furious worm, trying to kick her with his heels. His mouth opened, and I saw his intent. I put a hand over his mouth before he could bite her.

He bit me. Of course. I swore something about cannibals and pulled my hand away. The kid opened their mouth—and Hana stuffed a cloth handkerchief in it. She always has one. It is a Japanese thing.

The kid’s eyes went wide, and he stopped struggling and slumped backward. I smacked my hand back over the kid’s mouth. I was pretty sure he was a boy. Aside from being ferocious, he had no fat and his sharply defined muscles stood out on a short but wide-ish frame. Yes, that was me falling back on stereotypes. Also, I just couldn’t imagine a dangerous lookout job going to a little girl. Motioning Hana to pass him over to me, I said, “I think he was watching over your pod.”

Hana relinquished him to me, and I hauled him off his feet, his bony back against my chest. He probably could have done damage with his heels, but he sagged against me. I headed back to the tree and walked around the other side. Sure enough, the pod was there ahead, tilted on its side, but seemingly in one piece. A trail of beaten-down undergrowth led toward it. My eyes narrowed. Something sparkled on the trail. I took a few steps forward. It was Hana’s snow globe, laid out like an offering. Or bait.

“They’ve got a tripwire or something ahead,” I said to Hana.

“Would a big stick work to trip it?” Hana asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

There was rustling behind me, and Hana said, “Here.” She held up a branch that was about six feet long. I pushed the kid to her—he didn’t struggle, just stumbled toward her—and I took the stick. Focusing on the “offering,” I pushed the end of the branch along the ground. I felt it catch, and a heartbeat later, a snare snapped around the branch, hauling it up into the treetops with enough force to break an ankle or a leg. For a moment I stared triumphantly, and then I heard a snap behind us. A muffled cry came from the boy.

I turned to see a log with a sharpened end swinging directly at Hana’s head.

* * *

Hana says time and space are woven together. But I think she’s wrong, because when that log swung at her, time stopped. My heart stopped with it.

“No!” I heard my shout as though it came from someone else.

The log passed before my eyes before I could react, but there was no crush of bone or the squish of pulverized insides.

The log swung back the other way, and Hana and the boy lay below it. Hana had one arm over her head, and one over the boy.

“Hana!” I crouched down beside her, the log swinging in smaller and smaller arcs above us. “Are you … baby, talk to me.”

Lifting her head, she blinked up at the log. “That was close. Pretty smart cavemen.”

Smart cavemen. I remembered the moose that they’d killed the other day, and how it had seemed to rear up impossibly high, as though its hind legs had left the ground. It had reared impossibly high, and it had left the ground. They’d caught it in a damned snare.

The boy whined, and I fought the urge to strangle him.

Hana patted his back. “Lucky, he dropped to the ground, or I would have been hit.” That’s when I noticed the kid was holding his head as though warding a blow.

I fell backward onto my butt, feeling like I had just lost ten years of my life.

Rising to a sitting position, Hana continued to eye the log. “I thought that if he was ducking, there must be a reason.”

This was the woman who could not boil water or drive. Who couldn’t dig a damned hole.

I wiped my face with my hand. She could not do those things because they were not puzzles. Hana is great at puzzles. I used to have an old, vintage Rubik’s cube. They were cubes with nine movable squares on each side, with six different colors. The goal was to make all the sides of the cube a single color. Hana found mine. She solved it in a few minutes. Not a world record or anything, but I had never solved the thing, and she had never seen one before. She also just sort of … did it, with no fanfare. She didn’t say, “Hooray, I finished it!” She just did the puzzle and set it aside as casually as you might flick a piece of lint from your jeans. I found it solved later.

The log that had her name on it was still swinging above us.

“Don’t cry,” Hana said.

“I’m not crying,” I said, but the world was blurry, and my eyes were hot.

“Come on, Cannibal,” I grumbled, and hauled the kid up by the arm, and pushed him ahead of me. He didn’t fight anymore, just stumbled down the trail. As we got closer to the pod, I saw what Hana meant about it being cracked like an egg. The bottom was crumpled, like a hard-boiled egg if you smacked it flat on a counter. The rest of the pod appeared remarkably unscathed.

Following behind us, Hana exclaimed, “My snow globe!” she said, joy in her voice. Three steps from the pod, I looked back as she scooped it up and flushed. I had given it to her. She still had it, across space and time.

Eyes going past me, Hana asked, “Is he sick?”

My attention went back to the child just as he slumped to the ground.

“Down!” I shouted, expecting another trap. It was a lot more helpful thing to shout than the “No!” I’d screamed minutes ago.

I dropped. Hana dropped.

A bird chirped nearby. A real bird. I saw it not far away in the undergrowth. It was not the cry of our enemies.

Nothing happened.

Hana undid the pack from her back and crawled over to the kid, lying on the ground, his mouth still full of handkerchief. He looked pathetically small, vulnerable, and very human despite a schnoz larger than I typically associate with children, and a receding chin. I reminded myself he’d eat me if he got the chance.

Hana put a hand on his forehead. “He’s burning up.”

I swallowed.

She said, “May I have the canteen?”

I nodded, crawling out of my rucksack and pulling it out. A twig cracked nearby. I looked back the way we came. “I need to get my tools.”

Nodding, she took her handkerchief out of the kid’s mouth and doused it with water. As I left, she put it on his forehead.

When I came back, the handkerchief was still on the kid’s forehead, and his eyes were closed. Her eyes met mine. “Did we make him sick?”

I thought of the North Sentinelese, the third of Native American tribes in the interior decimated by European diseases even before the first explorers arrived, and the Amazonian tribes that perished. I thought of the wailing the night before, and the old man who’d fallen after the hunt. There was a high probability we’d brought diseases with us, but my lip curled. “No, the men who attacked you made him sick.” If they’d kept their distance and hadn’t tried to rape or eat her, or both, they wouldn’t have picked up whatever lingering virus or bacteria had slept in Hana’s cells.

Her eyes dropped to my hand. “He bit you. Maybe you should put some antibiotics on it?”

I flexed my hand. He had drawn blood, not much, but I didn’t need an infection. I took out my first-aid kit, smeared on some antibiotics, and smacked on a bandage. During that time, Hana settled the kid’s head onto her lap and tried to coax him to drink from the canteen. We’d boiled that water, and hadn’t drunk from the canteen yet. It was probably the cleanest water he’d ever encountered. His eyelids fluttered. He took a few sips, and then his head fell back down. Hana smoothed back his hair, doused water on her handkerchief again, and put it back on his forehead. Her gaze was rapt and gentle in her worry for a kid who’d just tried to trap and eat us. I didn’t think I’d ever seen exactly that expression before, or I hadn’t seen it on her.

A sunbeam slanted through the trees, and I remembered we were on the clock. I cleared my throat. “I need you to open the pod.”

Hana looked up, her expression stricken.

I wiped my face. “I can look after the kid.”

She nodded and slipped out from under him, gently setting his head on the ground. His hair was already filled with leaves and twigs. The ground would hardly make a difference. She approached the hatch of her pod and looked directly into a camera there. A sound like static when you drag your feet over a carpet filled the forest, and then there was a click and lights flickered on. She took a deep breath. “I'll get what we need. Make sure the handkerchief stays cool.”

“Sure,” I said, and put my hand on the kid’s forehead. I frowned. The handkerchief was wet but lukewarm. After I had boiled the water in the canteen, I’d set the canteen in the river. It should have been icy cold. I doused the handkerchief again. The handkerchief was the finest, softest cotton you can imagine, printed with a delicate pastel hydrangea pattern, a Japanese watercolor painting, transferred to cloth. It was also relatively clean. The contrast between it, his filth, and the rags he wore was surreal. It hit me: I was 100,000 years in the past. I let the panic wash over me and breathed it away. We were still alive.

Hana opened the toolbox, and I said, “Would you give me the thermometer?”

She passed it to me before grabbing the tools she needed and disappearing into the pod.

I stuck it under the kids’ arm—I was not going to risk putting it in his mouth, and definitely not putting it in the other end. I left it there for five minutes before I read it. It was 40.5 degrees Celsius and 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I told myself he wasn’t human and might have a completely different metabolism than we did. It might not be that bad to be 105. But the kid was dead to the world, and I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.

Hana poked her head out of the pod. “What do we do?”

And I knew she was not talking about moose storage or water wheels.

* * *

It was late afternoon, and we were back at our pod by the river.

The pod was packed a little tighter with some gear from Hana’s pod: a huge plastic water dispenser, the type with a spout, a plastic bucket, a few station blankets and a pillow, a few Japanese SMREs—and two dozen Raisin Wich cookies, a Japanese shortbread cookie sandwich with rum “cream” and raisins in the center—Hana’s junk food weakness. I guess she’d thought she’d probably transport herself to nowhere and figured she might as well eat them all while her air ran out. She hadn’t brought a suit with her. The Dreamer’s suits were older models, bulkier, and without the handy CO2 recyclers my suit had, so not as useful. Also, her pod was much smaller, with just enough room inside for the bucket (to sit on and stow things inside) and the water dispenser.

We also had the kid. We couldn’t take him back to his own people. They’d eat us. So he lay between us on the floor.

The kid was a boy. He’d puked on himself, and in the process of removing his leggings, it was obvious.

Moving Hana’s stuff and the kid to the river pod and hauling the moose to Hana’s pod had taken several trips—especially since Hana stayed with the kid in the river pod once we got him there—my legs were sore from climbing up and down the incline all day.

I’d had the easier job. There is a type of hardship that comes from hopelessness. By the time I settled in for the evening, worry lines had set between Hana’s brows.

As I lifted the kid’s head, she held the canteen to his mouth.

“Come on, drink,” I said.

SMREs come with an electrolyte drink mix, and we spiked the drink with one, hoping it would be more effective than water. It works on cats.

His eyes didn’t open.

“Nonde kudasai,” Hana whispered.

Hana isn’t great with languages. She knows English and Japanese because she learned both from her parents and had both reinforced in the fancy international school she went to in Tokyo. She also knew enough Hebrew to get through her bat mitzvah, at one time, but had forgotten most of it. She tended to slip into Japanese when she wasn’t being understood in English. It was funny and cute, but confused the Venezuelan guy who sold his ice cream from a bicycle cart back at the University.

At her voice, though, the kid’s eyelids fluttered. His gaze went to Hana, and his lips parted. He took a sip of the water. We both sighed.

I’d opened up my scroll’s library and learned a little about Neanderthals. Trying to lighten the mood, I said, “Makes sense he’s responding better to you, since Asians have more Neanderthal DNA than Caucasians.”

In truth, I thought it was just that she was prettier than me.

She rolled her eyes at my poor attempt at humor, but the lines between her brow softened—and then they settled right back in. “I’m worried about him.”

I was worried, too. We’d kept cold compresses on his forehead and sponge bathed him, but his fever hadn’t come down.

Our eyes met. “Should we use it?” I asked.

Biting her lip, Hana was quiet for a long moment, but then she nodded. I took out the first-aid kit and cut a piece of Acetaminophen into quarters.

Lifting the kid’s head, I pressed a shard into his mouth. She tipped the canteen to his lips and pleaded, “Nonde kudasai.”

He drank, probably because he was too out of it to resist.

Holding my breath, I laid his head back down and hoped I hadn’t just killed him.

Acetaminophen is toxic in cats.

* * *

Within a few hours, the kid’s fever dropped. We hoped that wasn’t a prelude to death.

He was sleeping, noticeably less fitfully. It was dark, and I was reading aloud from my scroll for Hana, “All of the Neanderthal DNA that persists in the human genome is from the Neanderthals of the Middle East. There is no evidence that the European Neanderthals and Homo sapiens interbred or even met. Some evidence puts humans in Europe as early as 100,000 years ago, but many archeologists say it is inconclusive, and the preponderance of evidence puts Homo sapiens’ arrival in Europe only as recently as 40,000 to 45,000 years—”

Wailing began up the mountain.

The kid jolted up and started screaming something. Over and over again.

Grabbing his shoulders, Hana murmured, “It is okay. Daijobu.”

He shook his head, muttering something over and over.

“Anzenda yo,” Hana said. “You’re safe.”

Pulling his knees to his chest, he backed against the wall and sat there shaking until the wailing and the chanting stopped. He fell asleep like that; us sitting on either side of him.

* * *

In the morning, he seemed better. He still had a fever, but it was milder, only a little over 38 degrees Celsius, 100 degrees Fahrenheit. He grabbed his crotch, and I took him outside to pee, and then, since the sun was rising and the air felt cool but good after the stuffy pod, we stayed there.

Hana joined us, and while the kid was drinking electrolyte fluid and munching on crackers from an SMRE, Hana pointed to her nose. “Hana,” she said. Japanese people point to their nose when they introduce themselves, but it was also funny because the Japanese word for nose is “hana.”

“You’re so punny,” I said, because God knew we needed some levity.

She narrowed her eyes at me.

I pointed to my own nose instead of my heart to stay consistent. We were already speaking to him in English and Japanese, no need to confuse him more. “John.”

Hana touched the kid’s nose, and his eyes crossed comically. She cocked her head. “Who are you?”

Shoving a cracker into his mouth, he stared at her. His eyes were enormous—not because of excessive emotion on his part, although there may have been some of that—Neanderthal eyes were larger, according to my scroll.

We performed the pantomime again.

His eyes went up to the mountain toward the smoke rising to the sky there, and his lips parted in an expression of transparent longing.

“What are we going to do?” Hana said.

“When he gets better, we let him go home, I guess,” I said, my throat getting tight. Would they accept him back? Would they think he was contaminated? He was their child. They must miss him—even though they hadn’t shown up to claim him, and even though the proximity alarm hadn’t gone off, alerting us that they had tried.

“Purr,” he said, touching his nose.

“Purr,” we said.

Hana smiled. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Hajimemashite,” I said, which was Japanese for the same, just so we were confusing him consistently. I smiled, too, in sheer relief. I didn’t want to be a child killer, even if Purr would have eaten me if he could.

* * *

Purr’s fever was up before the sun even reached its zenith.

14 JOHN

We didn’t get much work done in the next few days. We took care of Purr, listening to books on Neanderthals as we did.

We didn’t discuss that he would be our first priority. He just was. We opened more of the SMREs than we’d planned to, but highly processed white rice, pasta, crackers, and electrolyte drinks were what we both associated with recovering from illness.

Every day followed the same pattern: I took him outside to pee. He seemed better. His fever was less—maybe because we kept giving him acetaminophen in the evenings, maybe because his temperature naturally dropped at night, or a combination of the two. He drank and ate a little solid food. His fever rose. Not high enough to dose him—we were both of the school that a little fever was good—but by evening, we would be afraid not to.

We noticed little things about him in those hours and days of worry. His nails were smooth and filed, not bitten off. His hair was short, but the ends were uneven—from stone tools? Fire? Was it cropped to ward off vermin? He knew how to eat with a spoon. All pointed to a child that someone cared about, someone taught, someone loved. But no one came down the mountain for him. Did they think we’d already killed him?

From some angles, and by firelight, he looked human. But from others, his otherness was stark. His nose was cute in its exaggerated size. It pointed to what some theorized was the reason Homo sapiens eventually replaced Neanderthals: a higher metabolism. Neanderthals required about 500 more calories per day than Homo sapiens. They were more muscular—a male Neanderthal could break every bone in a human male’s hand with a handshake—and all that muscle power demanded calories and protein. Add to that, their gait on mountain slopes was more efficient, but less efficient on flat land. There was a lot of flat land even in the mountains—the clearing across from the pod, for instance. Oxygen was essential for burning calories as much as it was essential for burning wood. That large schnoz fed his prodigious metabolism.

Purr’s eyes were bigger, and although his forehead wouldn’t be as high as ours when fully grown, his skull would be elongated and have the same or even greater volume. According to my downloaded encyclopedia, some of the extra gray matter in the back was devoted to better vision in low light, which also explained the enormous eyes. According to the same source, modern humans at high latitudes also have larger eyes, but not elongated skulls.

We learned from our books that not all Neanderthals were cannibalistic. Neanderthals roamed from Northern Africa to Europe to Asia for nearly 300,000 years and lived in all sorts of climate conditions. They had cultures evolved for seasides, bitter cold mountains, scorching deserts, and the tropical jungle that Europe was for a time. The Neanderthals in the Middle East, the ones who are the ancestors of humans, weren’t notably cannibalistic.

But the Neanderthals in Europe, who weren’t into making human-Neanderthal babies, were cannibals. It was almost as though the xenophobes among the Middle Eastern Neanderthals saw the influx of Homo sapiens, got disgusted, moved north, and notched up their xenophobic ways. They spread out, became isolated, and inbred. And they ate their dead … and dead that weren’t theirs.

Some of the cannibalism was definitely ritualistic. Every evening, the wailing and the chanting resumed up the mountain, and Purr woke from his sleep in a frenzy. He shook and whimpered until the ritual ended, and we soothed him back to sleep.

The days were better. Every day, he ate a little more. His fever was low a little longer. We kept him outside, because he seemed to like that. I cooked soup low and slow so that the tough-as-nails smoked moose broke down. Sometimes I fished.

With a patience I’d never seen from Hana, she pointed out things to Purr and named them. She turned her scroll into a camera in mirror mode and delighted him with his own image, and she opened a piano app and played simple songs. She even got him to repeat them. He laughed and smiled at his image and music. Like a human.

It occurred to me that for Hana, maybe boring tasks with emotional investment differed from digging a hole.

He also enjoyed sitting with me while I fished. I carried him over to the river, let him sit on a big rock, and hang his feet in the water. I used a line I made from the gut thread I lifted from his kin and a hook made of strips of braided wires. When I pulled out a fish, he laughed like I’d pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Kids laughing from pure joy must be one of the wonders of the universe; it made me feel ten feet tall even when my fish was only six inches long.

He liked us, but we would catch him looking up the mountain. Was he wondering why no one came for him? Or reassuring himself that the trail of smoke was still curling into the sky?

On the fifth day, at breakfast, he smiled and said, “Hana, John …” Something, something.

Hana said, “I think he’s saying ‘Hana and John are his friends.’”

“Or maybe he’s saying we’re tasty,” I replied, partially because it was a definite possibility and partially to make Hana smile. She smiled and Purr did, too. And I grinned back like an idiot.

15 JOHN

On the sixth morning, we came out for breakfast, and the billowing smoke on the mountain was much less. During breakfast, it stopped. Purr put his moose, dandelion green, and SMRE vegetable rice pilaf soup aside and shakily rose to his feet. He shambled to the edge of the clearing and then sagged against a tree.

Hana picked up the shallow SMRE container he’d been eating from and took it to him.

“Please eat,” she said. “Tabete, kudasai.”

Purr pointed up the mountain, said something in his own language. He repeated it. He repeated it again. “Please. Kudasai. Hana. John. Please. Kudasai. Hana. John.” Our jaws gaped.

He struggled to rise and stumbled into the trees. Hana caught him. He tried to pull away, repeating words in his language. “Gega geh lin, gega geh lin.”

I got in front of him and said, “Please eat.” I pointed up the mountain. “Gega geh lin.”

He stopped fighting.

“What did you just say?” Hana asked.

“I think I said we’d go up the mountain after he eats.”

At my words, he sat down and ate his breakfast.

“We will?” Hana asked.

“We can’t keep him against his will,” I said. “But if he goes alone, he might not make it.”

Almost to punctuate that thought, a wolf howled.

“I’ll come, too,” Hana said, and spun around and went back to the pod before I could tell her no. I’d put the toolbox outside beneath the hatch—it was waterproof and made a great step. When we were inside, and the proximity alarm was on, it was in no danger of being stolen or destroyed by a curious bear. She returned with the WD-40 and the lighter.

We couldn’t leave the toolbox outside, and we needed a few supplies.

Cursing, I said, “Don’t go without me.”

* * *

Hana carried Purr piggyback-style up the mountain. He weighed nothing. Or rather, not as much as you’d expect a hominid with more muscle mass and potentially denser bones to weigh. He was a kid and small. I carried my rucksack, a bag of soup, another bag of water, and my rifle, of course. The higher we went, the chiller the air became, and the more snow we saw in the shadows of trees and rocky outcrops.

Twice, he stopped us and sprang hidden snares. They dangled behind us from the trees like empty nooses.

As we got closer to the place the smoke emanated from, Ravens rawked in the sky.

On Hana’s back, Purr swung his legs back and forth. “Gega geh lin. Gega geh lin.”

“What is it?” Hana asked.

“Ravens scout for wolves,” I said, picking up the pace.

“They look for wolves?” Hana asked, keeping pace.

“No. Ravens look for ill or weak animals, and then call wolves to kill them.”

“Gega geh lin. Please. Kudasai,” said Purr, pressing his face into Hana’s back.

We broke into a jog.

* * *

We smelled the Neanderthal camp before we reached it: it smelled like rotten meat. The guys I killed hadn’t smelled as bad, despite losing their bowels.

Struggling violently, Purr slipped off Hana’s back. He tried to run past me but stumbled. Catching him before he faceplanted, I took one of his hands. Hana took his other one. He looked up at us with what might have been gratitude with those enormous Neanderthal eyes. Purr led us up a path, looping along a steep slope between the trees, just wide enough for the three of us. The trees fell away, and there was a circular sort of clearing of trampled undergrowth in front of a sheer, steep slope. In the slope itself, hidden by grasses and low plants, was a cave opening, about as high and wide as a standard two-car garage. Just in front was a fire pit encircled by stones, the coals within smoldering. A girl—or maybe young woman—lay in a heap of furs in front of it, clasping a large stick that she used to poke the embers. She was Purr’s kin at a glance, and she was sick, her skin flushed. At the sight of us, she dropped the stick. “Purr!”

“Blou!” he yelled, and slipped from our grasp and ran to her.

Throwing back the furs, she tried to rise, but gave up and just let Purr tackle her. Pulling him close, she wept into the crook of his neck. It was a few minutes before she noticed Hana and me.

Grabbing the stick, she half rose and held it up as though she could ward us away. Purr pushed it down and started talking to her in their language. Ravens rawked more fiercely overhead.

“Where are the rest of them?” Hana whispered.

I looked at the dark mouth of the cave, and the single young woman. “They’re all dead or close enough to it.” I glared up at the ravens. “We’d better get some more wood on the fire.” I looked around the trees for deadwood and noticed that all the undergrowth and trees appeared to be picked clean. Of course they would be.

Was there any more fuel in the cave, or had the girl already used it?

Also, was there anyone alive in there?

* * *

Wearing Hana’s handkerchief, I entered the cave, rifle ready on my shoulder.

I paused a beat, waiting for a shout, fast footfalls, or any sign of an incoming assault.

There was only an eerie silence from within the dark chamber. From without, I heard ravens, their clamor like laughter.

Swinging my rifle around, I gazed through the ASF sights. It had automatically switched to night sight. I could see the cave’s interior in sharp relief, but in tunnel vision without color. I scanned for movement, not sure if I wanted to see any or not.

I saw none, but I did see bodies, three of them: two women and the man who issued a truce with me—a truce he broke by booby trapping Hana’s pod and leaving Purr there to wait for us.

There was a section at the back of the cave devoted to chopping up carcasses—our books said there would be. Neanderthals were organized like that. There were bones that were recognizably human, even to my untrained eye, and smoked meat. I was afraid of what that meat might be. I thought of the chanting over the last few days and wrote a story in my mind: they all caught whatever Purr had. They died over the last few nights. At first, the survivors processed their remains. But Blou was too weak to process the last three.

The ravens rawked nearby, and Hana yelled something fierce in Japanese. A whoosh of flame followed. There was a yip and a canine whine, and I made a fast decision.

Grabbing the dead man’s wrist, I dragged him from the cave with one hand, holding the rifle in my other.

Thankfully, Blou seemed to be asleep. Purr’s brow furrowed, and he watched me, but he said nothing and didn’t move.

“Which way did the wolves go?” I asked Hana.

She pointed into the trees in front of the cave, and I dragged the body around the fire pit and as far away from the cave mouth as I dared. I headed back and dragged out the first of the women. The wolves were already slinking over to study the first body. I shouted at them. Growling, they retreated. Slightly.

I didn’t drag the woman as far, and I backed away, rifle in front of me.

By the time I dragged out the last body, the wolves and ravens were already at the first and didn’t bother to rise when I approached.

I figured I’d bought us some time.

Without the dead, the cave didn’t smell as bad. While Hana guarded Blou and Purr, I went through it, taking an inventory. Divided by stones into sleeping areas, furs lay unfurled between them, waiting for their owners. The furs were soft and as silky as anything I’d felt—and also bigger than I would expect, which made me nervous about the wildlife. There were spears that would make excellent tent poles and hides to make the tent. There was a usable stone ax with a wooden handle, wooden bowls and platters, and bags of all sorts. In one bag I found hazelnuts, and in another acorns. Acorns only keep for about four months. Maybe they’d frozen early in the fall and stayed that way? I opened another bag, peered in at the contents, and almost vomited at the stench of fermentation. Inside floated gray masses that looked like brain. For beings dependent on calories, brains would be an excellent source, and fermentation was one of the few ways to store fatty food before modern times. Remembering the cannibalism, I passed that one up. Hell, the smell alone was enough to say, no thank you.

I discovered a small bag of salt, and a bag of what looked like wet, yellow sugar. It took me a moment to put together that it was crystallized honey. Probably. I wasn’t going to test it without boiling it first.

There were baskets lying about, some made from birch, others frailer and more porous, made of grasses. I almost passed by a small wooden, cylindrical container, wide as my wrist and a few inches high, with a soot blackened exterior. It had a neatly fitted lid that resisted being pulled off, and on inspection, had an amber colored sealant along its edges. That made my eyebrows rise. Our books mentioned Neanderthals used two types of adhesives: one made of beeswax and pine resin, another made of birch tar. The smoky smelling, blackened tacky balls inside the wooden container were birch tar—strong stuff that they used for attaching stone cutting implements to wooden shafts. The gooey, sticky stuff on top was beeswax and resin. It was more flexible than birch tar, and among other things, could be used to waterproof hides. I waved my flashlight around, looking for the pine resin, and found it inside another wooden container.

I took the adhesives, a few baskets, ax, acorns, hazelnuts, honey, salt, and the cured hides. I eyed the bear skins covetously. Sleeping on the floor of the pod and the ground hadn’t been comfortable, but they had to have fleas, and were bed bugs a thing yet?

I walked out and found Hana patrolling the perimeter with her WD-40 and lighter blowtorch. Purr was sitting with Blou, holding the Neanderthal woman’s hand. The flush and strain had left Blou’s face, and she was sleeping. She didn’t look as horrendous as the reconstructions depict. Not that she was a beauty: her nose and brow were pronounced, as was the length and protrusion of her upper jaw, and her chin receded, but if you saw her on the street, you’d pass her without much thought. Though her red hair was mussed, it was essentially clean and collected and braided at the back of her head. She had access to combs. Our books said nothing about combs, but bone and wood would degrade in a few thousand years.

I was confident we could carry her back to our camp, or I could, at least. We couldn’t stay at the cave. Besides the eeriness of it being the site of recent mass death, logistically, it made more sense for Hana and me to be near the pod. Not just for the sake of repairing it, but Blou didn’t look like she’d be well for a while, and Purr wasn’t much better. If we were caring for two invalids, I wanted to be closer to water and trees that hadn’t had their dead and fallen branches picked over.

“I gave her some water, and she drank a little soup,” Hana said. The furrow of worry between her brows had returned.

I nodded, about to ask Hana about the furs, and how much she was willing to risk fleas to spare sore joints, but then Blou woke up. Her eyes fluttered open. A beam of sunlight shone through the trees and made her blue eyes appear to glow. She smiled at Purr and said a few words. He whispered in reply, leaning closer. She squeezed his hand, and then gazed away, and her smile went slack.

For a moment, the only sound was the rawking of ravenous ravens and the wind in the trees.

And then Purr whispered, “Blou?” A moment later, he was shouting at her and pounding his small fists against her chest. We raced over, but just before we reached them, I understood.

Throwing out an arm, I held Hana back. She protested. “He’s—”

“Grieving,” I said, as Purr shook Blou’s lifeless shoulders and then collapsed into sobs.

Hana exhaled and moved closer to me, her eyes glassy and red. “We have to get out of here,” she whispered.

16 JOHN

We slept that night on a stack of furs in the pod.

After weeping his heart out against Blou’s chest for over an hour, Purr had raised his head.

“Gega geh lin,” I said, pointing to the pod. “We have to go home.”

He pointed to the cave. “Gega geh lin,” he said. We didn’t stop him when he stumbled inside. He went to one of the partitioned places in the cave, fell to his knees, and pulled the furs to his face. It seemed like he wanted to cry, but maybe his eyes were dried out by then, because no tears came.

Hana was the one who went over, pointed to the pod, and said, “We have to go home.” She began rolling the furs up. Purr rose, expression as blank as Blou’s corpse. We brought the furs and other items from his “home” back with us, probable fleas and all.

They could have smelled worse. Maybe Neanderthals were like ethnic groups that don’t produce the rank oniony body odor that some say is about sexual attraction, and some say is about making predators think twice about eating us. Onions are toxic to bears, cats, and canines. Neanderthals were strong enough to break fingers with a handshake and easily wielded heavy spears. Maybe they didn’t need onion-stink dissuasion?

Purr slept between Hana and me, curled in a ball. I put my ear to his back and listened to his breathing. He was so winded I worried about pneumonia. I’d never actually heard pneumonia before, but I’d heard Kim describe it as a “snoring” sound. Purr’s lungs sounded normal to my untrained ears, if maybe a little fast. But maybe fast was normal for kids? What would I do if I heard pneumonia? I didn’t have oral antibiotics. Kim would know what to do. He’d be pissed enough to strangle me when we got back, but he wouldn’t take it out on Hana or Purr. Kim wasn’t like that.

In the middle of the night, when the wailing used to begin, Purr woke up and thrashed.

“Shh,” I said, my hand falling on his stomach, taut as a drum.

Hana rubbed his chest and sang him a lullaby, sad and sweet, in Hebrew.

Purr’s body shuddered, and he went quiet. For a cold, dark moment, my heart stopped, envisioning his eyes opening and staring at nothing. I didn’t think of my accident on the sub; I thought of the aftermath, my fellow survivors who committed suicide. The loneliness of being left behind. But his stomach rose and fell beneath my hand, and his eyes stayed closed. Hana and I sighed, and our fingers brushed.

I took her hand in mine. “What did that song mean?” I whispered, hoping she wouldn’t pull away.

She didn’t. Instead, she squeezed, and my heart soared.

“It’s a simplistic version of the Shabbat song we sing when we close the Torah … My Bubbe used to sing it to me sometimes just … because. It means, ‘There is a tree of life for those who will hold on to it, and all who do will be happy.’ It was all I could think of.”

“Bubbe” means “grandmother” in Yiddish. Bubbe was Hana’s strongest tie to her Jewish faith. There were a lot of Jewish men in the physics department of the University of Chicago. Working with them, I kind of got the idea that part of the reason for Jewish success was dedication to family. It seemed like a cultural trait. But as my dad used to say, “Assumptions make asses of us all, and so do stereotypes.” Hana’s dad, a CTO of a multinational tech firm, was … distant … and I think it was only Bubbe’s influence and Hana’s Japanese mother’s respect for tradition that ensured Hana and her brother Ken received their bat mitzvah and bar mitzvah.

Hana lifted her wrist, and her watch glowed. “And it is Saturday. Somewhere.” She exhaled. “Sometime.”

I was happy, in that moment, despite everything, and I was glad I held onto life during the accident on the sub, and after, and that I walked into the pod. Happiness can come after tragedy if you hold on and allow it.

I swallowed. “It was perfect.” And I whispered into Purr’s hair. “Hold on to life, little guy. We’ll be your tribe now. You’ll be happy.”

17 JOHN

The next morning it looked like rain. With spears I’d taken from the Neanderthals—or is the right word inherited?—I began building a “front porch” outside our pod. We’d begun working on the generator in the preceding days. Purr couldn’t be in the same room while we did it. He was too curious. We needed to build a dynamo, and an essential part of that was copper wire wound around a central core. It was tedious work, but the more turns, the greater the current produced.

Purr was determined to unwind our dynamo.

Also, the magnets for creating the electromagnetic field fascinated him.

And our scrolls.

And the toolbox.

And the toolbox’s contents.

And we both got it. He was a child after both of our own hearts. We were both like that as kids, and we thought it was charming. And hopeful. When he got back to our time, he’d have more immune issues—but he’d also have access to better medicines. I was sure his health would be fine. But my bigger worry was him finding a place. His curiosity about all things technological put that worry out of my mind. I didn’t say it aloud, but it made me think he’d be fine in our world.

But it wasn’t the same as me getting in the way in my father’s garage, or Hana in her Japanese grandfather’s shop—it was life or death.

So I took Purr outside while Hana got to work.

The tent construction intrigued him. But as soon as it was done, a whirring sound came from inside the pod—Hana making the water wheel components—and his eyes lit up. He stood, climbed up the toolbox stairs, and put his hands on the lower lip of the hatch.

“No,” I said, grabbing his thin waist. He didn’t let go. The kid had no energy, but he had strength, and it was all I could do to pry him away without hurting him.

Dark grey clouds threatened rain. While it was still dry, I grabbed the bag of acorns and a basket, squatted down, pointed to my back, and said to Purr, “Up.”

He obliged. I piggybacked him to the river, and then put him on a boulder. I filled the basket with acorns that hadn’t rotted, and then set the whole thing in a shallow part of the rushing river, weighing it down with stones so it didn’t become dislodged.

Scowling at me, Purr said, “John. No.”

I studied the setup. The basket’s edge was tall enough that the acorns wouldn’t float away. It was the same method used by some Native Americans to remove the acorns’ bitter tannins. “Looks right to me.”

“John, no,” he said empathetically.

I blinked.

He pointed at the acorns. “Hana. Hana.”

“Are you saying this is Hana’s job?” I narrowed my eyes.

He looked at me defiantly.

“Why you pint-sized misogynist,” I said. And then under my breath, I muttered, “It is always the men who gave me the worst shit.”

* * *

A couple of days after my third date with Hana, I met up with an old buddy from my hometown in Wisconsin. Frank was in town for some sort of new hi-definition MRI scanner training. He was the repair guy for all the scanners in rural Wisconsin, which was a pretty respectable gig. Medicine in our corner of rural America was scarce and behind the times, and he kept it going.

Frank was also newly divorced. I should have trod carefully, but I had some of that new romance giddiness and optimism. Yeah, Hana was different from most of the girls I’d dated, and the way we wound up in a relationship was definitely weird. It also wasn’t the hottest spark I’d ever experienced, but I was happy. When he asked me if I was seeing anyone, I replied without hesitation, “Yeah, she’s a researcher at the University.”

Tipping back his beer, he said, “Using you to pay off her college loans. Look out.”

“She doesn’t have any loans,” I replied. Hana had gotten scholarships since the get-go, including the Stellar Grant, set up by one of those 2000s billionaires who’d built reusable rockets and kept the dream of spaceflight alive. I didn’t say that, though.

“Huh, so a researcher. Big title, lots of prestige, not a lot of money,” Frank said. “She’ll want fifty-fifty help raising the kids and will add bunk to the bottom line.”

The postdoc system in the U.S. was a sweatshop rolled up in a pyramid scheme, with more postdocs than there were professorial positions. But Hana had climbed the pyramid, and there was a lot of money at the top, especially with venture capital pouring into time band development. The solar system was filled with exploitable resources that didn’t demand environmental impact studies and weren’t owned by sovereign nations. The sky was literally the limit. Hana’s professorial position paid well, but the consulting she did, helping various firms implement her math, paid really well.

“No, she makes good money,” I said, in a massive understatement.

“More than you?” Frank asked snidely.

And then I felt it, the cold coil in my gut. “Yeah, she makes more than me.” I looked away.

He elbowed me and hooted. “Gonna be the house husband, then? Going to cook and clean for her and spend the day playing video games!”

I shook my head and tipped back my beer. “I’m going to Oort, asshole. It is just for a year.” It made me sadder than it should have to say it. Not that I would want to play video games all day. I know it is some people’s idea of heaven, but I’m a very physical guy, and I have to be up and moving.

He shook his head. “That’s right. Good for you. Better to escape before she decides she’s not in love anymore and divorces you. Not in love anymore. What the Hell does that even mean?”

* * *

I watched the water, clear and icy, run through the acorns in their basket.

What did it even mean to be in love, to begin with?

I’d had relationships with better sex and more sparks than with Hana. I’ve also had worse sex, too. Neither sparks nor sex are love. Took a while for that to penetrate my thick skull—although I suspect that what’s in my skull wasn’t what was confused.

It seemed like respect was a big part of love. Respect is one of those things that has to go both ways, though. Despite our differences in class and brain power, Hana had it for me, and I definitely had it for her.

Purr sighed. “John, John, John. No, no, no.”

“Yeah, whatever, Half Pint. I’m going to make the best acorn mush you’ve ever tasted.”

I looked up at the sky. Rain was imminent, but I could keep him busy and away from the pod a while longer. “Let’s fish for crawdads, Kid.”

“Fish?” said Purr, perking.

Evidently, fishing was a manly thing.

“We have to get our gear,” I said, heading back to the pod.

Purr hopped off the log and followed me about halfway, but then he sat down on the grass and waited. I hauled him up as I came back, and he laughed as I swung him onto my hip. Setting him down on a large boulder, I taught him how to tie a bit of meat to a string and drag it real slow along the bottom where the water didn’t run as fast. I think it scandalized him when we dumped the meat into the water, but sure enough, the crawdads took the bait, and we caught a half dozen, him draped over a boulder the whole time, before the rain started. We put the crawdads into Hana’s bucket with enough fresh water to keep them alive to cook when the rain stopped.

Purr seemed fascinated by the sound of the rain on the tent, but he soon began looking covetously at the pod entrance. He told me something in his own language, and I shook my head. He told me again, louder. Hana popped her head out, then, and said, “You want to switch for a while? I can give him a piano lesson.”

“Piano!” said Purr.

When I ducked into the pod, Purr lay on a fur spread out under the tent, and Hana was showing him how to play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and I felt dizzy. He banged out the notes in perfect rhythm, grinning madly.

I wanted to make a joke about doing fifty-fifty custody, to lighten the mood, but I couldn’t.

* * *

Hana and I worked together later that afternoon on the water wheel, Purr sleeping on the fur.

“Does he sleep a lot?” Hana asked.

Fitting a wafer of plastic to the wheel with epoxy, I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I remember taking naps when I was four … and he is small …” She bit her lip. “It would help if we knew how old he is.”

“He’s still getting better,” I said. “And remember, the book said their metabolism is faster than ours. Maybe he needs to sleep more to conserve energy?”

“Maybe he needs more calories,” she said.

That afternoon, when he woke, Hana broke out her precious Raisin Wich cookies and gave him one. The expression on Purr’s face was one of joy and pure wonder.

“Thank you, Hana John,” he said.

* * *

In the evening, two days later, we were putting our water wheels together. Wheels, plural. Hana had helped Purr build a miniature water wheel and generator and attached it to a scavenged lightbulb from her pod. We attached our larger wheel to the battery we’d been using. As soon as we hooked it up, the voltage readout on our battery ascended, and I laughed in relief. I looked over at Hana, her hair only partially held back by a sharpened twig, her curls caught in the breeze, and her narrow, almost elfin cheekbones smudged with dirt. “God, I love you, woman,” I blurted out.

Flushing, she looked away.

And my smile fell.

But at that moment, Purr’s lightbulb glowed, and he beamed brighter than the light did. Sitting beside it, he smacked his thighs and rocked back and forth in sheer delight. He was so much like a human child … but then my gaze fell to his fingers splayed on his legs, with their wide tips. It was easy to see he wasn’t human, not quite. When we brought him back, Kim would notice. A DNA test would notice more.

He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Thank you, Hana John.”

Hana gulped, and my gut twisted.

“We’ll come up with an alibi for him,” I said. “We’ll fight for him when we get back.”

“If we get back,” Hana whispered.

“Have faith,” I said.

She glanced up at me. “I have faith in some things, but not …” She shook her head and her gaze slipped away again. I was afraid to touch her. The past few days, Purr had been both a chaperone and a bridge between us. The connection was still fragile, and I wasn’t sure what made it so, old memories or new trauma.

Sitting beside his lightbulb, Purr laughed so loud and so hard, he toppled over.

“Daijobu?” Hana asked, sitting on her heels beside him. Are you okay?

Not rising, he giggled. “Daijobu. I am okay.”

I tucked the battery, our generator, and Purr’s generator and lightbulb in a doghouse-sized hutch made of semi-transparent plastic panels from Hana’s pod glued together with Neanderthal adhesive.

Rising, Hana took one of Purr’s hands in her own. I took the other, and we headed back to our pod. It wasn’t far, 100 yards maybe, but by half-way, we were all but carrying him.

Hana paused and knelt. “I’ll pick him up—”

“Nah,” I said, because I was worried about him, and afraid if he didn’t push himself just a little, he’d never get better. “He can go a few more steps. Come on, Purr. Come on.”

He rallied but stumbled three steps later. Swooping him up, I grinned at him. Panting, he grinned back, and I ran my hands through his hair. It was damp with sweat, though the evening was cool.

Maybe it was because of his Neanderthal metabolism? I threw him into the air, spinning him around, making him laugh and Hana cry out. I caught him with his body turned away from me and pressed my ear to his back to surreptitiously listen to his breathing.

It sounded fast, but even and clear. I glanced at Hana and said, “It sounds good.” I told her about my pneumonia fears. She gave me a tiny nod, lines etched sharply between her brows, even in the low light.

My ear must have tickled, because Purr laughed louder, and I thought but didn’t say, hang onto life, little guy.

* * *

Hana and I lay facing each other. Purr was sleeping between us, and whatever awkwardness had set in earlier, our hands were linked over his tiny body.

I was thinking about kissing her and asking if she wanted to go outside the pod, and I was wondering if that would wake up the kid. Was this what having a kid felt like? Was he our kid?

I pulled her hand closer to me, but she pulled back, her palm slipping from mine until only our fingertips touched. It was tentative, and my chest tightened.

“What is this?” Hana blurted, her fingertips tapping mine in the dark. “We … You … What is this?”

My brain put all those words and actions together, the light touch against my fingers, the gesture of someone blind and deaf, and I understood. Hana wasn’t good with emotional uncertainty. I wasn’t sure if it was a Hana thing, or a Japanese thing, or both. She grew up in Japan, and in Japanese culture, before a relationship progresses there is kokuhaku, literally “white confession”—a way of clearly stating your intentions to be an exclusive couple and avoid ambiguity.

We were the only couple there, so by default, we were exclusive.

But that wasn’t what she was asking.

Did I mention I was a jerk at the end of our relationship? I was cruel—and loud—about all of Hana’s faults: her inability to read a room, to make small talk, to boil water, to feed herself in a timely manner, or to focus on the here and now. By the end, I was still only twenty-six, in a relationship that despite its non-auspicious beginnings, our differences in education, social status, our age, and Hell, just the ordinary divide between men and women, was the best thing I’d ever had. But I also had to end it, which in my youth and stupidity meant killing it, for her, for me.

After all the years between then and now, it was still the best thing I’d ever had. She laughed at my jokes, liked my geeky side, and all those class differences? Hana never cared. Or maybe she was constitutionally unable to care. Heck, after her cryo-sleep and slip through time, I might have been older than her at that moment, too.

I thought of a comment she’d made weeks ago when I’d told her not to worry about food, that I’d manage that. She’d replied, “Just what you never wanted.”

She could never tell when I was lying. Maybe I hadn’t realized I was lying back on our Earth when I told her what a burden she was.

“The thing of it is …” I swallowed. Our backward, unconventional relationship worked. And I loved her. “I always liked taking care of you.” And that, too.

For a moment, her fingers slid closer. But then she stopped, fingers just at the edge of my palm. I froze, prepared for what she would say next. How I’d been an ass. How I said we never would have worked out. How we weren’t suited for each other. All of which I deserved and should face like a man.

Hana sucked in a breath. “I’m not …”

My muscles tensed, prepared for the onslaught.

“... on birth control,” Hana said.

I was glad the only light in the pod came from behind me, and she couldn’t read my expression, because I probably made a face like an idiot. “What?” Not eloquent, or cool, but all female astronauts were on birth control of some sort or another. When it came to fraternization, our missions were less like the navy, where it is verboten, and more like cruise ships where it is encouraged. It was deemed more practical, long term.

“The hormones in the implant were impairing my thinking. So Ameyo, Dr. Adadevoh, took it out before cryo-sleep. When I woke up …” She shrugged.

When she woke up, she was going to die alone while the male astronauts who could get her pregnant safely slept. Irrational anger on her behalf swept over me. How could they all abandon her?

And then a thought cracked through my rage.

She wasn’t saying no.

“Would a goodnight kiss be acceptable?” I suggested.

“Yes,” Hana whispered, and I could hear her smile in the word.

It was ridiculous that I was as happy as I was when I leaned in.

18 JOHN

The next morning, we were ready to move on to repairs proper.

Hana was smiling more.

I was feeling optimistic, but then, I’m usually optimistic.

The only thing off was Purr. He was moody. The scroll’s piano app and even the Raisin Wich Hana pulled out didn’t bring him the usual transcendent joy. Maybe he was getting used to such wonders, or maybe he was just frustrated, because he was not as mobile as he should have been. His illness was still lingering—or maybe it wasn’t—and he was just depressed. Guy just lost his whole family and had been plunked down in a new family that was strange, didn’t speak his language, and wouldn’t let him in the pod while its fascinating electric guts were exposed.

The kid liked wires and electricity. We had ourselves a pint-sized engineer.

He took his usual afternoon nap outside the pod but twisted and turned fitfully on the fur.

In the afternoon, with Hana safe in the pod, I took him with me to get firewood. Carrying the purloined stone ax and my boomstick, I set Purr on my shoulders. We headed downstream, partially just because I wanted to explore that way a little more. We passed a gray willow, and I took careful note of it, remembering my mom’s foraging lessons—by “my mom,” I mean “stepmom.” My biological mom couldn’t forage for much more than her next hit. Gray willow is a cold weather adapted member of the willow family that only grows to five or seven meters. Like all members of the willow family, gray willow bark contains compounds similar to aspirin and is a natural fever reducer, pain reliever, and anti-inflammatory.

A few yards past that I found a tree, felled by lightning, stump charred, trunk dry and crumbling. Finding a boulder for Purr to sit and supervise from, I set about breaking the log into pieces where I could and chopping it where I had to. The ax blade was thicker than steel, and the blade had almost a 90-degree angle. It bounced when it hit the wood and didn’t get stuck, but it didn't dive as deep, either.

Turning to Purr, I said, “I miss steel.”

He wasn’t there.

My heart stopped and then sped up. Spinning in place, feeling like I’d lost a few days of my life—how did parents do this?—I spied him sitting not far away, leaning against a tree, staring wistfully up the mountain slope. The short walk had left his face damp with sweat and plastered his bangs to his forehead.

I approached, undergrowth crunching under my boots.

Rubbing his armpit, he looked at the ground.

Sitting on my heels, I said, “Hey, buddy, you gave me a scare.”

His brow furrowed. He frowned and pointed up the mountain to the cave. “Gega geh lin.”

I translated that as, “I have to go home.”

My shoulders fell. Maybe there was something he was missing. Maybe he just needed a little more closure. Maybe tomorrow I could take him there. It would be okay. Hana was working in the pod. It was sheltered enough that it didn't get too hot, even with the hatch almost closed.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said, and rubbed his head. Did he feel slightly warm?

I pointed to the pod and repeated his words. “Gega geh lin.”

He stared at me and almost smiled. His eyes looked red. “Hana. John. Lin.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Hana. John. Purr. Home.”

Only it was not our home. Our home was hundreds of thousands of years away.

“Hana. John. Purr. Home,” Purr said, as somber as a five or seven or eight-year-old or whatever he could be.

My heart swelled. Home was people, not a place. He was a hunter-gatherer. He knew that better than most. “Yeah. Gega geh lin,” I said.

When we left, he looked up the mountain.

* * *

“Does he feel warm to you?” I asked Hana as I cooked the nightly soup.

She was sitting cross-legged on the bear fur, a skin thrown over her shoulders. Purr’s head was resting on her lap. Rubbing his chest, he watched me without commenting on me cooking, although I caught him scowling. He had never lay on her lap like that. Maybe he was more comfortable with us, or maybe he needed comforting a little more that night.

She put a hand through his hair. “No. A little sweaty. I thought you took his temperature earlier?”

“It’s normal. He just seems off today.” I frowned. In the firelight, his skin appeared exceptionally pale, his lips almost blue. God, was this what parenting was? All the worry?

Hana smoothed down his hair. “He might miss his family.”

“Yeah, I thought that, too.”

Rubbing his shoulder, gaze on the fire, Purr said, “Thank you, Hana John.”

I summoned up a smile for him. “Aww … you’re …”

I gazed into his eyes. They weren’t blinking.

“Purr?” I said. I dropped the stick I was using to prod the logs. Sparks flew. One landed on his wrist, and he didn’t even flinch.

“Purr!” I shouted, dropping the night’s dinner and reliving the moment hours ago when I’d found him gone.

Hana turned his body over so he was lying on his back, eyes on the sky. “He’s not breathing!” she said.

“CPR!” I ordered.

We tried to bring him back past when the stars rose.

19 JOHN

The sky was bright and clear.

Placing a river stone atop Purr’s small, shallow grave, my vision blurred.

Hana placed a last stone of her own, hair whipping in the breeze. Backing up, she stood a few feet to the side of me, her shoulders hunched.

We’d washed his body the night before and slept with him between us. It was too cold for decay to set in, but he didn’t smell alive: no scent of sweat or child, just a faint, sweet odor. I think we hoped we were wrong, that he’d wake up. We only had our ears and fingertips to search for signs of life. You hear stories about people being buried alive before the advent of stethoscopes. But his body was stiff by dawn.

We dressed Purr in the clothing we’d brought from his little corner of the cave, dug a shallow grave, and placed wildflowers on his body before we slowly covered him with dirt, and then the stones.

His grave was so small.

Hana shuddered, and I put my arm around her shoulders. She stiffened at my touch, and I almost pulled away, but then she said, “I thought of him as our child,” and there was something confessional about her tone that caught me off guard, but then I remembered Hana didn’t trust her emotions—probably a good trait in a scientist, but isolating as a human.

“I did, too,” I said.

And then she melted into me, pressing her face against my chest and sobbing.

“We killed him,” she said.

“A virus or bacteria did,” I said. Many infections increase the risk of heart attack in the weeks following the illness. Remembering him rubbing his chest, armpit, and shoulder and his blue lips, I was almost positive it was a heart attack that killed him. He’d probably been in pain all day long without a way to tell us.

“We carried it,” Hana blurted.

“Probably.” The Neanderthals could have picked up a disease from somewhere else, someone else, or something else before we encountered them … but it had probably been us. They’d doomed themselves when they attacked Hana and got close enough and violent enough for her to fight, for her to breathe hard and spew invisible droplets of saliva on them.

She trembled against me.

And I made a confession of my own. “There was a willow tree down the river. If I’d only recognized him rubbing his armpit for what it was, if I’d brewed it into tea and forced it down his throat, it could have saved him.”

She pulled back and looked up at me through eyes wet and red with tears.

“It is like aspirin,” I said. It might have worked the way the aspirin works during heart attacks to thin the blood.

She shook her head. “You couldn’t have known. Children rarely have heart attacks. We both missed the signs. He was sick.”

The stones atop the grave looked cold, despite the warm sunshine. We were both blaming ourselves for something we couldn’t help. I remembered when we found him, and I almost choked, the dark irony of it all hitting me. “If he hadn’t been sick, he would have eaten us.” If he hadn’t sneezed, we wouldn’t have realized something was amiss. I would have walked into the snare, and Hana would have been pulverized by a log. Hell, our little engineer may have set up the traps himself.

In my arms Hana went still, and then her body shuddered, and she half sobbed, half laughed. “Our little cannibal.”

I choked too, because he was. Still, I loved the little guy.

20 JOHN

In the following week, with Purr gone, we worked faster, but with less joy.

It might have been the lack of distractions.

It might have been the pressure of knowing a cold could kill us—or a toothache.

I didn’t feel that interested in sex. I mean, if Hana had offered, I’d have been up for it—ha, ha—but I felt numb. I don’t know if there was anything I could have done. Willow bark isn’t aspirin and might not have been enough to keep him going until we got back to real medical care.

Still. I felt like I had failed. Another team member I let down. And yes, I knew that was illogical. But feelings are alarm systems, not built for diagnostic or repair purposes. So, what did I learn from my alarm? Was it a reminder that this world was dangerous and would kill us?

I thought that in the early morning, as dawn’s light was just cracking through the hatch. Hana was awake, her breathing not deep enough for sleep, her head on my shoulder. We were physically closer than any time since my arrival, and the distance between us was still vast.

I knew she was thinking about Purr, though.

Sure enough, she whispered like a prayer, “There was nothing we could have done.”

“No,” I replied, gazing up at the slats of sunlight illuminating the pod.

And then the perimeter alarm went off.

We were both up in seconds. Hana went to the interface, and I had my rifle in my hand.

“Whatever they are, they are big,” she said, eyes widening. “Or there are a lot of them.”

“Where?” I asked. If it was a tribe of Neanderthals about to send a spear at our water wheel or generator, or God forbid, our battery, we were in trouble.

“Across the river,” she answered just as I threw the skin away from the hatch. A scent I associated with sheep wafted on the breeze.

I pulled myself up, and my jaw dropped.

“John, who—what is it?” Hana whispered.

I couldn’t make my mouth work. I climbed out of the pod and whispered back, “Come see.”

A moment later, Hana was standing beside me in the chilly mountain air. “Oh,” she whispered.

Oh.

Grazing on the recent growth in the clearing across the river were mammoths. All had tusks, even the babies—although theirs just poked out of their mouths. The tusks of one adult were at least fourteen feet long, twisted in impossible corkscrews. I’d thought that the Neanderthals had created the clearing to attract game, but watching the mammoths, I wondered if they’d created it. They plowed through the spring growth indiscriminately, ripping saplings from the ground along with grasses.

“Do they see us?” Hana asked.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. Their ears—small and furry, not like an elephant’s—lifted and flapped, but none turned in our direction. Didn’t elephants have an acute sense of smell? They probably smelled us but didn’t care. Why should they? They could flatten us. I didn’t have an elephant standing nearby for comparison, but I suspected they were at least as large as an African elephant but shaped differently. Their backs sloped toward their hind limbs, and they had a hump above their shoulders. They were so large my bullets wouldn’t kill them before they killed us.

I wiped my face with my hand. I was supposed to go to Hana’s pod for another parts pickup.

“Will fire keep them away?” Hana asked.

“Probably,” I said. I still didn’t like leaving her while they were there. In our time, elephants were deadly. Westerners had an idealized vision of them as “gentle giants,” but farmers who lived near elephant habitats knew otherwise. Herds would rampage through villages and were smart enough to take down electric fencing. African elephants killed about 500 humans a year, while their smaller, Asian kin killed an average of 600.

“I can manage the fire while you’re away,” Hana said.

I stared at the mammoths grazing in the morning sunlight. Some of them were shedding large clumps of fur. Here and there, tufts caught in the grass.

“John, if the fire doesn’t keep them away, we have bigger problems,” Hana said.

Which was true. “I don’t like leaving you alone.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. But I couldn’t make myself budge.

“We need the supplies from my pod,” she reminded me.

My shoulders fell. We did. And if I took her, and there was no one there to maintain the fire, we’d have to take apart the water wheel, turn off the generator, and stow those and the battery away, which would slow down repairs. We were welding and soldering, both energy intensive and draining power so fast we’d discussed making a second water wheel and generator.

“I’ll go,” I growled. I turned to her. “But—”

“I’ll hide in the pod if anything seems threatening,” she said. “I won’t try to scare away a mammoth with WD-40 and a lighter.” She sighed. “And I promise to call if they head this way.” One of the first things we’d fixed was the transmitter. The pod could act as a hotspot for our scrolls.

I nodded. I didn’t move. “For the record, I hate it.”

She smiled, just a little. “For the record, I know.”

Words like that aren’t supposed to make you lust for someone with the intensity that swept through me then. But they did, though I didn’t act on them. A mammoth trumpeted, reminding me of what my alarm system was telling me earlier.

The mountains would kill us.

I prepared to go to Hana’s pod.

* * *

Sexual frustration, grief, determination, and hyper awareness were churning through me as I left the protection of the proximity alert and headed up the slope. I had moose soup in a stomach bag for lunch, my canteen, and tools I'd need to disassemble the parts we required. And I had my rifle in my hands.

I was not even halfway there when a rustle in the undergrowth had me shifting fast behind a tree, dropping to one knee, and raising the boomstick. A wolf cub’s head popped out from the spring plants. At least, I was reasonably sure it was a wolf cub. He was gray, but he had a spot of black on his chin and creamier colored fur on his chest and belly. Foxes are gray when they’re cubs, though, too. There were probably foxes in the mountains, or their ancestors, but this critter was almost as tall as a fox, despite his downy cub-like coat and disproportionately large ears. He took a wobbly step toward me, and I glimpsed front paws way too big for its body.

Definitely a cub. Probably a wolf. Shit.

Wolf cub meant mamma and papa wolf. Getting in between a large predator and its young was a stupid idea on any continent at any time in history. Going into high alert, I scanned the surrounding forest, but saw no sign of its parents. The undergrowth crunched and swayed, and I dropped my gaze. The cub was approaching me on wobbly legs, nose lifted.

“Shoo!” I said, stamping a foot in its direction.

It backed up, fell on its haunches, and looked up at me with a trembling, whiskered snout. Its eyes were big and puppyish, and its snout was huge and tipped with an enormous, wet, black nose.

“Get!” I hissed.

It didn't move, just sat there sniffing the air, probably smelling my moose soup. It was scrawny and could use some moose, but I shook my head. It was a tough world. Giving it a bite of soup, making it think hominids were its friend, would be the worst thing I could do for it.

I surveyed the forest once more and didn’t see its parents. I had a job to do. I left the cub behind.

* * *

A few hours later, I was returning to the pod. Anxious to return and be there for Hana in the event something had gone south, I was traveling a lot faster than I had when I’d left. No wolf cub on the trail, or its parents. Thank God.

I was close, but still out of sight, when I heard Hana’s voice. “So hungry, Haiiro-chan!”

My heart lifted at how cheerful she sounded. All was well. And then my brain put the words together. “Chan” is a suffix in Japanese, used to show endearment. Who the hell was Haiiro? I burst through the trees to find Hana kneeling close to the wolf cub.

“What are you doing?” I shouted, dropping the supplies I’d brought.

Hana blinked up at me.

The cub, eating from one of the old SMRE containers, adjusted its body so it could face me, but kept eating Hana’s portion of the moose soup.

I forced my volume down a notch. “Its parents could come looking for it at any moment.”

“The perimeter alarm will sound if they do,” Hana said, holding up the WD-40. “And wolves are afraid of this, remember?”

“Maybe not when a cub is on the line,” I said.

“But he’s hurt,” Hana said.

“That doesn’t make any difference!” I snapped, not sure what she was talking about.

“He’s so hungry,” Hana replied, putting a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t flinch, just continued gorging.

I wiped a hand down my face. I stopped shaving a few days ago, and my chin itched. Studying the little guy, I tried to decide if it was the same cub I saw earlier. I thought so. There was the same spot of black on his chin and creamy chest.

“You told me onions and garlic are toxic to bears, dogs, and cats, so I took them out of the soup,” Hana said, as though she hadn’t just invited an apex predator to lunch. Scratching his downy fur, she gazed at the little guy, her expression a weird combination of hope and sadness.

Sighing, I hauled the gear over to her. “Honey … he’s a wolf. They eat humans.” I saw what she meant by “hurt” then. The cub had a deformed hind leg, twisted and smaller than the other hind limb. It didn’t look like an injury, more like something he was born with. Did he get lost during a hunting expedition with his family? Did they reject him?

“Neanderthals eat people,” she said.

“The difference between wolves and dogs might be greater than the difference between Neanderthals and humans,” I said.

She gave me a skeptical look.

My eyes dropped to the pup—no, cub, I reminded myself. It was tolerating Hana’s fingers sliding through its downy fur.

I sighed. “There was a wolf dog rescue near our place in Wisconsin. We were on good terms with the people who ran it.”

“Wolf dog rescue?” she asked.

I winced. “People want wolves or wolf dogs as pets to be special and different. They keep them in apartments or postage-stamp-sized backyards, and then give them up when they destroy every piece of furniture in the house or climb the ten-foot chain-link fence or dig their way out.” I put my hand out to pet the creature, and it sidled away, eyes on me, a low growl in its throat.

I huffed and put my hand through my hair. It was getting longer. “Or they can’t keep up with their nutritional requirements. They need meat, real meat, and they need to eat fur and bones.”

“We’ve got plenty of meat here,” Hana said. “And fur and bones.”

“There won’t be enough on the space station,” I replied.

“We may never get back to the space station,” Hana retorted with surprising ferocity.

Uh-oh. She couldn’t doubt herself. “I have faith in you and so did Lo.” He’d understood her math. My stomach felt queasy. He’d understood her math, but had said, “Of course, she never made it to Earth, so we’re missing something.”

Hana shook her head. “We’re not supposed to be here. Lo and I both missed something, something huge,” she said, echoing Lo too closely.

“We’ll make it back,” I replied, to her, to myself, to the universe. The prototype made it back—or close enough.

Hana poured a little more soup into the SMRE container, and the wolf cub lunged for it. She slipped her fingers back into his fur, and her face relaxed.

“He’s too old to tame,” I said, recalling my neighbor's words: “Wolf cubs are tamable for about the first four weeks. Dogs are tamable up to about sixteen weeks.”

Hana slipped her hand between the cub’s ears. He didn’t growl; he just licked the container more aggressively.

“He’ll probably go back to his pack,” I warned her.

“If he does, will he die?” she asked, eyes sliding to his bum leg.

I had no idea. My mind skipped to more important matters. “We can’t tie him up like a dog,” I said. “We don’t have a chain. He’ll chew through any sort of leather leash we create for him, and it wouldn’t be ethical. Wolves travel up to thirty miles a day. It would drive him crazy.”

Hana gulped. But nodded.

I sighed. “He’s not a dog, Hana. We’ll never be able to treat him like one. Any sort of negative reinforcement will backfire, and he’s going to be too smart to just sit on the sidelines. But he also won’t be like a border collie that you can train to do a job different from what it was designed for. He’s not going to be content playing Frisbee.”

According to my neighbor, plenty of people had tried to train wolves. The South Africans, among others, had tried to use them as police dogs and failed. Wolves have the tracking abilities of bloodhounds, can handle long treks, and have about twice the bite power of a dog—appealing characteristics to some. But wolves only do what they want to do.

“No one has ever trained them for the job they were designed for?” Hana asked.

“N—” I caught myself. “My neighbor did say there were some accounts of people training them to hunt with them.” I sighed. “Although ‘training’ might not be the right word. ‘Had an arrangement’ or ‘an understanding’ is probably more like it.”

Hana perked up. “You like hunting. You can come to an arrangement.”

I stared at her. She stared at the cub.

Trying to back up, it fell down on its butt, and then looked between us.

“You don’t really want to chase him away,” Hana said.

If I thought I could chase him away without Hana being upset, would I? He might not live long if I did. Even if he made it back to his pack, could he survive in the wild with only three legs? Studying him longer, I made out the sharp angles of hip and shoulder bones. He didn’t have the fat roly-poly belly that healthy puppies have. Maybe he didn’t have a pack to return to. Wolf packs go to war with one another and will kill and eat their own.

“He’s so cute,” Hana said. “Aren’t you, Haiiro-chan?”

Gazing at her, Haiiro-chan licked his lips.

“Awww …” said Hana, smiling like I hadn’t seen in days.

I stared helplessly at the cub.

I’d just become a wolf dad.

* * *

We slept outside that night. Not because of Haiiro-chan, though I would have been afraid to pick him up and put him in the pod. He was still skittish and might have bitten. We slept outside because the interior of the pod was a mess of rearranged panels, equipment, and cables.

I woke up before dawn to a new sound in the cacophony of birds—I was pretty sure it was frogs, even if it didn’t sound like any frog I was familiar with, and even though there was still snow pack around. I didn’t dwell long on the mystery noise—whatever it was sounded too small to eat me—instead, I thought of all the loose cables in the pod and the damage little wolf’s teeth could do to them. Of course, the entrance was high above the ground, and we’d shut it, but wolves can open cabinets and work themselves out of all sorts of confinement situations. Some need thirteen-foot enclosures with guards in the ground to prevent them from climbing or digging out. And we hadn’t moved the toolbox steps or tried to confine Haiiro-chan. Propping myself up on my elbows, I blinked in the dim light, scanning the clearing for the little fluff ball. A shuffle and shift of shadow drew my attention to Hana’s feet.

Haiiro-chan gazed up at me, eyes glowing faintly in the dimness.

Beside me, Hana said sleepily, “Don’t worry, Haiiro slept next to me. He’s fine.” One of her hands slipped up to my chest.

I was worried about the cables, but I didn’t disabuse her of the notion I was worried about the cub.

Her hand dropped to my stomach, and I wasn’t thinking about wolf cubs anymore.

“Thank you for letting him stay,” she said.

Catching her hand in mine, I slipped back down into the furs.

She leaned toward me and kissed my cheek.

“It is too early to get up,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

Her leg slid over mine. And yeah, we couldn’t have sex, but there were a lot of other things we could do that are a lot better than having a go at it alone.

Thank you, Haiiro-chan.

21 JOHN

About ten days after he joined us, Haiiro and I were heading downriver along the same path I’d used with Purr. It was just after dawn. The wind was gusting down the mountains, still covered in snow, and it was cold—just above freezing—despite the season. I had a hide wrapped around my shoulders.

On our side of the river, there were lots of trees, but the clearing continued on the other side. Was it a big ol’ mammoth trail? Our side was rockier and steeper. Maybe it was too treacherous for them, or not worth the effort?

We saw a group of them, and some new critters: giant buffalo things, their breath rising in clouds in the chill. I was so sick of moose; I was tempted to shoot one, but the logistics of hauling it back to the pod would be a bitch. Most of it would wind up going to scavengers. We also didn’t need it. Repairs were going well. We’d be gone before summer’s end, and we had more than enough food for two people and a hungry wolf cub.

Haiiro and I approached the willow tree. It put a lump in my throat to see it. In the past days, I had come to a greater understanding of why people got fur children. Haiiro was cute, but a lot less trouble than Purr—he didn’t get as easily bored.

But Purr was still a gaping hole in Hana’s and my hearts—maybe partially because he was more difficult. We’d had to invest more in him.

Haiiro wasn’t the same. Purr was … human. I’d been prepared to fight for him on our return—and envisioned a future for him, one in which he found meaning and purpose. He was clearly capable of rational thinking and electronic tinkering.

Haiiro probably wouldn’t be as “easy” to care for if we were in a twenty-second century environment. In the mountains, we let him roam freely. He was often out of view. We worried about him, but it would have been wrong to confine him. He chased everything and killed lots of things: baby hares he found in dens, ground dwelling chicks, even a fish he herded into the shallows of the river one day. In Chicago, it would be unethical not to confine him. I’m sure neighborhood cats would be on his menu, and he’d chase kids, too.

He wasn’t a dog. He howled—just a sort of whine in the evenings, but I could hear a bit of the apex predator he would become. More than that, he had an attitude. He liked us, appreciated the food we shared and the furs he slept in, but he didn’t look up at us with puppy-like adoration. When he was nearby, I felt like he was studying and judging us in a way that was almost cat-like.

On the one hand, it was disconcerting. On the other hand, he was still a cub, but he understood more words and hand signals than I’d expect from a puppy. Not going to say he took commands, but he took suggestions—when properly motivated.

We passed an indentation in the undergrowth, left from the fallen tree I’d mined for firewood, and I felt a lump rise in my throat again.

Haiiro trotted right past it, and his nose dropped to the ground. He began sweeping it back and forth near the bottom of some bushes.

I clucked my tongue for his attention. He stopped, cocked his head as though considering whether his valuable attention was worth giving to me, and then bounced over, for a moment, almost a puppy.

I slipped him a piece of smoked moose from my belt and held up a hand with my palm toward him, our sign for “stay.” He remained still, but his eyes tracked me as I crept around the bushes.

Hana and I had gone through my scroll, looking for anything we could find on domesticating wolves from my mega-download. We didn’t find any specific books, but we did find an encyclopedia entry. They still made encyclopedias, go figure, handy for space explorers and time travelers without instant access to the internet. The entry on wolves had a few brief paragraphs on efforts at domestication. Hand signals were supposed to work better than verbal commands.

I got to a place that I thought would work best for what I had in mind. Reaching around, I skipped my rifle and pulled out a bow and arrow. I had made both from a piece of green ash that was just perfect for the job. Why did I do this? The welder had been charging, and I’d been bored.

Haiiro shuffled, at the limit of his patience. I tossed him another moose bite. He caught it midair, landed with his front paws apart, and glared up at me. The stance and glare put words into my mind. “Hurry and make this worth it, human.”

Nocking an arrow and raising the bow, I flicked the index finger of the hand on the grip forward. It was the signal we came up with for “go,” and I wasn’t sure if he’d catch it with my hand in this position.

Haiiro saw it and understood, or he didn’t want to wait anymore, because he took off into the bush in a flash. Birds cooed and streaked into the air in exactly the direction I’d expected. I shot and missed, but the arrow streaking through the air made a bird change course, and Haiiro leaped up and caught it. He growled and shook it, sending feathers falling like snow.

Re-nocking my bow, I followed another bird with my eyes. I took a breath, aimed … and impossibly, I hit it. Whooping in surprise and triumph, I trotted over to retrieve it and my arrow, and found what looked like a sort of grouse. It was spring, near as I could tell, which might mean … Stowing my bow and arrow and grabbing it by the neck, I went back to the bushes, got down on my belly, and crawled on my elbows. Ah, yes. Eggs. Five of them. Whistling happily, I collected them all. I was so tired of moose. So, so tired of moose. In the environment I was in, I knew I should just be grateful to have something to eat, and yet …

It occurred to me I didn’t hear Haiiro growling anymore. Nor were feathers still flying, but I didn’t hear the sounds of enthusiastic tendon ripping, bone snapping, or canine jowl smacking, either.

I hastily pulled myself and my eggs out of the bush, picked up the grouse, and stowed it all in the Neanderthal bag I had at my waist.

Haiiro was standing with his grouse-thing at his feet, his nose lifted, sniffing the air. His ears flicked this way and that, and he trotted forward, grouse forgotten.

He was not acting fearful. I’d seen Haiiro’s fear when some big cat-thing roared one night. Because he wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t.

I was perplexed. “You’re leaving your bird behind?”

That was not like him. If anything, he got growly when he was eating something he’d caught—or eating anything. I could say with some confidence he would bite the hand that fed him.

He took another step, nose still high. I picked up his bird, and he didn’t even blink. He trotted a few steps back the way we came, his ears forward, the fur on the back of his neck rising and his tail fluffing out. And then he took off in a gray blur, growling and sending a shower of spittle behind him.

Swinging my rifle around, I took off after him. He had three legs, and he was a cub, but I could barely keep up.

And then I heard Hana scream, “John!”

My feet moved faster. So did Haiiro’s. He disappeared from sight in an instant, and it was me alone in the woods with my heartbeat and breathing loud in my ears.

Haiiro barked and growled somewhere ahead of me, and Hana shouted, “Stay away from me!”

22 JOHN

I crashed into the clearing to find Haiiro between Hana and a girl. The girl had long, dark brown hair, big green eyes, light brown skin, and she was a human, Homo sapiens sapiens. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Clutching something to her chest, she looked at Haiiro with wide, frightened eyes. She didn’t appear to be a threat, but Hana had screamed and—

A man came out of the trees, spear raised. He was a Neanderthal and could have been Purr’s father: short, red-haired, thick-browed, and broad chested. With a curled lip and furrows between his thick brows, he was also visibly pissed. So was I. If he took a step closer, I would shoot him.

Another man coughed and appeared from around the pod. He raised his hands, palms out, and said something to me or to everyone—I couldn’t tell. He looked frightened more than angry. Like the girl, he was green eyed, brown-haired, with a medium skin tone, and human. The Neanderthal snarled something at him but kept his spear tip pointed in my direction.

Still holding his hands up, palms out, the human man sidled over to the Neanderthal, put his hand on the spear, and pushed it down. He said something to the Neanderthal, who barked back at him. The human man’s chest rose and fell, and he spoke to me.

I stared at him. With him standing next to his Neanderthal friend—I was going with “friend,” because the Neanderthal wasn’t killing him, although he was clearly annoyed—I could see the differences between our two species. The human man was as tall as I was, maybe a little taller. I’d say the guy had more pronounced features than me, but his heavy brow and jaw were nothing compared to the Neanderthal. Overall, his appearance was more delicate, despite having a respectable beard. The Neanderthals beard was sparse and short. They both wore their long hair pulled back from their foreheads, and that’s where the real difference was. The human man’s forehead was noticeably higher than the Neanderthal’s.

The human man repeated the words he said before more slowly.

I blinked.

He spoke in a different language—I could tell by the change in rhythm.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand you.”

His lips pursed. I noted that although their garments were like Purr’s family’s—leather tunics over leather trousers—they were subtly different. Before I could place exactly what it was, the human tried a third language.

I shook my head again.

He took a deep breath, pointed up the mountain toward the cave, and said, something-something lin.

I’d been holding my rifle up, but at that word, it sagged. Lin. I translated that word as “home.”

He smiled, and at that moment, a raven dropped out of the sky and landed on his head.

His smile broadened, and he gazed up at it for a moment, but then his eyes quickly returned to me.

The Neanderthal standing next to him glared at the bird and shifted his spear. The bird laughed at him, and the Neanderthal’s face went red. Muttering something under his breath, the Neanderthal turned around and stomped off to the edge of the clearing. The girl said something to him in a reassuring tone and put a hand on his shoulder as he passed. Shrugging away, he grunted without looking at her.

Haiiro’s growls subsided. Kneeling beside the cub, Hana said, “John, they will get sick. We might kill them, too.”

That was why she was afraid. I hadn’t put that together, but she was right.

The guy with the crow on his head took a step closer, which was mighty brave considering I was holding a rifle, but of course, he didn’t know what a rifle was. Closer, I could see the leathery look of his skin and deep grooves around his eyes and mouth, yet his teeth were bright white. Despite the laugh lines, I suspected he wasn’t much older than I was—he’d just been out in the sun his whole life. He pointed at his stomach, the Neanderthal, and the girl, and up to the cave. “Lin.”

I took a step back and gestured at the pod. “Lin.”

He sort of nodded. Touching the region of his navel—he was wearing a buckskin tunic—a lot like the Neanderthals had worn—a short fur cape over that, and shoes that were proper moccasins. “Nahbey,” he said. He gestured at the girl. “Halla.” Standing close to the Neanderthal, eyes on me, the girl rocked slightly toward us. Nahbey gestured at the Neanderthal. “Rock.” The Neanderthal grunted.

My lips quirked. I’m sure it was a coincidence, but Rock fit his namesake.

The raven on Nahbey’s head squawked. Laughing, Nahbey pointed at it. “Squawk,” he said.

From the trees, there was an answering rawk, and the crow leapt into the sky. Something like sadness flickered across Nahbey’s face as he followed the bird with his eyes.

I pointed at my navel and introduced myself, and then Hana and Haiiro.

Nahbey’s whole body rocked, and he repeated our names. He lifted both his hands, palms up, and rocked forward again with his whole body.

I rocked my body the way Nahbey and Halla had done.

Rock snorted.

Nahbey’s eyes slid to Rock, and the human sighed. Nahbey gestured to Halla and Rock, rocked once in my and then Hana’s direction, and then headed toward the cave. Rock and Halla followed him, Halla rocking toward us before leaving.

When they were gone, I walked over to Hana. Sitting on the ground, she had her arms wrapped around Haiiro, one hand balled into a fist. She looked miserable.

I blinked at their retreating forms. “Their clothing is different …” I still couldn’t put my finger on why.

Hana said, “It’s fitted and has geometric patterns at the hems. Also, the girl wore a knitted garment beneath her tunic. Or nalbinded garment; it’s the forerunner of knitting. Neither is supposed to have been invented for tens of thousands of years. And Halla wore a necklace with shells on it. The Neanderthals didn’t wear any jewelry.”

I’d missed all of that.

It made sense that Hana didn’t. Her mother was—would be in the future—a preeminent researcher in textile production in Japan. It was part of how Hana’s mother wound up on the Europa mission. It’s not something you think about a lot, but clothing breaks down, and a permanent colony needs an efficient means of recycling materials to create new duds.

Dropping to my heels, I put my arm around her and focused on what was most relevant. “Well, they seemed friendly.”

Trembling beneath my arm, Hana began speaking fast, in a tone that sounded like a confession. “The proximity alarm went off, and I got the WD-40 and the lighter ready, but she was so young, and she was smiling, and I didn’t want to burn her. I lit the lighter, but she just seemed to find it interesting, not scary. I didn’t even see the other two. The proximity alarm was already going off, and she was getting so close and—”

“Hey, it is all right.” I kissed her head. “They didn’t get that close.”

Hana’s head bowed. “No, Halla did. She pressed this into my hand just before Haiiro arrived.”

She opened her fist. In her palm was a single, shiny shell.

* * *

An hour later, I was scowling and stripping feathers from a grouse with a little too much force. Nahbey and his crew weren’t really friendly. Sure, they didn’t touch our water wheel or the battery, but that was probably just because they didn’t understand their worth. They used a woman to approach Hana. Oldest trick in the book, using a woman to mask nefarious intentions. Male operators of brothels used that trick to get new recruits. They’d expected Hana to let down her guard, and when she had, they would have abducted her, and worse.

Haiiro, gnawing on an unrecognizable piece of grouse, lifted his head and growled.

Pointing my knife at him, I said, “You said it.”

And then a call came from upriver. “John!” I looked up to see Nahbey standing on a boulder. He was holding a spear like a walking staff and inclined his body in my direction. Turning, he whistled downstream and across the river. More whistles answered from that direction. The mammoths and the oxen creature that I’d become accustomed to in that area trumpeted and rumbled. The oxen gathered in groups on the far side of the clearing.

Haiiro slunk to the river’s edge and growled, nose pointed downstream.

People emerged from the low bushes and high grasses along the river’s edge on the opposite bank: men, women, and children, in single file with packs made of skins and basket-like fibers. Little kids, with miniature packs of their own, darted around the adults. Their skin tones ranged from very dark to medium tan, their hair from black to light brown streaked with blonde.

Hana poked her head out of the pod. “John, the proximity detector—”

“Hana!” shouted Nahbey, and he did that thing where he leaned his whole body forward, almost like a bow. A form of acknowledgement, I was pretty sure.

Climbing out of the pod, Hana came over to me, WD-40 in one hand and lighter in the other. “They’re human, aren’t they?” she whispered.

“Yes,” I said. They might have had heavier features than twenty-secondth century Africans, Europeans, or Asians, but compared to Neanderthals, they were almost fae. Hana and I must have appeared impossibly delicate to them. Easy to beat up. They were tall, not like medieval peasants that I always read hovered around five and a half feet. They wore hide tunics over trousers and moccasins. Every cavemen depiction I’d ever seen showed early hunter-gatherers draped in simple fur capes, but that would only work in places where exposed skin would never encounter frostbite.

Nahbey raised his free arm and shouted and whistled at the people. When Nahbey finished whistling, some adults did that incline-bow thing in our direction, but quickly resumed walking. There were some shy smiles and giggles from a few girls. Some of the men’s eyes roved over Hana a little too long, and I scowled. I counted fifty adults, but there was no way to count all the kids darting this way and that. It occurred to me that my mistrust of Nahbey was misplaced. If they’d wanted to attack or hurt us, they could have easily. Well, not easily. I could have shot them all, but they didn’t know that. Nahbey, Rock, and Halla had just come by to introduce themselves. Halla approached Hana first to avoid frightening her … they’d been … neighborly.

The kids darted to the water wheel. Heading to the river, I growled, “Leave that alone.” Haiiro added his growl to mine. The kids looked at each other and giggled, but then Nahbey came down the bank and shouted and gestured at the kids, and they took off.

In thanks, I inclined my body the way I’d seen them do. He took that as an invitation to get even closer.

I didn’t want to kill the guy with my germs. Holding up my hands, palms out, I took a step back. Nahbey’s brow furrowed, and he looked hurt.

Haiiro darted between me and Nahbey and growled at him.

Nahbey glanced down, smiled, and laughed. “Haiiro!”

A shadow soared from the trees, and a second later, Squawk perched on Nahbey’s head. Raising his wings, Squawk gave Haiiro what for, and I laughed. “Hiya, Squawk,” I said to the raven, and Nahbey smiled.

“Lin,” he said, gesturing up the mountain.

“Lin,” I said, gesturing to the pod.

He inclined his body.

I inclined mine.

He looked like he wanted to say something, but someone from his tribe shouted his name. He turned, revealing his profile. His forehead was as high as Hana’s or mine, so different from the Neanderthals. The books we read said that the prefrontal cortex hid behind that high arch of bone, and it handled, among other things, impulse control and theory of mind: the ability to understand other people’s intentions and desires. It was essential for a social mammal, and the more social, the larger it had to be. The human tribe was easily fifty adults, plus too many kids to count. The Neanderthal tribe had less than twenty people.

With another incline of his body, Nahbey left.

“Do you know what they want?” Hana asked.

“I think just to let us know they’re taking up residence in the cave,” I said. A much different reception than we got from our Neanderthal neighbors.

Hana whispered. “I hope I didn’t kill them all.”

Me, too.

I put my arm around her and said, “I’m sure the contact was too short. They’ll be fine.”

* * *

Our neighbors sang loud enough that we heard them down the mountain that night. They sounded joyous, not as though they were performing a ritualistic chant. A plume of smoke graced the sky the next morning in the same place the Neanderthal plume used to be.

We didn’t see the people, but we heard a triumphant shout upstream the next morning.

Pausing my welding, I lifted my face shield and said to Hana, “They sound healthy.” I didn’t want her worrying.

Bent over a circuit board with the soldering iron, she paused and smiled. “And happy.”

I smiled, too, and went back to work.

The contact with Hana wasn’t long enough or intense enough. They’d be fine.

23 JOHN

I held up my hand for Haiiro to wait.

He stilled, and I threw him a bit of moose.

We were beside the bushes where we caught the grouse, and I’d collected the eggs. I was hoping we could enact a repeat performance. The welder was charging again, and I was still sick of moose. Edging around the bush, I raised my bow, and—

Haiiro growled and spun away from me. The grouse scattered into the sky.

Instead of charging after them, he slunk to the other side of the bush, and the fur on his back rose. I exchanged my bow for my rifle and kneeled beside him.

Birds and insects called, a mosquito hummed beside my ear, and then an itch bloomed on my neck when it landed. I heard a twig snap and a thud. And then another, and another. Something four legged and large?

The mosquito bit. My eye twitched.

The thing down the trail paused, and I wondered if I should grab Haiiro and climb a tree and wait it out. A charge by one of the bison-things could take me out before a bullet could do its work, but I hadn’t seen bison on this side of the river this far upstream—the tree cover was too dense. Plenty of moose evidence. Although I didn’t think Haiiro would growl at the presence of a moose; he’d just snap to high alert.

The bushes shook at the bend in the trail. I slid closer to a tree, rifle high … and Nahbey and Rock burst through. Nahbey had one arm over Rock’s shoulder, and his face was flushed. Neither of them noticed me.

Lowering my rifle, I rose—and they still didn’t notice me. I felt a sinking feeling in my gut.

Rock set Nahbey down, leaning his friend against a tree, and then sank against the tree beside him, coughing into his hand. No longer in motion, I could see Rock’s face was flushed, too.

I approached them slowly, free hand up, palm out.

Neither noticed me until I said, “Nahbey? Rock?” and then Rock sat bolt upright.

Nahbey half-raised his head and opened one eye. He coughed. “John?” And then he broke into a cough so severe, his head fell to his knees. Rock massaged his friend’s back and whispered something soothing before hacking himself.

I stood there, hopeless. Could I make them sicker if I went closer? Shaking my head, I made an executive decision and unscrewed my canteen lid. I’d boiled its contents the night before and hadn’t drunk from it yet—they’d never drunk anything so germ free. (Had Purr’s first unpurified drink from our canteen done him in? Water had seemed more important at the time.)

I pushed those doubts and recriminations aside. Miming drinking, and sinking to my heels, I held it out to Nahbey. Up close, both were sweating, especially Nahbey, though the day wasn’t particularly warm. Nahbey took the canteen from me, his fingers touching mine. I swallowed. I didn’t think I was imagining them being warm.

Haiiro growled behind me, clearly frustrated I was being friendly.

Rock threw a pebble at Haiiro, but Nahbey laughed at the cub. Tipping back my canteen, Nahbey said a word I decided was thanks and handed it to Rock with a few murmured words. Rock glowered at the canteen but took it. He tipped it back, and then handed it back to me, saying the same word that Nahbey used, but angrily.

And then they both leaned back against the tree, seemingly exhausted from the simple act.

I looked up at the sky. It was late afternoon. I did not want to be away from the pod after dark.

I pointed toward the pod. “Lin.”

Nahbey didn’t respond.

Rock’s head bowed, but he got to his feet, turned to Nahbey, and hauled him up. The Neanderthal draped Nahbey’s arm over his left shoulder. With his other hand, he used his spear as a walking stick.

Palms up and out, switching my rifle to my left hand, I went to Nahbey’s other side and hauled his arm over my shoulder.

Rock lifted an eyebrow, shook his head, and plodded forward.

Haiiro danced at our feet, growling under his breath. Probably about me ignoring his advice on the matter of intruders.

We hadn’t gone ten steps when Haiiro reversed direction, sank to the ground, and began growling and whimpering.

A raven rawked overhead.

Rock turned fast, nearly dropping Nahbey again, except I was there to catch him. I turned more gently, and then saw what had Haiiro’s and Rock’s attention.

It was a big cat, about ten meters away from us, peering through the brush. It might have been fear, or that everything seemed a little bigger in the mountains, but it looked larger and broader than any lion or tiger I had ever seen, despite being low to the ground, its butt wiggling.

My heart sped up, and my mouth went dry. Our barn cats would slink and wiggle like that right before they leaped.

I was not dying as a mouse.

I sprayed bullets at it, single-handedly, left-handedly, like an idiot, my arm jerking with the recoil. I hit grass and sod, sending both into the air. I hit trees, sending splinters of wood shooting in every direction. Alloy foam splattered everywhere in bright orange splashes. Birds cried. Something squeaked, and I might have hit the cat because it made a funny noise, spun around, and vanished.

I stood shaking, Nahbey leaning against my chest, my blood pounding in my ears. Haiiro cowered between my feet.

Rock turned to me and stared, slack jawed.

He closed his eyes, rubbed his temple with his fingers, and mumbled something that I imagine translated to, “I cannot deal with this shit right now,” because he hauled Nahbey’s arm over his shoulder again, and we headed back to the pod.

My scroll pinged faintly in my pocket, and I tapped it to accept the call I knew was coming. “John?” Hana’s disembodied voice asked.

Rock’s head jerked toward it, and his eyes went wide. But then he turned his attention back to putting one foot in front of the other, grumbling something under his breath.

“I’m okay,” I replied.

“Haiiro-chan?” she asked.

At her voice, Haiiro shot off toward the pod like a bolt of fuzzy gray lightning. I’m pretty sure if he didn’t love hunting, he’d never hang out with me.

“He’s fine, too,” I said. “Nahbey and Rock are with me,” I added. “Don’t spray them with WD-40.”

There was a buzz of static. And then Hana asked, “Are they okay?”

I couldn’t bring myself to answer.

We stumbled into the clearing a few minutes later. Hana’s face fell, and I made a needless proclamation. “I think they might be sick. Especially Nahbey.”

Hana quickly rolled out the hide we slept on beneath the spear tent.

I angled Nahbey and Rock toward it. Nahbey keeled over, and Rock sat beside him.

I handed over my canteen. Rock rolled Nahbey over and pressed it to his lips. Nahbey woke up enough to say something, and Rock said some words and our names with surprising gentleness. Nahbey lifted his head a little higher and said, “John, Hana … Haiiro.” He smiled a little and then his head dropped.

Falling to her knees beside Nahbey, Hana put her fingers against his neck. She looked up at me. “He is alive.” She placed a hand on his forehead. “He’s very hot.”

I nodded. “I think Rock is sick, too.”

She looked over at the Neanderthal.

Rock looked so much like the other Neanderthals we met, down to red hair and blue eyes. Fear flashed in her eyes, but she schooled her features quickly.

Rock gestured with his spear up the mountain and said, “Lin.”

He got to his feet stiffly. Like he was a hundred years old.

I went over to help him, and he waved me away, muttering, “Lin, lin, lin,” and staggered across the clearing.

Hana picked up the bag of soup and ran after him. “Wait!” she shouted.

He turned around, and she opened the bag so that the steam curled free. “Please eat,” she said, and added, “Tabete kudasai.”

Rock was feverish. He didn’t want to eat, and I almost said that, but then I caught the way his eyes had fallen on the soup. He leaned closer. Hana gestured to the tent area where Nahbey slept. Rock scratched his ear and meandered that way. A few minutes and some soup later, he was leaning against the toolbox, sound asleep.

“How did you know that would work?” I asked.

“They have a higher metabolism,” Hana said. “It stands to reason they’d be hungrier, too.”

“Oh.” A logical puzzle. Figures she’d solve it.

“I heard gunfire,” she said. “What happened?”

I told her about the incident with the big cat, wondering what the thing was. Its build was lion-like, but I think its coat may have been dappled. It was hunting among the trees, which was leopard-like, but it had been so big—broader in the chest and taller at the shoulder than I expected leopards to be. I stared at the two sleeping, sick cavemen. Their illness had probably smelled like opportunity to the cat.

“We have to take care of them,” Hana said.

“A delay won’t hurt us much. We have enough time and enough food,” I said, a weight settling on my shoulders.

Were we going to watch the tragedy of Purr’s people play out again?

24 JOHN

We managed to take Nahbey’s and Rock’s temperatures.

Nahbey’s was 104 Fahrenheit, 40 Celsius. I was pretty sure that was hot enough to cause brain damage. We tried to get some acetaminophen in him, but he spit out the pill. We crushed it in water, and he spit that out, too. He was completely insensible, and only drank when Rock put something to his lips.

Rock’s temperature was lower. 101.9 Fahrenheit, 37.7 Celsius. I guessed that gave lie to the idea of Neanderthals having a weaker immune system due to inbreeding. That was not a comfort. There were at least fifty human beings in their tribe. How many were infected? How many would die?

Thankfully, Rock didn’t try to leave again. Nahbey woke up a couple times in the night raving like a madman, pouring sweat, even though the late spring, early summer night was cold enough that our breath steamed in front of our faces. Each time Rock spoke to him softly, gave him water, and mopped his forehead and neck with a cool wet cloth until Nahbey fell into troubled sleep again.

I picked up the words for drink and eat during this time—Rock tried to get Nahbey to do both, but Nahbey only took a little water. I also picked up expressions that probably related to their tribe or camp. I heard Rock say our names a lot, and when he did, Nahbey smiled and responded in a way that sounded gently chiding.

Hana and I slept together, tangled in a single enormous fur just outside the tent’s cover.

It rained, because of course it did. A gentle, persistent drizzle that turned the fire to smoldering embers. The interior of the pod was a maze of partially disassembled equipment, and we were forced to squish beside Nahbey and Rock beneath the spear-tent-awning. Something had the proximity alarm and Haiiro going off in the middle of the night. Hana’s WD-40 flamethrower was enough to scare it off, even with the reduced light show in the drizzle. The bolt of flame made Rock’s jaw drop and Haiiro whine, much like my bullets had done.

“How much are we altering history?” Hana asked, huddling beside me after Rock and Nahbey had passed out again.

“Not at all,” I said. “Remember, either this has either already happened or we’ve created a completely alternate reality.”

“I missed the course at uni that taught those things,” Hana replied.

“Is that sarcasm? I thought you told me sarcasm isn’t a Japanese thing,” I said.

“I’m half Jewish, and anyway, I’ve spent many years in the States,” she replied.

I scratched my beard. “There are plenty of legends of Gods throwing lightning and fire,” I replied. “Maybe any tales they tell will work their way into those.”

“Or maybe they are all going to die and legends of this don’t go any further than tonight,” Hana said.

Hana had not complained about the rain. She had not complained about our dwindling supply of soap, or about the river stones we used as toilet paper. She complained less about the food than I did.

Hana wasn’t someone who complained—which sometimes irritated me. My girlfriend made more money than me, was more famous, and she was more stoic.

Other times, times when I was stranded 100,000 years in the past, and all I could provide was game and bitter greens boiled past recognition for meals, and smooth river stones for toilet paper, it was a relief. But that flash of pessimism reminded me she was hurting, too.

“Hey,” I said. “Don’t say that. Their fates aren’t written in stone. They seem healthier than the Neanderthals.” Or at least, the humans looked less inbred.

“Should we go to their camp?” she asked. “Will they need help with water? With food?”

I’d thought about those questions, too. I squeezed her shoulders, said what I hoped was true. “I’m sure they’re not all sick at the same time. They’ll help each other.”

It turned out I was right that not all of them would be sick at once.

They showed up at the crack of dawn.

With spears.

* * *

Our proximity alarm and Haiiro went off, and at first, I thought it was just the moose again. Grabbing my rifle, I rolled onto my stomach, peered through the scope, and there the moose were, upriver, drinking in the low light of dawn. It would have been an easy shot.

But then Hana said, “Something is coming from the mountainside,” and I rose and moved in that direction. Kneeling on the wet ground, rifle on my shoulder, I waited.

Padding quietly to join me, Hana stood just a few steps behind, her WD-40 ready to go. Its range would be diminished in the mist. Haiiro growled and whined at her heels. The shapes that approached were low to the ground, and in the dim light I worried they might be wolves, but just then, I spied the tip of a spear between the trees.

“It is all right,” I said to Hana. “They’re human.”

I stood up, holding my rifle above my head and my other palm out, and said, “Good morning.”

With a whoop, the bearer of the spear emerged from the shelter of the trees and charged me. By the time my brain kicked in and I realized this was not a friend, it was too late to aim. I swung my rifle and knocked his spear to the side, shock rippling through my arms.

The man backed up, his spear cracked and bent in the middle, his lip curling in fury.

Other men emerged from the trees and brush, holding their spears ready to thrust, but they held back. Heart beating fast in my ears, I contemplated spraying the lot of them with bullets. My attacker broke the end of his spear off with his knee and held the blunt end in one hand and the tipped end in the other. He spit to the side.

“I really want to shoot him,” I said to Hana.

“Perhaps we should see if they know Nahbey and Rock,” Hana suggested, which was a Japanese way of saying, “Don’t be a hothead.”

Just then, Rock’s voice cracked behind us, grumpy as ever, and considerably louder.

Looking over my shoulder, my attacker yelled back at him.

Whatever he said pissed Rock off. I heard “Hana” and “John” and a bunch of other words, louder and grumpier.

The other guys in the group lowered their spears. One said, “Nahbey?”

Rock followed that up with a long string of words and imitated the sound of my rifle fire and the big cat perfectly. They looked back and forth between me and Rock and whispered. One guy walked over to my attacker and pushed his hand down. My attacker glared at him, backed up, ran over to Nahbey, and fell to his knees.

Hana whispered in a robotic monotone, “If Angry Guy wasn’t infected before, he is now.”

“Yep,” I said. What could we do? Try to wave them away? They were just about to shish kabob us, and, thinking about it, I understood. It might look like we’d killed Rock and Nahbey … and considering the culinary habits of other inhabitants of the region …

“Maybe they thought we would eat them,” Hana whispered, echoing my thoughts.

“Yep,” I agreed.

Rock said some more words, and the remaining guys leaned in our direction, doing that not-really-a-bow-thing.

Nahbey lifted his head and mumbled. There were body inclines in his direction. Angry-would-be-attacker took Nahbey’s hand and cried. Nahbey’s head dropped back, and his eyes closed.

Angry Guy dropped his hand, wiped his eyes, got up, and tossed his weapons down. Weeping, holding his hands aloft, he approached me.

“What does he want?” Hana asked.

I was pretty sure what was coming and had the urge to run, but where was there to go?

Angry Guy threw his arms around me in a hug and wept into my shoulder.

“Oh.” Hana sighed.

I patted the guy’s back.

I didn’t need to shoot him.

I’d just killed him with my germs.

25 HANA

The hunters crowded beneath the awning John had fashioned of spears and hide, bubblegum, spit, and duct tape. Two of the last three are hyperbole. We had no bubble gum and would never have spared the duct tape for anything not related to the pod. There might have been spit involved.

John sat beside the unconscious Nahbey, who was stretched across the furs. Rock sat on the other side of his friend, one knee bent and an arm wrapped around it, as if using his leg as an anchor to keep from falling over. Purr had sat like that.

Rock’s face was flushed, and his eyes were glassy with fever, even if he wasn’t as sick as Nahbey. It surprised John that Rock appeared to be doing better than Nahbey. I was not surprised, nor unsurprised. Just because humans, or rather, human-Neanderthal hybrids, would out-compete Neanderthals, it didn't mean a particular human-hybrid wouldn’t be more susceptible to illness than a particular Neanderthal.

I also wasn’t certain Nahbey’s extreme fever wasn’t a positive response to the disease.

Researching my brother’s fatal cancer, I’d found incidences of spontaneous remission, almost always triggered by a secondary infection accompanied by high fever. The fevers decimated the infections and the cancer as well. Fever is sometimes a feature of an effective immune system, not a bug. Rock’s relative wellness might have been an insufficient response to whatever disease lay dormant in our bodies, held in check by millennia of evolution and lifetimes of exposure to global pathogens.

I didn’t want to say that aloud, didn’t want to admit that we’d consigned another life to a senseless death. Not even Rock, who looked so much like my attackers he could have been their brother and made me repress the urge to flinch whenever I got close to him.

Rock wasn’t one of my attackers. He was with these humans, and they trusted him. His species was our cousin, and according to the books, more closely related to my Japanese ancestors than to John or my European ones, even if Rock looked more like John, with his pale skin and blue eyes.

We’d only spent perhaps thirty minutes in actual communication with these people, yet John spoke to our guests with his hands as much as with words. John picked up scraps of language like I collected leaves as a small child. I pressed those leaves in pages of a heavy scrapbook, labeled them in Japanese, Latin, and English, and packed them away. John did not pack his collected words away—he brought them out and shared them with anyone who might understand and help him build up his collection: co-workers, cab drivers, waitresses, and scientists from far-flung countries.

I was bilingual, raised by a Japanese mother and Jewish American father in Tokyo in a household where conversations flowed between English and Japanese, seemingly at random.

Bilingual speakers are, on average, better at picking up languages. But averages are deceptive, perhaps the same way Rock appeared to be doing better than Nahbey.

Language is an abstraction, with rules that change based on emotion, context, and status. I find the flow of unfamiliar languages as hard to pin down as water in a stream. I only learned the bare minimum of Hebrew, though I loved the way it sounded rising around me at synagogue, the cadence like Bubbe’s voice, tying me to her through the years, time, and despite death.

Japanese writing comprises three distinct systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are “syllabics,” with each character representing a syllable. Kanji is a logographic form of writing that evolved from Chinese pictographs. Some kanji resemble the subjects they represent, but most do not.

Words are the spoken equivalent of logographic language. They rarely sound like what they mean. I patted Haiiro-chan’s head. “Wolf” is an exception to that rule. But does “sun” sound like our local star? Does “cloud” sound like a visible mass of water droplets or ice crystals collected in the atmosphere?

Worse than the arbitrary collection of sounds that make words is the way they bubble together in an incomprehensible soup. At least each kanji is distinct.

John can pick out one or two words from the soup and put together the entire sentence. He once explained to me, “The road doesn’t drive on the car.”

Numbers are as unambiguous as musical notes, without subjectivity or emotion; that is why I love them.

Nonetheless, we would be in the mountains for months and these people would be our neighbors. I needed to communicate with them.

I tried to focus on what the tribe members were saying to John, telling myself to think of context. What could they be discussing beyond “sick” and “well” and “stay” and “go”? They wouldn’t be discussing quantum theory.

… But they might have been discussing the position of the Pleiades, the myth’s origins were during this time. And maybe they were discussing quantum physics in their own way. My brother Ken and John both came separately to the conclusion that religion is just humans trying to understand the quantum world.

The more I tried to focus on the conversation, the more the words blurred with the bird calls. The motions of their hands, the twitch of facial muscles, and the shifting of their postures distracted me. All were communication, but with meanings that shifted with culture and feelings. Rock’s hand slicing through the air could have been showing direction, of “half,” or a warning, and probably more than I could imagine.

John nodded.

He turned to me and said, “Rock and Nahbey will stay here, at least for the day, and probably overnight.”

He’d heard of all that. I’d heard none of it, but I was called the genius. Combing meaning from a soup of abstract sounds and ambiguous gestures seemed its own sort of genius.

John was still staring at me. Waiting for my permission?

“Of course,” I said. I can’t remember if I said it in Japanese or English, but it wouldn’t have mattered. John would have understood.

Haiiro-chan’s growl deepened, as though he understood our plans and disagreed. He didn’t like the company. John had told me friendliness toward humans is a thing wolves have to learn—dogs are born with it. His neighbors who rescued wolf cubs unfit for release attempted to habituate them with human contact. We hadn’t been providing that for Haiiro-chan, and John was concerned about how Haiiro-chan would fare when we returned.

I hadn’t been concerned. I knew we would never get back. There was something wrong with my calculations, a known unknown, and therefore something wrong with Lo’s numbers.

I thought I knew the answer: there were tides in the nothingness beyond space-time. I could almost picture the equations, but I could not deduce the numbers. The equations were like a word on the tip of my tongue. Given time, I would figure it out. But the numbers I could not know. They were, most likely, variable. Perhaps stronger from one place to the next, or non-existent in some times and/or places. It did not matter—I could not calculate the numbers because we didn’t know precisely where or when we were, and I couldn’t know how off course we were. An approximation wouldn’t do for a leap in time and distance of the magnitude we required.

We were never getting home, but I worked on the pod, anyway. Maybe because John believed it. Maybe out of habit. Math, music, and tinkering, they were—are—what I do. I cannot stop.

John and the tribe members’ intonation and body language changed. The tribe members rose, did the strange sort of bow, bodies tipping forward, but not bending. They leaned to John, and to Haiiro-chan and me.

Haiiro’s growl intensified.

Eyes on Haiiro, Rock said something that made the other men shift on their feet and glance quickly at our cub. John said, “Nantoka nantoka, Haiiro-chan.” Rock grumbled. Nahbey woke up and barked something at the Neanderthal. Rock rolled his eyes. The other tribesmen laughed. One swatted Rock on the back of his head. Another said a few more words to John. They bowed again, and then they went, Haiiro-chan trailing after them to the edge of the trees, as though making sure they wouldn’t change their minds and come back.

Rock fell backward and lay on the furs.

John scowled at him.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Rock suggested eating Haiiro.”

All the air left my lungs. “I thought he wasn’t like other Neanderthals.”

John sighed. “It is not uncommon for human cultures to eat dogs.”

I knew that, but it was not common in our cultures. I looked to Haiiro-chan, growling at the path our visitors had taken. He’d grown since we’d found him, but his legs were still too long for his body; his ears and feet, still too large; and his fur still soft as down.

“The others didn’t like the idea, though,” John said. “You saw Nahbey with Squawk. They sort of have pets.”

Nahbey groaned, as though in reply, but Rock didn’t stir. I joined John beside our two guests and sat down at Rock’s side. I glanced down at his hands. Like Purr, he had odd fingers, strangely wide at the tips. But that wasn’t what caught my eye. “John,” I said, and pointed down at a string of angry red and white pustules covering Rock’s knuckles.

John frowned. “Staph.” Rising, he vanished into the pod, and I swore the temperature dropped. I felt that every time he left, unless I was working, safe with the things I knew and understood, focused on a task. I could not think of what would happen if he didn’t come back.

A few minutes later, he emerged with the first-aid kit. He grimaced. “We probably need to lance those.”

I stifled a grimace.

John took out his utility knife and studied the blade. “I guess the antibiotic will kill anything on it.” He tapped Rock’s shoulder. The Neanderthal’s eyelids fluttered open. John pointed at his hand. Rock scowled at it, and then, without self-consciousness, popped the pustules with his spatula-like fingers.

I swallowed bile and fought back the urge to retch.

“Ugh,” John said, making a face that was so silly I laughed before I caught myself. He stuck out his tongue at me, and I realized his silliness was feigned. He was trying to keep my spirits up and maybe his, too.

Rock lifted his head and looked around, as though considering wiping the pus on our furs, but John caught his wrist and wiped it with some gauze. Rock’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t protest. John tied the soiled gauze in a knot, and I gingerly took the unsoiled ends and set it aside. “Thank you, Dr. Morgenstern,” he said with exaggerated solemnity that made me smile.

“You’re welcome, Dr. Miller,” I replied, and he grinned.

He applied some antibiotic ointment to more gauze and handed me the tube to cap as he applied it to the wound. I gazed down at the tube. It was about three-quarters full, the end carefully flattened and rolled up.

When this was gone, there was no more.

Another reason to work on the pod, though I knew it was hopeless. I didn’t want to be stranded there and then when the antibiotics ran out.

* * *

Later that evening, I was working on a circuit board, and John was reading aloud to me from his scroll, when Haiiro dashed over, sat himself between me and Nahbey, and growled at the man.

Nahbey sat up, slow and dazed. Looking around, he rubbed his shoulders as though to ward off the chill.

John was offering him water a moment later. I left the warmth of the awning and went to the campfire where the soup was heating in its bag of something’s stomach. Nahbey took the water, and John started talking to him, gesturing occasionally up the mountain.

Nahbey looked down at Rock, sleeping beside him, and touched his friend’s forehead. His own temple creased, and he frowned.

Fluttering above caught my attention. Squawk landed on Nahbey’s head, and Haiiro went nuts. John shouted at Haiiro, and Haiiro growled back at him, and then headed out from beneath the awning and paced, looking disgusted.

Nahbey smiled at the bird and lifted his hand to it. Squawk alighted on his fingers, and Nahbey scratched his head and murmured quietly. It might have been my imagination, but the bird didn’t appear flat black, like ravens in our time. Of course, ravens aren’t precisely flat black. They are slightly iridescent. All birds can see in the UV spectrum, and in UV light, many corvids’ plumage becomes bright and colorful.

John taught me that. It is the sort of random knowledge that I love that makes the world more beautiful, and that I never had time to gain on my own. In my field, research happened at such a rapid rate, it was all I could do to keep up. I loved what I did, but I sometimes felt as though huge swathes of life were passing me by.

I blinked. If we got back, I would not have lost time by spending time here, even though I was cut off from everything. Time travel, a genius vacation idea for busy scientists and executives.

John coughed, and I remembered where and when I was and handed Nahbey some soup in a bowl we stole from the Neanderthals. It was roughly hewn, though it had its own sort of beauty. He took it, stared at the broth and small, neat chunks of moose, dandelion root, and globules of garlic, wild onion, and greens, and then took a slow and careful sip. He smiled when he tasted it and said a random string of syllables I could not decipher.

John smirked. “He said it is delicious.”

I smiled back. “And you’ve been complaining about your cooking.”

John and I found the soup palatable, but only just. It was illogical, given the situation, but it pained him to make food that he felt wasn’t up to his standards.

“You never complain,” he noted.

I don’t like to complain. Complaining about something or listening to someone complain is to endure the offending thing twice: while you live it and when you or someone else gripes about it.

John complained about the soup, but usually he accompanied his grumbling with silly faces that surprised me with their seemingly anatomical impossibility. Instead of evoking annoyance, his complaining made me laugh.

He never complained about being stuck 100,000 years in the past or of the possibility of dying. He also never complained about having to take care of me. I’d be dead without him, even if the Neanderthals hadn’t caught me that first day.

“Hey,” John said, tapping his watch. “We should probably eat, too.”

John’s taps made his watch light up, which caught Nahbey’s attention. He said something, and John held it up for him to inspect.

While Nahbey murmured in amazement, I distributed some soup for John and me.

Lifting a spoonful to his lips, John stuck out his tongue, opened one eye wide, and squinted the other, making me laugh.

“You don’t like it, either,” John accused.

“You know niku jaga is my favorite dish,” I replied, which is true, but our meal was only niku. “Niku” means “meat.” “Jaga” means “potato.”

Lifting a lump of dandelion root, John moaned, “There won’t be a potato for another 99,000 years.” He faked a sob. Europeans, Asians, and Africans wouldn’t incorporate potatoes into their diets until trade opened with the Americas.

Nahbey looked between us, his brow furrowed. “Zamed, Hana.” He inclined his body toward me. “Zamed.”

John snorted. “He’s saying it is delicious again. I think he thinks I’m being rude about your cooking.”

I laughed. “If I’d cooked this, he wouldn’t say it’s delicious.”

John put down his soup. “I feel unseen.” He touched his belly button and proceeded to babble something to Nahbey, too fast for me to comprehend. Nahbey bowed to John. “Zamed, John.”

“Hey, he didn’t give me a lecture like Purr,” John said.

At Purr’s name, the patter of rain on the tent became loud and oppressive.

I tried to think of something else. My eyes went to the river. The wheel was churning out there in the mist, steadily recharging the battery. In the misty gray of the rainy afternoon, the water was dull and dark. But in the sunlight, it shone. The memory of sunlight sparkling over smooth rocks filled my mind, and then, at the bottom of the river, I saw equations instead of stones, wavering in the glittering sunlight.

I had to write them down before they washed away.

26 JOHN

I saw the exact moment Hana left us. Nahbey had just complimented my cooking, and then begun teaching me his language, pointing at something and saying the name, and then repeating it—I could pick up words faster than usual with the guided tour. I suppose he knew what he was doing, as he seemed to be conversational in at least three languages.

He pointed at the entrance to the pod. Hana was sitting right below it, not looking at us, her gaze on the rain, and I knew she was in “the zone,” “Hana’s world.” She was seeing numbers, and she had to write them down before they shimmered away. I knew not to bother her. I also knew if I tried, she wouldn’t hear. The reason Hana didn’t drive in our time was because a solution came to her once while she was driving, and she stopped in the middle of the road to write it down. Cars backed up behind her and honked but she didn’t “hear,” or, as she explained to me, “I knew that I had pulled to the side of the road and so I ignored them, but when I finished writing it down, I looked up and I hadn’t pulled over. There was a man pounding on my window. I was so afraid he would hurt me, but he didn’t. He asked me if I was all right and if I’d had some sort of seizure.”

Hana decided it had been a seizure, of a sort. She never drove again.

Sure enough, Hana pulled out her scroll, unrolled it, and grabbed her stylus.

The scroll’s glow illuminated her face, and Nahbey perked and shifted, ready to approach her. I grasped his arm and shook my head. Ten to one, she was working on something that would ensure our jump home put us closer to the station.

He stopped. He pointed to the water wheel, the pod, the scroll, and raised an eyebrow.

I wiped my face, at a loss for words to explain.

Rock had been sleeping peacefully, but at that moment, he twisted, threw back the furs, and shouted something incoherent.

Nahbey turned to his friend, put a hand on his forehead, and murmured what sounded like a plea.

Rock’s face was more flushed than it had been in the morning, and I had the uncomfortable feeling I’d been down this road before.

* * *

Nahbey spent the night with us. The next day, it was still raining and still cold. Hunters came by—men and some younger women—and then headed off into the gloom. Nahbey stayed with us, coughing, chatting, and trying to teach me their language.

He left with them when they came back a few hours later. Empty-handed, I noticed—apex predators, my ass. But maybe it was the lack of visibility. I told myself I didn’t hear snuffles. As Nahbey returned with them to the cave, he walked with less spring in his step. Rock stayed with us, too sick for the trip.

The next day, Nahbey came to check on Rock with a few less hunters. He stayed with us during the day and left with them. They had a few small game animals in tow: hares, grouse-like birds, and a few fish. Rock remained, still too sick.

And then Nahbey came again the next day, with a few less hunters.

The pattern repeated itself.

On the third day, Rock tried to argue that he should go with the hunters. I didn’t understand all the words, but I got the gist of it. Nahbey convinced him otherwise.

On the fourth day, Nahbey didn’t come at all.

27 JOHN

“I can’t find Rock,” Hana said.

I pulled the furs down. It was still chilly in the morning, and I had to piss—doesn’t everyone, first thing?—but I’d opted to hide a little longer. Normally, mornings were the optimal time for fooling around, but Rock was with us, and our activities, such as they were, were curtailed. Staying in bed late might have been me pouting a bit.

I blinked up at Hana, shifting the fur she had draped over her shoulders. Haiiro was sniffing around her feet. I sat up. Moose were drinking on the opposite side of the river just up the bank. If I wanted to, I’d have a clean shot.

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Did you check—”

“I’ve checked everywhere, and his spear is gone.”

My heart sped up. I opened my mouth, about to lose my mind a bit, but Hana guessed what I was about to say. Before I got a word out, she amended, “When I looked for him, I was always in range of the proximity detector, and Haiiro was with me, too.”

My jaw snapped shut.

“We have to find him,” Hana insisted.

I groaned. And then my brain connected to where we were, and the danger he was in. Beyond my worry for the guy, I considered what would happen if Rock were to disappear. I didn’t want to kill all my neighbors when they came to seek revenge. Thinking about how sick Rock was, I threw off my furs. “Stay here and keep the fire lit,” I said.

Hana nodded. Grabbing my rifle and the canteen a few minutes later, I fished a pouch full of wolf treats out of the toolbox—Haiiro still couldn’t open the toolbox, but he’d chew through bags, and he had figured out how to climb up on top of the toolbox to nose open the broken pod door and let himself inside.

Haiiro recognized the pouch, and I had his immediate attention.

I looked down at the wolf and experimented with a new command. “Find Rock.” I said. I point upward and make a circling motion with my finger, the sign I’d developed for “find.”

Haiiro blinked up at me. I sighed.

“Maybe if you say please?” Hana said.

Pretty sure he knew what I meant. Also, I was sure I knew what he wanted first. I grumbled, “Dogs don’t demand down payments,” and tossed him a bit of dried moose. He ate it and looked up at me expectantly.

“This isn’t an extortion racket, Buddy,” I growled.

Hana walked over. Sitting on her heels beside the wolf, she used the same sign I did, and asked, “Haiiro-chan, find Rock?” in a light feminine voice.

Haiiro wagged his tail, dropped his nose to the ground, and took off in a three-legged lope.

“You have to make it a suggestion,” Hana said.

I glared at her through narrowed eyes. She hid a grin behind her hand.

Rolling my eyes, I followed the wolf.

* * *

Rock hadn’t taken the route I expected. I’d expected him to take the switch-backing path Purr led us along to the cave. Instead, Haiiro led me almost straight up the mountainside.

Once when I was a kid, we had a dog named Blue who had epilepsy. Unlike Haiiro, Blue was loyal, wise, and obedient … until the day he died. On the day he died, he ran away, and resisted my call for him to heel. I caught Blue when a seizure took hold of him. I carried him back to the house and laid him on his bed. An hour or less, and he had passed. Sometimes animals want to be alone to die.

Scrambling up a steep incline, I worried Rock was doing the same thing.

“Please, no,” I whispered. Taking care of Rock hadn’t been like taking care of Purr. Rock was more self-reliant. He didn’t need a lift to the camp’s edge to relieve himself. And he was actually helpful. In moments when he was lucid, he sharpened my ax and other pieces of stone and bone tools we had about.

But when the sunlight hit his hair, Hana and I saw Purr in him.

Taking care of Rock, it felt like atonement, or something. He had gotten frustrated with us. We made him drink water brewed with willow bark, not just to reduce his fever, but because we were worried he’d die of a heart attack like Purr. We did not know if willow bark would work like aspirin and thin his blood, but we gave it to him anyway, knowing that was exactly how stupid, inane, harmful treatments like bloodletting became common practice: desperation.

Haiiro and I reached a sheer rock face high as my shoulder. Haiiro jumped. His front paws caught on the ledge, his good back leg found purchase in a groove in the rock, but his misshapen leg flailed helplessly. He crashed back down.

I tried to lift him, and he growled, snapped at me, and thrashed out of my arms. As soon as he was on terra firma, he lunged at me, teeth bared, spittle flying, hackles raised.

So not Blue.

Taking a piece of moose from the pouch, I set it up on the ledge.

His jaw snapped shut.

I swore he glared at me for a full minute before turning to study the situation. He didn’t leap. Head bobbing, he surveyed the problem. He wasn’t Blue. He was smarter.

“Lifting you,” I said, grabbing his sides.

He growled, but with the smoked moose in front of his snout, he didn’t thrash, and a few minutes later, I climbed up the ledge after him.

Sitting on his butt, he glared at me again.

“Look, dog—wolf—I’m sorry if I wounded your pride,” I grumbled. I threw him another piece of moose. He caught it midair, chewed it once, and swallowed it.

Signing, find, I said, “Find Rock.”

He didn’t move.

With a curse, I sat down on my heels and signed again. “Find Rock?” I asked.

He still didn’t move.

I sighed, ran my hand through my hair, and pitched my voice an octave higher. “Find Rock?”

He licked my nose and set off again, nose low.

A few minutes later, Haiiro got down on the ground beside a thicket and barked. I had a moment of doubt where I worried Haiiro might be leading me on a wild goose chase—or a wild moose chase—with the goal of eating everything in the pouch, but I got low and peeked in the direction he was barking … and sure enough, there was Rock, curled in a ball. Lifting his head, he scowled at Haiiro and said, “I should eat you,” or the rough equivalent.

I slipped Haiiro a moose bit.

Ripping a twig from the thicket, I tossed it at Rock. “No.”

Rock shifted his scowl to me. I scowled right back.

He blinked his fever-glassy eyes. “I have to go home,” he said in the tribe’s language. Waving up the mountain, he repeated it in the language of the Neanderthals. “Gega geh lin.”

I exhaled, relieved that he wasn't trying to die. He probably headed up the slope, gambling that taking the straight shot to the cave would be easier—Neanderthals were efficient climbers. Shadows overhead caught my eye. Ravens were circling. Ravens can’t smell very well, but they have excellent eyesight, and they lure wolves to the dead and dying. Death might find Rock, whether he tried or not.

I gestured down toward the pod. “Rock. John. Go home.”

“No,” Rock said. Pointing up toward the cave, he reiterated. “Go home.”

I shifted back to my heels and wiped my beard. Even hauling him downhill with his arm over my shoulders would be a lot, and it was not as far to the pod as it was to the cave. Uphill … He was a head shorter than me, but I’m pretty sure he was heavier. He was solid muscle. Which meant I couldn’t force him to do anything either, not without one of us getting hurt, and seeing as I would fight with kid gloves not wanting to hurt him, the person most likely to be hurt would be me.

I rubbed my eyes. I had to outthink the caveman.

Rock wanted to go home—didn’t we all? He was probably worried about his family. He wanted to know they were all right, or even to know that they weren’t. I had taken a stupid risk for Hana for much the same reason, and it had been the right thing to do. The thing was, he didn’t have to risk himself.

I touched my belly. “John and Haiiro … go home.” I gestured up the mountain instead of the pod. I ran into words I didn’t know, so I pantomimed. Putting my hand above my eyes, I said, “Look for Nahbey.”

Rock touched his belly. “Rock and John go home.”

I couldn’t tell him he was too heavy. Partially because I lacked the vocabulary; partially because if I did, he’d claim he’d walk on his own. I probably would do the same in his shoes. Or moccasins. Or leather socks. Or whatever. So I tried another tack, one to help him save face. Shaking my head, I said, “Hana alone.”

Rock’s shoulders softened. Hana took care of Rock, helping him re-bandage his hand and reapply antibiotics. She put cool wet cloths on his forehead and made sure he always had clean water and plenty to eat. Rock had noticed I did the cooking, gathering such as I’m able, and the wood chopping. In hunter-gatherer terms, I was doing all the work. I’d explained that the pod was a type of boat—they had a word for “boat”! Boating was supposed to be something humans didn’t figure out until much later. I think they thought working on a boat that was too heavy to move to water was insane. I’m pretty sure Rock and Nahbey thought Hana was some sort of kind, beautiful idiot. Definitely not someone who should be left alone.

Despite his Neanderthal nature, I trusted Rock to be alone with Hana. Rock grunted at me and growled at Haiiro but spoke gently to Hana. He’d never hurt her—he was not like her captors. Hana knew that. She’d forgive me for this. She’d probably even approve.

Pressing my advantage, I looked down the mountain and said again, “Hana alone.”

Rock sighed. I knew I’d won and bit back a smile.

An hour later, I wasn’t smiling anymore.

28 JOHN

Haiiro and I approached the cave the same way Purr had taken us. There was less snow pack this time, but patches of dirty-white still hugged the shadows. As we got closer, I started to get flashbacks. There was a trail of smoke in the air, but it appeared thin against the early morning sky.

Before the clearing had come into view, I’d decided it was quieter than it should be with fifty-some odd souls … And then the clearing came into view, and my heart stopped. A lone woman was poking at the fire. Just like that horrible day we brought Purr home.

“No!” I shouted, breaking into a run, gear bouncing on my back. “Nahbey! Nahbey!”

The woman jumped to her feet and dashed into the cave, screaming, “Nahbey! Nahbey!”

Men rushed out of the cave, thrusting spears. I skidded to a halt just inches from them. My brain was just putting together what the screaming woman and the spears might mean when Nahbey ran out. “John?”

He pushed past the guys and their fence of spear points, grabbed my shoulders, and shook me. “Rock? Is my brother okay?”

“Yes!” I put my hand to his face. “You’re okay? Rock is …” I didn’t know how to say worried.

“I am okay,” Nahbey said, not releasing my shoulders. The surrounding men stumbled back into the cave and fell back into furs, their movements clumsy and exhausted.

Patting my shoulders and backing away, Nahbey asked, “Is Rock eating? Is he drinking?”

“Yes, yes, Rock all right,” I said—or think I said.

Nahbey relaxed and almost smiled. Herding me into the cave, he said, “John, eat. Drink.”

I stiffened in the cave’s chill. I did not want to eat or drink anything that hadn’t been cooked just until the point of inedibility. I’d made it too far to die of dysentery. If I died, Hana would most likely die, or at best, be stuck here. “Eh …” I said. It meant basically the same thing in their language as it means in ours. “I’m all right.”

But Nahbey was already disappearing, coughing, as he headed into a dark corner. At least I think he was coughing. The cave was packed with people, and there was coughing, throat hacking, and sneezing all around. It was too dark to see far, but the people I could see looked unwell—a glassy-eyed woman with flushed cheeks cradled a limp child whose damp bangs clung to his flushed forehead, other people on fur and grass pallets, though it was nearly noon.

Nahbey returned with a wooden bowl. Saying something in a deep affectionate tone, he thrust it into my hands. I gazed down at a watery soup with a few chunks of tuber floating in the broth. When I surreptitiously dipped my finger in, it was as chilly as the cave. I would not eat it, but I had to find a polite excuse.

“No meat,” Nahbey said apologetically. “Sorry.” He said a bunch of words that sounded apologetic.

“No meat?” I repeated dumbly.

He wiped his face and looked away. “Hana and John … Rock and me … meat …” He went on and on and I think he was saying how ashamed he was that they had no meat to give me. We gave Nahbey and Rock meat when they stayed with us, partially because we had more of that than anything else. We’d gone through the acorns and hazelnuts we’d stolen from the Neanderthals by the time they’d arrived. It was still early in the year for foraging, and I wasn’t sure how much foraging I could do. The plants were subtly different from what I was used to.

Protein is important for recovering from illness and injury, and the coughs and sneezes seemed to rise in volume around me. I heard groans I hadn’t registered before and noted the dark circles under Nahbey’s eyes.

Every morning, I saw moose within easy range of the pod.

Easy range … If you had a rifle.

These people didn’t have bows and arrows or even atlatl, a simple spear throwing lever. What was the maximum distance for a javelin throw—ninety meters … three hundred feet … maybe? What was the accuracy at that range? I glanced at the spear Nahbey was using as a cane and at its heavy stone point. It had to be heavier than an Olympic javelin.

How much moose meat did I have down by the river? Enough for soup for another day or so … but I still had a few hundred pounds of it stowed in Hana’s pod.

Doing the full-body bow thing, I handed the soup back to Nahbey. “You eat it,” I said. “I’ll get more meat.”

* * *

When I came back to the cave, I carried in my arms and on my back every scrap of gamey, tough moose smoked over whatever wood I could scrounge.

Nahbey broke into tears and hugged me.

“Rock wanted to kill you,” he said.

“Um …” It was all I could get out; he was holding me too tight. I was pretty sure it was hyperbole. I hoped it was hyperbole.

Rocking me back and forth, Nahbey coughed. And coughed more. And then rasped out, “But I said no, friends are better … I was right.”

Grasping my shoulders in a near bone-breaking grip, he pushed me out to arm’s length. I gasped for breath and inhaled the reek of illness and onions.

He frowned, the lines deepening in his weathered face. “No! You are not my friend!”

Before I could digest that, he broke into sobs and pulled me in for another suffocating bear hug. “You are my brother.”

29 JOHN

Whispering a soft apology to Hana, I climbed out of the furs before dawn, or even moose the morning after my visit to the cave.

Rock stirred at my movement. I waved him back, walked to the river’s edge, knelt on one knee, and gazed through my scope. It took a few minutes before the moose arrived. They lifted their noses in my direction, and I knew they knew I was there, but they were unafraid. I was at least three hundred meters away—much farther than a ninety-meter javelin throw. I waited until a big bull lifted its head and pivoted to look up the mountain.

I fired. The bull was dead before it hit the ground.

Haiiro barked and dashed over to me, grumbling under his breath.

Scratching his head, I rose.

Haiiro spun and growled back the way he’d come. Feeling the prickle of eyes on the back of my neck, I turned, too.

Rock stood there.

In the past days, he hadn’t mentioned the time I fired on the cat. I’d wondered if he just attributed it to a fevered delusion. He was still not well, but I somehow didn’t think he’d be able to excuse the rifle shot twice. I looked back at the fallen moose. I would have to deal with Rock later. I had a moose to clean.

I stripped down and splashed into the river.

Coming around the pod, Hana offered to help ferry the meat across the river, but I waved her back. She had plenty to do in the pod. She retreated, and Rock followed her.

I was not even halfway across the river when Haiiro growled on the bank. I turned again and found Rock, this time fording the river, his spear in one hand, my stone ax in the other.

The water was frigidly cold, but I stood rooted to the spot.

Halting, Rock hefted the ax, and for a moment, I thought he was going to throw it. My rifle was hanging on my back; my utility knife was in my belt. I might dodge a throw—but I had to be imagining his intent—Nahbey’s comment about Rock wanting to kill me was infecting my brain. We’d taken care of Rock and Nahbey, and I gave his tribe meat—but he didn’t know the last part.

Rock’s eyes narrowed. His lip curled up, and I was positive I’d read him right.

I tensed. His ax hand rose. I was too pissed to be afraid. What a stupid way to die.

Haiiro whined on the bank. The wind swept down from the snow-covered peaks, crisp and cold, buffeting my side, already icy from the splashing river. It cut the heat of my temper and made it something cold and calculating. I saw myself in his eyes: a stranger with a weapon beyond comprehension. Someone dangerous who just killed an animal that could keep his tribe fed for a week and a half, maybe longer. I also saw the consequences of killing Rock before he killed me: I’d wind up with a tribe of humans who mistrusted me. I’d have to watch my back even more than I already did—and Hana’s back, too. I had to de-escalate this situation with only my rudimentary caveman vocabulary.

I took a step toward Rock and held up my hands, palms out. I searched for words I knew. “Rock … brother,” I said, because I had nothing else.

For a moment, I heard every gurgle of the river, every blade of grass caught in the breeze, and then Rock’s body uncoiled. Setting the spear down like a staff, he sagged against it and looked away. I knew at that moment I had not imagined his intent. He cast a glance in my direction, and I knew he knew I knew.

With a grunt, he started fording the river again, but he hung his trajectory, his new path taking him a few meters to my right.

I waited until our bodies were in line, and then I walked to the bank as well. He set down his ax and spear by the moose’s head, and after a moment’s hesitation, I set my rifle down, too. With only grunts and gestures, we angled the moose’s body so its rear was down a slight slope—when we dressed the animal, gravity and pressure would push its innards out. We were on the same page. I took my knife up to the animal’s jaw and made two cuts, intending to create a flap of skin that I’d pull down the creature’s body. Rock barked something that could only be, “Stop!”

And I did, because frankly, he scared me.

Glaring at me, he let loose a tirade that went right over my head. He took out a stone blade with his right hand, pushed me out of the way with his left, and started cutting a single line down the moose’s belly. He was preparing to save the hide. I had been going to discard it.

Even weak and feverish, he went fast. He had a lot more practice, but the sun was rising, and the moose would be warming up soon. “Brother,” I said.

He slowed, and then looked up at me through narrowed eyes. I offered him my utility knife. His eyes widened, and he took it gingerly, heavy brows rising. He offered me his knife—which is a generous description of a long rock sharpened on one side.

Rock got back to work, faster than ever, and he whistled softly under his breath. “Good knife … good …” he said.

From there, things went pretty much as I would expect. The ax came in handy. We used it to break the sternum, which sets free the lungs.

I’m glad it was useful. We could pretend that dressing the moose was the only reason he brought the ax and that the moment in the river never happened.

* * *

“You shouldn’t have given that to the wolf,” Rock said—or thereabouts. There is no English-to-Tribe dictionary—technically, all translations in this volume are “thereabouts.” But I was pretty sure that was what he meant, piecing together the words I knew with his scowl and thumb jerked in Haiiro’s direction. Lying some distance from the pod, eying us suspiciously, Haiiro gnawed at the moose shank I’d given him. Still mostly intact, its fur, bones, and tendons were excellent for his digestive health. At my and Rock’s stares, Haiiro growled.

“See?” said Rock, adding some other disgusted words. He might have said Haiiro was “ungrateful.”

Well, yeah. But Haiiro was a wolf—there was nothing I could do about his wolfy attitude.

Ignoring Rock’s grumbling and Haiiro’s growl, I set the last load of moose I’d hauled over into the shallow water at the river’s edge to cool. Wading in, I inspected some pieces I’d hauled earlier. They still weren’t cool enough to smoke.

Watching me, Rock didn’t so much sit down as fall onto his butt and lean his back against a boulder. He’d been visibly failing by the time he’d finished carving up the moose, and I’d left him on the other side of the river “to protect the kill” while I’d brought the moose back on multiple trips. He looked worse than he had that morning. As if to illustrate that thought, he coughed.

“I’ll take these up to the cave later,” I said.

Rock straightened. “What?”

“I’ll take some of this up to the cave later,” I said, gesturing to make sure I was understood. I frowned, thinking about all the ill people. “Everyone is sick. Not hunting. Not enough meat.”

Rock scowled at me. His eyes narrowed. “You will not.” It wasn’t an order. It was a statement of disbelief.

Shrugging, I said, “I don’t need it.”

At that moment, Haiiro rose, shank in his jaws, and repositioned himself and it, growling through his mouthful of moose and glaring at the trees.

Rock and I both stiffened. I brought my rifle around. Rock lifted his spear and shifted from a sitting position to a crouch, all animosity between us vanished. A raven rawked above.

My scroll pinged. Hana, who’d been working on something inside the pod, poked her head out. “John, the proximity detector—”

“We know,” I said.

Slinking forward, Rock motioned for her to get down. I repositioned myself so I wouldn’t shoot him if another big cat came through the trees. I thought about something I’d read about cat reaction times being the fastest in the animal world. In our time, tigers sprinted at forty miles per hour, and they weighed up to 680 pounds. If this ancestor-of-a-tiger thing got going, would a bullet stop it before it killed us? Had I just gotten lucky the first time? Why wasn’t the fire scaring whatever it was?

Nahbey’s cheerful, “Rock, John!” echoed from the trees, followed by coughing and hacking. Rock and I let our weapons sag. Rock muttered something under his breath.

A few minutes later, Nahbey emerged from the trees with another hunter, a guy who couldn’t have been more than sixteen. They both were leaning heavily on their spears—and yet they still had been quieter than any man I’d ever hunted with … Except for the coughing. They promptly began hacking again, the sound wet and deep.

Rock sat back on his butt, hung his head between his legs, and joined them.

Hana poked her head out of the pod, waved without smiling, and said hello in English and Japanese.

Nahbey grinned, waved back at her, and responded. I wasn’t sure she saw or heard. She slipped back into the pod too fast. I recognized one of her, “I’m doing something really important but I’m going to try to follow social niceties,” moods.

Dropping the moose shank, Haiiro rose, barked, growled, voiced his displeasure at having his lunch interrupted and warned us all not to upset him again. Then he sank back down and resumed gnawing.

Nahbey and his companion laughed. “Hi, Haiiro,” Nahbey said.

Squawk soared down from the trees, landed on Nahbey’s head, and rawked at the cub.

“Big moose … for a little wolf,” the teenager said with a chuckle.

“Wasted,” muttered Rock.

I blinked. This was a great opportunity. Instead of hauling the meat up the mountain, Nahbey and his friend could do it for me. Or at least they could help.

Gesturing to the river, I said, “Want some moose meat?”

Rock’s attention shifted to me. His jaw sagged.

A crease formed between Nahbey’s brows, and he held up his hands, palms out. “You gave us too much.”

“He what?” Rock said.

“It’s no problem,” I said, and then, using the big hunk of gray jello in my prefrontal cortex, I added, “Rock and I killed a moose this morning.” I would kill Rock with brotherliness, give him some credit, protect his pride, and see if I couldn’t keep his murderous impulses at bay.

Not contradicting that telling of the story, Rock demanded, “When did John give you moose?”

“When I went up the mountain,” I replied and said to Nahbey, “Rock stayed here to protect Hana.”

Nahbey’s facial features smoothed. “You and Rock killed a moose this morning. Very lucky.”

A natural diplomat, I think he knew I was sparing Rock’s pride with my description of events this morning and the day before. The eyes of the kid who was with Nahbey got wide. He looked at Rock, sitting on the ground, head between his knees, hacking again, and his mouth stretched in a smile. His lips parted. He lifted a finger toward Rock, and I could see the jest and comment of disbelief to come. But Nahbey casually knocked the side of the kid’s foot with his spear. The teen snapped his mouth shut and dropped his finger.

“Rock is very loyal and strong. He would keep Hana safe,” Nahbey said.

I wondered if Nahbey was speaking for my benefit or for Rock’s, playing the same mind game I was. Was emotionally babysitting the Neanderthal worth it? I remembered Rock heaving Nahbey through the woods and not running when the cat came. Yeah, it was worth it. Rock was loyal to those he cared about. I wasn’t in that circle; neither was Haiiro. He might care a little more about Hana.

Taken over by a hacking fit, Rock coughed and spoke, “What do you”—cough, cough— “mean, John,gave you meat?”

Squatting beside Rock, Nahbey launched into an explanation that was too fast for me to follow. But I heard “sick” and “hungry” and “meat” and my name and put it all together.

When Nahbey and his companion left, I gave them all the moose they could carry, and the hide, of course. We didn’t need 800 pounds of the beast. I was fairly confident I could keep us fed until we left.

Exhausted, Rock didn’t fight to leave with them.

He also wouldn’t meet my eyes.

30 JOHN

“Please, drink this,” Hana said to Rock, holding a bowl filled with willow bark tea out to the Neanderthal.

“Thank you, but I’m not thirsty,” he replied. He almost smiled.

Hana looked back at me. Scowling, I translated.

She gave me the bowl and mouthed, “You try.”

Sighing, I offered Rock the bowl. He grunted and said, “No.”

He was nicer to Hana than me. Probably for the same reason Haiiro growled when I lifted him but didn’t growl at Hana. Someday, Haiiro would go through puberty, and when the season hit, he might not let me touch him, but probably would be fine with affection from Hana. Testosterone is a hell of a drug.

“Please,” Hana said again, taking the bowl from me. “Onegai shimasu.”

Rock was still weak, but he looked better, and he hadn’t had a hint of a fever for over twenty-four hours. Like Purr.

Rock’s shoulders fell, but he took the bowl and one delicate sip. I saw him fighting to keep his expression neutral. The stuff was bitter, but Hana and I agreed it might keep him alive … and that everyone in the tribe should drink it, too. Just in case.

Haiiro barked at the clearing edge. I tensed for an instant, but then the raven I’d come to recognize as Squawk called in greeting.

“It’s Nahbey,” Rock confirmed, using the interruption to set the bowl down and clamber to his feet. Hana vanished and came back with a bowl of willow bark tea for Nahbey just as he emerged from the forest up the slope.

Thanking her, Nahbey took it, sipped it gingerly, and Rock said something fast about the taste that I pretended not to understand.

Nahbey, ever the diplomat, said to me, “You know river water is fine. No need to go through this trouble.”

I stifled a snort at the gentle request. The willow bark tea tasted disgusting. There was no getting around it.

“What did he say?” Hana asked.

Chuckling, I explained.

Hana’s eyes got big and mournful.

Uh-oh.

“It is not funny!” she said. “They could die. You have to explain about Purr.”

“Purr?” Rock asked, sitting up tall, suddenly alert.

“That’s a mountain person’s name,” Nahbey said.

His words hung in the air. Some migratory birds had flown in the evening before in a flock so dense that the sky had gone pitch black. In that moment, their calls rose in volume like a symphony. I swallowed, not wanting to explain, and not sure if I could.

“Why is Hana sad?” Rock asked. She was biting her lip, and her eyes were glassy. I think she cared about Rock more than I did. She didn’t have the experience in the river with him. To her, he was just Purr, all grown up. I ran a hand through my hair.

Gesturing for Nahbey to take a seat with us under the awning, I tried to explain with my limited vocabulary how we came to care for a “little mountain person” who got sick, like Nahbey and Rock. How he seemed to get better, but then he had a heart attack and died. Heart attack came out as “heart pain.” They’d both butchered animals, and they knew what a heart was.

“Hana is afraid we will die if we don’t drink it?” Nahbey asked, smiling indulgently.

I admitted, “Yes. Me, too.” I shrugged, trying to convey, “maybe.”

“You … had a mountain person child?” Rock asked, staring into his bowl but not picking it up.

Hana unrolled her scroll, pulled up a picture of Purr, smiling at the camera, and handed it to Rock. Her eyes were red. Maybe mine were, too.

“How?” Rock asked, stroking the screen.

Maybe he was asking about the tech. Or maybe he was asking about Purr. I answered the question I could answer, and that was hard enough. “We found him,” I said, shifting uneasily, thinking about Purr.

“How did you find him?” Rock asked.

I wiped my face. “He … the mountain people … set a trap for us. He sneezed. We found him. He was very sick. We brought him here.”

Rock said, “They tried to hunt you. The mountain people eat people, John.”

In the past days, beyond language, I’d learned a lot about our neighbor’s tribe, from Nahbey at the cave, and Rock, too. They didn’t have a “leader;” they had different leaders for different things. Depending on the task, the leader might be a man or a woman. Every person in the tribe could hunt, cook, gather, navigate by the stars, start a fire, tan leather, and repair one of their knitted garments—or as Hana called it, “nalbinding garments.”

I’d told Rock, “That seems idyllic.” Well, not really. I didn’t have that vocabulary. I told Rock, “There is no …” I mimed fighting. “…in your tribe.”

Rock had snorted. “We don’t fight each other when mountain people are close.”

I should have paid attention to that comment. Instead, I had focused on how the tribe knew about the Neanderthals’ habits but didn’t see Rock as a Neanderthal. Nahbey had said, “Rock looks like a mountain person, but he is our people.” It seemed the ultimate demonstration of their egalitarianism.

I shrugged. “Purr … was a child.”

Rock scratched behind his neck and stared at his bowl, as though it harbored deep secrets. Maybe he saw his reflection. He sighed, long and loud. “You are both idiots.”

Nahbey snapped something at Rock, which I couldn’t translate directly, but I thought meant, “That isn’t nice!” Then Nahbey said something I did catch. “Purr was their son.”

We’d had him for such a short time, but yeah, he was. Would have been. I tried not to choke up. Hana wiped her eyes.

“His people didn’t come for him?” Nahbey asked.

“All his people got sick and died. But he seemed to get better. We … did not give him willow bark. We … did not think that the sickness would get to his heart.”

Rock flexed the knuckles of the hand we’d treated with antibiotics. He grunted, picked up his bowl, lifted it in Hana’s direction and then mine, and drank every last drop.

He nudged Nahbey. “You’re my only brother. Drink it.”

Nahbey grimaced, but drank his, too.

Leaning toward him, Hana said, “Mainichi …” and then shook her head at the slip into Japanese. “Every day … You must drink it every day for at least two months.”

Rock inclined his body toward her and said in English, “Every day.”

Hana smiled and relaxed, but her eyes were still red.

Rock’s brow furrowed. “Don’t be sad.” He leaned so close, I put my hand on Hana’s knee before I even thought about it. Rock met my gaze, narrowed his eyes, and snorted. I couldn’t tell if it was a challenge or if he was annoyed.

Clearing his throat, Nahbey said, “John … you’ve helped our people so much. We want to …” He said a bunch of words I didn’t understand.

Rock said, “Come to our home. Songs. Food. Drink”—something, something—“to drink that is not willow bark tea.”

The last made me laugh.

“What did he say?” Hana asked, looking at me expectantly.

Rock’s brow furrowed.

“They’ve invited us to a party,” I said.

“Haiiro and Hana, too,” Nahbey said.

Of course, I understood that as implicit.

31 HANA

I hadn't been up to the cave since the terrible day with Purr. That journey had been so … quiet. Just the calls of birds. But walking up the mountain with John, Haiiro, Nahbey and Rock, even from afar, I caught the sounds of laughter and the occasional happy shout.

I readjusted the rucksack I wore. It was lighter than the improvised bag John was carrying. We’d brought furs to sleep in and boiled water. Rock and Nahbey had insisted we bring no food.

The two brothers led the way. Rock had taken a bath earlier in the river’s curve, where it ran over rocks and was shallow and almost warm. He’d scrubbed his body with a river rock and soaked his hair, getting it as clean as you could without soap. John and I made him sit beside the fire to dry it afterward. The day wasn’t particularly warm. Snow still covered the mountain peaks, and when the wind blew down from their heights it was chilly, despite the bright sun and lengthening days. After bathing, Rock and Nahbey took turns braiding each other’s hair.

John and I had spent the time packing up the tools, the awning that we slept under, the furs, and the hutch we kept the batteries in when charging. We took the water wheel out of the water and set it close to the pod, anchoring it with heavy stones so a curious bear couldn’t drag it off.

John said the break from work would do us good; we were ahead of schedule, but we still might need our neighbors at some point. We definitely didn’t want to get on their bad sides, and refusing their hospitality wouldn’t endear us to them.

Maybe he was right. He was usually right about such things.

He still didn’t understand how little being ahead of schedule on the repairs mattered. I had an equation that would account for the unknown variable that caused the shift in time, but it was useless to me without more data.

Haiiro dashed past me, drawing me from my dark thoughts. Leaves and twigs went flying. He flew past Nahbey and Rock, too. A bird screamed a warning. The brothers drew to a halt. Nahbey pointed into the branches where a large hawk-like bird sat and said a string of words that ended with “eat.”

John said not to pick apart the words too closely, to use context to piece together the sentence.

“He said the bird is good to eat?” I asked.

John frowned. “No, he said that type of bird likes to eat baby wolves.”

I gasped. But John said, “Don’t worry, Haiiro is too big now.”

Nahbey took a few more steps forward, but Rock held back and grunted something in Haiiro’s general direction.

John’s eyes narrowed. “Rock said Haiiro isn’t too large for him to eat.”

Leaning on his spear, Rock said something else, and John said, “He said if we wait too long, Haiiro will be too tough.”

Nahbey returned to Rock and chided him.

Thumping his spear, Rock protested, and John said, “Rock pointed out that in about four years, Haiiro will leave us anyway.”

John had said that, too. Haiiro wasn’t a puppy; he was a wolf cub. He would mature and want to find a mate and form a pack of his own. I blinked. “It is interesting they know that. It sounds like they’ve tried to domesticate dogs … I mean, wolves.”

Nahbey snapped at Rock. Rock shrugged and leaned on his spear, staring up at the tree.

John stood up a little straighter. “I think you’re right. Nahbey just said Haiiro is our wolf-child and that Rock should shut up.” Nahbey turned to us, spoke for a moment, and then John translated, “Like Squawk was—is—his raven child. Nahbey found him when he was a baby, too. Squawk has his own family now, but comes to visit Nahbey when they are here, in this valley … I think?”

At that moment, a raven flew overhead, swooped in a wide circle, rawked, and then took off up the mountain.

Nahbey laughed and waved upward, resuming his path up the slope.

Not following, Rock harrumphed and swiveled his spear in the dirt.

“I think Rock is teasing us,” I said, bouncing on my heels.

“Why’s that?” John asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Because we’re standing here, not moving, and he’s tired but doesn’t want to admit it. His chiding is an excuse to rest.” I rolled on my feet, excited by the epiphany.

John grinned and winked. “You picked that up. He is definitely stalling. But I think he would eat Haiiro if given the chance.”

If John suspected that motivation, it most likely was true. John read people the way I read numbers. Sometimes he’d startled me with his observations. There was a donor to the Near-Light Project, a wealthy man in his sixties, with deep connections. This gentleman hosted a party for the scientists on the project at his home, a place that glittered with understated elegance. John came as my plus-one. The whole evening our host was charming, his manners were perfect, his observations witty. He seemed like a happy, self-assured, fulfilled person. I hoped I would feel as at home in my own skin when I reached his age. On the ride home, I said as much to John.

“He seems depressed to me,” John replied. The night was rainy, and water droplets shone on the driver’s side window, highlighting his profile like stars.

I was shocked and perturbed. “Why would you say that?” I asked.

John shrugged, the fabric of his tux pulling at his shoulders. He’d looked so much … bigger … than the other men there, and rougher around the edges. Which he was. Normally, it didn’t bother me—his eclectic, wide-ranging knowledge and ability to condense it to just the fun parts was a constant source of enjoyment for me. But at that moment, I wondered if he was jealous.

“I don’t know …” Since he was focused on the traffic, he couldn’t see me scowl.

He mused aloud, “He’s not married … no kids …”

“Lots of people are happily unmarried without children,” I said, trying to keep defensiveness out of my tone.

He tilted his head and tapped the steering wheel. “Yeah … lowers the odds, though.” He shrugged again. “I don’t know. I just think he is depressed.” Sitting up straighter, checking the rearview mirror, he added, “Don’t get me wrong, I liked him. He treated me like everyone else, and his money didn’t seem to have made him a jerk.” He sucked air in through his teeth. “Don’t think I’d like to be him, though.”

My anger had melted. John had been honest with me, from small things like when he’d asked me out, to the big things, like how he was leaving in a year to Oort Cloud and didn’t think a long-distance relationship would be feasible. I don’t understand people intuitively, but I can see patterns and deduce character. John wasn’t being petty, I decided, but he was wrong.

And then the donor attempted suicide a few weeks later.

Before John, I dated academics. People like me. I thought he brought an element of balance into my life. He was more emotional and spontaneous than me, and in the beginning, before those last few months when he was getting ready to leave, when he changed and became cruel, I thought balance was a good thing.

“Hey, you with me?” John asked, drawing me back to the present—or rather, the past.

We’d begun walking. I hadn’t noticed.

“Where else would I be?” I asked, going for the literal interpretation, not wanting to talk about that painful time.

“In math land,” he said.

“I don’t always think about math,” I said. “I’m not a robot.” He’d called me a robot frequently at the end—his voice in a shout that could make the walls reverberate.

In the primordial forest, his head jerked back as though I’d bit him.

I expected him to get angry, but he put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. “I know, honey,” he said, drawling the last word. I liked his drawl. I liked his voice, deep and a little raspy. Rough.

What could we be if we had a future?

A child’s shout drew me back to the real world. “Nahbey! Rock!”

Two children skipped toward us, and then, breaking into coughing fits, halted a few meters up the path. They wore leather moccasin-like boots that reached up to their ankles, and knee-length, sleeveless tunics with slits up the sides, made of “knit” fiber that was distinctly gold. It was cedar fiber; I was almost certain. The Ainu, indigenous Japanese people, also used the breathable, water-resistant fiber. The tunics were all-season garments. Perfect alone in warmer weather, or as a base layer beneath leather and furs in cold weather. I could see patches made with less vibrant nettle fibers. Converting nettle to fiber is considerably easier than cedar, which can only be done at certain times of year. Also, I hadn’t seen cedar trees in the mountains. Had they traded for it? Did they travel through regions where cedar grew?

Recovering from his coughing fit, one child approached us at a more sedate pace. Rock mussed the child’s hair, and the child sidled up close to him, looking curiously back at John and me. The child’s skin was a shade darker than mine; his or her hair was brown and curly, but very short. Their eyes were as blue as John’s or Rock’s—though we’d read the mutation for blue eyes in humans wouldn’t show up for another 80,000 years at least. Haiiro dashed through the underbrush. With a cry of delight, the child left Rock’s side and took after the cub. The other child joined. I noted he, or she, had dark hair and dark eyes, but their skin was almost as pale as John’s.

Rock and Nahbey both laughed at the children’s and Haiiro’s antics.

Their laughter stopped as the children broke down into new coughing fits.

For a moment, I felt despair, but then John said, “They are doing a lot better than the Neanderthals,” reminding me that there was hope.

Of course, John always believed there was hope.

32 JOHN

The instant Nahbey, Rock, Hana, and I entered the clearing, people thronged us. There was a lot of coughing and sneezing, but a lot of smiles, too. I got hugged a lot and thanked. A huge fire burned in the same fire pit the Neanderthals had used. The humans had arranged logs and stones, large enough for dozens of people to sit on around it. Things were cooking over the flame in bags suspended on sticks. Nearby, baskets steamed—they’d probably dropped hot stones into them to cook the contents.

Rock peeled away from the group, and as Nahbey took Hana and I around, introducing us, I saw Rock approach a woman just within the cave entrance. The woman clutched a sick child in her lap. From the lines around the woman’s eyes and mouth, she looked to be in her early forties. She was clearly glad to see Rock, and he squatted down beside her and the child. Even from a distance, I could see everything in his demeanor change—his eyes got soft, and so did his shoulders. He brushed the bangs from the child’s flushed face with great care.

“Rock’s wife and child?” Hana mused aloud.

Nahbey was at least as talented at languages as I was. He’d been leading us to another group of people, but he stopped and scowled. “No,” he said in English. “Not Rock’s woman.” And then he unleashed a torrent in his own language, his hands moving through the air in agitation.

“What is he saying?” Hana asked.

“That she is too old to have children and won’t be Rock’s woman.” At least, I was reasonably certain that’s what Nahbey said.

Hana eyed Rock and the woman, and then Nahbey, who gestured for us to follow him to another group. She looked adorably dubious at Nahbey’s interpretation.

“Yeah, I think it’s wishful thinking on Nahbey’s part,” I whispered.

Nahbey stopped. Frowning at us, he spoke in his own language. “Rock’s woman died. She had no children. All her babies died. He should find a young woman who will give him lots of children.”

Someone called Nahbey, and he did that body-incline thing, saying, “Just a moment,” and walked away.

Wincing, I translated for Hana, and she said, “Didn’t we read that Neanderthal Y chromosomes had genes that would cause miscarriages in human women?”

My shoulders fell. “Yeah.” And even without faulty genes, among those with a nomadic lifestyle, without a consistent food supply, infant and child mortality would be high.

I looked back at Rock, sitting cross-legged by the woman and her child. He had his hand on the child’s forehead. The kid was dark-skinned and dark-haired, and not biologically his. It was obvious. But Rock cared about the child, and when he looked up at the child’s mother, there was more than care there—there was longing.

Seeing us standing alone, Rock beckoned us over and gestured to the child. “Can you … help?” he asked in English.

At that moment, Nahbey caught up to us. He took my arm. “We have a drink for men.”

“Ah …” I said.

“Go ahead. I have the first-aid kit,” Hana said, patting her pack.

Nahbey began dragging me away. Eyes on Hana, I said, “Remember—”

“Drink my water and only eat food that’s steaming hot. I will!” Hana replied.

And then Nahbey shoved a skin canteen into my hand. I took a sniff, and my eyes went wide. Holy shit, beer!

Fermentation kills all the bad bugs, right?

33 HANA

I watched Nahbey drag John away and then took out the first-aid kit, though I didn’t expect there would be a lot I could do. Still, Rock looked hopeful, and I’d heard that care can be a powerful placebo.

I sat down in front of the woman, and Rock gestured between her and me. “Nara … Hana …” He gestured to the child. “Tonn.”

He spoke in his own language to Nara, showing her his knuckles. The only remnants of the staph infection at that point were flat pink scars, and her eyes got wide. He must have been fighting that infection for a while. The woman leaned closer to me, and the fur covering the child fell back. He was naked beneath, perhaps between the ages of six or eight, much slenderer than Purr was … had been. My eyes got hot, and I blinked to hold back my tears. There was hope for this child, I told myself. I put my hand on his forehead. He had a fever, and up close, had sunken eyes. His breath came fast and shallow. At my touch, his eyes fluttered open, but his gaze was distant. I didn’t think he saw me, or anyone.

Rock said, “No eat, no drink. Water, mizu …” he mimed throwing up.

Purr never got so sick he couldn’t hold down food. A wave of fear, but also hope, swept through me. His fever had probably dehydrated him, and dehydration may have caused the nausea and vomiting. I knew because it happened to me as a child on multiple occasions. John and I had something that could help. Fumbling with the kit, I pulled out a pouch of instant sports drink—it came with the SMREs and was gentler on the stomach than water. I gestured for a bowl and a spoon. Putting one of his hands on the woman’s shoulders, Rock hastened to his feet.

The woman bowed slightly. I returned it. She was wearing a sleeveless gold tunic made with a nalbinding stitch. It had a large eyelet at the front, secured with a leather tie. The edges of the tunic were red on the cuffs and hem and green along the edge of the eyelet. A decorative cedar fiber net held back her gray-streaked hair. She wiped her eyes again, and I realized I was staring. I ducked my head.

Rock rejoined us a moment later and gave me a wooden spoon and bowl. I filled the bowl with water from my canteen—I hadn’t drunk from it yet—and mixed in the electrolyte powder. We put the boy in Rock’s arms, and Rock held his head aloft as Nara spooned a bit of liquid into his mouth. I massaged his throat. His pulse was fast and steady under my fingers, and his face was angelic, though I guess all children’s faces are. Even Purr, even after he’d tried to kill us—or kept lookout for the people who had tried to kill us—had looked innocent. Purr had been as pale as John, maybe paler, and his hair had been bright orange. But in my memory of him sleeping, his features weren’t so different from Tonn’s, just a different color. Tonn didn’t wake beneath my ministrations, but he swallowed. Had Purr ever been this sick? I didn’t think so.

I quickly took out my scroll and spoke into it, “Set alarm for twenty minutes.”

Rock and Nara blinked at me. To Rock, I said, “Now we wait.”

The process of rehydrating had to be slow. If we gave him too much liquid, he might retch, dry heave, and then be worse off. But if he kept the liquid down, we would give him another spoonful when the timer rang. If he kept that down, we could give him a little more at the next interval, and if he kept that down, we could slowly narrow the intervals and increase the fluid. I didn’t like to think of what we would do if he didn’t keep the first spoonful down.

Rocking Tonn in his arms, Rock talked quietly to Nara. Her eyes flitted occasionally to me. Outside the cave, the “party” was getting rowdier. John was drinking from a skin I didn’t recognize and laughing at something someone was saying. People were moving back and forth. It was … chaotic. I was happy to sit there with something I could do, with a purpose.

The timer rang, and even though its volume was inconsequential compared to the revelry going on just outside, Nara and Rock both visibly startled.

“It is okay,” I said. “Daijobu.” And almost laughed at my automatic switch between English and Japanese, neither of which they understood.

“Daijobu, okay,” said Rock, nodding confidently. He said something to Nara that must have reassured her, because she shook herself and smiled slightly. It was humbling to think my facility for languages was less than a caveman’s.

I dipped another spoon into the bowl, and we began the process again.

The wind picked up, the sort of icy wind that swept down from the peaks and made the summer feel like fall and smell like snow. We weren’t far enough into the cave to miss its blast. Rock wrapped Tonn back into the fur blanket, and I took out the fur I intended to use as a bedroll and slung it over my shoulders. Nara unfurled a poncho lined with fur and set it over Rock’s shoulders. He barked something at her. She only raised an eyebrow and wrapped another fur around her own shoulders. Only it wasn’t a “fur;” it was furs in long, thin strips of gray that were sewn together. A different fur that was dark mahogany ran in a strip along the bottom. It was a beautiful thing. I didn’t remember Purr’s family having such handiwork.

Rock and Nara whispered together, the words blending with the wind. Outside, the leaves in the trees swirled on their branches, buffeted one way, and then the next—I tried to find the pattern in the way they bent and snapped, and the way the leaves at their ends swirled one way and then the other … and I knew I’d omitted a variable in my equations.

34 JOHN

Was Hana doing all right? I checked over my shoulder to see her leaning close to the sick kid, held by Rock. The woman I was going to think of as “Rock’s girlfriend,” was biting her lip, eyes soft. I took a step in that direction, but Nahbey pulled me back, gestured to a log beside the fire, and pushed me down on it. “Relax! Relax!”

Taking his invitation, I sat down and stretched my legs out to the bonfire. It had gotten cold fast when the wind changed. Sitting beside me, Nahbey handed me the beer skin, and I took a swig. It tasted terrible and wonderful, and I choked a bit, which made everyone around the fire laugh. I spotted Haiiro dashing through the undergrowth pursued by some kids. His jaw was open, and his tongue was hanging out in a big canine smile. He let one of the kids almost touch his tail, and then he sprinted away. Tease.

A warm feeling bubbled up in my chest. I was not drunk enough not to realize it was the booze. A stupid smile came to my face. I glanced at Nahbey and found him glaring back at Rock. “He shouldn’t be with Nara. He should be drinking with us.”

“They seem—”

“Stay here. Drink,” Nahbey growled, and got up and headed in that direction.

Tipping the skin canteen, I took a long swig to fortify myself for politics. In that moment of weakness, warmth replaced the chill air beside me. Licking my lips and lowering the canteen, I looked over, expecting Nahbey to have returned. Instead, I found a girl smiling at me, and I don’t think I am being patronizing when I say girl. My eyes dipped—it was instinctive, although, yeah, maybe my self-control was a bit eroded by the buzz in my brain. Even if her bronze skin didn’t have the same windblown, sun-thickened look that Nahbey, Rock, or any of the adults had, she had the accouterments of womanhood. That is to say, she had T and A.

“Um …” I said.

Halla, the girl we’d met that first day with Nahbey and Rock, stood just behind her. Frowning, Halla put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear. Without a backward glance, the girl in front of me brushed Halla’s hand away.

Rolling her eyes, Halla left.

Uh-oh.

It is a scientific fact that men overestimate women’s interest in them; also, I had a buzz going, so my executive functioning might have been impaired … but, I was pretty sure she was leaning too close. I wished in that moment that hunter-gatherers were as primitive-looking as they are in museum dioramas, but her hair was tied up in a very neat and complicated braid, her knit dress was clean, and the peekaboo hole in the front was enticing.

My brain screamed, don’t look. Don’t look.

Other parts of me had different ideas.

“Johnnnnn,” she said, rolling my name off her tongue. Her lips were shiny and pink, like she had some access to stone-age lip gloss and wasn’t afraid to use it. Or it could have been the beer.

“Err …” I said.

She put her hand on my forearm. I didn’t know the rules of their society. I didn’t want to accidentally get married. Jumping up like my pants were on fire, I spun and saw Rock scowling at nothing as he ambled through the partygoers.

Stepping sideways, putting space between me and The Girl, I said, “Rock, brother, sit with me!” My desperation rang loud in my own ears.

Rock’s gaze went to The Girl, and his heavy brow lifted. Stepping over the log between me and her, he sat down.

Joining him, I threw my arm over his shoulder. “Thank you,” I whispered. “You saved me.” Or at least, that is what I tried to say. I wasn’t fluent, I was just trying my best.

Lip curling, he peeled my arm off of him and grumbled, “You saved Nahbey and me.” He sighed. “The meat you shared saved Nara and Tonn … and everyone else.”

“Nara? Tonn?” I asked.

His head tipped to the woman and the boy. “Nara is the woman. Tonn is her son.”

Hana was giving the boy a spoonful of something while Nara held his head up. The little guy’s eyes were open. He watched Hana like she might be an angel.

“Nara—”

“Nara has no man!” Rock snipped out of the blue.

“But Rock likes Nara.” It was adolescent phrasing, but I’d only spoken his language for a few weeks … or was it days?

His shoulders softened. He reached for the flask, and I put it in his hand. He tipped it back. “Tonn is not my boy.”

“Tonn needs a … man …” I said. How did I not know the word for “father”?

Rock gestured around the camp. “Many men.”

I could see his point. The kid would have a tribe of men. My brow furrowed. “Is it the same?”

He looked thoughtful, and then frowned and took a long sip of beer. And then another. “Nara will not want me.”

Uh-oh, I didn’t want the guy who could break all my fingers with a handshake being a sad, angry drunk. “Why not? You are …” I searched. “Strong.”

His frown deepened. “Strong, yes, but not good at …” He said some words that made my eyes cross. Raising a brow, he mimed a throwing motion. “Not a good hunter.”

Oh. Our books on Neanderthals said that their throw wasn’t as strong as a human. Something about the shoulder joint. Thinking about it, the Neanderthals we’d seen hunting were ambush hunters, lying in wait and striking at animals they’d herded directly at them, their snares, or both.

Early humans threw spears from afar with their superior throwing ability. It had the advantage of being a lot less dangerous for humans. Neanderthals had to wait for animals to practically run over them.

Rock took another swig of beer, and his eyes went to my rifle, strapped at the moment on my back.

Oh. And oh. He wanted my rifle because he was not as good a hunter as the other members of his tribe. He wanted to be a good hunter because he was in love. He was afraid of not being able to provide for Nara the way his society expected him to. That … hit hard.

I sighed and said, “It won’t work for you,” in English, and then, “Only me,” in his language. He didn’t look like he believed me. I hesitated, but then, maybe because I was drunk, I swung it off my shoulder. No one looked over. The rifle meant nothing to them. Rock was the only one who had seen me shoot anything. Still … “They are not scared. You told the story of the big cat and the …” I mimicked the sound of gunshots.

“They think I was crazy with fever,” Rock said.

I handed him the weapon.

He took it gingerly, pointed it at the fire, and pulled the trigger. He’d been paying close attention. Nothing happened. It was biometrically activated. He scowled, and I said, “I’m sorry.”

He grunted. “You saved me. I should not ask for more.” He passed the rifle back to me.

I stared at the rifle in my hands. He hadn’t seen me use the bow and arrow, either. I hadn’t shown him the bow and arrow out of superstition. I had this nagging feeling that if Hana and I changed nothing while we were there, they’d walk away from their encounter with us unscathed. They might talk about us, our “strange lights,” and “strange small cave,” but it would be just a story, and if they mentioned they were all sick, it might all be attributed to fever. But if we gave them more tools, would the universe rearrange itself so that the bow and arrow and atlatl still wouldn’t be invented until the date archeologists believe? Would they all die in some terrible way?

If I helped him, would I doom him?

Of course, the dates and locations of the bow and arrow and all inventions were always getting pushed back in our time, the location of their first “discovery” constantly changing. These people were knitting, or nalbinding, or whatever, and that wasn’t something that was supposed to appear for another 50,000 years. Fabric, bone, and wood tools break down faster than stones.

When Purr died, I told myself and Hana that we had given him a better life, even if it was for a brief time. Rock was my friend. All right, not my friend, and he might have tried to kill me before, or at least thought seriously about it, but I was feeling sappy at that moment.

Taking the beer flask, I took a swig. “I can make … things … help you.”

The camp was getting rowdy. People were laughing and talking. The smell of roasting meat was rising around us, and the flames in the fire were leaping. I was warm, despite the chilly wind from the mountain. Rock stared at me.

I cleared my throat and tried again. “Help … throw … fast strong.”

“Why?” Rock asked.

“Why?” I repeated dumbly.

“Why are you helping me?” Rock clarified.

Why was I helping him? Because he was in a position I sort of kind of understood? Because he lost his wife, and losing Hana, or thinking I’d lost her, had hurt. Because he had lost a lot of babies … and after Purr, I empathized more with that. I never liked hearing about someone losing a kid, but after Purr, I felt it deep in my gut. I’d started to imagine Purr’s life in the future—imagined it being hard and having to fight for him. Anticipating that fight had given me meaning. Losing Purr, I lost a future and meaning, and I didn’t want to do that to another man. And Rock might hate me, but he wasn’t a bad guy. He could have run and left Nahbey to the cat, but he hadn’t.

I couldn’t articulate that in his language. Maybe not even in my own. Thinking about Purr was putting a lump in my throat. So I just shrugged. “Why not?”

“You’re crazy,” Rock said.

Probably.

I shrugged again and took a long swig of beer.

35 HANA

I spied John and Rock, silhouetted by firelight, as they conspired about something, and turned back to Tonn and Nara. Tonn was sitting up, sipping electrolyte drink directly from the bowl. He was still feverish, but it had been over an hour, and he hadn’t thrown up. Setting the bowl down, he slumped against his mother, and his eyes shut, as though all power had left his small body. She rubbed his head affectionately and smiled at me. “Thank you,” she said in her own language.

I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up—least of all, my own. I’d thought Purr was better, too. But I thought Tonn had turned the corner. I peered into the dimness of the cave. I saw other mothers with children who were still recovering. Many were nursing.

My mother said breastmilk was better than any electrolyte solution, but Tonn was perhaps past that age, and if he was Nara’s last child, she wouldn’t be able to nurse him. And he’d been so weak … he might not have imbibed except with help.

My mother sat with me when I was ill. And with my brother Ken, too, both when he was small and during his last terrible year when the cancer ate him from the inside out. She and Ken were so alike. Was watching him die like watching a part of herself die?

In personality and inclination, I was more like my father. I only knew him from a distance. His work was everything to him. I didn’t think my work was everything to me, but “math-land,” as John called it, pulled me in at inconvenient times. My brain wandered there whenever I got bored.

A lump formed in my throat. I would not see my parents again. The realization hit me at odd times. I smoothed Tonn’s hair away from his perfect, angelic face. Perhaps now wasn’t a strange time for that recognition to hit.

They’d never have grandchildren. Unless …

Did I have what it took to stay in this world enough to be a parent? I’d missed the warning signs of Purr’s heart attack. I swallowed the lump in my throat and reminded myself that John did, too.

It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t take that chance.

We couldn’t stay with the tribe. I closed my eyes. I wasn’t that brave.

“Hana,” Nara said.

I opened my eyes and met hers. She said some words, slowly, but they were still incomprehensible to me. Her brow furrowed, and she touched my clothing and repeated what she said before. Some commentary on my clothing? I was wearing a pair of John’s coveralls, rolled up at the sleeves and ankles, and my own undershirt. We only had one change of clothes between the two of us. Washing them with rocks was taking its toll, and the coverall’s fabric was becoming worn. But she probably wasn’t commenting on that. Was she asking if I made these? The coveralls were woven, the T-shirt a fine knit. Both made with technologies that wouldn’t exist for a long, long time.

Not knowing how to respond, I touched her tunic dress and then mimed nalbinding. She nodded vigorously … and then we came to a conversational impasse.

Fortunately, at that moment, Rock barked something very close. He was holding two steaming bowls with spoons. John was at his shoulder, with a flask of something. Rock handed one bowl to Nara and one to me.

“S’okay to eat,” John said. “I watched them dump red-hot rocks into the basket to boil it.” He held out the flask. It reeked like vomit. “You want some pre-historic beer?”

“I’ll leave that to the history buff,” I said, averting my nose and stifling my urge to grimace.

Grinning, he said, “For history!” and took a long swig. John had never gotten drunk in my presence, even when I would’ve understood if he had—the single, horrible dinner with my parents, for instance. My mother told him she’d never heard of the online university he’d graduated from, loud enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear. He’d just smiled and said, “It is small.”

My father had tried to be more subtle with his own disapproval. “You know Hana’s Jewish?”

John smiled again and said, “I was aware, sir,” with good humor and respect. If he’d downed the whiskey he’d been drinking and summoned the waiter for another, I would have understood. He was careful with alcohol; and beer, in our time at least, wasn’t that intoxicating, but it seemed unwise not to be cautious. “Do you think you should be careful?” I asked.

“Nah, it is pretty weak,” he said, lifting the flask and regarding it through one squinted eye.

A rhythmic sort of noise rose from a circle of people off to one side. John perked and said, “What is that?” and headed in that direction.

Rock stayed, though. “How is Tonn?” I think he said.

Nara smiled as she answered, and Rock’s shoulders got softer. He smiled back and patted my shoulder. “Thank you,” he said in English, and then added in Japanese, “Duomo arigatou.”

“Don’t mention it. Doitashimashite,” I said in both languages, just to keep our conversation consistent.

He sat down with us and talked to Nara, words too fast and too hushed to hear over the increasing volume of the crowd.

Eating the food in my bowl—it was not particularly tasty, and the meat was incredibly tough—I looked out at the tribe. The current atmosphere was a bit like a frat party a roommate once convinced me to go to. John was dancing … or something … with Nahbey, fitting right in. I felt like I did at that party, on the edges, a little bored. I stared at the fire and the smoke swirling into the sky.

John and Nahbey joined another circle on the other side of the fire, and I watched them through the flames. Nahbey was trying to teach John an intricate step. A young woman slipped between them and attempted to help. Nahbey shooed her away, and she backed off, but her eyes stayed on John, and even at a distance, even with my poor ability to read intent, I saw her longing? Hope, maybe?

My heart rate picked up, and a chill crept beneath the fur.

John didn’t see her—or was pretending not to.

He fit in.

He could stay.

He could live.

Nahbey was distracted for just a moment, turning to talk to another man, and the girl moved in again.

I wrestled with a moral dilemma, thinking I should go over, and that I shouldn’t.

I needed to let John go.

I was paralyzed. John was not.

36 JOHN

“Turn off the sun!” I moaned to Hana. Each ray of light creeping beneath the fur felt like a knife to my eyes.

“I think the beer was stronger than you thought,” Hana said.

There was a jackhammer. In. My. Head. “Honey?”

“Yes?” Hana asked brightly. Too brightly.

“I know you’re a genius—”

Her tone became contemplative. “I am not really sure I know what that means, in practical application. I—”

That introspection was why I loved her, but I groaned. Really, groannnnnnnnnned.

“Would you like some water?” Hana asked.

My mouth tasted like something had crawled into it and died, and also, like the thing was still there. My tongue felt …fuzzy. And yet the prospect of water made my stomach churn. I talked so I didn’t think about it. “I know the beer was stronger than I thought.”

“Oh.”

For a few seconds, the only sound was the pounding in my own head … and the frogs, and the birds, and the bugs that I’d learned to ignore.

I was going to puke.

“Do you remember last night?” Hana asked.

“Of course, I …” Oh, shit. “I was sitting with Rock, talking.” I remembered promising to make him a bow and arrow. I was apprehensive about that—was I dooming him?—but what worried me more was that everything after that was a blur.

“Did I do anything bad?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat.

“No.”

I exhaled.

“They asked us each to sing a song, and we did.”

“I don’t remember that,” I said.

“You have perfect pitch, even when you’re drunk.”

If my head hadn’t been screaming, that would have made me smile. I wanted to say something cocky. But all I could manage was, “Ugh.”

“I sang, “Ue o Muite Arukou,” and you whistled along in accompaniment, even though it is over one hundred years old, and you said you’d heard it only once before.”

That was impressive—I didn’t think I’d heard that song ever.

“You told me you call it “Sukiyaki,” in English. But it is not about grilling at all, and it is strange that it got that name.”

“Probably only Japanese anyone knew when it came across the big pond,” I replied, like I knew what she was talking about. I didn’t know any song called “Grilling,” in Japanese or otherwise. I put my head in my hands.

“You sang “Light My Fire,” by a band called The Doors.” Hana continued, “Because you said you wanted to sing something they could relate to. I think one of the girls understood the … figurative … meaning.”

“Ergh. Wait, complicated braids?” Big breasts? I didn’t ask the last aloud; instead, I said, “Lip gloss?” What was she using? Probably some sort of animal fat.

Hana’s voice got quieter. “Yes. You do remember?”

“A little.”

“After the singing … We had a talk,” Hana said. “Do you remember that?”

She said “a talk” like women say, “we need to have a talk,” although I don’t remember Hana ever saying, “We need to have a talk,” during our previous relationship or, more importantly, the night before. Hana had never held me in suspense. She just out and told me if I did something she found perplexing or annoying. I might have used that expression, though. I was sort of the woman in our relationship in a lot of ways.

But last night we’d had a talk … I remembered the curve of Lip Gloss’s breasts through the peek-hole of her dress and felt a cold rush of terror.

I threw back the fur and swore at the morning light piercing my eyes. “Wait … I didn’t … you said I … but did I do something?”

Hana was sitting beside me with the canteen at her knees. It was open and steaming, like she just heated it on the fire. She tilted her head and frowned.

Oh, no …

“I told you, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

I blinked at her and rubbed my eyes.

She whispered, “I was sitting with Nara, Tonn, and Rock, and you came over and asked me to come over to the fire … do you remember?”

The word “no” was on my lips when I had a hazy recollection. “Did I come running over to you saying, ‘Help me! She’s been chasing me all evening?’”

She nodded.

“Did I scream it … like a child being chased by a bear?”

Hana nodded again.

Rubbing my eyes, I said, “Oh, thank God.” I hadn’t hit on the girl, and it hadn’t looked like I had. I relaxed a fraction.

Hana said, “But you forgot our talk.”

“That sounds … ominous.”

“You can stay here, John.” Hana said, “You fit in; they love you.”

Still rubbing my eyes, because keeping my fingers on my eyelids helped keep out the sun, I replied, “That’s nice. But not nicer than antibiotics, ibuprofen, and toilet paper.” We’d been using river rocks, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds—it won’t give you ticks like moss—but it wasn’t great.

“I’m not sure we can get home,” she said.

This again. “I have confidence in you,” I replied.

“I don’t have the computing power I need here—”

“But Lo had the computing power you need back at the station, and he already has the coordinates figured out and pre-programmed.” I felt a flash of fear. “We still have Lo’s coordinates, don’t we?”

“Yes, but—”

It was too much: the hangover, the smell of whatever was cooking on the fire, the fear that I’d Done a Bad Thing, the subsequent Relief, and then Hana’s Worry. I wanted to be there for her. But I couldn’t. Stumbling to my feet, heading for the trees, I said, “I’m going to throw up.”

37 HANA

John stumbled away from me. He didn’t even take the boomstick. He’d slept with it curled under his arm all night.

I shifted the furs around my shoulders. The wind gusted down from the peaks with too much force for it to be safe to operate the water wheel.

People milled around the camp—they had been all night, there was never a time everyone was asleep. For the best, I guessed, since there was no proximity detector except for people’s eyes and ears—and for the moment, Haiiro. He’d slept beside me, but at dawn he’d begun prowling around the camp, looking for discarded bits of meat and bones.

The sound of John retching came from the woods. A few people commented and chuckled. He wasn’t the first person to be sick that morning.

Between the wind and his hangover, it was wise to stay later than we’d planned.

I looked up at the snapping branches and swirling leaves and had an attack of math. I unrolled my scroll, tapped on my stylus, and flicked open an application capable of deciphering my scribbles and finding errors in my equations. There was a current in time, of that I was certain, but how was the strength of the current determined?

“Hana?”

Was it stable?

“Hana?”

Or did it vary? If so, why and how much? I scribbled something and then crossed it out. That wasn’t right.

An index finger, wide at the tip, tapped the screen.

I blinked at it. That was Rock’s finger.

And then I blinked up.

Rock squatted in front of me. “Hana John, no go home. John …” He said a word in his language. I stared at his lips, and he said, “Sick,” in English.

“Not sick,” I said, and tipped back my head, miming drinking.

A ghost of a smile came to his lips. “John … sleep. You … go with Nara.”

I looked around. I didn’t see Nara.

“Go …” He mimed picking things and digging.

A small child walked over, squatted at my side, and coughed all over me and my scroll.

I was probably not going to get any work done … and a walk would be nice. I’d been out a bit with John, but mostly stayed pretty close to the pod. We both did. Unless things were packed away, a curious creature or human could upend all our hard work or strand us here if they irreparably harmed a battery.

Also, walking with the other women might be interesting. John provided all of our food—not really that much different than during our relationship in our time—but I hated feeling useless. Maybe I could learn from them and be able to identify edible plants that even he didn’t know? He said that even the dandelions were different from the ones in our time.

I rolled my scroll up and couldn’t find the words I needed in his language, so I smiled and inclined my body in the not-quite-a-bow move. Rising, he smiled back and patted my shoulder.

Rock and I had calculated his age with hash marks while he was recovering down at the pod—he thought of numbers by factors of ten, which I found fascinating. Was it simply a number the tribe chose because of the corresponding number of fingers? It wasn’t a universal human phenomenon; the Sumerians had a base of sixty. According to John, at least one tribe in the Amazon had no numbers at all, let alone addition or multiplication. Rock seemed to understand addition and multiplication, too—he was three tens and five years old.

Not much older than my brother. He was also a few inches shorter than me, and yet that pat on the shoulder managed to be fatherly.

“Hana go,” Rock said with a satisfied nod.

Nara appeared with Tonn; they stood very close to Rock. Rock took Tonn’s tiny hand in his oversize mitt, and the boy leaned against him.

“Yes,” I replied. “Yes” was enough. I don’t know why I’d wanted to make it more complicated.

Nara smiled and inclined her body. More women, children, and older men gathered around her.

I thought the expedition could only be a good thing.

* * *

Everyone in the foraging party carried a basket or satchel. The older men and younger women carried spears. Everyone else carried large walking sticks. A few of the armed members of the party walked at the head of the group, and others took the rear. The ones in the rear were constantly turning around, and I wondered if the creatures they expected were like tigers: unlikely to attack if you faced them. All the women chatted as we walked down the slope.

Giving a speech before a crowd of thousands doesn’t unnerve me, but casual conversations with a group of strangers makes my hair stand on end. I’m never sure what I should say. But I was not uncomfortable with the foraging party. I could not understand a word they said and could not communicate with them. I was free to just enjoy the walk, the conversation flowing by me, like the ever-present bird calls and hums of insects.

We stopped in a clearing that looked natural, rather than man or mammoth-made: small, irregular, with prominent saplings arising from the undergrowth. My companions spread out and bent over, scanning the ground for something. Not knowing what that something was, I held back. And then toward the center of the clearing, in a place where sunlight spilled through the trees like a spotlight, a child gave a cry, bent over, pulled something from the undergrowth, and plopped it into his mouth too quickly for me to see. There were more excited cries, and the entire group converged on the spot. I followed and gasped. “Strawberries.”

Already squatting, with a few in her hands, Nara said, “Srrawbearie?”

Joining her, I nodded, and my brain did the thing it always does with people who can’t speak English—it switched to Japanese. “Ichigo,” I blurted, and then winced because I was hopeless. I picked a berry and inspected it. Up close, it wasn’t as strawberry-ichigo-ish as I had thought. It was smaller than the tip of my pinky, narrow, and shaped like an upside-down raindrop instead of a plump heart. Also, the seeds were close to the surface, almost popping out.

Lifting one to her mouth, Nara smiled and said what I’m sure was the berry’s name in her language. She promptly ate it, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

I put my berry in my borrowed basket. Everyone else was eating; no one was “gathering.” John’s warning, “Don’t eat anything unless it is boiled or charred past recognition,” rang in my mind.

I plucked another berry and looked enviously at the smiling faces around me, shoveling the berries into their mouths for all they were worth. The berry in my fingers was a brilliant red without a trace of white, unripe flesh. I washed the berry with water from the canteen, still warm from being boiled earlier. And then I put it in my mouth. Juice exploded on my tongue, tarter than I was used to, but instantly and obviously recognizable as strawberry. I reached for another one and plopped it in my mouth before I thought about it.

“Delicious,” Nara said in her own language, and I smiled because I knew the word and because they were. “Delicious,” I agreed, and then added for good measure the word in English and Japanese.

I ate a few more, washing them first, before deciding it would probably be better to collect them instead of eating them all. The dose makes the poison, and I hoped any dysentery bugs that might have been on the berries were washed away—or were too minute in quantity to make me ill.

We moved on from the clearing, and the women bent to pick leafy greens. They pointed at other plants and shook their heads. Nara gestured to small plants with four leaves, almost like a clover, and began collecting them. I attempted to help. At the edge of the cluster of clover-like plants, on the roots of a tree, I found a beautiful mushroom. It was a brilliant yellow—a color I associated with poison tree frogs. A dramatic, lacey white fringe covered its cap. I sat on my heels beside it, and from the new angle, I spotted a delicate “skirt” on its stem. It was lovely. I reached for my scroll to take a picture and found my pocket empty—my heart rate sped up, and I had a moment of panic before remembering I’d left it in my bag in the cave. And then I bit my lip. The mushroom was such a beautiful thing; I wanted to record it. Nothing could be that beautiful without being destructive, and I knew it was poisonous. I wondered if John could identify it. Things in the past didn’t look precisely like we expected: the wolves were bigger, John swore he saw an enormous bear one night, and even the dandelions were different.

Curious to know what John knew, I used a pair of twigs like a pair of chopsticks and gently picked the mushroom. I carefully wrapped it in a broad leaf, and then wrapped that in my handkerchief. Nara called me over, and I slipped it in my pocket, safely away from the food I’d collected.

38 JOHN

Eyeing the forest trail that Hana and the party departed on, I took a sip from my unknown animal-stomach canteen. Despite the slightly gamey taste of the water, I didn’t feel like throwing up. The pounding in my head no longer felt like a jackhammer—it felt more like a regular hammer.

I swished the water in my canteen. There were only a few gulps left. I wanted to go back to the pod, and the river, and the seclusion of just me and Hana and Haiiro, and I wanted not to have anybody offer me any prehistoric beer ever again.

As if to punctuate that thought, Nahbey came over, squatted beside my bedroll, and offered me some of the swill. I groaned. He laughed and smacked my back. “We had fun last night, didn’t we?” he said. I groaned again. Nahbey nodded sagaciously. “You should stay here. You’re a good hunter. You would be welcome as one of us.”

I was a good hunter because of my boomstick. Maybe, if I dug through the encyclopedia on my scroll, I could devise a better bow and arrow, and maybe that would give me an edge for a while, but that wouldn’t give me antibiotics, ibuprofen, or cheese. My stomach was still queasy—why the Hell was I suddenly thinking about cheese? It’s not like there was much cheese to be had aboard the spaceship either, just the instant ration pizza and taco stuff, which was dehydrated—and tasted like it. “Thank you,” I said in his language. “I will think about it. Today we will go back to the small cave.”

Nahbey shook his head. “It is not good to be alone.”

“We’re not alone. Hana and I have Haiiro,” I replied. And a pod full of gadgets.

“You are alone,” Nahbey said sadly.

Rock was sitting on one side of the cave entrance, his back to the stone wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. Tonn sat on the opposite side of the entrance. They were passing a ball made of hides back and forth between them, both pausing now and then to cough, sniffle, or clear their throats.

Catching my interaction with Nahbey, Rock rolled his eyes and said, “John, you’re crazy,” in his own language. I think the word was “crazy” … but maybe it meant “idiot”? He’d used it to describe adopting Haiiro, too. I didn’t remember him drinking much last night. He passed out kind of early, which lent some credence to the theory that Neanderthals needed to sleep a lot to balance out their high metabolism. Or maybe he was just smart enough to know that he was still recovering, should take it easy, and that the beer was very strong.

I heard the women approaching. Their laughter and their coughing rang through the trees.

An instant later, Haiiro bounded up the slope and out of the undergrowth, sending leaves flying. The gathering party entered the camp more slowly than my excitable, impatient wolf cub. Haiiro turned right back around, dashed down the slope, and I heard Hana say, “No jumping, Haiiro-chan.”

Finally. I rolled up my bedroll. I had already rolled Hana’s earlier and found her scroll inside. Patting my pocket to confirm I had her scroll and my own, I stowed my bedroll with hers in the makeshift bag.

The people who’d stayed behind rose to greet the party … Those well enough to do so. Our virus had hit the males harder than the females. Many of them were more visibly and audibly ill. Or maybe they just got drunk the night before like I did.

Hana was at the tail of the group, a basket balanced against her hip, and Haiiro danced circles around her feet. Seeing me, she grinned, and I grinned back, despite my headache, despite my still uneasy stomach, despite the too-bright sunlight.

As she approached, conversation swirled around us, but it was like we were in our own little world. She looked more disheveled than usual, my spare clothes hanging off of her—stones do not clean as well as soap, and the knees of the pants were dark with stains and visibly thinning. Still, she looked like home.

She deposited the basket beside me and sat down on her heels. I eyed the contents: lots and lots of greens, and a few bright spots of ripe red fruit. I was not ready, even for the fruit, and groaned.

Laughing softly, Hana said, “I brought you a gift.” Reaching into her pocket, she fished out her handkerchief, tied in a tiny bundle. Opening it, she revealed a rolled-up leaf. Gingerly unrolling that, she displayed its contents proudly. It was a mushroom, and I blinked at it, because it was nothing like I had ever seen before. Its cap was a happy, bright yellow covered in a lacey white veil.

“I know it must be poisonous,” Hana said cheerfully, “but it is so pretty, I had to show you. I knew you could recognize it and tell me exactly how it would see me to my untimely end.”

I gasped then, because I did recognize it—and also for dramatic effect. “It’s a death cap!”

Hana smiled. “I was right. It is deadly. So deadly the death is in its name!”

Sometimes, when I’m excited by something, I babble. “This is the most deadly mushroom known to man. It was—will be—responsible for the death of a pope and possibly one Roman emperor!”

“I knew you could tell me about it.” Hana beamed at me.

My chest warmed and I probably grinned. She never minded when I nerded out. Leaning closer to the mushroom, I shook my head. “But they usually aren’t this pretty. Usually, their caps are a paler yellow and sometimes even brown. Also, I’ve never seen the lace quite that delicate.” Forgetting my hangover in my enthusiasm, I proclaimed, “This is the deathiest death cap I have ever seen. We shall call him Cappy.”

Hana said, “They must have changed their appearance in the last 100,000 years.” Turning the leaf around on her palm, she revealed the characteristic skirt on its stem.

“Hmm,” I murmured, picking up on an opportunity to make her laugh again. “If its appearance has changed so much, maybe so has its toxicity.” I scooped it from her hand, leaf and all—no way was I going to touch the damn thing. “How long to organ failure, do you think?”

“Well,” she said, “I think you have to consider that you already gave your liver a run for its money last night, which might shorten the time frame a bit.”

Nodding sagely, I lifted it higher and tilted back my head. “It won’t be a perfect test. But needs must.”

Hana rolled her eyes.

Winking, I opened my mouth wide. “For science!”

A scream pierced the air.

The mushroom and leaf flew from my hand, and my eyes traced it as it soared into the trees. Haiiro lunged after it, but Hana dove for him, catching him in a bear hug before he could retrieve the deadly fungus.

I blinked stupidly and found myself staring at Lip Gloss; only she was not staring at me, she was staring at Hana, pointing a finger at her and shouting … and not shouting happy things. A pair of older women went over to where Cappy, the deathiest death cap, had fallen. They gasped and murmured urgently amongst themselves.

Nahbey was suddenly beside me. “Did Hana give you that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“If you ate that, you would become very sick,” Nahbey said, his eyes wide.

“You would die,” Rock clarified, materializing by Nahbey’s shoulder.

“I know,” I said.

“You know?” Nahbey asked in disbelief.

Rock rolled his eyes. “You’re crazy.” Or maybe he said I’m an idiot. Maybe his word choice implied both?

I shrugged. “Yes.”

Shaking his head, Rock pinched the wide bridge of his prodigious nose.

Lip Gloss turned to Nahbey and Rock and pointed an accusatory finger at Hana. She said things, angry things, that I couldn’t parse.

An older woman scooted over, took Hana’s basket, and threw the whole thing on the fire.

Nahbey, Rock, and Nara looked concerned.

More men and women came to stand beside Lip Gloss, and they looked angry.

“Oh, no,” said Hana.

Nahbey said some placating words I didn’t follow. I think he said that I was joking … maybe?

Lip Gloss scowled. “She is”—something—“he gave us meat.”

Rock said, “Hana wouldn’t hurt John,” and Nara added, “She helped Rock, Nahbey, and Tonn.”

“Hana’s not an idiot,” I said.

Haiiro growled at Lip Gloss. Lip Gloss narrowed her eyes at him and stomped away.

The rest of the tribe milled around, scowling at Hana.

The calls of the birds and insects became ominous. “I think …” I said in their language. “We will go home.”

Nahbey gave me a weak sort of smile that morphed into a grimace. “Maybe that is a good idea.”

39 HANA

“They think I was trying to kill you,” I said to John as he, Haiiro-chan, and I made our way down the slope. The wind had calmed. We’d be able to set up our water wheel and resume charging our battery.

“I don’t think Nara, Nahbey, or Rock think that,” John said.

“The girl did,” I said, thinking of her finger pointing at me.

We went a few more steps. John frowned.

“She didn’t believe that?” I suggested.

Leaves crackled under our feet, and stones tumbled down the steep slope. Haiiro dashed from the trail into the undergrowth.

John still didn’t answer.

I don’t have a feel for interpersonal relations or politics, which doesn’t mean I can’t intuit them logically. “She has a crush on you, was jealous of me, and made the accusation.”

John flushed from his neck to his scalp.

I chuckled darkly. I had heard that inter-female competition is vicious, but I hadn’t really felt it since high school—which was maybe no coincidence, considering the cave girl’s age. Or maybe it was. I’d heard of rivalries in college and in the Ph.D. program. I’d blissfully floated by them, not on social acumen—more, I think, because my success came early and fast, and my parents were wealthy and donated to the university. But now, in prehistory, I was encountering them. I supposed, by the law of averages, it was bound to happen sometime. It didn’t matter. I was not staying here.

I had a sudden thought. Their anger wasn’t directed at John.

“You could stay with them,” I said.

John had been leaning slightly under the weight of his pack. He looked over at me sharply.

“They told you about that?” he asked.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

I blinked. “They asked you to stay?”

He scowled. “They asked us to stay with them. They said we are alone.”

“Us? Really?” I asked.

“Yes …” he scowled again, and his gaze went to the distance. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” I pressed.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

But it did. He could live.

40 JOHN

“We’ll just be across the river,” I told Hana, poking my head into the pod. It was a day after the “Cappy Incident,” barely sunrise, and still dim outside. Inside the pod, light came from the computer screen, bluish compared to the pink of the sunrise. Standing behind me, Rock had to see the glow, but he said nothing.

Sitting on the floor that was—or had been—a wall, she nodded. Her hair was an unbound cloud of disheveled dark curls. Her eyes were troubled. She didn’t believe we’d get home.

Clearing my throat, I said, “We will go downriver a bit first to—”

“Cross on the stones,” she said.

The river had shrunk since the spring thaw. We’d had to reposition the water wheel and charging equipment. Despite that hassle, the water was still freakishly cold. I opened my mouth.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ve got lots of work to do here.”

I nodded.

She smiled. It looked forced. “Have fun.”

I pretended I didn’t know the smile was forced. “I probably will.” Grunting dramatically, I thrust the atlatl I’d made the day before into view. I planned on showing Rock my bow and arrow, but the atlatl spear-thrower, basically just a stick with a hook, was even simpler and would work with their existing spears.

I’d confessed to her my promise to Rock and my reasons. “Me like throw spear.”

She smiled then, a genuine smile that reached her eyes.

I withdrew from view. “See you soon,” I said.

Shifting from foot to foot, Rock called, “See you, Hana,” in English, and then he added in Japanese, “Mata ne.”

“Mata ne!” Hana replied.

Picking up my bow and arrows, and a spear I’d altered to work with the atlatl, I set off. Rock fell into step beside me. Haiiro was off somewhere being Haiiro, which was maybe better. I didn’t want him getting in the way of bow and arrow or atlatl practice.

Rock looked at both weapons with interest, and I said, “These you can make.”

Pointing to the arrow tips, Rock said, “That stone you used I don’t have …” His finger dropped to the “fletching.” “And I don’t have that.”

I’d made the arrow tips of titanium bits I had hacked off Hana’s pod. The fletching was bits of thin plastic from the same. “I’ll give you these, but you can use your stone for them when these wear out,” I said, pointing to the tip and his own spear point. Gesturing to the fletching, I said, “Feathers work for this.” I added for good measure, “They help it fly straighter,” using his language and more gestures.

“Finally, good use for Squawk,” Rock said with a scowl.

I looked at him sharply. In profile, he looked less human: short and broad, thick brows and a protruding nose and upper jaw, and a low forehead. There was also something alien in the way the weight of his skull was situated in the back. His profile, the scowl, both brought to mind stories of mythological dwarves. They were supposedly cranky mountain dwellers, too. Another legend like the Sisters that was based on truth?

The ghost of a smile touched Rock’s lips, and he was human again.

“You’re joking,” I said.

He sighed. “Unfortunately.” His thick brow furrowed. “Nahbey would be sad.” He shook his head. “It is just a bird.”

“Squawk isn’t just a bird,” I protested. “He warned you of the cat.”

The furrow in Rock’s heavy brow got deeper. “It is a bird … Squawk isn’t like a child or a brother. He didn’t stay with the tribe.”

“Neither will Hana or I,” I said.

“That’s not good either,” Rock replied, looking at me sharply. “Not for you. The snow time will come. You will die if you don’t join us.”

I wanted to tell him we’d leave, but I didn’t think he bought the idea that the pod was a boat—or at least not that it could float on the shrinking river. So I said nothing … until we reached the willow. “Have you had tea today?”

Rock rolled his eyes, ripped a twig off the tree, and stuck it in his mouth like a toothpick. “Happy, Mother?”

I laughed. I thought at the time that Rock was probably as close to an alien as I was ever likely to meet, but his humor was surprisingly relatable, and funnier for it. “Yes …. Son,” I replied.

He glared. I smirked.

I raised a brow. “You called me Mother. You walked into it.”

Those heavy brows of his lifted, and his wide eyes got wider. “Walked into it …” He smiled. “Interesting … way … to put it. Hmm …”

I noticed he was panting and shortened my stride. He didn’t comment. When we reached the rock crossing a few minutes later, he halted before the bank and wandered down to a bluff by the river’s edge. I stood, not sure what he was doing.

“These are delicious,” he said. Sitting on his heels, he plucked something from a long stalk and plopped it into his mouth. I joined him. Closer, I saw low-growing plants with dark green five-lobed leaves. Among the leaves, I made out tiny berries, reminiscent of raspberries, but with fatter, plumper lobes. I was pretty sure they were cloudberries or related to them. Cloudberries were not native to Wisconsin when I lived there, but on a canoeing trip to Minnesota, we’d looked for them, but never found any.

Gesturing for me to join him, Rock plopped another berry into his mouth.

I was not sure if he was eating to eat, or because he was tired and needed to rest. He’d been tired at the party, and he’d hiked down the mountain alone. I sat on my heels beside him, plucked some berries, stared at them in my palm for a minute, and then washed them with water from my canteen before eating them. Their flavor was reminiscent of raspberries but with more tartness and an underlying taste of honey. I paused then and gazed up at the mountain peaks, not wanting to eat more. I didn’t want to spend any more water from my canteen on washing the berries, not when I wouldn’t have a fire to boil more water before our return.

Rock gestured again with his hand, as though to say, Eat, and plopped more berries in his mouth.

“I’ll pick some on the way home,” I said. “They’ll get …” I pointed to my pocket and mimed them being squished. As an afterthought, I added, “Hana will like them.”

Staring thoughtfully at a berry in his palm, Rock said, “Do you do all the hunting, gathering, and cooking for your small tribe?”

“Yep, well, Haiiro helps with hunting.” I chuckled. “Hana can burn water. But she is good with the boat.”

He looked up at me. “Have you ever seen this boat … on water?”

He thought I was crazy, and that the pod being a boat was craziest of all. And he was right; it was crazy, because it wasn’t a boat. It was a space-time machine, which was, objectively, even crazier.

I looked upward. Despite the rising dawn, the moon and a few stars were still visible. “It is not for water.”

“How can it be a boat, but not for water?” Rock protested.

“I do not know the word,” I said. “Boat” was the closest. “We came in these …” “Small cave” didn’t describe something that moves, so I fell back on the English word. “... pods … from far away.”

Rock raised an eyebrow.

I searched for words. “In the pods, you have seen strange lights—”

“I’ve seen strange lights in your pants,” he said.

He doubtlessly meant the scroll. But the potential joke there … With more control than I thought I had, I kept going, “...and we always know when you’re coming, and the strange sounds …”

“I have strange sounds in my pants, too,” Rock said, raising a bushy brow.

I blinked.

Squeezing one eye shut, Rock lifted a leg and farted.

I fell over laughing.

* * *

Bow lowered in his hand, Rock stared at the arrow embedded in the tree trunk. “It is small. Not strong,” he said. “Not a spear.”

I’d shown him how to use the bow and arrow first, since throwing was the thing Neanderthals had trouble with.

“A bigger bow can shoot stronger,” I said, thinking of the longbows of the Middle Ages. He was strong enough to use one. I’d made something fast and easy instead of trying to optimize all the variables: curvature, the type of wood, a secondary layer of bone, a linen bowstring more resilient to humidity. Unfortunately, I wasn’t an expert on any of those, and I didn’t think I could describe any of them.

Rock grunted. “Good for small animals, but small animals I can trap.” He sounded less than enthused.

Pulling out the atlatl, I said, “This is better for large animals in the … grass.” I didn’t know the word for plains. Setting the spear atop it, I cast back and threw. I hadn’t aimed at anything in particular, but my throw launched the spear at what must have been an impressive distance because Rock muttered, “This is more interesting.”

“Aiming is hard,” I said, heading toward it.

Rock grunted.

When we reached the spear, I handed over the atlatl, and he inspected it. “Easy to make,” he remarked. He quickly deduced how the point at the end of the spear shaft fitted into the atlatl’s socket. Angling his body, he cast off. He threw stiffly, hips turning with shoulders, without the windup that makes a great throw, and there was something wrong with the way his shoulder worked. I took a step toward him, instinctively going to correct him, and then I caught myself.

He wasn’t a child. He’d probably been throwing spears since he could walk, and he was well aware of his limitations. Those limitations might be hard-wired.

I crossed my arms to keep them to myself and stepped back.

“Hmmm …” he said, gazing at the spear embedded in the grass. It hadn’t gone as far as mine, and I hadn’t been throwing for distance—I’d been concentrating on trying to keep the spear atop the atlatl.

He turned around. I expected disappointment on his face, but he looked thoughtful, and before I could work out what to say, he said, “For me, that was good.”

I stood straighter.

Lifting the atlatl and studying it, he said, “But when the others learn of this device and use them, they will throw farther, too.”

I gazed at where his spear had fallen. I’d read a lot about atlatls since my promise at the party. The range of an atlatl is about 850 feet or 258 meters, but the effective range is much less: thirty meters tops, which sounds bad when compared to my rifle, but is about double the effective range of a spear thrown by hand. Rock’s spear had gone a lot farther than thirty meters; he could learn to be accurate within the thirty meter range. I said, “You are first. Throw again and again. Hit something. Again and again. Be better.” This was as close as I could get to saying, Practice.

“I will—” he said a word I didn’t know. “I will throw again. And again.”

I repeated the word.

And he nodded.

We understood each other, despite 100,000 years, and if not across a species divide, across a species branch. As he retrieved the spear, I looked across the river and saw Hana.

She was watching, hair held in place by a few plastic chopsticks that came with her ready meals. Even at a distance, I could see the clouds in her expression.

She was from the same time as me, and the same branch of the Homo sapiens tree, and yet, her language, of math and physics, had told her troubling things.

I would never learn those languages well enough to put her at ease.

41 HANA

Haiiro’s bark cut through the hiss and crackle of the welder.

I wouldn’t have noticed, but I’d just finished one of the last, final joins.

Lifting my face protection, I froze.

His barking became more insistent. Maybe it was a false alarm?

John and Rock were across the river, practicing throwing with the atlatl. Haiiro and I were alone. Maybe he’d just become enraged by a leaf wafting out of reach in the breeze. The proximity detector, which analyzed movement around the pod and had “learned” what the drift of leaves, flight of birds, and scamper of small game looked like, hadn’t gone off.

At that moment, my scroll and the onboard computer sounded the proximity alarm at the same time. I touched the computer screen to turn both off—and my scroll pinged with an incoming call.

I accepted it with a tap, focusing on the screen. John’s voice scratched through the small speaker. “Hana?”

“I’m checking the cameras for angle of approach,” I said. The cameras detected movement in two different directions, neither one from the switchback trail. Whoever or whatever was approaching the pod wasn’t doing so from any path taken by the tribe. I jumped to the toolbox to retrieve the WD-40 and the lighter. Maybe it would be better to stay in the pod—but Haiiro was out there.

“On my way,” John said.

Rock’s voice scratched through the speaker. “Hana?”

I climbed out of the pod on a wooden ladder John had made, Rock’s voice crackling from my scroll. I understood when he asked, “What is this?” But I didn’t understand John’s answer.

“Haiiro!” I shouted, my desperation ringing in my ears. He was ten meters from the pod, facing away, snarling snout directed at a clump of grass that towered over him.

He smelled something.

“Haiiro,” I called again. He wasn’t a dog. He ignored me.

Leaping from the pod, boots hitting the ground hard and my teeth rattling, I raced toward him, only to watch helplessly as he dashed into the undergrowth.

“Haiiro!”

I plowed after him, but saw nothing but trees, and came to a halt. The trees towered around me. Their trunks seemed to press in on me on all sides. Insects buzzed ominously, and the call of birds became shrieks.

“Nara … Tonn ….” Rock’s words over my scroll were at the edge of my consciousness.

I couldn’t hear or see Haiiro. Maybe because of the boom of my heart, the rasp of my breathing. Had the cat returned?

“Hana, it’s okay. It’s Nara and Tonn,” John said.

Nara and Tonn were not there. I took a step backward. A twig snapped under my boot, unnaturally loud.

“Hana!” John said. “It’s all right.”

“Daijobu,” said Rock.

I could feel the muscles in my back tightening.

“Hana!”

The last, spoken from close by, made my breath leave me in a whoosh. “Nara?” I called.

She said words I didn’t understand, her voice seeming to come from every direction at once. But then I saw her emerging from around a tree, a spear in one hand, a pack on her back, and Tonn and Haiiro engaged in a game of tug o’ war over a stick beside her.

Halting, Nara waved tentatively.

The trees were trees again, no longer walls. The buzz of insects was a pleasant summer hum, the birds just birds.

“Hana?” John’s voice cracked over the scroll.

“I’m fine,” I replied, but I stood frozen in place, unsure of my manners.

“Nara and Tonn,” Rock said. “Lunch time, yes?”

My scroll’s lunch time alarm went off.

“I think we’re having visitors for lunch,” John said.

* * *

Under the hide awning, I offered Nara and Rock water. John was making lunch. Tonn and Haiiro were playing in the shallows of the river, herding minnows toward the shore.

Sitting across from me, Rock cleared his throat. “Nara has …” He looked at John and asked a question.

Before John could answer, Nara opened the pack she’d brought with her. She pulled out a swathe of cloud-blue fabric knit with a nalbinding stitch, and then she unfolded it. It wasn’t a swathe of fabric; it was a dress, made of four discrete sections of fabric. The top bodice section had capped sleeves, with decorative loops, and a split neck with an opening to below the breasts, laced up with a leather cord. There was a middle section that dropped to just below the waist, and then long front and back panels.

“It’s lovely,” I said. So far beyond what museum dioramas displayed. She must have understood my tone, because Nara smiled and pulled two more items out of the sack. They were identical tubes of some sort of animal fur, tan on the exterior, white on the interior, with wooden buttons on one end. Nara buttoned the “tubes” to the dress at the shoulder caps, turning them into sleeves and making the summer dress into an all-weather garment. I smiled at the ingenuity and the design. “Beautiful,” I said.

Smiling again, Nara pulled another item out of her bag. It was an apron made of leather. Unlike the dress, it was worn and flecked with stains. Without touching it, I could tell it was stiff and scratchy on the underside. Still, it was a step above anything in museum dioramas. Also, it had pockets.

Nara said something to Rock. Snorting, Rock raised a bushy brow and chided in English, “Not beauuutifull? Not lobuley?”

My lips parted, searching for a compliment for the rough, stained garment, and then Nara bent over double and laughed.

Rock said, “It is not. But you …” he said a few words and made some motions with his hands. “...fire.”

“You work with fire!” John supplied, looking up from where he was frying eggs on a piece of metal scavenged from my pod.

I blinked. The apron would be good for welding and soldering.

“Yours,” Rock said.

In some cultures, it is polite to decline a gift; in some, it is rude. I sat mute, not knowing what to say or do.

Nara folded the apron, the dress, and the sleeves, and held them forward, bowing in my direction.

“Yours,” Rock said again.

All of them? “They’re too beautiful,” I murmured, not daring to move. How many hours had the dress and the sleeves taken Nara? Where had she gotten the apron?

“You … help … Tonn,” Rock said.

“Tonn,” Nara repeated.

“Yours,” Rock said, and then with more authority, “Take them.”

A lump formed in my throat. It was too much. In this time, such garments were a monumental undertaking. The sky seemed impossibly blue overhead; the water where Haiiro and Tonn frolicked, especially bright.

“Please,” Rock said, “Onegia shimasu.”

The last word was more than “please.” It was, please do me this favor. I’m sure I’d whispered it to him when I’d begged him to drink willow bark tea more than once.

I took the gifts. The fabric of the dress was soft against my fingers. My eyes slipped closed as I tried to discern the type of fiber used. “I think it’s nettle.”

Rock and Nara both perked expectantly—and looked at John. John translated what I said. “I told them it was a plant. That was as close as I could get.”

“Yes,” Nara said in her own language. She pointed at the riverbank. Nettle loves river edges. To get the dress so soft, the stems would have had to have been bundled and left to rest on damp ground for at least three weeks in a sort of controlled rot.

A furrow between her brows, Nara asked a question.

Rock pointed at the dress fabric. “Hana knows how make this?”

“Yes,” I said.

I did. Because my mother was a textile engineer, and my brother Ken was an artist who’d gone through a textile stage. I could knit, crochet, and weave, too. They weren’t hobbies, but I’d learned them at such a young age they imprinted on my brain and in my fingers. I mimed twisting nettle into yarn and the nalbinding stitch.

Nara and Rock’s shoulders lost a hard edge I hadn’t realized was there. They both smiled and bobbed that full body bow, and then they whispered between themselves. I didn’t understand the words. On a whim, I pressed the record button on my scroll.

John came over, bearing lunch, and their whispers abruptly ceased.

* * *

I replayed the whispers on my scroll later that evening, when the stars had come out, and we were stretching out under our furs.

John, at that moment researching long bow designs, lifted his head. “They’re talking about how you could be useful to the tribe … how you could stay with them … they need to talk to the others.”

I replayed it again. “Help me untangle the words.”

He did, and I entered the translations into my scroll’s memory and had it transcribe them, hoping I could learn the language more easily if I could see the words.

As I listened to them over and over, I had a rising suspicion. “Do they sound surprised by my usefulness?”

John paused his long bow research. Scratching behind his ear, he chuckled, “Eh … yeah.”

I huffed, amused. They thought it might be enough for me to come with them.

I looked at the pod, its doorway dark, an open maw. The pod was death …

I looked out at the trees that had frightened me earlier, and remembered Bubbe’s lullaby, there is a tree of life for those who hold onto it, and those who do will be happy. The melody was modern. The words were very old.

I swallowed. I don’t believe in God, but there are many parts of my heritage I trust. Judaism does not condone suicide, especially the type I was contemplating. At the station, I had been running out of oxygen. I was trying to escape death. But here, if I used the pod, I’d be running to death. There was a difference.

Worse, I’d be taking John with me.

“We should stay here,” I said to John.

He put down his scroll and turned to me. “What?”

I studied my hands. “We should stay here. The pod is too risky.”

He put his arm over my shoulders. “Hana, the pod will work.”

“It will work, but it won’t take us where we want to go.” We’d wind up somewhere in the black. If we stayed here, we could live. Not like we would have in our own time, but there would be moments of happiness as well as sorrow.

He kissed my hair.

His arm slid lower; his body edged closer.

We held onto life.

42 JOHN

Hana’s head was pillowed on my arm. The barest sliver of rose-colored light entered my cracked eyelid. It was almost dawn. I tensed expectantly, but Haiiro snored at my feet, and the proximity detector did not go off. I lifted my head. We were alone.

Rock had been visiting us every morning for the past four days, just before sunrise. After greeting us, he went across the river and practiced throwing the atlatl in the clearing until noon. In the afternoons, Nara and Tonn came down the slope and joined us for lunch and a chat, always bringing something to add to the meal. Sometimes Nara brought tufts of mammoth undercoat with her, and she and Hana twisted the tufts into yarn.

It had slowed down repairs a bit. Not just their visiting. Hana had created a program on her scroll that recorded, transcribed, and translated the tribe’s language. She tried to encourage our guests to talk, and then played back their words later, trying to discern their meaning. She hadn’t talked more about staying, but I think she was still mulling the idea.

Maybe we both were.

The thing was, if I thought about it rationally, we were preparing to punch a hole in the universe. This had been done three times before—by Hana, the prototype, and me—and in none of the instances had the results been as expected. Hana said that there was an unknown variable or variables, and she had no idea if they’d remain consistent traveling from the “here and now to there and then.”

It would be safer to stay, at least in the short run.

I rubbed my eyes.

We’d made friends. When—if we left, we would never see or hear from them again. There would be no accidental bumping into each other on a space station, no video chat catch up, no out-of-the-blue email after ten years just to say hello. Our parting would be absolute. Final.

But if we stayed, our old friendships died, too. Could friendship with the tribe ever be as deep as the friendship of our colleagues at the station? So much of what was important to Hana and me was beyond their experience or language to communicate.

There was beauty in this primordial Earth. And as long as we kept our scrolls charged, I had access to an encyclopedia. We could live a life more than primitive if we wished. We could make some damn soap.

Beside me, Hana stirred. “Rock’s not here.”

She snuggled deeper into the covers and closer to me.

I didn’t want to think about leaving or not leaving. “Nope,” I said. We were alone, we were whole, healthy and in no current danger. Who knew how long that would last, whether we stayed or tried to return? I turned onto my side, curling my body and pulling her back to me.

And then three things happened at once. Haiiro jumped up, ears perked, and dashed around the pod. The proximity detector went off and something wailed, a deep throated baritone, moaning howl. Every hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and goosebumps rose on my arms. It was a wail of agony and of pain that wasn’t from a human throat, but I recognized it, just the same. So did Hana. She stiffened in my arms. “What is that?” she cried.

I shook my head. Pulling on my clothes, I strained to listen. The wail of pain continued, but low moans of terror and the fall of hooves were audible beneath that hair-raising cry. “Moose,” I said. “Across the river. Wolves maybe got them.” Digging in before their prey is dead is a thing wolves do.

“Make it stop!” Hana said.

Grabbing my rifle, I was up and around the pod a moment later. The wailing huffing increased in volume.

Across the river, about twenty meters from me, a moose lay huffing in terror and pain. There was a spear in his neck, and another protruding from his ribs. His tail was facing me. It was not a good angle for a shot. I wouldn’t kill him; I’d only make it worse if I tried.

A human shout rose from my side of the river up the bank. My head jerked. Rock stood on a boulder a little over thirty-six meters away, jumping up and down with an atlatl in his hand. “I got him!” he shouted, leaping from the boulder and racing toward me. “I got him! First, I threw from far away. I hit him enough to slow him. Then I ran closer and hit him again! Alone! Me! And look how far!”

“John!” Hana cried, her tone laced with as much pain as the moose’s moans and huffs. Both pulled at my heart.

Nodding at Rock, I said, “Let’s hurry and kill him.”

Grinning ear to ear, Rock patted me on the shoulder. “No need to hurry. He’s not going anywhere. Thank you, John! I could never have done this without the atlatl.”

Heading toward the river, I barked, “It is in pain. We kill it now.”

Rock hung back. “The river is cold. We should cross on the stones.”

I growled. “I am going across the river here and now, and I will kill it as soon as I have a clear shot.”

“No!” Rock shouted. “It is my kill!”

Jogging past me, he leaped down the bluff at the river’s edge and plunged into the water. He navigated the underwater stones with much surer footing than mine and was across before me. He pulled the spear from the moose’s neck, evoking a higher-pitched moan. Raising the spear high, Rock drove the spear through an eye socket, and the moose was finally, mercifully, quiet.

Wet, panting, and shivering, Rock glared up at me. “My kill.” I saw the animosity again, the same as that day when we crossed the river, and we both thought he was about to kill me. Weariness sank deep in my bones. I never wanted to steal his kill.

Holding up my hands, palms out, I said, “I wanted its pain over. I’m happy now.” The second part of that was a lie, but Rock’s body relaxed.

He shook his head. “It is only a moose.”

If the pod had been fully operational, I would have gone back across the river and hopped into it right then.

43 HANA

I checked the battery in the “doghouse,” the plastic shelter John built for charging. A month ago, it would be done charging, but the water wheel moved lazily in the slow summer current.

Wiping my hands on the apron Nara had given me, I gazed up at the early morning sky. The day was warm, but it wouldn’t get hot. We’d never had a day where the temperature had reached 27 C—80 F.

If that day came, the dress she gave me—that I was wearing at that moment—would be cool. Also, a dip in the river might be comfortable.

Rocks for toilet paper, lack of soap, and cuisine aside, it was still better than death.

John was anxious to leave. In his mind, the relief vessel should have arrived at the station, which meant that instead of Kim having to drive 2,000 kilometers across uneven terrain, we would get picked up by the ship within hours. It wouldn’t work like that. We wouldn’t arrive two months after he left because we’d remained here two months … it was doubtful we would even arrive in that solar system.

He said I need to have more faith in myself and Lo.

It was not a matter of faith; it was math, multiple variables I couldn’t solve for because I didn’t have the relevant data. Variables that might be unsolvable because humans in our native time didn’t have instruments to measure what the variables represented: currents in time and currents beyond time.

Haiiro darted out from behind a clump of grass and came to stand beside me, his ears cocked. My scroll pinged, warning me that the proximity detector had detected something.

From where he was cooking breakfast, John shouted, “Hana!” He picked up his rifle.

“I hear it,” I said. And then I glanced down at Haiiro—alert, but not growling. “I think it is just visitors.” Rock, Nara, and Tonn, sometimes with Nahbey.

Since recording and transcribing their language, I’d gotten a little better at it. I thought Nara and I were friends. I’d shared the second to last Raisin Wich with Tonn and her.

John was casting a concerned eye to the hills. I trusted Haiiro, but I went over to John, because I knew he’d worry until he was certain of our visitors.

Voices came down the mountain, and I realized I was wrong. It was not Rock and Nahbey or Nara and Tonn. Based on all the talking, and all the voices—male and female—it was the entire tribe, or at least many of them.

A moment later, Rock and Nahbey broke into the clearing, followed by others. It was a hunting party, not a group out for gathering—men and young women with spears—and Rock with his atlatl. The girl with the braids was with them, a spear in her hand, her hair as intricate as ever. She grinned at John.

“Rock, Nahbey!” John called.

The girl’s smile flickered but returned.

Rock and Nahbey weren’t smiling as broadly as the girl. In fact, they looked uncomfortable. They weren’t meeting my eyes. Nara and Tonn weren’t with them, either. That was not surprising. Nara told me she didn’t find hunting as comfortable as she did prior to having seven children. “Too much running and jumping.” I wondered if that was a delicate way of acknowledging the damage that childbirth can inflict on the pelvic floor. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle was not a cure for all ailments, as modern health gurus peddling “primitive” diets and exercise regimens would have you believe. From descriptions of other diseases, they got cancer, and death by an infected tooth wasn’t uncommon. They had periods of starvation—many might have starved when they caught our virus if John hadn’t provided for them.

Of seven children, Nara only had two left. Her mother and grandmother were dead. Further attestations to how difficult the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is.

Not smiling, Nahbey said, “We were wondering if you want to come hunting with us?” He looked at me and then quickly away. “John.”

I gathered I wasn’t invited. I would be useless, although I’d enjoy the walk. But maybe I’d be worse than useless. Maybe I’d be in the way.

I told myself that both John and I leaving the camp would mean that we’d have to pack up the sluggish water wheel, the charging batteries, and our tools.

John squinted. “I was just cooking breakfast …”

“We already ate,” said the girl with the braids. “Too bad, since I hear you are a great cook.”

John flushed from neck to hairline. “Didn’t make enough for everyone,” he said, glancing around. We’d never had guests without offering something.

“I can make …” I stuttered over the last word, and said it in English and Japanese. “Tea … Ocha.”

Rock grimaced. “Not willow tee-cha!”

“No,” I replied, smiling despite myself. And then I stuttered again. “Thyme … taimu.”

John and I had found mountain thyme a few days ago and harvested sprigs of it.

John wanted to use it for a final feast he was planning. He talked about it constantly, a sort of audible, ongoing daydream. He’d been dry aging some moose in my pod—dry aging is basically letting meat hang and rot, to break down the tough parts and kill parasites. It allows you to eat meat “rare.” I had no idea what “dry aged” meant before. I wasn’t happy to know.

Scratching behind an ear, Rock said, “Make thyme. We wait …” He switched to his language, and my brow furrowed, unable to follow.

“He’ll wait for us to finish breakfast,” John said, his expression pensive.

“I’ll get started on the tea,” I said, happy to have something to do.

We didn’t have enough “drinking bowls” to go around, but it didn’t matter. Our guests were comfortable sharing a few bowls. I’d just served tea for everyone when John finished our breakfast: lots of greens with small slices of root vegetables boiled and mixed with some rendered grouse fat, and trout cooked over the fire, brushed with more grouse fat. Everything generously salted. It was not so different from Japanese breakfasts, but I missed natto, the sticky, fermented soybeans that John once described as an “alien egg nest.” It is disgusting, and I craved it. John wanted peanut butter. We both craved noodles and bread.

Rock said something, smiling, and oddly loud, like it was a proclamation, and John grinned as he handed me a platter. “He said I’m a great cook.”

“Well, you are,” I said. He had found edible fruit and vegetables that added seasoning to all the grouse, moose, trout, and crayfish we ate. He’d innovated ways of boiling food that mimicked sautéing.

Rock said something else, and John said, “Sure.”

Still grinning, John made a platter for himself, and then made a third platter that he passed to Rock. Rock took a bite and handed it to the next person. Everyone tried a bit of fish and vegetables. Eyes went wide, and there were smiles. Rock said something, and John squinted at him, looking bemused.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He said, ‘Is it any wonder Hana lets John do all the cooking?’” John blushed.

“Did you tell him I can burn water?” I asked.

John chuckled. “Yeah.”

Nahbey asked John, “You’ll come hunting with us?” He was unusually serious.

John shook his head. “Thank you, but no.”

“Why don’t you want to go?” I asked.

John shrugged. “It sounds like an all-day trip or longer. I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

I didn’t want to be alone, either. But. “I don’t want you not going because of me.”

The girl said something, angry. I swore Nahbey shot me a glimpse that was almost guilty. The group of visitors became quiet.

Rock started telling the story of how he killed the moose. From his pointing, I could tell he was giving the location of his first spear throw and his second, and I could read his fellows’ disbelief that he could throw so far.

I followed his hands, his words … and he never caught my eye. I looked around the group. No one would meet my eye, except the girl with the braids. She met my eyes and smiled.

I froze.

“What are you thinking?” John asked me quietly.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. If I spoke, I’d ask him not to go.

I picked up our empty plates and utensils. Their solidness anchored my thoughts. “I’ll go rinse these off in the river,” I said, and left the party behind.

I was removing the food bits with river water and a bit of sand for grit, when part of the party went to wash their hands in the river—the girl with the braids, and some friends—a few meters downstream from me. When she spoke, I recognized her tone—it was the “mean girl” voice, which was recognizable even 100,000 years ago. The thought made me laugh, and then I submerged my hand and a plate beneath the moving water that was icy cold, and reality rushed in. I saw what I was doing: washing dishes with sand, in frigidly cold water. Dishes that we only had because we stole them from the dead. Despite the sunshine, despite my full belly, we were dangerously close to the edge.

The girl was still laughing and talking to her female companions.

I pulled my scroll from the leather apron I was wearing over my dress, pressed a button on its side, and commanded, “Record.”

44 JOHN

I watched Hana go down to the river to rinse the dishes. After rinsing them in river water, she’d pour boiling water over them, and dry them in the sun. Her shoulders hunched as she scrubbed. Something was bothering her. Was it the same old, same old, or something new … did she even know? Sometimes it took a while for her to identify her feelings, or even notice them.

The girl with the braids and a few friends had followed Hana down to the river’s edge. Well, not really followed … trailed? Stalked? They’d settled a few feet away from Hana. I got a bad feeling in my gut.

“John … John … Did you hear Nahbey?” one hunter asked.

I blinked. “What?”

“We’ll go down into the valley and hunt the mammoths!” Nahbey said.

“Come with us!” another guy said.

“Mammoths?” I asked. With spears? They were nuts.

“Baby mammoths,” Rock clarified.

I stared at him in horror. Don’t get me wrong, lamb tastes good. Veal tastes good. And I’d shoot a moose calf. But baby elephants?

“What?” said Nahbey.

I realized my jaw was hanging open, and my feelings on the matter of killing baby elephants were probably obvious.

“My tribe … we don’t kill mammoths … they’re like people,” I said.

Rock’s big eyes got bigger. “We don’t eat people.”

Nahbey blinked. “Mammoths will knock you over—”

“Stomp on you,” said Rock.

“Gore you with its tusk,” added another hunter.

Nahbey shook his head. “It is not a person.”

They might have had a point.

Really, what was my hang-up? Pigs are one of the smartest non-human animals, and I love bacon.

“I can’t leave Hana for an overnight trip,” I blurted. That was my hang-up. The best hunting was going to be at dawn and dusk. They’d be spending the night—or nights—in the field. Nahbey’s shoulders fell, Rock scratched behind an ear, and I knew I was right. I was also dimly aware of other guys shifting on their feet and looking uncomfortable.

Standing a little straighter, Nahbey said, “Why don’t you, Rock, and me go for a walk upstream? We’ll be back before dark.”

One guy protested, “We want to see John hunt!”

And another said, “We want to see Rock hunt with his new spear throwing thing. I still don’t believe he killed that moose at forty meters.”

“I hit the moose at forty meters—” Rock said.

The man made a “pfftt” noise.

“I killed it at thirty meters,” Rock finished.

“He did. I saw him,” I said.

“With that thing you gave him,” the guy replied.

I shrugged. “Rock could make you one if you’re nice.”

Rock grinned.

The other fellow rolled his eyes.

“Come with Rock and me,” Nahbey said. “Upstream. Maybe we’ll see a moose, and Rock can show me how the atlatl worked.”

My brow furrowed. It felt like a setup. I didn’t think Rock and Nahbey would hurt me, but something wasn’t right. They’d invited me to go hunting. When I refused, they’d invited me to go upstream, where the trees were thicker, and I doubted we’d get a clear shot at any moose. The clearing across from the pod was a trap for their prey, with its dense, lush ground cover and easy access to water. Without such a trap, even with my rifle, I didn’t think it would be a successful hunt. But maybe they knew another clearing? Another trap. I would kind of like to see that, and to see Rock show off his atlatl skills to Nahbey.

And I’d like a little fresher air before we hopped back into the pod and faced either slow death or stale station air.

“I think you should go.”

Hana’s voice made me start. She’d returned from the river, platters and utensils in tow, her expression drawn and troubled. There was a hard set to her mouth, a furrow in her brow.

“I think you should go,” she said again, in a tone that made me think she was not saying it so much for me, as herself.

“I don’t need to go, hon,” I replied.

Hana studied the dishes in her arms. “Don’t you want to explore?”

I looked up at the teeth of ice and rock jutting into the sky that were the mountain peaks. I hadn’t traveled far upstream.

Hana lifted her gaze. “You could take pictures for me. I’ll be fine here for a few hours. There is plenty of wood. I’ll keep the fire burning, and the animals will stay away.”

I stared at her.

Rock looked back and forth between us, eyes soft and worried.

“John, it is important. You should know,” Hana whispered.

“It might be all day,” I pointed out.

“I’ll remember to eat lunch,” she promised.

I squinted one eye and raised a brow.

Holding up a hand, she said, “I’ll set a timer on my scroll.”

I narrowed both eyes at her.

Pulling her scroll from her pocket, she said, “Scroll, set alarm for four hours.”

I crossed my arms. “What will you eat?”

She bit her lip. “Berries, smoked moose, and leftover soup will be enough.”

I should have been satisfied, but I wasn’t. Still, stifling my misgivings, I said to Rock and Nahbey, “All right, I’ll go.”

It was only when we were about a mile away from the pod that I turned Hana’s words around and inside out. “... It was important. You should know.”

Hana knew that Rock and Nahbey had something to tell me, and she probably knew what it was.

So why didn’t she just tell me herself?

45 JOHN

Haiiro darted up the narrow deer-moose-or-whatever path Rock, Nahbey, and I walked on.

There was no reason to beat around the bush. “So, you guys got something you want to talk about?” I asked.

Rock grunted.

Nahbey said, “It would be easier if we showed you.”

“Show him what?” Rock asked.

My eyebrows hiked. Rock wasn’t in on the plan?

“Yeah, show me what?” I echoed.

Nahbey rolled his eyes. “If I tell you, I’m not showing you, am I?”

I looked at Rock. He itched under his armpit. “I don’t know what he wants to show you.”

“But Hana did,” I whispered.

Rock’s heavy brows rose. He kept scratching his armpit. His left armpit. My heart rate spiked, and for a moment, I forgot everything. “Does your chest hurt?” I asked Rock.

“No,” said Rock, still scratching.

Grabbing Rock’s shoulders, I spun him around. I saw his face and Purr’s face weirdly superimposed. “Why are you scratching under your arm?”

Rock blinked. “I dunno? I have a flea?”

“What’s going on?” Nahbey asked.

“I have a flea,” said Rock.

I shook him. “Do you feel—” I didn’t know the word for “dizzy.” “Like you have turned around fast again and again?”

“What? No! What’s wrong with you?” Rock asked.

“We need willow,” I said, scanning the forest. It would be closer to the riverbank, which wasn’t in view.

Rock sighed. “This again.”

“What again?” asked Nahbey.

“John thinks I’m dying,” Rock replied.

“Did you drink any willow bark tea this morning?” I demanded.

“No. It is —” Rock stuck out his tongue, like a child.

My heart skipped a beat. “We should go back,” I said.

“No, we shouldn’t,” Nahbey snapped. “Rock’s fine.”

“We need willow,” I said.

Sighing, Rock heaved his huge shoulders with an immense sigh. He reached into the little pouch he wore at his waist and fished out a tiny twig. He stuck it in his mouth and chewed. “It is willow. Are you happy?”

With his red hair and bright blue eyes, Rock could be Purr grown up or either of the male Neanderthals I shot, or any of them killed by the viruses Hana and I brought with us from 100,000 years from now. They all looked alike because they were all inbred. Rock wasn’t dying at that moment, but his species was dying. Neanderthals would linger for another 65,000 years, and then they would just be an echo in coils of DNA that live within Homo sapiens sapiens.

Rock was alive at that moment. And maybe I’d saved his life and made it better with the atlatl.

“Yes, I’m happy,” I said.

Nahbey lifted his free hand and his spear. “Great, can we get moving again?”

“Sure,” I said.

We walked for a bit and came to a breathtaking view of the valley. Its grass put the Midwest prairie to shame. Mammoths and other creatures—wooly sorts of rhinos—grazed in immense herds. There were also creatures that looked a lot like American buffalo. There must have been cave lions and wolves in the grass, but their tawny hides were hidden. I took out my scroll and took a picture for Hana. Nahbey and Rock gave me the names of the critters, and then we moved on, Nahbey and Rock relaying great hunts they’d taken part in. I admitted that mostly I hunted deer, which I didn’t even have their name for, but I think I described them well enough.

“How did you survive eating … deer?” Nahbey said, sounding dubious.

“They sound too small,” Rock echoed the sentiment.

Haiiro dashed by, and I thought of the buffalo critters, and then naturally, I thought of pizza … and cheese. Glorious cheese. There are reasons people from Wisconsin are known as “Cheeseheads.” I laughed. “You know how we’re friends with Haiiro?”

“He’s not your friend,” Rock said.

Nahbey rolled his eyes.

I continued, “We have buffalo friends. We take their …” I didn’t know the word for “milk,” so I improvised, “Baby drink and drink it.”

The two cavemen drew to a halt.

I grinned. “It is good. We make cheeeeeseeee.” I mimed a cheese wheel and waggled my eyebrows.

They stared at me and then threw back their heads and howled with laughter. I think Nahbey actually cried.

After they recovered, we trudged upward, only stopping when Haiiro cornered something beneath a bush.

“Get your weapons ready,” I said, and did the whole flushing-the-critter-out trick with Haiiro. Two hares darted out. I fired my bow and arrow. Rock used his atlatl. Nahbey threw a spear. We all missed, but no one hit Haiiro, which I took as a win. Haiiro, not realizing the danger he’d escaped, looked at us with disgust. His eyes said, “Alpha predators, my furry butt.”

Squawk punctuated that thought by swooping out of the sky and landing on Nahbey’s head, to Nahbey’s obvious joy and Rock and Haiiro’s obvious disgust.

“Who’s beautiful?” Squawk asked Nahbey. It was the first time I’d heard the raven talk, and I was delighted. Rock muttered something under his breath.

“You are my most beautiful,” Nahbey crooned before fishing into his pouch and handing the bird a tidbit of meat.

Making the same face he made when we discussed willow bark tea, Rock grumbled, “You need a new wife.”

Nahbey beamed up at the bird and gave it another piece of meat. “Let’s keep walking.”

The path widened, and we walked side by side. Rock and Nahbey’s faces were in profile, the differences in them pronounced. Nahbey’s forehead was a high dome—his brows and jaw were heavier than mine, but he was noticeably and obviously human. Hana and I had been reading that the larger frontal lobe in humans is related to executive function, the ability to plan, organize, initiate, self-monitor, and control one’s responses in order to achieve a goal. But that huge frontal lobe is also related to friendliness. Nahbey had confessed that Rock had initially planned to kill Hana and me—and I’d seen that murderous impulse in the river. Nahbey loved Squawk, and he understood why Hana and I liked Haiiro, even if the cub would eventually leave us. Nahbey understood why we adopted Purr, too. Rock could only see how Purr’s family had meant to eat us.

It struck me that domesticated cows, sheep, horses, even elephants—and our relationship with cats, who we happily tolerate being domesticated by—they didn’t come to be because our species is the alpha predator of collective imagination.

Humans are alpha friendly, and that was how we were going to take over the world.

* * *

The sun had passed its zenith. I was thinking that Hana probably forgot to eat lunch, when Nahbey said, “The tribe will leave soon … a few days at most.”

I jerked myself out of my private thoughts. “I’ll be sorry to see you go,” I said, and I would, although it was probably a piece of luck. They wouldn’t be around to see Hana and I disappear, in the very literal sense. We’d given them enough to wonder about with talking scrolls, photos, strange lights, and rifles.

“We’ll be going south,” Nahbey said. “Over the mountains. Ten days march from here, there will be a gathering of all the tribes.”

“I hate it,” Rock grumbled. “Too many people. Too many strangers.”

I coughed at Rock’s inadvertent demonstration of my “man the friendly, Neanderthal the not friendly” theory.

Nahbey shot him a warning look.

Rock shrugged. “You know I do, and I always have. People get stupid and violent. Some idiots are always killing other idiots.”

Nahbey dipped his chin. “If any idiot tries to kill you, you’ll kill them first.”

Rock’s lack of enthusiasm was becoming more understandable, but then Nahbey smiled, pleased as punch, and winked at me. “They always underestimate how strong Rock is.”

I opened my mouth, about to say, “It’s not pleasant having to kill people.”

But Rock chuckled and said, “That’s true.”

Nodding sagely, Nahbey continued, “It is a good place to find a wife.”

Rock scowled again.

Nahbey continued. “There are women with red hair, white skin, and blue eyes at the gathering. So beautiful.”

He seemed to be interested in a woman who looked like his adopted brother. Maybe it was my fat frontal lobe, but I held off from pointing that out.

Rock grumbled, “A good place for you to find a wife. I’m happy with Nara.”

“You could have waited and found someone who can give you children!” Nahbey snapped.

“Tonn is my son now,” Rock replied.

Nahbey turned around, opened his mouth, and I cut him off. “I love my father’s second wife like my own mother.”

Nahbey’s mouth snapped shut.

Rock cleared his throat. “You told us about your father’s second wife. And about your mother by birth.”

I blinked. “I did?”

“When you were drunk,” Nahbey replied. “You spoke about how your mother by birth was lazy.”

“Lazy?” I murmured. That isn’t how I would describe her. Drunk, high, volatile, too busy looking for her next hit or next man—they tended to go together—to care about her son, but not lazy.

“She didn’t take care of you,” Nahbey said. “She was lazy.”

I didn’t dispute it. What would be the point? The outcome was the same.

He fell silent for a while, and we continued to hike. The trees were thinning, and we were all panting. We’d reach the tree line soon. Pockets of snow appeared in the shadows, and I noticed more and more dead trees. Their dark skeletal remains stood stark against the snow. I shivered. There was something … off … but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I told myself it was inexperience with mountain terrain. In my time, Wisconsin had rolling hills, and Georgia’s mountains were low and warm—they did not jut from the world like the gaping maw of Earth itself.

A few minutes more, and the path itself was snow covered, even though the sun burned bright and warm over our heads. The surface was slick and shiny, the way it gets when it melts and then refreezes, over and over. The snow was still there, past the time when strawberries and cloudberries ripened.

“Oh,” said Rock. “I know what you’re going to show him.”

“Enlighten me,” I said in English.

Nahbey, obviously a born linguist, picked up what I was asking. “Soon.”

The farther we walked, the more trees around us appeared to be dead.

Rock said, “Would be a good place to get firewood, if it wasn’t so far from the cave.”

“In the snow time you could cut a tree down and …” I didn’t know the word for “ride.” “Sit on it … down the mountain.” If the river was deeper, they could use that, too. But it was barely a stream here.

“We won’t be here in the snow time,” said Nahbey. “This isn’t a good place to be when it is cold.”

Ahead I heard a rushing sound, above the crunch of icy snow beneath our feet, and Rock said, “We’re close.”

Haiiro, until that point darting among the snowbanks, scampered back to the trail, and took a place between Nahbey and myself.

The trees opened, and we faced a short cliff of maybe twenty feet high, a waterfall tumbling between walls of ice at its top. The trail bent at the cliff and headed to the right. I saw bear prints in the snow there as large as dinner plates.

Nahbey ignored the trail and the prints and went right to the cliff wall. He sat down and started digging in the snow with his spear. “Help me, Rock.”

Rock squatted beside him and helped him dig.

Shivering in the cliff’s shadow, I looked around at the trees, still standing, but dead or mostly dead. How did they grow so tall when the growing season was so short?

Rising with Rock, Nahbey pointed at the hole they’d dug in the snow against the cliff wall. “Look, John.”

I blinked. “What?” I said, but the instant the word was out of my mouth, I saw it. I kneeled beside the hole. There was a line carved into the wall. A single, straight, deliberately carved line, about a foot and a half beneath the snow. I traced it with my finger. “What is it?” I asked.

“The snow line,” Nahbey said. “When our grandfather was our age.”

Rock said, “The snow is getting higher each summer. It is getting cold again.”

I opened my mouth, not to protest, but to ask, “How do you know?”

But it was obvious how they knew. They were tracking it. Humans are a species that can hold on to the memory of a disappearing star for 100,000 years in words alone. With markings in stone, we can remember longer.

The dead trees made sense.

Homo sapiens are creatures of Earth’s Quaternary Ice Age. At the time Hana and I were born, the Quaternary had lasted 2.6 million years. At the time I stood with Rock and Nahbey, the Quaternary had lasted 2.5 million years. Within the Quaternary, there have been glacial periods when it was really cold and glaciers spread, and interglacial periods, like the one Hana I were born into, when the glaciers melted. There was even a point about 125,000 years before our births that was about 2 degrees Celsius warmer.

I stared at the line and up at the mountains. After that high point 125,000 years ago, the temperature dropped. It was already colder than my time, but it was going to get a lot colder, another 2–4 degrees Celsius colder. Glaciers would cover Europe.

The surrounding trees had grown tall in an interglacial and relative warmth. But the world was getting colder again, and they were dying.

“It would be good to stay in the South,” I whispered.

“We know,” said Rock.

“We won’t come back,” Nahbey said. “All the tribes are moving south.”

“Except the mountain people,” Rock said. “They are staying.”

“They can have it.” Nahbey spit.

I nodded, rising, unease flickering up my spine. That was what our books said. There wouldn’t be humans here in the glacial period. Just Neanderthals. They’d hold on another 50,000 or 60,000 years and then vanish before humans returned. The Neanderthals would not die out because of a warming world—they’d survived a time when there were hippos in the Thames and monkeys lived in Europe, and they had thrived in deserts in the Middle East and Northern Africa. They’d die out because they were already dying of inbreeding.

“You should come with us,” Nahbey said.

Shaking my head, I said, “No, Hana and I … we have somewhere else to go.”

Rock shot a worried glance at Nahbey.

Nahbey said, “Not Hana, John. Just you. Hana is—”

“She is not,” Rock whispered.

“She is lazy,” said Nahbey. “She is not welcome in the tribe.”

* * *

I didn’t run from Nahbey and Rock. I strode. Purposefully. Calmly.

Inside I was a grenade with the pin pulled, furious at them, about to explode, but more furious at Hana. She knew.

And I got it. She didn’t believe that her pod would take us back to the station, and she didn’t have the computing power to compute the coordinates to send us just back to Earth’s future, but I was not a fucking child. I could make my own decisions, and I wouldn’t leave her.

Didn’t she get that?

Nahbey skipped to catch up to me. “You are a great hunter. And generous. You saved me and Rock.”

“Hana saved you, too,” I ground out, not looking at him, not slowing and not speeding up.

“She nearly poisoned you and destroyed a basket of food with her carelessness. She was lazy when she searched for food,” Nahbey said.

I slowed, and my jaw sagged. It was such an incredible misreading of Hana that my anger, for a moment, cooled to a reasonable temperature. Since we’d met the tribe, Hana had been befuddled, distracted, and occasionally condescending—like she had been sending me on this damnable hike—but she had never been lazy. She’d been working on our pod with singular focus. In our time, she’d had that same focus on her work. Physics wasn’t just a way to make money for her; it was her calling, and she was tremendous at it. The early physicists of the atomic revolution gave us power, but she helped us find the path, not just to near light-speed, but to faster than light-speed. She helped humans bend the rules of gravity. Even without near light-speed, that would have been a revolution. Mining the solar system became economical because of her. Spreading through the stars was possible because of Hana.

Nahbey continued, “It is common for men to marry women who are like their mothers. Your mother was lazy.”

I gaped at him. “What are you, fucking Sigmund Freud?”

Nahbey tilted his head. “I don’t know who ‘ucking Sigmun ‘roid is; I am a member of my tribe. It can be your tribe.”

Rock took his place by Nahbey’s shoulder and said sulkily, “We’re not coming back to this valley, John. If you stay here, even if you survive the winter, you will die.”

I sneered at him. “You approve of leaving Hana behind? After she cared for you? Cared for Tonn?”

Bowing his head, Rock said, “No. But it is the will of the tribe.” He lifted his eyes. “Everyone must contribute. They see Hana as lazy. Selfish.”

“Because she is,” Nahbey said.

“No,” Rock said, shaking his head. “She is working on something …” He gazed at his atlatl. “Maybe something we don’t understand.”

“She isn’t working,” Nahbey countered.

I closed my eyes and thought of the men and women going out to gather and now to hunt, how everyone in the tribe worked to cook and serve food … Working to them was all about food, catching it and cooking it. And why shouldn’t it be? How many of them would have died if I hadn’t given them the rest of our moose?

None of that mattered. “I’m leaving,” I said.

Nahbey perked.

I gave him a smile I knew didn’t reach my eyes. “I’m leaving with Hana.”

If I didn’t bang my brains out against a tree first.

46 HANA

Kneeling beneath our awning, numbers and symbols flowed from my stylus to my scroll at an ever-increasing pace. I was almost certain there were not one or two, but three unknown variables besides all the others. Time wasn’t one of the new unknown unknowns. Time didn’t exist in the “space” beyond the universe. We needed a new word for that, the not-space beyond space. Scribbling the final number, my heart rate picked up. I thought I had it. I hit enter, and my scroll converted my frantic scribbles into digital format. The figures shifted and reformed into a standard screen font before my eyes.

Correct? My scroll asked me.

I reviewed its interpretation of my scrawl, tracing each character with my stylus. It had the formula. “Correct,” I told it, and then commanded, “Review.”

Three little dots pulsed across the scroll’s surface …

I didn’t breathe.

The words, No errors found, appeared in a bubble on the screen.

I put my hands to my mouth, and then pressed them together, as though saying a prayer. I laughed despite everything. I was going to die, but I had a working equation. A way to start exploring the unknown unknowns. I looked to the heavens. How could I let the people of our time know? No one had discovered anything in our time left by me—but maybe they would. Could I burn it into a sheet of titanium and leave it behind? Perhaps in the cave? I looked heavenward, exhaled—and realized it was past noon. I had forgotten to eat lunch. Touching my forehead, I remembered turning off the alarm and promising myself that I would just work for a few more minutes.

John didn’t need to know I had forgotten. I’d make lunch now …

A cheerful woof cracked through the clearing, and I looked up to find Haiiro dashing toward me, adorable with his oversized ears, disproportionately long legs, and gigantic paws. I forgot lunch. Again. “Haiiro-chan!” I cried, and he raced over to wiggle, lick my nose, and roll over onto his back to expose his stomach. I rubbed his tummy, which he loved.

It was supposed to be a submissive posture in dogs and wolves, but when I stopped, he growled, so maybe it wasn’t quite that submissive in Haiiro-chan. I resumed, and his tail thumped in appreciation.

My eyes got misty. He loved us. He thought of us as his family, even if he lifted his muzzle at night to howl with other wolves. But he’d die if he came with us. “You have to go to your friends who you sing to at night, Haiiro-chan. You shouldn’t stay—”

Crashing in the underbrush interrupted me.

John stormed out of the trees, his face as cold as in the grainy video footage, or when he shot the Neanderthals.

The proximity detector went off, and Rock and Nahbey appeared behind him.

“What the Holy Hell, Hana!” John demanded, his voice booming through the clearing, his strides bringing him closer.

He’d never hurt me physically, I knew that, but the sight still made my blood go cold.

Rock and Nahbey drew up short. Nahbey said something that I think might have been, “Maybe we’ll just come back later.” But I’d heard the girls talking about the tribe not wanting me—the scroll had translated. Maybe what Nahbey said was closer to, “Don’t waste your time with her.”

Nahbey tapped Rock’s shoulder and pointed uphill. Rock hesitated, but then turned and left me alone with John, who was standing over me, blocking the slanting sun like a cloud. I was not sure of the origin of his fury. Not precisely. Something that had to do with the tribe leaving, but why was he so angry, and why was his anger directed at me?

“Do you think I’m a child?” he demanded.

The question came out of the blue, and my mind choked, almost didn’t put together the words, and when it did, part of me wanted to scream, “When you yell at me, yes!” but I couldn’t. My vocal cords were on a leash I couldn’t break.

“You knew they wanted to leave you behind!”

I swallowed, though my mouth was dry. I was still not sure why he was fuming at me.

“—and you sent me up the mountain to listen to their gibberish!”

I didn’t send him. I suggested he go. He accepted.

“Why did you do it, Hana? Why?”

Because I couldn’t bear to try to convince him myself.

“You want to leave me?” he asked. Demanded. Shouted.

I found my tongue. “No!”

“Then why?”

“Because you’re being irrational!”

John pulled away from me, as though I was a viper, as though I’d bitten him. His voice dropped to a whisper more terrifying than his shout. “And everything good is about being rational. If I’d been rational and not built this damn pod and come here to find you, you would be dead or—”

Or worse.

“I just want you to live!” I blurted.

He wiped his eyes. “I know the risks. It is insulting that you treat me as though I don’t.”

But he didn’t know the risks. If he did, he would stay here and take a chance at living. I knew better than to say that.

“If it is so dangerous, why don’t you insist we both stay here?” he asked.

Finally, a simple question. “Because the tribe is right. I’m a failure here. You’re not.”

“So what?”

I shook my head. I didn’t understand him. So what? His life was precious. I didn’t want to see it end.

“If you did fit here, if you could fit in, if the tribe accepted you with open arms, would you suggest we stay?” John asked.

“I already did,” I said, but I must not have said it loudly enough, or maybe he was too furious to hear because he shouted, “Well?”

“I already did!”

He took a step back and stared at me, his jaw hard.

Staying was the moral choice. Death was less certain. And we’d find happiness of a sort. There were mammoths here. I would like to see more of them, get closer to them.

But maybe it was wrong for me to contemplate staying. Except for nalbinding, I was helpless with the technology of this world. Could I become adept? Or would I spend the rest of my life mentally “wandering into math-land,” endangering those around me and being a burden?

John spoke, his voice as cold as the wind that swept down the mountain slopes. “I knew there was a very high probability that I’d be dying when I got into that pod and came after you.”

Very high probability. What did that mean? Fifty-five percent? Sixty-five percent? It was stunningly inaccurate.

He continued, “Don’t think I don’t know my mind. It is insulting. If we turn this thing on and we explode, so be it.”

That scenario was so wrong, I could not stop myself from correcting him. “That will not happen. The most likely scenario is that we will wind up floating in space far from anyone who can help us. We’ll run out of oxygen.”

He looked me dead in the eye, and his eyes were a frosty blue in the afternoon light. “Well, then, I’ll hold you while we slowly die, sweetheart.”

He walked away, and all the air left my lungs.

47 JOHN

I left Hana and went down to the river. I was still pissed. Besides her disrespect for my lack of agency, I was furious that she didn’t think I didn’t know the “most likely scenario,” and I was furious about the way she said it, completely without emotion, like a Goddamn robot.

My skin felt hot and tight along the scars on my back. Catching myself, I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, same as I was taught to do when an attack of PTSD came on. I hadn’t had one of those in years, but my heart rate was just as high, and I felt like I might self-combust.

I needed a dip in the river. Setting my rifle, quiver, and bow aside, I stripped off my shirt.

“I would like to see mammoths,” Hana said softly behind me.

I paused, my arms caught in the sleeves, my scar prickling.

She continued, “Are they as intelligent as elephants? Elephants can befriend humans and remember them and mourn them after their passing. Are mammoths as intelligent and as social? If we could stay … it would almost be enough to know.”

Shucking off my shirt, I said, “The Neanderthals and humans hunt them—or at least their babies. They might trample us on sight.”

“Probably,” said Hana. Sitting on a boulder beside the water, she gazed at our water wheel, lethargically spinning in the current. She was wearing the dress Nara gave her and the leather smock. Her scroll was peeking out of one pocket, her long legs swung gently, and strands of her ponytail caught in the breeze. Compared to Nahbey, Rock, and myself, she looked so damnably clean. Just like that, all the endorphins brought on by my rage were transmogrifying into lust. I almost laughed at my own predictability.

She’d been being logical when she sent me off. She’d thought she was saving me. She’d rather slowly suffocate alone in space than be the cause of my death.

Still … I felt myself getting angry again. It wasn’t logical when I came after Hana. But I wasn’t sorry I did. When that thug started spraying bullets in a convenience store, it would have been logical to back up and get out of the way, let it be someone else’s fight. Not ashamed I intervened. Not ashamed I shot the other guy. No one innocent died.

It would have been logical to dump Nahbey when the big cat stalked him.

But what sort of world would it be if our fellow humans didn’t become a little illogical on our behalf? I’m illogical for you. You’re illogical for me. It creates social cohesion, and social cohesion is logical.

It is a class thing, the fetishization of the “logical.” And yeah, I do see its usefulness … sometimes. The cold quiet, splitting apart and rematching of couples that happened during my deep space missions was logical. Drama would have killed us. But in a long term situation, with kids involved, it is illogical not to fight for your relationship. And that is the problem with putting logic in the moment above all else. It fails in the long term.

I tasted bitterness in my mouth. “You said before … that what was between us was for the long haul. You wanted commitment.” That had been the gist of her hesitation, hadn’t it?

Her legs stopped swinging.

I chuckled darkly. “Guess you didn’t think it would be all that long.”

She didn’t deny it. I hadn’t even stepped in the water yet, but I felt like I had, like cold was radiating through my body. I looked at her sharply. “Hypothetically, if we live, do you want us to stay together?”

“Yes.”

She said it so simply and so fast that the ice drained from my veins. She’d suggested as much before my trip to Oort. Which hadn’t been logical, not in the short or long term. Or maybe it had been, because here I was. I’d come after her and saved her brilliant, hapless self from certain death. Did she not respect that?

Without thinking, I stepped in front of her. “If we’re in this for the long term, we need to make decisions together.” I might’ve shouted, or I whispered it. One or the other. Not all the anger had left me.

She met my eyes and nodded.

I’m not sure when my hands dropped to her knees. I didn’t feel the cold water around my ankles when I leaned in to kiss her and pressed her legs apart.

* * *

Hana lay in the river beside me, our hands interlaced. The water was not deep, and the sun had made the stones on the river bottom almost warm, even if the water was still ice cold. We could use the cold. We were getting sloppy when it came to our non-pharmaceutical birth control. It was the precariousness of the situation. If you’re going to die, why not take every ounce of pleasure that you can? And there is something about completion of the act, with bodies locked together, that is just more.

Which tied in with something else I was thinking about, staring at the blue vault of the late afternoon sky, other decisions we should make, and things I needed to know.

“How much did you hear when you heard the tribe would leave without you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Just that they want you to join them.” She smiled. “Mighty hunter.”

I snorted. I wasn’t mighty. I had no desire to poke a mammoth with a sharp stick and see if it would trample or gore me before it died.

Squeezing her hand, I asked, “Did you hear they don’t plan to come back?”

“No.” She rolled in the water, so she was on her side, facing me.

I told her about my walk up the mountain, and how they were tracking the glacier’s advance—or snow cap advance, or whatever, I’m not a glacier specialist—and about how they knew the Earth was cooling, and heading south for good. Or at least for the next 60,000 years or so.

“What are you saying?” she said.

“We can follow them across the mountains, maybe meet up with some other humans who …” I thought of Rock’s assessments of the gatherings as prone to violence and murder.

“Who don’t think I tried to poison the tribe?” Hana suggested.

I nodded. That, too. “I’m pretty sure we’d survive the crossing. Here … we’d probably make it through the winter, but there would be no future if …” My skin got hot, even with the water. “For a child if …”

Hana’s gaze went to the mountains. “I would be no help.”

“You’re healthy and strong, and you’d make it across the mountains,” I said.

“I believe that. I believe I’d be no help,” she said. Which was probably true.

For a few moments, the only sound was the birds and the water.

She closed her eyes. “I’ll stay if you want to … it would be a … chance.”

Our chances in the pod weren’t as poor as she’d made them out to be. The prototype made it back, and if time ran in the future at the same rate as it did for us, we’d be in better shape than we would have been when I’d left—the resupply ship would pick us up fast. Even if Kim was pissed at me, he wouldn’t be pissed that I found Hana. And if there was any way back …

My stepmother almost died in childbirth. Each time. The odds that Hana would die if she got pregnant were about one in ten in her lifetime without modern medical care. We might be able to join another group of humans, or we might not, and I might lose her and our child together. It would be too much. I couldn’t stay without Hana, without someone I could read to, who remembered the future and all its failures and wonders.

“I don’t want to stay,” I said.

She exhaled and kissed me, and it felt like we were taking our first step into the future together.

48 HANA

John was outside the pod, cooking by the sound of it—whistling and occasionally gently chiding Haiiro. “It is too hot, Haiiro-san. You’ll burn that long tongue of yours.”

The suffix “san” is the Japanese equivalent of the English “mister,” “miss,” or “Mrs.” “Chan” is a diminutive for the young, the small, and the cute. John joked that we needed to start treating Haiiro like the grownup he was becoming. He might have been only half joking.

I set the battery into the casing designed for it, checked the readouts, saw all was well and then paused, thinking about the grownup wolf Haiiro would be. Haiiro wasn’t a dog. He growled if we got too near his food. He didn’t take commands; he took suggestions. He was a lot smarter than a dog. Haiiro understood more words than any dog I’d ever known, and he recognized the names too: Squawk, Nahbey, Rock, Nara, and Tonn, and my and John’s names. He understood “find” and those names, but also moose, grouse, hare, fish, crawdad, marmot, squirrel, and shrew. The last three he caught and ate on his own, selfishly and frequently, glowering and growling, lest we try to steal his prizes.

John said Haiiro needed the fur and bones for his digestive system.

He howled almost every night.

He’d snap at John in particular, even when John was trying to help him.

But Haiiro also slept snuggled at my feet, was loyal, loved tummy rubs and ear scratches, gave kisses, and would play fetch when he was in the mood.

What would we do about him?

He roamed, but he didn’t leave us, which was the worst of all possible worlds. If he would just roam into another pack … I exhaled.

Another pack might kill him.

Or they might not.

John was worried about his wandering instinct driving him crazy aboard a spaceship or in the space station. There was a gym on ships, and they always had treadmills. John had plans to put a monitor in front of a treadmill at “Haiiro height” with computer generated mountain trails for him to follow.

I didn’t remind John that there was a 99.999 percent chance we were going to die slowly of asphyxiation.

Maybe we should leave Haiiro behind.

If Haiiro would go with the tribe, that would be ideal, but he wouldn’t go with them. He walked on a lead with John or me, but not with anyone else.

Still, if he stayed behind, he’d have a chance.

Haiiro barked, a bark that meant “someone coming” but wasn’t laced with warning. One of the tribe. A few seconds later, the proximity detector went off. I checked the monitor. It was Rock leading Nahbey.

They called out to John. I waited in the pod. I didn’t feel like talking to either of them.

John talked about feeling like a fish out of water milling among the university alum and Fortune 500 CEOs at the fundraisers Vlks forced him to attend. Vlks believed in the benefit of people from different backgrounds on the project—and he meant educational and political backgrounds—not “racial” backgrounds, as was more popular. Not everyone agreed.

I understood that fish-out-of-water feeling now, deep in my gut in a way I hadn’t before.

But the fishermen in academia’s water didn’t want to leave John alone in the wilderness to die. That was the fate the tribe selected for me—death by ostracization. Did it feel kinder to them than putting a spear through my heart?

Rock, Nahbey, and John talked for a while, and I retested circuits that I already knew functioned, and reran a diagnostic of all systems. We had no life support except for what was in John’s suit. I could run a diagnostic on that, but the minutes of the diagnostic test would take minutes off the carbon filter’s lifetime, decreasing the time we would have for breathable oxygen by the same—no, not the same, because there would be three of us, not one, as the suit was designed for. Would it be by one-third, or would the strain of converting the CO2 of three mammals cause the O2 filter to expire prematurely?

I took a deep breath.

Mammalian bodies don’t necessarily perceive lack of oxygen. Asphyxiation can be an unnoticeable, painless death if the asphyxiating gas is excess nitrogen. In our time, nitrogen comprised 78.08 percent of the atmosphere, while oxygen made up 21 percent and CO2 comprised approximately 0.04 percent.

Human bodies don’t detect asphyxiation by nitrogen because the signal for respiration is, counterintuitively, the level of CO2 in our bloodstream. If there isn’t enough oxygen, but nitrogen levels are high, our respiration doesn’t produce the excess CO2 that typically signals our bodies are in distress.

Dying from slow CO2 asphyxiation would not be pleasant. Unlike dying from nitrogen asphyxiation, our bodies would recognize the lack of oxygen. Our lungs would burn, we’d feel sick, and we’d struggle vainly to inhale the oxygen we needed.

Would a spear thrust be less painful?

“Hana?”

I startled at Rock’s voice and looked up over my shoulder to see his face in the pod’s opening. He cleared his throat and didn’t quite look me in the eye. Lifting a leather wrapped bundle into the pod, he said, “From Nara.”

I hadn’t seen Nara since before it was declared I should be ostracized from the tribe I didn’t even belong to.

I stared at the bundle as though it contained snakes.

“Please,” he said, in English, and then, “Onegaishimasu. It will be samui.”

“Samui” means cold—cold weather specifically. He knew my languages better than I understood his language. Why wouldn’t they ostracize me?

I reached for the bundle. Only when my hands connected with it did I realize how much I trembled. I pulled it close. The bundle was a leather backpack of incredible softness. A flap over the top was secured with a wooden button. I could feel something soft within.

Opening it, I discovered a shrug, created by nalbinding, of what felt like cashmere, but was mammoth yarn, so dark it was almost black. Elegant in its simplicity, it was something my mother would wear. It would look beautiful with the blue dress Nara had made me. It was also too short to keep me warm in the deep cold.

Rock cleared his throat again. “No …” he stumbled in English. Turned and said something to John. “Time,” John said.

“No time,” said Rock. “Sorry. Gomen nasai.”

“Tell her …” I remembered the words in his language. “Thank you.” And then I started to cry. She’d been worried about me and had done as much as she could in the short time frame, with fabric that felt like a treasure. What could I possibly give her in return?

He pulled away, and I said, “Wait!”

In the periphery of my vision, I was aware of Rock’s head reappearing.

The toolbox was open to my left, and I rifled through it to the spare utility knife blades, each wrapped in a paper sheath. Nara and Rock were clever. They’d know how to affix them to wooden handles with glue. I took out two. “For you and Nara,” I said.

He stared uncomprehendingly, so I showed him how to unwrap one. His eyes widened at the sight of the bright, slender bits of steel. I carefully wrapped the blades and offered both to him on my palm. “Ki o tsukete,” I said. “Be careful.”

“Careful,” he agreed. “Ki o tsukete.” He did the rocking bow. “Thank you, Hana. Arigatou gozaimasu,” he said, and delicately lifted the blades from my outstretched palm. “Thank you.”

And then he was gone.

I heard Nahbey asking him something. Rock only grunted in response. And then I heard their retreating footsteps. John was at the door a moment later. “You okay?” he asked.

The next day, the final battery would be charged, and then we were going to die, slowly and painfully. I didn’t know what we’d do about Haiiro-chan.

“Daijobu,” I said automatically. I’m fine.

49 JOHN

The early afternoon sun was slanting through the forest canopy, and the air was heavy with the scent of sun and pine. Haiiro was dashing on the trail ahead of me, and I was dreaming of steak I was off to collect. Moose steak. Dry aged in Hana’s pod to kill toxoplasmosis and to tenderize the tough meat. When I got back to the pod by the river, I’d let them marinate in soy sauce from our SMREs, grouse fat, and a little wild garlic, and then I’d sear them with salt and pepper—also from our SMREs. My mouth salivated, and it was the only thing that kept me from whistling.

We were leaving that night. The final battery was almost done charging. It would be fully juiced and installed by the time I got back.

Before we left, we’d have sautéed greens with the steak, wild carrots, and root something-or-others mashed with grouse fat and sprinkled with salvaged cracker crumbs. For dessert, we’d have the last Raisin Wich. It was a celebratory dinner before we left this world—our world—and returned to an alien world in our own time.

Haiiro paused in a small clearing filled with flowers and lit by a single brilliant sunbeam. Spinning in a circle, he snapped and leapt at a fluttering butterfly. Chuckling, I stopped and recorded a few seconds of his and the bug’s antics. Hovering just out of reach, the butterfly almost seemed conscious of frustrating him. After a few minutes, the bug must have realized it was not going to enjoy the flowers until Haiiro left, and it took off.

“Better luck next time, Haiiro-san,” I teased.

Ears flattening, he glared at me through narrowed eyes.

“Like you wouldn’t give me shit,” I replied to his annoyed stare.

His ears perked up, his tongue sagged out, and he resumed his way up the path. Instinctually, I looked up the mountain to the cave. For the first time since the human tribe arrived, there was no trickle of smoke. We were alone again. The tribe left that morning, with no further goodbyes, just as Nahbey and Rock told me they would.

I frowned and resumed my way up the trail.

They’d given me one last opportunity to join them. Well, Nahbey had tried. Rock had said, “He’s not coming, Nahbey. Stop annoying him.” Nahbey had glared at Rock, and Rock had scratched awkwardly behind an ear and mumbled, “I wouldn’t leave Nara, either.”

Nahbey had rolled his eyes. “You can always find a wife at the next gathering, one who is young and could give you children, and so could John!” Nahbey had turned to me and said more sympathetically, “I know it is hard, but you will die here.” He sounded distressed. Which made me want to wring his goddamn neck that much more. It was fine for Hana to die alone because the tribe imagined her as “lazy.”

“Not leaving Hana,” I growled.

Rock had explained to me at one point Nahbey was the pre-historic equivalent of divorced—he’d left his previous wife a few seasons ago. Halla was his niece. His own kids were off with their mother. As I strode up the trail, it occurred to me that maybe the downside of being as open as Nahbey was being open to leaving.

Nahbey was easy come and easy go. Rock was not. But Rock was a good friend, if he considered you one.

I blew out a breath.

I guess they both were. In their own ways.

* * *

When we reached Hana’s pod, its proximity detector recognized Haiiro and me, and lights flickered along the time band on its surface. There was a whoosh of air as the door lock disengaged. And then, as though exhausted by that effort, the pod went dark.

We had hidden the entrance beneath rocks and dirt, and as I dug it out, Haiiro’s tail wagged madly, probably at the smell of moose meat.

A few minutes later, I had more moose than Hana, Haiiro, and I could eat that night packed in our leather satchel. Haiiro was eating a huge hunk of bone-in moose thigh just outside the pod’s door. The thigh dwarfed the mighty hunter and kept him too busy to try stealing meat from me, so it was a win.

I hefted the bag. I had at least thirty pounds of moose, but it seemed like a good idea to bring some extra for Haiiro. My wolf-rescuer neighbor always complained, “An adult wolf eats three to four pounds of meat a day. Hardly anyone who takes them on as pets is ready for that.” Haiiro wasn’t an adult, but I paused … Haiiro wasn’t a wolf, either. He was of a species that was an ancestor of modern wolves and dogs. I thought of how big the cat I saw was, how tall Nahbey was, how big the maybe-bear was, the mammoths, the rhinos, and the wolves or wolf-like creatures I’d seen so far. Everything in the valley was bigger. Maybe not the moose, but they were giants in any time. Maybe I should bring more meat? I’d convinced Hana that we couldn’t leave Haiiro behind. I was sure that we’d find some way to feed the guy … Vlks was a big believer in redundancy, and the relief vessel would have more food, plus I had another sixty pounds packed in the pod by the river … still. I stuffed another ten pounds in my bag, pushed the bag out of the pod, and then squeezed myself out.

“Let’s go home, Haiiro,” I called.

His moose-thigh muffled growl rumbled from the ground.

“Whatever, I’m leaving,” I said. I lifted the leather satchel, intending to hang it on my front, realized how big it was, and switched it to my back. I had my rucksack with me, with water and a few odds and ends, and switched that to my front. Rifle in hand, I set off down the trail.

I heard scuffling behind me and turned to see Haiiro dragging the femur. Halting, he panted and looked hopefully at me.

“You’ve got bones back at the other pod. I’m already hauling fifty pounds of meat for your furry tail. Forget it.”

He wagged said tail.

“Not going to work,” I said, and then thought of the years he’d be aboard a spaceship, in an environment not suited for a dog, barely suited to humans, let alone whatever he was.

Swearing, I picked up an end of the femur. He watched me do this and didn’t try to stop me, but he had the audacity to growl. Typical.

“Relax,” I huffed. “I’m not going to eat it after you dragged it through the dirt.”

His growl deepened, and I rolled my eyes and set off down the trail. Loping to catch up, he raised his lip, baring his teeth at me, and then trotted ahead, the fur on his haunches high, growling all the way.

“How were you and Rock not friends? You’re as cranky as he is,” I told Haiiro.

Haiiro grumbled and growled, and then growled some more.

I blame the fact that he’d been growling the entire trip that I missed when the growl changed.

We were almost back to the pod. The trees were opening, and he paused, his crooked back paw trembling. He held his nose high, and his growl deepened as low as a four- or five-month-old cub growl could.

“Dude, I haven’t eaten your moose,” I said.

A second later, a stone knocked against Haiiro’s ribs, sending him toppling with a yelp. A moment later and a spear buried itself into the rucksack I had hung on my front, bowling me over and sending me sprawling.

My scroll’s proximity detector went off.

It wasn’t set up to warn of intruders where I was.

Hana was no longer alone.

… And neither was I.

50 HANA

I lugged the battery into the pod and began settling it into its casing. I turned to the control panel, ready to run a diagnostic, when the proximity detector began to ping.

“John,” I called, though of course, it wouldn’t have pinged for him. I switched the panel to the outside cameras—and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

The fire blazed, hot and orange. I’d put more wood on it—maybe it was the lack of friendly smoke from the tribe’s fires, but I’d felt more lonely, more vulnerable, than usual when John had left that morning. We were leaving. There had been no need to conserve, so I’d dumped almost all of our wood into the pit. The undergrowth around it had been beaten down by our feet—there was little wind today, there’d been a light rain the night before, and no worry of a spark catching. The heat of the flames had been comforting in John’s absence.

The flames should have been enough to convince animal life to stay away … I felt a prickle at the back of my neck, and my heart beat against my ribs like a frightened bird in a cage.

Only two-legged predators would ignore the flames.

Pulling out my scroll, I pinged John. There was no answer.

It could be other members of the “tribe,” other Homo sapiens sapiens moving from the north down to the southern gathering—but they weren’t trying to say hello.

Maybe they were afraid?

I scrunched my eyes shut. Who would be “afraid” of one unarmed woman?

The hatch door was wide open. But it opened to the outside. To close it, I’d have to climb the ladder and expose my upper body.

A rope to pull it closed would have been a good idea—my inconvenient brain began to envision it—and then a twig snapped outside. Too close.

The toolbox was open beside me. I grabbed the WD-40 and the lighter from inside, and then I closed the toolbox and snapped it tight, like an idiot, as though by doing something familiar, calm, and mundane I could make the moment and the world calm and mundane.

A shadow moving across the computer screen made me look: a short stocky humanoid, male, with pale skin and red hair, was rushing toward the pod opening. John had built a handy little staircase up to the entrance for me, one that even Haiiro could take advantage of.

Maybe it was Rock?

Rock would never try to scare me.

“Stay back!” I shouted.

Fast footsteps outside approached the pod. Cowering as far as I could from the opening, I raised the WD-40 and the lighter with shaking hands.

A face appeared in the opening. Backlit against the sky, his expression was unreadable, but the halo of his hair was as bright as flame.

“Stay away!” I tried to fill my voice with command and failed.

Teeth glinted in the shadowed face, and he chuckled. My finger depressed the WD-40 container—droplets of oil covered his face, but my fingers slipped on the lighter. His head jerked back but snapped forward again. He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. I fired the WD-40 again and pressed madly on the lighter. Click. Click. Nothing.

Wiping his face, the man snarled.

I hit the WD-40 again, tried the lighter.

Click. Click. And then there was a whoosh.

The man erupted in flames and screams. Averting my eyes, my gaze fell on the bottom of the ladder. Dropping the lighter and the WD-40, I grabbed it by the bottom rung and rammed the top of it into his chin. He fell backward, howling, his hair, face, and tunic on fire.

I set the ladder down, leaning it against the opening above, shaking and breathing deep. No one ran forward to help the man on the ground. I could climb up and close the door.

But John was out there somewhere.

I climbed the ladder just as the man on the ground rose. He didn’t run toward me, though; he ran toward the river.

The proximity detector began to ping like mad, and someone shouted, “Hana, down!”

I dropped a few rungs. But then my eyes lifted to the woods. Three Neanderthal men rushed toward me. I froze. Time stood still.

Shadows like birds arose from behind the pod, and I fell backward. From outside were rough grunts.

I looked at the computer screen. Spears protruded from the hearts of the Neanderthals. They staggered and fell, moaning on the ground. Another, smaller spear flew above them and struck a Neanderthal man, crouching low in the undergrowth.

“Hana!” a woman called.

I recognized the voice. “Nara!” I called, climbing out of the pod.

A moment later, it wasn’t Nara coming around the pod, but Nahbey and Rock. Nahbey with a knife in one hand, a spear in the other. Rock with a spear and atlatl.

“Where is John?” they asked, skewering the Neanderthal men with practiced efficiency before retrieving their spears.

I pointed vaguely up the mountain. Rock’s brow furrowed as he yanked his spear from one of the Neanderthal’s eye sockets.

Nara and Tonn came around the pod a moment later, each with an atlatl of their own. Tonn scampered around them and retrieved his spear from the man who’d been crouching in the undergrowth.

Tonn had killed a Neanderthal. For me. Tonn was a baby, a child.

The sound of gunfire echoed through the valley.

Nahbey sank to his heels.

Rock said, “That is John’s thunder.” Nahbey rose with a curse, and Rock said something to Nara and Tonn. They nodded. Then he and Nahbey took off into the forest, toward the sound of gunfire.

Another gunshot echoed down the mountain. Grabbing my scroll, I pressed the comm app, hoping John was close enough to get the signal.

“John! Rock and Nahbey are coming.”

51 JOHN

The rucksack covering my gut saved me from being a pincushion, but the spear knocked me sideways over the ledge beside the trail and sent me skidding down a steep, short embankment. And then the spear, embedded in my rucksack, turned into an anchor. On my back, weighed down by a pack filled with dog food, and with a spear in my front rucksack filled with snacks and more dog food, I was as agile as an overturned turtle. I yanked the spear out, spilling smoked and dry aged moose across the ground. A shadow appeared on the ledge above me, a Neanderthal man with a spear.

Two thoughts went through my brain at once. The first was, When they don’t have time to lay a snare as a trap, Neanderthals throw spears to trap and ambush their prey. The second was, Kill it.

I lifted my rifle one-handed, and sprayed bullets, with all the finesse I’d had firing on the lion. My arm jerked wildly with the recoil. But he was too close to miss. Brains, bone, and gore showered around me. I heaved a breath. There had to be others. I’d seen the Neanderthals hunt. They trapped their prey. And shit, Haiiro … where was Haiiro?

A ferocious growl ripped from the trail above me, just out of sight. And then Haiiro soared over my head and landed a few feet down the slope. Without glancing back, he headed toward a tree, snarling and showering spittle. “Wait!” I shouted, clambering onto my knees, but too late. The butt end of a spear whipped from behind a knot of trees and knocked him across the chest. Cracking bone and Haiiro’s howl of pain filled my ears. The blow sent him sprawling, and then my noble wolf-cub lay crying piteously on the ground.

My scroll erupted in static, and Hana’s voice worried and trembling, “John … Nah …”

They’d hit my cub, and Hana was in danger. Kneeling on one knee, setting my rifle against my shoulder, I was aware in a sort of unconscious way that I roared with rage. I fired at the tree. I couldn’t see my target, and the blossoms wouldn’t go through the trunk, but I hoped a shower of splinters would flush him out.

Lying on the ground, unable to rise, Haiiro spun and barked at another spot downslope slightly to the right. A shadow disappeared behind another knot of trees. I shot at him and missed. Haiiro spun again to the right, and there was another shadow. I shot again. The shadow dived, and from the cry of pain, I didn’t miss, but I couldn’t see him. A hit didn’t mean dead, even with the blossom bullets. I looked for cover for me and Haiiro, but our foes had picked a perfect place for an ambush. We were in a small clearing down from the trail. They could be above, and I wouldn’t be able to see them, and I knew they were in the trees below us. Haiiro rolled to the left. I spun. Shot at someone. Missed. A shadow appeared above on the trail. I spun and raised my rifle—something out of the corner of my eye made me lean back. Pain erupted along the front of my abdomen. I fell backward, my right hand flailing, my rifle slipping, and I yanked out a spear trapped between my belly and the rucksack.

My vision went white, and my scream echoed in my ears. But in the blur of pain, shadows loomed. Rolling onto my side to grab my rifle, pain exploded again along my stomach. I blinked up at the embankment and the Neanderthal man above me, and fumbled to get a grip on my rifle, knowing it would be too late—

There was a whoosh, a whistle, and a spear protruded from his chest. He fell back, his own spear releasing from his hand and sliding down the embankment.

“John!” Rock’s deep bellow echoed through the forest. There was a scream from the trees, and an unfamiliar shout in a language that didn’t sound like the tribe’s. A Neanderthal man I didn’t recognize leaped over the embankment to the right of me and headed down the slope, a spear raised, and a blood-curdling howl on his lips.

My fingers connected with the trigger, and I shot him in the back. He screamed, body bowing and tumbling.

Recoil traveled down my arm. Arm bones connect to the shoulder bone. Shoulder bone is connected to the spine, which is connected to a hell of a lot of things because I felt the recoil all the way to my gut. I shouted in pain and rage.

Haiiro cried.

“Don’t throw thunder at Rock and me!” Nahbey said from the direction the Neanderthal had come.

I might have answered. I tried. Lowering my rifle, I slithered along the ground on my side to my wolf-dog. Haiiro whimpered. I peeled the front rucksack off and wrapped my arms around him. My stomach was warm. The rucksack’s back was stained reddish brown. I smelled feces and blood and vomit.

Rock emerged from downslope, and Nahbey from the trail, spears raised, eyes everywhere but me. A shadow swooped from above, and Squawk landed on Nahbey’s head. Nahbey lowered his spear, and Rock lowered his spear and atlatl.

“Hana!” I blurted, curling closer to Haiiro and clutching my stomach at the same time. My fingers encountered things too slick and too warm. I took deep breaths and tried not to think too closely about what that meant.

“Is fine,” Rock said, sitting on his heels beside me. “We came back for you. Both of you. I could not leave you behind.”

Haiiro whined, and Rock’s mighty brow furrowed, but he amended, “All three of you.”

Nahbey looked down at me over Rock’s shoulder. “Rock convinced me. We’ll form a new tribe.”

Rock did that funny bow thing, and he spoke fast. Nervously. “Nara said Hana can become a maker of clothing, even if she can’t gather or cook. It will be you, me, Nara, Tonn, Nahbey—”

“And the woman I convince to marry me!” Nahbey said. He smiled. Was there something shaky about it?

“Thank you,” I whispered.

God, it hurt. I closed my eyes. “But I have to go home.”

“John—” Rock said.

I lifted my hand from my stomach.

Rock and Nahbey looked down.

Rock’s breath caught. “Oh, brother—” he whispered, and I knew it was as bad as I thought it was, and knew if I didn’t get some intravenous antibiotics in me soon, I was going to die.

I struggled to sit. “Haiiro …” I whispered. “In the sack … please.”

They didn’t move. They looked stricken.

My scroll hissed in my pocket, and this time Hana’s voice was loud and clear. “John? John? Are you there?”

Nahbey and Rock’s heads jerked as though a giant spider had just crawled from my pocket.

“Please … have to go home,” I whispered, and then I just gave it all up. “Have to get to Hana … Our boat … goes to the sky.”

52 HANA

Clutching my scroll, I sat with Nara and Tonn in the pod, waiting for Rock, Nahbey, and John to return.

My scroll pinged with a call, and I answered it with trembling hands.

“Hana?” Rock’s voice crackled in the pod. Nara’s and Tonn’s eyes dropped to my scroll and went wide.

“Rock?” I said, pulling my scroll closer. “Is John all right?” I asked and then realized I was speaking English. “Daijobu?” I said before I remembered that wasn’t the right word, either.

Rock saved me by speaking in English. “We are coming,” and then, in Japanese, “Iku yo.”

“Rock?” Nara said, reaching with a hesitant hand to touch the scroll.

“Nara!” Rock exclaimed and let loose a torrent of words in their language I couldn’t follow. Nara looked up at me, her eyes wary, and I pushed the scroll into her hands.

My heart was a bird trapped within me again. Something was wrong. I was not a genius with languages, but even I could tell that.

“John-John?” Tonn asked.

Rock said something in their language that Nara answered, and Rock said in English, “Hana, we bring John to sky-boat.”

I swallowed. Something was very, very wrong. I turned toward the ladder, then thinking better of it, I picked up the WD-40, shaking it to make sure it wasn’t empty, and grabbed the lighter. Stuffing them in the pockets of the apron, I climbed out of the pod, taking two rungs at a time.

Nara began talking to Rock again, words fast and frantic. I leapt from the pod to the ground.

“Hana!” Nara called as I strode in the direction Rock and Nahbey had gone.

The proximity detector went off.

“Hana!” Nara screamed, jumping from the pod.

I spun in place, looking for the intruder.

A Neanderthal man who was definitely not Rock rose from the undergrowth to my right. He shouted something at us. Tonn ran past me and took a stance between Nara, me, and the strange Neanderthal.

Tonn was only a little taller than Purr, and his shoulders were about half as wide.

Something inside me snapped. I heard myself snarl. Pushing past Tonn, ignoring Nara’s hands on my arm, I strode toward the Neanderthal, WD-40 and lighter raised. The Neanderthal stared at me like I was insane. A cool breeze from the mountain was at my back. I sprayed the WD-40. I didn’t even attempt to start the lighter. The WD-40’s spray coated the Neanderthal’s spear, his hands, his tunic, and his face.

He blinked and wiped his eyes. He was almost, but not quite, laughing. A wicked, cruel laugh.

“Hana!” Nara called.

I clicked the lighter, sprayed some more, and flames spilled through the air in a brilliant plume, catching on his spear, his skin, and his clothes. He screamed, and I watched him tear at his eyes and stumble to the river, knowing I should care and not caring.

“Nara! Tonn! Nara!” In Nara’s hand, Rock’s voice was humming desperately from my scroll.

Nara answered it. I heard my name. I heard the word “fire,” and then I heard John’s chuckle.

I spun. “John!” I cried, leaping toward Nara and the scroll. Nara put her arm around my back, like I hadn’t just torched a man.

“Heard you smoked a guy, honey. That’s my girl.”

He didn’t sound right. He sounded too cheerful. He told me the first time he shot someone he threw up, but he was laughing … because he didn’t want me to worry?

“Something happened?” I whispered.

“Might have to skip dinner. Haiiro and I … we … need … to go home.”

Nara whispered in her language. “Hana, you can come with Rock, Nahbey, Tonn, and I. You saved Tonn.”

I understood the words, John’s and hers, on multiple levels. John had been hurt, and probably Haiiro, too. Badly. Nara was telling me I could come with them. I could be part of the tribe. I bit my lip. Touched. But John wouldn’t stay without me, and I wouldn’t stay without John.

He had been hurt, and Haiiro, too. He—they—needed modern medical care. In confirmation, I heard John say, in an almost drunken tone, “This is not as bad as getting boiled alive,” and I wanted to weep. It was a reference to the submarine accident he’d been in, and the scars on his back.

If we left in the pod, we’d just wind up in empty space. I was sure of it. I closed my eyes. He wouldn’t blame me.

“Thank you,” I said to Nara. “Thank you, but …” I remembered Rock’s wording. I pointed to the pod and said, “John, Haiiro, me … sky boat.”

I had to get ready for the cast-off. I returned her side hug, put my head on her shoulder, and then ran to the pod.

53 JOHN

I was past the point where pain stole my vision and turned the world white. The toe bones connect to the ankle bones, the ankle bones connect to the leg bones, leg bones connect to the hip bone, and the hip bone has a bunch of muscles, ligaments, and tendons that transverse the abdomen attached to it—they were all screaming at me. I was holding myself together with one hand, in the literal sense. Rock gripped the other to keep my arm from slipping from his shoulder. I wanted to joke about him being conveniently short, but it was all I could do to keep my insides from spilling outside and not to scream.

Rock was talking, maybe trying to take my mind off the fact that I was as good as dead. “We got to the ridge just to the southeast, and we saw the mountain people coming down into the valley from the north. And you’re my brother—I couldn’t leave—we couldn’t leave you to face them alone.”

He came back; he found me at death’s door and wasn’t leaving me alone to die, either. My eyes leaked.

My mouth tasted like metal.

My gut wound smelled like shit.

Nahbey said from behind us, “Don’t worry about Hana, John. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of her.”

They were hunters accustomed to wounding their prey and then running it to ground. They both knew what a gut wound that smelled like excrement meant.

Nahbey was carrying Haiiro in my rucksack, and the little guy whined. Maybe he knew what my gut wound meant, too. Or maybe he was just dizzy with his own pain. He couldn’t walk, but I couldn’t tell what was wrong with him.

Was I imagining Haiiro whining? I wanted to turn and look, but I couldn’t.

“Haiiro?” I gasped.

“I’ve got him,” Nahbey said.

Rock grunted.

I gritted my teeth. “Hana?”

My scroll crackled. “Here.”

Hana was alive. She would get us home. She’d get us to safety. I wanted to tell them that, but I couldn’t do that and keep my feet moving.

The world shifted, and I thought maybe there was an earthquake. Next thing I knew, I was lying flat on my back, staring up at the sky and not moving anymore. “Hana. I have to get to Hana. Sky boat. Sky boat,” I think I said.

“Shh,” Rock replied, and then I was moving again. Only I was not moving my feet. They were tied together, not trapped in Rock’s arms. He was carrying me like a bride. He was shorter than me, but his arms were long, and he was so freaking strong. It would have been a great time for a slightly homoerotic joke, just between friends, but I couldn’t manage it. Not sure if it would have translated, anyway.

“John!” I heard Hana’s voice through my haze of pain and delirium and adrenaline, and I wanted to say so many things, but I couldn’t.

“This way,” Hana said, speaking English. Rock must have understood because I was still moving and then I was going up … up … and then down. Someone screamed. It was probably me.

My eyelids fluttered, and I was on the floor that was actually the side of the pod, and Hana, Rock, and Nahbey were all looking down at me. I blinked at the space over their shoulders, and there was Nara and Tonn peeking through the door.

“The diagnostic is almost done,” Hana said. “Everything so far looks good.” She sounded calm, but her nose worked. She knew what I smelled like and must have known what it meant, too.

Rock and Nahbey looked between each other and then down to me worriedly. And I said, “Be not afraid.” I might have added, “Our boat is almost ready. We’re going home.”

The computer beeped, and they started, their eyes going to the interface. It was well lit in the pod. I didn’t think they had seen it when it was all lit up, walls all put together, toolbox stowed. It almost looked like a real spaceship.

“John,” Hana said. “Unless they want to come with us …”

Oh. Right. I cleared my throat and searched for the words in their language, and realized I didn’t want to find them. I didn’t want to say goodbye. They were my ancestors. They were my brothers, and both of them saved me. Nahbey, my human brother, whose first instinct was to make a new friend, and Rock, my Neanderthal brother, whose first instinct was to kill me, but whose loyalty in the end was unquestioning. These men were humans. These men were us.

I closed my eyes.

“John,” Hana whispered, fingers tangling with my hair.

I found the words. In their language, I said, “You need to get away from the sky boat. There will be light and fire.” I must have opened my eyes because I saw them despite the pain, looking worried and unbelieving. I gasped. “We will remember you for a hundred thousand years.”

There was another bright light. I blinked again. And they were gone.

“Make sure they get far enough away,” I whispered.

“I’m watching through the cameras,” Hana replied.

There was a change in air pressure. A change in light. She’d closed the hatch.

“They’re safe,” Hana said so faintly, I almost missed it.

Haiiro whined beside me, and then the light got even brighter.

And then it was blinding.

* * *

I was weightless.

My vision was still white, but my pain lessened. I think my heart skipped a beat. I wasn’t dead already?

But then the pod hit something, and I hit the floor. And I hurt. Everywhere. We’d just been falling. Haiiro yelped, and the breath rushing through my lungs sent a shout from my lips. I almost laughed. We weren’t dead. My eyes stung with sweat or tears, and the pod rocked. Hana’s body leaned one way, and then the other, and I felt a familiar sensation, one that I hadn’t felt in over a decade.

“You did it,” I gasped.

“I’m not sure,” Hana said.

But I chuckled. She was wrong. “It’s the sea.”

Light flooded in through the little window inset in the door. Brilliant sunlight, not something that you would see from Europa, Mars, or the Oort Cloud.

A voice crackled in English from the wall. “Unidentified vessel, unidentified vessel, identify yourself. Repeat, unidentified vessel, unidentified vessel, identify yourself.”

I laughed again, or maybe I imagined myself laughing. Laughing would probably have knocked me with pain.

“Hana, you didn’t just take us into the future. You brought us home. I knew you had one more miracle in you.”

I think I said that. Maybe not. I wasn’t in pain anymore, which, even at the time, I knew wasn’t a good thing.

But we were home.

54 HANA

John’s smile melted, his eyes closed, and a moment later, he was unconscious. A small mercy. Haiiro whined in the rucksack and panted in pain.

I tapped the screen, hit the audio button, and said, “This is Hana Morgenstern and John Miller of the Dreamer and Starlight. Requesting immediate medical assistance.”

“Who is this?” the voice responded. There was something about the accent. I couldn’t place it. A little American, with a hint of a Spanish, maybe?

“Hana—” I repeated.

The man on the other end said, “We heard you the first time. Just a little surprising, is all.”

I blinked, remembering I was dead, and John wasn’t scheduled to return to Earth for five more years at least.

“We’re happy to assist,” the voice said, and I felt ten kilos lighter.

“Thank you,” I gushed. “Thank you.” Sliding my fingers across the screen, I pulled up the navigator app, such as it was. If this was Earth, and it felt like Earth—the gravity seemed right, the language obviously was right, the sunlight looked maybe right, and the temperature outside was within human tolerance—I could bounce a signal off a satellite and find out where we were. “Hold on and I will try to find our current location,” I said.

“We’ve already got it … are you a doctor, Morgenstern … like … the physicist?”

That was a strange way to put it.

“Not the right kind of doctor,” I said. “My … John is hurt. Also, we’ve got a”—I almost said “cub,” but caught myself—“puppy that is injured.”

“Puppy? Wow! Don’t worry, we will be there in three minutes.”

The pod rose and fell as though on a wave … as though at sea, just like John said. But outside, I could see only the sky. It looked like Earth … and yet.

Our would-be rescuer said, “Can you tell us what’s wrong with Mr. Miller?”

“Puncture to his stomach. I think his intestine might be …” I looked to where John was grasping his abdomen even in unconsciousness and mentally prepared myself to lift his hand if they asked.

“The medics heard. They said not to worry,” the guy responded.

I swallowed. Could that be true? Gut wounds are serious, and nearly always fatal, even with modern medical care. John and I watched some old movie one night where the plot twist was the hero introduced at the beginning was already dead and going through life not knowing he was a ghost—except John knew right away because, “Gut wounds kill you. Especially in the 1990s.”

The man’s voice filtered into the pod again. “Is the, ahh … puppy in critical condition?”

I looked at Haiiro. “I don’t see any blood …” I hadn’t been able to ask Rock and Nahbey what was wrong with him.

“Well, we have a few veterinarians in the city of Twilight. I don’t think any of them have ever worked on a puppy before, but I suspect they’ll love to see one. I want to see one!”

Twilight? Never seen a puppy?

John moaned, and I let the questions bubbling inside me go.

“Hold on,” I told John. “They are coming. And they sound friendly.”

Very friendly.

Which made me feel like I’d wandered into another movie plot when it shouldn’t. We were obviously somewhere modern. Someplace where gut wounds didn’t automatically mean death.

John didn’t respond, but he was quiet. I took his free hand and waited.

A moment more, and the sea became calm. There was a wrenching noise. The pod trembled.

The stranger’s voice crackled through the computer speakers again. “We’ve got you. Bringing you aboard.”

The pod lifted. The sound of the waves that I hadn’t registered in my worry, panic, and shock vanished, but I noticed their absence acutely. There was a thunk that I felt as much as heard in reverberations that traveled through my knees and my feet.

“Releasing grapple,” the man said. The pod trembled again, and then the voice said, “You’re safe now. We don’t want to damage your craft. Care to let us in?”

The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I didn’t know why. But springing to my feet, I threw open the hatch. Air, hot and as thick with humidity as August in Tokyo, rolled into the pod.

Hands gripped the edge, and a man with brown eyes, brown hair, and medium complexion pulled himself up to the opening. He stared at me for a moment, as though I’d startled him. He shook himself. “Sorry,” he said. “Just a moment.” Sliding away, he shouted, “Ladder! Medics.”

And then I was being hustled out of the pod by a lot of men who could be brothers of the first, and one older man, lean and fit with gray hair at his temples. They were all only slightly taller than me and had slender frames, but the last observation could be because I’d spent the last few months with cavemen and John. They wore neat, olive jumpsuits. We were in a narrow … hangar? … I think. It looked large enough for one of the new anti-grav flitters to land inside it. A giant claw dangled from the ceiling.

On the other side of the pod, the hangar was open to the sea. I took a step toward it, instinctively, staring at the horizon. We were about five meters above the surface. All I saw was dark blue ocean and bright blue sky, stretching out on all sides, without land in sight. That shouldn’t have been odd to me. We were at sea, but something was … wrong at the sight. The horizon, dark blue water stretching to a bright blue sky, seemed too big. Because we’d spent months in a valley, surrounded by sharp peaks that looked like they could have been the maw of Earth itself? A breeze blew through the door, hot and wet. It didn’t smell salty. Were we above one of the Great Lakes? Only Lake Superior could be so large. But could the air above Lake Superior ever get so hot? A grisly line from a song about Superior never giving up her dead came to my mind—Lake Superior is so cold that even in summer, decay often can’t occur, and the dead sink like stones.

The first man I spoke to put a hand on my arm and pulled me to the side. Grabbing a handrail with his other hand, he gestured to me to do the same. “In a moment, the ship will move and—”

Engines whirred—his words sank in. We were on a ship—not some sort of platform—and then we accelerated, and I would have fallen over if he hadn’t caught me. My attention jerked to the pod, where men were lifting John out, but the medics didn’t slip, and they lowered John into a waiting stretcher with care. A moment later, they lowered Haiiro in the rucksack, whining piteously.

The man with gray hair at his temples, waiting by the stretcher, lifted John’s hand. He frowned, and I tensed, but the man said, “He’ll be fine, but needs to get to medical, stat. Bring the puppy, too.”

The men in jumpsuits obliged, and they disappeared in a door at the far side of the hangar. I started to follow, but the man held me back. “Doc will snap if we get in the way. Our med center will be crowded as it is.”

I looked back at the stranger, and at my gaze, he flushed. “I’m Colin, by the way.”

“Hana,” I said.

“Dr. Morgenstern? Like the physicist?”

“Just Hana is fine,” I said.

His flush deepened. He hadn’t let go of my forearm, and I was becoming uncomfortable. Extricating myself casually, I hoped, I took a few steps toward the open hatch.

Colin followed on my heels.

I stared out at the horizon … and realized that the horizon hadn’t seemed too wide; it was too wide. Which meant … “This isn’t Earth.”

“No, Doctor … ah, Hana. That was where you were aiming for?” he asked.

I turned to him abruptly.

He flushed again, neck to hairline. “You’re working on faster-than-light travel? Right? Someone made you to solve the problem?”

The first question I understood, so I answered, “Yes. How did you know?”

He beamed. “Only way you could get here so fast, right? They’ll be so pleased.”

“Colin,” I asked. “Where exactly are we?”

“Dawkins Planet! The most technologically advanced colony in the galaxy. You’ll fit right in here at Twilight.” His chest puffed, and he smiled.

I almost asked him when we were but bit my tongue.

55 JOHN

I was giddy. “Hana, look! Snow bunnies!”

One bunny ran beneath the snow, and I watched the little lump that was its hidden body slide across the snow-covered plain. “Don’t leave, little guy.”

“John,” Hana whispered. “Those are your feet.”

I blinked at the bunny. I wiggled my toes. The bunny wiggled. I wiggled my other toes. The other bunny wiggled.

I felt … strange. Like, I might be made of something not flesh. Something a little firmer, a little scratchier, particularly around my middle …

Memories came back to me. I got sliced open at my middle.

Which didn’t trouble me as much as it should have.

I scrunched my eyes shut. “God damn, these are good drugs,” I said.

“It seems like it,” Hana said. Her voice was disembodied, like she was speaking to me from another room, but when I slid my eyes to the side, she was sitting next to me in a chair. It had been a long time since I’d seen a chair. Haiiro was on her lap. His front was all bandaged up, and he had jammed himself in between the plastic armrests. It didn’t look very comfortable, but he gave me a wide, wolf-cubby panting grin. Little sparkles danced from his eyes and spiraled up into the air.

“I am so high,” I said.

“As a kite,” Hana agreed. She bit her lip. “I’m so glad you’re getting better, though. So glad you both are.” She hugged our wolf-cub, and he licked her chin.

I scowled at Haiiro. “Take it easy,” I grumbled.

I swore Haiiro waggled his eyebrows at me. Everything was sparkly and fuzzy. We were alive; I was going to live, and I could not stay jealous. Grinning, I looked around the hospital room. Lots of white, and a huge picture window, revealing a pink and purple twilight sky. I blinked. I felt like I had memories of that twilight sky. Like every time I’d opened my eyes, I’d seen it. I must have been in and out of it for days. Gut wounds are nasty, even in modern times. I shook off the “Oh my God, I almost died” melancholy. Or it slid away in my drugged state. I smiled again. I could say, “I told you so.”

So I did.

“Told me what?” Hana asked.

“That you would bring us home. That I would be fine.”

Hana’s face went blank. “I’m glad you’re better, but—”

Haiiro growled at the doorway.

A man entered the room. He was wearing a sort of suit that buttoned up to the neck and was silver and sparkly. My brow furrowed. I looked between him and Hana. He had the same eyes as Hana. The same nose. The same hair color and texture, though his hair was short. He was younger. Early to mid-twenties, maybe.

“Are you two … related?” I asked.

Hana’s expression became clouded.

“I’m Hana’s clone,” the man said. “Dr. Ira Hoshino.”

I looked back at Hana, and she clarified. “My clone with a Y chromosome.”

I blinked at her. “You had yourself cloned?”

Almost too quietly for me to hear, she spoke in the tribe’s language. “No.” It was a sort of grunt noise and sounded like she was clearing her throat.

“Dawkin’s Planet clones the best,” Hana’s clone said. He smiled. It didn’t meet his eyes.

There was an awkward moment. My thoughts chugged slowly through the jello that was my brain on drugs. I was better. Hana was happy about that. Hana wasn’t happy about Clone Boy. We were not on Earth. Also, I was drooling. I reached to wipe away my spit but smacked my ear instead. Setting Haiiro down, Hana stood and wiped away the spittle with her handkerchief.

“I don’t think they’ll be cloning me,” I said.

“Probably not,” Clone Boy agreed.

I’m glad I’d already forgotten his name.

Hana’s eyes were very close to mine. She was wearing a suit almost exactly like the man’s. It was too large, the shoulders halfway down her arms, and rolled up at the sleeves. It fit her like a sparkly silver potato sack. It annoyed me. A cavewoman made Hana garments that fit her better.

“John,” she whispered, snapping my eyes back to hers. “The most important thing is that you’re well.” I heard her gulp, and then, leaning forward, she kissed me, long and deep, right in front of Clone Boy.

Hana was raised in Japan. She had never been big on Public Displays of Affection. I was drugged, not an idiot. It was a coded message. I kissed her back, trying to appear self-assured and possessive, and hoping I was not throwing spittle in my mind-numb state.

She pulled away, and Clone Boy cleared his throat. “Dr. Morgenstern, they’ll want us back at the lab.”

“I have to go,” she said. “But Haiiro-chan will stay—”

“I think I’d rather he go with you,” I grumbled. Haiiro didn’t like Clone Boy either, and he may have been small, but his teeth were sharp. I knew.

Hana said, “I will be back.”

I nodded.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“Right back at you,” I said.

And then Hana said, “Don’t worry, it will all be okay.”

Have I mentioned she’s a fucking terrible liar?

AFTERWORD

Miller insists that I not end their memoir at this point. However, I believe that the preceding account will provoke enough controversy for now. Yes, it is true that human historical memory is as fragmented and imprecise as Morgenstern and Miller have implied here. The databanks of their vessels and personal devices back this up.

I am sure this revelation will only increase the accusations of human mental inferiority. And yet, here they are, lightyears from their home world, in less than a lifetime.

I am also sure that some will protest the seeming dominance of Miller’s voice in the narrative. They will doubt the account’s veracity because of it. However, please absorb that Dr. Morgenstern has reviewed John’s memories (as translated by our technology into their “English language”) and given her sign-off on their accuracy.

Dr. Morgenstern’s and Miller’s memoirs will continue with Intelligent Design.

Corewing Lotus

62,525 Orbits S.D.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I may write in solitude, but for editing and moral support, I am utterly dependent on many others. Behind every page lies a community, and to my first beta readers, who ignored eye-twitch-inducing typos and delved into the depths of my rough drafts, I am forever grateful. Your scrutiny for consistency and factual inaccuracies, comments on characterizations, and dedication and keen eyes are the bedrock upon which this novel stands.

Tod Roberts, Barbara Forman (A.C. Smart), Daniel Smith, Wynnefredd Fitzgibbons, Jack Spencer, Kirsten Adams, Barbara Wellnitz, and Sarah Easterly, you illuminated blind spots I never knew existed and polished this work into something far greater than I could have achieved alone. Your willingness to lend your time and expertise, your sharp insights and gentle critiques, breathed life into this “Beast.” Each of you played an integral role in shaping this narrative, and for that, I am deeply grateful.

Erin Zorro Reed, you tackled the first, most difficult grammatical edit. Genevieve Turcotte, as always, you caught the mistakes I made while trying to resolve errors Erin discovered. Any remaining mistakes are all my own.

I also want to thank all of my Kickstarter supporters. Your contributions, both moral and material, made this project possible. I especially want to thank my “first responders,” who donated in the first pivotal twenty-four hours: Andrew Sandor, Michael Griffin, David DeHaan, Heiko Koenig, Kim Stoker, Kasey Sargent, Marianne Marrou, Jean Verney-Carron, Louiz, Samantha G, Firebyrd, Sean Willson, Steve Ryder, Gary Olsen, Helen Kershaw, Samantha, Jacob, Kirsten, Marie Devey, Doug Pruden, The Creative Fund by BackerKit, Carol Van Natta, C.Robinson, Gaia Love, Xiofett, Ellen Sullivan, Joan Eorgoff, Emily Mullaney, Melissa Mitchem, Lucy Street Bartlett, Billye Herndon, Pauline Baird Jones, Benjamin Plaga, Rose Angerer, Reggie Mitchem, Wolf Pack Entertainment, Donald McCartney, Aye Alba Publishing, Aiisling3, Renee, Bob, Jonathan Lally, Angela Richter, Tara Zrymiak, Ceri Pritchard, Angela McVey, Stephan Lack, John Otway Jr, Richard Valdez, Lisa, Bonnie Wendt, Christopher D Shramko, Lori Davis, Dave Walsh, Morrioghain, Caledonia, JohnNeverSleeps, Patrick Hay, Julia Huni, Ray Smillie, Adrian Chant, Stephen Ballentine, Tim G., Simon Tull, Amanda, Lisa Venerussi, Patty Guinn, Irene A. Mystery, Russell Fisk, Katherine Shipman, Lena Johnson, Deborah Newbury, Myrddin Starfari, Julienne Chappell, Russell Ventimeglia, Wynni, Lai Lee, Michael Brassell, Michelle Marchand-Bailie, Janis, Steve and Carrie Weyer, Aurelia, Stephen Michael Kellat, Mike Thor, Bridget Horn, Regina Dowling, Madelynne Anne Lamb, Robert Parker, and Martin Nunn.

This book and all the others I have written would never have been possible without my husband, Eric, nagging me to publish my writing. Also, unlike my character Hana, I never forget to eat—fortunately, Eric keeps me from subsisting on chocolate, ice cream, and tea.

Thanks must also go to Eric and my children for the endless inspiration they provide. They also tolerated me reciting Neanderthal and early hominid evolution facts in eye-watering detail throughout this particular endeavor.

Lastly, but never least, thanks to you, dear reader, whether you picked up this book during my Kickstarter campaign or later on your favorite vendor. Being a writer is a job I never dreamed I could have. You’ve made it possible. I hope I can continue to transport you to new worlds and give all the joy I receive imagining these stories back to you.

C. Gockel

ALSO BY C. GOCKEL

THE ARCHANGEL PROJECT

Archangel Down

Noa's Ark

Heretic

Carl Sagan's Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe: A Short Story

Starship Waking

Darkness Rising

The Defiant

Android General 1

Admiral Wolf

Supernova

Mech

Let There Be Light: A Sci-fi Short Story

Beasts in the Garden

Intelligent Design

Noble Savages

I BRING THE FIRE (A LOKI SERIES)

Wolves: I Bring the Fire Part I

Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II

Chaos: I Bring the Fire Part III

In the Balance: I Bring the Fire Part 3.5

Fates: I Bring the Fire Part IV

The Slip: A Short Story (mostly) from Sleipnir’s Point of Smell

Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V

Ragnarok: I Bring the Fire Part VI

The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story

Atomic: A Short Story

Someday My Count Will Come: A Short Story

Magic After Midnight: A Short Story

Rush: A Short Story

Take My Monsters: A Short Story

Soul Marked: I Bring the Fire Part VII

Magic After Midnight I Bring the Fire Part VIII

Last Wish: A Short Story

URBAN MAGICK & FOLKLORE

Snow So White

Blood So Red

Grendel & Beowulf

Mother of Monsters

Monsters & Empire

CONTACT INFORMATION

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