CHAPTER
SEVEN
The horizon was showing the first hints of dawn. Marty lunged at an unseen opponent, blocking hits that never came, and then launched a roundhouse kick that would have smashed into the side of his attacker’s head.
Marty stood alone on top of a rocky escarpment to the east of the river. Farther east rolled unending grassy plains. Down in the river and on the other side stretched the patches of melons, berry brambles, and other water-guzzling plants that filled the oasis.
For nearly half an hour, he worked through a series of forms and exercises that he’d been doing all his life. He needed to clear his head. Also, the ritual workout gave him a sense of the familiar, something that he needed more than ever since the world around him had been turned upside down.
So much around him had been twisted up and had no explanation, but at least one thing had improved: his fatigue. Marty felt like he had before the bouts of fatigue had set in, so if nothing else, that was a boon he was grateful for.
The idea that somehow he’d been transported both somewhere and somewhen unexpected was the stuff of nightmares. It was impossible. As far as he knew, the giant three-sided rocky massif was unique to Morocco. He’d been there before, and he’d also seen the massif in movies—distinctive as it was, it was a favorite of Hollywood location scouts.
As he continued working through his morning exercise, his mind raced with the improbability of it all.
So Lowanna was right and they really were in the distant past. Say, 3,000 or 4,000 B.C.E. When global climate was changing and the last of the glaciers were receding.
Being in the ancient past would explain why the ruins weren’t where he thought they should be. The ruins of Sijilmassa hadn’t even been constructed yet. Being in the distant past explained many things.
But it bothered Marty. They couldn’t be in the past, that was a thing of science fiction, not science fact, and facts were what he lived and breathed.
Still, he’d long ago learned the phrase “disagree and commit.” Despite his inability to wrap his head around the idea that time had flip-flopped on him, he was willing to just leave it be and move on. Just because Lowanna was sure about them being in the past due to the position of the stars, he wasn’t there yet.
Not entirely.
His academic training didn’t let him accept some of the things he was experiencing at face value. There had to be a better explanation.
He tried very hard not to think about the English-language sentence he’d read in the ancient tunnel, written in hieroglyphs of his own devising.
He wiped sweat from his forehead; his muscles had warmed and he felt good. As he snapped a front kick into the air, he heard the slap of his pants leg against his shin and immediately swung around, slamming a backfist into the imagined opponent, and then finishing the movement with a leg sweep.
Despite their march to find the ruins and his restless, dream-filled sleep, he felt more alive than he remembered ever feeling. It was as if the sun beating on him had oiled his joints, making every motion feel smoother, faster, and hell, maybe even stronger.
If only he had a heavy bag to pound against . . .
“I assume you’re a black belt?”
Marty turned to see Lowanna approaching from the river. Below, he could see the rest of the crew stretching and preparing for the day.
“Every time I clear my head,” he told her, “I find you there.”
“Some kind of sign, maybe. You said you were having visions.”
“I learned kung fu at home, from my grandfather. He was a monk at the Shaolin temple for twenty years before leaving China. I don’t think they do belts in any formal way.” He grinned. “It’s like Mr. Miyagi said, ‘Belt mean no need rope to hold up pants.’”
Lowanna laughed. “You never sparred at a dojo or anything?”
“Nope. Forms on my own, fighting when I had to.”
She shook her head and smiled faintly. “So dorky.”
“Marty!” François waved a greeting as he ambled up the slope. “Is your vision still saying we should head east, now that this ruin of yours didn’t pan out?”
“We should discuss,” Marty said.
“In the alternative,” François said, “you could admit that you were wrong and we could now do a reasonable thing.”
“In the first instance,” Marty said, “the reasonable thing to do right now is to discuss with the entire party.”
“The entire party—” François said, but Lowanna cut him off by simply walking down the slope.
Marty trudged back to the camp on Lowanna’s heels.
The rest of the crew stood around last night’s fire, looking back and forth between Marty and François. Several of them had been sharpening their ankhs on a large rock, following Surjan’s example and direction, and now held pointed ankh-daggers.
“So here we are,” Marty said. “Ancient Earth. How ancient, we can’t be certain.”
“It’s possible we’re here pre–Homo sapiens,” François added.
Abdullah blinked. “Before Adam? What was there before Adam?”
“Desert, old chap,” Surjan said. “In the beginning was the sand. But something made those trails we followed last night, and it wasn’t addax.”
“I think there’s no end of speculation we could get up to,” Gunther said. “None of it will substitute for actual experience of our . . . new environment, and none of it is as important as the practical question.”
“Should we kill Hitler?” François suggested.
Marty chuckled. “More broadly than that, what do we do?”
“Get back home,” Lowanna said.
“Agree,” Marty said instantly. “Does anyone have any ideas about how to do that?”
“About the whole killing Hitler thing,” Surjan said. “If we’re in the past, how much do we worry about changing the future?”
“That’s an argument for getting home as soon as we can,” François said.
“But also,” Lowanna added, “it’s an argument that can’t go anywhere, practically speaking. We can chase our tails down theoretical alternate universes all night long, but at the end of the day, unless we commit group suicide right now, we risk changing the future. We just have to live with the risk. Heck, we might make the future better.”
“If we make a future in which we ourselves can’t be born,” Marty said, “theoretically we have a paradox problem. Which, I don’t know, theoretically, maybe that destroys the Earth.”
“You ready to kill yourself, then?” Lowanna challenged.
“No,” Surjan said instantly.
“No.” Marty’s voice was softer.
Silence.
“About getting home,” François said slowly. “If some sort of spatiotemporal anomaly moved us from future Egypt to past Morocco, we should first of all feel grateful.”
“A what?” Marty asked.
“He means a glitch in the matrix.” Lowanna waved dismissively. “Why in the world would we be grateful?”
“That the Morocco end wasn’t ten miles removed, or even a hundred yards removed, in one direction or the other. We could have been thrust into outer space, or under the Earth’s crust.”
“We are alive, praise God,” Abdullah said.
“And then?” Gunther asked.
“Doesn’t it seem likely,” François continued, “that if the spatiotemporal anomaly continues to exist, or if it is likely to repeat itself, that the most likely way to encounter it again, and therefore to get back to the twenty-first century, is to stay at the Jebel Mudawwar?”
“You want to go back,” Marty said.
“It was a mistake to leave,” François said. “We should return to the massif, find water, build shelter, and look for the road home.”
“That sounds wise, by God,” Abdullah said.
“I don’t want to die before Adam,” Kareem added. “It feels like a cursed fate if it happens.”
“Or, second best,” François said, “make our shelter here where there is water and abundant food, and take regular expeditions back to the massif.”
“I take it you forgot to mention your background in theoretical physics yesterday?” Marty asked. A chuckle ran through the group. “Okay, so that might be right, François. And we should put it to a vote. But here’s where I worry. What happened yesterday wasn’t some normal, or even unusual occurrence. As far as I know, it was a unique occurrence in the history of the planet.”
“As far as you know,” François said. “But the history of the planet is almost entirely unrecorded.”
“True. But the mostly likely outcome of sitting around and waiting for the . . . spatiotemporal anomaly, as you say, to reoccur would mean sitting around and getting old on a desert rock. I’d further argue that the glitch might not really be a glitch, but a doorway. A doorway that’s maybe still open and accessible back where we came from, which would also be east of here.”
“If we encountered the anomaly again,” Gunther said, “there’s no reason to think it would automatically send us home. It might send us farther into the past. This time it might place us in the Earth’s core.”
“I have no appetite for sitting around and waiting,” Surjan growled.
“You want us to follow your vision,” François said. “You want to march eastward. For some fifty days.”
“It gives us direction, at least,” Marty said. “If we’re still near Aswan somehow, we should hit the Nile shortly.”
“Immediately,” François shot back. “We’d have hit it last night.”
“If we somehow got turned around and on the other side of the Nile,” Gunther said, “we’ll hit the Red Sea soon enough.”
“But neither of those is true,” Lowanna said. “So in fifty-odd days, we’ll reach the Nile.”
“Perhaps at about the time that Egyptian civilization is being founded.” Gunther’s eyes lit up. “When the Badari pull the rip cord and go pharaonic. How exciting!”
“You want to follow Marty’s vision?” François laughed. “Why don’t we follow the animal voices Lowanna is hearing? Surely, they’re just as likely to contain wisdom. Hey, little sparrow, which way to the twenty-first century?”
“I’m just as uncomfortable as you are at the fact that I’m having visions,” Marty said.
“I’m not uncomfortable that you’re having visions,” François said. “I’m uncomfortable that we’re seriously considering following them.”
Marty could only shrug.
“Fine.” François glowered at Marty. “Other plans?”
No one offered any, and François called for a vote.
The Egyptians voted with François. Everyone else voted to go east. François kicked the sand, but said nothing.
The crew took last drinks of water, hefted packs onto shoulders, and climbed back up out of the riverbed and onto the plains.
As Marty’s gaze followed the path ahead, the vision replayed in his mind.
Ahead of him, according to what he saw, stretched fifty-four sunsets and an incalculable number of steps to walk. With all the insane and undeniable things Marty had experienced since coming to Egypt, he felt he couldn’t deny the reality of his vision. And with all the bizarre things that had already transpired, Marty couldn’t imagine what might happen next.
It had been three days since leaving the oasis. As Marty chewed on a piece of the bland-tasting meat, he felt a growing sense of concern. Food hadn’t yet become a problem since François had had the idea to divvy up the meat and drape it over their woven packs. This let the sun do the work of drying it into a jerky-like consistency to help retard spoilage. As of this morning’s inventory, each of them still had a few days’ worth to gnaw on, but water was going to be a problem.
They hadn’t found any radishes since leaving the oasis. No melons or anything else with water in it. No animals they had any chance of catching. And no signs of water.
Upon breaking camp this morning, François had taken it upon himself to lead the group’s march eastward. Making a point of “leading” might be something the Frenchman needed for his ego or self-worth. All they were doing was following a faint trail in the grasslands that seemed to perfectly align in an east-west direction.
It was nearly midday when Abdullah whistled.
“Oh, excellent!” François called.
Marty increased his pace. His gaze followed the Frenchman, who’d veered off the trail at a jog, with Abdullah by his side.
There was someone ahead in the tall grasses!
The stranger wore a long loose-fitting robe with the hood pulled up. A djellaba, he’d have called it, seeing it on the streets of modern Cairo. François and Abdullah approached the newcomer, and Marty realized that the stranger was very tall and big, bigger than Surjan, NBA all-star power forward-sized. Marty jogged after the crew as François waved at the lone figure, yelling a greeting alternating between French and Arabic.
This was good. A person was a source of information.
The figure turned toward François.
He had a spear in his hand.
François slowed to a walk and began rattling off a series of questions, each in Arabic and then in French. Marty raced forward. He had an uncomfortable sensation in his stomach.
The giant in the dejallaba lunged toward the Frenchman with his spear, and the world slowed down.
Abdullah jumped at François, knocking the banker to the side. The stranger plunged his spear into Abdullah’s chest.
Marty jumped. He slammed into the robed man with a flying side kick, sending the stranger staggering. The hood fell back and time seemed to stop.
Glaring at Marty with malevolent yellow eyes was something out of a nightmare.
The head was shaped like a canine’s. A long snout snarled at him with bared teeth and a silver nose ring. The ears stood straight up from the top of its head and were square at the top. This was no wandering Berber, it was no human at all.
It was a monster.
And before Marty could even register what he was looking at, the creature ripped the spear from Abdullah’s collapsing body and lunged at him.
Muscle memory kicked in. Marty blocked the attack with one hand and slammed his palm into the back of the creature’s elbow.
The bone cracked with a sound like a gunshot.
The creature howled. It lunged at Marty with clawed fingers extended.
Marty caught both of the creature’s wrists, fell backward, and flipped the monstrosity onto its back. His shoulders screamed with the effort. Marty was tall, but this beast loomed over him and weighed twice what he did.
The creature recovered almost instantly, scrambling to its feet. It bellowed an ear-splitting roar that shot vibrations through Marty’s chest, and charged, shoulder first.
Barely sidestepping the attack, Marty smashed a closed fist down on the end of the creature’s snout, sending the creature staggering backward as its nose ring fell to the ground in two pieces.
Fumbling for something under its robe, it pulled out a bronze medallion. Marty swiped at it with a crescent kick.
A red beam flashed from it as the metal disc flew from the creature’s grasp.
Looking stunned, the monstrosity wheezed and bent at the waist, reaching for something near its feet.
Marty grunted as he launched a spinning back kick.
His heel connected with the side of the creature’s head and Marty felt and heard the neck snapping.
Surjan raced up, wielding the ankh like a sword just as the creature collapsed to the ground. “What the hell is that?”
Marty stared at what he’d done, his body tingled with the adrenaline racing through him. The world blurred and the sound of his heart thundered in his head.
François wept as he pumped Abdullah’s chest, performing CPR on the injured man.
Gunther came to François’s side, listened at the Egyptian’s lips, and rested a hand on the Frenchman’s shoulder. “He didn’t have a heart attack, François. And he’s gone. He died instantly.”
François roared and punched the sand with both fists. It was a childish and impotent gesture, and Marty found it touching.
Marty jumped as Lowanna touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “I couldn’t . . . I tried to . . .” Words were failing him.
“Marty, I saw what happened.” She rubbed her hand across his back. “You were amazing.”
“But I couldn’t—”
Yanking on Marty’s arm, Lowanna turned him toward her. With a stern expression she growled, “This wasn’t your doing.” She hitched her thumb toward François. “It was his.” She leaned closer and spoke in a hoarse whisper, “If that bastard didn’t assume everyone would bow to his every word, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“On the other hand,” Marty said, “if we’d stayed at Jebel Mudawwar, Abdullah might be alive.”
Suddenly the world flashed white and Marty saw in his mind’s eye an image of the chamber that had sent them to into the past.
The crew was standing motionless, stuck within seven bluish-white beams of light.
The light bathing Abdullah’s statue-like image flickered and blinked off.
Abdullah pitched forward. Before he even hit the ground his body exploded into a cloud of dust.
Marty gasped as the chamber blinked out of existence and he saw Lowanna’s eyes widen. “Did you see that?” he asked.
She nodded, the fearful expression giving way to one of anger.
François sobbed.
Marty took a deep shuddering breath and gave Lowanna a quick hug. “None of that matters . . . we can’t afford to lay blame. That’ll drive a wedge into the group and will end up getting us all killed. Let’s just focus on the next steps.”
Lowanna turned to the Frenchman and narrowed her gaze. If looks could kill, François would have gone up in flames.
Marty glanced at their dead crewmate and felt a wave of sorrow. If he’d only been a few feet closer . . .
This crazy journey into the unknown had suddenly become very real.