CHAPTER
SIX
I think that one can hear us.
Can you hear us, Two-Legs?
Lowanna felt ill.
It wasn’t just the smell of the blood and the roasting meat, or the sight of the addax’s head and the knowledge that Kareem intended to pound brains into the creature’s own hide to help with the curing process, though those things bothered her.
But why should they bother her? They never had before. She was no vegetarian.
Was she?
It was also the voices. Was she going crazy? She glanced at Marty and wondered when she could tell him about them. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she felt she could trust him. But on the opposite side of the campfire was François, he was staring at Marty, and the last thing she was about to do was to admit to anything around the banker.
Shifting her gaze from the others, Lowanna focused on roasting some radishes while the others roasted meat and made small talk. Again, she heard voices calling to her from the darkness.
Fire! Fire? But I saw no lightning!
Ah, it is a party of the Two-Legs. They brought fire with them, or they made fire. Look, they are eating a Curved Horn. They will leave us alone.
They only eat us when they have no bigger meat.
She ate the radishes before they had fully cooled, to distract herself from the chattering of the voices. She burned her lip, but the painful sensation passed quickly. Perhaps the joy of eating lifted the pain from her. It also eased the burn of her hand, from grasping the ankh.
Marty was probably right about where they were located, she thought. But Marty didn’t see the whole picture.
And the whole picture was so much worse than just being in Morocco, which was bad enough. How had they been transported, instantly, two thousand miles, from Egypt to Morocco in a heartbeat?
Her fear was not that she was in a dream. Her fear was that she had gone insane.
While Marty and Surjan had been gone, she had heard screaming. No one else had batted an eye, but she had heard a voice crying of death and fear and solitude, drifting to her on the wind.
She watched Marty move around the fire. The others watched him, too. He had the confidence and the unselfconscious air of a natural leader, and everyone responded to it, whether they realized it or not.
François watched Marty through slitted eyes.
The first cooked steaks were ready. Marty offered her one, gently, and she only turned away and tried to sleep. She had a half-eaten roasted radish, but the nausea made it hard even to think of eating it, so she just clutched it to herself, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply.
She had the drifting sensation of sleep, and with it, the growing certainty that whatever was happening to her on this savannah was not a dream.
Take the food.
Now, she is sleeping.
Lowanna felt a tug at the radish in her hand. She opened her eyes; she was facing away from the campfire into the darkness. The light spilling over her shoulder illuminated two creatures, the size and shape of prairie dogs, within arm’s reach. One had its front paws and teeth sunk into her roasted radish, now growing cold, and was trying to pull it from her.
The other lingered slightly behind, watching Lowanna intently. When she opened her eyes, they both began to chatter.
The Two-Legs is awake!
Run!
Feeling pressure in her bladder, Lowanna sat up and looked around. Kareem slept. The others were wrapping the last of the butchered and uncooked meat into grass envelopes and placing them into their baskets. Abdullah stood patiently waiting and keeping an eye on his nephew; he had the dirty addax hide rolled up over one shoulder, and a grass basket full of radishes over the other.
She rose and walked outside the reach of the campfire’s flickering light.
As Lowanna finished relieving herself and stood, adjusted her pants, she caught sight of a silhouette walking in her general direction.
It was Marty.
He must not have seen her in the darkness, because he unzipped and quickly began relieving himself.
Do you think the Two-Legs can see us?
I don’t know. But the dark one almost collapsed our burrow.
Lowanna turned in the direction of the furry creatures’ voices and whispered, “Sorry.”
Then she clapped both hands to her mouth.
It can see us! Run!
“Lowanna?” Marty’s voice cut through the night.
“Just contributing to the topsoil.” Lowanna winced as she turned to Marty, who quickly zipped himself, and walked to within arm’s reach of him.
“Sorry about what?”
Lowanna felt heat rising up her neck and into her cheeks. Would he think she was an idiot?
“Can I tell you something in confidence?”
“Sure.” Marty stepped closer. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” Lowanna hesitated for a moment. “I’m hearing voices.”
Marty was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to ask a question. It’s a serious question, though I know it might not sound like one. What language were the people in the vision speaking?”
“No, it’s not like that . . . it wasn’t a person speaking.” Lowanna’s throat tightened. “And there was no vision.”
Marty raised his hands and then dropped them. “What do you mean, then?”
“I think I’m going crazy.” Her voice cracked. “I hear animals talking. I actually just apologized to a set of groundhogs because I heard them say I almost collapsed their burrow.”
“Oh, okay . . .” His voice had a warm, comforting tone, and then he put a hand on her arm. Surjan was right, he had calluses, but the touch was reassuring, anyway. “You know, that chamber we were in probably hadn’t been opened for thousands of years. Maybe you breathed in some dust and it . . . it had a mild hallucinogenic effect. You hear or see anything else unusual?”
“I don’t think so.” Her mind flashed back to the underground tunnel and the dusty chamber they’d entered. He might be right. “I saw an ankh and took it. I think everybody did.”
“I wouldn’t get too hung up on it, whatever effects it’s having on you are almost certainly temporary.” Marty grinned and tossed her a wink. “But in the meantime, if those groundhogs give you any good intel, let me know.”
She had something else on her mind, but the wink disarmed her. She couldn’t say what she wanted to tell him when he was being charming and cavalier.
Lowanna impulsively gave Marty a quick hug. “You don’t need to tell anyone this.”
“I don’t. Also, I . . . I won’t tell anyone.” Marty motioned in the direction of the campfire. “Shall we head back?”
Lowanna shook her head. “You go ahead. I think I have to pee again.”
“I have that effect on women.” Marty chuckled and walked back toward the campsite.
A cooler breeze blew across the grassland, raising goose bumps on Lowanna’s skin. Feeling a prick of pain on the back of her arm, she reached across and felt something hard on her skin. She scratched at it and managed to pull out what felt like a thin sliver of plastic from her arm.
What the hell?
She stared in the darkness at the thing which was just a bit over an inch long and looked like a tube of some kind. Lowanna groaned, realizing what it was.
“Oh damn. That’s all I need at this stage.”
Pocketing the plastic for later disposal, she returned to the fire.
“You slept a couple of hours,” Marty said to Lowanna. “We’re going to head out now and make for Rissani while it’s still dark and cool.”
“The oasis,” she said.
“Well, the town,” he said. “But yes. We should get there in four pretty easy hours. And we have food and water, in case I’m wrong.”
Kareem awoke yawning and stretching when Abdullah prodded him, but scrambled quickly to his feet to shoulder not only a basket, but also, against his uncle’s protests, the antelope head and the hide. Then they set out walking.
They all moved differently; Abdullah walked with the strong plodding step of a man who had carried many burdens, Surjan prowled like a cat, François clumped as if every step was a plea for someone to pave the road before him, and Kareem skittered across the prairie like a drop of water scrambles across a hot skillet. Marty seemed to float, as if he were parallel to the ground but not touching it. His mere steps looked like the motions of a kung fu master, graceful and effortless and almost inhuman. The basket hanging from his shoulder floated at his side.
They circled around the massif to get onto its east side. It was easy to steer by the stars, but Lowanna left that to Marty and Surjan—every time she looked up at the sky, she shuddered at its wrongness.
At least, while they were moving, the voices receded into the darkness. If she didn’t listen for them specifically, she couldn’t hear them anymore.
“We’ll hit a jeep trail, any minute now,” Marty said, four or five times.
At the southeast corner of the rock formation, Surjan raised a hand to stop them. He was clearly visible in the starlight; once they’d banked their fire, the sky was so dark, there might not have been an electric light within a thousand miles.
Suddenly Lowanna couldn’t bring herself to look eastward, either. She stood still and stared at her feet.
They’re stopping.
Do they see us?
“There’s a trail here,” Surjan called. “And it goes east. Only . . .”
“Only what?” Marty walked up to the front of the line to join the Sikh.
Marty and Surjan looked at the trail together. Lowanna trudged forward to join them.
“Not a jeep trail,” Surjan said.
A distinct track cut through the grasslands, heading east. But it was a single track, pounded deep into the sandy soil and maybe four feet wide.
“I’ll be,” Marty murmured.
“Camel,” Surjan said.
“Camel? What do you mean?” Marty peered down into the shadow of the trail.
“Camel tracks and sandals.” Surjan shrugged. “Can’t you see them?”
Marty shook his head.
“Are you taking the Michael?” Surjan pressed.
“I have to tell you something,” Lowanna said, “and it’s awful.”
Everyone turned to look at her.
“How are you feeling?” Marty asked.
“This is not about how I’m feeling.” Lowanna took a deep breath. “I think you’re right, Marty, we’re at Jebel Mudawwar. And of course, we’re not in a dream, anyone who’s still saying that needs to shut up, or I’ll slap you.”
The general murmur that ran up and down the group told Lowanna that others had come to the same conclusion.
“We’ll get to Rissani,” Marty said. “From there we’ll get a bus or hire someone to drive us, and we’ll fly back to Egypt. I know this is all strange, but of course there’s some explanation. We’ll get back to the site and figure out what happened to us.”
“Or we won’t figure it out.” Gunther shrugged. “And we will have a strange mystery to tell our grandchildren. Like stories of rains of frogs, or people who saw armies marching in the night sky.”
“There’s no Rissani,” Lowanna said.
“Sure there is,” Marty said.
“Here’s what you’re not seeing.” Lowanna shook her head. “We’re in the past. We didn’t just travel in space, we traveled in time. I don’t know the exact date, but my guess is that we’re somewhere between two thousand and five thousand B.C.E.” Her head whirled. “Or maybe much earlier than that.”
They stared. Their stares were so heavy, she had to set down her basket.
“That’s a big jump.” Marty’s voice was soft.
“Big jump? You think we moved from Egypt to Morocco in the blink of an eye and that doesn’t bother you at all.”
Marty flailed his arms like a struggling bird. “Yeah, but . . . what evidence is there? I mean, there’s the grass, that’s strange, I’ll grant you.”
“And the path,” Surjan muttered. “Camels?”
“We’ll find the jeep roads.” Marty’s voice was confident.
“And the ruins?” François asked. “The twenty-five-foot-tall walls that aren’t there?”
Marty opened and closed his mouth without saying anything.
“There’s something else,” Lowanna said. “What day is today?”
“March twentieth,” François said instantly. “At least, that’s what day it was in Egypt.”
“And the grass.” Lowanna pointed at the dark prairie around them, rippling silver under the stars. “Tall and green like this, that suggests it’s still spring, right? Still March twentieth, or something really close to that. Spring equinox?”
“Sure,” Marty conceded. “It’s clearly spring.”
“The precession of the equinoxes,” she said.
They all stared. None of them understood.
“Look, here’s the deal,” she said. “For about the past two thousand years or so, on the day of the spring equinox, the sun is in Pisces. Sometime around the twenty-first century C.E., our time, it will move into Aquarius. That’s what the Age of Aquarius is all about. We live—we lived—at the end of the Age of Pisces and at the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. For the next two thousand years or so, the sun would be in Aquarius on the day of the spring equinox.”
“I think I’m following.” Marty had a look of intense concentration on his face, his eyes visible only as black pits in the starlight.
“Let’s make it round numbers, because each age really lasts something like twenty-two hundred years,” Lowanna said. “But let’s call it two thousand, for simplicity’s sake. From two thousand B.C.E. to year zero, on the spring equinox, the sun was in a different sign still.”
“Aries,” François said immediately.
“You’re saying that the sun moves through the Zodiac over the course of the year,” Marty said, “but it also slowly moves so that what sign the sun is in each month gradually changes. Over thousands of years.”
“One rotation all the way around the Zodiac is something like twenty-six thousand years.” Lowanna felt exhausted. “That slow movement is called the precession of the equinoxes.”
“And?” Marty’s voice held an ominous edge.
“I saw the sun set last night,” Lowanna said. “Once it was down, I saw the edge of Gemini and I saw Cancer. They were pretty clearly visible. Which I think means that the sun is in Taurus. At or near the spring equinox.”
“What you’re telling me,” François said slowly, “is that I am no longer a Leo.”
Surjan and Gunther chuckled. Abdullah and Kareem looked baffled.
“I call cheating,” Gunther said. “You didn’t list astronomy as a skill.”
“You think we’re in the Age of Taurus,” Marty said. “Which is to say, between twenty-two hundred and forty-four hundred B.C.E.”
“Give or take,” Lowanna said. “Not sure how close we really are to the equinox. And those are approximate numbers. But yeah.”
“Which is to say,” Marty continued, “at the very beginning of Egypt’s written history. Or earlier.”
“About the time of the tablet?” Gunther murmured.
“Possibly,” Lowanna admitted. “Although two thousand years is a long time, so we could be in the Age of Taurus, and Egypt could still be a thousand years in the future.”
“In fact,” François added, “we could be twenty-six thousand years before the birth of unified Egypt. Or fifty-two thousand. Right? This is a cyclical phenomenon.”
“Yes.” Lowanna felt very small.
“Does anyone know what the climate of north Africa was in 30,000 B.C.E.?” Marty asked. “Or 55,000?”
“I would have said this was all insane twelve hours ago,” Gunther said quietly. “And frankly, it all still sounds nuts.”
“We’re heading straight for a test of the hypothesis.” Lowanna pointed eastward. “I think we should see the lights of Rissani, if we’re within ten miles of it. I think we’re going to follow this track, and we’ll come to the river you’re talking about, but we’ll never see Rissani. No town.”
“If you’re right,” Marty said, “I don’t think we’ll find Sijilmassa, either. That’s a medieval town, way too late.”
“No buses, no rental cars,” Gunther said.
“No airplanes and no ships,” Surjan added. “Bother.”
“And then what?” Lowanna asked.
“Come to think of it,” Surjan muttered, “I haven’t seen a single jet trail all day.”
“We’ll do whatever François decides, by God,” Abdullah said. “This is his expedition.”
François cleared his throat but said nothing.
“I think there’s something I need to tell the rest of you,” Marty said. “I had a vision on the way here.”
“You mean, besides the vision we all had?” Gunther asked. “A light and an ankh?”
“I dreamed of a journey,” Marty said. “Between the moment when I grabbed the ankh and the moment of finding myself standing at the top of the cliff on Jebel Mudawwar, I dreamed of a long journey overland to the east, and I dreamed that we needed to hurry. Did anyone else have that dream?”
There was a round of muttered negatives.
“I dreamed of a journey,” Marty said. “And I got the sense there was a time imperative, a countdown, so to speak.”
“You’re saying that if we get to the oasis and there’s no town,” Gunther said slowly, “we just keep going until we get to Egypt.”
“Two thousand miles, give or take,” Surjan said. “A long journey overland, indeed.”
“I just want you all to have all the information when we make a decision,” Marty said.
François grumbled wordlessly.
“I’ve been hearing animal voices,” Lowanna said. She looked at Marty as she said it, and he nodded. “I’m pretty sure I’m not crazy.”
“In the interests of everyone having all the information,” Marty said. “And I’m also pretty sure Lowanna isn’t crazy.”
“I hope you’re confident I’m not barmy, either,” Surjan said. “When I killed the addax, I saw a light.”
“Maybe our . . . situation . . . is causing us to experience sensory malfunction,” François said.
“I didn’t experience ‘sensory malfunction,’” Surjan objected, “because I am not a robot. I saw a light. It came out of the addax and went into me.”
They stood together silently for a minute.
“Well.” Gunther took a deep breath. “I guess we need the data. And I think that means we go east to the river and find the oasis. Hopefully, we also find a town there, and people who drive automobiles. But if not . . . going on to Egypt might at least help us know whether we’re in the fourth millennium B.C.E. or the thirtieth. I, for one, wouldn’t mind a shot at watching them build the pyramids. Maybe scratch my name on one of the stones.”
Marty flinched visibly.
No one objected, so Surjan turned and marched toward their objective.
They walked through the night. Lowanna heard whispering in the darkness from time to time. It bothered her a little less now.
She did look up to the horizon ahead of them, watching for the lights of a town. They didn’t appear. She told herself that maybe Rissani was poor and didn’t have electric lighting, or had so little electric lighting that it wouldn’t be visible from a distance. But the farther they traveled, the more convinced she became that they’d fail to find Rissani.
There was no jeep trail, but the camel track continued eastward.
Sometime in the predawn hours, the vegetation around them began to change. In the darkness, Lowanna couldn’t tell the species, but she recognized that they were now walking through trees.
She heard more voices.
Here come Two-Legs.
Hide! Into the burrow!
She ignored them.
The grassland abruptly dropped into a riverbed. Lowanna smelled the water and then felt the humidity on her skin. She also smelled the sweet, tangy aroma of fruit on the tree, and something else.
“Melons,” she said. “I smell melons on the vine.”
They reached the river, snaking back and forth around a rugged fin of rock.
“No Rissani,” Marty said. “No Sijilmassa either, as far as I can tell. But this is the river.”
Surjan muttered something under his breath.
“That tears it,” François said. “We are no longer in the twenty-first century.”