Done.
“Ianna,” Martin said, his eyes fixed on the Chayil. He pulled a small, tightly wound package from his belt, tossed it to Ianna.
“Jump home. Now!”
“Mar, I can’t leave you! I love—”
“Now!”
Ianna hesitated. Rachel waved the causality handle in her direction and nodded frantically.
“Last chance,” Rachel whispered. “Please…”
Ianna’s eyes widened. She nodded and flickered uptime.
The Kehin glanced at where Ianna had been. His mouth tightened and his eyes narrowed.
“Bitch! I’ll deal with her when we get back—”
“I don’t think so,” Martin said. He stood straight, dropped his fighting pose. “I don’t think you’ll ever see her again. I do wonder who and what you will see again. And when you’ll be.”
Nilik just reached his camp. He’s going through the wheat, putting it into sacks.
“Activate the gene killer.”
Now?
“Uncertainty just maxed out!” Rachel said.
“Now,” Martin said out loud. He spoke to the Kehin and the Chayil. “Goodbye.”
Activated.
The Kehin and the Chayil were gone.
Silence under the canopy. Rachel licked her lips and looked up at Martin. She touched herself, to make sure she was still real, then touched Martin.
Rachel, is that you, sweetheart?, a new voice asked.
“Mom?”
And a good time was had by all, Artie said smugly. I do believe we are going to be whending our way home tonight.
“The key was the salt resistant wheat,” Martin explained later that night. They sat around a fire outside the hut, the canopy tucked out of the way, the clear stars above them. Rachel rested comfortably against Martin, his arm around her.
“I don’t understand,” Rachel confessed. Her mother AI was activated, working her biology, making repairs to both Rachel and Artie. Martin heard her, in the background, through Artie, clucking in disapproval, murmuring and soothing both of them.
“In our timelines, Carthage fought three wars against Rome. Each time, the Carthaginians lost. Mainly because they only had a limited amount of arable land. Starvation hurt them much more than it did the Romans,” Martin said.
“But here?” Rachel asked.
“Here the people of Qart-hadast had the same geography, with the salt flats and the Chatt al Djerid salt lake south of them. But here they also had salt-resistant wheat, descended from Nilik’s wheat, to grow on the salt plains. With that extra food, and Hannibal and Hasdrubal as generals, Carthage defeated Rome,” Martin explained.
“And now?”
“And now… I don’t know. The Carthaginian Travelers are gone from the camp. I don’t know who else is here instead. I don’t know the future of this timeline. But I know what it’s not going to be,” he said, and smiled.
This timeline is closer to what we’re all looking for, Artie said. Some of my self-repair algorithms work now.
“So now you’re not dying?”
I wouldn’t go that far, Artie said grudgingly. And Mom may have helped. A little.
“But can we now say that the rumors of your imminent demise were greatly exaggerated?”
I don’t know that reference.
“Then I’m not there yet,” Martin said. He looked up at the stars. “But I’m getting closer.”
The next day, Martin woke alone.
He dressed, stepped out of the hut. Rachel sat on a bench, a bowl of wheat gruel in her hand. She tipped her head toward another bowl. Martin picked it up, gratefully.
Her backpack, fully equipped, sat on the ground between her feet. He glanced at it, then over at her.
“I went forward last night, after you went to sleep,” she said.
“You wanted to see if you could go home?”
“Yes.”
“And?
Rachel shook her head. She ate another scoop of gruel.
“I can get closer, but then I’m blocked. Something is still wrong, uptime.”
Martin pointed to the pack on the floor.
“It’s not unpacked.”
“No.”
“You’re moving up there?”
Rachel put down her bowl.
“Yesterday, just before Artie unleashed the virus, you tossed something to Ianna.”
Martin hesitated, then shrugged.
“It was a bandeau, like the one you wear. She thought it had style, back when you told her to get out of here and go home. I had Asherah weave one for her.”
“One last present?”
“Something like that.”
“Because you always get what you want. Because you never give up. Which meant you had to leave her behind and you didn’t want her to forget you,” Rachel finished. She stood.
“I’m leaving for the same reason. I don’t want to get left behind, by anything you have to do back here. So I’m going uptime to wait for you. To me it will only be a few days. Mom says it will be easier to repair me, to keep me alive there. At least until you arrive.”
“Where is this place, this next roadblock of yours?” Martin asked.
“It’s named Catal Huyuk. It’s the first city in human history. Fascinating place,” Rachel said.
“Because it’s the first human city,” Martin said. He nodded. She looked at him, puzzled.
She shook her head.
“First cities,” she said and shrugged. “Not that interesting. Too many of them. First city in China, first city in India, first city in Aztlan. The usual traveler crowd in all of them. A lot different, but mostly the same.”
“In that case, what’s so interesting about this Catal place? Except that it’s as far as you can go.”
“No doors,” Rachel said. She adjusted her bandeau so it rested snugly, just above her breasts. “Thousands of people, and not a single door in the whole damned place. Just hatches and ladders and little, tiny, windows, way up high in the walls.”
“Sounds horrible.”
“Attracts Travelers like flies to honey. Always fresh data there,” Rachel said.
“When will you be there?”
“A week from Tuesday.”
Martin flicked Artie’s database.
“It’s over a hundred miles away from here.”
“That’s why I’ve got to start walking.”
Martin checked again. He dropped the connection.
“Catal peaks in 7000 BCE. That’s two thousand years from now.”
Rachel stepped forward, picked up her pack, and turned to leave camp. She looked back at him, over her shoulder.
“Then I suppose you better start living…”
A few minutes later, Martin filled his own backpack and stepped out into the sunshine.
And that’s it? Artie asked. We just leave the hut and the beer and everything else?
Martin shrugged.
“No archeologist never found any sign of permanent habitation anywhere around Gobekli Tepe, so we can’t stay here. A city might grow up around us. So, we leave. Enki and Asherah and Nilik can scavenge the hut and whatever is left. We can only use what we can carry. Everything else will gradually fall apart and rot and erode and be gone.”
And what are we going to do now? It’s not going to take us two thousand years to walk to Catal Huyuk. And I can’t see you sitting in one place for that long. What are we going to do in the meantime?
“I’ve always liked the water,” Martin said firmly. “The boat is already invented, but all the boats in all the world, right now, have to be paddled. Best evidence, though, is that sometime, in the next thousand or so years, someone, somewhere, is going to invent the sail. Maybe they’ll need a little help. And maybe some other people will need some help with some other ideas. Remember the old Japanese proverb Soichiro Honda used to use?”