‘I don’t know. Why do people do anything?’ Thompson threw his cigarette out in a spinning arc off the bluff. The twisting red dot winked out in the waters.
‘A copy of the report’s back at my hotel room. You can read it tomorrow,’ he said to her. ‘I wrote down just what happened, and what you found. I sent photostats of all the things we could copy. Kincaid will send a copy of your final papers. That’s all I can do.’
‘Will it make any difference?’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘It’ll be strange reading for some archivist. Somebody might want to do something with it, but what can they do? They can’t change the past.’
‘But the future! That can be changed.’
‘I hope so. But we don’t even know the terminology, half of it. People at the War Department will start asking about what some of the things are, and I’ll try to tell them what I think they are. Then they’ll ask you about all the Buck Rogers stuff. I’m sure Amazing Stories or Weird Tales will be interested, but that’s about it. That’s the kind of reaction I’ll be getting.’
‘But proof. We’ve got it.’
‘Look,’ he said. He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘It’s all very fine, what you have, for a museum, for what the average bloke thinks. But when you start waving it around in public, that’s when you get in trouble. You know that. Look at that … what, the … elephant thing….’
‘Cincinnati tablet.’
‘That. That’s been nothing but trouble, and still nobody’s convinced. All you can do is try to prove this to your colleagues.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m going to quietly insist to my superiors. That’s all I can do. Any more, and they’ll quit listening.’
‘Kincaid’s going to deliver his paper when he finishes it.’
‘I wish him luck. There’ll be cries of hoax before he’s halfway through.’
‘I know.’
They were silent. The sleet began to fall harder.
‘We’d better go,’ said Thompson. ‘These roads are bad enough without this freak ice storm.’
Bessie climbed into the Army truck beside him. He cranked it up and turned on the headlights. The truck faced the bayou. Through the sleet and rain she saw the waters of the bayou flat and black before them. This time next summer they would be another six feet higher. The whole landscape would be changed for hundreds of square miles around.
Thompson turned on the wipers. ‘There’s a bottle of coffee back there; find it, will you please?’ He turned the truck around. ‘I’m chilled through.’
She rummaged behind the seat and found the warm jug. She looked out the rear window, saw the waters being lost in the darkness.
‘They didn’t understand,’ she said.
‘No, I expect they didn’t,’ said Captain Thompson.
He put the truck in low gear and bounced past a mudhole.
Leake XVIII
‘them bones, them bones gone walk aroun’ them bones, them bones gone walk aroun’ them bones, them bones gone walk aroun’ nunc audite verbum dei’
Things aren’t normal, and they never will be again.
Everyday Sunflower and I and a few others go and pile some more dirt on Took’s mound.
Everyday I work a little at the pipes Took-His-Time left in rough form, and finish them up a little more.
Everyday brings new horrors to which we have grown numb.
Stories come from upriver on both sides: villages deserted, given over to the woods.
The Buzzard Cult people danced by one day last week, still across the River. We all watched. Their hands are joined, they do their shuffling steps for kilometers at a time. We hear they dance into dead villages, through their plazas, out the gates again.
When they danced back by again, earlier this week, there were fewer of them. Our hunters who go back across the Mes-A-Sepa keep away from the towns and solitary huts, any place that had been settled by man.
The only good news to come across is that the Huastecas seem to be dying faster than we ever will, from some other disease, or the same one with a whole new set of symptoms. Theirs sounds like mumps to me. They got it way down on the Gulf where their merchants had set up permanent trade with the Traders during last winter.
The Traders and Northmen are being hunted and killed wherever they are found. I hope some of them get away. The diseases are here; it’s too late to stop them. Killing the messengers is futile. It probably makes the people feel better.
On this side, the Buzzard Cult is growing, too, but slowly, quietly. They get together and dance, then they go home. Without the Woodpecker, there’s not much else. The tattoo man is busier than ever. Weeping eyes are the next big craze, also hands and eyes, and rattlesnakes.
There is death and resignation all around.
Sunflower tries to keep busy and to keep me happy. I have to go out with the other guys now and hunt. It’s late spring, and we’re not sure if the crop we planted over here will make it. We’re killing and drying meat as fast as we can. Maybe that mammoth will come back this winter, and if the pipe magic works, we’ll all eat good.
I was carving on the pipe, trying to get the tusks just right, when they started yelling my name outside.
‘Yaz! Yaz!’ called the new Sun Man.
I came out with my spear.
The new Sun Man was already deeply tanned. He was carrying a small deer over his shoulder, something the old Sun Man would never have been seen doing. Everybody was out hunting and grubbing for roots.
Three guys who’d been across the River with him were there.
‘Yaz,’ said one, pointing back over the water. ‘The place you came from. Remember? Something funny’s going on there.’
‘What?’
‘The air is weird. It moves. Next to the tree where you tied the white cloth, and laid the orange thing on the ground. We ran a rabbit through there, and it went away, right in front of us. We watched the air move for half an hour. Then the air started making hooting noises. We left in a hurry.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll take care of it.’
I went back inside our skin hut.
‘What’s up?’ asked Sunflower. She looked over her shoulder at me.
‘Oh, guy-stuff.’ I rummaged around. ‘Sun Man wants me to take care of some business for him.’
‘Will you be gone long?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is it across the River?’
‘Just a little way.’
She looked at me darkly. ‘Do you need some food?’
‘A little.’ I got some Army stuff I might need out of the bundle.
Sunflower gave me some food, leaned up and kissed me on the head. ‘Hurry back,’ she said.
I walked to the flap.
‘Tell me if you’re going forever,’ she said, very quietly.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
I kissed her. She looked away.
I went down to the River and picked out a canoe. There were lots not being used these days.
I had almost forgotten how the place looked, the bluff, the faraway bayou. It was noon the next day when I got there. I heard the hooting a long way off – a rising and falling klaxon sound, cycling about once every two minutes. It should keep the animals away, and bring in curious people.
Only there weren’t any curious people within twenty kilometers anymore. I doubt the Buzzard Cult people this side of the River would pay much attention. They’d probably think it just one more manifestation of Lord Death. Maybe they would take notice, and build a shrine to it when they found it.
The air was shimmering. Somebody was still alive, Up There. They must have found a way to reconnect me. Good old Dr. Heidegger. Maybe his sons or grandsons or daughters. Or someone ten thousand years from now, who’d read his notes and duplicated his experiments as a curiosity.