At the Edge of the Game Page 13

  We left in midmorning the next day, flying south, following the line of the island coast until it turned eastwards and receded behind us. Soon the vast ocean was all that was visible below. Cat stared with grave intensity at the waves, feline face pressed against the cockpit window, tail fur standing on end. The triped dozed at my feet. The sun edged closer to the horizon behind us as we flew over New Zealand. The contrast with my time could not be more dramatic. Though it was the winter season in the Southern Hemisphere, conditions were quite mild. The rugged terrain was covered with ice-encrusted forest. The rivers and lakes were frozen over, but clearly alive beneath the layer of surface ice. From the air the rich abundance of the land, awaiting the spring thaw, was plain to see.

  We continued south and reached the Antarctic Ocean. We flew at Mach 5, not wanting to tarry over the dark, choppy, iceberg-filled waters. We began to decelerate when we reached the rocky, barren coastline of the polar land, and pressed inland more deliberately over glaciers and mountain peaks, snowfields and dry valleys. Close to the South Pole, where the ice sheet was thickest, we set down. Though the ship's hermetic seals were absolute and the air was warm inside, we felt in our bones the bite of the profound polar cold. The mercilessness of the gales that drove clouds of hard ice crystals against the windows, that buffeted and rocked the ship as it sat on the flat ice sheet, made their mark on our consciousnesses. This was more than enough of a taste of the harshest environment remaining on the planet. It was sobering to reflect that in my time about sixty percent of the earth was characterized by weather similar to that outside.

  We flew northwards and made the crossing to Tierra del Fuego in half an hour. There we encountered great sea cliffs battered by the powerful rollers of the southern sea. While the Unquiet Spirit hovered above the waves, we released a probe into the air to examine the many-coloured, many-textured layers that made up the cliffs. We directed another probe into the yawning mouth of a big sea cave and explored the beautiful system of caverns within for an hour before bad weather obliged us to recall it and be on our way.

  The Amazonian and Central American rain forests were blanketed by bank of thick, low cloud underneath which the weather was very unpleasant. We flew through heavy rain and powerful lightning until we reached a region where the rain forest gave way to an expanse of brown savannah. We landed for a short time and walked through a canyon carved out of soft limestone by a long-departed river.

  The savannah in turn met the edge of a dry, baking desert where once had been the nation of Mexico. We banked, slowing and descending until we were directly over a wide, flat ancient lake bed, close to the cliff that on its southern side bordered the dead lake. The sheer, hundred-metre wall of sandstone was made up of dozens of distinct sedimentary layers. The landing gear met the ground with a resounding crunch and sank half a metre through the cracked, brittle surface.

  The heat was almost unbearable outside. Though he tried not to show it, the effort of moving around in the heat took a lot of Dexter, considerably more than it took out of me. He picked a piece of rock out of the flaking shale cliff face and rested in the shadow of a large boulder, regarding it pensively. I decided to leave him to it and went back to the coolness of the ship. I watched him through the cockpit window as he pulled one piece after another of shale out of the cliff wall, turning them over, staring at them as though they might speak to him.

  Soon the heat became too much even for his stubborn will, and he came inside. He went directly to his room. I slept fitfully that night, discomfited by the deathly silence, which I had never known at the bay. It was broken only by the creaking of the ship's hull as it cooled in the desert night.

  My mood was dark in the morning. For some reason Dexter was reluctant to resume our journey just yet, but I insisted that it was time for us to be on our way.

  The lakelands of the American Mid-West gave way to drier terrain, and trees became commoner. We passed over thick deciduous forest at close to the speed of sound, overflew lakes, rivers, valleys in the blink of an eye.

  We descended to take a closer look at the Canadian wilderness. Its craggy postglacial hills and valleys teemed with wildlife. It was very different to my island, where remarkably few species lived and there seemed to be no competition for ecological niches. Great numbers of bovoids, very similar in colouration to those that lived on my island except that this breed wore slightly shaggier coats, roamed over this country. Most paid no attention to us at all, despite the roaring engine of the Unquiet Spirit. They displayed the placidity of creatures that knew no natural predators. It appeared that their only substantial threat came from the climate.

  We flew low over the hilltops, slowing as we did so, and descended further to view the marshland beyond. Our passage overhead disturbed flocks of roosting water birds. Flocks of geese, ducks and heron rose in distinct waves, banking right and left to avoid our path. I observed large nests in the tall grasses, where eggs had hatched months before. The wetlands stretched as far as the horizon, apparently unbroken by anything but the occasional meandering stream. It was austerely beautiful country. But there was surprisingly little evidence left that a great civilisation had once covered the world. There were no remains of buildings, no bridges or roads. The inexorably spreading glaciers had scoured the earth clean. At some time since the human age, the entire earth must have been covered in ice. All the mighty earthworks of the human age had been razed, obliterated. Nature, it seemed, had returned to the most innocent of states.

  The Neanderthal drummers strike a slow, leaden rhythm that quickens in stages until it is nearly a continuous noise. They stand in columns, the warriors, set in a certain posture I scarcely think could be even physically possible for Sapient humans. After all, the set of their skeletons differs from ours in small but significant ways. For all our kinship, they carry themselves sometimes in a manner that marks them out as another species altogether. Although that, of course, is a superficial distinction compared to the psychic gulf between us and them. So many mysteries. For example, is it the war drums that prompt them to sink into that strange spell that makes their eyes sink back further into their hooded sockets, their limbs to thicken, their skin to turn dark?

  And now, in sympathy, the sky itself darkens, so that they blend deeper into the surrounding grassland… did they summon this? What caused what?

  A deeper sound than the percussion builds from away to the west. A wall of falling water is approaching faster than a man can run. In a few moments we’re under a torrent, all of us. None of the Neanderthals move, and neither do my bodyguards, so I hold my ground, intent on preserving my dignity. Not, I know, that anyone here cares either way about my dignity, except for myself. Anyway, there is no shelter to run to.

  No more than a minute passes before the squall stops. A temporary stream drains past my feet down into a narrow gulley that runs along the side of the defenders’ hill. Everyone is soaked to the skin, and stray droplets continue to fall, burst on my drenched scalp, track down my face. Dripping water, clearing my head, centring me, focusing my thoughts, ridding me of the confusion that kept me at one remove from everything around me.

  This is a strange place to be.

  I’m lying on my back in a pool of water, and it’s just now struck me that my eyes are closed. Don’t know how the light is getting through my lids. Gummed shut, they open only with resistance. Ceiling, damp-stained, droplets soaking through, falling on my face. A window, dirty curtains hanging there. A small child’s bed.

  The blankets are disturbed. Where’s Helen? I want to sit up, but it’s not easy. I’m weak, stiff. I was sick. Suppose I still am. Hard to tell until I’m on my feet, gauge my strength-level. Sitting up makes my head spin. Definitely not promising. Throat-dryness makes me think twice about calling for her. The raw feeling in my chest feels like it could all-too easily transform itself into racking pain.

  But of course – now I understand. She couldn’t stay in this room with all the water about. You can’t look after a newb
orn in a soaking-wet environment. And look – rain streaming down the windowpanes. It’s pouring outside. Absolutely pouring. Still, it’s warm in here. That springtime feeling has developed almost into summer. Cause for optimism that prompts me without any conscious command to my limbs to stand up.

  My eyes are slow to focus, and my head swims a little as I turn to open the bedroom door. The hallway is windowless, murkily light-absorbing with its dirty old surfaces. Flaking auroch-dung-coloured paint on the walls. Thin, brown Seventies carpet underfoot, loose and unpleasant on the feet. Hushed conversation penetrates the cheaply hollow living-room door. I open it, and they’re all there, looking at me as though they had forgotten I existed. Helen is standing in the kitchen area with the kettle in her hand. I attempt a smile, but my face is inflexible from my time on the floor.

  She comes over and grips my arm as though to help me stay upright.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I tell her.

  ‘You don’t look it.’

  ‘Where’s the baby?’

  This makes her look at me in a way that frightens me.

  ‘I don’t understand, George.’

  I don’t understand either. Her reaction has me confused.

  ‘Did…’

  How else to put it…

  ‘Did the labour go all right? Is she sleeping?’ Tears are already forming in my eyes. She’s going to tell me the baby died.

  ‘The labour?’

  ‘Where’s the baby? Just tell me.’

  She puts my hand to her belly. The bump is still present. Does it not go away after birth?

  ‘The baby’s here, George.’

  Comprehension comes to me as a physical jolt, and the room comes into sharper focus.

  The eyes of Heathshade and the two fat parents and their child are on me. A momentary entertainment for them is what I am.

  Only Helen cares. I see no contempt in her eyes - just pity. She takes me back into the small box room with the leaky ceiling, puts me into the bed. It is dry, not wet.

  ‘Sleep,’ she says.

  The word works like a magic incantation. I close my eyes and see long grass. I open them and see her worried eyes.

  Don’t worry. I’ll be all right. But for the moment I opt for the long grass.

  Helen very kindly divested me of my wet clothes while I was asleep, and left me in bed naked. Now again awake – and how much time later, I have not yet gathered the strength to ask (my watch indicates I was out for three hours, but I think that maybe a day and three hours might be more like it).

  I have dressed to the sound of the still-pelting rain. It’s a world of water out there – pouring down the slope in spreading obstacle-formed wave formations that produce ever-shifting ripple patterns.

  Low, dark clouds are being driven in from the north, over the crest of the steep hill above us. Thunder rolls across the shifting canopy, but there are no attendant flashes of lightning.

  The other bungalows down the laneway are submerging slowly, as though the foundations have turned to quicksand. And even this house, higher though it is, is in danger. The flood has risen past the line of trees and into the garden. In time it will cover the lane that brought us here, and then the house itself will be threatened.

  Good then that Heathshade and John Paul are busy in the driveway loading the people-carrier in preparation for getting us out of here.

  Two brown ducks cross the garden leaving oozing tracks in the liquefying soil. Snails and slugs have come out into the open, are gathering atop the mossy garden walls.

  I make my appearance in the kitchen. Helen and the mother are here. In recognition of my convalescent state, I’m given a cup of tea and a hunk of bread.

  Helen asks me how I am.

  ‘The important thing is how you are feeling.’ I say this with an eye towards my own dignity.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  The boy comes into the room wearing a wet anorak with the hood up. And here’s Heathshade behind him.

  ‘On your feet again.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We’re loaded up,’ he tells Helen, and is gone again.

  The table begins to shake, and for a moment I think the unsteadiness is that of reality itself. A noise like water boiling getting louder, mighty and in the bones, coming from all directions at once.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Heathshade shouts, and here he is again, backing into the kitchen.

  Something’s oozing over the plastic-covered carpet. Black sludge, spreading in rippled fronts as it pushes through the crack under the front door. Mud. It’s a mudslide, surging down the hill over the driveway and garden.

  John Paul is stuck outside in the car. It’s been picked up, slid down the slope, wedged into the line of trees at the end of the garden.

  “Do something!” the boy shouts.

  He kicks and punches me, as if there’s something I can do. But what can I do?

  He shoves past, vaults into the porch. But his mother stops him before he gets caught in the dark viscous current, janks him back inside. The two of them babble curses and prayers, gripping each other as they watch the trees hinge over, failed by the supersaturated soil holding the roots. The car jerks forward, drifts into the flood lake, floats as the interior fills.

  Now it sinks.

  The kitchen windows at the other side of the house shatter. The mud has broken through, is spreading over the kitchen floor.

  Heathshade shuts the kitchen door.

  Our world shrinks to a dark space. Between us and the rest of the Universe, a gulf greedy to suck our lives away.

  John Paul’s head pops up far from the shifting shore. He struggles to the wall of a flooded house and grips the drainpipe. He tries to climb, roared on by his red-faced son. He’s got both elbows onto the roof, and slowly now, his left leg hanging – swinging – he hauls himself up onto the sloping surface.

  It was night. We were travelling westwards across the North Atlantic. Our next target was Europe, that great centre of civilization lost to the ice sheets two centuries before I was born. The full moon rose on the watery horizon, and the ocean lit up, sparkling in its silver light. The cat and the alien triped came back from a wander around the Unquiet Spirit's dark corridors, and both attempted to sleep on my lap at the same time. There was not enough room, and after a series of protracted struggles Cat eventually resorted to the floor.

  We were flying into the dawn. The engines hummed softly as the twilight of the new day spread in the eastern sky. We were approaching land – a region of Western Europe that before the Ice Age had been called Portugal. We saw it as a looming area of blackness between the lightening sky and the glistening water. We allowed the computer to take us down, to set the Unquiet Spirit down on a wide, flat beach, where we would stay for the rest of the night. When the engines were quiet and the ship secure, we went gratefully, wordlessly to our beds. We thought not of the unknown, darkened land to which we had just arrived, only of the sleep for which our bodies yearned. Comforted by the sound of the breaking waves outside my open window and the cold sea air that blew in and freshened the room, I felt more at ease than I had done since we had left my island.

  I woke in the afternoon, feeling rested. I went outside to take a look around. The ship’s landing gear had penetrated a half a metre into the sand. Sea water gurgled in the holes each time the waves rolled in. It was a cool day, but the effect was bracing rather than unpleasant. The rocks on the beach retained vestiges of an encrustation of frost. The vegetation inland was predominantly gorse and fern. Gulls flew in hundreds over the water.

  When I was some way up the beach, I heard Dexter’s voice. He was calling me back to the ship. I tried to ignore him, but he continued to call. In the end I gave in and made my way back to the ship. He could not wait for me to arrive. He approached me as briskly as his rickety gait would take him.

  ‘The ship has made a curious discovery.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I had it send out a bunch of probes this mornin
g to look around the area.’

  ‘And?’

  He pointed out to sea. ‘Do you see out there? See the iceberg?’

  The iceberg was barely visible, set between the ocean and the cloudy sky. ‘I see it.’

  ‘There is a magnetic anomaly in the centre of the berg.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by ‘magnetic anomaly’?’

  ‘A large metallic mass stuck in the ice.’

  ‘How did it get there?’

  ‘That’s what we have to find out. There’s no time to waste. Let’s get moving.’ Dexter turned and walked back towards the ship. I had no option but to follow him.

  We took the ship out over the iceberg, which was drifting several kilometres offshore. Other icebergs were visible further out in the ocean, all moving more or less southwards. It was summer in this hemisphere, and the northern ice sheet was shedding some of its mass. It seemed as though the general trend in the global climate in this era was progressive warming, with the ice caps retreating further each summer. The data the ship’s probes had gathered in the Antarctic ice had suggested as much. Currently in Europe, the ice extended southwards as far as what had once been the southern coast of Ireland. In my time it had reached as far as Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean itself had become icelocked.

  The Unquiet Spirit hovered over the surface of the berg and deployed a swarm of probes, all that it had, to thoroughly scan beneath the ice. The iceberg was about a kilometre long and three quarters of a kilometre wide. Underneath the surface of the water it extended to a depth of several hundred metres. In moments the ship was able to generate a detailed three-dimensional rendering of the metallic object buried within.

  ‘Looks like a boat,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it? Our first proper evidence of the old human civilization.’

  ‘Incredible. It must have been stuck inside the ice for thousands of years.’

  ‘Assuming it comes from around about our own era, which is probably a safe assumption.’