Chapter 12

Near one million BC.

After they had eaten breakfast, Thad put a roast on a spit and positioned it over the small fire they had kept going as they ate breakfast. They cleaned everything and returned what they wouldn’t use immediately to their packs. While the meat was slowly cooking on the spit, Thad cut some small, bushy evergreen boughs and began spreading them on the cave’s dirt floor. “These should keep the dust down, make the place smell better, and they might tend to keep our clothes a bit cleaner too.”

“How long do you think we’ll have to stay here?” Kathy asked as she began helping spread the boughs without being asked.

“Kessler says until the Traveler comes back up-time. You know that.”

“I know what he said, but what do you think?”

“Look, Kathy, I don’t know any more than you do about how long it’s going to be. We’ll just sit here and survive until the Traveler comes back up-time, and Kessler puts us in the Traveler’s time frame. We need to keep as much of our equipment in our packs as possible. No telling how much time we’ll have before he moves us once they detect the Traveler. Everything we brought is tagged, but if some of our things are too far from us, they might not come with us.”

When they finished with the boughs, Kathy suggested another cup of coffee. As they sat to drink it, bored, she said, “Tell me about some of your trips.”

Thad frowned, “Did you have something particular in mind?”

“What’s the farthest down-time you’ve ever been before now?”

“Do you mean other than my previous trip to near one million?”

“Yes, I know about that. Where else, or is it when else, have you been?”

“I usually just call it where,” he said as he stopped to think. Then, after a few seconds, “Well, let’s see. Temporal maintains a lodge at 10,000 BC, and I’ve been there several times. Twice on survival training exercises, and a couple of times on hunting trips — back when Kessler would let us go. I’ve also vacationed there a couple of times over the years.”

“By yourself?” Then as Thad frowned, “No, don’t answer that.”

Thad turned to lock eyes with her. “Wait a minute, Kathy. You act as if I’m some kind of Don Juan or something. Look, I get told ‘no’ a lot more than I’m told ‘yes.’ And yes, one of those trips was with a female. Once I was alone. And another time, I went hunting with a male Op who is a friend of mine.”

They just watched the meat cook for several minutes before she asked, “What about more modern times? Tell me about some of your trips to correct changes in the timeline.”

“There really isn’t a lot to tell. Usually, it’s just hurry up and wait. You have to be in a certain place at a certain time, but most of the time they can’t just drop you in the middle of things, so you get dropped at night someplace deserted, wait until daylight, then make your way to the point where you’re supposed to make the change.”

“I know they send you to check out things sometimes, too. For instance, Mr. Kessler is going to send your girlfriend to check out the problem at 5000. What do you do on that kind of trip?”

“Just the usual things you hear about. Find a place to live. Familiarize ourselves with the current happenings and try to determine what can be done to make the change we’re trying to make, if we haven’t already determined that ahead of time.”

“I know all that, but what’s it like to be part of, say, early England?”

“Well, for one thing,” he said with a deep frown, “you don’t drop into the middle of a church social.”

She blushed and said, “I didn’t mean to bring that up. What are the people like?”

“Well, they don’t take as many baths as we do, particularly in the wintertime. And most of the clothes I’ve seen weren’t as pretty and pompous, shall we say, as some history texts would lead us to believe, even with the nobility — of course, there are exceptions.

“Something — one of the Others, I suppose — made a change that the computers picked up, and I was sent back to keep this individual — I can’t remember his last name just now — from being killed. Frederick something or other. Anyway, as is usual for one of these trips, we couldn’t get to the exact time that the change occurred. Same old story. For some reason, the chamber won’t put us within a certain length of time surrounding the changed event, probably something the Others do that we haven’t figured out yet. Anyway, this time I had been sent down-time to determine a way to change things back the way they were, that is to say, to keep this Frederick person from being killed. He and his family didn’t live in a town but well out in the country. They dropped me a couple of kilometers from where he lived. They had given me a direction, and I finally found a road/wagon path that led to his house. Oh, yeah, the people of that time tended to keep dogs, and I mean, real dogs, not lap dogs.

“Anyway, this chap lived about five kilometers from his nearest neighbor. The dogs were his early warning system (excuse the pun), only the dogs apparently thought they were his execution squad instead. They just plain didn’t like me — none of them. When Frederick came and rescued me from a tree, I thought they would accept me then, but no, this big chow (or something that looked a lot like a chow) would go for me every chance he got. None of the dogs ever seemed to become accustomed to me (maybe I didn’t smell right or something), and I didn’t dare go anywhere outside the house without some of the family with me. Of course, I could have shot the stupid dog, but you don’t make friends with someone by shooting his dog.”

“How did you make the change and keep him from being killed?”

“Actually, I didn’t. Oh, he didn’t get killed, but I didn’t consciously make any change. I think my being with him must have kept him from riding off — he had some fine horses — on an errand, and consequently, he must have missed the Others. I lived with Frederick’s family for three weeks just to be sure, and they treated me like royalty.”

“Is that where you found out about the baths?”

“Not really, but yes, they didn’t seem to take a lot of baths either. Maybe that was what was wrong with the dogs; I didn’t smell bad enough,” he said with a chuckle.

“What kind of family did this Frederick have?”

“A wife, two daughters, and a son. He seemed to have hopes of my marrying his oldest daughter, because he kept reminding me that she was fourteen and a woman.”

“Well, did you?” she asked while looking him straight in the eye.

“No, of course, I didn’t marry her.” Then seeing the look on Kathy’s face, “No, I didn’t do that, either,” he snapped. Then in a calmer voice, “Oh, she was pretty — for a fourteen-year-old. I don’t bed little girls, even though she was eligible by the mores back then. From what I heard, they think of a twenty-year-old unmarried woman as an old maid.”

There was an embarrassing silence that continued while Thad tried to think of something to say. Why does this woman seem to care about my past life — my present, for that matter? She doesn’t have any hold on me. All my trips are on record. And there is a detailed report to go with them. She must know, at least generally, what I have done while on my trips.

Kathy got up to check the meat, then while she was turning the spit, she glanced at him and said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have pried. So, what’re you going to do today?”

“I’m going to build a crude drying rack so that we can keep some of our meat. After that, if I’m still feeling the notion, I’ll make a door that will, at least, slow down any unwanted visitors. But building the door might be usurped by a nap to make up for some of the sleep I lost last night.”

“Can I help build the rack? The roast has a way to go before it’s cooked through.”

“Sure, but don’t expect anything fancy. It will be just the bare minimum for something to dry the meat.” She just volunteered to help me, and she’s been checking the roast. My, how things have changed.

The rumble of thunder invaded their world again, promising the rain that seemed so eminent yesterday but had failed to materialize after all. Outside, Thad stood looking up at what sky he could see through the dense tree cover. “If it starts raining, we’ll have to move our meat drying operation inside, but I’d rather have a smoky fire under the meat, and that isn’t going to help our breathing in the cave, particularly when the wind blows toward the opening.”

After a few moments, he continued, “Screw it. I’m going to build the rack out here. If it rains, I’ll deal with it then. If you want to help, come on. You can help bring some of the poles.”

“Okay, but give me a minute to move some of the fire away from the meat. I don’t want the roast to overcook.”

Thad cut four poles roughly two meters long with a fork on one end, and he sharpened the end of the poles opposite the “Y” just as he had for the two they were using to support their spit over the campfire. That done, he cut four poles for supports before beginning to cut other slender poles to hang the meat on. When he stripped the limbs off one with his belt knife, Kathy asked, “Didn’t you say that you had another knife? Let me use it, and I’ll help strip the limbs off the other poles.”

“Be careful,” he said as he handed her the knife. “If you accidentally swipe it across a finger, the knife might well cut it off.”

With the knife in hand, Kathy carefully cut the smaller limbs off several of the poles while Thad finished with his work.

When all the poles were ready, Kathy gave him his knife back, and they gathered the poles and returned to camp, stopping at a reasonably flat spot not far from the entrance to their cave.

“So,

how are all these sticks going to make a drying rack?” she asked. “And since we’re on the subject, drying meat is something I’ve never heard of. Remember, I’m a city girl.”

“Well, drying meat to preserve it has been around practically forever and is one of a very few ways of preserving meat without refrigeration. Basically, drying meat removes the moisture so that microorganisms can’t grow in it. If the fat is removed, and the meat is dried properly and kept in a dry place, it will last for a long time. There are other methods of drying meat, but I’m not trying to preserve it for years, but only for up to a few weeks. At least, I certainly hope we aren’t left here for longer than that. Anyway, we have to push our stakes with the ‘Y’ fork into the ground to hold the supports for the drying rack.”

When he had pushed the stakes into the ground, they formed a rough rectangle a meter wide and two meters long. After laying supporting poles across the uprights, he began laying other poles across the supporting ones to create the drying rack. The result was a meter wide by a two-meter-long group of thin, horizontal poles, spaced apart only far enough to give room for the meat to hang over the poles. “Now, once I thin-slice the meat and trim the fat off, we’re in business.”

Thin slicing the meat and removing all the fat took longer than constructing the drying rack. Since one slip of the knife could well mean a major injury, Thad suggested that Kathy take the slices as he finished with them and drape them over the drying rack. With both of them working, they had the drying racks full of very thin-sliced meat in reasonably short order.

Kathy had gone to check on their roast. When she returned, she asked, “You’re just going to let the sun dry the meat?”

“Well, that’s one method, but with these trees, we would have to keep moving the rack to try to stay in the sun, but there’s a much faster way — at least to prepare the meat to last for a couple of weeks. To process the meat to last for a long time would mean slow-drying it over a long period of time — probably a couple of days. I’m not going to spend that much time, and we don’t need to prepare the meat to last for months, but rather a few days to a couple of weeks. If we’re still here then, I’ll kill something else. Oh, and I’ve already found the wood I want for our small fire.”

The tree was a couple hundred meters from the cave, but Thad began gathering downed limbs the tree had dropped, and Kathy pitched in to help him. “Here, smell it,” he said while offering a severed limb to her.

“I like the smell,” she said as they started back with their arms full of limbs cut to the length Thad wanted.

“What kind of tree is this?” she asked.

“Well, it’s not the hickory I would like to have, but it smells a little like it. Anyway, it should add a good smell and maybe some flavor to the meat as it dries.”

When they returned, Kathy again went in to check on the roast and put out the fire because the meat was done. When she returned, Thad had a small, smoldering fire going under the racks. Each time it flared up, he spread the fire out more or sprinkled a little water on it. “I want the temperature of the meat up to about 70 degrees C for a few minutes to kill off the bacteria, but after that, all we need is a small smoldering fire to hasten the drying of the meat. The smoke will add flavor and keep the flies away from the meat. When we can no longer detect any moisture in it, we’ll put out the fire and take the meat inside with us. There may be better ways to dry the meat, but this is easy and has worked for me in the past. When it’s done, we can put the jerky in the plastic bags I brought with us.