Chapter 6

... It was one thing to recognize shock but yet another to control it. Mack tried to calm himself, to put the pain and blood loss out of his mind, but his body shook as he made his way down the tree. Thirst tempted him to go back to the river. All that water and none to drink. His mouth felt parched — stuffed with cotton. One long drink and he would start back. No. He had escaped from the cat. If it was in the river, wounded, it might summon enough strength to kill the puny human before it died. Best not to take the chance.

The plains seemed to move on their own as he oriented himself and gripped his shoulder as tightly as he could before starting for his cave.

The climb back down the tree had restarted or at least increased the bleeding. Warm blood slowly trickled down his arm, even as he increased pressure with his good hand to slow the flow. Blood loss and shock were making him dizzy and sick to his stomach.

Take it easy, Boy. You can see the bluffs over by the notch in the mountains. Your cave is close to that. Take your time. Just walk. No hurry now; the cat’s dead.

The spear slid from its position on his back. He slipped it off his shoulder and dropped it on the ground, its extra weight too much of an encumbrance now. If I live through this, I’ll make another one. I suppose it’s five miles or so back to the cave. An easy stroll any other time, but it’s going to be a little tougher this time. No matter — I’ll make it.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. You went out on the plains before dealing with the cat, but what’s done is done. Suck it up and get on with it.

He tried to ignore the pain as he kept firm pressure on the wound in an effort to slow the blood flow that continued to ooze from between his fingers.

It has slowed down considerably, he told himself. Just keep the grip on my shoulder firm and put one foot in front of the other.

He badly wanted water, but he kept telling himself that he wasn’t that thirsty. He knew the insistent thirst was his body’s natural response to the blood loss, but logic didn’t help stop the craving.

I’m just going to have to be thirsty. No way am I going back toward that river.

A stumbling hour later, he could see the bison herd off to his right. Looks as if they have moved about a mile since this morning. At least I won’t have to circle around them this time.

At long last, he came to a small stream, put his bow down and dropped to his knees, then sprawled fully on his stomach before putting his face into the water to drink his fill. He kept telling himself to stop, or he would vomit the water up, but stopping was hard to do with the driving thirst insisting otherwise.

I’ve got to rest, but he told himself to get his ass up and get started. If you don’t get up now, you never will. Besides, sooner or later, something will come along and make a free lunch out of your ass.

Struggling, he roused himself before he dropped off to sleep. The movement of getting back to his feet brought fresh agony. After putting his bow back on his good shoulder, he twisted his pouch around to the front, worked his left hand under the rawhide strap, and using it for a sling, stumbled on.

Still, a couple of miles. It seems as if you’ve been walking all day. Of course, when you get there, the fun will really begin.

The last half mile was almost beyond him. It seemed he had to rest every few steps now. An eternity after his battle with the cat, he came to the stream where he got his water. He fell to his knees in the shallows and cupped water in his right hand, drinking small amounts again and again, but he dared not drink as much as he wanted. He’d had a bout of vomiting a while back and didn’t want to risk getting it started again. Getting up was the hardest thing he could remember ever doing. The world tilted crazily around him as he forced himself upright, his feet braced wide apart as he swayed, but he remained standing, amazing himself.

He had to cross the stream, and he knew his balance wasn’t sufficient to tackle the uneven rocks across the dam. His mind was also foggy with the pain, and he couldn’t seem to remember where a shallow crossing was, besides, he didn’t have the time to look. He chose a place that didn’t look too deep, but water came almost to his chest at midstream, and in his weakened condition, he stumbled on a rock and splashed water on his arm. It felt like liquid fire was pouring into his veins, and he barely managed to keep from pitching forward in his agony. Air hissed through clenched teeth as he stumbled onto the sloping bank and fell to his knees in the shallows, then stayed there for a while, taking deep breaths until the pain subsided.

Now, you have to get up again.

He groped for a bush at the water’s edge and pulled himself to his feet. High up the narrow, winding trail, the mouth of the cave seemed to mock him.

Just before dark, he wedged the last pole across the entrance, then slumped against the wall, exhausted. After resting a few minutes, he made a fire and hung a piece of meat on the spit, even though his stomach threatened to revolt at the thought of eating. He put some water on to heat before getting out his bone needles and hair thread. Using a thighbone that he had found while searching for firewood, he had cut out a long sliver, then after drilling a hole in one end with the point of his knife, he had continued shaving the splinter down until he had something that resembled a needle. He assumed that the needle would break easily while sewing hide with hair or sinew, so he had made a half dozen of the needles. Now his hands shook at the thought of what he was going to do with the thin, white slivers, but his arm would never heal unless the wound was closed.

He propped his useless hand on his knees and tried to make his fingers hold a needle so he could thread it. Eventually, he got the thick hair through the eye before just sitting and staring at the needle. How was he going to push a makeshift needle through his swollen flesh? Flesh that was torn and ultrasensitive. This wasn’t just a small wound; it was big and would require many stitches. The sliver of bone he had fashioned was several times as large as a regular sewing needle and not nearly as sharp.

If you don’t do it, you’ll die for certain, another part of his brain seemed to say. You know you will have an infection that will kill you, anyway. Why go through the pain? Just lie down and sleep. You’ve lost so much blood now that you can’t stop shaking. There’s no way you can sew yourself — not something this deep — just lie down and sleep.

But the logical part of his brain didn’t agree. If you don’t do something, the wound will bleed until you don’t have any blood left. You have a chance; don’t wimp out and just lie here and die.

At first, he thought he would wait until the meat was done and he had eaten, but he knew that was just stalling. Besides, if he ate now, he would probably throw up the food anyway.

He washed his right hand as best he could in the hot water, then cleaned the area around the wound. Some water got to the sensitive flesh, and he gripped his shoulder until the pain lessened, heedless of the moaning sounds forcing their way past his lips.

The water was boiling, so he dropped the needle and thread into it, then braced a pole against the cave wall. After fishing the needle out by the end of the thread, he held his fingers in the steam above the boiling water for as long as he could stand the pain. He knew he was only kidding himself anyway, because the wound had been contaminated when the cat’s claws made it. Still, he wasn’t going to introduce any more infection than he could help.

Do you think you are man enough to sew yourself up, boy? The wound isn’t just superficial. It’s to the bone in one place.

With his shoulder braced against the pole to help hold the wound closed, he stabbed the needle into the edge of the torn flesh and pushed it through. Pain rocketed up his shoulder, but he knew he couldn’t hesitate as he turned the needle and forced it back out the other side. Now What? I can’t tie a knot with one hand, but maybe this will work.

Instead of trying to tie the first stitch off, he continued with the next stitches. After he had three, he ran the thread under all three of the stitches, looping it over and over while hoping that friction and the clotting blood would keep the stitches from pulling out.

The needle he was using had a slight bow to it, and because of that, he had almost rejected it, but it turned out to be easier to sew with than a straight one would have been.

Later, he couldn’t remember much about sewing the gash in his shoulder closed. Probably, he had been half-mad with pain, but the wound was closed, and the bleeding seemed to have stopped with only a little seepage between two of the stitches. He must have passed out for a while because the meat he was cooking was burned on one side. Resignedly, he sliced away the worst of it.

After putting what was left of the piece of meat on his crude wooden plate, he awkwardly tried to cut off a bite-sized portion of the gazelle steak, but he almost pushed the meat off the plate and into the dirt. Frustrate, he just held it in his hand and took a bite. The first bite was good, but his appetite soon waned, and he had to force himself to eat more. He managed to get down about half of the piece before giving up and lying on his bed. Sometime later, his stomach rebelled. He didn’t have the strength to stand and vomited into the dirt beside him. When the retching was over, he wiped his mouth and slumped back onto his hide bed.

Still later, he awoke in the dark, shaking with cold and parched with thirst. He fed wood to the glowing embers, drank some water, and examined the injury by the flickering firelight. The whole arm ached while the shoulder and upper arm were already swollen considerably. When he struggled to drag a larger piece of wood to the fire, the ache seemed to increase tenfold while he fought to keep his teeth from chattering. It can’t be this cold. Oh, shit. I must be starting a fever already.

Time Headquarters (Temporal)

The sharp smell of ozone went unnoticed as Thaddeus P. Sullivan slammed the chamber door open and stepped into the operations lab. He didn’t see the tension and troubled faces around him as he stomped up to Jamison, or at least attempted to — some of the effect was lost since Sullivan was barefoot and limping. His good looks were marred by his unkept hair, matted with filth. His fifteenth-century farm costume, simple at best, was now an indiscernible color, covered with grime and hanging in rags. No one present thought Sullivan was in a good mood, nor did they expect him to be — everything considered — but he didn’t notice.

Thaddeus stopped almost nose-to-nose with William Jamison III, Operations Lab Chief, and glared. As Jamison opened his mouth to speak, Sullivan asked in a strained voice, “What happened?” Then with gradually rising volume, “Do you know where you put me? You almost got me killed! They were about to burn me at the stake!” he croaked out the last at the highest volume he could muster with his tired and besieged body.

Jamison looked at the bedraggled Sullivan for a moment, then inexplicably started to grin.

A grin was the last thing Sullivan expected, and flustered, he continued in a loud voice, almost baring his teeth, “Maybe you didn’t hear me. You dropped me in the middle of a church social in 1456. And I do mean dropped me from six feet up! It was a rather ignominious entry. They thought I was a witch. Correction: they knew I was a witch. And while we’re at it, I was supposed to be there three days — not ten. Did you guys go on vacation or something?” he snarled.

“Take it easy, Thad,” Jamison said, trying to mollify Sullivan. “Things have been a wee bit hectic since you left. We’ve been working twenty-hour shifts, and the Old Man has threatened to fire everybody here at least once.”

Sullivan, tight-lipped, snapped, “Why didn’t you bring me back?”

Jamison hesitated, then said, “We were too busy sending other ops downtime with monitoring equipment. Then we had to watch over the equipment. You’d still be there if the Old Man hadn’t already sent everyone else out,” he added.

Thad slammed his hand down on one of the consoles, making the tech sitting there jump and glare. Sullivan glared back. “If you had waited for another couple of hours, the barbecue would have been over. They were going to burn me at the stroke of midnight. They like doing things like that,” he added darkly.

Jamison put out a hand to steady a weak and shaking Sullivan, but before he could do so, Sullivan whirled around and stormed out the lab door, but his grand exit wasn’t much better than his entrance. However, he didn’t give the door enough time to get out of his way and bumped his shoulder on the way out. He didn’t hear the chuckle from Jamison or see the impromptu toast as the lab chief held a cup of stim high to salute his associates.

Sullivan continued down the hall, oblivious to the covert glances of staff members.

Ian Kessler, head of Temporal, liked doors that could be opened by hand. Sullivan seized the opportunity and without knocking, jerked the door to Kessler’s outer office open and confronted his assistant.

“Where’s Kessler?” he demanded.

The stunning brunette sitting behind the desk gasped. “Oh, it’s you. You startled me.” Then with the color rising in her cheeks, “What do you mean by barging in here like that?”

“I want to see him.”

“Thad, Mr. Kessler’s not in a very good mood, and trust me, that has to be the understatement of the year. At least you could have cleaned up and gotten out of that period costume before you came in here. You can’t see him in any case,” she continued, “He has appointments all morning, and he’s in the middle of a conference right now.”

Sullivan looked around for a seat. “Okay. I’ll wait until whoever is in there leaves, but I’m next.”

“You’re dreaming. You’re going to get yourself in trouble again,” she cautioned. “Get cleaned up, and I’ll try to work you in for a few minutes this afternoon. Big things have been going on since you left.”

Grimly, Sullivan said, “Big things were going on where I was, too. You should have seen the stack of wood around that stake.”

Kathy frowned, obviously not following his meaning. “What’re you talking about?” The frown didn’t do anything to lessen her beauty, though. She pointed an accusing finger at him. “Look, if he comes out and catches you dressed like that, you’re going to get him stirred up again.”

“Oh, I intend to stir him up all right,” Sullivan remarked under his breath darkly.

Before either could say anything more, Kessler’s door opened and Albright from accounting left, muttering to himself without saying a word to Sullivan or Anderson. Thad saw his chance and limped into Kessler’s office before Kathy could stop him.

Kessler looked up from his desk. “Sullivan. Where the crap have you been? Everybody else is working his butt off, and you’re out loafing,” he said with a twinkle in his eye that Thad missed.

Sullivan strode to Kessler’s desk, put his hands on the top and leaned over in Kessler’s face. “Chief, I’m not in the mood. You know very well where I’ve been or was supposed to have been, but somebody screwed up and almost got me killed. Again! I’ve had it with this outfit. I’m thinking about getting out.”

“Rubbish. I couldn’t run you off if I tried, and besides that, you know as well as I do what would have to be done to your mind before we could let you leave. Now stop with the bullshit, sit down and shut up. Whew, you stink,” he added while waving his hand between them. “Get out of my face.”

Sullivan backed off but didn’t sit down. “Stink? You should try it from over here,” he said, waving what was left of a shirt sleeve at his boss. “They gave me a bucket for a bathroom and a cell without even a window. And their idea of exercise for prisoners is a stint in the stocks where people are expected to spit on you when they walk by. They thought I was a witch or warlock or whatever you call a male witch,” he muttered.

Kessler got up to stand staring out the window. “How in the crap did you manage to give them that idea? You were obviously given proper dress for the time period and era, because you’re still wearing what’s left of it. Didn’t the language blurp take?”

“Yeah, yeah, it worked,” Thad said, waving his hands, dismissing the idea, “but those fool technicians materialized me two meters up in the air, right in front of some fat woman screeching out a solo in a church. Trust me. From then on, it was all ... down ... hill.”

Kessler whirled around. “Wait a minute. My technicians don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”

“Oh, don’t they? Well, they did this time. I almost broke my ... neck,” Thad snarled defiantly.

Kessler continued, ignoring Thad’s last remark. “You know as well as I do that the equipment doesn’t make mistakes like that. It wouldn’t matter what the technicians did; the AI would have overridden anything of that nature.”

“Well, it happened this time,” Thad said defiantly. “I was supposed to land behind a deserted farmhouse outside of town just before daybreak. That church was in the middle of town, and it was early evening.”

“Wait. When did you say you left here?”

“Ten days ago. At least I spent ten days back there. I suppose subjective time remained the same.”

Kessler locked his hands behind him and turned to stare out the window again. “I think I know what happened to you. Have you cussed out the technicians yet? Don’t bother answering that. I know you. Just apologize the next time you have a chance. If you don’t have a chance, I strongly suggest that you make one.”

Thad thought about kicking Kessler’s desk, but one sore foot was enough. Instead, he said, exasperated, “You’re driving me nuts. Are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”

Kessler continued to stare out the window, and Thad, curious, looked over his shoulder to see what was so interesting, but all he saw was someone walking across the grounds between the buildings and the swirling nothingness outside the fields. Finally, the director sighed and answered, “I wish I knew. It seems that we’ve found the Others at last or at least a trace of them. Something went down-time while you were in transit, and it didn’t stop when it got to the barrier — it just kept going. Every monitor we have went right off the scale. It must have affected your jump by half a day and two meters.”