Chapter 59

“What do we do now?” Monty asked as the Gateway began to cycle down, and the portal between the device and wherever Jake had travelled to vanished before his eyes.

“We watch and wait,” Kim stated slowly, looking a little uncertain about what had just happened, “and we hope for the best, and while we’re doing that we get back to work. Regardless of where Jake has gone and what he is up to there, we’ve got responsibilities that have to be attended to. So I suggest we put this out of our heads for the moment and get back to work. It’s what Jake would want in any case, so let’s get with it.”

Monty looked at Kim for a moment, eyeing her hesitantly, and then he glanced over at Koo. The woman was going from station to station, checking readouts on the control panel and jotting them down on a clipboard that she’d found earlier and that she was now using to record her findings. She hadn’t even been paying attention to their conversation. Instead she’d been totally absorbed in the transfer, and the devices that had allowed it. Monty wondered if that was good. Then he glanced back over at Kim to find her eyeing him intently.

“I guess you’re right,” Monty finally admitted with resignation in his voice. “I should at least go and have a chat with Gogra. He took an expedition out this morning to look at an alternative site for this base. We know we can’t shift everything, but the truth is that we’re miles from any source of game or plants that are needed to sustain this community once all the supplies Jake brought through are used up. Gogra wants us to move closer to the forest while still staying within walking distance of the actual base. Jake agreed with him and while I’m loath to admit it, since I’ve been enjoying living in an actual apartment once again, I agree as well. I’ll see you later.”

Kim nodded her head in acknowledgement, but said nothing in response. Instead she just stood and watched Monty go.

“We should set up a watch,” Koo declared drawing Kim’s attention back to her. “There is no telling when Jake will signal his need to return. Somebody should be here when it comes in.”

“I know,” Kim replied hesitantly, before biting her lower lip in thought. “Unfortunately, there aren’t too many people we can pick from to do the job. There’s you and me, and maybe Monty and Hendrick, but that’s it. I might be able to train somebody else to react properly if a return signal comes in, but I don’t know. You’ll have to give me a day to work it out.”

“No problem,” Koo answered in a dismissive manner. “I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere other than to the latrine. There’s a bed here to sleep on so I’ll be fine. Just make certain someone brings me food.”

Kim said she would and then excused herself. She silently walked from the temporary shelter, her head filled with thought. She almost walked straight into me.

“Jake!” Kim exclaimed excitedly and with surprise. “What happened? What are you doing out here? Didn’t the Gateway work?”

I didn’t answer Kim verbally. Instead I pulled her into my arms, and then lifted her up as if she were just a child, so I could plant a kiss on her lips. Kim immediately squealed with alarm as I did this, surprised at my actions, but she quickly settled down once my lips met hers. Kim actually threw her arms about my neck as my embrace became more passionate than publicly acceptable, and she wrapped her legs about my waist. That allowed me to slip my hands from holding her up by the waist to sliding down and cupping her ass. As our tongues duelled lustfully my hands gripped her tight little ass and kneaded it with ardour.

“Oh, my,” Koo blurted out from the doorway to the temporary shelter. “You’re back already. What happened?”

Interrupted, I broke my kiss with Kim. She was panting, both from lack of breath and from the fire that I’d kindled in her. She looked into my eyes longingly.

“Later,” I told her as I slipped my hands off her ass and back about her slender waist. “We should talk.”

Kim wasn’t happy about that fact, but she didn’t protest as she unlocked her legs from about my body and allowed me to put her back down on the ground.

Koo was still standing in the doorway to the temporary shelter, looking on in wonder. I spotted some colour in her cheeks. Smiling, I walked over to the woman. She was at least five inches taller than Kim, but was still a small woman next to my frame. She met my gaze as I approached her, and openly blushed. I smiled and then took her in my arms.

“Would you like a kiss as well?” I asked teasingly. When Koo didn’t answer immediately, I picked her up as well, and kissed her just as deeply as I’d kissed Kim. The woman responded hungrily to my embrace and it took Kim clearing her voice to break us up.

“As you pointed out a moment ago, only a moment ago Jake,” Kim stated coolly, “we need to talk.”

Kim was correct. I broke my kiss with Koo and I set her back down on the ground, placing her beside Kim. I then looked sheepishly at Kim and I apologized.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “It’s been a while, and I missed you, and Koo. Perhaps we can pick up where we left off, later. For now, let’s go have that chat. Boy, do I have a story to tell you.”

Monty gasped with surprise when I walked into the mess hall with Kim on one arm and Koo on the other. His jaw dropped, and for a moment he was lost for words. Then he leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair and startling everyone with him.

“You’re back!” Monty blurted out. “I can’t believe it. I expected you to be gone forever, but you’re back. Did it work?”

“Yes,” I told him as Monty came around the table where he’d been sitting so he could greet me. He grasped my hand and shook it, and then patted me on the arm. It was obvious to everyone in the mess hall that Monty was excited, and that I’d just done something to make him so. It meant that a lot of people were now looking at me.

“You look different,” Penny announced aloud, so that everyone heard her, even though her comment was to me. “Did you get a haircut?”

It was an innocent question, but one that got a lot of people looking at me a little more closely. It didn’t take long for other people to nod their heads and to make one or two comments.

“She’s right,” Rita pointed out with a hint of amazement in her voice. “Jake has had a haircut and his beard has been trimmed as well.”

“Look, his boots are polished,” Carmen let everyone know in an excited voice. “What’s going on here?”

I sighed and shook my head in response to those outbursts and the clamour of others in the room asking the same question. As I did, I raised my hands in surrender, and the hope that people would calm down; at least long enough for me to explain things. After a second or two of me standing there looking at people and holding my hands before me, people got the point. They settled down and fell silent, although they still looked at me with questioning eyes.

“I’ll explain everything,” I told them all; addressing them all in English since the majority still didn’t speak our language, leaving those who spoke both to translate to everyone else. Again, I waited until the room fell silent, “But you have to be patient and save your questions for later. All right?”

People nodded their heads, and some muttered the words in reply. Then everyone fell silent again.

“Okay then,” I began speaking loud enough that everyone could hear. “I’m going to keep this short and sweet because I have business to discuss with Monty, Kim, and the others here. As you all know, Dr. von Stubbing is dead. As far as we knew, the Gateway was useless to us, except as a possible means to move about on this world. Since no one has tried that aspect out yet, we’re still not certain about it; however, that isn’t important at the moment. What is important, is that Koo told me that the Gateway device could be used to move back and forth in time, even if it couldn’t punch a hole into our dimension and take us back to Earth. When I learnt this from her I decided to find out if it would work. I had Koo crank up the device and Kim punched in a set of time-space coordinates. Then I stepped through the Gateway and I’ve just got back.”

At that declaration the room exploded into pandemonium and every uptime person there started asking me questions. I fell silent again and waited for them all to shut up which didn’t take as long, this time. When it was quiet, I continued speaking.

“I’m sorry, but for now all I can tell you all, is that I went into the future, and now I’m back,” I told them, earning myself a few disgruntled looks. “I’ve been gone a week in personal time, but barely half an hour in our time here. I need to speak to people and to put a few plans in motion. I do want to point out that the Gateway is out of bounds to everyone. I can assure you that the people in the future, while they did help me out, weren’t happy to see me. They would definitely not be happy to see you. Now if you will excuse me, I need to speak to Monty and the others. I will make time, later, to answer any of your questions. Just be patient with me.”

There was some grumblings; but all in all, the people in the mess hall let it be. I did have to take a few minutes to explain myself to the locals. While Kim and Dunbar had stepped in and they had translated much of what I had told the others, the locals were at a total loss. They had no reference point to latch onto in relationship to time travel. The moment I stopped talking English to my people, they hit me with questions as well. Even when I did explain what I’d done, most of my local people didn’t get it, and I was left with the certain feeling that none of our new members grasped the concept either.

“I know you don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you,” I declared to the few who were still trying to understand, “but for now you need to trust me, and let me speak to Monty and Kim. We need to do some planning about heading north and dealing with the leader of the bad people. Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll be able to answer your questions.”

The last few hold outs were Gogra and his three mates, plus Ruba, Ohba, Tonko, Bogdi, Gort, and Geeta. They all, with the exception of Gogra’s two new mates, trusted me completely. They knew I wasn’t making things up for they were well familiar with the fact my people had strange and sometimes weird devices that did things that they’d had never heard of before. They just wanted to understand. For now though they were willing to let me be. Gogra sent his mates off to talk to the others in the mess hall to reassure them that all was well, but he and the others stayed to listen in on my conversation with Kim, Monty, Koo, and Dunbar.

“All right now,” I said as everyone settled down to listen to me. “For those who don’t get it, I took the risk of going into the future for one reason only. Stubbing and then Koo declared that the only way we could open the Gateway to our Earth is with a nuclear reactor. The thing is, we need to open the Gateway to our Earth, no matter what. Someone from here, and we all believe it to be me, sent General Ridgeway all the proof he needed to go after Quantum and Winslow, and to take him down on our Earth. That person also saw to it that certain people were sent through the Gateway to help me here, and they made certain that supplies were sent to us when they were needed. The point is that for such a thing to happen the Gateway had to be opened, and since we didn’t have a nuclear reactor I went into the future to get us one.”

“You’re joking?” Monty gasped aloud, looking at me in wide-eyed disbelief, and causing a stir again.

“No, I am not joking,” I told the man sharply, “and keep it down. I don’t want to spend the rest of the day explaining this to everyone. For now, I just want to tell you what happened.”

“Sorry,” Monty murmured apologetically, looking sheepish as he did it. “But are you really serious; did you really go forward in time to acquire a nuclear reactor? That’s just plain crazy!”

“I’m not going to deny it was a crazy thing to do, but I had to do it,” I told the man and everyone else who was sitting there listening in.

“Did your mission succeed?” Koo chimed in excitedly, interrupting me before I could go on. “Did the future people give you a nuclear reactor?”

“Yes and no,” I said plainly in reply. “My mission was a success, but the future people didn’t give me a nuclear reactor. However, they did give me something that they said would do the job.”

“What?” Koo and Monty asked almost simultaneously, excitedly looking at me as they did.

At that point I reached into the breast pocket of the combat shirt I was wearing and I pulled out a small, thin, rectangular metallic object that looked a lot like a cigarette case. Everyone watched as I held it out before me, waiting for me to open it up. Pressing on an embossed area on the lid with my finger, I did just that.

Inside the case was a foam lined compartment and in the compartment was a small computer chip. It wasn’t much bigger than my thumb.

“What is it,” Kim asked first, getting the question out before anyone else had the chance.

“I’m told it is an amplifier,” I informed her and the others. “Supposedly, once installed in the power relay system to the Gateway, the circuit will amplify the power we have ... ramping it up, so to speak ... until the charge sent into the Gateway will be sufficient to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe and allow us to send General Ridgeway just what he needs to put a stop to Winslow. The only problem is that the circuit is designed to burn itself out once that job is done. The uptime people of this Earth don’t want us bringing more people over. In a way, they’re just as afraid of time paradoxes as we are. They don’t want us to screw up their present – our future, and truthfully, I can’t blame them for making certain it won’t happen.”

“That sucks,” Monty pointed out in blatant terms. “Something like that circuit could have been a boon to us. Now I don’t even know if I can send a test charge through it without burning the damn thing out.”

“True,” I agreed without hesitation, even as I closed the case and I put the entire thing back into my pocket, “but it was one of the conditions that the uptime people put on me for their help.”

“So when do you plan to use it?” Kim enquired moving the conversation past that bit of news. “The sooner the better, I suppose?”

“No, not yet,” I replied shaking my head as I did. “When I do use the Gateway to send General Ridgeway my report, I want to be able to give him a complete report and at the moment I can’t do that. We’ve still need to deal with Winslow and his hired thugs. They’re somewhere in the north and we need to find them and eliminate them.”

“So you want to head north first,” Kim murmured in acknowledgement. “I get that and I’m with you on wanting to give the General a full report. The question is this; have you found Winslow yet? Did the uptime people provide you with any help with that?”

“No, they didn’t,” I admitted with a little chuckle, “although I did ask them the same question. Unfortunately, they didn’t know. You’ve got to remember, all of this is ancient history to them. Some stuff got lost over the years.”

“But they knew about you?” Monty pointed out in a questioning manner. “They knew who you were?”

“Yes they did,” I replied trying not to look too pleased with the fact that the uptime people had recognized me. “It seems I’m a bit of a legend amongst the people of the future. In fact, according to the people I spoke to, I’m on the same level as Arthur, the ‘once and future king.’ They had a legend about me showing up, which got passed down through the ages. They were waiting for me when I got there.”

“But how could something like that have happened?” Monty asked with a puzzled look upon his face. “You were only gone for half an hour.”

“Technically, yes; and technically, no,” I stated in an ambiguous manner. “Until I returned here, I was gone thousands of years. You people started the legend and it carried on down the millennia until I actually did show up. Then I came back. I don’t know what will happen, now. Perhaps the story will change a bit, but the gist of it will be passed on. I hope so as it helped a lot that they knew why I was there.”

“It must have been strange, being there and meeting the descendants of the community you’ve started,” Carmen interjected from where she’d been sitting listening in to the conversation. “I would have freaked out.”

“It was ... interesting,” I confessed willingly. “I’ll tell you all about it later, but for now I want to focus on the jobs at hand. I need to find Winslow and finish him off, and we need to move the bulk of this community eastward to someplace where people can actually survive.”

“So you’ve decided on that,” Kim muttered, nodding her head in agreement as she spoke. “Good for you. That news will make a lot of people happy.”

“And it will piss a few people off,” Monty pointed out, “but you’re right about having to move. This place isn’t sustainable, and we’re going to have to admit it. We’ll survive.”

“Have you found Winslow yet?” I enquired shifting the conversation away from discussing the upcoming move. I’d talk to Gogra and Monty about that later. I was still fixated on finding Winslow and putting an end to the man, no matter what.

“No,” Monty admitted with a sigh. “I’ve swept the plateau completely and the big valley. I’ve even flown the drone out over the northern plain. I have spotted some ruined settlements within a few miles of the northern compound. Unfortunately, with no one on the ground to poke around the sites and investigate, I can’t tell if the destruction was done by other locals or Winslow.”

I nodded my understanding and then I sighed. It was time to plan another trip using the Gateway. Only this time the trip wouldn’t be through time, but to the north.

The first thing I did was to get off a radio message to Burton. That was a plus to operating from the base that would be missed if we ever shut it down. The base had a whole array of communications equipment and the antennas on the command post container could transmit a signal for hundreds of miles so long as nothing blocked it. In fact, the base could have communicated with the southern compound, if it hadn’t been for the fact that there were two mountain ranges in between the two locations. That problem didn’t exist between the base and where Burton was building the new settlement. There was the issue of the escarpment being in the way, but the escarpment was only fifty feet above the ground and the transmitting antenna was well above that, as was the receiving antenna. One of the gun trucks had a vehicle mounted radio in it and Burton had parked it at the summit of the hill upon which he was going to build the settlement. The channel wasn’t being monitored continuously. In an effort to spare the vehicle’s battery life until a recharging system could be set up, Burton only checked for messages three times a day, in case I needed to get a hold of him. I asked Kim to handle the communications. I wanted Burton, Sygor, and Ozmat back at the base and ready to go, as soon as Burton felt he could do it without too many problems arising from his departure. I told Kim to keep quiet on what was up, and only relay that we were going after Winslow. She said she would.

After that, I took a walk with Monty and Gogra. Gogra had found a place where he wanted to move the community to that met everyone’s needs. It was actually on the coast to the south of the base, but further inland than our current location since it was at the end of a long, almost fjord like cove. It was also very close to the big valley where we’d found the aurochs. The way Gogra saw it, the river people could fish, the women could go into the forest to gather, fields could be ploughed and sown, and the men who wanted to hunt could hunt. While it was definitely further away from the base than some of our uptime people might like, it was still reachable on horseback or on an ATV. I wanted to go and check it out.

Gogra and I mounted up while Monty took an ATV. By then it was late afternoon and the time there and back meant that the visit at the location would be short, but I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to do it. I wanted this matter resolved tonight, so I could move on to another. With the urge now to head north boiling in my veins, sitting about prattling on about whether to man the base or not had become a secondary matter. The uptime people needed to compromise if they were going to survive, and I was going to make the decision for them. Regrettably for Monty, I’d be leaving him the job to sort it out.

Gogra and I pushed our horses once we got past the base and we were headed south. We kept to a good steady trot for the most part, except when we approached a stream or a river that needed to be forded, then we slowed to a walk. Once past the impediment, we’d prod our horses on again as best we could. It still took two hours for us to get to where Gogra wanted us to go.

To me the location was perfect. The site was at the mouth of the river which ran through the big valley. The river emptied into a long, narrow, rock hemmed cove that provided good shelter from the sea, yet easy access to it as well. The spot that Gogra actually wanted to erect a new settlement was half a mile further up the river, on the south side of it. There was a broad, inverted bowl shaped hill that would be perfect for an enclosure and a village. It would allow the fishermen to beach their boats at night and to come home to the safety of the enclosure, while still permitting them to ply their trade, even in the cold of winter.

“I like it,” I declared after taking a good look around. “With the river bridged, you could send people to the base daily if you wished, even in winter. I’ve spoken to the fishermen who’ve joined your community and they’ve said that they usually get more rain than snow in this region. That means the roads should be open more times of the year.”

“Yeah,” Monty agreed hesitantly, “but even with bridges over the rivers and streams, we wouldn’t be able to bring any of the containers here. It would mean leaving the sickbay and the various workshops where they are, as well as all those containers filled with dry food. I can see people bitching about that.”

I paused and looked at the man for a moment, and then I glanced about, thinking about the situation. After a second, a thought came to mind.

“You can use the Gateway,” I told Monty pointedly. “You can hitch a tug and a dolly system to a container and then pull it through the Gateway. Hell, we could do the same for Burton and his settlement. It would allow us to strip the base completely except for the two temporary shelters without burning up the rest of our helicopter fuel. Just think about that.”

Monty did think about that. His eyes went wide and his mouth hung open for a bit. Then he started to nod his head in agreement.

“It would work,” Monty stated thoughtfully. “It would work at least until the system failed and that could be years from now. It would make everyone’s life a bit easier. We’d still need to man the Gateway and protect it, but that would be minor with it working for us. Hell, we could shift people between the base and here if we wanted. I’m for it.”

With that declaration I glanced over at Gogra. I could see that he was a bit confused about what we’d been speaking about, although he was definitely happy that Monty thought the site he’d picked was a good one. I smiled at the older man and then addressed him.

“It’ll make sense to you tomorrow,” I told Gogra as reassuringly as I could. “It might scare the crap out of you, but it’ll make sense. At least, I hope it will.”

“If you say so, Jake,” Gogra declared dubiously.

“I do,” I replied smiling broadly as I did. “Tomorrow, I’m going to introduce you to the Gateway. You and I, and I think a few others, are going to step through it. We’ll come back here so the others can see it, and they can experience what the Gateway does. As I just told you, it might scare you because what it does is almost magical, but rest assured that the magic is in my control. It won’t hurt you or anyone in the tribe, and it could make our life better. That, we’ll have to wait and see, but I’m hoping I’m right. For now, just be happy that both Monty and I like this location. Now let’s mount up and head back to the base. It’s getting late and I’ve got two women waiting on my return.”

Those words got Gogra laughing. He broke out in a broad grin and his whole body shook with mirth for several minutes. It took him a while to get in control of himself. Even when he did get control of himself, Gogra started laughing again uncontrollably when he glanced over in my direction.

“What’s so funny?” I asked aloud, slightly bewildered.

“You said you had two women waiting on your return,” Monty chucked in reply. “He’s laughing his ass off because you never have just two women waiting for your return. Four yes, but never just two; and, lately, I think more.”

I just sighed in response to what I was just told. It was true, and I knew it, but it wasn’t my fault. Ohba had me servicing all the ex-slaves in an attempt to purify them so that the local men would take them as mates. I didn’t protest that fact, as that would have just ensured that I’d be razzed even more. Instead I kept my mouth shut, choosing to mount up and ride off before anything else was said.

It turned out that Monty was correct in his assertion that my bed wouldn’t be occupied by just two women that evening. I found Kim and Koo cuddled together, patiently waiting my return in the company of Penny, Sarah, and Ohba. There was also one other woman in the clutch, Mira, the butterfly lady.

I’d learnt her name after I’d sated her needs a few nights back, and we’d spoken together about her skill as a tattoo artist. I still wasn’t a big fan of tattoos, but my tribe had embraced them as a mark of membership in our community. So we talked. I learned that many women in her tribe were skilled at tattooing, and that most of the women were either staying at the base or at the site of the new settlement. She told me who they were and I noted down their names. Then I set the rules for who got what tattoo. If it was going to be a mark of my tribe, then I was going to control when someone could get a tattoo. Mira thought that was a very good idea. Now, from the look of it, Mira was back in my bed. I smiled at that. She reminded me of Marta in a way in that there was strength in her, and a certainty. I knew that she was going to take on an important role in our community. In fact, I knew that all the artisans in our community would take on important roles, once we put Winslow and his goons to rest, and my people had a chance to establish themselves. After all, I’d seen the future. I knew what was going to happen. However, for tonight, I locked that knowledge away. Instead I turned my attention to the gathered group of women.

“Who’s first?” I asked teasingly as I stripped off my clothing. All of them answered, “Me!”

I learnt in the morning that Burton would be returning to the base that night, bringing Sygor and Ozmat with them, as well as their gear and horses. He’d be leaving Alexa and his party of uptime experts in charge, along with Holgar to interact with the ex-River People for her. Sakkor would do the same with the ex-Forest People who were still settling in. That left me the day to resolve a few minor problems, and to introduce my people to the Gateway.

The first order of business was telling everyone that the base was moving. It was my job to pass the word, particularly to the uptime people who’d volunteered to stay at the base until it had been stripped clean by my people. Those uptime people had expected that job would take years, and they’d have the pleasure of living in warm, electrically heated apartments, eating food cooked on electric stoves, and taking hot showers for the duration of that time. Now I was about to tell them otherwise. I knew some people wouldn’t be happy.

I held the meeting in the mess hall and I included everyone. It was a tight fit, but we got everyone in. The bulk of the people were either ex-slaves or the Forest People women and children we’d rescued. I started my spiel by speaking to them first as I wanted to let them know that I was going to speak my people’s language for a bit, but that they needn’t worry. I’d explain everything to them as well. Then I let the uptime people know what I had said. I actually noted an attitude shift when I did that.

The fact was, many of the uptime people still viewed themselves as more important than the local people. They might tell themselves differently, but it was true. From time to time it came out in their interactions with the locals, and it showed in the fact that most of them still didn’t speak more than a couple of words in any of the other languages. While many of the locals had begun to learn my people’s common tongue, the uptime people stuck to English whenever they spoke, regardless of who they were speaking to. Whenever they did it to me, I would reply in the common tongue. That really pissed off a couple of them. It also pissed off a couple whenever I showed deference to the locals, like now, when I was prepping the locals to be patient. The uptime people had tensed up as I’d first addressed my people in the common tongue, and then I’d repeated myself in both the River language and the Forest language. It was a situation that would need to change.