Ignoring the sour taste of fear in his mouth, he timed the rising and falling of the camel, and gently squeezed off a shot. The Ups’ leader gave a shrill ‘yipe’ and collapsed, snapping at the shaft buried to the flights in his chest. A heartbeat later, as Gareth was fumbling for another bolt, there was a second heavy chunk, and the second Ups in the pack, one almost as big as the leader but coal black, stumbled and fell, a crossbow shaft protruding from the shoulder of its single front leg. The charging pack jerked to a halt, as they disappeared in the dust kicked up by the running camels.

  Gareth turned in his saddle to scold Chiu who also rode backward, the butt of her crossbow resting on her thigh. A smile was playing on her lips as a single eyebrow went up. “Did you want to say something?” she asked sweetly. Leading both camels, Lyndra was grinning like a madwoman.

  Gareth shut his eyes. “Nevermind. It was a good shot.”

  “Thank you.” Somewhere behind them, in the dust, something screamed.

  All the camel drivers from the caravan hosted a party that night, passing around gourds and wineskins of a mixture of fermented goat’s milk and honey. Later, Gareth guessed it ran about one hundred and twenty proof. He and Chiu and Lyndra were the guests of honor, and had to accept the many toasts to their prowess in battle. The fire crackled brightly, and some of the women, wives of the camel drivers or drivers themselves, danced wildly before the flames as their men clapped and cheered. The stars were especially bright in the dark sky, and Gareth found that if he drank enough, he could ignore the Ups howling in the distance.

  When he finally clawed his way back to consciousness, it was to discover that he was tied to the saddle of his moving camel. His head was pounding with every step of the beast, and with every sway side to side his stomach lurched. From the taste in his mouth he’d already been sick once… not that he remembered. The caravan was plodding today, barely traveling at a man’s walking speed and Gareth decided, without much forethought, that a walk would probably do him good. Slowly and painstakingly he undid the knots of the rope holding him in the saddle. Luckily, the fall didn’t break any bones, and Gareth rolled over to see the caravan proceeding on without him, Chiu and Lyndra also tied to their saddles, unconscious. Spitting out a mouthful of dust that tasted suspiciously of camel dung, he finally managed to get to his feet, only to realize that he now had to run to catch up with his camel or he would be left behind. Groaning, he put his head down and ran.

  Chiu was sitting up in her saddle smiling when he finally caught up. She opened her sapphire eyes very wide in mock surprise. “Why, whatever are you doing down there?” she asked, looking down on Gareth’s sweaty, dirt grimed face.

  “Fahr zur Hölle!”

  “Pardon?” she asked sweetly. “Did you happen to forget the spell for healing that you learned?”

  Gareth stopped dead, as the camel continued on. “Scheiße!” He swore, and then more softly, “Curáre corpus.” He jogged back to the camel and clambered up into the saddle with no further problem. Chiu said nothing, but her smile was wide, and her blue eyes laughed.

  It was several days later, as the caravan was about to pass through the narrow defile in the Vluwth Mountain Range that Gareth saw something glittering in the distance, among the piles of rubble. He gave Chiu a wink. “I want to check that out.” He grinned. “It’s the first interesting thing I’ve seen in this whole godforsaken trip since we left Xoln.”

  “Fine,” she replied, turning her own camel. “Let’s go then.” Beside her Lyndra turned her own camel.

  Gareth sighed, and then squinted at the far-off object, perhaps a kilometer distant he guessed. “I’ll race you.” The words had hardly left his mouth when Chiu swiveled in her seat, reaching out with her crop to smack his camel lightly on the nose. His beast reared up, and it took Gareth several moments to get it back under control before he could urge it into a run. Lyndra simply slid from her saddle, long wolf legs quickly outstripping even Chiu’s lead. The women were waiting for him when he arrived. “It’s a really good thing I didn’t bet anything with you two cheats.” He grumbled, slipping from his saddle and handing Lyndra the reins to her camel. Although she was in human form, her grin still had something of the wolf in it.

  Gareth knelt in the dirt beside the shiny chunk of what was obviously metal, and began to brush away layers of ancient dirt from the stainless steel. Stopping, he jerked his hand away with a curse. There, embedded in the ancient engine block was the oval logo of the Ford Motor Company.

  Chiu looked concerned as Gareth stood, face pale, fists clenched, cursing steadily in German. “What is it?” The dark-haired woman asked. Lyndra, sitting calmly on her camel, shared Chiu’s look of anxiety.

  Gareth counted to one hundred, very slowly, in German, before he could get his anger back under control. Fists still clenched, he turned to Chiu. “I’ve been played for a sucker. All along I’ve believed that this was some strange alien world I’d been… transported to. After all the similarities I’ve seen, this is the frosting on the cake.” He pointed to the engine block.

  “But, what does it say? I can’t read the writing.” Chiu asked in a low voice, as Lyndra pulled a little closer.

  Gareth sighed. “This piece of stainless steel is an engine block from a vehicle manufactured by the Ford Motor Company.” He knelt and touched the block. “I used to drive a Ford.” He mumbled wistfully. “This is Earth.”

  “But… what will you do now?” Lyndra asked. “Now that you know that this is your world too?”

  Gareth stood up, brushing the dirt from his hands. “Get some answers from this Athena creature, that’s what.” He studied the landscape, finally settling on a jagged mountain rising fifteen kilometers away. “We’ll set up camp on that mountain. With three legs, Ups can’t be very good climbers.”

  Chiu nodded. “You’re right, but our supplies?”

  He almost said leave them he was so angry, but common sense finally won out. “We go back and get out supply camels. We can catch up with the caravan in a couple of days, after they go through the pass into the plain beyond.”

  Lyndra sighed. “Now I’ll never get to see the circus.”

  Gareth frowned. “Circus?”

  Lyndra smiled, and Chiu looked curious. “There was a circus up at the front end of the caravan, with wild animals and performers and everything.” To Gareth she sounded like an excited little girl. “I was able to get a quick glance.” Her green eyes shone. “They even had a lion.”

  Gareth frowned. “Lion? Lions were endangered in my time. How could they have a…” He snapped his fingers. “It’s a clone.”

  “What’s a clone?” Chiu asked warily.

  “A copy. In this case probably a copy of a copy of a copy. Let’s get our stuff. That mountain is still a few hours ride ahead of us.” Chiu groaned. “Hut, hut, hut!”

  The camel drivers thought he was crazy, as did Chiu and Lyndra, but Gareth would not be dissuaded from getting his answers, so the three, leading their two pack camels, headed out on their own toward the distant mountain. Okult Heights, the camel drivers had called it, and a grim-faced Gareth thought it fitting.

  Gareth sat at the low fire, high up the side of the mountain in a small sheltered notch, and studied the stars. Although not an astronomer, now that he knew what he was looking for he was able to recognize some of the major constellations like the Dippers, Cassiopeia, Draco and Cepheus, and a few of the planets. The distant moon still stumped him. It looked as though it had been physically moved further from Earth, and placed in such a way as to forever block a certain portion of the sky. The moon bothered him as much as the red sun. For Earth’s sun to redden so much would require billions of years, and if he could remember his Astronomy 101, the scorching of the Earth as well. It didn’t make any sense. He sat for hours, and in all that time saw not one artificial satellite. He shook his head. Tens of thousands of years into the future Earth should have had cities on the moon and Mars, along with dozens of space habitats. Instead, there was nothing. He watched the blue curl of his pipe smoke rise into the still chill air. Chiu and Lyndra had long since retired, but sleep for him remained a distant companion. A falling star streaked through the heavens, and for a brief moment Gareth wondered if it were some ancient satellite tumbling back to Earth. Eventually, when the air grew too cold to sit outdoors, he crawled into the small tent he shared with Chiu, and burrowed under their blankets, to her small mumbled protests about drafts. She was a warm pleasant armful to curl up to, Gareth decided. And she smelled good.

  Gareth, Chiu and Lyndra had finished their breakfast of porridge, dark bread toasted over an open fire and coffee, and put away the cleaned dishes. Now the two women stared at Gareth.

  He shrugged. “All right.” He looked around the small clearing where they had made their camp. “This place should be as good as any.” Sitting down on a cold shelf of rock jutting out of the mountainside, he looked up. “Okay Athena, or whatever the hell your name is, we need to talk. I know it was your hand that saved me from myself, and repaired my injuries; and for that I thank you, but sending me to a future Earth. Really?” He asked calmly into the clear air.

  “Women always keep secrets… you should know that.” A soft woman’s voice said from the empty air over them. From somewhere behind him he heard Chiu let out a small growl.

  A small rictus smile crossed his face as he answered. “Hello, Athena. I thought before I went much further, we might have a little chat,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Athena laughed. “You don’t appear the depressed suicidal Marine I saw on the Mexican beach. I like you better angry.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You’re doing all the right things to piss me off then.” He heard Chiu gasp, but Athena chuckled.

  “It took you long enough to smell a rat.”

  “Not really,” he replied. “I began to have suspicions when I ran into so many references straight from Earth mythology. Chiu’s name kind of gave it away though.”

  “It was obvious.” The voice paused. “Ask your questions.”

  “Is this Earth?” he asked bluntly.

  Athena replied in kind. “Yes, 38,000 years into your future.”

  Gareth scoffed, wiggling for a more comfortable position on the cold rock. “Bullshit. Our sun couldn’t go that color naturally in thirty-eight thousand years, nor the land masses shift to the Amasia Supercontinent.” He laughed dryly when he heard the voice gasp in surprise. “Yeah, I figured that out too. I’m not merely another dumb jarhead.” He snapped.

  There was a heavy sigh from the air before the voice continued. “There was a war, seventeen thousand years ago between the people of Earth and a species called the Ecothiax, from a world named Enokkia VI. Because the humans were more technologically advanced than them, the Ecothiax felt it within their rights to use every weapon at their disposal to destroy the humans. Humans and Ecothiax shared a similar metabolism, and therefore sought the same real estate. After a series of unsuccessful space engagements, the Ecothiax attempted to destabilize the tectonic plates of the Earth, destroying our civilization by earthquake. They were only partially successful, and simply sped up normal tectonic realignment by a few million years. Having failed at that, they tried to cause our sun to go nova. That attempt also failed, but the result destroyed much of the solar fuel available, reducing the life of our sun to a scant few thousand years.” Athena fell silent, and Gareth could hear the sorrow as it continued. “The time until all the solar fuel is consumed is less than a thousand years, at this point.”

  “What happened to the Ecothiax?” Gareth asked in a hushed voice.

  “The men of Earth were forced to retaliate. The sun of Enokkia was driven nova, destroying every planet in their system.” She took a deep breath and continued. “After that, the majority of humanity began to flee this world for the stars… via one method or another. The humans that remained on Earth, having mastered the art of genetic engineering, began to play with the power of God.” She paused, and he heard the speaker swallow. “Except for a handful of truly alien races; all the races you see on Eldenworld were once as human as you. The human scientists even began experimenting with the dolphins, trying to make them even more intelligent than they already were. The result is the abomination you see around you today. The worst of the lot, as you’ve seen, are those still biologically human.”

  “I’ve still run into some decent humans, in my travels.” Gareth injected.

  “Oh?”

  “The captain who runs the Spray, and the crew of the ship are all good people. Many of the people in port are good.” He gave the sky a crooked smile, suspecting that Athena could, in some way, see him. “Sometimes if you look only for the bad, that’s all you’ll find. If you look for the good, you’ll find that too.”

  There was a long pause, as the faceless voice considered his words. “I’m glad I saved you. You have qualities I didn’t suspect.”

  He let out a low laugh. “See, what did I tell you? Now explain to me how this magic thing works. Rattling off a Latin phrase and having things pop into existence doesn’t make sense. And what’s the story with the moon?”

  “You’ll have to figure out magic for yourself, as well as how to save the Earth… or Eldenworld if you will.” He could feel her unseen eyes on him. “That’s the reason I saved you, after all. Human beings purposely moved the moon, and that’s all I’ll say. I will, however, give you a hint, my Gareth, about magic. Remember the Krell.”

  “The what?” he gasped. The voice didn’t reply.

  Chiu’s eyes were dangerous. “My Gareth?” she hissed.

  Gareth held up his index finger as he looked to the sky. “I’ll still find the answers I need in Zuebrihn?”

  “You’ll find what you need in Zuebrihn.” The voice out of the sky agreed. “Kiang already told you about the Eye, I believe. The géis—the compulsion you’ve felt since your arrival on Eldenworld is still there, to guide your footsteps, you might say.” The presence in the air was suddenly gone.

  “Thanks,” he finished, somewhat sourly, turning to Chiu. “Say what you will. We might as well get it out; but let me say I am Athena’s only in as much as she saved my life and mended my hurts. I’ll do my best for Eldenworld to repay that debt.”

  Chiu’s sapphire eyes were hard. “She’s a deity, you know.”

  “They say that she’s a deity.” Gareth corrected. “There’s a difference.”

  Chiu’s mouth worked, like a fish out of water until she finally muttered, “You got screwed.”

  Gareth’s reply was thoughtful. “Perhaps, and perhaps not. If I had remained on Earth, I would have killed myself, and currently be residing in a grave or at the bottom of the ocean. That I am not is a plus in my book.”

  Lyndra looked up at the noonday sun. “Will we leave today?”

  Gareth sighed. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning. That will put us on the far plain while it is still bright daylight.”

  Lyndra grinned. “That works for me. I’m going back to bed.”

  Chiu glanced at Gareth, a small smile touching the corner of her lips. “Well, my Gareth?” she asked, somewhat pointedly.

  “As you wish,” he replied, returning the smile and holding open the flap to the tent.

  Far out on the plains something was burning fiercely, and the thick finger of greasy smoke rose high in the morning air before the upper winds finally tore it to shreds. Gareth, Chiu and Lyndra stared at it a long while before they began to break camp.

  “Think it’s the caravan?” Lyndra asked as she finally swung up into her saddle.

  Gareth frowned. “Probably. The direction is right.”

  “Won’t it be… dangerous to go down there?” There was a tremor in her voice.

  “Probably not as bad as you might think. The robbers will have taken what they wanted and be long gone by the time we get there. Still, we’ll take our time and be careful.”

  “If we hadn’t been up here…” Her voice faded.

  “Yeah. We might have had a problem. Funny how things work out sometimes.” Especially when you were dealing with a being who might have been around since the beginning of time. He thought to himself. It makes you wonder. He flicked his crop. “Hut, hut, hut!”

  On the cloudy morning of the second day, Gareth had Lyndra assume her wolf form to scout ahead, while he and Chiu brought up the rear with the supplies. The smoke had finally stopped spiraling upward, and Gareth guessed their distance to the caravan at something under a kilometer when Lyndra returned to their side, wavering at once into her human form.

  Puffing, she looked up. “There are three human raiders still picking over the wreckage at the end of the caravan.” Her face was pale and her eyes looked sick. “I couldn’t see any other survivors or raiders.”

  “Distance?” Gareth asked, reaching back for his crossbow.

  “Eight hundred meters,” she replied. “Just beyond that last clump of trees.” She looked at the ground, her face twisting in disgust. “They’re… busy right now, and won’t hear you coming.”

  Gareth glanced at Chiu. “You two stay here. You don’t need to see this.” Slipping out of his saddle, Gareth shrugged out of his robe. Chiu was startled to see that he was wearing his Marine digicams, with kukri and Colt at his waist. He carried the crossbow in his left hand with the quarrel of bolts slung over his shoulder. His face was grin as he turned without a word, and headed for the caravan.

  He was unsurprised and disgusted to see that crucifixion was back in vogue. The raiders had set up a row of ten crosses, with ten people roped or chained or impaled to the crossmembers. The three raiders were standing before the last cross, poking the twitching body with spears, each poke leaving a small bloody mark. There was so much blood Gareth couldn’t tell if the person on the cross was male or female.

  He raised the crossbow, and sighted on the person closest to him. The weapon chunked, and he dropped the bow as the bolt sank to the flights in the back of the man’s skull. The raider dropped bonelessly as the other two turned, reaching for their short bows. The Colt barked twice, and both men fell, clutching their lower abdomens.

 

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