God's Junk Drawer, page 18
But after all this time, after decades of study and research and calculation . . . he understood the valley. He knew how it worked. The basic mechanics of it weren’t a mystery to him. Those he knew absolutely.
He looked at the big crack running across Ross’s faceplate and wondered if the old android—his old friend—had taken some kind of mental damage. Processing damage? Maybe a corrupted database or memory file or . . . something. He understood computers a lot better now than he had then but still didn’t really know how Ross worked.
“You have to be calculating the time passage wrong,” he said out loud. “Or remembering it wrong or . . . something. It hasn’t been that long.”
Ross looked at him. Turned to gaze at the students. Parker and Sam sat quietly, watching the discussion. Josh poked at the tray of food, picking up one thing after another and dropping them back down. Noah’d been so wrapped up in this, so confused with figuring out why all these people thought so much time had passed, he’d almost forgotten they were here until Sam had chuckled.
Qiang stared across the table at him. Noah knew the look in those eyes. He’d seen it from so many doctors and therapists and counselors. The so-controlled, so-faint glimmer of hope and pity and frustration.
He’s so close to a breakthrough.
“Over my decades at Roanoke,” Ross said, “I have been given a title. Many here refer to me as the Timekeeper. There’s no way to accurately measure time here, so I’ve become, to play off a phrase your father once used for me, a walking, talking clock and calendar. I’ve also kept track of numerous historical events.”
Noah rolled this back and forth in his head. “But there . . . there isn’t any history here.”
“I’ve recorded four hundred thirty-five years in the valley.”
“Excuse me,” said Josh before Noah could say anything else. He held his hand up with a piece of green fruit in it. “Can’t they build an hourglass or use the stars or something? Like people used to do?”
“Or just make marks on a tree or something,” Sam added. “That’s what you did back in your cave, right?”
“You can only make so many marks on a tree.”
“The technologies needed to build an hourglass haven’t been rediscovered in the valley,” Qiang said. “We have only the barest of metalworking and ceramics. Stellar timekeeping isn’t possible because the stars don’t move.”
“Since the what don’t what?” Parker straightened up in her chair.
“The stars don’t move,” Noah said. “I told you things were different here.”
Sam’s lips mouthed the start of two or three words before he settled on, “That’s not in any of the books.”
“Because everyone said it wasn't possible.”
“But they were all cool with dinosaurs and robots and aliens?” asked Josh.
Noah shrugged. “Sometimes even the crazy kid says something too crazy to believe.”
“If I may continue?” asked Ross, sounding more like an aggrieved professor than a machine.
“Sorry,” said Noah. He’d forgotten Ross could imitate so many emotional tones with his voice.
“Your beliefs about the valley and its history are based on your father’s flawed hypothesis that everything entering the valley arrives close to the same point in space and time, no matter what time period they originated in.”
Something low in Noah’s chest twisted. “What?”
Ross shifted his feet, the signal a lecture or lesson was about to begin. It crossed Noah’s mind that he did the same thing. Odd teaching habits he’d learned decades ago from the android.
“The space-time anomaly absorbs individuals and objects from various locations and time periods on Earth,” Ross began. “However, my long existence here has let me observe these items also appear at random space-time points within the valley itself, and not in any linear fashion. Just as all of you have arrived here now, more than four hundred years after Noah’s original time here.”
Noah shook his head. “No, that’s not right.”
“You and your family believed that the valley was a patchwork made up of numerous life-forms, objects, and locations from throughout Earth’s history. What you didn’t realize, because of your limited window of experience, is that this is the valley’s ongoing, dynamic state. It’s expanded several times over as creatures, places, and objects continue to appear. Since your time the valley’s acquired new fields, forests, water, hillsides, and a glacier.”
“How does that work?” asked Parker. “One day everyone goes out and there’s a forest outside the gate?”
“Yes,” said Qiang.
“Really?”
“There’s a large grove of cypress trees to the right as you exit Roanoke’s main gate. About three and a half hectares. They appeared there twenty-two years ago. Just after lunch.”
“Along with approximately one-point-three megaliters of water,” added Ross.
Noah shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. If things were appearing throughout the valley, we’d know. We’d’ve seen it.”
“How would you know if something had appeared before you arrived here, Noah?”
“Because we’d see it.”
Sam did that thing where he tapped his fingertips like an overcaffeinated Bond villain. “It . . . sort of makes sense.”
“No it doesn’t,” said Noah.
“It kind of does,” Parker admitted. “Things get pulled from any time in history, but then get dropped anywhere in the valley’s smaller subset of history.”
Ross’s electric-blue eyes flickered. “That’s my understanding as well, Miss Parker.”
Again, thousands of facts spun and collided in Noah’s head. This time it took him longer to sort them out, to get it all to make sense again. He knew Ross was still talking with the others, but he didn’t register any of it as more than sounds in the room.
Four hundred years.
It couldn’t be true. It made horrible, perfect sense. It explained some of the things he’d seen as a kid and some things they’d seen since yesterday. But it also meant he’d been wrong about so many things.
It also meant he’d made some huge mistakes.
It couldn’t be true.
Qiang was still watching him. Still waiting for that breakthrough moment.
“You believe . . .” he started. “You’re sure about this?”
Ross’s cylindrical head leaned forward. “I have recorded forty-seven instances of it happening.”
“You’ve actually seen it?”
“I’ve directly witnessed sixteen events in the four hundred twenty-seven years since the first one. The other thirty-one I became aware of through indirect but immediate means. As the valley’s become larger over time, it’s become less likely for events to happen within range of my senses. It’s likely there have been others I was unable to register.”
“What was the first one?” Sam asked.
“A statue, seven meters tall, surrounded by approximately one-quarter hectare of white sand appeared. The outer edge of the area was two hundred and six meters from the base of the cliff where the Gather family’s cave was located.”
“And you just happened to see it?” Parker asked. Noah heard the skeptical edge in her voice. Good for her.
“Yes. I was on the ledge outside the cave, watching for Miss Beau. This event happened four years, three months, twenty-nine days after her disappearance.”
“What did it look like?” Sam had turned his chair to face the conversation, and now he leaned forward. “When the statue appeared? Was there a light or a sound or anything?”
“No. One moment the statue wasn’t there, one-thirtieth of a second later it was. The only notable effects were the shift of several tree lines when the landscape changed and a minor atmospheric pressure wave radiating out from the statue.”
“Like something expanded in the air.”
“Yes, Miss Parker.”
“Could we go with just Parker?”
“Of course, Parker.”
Noah bit his lip. “And this statue . . . it landed on top of, what, the mushroom grove?”
“No. The statue and its surrounding landscape appeared between the mushroom grove and the edge of the area you and Miss Beau called the Boneyard. The grove at that point was forty-five meters further away from the cliff.”
Josh propped his head up on one hand. “Like a landslide?”
“No, Mx. There was no movement through intervening space. The grove was simply in a new location.”
“Josh is fine.”
“Of course, Josh.”
Noah kept processing, kept trying to reconcile this new version of the valley with the one he knew. “How?”
“I don’t know, Noah. It’s the nature of the valley. As I said, since that first event, I’ve seen numerous other locations appear across the valley, expanding it to its current size. It’s also made the creation of maps difficult as most landmarks don’t maintain the same relationship to each other for more than a few years.”
Sam’s fingers continued to tap against each other. He looked at Noah. “You thought Lookout Hill should’ve been closer.”
“It’s supposed to be closer.” Noah fought the urge to press his hands over his eyes. Almost none of this had gone as he’d planned. As he’d calculated. He pushed all the potential mistakes and repercussions out of his mind, focused on the important thing. “If you didn’t know what happened to Beau, why did you stop waiting for her? Why’d you leave the ledge?”
“The appearance of the statue so close to your cave agitated the Pakka tribe. Three weeks after it appeared they made their first attempt to approach it. Two days later the one you called Scarnose touched it. Over the next two months they made several attempts to vandalize the statue. They became bored with this and began approaching the cliff face where your cave was. And also the ledge where I stood. I was struck five times over four weeks with stones and once with a spear.” The android reached up and pulled its cloak aside, revealing a dirty gouge in its chest plate close to the shoulder. A trio of cracks radiated out from it, black with centuries of dust and grime.
“They knocked you off the ledge,” said Noah.
“They didn’t, but thank you for your concern. The severity of the attack activated my self-preservation subroutines and let me retreat from the area when the Pakka began their next wave of attacks. I moved to a safe distance away and stayed there for another two years, eleven months, nineteen days until I was found by Miss Amelia and her partner, Mr. Fred, on their third day in the valley. I remained with them for the rest of their time here.”
“What about the Castaway? Did you ever ask them? They’d know where Beau was.”
“I didn’t. As you know, such independent decisions aren’t within my operating parameters. In addition, the Castaway made it clear several times living things were their priority. I’m not alive, and they rarely acknowledged me.”
“Sounds like a jerk,” said Parker.
Josh yawned.
Sam turned to him. “Dude, seriously?”
“It’s been a long day,” Josh said. “How are you not exhausted? We were carrying Olivia for half the day.”
“It wasn’t that long.”
“Pretty sure it was.”
“Many people suffer from disorientation when they arrive here,” said Ross. “The nature of the valley doesn’t align with natural biorhythms, and it’s normal for people to lose track of time. It takes several days to adjust, but the feeling will subside.”
“I remember,” said Noah.
“We have a guest house across the road,” Qiang said, gazing at each of them. “Several rooms. Beds. It’s yours for as long as you want it. Most people find the first few days here a bit . . . exhausting.”
“Yeah,” Parker said, “you could call today exhausting.”
Josh swallowed the last of his bread knot. “Nothing a few weeks of meditation and some quality pharmaceuticals won’t take care of.”
“What about Olivia?” asked Parker. “Should we check on her? Where’s she?”
“Your friend is with Monique, our physician,” Qiang assured them. “She’ll be well cared for.”
“They’re not going to drill holes in her head or put leeches on her or something, are they?”
Ross’s head squeaked side to side. “There are no leeches in the valley, Parker.”
“I meant . . . she’s a real doctor, yes? She practices modern medicine, not, like, Middle Ages medicine?”
“Madame Cadieux was born in 1726. However, while she lacks in some resources, the past nine years have advanced her medical knowledge considerably, including techniques and medical knowledge from the late twenty-sixth century.”
“So . . . no leeches.”
The cylindrical head moved side to side again. “There are no leeches in the valley, Parker.”
Noah watched them all get up. Stretch. Pick up useless smartphones. They shuffled around the room for a few moments. All ready to head home and collapse into their beds.
Home.
Numbers and theories and calculations that he’d been pushing away came crashing down in his mind, impossible to ignore any longer. He stared at the wooden tabletop. At the old, well-worn wood. “I was wrong about everything.”
“About the valley?” asked Sam.
Parker moved a little closer to him. “About your sister?”
“Everything. All my work, all the calculations I made, I assumed things were stable on this side. That the wormhole deposited things at more or less the same point in space-time, in a valley with set internal coordinates. But I didn’t . . . my understanding of all of it was so wrong. There’s so much variance on this side of the wormhole, and it means all my work’s off by several orders of magnitude. It’s just . . . it’s all wrong.”
Noah let himself drop into one of the chairs. Felt the impact shudder up his back. Stared at one of the oil lamps. Felt the heat of the fire on his eyes.
“I don’t know how to get us home.”
15
BILLY
Billy followed Dad through the forest. It was a forest now, even though it’d been a jungle ten minutes ago. Palm trees, then pine trees.
“When are we going to go home?”
“Soon, bud,” Dad told him. “But until then, this is still our big camping trip.”
Four days here now. Dad called this place a lost world. Beau called it the valley before time. On their first night, as they stretched out in their sleeping bags, Billy suggested calling the place the Savage Land, but Beau had told him that name was copyrighted and lawyers would find him if he called it that. Billy had cleverly pointed out they wanted someone to find them, so calling it the Savage Land was clearly the best thing they could do. Beau and Dad had both laughed and then she’d said he didn’t understand copyright law.
They’d started the hike this morning, right after the sun had appeared in the sky. It was the first time out of the cave for Billy and Beau. Dad had gone out yesterday to get the last of their supplies from the raft. He’d made it back and told them he thought they could move through the valley as long as they stayed quiet and stuck to cover.
So here they were. Day four. Hiking through the jungle-forest. Dad. Billy. Beau.
She bonked his butt with the big water jug. “You’re slowing us down.”
“No I’m not.”
“It’s your tiny legs.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “You’re not that much taller than me.”
“I’m closer to Dad than you are to me.” She swung her arm and the empty container bonked Billy again. He swung his back at her and she blocked it with her own. They clunked together, so he swung again and she knocked his attack away with another dull bonk.
“Hey,” said Dad. “What did I say about no extra noise?”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“She started it.”
“Shut up.”
“Both of you shut up or I’ll take you back to the cave.”
“I’ll pull this valley over right now,” murmured Beau. Billy laughed and smothered it with his free hand.
Dad had bought four gallons of water for the raft trip. One jug had burst when they . . . landed. Or maybe got stepped on by a dinosaur right afterward. Either way, they only had three left and they’d drank the last of their clean water yesterday. Which is why they were hiking through the jungle toward the center of the valley.
Old pine needles crunched under their feet for a few more steps and then the trees stopped. They were on the edge of a field of waist-high grass. On the far side, maybe two hundred feet away, Billy could see something that looked like an old, rusty school bus. And past the school bus, almost touching it, stood the iceberg.
“If it looks clean,” Dad said, “it’d be all the water we need. There might even be some runoff around it. Maybe a little stream we could fill the jugs at, like a fountain.”
“Unless it all melts first,” said Beau.
“That’s a lot of ice.” Billy gazed up at the tall lump. “It’ll probably take a hundred years for it to all melt.”
“Well, hopefully we’ll be home before then,” Dad said. He looked across the field. Closed his eyes and listened. “I don’t think the big one’s close by. I don’t hear anything.”
“We should stick close to the trees.” Beau’s finger swept a path around the edge of the field. “We can hide quicker if he shows up.”
Billy blew some air out between his lips, making a fart sound. “Unless he comes out of the trees close to where we are.”
“It’s still better,” said Dad. “We’d hear him coming sooner. Good thinking, Beau.”
She smiled, then stuck her tongue out at Billy. He made another fart noise at her. She waggled a finger at him. “Hey, Dad said no extra noise.”
“It’s not extra. It was a special one just for you.”
They made their way around the field, pushing through the tall grass. Billy tried to look around Dad to get a better look at the school bus. He could see long rows of windows, but as they got closer he realized it was a lot bigger than they’d thought. At least twice as big as a bus.
