A Long Time Until Now (54 page)

“And the men here?”

She shrugged in the dark. “Well, Oglesby creeps me out. Spencer’s old and creepy. Doc is Doc, he always seems embarrassed if it’s not professional. Barker’s a decent guy, but really not my type. Dalton . . . that wouldn’t work. Ortiz is possible, but he’s still got some of that Latin machismo I don’t care much for. Trinidad . . . also a good guy who’s not my type. I’m afraid if I showed interest in the LT, it would be taken the wrong way, and he’s not a good personality type.”

“He’s entitled to a family, too.”

“Sure. But I don’t think it can be me. I really never thought any male in the military was going to work for me. You?”

Alexander stretched back on her rack. “Elliott? Decent looking, but I think he thinks of me as this old lady. You said it about Doc. And he’s physically lean and handsome, but his features really don’t attract me. He’s got very pronounced lips. They just . . . no. Dalton’s an annoying younger brother, and so is Oglesby. Trinidad . . . I just don’t feel anything there. Ortiz maybe. Barker’s almost an older brother, even though I’m older.”

“Spencer?”

“Yeah, I think that’s where I’ve assumed it’s going. But I want to see my kids, and my cats, and my husband. I don’t want to settle down here.”

As if on cue, Cal ducked his head under the door and chirruped. He padded onto Alexander’s bedding and settled down to purr. She reached down and skritched him.

Jenny said, “I’m still concerned that if we don’t have someone, we’ll be seen as fair game.”

“If they haven’t raped us yet, I don’t think they’re going to. They might fight each other if we start showing interest, though. And we’d make a terrible couple.”

“Yes, and even if it wasn’t a cliché about feminists being dykes, I’d avoid that suggestion. And I don’t swing that way.”

Alexander said, “I wasn’t suggesting it. It was just the remaining local option. So either we become bitter old hags, or find some trainable cabana boys among the Urushu and raise them right.”

“I guess. It just doesn’t interest me.”

“We have Cal,” she said, and suddenly was sobbing.

“We do. So we’re crazy cat ladies who are so poor we can only afford one cat to share.”

“Oh, gods, that sounds bad. He’s letting me pet him.”

Jenny leaned over slowly to look and said, “Oh . . . yes he is! Awesome.” Alexander was skritching his ears. He seemed a bit unsure, but half brain-melted from the attention. He was a huge cat compared to domestics, probably thirty pounds.

Alexander “I have a pet. That’s more than I could have hoped for.”

“Don’t tell the others. They’ll get jealous.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Jenny asked, “Why didn’t you sleep last night?”

Sighing, Alexander explained, “I get overly fatigued, and it’s thyroid related as well, affects my L-Tyrosine and melatonin levels among others. Gods, I still remember those terms. And extreme frustration.”

Frustration. She understood that.

Delicately she asked, “Do you need some alone time, hon?”

“It won’t help.”

“You could at least take the edge off.”

Alexander sounded like she was reading from a script. “Thyroid issues screw with cortisol levels. I can’t get any kind of endorphin rush. Nothing happens.”

“I’m . . . sorry.”

“Yeah, so am I. Eventually it kills me. I may make it to sixty, lethargic and fat.”

Jenny didn’t know if that was better than the alternative of another fifty years or more. With her family history, she’d probably live a long time, eventually becoming some wise, weird elder for the Urushu to venerate. If the Romans didn’t decide to make her a trophy by force before that.

There wasn’t much else she could offer. They all had problems, collectively and individually.

Patriarchal society seemed to follow from organization. Once there was a unified leadership structure, men moved into it.

She’d never liked Libertarianism, but it seemed that might be the system with the best potential for equality. If it could be socially moderated away from privileged white males, it might work. But of course, that couldn’t happen, and it would never be popular.

She carefully reached over and petted the cat, too. He was good company in the dark.

Felix Trinidad was a trained intel specialist. He had little to do here, but he couldn’t help but keep track of happenings.

The last couple of weeks, the number of Urushu women visiting the camp had increased. It had gone from an average of two every week to six. Their medical issues were usually quite simple, and some were unhurt. They excused their presence as cooks and support, as near as Oglesby could translate for him.

Interesting.

The next week eight of them rotated through.

He sought out the LT. Elliott was looking over a tablet and frowning. Felix noted a mention of Romans, then made a point of not looking at it while addressing him.

“Sir, did you notice the increase in women visitors?”

“A bit. They’re here for cooking and such, as I understand it. I think we’ve reached another level of trust.”

“That’s one way to put it. I think they’re looking for mates.”

“I guess that’s possible.” The man’s expression said he knew that was exactly it and trying to be reticent.

“Did you notice they’re mostly young? Fifteen to twenty, at a guess.”

“I actually hadn’t. I try not to pay too much attention to them individually, just to their numbers and movement. Thanks for the information, though.”

“Any specifics you want me to look for or inquire about?”

“Please. Anything. If you can discreetly ask, do so. If not, I’m sure it’ll come out in time.”

That wasn’t very specific, but it seemed he was worried about threats, not mates. That was reasonable.

“Hooah, sir.”

Today he was helping Spencer work on that forge of his, and it was past being a joke. The man was a decent mechanic, from all stories, but the forge seemed like something that would never happen.

He wanted to be fair, because reverse engineering primitive stuff was hard, but it was an obsession that wasn’t yielding anything so far. Felix had seen various forges in Bataan. He didn’t know much beyond bellows, fire and hit metal.

“Okay, it’s really not that complicated,” Spencer said. “We use the lathe to turn rods for a form, wrap it in clay and then fire it hard so it burns out and we have a pipe. That goes into a trench under where the fire will be. We make a bellows to fit it. We hammer some rocks to make a hearth. We use one of the large river rocks we dug out as an anvil. Once we have reliable water in the stream again, we’ll work on reducing iron.”

“You need water for it?”

“You cook the ore, then shovel it out into the water, which shatters it and blows some of the slag off. Then you forge.”

While Spencer turned the sticks on the lathe, he talked to the Urushu about clay. They were all hanging about their hooch, lazing on hides and whittling crafts or doing other minor tasks while chatting with each other.

“Greeting, Nus!opfa.”

“Greeting, Watcher Felicsh.”

“We need to find clay you talked of, and make a . . . hollow bone.”

“Need you a hollow bone?”

In Tagalog he thought, “That’s a damned good question.” “I ask.”

He jogged down and called, “Hey, Sergeant Spencer, would a large bone work?”

Spencer stopped, stood covered in wood chips for a second and said, “Ah, shit. Way to overanalyze it.”

“Is that a yes?”

“That’s a ‘it should to get started at least.’ Faaahk.” He dusted off a few shavings and stepped back from the lathe.

“I have no idea what to do with that, now.”

It was almost amusing.

Felix ran back and exchanged with the Urushu, who promised to bring a bison leg in a few days.

“Eat meat and marrow first, many nom.” The word “nom” had come into creole use between them.

“Sounds great.”

The bellows he was able to help with, and happy to do so. He took a chunk of a straight limb, bored a hole, shaved and scraped and whittled until he had a proper mouthpiece.

Spencer was actually a decent basket weaver. He took some soaked reeds and withes, and twisted three paddle-shaped frames.

“So this is a two-stage bellows?”

“Yes, you get more consistent airflow.”

Maybe the man did know what he was doing. Felix thought he’d seen one of those back home once or twice.

“Nice muzzle,” Spencer said. “That’s almost exactly what we need.”

“I’m glad.”

“Okay, I’ll stitch the hide while you dig a trough to hold this bone. Are we talking aurochs, elk, bison, something like that?”

“Bison, with meat and marrow.”

“Nom.”

Spencer had no idea why he laughed.

It took a while with a pick to chip the hard earth down a foot, but he had it by lunchtime. It would need roughed out again once the bone arrived, but should work for now.

Lunch was dried fish with some berries and greens. It was okay, but he wasn’t thrilled.

Spencer took a while to do the complicated stitching of thick hide to the frames, and expansion joints between them. The whole thing was stitched with sinew. Spencer kept it in his mouth to soften it, pulling bits out, threading them onto a bone needle, and using the awl on his multitool to bore holes.

Felix watched it bit by bit as he brought rocks from the dry bed for the forge construction.

“Not those,” Spencer said. “Nothing that might soak up water. Then we need to either stack them roughly flat, or hammer and grind them into rough squares.”

Three days later, he did have increased respect for Spencer. They’d slaked lime in a small, hot fire, added fine sand, hammered rocks into blocks, stacked them in the hearth, mortared them, lit a small fire to cure the whole mess, and started on another lean-to to cover it.

Felix said, “I expect the Romans could have helped with this. But of course, we don’t want them inside.”

“That, and they might wonder about our lack of experience in that area. I was able to fake it through the charcoal burn.”

“How do we drag that fuel up here, by the way?”

“In a hide, and drag or carry.”

“What if it gets wet?”

“That won’t hurt it. It dries as it goes into the fire.”

The Urushu showed up with the promised leg of bison, along with eight women. He recognized the number and came to an immediate conclusion.

Damn, he wanted a woman. They were tall, lean, dusky and so very, very exotic. They hadn’t fulfilled the year yet, though, and he knew what Elliott would say if the suggestion was made.

“Tell them we must wait a full turn of the sun, which isn’t yet. Then we can talk about it.”

Elliott looked very tense and sad about that decision every time he had to remind someone.

They knew they weren’t going home, he’d already made the separation between then and now, and he wanted to move on with life.

Regulations were regulations, though, until they were released.

Richard Dalton had an odd relationship with Spencer. They’d never agree on the existence of God, Christ and all it entailed, but he did find their discussions productive. He was beginning to accept there was no way he’d ever bring the man to Christ, but he prayed for him anyway. The arguments also caused him to reassess his relationship with God, and that was a good thing.

Rather than hunting, he was assigned to “Help Sergeant Spencer.” He ate cold sidemeat and sought the man out. He was over by the stream.

“So what are we doing today, Sergeant?”

“I think we’re going to cook some iron today. Bring gloves and eyepro.”

“Really?”

It had been a snide joke for so long. Were they really going to do it?

Spencer held up a hide bucket full of cracked red rock. “This ugly red ochre is iron ore. It’s a pretty good grade, too. And it comes premixed with limestone.”

“That’s good?”

“That’ll work as a flux.”

“Okay, so what’s next?”

“We’re doing this the crude way for now, as proof of concept. We’re going to dig a hole, layer in the charge, fill the hole, light it and crank. We’re going to need three people for that.”

“Okay, where do we dig?” It wasn’t that he liked digging, per se, but it was good exercise and let him meditate.

In an hour, they had a steep cut into the bank of the creek.

The order for gloves and eyepro wasn’t really necessary. They always had them with them. These were getting scratched, though, and he’d have to use his spare pair soon. Maybe they could devise some fine polish to restore them with?

“I wish we could do this farther up,” he said. “It still smells like latrine.” They were about twenty feet upstream of the outhouse.

“Yeah, tell me about it. Okay, flatten out the bottom and fill it with large stones, three inches or so, for about a foot.”

“Got it.”

Spencer explained as he went. “Bone pipe, which the Urushu suggested instead of trying to do pottery. I wrapped it in clay anyway, in case it helps. Then we’re going to layer charcoal and ore in about four-inch layers all the way to the top. As it slumps down, we’ll add more up top. We fill in packed dirt around it as we go.”

“Okay.”

In another hour, they had a tall tube of the charge, with the pipe and bellows in place, more materials at hand, and both shovels.

“Grab a good coal from the fire.”

He ran up with a shovel, scooped a chunk from Barker’s cooking fire, and carried it out and around, watching the heat waves roll off it even in the bright sun.

“Okay, ladle it in there above the bone . . . and now pack dirt on it.” He did so.

Spencer started pumping the bellows, slowly and evenly.

In five minutes, smoke and haze rose from the top of the chimney.

“I think you have it.”

“Yeah, well get Oglesby, we’ll be swapping off every fifteen minutes or so.”

He spent the day pumping and zoning. He took over, squeezing the bellows rhythmically, feeling his arms burn, mesmerized by the movement and the smoke. He prayed for success once, then twice, then realized that was silly.

Oglesby took over, and was surprisingly strong. He looked skinny, but had lots of wiry muscle.