Mercury Shrugs (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Somewhere in North Africa; c. 5,000 B.C

Christine Temetri and Jacob Slater huddled behind a bush, watching from a distance as their village burned. There wasn’t much cover in this terrain, but so far the two of them seemed to have escaped notice. The same couldn’t be said for the other members of their adoptive tribe, who had been slaughtered or rounded up by the Detroit Pistons.

That wasn’t the belligerent tribe’s real name, of course. Its real name in the local language was some combination of lingual clicks, humming, and impossibly complicated hand gestures. Jacob and Christine and mastered a few basic words and phrases over the four months they had been among the Lakers, but amongst themselves they still used English exclusively—including coming up with their own names for the local tribes. There were six other tribes that the Lakers—their own tribe—had contact with, and it was hard enough to keep them straight without having to remember which one was a hum and three clicks and which one was two clicks, a hum and thumbs-up. Christine had suggested naming the tribes after schools of Western graphic art (the Pre-Raphaelites, the Impressionists, the Cubists, etc.), but even she couldn’t remember if the group to the southeast were Dadaists or Modernists, and Jacob’s scheme of matching tribes to NBA teams won out.

Most of the tribes—the Lakers, the Nets, the Bulls, the Celtics, the Heat and the Jazz—coexisted more or less peacefully in the region, but recently the Bulls and the Celtics had formed an alliance against the Pistons, who had been on an expansive tear. The chief of the Pistons, Isiah Thomas, had apparently gotten it into his head that it was his divine destiny to subjugate all the other tribes in the region. This sudden belligerence was so out of character for these people that the other tribes had failed to recognize the threat until the Nuggets and Trail Blazers, farther north, had already been wiped out. Even after that slaughter, the Bulls-Celtics alliance remained an informal agreement characterized not so much by any actual strategic cooperation as it was by the hope that the Pistons would pick on one of the non-allied tribes next. That hope proved unfounded.

The Lakers were in talks with the Heat and Jazz about what to do about the Piston threat, but these tribes were fiercely independent and exhaustively deliberate in their decision-making; nothing firm had been decided by the time the Pistons emerged en masse from the scrub and chased the Lakers from their huts. Most of the men had been killed; the women and children had been captured. The Pistons had set fire to the Lakers huts and returned to their own village, leaving only a handful of men behind to look for stragglers.

Christine and Jacob had escaped the carnage only because they had been assigned by the tribe to gather blackberries that morning. It was rare for the Lakers to send two members of the tribe off by themselves, but they made an exception for Christine and Jacob, who were hopeless at hunting, weaving baskets, and just about every other task the tribe needed done. Jacob was fairly certain it wasn’t even blackberry season; the two of them had been gone all morning and still hadn’t found any. They couldn’t help wondering when the Lakers’ charity was going to run out, but that was a moot question now.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Christine asked.

“For—
unck
—what?” asked Jacob. Jacob had a chronic verbal tic that had mostly subsided since their arrival in prehistoric Africa, but it tended to return in high stress situations.

“To go back to the village. Maybe we can scrounge enough food to make it to the Timberwolves.” The Timberwolves’ village was about forty miles to the south.

“I’m pretty sure the Timberwolves are cannibals,” said Jacob. “We would—
unck
—have better luck with the Heat.”

“The Heat are even farther,” said Christine. “We’ll never make it. There are lions down that way.”

“There are lions
everywhere
,” said Jacob. “That’s why I didn’t use NFL teams.”

“M’boutoo [click click]!” said a voice behind them, and they spun around to see a man with a spear watching them. He bore the tribal markings of the Pistons.

“Son of a bitch,” said Christine. Jacob nodded. For a moment, he considered running. These tribesmen were ridiculously fast, but this guy looked fairly old and gaunt by local standards, and Jacob thought he could outrun him. But that would leave Christine alone, and in any case, there was no place for him to go. Better to be killed quickly now than to be eaten by a lion. Or a Timberwolf.

“[Click click] Mootoo [click],” the man said, pointing his spear to their right. They got to their feet and began walking in the direction he indicated. After a few minutes, they encountered another Pistons tribesman. This one was younger and healthier looking, and the sheer surface area of his tattoos seemed to suggest some importance. He and the man who had taken them captive engaged in a long exchange, punctuated by silences in which they would stare curiously at their two captives. Christine and Jacob were used to this; they were the lightest-skinned people any of these tribesmen had ever seen. Even Jacob, who was considered “African American” in twenty-first century America, was an anomaly with his coffee-and-cream complexion. In fact, it was Jacob who appeared to be of most interest to these two men—it seemed to Jacob that they were having trouble categorizing him. Christine was obviously
different
, but what was Jacob? And how would their determination affect his fate? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to that.

After some time the two men seemed to come to a decision, and the old man again click/hummed an order at them and pointed in the direction they had been traveling. Christine and Jacob started walking, with the two men following close behind, their spears at the ready.

Coming over a small ridge, they found themselves looking at a group of several dozen people standing huddled together, guarded by half a dozen men with spears. Christine and Jacob were prodded toward the group, whom they recognized as members of their adoptive tribe, the Lakers. Jacob realized with some discomfort that he was the only man among them. The warriors of their tribe had all been killed—even poor old James Worthy. Why hadn’t they killed Jacob? Was it merely because they didn’t think he was a threat?

After a few more stragglers had been added to the group, someone click/hummed another order, and the group began shuffling to the north. Christine and Jacob went with them.

They spent the next five hours walking across the desert with the other captives. It was hot, but not unbearably so, which was good because the attackers had apparently only brought a minimal amount of water with them. Once an hour or so, they would stop and pass around a skin of water, each of them getting a single swallow. Occasionally one of the women would collapse. The first time this happened, several of the others went to her aid but were mercilessly attacked by the captors. One young woman was impaled with a spear and left to die alongside the woman she had been trying to help. The next time someone fell, she was left to die on her own. The Pistons didn’t seem concerned that the women might be faking; everybody knew that being left out here alone was a death sentence.

Eventually they reached the Pistons’ village, which could easily have been mistaken for the Lakers’ village except for one major difference: in the center of this village was a roughly circular stone altar, about three feet tall and ten feet in diameter. The surface of the altar was stained with blood.

The captives all around Christine and Jacob were variously seized and prodded, disappearing to other areas of the village, until only Christine and Jacob remained, encircled by a ring of men with spears. They stared uneasily at the altar.

“I don’t suppose we’ve been—
unck
—selected to be guests of honor at some sort of welcoming ceremony,” said Jacob.

“That’s one way to phrase it,” said Christine.

To their left, a pair of men wearing elaborate headdresses exited a large hut. They walked to the altar and stood, one on either side, their spears planted on the ground in front of them.

Then a third man emerged from the hut. He was older and heavier than the other two, and wore an even more elaborate getup. Jacob could only assume this was the chief of the Pistons tribe, the man he knew as Isiah Thomas. He was a little disappointing, truth be told. Even the actual Isiah Thomas was more intimidating than this guy. But then the actual Isiah Thomas didn’t have a flaming sword. This guy did.

“Shit,” said Christine.

“Well, now we know what happened to Nisroc’s sword,” said Jacob. Nisroc was the angel who had chased them out of Eden II four months earlier. He was supposed to be guarding the entrance to the garden with a flaming sword, but he claimed to have lost it on the way over. The last Christine and Jacob knew, he was still scouring the plains looking for it. Apparently Chief Isiah Thomas had found it. He stopped in front of the altar and whirled the sword in front of him in an obviously practiced manner.

“I wonder if this explains the Pistons’ sudden belligerence,” said Christine.

“What do you mean?” asked Jacob.

“These tribes were so peaceful before. Maybe the sword inspired them to violence, like—”

“Like the monolith in
2001
,” said Jacob.

“I was going to say the Coke bottle in
The Gods Must Be Crazy
.”

Jacob shook his head, still watching the chief twirl the sword. “The noble savage is a myth,” he said. “These people were peaceful because their environment checks their population growth, making it largely unnecessary to quarrel over resources. Also, they don’t have the technology to administer a political unit larger than a village. No roads, no written language…”

“So how do you explain this sudden turn toward violence?”

“Aberration,” said Jacob. “Possibly precipitated by the acquisition of the sword.”

“That’s no answer,” said Christine. “Did the sword turn them evil or not?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” said Jacob. “It’s not The One Ring.”

“The Evil Thing,” Christine corrected.

“Whatever,” said Jacob. “The point is, you’re regressing into animism, the belief that inanimate objects have spiritual properties. Besides, violence is not in itself necessarily—”

The chief had ceased his show and was now pointing the fiery sword directly at Christine. He click/hummed an order and one of the spearmen stepped toward Christine.

“You were saying?” she said.

The man grabbed Christine by the arm and dragged her toward the altar. Jacob protested, but the other spearman growled at him and pointed his spear. All around him were other men, also with spears at the ready. There was going to be no escape this time.

Christine tried to resist, but it was no use. She was already weak from hunger and thirst, and there was nowhere to go even if she could break free. The man dragged her forward and threw her down on the altar. She raised her hands as she fell, catching herself as she hit the hard stone. She could smell the blood of those who had died there before.

The chief was clicking and humming something fierce behind her, and she rolled onto her back to face him. He was walking toward her, swinging the fiery blade over his head. As Christine tried to scurry away, two men approached, one on either side of the chief. Each man grabbed one of her ankles while the two more ornately festooned men took hold of her wrists. The four of them pulled her flat on the stone surface while Jacob watched helplessly, a man barring his way with a spear. He’d never felt more useless in his life. He could only hope that the chief killed him as soon as he was done with Christine; Jacob didn’t think he could live with himself after failing to protect Christine from these psychopaths.

The chief stood next to the altar, uttering some sort of prayer to a god or gods that would die out thousands of years before Jacob was even born. When the chief finished, he raised the fiery sword over his head. Christine clamped her eyes shut and turned her head away.

He brought the sword down in a decisive arc toward her neck.

Jacob closed his eyes as well, unable to watch. He wasn’t sure what cue he was waiting for; some kind of bloodthirsty hum/click of exultation, he supposed. But it didn’t come. All he heard was the equivalent of confused muttering. He opened his eyes to see the chief, sword outstretched mere inches from Christine’s neck. A look of frustration had overcome him; he seemed to be trying to drive the sword downward, but without success. Finally he pulled the sword back over his head and made a second attempt, swinging once again at Christine’s neck. Again Jacob grimaced and turned away. But this time, Jacob kept his eyes open, and he saw the blade halt three inches from Christine’s neck, just as it had before. It was as if an invisible barrier was protecting her. After a few seconds, Christine opened one eye and then the other, staring at the blade. The men around her clicked and hummed in confusion and fear.

Jacob heard someone speaking behind him—it sounded like the local language, but a dialect he hadn’t heard before, as if the speaker was not a native. At the man’s words, the men released Christine. The chief turned toward them, clicking angrily, but whoever the newcomer was, the men seemed more frightened of him than they were of the chief. Turning to see their mysterious stranger, Jacob literally didn’t believe his eyes.