Return of the Ancients (7 page)

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Harper said. ‘We’re going in – as for what happens then, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

Takada sucked in a deep breath, and visibly calmed himself. ‘We’re scientists; we’ll do what we’re supposed to – observe.’

‘Observe,’ Harper repeated, and then thought gloomily,
Perhaps observe the end of the world.

There was rain on his face, and he opened his mouth to let some of the drops fall onto his tongue. Memories floated back slowly: he remembered walking towards the shining object in the distance, and then seeing the mirage – a forest of tall trees, almost like it was fringing some unseen border.

He must have dozed again, for when he finally opened his eyes the rain had long stopped, and his clothes were dry. Arn groaned as he sat up, blinking to try to clear his vision.

The Garden of Eden
, he thought. Every muscle ached, and he still felt dehydrated, but he couldn’t help smiling. He had first woken in some dank cave of horrors deep below the earth, had crossed a sterile desert, and now he found himself on a green hillside dotted with trees that towered above him.

Where am I?
he wondered. It looked a little bit like California . . . Maybe the Sequoia Forest. He looked up at the sky – it was a darkish blue tending to purple in the west as the sun was about to set. Above him, a tree that could have been a black oak spread its huge limbs in an enormous umbrella-shaped canopy.

A giant nut, like an acorn the size of a football, dangled heavily over his head. He saw that there were many more of them on most of the lower branches. As he examined them, the closest one wiggled.

Arn stood slowly, shaking off a moment of dizziness, and reached out to touch it. Just as his fingers brushed against the glossy brown casing, the head of a worm burst from somewhere underneath and lashed out at his hand. The finger-thick grub had a ring of fangs like daggers, and only Arn’s fear gave him the speed to avoid it. Missing his hand by inches, it bit deeply, digging furrows along the side of its own shell. He grimaced in disgust and backed away, wiping his hand and looking over his shoulder to examine his surroundings.

He breathed deeply, calming himself. The air tasted strange . . . Everything was slightly strange. He stood quietly; except for the hum of hidden insects, there was no sound. The hill he stood upon gave him a view over a shallow valley that ended in a small stream ringed by thick forests. Many of the trees were so thick and tall they resembled mighty redwoods, except their canopies spread more like oaks.

Arn turned slowly in a circle. Through the trees to the east he could make out the dry sands he had just trekked across. He shook his head in amazement at how far he had managed to walk into the forest without even realising it . . .
Without even being fully awake
, he thought. To the north, the land became more raised, and in the very far distance he could see snow-capped mountains pushing up like ragged purple teeth against the darkening sky.

Arn sucked in another breath.
No pollution
, he thought . . .
and no car exhausts, factory smells, asphalt warming in the afternoon sun, perfumes, cooking odours . . . nothing.
Now he knew:
that
was what he had found strange – the air was pure.

He felt his face, his chest, and looked down at his feet and legs – dusty sneakers, jeans ripped at the knees; in his pockets, some gum, a multi-tool pocketknife, wallet and antiseptic gel his mother made him take on the field trip –
door handles were smorgasbords for germs
, she always said to him. And lastly, a blood red diamond worth about ten million dollars. He felt guilty just handling it.

Everything was exactly where it had been when he left for the science trip that morning . . . when he had come out of the room Barkin had locked him in . . . when he had found himself left behind and then tried to get someone’s attention on the camera. He frowned, trying to remember what happened next. He couldn’t. Everything had got a little crazy and mixed up after that.

The sky had now turned a deeper purple; it was going to be night soon, and Arn didn’t fancy sleeping out – if the cold didn’t kill him, his parents sure would.
How did Barkin get him out here? Did he somehow fall off the bus on the way back home?
He knew that Fermilab was built on about ten square miles of land, and that they had preserved much of the grounds to be like a wilderness to demonstrate their commitment to both science and the environment. Perhaps he had been knocked out and left in some remote corner of the estate.

But the worm thing? Maybe Fermilab was giving off radiation and mutating some of the forest creatures.

He dismissed the idea. He’d read that the reforested land around the facility was now providing some of the best birdwatching in the state.
And no one had taken photographs of any two-headed birds . . . or vampire worms inside acorns
, he thought.

Arn looked up at the seed casing, just in time to see that the pod had worked its way along the branch towards him. It had also extended its long muscular body down from the shell by about a foot, fangs extended and rows of small hooked legs opened wide, poised to seize hold of his head.

Yecch
. He ducked and rolled out of the way. Looking back, he could see that many of the other nuts in the tree had now managed to inch their way across the lower limbs, and had moved to hang from the limb that he had been standing underneath.
Not fruit at all
, he guessed –
more some sort of larvae casing for a carnivorous worm
.

He ran further out into the open, and stopped.
Where was he going
? He didn’t even know where he was.
At least away from that tree
, he thought, moving further into the clearing. He was fortunate he had woken before those things had managed to reach him. He shuddered at the thought.

Arn sat down heavily. Twilight was now upon him and he tried to come up with a plan. Find shelter? Continue on . . . but to where? While he contemplated his next action, a number of small animals entered the edge of the clearing, obviously heading to the stream for an evening’s drink. At first Arn thought they were large hares with their long ears and twitching noses, but as they cleared some of the longer grasses he saw that their legs didn’t end in small pads like a normal rabbit, but were longer and ended in hooves.

Some small sound in the forest caused them to start, and in unison their ears flattened back against their heads and they bounded forward – straight towards him.

A moment later, they caught sight of him and most swerved away, but two had to leap completely over his head. He frowned, then smiled – weird, really weird.
What would Edward make of
these strange things?
he wondered.
Rabbilopes,
he thought, and smiled again.

Thinking of his friend made him homesick. It also caused him to recall one of the last questions he remembered Edward asking Harper in the laboratory. Something about wormholes and space-time distortions.

Arn watched as a few of the strange rabbilope creatures worked up the courage to re-enter the clearing near the stream. Edward had been pestering Harper about the possibility of creating a doorway that could send you somewhere else . . . or some-when else. Arn remembered laughing at the time. But now?

Is that what happened? I’m either somewhere, or some-when else?
His stomach rumbled and he looked again in the direction of the drinking rabbilopes.
Nah, too soon to go Robinson Crusoe just yet.

Watching the drinking animals, two things jumped into his head from both his social studies and biology lessons – one: creatures came to drink in the evenings when they thought it was safe. So that meant there was also a time when it was unsafe – there were probably predators. And two: civilisations usually grew up along rivers – so if he followed the stream, he’d either find a city, or at least a coastline.

Arn stood, feeling slightly better now that he had mapped out a course of action. The sky had gone deep black purple, and just as he felt a creeping panic at the thought of wandering around in the dark, it suddenly began to lighten. Not to a sort of day brightness, but to more of a cool silver hue.

To the east, a gigantic moon was rising. It was so large, he could raise both arms wide apart and only just map out its edges. It hurt his eyes slightly to look at it, and he felt a small tingling buzz in the centre of his head.

Ignoring this, he studied the moon’s surface. Comfortingly, he could even see recognisable details on its silvery skin – it was
his
moon after all. He could see the craters, dry lakes and oceans, and he remembered their names from his astronomy classes – the Sea of Tranquillity, the Tycho and Copernicus Craters. He frowned and squinted; at the edge of the Sea of Rains, a dark smudge stained its silvery exterior. There were veins running out from the stain’s centre to smaller smudges. He shook his head, guessing at what it could be.
Impossible . . . A city?

The buzzing in his skull persisted. He opened his arms and stretched his back and shoulders. The moon’s bathing glow made him feel strange – a good feeling, powerful almost. Could the increased gravitational pull of the closer moon be affecting him? He flexed his arms. His fatigue had almost completely fallen away. It didn’t matter; all that was important was he knew he was on Earth, and that only left him to find out the some-when
else.

*****

Arn crossed the lower plains of the valley, and walked along the edge of the stream for many hours. Finally, when the huge moon was beginning to fall towards the horizon, he sat for a moment to rest.

The water burbled over rocks, and from time to time he saw flashes of silver being reflected back from the moonlight.
Fish
– his empty stomach growled loudly.

I can eat raw fish,
he thought,
but with no rod, no reel, no bait? No chance
. He continued watching the silvery flashes, listening to the water tumble over the rocks – it was almost hypnotising.

So tired
, he thought.
But I’m never going to be able to sleep in this weird place
.
I wonder if Beescomb is looking for me? I wonder where Becky and Edward think I’ve gone? I wonder if she misses me?
He watched the fish continue to dance and tumble in the crystal water. In another second, he was fast asleep.

*****

His face was warm.

Arn woke with a start. He sat bolt upright, getting his bearings. Warm sunlight glittered on the stream, and felt pleasant on his cheeks and shoulders. Now, in the full light of the morning, he could fully take in his surroundings. He had fallen asleep on the bank of the stream where it bent at a tumble of boulders. He was sheltered by this small wall of rock at the base of a hill. Knee-high plants with fleshy leaves and small red star-shaped flowers grew in bunches at the water’s edge.

Arn followed the flow of the stream with his eyes and saw that it actually disappeared in among the rocks at the side of the hill. He hoped that it reappeared on the other side of the hill, so he could continue to follow it.

While he sat musing, his stomach growled again and this time actually hurt a little. Small yellow butterflies danced around his face and he blew air at one that looked to be contemplating a quick landing on his nose.

‘Shouldn’t get too close to my mouth when I’m this hungry, little guy.’

While he continued to watch them, one alighted on his hand. He smiled, until he felt a sharp pain; he slapped at the butterfly, cursing, and flicked it into the water, where its small yellow body circled in a little eddy at the shoreline. He looked down at his hand and saw a puncture mark with a dot of blood welling up from it.

‘Jeez, does anything not bite, sting or peck in this weird land?’ He lifted his hand to his mouth to suck at the wound and ease the sting. There was a splash from the stream and he looked up in time to see a good-sized fish come in close to the shore to snatch the butterfly from the water’s surface. His stomach rumbled again, and he lowered his hand, wondering at the possibility.

Arn swatted another couple of the large yellow butterflies. From a large bush, he dragged down a branch about four feet in length, broke it off and stripped away the smaller branches. Taking out his pocketknife, he sharpened one end of his makeshift spear.

Once finished, he admired his handiwork. He lifted the spear, weighed it in his hands, and looked down along its length as though checking a pool cue. Satisfied, he returned to the rocks by the stream.

He had only been gone a few minutes, but on returning he saw his butterfly bait was gone, and some of the fish from the stream were waddling back towards the water, propped up on stiff forefins. One still held one of the butterflies between its rubbery lips.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

On hearing him, the fish started to move a little faster towards the water. Arn leapt, spear held high.

*****

Arn threw the remains of the fish onto the ground and went to wash his hands.

He caught sight of himself at the water’s edge. ‘Like fishy, bony pork, and very nice.’ He finished with a belch at his reflection.

The sun was climbing towards its zenith, and he decided to set off again – he’d climb the hill and then hopefully be able to pick up the stream when it reemerged on the other side. He felt better after his small meal, and now he knew that at least there was
some
food he could eat . . . and more importantly, catch.

He looked back at the remains of the fish. It was already covered in the yellow butterflies. He shook his head.
Carnivorous butterflies . . . What next – acid-spitting squirrels?
He laughed at the thought, and set off.