Time Quintet 04-Many Waters (2 page)

Sandy, too, stripped off his sweater. “We got what we asked for, didn’t we? Heat. Low humidity. Sparse population.”

Dennys looked around, squinting against the glare.

“Sparse wasn’t meant to mean nobody.”

Sandy unbuttoned his plaid flannel shirt. “I thought we asked for a beach.”

“Not on Dad’s gizmo we didn’t. Just sparse population.

Do you suppose we’ve blown ourselves onto a dead planet?  One where the sun is going into its red-giant phase before it blows up?”

Despite the intense heat. Sandy shivered, glanced at the sun, then quickly away. “I think the sun in its red-giant phase would be bigger. This sun doesn’t look any larger than our own sun in movies set in deserts.”

“Do you suppose it is our own sun?” Dennys asked hopefully.

Sandy shrugged. “We could be anywhere. Anywhere in the universe. If we were going to play with that doggone keyboard, we should have been more specific. I wish we’d just settled for Baki or Fiji, beautiful people or no.”

 “I’d just as soon see a beautiful person. Right now. I wish we hadn’t done whatever it is we’ve done.” Dennys pulled off his cotton turtleneck, stripping down to his white briefs and tank top.

Sandy stood on one leg to start pulling off his warmly lined pants, glanced again at the fierce sun, then quickly closed his eyes. “They’ll miss us when they get back from the dentist.”

“But they won’t know where to look. Mother has more sense than we have. She’d never mess around with anything of Dad’s unless he was right there.”

“Mother’s not interested in astrophysics. She’s into virtual particles and things tike that.”

“She’ll still miss us.”

 “Dad’ll be home tomorrow,” Sandy said hopefully. He was now stripped to his underclothes.

Dennys picked up his things and made a tidy bundle.  “Unless we find some shade, we’re going to have to put our clothes back on in half an hour, or at least some of them, or we’ll get a vicious sunburn.”

“Shade.” Sandy groaned, and scanned the horizon. “Den!  Do I see a palm tree?”

Dennys held his hand to shade his eyes. “Where?”

“There. All the way over there.”

“Yes. No. Yes.”

“Let’s head toward it.”

“Good. At least it’s something to do.” Dennys trudged off. “If it’s the same time of day it was when we left home—“

“It was winter at home.” Sandy’s eyes were almost closed against the glare. “The sun was already setting.”

Dennys pointed to their shadows, as long and skinny as they were. “The sun’s slightly behind us ... We might be heading east, if it’s our own kind of sun.”

Sandy asked, “Are you scared? I am. We’ve really got ourselves into a mess.”

Dennys made no reply. They trudged along. They had left on their shoes and socks, and Dennys suggested, “It might be easier walking barefooted.”

Sandy bent down and touched the sand with the palm of his hand, then shook his head. “Feel it. It would burn our feet.”

“Do you still see that palm tree?”

“I think so.”

They moved across the sand in silence. After a few minutes it seemed firmer under their feet, and they saw that there was rock under the sand.

“That’s better,” Sandy said.

“Hey!”

The ground seemed to shudder under their feet. Dennys flailed his arms to try to keep his balance, but was flung to the ground. “Is this an earthquake or something?”

Sandy, too, was thrown down. Around them they could hear a noisy grating of rock, and a deep, thunderous roaring beneath them. Then there was silence, abrupt and complete. The rock steadied under them. The earthquake, or whatever it was, had lasted less than a minute, but it had been of sufficient force to push up a large section of rock, making a small cliff about six feet high. It was striated and raw-looking, but it provided a shadow that stretched across the sand.

Both boys climbed to their feet and headed into the welcome shade. Sandy touched the sheared-off rock, and it felt cool. “Maybe we could sit here for a minute . . .”

The sun was still fiercely hot but the slab of rock they sat on was cool. The relief of the shade was so great that for a few minutes they sat in silence. Their bodies were slippery with sweat; it trickled into their eyes. They sat without moving, trying to take every advantage of the shade.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but whatever it is, I’m not likely to be surprised,” Sandy said at last. “Are you sure it was Dad’s experiment we weren’t supposed to interrupt? Couldn’t it have been Mother’s?”

“Mother’s doing something with sub-atomic particles again,” Dennys said. “Last night at dinner, she spent most of the time talking about virtual particles.”

“It sounded crazy to me,” Sandy said. “Particles which have a tendency to life.”

“That’s right.” Dennys nodded- “Virtual particles. Al-most-particles. What you said. Particles which tend to be.”

Sandy shook his head. “Most of Mother’s sub-atomic experiments are so, oh, so sort of infinitesimal, it hasn’t mattered if we’ve come into the lab.”

“But maybe if she’s looking for a virtual particle—“ Dennys sounded hopeful.

“No. It sounds to me more like something of Dad’s. It was just sort of wishful thinking when I asked if it could be something of Mother’s. Why didn’t we see that notice on the door?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“And I wish our parents did ordinary things,” Sandy complained. “If Dad was a plumber or an electrician, and if Mother was somebody’s secretary, it would be a lot easier for us.”

“And we wouldn’t have to be such great athletes and good guys at school,” Dennys agreed. “And—“ He broke off as the earth started to tremble again. It was a brief tremor, with no heaving of stones, but both boys sprang to their feet-

“Hey!” Sandy jumped, almost knocking Dennys over.

From behind the rock cliff came a very small person, perhaps four feet tall. Not a child. He was firmly muscled, darkly tanned, and there was a down of hair across his upper lip and on his chin. He wore a loincloth, with a small pouch at the waist. As he saw them. he reached for the pouch in a swift, alarmed gesture.

“Hey, wait.” Sandy held up his open hands, palm forward.

Dennys repeated the gesture. “We won’t hurt you.”

“Who are you?” Sandy asked.

“Where are we?” Dennys added.

The small man looked at them in mingled curiosity and fear. “Giants!” he cried. He had a man’s voice, a young man’s voice, deeper than Sandy’s or Dennys’s.

Sandy shook his head. “We’re not giants.”

“We’re boys,” Dennys augmented. “Who are you?”

The young man touched himself lightly on the forehead. “Japheth.”

“That’s your name?” Sandy asked.

He touched his forehead again. “Japheth.”

Perhaps this was the custom of the country, wherever in the universe it was. Sandy touched his own forehead.  “Alexander. Sandy.”

Dennys made the same gesture. “Dennys.”

“Giants,” the young man stated.

“No.” Sandy corrected. “Boys.”

The young man rubbed his head where a purplish egg was forming. “Stone hit me. Must be seeing double.”

“Japheth?” Sandy asked.

The young man nodded. “Are you two? Or one?” He rubbed his eyes perplexedly.

“Two,” Sandy said. “We’re twins. I’m Sandy.  He’s Dennys.”

“Twins?” Japheth asked, his fingers once more reaching for the pouch at his side which appeared to be filled with tiny arrows, about two inches long.

Dennys opened his hands wide. “Twins are when”—he had started to give a scientific explanation, stopped him-self—“when a mother has a litter of two babies instead of one.” His voice was soothing.

“You’re animals, then?”

Sandy shook his head. “We’re boys.” He was ready to ask “What are you?” when he noticed a tiny bow near the pouch of arrows.

“No. No.” The young man looked at them doubtfully.  “Only giants are as tall as you. And the seraphim and nephilim. But you have no wings.”

What was this about wings? Dennys asked, “Please, J—Jay—where are we? Where is this place?”

“The desert, about an hour from my oasis. I came out, dowsing for water.” He bent down and picked up a wand of pliable wood. “Gopher wood is the best for dowsing, and I had my grandfather’s—“ He stopped in mid-sentence.

“Higgaion! Hig! Where are you?” he called, as the twins might have called for their dog at home. “Hig!” He looked, wide-eyed, at the twins. “If anything has happened to him, my grandfather will—there are so few of them left—“ He called again urgently, “Higgaion!”

From behind the outcropping of rock came something grey and sinuous which the twins at first thought was a snake. But it was followed by a head with small, bright, black eyes, and great fans of ears, and a chunky body covered with shaggy grey hair, and a thin little rope of a tail.

“Higgaion!” The young man was joyful. “Why didn’t you come when I called you?”

With its supple trunk, the little animal, the size of a small dog or a large cat, indicated the twins.

The young man patted its head. He was so small that he did not have to bend down. “Thank El you’re all right.” He gestured toward the twins. “They seem friendly. They say they aren’t giants, and while they are as tall as seraphim or nephilim, they don’t seem to be of their kind.”

Cautiously, the little animal approached Sandy, who dropped to one knee, holding out his hand for the creature to sniff. Then, tentatively, he began to scratch the hairy chest, as he would have scratched their dog at home. When the little animal relaxed under his touch, he asked Japheth, “What’s seraphim?”

“And nephilim,” Dennys added. If they could find out what these people were who were as tall as they, it might give them some kind of a clue as to where they had landed.

“Oh, very tall,” Japheth said. “Like you, but different.  Great wings. Much long hair. And their bodies—like you, not hairy. The seraphim are golden and the nephilim are white, whiter than sand. Your skin—it is different. Pale, and smooth, and as though you never saw sun.”

“At home, it’s still winter,” Sandy explained. “We get very tan in the summer when we work outdoors.”

“Your little animal,” Dennys questioned, “looks sort of like an elephant, but what is it?”

“It’s a mammoth.” Japheth slapped the creature affectionately.

Sandy withdrew his hand from petting Higgaion. “But mammoths are supposed to be huge!”

Dennys saw in his mind’s eye a picture of a mammoth in a nature book at home, very like Japheth’s animal.  Japheth himself was a miniature version of a strong and handsome young man, not a great deal older than themselves, perhaps as old as their sister’s friend Calvin, who was in graduate school. Perhaps in this place, wherever it was, everything was in miniature.

“There aren’t many mammoths left,” Japheth explained. “I’m a good dowser, but mammoths are very fine for scenting water, and Higgaion is the best of all.” He patted the little animal’s head. “So I borrowed him from Grandfather Lamech, and together we found a good source of water, but I’m afraid it’s too far from the oasis to be much use.”

“Thank you for explaining,” Sandy said, then turned to Dennys. “Do you think we’re dreaming?”

“No. We came home from hockey practice. We made sandwiches. We went into the lab to find the Dutch cocoa.  We messed around with Dad’s experiment-in-progress. We were stupid beyond belief. But it isn’t a dream.”

 “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Japheth said. “I was beginning to wonder, myself. I thought I might be dreaming, because of the stone hitting my head in the earthquake.”

“It was an earthquake?” Sandy asked.

Japheth nodded. “They come quite often. The seraphim tell us that things aren’t settled yet.”

“So maybe this is a young planet.” Dennys sounded hopeful.

Japheth asked, “Where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“Take me to your leader,” Sandy murmured.

Dennys nudged him. “Shut up.”

Sandy said, “We’re from planet Earth, late twentieth century. We got here by accident, and we don’t know where we’re going.”

“We’d like to go home,” Dennys added, “but we don’t know how.”

“Where is home?” Japheth asked.

Sandy sighed. “A long way away, I’m afraid.”

Japheth looked at them “You are flushed. And wet.”

He himself did not seem to fee! the intense heat.

Dennys said, “We’re perspiring. Profusely. I’m afraid we’ll get sunstroke if we don’t find shade soon.”

Japheth nodded. “Grandfather Lamech’s tent is closest.  My wife and I”—he flushed with pleasure as he said my wife—“live halfway across the oasis, by my father’s tent.  And I have to return Higgaion to Grandfather, anyhow.

And he’s very hospitable. I’ll take you to him, if you like.”

“Thank you,” Sandy said.

“We’d like to come with you,” Dennys added.

 “At this point, we don’t have much choice,” Sandy murmured.’

Dennys nudged him, then took his turtleneck from the bundle of clothes and pulled it back on, his head emerging from the rolled cotton neck, which had mussed up his light brown hair so that a tuft stuck out like a parakeet’s.  “We’d better cover ourselves. I think I’m sunburned al-ready.”

“Let’s go, then,” Japheth said. “I’d like to be home before dark.”

 “Hey—“ Sandy said suddenly. “At least we speak the same language. Everything’s been so wild and weird I hadn’t realized it till—“

Japheth looked at him in a puzzled manner. “You sound very strange to me. But I can understand you, if I listen with my under-hearing. You talk a little like the seraphim and the nephilim. You can understand me?”

The twins looked at each other. Sandy said, “I hadn’t really thought about it till now.  If I think about it, you do sound, well, different, but I can understand you. Right, Den?”

“Right,” Dennys agreed. “Except it was easier when we weren’t thinking about it.”

“Come on,” Japheth urged. “Let’s go.” He looked at Sandy. “You’d better cover yourself, too.”

Sandy followed Dennys’s example and pulled on his turtleneck.

Dennys unrolled his flannel shirt and draped it over his head. “Sort of like a burnoose to keep us from getting sunstroke.”

“Good idea.” Sandy did the same.