CHAPTER
FIVE
They reached the rest of the party while the evening sun was still yellow and shadows were long. Under Lowanna’s direction, Gunther, Abdullah, and Kareem had woven together seven grass baskets, each with a short, thick, grass rope attached at two points to the rim, like a handle.
“The more I see this place,” Marty said, “the more convinced I am that it’s Jebel Mudawwar. But . . .”
Should he really betray his doubts to the group? But they couldn’t reach anything like a good decision unless they had good data. Which meant all the data.
“But there’s way too much grass,” Lowanna said. “This should be desert. Like the dry, sandy desert of the northern edge of the Sahara. We should see sagebrush and saltbush and succulent euphorbia, barely dotted across the landscape. Not this sea of grass. This looks like, I don’t know, some wild corner of Kansas.”
“Also, you said there would be ruins in the mouth of the canyon,” François said. “Big stone walls. Twenty-five feet tall.”
“So we’re not in Morocco,” Surjan said. “And not in Egypt.”
“A dream,” Abdullah said. “By God, it is a dream.”
Marty frowned, not sure what to believe anymore. This had already gone on too long, and the dry sweat now prickling his back between his shoulder blades felt much too real.
“We have water,” François said. “The next orders of business are shelter and food.”
“We can test your hypothesis,” Gunther said, “can’t we? We can look at the stars in a few hours, and tell our location from the stars.”
“We’ll be able to tell latitude,” Lowanna said, “but not longitude. I’m a little surprised you’d even think that.”
Gunther grimaced and shrugged. “I was just hoping, I guess. I’m a city boy, but I know some of you know your way around the backcountry. I thought maybe you’d know something I didn’t.”
Marty searched his memory. “Jebel Mudawwar is about thirty degrees north latitude. If we’re at some other latitude, I’m wrong, but if we’re at thirty, then we have a working hypothesis as to where we are.”
“In this cursed dream,” Kareem muttered. Abdullah elbowed him into silence.
“But in your hypothesis,” Gunther said, thinking out loud, “Morocco has had several really wet years and we just didn’t know about it, so the vegetation is different from what we expect. And also, your memory is wrong about the ruins.”
“And if this is Morocco,” Surjan said, “we should go north. Or maybe west. We get to the sea, and to a more forgiving, Mediterranean climate.”
“This climate looks plenty forgiving,” Lowanna muttered.
Surjan frowned.
“If this is the place I think it is, we should go east,” Marty said.
Gunther snorted. “It’s true, Cairo is also about thirty degrees north, so if this is Morocco, we can walk straight east to Cairo. But that would be some two thousand miles, wouldn’t it?”
Marty thought about his vision, then pushed it from his mind.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “Yes, we could walk to Egypt, but that wasn’t what I meant. If this is the Jebel Mudawwar, then there’s a town about ten miles east of here. On a river. The river’s intermittent, it’s sometimes just a dry watercourse, but right now I imagine, given the grass we’re seeing, that the flow is pretty good.”
“You know a lot about the geography of Morocco,” Surjan said.
Marty chuckled. “I guess so. I was here years ago for a dig at Sijilmassa. That’s a medieval ruin, near Rissani—they’re both near an oasis on the River Ziz. We came out here on motorbikes a few times, to hike.” He looked around. “We had to bring our own water. This place was bone dry.”
“How about pot?” François asked. “Did you bring your own marijuana?”
Marty smiled. “I was young and foolish. I can neither confirm nor deny.”
“Ten miles is not a long hike, once the sun goes down,” François said. “We go east.”
“Let’s get a look at the stars first,” Gunther said, looking to Lowanna and nodding. “If we discover we’re not at thirty north, we’ll have to figure out another plan.”
“So in the meantime,” François said, “food.”
“There are the radishes,” Lowanna pointed out.
“I am grateful for the radish water,” François said, “however much it tastes like peppered chalk. But I saw antelope tracks back there, and I think we should kill an antelope.”
“With what?” Lowanna frowned. “Are you going to beat it to death with a basket full of radishes?”
Surjan stood, tucking his ankh into his belt. “Agreed, we need food. I’ll go get an antelope.”
Marty raised his eyebrows at the Sikh’s casual confidence. “With your ankh?”
“I’d prefer a gun or a bow,” Surjan said. “Or a spear. Since I don’t have any of those, I’ll use my knife.”
“And if that fails, his bare hands.” Gunther smiled. Surjan frowned at him, and the German looked away.
“The sharpened ankh should make an effective weapon,” Surjan added to Marty. “You might consider sharpening your own.”
“I should come,” Marty suggested.
“You’ll want to stay back some distance,” Surjan said, “so you don’t frighten the game.”
“I can be quiet,” Marty said.
Surjan shrugged. “Stay near me, so you’re downwind of our quarry.”
Marty followed Surjan west out of the mouth of the canyon, trailing slowly behind. As they went, Surjan paid more and more attention to the ground at his feet, stooping to brush aside the grass so he could see the soil, or to pluck and examine the grass itself, and then he froze. Marty froze, too, and followed where the Sikh was looking; a herd of white ungulates with long and twisted horns grazed in the distance.
Addax. White antelope. Native to the Sahara, Marty thought he recalled. Although if this was the Sahara, it wasn’t the Sahara as he remembered it.
Surjan motioned with his hands for Marty to get down, and Marty crouched. He looked around, still astonished and frustrated not to see the fortifications he remembered so well. He didn’t want to admit it to François, but he had smoked a joint, leaning against a twenty-five-foot-tall stone wall and watching the sunset with three other grad students.
Watching the sunset out over these plains, he was sure of it.
He returned his attention to the addax herd, and could no longer see Surjan. Was he creeping forward on hands and knees, or lying on his belly with his knife in his teeth? The wind rippling the grass was blowing toward Marty, so the antelope shouldn’t be able to smell him. If Surjan was moving more or less in a straight line toward the animals, they shouldn’t be able to smell him, either.
The sky was a deep purple, sunset was upon them.
If this was a dream, it was unlike any dream Marty had ever had. But what else could it be? A hallucination? A simulation of some other kind? And was the rest of the group really here and experiencing it with him, or was he merely imagining them?
Were they all sitting somewhere in a room, eyes closed, while a hypnotist told them they were seeing tall green grass covering the Sahara Desert?
Something, the image of the Sikh sneaking up on the game animals through the tall grass or the memory of the pot or the ridiculousness of not knowing for certain where he was, struck Marty as improbable and incongruous, and he laughed out loud.
One of the antelope raised its head to look in Marty’s direction. At that moment, Surjan sprang up from the grass, knife in his hand, and seized the beast around the neck. The addax leaped forward, but Surjan kept his grip. As the antelope tried to buck and throw him off, Surjan wrapped his other arm around the animal and slit its throat in one smooth motion. A bloody crease opened, vivid even in the dim light against the white hide.
The herd burst into motion, bounding away across the prairie.
Surjan fell to the grass. The antelope slashed at him once with its twisted horns, and then Surjan’s prey ran with the other antelope. But Surjan stood, and as Marty rushed forward to join him, he watched the wounded antelope slow to a canter, and then a walk, and finally collapse to the earth, bleeding out. Surjan jogged to the animal, and then froze.
He stood, staring down at the antelope’s body and at his own hands.
Marty stopped jogging. What was Surjan seeing? The sun had hit the horizon and long rays bounded over the prairie, making silhouettes of the Sikh and his dead prey both. Marty moved forward slowly.
Surjan was murmuring something as Marty caught up to him over the antelope’s body.
“I’m chuffed you’re here, Marty. Now I know I’m safe from snakes.” His arm was bleeding.
“I didn’t save you from the antelope,” Marty acknowledged. “But at least I can tend the wound.”
Surjan nodded. Marty tore half his white cotton undershirt into strips and wrapped the long gash in Surjan’s forearm. The cotton wasn’t sterile, but at least it would be absorbent.
“Did you see . . . something?” Marty asked as he worked. “After killing the addax?”
Surjan hesitated. “Like what?”
“Just as . . . I don’t know, it looked as if you were staring at something.”
Surjan grunted. He stooped to hoist the creature up and sling it across his broad shoulders. Then he turned and jogged back to join the others.
Marty was impressed at Surjan’s stamina, but he was also impressed with his own. He felt much less fatigued than he thought he should, for all the climbing and walking and even running he’d done this day. Was this evidence that the entire experience was, after all, a dream?
Two of the baskets were full of roots when they rejoined the others. Abdullah and Kareem were tending a small fire.
Surjan laid the antelope carcass down. François whistled.
“I see you did use the knife, though,” Gunther said. “Hardly sporting.”
“It isn’t sport,” Surjan rumbled. “I’m about to skin and butcher the carcass, and do you know what? That isn’t sport, either. I want to eat.”
Lowanna stood and walked away from the light of the fire into the gathering gloom. Marty followed her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I feel suddenly nauseated.” She bit her lip and stared westward as the first stars began to appear.
“I feel totally disoriented myself,” Marty said. “And sort of embarrassed, that I’m so sure that this is Jebel Mudawwar, even though . . . even though that doesn’t seem to be right. And confused. But I’m pretty sure this isn’t a dream.”
“It isn’t a dream.” Lowanna sounded frightened.
“I’m starting to see stars,” Marty said. He turned right to look north. “There’s the big dipper, always the easiest to find. Follow the front two stars to Polaris, there we are, kind of low on the horizon.” He held out his right hand, pinky and thumb both extended to form a span that, at arm’s length, would reach fifteen degrees. “About two handspans off the horizon. We’re definitely in the northern hemisphere, and near the thirtieth parallel.”
“You say it so lightly,” Lowanna said. “Why do the words feel so heavy to me?”
Marty sighed. “I guess you’re one step ahead of me. You’re thinking through the consequences, and feeling their weight. We may be at Jebel Mudawwar. Which means something strange happened to us, and we’re pretty far from Egypt.”
Why wasn’t he more shocked?
Was it because he was experiencing this after reading a predynastic text, and then seeing a text written in his own personal hieroglyphs but in a sealed and ancient Egyptian tunnel?
With that buildup, a sudden transition to Morocco somehow didn’t seem like the strangest thing that could happen.
“Something strange,” Lowanna murmured. Something was distracting her.
“You’ve probably got more wilderness experience than I do,” Marty said, trying to bring her back into the conversation.
“Because I grew up Arrernte?” she pushed back.
“I did say ‘probably,’” Marty added. “In any case, I’m asking for your view. What do we do now?”
“Prepare the antelope meat, like Surjan said.” Lowanna leaned forward and vomited into the grass. She stood, wiping her mouth. “Excuse me. Cook it if we can. Or slice it and wrap it. Ideally, I’d like to salt it. But it’ll keep for a day or two if we carry it with us. We should use the hide, too. Make it into water bottles, so when we get to an oasis, we can carry water with us.”
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and breathing deeply.
“There will be people at the oasis,” Marty said.
“Except what if there aren’t?” she asked.
Marty remembered the town of Rissani, with its thriving bazaar and its whitewashed houses in rows. “Okay,” he said, “better safe than sorry, so we take the time to make waterskins just in case. I assume that’s something you can do.”
She retched again, though nothing came up this time. “Maybe someone else can do it. I can give instructions.”
“I think we better not drink any more water from those radishes,” Marty said.
“It’s not the water,” she said. “I’m throwing up at the thought of meat.”
“Have you always felt nauseated at the thought of meat?”
“No.” Lowanna stood, inhaling deeply.
“Are you . . . ? Look, this is awkward, but if we’re going to hike across the prairie through the night, I have to ask. Are you pregnant?”
“Not a chance.” Lowanna walked back to the fire.
He felt relieved.
The antelope was butchered, various cuts skewered or lying on stone to be held close to the fire. Marty’s mouth watered at the smell, but Lowanna turned her head aside.
Kareem had already started working the addax’s hide; he had neatly laid it out on the grass and was scraping flesh and blood with a large bone. He had set aside other bones and the addax’s entire head.
As Marty entered the circle of firelight, Abdullah slapped his nephew on the shoulder and pointed to his work. “Look what Kareem is doing, by God! He learned this at my brother’s factory, they make sandals and bags!”
“He’s a good worker,” François said.
Abdullah beamed.
“Don’t we need to cure the hide?” Marty asked. “I mean, before we do anything with it?”
“We can use it like this, but it will stink. Water will taste funny if you make a water bag.” He shrugged, then reached over to tap the addax’s skull with his scraper. “We can . . . cure the hide. We can prepare it with brains. It’s how the Bedouins do it.”
“We need to build shelter,” Gunther said. “We can scout the cliffs for a cave we might start with, but first we should make woven mats and maybe stretch the addax hide over a frame, to shade us from the sun.”
“You want to stay here?” Lowanna asked.
Surjan seemed to be biting his lip.
“If we go east . . .” Marty began.
“We’re not where you think we are,” François said. “Obviously.”
“You think I’m obviously mistaken?” Marty felt irritation, and tried to keep his voice level.
François spread his arms. “Where’s the wall, Marty?”
Marty nodded glumly.
François grinned. “So we build a shelter, secure food and water, and then we think about our options. If food is abundant, maybe we even wait until someone comes along who can tell us where we are.”
Surjan had turned his back on François, busying himself with tending the roasting meat.
“That’s the money vote,” Lowanna muttered.
“It’s my vote,” François said. “If you don’t respect that I paid for this expedition, at least you might respect that I’m a member of it.”
Kareem was shaking his head as he knotted together grasses into a cord.
“Please, sir,” Abdullah asked. “Which way is Cairo?”
“Okay,” Marty said. “There are good arguments for what François suggests. We potentially avoid making a big mistake, going off half-cocked. Maybe we avoid attracting unwanted attention, or getting more lost. What are our other options?”
“We could go east,” Lowanna said.
“Well, that certainly seems like a good idea to me,” Marty. “If something, ah . . . strange has happened and we’re in Morocco, which is where I think we are, we’ll find out in a short march.”
“No wall,” François said. “Not Morocco.”
“No cave,” Surjan said. “Also, no Nile, no airport. Instead, this big rock. Not Egypt.”
François harrumphed.
“We’ll take water and food with us,” Lowanna said. “If we don’t find this Rissani in ten miles, we can even come right back, if we want to.”
Marty met her gaze and they shared a brief smile. Did she actually agree with him? Or was she supporting his idea because she didn’t like agreeing with François?
“This is silly,” François said. “Marty has a teleportation fantasy, and you all want to hike out into the desert. I’ll have you know the last Jew I read about wandering into the desert leading folks got lost for forty years.”
“Anyway, if we’re near the dig site,” Marty said, “no teleportation and we walk east, where do we end up?”
“The Nile,” François said.
“So it’s a good test of the possibilities,” Marty said.
“God willing, we are near the Nile,” Abdullah muttered.
“We should vote,” Marty said.
François grunted in disgust. “Fine. All in favor of making shelter, to protect ourselves from the sun.” He raised his hand. No one else did.
“All in favor of hiking east tonight.” Marty raised his hand.
The others all raised their hands.
“God willing, we will see the Nile in the light of dawn,” Abdullah said.
“I don’t like standing still,” Surjan muttered.
“No one has to come,” Marty said. “If anyone prefers to wait here, we’ll figure out where you are and come back for you.”
“Like hell I’m waiting here alone!” François snapped.
“Good,” Marty said. “Then we ought to take an inventory.”
Everyone pulled from their pockets whatever they had and Marty scanned the group’s possessions.
“I guess I didn’t exactly plan as well as some of you did for this event.” Marty grinned. “A bunch of wallets with some plastic cards in them, cash that will have to be exchanged, probably at a bad rate, some house keys, three pocket knives, Surjan’s hunting knife, and Kareem’s fire starter.”
“Everyone has one ankh: sharpen it, and we’re armed,” Surjan suggested.
“What about skills?” Marty asked. “We’re out in the real world with just what we’re carrying and whatever skills we’ve got. Anybody have any particular skills that might be useful?”
“What are we doing, filling out a dating application?” Gunther grinned. “I’m pretty good at poker, but I’m reasonably good at a hundred other things, too, and there’s no way I can think of them to list them all right now. I can snorkel; do you think that matters?”
“Marty’s right. We all probably have some possibly relevant skills,” Lowanna said. “I can ride. I have some pretty good survival and orienteering sorts of skills. I know a lot of primitive crafts. Baskets, pots, leather.”
“Survival and orienteering,” Surjan said. “Hunting. Tracking. I can fight, with any weapon or no weapon. Marty can fight.”
“Yes, I suppose I can,” Marty said. “And I know a handful of languages, both old and new.”
“I can do a million things,” François said. “Most of them badly, but with no fear. I was a career university student, learning whatever caught my interest, especially when it came to the sciences and engineering.”
“We can work and fight,” Abdullah said, his arm draped over Kareem’s shoulder. “Bargain. Work with beasts of burden. Kareem can skin an animal. Drive a car.”
They all looked at Gunther.
“I can snorkel and play poker,” he said, his jaw set stubbornly. “And I suppose, back in the day, I was an Army medic. I can do some first aid if it comes to it.”