Arthur Clarke - Time’s Eye

And the land had been rent apart. In the Atlantic, a belt of volcanic mountains, stretching south from Iceland, marked the position of a mid-ocean ridge, a place where seabed was born, molten material welling up from the planet’s interior. This birthing zone had been ripped open by the Discontinuity. The Gulf Stream, which for millennia had delivered warm southern water to Europe, now faced a fresh obstacle, a new volcanic island that would eventually dwarf even Iceland, thrusting its way out of the ridge.

Meanwhile the “Ring of Fire” around the Pacific, where great tectonic plates jostled each other, lived up to its name. There was turmoil all down the western seaboard of North America, from Alaska to Washington State: most of the twenty-seven volcanoes in the Cascades were triggered.

Mount Rainier’s explosion was the worst. Its noise was a great shout that spread right around the planet. In India it sounded like distant artillery, and the survivors of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries stirred uneasily in their sleep. A vast mushroom cloud of ash and debris lifted high into the air’s upper layers, spreading at hurricane-force speeds. Most of the debris washed out quickly, but the thin stuff lingered, blotting out the sun. Temperatures dropped. As the air cooled, it could hold less water.

All over the world it rained. And rained, and rained.

In a sense, all of this was beneficial. A Frankenstein’s-monster of a world was trying to knit itself together, and a new equilibrium, in the air, the sea and the rocks, would eventually emerge. But the painful thrashing of that healing process was devastating for anything, plant or animal, struggling to survive.

Seeker had no long-term perspective. For her there was only the present, and her present was drenched in misery, confined in the humans’ cruel cage, and by the acid rain that lanced down at her from the sky. When the rain was at its worst Grasper huddled under her mother, and Seeker curled over her baby, taking the scalding downpour on her own back.

Still wielding his sword, the Mongol yelled over his shoulder. More armed men came running out of the tents—no, Kolya thought, the yurts . Women and children followed. The children were little bundles in felt coats, wide-eyed with curiosity.

The men had classic Asiatic features, Kolya thought, with broad faces and small dark eyes, and jet-black hair that they wore tied back. Some had bands of cloth around their heads. They wore baggy dun-colored trousers, and went barefoot, or wore boots into which the trousers were tucked. If they weren’t bare-chested they wore simple light tunics, heavily mended.

They looked mean, and strong. And they gathered threateningly around the gravity-laden cosmonauts. Kolya tried to hold his ground. He was shaking; Musa’s headless corpse still lay against the side of the Soyuz , the last blood trickling from its neck.

Musa’s killer walked up to Sable, who glared back at him. Uncompromisingly he grabbed her breast and compressed it.

Sable did not flinch. “Holy crap, but this guy stinks. “ Kolya could hear the brittleness in her voice, sense the fear under her resolve. But the warrior backed away.

The men talked rapidly, eyeing the cosmonauts and their spacecraft, and the parachute silk that lay sprawled across the dusty steppe.

“You know what I think they’re saying?” Sable whispered. “That they’re going to kill you. Me they’ll rape, then kill.”

“Try not to react,” Kolya said.

The tension was broken by a squeal. A little girl of about five, with a face round as a button, had touched the wall of the Soyuz and had come away with a burned hand.

The men growled as one. Musa’s killer pressed his sword against Kolya’s neck. His mouth was open, his eyes small, and Kolya could smell meat and milk on his breath. Suddenly the world was very vivid: the animal stink of the man before him, the rusty scent of the steppe, even the surge of blood in his ears. Was this to be his last memory, before he followed Musa into the dark? …

“Darughachi,” he said. “Tengri. Darughachi.”

The man’s eyes widened. He backed away, but he kept the sword raised, and the rapid conversation resumed, but now the men stared even harder.

Sable hissed, “What did you say?”

“Schoolboy memories.” Kolya tried to keep his voice level. “I was guessing. It mightn’t have been their language at all; we could have landed anywhere in time—”

“What language, Kolya?”

“Mongolian.”

Sable snorted. “I knew it.”

“I said we were emissaries. Emissaries of Eternal Heaven. If they believe it, they will have to treat us with respect. Hand us over to local officials, maybe. I’m bluffing—just bluffing—”

“Good thinking, Batman,” Sable said. “After all these guys saw us fall from the sky. Take me to your leader. Always works in the movies.” She actually laughed, a forced, ugly sound.

At last the circle around the cosmonauts began to break up, and nobody came to kill them. One man pulled on a jacket and felt hat, ran to a hobbled horse tied up beside a yurt, mounted it and rode briskly away.

The cosmonauts’ hands were tied behind their backs and they were prodded in the direction of one of the yurts. It would have been difficult to walk even without tied hands; Kolya felt as if he was encased in lead, and his head sang. Staring children, picking their noses, formed a sort of honor guard as they passed. One nasty-looking brat threw a rock that bounced off Kolya’s shoulder. It was hardly a dignified return to Earth, he thought. But at least they were alive; at least he had won them some time.

The door flap of the yurt was pulled open, and they were shoved inside.

Sable and Kolya were thrust down onto felt mats. In their stiff pressure suits the cosmonauts were huge in the yurt, and their legs stuck out comically in front of them. But it was a relief just to sit down.

The yurt’s single doorway faced south; Kolya could see the sun beyond a layer of haze. That was a Mongol tradition, Kolya knew; in their rudimentary theology there was a strand of sun-worship, and here on the plains of northern Asia the sun wheeled through its daily circles predominantly in the south.

Mongols came and went, apparently to inspect the newcomers, squat men and muscular-looking women. They stared at the cosmonauts, especially Sable, with greedy calculation.

Some of the cosmonauts’ gear was brought in from the Soyuz capsule. Much of this—emergency medical kits, an inflatable life raft—was incomprehensible to the Mongols. But Sable and Kolya were allowed to change out of their bulky spacesuits into the lighter orange jumpsuits they had worn on orbit. The Mongol children stared at their underwear, and the rubberized trousers they stripped off. The spacesuits were stacked up in a corner of the grubby yurt like abandoned cocoons.

The cosmonauts both managed to conceal the existence of their sidearms, tucked behind their backs, from the Mongols.

After that, to Kolya’s huge relief, they were left alone for a while. He lay against the yurt’s grimy wall, his limbs trembling, trying to still the beating of his heart and clear the fog in his head by sheer willpower. He should have been in the hospital right now, surrounded by state-of-the-art twenty-first-century technology, beginning a program of physiotherapy and recuperation, not stuck in the corner of this stinking tent. He was weak as an old man, and before these stocky, powerful Mongols he was utterly helpless; he was resentful as well as frightened.