Eric Flint - Time spike

Things werecompletely screwed up now. He had a prison full of felons he was trying to protect from themselves and from whatever it was outside the walls. He had around two hundred overworked, exhausted C.O.'s looking to him for answers. And now he had what? A war going on outside? Jenny was afraid the patient would try to pull the I.V. out of his arm so they had tied him down. The man's eyes were glazed and feverish. His dark skin managed to look pale and flushed even to Andy's untrained eye. The captain stared at the man's face. Here was someone who could tell them what was happening outside the walls. And the someone was in bad shape and apparently couldn't speak one word of English. "Is he going to make it?" the captain asked Jenny. "I don't know." "Ka-nun-da-cla-ga. Ka-nun-da-cla-ga," The man moaned. His voice was raspy and soft. almost inaudible. "Man, I wish I knew what he was saying." Jenny nodded. "When I moved into my apartment in town, the landlady made a point of telling me the area receives visitors from all over the world. If he is one of the tourists he could be talking just about any language. Whatever it is, it's not Spanish. I'm almost fluent in Portuguese and that's close enough that I'd recognize Spanish if I heard it." Andy shook his head. "No, you're right. I took four years of Spanish in high school. That's one I would recognize, even if I didn't understand the exact words." Jenny shrugged. "Well, what he's saying doesn't sound Arabic or Asian, either. That I would know. And I would bet he's not American." He looked at the man on the cot. "Why are you so sure he isn't American?" The nurse waved a hand at her patient. "He's somewhere around fifty, maybe older. And he was never given a smallpox vaccine. I checked his hips, arms and legs.

Anyone that old, if they had been born in this country, would have been given the vaccination, unless their religion forbade it. Also, he's had no dental work done. And believe me, he needs it. Those teeth have got to cause a lot of pain now and then. From that and the fact he doesn't seem to speak English, I'd guess he was a new immigrant.

And he had to come from a country that didn't have a comprehensive health program. He might even be an illegal alien." She raised a hand to stop Andy's complaints. "I know; that's not an accusation you want to make too readily, but look at him. He's starving. He's been beaten.

But he's not an addict. The damage to his nose is from the beating; the interior is not drug damaged. He has no track marks. His liver isn't distended, and neither are his intestines." "How does being beaten and starved make you an illegal alien?" "Andy, if someone starved you, beat you within an inch of your life, shot you, then left you for dead, you would go to the hospital. And you would press charges. You wouldn't be hiding in a hole in the ground. The only people who don't go to the police are those who can't. And since most dealers are users, he probably had other reasons to steer clear of the authorities." Andy looked at the man on the cot. "I guess you're right. I would call the cops. But I don't think this guy had a chance.

And I don't think it had anything to do with being afraid of the badge. My guess is, this happened after the Quiver." He handed Hulbert the pan with the spent bullet. "He was shot with a matchlock, you said." Hulbert nodded. "That's what I figure. I can't think of any other explanation for a bullet that big and that slow-moving. I'd bet he's Indian. Probably pretty close to full blood." Andy stared at Hulbert. "You're talking Native American, not an India Indian." He was wide-awake now. "Yeah, I am. And I'm thinking he'sextremely authentic.

And I have a hunch he has enemies just as authentic as he is." The captain stared at Hulbert, then at the man strapped to the examination table. "We can't jump to any conclusions. That bullet could have come from a replica. Or maybe an antique." Hulbert was shaking his head. "I thought of that. But not too many reenactors play around with matchlocks. They're usually interested in later historical periods.

Then you have the guy's clothes and all the things Jenny mentioned."

Andy pulled the clothes from the biohazard container, careful not to touch the blood. He turned them over and over in his hands, checking the seams and the buttons. "If these are part of a reenactment costume, they cost the guy a pretty penny. They're the most authentic looking things I've ever seen." "He doesn't look rich enough to be into that type of fun," Jenny said. "He looks like one of the homeless I used to care for when I worked on the coast." Marie entered the room, carrying a tray of sandwiches. "And if that's not a reenactment costume, and if he wasn't shot with a replica, where is the guy who did it?" Marie shrugged and then answered her own question. "We don't know." Now it was Jenny's turn to look surprised. "Oh." She looked at the man on the table and then at Andy. "It doesn't matter if that stuff is real or fake. Does it? We have people out there. Real people.

And they're armed and shooting." Hulbert shrugged. "Like I said, we've got problems. And if the animals are mixed up, jumbled up, the people are likely to be, too." Marie Keehn moved so she was standing next to Rod Hulbert. Her voice trembled slightly, "More than two thousand prisoners to feed and water, multiton dinosaurs to avoid, and to top it off, out of sync people using other out of sync people for punching bags and target practice. And we don't know why." Jenny hissed softly.

The captain and the lieutenant both nodded, their faces grim. Jeff Edelman stared at the pictures on the camera phone for a while, and then shut the phone off. "I want the best artist in the prison to copy this onto paper. The same thing for the jewelry our visitor is wearing." He looked at Hulbert. "The camera phone is a great way to record what's going on in the field, at least until the batteries wear out." "You're right," said Joe Schuler. "We'll go through all the cars on the lot and through the lockers. We'll gather up all the picture phones and have them placed in the armory. That way when we send people out for whatever reason, they can take one of the cameras with them. When they get back we can have the pictures transcribed to paper. If Hulbert had one in his car when the Quiver hit, I'm betting we'll get a couple dozen of the things." Hulbert nodded. "Andy, we might want to do a technology check. See who has what, and if it could be useful put it under lock and key." "No, wedon't want to do that,"

Andy said. "We don't want to confiscate anything. That includes the picture phones. Ask what's in everyone's lockers and lunch buckets.

Ask if people will donate their stuff, or loan it. But I don't want anything commandeered." "Nothing?" Edelman asked. "Nothing. Now, what can you tell me about Spielberg's monsters?" Edelman frowned. "The nickname Jerry Bailey gave these animals is more appropriate than you realize. The two large birdlike creatures doing the attacking are called Utahraptors. They are the jumbo-sized relatives of the velociraptor. While the velociraptor weighs around fifty pounds, their larger cousins will tip the scales at eight hundred to a thousand pounds. An amateur, Bob Gaston, found the first of this species in 1992. This was the same year work was being done on Spielberg's film, Jurassic Park. Spielberg hadn't liked the idea of his meanest creature being such a lightweight, so he wanted to cheat and make them larger. The technicians working on the film, of course, did it Spielberg's way. Bigger was better. Anyway, with the discovery of the Utahraptor, you would think the raptors in the movie would get a name change. It didn't happen. They left the name of the beasts velociraptor, but gave them the size of their Utahraptor cousins."

Hulbert shrugged. "Hollywood is not here. The animal killed by those things was not happy and neither were we. That was the scariest thing I ever saw in my life." "I bet." Jeff suppressed a yawn and then sighed. "Sorry, three hours a night, every night, it's not enough sleep for anyone." He yawned again, but this time didn't try to fight it. "You have to look at the whole picture. That stegosaurus that used the prison wall for a scratching post a couple of nights back was from the Jurassic period. The Utahraptors on that picture phone were from one hundred and twenty million years back. The animal the raptors ate, the iguanodon, was from the early Cretaceous period, which was around one hundred and forty-five million years before the modern era. The T-rex in Spielberg's movie was from the late Cretaceous period, around seventy million years ago." "I thought you said the tyrannosaurus was from the Jurassic period," Jenny said. "No, the book and movie was calledJurassic Park because it sounded good. Most of the animals it depicted were actually from the Cretaceous period, the same timeframe we seem to be dealing with. Much of the plant life a few miles out from the prison is also from that time period, but not all of it. Too much of it is unfamiliar to me, and a lot of what I recognize, I can't name. I can't remember what it's called." "I don't care about the name," Joe said. "I just want to know what is happening. Are we going to be dealing with the animals from that movie? Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus Rex?" "Well, Jurassic Park depicted a theme park populated with dinosaurs built from found DNA left over from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The plants and animals inside the park were basically from the same period, but that doesn't mean they coexisted. Very few species last eighty million years, which is the length of time the Cretaceous period lasted. Or even eight million years, for that matter. The only time we know for sure two species coexisted, is when we find them together. All else is guesses. Good guesses based on a lot of facts, but they are still guesses. Jeff walked over to the dry erase board and began sketching a time line.