Eric Flint - Time spike

These Cherokees, on the other hand, were almost-not quite, but almost-a people still in their prime. They were quite self-confident, certainly. And all Andy had to do was look around the small little town-that was what they called it, anyway, although Andy would have probably used the word "village"-to see that they had plenty of reasons to be. The simple and plain truth-Rod Hulbert had commented to this effect at least a dozen times, and always with envy-was that the Cherokees were far better equipped to deal with the realities of this new world than Blacklock and his people were. In fact, if it hadn't been for the military threat posed by de Soto's conquistadores, it would be the Cherokees who were in position to give aid to the modern Americans, not the other way around. Theyweren't lying awake at night trying to figure out how to feed themselves. Or how they'd clothe themselves when their store-bought garments wore out. Or what to do when and if winter came. It wasn't easy for them, no. Not in the least. One of their men had already been hurt badly in the course of hunting some smaller herbivorous dinosaurs. They'd been deer hunters in their own world, not mammoth hunters, and were having to learn from experience and make adjustments. But they obviously had no doubts that they'd manage. They didn't plan to hunt the really big dinosaurs, of course. And they were clearly worried about how they'd handle an attack by one of the big predators. But that's what the one really huge theropod they'd seen at a distance had been for them-just a very big, very dangerous predator. They certainly weren't jabbering to each other about the Great God Lizard and wondering what sort of offerings or magic rituals or sacrifices might placate the being. Just how to kill it in the event they had to. They were actually more concerned about the agricultural situation than they were about the dinosaurs.

Predators were predators, and meat was meat. Simple enough. But so far as the Cherokees had been able to discover, none of the food plants they were accustomed to growing had come through the Quiver. The one and only exception was a small patch of corn they'd found-which their men were guarding like hawks and upon which their women were lavishing tender loving care. They'd located the town, in fact, right next to the patch, even though the location was far from optimal in many other respects. Nourishing that small patch of corn and turning it into a staple overrode everything else. But there was nothing else they'd always depended on. No squash, no beans. No acorns. Jeff Edelman said that was because almost every edible plant that human beings had domesticated in their history had been what he called angiosperms-and the angiosperms apparently hadn't evolved yet. That enormous group of flowering plants that had come to dominate the Earth by the time humans beings showed up were simply absent here, so far as he could tell, except an occasional little patch like the corn. And that was obviously a transplant produced by the Quiver. There weren't even any grasses yet. Some variety of fern usually provided the ground cover.

Jeff had fretted over the problem. According to him, the angiospermsshould be here. They'd emerged in the late Mesozoic and by the end of the Cretaceous had come to dominate the world's vegetation.

They shouldcertainly exist in a world that had tyrannosaurs in it. The solution Edelman had finally come up with was, from Andy's point of view, simply to change his terminology. It turned out, he explained, that they were actually in an earlier stage of the Cretaceous than he'd thought originally. And what he'd thought were tyrannosaurs were actually allosaurs, their somewhat smaller ancestors. They didn't look much different, after all. "Well…" He'd scratched his chin.

"Probably they're something in between allosaurs and tyrannosaurs.

Allosaurs are a little too ancient, really. Their heyday was the late Jurassic, and I don't think we've gone backthat far." Apologetically, he added: "The fossil record really is pretty spotty. The truth is we have no real idea what creatures might have lived in great big chunks of geologic time." Andy had smiled. "Has it occurred to you, Jeff-I'm not arguing the point, mind you-that your new theory isn't too different from insisting that a personnel department is really a human relations department?" "Smart ass." Jeff's eyes ranged over the landscape of the Really New World around them. "The problem is that there's something fundamentally screwy about this universe. We've got too many things from too many different periods all mixed together.

What I'mhoping is that we'll eventually discover the effect is geographically restricted." "Meaning?" "Meaning that the Quiver scrambled time for a relatively small area of southern Illinois-insofar as you can use the expression 'southern Illinois' to refer to that area of the globe all through geological history." The gaze he now bestowed on the horizon was a longing one. "You know, if I could take a few guys with me and explore maybe fifty or a hundred miles away from here, I'm willing to bet everything would settle down.

I could tell you then, for sure, if we're in the late Cretaceous or the early Cretaceous or some part of the Jurassic or what." "Forget it. Look, Jeff, in the end it's really an academic question. Call them tyrannosaurs or allosaurs, who cares? We've still got to figure out how to deal with them, if they come after us. And we can worry about what to call these plants around us after we figure out which ones we can eat." Jeff scowled. "Yeah, fine. But have you contemplated the alternative, if the effectisn't geographically limited? That would mean that we're in a universe that apparently has no logic at all, at least for a geologist and a biologist. Hell, for all we know, the Aztec winged snake god Quetzalcoatl might come flapping over the horizon tomorrow. Or dragons instead of whatever-you-call-ems." "I'd settle for a field of wheat, whether it's got winged snakes or not.

The Cherokees would be ecstatic if some squash turned up-and they'd take the dragons in stride." They were now in a world of conifers, ferns, horsetails, cycads and gingkos. The Cherokee women were fuming.

Generations of practical learning and lore and skills-gone with the wind. Not really, though. The specific skills might be gone, but the generic skills that underlay them were still there. Yes, the women groused incessantly, and the curses they rained down on the new plants they experimented with would have made sailors blanch. But they'd already figured out how to grind up something that looked like big pine nuts into a sort of gruel that they could use to make a cornmeal substitute or fried flat bread. They called it "nutmeal." The stuff needed to be leeched, since the raw taste was very bitter, and the end result didn't have much taste at all. But it had become their staple food-and, lately, they'd found some herbs that brightened it up a lot.

Andy didn't have much doubt that, given a little time and peace, they'd eventually produce a full diet that, along with the meat and fish the Cherokee hunters brought in, was nutritious and plentiful enough that people could live on it indefinitely. Including Andy's people, whose skills in these critical areas were far more primitive than the Cherokees'. But that still left the problem of "time and peace." Both of which, unfortunately, were in shorter supply than food. He figured it was time. Watkins liked to ponder a problem, and Andy respected that. But he'd pondered it enough. "Have you decided, Chief?" Watkins smiled. "And when did you start being formal, Captain?

If I remember right, it was 'Geoffrey' less than an hour ago." But he knew the reason for the sudden formality perfectly well. He looked away and, after a moment, finally started talking. "The proposal is attractive in many ways, certainly. Each party provides the other with what it lacks most. We provide you with food, eventually clothing, those sorts of things. And you"-he glanced at the pistol holstered to Andy's hip-"provide us with the firepower we will need to deal with monsters. Human and otherwise." He looked away again. "All the more attractive because the disparity is so great on either side. Our muskets and bows and spears are fine for hunting, but if this Spanish man de Soto's army is as large as you say, they bean't enough. The Spanish will have muskets too. Maybe not as good as ours, but good enough. I used a matchlock as a boy. Clumsy fucking thing, but it worked. Their crossbows and swords will easily match our bows and spear and war clubs. Worst of all-" He glanced at the town. "-I don't have that many warriors. Not more than thirty-five, really, and even that is… what's your expression?" "Stretching it. Or pushing it."