A World Out of Time

The tall Boy got off his chest. He said something to the others. They all frowned down at Corbell. They discussed the matter in complex consonants spat like mouthfuls of watermelon seeds.

Corbell's head still rang; it had been beaten against granite. Four Boys were still sitting on his forearms and knees. Rain splashed in his eyes. It all tended to muddle his thinking.

Did they think he was a strayed dictator? But Corbell was showing his age. They couldn't-wrong! No dictator immortality here. The dictators must grow old as Corbell had grown old.

The discussion ended. Four Boys got off Corbell. He sat up rubbing his arms. One took a theatrical pose, pointed at the ground before him, and spat one harsh word. Stay! or Heel! His message was plain, and Corbell was in no shape to run.

The tall Boy still studied Corbell as if trying to make up his mind. The others clustered around Corbell's soup pot. They scooped soup into halves of coconut shells. The tall Boy finally offered him something else, a ceramic cup from his belt. Corbell waited for room, then moved in.

He sat (gingerly, favoring the bruises) and drank. Cat-tails moved among the tribe like a plague of snakes; rubbed against ankles, and were petted; tore at the raw turkey carcass, what was left of it. Corbell felt fur against his ankle. He stroked a pure-black cat-tail. A rumbling vibration went through his shin.

Shall we say that Corbell has been captured again? Or, Corbell asked himself, shall we say that Fate has given me guides through Antarctica? Put that way, the decision was easy...

III

The soloist sang in a strong, rich tenor. He sang to background music: eight Boys humming in at least four parts, one more beating with turkey bones on Corbell's trash-can fireplace. Alien music, improvised, overly complex against the simple melancholy tune.

Corbell listened open-mouthed, the back of his neck tingling. He had feared this, and it was true: Three million years had increased human intelligence.

The night after his capture he had tried singing as a way to enhance his entertainment value. Since then he had sung medleys of advertising jingles, or theme songs from movies, or the clean and dirty folk songs he and Mirabelle had sung on the boat: songs three million years out of date. But the Boys liked them.

They didn't like it when he repeated a song they'd heard before. He wondered why, but he obeyed their wishes.

"Oh, we got a new computer, but it's quite a disappointment," Ktollisp sang, "'cause it always gives this same insane advice: Oh, you need little teeny eyes for reading little teeny print like you need little teeny hands for milking mice!" The flavor or mockery in his singing was for Corbell. He couldn't know what the words meant. But his pronunciation was accurate.

Corbell had sung that song once.

Beside him was the Boy who had attacked him that night a week ago, the leader in some respects. Skatholtz was broad of nose and lip, woolly-haired, long-limbed and emaciated-looking. He might have been a black preteen, but for the partial baldness and the prison pallor he shared with the others. He said in English, "He sings well, do you think?" and laughed at what he found in Corbel's face. "Now you know."

"You remember everything. Everything! Even whole songs in another language!"

"Yes. You need to learn my speaking more than I need to learn your speaking, but I learn yours first. This is why. You are different, Corbell. Older. I think you are older than anything."

"Almost anything."

"I will teach you how to talk. When you tell your tale, we all want to listen. I make a mistake with you. Do you know why I hit you? We thought you are only a dikt who broke with rules. You did not-" Skatholtz jumped suddenly to his feet. He stood at parade rest for a moment; then he shrank back, hands raised half in supplication, half to ward a blow.

"I didn't cringe," said Corbell.

"Yes, cringe. It is a formal show of respect."

Ktollisp sang, "So we got an expert genius and he rewrote all the programs, but we always got results that looked like these: Oh, you need little teeny eyes for reading little teeny print like you need little teeny license plates for bees."

It was pink-and-black dusk in the park. The Boys had returned early this day. They spent most of every day in Sarash-Zillish, going through buildings like a flock of wild birds. Exploring, Corbell had thought. Savages swarming through ruins they could not understand.

He'd soon lost that illusion. A pair of Boys had escorted him outside the hospital operating room while the others worked inside. When he was allowed back in, Corbell's scalpel-spear had been reattached. The many-jointed arms above the operating table were carefully carving a phantom patient.

He was not allowed to watch repairs, but he had seen the results. The refrigerator in the police building, restored. A factory tested, run through its cycle until it had built two "phone booths." The Boys did Corbell the signal honor of letting him test the booths. He had not tried to balk. Another factory had produced a bathroom, a complete unit with pool and sauna. The Boys had repaired and tested the city lighting. Now the sides of many buildings glowed with soft yellow-white light. Others remained dark. The effect was eerie: a city-sized chessboard.

They lived like savages, but apparently it was from choice.

In camp Corbell had done his share of the work, hauling firewood and digging up roots. They had given him a loincloth, but they would not give him a knife to replace his scalpel-spear. He still didn't know what place he held among them. He feared the worst. They were too intelligent. They would see him as a lesser being, an animal.

He needed them. It wasn't just company he needed. He could not travel safely until he knew something about this new continent.

The boy was singing all the verses, to the muted laughter of his companions. Corbell said, "Sooner or later I'll run out of songs. Sooner."

Skatholtz shrugged. "It is all the same. We leave here when light comes again. We go to other... tribes? To tell them that Sarash-Zilish is ready for the long night. You come with us."

"Night? Is it night that's coming?" Had he landed in autumn, then?

"Yes. So you came from space, unready! I thought that. Yes, the long day is ended and the short day-nights are with us and the long night comes near. In the long night we live in the city. Hunters go to the forests around, and food will keep in the cold boxes. In day we live more as we like."

"What's it like out there?"

"You will see." Skatholtz picked up a passing cat-tail and stroked its fur. "We have time to teach you some speaking," he said, and he switched to the language Corbell had tagged Boyish. Corbell was agreeable. He enjoyed language lessons.

Morning: They moved out. There was incredibly little fuss. They all seemed to wake at once. Soup had been simmering all night, made to Corbel's recipe, which they liked. Breakfast was soup in coconut shells. They picked up pots, cloth, the fire starter, half a dozen edged weapons. One, an albino Boy with pink eyes and cottony golden hair, handed Corbell twenty pounds of jerked meat wrapped in cloth. They left.

Corbell woke fully, marching the rest of the way. He had to drive himself to keep up, though the Boys made no attempt to set a steady pace. They ambled. Some dodged into buildings, then jogged to rejoin the tribe.

Savages they were not. They carried an idiosyncratic variety of edged tools, no two alike: scimitars, machetes, sabers, shapes that had no name, all with carefully sculpted handles. They had made the jerky the way Corbell would have, in an oven set on Low. The cloth they carried was indestructible stuff as thin as fine silk. Krayhayft's flashlight/fire starter projected light of variable intensity, in a conical beam or a beam no thicker than a pencil.