BURYING THE FUTURE DEAD
by
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Caldera’s space ship was nestling into the swale just beyond the pyre. As it settled there was metallic creaking and groaning, an old dog turning in its spot before the fire. Once landed, it spit and steamed, blowing off vapor and the pressure accumulated from flight. It stood hissing and ticking like an old radiator for a full minute. It was huge. A flying skyscraper. Then a portion of its underbelly opened and a ramp descended to the grass. Two men dressed in fatigues emerged and stood on each side of the incline. A minute later Caldera walked down the ramp and toward the hospital. Following him was a procession of women, single file, tethered together at the neck. Their hands were bound behind them. They looked straggled, unkempt and defeated. Most of them wore torn clothing that only partially covered them, and many of them seemed to be injured. A line of about fifty of them were ordered to halt just beyond the ramp so they could be viewed from a distance. Caldera continued to march toward us. He walked up the steps until he was just below us. He turned his hands outward, palms up, and looked at us like Look what you forced me to do.
“What about the rest?” I asked.
“They didn’t get far,” said Caldera.
“Dead?”
“Mostly, I imagine. We didn’t check too closely. Not far from here. You can see for yourself. Some fought back. Those weapons. They fired them at my cruiser. What makes you so stubborn that you send people to their death like that?”
“Stupidity,” said Hiller.
“Yes. Stupidity,” said Caldera. “My men are very happy, though. Some of the women—a lot of them . . . Well . . . We saved most of them from the . . . What do you call it? The wagon train? We saved most of them from the wagon train, but they didn’t make it through the night. Especially some of the younger ones. Too many men. Too much hunger. Well . . . you see how it is. We appreciate the stores, the provisions, nicely packaged, and all. We expect the same next time around. And that won’t be long. A week at most.” Caldera looked down at his feet. He seemed embarrassed, and he toed some loose gravel on the steps. “
“They’re not designed to keep you out,” I said. “They’re designed to let us escape.”
“Oh!” Caldera laughed. “You have a plan! Visit your friends out there on the prairie. See what a pulse of fifty thousands volts will do to a wagon let alone a human being. People explode right out of their skin. Nothing left. Not a trace. I can’t say it’s a bad way to go, though. One second you’re there, the next . . . Well, I must be going.”
“Leave the women,” I said.
“I can’t,” he said. “I’ll have a mutiny. You sealed their fate, Sabine. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but you should go back to your puny little twenty-first century.”
* * *
Reed was hung from timbers that formed an X from the ground and were supported by stakes and rope. His body was mutilated. Other crude crosses had been erected where people had been burned at the stake, possibly alive. I could see the agony even in their charred remains. There was no sense in attempting field autopsies, and Dr. Farnsworth was too busy bustling from corpse to corpse, seeing if anyone was still alive. The plan was to circle the wagons for defense just like the cowboy movies. But the wagons were even more strung out than when they started. It looked like some made a run for it, but didn’t get far. Hiller and I walked through the carnage.
“You were right,” I said. “What a waste.”
“No,” he said. “You were right. I’m wrong. It was cowardice—my cowardice—not to see you were right.”
“Cowardice?” I asked. “Aren’t you a decorated veteran?”
“It doesn’t take bravery to inflict injury from ten kilometers away. It doesn’t take bravery to drop explosives on people from above. In fact, there’s a certain cowardice to it.”
“And guilt,” I added.
“And guilt.”
Freehan was among the search parties. He walked toward us without any trace that what he had seen affected him.
“Survivors?” I asked.
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About the Book
The year is 2010. The world is at peace at a horrible cost. A war to make all previous wars pale in comparison is over.
Bob Taylor is a mad scientist. After decades of work and applying his genius to harnessing atomic power and writing intricate computer programs he has opened the past and future to travel. Not Time Travel, but the ability to hop in and out of dimensions to place a person any place in time. To the second.
Jack Blackrud is his guinea pig. A man of algorithms and models. A man tortured by the lives of his brothers claimed by the war and the slaughter at his hands—his algorithms and models—of millions of people. He’s sent back into time to relive the greatest moments of his ancestors’ lives and goes forward to redeem himself and strip the scars from his soul.
About the Author
Jim Arneberg is the author of six crime novles: Into an Unseen Distance, A Long Drop to Eternity, A Man Is What He Hides, Not Seeing the Stars and Very Few Have Excellence.