“There’s chairs, tables and stuff in the lab that’ll burn nicely, Cap,” Wiggins said. “I’ll go fetch some of it if you want?”
“Nope, we’ve got enough for one night. And I don’t intend being here any longer than that, one way or the other,” Banks replied. “Besides, yon big dog is just waiting for us to make a mistake like that. I’m not going to give it the satisfaction.”
Within half an hour, they had a fire going, coffee brewed, and they were all eating dry meat and hard biscuits. It wasn’t much.
But it’s better than the alternative.
Banks put Wiggins and McCally on first watch at the front door.
“Shoot first, ask questions later, okay?”
McCally nodded and led Wiggins away. Five minutes later, the smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the chamber. Banks began to relax for the first time in many hours.
Galloway had fallen asleep on the far side of the fire. Hynd went out to join the other lads for a smoke, so Banks went over to where Waterston was studying the pictures on the wall, which seemed to achieve a primitive form of animation under the flickering firelight.
“So, prof, do you still believe your man’s theory that these hairy beasties are locals, that Volkov didn’t make them, but found them?”
“I do,” Waterston replied. “Even more so now I have looked at these daubings properly.”
“It’s hard to credit such things could have survived here over such a vast stretch of time,” Banks said.
“Vast? Nonsense, man, it’s but a blink in the eye of eternity. Let me explain it to you the way I do to students who can’t wrap their heads around it.”
The man took out his wallet, and showed Banks a photograph he kept in it. Banks had to tilt it to get a good look in the flickering light and shadow. It showed an old woman in a backyard, holding a barely toddling child’s hand.
“That’s me, in nineteen-sixty,” the prof said. “And that’s my great-grandmother with me. She was born in eighteen eighty. That’s nearly a hundred and forty years in one touch. Now imagine her as a baby, holding her great grandmother’s hand and take that back another eighty years. Two touches of hands, and we’re two centuries away, already back at the start of the nineteenth century. Can you imagine the generations, holding hands, backward into time? Can you see them, Captain?”
Banks nodded. He could picture it all in his mind’s eye, a chain, his family, reaching back with each other into the gloom of the misty past.
“I have a similar photograph of my own, but it’s great-granddad for me though. So, I see your point. Less than a hundred generations gets us back to the Pre-Roman Britain Era, does it not? I’d never thought it so close.”
Waterston nodded in response.
“Add just another couple of hundred generations, and we’re back here in the times of the mammoths, and whatever people originally hunted them across this tundra. The odds of them surviving across time to now don’t seem so steep, do they, Captain?”
“No, you’re right, they don’t.”
“And does it, perhaps, make you think of them as more human, more like relatives than mere mute beasts?”
“You haven’t met some of my relatives,” Banks said with a smile. “But I get your point.”
“I hope you do, Captain,” Waterston said quietly, “for I have a favor to ask. I’d like you to avoid killing them, if that’s at all possible.”
“Even after they killed your friend?”
Waterston nodded.
“I’m not convinced that was intentional,” he said.
“I am,” Banks replied, but the prof was insistent
“This small population could well be the last remaining remnants of the species,” he said. “We have a responsibility to protect them.”
“And I have a responsibility to protect you,” Banks replied.
“I’ll gladly relieve you of that burden of you’ll promise the Alma will come to no harm.”
“Unfortunately, that is not a favor you have the authority to grant to me,” Banks replied. “But I promise not to kill the Alma without undue cause. That’s the best I can do, for now.”
“Then it will have to do,” Waterston replied, and went back to studying the paintings on the walls.
Galloway still slept, fitfully, by the fire. Banks left the scientists and walked through to the central chamber, then followed the dim light down the corridor to the main door, where the three men of his squad were gathered having a smoke.
“All quiet, Cap,” McCally said. “No sign of the hairy beasties.”
“The prof says there less like beasts, more like cousins,” Banks replied.
“Aye, well, I’m still not shagging one,” Wiggins replied.
The laughter rang loud in the narrow corridor… and was joined by an answering whuff from the other side of the outer door.
- 18 -
The squad reacted as one; smokes got ground out under heel, and weapons were raised and in position without Banks having to give an order. They all stood, silent and still, listening. The sound outside repeated, a double whuff this time, and Banks knew exactly what it was—he’d seen a chimp been shown a magic trick in a Lagos market years ago, and the laugh it made at the joke had sounded remarkably similar, just not as low pitched.
The bloody thing liked Wiggins’ joke more than we did.
The next whuff came, closer now, just beyond the door. Banks’ hand tightened on his weapon; he expected the door to be pulled open at any moment. But there was only a soft, almost gentle scratching, as if the beast pawed at the door asking to be let in. Then there came another whuff, a softer, more pleading sound, until that too was gone, and silence fell in the corridor.
The squad didn’t relax for more than a minute after the last sound, and finally it was Wiggins who broke the silence.
“What do you reckon, Cap? Has it fucked off?”
Waterston answered, having come along the corridor while they were occupied with looking the other way.
“Would you, if you came home to find somebody was in your house and had locked you out?”
“Come on, Prof,” Wiggins said. “It’s just a fucking animal.”
“It’s a fucking animal that can paint, that can make a flute, and knows where its house is. It’s as smart as you.”
“Smarter,” Hynd said.
When McCally laughed, there was an answering double whuff from outside again before everything went quiet.
There were no further noises from beyond the door for several hours. Banks had the men try to get some sleep as the evening wore on, and even managed to snatch a few hours of his own before McCally woke him near midnight.
“Still all quiet, Cap,” the corporal said quietly.
Wiggins was already getting settled down across the fire, and when Banks got to the front doorway again, he found Hynd already there, lighting up a smoke.
“Do you reckon there’s another plane on its way, Cap?” the sergeant said.
“I think it’s probably fifty-fifty, knowing the colonel. Despite the fact that you’re a bunch of wasters, he’s got this idea that we’re a crack unit, big boys that can fend for ourselves. I guess we’ll know by morning whether we need to test that or not.”