Ahead, a mountain swallowed the ridge, and the trail turned right, becoming a narrow shelf road. He kicked a rock over the edge and it bounced and clattered for seconds, starting a half a dozen other rocks on their way before reaching the tree line. The woman led the way, then Eric, then the rest of the party. He started whistling the theme music to The Bridge Over the River Kwai to hear the sound. The woman peeked over her shoulder. He launched into a second chorus, and another whistler joined him. Eric grinned. In a moment, they were all whistling, and he laughed at the image of it: a hard, wild naked woman powdered in white, followed by an old man from another time, followed by the rest of the tribe, all whistling a tune from a one-hundred-year-old movie about a war that only he knew anything about. After a third time through, he stopped, and they walked in silence again. A hand patted him on the back. The man behind Eric ducked his head when Eric looked at him, but he thought he saw a smile. At the next turn in the trail, the woman stopped and Eric nearly ran into her. She stepped to a rock wall that blocked the trail and slapped her hand sharply on it three times. A rope ladder tumbled from above. When she reached the top, she waved him up and he followed clumsily, having a hard time finding the loose rungs with his feet as the ladder twisted. Swinging from one side to the other, he banged his hip twice. The rope felt ragged and homemade. He wondered what they used to make it. Another Earth Dancer, this one an unpowdered blonde woman, seven or eight months pregnant, held a torch that instantly ruined his night vision. Eric thought, Ah, they do use fire. She handed the leader a torch, lit it for her, and they waited for the rest of the Dancers to join them. The flickering light showed the entrance to a mine. Huge, rough beams framed the entrance, and beyond them, bright sparkles reflected the light back to him.
The pregnant woman led.
What is this? Eric thought. The mine’s walls and ceiling were pure gold. He inspected closer, but the torch moved several paces farther away, and the bright color faded to gray. Down the shaft, golden light bathed the two torch bearers, while the rest of the Dancers waited for Eric to continue. He touched the wall, and something small and flat fell into his hand. He hurried to catch up. A turn brought them into a large room that smelled moist and human. Other torches sputtered from niches in the walls, revealing the home of the Earth Dancers. Piles of skins dotted the floor, and Eric thought at first that this was a storage room until he spotted eyes looking at him from each pile. Here the walls were golden too. Eric took down a torch and held the flame next to the piece he’d taken from the shaft. One side was white with a dark stripe along its length. He flipped it over. It was a Visa Gold card. He walked around the room. Thousands of Gold cards covered the rock, each held with a tiny bit of something gummy. It might even be gum, he thought, but where would they get so many cards? He checked the back of the Visa he held. The signature read, Mason Withers, which matched the embossing on the front. He checked others; they were all embossed and signed. “God,” he said, “what a horrible job collecting them must have been.” The Earth Dancers watched him. “Someone was very persistent,” he added, holding up the card.
The woman, who he now thought of as his Earth Dancer, pulled on his shirt sleeve and tugged him toward a shaft at the back of the room where the rest of the Earth Dancers had gathered. “Okay, I’m coming.” He pulled away to stick the cards he held back in place.
Light green covered the walls in the new shaft. He checked. “American Express,” he said to her. “Don’t leave home without it.”
Pure white reflected the light in the small room the shaft led to. Eric chuckled. Sears cards, of course. In the middle of the room stood a large grandfather clock. Earth Dancers formed a semi-circle around it and sat on the stone floor. The woman lit two torches on the wall, then placed her torch in an empty niche. She knelt in front of the clock and pressed her forehead to the floor. How out of place the clock looks, Eric thought. A beautiful piece of work, though. Its mirrored oak finish and polished brass fittings called to his mind paneled drawing rooms. No, smoking rooms, where massive, overstuffed leather chairs held proper gentleman who smoked pipes and read from gilt-edged books. “Your drink, sir,” the butler would say, and in the background, the grandfather clock ticked majestically, calling out the hour with measured chimes.
All of the naked Earth Dancers leaned toward the clock until their foreheads pressed against the floor. This is a cathedral! I’m in a place of worship. Why have they brought me here?
After a minute where no one moved, the woman, barely raising her head, crawled to the base of the clock and opened the glass front that covered the weights and pendulum. Blindly she groped in the cavity until she touched the pendulum, then she pushed it so if began moving back and forth. Each swing grew shorter, and the clock didn’t tick. She pushed it again, looking at Eric this time.
“It’s just a clock,” he said. His face flushed, and he felt embarrassed for their posture. He pictured their wild leaps at the moon, their wonderful patterns of dance. They belonged. They were scary and primitive and feral, but they seemed proud. He was the one that was out of place, in his clothes, in his remembrances. “It’s just an old, dead clock from a world that never existed.” He spat the words. Anger filled him too. They hadn’t chosen him from the camp because there was a special connection. They didn’t know him from anyone else. He was just the oldest, the most likely to know how to fix the clock. The closest human to their parents’ age.
She kept her head on the floor. The pendulum stopped. Eric’s] head sagged. He felt tired. It’s late, he thought, and I should be asleep. Voice thick with irony, he asked, “Does anyone know the time?” Her eyes pleaded with him to help, and again she reminded him of Leda whose eyes were so expressive, and he said, “I’m sorry.” He didn’t know exactly why he was apologizing, but he knew he should. “You’re not responsible for your gods. I mean, they’re not your fault. You’ve been sold a bill of goods by moms and dads who didn’t even know what they were doing.”
He thought, at least this god, if that is what it is, when it works is visible. At least this god is dependable and regular. This god keeps good time, and a god could do a lot worse than that. He stepped into the circle, and, not knowing what to do, bowed a little before peering into the clock. The woman crawled out of his way.
“Have you tried pulling on the weights?” Bottoms of three acorn patterned, brass weights barely showed at the top of the case. “Of course you have.” But he pulled one to the bottom anyway. When he let go, it rattled back to the top.
“I had a pendulum clock once,” he said. “Here, give me a torch.” No one moved. He got one himself and held it so it cast light inside. This is tricky work, he thought. When the flame approached the clock close enough to see the works, it also scorched his cheek. He didn’t want to singe the wood, so he put the torch back, reached inside and worked by touch. As he hoped, just like his clock at home, the main weight pulley screw was loose so that the gear on the back of it wasn’t engaging anymore. Awkwardly reaching both hands inside, he pushed the pulley wheel against the gears, then tightened the screw by hand. This time when he pulled the weight down, it stayed.