Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(78)
“Hey you.” She beamed as he walked in and studied the fire. They didn’t see much of each other during the day because of all the chores the Elfreth set them to, so it was always a little thrill when he stopped by every evening. It was strange; he totally wasn’t her type, but nothing made a smile splash across her face the way his being around did.
She was also very proud of James. After the incident at the dam when he saved a group of tribesmen from drowning, the Elfreth seemed to have finally thawed toward him. In return, she saw him make a real effort not to be such a statue to them. Now, he stomped and scowled less in camp, and not all of them pointed their guns at him when he passed. She considered that a vast improvement. Most were still uncomfortable around him, but at least both sides were making a little effort.
“The old windbags ordered me to bring you dinner,” he said.
Elise made a face. Eating had somehow gone from her favorite pastime to her most dreaded. She had mostly gotten use to the meager sustenance of this land, though some of it still took choking down for her to digest. At least her body had adjusted. During the first few days, her stomach had launched a protest that kept her perpetually cramped.
He passed a hand over the boiling sludge. “Any luck on the cure?” He asked this every time he stopped by. For a guy from the far future with very advanced technology at his disposal, he was surprisingly a knuckle-dragger when it came to certain things.
“This isn’t like fixing a mechanoid or curing the cold, James.” She shook her insect-wing fan at him. “Look at what the hell I have to work with! Do you know what in Gaia this is made of?”
He paused, his gaze moving from the slurp she was cooking in her little pots to the fan in her hand to the makeshift shelf of scrounged lab tools she’d accumulated over the past few days.
“What do you need, then?” he asked.
“Well, for one, it’d be nice if I didn’t have to spend two hours to build a damn fire every time I want to heat something up. Maybe a real filtration device instead of a spaghetti strainer, and how about some real equipment? Holy hell, how about a room with four actual walls?” She laughed as she ticked off half a dozen old comforts of home that she missed. James looked serious as he took in every single one of her suggestions.
“I’ll see what I can do,” was all he said. “This might take a few days to track.” He turned and left her lab.
“What? Wait.” She ran out after him. “Do you mean it? Can you really get the stuff for me?”
He must have seen the ear-to-ear grin on her face because a rare smile grew on his. “For a cure for Earth? Sure. For you? If it makes you happy.” He looked at the opening in her lab where a wall should have been. “What do you think about moving the lab into one of the Farming Towers? I don’t feel comfortable with you working so far away from the safety of the tribe.”
She shook her head. “It’s pitch-black up there at night. You won’t catch me climbing those stairs after sundown.”
James thought about it and nodded. “I’ll see what I can do about adding power to your lab.”
Elise couldn’t believe it. She didn’t think he was taking her seriously. This was more than she could hope for, and she ran through the list of requests that she had haphazardly shot off in her head. She definitely should have been more considerate with what she asked for. “Hang on, let me think it over and get a real list.”
James held her hand with his. “Take your time. Eat your meal before the food gets cold. You know how much worse it tastes once that happens.”
Elise was so excited she barely noticed the dead grubs, moss soup, and wilted leaves she inhaled for dinner. She made a detailed wish list and double-checked it like a little girl picking presents for winter solstice. By the time she was ready to turn in for the evening, the number of things she wanted had grown to over a hundred.
Afraid that she was being too greedy, she refined it once more, putting the list of lab equipment she wanted into separate columns, from required to optional to nice-to-have alternatives. Too excited to sleep, she stayed up and tweaked the list until it had been reduced to a trim thirty-six items. Then she decided that the eight semi-optional items weren’t actually optional after all, which brought up the final list to forty-four.
“Forty-four to save the Earth,” she said and rubbed her hands in anticipation.
Farther upstream in the field, the guard on watch banged his nightstick against the column he was perched on. Fourteen times the ringing of the aluminum tube echoed across the camp. By the time the sun came up, the guard would have banged the nightstick up to forty times, the occurrences evenly divided by an old recovered hourglass that he continually flipped. Each banging let the rest of the tribe know how deep in the night they were, and more important, let them know that someone was still watching over them. Falling asleep while on watch was one of the worst crimes a tribesman could commit. No one knew exactly how long the hourglass was, but if Elise had to guess, she’d say it was approximately ten to twelve minutes.
That was the way with things now in the present. Everything was measured in approximations. These people lived life from sunup to sundown, and measurements were taken based only on the capacity of what they used. Metrics for these people were based on fingers, toes, and persons. Thus, those seventy-seven blood corn stems stacked on the far bank for tomorrow’s work on the dam would be three persons, three limbs, and two fingers. It made sense, she guessed. Last month, her team was triangulating core temperatures near the center of the Earth and now she was counting mutant tomatoes with her hands and fingers. Go figure.