Lost Dawns: A Short Prequel Novel to the Lost Millinnium Trilogy Page 4

  "What's the drill today? Will we operate with the other team?"

  "No. I've got an anthropologist and archeologist for you to meet. You asked how much you can trust the historical data. These two can answer your questions if anybody can. Briefing starts at 0800. Shall we head over."

  Jack slipped off the rail and picked up the fruit with a chuckle.

  "You did a neat job of walking off with the bowl. I didn't notice you hanging around to help Samantha get your name right."

  "I'll straighten her out on several things next time I see her. Unless . . . " Launa grinned sideways at Jack. "What are my chances of dodging her for the rest of our stay?"

  "A lot better than mine."

  The two shared a laugh that tasted good in Launa’s mouth.

  AP Headlines for May 4, 1999

  BASEBALL SEASON STARTS AT LONG LAST

  This Year's Strike Longest of the Last Three Years

  2 MILLION PERUVIANS SUE U.S. AND DOW

  Peru's Attorney General Joins Suit.

  Recent Report Shows Birth Defects Continue from Coca Defoliant U. S. Unilaterally Dropped during 1996 Operation Sudden Swoop.

  INOCULATION FOR AIDS READY FOR HUMAN TESTS

  French Doctors seek human guinea pigs in Africa.

  Governments Object

  SKIN CANCER UP 5% IN USA

  NIH Blames Continuing Depletion of the Ozone

  for 1998 Increase

  WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION REPORTS

  AFRICAN POPULATION DOWN 8%

  For the Third Year, Deaths from AIDS Outstrip Births

  INSURANCE BAILOUT PROPOSED

  Crumbling Real Estate Market in CA and Japan

  Blamed for Shrinking Assets.

  Baby Boomers Retirement Funds Threatened

  And today, President Dave Lark took time off from his Budget Deficit negotiations with Congress to meet the Marigold Queen from Peoria, Ill.

  4

  Jack hoped Launa liked Judith and Brent. They had offered him an anchor of rationality and stability in this sea of endless "what ifs." Launa would be a good comrade in this forlorn hope, even if she was a bit idealistic. The more he saw of her, the more he liked.

  His thoughts about her were changing, almost by the minute. A fear gnawed at him. Was he grasping for something lost? Launa was an enjoyable young woman, smart, capable, a good officer. He would have to be careful to keep any other feelings on hold. He seemed to live most of his life on hold.

  He got them to the meeting room a few minutes before 0800 so she would have time to get comfortable. The place looked more like a parlor than a conference room, with four comfortable chairs gathered around a small coffee table. But the casual atmosphere was off-set by the two eighty inch flat monitors hanging on one wall and the recessed plugs built into the table to give network access.

  While Launa drew aside the drapes and let daylight onto the knotty pine paneled walls, Jack checked the refrigerator. There was plenty of ice and three Diet 7-Ups had been added to the usual assortment of soft drinks and juices.

  At 0800 he heard the voices of the two specialists in the hall – as usual, they were arguing and only stopped as they entered the room.

  Jack grinned as he introduced them. "Lieutenant Launa O'Brian, this is Professor Judith Lee." A short, middle aged woman took Launa's offered hand. She wore khaki slacks and a shirt that matched her snow-white hair.

  Jack hoped Launa spotted the sparkle in Judith's green eyes.

  "I'm Brent Simpson," a tall gray-haired man interjected. He sported plaid pants, a gray tweed sports coat, an outrageously colored bow tie and leather sandals over bright green socks. An unlit pipe was clenched in his teeth.

  "Think of me as the loyal opposition. I'll drag up rumors and hearsay to refute the pipe dreams and suppositions Judith tries to sell you."

  Launa gave the man a quizzical look as she sat, but Judith moved quickly to answer.

  "What Doc Bulldozer means is that we'll air our professional differences for you. You can decide for yourself who's right."

  "Doctor Bulldozer?" Jack had not heard that one before.

  Brent waved his unlit pipe as if to ward of bugs. "The lady thinks I do my research with a bulldozer instead of a brush and dental pick."

  "Well you do." Judith sat, pulled a computer out of her tote and plugged it into a receptacle on the table.

  "I did once." Brent leaned forward, pulled his computer out of a shoulder bag of brightly woven cotton, plugged it in and faced off with Judith across from him. "There was good reason to take the first couple of layers off that old tel with a dozer. Life's too short to waste time on the recent crap."

  "And getting shorter." Judith cut him off. She hit one key, her computer beeped and the screen on the right lit up.

  PEOPLE OF THE MID-NEOLITHIC

  AND HOW THEY LIVED

  Judith cleared her throat. "I hate dry lectures. If there's an English word, I'll use it.

  "Good, then maybe we won't sleep through this."

  Jack jerked his head toward the door. Captain Dick Miller came through it, followed closely by Samantha and Dick's partner, Marilyn Brunner. Even at this distance, he could tell that someone had not bothered showering after their morning workout.

  Samantha took center stage. "Jack I meant to tell you but you ran out so quickly after breakfast. Since Lora is getting a full briefing on the target time and these two haven't gotten one yet, I've ordered them to sit in on this. I'd stay myself," the administrator was already heading for the door, "but an old friend is passing through and we'll only have an hour of so between flight. He's quite insistent that I see him."

  Two ranch hands with chairs made way as Samantha sailed out of the room.

  Jack watched her go, wondering why she had fallen out of character. Normally Samantha was quick to drop names, most of which Jack had never heard of and never wanted to meet. Why hadn't she dropped this name?

  The ranch hands deposited their chairs where Dick and Marilyn pointed. The two captains did not join the immediate circle around the table, but sat off at a distance between Brent and Launa.

  "We can move our chairs to let you closer." Launa said, starting helpfully to slide hers toward Judith.

  "No need," Marilyn waved a hand. "We don't want to upset the computer network and we can hear what we need to know from here."

  Judith smiled at the two new arrivals. "What would you like to know?"

  "Oh, I don't know." Dick shrugged, looking around at the walls of the room. "We've read the briefing papers. We're trained to handle any situation. We figure we can handle this one."

  "I could be of greater service if you could tell me what you think you need to know." Judith offered again.

  The two green berets looked at each other then stared at Judith.

  "Well," Launa put in tentatively, "if you two don't have a question yet, I do."

  All eyes turned to her.

  She looked around and when the silence grew long, continued.

  "What makes 6,000 years ago so important? In the last twenty-four hours that date keeps coming up. Why?"

  Judith sat back and took a deep breath. She frowned and let it out.

  "Graves." Brent spoke the single word.

  "Graves?" Marilyn raised an eyebrow.

  "Actually funerary gifts." Judith corrected them both. "Between 4200 and 4000 B.C.E. there was a radical change in what people in Southeastern Europe were buried with. Before, we find many burial sites. Nearly everyone has jewelry, tools or cooking utensils. After the break, that changes. It's not easy to find a grave for the average woman. And the ones we do find . . .” She tapped her computer.

  The screen showed skeletal remains. An ax, three spears, a bow and arrows, several bronze knives were apparent.

  She hit the keyboard again. The picture changed to show a diagram of the grave. Judith rummaged in her tote and brought out a small flash light. She pointed it at the screen and an arrow appeared. "This warrior was well provided for in his ne
xt life. Here rests his horse. This deer should feed him for a while. And to serve him are these two women, four children, ages eight to ten and, at his feet, a teenage boy and girl. Quite an entourage, don't you think."

  "Could they have died together?" Launa asked slowly.

  "Not very likely," Judith answered

  "When I kick off, I hope everyone just curls up and dies right along with me," Dick chortled.

  Jack grimaced. If people weren't careful, Dick might get his wish.

  Brent frowned and tried to keep the meeting on topic. "In recorded time among the American natives, we have situations where the death of a chief brought on mass suicides among those who knew him."

  "That's one way to avoid a complicated grief situation," Jack muttered, then turned away, immediately regretting his words.

  Launa shot him a puzzled glance.

  Brent ignored Jack, turning in his chair to face the two skeptics. "On one side of the break, people lived in towns of up to 5,000. The architecture is sophisticated, occasionally even including sewer systems." He played with his computer. Several strange things flashed on his monitor. Finally, a town map filled the screen.

  "At last," he muttered. "People lived in single family dwellings of about twenty-five square meters. Religious shrines were plentiful and distributed evenly." He looked at the group. "Let's see how long it takes me to find my next AV."

  "I think I can help you." Judith hit two keys and her screen lit up with a map. "Notice that after the break, the houses are half dug-outs, of about twelve square meters. This is an architecture that was common thousands of years earlier. That's where the common folk lived." She hit another key.

  Two large rectangular halls appeared, surrounded by a palisade.

  "The building on the right served a cultic purpose. The one on the left was the chief's. This fort was built on a hill. Ladies and gentlemen, meet your first two-bit dictator. He's brought a thriving economy to its knees, but who cares, he's the boss."

  Judith looked like she had bit into something sour.

  "Well, now I know where I want to live?" Dick nudged Marilyn.

  "The basic idea is to make sure one person doesn't live like that while everyone else has nothing." Judith sat up, ramrod straight. Her voice had a hardness Jack expected in a general officer, but it surprised him coming from the diminutive scholar.

  "Before 4200 B.C.E., in Europe, Western Asia and Egypt, a culture thrived that concentrated its efforts on increasing production and creativity. Its people lived in partnership, treating each other as equals. It was replaced by a culture that concentrated on tools of destruction and established a dominator/dominated relationship. Human beings became tools.

  The anthropologist paused to let her words sink in.

  “That earlier culture deserved to survive; it was better than its replacement culture by any measuring stick you choose to use. Both your teams are tasked to protect these people so they can thrive and grow. This would change civilization for the better."

  Launa nodded; Marilyn pushed herself out of her chair to pace the room. She halted to peer at the pictures on the monitors, then turned to Judith.

  "All this talk about graves and architecture is not helping me. Our mission objective will never put us in contact with these people. However, while we're on the subject, it takes a war to advance technology. Without a little fighting, this culture is going nowhere."

  Judith held her ground. "Look at what they did. Between 6,000 and 4000 B.C.E., they discovered farming and domesticated animals, made cloth from flax and wool," Judith ticked them off on her fingers, "and created pottery. They began trading and ship building. Art advanced outside the cave. We have the beginning of the symbol system that led to writing."

  Judith's exasperation clearly showed.

  "Hell, without the ravages of war and dark ages, they probably would have been writing before 3,000. I can't prove they would have kept progressing, but they had a damn good track record."

  Launa interjected a question. "What type of political structure did the old culture have?"

  Jack gave her another check mark. A good leader knew when to switch off of a hot issue and cool down a meeting.

  "That's a tough one,” Judith leaned toward Launa. "They left no documents, but as late as 3,000 B.C.E. records mention cities ruled in the "old way," by a council of elders under a Queen. These elders were both women and men and came from all lines of work."

  "What about the Queen?" That had gotten Marilyn's attention.

  "Don't think of her as a female king. The accounts allude to kingship coming down from heaven to settle on a ruler about 2700 B.C.E. The idea of one-man rule is a recent innovation. I'd say the queen functioned more as the center for consensus."

  Marilyn laughed. "Sounds like a pretty dull job to me, assuming it works. In my book, you need a strong leader if you expect to get anything done."

  Now she turned to Dick. "I haven't heard anything here that wasn't in the brief and that I didn't pick up in a fourth year history class. We'll just hang loose and prepare for anything. To me that means spending time sharpening individual skills, not sitting on my duff. Let’s go, Dick."

  "Right."

  In a moment, the two were gone leaving nothing behind but Jack's frown. He had never considered anything from Samantha an order, but he never would have walked out on a briefing.

  Who was in charge here?

  This lash up had been thrown together too quickly. What with the CIA, civil service, scholars and soldiers, the chain of command was a totally knot. Which one of the captains was senior officer present? Did it matter? If he was, how would Dick or Marilyn react?

  Unbidden, snippets of M*A*S*H came to mind. And under it all was his stepfather's voice. "Boy, you've got to make things happen. You can't wander through life like some drunk Indian."

  Launa was talking. Jack decided to let it ride, and turned his attention back to the briefing.

  "I didn't want to raise this in front of those two, but we are planning the most important invasion since Normandy. I don't feel very comfortable with, `the records mention', or a thousand years after the fact `the accounts allude to.' All you're giving us are crumpled burial piles and stories written years later by the winners about the losers."

  "I'm sorry, Lieutenant," Brent offered in a concerned voice. "It does appear our best intelligence is a trifle stale."

  Launa's head snapped back to Brent. She turned to Jack just as he lost his struggle to keep a straight face. The tension broke as both soldiers collapsed into laughter at the absurdity of the situation.

  The scholars looked at the two young people, then at each other and joined in.

  "I've never thought of archeology as military intelligence." Judith finally got out.

  "I've never thought of military as intelligent." Brent fired back giving Jack and Launa a sly sidewise look. "Present company excepted, of course."

  "Why bother with an exception." Launa laughed. "We were dumb enough to volunteer for this, weren't we? That wasn't too intelligent."

  To Jack this sounded like a good time for a break. If these puns got any worse, someone might get hurt. "Would anybody like some coffee, a drink?"

  The meeting dissolved as the four poured beverages.

  Brent stepped out on the balcony, and was lighting his pipe when the others joined him. For several minutes he and Judith reminisced about the digs of their youth. When they fell silent, Launa brought them back to the present.

  "What is that other team's mission profile?"

  Jack grimaced and Brent stepped in. "They're to ferment civil war among the horse raiders. That would buy the Old Europeans more time before the invasion."

  "But they'd still get hit." Judith added sourly.

  "Could we send both teams?"

  "Not likely." Jack shook his head. "The machine is still weight limited. They want to take horses and I can't blame them. Drop them on foot in the middle of the steppe and they could die of thirst before they found wa
ter. Besides, our drop zone is west of the Danube. They want to be far to the east of the Dnieper. No one is sure there will be time to attempt a second drop once the first team is inserted."

  Launa shook her head as if to clear it. "God, this stuff is hard to think about. Part of me expects to wake up in the Infirmary at the Point and find it was all just a fevered nightmare. Another part is scared stiff we're overlooking something. We'll get there and need a can opener."

  Brent nodded. "I know how you feel."

  "Our problem is to plan ahead so these folks can make the rescue with their pants on." Judith sprouted an impish grin. "Assuming the Neoliths wore anything. Have I shown you my dirty pictures?"

  Jack felt warmth rush to his face. It had not been that way the first time Judith showed what they might be wearing. With Launa at his elbow, it was different.

  He headed back in. Slowly, the three followed him.

  When they sat back down, Jack turned to Brent. "What do you see as the downside risks to us?"

  "How about the queen grabbing you for her lover and you getting your gizzard cut out for New Year."

  "Hold it," Judith protested. "That's not a likely risk."

  "What do you mean, Jack getting chopped up?" Launa voiced Jack's concern faster than he could.

  Brent looked defiantly at Judith.

  Judith breathed a deep sigh. "This comes under the heading of those who win, write the histories. The male dominated histories say some female led systems used to sacrifice the queen's consort every year. The economics of this system defeat me. I should think they would run through their supply of available consorts rather quickly."

  "Yeah," Jack observed dryly. "Like the first year."

  "There is no hard evidence for this practice,” Judith said. “I can't say the same for the dead women in the conqueror's tombs."

  Brent would not back off. "In Denmark, they've dug up well preserved bodies of men hung as offerings to the goddess."