Cordova looked at the guns trained on them. "I think we must, for now." He reached for Marie's hand, and she reluctantly took it.
Hand in hand, they walked toward the dangling end of the rope ladder, which was not even swaying in the still air now that it had reached its full length. Cordova kept one eye trained on the spectators above, noting which ones lowered their weapons or averted their aim, and which didn't.
At the base of the dislocated city, while they were out of sight of all but the sentry and two others standing on the very crumbling edge of the street above, Marie whispered, "We don't have to do this. We can skirt around the side to where they can't see us, and make a break back into the jungle."
Cordova wrinkled his forehead and shook her request away. "This is an amazing scientific find. Don't you want to know who these people are, where they came from?"
Marie frowned at him. "They already said they were American."
"More reason to learn all we can," Cordova said. "They're in the middle of a jungle and scared. We might be able to help them. Also..." he looked back at the smashed cars they had passed on their way to the ladder, "I may not have been in the States for several years, but I don't recall seeing cars like that."
Marie could tell by the look in his eyes that any counter argument would be lost on him. It was the same fiercely inquisitive look he had the morning they had started up the river. He hadn’t grown up on the outskirts of the jungle; to him, it was not full of wonders to be respected, but mysteries to be solved. She reached out and took hold of the ladder.
She didn't ask for a boost to get her feet up onto the bottommost rung, and none came. However, hands reached down to help her over the ragged edge of the macadam to lift her up once she reached the top. She meant to thank her aides as her head came up over the level of the street, but all thoughts of anything other than the scene before her immediately flew away.
In the span of thirty seconds, she had gone from the world's wildest jungle to the downtown street of a major American city. She had never been in one before, which made seeing one that had been through a subtle cataclysm all the more disturbing. The street was pockmarked and pitted like a normal street, but there were also long, rolling grades and inch-wide cracks that she was sure hadn't been there before the relocation. Cars, shiny and rounded and mostly unharmed, lined both sides of the street. The street itself was awash in sparkling drifts of broken glass – nearly every visible window had been shattered -- and she could see where effort had been made to sweep aside dozens of stories of accumulated detritus to make safe paths. Other than that, the tall buildings seemed to be mostly unaffected.
"Dios mio," she heard Cordova breathe as he came up behind her, beholding the same scene. The sentry was immediately trying to ask him questions, but for a moment, the two scientists just stood there together, marveling at their sudden immersion in a landscape that, by all rights, should not have been there.
Marie looked at the small team that had escorted them up the ladder, trying to apply the same eye that Cordova had applied to the cars. She tried to see if there was anything about their fashion or hairstyles that looked wildly out of place to her, given that she didn’t quite know the state of casual American dress. She found that she couldn't determine anything beyond their general disheveled appearance, but that could all be written off by the fact that they had all been literally dropped into a foreign environment and forced to spend at least four days there, without power or (most likely) water.
"There was just this huge sound," the sentry was saying rapidly, most likely because they were the first people they had seen that had been unaffected by the tragedy, "and the rest of the world just... went away. Some people say that a white light surrounded everything outside the boundary, and then everything shifted. When the light died away there was nothing but jungle.”
Cordova continued scanning the street as he asked, "What time of day was it when you arrived?"
The sentry, puzzled why he was asking this, finally replied, "Evening. It was mid-morning before, and then evening."
Cordova nodded. "So it would seem that not only have you been greatly displaced in space, you have also been displaced in time."
One of the members of the crowd, an especially stern-looking man in what might have been a business suit when they first arrived, and who was the only one who hadn't yet lowered his weapon, said, "We should take him to see Collins."
"That's what I was thinking," the sentry said. "Come on," he said to Cordova and Marie, "I'll show you the way." He started walking out in front of them, then turned and motioned when they didn't immediately follow. "Collins will know what to do," he said.
The small group began moving down the street. Every minute or two, a deep, disquieting creak would come from one of the buildings, a sound almost impossibly slow and grinding. Marie absently realized that, in their original placement, these buildings would be built on pylons driven at least half their height into bedrock. Now, they all were poised on nothing more than fifteen feet of stabilizing material. Sooner or later, they were all going to fall like the partial buildings they had seen along the almost surgically-precise edge. The whole city would eventually wilt like a flower, petals dying in the jungle heat and falling outward.
The sentry, still taking the lead, picked a path down the street, and then turned a corner where a gap in the buildings held what was once a wide plaza. The frozen waves of broken safety glass, arranged in a trillion tiny cubes that reflected the morning sun like a vast pile of diamonds, were thicker here; more effort had been made to push them to the edges. In the center of the plaza stood a large tent, painted with bright stripes. It looked like it had been designed for circus use.
"Pretty lucky they were in town, wasn't it?" The sentry was saying. "It seems to be more stable than anything other structure, so Collins has his command center in here." The small group around Cordova and Marie shepherded them toward the large flaps that had been pulled aside to form an entryway. The sentry passed into the dark shadows inside the tent.
If they had been hoping for a respite from the oppressive jungle morning air inside the tent, they did not find it. The heat, if anything, was even worse, the air stale and sluggish. The acidic smell of animals hung in the air, making their lack of visible presence all the more disturbing. Marie and Cordova’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, and they could see that the tent material was illuminated, unable to block all of the sun. The diffused light made everything inside shadowless and flat.
They passed between two large stacks of bleachers, which held sparse groups of people, sitting and talking in low tones. Some of them were clearly the circus’s performers; Cordova saw one man whose face was incomplete with clown makeup, caught in preparation for a morning show and now half-melted off with sweat: outlines of black and red, white streaks down his neck, one greasepaint eyebrow raised in permanent surprise. The bleachers faced a ring of fat tentpoles that circumscribed a foot-high, circular wall at the very center of the tent. Inside it, the ground was covered with a thin layer of sawdust. It had been spread evenly for the start of the show, but now it had been kicked and shuffled through until it formed tall, abstract patterns on the thin padding underneath. Near the rear, several tables had been pushed together so that maps, blueprints, and other materials could be laid out. Between them, a well-worn path had been made in the sawdust. A man walked back and forth among the tables incessantly, tracing the route over and over again, clearing it to a width of over three feet. His skin was dark against his buttoned white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow.
The sentry stopped just before stepping over the low wall and into the ring. “Mr. Collins?” he called.
The pacing man looked up immediately. Sweat stood out on his brow. “Yes?”
The sentry suddenly seemed to lose his sense of authority. “We… Some people…” he stammered.
Collins narrowed his eyes, then smiled and waved the man forward. His grin was wide and charming. “Come over, Allway,” he said. He certainly could be an actual mayor, Cordova thought.
The sentry, breathing a sigh of relief, stepped over the wall and walked to Collins. They talked in low tones for a moment, some of the attending personnel looking up from their tables to listen in. More and more glances were thrown in Marie and Cordova’s direction the longer the Allway spoke.
Finally, Collins seemed to have heard enough. He put his hand on Allway's shoulder, and turned back to the place where Marie and Cordova stood. "Come on over!" the man called, his teeth shining.
Leaving the rest of the sentry group behind, they stepped over the wall and crossed to the group of tables, their feet rustling erratically through the small waves of sawdust. Allway backed away respectfully as they approached, absolving responsibility for them. Collins spoke in conversational tones as soon as they were within earshot. "So, I hear you're from outside," he said.
Cordova nodded. "We were on the coast originally, but there were seismic reports and weather phenomena, so we were asked to investigate."
"Wonderful!" Collins said. "That's been our biggest fear, you know, that no one realizes we're here, wherever that is. Where are we, exactly?"
Cordova spoke as if he had been mentally rehearsing for some time. "Not far from the northern coast of Colombia," he said. "A little over four days' trip by boat up the river."
Collins seemed genuinely fascinated. "Amazing..." he mused. “And how much information does the government have?"
"Which one?" Marie asked.
Collins seemed to have not thought of this distinction. "Ah... well, yours and ours both, I suppose."
"Nothing yet," Cordova said. "We're too far out of radio range to relay our information back."
Collins squinted at them, puzzled. "Radio range? So, no one's taken any satellite imagery yet?"
Cordova shrugged. "I don't know what you mean. Are you talking about radar?"
Collins looked between the two of them for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was low, conspiratorial. "What year is this, anyway?"
Cordova answered quickly, matching his hushed tone. "1952."
Collins' face went a little gray. "I see," he said. "Could you two... follow me, please?" He turned and walked toward the smaller back flaps of the tent without checking to see if they were following. The two explorers exchanged a wary look, then followed. They left behind a few staff members to pore over the maps and schematics on their own.
Marie and Cordova exited the tent the way the performers did, at the back of the ring. In the back, there were a few narrow switchbacks between walls of canvas. It was darker back here, the smell of animals more intense. They followed the shadow of Collins as he constantly turning corners ahead on them in the canvas warren, and finally came out in a sheltered area that was full of movement. They clasped hands instinctively as they realized that they had found the source of the animal smells. Cages of all sizes ranged around. Here, a pair of tigers paced back and forth, flashing orange and black between the bars. A small stable along the back held a half-dozen horses, all nodding acknowledgement at the new people. Back in the corner, the largest cage held a small elephant family, all of which flapped their ears and regarded them stoically. Collins turned to face the two scientists, his countenance dour, miles away from the cheerful politician that had originally greeted them.
"I take it my answer was not what you suspected?" Cordova asked.
"When we left, it was..." Collins paused for an unusually long time, as if not wanting to manifest the answer in the physical world, and then uttered a time that lay some sixty years in the future. Cordova nodded, remembering the strange car models lying at the edges of the excised city. "Of course," Collins said, his voice subdued, looking around him at the trapped animals, "... there's no way for us to get back, is there?" He turned back to them, his bark of a laugh holding the slightest hysterical edge. "We're stuck here."
"There are things we can do..." Cordova began.
"Yeah?" Collins said, his eyes wide. "Because if it’s anything other than telling those people out there that they can't go home again, that they're trapped forever in the past..." He ran his hands over the sides of his face. Marie took a half-step back. "I'm not even a real leader, you know," Collins was saying, starting to jabber. "For the first few hours, everyone was just running around, trying to figure out what the hell happened. I just started giving people tasks to do, you know... Sweep the glass out of the street, start taking inventory of the stores and restaurants, things like that." He began pacing anew, this time a sense of urgency in his steps that wasn't there before. He wheeled on them, his tone equal parts incredulity and panic. "I'm an elementary school teacher! I didn't ask for this! I made suggestions, and all of a sudden everyone was looking to me to save them! I can't go out there and tell them that we're not even in our own *time* anymore, and that no one is coming to save us! This city is going to collapse entirely before too long!"
He lunged forward, grabbing Cordova by the lapels. Marie tried to step forward, put herself between the two men to keep them apart, but didn't quite make it. "What are we going to do?" Collins asked, launching flecks of spit toward the other man in the ammoniac heat.
Cordova's calm didn't break. "The best thing you can do for these people right now is to get hold of yourself," he said. "One thing at a time. Securing their survival is the number one job, and it looks like you've managed to do that, at least for now."
Collins looked almost disappointed that Cordova wasn't retaliating, hitting him to the ground, kicking him, anything. Marie considered that maybe that's what the de facto mayor wanted, to sustain some physical wounds to detract from the psychic ones he had been hiding since this emergency started.
Collins looked into Cordova's eyes, first one, then the other, and slumped against him. Because the men were almost identically sized, it was nearly impossible to tell which of them was holding up the other. Marie went into one of the darker corners of the tent and returned with a folding chair. She slid it under Collins, and Cordova lowered him into it. Collins, his hands still crabbed even after relinquishing his tight hold on Cordova's lapels, ran over his sweating face and scalp.
Cordova crouched down next to the chair, looking up at Collins. The weather scientist spoke. "Now, granted, I know next to nothing about these things, but I think the fact that Marie and I didn’t arrive in a city full of savages bashing each other’s brains out in fear means that you've done something right. Can you accept responsibility for that much?"
Collins, staring straight ahead into the gloom, nodded.
"Good," Cordova continued. "Now, you said that you were taking inventory of food and water stores, correct?"
Collins nodded again, but this time flicked a wary glance over at Cordova.
"So you've secured sustenance and shelter for these people. For the moment, the situation is stable. Can you admit that?"
Another nod.
"Okay, so no one's going to starve or start fighting for food. How long can that status be maintained?"
Collins' mind began to work again. "We haven't looked everywhere, but I think we have two weeks of food if we ration it correctly. There are seven restaurants in this section of the city, which has nine complete blocks in it. There are teams still scouting the partial buildings out around the edge, because they’re the least stable and careful progress is slow, but we figure we'll find other hidden survivors at about the same rate as we find food. We're trying to fill six of the restaurants' freezers with everything perishable and keep the doors closed. They're mostly deep inside buildings, so we're hoping the food will last longer."
"Wonderful," Cordova said. "And how many people are accounted for as of now?"
Collins searched his memory. "Four hundred sixty-three," he said. "We lost another hundred in various accidents. Those that didn’t make it… we put in the seventh freezer." His voice was not robotic, but had a statistician’s detachment. Marie thought this was probably necessary for someone in this situation.
Cordova shared a grim look with Marie. "And what is the focus of your efforts right now?" Cordova asked.
“Water," Collins said, more like his original self than he had been since they entered the back of the tent. A tiger growled nearby as if it understood what he was saying. "Any buildings over six stories have rooftop tanks, so we’re making sure they’re full."
"That's wonderful," Cordova said. "I thought sixty years from now they'd have moved on to better plumbing technology."
Collins actually smiled a little at that. "No, it's still done with the old wooden tanks. Don't mess with perfection, as they say." Cordova chuckled, prompting Collins to continue, "I'm having the roof taken off one of them," he said. "They're draining it, moving the water to other buildings. We need to see if the rainwater we catch will be usable."
Marie saw a moment for her own expertise to be useful, so she jumped in. "I'd think so. Your people can't drink water from the streams down in the jungle without getting sick, but the only bacteria in the tanks are the ones you brought with you. So far, anyway. It might be such a gradual transition that your people won’t feel it much."
Cordova nodded toward her. "Marie's our native biochemist," he said. "If you're going to get through this, you'll have her to thank more than anyone else." The look on Marie's face betrayed how deeply she now realized the responsibility on her shoulders.
"What about you?" Collins said. "What's your line of work?"
Cordova shrugged. "I'm a meteorologist," he said. "But I'm an American, so there's that. I'm guessing you're from the East Coast, is that right?"
Collins nodded, and volunteered the name of the city they had been excised from.
"Were there any warning signs before this happened to you?" Cordova asked. “Was there any kind of precedent for it?”
Collins shook his head. "There's been news, I guess, but nothing out of ordinary. Threats of terror attacks, that sort of thing."
"Russians?" Cordova asked, already nodding. Collins laughed out loud.
"No! We're not worried about them anymore. It’s more religious extremists that we're concerned with now. There have been other attacks, but nothing like this."
Cordova looked at Marie. "How do you feel about speaking to the people?" he asked her. "This is your nation, but this turf is more mine. I think we need to talk to as many of these people as we can, and tell them what we understand so far."
Marie nodded. "Promise me one thing, though," she said. "We won't sugar-coat this. The situation is dire, and they should know that." She turned to Collins. "You know them best. Is this information something they can handle?"
Collins nodded, his resolve clearly coming back. He even sat forward in his seat a little bit. "I've seen these people pull together in ways that I've never even considered before. They can take it."
"Sooner is best, I think," Cordova said. "How quickly can we gather them together?"
