Chapter 2
The desert sun beat down on the improvised airstrip doing its best to make the parched soil even drier. A woman in her mid-twenties wearing Office of Public Security grays stood near the aircraft that had just landed. She raised her hands, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare, and scanned the arid landscape looking for some sign of civilization. Other than the lone building standing among the rocks and cacti like a sentinel in a forgotten outpost, there was nothing but desert. A sudden gust of wind blew grit into her face causing her to drop her hands to her eyes and making her strawberry blonde hair dance about like flames in a campfire.
“Is this an emergency landing, Jonathan?” she asked the man standing beside her. “I thought we would arrive at an airport. The only thing I see is a wooden shack and a roofed-over storage area. Can we re-board the plane?”
“This is the airport, Ellie,” said Jonathan. “We’re waiting for our guide to escort us to camp. And no, we can’t re-board the plane. The crew will be locking down and preparing to assist with the cargo offload. Things are a bit more primitive out here.” Like Ellie, Jonathan was dressed in OPS grays, but while most people would have called Ellie attractive, they would have called Jonathan ‘worse for the wear.’Jonathan was in his early forties, balding and with the complexion of a fair-skinned man who had spent most of his life outdoors. Very few people noticed his complexion, however. What they noticed was the livid scar on his left cheek.
A second woman, black and in her early sixties handed Ellie a tissue she could use to wipe her eyes. Her hair was white but she had the build and moved with the grace of a professional dancer. Unlike the younger woman, she was dressed in civilian clothes.
Jonathan nodded toward the solitary building from where a figure had emerged and was walking in their direction. “Unless I’m mistaken, here’s our guide now.”
Moments later, a young man in an OPS uniform, but wearing a hat which might have come from one of the old Western movies Jonathan loved, stood before them.
“Major Kubiac?” He saluted. “I’m Corporal Adel. Welcome to Pacific Reclamation Reforestation Camp Four. I was informed you’d arrive with the supply plane, but not that you’d be accompanied.” He looked quizzically at Ellie, whose uniform bore no rank insignia.
Jonathan returned the salute. “Thank you, Corporal.” He gestured with his hand first toward Ellie and then to the woman in civilian clothes. “This is my assistant and fiancée, Ms. Kassia Maly. Our companion is Dr. Vivian Vandermire.”
“A doctor?” The corporal’s face brightened at the word doctor. “That’s good news. We can use another one. The camp medical staff always has more work than time.”
“I’m not that type of doctor, Corporal. I’m a professor of psychology and teach at Ellie’s… Ms. Maly’s university.”
“We can use teachers too. We only have two at the moment, and over one hundred school-age children.”
“Dr. Vandermire isn’t an émigré, Corporal,” said Jonathan. “She’s here as part of a research project on the reclamation camps.”
“Oh.” The corporal looked visibly disappointed to learn the camp wouldn’t be gaining a teacher. “In any case, I need to bring you back to the camp. We have transportation behind the building.”
When Ellie rounded the corner of the building and saw the transportation her eyes widened and she stopped walking. “A stagecoach? This is 2069. How can we be riding in a stagecoach? You’re kidding, right?”
Dr. Vandermire was equally astonished. “Explain to me again why I’m here. And how we got transported two hundred years into the past.”
“Because you volunteered,” said Ellie, trying to come to terms with the idea she would be traveling by a means two hundred years out of date. “You said you wanted to study one of the reclamation camps.”
“I must have been feverish at the time. Why didn’t you tell me to take a nap until the delirium passed?”
Jonathan rolled his eyes heavenward and compressed his lips as if trying to contain a smile.
“As I said earlier, they do things differently out here.” Jonathan helped the corporal stow their luggage onto the roof of the stage. “The camp’s powered vehicles are only for emergency transportation. I’ve ridden in one of these coaches before. They sway a bit but aren’t uncomfortable. The camp can’t be over three hours’ travel from here.”
“Two and a half is more like it, sir,” said the corporal from the coach’s driver position. “Now if you will all board the coach, I’ll get us back to camp.”
As soon as his passengers took their seats, Adel cracked a whip, and with a “Giddyup, horses,” the coach rumbled forward.
“Alina used to say riding in a coach reminded her of being at sea,” said Jonathan. “I had to take her word for it. I’ve never spent time on the open ocean. On the other hand, the movement tends to lull me to sleep.” His tone of voice became nostalgic. “We spent the first two years of our marriage at a camp like the one we’ll be visiting. It wasn’t until she started having dizzy spells and we returned to the East Coast that the doctors discovered the brain tumor.”
Alina had told Ellie the same thing the previous night. Six months ago if anyone told her she would be having dream conversations with the spirit of a dead woman, she would have laughed in their face. But after the events of the previous few months, conversations with the dead were almost mundane.
Alina warned her Jonathan would become nostalgic during the trip and the best way Ellie could help him get over old memories would be to create new ones with him. She also recommended several sexual positions “guaranteed to make Jonathan howl like a dog at the moon and thanking God he was male.”
The coach did sway as it moved. It was also warm. Between the rocking and the temperature, Jonathan fell asleep within minutes, but he could sleep anywhere anytime. Dr. Vandermire lasted a few minutes longer than Jonathan, but within fifteen minutes Ellie was the only passenger awake.
With no one to talk to, there was little for Ellie to do but stare at the countryside the coach passed through. The desert wasn’t what she expected. Her imagination had pictured a barren expanse devoid of any form of life and covered in sand dunes. The reality was a parched landscape of rock and dirt covered with a scattering of plants and a few small trees. She saw a bird circling overhead, and a rabbit scuttled from one small bush to another.
Time passed, and Ellie was beginning her own trip into the land of nod when the stage took a hard bounce. Dr. Vandermire awoke with a start. Jonathan grunted but didn’t waken. He shifted slightly, moving into closer contact with Ellie, and began snoring.
“Central Valley,” said Dr. Vandermire as she joined Ellie in watching the scenery. “Before the drought, this part of California produced so much food it was sometimes called the breadbasket of the country. But when the climate changed and the rains stopped, it turned into this. Now between the earthquakes and the drought, the Pacific states are almost uninhabited.”
Before Ellie could think of an intelligent reply, Corporal Adel shouted down from the driver’s bench, “We’re almost at the camp. You’ll be able to see it once we round this bend.”
Ellie wasn’t sure what she thought a reclamation camp would look like, but she was certain it wasn’t what she saw when the stage rounded the bend. The camp was a small town of tents and awnings laid out in military precision. There were big ones, small ones, and one which would have been at home in a circus. Most were shades of olive drab, gray, or brown, but there were a handful of reds, blues, and yellows intermixed among the otherwise drab dwellings. She saw only two structures constructed of something other than tent material.
“Not quite what you expected?” asked Jonathan, who had awakened at the corporal’s announcement.
“Not even close. What’s in the big tent? Elephants? It looks like a circus tent.”
“That will be the mess tent.” Jonathan stretched his arms out enough that Ellie needed to duck to keep from getting poked by an elbow. “The camp meals are prepared there and most people take their meals there as well. Mealtimes can resemble a circus, though. The permanent buildings will be the camp’s infirmary and the administrative building. I expect we’re heading to the administrative building now.”
Jonathan’s prediction proved correct as the stage stopped before one of the buildings. Now that she was closer, Ellie decided it looked like it was made from the local rocks and soil.
Adel climbed down from the coach’s driver position and opened the stage’s doors. “I’ll wait with the stage, while you and the ladies report to the duty officer, sir. When you’re finished, I’ll help you move your luggage to your tent.”
Jonathan led Ellie and Dr. Vandermire into the building. It was marginally cooler than the outside but the operative word was “marginally.” The interior of the building was a single room, with furnishings as rustic as the stagecoach. The administrative area contained a trio of desks and numerous old-fashioned filing cabinets. One corner of the area was walled off to make a private office. Sunlight petering through the room’s shuttered windows provided the only illumination. If not for the computers sitting on the desks, Ellie thought the room could have been a movie set from one of Jonathan’s Westerns.
A wooden counter divided the room into a waiting area and an administrative section. Jonathan rang the call bell sitting on the counter. A moment later a man emerged from the office. To Ellie’s surprise, he wasn’t wearing an OPS uniform. Even more surprisingly, he was in a wheelchair.
“Afternoon, Major, ladies, and welcome to Pac-Rec Reforestation Camp Four,” said the man. “I see Corporal Adel brought you all back in one piece. I’m Christopher Rowlands, today’s Officer of the Day. If you give me your orders, I’ll check you in and turn you back over to Corporal Adel.”
Jonathan handed over his orders. The OOD wheeled his chair over to one of the computers and verified their orders and faces against what he saw on the computer.
“Major Jonathan Kubiac, here under temporary assigned duty orders from the upstate New York Office of Public Security Criminal Investigation Division. Dr. Vivian Vandermire from the Oswego branch of the New York State University, here on sabbatical to study the Pacific-Reclamation reforestation camps. Kassia Maly, civilian employee with the New York Office of Public Security Criminal Investigation Division and scheduled to attend OPS basic training in January. Is all this correct?”
Both Dr. Vandermire and Ellie nodded in affirmation while Jonathan gave a more formal, “That is correct.”
Rowlands stamped the papers and returned a page to Jonathan.
“Okay, we’re done here. I’ve checked you in. Corporal Adel will take you to your quarters. Oh, before I forget, the commandant requested me to inform you that you and your assistants are invited to his tent for dinner tonight.”