I can hear someone talking as I return to camp from my morning ablutions.
“It can’t be.”
“Morning,” I say, as I approach our fire.
Wolf and Jake are leaning over Jake’s tailgate, which folds down out of his cart into a makeshift table. Similar to the chuck carts. Jake calls it his desk. They have the paper we found spread out in front of them. Each has a magnifying glass in their hand. They are scanning the surface. Tuf is watching them intently.
“I can think of no other explanation.”
Spud walks up with two cups of coffee and hands me one.
“Annie thought maybe it was a cave you and Mose had set up. Long ago.”
“Not us,” says His Lordship.
“How about an earlier settlement attempt?” I ask.
“All the work I know of took place there around MadDog, where the space landing port was built,” says Jacob. “True, you can land some ships anywhere reasonably flat, but near the coast the food supply is more reliable. Out in a desert like this, water is scarce. Game is scarcer. It’s an odd place to attempt to survive.”
Wolf looks at him. “True.”
“Why would they have an Old Earth map with them?” asks Sir Jacob.
“An Old Earth map?”
“Yes,” says Wolf. “See, here.”
He points at the lower left corner of the large paper. “Here is the legend.”
“U.S.A.” I read. “What’s that?”
“A country on Old Earth,” says Sir Jacob.
“Maybe they were odd and brought some Earth artifacts with them,” I say. “They were hoarders, maybe.”
“See the big letters? Here, by where it is torn?” asks Sir Jacob.
There is a hole near the center of the map. A large area is missing.
“Jake,” says Wolf. “Look.” He points at a big letter.
“A,” I say. “I don’t need a magnifying glass to see it.”
“There is a big ‘A’ here also, Jake,” says Spud, from the other side of the map.
Mose joins us. “What you got here? Them gals tole me you found suthin’ in a cave.”
“Map,” says Wolf.
“Of Earth,” says Jake.
We get quiet for a while and all peer around at the map. Many parts are illegible from age and dirty still.
“My conclusion?” asks His Lordship.
“As a gentleman and a scholar?” asks Mose. He smiles brightly.
“In fact, yes,” says Sir Jacob.
“Do you have a conclusion also, Mose?” Asks Spud.
“The very same one, though I cain’t hardly believe it,” says Mose.
“Wait,” I say. “How can either of you know what the other is thinking?”
“We been friends a long time, and we both always had suspicions,” says Mose.
“Go ahead Mose, say it.”
“We on Earth.”
“Old Earth? No fucking way,” I say. “It was destroyed beyond use with warming climate. The hots, they called it. Dwindling livable areas. Wars. Plagues. Nothing living survived. Nuclear winter lasted half a century. We all know history. Nothing could live there, still. Those papers and books we found were brought here by some pioneer migrant looking to save the past. Just a few scraps left from the book blazes.”
“We believe not, Annie,” says Jake. “Saguaro were another clue. We have been identifying more and more plants that were not introduced after terraforming. And now the napkin and this map?”
“But…”
“This isn’t the first cache Mose and I have found. Many of the books in my library were found here on the Rock. At first, we believed that people had brought them, hoarders, like you say. More correctly, collectors. Collectors of artifacts of Earth’s past.”
“But the evidence, it been pilin’ up,” says Mose. “We found a lot over dere by the settled area. But den, I find more out by the Rio Rojo, now here we find a map. On this map, right here on the left side. See it? A river.”
“Here Annie, take my glass.” Jake hands me his magnifying glass.
Mose puts a finger just above the paper. “See heah? The wiggly blue line. It says here Colorado. What do colorado mean?”
“In Spanish, it means red.”
“And what do rojo mean?”
“Oh,” I shrug my shoulders. “Red. But, you know that.”
“Uh huh. Now y’awl do, too.” Mose and I look back at the map.
“See dese curves here?” asks Mose. “They match the ground. This our Rio Rojo. It run red with floating sediment in the spring floods.”
He runs his finger along the curves.
“Same curves as on the map, the Colorado. I trap all over this country, I know mah river.”
“Wow,” I say. “I recognize this one. The bluffs, that drainage. Sure, that’s where we found Trixie.”
“By golly it is,” says Spud. “And this here is Beaver crick comin’ down from the west. Well, not quite.”
“Been five hundred years and some, son, bound to be a few changes,” says Mose.
“True.”
“You see, your Spanish, Annie, plus dis map. Dat our proof,” Mose nods. “It true. Earth ain’t dead.”
“But, it can’t be. Earth was blown to smithereens,” I say.
“Mose and I believe that the smithereens story is a fabrication,” says Sir Jacob.
Mose nods in agreement. “Yassuh.”