No Enemy But Time

First published: 1982

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Science fiction—time travel

Time of work: 1963-2002 and two million years in the past

Locale: East Africa

The Plot

The novel is composed of chapters that alternate between two narratives. The first begins in 1986 as protagonist John Monegal, a twenty-three-year-old black American, is undergoing survival training in a fictional East African country in preparation for a trip back in time to study proto-humans. The narrative, told in first person, centers primarily on his two years spent two million years in the past.

The other, third-person narrative begins in 1963 with John as a small child in Spain. John’s mother was a mute prostitute in Seville. Fearing that she would be unable to provide for her son, fathered by a black member of the U.S. Air Force, she gives the baby to a randomly selected Air Force family. John grows up as the adopted son of an enlisted man. Initially slow to develop, he adapts to his new life but is haunted by vividly realistic dreams of a primitive world that he slowly realizes is East Africa two million years ago.

After John’s adoptive father dies in a car accident, John moves to the Bronx with his mother and sister. When he discovers that his mother is writing a book about his dream experiences, he runs away to Florida. He works odd jobs, under the name Joshua Kampa, for eight years. His vivid dreams of Pleistocene Africa recur, and he avidly reads about anthropology and paleontology, becoming an amateur expert. He gets the attention of a famous hominid paleontologist from the African country of Zarakal, who offers him a chance to travel back in time.

After months of survival training with a local tribesman in Zarakal, Joshua is sent into the past. He tries to send back his observations, but his communicator fails. He meets a band of proto-humans, one female member of which seems closer to modern humans. He becomes tolerated and then accepted by the hominids, especially the female he calls Helen, with whom he falls in love. The hominids are fascinated by his technological artifacts, which include a handgun that he uses only when absolutely necessary. The death of a male member of the group who kills himself playing with the gun brings Joshua closer to the tribe. Helen becomes his mate.

A drought forces the hominid group to migrate. Helen adopts an Australopithecus baby who is later brutally killed. Joshua then realizes that Helen, formerly barren, is pregnant. Joshua and Helen spend happy months together before the baby is born. Helen dies in childbirth. Stricken with grief, Joshua takes his baby and flees as an erupting volcano disperses the tribe. He barely makes it back alive to his time machine, then returns to the present with his daughter.

The final chapters of the book cover the next fifteen years, as Joshua and his daughter Monicah first live in the United States, then move to Zarakal. Under the patronage of Zarakal’s leader, Joshua becomes an important government official. Monicah also has vivid dreams, but of the far future, not the far past. The novel ends with her decision, against her father’s wishes, to use the time machine to visit the future world of her dreams.