Time's Last Gift (4 page)

The rain was as heavy as before. He splashed along for a while and then decided to cut straight back to the vessel. The rain had discouraged most beasts from coming out.

He turned to the west and started back up the long slope. As he passed by a high outcrop of limestone, he slowed down. If he poked around in there, he might scare something out. He stopped and removed his small motion-picture camera from the bag and took some shots. Then he went up to a gap between two tall rocks and threw several stones into it. Something grunted from deep within. He backed away and pointed the camera at the opening. Nothing, however, emerged.

He threw some more stones inside, heard another grunt, and entered the gap. He did not know what was inside. There were no tracks since stone covered the entranceway and the rain would, in any event, have washed away odors. When he got about twelve feet inside the gap, however, he smelled bear. He had installed the camera inside his hood; its base was secured to a helmet-like arrangement which fitted around his head and which he had removed from the pack. Thus, he could take pictures and at the same time handle his express rifle. If the light was too dim to give good pictures, he could always erase the electronic film.

He did not intend to kill the beast. He never killed unless he had to do so for defense or meat. But he had been so long without adventure that he could not resist sticking his head into the den. Later, he admitted to himself that he had lost his good sense for a moment. What did he expect a bear on its home territory to do other than charge the trespasser?

The beast heard or smelled him, and it snarled. He went on, his rifle held out ahead of him. The gap curved to the left for about ten feet and then straightened out. It had narrowed overhead to a thin line and then, within a few feet, its edges merged.

About that time, either his wits returned or his blood cooled. He was not afraid, but he did not want to kill the bear. What good would it do anybody? Then it occurred to him that the meat would not spoil. The people would walk through the rain to get it, even if it was about five miles away. He could block up the entrance with rocks to keep the hyenas and wolves away. And this morning’s indulgence (that was what it was) could be justified.

Of course, he could have killed a mammoth or rhino but then the carcass would have been out in the open and so subject to the carrion eaters.

He grimaced. He did not have to justify himself to anybody except himself.

The snarling became a roaring, a huge head with white-edged eyes and dripping saliva showed itself a few feet ahead of him. The gap was so narrow that the great beast had to shove both shoulders against the walls to get through. Gribard-! sun fired the rifle; the noise was deafening in the tight corridor; the 500 express bullet went through the skull between the eyes and the beast fell dead.

Another bear behind it, roaring, tried to get at Gribardsun by climbing over the carcass. It became stuck in the narrower opening higher up, and Gribardsun’s bullet went into its throat. It died on top of its mate.

The Englishman climbed over the top body and into the dark and fetid chamber. He turned on a flashlight and inspected the cave. As he had expected, there were two cubs. They cowered in the rear but snarled at him when he picked them up. He threw them ahead of him over the bodies, climbed out again, and then had to chase them down. He had expected them to stay close to the bodies of their parents, but they wanted their freedom.

After catching the cubs, he injected a dormgen shot into each. While they snoozed away, he piled large rocks and small boulders over the entrance to the cave. Satisfied that hyenas and wolves would have a hard time getting in to the bodies, he picked the cubs up, one under each arm, and set off. He returned at a faster pace and so was only half an hour behind the time he had promised to return.

The others were worried because he was late, and they were surprised on seeing the cubs. Rachel thought they were darling, but she was concerned about feeding them.

‘They’re past the nursing period,’ Gribardsun said. ‘Meat and berries are all they’ll need.’

He brought out a package which he unfolded on the lee side of the vessel. It was a conical framework about three feet high. He spread a thin sheet of plastic over it, secured its corners, and then sprayed a thick coat of foam over the plastic. The foam dried within ten minutes, and he sprayed another coat and then another. The three coats made a covering four inches thick. He cut a hole at the base for the cubs and used the cutout as a swinging door. The cubs now had a snug warm house.

The bearhouse was a smaller scale model of the dwellings that the humans would erect later on. These were very light and even Rachel could carry one for miles, though the size made them awkward to handle. They could be dragged through the roughest land, however, without damaging them. And axles and wheels, also stored in the vessel, could be attached to them when they were to be moved any distance.

At noon, they were all back at the tribal campsite. This was to be referred to in the official reports, and so unofficially among themselves, as Site A-One or just A-One. Again, they were confronted by a number of warriors. Gribardsun proceeded ahead of his fellows but much more swiftly this time, as if he expected to be received without suspicion. He headed for the tent housing Abinal and entered with a nod to the mother, Amaga. Abinal looked much better. He was frightened on seeing the stranger, but Gribardsun talked in a soothing tone while he examined him. He gave the boy another pill, but the boy refused to swallow it.

Gribardsun, smiling, took out another and swallowed it to show Abinal that it was harmless.

Abinal still turned his face away, and his mother jabbered away at Gribardsun. It seemed she was trying to get him to leave the boy alone.

Gribardsun made signs indicating that Abinal would die if he did not take the pill. He also indicated that the others would die, too, but he was not sure that he was getting his message across.

He left the tent because it was obvious that Abinal was too scared of him to do anything he was going to suggest. Rachel was taking films of a woman skinning a marmot. Drummond was knocking off samples of rocks with a pick while a crowd of children watched him along with several of the men. Robert von Billmann had given an old white-haired woman, who probably wasn’t much over fifty-five, some meat, and she was teaching him the language. She was showing him various objects as referents.

Gribardsun decided that their camp should be set up about a quarter-mile down the valley. There was a slight overhang halfway up a steep hill that would give them protection from the weather. They would be close enough to visit the site without wasting much travel time. But they would not be so close that the natives would feel that the aliens were sitting on top of them.

Gribardsun entered the tent again. The boy was being fed by his sister, Laminak, who appeared to be about twelve years old. She looked up startled when Gribardsun came in, but she smiled at him. He smiled back at her and, squatting, felt Abinal’s pulse. It was seventy-six, and his skin was warm but moist. Gribardsun stood up and turned away and inserted a panacea into the spout of a bag of water. That the pill would be much diluted did not matter. It was extremely powerful. Moreover, if the others drank from the bag, that was all the better. Gribardsun would have liked to dope all the water bags.

The boy said something, and the girl stood up and faced the Englishman. She spoke to him in a protesting manner. He understood, after a minute, that Abinal had seen him drop something into the water. Gribardsun did not try to deny it. He tried instead to demonstrate, with sign language, that he meant to make Abinal well.

Laminak called out, and Amaga, her mother, entered. There wasn’t much room to stand in the tent then. Gribardsun bent over and went out through the narrow, low opening.

‘What’s going on in there?’ Rachel asked.

Gribardsun told her, and she said, ‘If you get them upset, then we lose our chance to study them at close range.’

‘And if they all die, then we lose our chance too,’ he said. ‘Besides, I can’t see letting anyone die if I can prevent it. Even if…’

‘Even if they’re going to die anyway and, in one sense, are already dead?’ Rachel said.

He smiled and said, ‘In that sense, we also are already dead. And we know it! But that doesn’t stop us from trying to live forever, does it?’

Amaga came out of the tent with the bag of water. She walked to the end of the ledge and poured the water down the hillside. Then, after a quick but triumphant glance at the Englishman, she went back into the tent.

‘They won’t accept my help,’ he said. ‘They’re afraid I’ll get control of them if they take my medicine, I suppose. And so Abinal may die.’

‘It’s a matter of timing,’ she said. ‘If we had only gotten here a week or so sooner, they might have accepted your medicine when Abinal got sick. But…’

Gribardsun was not one to dwell long on what-if’s. If he could not help Abinal now, then he would work to establish confidence in himself through the tribe’s elders. He might be able to help Abinal later on. If it was too late then, so be it.

Through sign language, he communicated to the adult males that he had killed two bears - or two large ferocious animals and that they should follow him to the scene of the kill. They were reluctant. Then, understanding at last that they were afraid to leave the women and children while any of the four stayed behind, he told the others they would have to come with him. Von Billmann protested, but Gribardsun said that their work would go better if he could make these people grateful to him.

Gribardsun also suggested that those women who could be spared should come along with them. After about twenty minutes, they set out with the four aliens in the lead. The natives were still suspicious, but the image of all that meat was too tempting.

Long before he reached the site, Gribardsun knew that someone had been at the bears. Through the slight drizzle, he saw that the stones he had piled up had been torn down and rolled away.

He entered the gap in the rocks slowly, cautiously. There were no humans there, and only parts of the bears remained. The entrails had been left behind, and there was blood on the rocks here and there. However, the robbers had done a relatively neat job.

Gribardsun paid no attention to the furious chatter of the disappointed men and women nor their reproachful expressions. He cast around the area past the rocky floor until he found a footprint in the half-frozen mud. It was filling in swiftly, but there was enough of an outline to show him that a large man with boots or some kind of shoes had slipped off a rock and stepped into the mud.

He went north and within a hundred yards found that a bear’s paw had trailed in the mud for several feet. It must have slipped off the shoulders of the man carrying it.

‘There must be quite a few in the party,’ he said to von Billmann, ‘Those bears together weigh over two thousand pounds, and while they were cut into smaller pieces, no ten men are going to carry the pieces away. I wonder why I wasn’t attacked. They must have been watching me while I blocked the gap.’

He decided that it was because he was a queerly clothed stranger, and also because they might have been scared by the firing of the rifle.

There was a shout, and they looked up to see a band of six hunters approaching them. These were Glamug, the shaman, Shivkaet, Angrogrim, Gullshab, Dubhab, and the chief, Thammash. They carried pieces of two reindeer wrapped in the skinned-off hides of the animals.

There was a loud and fierce conference with frequent glances and gesticulations at the four strangers.

By now, Gribardsun and von Billmann had learned that the basic word for an adult male bear was wotaba and for a female adult bear was ivotaimg. There were frequent references to both, and Gribardsun could not understand this. Perhaps they knew from the entrails and the single mark of the claw that the animals were bears, but how did they know the sex of each? Then he remembered that some of them had gone into the cave and must have deduced from evidence there that there were beasts of two sexes. He would find out their method of detection when he learned the language.

He interrupted the angry conference by bellowing through the bullhorn at them. Then he made signs that he would follow the robbers and indicated that he would like some of them to join him. The robbers could not be too far ahead, even if they had started to work immediately after he left the cave. They would be heavily burdened.

The Silversteins were upset at the turn of events. Von Billmann appeared ready to do whatever Gribardsun wanted. The Englishman told the Silversteins to return to the campsite with the natives. He and the German, and some of the men, if they would agree, would track the robbers.

‘But we can’t get involved in the quarrels of these people!’ Drummond said. ‘We don’t want to get into the position of having to take sides! Maybe even having to kill their enemies!’

‘We’ll have to play favorites,’ Gribardsun said. ‘There’s no way of getting away from it. Moreover, the more deeply these people are in our debt, the sooner they’ll open up for us. We can’t stay neutral.’

‘You have no right to shoot those men!’ Drummond Silverstein said.

‘Who said I would shoot them?’ Gribardsun said, staring hard at Silverstein. ‘Why don’t you ask me what I intend to do instead of making your assumptions?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Silverstein said. ‘Perhaps I’m wrong. But I don’t see how you can attempt to take all that meat away from these savages without having to fight them.’

‘I have to re-establish our prestige,’ the Englishman said. ‘Otherwise we’ll never be able to know these people inside and out. I’ve said that twice. Once should be enough.’

He turned away. ‘Come on, Robert.’

Four of the tribesmen joined them, among them Thammash and the giant Angrogrim. They set out northward with the Englishman in the lead. He trotted along, looking to both sides for signs. After a mile he saw a track, and a little farther on where a man had spit. Then they entered a morass which held many prints. Gribardsun thought that the party was composed of fourteen men.