Time's Last Gift Part 23

Something decisive had happened to that group. Though there was always a certain amount of reserve among the three - von Billmann alone being treated quite warmly by all the others - they got along with a minimum of friction. All worked harder than before. Moreover, there were long periods when they did not see each other. Their studies of the area around the campsite had exhausted everything of interest there except the tribespeople themselves. They went farther and farther afield on their own specialties.

Winter struck. Though the world temperature was slowly climbing, and the glaciers would melt a little more every year, the cold and the snow were brutal. And this year the tribes had to leave the overhang and follow the reindeer herds. The big game in this area had been cleaned out. Moreover, the herds seemed to have deserted this part of France.

To von Billmann's joy, Gribardsun decided they should head for Czechoslovakia-to-be. They would progress slowly because of the heavy snows, but when they got to Czechoslovakia, they would settle down there for the winter, and also the next summer. Provided, of course, that game was not too scarce there.

They moved north of the Alps, which were covered with giant glaciers, and into Germany and along the Magdalenian Danube - which did not follow the course of the twenty-first century river - and then northward into Czechoslovakia. There they stayed in a semicave during the whiter. Thammash, the chief, developed arthritis, which Gribardsun alleviated with medicine. But the medicine had an unexpected and long-hidden side effect, and one day that summer, while Thammash was running after a wounded horse, he dropped dead. Gribardsun dissected him and found that his heart muscles were damaged. The damage was the result of an intricate series of imbalances, a sort of somatic Rube Goldberg Mechanism.

No babies or mothers died during birth that year, though there were several miscarriages.

Angrogrim, the strong man, slipped just as he was about to drive a spear into a baby mammoth that had been cut out from the herd. His head struck a rock, and he died even before the baby stepped on his chest and crushed it.

Amaga married Krnal, a Shluwg whose wife had choked on a fishbone.

The following summer, the tribes moved back to the overhang in the valley of La Vezere in France. Von Billmann was very disappointed, because he had not found a single language which seemed capable of developing into Indo-Hitt.i.te.

'You really didn't think you would, did you?' John said. 'Whoever the pre-Indo-Hitt.i.tes are, they are probably in Asia or Russia somewhere. They won't be migrating to Germany for several thousands of years yet - probably.

'Of course,' he added, smiling slightly, 'it's possible that they are only a few miles from us at this very moment.'

'You have a small s.a.d.i.s.tic streak in you, John,' von Billmann said.

'Perhaps. However, if you are on the next expedition, which will go to 8000 B.C., you may find your long-lost speakers.'

'But I want to find them now!'

'Perhaps something entirely unforeseen will happen to enlighten you.'

Von Billmann remembered that remark much later.

Nine.

Time went swiftly, and then suddenly the day of departure was close. Four years had pa.s.sed. The vessel was crowded with specimens and only a few had yet to be collected. These were mainly spermatozoa and ova which would be taken from animals shot with the anesthetic-bearing missiles. When the vessel returned to the twenty-first century, the frozen sperm and eggs would be thawed out and appropriately united in tubes. The fetuses would be placed in the uteri of foster mothers - cows in the case of most of the larger animals but, in the zoo, elephants or whales in the case of the largest. The biological science of the twenty-first century permitted the young of one species to flourish in the womb of another. And so, the twenty-first century would soon have in their zoos and reservations beasts that had been extinct for many thousands of years.

Moreover, the sperm and eggs of humans were in the cryogenic tanks. These would be united and implanted in human females, and the children would be brought up by their foster parents. In everything except physical structure, they would be twenty-first centurians. But they would be studied by scientists. And their children, hybrids of Magdalenians and modern, would be studied.

To compensate for the ma.s.s of the specimens, parts of the vessel had to be removed. Everything was removed except the files and those devices needed to keep the specimens from decay. Everything had been carefully weighed before the vessel was launched, but everything was weighed again. The day before the vessel was to be retrieved, the weighing apparatus was removed, and its ma.s.s was replaced with artifacts from thirty tribes, each of which had been weighed. It was Gribardsun who suggested that each member of the four should also be reweighed.

'If something should happen to one of us, and he wasn't able to get aboard, his weight should be replaced by something valuable.'

'For heaven's sake, John!' Rachel said. 'What could happen? We're not leaving the vicinity of the vessel except to go to the farewell feast tonight. And if somebody got sick or fell and broke his neck, we'd still take him along.'

'True, but I feel that we should take no chances. You know how serious a deviation in weight can be when the tracers'll be searching for us. Let's take no chances whatsoever.'

The 'reserves,' as von Billmann called them, were artifacts reluctantly discarded because there just was not enough room for them. Four piles were carefully selected, each representing the weight of one of the four. Whatever additions or subtractions had to be made were done with mineral specimens.

The celebration that night was long and exhausting and often touching. The tribes, carrying pine torches, followed them to the vessel and then each member of the Wota'shaimg and the Shluwg kissed each of the explorers. And then, wailing and chanting, they retreated to a distance of a hundred yards. There they settled down to wait for the dawn, since the departure retrieval was set for shortly after sunrise.

The four made no attempt to sleep. They sat in their chairs and talked and now and then looked at the screen showing them the outside. The tribespeople were all awake too, except for the babies and small children.

The four talked animatedly and even gaily; for the first time in a long while the shadow of the past had lifted. Rachel found herself hoping that Gribardsun might forget his prejudices against coming between a man and his wife. She would file a divorce claim as soon as she was out of quarantine, and she would convince John that he did love her, that he had only suppressed his love because of his old-fashioned morality.

A few minutes before sunrise, John Gribardsun rose from the chair. He turned, pulled out a black recording ball, and placed it in a depression on the armrest of chair.

Time leaving now,' he said. 'You'll want to stow my pile of artifacts aboard as quickly as possible to replace my ma.s.s. Anything you want to know is in the ball. Please don't ask me anything now or try to hold me back. You can't do that; all three of you together aren't strong enough and you know it.

'I'm sorry to be so abrupt. You're very shocked. But I don't like long goodbyes or arguments, and I knew that that was what I'd get if I told you ahead of time.'

He paused, looked at their pale faces, and said, Tm staying here. I prefer this world to the one we left. That's all.'

He turned and pressed the b.u.t.ton that opened the vault-like door and stepped outside. As he did so, the tribespeople cried out and some raced toward him. They must have guessed that he had decided to stay with them, and they were happy. At least, most of them were. No man ever lived that was one hundred per cent popular.

Rachel cried out, 'Stop him! Stop him!'

'With what?' Drummond said. He had recovered swiftly from his shock and seemed almost as joyous as the tribesmen. "We don't have any guns, and he wouldn't pay any attention to them if we did. And, as he said, he could take all three of us on and not even get up a sweat.'

He ran to the pile that was to be Gribardsun's subst.i.tute and picked up a bag of artifacts. 'You two had better help me, and quick!' he said. 'We haven't got much time!'

Rachel was weeping by now and she looked as if she would like to run after Gribardsun. But she picked up a bag, too, and walked to the vessel after Drummond. Von Billmann followed her with two sacks. He lowered them to the floor by the entrance and blocked her as she tried to get out again. Drummond pressed the b.u.t.ton, and all three were quickly shut in again. They got into their chairs and strapped themselves in and waited.

On the screen they could see Gribardsun standing before the tribe. He lifted a hand in farewell.

Sixty-three seconds pa.s.sed. And they were back in the twenty-first century. The vessel was forty yards from the edge of the hill, and the walls around the buildings of the project towered over them. Then figures clad in white helmets and suits, carrying tanks on their backs and hoses in their hands, stepped out of a small building on their right. The first phase of the quarantine had started.

Von Billmann answered the chief administrator. The eyes of the entire world were on them; everyone of the nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine channels were devoted to the time vessel. But Rachel was paying no attention to the outside. She had dropped the recording ball, no larger than a child's marble, into the machine, and she was listening to John Gribardsun's voice.

Seven days later, the three were allowed to leave. The first thing they did was to go to the valley below, where the overhang still existed. Here they saw the hole in the back wall, broken open by the archeologists and project scientists. Behind six feet of rock was the chamber Gribardsun had promised they would find. And they also found the great stacks of artifacts and records that he said he planned to leave there, if he lived long enough.

Most of the records were in the form of John's handwriting on vellum and then on paper. But his last message, made in 1872, was recorded in a ball in one of the machines he had taken from the vessel.

'To you three, Robert, Drummond, and Rachel, it's only been a week, but to me, almost 14,000 years have pa.s.sed. I have lived for more than that; I have lived far longer than seems right.'

'I did not think, the day I said goodbye forever to you, that I would live nearly this long. I am completely unafraid of death - which makes me somewhat nonhuman. I'm not afraid - but I also have a very strong will to live. Yet the mathematical probabilities of my living this long were very low. So many accidents can happen in 14,000 years; so many people and beasts would try to kill me. But they failed, and though I came near dying a number of times, I still live.'

'I still live. But for how long? Today is January 31, a Wednesday. Tomorrow, or sometime in the next few days, I'll be conceived.'

'Will Time tolerate two John Gribardsuns?

'Is there something in the structure of Time which win kill me? Or will I be erased from the fabric of s.p.a.ce-Time?

'I'll know only if I am spared. If I am killed or erased, I will be conscious one second and unconscious, because dead or obliterated, the next.

'Whatever happens, I can't explain. I have lived as no other man has lived, and for longer than any other man has lived.

'As you know now, I was fortunate enough to be given an elixir by a witch doctor who was the last man of his tribe. He belonged to a family the original head of which, some generations before, had discovered how to make the elixir, a vile-tasting devil's brew, from certain African herbs, blood, and several other const.i.tuents I will not even hint at. He had a high regard for me because I saved his life and also because he thought I was some sort of a demiG.o.d. He knew of my rather peculiar upbringing.

'But all that was explained on the ball I gave Rachel.