Time's Last Gift Part 14

'It's not a question of when in Rome, do as the Romans do,' Rachel said. 'Even these savages cook their meat thoroughly. It disturbs them that you eat yours b.l.o.o.d.y.'

'Chacun a son gout,' Gribardsun said and licked the blood off the corners of his mouth. The fire lit his rugged and handsome face and seemed to be reflected in his gray eyes. Rachel turned away and went back to the women's feast. She had come over to the chief's 'table' to ask him a question and had been unable to resist joining the conversation.

Drummond looked at Gribardsun with an indecipherable expression. When he saw the Englishman's eyes on him, he looked down. But he was doing only what everybody did who tried to outstare Gribardsun.

Three days later, they packed and left. Efforts to make friendly contact with the nearest strangers had failed. The tribe had picked up and decamped northward.

The fourth night after leaving the site of Madrid-to-be, somebody shot out the lock of the door of Gribardsun and von Billmann's hut, stuck the barrel in, and blazed away. After discharging five cartridges, the rifle was withdrawn, and the man who had fired ran away.

If the rifleman had moved the barrel around a wider arc, he would have struck both occupants a number of times. In which case it is doubtful that either would have lived, since the impact of the high-velocity and heavy bullets was deadly.

But he had made the mistake of blowing out the lock when he could instead have fired straight through one of the walls. And he had moved the muzzle only a few inches to either side, not enough to send the bullets past one of the small boulders set inside the hut to hold it down. They had simply ricocheted off the boulder and out again through the walls.

Though unhurt, the two men had been deafened by the explosions. They sat in their original positions for twenty or so seconds after the explosions ceased, unable to hear the slapping of the would-be killer's soft leather boots on the rock. Then Gribardsun, rifle in one hand, burst through the doorway, banging the door to one side and tearing it off with the impact of his body.

By then the camp was awake. Several torches were thrust into the embers of fires, and the people came out of their tents.

Gribardsun immediately ordered a head count. Thammash and Glamug lined everybody up and had them call out by name.

Before the counting was done, a rifle exploded somewhere in the darkness. A bullet skimmed Gribardsun's shoulder. He rolled away into the darkness, out of the light of the torches, and then was up and into the nearby woods.

The Englishman had had many years of experience as a woodsman. He could move through the forest, winter or summer, without making a sound. But the man he was hunting had been born in a world where a man has to be one with the woods or starve. He had disappeared somewhere deep into the trees. Gribardsun finally found his tracks and started after him, avoiding but staying closely parallel to the tracks. Snow began to fall, and he realized that his quarry's trail would soon be covered. Moreover, if he did not return to the camp, he might find himself lost or bogged down.

The wind had come up, and the snow was pelting down when he got back to camp. By then, von Billmann had started the head count again. Gribardsun waited to one side grimly. He looked for Dubhab and did not see him and then, suddenly, Dubhab was coming out of his tent. He had gone back into it when the shot came from the woods, he said.

n.o.body was missing. The rifleman had circled back and sneaked into camp during the hullabaloo.

The Englishman regarded him for a moment and then he, too, smiled. 'Light some more torches!' he said. 'Robert, set up some lights and equipment in our hut! We'll give them the paraffin test!'

Von Billmann and the Silversteins looked puzzled. Gribardsun spoke in Wota'shaimg so that the tribe could understand what he intended to do. He explained that when a man fired a rifle, he got some small particles of the gunpowder on his hand or on his clothes. This could be detected through the use of a substance known as paraffin. It would be easy to find out who had fired the rifle by examining the hands, or the gloves, of every man in the camp except, of course, those whom Gribardsun knew were not in the woods.

Von Billmann said in English, 'I never heard of that test, John. Is that some more of your old lore?'

'The paraffin test was used at one time, Robert,' Gribardsun said. 'But it wasn't used exactly as I said. Nor would we use it under these conditions, even if we had the paraffin.

'That doesn't matter. What does is that the would-be killer will believe that we can detect him with these means, and he...'

Dubhab had suddenly started running. He went past Glamug and Thammash and Angrogrim, his short legs pumping rapidly, his face a twist of despair.

Gribardsun's hand moved; suddenly it held a steel knife. He threw it, it glittered in the torchlight, and then its hilt was sticking out of the bear fur over Dubhab's back.

Later, Gribardsun said that he believed in swift justice. He did not want a trial because that would have been too painful for Dubhab's family and there was no reason to make the man himself suffer. Moreover, if he had tried to capture the man, and had failed, Dubhab might have gotten to his hidden rifle in time to use it.

The other scientists were shocked, though not as much as they would have been had they not had time to get used to this world. Justice in their world was often agonizingly slow. Everything that could be done to safeguard the rights of the accused and of the accuser was done. Moreover, no person had been executed for a crime for sixty years anywhere in the world. And prison was unknown except as a means for restraining dangerous people while they underwent therapy.

Gribardsun said, 'I don't believe that we'll ever find the rifle.'

Rachel cried, 'Is that all you can think about? My G.o.d, you just killed him as if he were an animal! He didn't have his chance in a trial; you judged and convicted and executed him in two seconds!'

Gribardsun did not reply. He withdrew his knife and wiped it clean and then walked over to Thammash and Glamug and spoke briefly to them. Angrogrim picked up Dubhab and carried him to his tent, where he stretched him out a few feet in front of the entrance. Amaga, Abinal, Laminak, and Neliska stared for a while, pale and tearless, at the body and then they went inside the tent and closed the flap.

By morning, Dubhab's body was frozen stiff. The funeral took all day, and he was buried under a pile of rocks in the midst of general mourning. That he had been a criminal and a traitor did not matter after he had died. He was then one of the tribe and to be treated with all the honors of any brave warrior and good hunter, which he had been most of his life.

Afterward, Gribardsun found what obligations he had taken upon himself by killing Dubhab. He was now responsible for Dubhab's family. It was up to him to provide for them.

Abinal's att.i.tude toward the Englishman did not seem to have changed. But when he became a man, he would have to decide whether to forgive Gribardsun or kill him. He knew that; everybody knew that. For the time being, the matter would be put into abeyance.

Amaga did not care who took care of her. Gribardsun told her that he would protect her and hunt meat for her. But he was not her mate and did not intend to be. Amaga was indignant and justly so, since tribal custom decreed that Gribardsun should replace Dubhab in all his duties. He stated simply that he did not care to. Amaga then told all the tribe, but for the first time the tribe did not dare to punish a custom breaker. The woman sullenly accepted the reality of the situation, but a short time later she brightened. Perhaps Gribardsun preferred the beautiful and hard-working Neliska as his mate? Gribardsun said he was considering that. Rachel looked shocked.

Drummond smiled but did not say anything to her. Neliska looked happy. Laminak, weeping, ran away.

Rachel said, 'But you'll be leaving in a few years! Would you just walk out on her? Or were you thinking of taking her back with you as a specimen? That would be cruel; she could never adjust to the bewildering modern world. Anyway, she's a tribal creature, and she'd die if she were cut off from her people.'

'I said I was considering her as a mate,' Gribardsun said. 'I didn't say when I would come to a decision. I rather believe that by the time I'd be able to speak for her, she would be long married.'

Rachel later said to Drummond, 'I don't think I'll ever understand that man. His thought processes are too deep. Or maybe just too different. That's something not quite normal? - human, about him.'

'Time keeps a man human. But eternity would give him a nonhuman dimension,' Drummond said. 'Perhaps he isn't quite human. But I just can't go along with your theories about someone finding the elixir. I just can't believe in such a phenomenon as an elixir. Especially in the nineteenth century, which would be when Gribardsun was born, if you were right. That business about the first time machines and the limits of the 1870s indicates that something is rotten.'

At the time this conversation took place, they had just crossed the half-frozen Guadiana River. Four days later, after they had established a camp on the south side of a heavy brake of trees, Drummond attacked Gribardsun.

The a.s.sault was entirely verbal, although there was one moment when the tall thin physicist seemed on the point of attacking the Englishman with his fists.

Ever since the incident of the stolen rifle, Gribardsun had refused to let Drummond hunt with him. He went either with Rachel or von Billmann, and Drummond found that a tribesman was always shadowing him when Gribardsun was out on a hunt. He said nothing about this, not even to his wife, until the evening of the fourth day after crossing the Guadiana. Gribardsun said that they would camp there for several days while he went out hunting wild horses with a dozen tribesmen. He intended to restrict himself this time to native weapons again. Von Billmann would go along as 'shotgun,' as usual.

Drummond belligerently said that he intended to accompany them.

Fine,' Gribardsun said. 'If you leave your firearms here.'

'Why should I?' Drummond leaped up, his hands balled.

'I want to make sure there are no accidents.'

'Accidents, h.e.l.l! You mean you want to make sure I don't shoot you in the back, is that it?' Drummond yelled.

'That is exactly it,' Gribardsun said coolly.

'd.a.m.n you, you have no right to suspect me of trying to kill you!' Drummond screamed. 'I admit I was watching you two, and I have every right to do so, and from what I saw, my suspicions were justified! But I did not shoot at you! It was Dubhab, and you know it!'

'I don't know any such thing,' Gribardsun said. 'As for your suspicions being valid, what did you see? Nothing really, because nothing happened. Nor will it, unless you bring it about with your psychotic jealousy. Frankly, Silverstein, I don't understand what's happened to you. I saw your psych ratings, and they indicated a stable character and a reasonably well-adjusted marriage. But all of a sudden you go ape.'

Gribardsun smiled when he said the last two words, and Drummond wondered why, but he did not ask.

'I think that the sudden thrust into a strange world, the temporal dislocation, caused an emotional imbalance. Let's hope that you regain your normal state of emotion before long. Otherwise, you may end up insane or dead.'

'Is that a threat?' Drummond shouted.

'I don't make veiled threats. I am merely stating likely alternatives.'