Time's Last Gift Part 15

Gribardsun paused and then said, 'I am sorry that this happened, because an efficient scientific team needs as little friction and as much good will as possible among its members. We have a relatively short time to do much, and we shouldn't be wasting it with human pettiness. So...'

'Pettiness!' Drummond yelled. 'You call losing my wife a pettiness? Being accused of attempted murder is a pettiness?'

'You haven't lost your wife nor have Rachel and I done anything to deserve your condemnation. Nor have I accused you of attempted murder. But you are definitely under suspicion.'

Drummond lifted his open hands to the night sky and said, 'How long? How long? Do I have to go the rest of my life under suspicion? What charges will you bring when we get back? Would you wreck my career on the basis of nothing at all, circ.u.mstantial evidence and weak at that? What can I do to clear myself? Would you hold a trial?'

'There is no way of clearing you,' Gribardsun said. 'So I propose that we continued to work together and try to get along together as best we can. I just do not propose to put myself in a position where I will be at your mercy.'

'Look at her! Look at her!' Drummond said, pointing at Rachel. 'The devoted wife! The trusting spouse! My beautiful innocent loving Rachel! She believes you! She thinks I was trying to shoot you!'

'Or her. Or both of us,' Gribardsun said.

'Drummond, you're sick,' Rachel said. 'I just can't believe that you would try to kill anybody. I've known you too long. And yet, I never knew you to be jealous, at least, not abnormally so. Something has happened to you, and it makes me sick, just simply sick in the pit of my soul. But...'

'Go to h.e.l.l! Go to h.e.l.l, both of you!' Drummond said. He looked at von Billmann, who had been sitting with head bowed, sipping on his coffee.

'You can go to h.e.l.l too!'

'What did I do to you?' von Billmann said.

'You believe them, not me!' Drummond said, and stamped off into the darkness.

The others were silent. They had been sitting on inflatable cus.h.i.+ons around a wood fire. Their huts were two white cones in the firelight. From thirty yards away came the sound of many voices as the tribesmen called back and forth and laughed at jokes. They were happy. n.o.body was sick, and they had plenty of meat.

The explorers had made their camp some distance from the others because they had wanted to discuss their plans for tomorrow without interruption. They intended to study the region for three days before moving on. But Drummond's outbursts had cut off the planned conversation.

Rachel looked out into the starless and moonless night and said, 'I hope he comes back soon. It's dangerous wandering around out there. He's only got his pistol, too.'

'I'd suggest a physical and mental examination for him,' Gribardsun said. 'But he would object, and he might be justified. I don't know how objective I myself could be in my examination.'

'Do you suppose it could be temporal shock?' Rachel said.

'I think so,' von Billmann said. 'I'm only just now getting my sense of reality back. For a long time everything seemed distorted, out of focus slightly, you might say. Weird. Simply not true to reality. How about you, John? Did you feel anything like that?'

'The first three or four days,' Gribardsun said. 'Though even that was not an overpowering feeling by any means.'

Von Billmann went to bed. The tribesmen crawled into their tents and tied the flaps shut. Rachel and Gribardsun sat before the fire and stared into its flames or looked now and then into the snow-white night. The only sound was the crackling of the firewood, the distant howl of a wolf, and an even more distant bellowing from some aurochs in some snow-walled area.

After a while, Rachel looked up across the fire at Gribardsun. Tears were running down her cheeks. 'Drummond and I should be so happy,' she said. 'We don't really have any reasons for friction between us. We share so many common interests, and before he got moody he was sometimes amusing, though too serious most of the time. But not always. And we were chosen to go on this expedition, and that alone should have kept him happy. But...' She wiped the tears away and swallowed and then said, 'But something happened. He's so miserable and unhappy. And everything is just ruined for us, just ruined. It'll never be like it was. It just can't be. And if he keeps on the way he has, he'll end up trying to kill you or me or both. Or probably he'll kill himself. He has a tendency to turn his anger inward against himself.'

Gribardsun said, 'Most human beings seem to go wrong in one way or another to a greater or lesser degree. They're much less stable than animals, and this instability is the price humans pay for their sentience and their complicated emotional system. Self-consciousness and the power of speech are the requisites, though not the only ones, for progress in man. But man pays for his greater potentiality by a greater vulnerability to imbalance. And your Drummond is just one of the ten billion imbalances of the twenty-first century.'

'And that theory makes me one of the ten billion unbalanced too, right?' she said. 'Well, G.o.d knows that I know that. But what about you, John?'

'Human, all too human,' he said, smiling slightly. 'But my early life, the really formative period, was rather peculiar. I'm not sure that I look at the world through an entirely human prism. But that doesn't really make much difference in my response to the world. The kind of imbalance that I am talking about is largely genetic. The very nature of a man's nervous system forces him to stumble; he makes mistakes and errors and reacts in a unique egotistic manner to the world, and he gets sick. Mental sickness is the sentient's way of life, you might say.

'I suppose I was lucky. I have an unusual stability. But for that I must pay a price, of course. What that price is...'

'Oh, you're so mysterious!' she said. 'You've been talking a lot and you've said almost nothing meaningful! What is all this about your early years? Weren't you raised by human beings? Surely you aren't some sort of Mowgli or Romulus or Remus? Everybody would have heard about it if you had been, and, besides, the very idea is ridiculous. And I happen to know that you were born on the Inner Kenyan Reservation and you were raised by your parents and the black natives.'

'That's what the records say.'

'I know what you've been doing with all this mysterious nonsensical talk. You've been taking my mind off Drummond!

You're very clever. But thoughtful. I thank you for your concern. But I have to worry about him. What is he doing out there, wandering in the snow? He might get lost or some bear or lion might get him, or...'

'This isn't mountain country so there aren't any bears, and besides, the bears are hibernating,' he said. 'And we haven't seen a lion for days.'

'The wolves!' she said.

'When he left he knew what he was walking into,' Gribardsun said. 'I suggest that you go to bed and put him out of your mind, if you can. He'll be coming home soon enough, and in the morning we'll see how he feels. We do have work to do, you know, and...'

He started to rise, but she said, 'Sit down, John. Please! Just for a moment! Don't leave me!'

He lowered himself on the cus.h.i.+on again and said, 'Very well. I'll stay a little while, if it will help you.'

She leaned forward and said, 'John! Do you or do you not love me?'

He smiled slightly again, and she said, 'Don't laugh at me!'

'I wouldn't do that,' he said. 'I was just thinking of - well, never mind. There were women bold enough even in my youth. I knew more than one who would come out with the same question if she felt the need for an answer. But I sometimes forget how free modern women are. That, however, is neither here nor there, is it? You asked, and you shall receive. I find you very attractive, Rachel, and if you were free, I might ask you to marry me. But you aren't free, and I am old-fas.h.i.+oned. I don't believe in adultery, and I wouldn't try to break up a marriage or take advantage of the fact that it's breaking up. I don't love you with the intensity or the pa.s.sion you meant when you asked me if I loved you. I do like you very much. But I don't love you.'

There was a silence. Something white, a huge bird, glided past the snow-laden branches of the trees just on the edge of the firelight.

Finally, Rachel said, 'I thought you weren't in love with me, but I was hoping that you were and that you felt you couldn't say or do anything because I was still married. But you don't love me, and I thank you for telling me so honestly, even though it does hurt.'

'I seldom have regrets,' he said, 'since regret changes nothing. But I am sorry that this whole affair developed. It's not only making you and Drummond unhappy, and making Robert miserable and myself uneasy; it's decreasing the scientific efficiency of all four of us.'

'And we have an obligation to those who sent us here,' she said. 'I know. But what can I do to make things better?'

'Call me when Drummond gets in,' he said. I'll get up, and we'll have this out before breakfast, if he shows up soon enough, of course.'

'I don't know that he'll listen to reason any more.'

'Then he won't, and we'll proceed from there.'

'You're so practical,' she said. 'And so self-controlled.'

'I've had much practice,' he said. He rose and walked to bis hut and then turned. 'I don't like to leave you alone, but there really is no point in staying up. If Drummond hasn't returned by morning, I may go out after him. He is an adult and so shouldn't have to be watched as if he were a child. But I am the head of this expedition, and it's up to me to keep watch on my people.'

Rachel sat for ten minutes by the fire and then went into her hut.

Six.

The first paleness of dawn acted as alarm clocks on the Wota'shaimg. The light seemed to penetrate the skins of their tents. The light touched their eyelids, and their lids opened. They crawled out of their tents into the start of a light snowfall. They went into the woods and emptied themselves, and then the women poked the embers buried under deep ashes and piled on wood shavings made by flint knives and then put on more wood. The fires were roofed and partially walled with boughs laid over each other in two layers. The snow was beginning to pile up on the fire huts, as they were called. The men gathered around the fire, hawking, blowing their noses, spitting, and grumbling. They talked about the chances for hunting, which did not look good. Fortunately they had plenty of meat and the partially digested contents of bison and deer stomachs. They could afford to lie around the camp for a week, if they had to do so. By lying around they did not mean idleness. They would be repairing their spears and harpoons and working new flint and ivory and bone points, carving bone and ivory figurines of animals for use in magic, and figures of women to bring about increased fertility.