Time's Last Gift Part 6

Tonight, Dubhab was trying to get Gribardsun to promise him the horn of a rhinoceros or the tusks of a mammoth. Tomorrow, the Wota'shaimg were going on a big hunt, and the four strangers - the Sha's.h.i.+nq - were going along. Dubhab was certain that Gribardsun would kill some of the big game with his loud noise stick, and he wanted a gift. The horn of a rhinoceros, set before the tent of a warrior, ensured that that man would have strength and courage and prosperity. The tusk of a mammoth was also valuable for several reasons.

John Gribardsun politely refused several times, saying that whoever deserved the horns or tusks, according to the customs of the Wota'shaimg, would get them. Dubhab argued that it was a certainty that Gribardsun would kill many with the stick. Why couldn't he see his way clear to giving Dubhab at least one?

Finally Gribardsun, irked, said that he did not want to hear any more about it. For one thing, he did not plan to use his thunder stick. Von Billmann would be carrying it, but he would use it only if he had to. He, Gribardsun, would be with the hunters and using the same weapons they used.

Dubhab swallowed his disappointment and managed to smile at the Englishman. Gribardsun - or Koorik, as he was called, meaning Thunder Death - would be a mighty hunter even with ordinary weapons. He would surely slay a dozen great beasts with his spear alone. Why couldn't he...?

Gribardsun disliked cutting the man off because of his fondness for Laminak. But he stood up, bade them good night, and walked off. The others were caught by surprise, but they followed him. He went to the fire around which sat Tham-mash, the chief, Wazwim, the singer, Glamug, the shaman, and Angrogrim, the strong man. It was the custom that everyone say good night to the chief before retiring, and Gribardsun tried to live within the customs as well as he could.

The men had been squatting by the big hearths. Over this pile of stones the head men of the Wota'shaimg gathered each evening. As the four approached the hearth, the head men stood up. Glamug got up last, not because of any reluctance to honor them, but because of his rheumatism. Though he might have resented the presence of mightier magicians, he did not seem to do so. He had already hinted that if they had anything to alleviate rheumatism, he would be most grateful. His dancing was becoming steadily more painful. Gribardsun had said that he would see what he could do. He was studying his medical books in the late evenings, seeking a cure for Glamug's ailment. Rheumatism was unknown in modern days though not when he was a young man. But he had paid it no attention then, and when he became an M.D. fairly late in life, he had never had reason to learn much about it.

The party had been inoculated against every disease supposed to be rampant in the Pleistocene, but since they were genetically invulnerable to rheumatism, they had taken no shots nor brought along any books about the disease. This was one of the curious omissions that the expedition ran across every now and then. It was well known, from a study of the bones of middle Magdalenian man, that rheumatism and kindred arthritic diseases were common. But, somehow, these had been overlooked.

Actually, the planners could not be blamed. It was not part of the expedition's purpose to cure the people they found. Their primary mission was to study. Any good they could scatter along the way would be up to their individual decisions.

The head men said good night in turn, the chief speaking first. The four set off through the darkness, their lights probing ahead. Near their camp, they heard squeals and then a chilling laugh. They hurried and were in time to see several huge hyenas slink off. They had been trying to get into the dome in which the two pet bears were kept.

When the expedition had first come, the hyenas had seemed fairly common. But when warmer weather came, the Wota'shaimg had hunted down all the large predators in the neighborhood, including the hyenas. These big brutes were dangerous, since they often hunted in packs, were not at all cowardly, and had jaws stronger than a cave lion's. But many of them died, and in a short time they ventured out only at night in this area. But the few left did venture quite close to the two human habitations.

Gribardsun checked to make sure that the bears were unharmed and that their food and water supply was full. Then he went into his own dome with von Billmann after saying good night to the Silversteins. He fell asleep quickly but was awakened at three o'clock by his alarm. He shook the German awake, and they ate breakfast. Von Billmann dressed in hiking clothes with boots, but Gribardsun put on the skin loincloth and threw a fur cloak over his shoulders. They went outside, where the Silversteins were just leaving their home. They set out for the overhang, drinking coffee from their thermos and saying little.

At the village, they found a bonfire going, before which the hunters, adults, and juveniles sat. The women and children sat about twenty yards away and made no noise during the ceremony that followed.

The strangers, except for Rachel, sat down at the right end of the hunters. Though she was not forbidden to take part in the hunt, she was not allowed to partic.i.p.ate in the ceremony. She sat with the women.

As the dawn turned the world blue and green, Glamug came out from his tent. He was naked except for a reindeer loin covering, a rhinoceros skull over his head, and a cloak of bear fur. His body was painted with ocher, green, brown, black, and yellow symbols. One of these was a swastika with its arms to the right, the good-luck gammadion. This was the first time any of the four had seen this, though there were a variety of other types of crosses painted on the skins of the tents.

Rachel filmed Glamug; Gribardsun made a mental note to comment in the vessel's log on the earliest recorded appearance of the ancient and once honorable symbol.

Glamug held in one hand a rhinoceros tail and in the other two small painted figurines of a rhinoceros and a mammoth. These were made of ground bone dust mixed with ocher and bear fat and baked in a small stone oven.

Glamug danced before the hunters, shaking the rhino tail and occasionally flicking the hunters in the face with its tip. He chanted a song which the Silversteins understood not at all and which the other two comprehended only partially. After a while the two men perceived that the chant was a linguistic fossil, preserved from an earlier stage of the language. It was as if a modern Englishman were to sing a song in Middle English to an audience which did not know what half of the words meant. Gribardsun looked at von Billmann, who was grinning with delight at this treasure trove of speech.

At the end of the ceremony, Glamug cast each of the figurines into the flame after reciting a short but savage prayer over each figure. As the rhino and mammoth figurines were thrown into the fire, the hunters bellowed or made a trumpeting sound.

Immediately thereafter, Glamug ran to the temporary tents at one corner of the ledge and got his weapons. All of the hunters had slept there last night, jammed against each other, keeping each other warm with their body heat. The night before a hunt for any of the large and dangerous beasts, the hunters slept away from all women. Nor were they to be touched by the women until they returned from the hunt and went through a ceremony to propitiate the ghosts of the slain beasts. The women went through a separate cleansing ceremony before they received their mates in their tents.

The man who led the hunters to the plains was not the chief nor the shaman nor the greatest hunter, s.h.i.+vkaet. He was a youth, Thrimk, who had gone through the rites of pa.s.sage only two years before. Last night he had dreamed that he had encountered a family of rhinos in a narrow valley debouching onto the plain. And in the dream he had skin the male. For this reason he was given the lead, and the hunters sang about his prowess-to-be as they marched along.

When they reached the edge of the plain, they fell silent. They formed into three crescents with the greatest hunters in the first. Gribardsun was put on the right-hand tip of the first crescent. Von Billmann stayed to one side of the group, shooting film. He carried the express rifle. Drummond Silverstein was with the German, though he had originally said that he had too much work to do to accompany them. But he had changed his mind.

Fleetingly, Gribardsun wondered if Silverstein was hoping that his rival (as he undoubtedly thought of him) would get killed. He was the only one who had not protested when Gribardsun said he was going to hunt with only native arms.

Silverstein, however, could not win. If Gribardsun was killed or hurt, then Silverstein's guilt would punish him. If Gribardsun performed well, then Rachel would regard him even more highly, and Silverstein would dislike him even more.

The youth, Thrimk, went straight to the pa.s.s giving onto the narrow valley he had seen in his dream. Of course, he must have seen it in reality more than once. Though the valley was six miles away from the village, it was within the territory ranged by the Wota'shaimg. The tribesmen had not come here recently, however, for fear of encountering the other people who had moved in. The Wota'shaimg called these the Wotagrub, the Bear Robbers.

The contacts of the two people had been few and brief after the invasion of the Wotagrub's village. The Wotagrub fled whenever they met Wota'shaimg, even though the latter were outnumbered. Once, however, a lone youth - Thrimk, in fact - had almost been hit by a heavy boomerang. The weapon had come sailing from a pile of boulders on the side of a hill. Thrimk had foolishly tried to locate his a.s.sailant, but the man was gone.

The head men had urged Gribardsun to clean out the Wotagrub, saying that there was not enough game in the area to support their own people for long, let alone an additional tribe. Moreover, the Wotagrub had not been punished enough for their theft.

Gribardsun had refused. He had nothing against the so-called Wotagrub, who had done only what their enemies would have done in their place. Moreover, though he did not tell the Wota'shaimg so, he intended to study the Wotagrub. And he certainly could not get friendly with them if he decimated them.

The hunters stopped when Thammash raised his hand with a spear held straight up in it. He nodded at Thrimk, who had also stopped. The youth shook his spear at them, smiled, and trotted off into the pa.s.s. He was a tall fellow with light brown hair and a scraggly beard. He had not yet attained his full growth. He was noted for his swift running and his high spirits, alternating with fits of deep depression. His father was Kaemgron, the best worker in stone and wood weapons in the tribe. But Thrimk and his father quarreled often.

The nucleus of the best hunters, with Kaemgron, who was supposed to stay close to his son, and Gribardsun, trotted after Thrimk a minute later. Von Billmann climbed the side of the hill on one side of the gap, and Silverstein climbed the other side to take pictures.

A narrow stream wandered out of the mouth of the valley. Along its sides were unusually heavy growths of vegetation, though none were over six feet high. Gribardsun saw the vegetation moving. Occasionally Thrimk's head would appear. Then he saw the brown tip of a horn plowing through the little trees. He repressed a shout. A moment later he heard the sudden thudding of heavy feet and the thras.h.i.+ng of little trees bending and breaking under the onslaught of a huge body.

Thrimk should have gone in far more cautiously, and he should have tried to lure the behemoths out into the open. But he must have been overconfident because of his dream. And he also probably wanted to impress the tribesmen with his bravery. Whatever his reasons, he had made a fatal mistake.

Thrimk yelled, there was a very loud thud, and the youth's body went sailing through the air while a tall horn followed it and then the shorter horn appeared and then the head of the rhinoceros as the beast completed the upward toss.

Both beast and man disappeared, but the vegetation waved and shook as the beast turned and charged again.

The hunters were setting up loud cries by now. They ran up to the edge of the vegetation and poked their spears into it and shouted. Gribardsun looked up at von Billmann. Gribardsun was not wearing the tiny communication set today. Now he regretted not having permitted himself any product of civilization.

The German, however, saw him and waved at him. Then he gestured into the valley and held up seven fingers. Seven rhinos.

Presently the vegetation thrashed and bent and cracked again, and a great woolly rhinoceros burst out. He was larger than any the group had yet seen, and his hide was covered with brownish, tightly coiled hair like rather spa.r.s.e sheep's wool.

He stopped after he broke the greenery, snuffed, and then trotted back and forth, his head lifted high.

A female and her baby broke out of the woods and then another male and female and a baby and a half-grown female.

The first beast had blood upon his horn and on his hoofs.

Kaemgron yelled and ran forward and then cast his spear. It struck the huge male on the shoulder, and the tip of reindeer antler penetrated about two inches. The atlatl had given the spear considerable force.

At that the rhino, which had not been able to make up its mind which way to charge, or, indeed, to charge at all, started out for Kaemgron. The earth shook as its heavy legs pounded, and its head was slung low.

Kaemgron turned and ran. Angrogrim threw his spear, and the missile penetrated perhaps three inches into the right rear flank just forward of the upper part of the leg. But the rhino did not even seem aware of the wound.

Other spears missed or, striking, bounced off harmlessly.

The men scattered.

The rhino did not allow itself to be distracted by all the yelling and running figures. It headed straight for Kaemgron and was going to catch up with him within the next twenty or so yards.

The second male also charged.

Gribardsun ran in with a spear he had s.n.a.t.c.hed from a man in flight, and rammed it into the eye of the beast as it pa.s.sed him by at three feet.

The spear was torn out of his grasp, and he was whirled around violently and thrown to the ground.

Von Billmann's express rifle boomed, and the second rhino stumbled, recovered, and charged again, though not as vigorously. Its goal was Gribardsun, who was just getting to his feet.

The express boomed twice, the rhino collapsed, its legs folding under it. Blood ran out of three wounds on its left side and out of its mouth.