Time's Last Gift - txt

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  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 God, 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 attitude 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 assault 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, hell! 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.

  'Damn 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.'

  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, circumstantial 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 hell! Go to hell, 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 hell 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 cushions 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. Nobody 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, God 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 cushion 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-fashioned. 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 passion 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.