Analog SFF, September 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He held his fingers on the scabbed over wound. “My injury."

  "Are they ghosts, God'n?"

  "I don't know."

  Between the clouds above the mountain Gordon saw a meteor streak into the atmosphere and burn itself out in a half-second display. “A prayer has been answered, Tonton,” he said. “I wonder whose."

  The distant sounds of wooden drums reached them from somewhere north of the cliff. It was joined by sounds resembling those of pan pipes. Singing joined the music. Gordon looked at Tonton. “What is that?"

  "You are being called to the Love, God'n. The peoples of Black Mountain are there to guide you into your marriage with Pela.” The naticha stood and faced him. “See if there might be something in it worth saving for the times to come."

  * * * *

  X*I

  The Love was held back in the north hills beneath the stars in a snowy clearing surrounded by giant cedars. There was a large fire for light and warmth and a group of seven men on the fire's east side beating with sticks upon hollowed logs working up a rhythm that, as Gordon sat among the gifted upon a winter bearskin, was joined by the pan pipers and the voices of thirty or so young girls and boys. The girls were from as young as six or seven up to in their early twenties and they circled the fire in a deliberately suggestive yet humorous dance. These were the unmarried girls dancing for their older sister's good fortune, and for that special pair of eyes in the surrounding audience of bachelors.

  In a moment the young girls were replaced by another set of dancers. “Married,” informed a man to Gordon's left who introduced himself as Aukis. He was a pointmaker and he pointed out his bride of eleven years, Tijin. The wife of Aukis was a formidable woman who danced as though she were killing mice with her moccasin-boots. Aukis held seven fingers up and grinned. “Four boys, three girls,” he said proudly. “We put youth to good use."

  Out of curiosity Gordon wiggled a finger at him and Aukis shrugged and nodded. Something caught the man's attention. He looked up and pointed toward the dancers. Gordon looked and Pela was joining the dancers. The dance this group did, erotic as it was, described the cycle of life. As Pela and the married women swayed and turned they played out courtship, lovemaking, pregnancy, birth, growing, age, and a death surrounded by loving friends and many descendents.

  He glanced down at the pack he was using for an armrest, remembering as he did so to reset the shockcomb. He held the bag between his legs, opened it, and checked the weapon. It was within three hours of puckering itself out of existence. Gordon reached in, reset the shockcomb. When Mahu asked for another look at the pack, Gordon handed it to him and decided to make a gift of the pack to the Clan Father as soon as he had a replacement. Then Gordon watched Pela dance until Ekav brushed the eastern sky with pale yellows and rose.

  At a signal from the drums the ceremony became a moving affair as Mahu stood and led the way down from the hill toward the clanhouse. After all the feasting, talking, and dancing of the previous two ceremonies, the wedding itself was somewhat subdued. The clanhouse was filled with well-wishers. Mahu's brother led Pela before a recently installed totem of Bel, which was a fearsome looking thing, a twisted oak log about thirty-five centimeters in diameter with branches for arms and a face formed from its bark with obsidian for eyes and milky quartz splinters for teeth. Gordon found himself next to Jatka, who was wearing a new set of leathers that were stylish indeed with diamond-shaped red beadwork on the shoulders and on his fur cap. He had a bundle beneath his left arm. He held it out to Gordon.

  "You are to put these on,” said Jatka.

  "Where?"

  Jatka nodded at someone and soon Jatka and Gordon were inside an area walled with pelts held up by Gifted Ones. As he stripped to his waist, Gordon asked, “Who does the totem represent?"

  "Bel, god of tiwineh."

  With a few probing questions, Gordon determined tiwineh meant agreements, and among the agreements under Bel's jurisdiction was the institution of marriage. Tiwineh was also their word for honor, which to the peoples of the Black Mountain meant saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

  Gordon looked at the deerskin shirt Pela had made for him. On its back in beadwork was the head of Coyote from the center of Gordon's belt, just the way Hosteen Ahiga had worked it into the leather, wink and all. He put on the shirt and it fit perfectly. He faced his new son. “How do I look?"

  "Like a man."

  Gordon picked up his pack and stuffed the furs that he had taken off into the bag. Facing Jatka, he said, “Let's begin."

  Jatka muttered a word, the pelts came down, and Gordon and Pela stood before the god of contracts and a new arrival, Tonton Annajaka in full makeup. Pela took Gordon's head in her hands and drew him toward her until their foreheads touched. Pela said to him, “I am your gift and you are my gift.” Gordon repeated the vow, then looked at Tonton as he reached out and placed his hand on Jatka's shoulder. “This is our son, Jatka,” he said. Pela placed her hand on Jatka's other shoulder, saying, “This is our son."

  Jatka placed a hand on Pela's arm and said, “This is my mother.” He placed a hand on Gordon's arm and said, “This is my father."

  "Let it be so,” said the guests.

  From a tiny white leather pouch of grain, Tonton took a pinch of grain and placed it in Pela's mouth, then another pinch of grain in Gordon's. She reached between them and placed a pinch of grain in Jatka's mouth. She pulled the drawstring on the pouch and handed it to Gordon. To the three of them she said, “Before all the clans and peoples of Black Mountain, may you be filled with love, respect, and honor the rest of your days together.” She paused as she closed her eyes and trembled slightly. Opening her eyes once more, she said, “In the name of Bel, I seek for your health, fertility, and prosperity."

  Gordon said to the naticha. “We would bring Jatka into manhood now."

  Tonton looked at Jatka, placed her right palm on his left cheek, and said, “I am happy for you, Jatka. Do not forget Tonton Annajaka."

  "I will stay and study with you, naticha,” he said, glancing at Gordon. He nodded back. Jatka looked at Tonton. “I want to keep studying the herbs and powders. I have no sight to become naticha, but when a back hurts, I maybe can ease a pain."

  The naticha smiled and removed her hand from Jatka's cheek. “Climb the tiers to your childhood, sit, and select your gifts,” she said.

  As Jatka climbed to the top tier, the Gifted Ones seated themselves along the bottom tier. Even Tonton Annajaka took her place among the women. It was a man-raising that granted all who attended for Jatka with wisdom from all the gifted, including the women. The gift he asked from each was the most important thing he or she knew. It was a question Gordon had once asked Iron Eyes. When his turn came, he passed on to his son Hosteen Ahiga's answer. “To learn from your own mistakes is intelligence; to learn from the mistakes of others is wisdom.” Tonton Annajaka's gift was, “Any moment may be your last; fill it with what you would remember for eternity."

  The gifted men took Gordon and Pela's new son to the Men's Ledge to spend the night beneath the sky getting Jatka acquainted with the society of men and to introduce him to Wuja, white bear god of men, fatherhood, and the hunt. Another feast, another dance, and more music. By the time Pela and Gordon reached Pela's house, the afternoon had become evening and the serenading had begun.

  Gordon awakened the next morning, memories of his wedding night warring with the abrupt end to everything he knew was coming. He stretched and wriggled into the most comfortable bed he had ever slept in. Bear robes on a thick bed of cedar boughs. The smell of the cedar was a perfume that permeated everything. He opened his eyes and looked up. The roof was made of poles covered with thatch. The circular wall was built of heavy sod reinforced by cedar poles. The floor was made of flat stones set in dirt. The fire was in a fireplace made from stones, sod, and dried mud.

  He was full of food from the night before, he was well rested, and unashamedly satiated in almost every respect. His talk atop
the cliff with Tonton Annajaka the night before nagged at him, though. Of the different peoples on earth at that moment, what gave the Black Mountain peoples any less of a right to a future? Chance? The hand of some indifferent god? The random path of a rogue meteor? Perhaps it was that same god who had sent Gordon back to correct an earlier mistake.

  What, then, was at risk if these clans escaped the coming devastation? Television? Nasal decongestants? Pizza? Bach? Thousands of years of religious wars? He sighed and rubbed his eyes, pushing all of it from his head as he heard something. After a moment he glanced to his right, then his left, wondering where Pela was and what had awakened him. She wasn't in the main room and she wasn't in the attached smaller room in which she made her furs. It sounded like a man's voice, though. It was Ghaf yodeling from the Men's Ledge.

  Throwing the fur covers aside, Gordon got to his feet, pulled on his new fur pants and boots, his Coyote shirt, bearskin poncho, and hat. Moving aside the heavy fur curtain that covered the opening to Pela's house, he stepped beyond the thick sod walls, out into the cold morning air and listened to the hunter's call to the village. The night in men's company had been passed, Jatka had slain his bear with a magical potion of his invention that eases soreness in aching muscles, which really works, said the hunter in an aside. Prayers had been made, and Jatka was now a man.

  Gordon looked around at the village houses. He seemed to be the only one listening to the hunter's news. The men and women of Red Cliff were down by the river standing on the north shore silently watching a tree. Gordon squinted and saw that someone—his bride—was high in the branches, singing out her own news. He could just make it out: the wedding night described blow-by-blow. Gordon felt his face grow hot, took a few steps forward, listened, then laughed and moved a few steps more.

  He reached a large house with walls of wattle and daub and saw Mahu standing in the doorway listening intently to Pela. “God'n my gift from Tana,” she yodeled and again she went on to describe, touch by poke, the consummation. “Thirty and eight!” she shouted like a crowing rooster. “Thirty and eight!” She made the signs with her hands and the yoni's companion no longer drooped. As she went on, elaborating on her theme, Gordon glanced back and saw Mahu and the Clan Father's first wife Keila looking back, wide-eyed, mouths open. Behind him he heard running and turned to see, fresh from his recent appearance atop the Men's Ledge, Hunter Ghaf running toward him, a most intent expression on his face.

  "Oh, hell,” said Gordon. “Now everyone'll want to know how I did it.” He made tracks for Pela's place.

  * * * *

  X*II

  "God'n? God'n?” called Pela from outside the door.

  "Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. Pulling the door curtain aside, he saw piled before Pela's door what he expected: game, beads, dried fruit, jerked meat, yams, presents of leather and wood and shaped flint, each one carrying a mark. In a semi-circle beyond their gifts stood Gifted Ones, men and women, waiting for their miracles. Pela looked around at the wealth and said, “God'n, they want—"

  "I know what they want,” he said. He held out his palms facing the gifts. “Take them back, I beg you. Take them back. There is nothing I can do."

  Mahu pushed through the supplicants, all his wives in his wake. “God'n,” he said, “you make me strong.” Mahu placed a brace of fine hunting spears in a prominent place among the gifts. Behind the Clan Father his three wives nodded eagerly.

  Gordon held his hands out, “And if I can do nothing, Mahu?"

  The father of the Black Mountain Clan faced Gordon. “Ask Wuja. Ask your Coyote. Try."

  After a deep breath and heartfelt sigh, Gordon nodded. “I will try,” he said to the Clan Father. “No promise, Mahu.” To Mahu's wives and the others assembled in front of Pela's door he said, “No promises."

  Gordon was inside Pela's house shaking his head in despair when Jatka pushed the curtain aside and leaned through the door. “Father, did you hear Ghaf's call? I am raised to manhood."

  Gordon went to the door, placed a hand on Jatka's shoulder, and said, “I am proud of you, Jatka. Come."

  Jatka entered and gestured with his head toward the door. “Why all the gifts, Father? What do they want?"

  "My son, the medicine man,” said Gordon, “what can be done to make the men strong again?” He wiggled a droopy finger at Jatka.

  "Nothing,” he answered apologetically. “Nothing that I know. Tonton has no answer.” He pointed with his thumb toward the door. “Is that what they all want?"

  "Yes."

  "Why ... did you and Pela—last night, did you?” and Jatka formed the familiar hand configuration representing successful copulation.

  "Yes."

  Jatka's eyebrows arched as he held his hands out to his sides. "How?"

  "That is the question,” answered Gordon.

  * * * *

  Over the next few days, as Gordon pondered the things that determine male potency, he learned the news of Pela's wedding night had raced across the snows by foot, fire, and horse to all of the clanhouses in the lands surrounding Black Mountain. In a few days more, Gifted Ones from Big Tree and Cleft Mountain came into camp. Representatives of Many Horses and Yellow Claw clans made their bids for the return of youth, as well. Black Shoulders and Big Snake emissaries arrived days later, offering prayers to Wuja that Gordon had not run out of whatever magic potion it was.

  Pela's house became surrounded by desperate men and women in their thirties and forties demanding that Gordon reveal a secret that, apparently, was a secret even to him. Still, he could find nothing that explained why men so young became so thoroughly impotent. They ate the same and did the same as the younger men. Jatka wondered if it was the plan of Wuja. Once a man has fathered enough children, the plan has been fulfilled and there is no longer any need for virility. Everyone knew Wuja's plan and had, up until now, accepted it. Gordon, however, appeared to have found a loophole.

  Finally, when even younger men began showing up, their arms filled with gifts, hoping for some way to escape fate, Gordon put some nuts and jerked meat into his pack, declared to all a need to commune with Coyote, and then climbed the cliff trail to find a place where he could think. It was a huge cliff with many trails, many ledges, and many niches cut by ancient winds and waters. As he explored the high cliff, he took care not to be observed from the village or from anywhere else. The object was solitude.

  The place he eventually found he almost missed. Its entrance was hidden from below by scrubby cedars and by brush and snow choking the narrow opening. Two places he could see where the brush had been tied into bundles. Two more places he saw where the snow had been pushed up into the opening by hands. The snow had been swept to remove such finger marks, but inexpertly. He could see light through the brush, so the space beyond was not a cave. Standing back against one of the thin cedars, he looked up at the cliff wall. In a moment he found sufficient handholds to scale the four-meter high wall to the next ledge, the cedars hiding him from below.

  Once on the ledge, he noted an overhang that sheltered both the ledge and the space beyond the brush-filled opening. The surface of the ledge where he stood had also been swept, removing foot impressions, but also the snow. He studied the place. It was a good perch for a sniper, he thought. There was one escape route through a cleft in the side of the overhang and another deep in back of the overhang. It was a natural chimney. When he checked it out he found it led up through the rock to a spot on the south face just below Tonton's special place on the cliff's top. Back behind the cedars, he looked over the village and the southern hills. He had a clear field of fire covering both sides of the river. With the proper weapon he could wipe out a sizable portion of the village. He nodded to himself. What he couldn't do was restore male virility.

  He pulled a piece of jerky from his pack along with the locator, gnawing a bite off the former and noting the remaining 165 days on the latter. Could Harith convince the Temporal Span Authority to send another vehicle back? Doubtful. Even if they did c
ome back they probably wouldn't have half a ton of Viagra with them. He looked down into the space behind the filled entrance to see what was there. It was a roughly teardrop-shaped area the size of a small house with the filled entrance at its small end. The floor sloped gently toward the opening and was covered with human tracks.

  Gordon lowered himself down the wall and studied the tracks. Different sizes, all smaller than an adult's. Charred sticks from old fires and more recent fires. There was something else there, as well: the thoroughly chewed remains of a certain kind of white root. He took a piece of charcoal and wrote on the wall, “Ekav knows.” He then removed all other traces of his passing, climbed down the cliff trail, and returned to the village seeking his son the medicine man.

  * * * *

  Jatka was at Tonton's cleaning out her fireplace, the naticha away in the eastern forest collecting oak moss. “Have you found your answer?” Jatka asked as he offered Gordon a corner of his own bed tucked in among the shelves.

  "I want you to help me find the answer,” said Gordon. “Explain to me the Gift of Many Summers."

  "White stingroot. It grows along Avina's banks and its juices end most pain.” He pretended to lick his thumb. “The Gifted Ones hold root in fist and rub scraped end with thumb. Then lick thumb."

  "You ever try it, Jatka?"

  He earnestly shook his head. “No. Ekav the Healer reserve stingroot for gifted in years."

  Gordon nodded slightly. “Is it remembered why the sun reserved the stingroot for only the gifted? The young also have pain."

  "It is forbidden,” was all the answer Jatka had.

  "Do the young sometimes break the ban and use the root in secret?"

  Jatka shrugged, glanced down, and nodded. “At times. If caught they would be punished, family disgraced, terrible things."

  "More than they know, my son.” Gordon nodded in satisfaction. “Thank you for your help, Jatka. I'm going to test an idea. If I am correct, you will have earned a third of the gifts the people have been piling outside Pela's door."