Caveman Alien’s Claim

by Calista Skye

  “Yes,” Brec’akz says. “The tribe has been through some difficult times. But things are getting better. All we need now is a Lifegiver. Or, as the Ancestors may have it, a woman.”

  “Several women at my tribe,” I state clearly. I don’t want these guys to get any ideas of me being some kind of baby-making machine for them. “Some babies have been born. Fathers are very strong warriors, highly protect all women.”

  “Hear that, Car’rakz? She has a tribe already.”

  21

  - Tamara -

  Car’rakz nods. “It is a good tribe she has. But ours can also become good.”

  There’s a glint in the old man’s eyes. “This tribe isn’t all bad. Have you shown her, Car’rakz?”

  “Not yet.”

  “May I?” The man reaches out his hand as if to take mine.

  I look over at Car’rakz. He promised to protect me here.

  “I’ll come,” Car’rakz says and wipes his mouth as he stands up, bending over under the low ceiling.

  We slide sideways out of the cave, then walk along the cliff to a larger crack. The old man stops. “You there, Ver’nax?”

  A caveman comes out of the shadow, drawn sword shining in his hand. “It’s late, Brec’akz.”

  “Yes, and it is a special occasion. This woman alien that Car’rakz brought wishes to see the treasure.”

  Ver’nax hesitates. “Has the chief given his approval?”

  “Of course,” Brec’akz says smoothly. “He especially wants the woman alien to see.”

  Ver’nax looks me up and down, then slowly stands aside. “Don’t stay long.”

  “We won’t,” the old man says and walks into the cave.

  I follow him, and Car’rakz comes after me. I can see flickering flames ahead.

  The cave widens until it’s at least ten times the size of Car’rakz’s cave.

  There are men in here, too, two of them, standing by the walls with their swords drawn as if guarding something of great value.

  In the middle of the floor there’s a kind of a wooden pedestal with a box on it.

  Brec’akz looks at one of the guards. “May I open?”

  The guard hesitates, then gives one quick nod.

  Brec’akz takes one step forward and lifts the lid off the box. Then he beckons for me to come and look.

  I do, pretty sure of what it is he will show me.

  And I’m right. The box is full of gold.

  It reflects the torchlight in here in a thousand facets and edges. There are ingots and nuggets and finely sculpted pieces, as well as pretty crude chains and small cubic bars. There must be fifty pounds of it in that little box.

  The warmth of the sheen leaves no doubt — this is pretty pure gold, too.

  “There is so much more now than last time,” Car’rakz whispers.

  “The new mine is producing well,” Brec’akz responds in kind. “There’s a seam of the pure material. You can shape it with your bare hands!”

  “Wonderful,” Car’rakz says and looks at me expectantly.

  “Very nice,” I say, just to say something. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more and better gold at the jewelry store at the mall. “It is pretty.”

  “It is the greatest treasure on Xren,” Brec’akz states with conviction. “It has taken many years to produce this much. And to learn to shape it. No other tribe has anything like it.”

  “But they have Lifegivers,” I state cheerfully. I’m starting to get some idea what this tribe’s problem is.

  “Of course, no alien can understand,” Brec’akz chuckles. He grabs my wrist, holds it up, and points to my bangle. “They prefer trinkets like this, made from common iron. Yes, it can be polished until it shines. But gold needs no polish. It shines always. And a warm shine it is.” He lets me go and closes the lid.

  We walk back out into the cool evening air.

  “You talk of Lifegivers,” Brec’akz says to me. “And it is true that ours perished in the terrible flood many years ago. But every tribe has them. None of them have that.” He points to the gold cave. “And soon, Car’rakz will get us Lifegivers. Or there may be other ways.” He gives me a look I don’t like at all, then turns around and hobbles away.

  “I think he expect more from me,” I say as Car’rakz and I walk back to his cave. “He disappoint.”

  “Perhaps,” Car’rakz replies. “He is old, and he enjoys looking at the gold. And he is right. No other tribe has gold.”

  We get to his cave, and he motions for me to go in ahead of him. “But as far as I’m concerned, the greatest treasure on Xren is Tamara.”

  We sit down again in the light from the oil lamp, and I lean my head on Car’rakz’s shoulders. I’m glad he hasn’t succumbed to the gold fever as much as his tribesmen. “There is gold mine?”

  “There are two. The first was discovered many years ago. Before my time. It was hard to mine at first. Then they say it was as if the mountain opened and it was all gold inside. They claimed it for our tribe.”

  Not much of a claim, I think to myself.

  “Then another mine was discovered. It is the one that’s being mined now. Very secret. Even I don’t know where it is.”

  “What can the gold be used for?”

  “There is no gold on your home planet? It can be used for… well, for looking nice. The chief has a necklace that shines and always impresses men from other tribes when they visit. In his cave, he has another box just like the one you saw.”

  “It can be used for looking nice,” I repeat. And then I make a not-very-wild guess. “And all tribesmen work all day in mine and shaping the gold that it produces.”

  “Many of them do.”

  I nod, getting a little sleepy this close to his large, warm body with the calming heartbeat. “Is nice. Only tribe on Xren with gold. Can trade for other things.”

  “Hm?”

  “We have gold on Earth, too. And is sometimes used because looks pretty. But sometimes used for trade.”

  “Trade?”

  I stifle a yawn with my hand. “You have gold. I have nice sword. You want sword. I say, you give one gold for sword. You give me one gold, I give you sword. Both happy.”

  Car’rakz laughs softly. “Of course, we don’t want to give any gold away! We will keep it in the tribe. We can make swords ourselves.”

  “Then you’re working your asses off for nothing,” I mutter.

  “The alien speech,” Car’rakz sighs. “It sounds so pleasant; I would really like to know what it means.”

  “No, you don’t, you huge and weird and somehow incredibly great cavedude.”

  - - -

  I wake up on a not-sheep fur with Car’rakz’s massive arm around me, but still not holding me down with its weight. Even in his sleep he’s doing everything to make me comfortable.

  The moisture in the cave turns the air chilly, and I sneak out of the cave to answer a call of nature.

  When I return, Car’rakz is up and smiling. “Early morning, time to andestani esoloji at the dragon.”

  “Yeah,” I say, scratching my hair, not all that awake yet. “Something like that. I just have to ask: there is coffee in village?”

  “Kofi?”

  “Yeah. Dark brew made from bitter beans. Highly hot. Black as death itself. With the option of cream.”

  “Not in this village,” Car’rakz says and hands me a slice of cold food. “But maybe we can make it?”

  I take the meat, not feeling all that hungry. “No, is fine. Just asked.”

  We get ready, and even before we start walking I’m feeling the dread. It probably is a good idea to go inside the dragon’s cave if we want to get some idea of how it thinks and lives. But every fiber of my being resists.

  We get to the new observation station right before sunrise, and the treetops are already yellow with light.

  After a little while, the sun rays hit the cave opening, and as if that was the sign, the dragon comes out. It’s weird, too — it’s just suddenly ther
e, and I can’t remember having seen it walk out.

  Then I remember — I have to cover one eye.

  When I do, the dragon is still breathtakingly beautiful and perfect, but at least it’s a creature and not something supernatural.

  It beats its wings once, and again I notice it has an ungainly moment just as it leaves the ground. It’s the landing clumsiness in reverse, probably, moving its weight from its legs to its wings.

  The dragon soars into the air, spiraling up as fast as if it’s just playing. And, I realize when I squint, that is what it is doing. It’s somersaulting and looping and doing barrel rolls. Which is probably what I would be doing every morning, too, if I could fly.

  As the dragon becomes small in the sky, the fear subsides again.

  “You not feel fear of dragon?” I ask the seemingly unaffected Car’rakz.

  “A little fear,” he admits.

  I frown. “If you could choose, fighting dragon or fighting irox, what is choice?”

  “The dragon.”

  “Is much bigger and more terrible!”

  “It’s bigger, yes. More terrible, I’m not so sure.”

  We wait for an hour or so while the sun climbs and dries out the trees around us.

  Then I take a deep breath. “Let’s go inside.”

  We quietly make our way to the point of the jungle’s edge that Car’rakz has determined is the closest to the cave. Then we scan the skies for a good ten minutes.

  “It’s time,” I state and run across the gravel as quickly and silently as I can.

  Car’rakz follows me, sword drawn, and I’m astounded at how quietly that huge man can run on loose gravel.

  I stop outside the opening, looking up. But nothing appears in the sky, and my level of fear is no more than expected for a girl about to enter an actual dragon’s lair.

  We look at each other, and then we tiptoe inside, Car’rakz first.

  It’s not a huge cave. But it’s clearly big enough for the dragon. It doesn’t smell of anything in particular except a slight sulfuric note. I was half expecting it to smell like some of the cages at the zoo, but this dragon must be more cleanly than most of the crocodiles and lions I’ve seen.

  The cave is empty except for a heap of weird things in one corner.

  I bend down to look. “What is that?”

  “Iron,” Car’rakz says and kicks at the heap. “Old iron and steel. That’s an old spearhead. Those are arrowheads. Two bent swords. Various wires. That looks like copper. Shiny stones. It’s trash.”

  I point. “That’s the thing it carried in here yesterday.”

  Car’rakz frowns. “Also iron. A part of a simple machine, like a pulley. Rusty and broken.”

  I think back to what I know about dragons. And this does ring a bell.

  “You think this could be dragon’s hoard?”

  “Ord?”

  “Hooord. A heap of things. Usually more valuable than this. I have an idea. Let’s leave.”

  We peer out and up, but there’s no sign of the dragon. We sprint back into the jungle and under the safety of the treetops.

  “It will know we were there,” I state when we slow down and walk back to the observation point. “It might not like it.”

  “Surely, it will understand that we’re only andestani esoloji as good sulogis.

  “I doubt dragon knows value of zoology or ethology. But we discover important thing.”

  “The hoard.”

  “Yes. Car’rakz, dragons have hoards. I forgot it before. Usually are better things. Not rusty iron! But what a dragon can find on Xren? Old iron only. Shiny stones. Is caveman planet. Not much made. But you now guess what dragons love. What dragons want in their hoard more than any other things?”

  “Steel? Good swords? Precious stones?”

  “No. Forget iron and steel! Too useful. Dragons love something else. What? Think like old man in tribe, love useless things.”

  He scratches his head. “Gold?”

  I punch his shoulder. “Yes! In old fairy tales, dragons love gold! Have huge hoards of gold. But on Xren, is no gold. Dragon must build other hoard from trash.”

  Car’rakz frowns. “What? No gold on Xren? Just yesterday we showed you a large treasure of it!”

  I smile up at him. “That’s the only gold on Xren. And I can’t imagine anything that will be more alluring to a dragon.”

  We stay at the observation post for a while, but now I’m not sure if it’s worth it. We made a possibly crucial discovery today.

  “Car’rakz,” I say when I finally cave. “Might not be smart to be here when dragon comes home. Might be mad.”

  He looks up at the sky. “I did wonder why you wanted to stay here.”

  “We can go to cave on mountain?”

  “We’ll go somewhere else first. I want to show you something.”

  So we walk again, this time in a new direction.

  Finally, we come to a rocky outcrop, like a huge boulder buried in the ground. Before we even get there, I can see that the rock has been worked and a rough tunnel has been excavated through it. There’s a large, partly overgrown heap of rocks and gravel right beside the opening.

  “Gold mine?” I ask when we stop.

  Car’rakz isn’t surprised at my guess. “The first. Where my tribe first found gold.”

  I sit down on a conveniently placed rock, glad to take a load off. “Tell me.”

  He looks around as if remembering. “They found gold here. Before my time. About the same time as things started to go wrong for the tribe. It was visible on this rock as yellow spots. The first man to see it scraped at the strange rock, and dust came off in his hands. For a while this was a curiosity, nothing more. The yellow stuff was metal, but could not be fashioned into blades. It was too soft. But it was beautiful to look at. Someone discovered that it could be melted in a very, very hot fire. They made nice things from it. Other tribes were astounded.

  “They started to break into the rock. It was hard work, because the rock around the gold was very resistant. Someone discovered that the rock would break by itself if you heated it with fire and then poured water on it. That way, they were able to get the rest of the gold. And they melted it. Right here.” He points to a pit in the ground where I can easily imagine that there was once a huge fire.

  There are the remains of some kind of machinery, too. Maybe to blow air onto the fire to make it hotter, like I’ve seen on the Primitive Technology channel on YouTube.

  “There was a big pot made from clay,” Car’rakz continues. “Hanging over the fire. The gold would melt and was then poured out into small molds. It set and would form bars. They were easier to carry back to the village and to make things from. A lot of gold came out of this rock, and it all came to the village. Every tribesman had a box in his cave, carefully guarded. At about this time, the drought hit and the Lifegivers died. The Bigs moved in and made all hunting hard.”

  I nod. “Did you ever go into this mine?”

  He looks away and struggles with something before he starts again. “I was the only boy my age, and of course I was the smallest in the village. I was sent into the mine some days to scrape gold from the inner wall. It was hard for the grown men to reach. One day I was in there.”

  He points into the mine. I can’t see where the tunnel ends, but it seems to go downwards. It is very dark.

  “The tribesmen had lit the fire and were melting gold out here. I and Xis’tan, the only other boy roughly my age, were in the mine. We were scraping gold and bringing it out to be put in the melting pot. I heard a lot of noise. Screams and the clanging of swords. I ran out to investigate.”

  He stares at the opening to the mine. “I came out into the sunlight. It blinded me after a long time in the darkness. I would not have run out otherwise, because I would have seen the irox. I don’t know how many there were. To me, there seemed to be endless numbers of them. Today, I estimate about six. Some tribesmen were fighting them.”

  He pauses again,
looking up at the treetops around us.

  “Then suddenly the tribesmen were gone. I still don’t know if they were taken by irox of if they ran away. And I was alone with the irox. They were terrible!”

  His voice breaks a little at the last word.

  I calmly get up, walk over to him, and hug him tight, putting one cheek on the warm suede of his silver stripes. “Go on.”

  “I had no weapon. And they were screaming. Their teeth… and their claws. Hundreds, it seemed to me. All over. There was no escape. I knew that. And the irox knew it. They… I don’t know. They could have just killed me there. But they decided to have some fun.”

  I hold on to his wide chest, feeling how his breathing goes faster. “It’s okay.”

  “I don’t know what I did. Probably, I cowered in fear. It didn’t help. One of them picked me up with its beak and flew up into the air. I still feel its sharp bite right here.”

  He puts a hand on his side, under the ribs.

  “And they started tossing me from one to the other. In the air. From talons to beak to talons and… I don’t know. I just knew that I was dead.”

  22

  - Tamara -

  I squeeze him as hard as I can, wiping some sudden moisture off my face.

  “I don’t know how long this went on. Probably only seconds. Then something happened, and they were distracted. Xis’tan had thrown a rock at one of them. And now they wanted him, instead.”

  I squeeze him to encourage him. I’m pretty sure this is the first time he tells anyone about this.

  “They dropped me from the air. To me it seemed from very high up. But I realize that it can’t have been that high. I dropped through the branches of a tree, and that probably saved my life. It slowed my fall. But I didn’t land on the ground.”

  I steel myself for what I think is coming now. “Tell me,” I whisper.

  “In the melting pot for the gold there was a steel rod. It was used to stir the gold so it would melt faster. I landed on the part of it that was outside the pot, and then I fell on the ground next to it. But my weight on the rod made it rotate in the pot and throw molten gold out of it. It hit me right here.”