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Gribardsun had to admit that the fathers were right. In this primitive economy, every able hand must be used to its fullest ability.
The juveniles were disappointed, since they would much rather be roaming around the country than working day and night at home under the strict supervision of father in particular and the tribe in general.
'Very well,' John Gribardsun said. I'll make the trip by myself. I can do it three times as fast by myself. I'll make a flying survey of England as far north as the edge of the glaciers. I think I can do it in four weeks.'
Von Billma
'Practically,' Gribardsun said. 'I'll be carrying the rifle and ammunition and a camera and film and some recording balls. I'll live off the country, eat only twice a day, and use every bit of daylight to travel.'
'It's about six hundred miles from here to the southern edge of the glacier in England as the crow flies,' von Billma
'I may take a little longer than a month,' the Englishman said.
'You won't have any thick woods to slow you up,' Rachel said. 'But even so...'
The night before he was to leave, the four sat around a fire in front of their huts. Most of the tribespeople had gone to bed, filled with meat and berries and boiled greens they had devoured during the feast to celebrate Gribardsun's departure. Many had cried and embraced him, saying that they would miss him very much and hoping that evil spirits or bad animals would not get him. Their grief seemed genuine enough, but Gribardsun remarked later that a sense of relief underlay the sorrow. With him gone, they would be able to get back to a more normal - or at least a less tense - life. Having a demigod around was not conducive to relaxation or comfort.
'I've said that I object to your going off on your own, and I protest again,' Rachel said. 'You're the one who keeps everybody in line here. Our authority may not be up to keeping the peace between the two tribes. And what if one of us falls sick? You're the doctor. You won't be here to treat us. If something should happen to you - and you must admit that the chances are high - we would have no way of knowing where you are. We couldn't even go looking for you; it would jeopardize the expedition itself. You aren't even taking along a radio.'
'As the head of this expedition, I make the decisions,' John said. 'Everything we do here is chancy. I believe that a survey of conditions in England will be a valuable addition to our data and so the trip is justified. Besides,' he added with a smile, 'I want to see what jolly old England looks like now. You can't call it a tight little island, of course, since it's just part of a huge land mass extending as far as Iceland. But I am curious to see what the Thames and the site of London-to-be look like. And what my ancestral estates in Derbyshire and Yorkshire look like.'
At dawn, Gribardsun stepped out from his hut. He wore a wolf-skin vest and deerskin loincloth and his bearskin boots. He carried a pack on his back containing ammunition and his meager scientific and medical equipment, several containers of dehydrated fruit juice and concentrated protein, a suit and a tent of thermicron (though it was summer it would be cold near the ice fields of England), and a pair of binoculars. He was not even taking shaving equipment, though he could have shaved with the edge of his hunting knife. He was growing a beard on this trip.
Laminak was wailing with the scientists. She threw her arms around him and wept, and he kissed her and told her not to grieve. Rachel looked sour. She had tried to overcome her irrational feelings of jealousy, but she could not endure the child. Gribardsun might seem amused by Laminak's devotion, but she could not get rid of the idea that he was just waiting for her to become a little older. Gribardsun thought so much of her, her intelligence was very high, - she was sensitive, perceptive, and open-hearted, and showed signs of being a beauty. Before it would be time for the travelers to return, she would be fifteen, and Gribardsun might take her back with him. She believed this despite his protests that that could never happen.
Drummond Silverstein said goodbye to Gribardsun and then burst into tears. He had become very much attached to the Englishman, partly because they spent an hour almost every day in therapy. Gribardsun was using a combination of drugs and hypnotism to break through the wall of time that Drummond had erected inside himself. But he had had little success. However, Drummond had become very dependent on him.
'If I thought that my leaving would injure him, I might stay,' Gribardsun said. 'But the therapy has not been spectacularly successful, so it won't be upset with my absence. But I want you two to watch him closely for signs of improvement or regression. You have my instructions concerning him.'
Ten minutes later, he was out of sight. He left at a trot, which he said he could keep up all day. Except in the roughest terrain, he expected to average about fifty miles a day.
The days passed. The summer was hot but short, and the work for both the scientists and the tribespeople was hard. Rachel trained Drummond to help her in her fields of botany, zoology, and genetics, but had to suppress an ever present irritation with him. She tended to regard him as mentally retarded, whereas he was actually a very bright twelve-year-old. He learned swiftly, but he did make mistakes, and she was sharp with him when these occurred. Nor did she feel sympathetic when he now and then called her 'mother.' She was, in fact, furious.
Von Billma
'The speakers of proto-Indo-Hittite must be located and their language recorded,' he said. 'And doing this will take time. We should be traveling there right now. But, instead, John Gribardsun is visiting that barren piece of land, England. I doubt that he'll find a single human being there.'
'That's not what he's looking for,' she said. 'You know he's making a geological and meteorological survey.'
'We should have brought along a small plane,' he said peevishly. 'We could have covered hundreds of miles, saved months of travel time. I could be in Czechoslovakia right now.'
She had known von Billma