Time's Last Gift

Eight

A month passed. The hunters brought in hares, lemmings, marmots, voles, grouse, foxes, wolves, ibex, reindeer, horses, musk oxen, aurochs, bison, rhinoceroses, and mammoths. The fishermen brought in salmon and fresh-water mussels. The women brought in berries and tubers and greens of various kinds. Meat and fish were smoked and dried. Tubers were dried or ground into a powder. Skins were ta

Casualties were normally high among these people, but this month they were unusually high, frighteningly so to the tribes-people. They blamed Gribardsun's absence for the evil things happening to them.

When thirty days had passed, Rachel and von Billma

The day of the seventh week after his departure, Rachel was on a herpetological field trip, about five miles from the camp, with Drummond. She had taken films at long range of a field where vipers lived. Having been fortunate to photograph a viper in the act of swallowing a young lemming, she went into the area to catch the snake. She found the hole into which it had disappeared and she and Drummond began digging into it. After fifteen minutes of hard work with the shovel, she exposed the snake sleeping in the burrow with its middle swollen with the lemming. She lifted it and dropped it into a bag.

And then she dropped bag and snake as Drummond yelled behind her.

She whirled and saw him rigid and pointing at a larger viper poised to strike only a foot away.

'Stand still!' she said. 'And be quiet! I'll get him!'

She withdrew her pistol slowly from her holster, but Drummond yelled again and jumped away as the upper part of the snake's body swayed back and forth. The snake flashed forward at the sudden movement, and Rachel shrieked. She thought that the snake had struck Drummond.

Her revolver missed the viper with the first two shots, but the third blew its backbone apart just behind the head.

Drummond remained frozen and gray.

'Did it bite you?' she asked. She reached into the bag she wore suspended from her belt. It held anti-venom drugs, but the effect depended on quick injection.

'I don't think so,' he said finally, staring down at his leg. 'It struck me, but only with the tip of its snout, I think. I was going away from it when it did hit.'

He suddenly sat down and covered his face with his hands. Rachel got down on her knees and rolled up his pants leg. She could find no bite.

'You're all right,' she said.

'Where exactly am I?' His eyes looked at her bewildered through his fingers.

She knew then, without being told, what had happened.

'I remember shooting at you,' he said. 'My God, what happened? Where are we?'

By the time they had returned to camp, he knew everything. But it was all hearsay to him. He remembered nothing from the moment he had tried to kill her.

'And the old snake-pit treatment brought me back,' he said. 'In one way I wish it hadn't. But of course I wouldn't want to remain a child forever. I wonder why I got stuck at that age? It doesn't matter, I can find out when I get back to our time. If we ever do...'

He began to weep, saying as he regained control, 'My God, what have I done? What's happened to me? To us?'

She did not reply for a while, and then she said, 'Whatever it is, it's something that brought out in us what already existed. It didn't originate anything.'

'I can't believe that these psychological changes are brought about just by the shock of time dislocation,' he said. 'I wonder if there aren't some subtle somatic effects caused by time travel. Something that causes an electrochemical imbalance.'

'That is something that will be determined by the medics when we get back,' she said. 'Unless, of course, the trip back restores our balance.'

She started to say something, shut her mouth, then put out her hand to stop him.

'John is gone,' she said, 'and it's possible he may never return. I can't help feeling that something bad has happened to him. But if he does return, then what? Are we going to go through the same thing? Do I have to be afraid that you'll be shooting at us?'

'I suppose it's all over between us, no matter what I do from now on,' he said.

'Yes, I won't lie, even if I am afraid of you,' she said. 'I'm getting a divorce as soon as we get out of quarantine.'

'And then you and Gribardsun will be getting married?'

She laughed and said, 'Oh, yes! Right away! You fool! He doesn't love me! I asked him, and he said no!'

'And you two weren't cheating on me? Or intending to?'

'This is the twenty-first century!' she said.

'No, it isn't. It's the hundred and twentieth B.C. You didn't answer my question.'

'No, we weren't cheating on you. You know I wouldn't deceive you; I'd tell you what I was doing or what I intended to do. And John would never stoop to do anything behind a person's back. You should know him better than that! Can you actually conceive of him doing anything base or sneaky?'

'Noble John. Nature's aristocrat!'

They were silent. He started toward the camp again but stopped after a few steps.

'I swore I wouldn't ever say anything about this until we returned. But I feel I must tell you now. Only you will have to promise me you won't tell Robert or Gribardsun.'

'How can I do that if it turns out that what you're going to tell me may hurt John if I keep silent?'

He shrugged and said, 'Unless you promise not to tell anyone, I won't tell you.'

Rachel looked steadily at him as if she were trying to tu

'You mean it?'

'Have I ever lied to you?'

'I don't think so,' he said.

He licked his lips.

'Well, here goes. The day before our quarantine, de Long-nors called me and asked if he could talk to me in private. You were gone, so I said yes. He was at our apartment in ten minutes, and after making sure the place wasn't bugged, and with me wondering what was going on, he told me everything he knew - and suspected - about Gribardsun.'

'Naturally he'd be angry with John.'

'There was more to it than that. You see, he'd talked with Moishe, not too long before Moishe died. Moishe was already sick by then, and he knew he was going to die. He called in de Longnors, who at that time was to be head of our expedition. He told de Longnors a strange tale, one which de Longnors found difficult to believe. Moishe said that thirty years before, in 2038, when he was still working on his theory of time mechanics, he was approached by Gribardsun. At that time almost no one knew what Moishe was working on and those who did thought he was a crackpot. In fact, Moishe almost lost his position as an instructor in physics at the University of Greater Europe because his superiors thought he was an imbecile or psychotic. Or both.