Страница 40 из 42
Drummond assured them that he had accepted reality, and that, whatever they did, he would not try any violence. Not that he ever had, except for the time when he had shot at Rachel.
Gribardsun gave Drummond a series of psychological tests designed to uncover deeply hidden feelings of violence toward particular persons. The results seemed to satisfy him, since he gave Drummond firearms. But Rachel noticed that Gribardsun never allowed Drummond to get behind him when he was armed.
Something decisive had happened to that group. Though there was always a certain amount of reserve among the three - von Billma
Winter struck. Though the world temperature was slowly climbing, and the glaciers would melt a little more every year, the cold and the snow were brutal. And this year the tribes had to leave the overhang and follow the reindeer herds. The big game in this area had been cleaned out. Moreover, the herds seemed to have deserted this part of France.
To von Billma
They moved north of the Alps, which were covered with giant glaciers, and into Germany and along the Magdalenian Danube - which did not follow the course of the twenty-first century river - and then northward into Czechoslovakia. There they stayed in a semicave during the whiter. Thammash, the chief, developed arthritis, which Gribardsun alleviated with medicine. But the medicine had an unexpected and long-hidden side effect, and one day that summer, while Thammash was ru
No babies or mothers died during birth that year, though there were several miscarriages.
Angrogrim, the strong man, slipped just as he was about to drive a spear into a baby mammoth that had been cut out from the herd. His head struck a rock, and he died even before the baby stepped on his chest and crushed it.
Amaga married Krnal, a Shluwg whose wife had choked on a fishbone.
The following summer, the tribes moved back to the overhang in the valley of La Vezere in France. Von Billma
'You really didn't think you would, did you?' John said. 'Whoever the pre-Indo-Hittites are, they are probably in Asia or Russia somewhere. They won't be migrating to Germany for several thousands of years yet - probably.
'Of course,' he added, smiling slightly, 'it's possible that they are only a few miles from us at this very moment.'
'You have a small sadistic streak in you, John,' von Billma
'Perhaps. However, if you are on the next expedition, which will go to 8000 B.C., you may find your long-lost speakers.'
'But I want to find them now!'
'Perhaps something entirely unforeseen will happen to enlighten you.'
Von Billma
Nine
Time went swiftly, and then suddenly the day of departure was close. Four years had passed. The vessel was crowded with specimens and only a few had yet to be collected. These were mainly spermatozoa and ova which would be taken from animals shot with the anesthetic-bearing missiles. When the vessel returned to the twenty-first century, the frozen sperm and eggs would be thawed out and appropriately united in tubes. The fetuses would be placed in the uteri of foster mothers - cows in the case of most of the larger animals but, in the zoo, elephants or whales in the case of the largest. The biological science of the twenty-first century permitted the young of one species to flourish in the womb of another. And so, the twenty-first century would soon have in their zoos and reservations beasts that had been extinct for many thousands of years.
Moreover, the sperm and eggs of humans were in the cryogenic tanks. These would be united and implanted in human females, and the children would be brought up by their foster parents. In everything except physical structure, they would be twenty-first centurians. But they would be studied by scientists. And their children, hybrids of Magdalenians and modern, would be studied.
To compensate for the mass of the specimens, parts of the vessel had to be removed. Everything was removed except the files and those devices needed to keep the specimens from decay. Everything had been carefully weighed before the vessel was launched, but everything was weighed again. The day before the vessel was to be retrieved, the weighing apparatus was removed, and its mass was replaced with artifacts from thirty tribes, each of which had been weighed. It was Gribardsun who suggested that each member of the four should also be reweighed.
'If something should happen to one of us, and he wasn't able to get aboard, his weight should be replaced by something valuable.'
'For heaven's sake, John!' Rachel said. 'What could happen? We're not leaving the vicinity of the vessel except to go to the farewell feast tonight. And if somebody got sick or fell and broke his neck, we'd still take him along.'
'True, but I feel that we should take no chances. You know how serious a deviation in weight can be when the tracers'll be searching for us. Let's take no chances whatsoever.'
The 'reserves,' as von Billma
The celebration that night was long and exhausting and often touching. The tribes, carrying pine torches, followed them to the vessel and then each member of the Wota'shaimg and the Shluwg kissed each of the explorers. And then, wailing and chanting, they retreated to a distance of a hundred yards. There they settled down to wait for the dawn, since the departure retrieval was set for shortly after sunrise.
The four made no attempt to sleep. They sat in their chairs and talked and now and then looked at the screen showing them the outside. The tribespeople were all awake too, except for the babies and small children.
The four talked animatedly and even gaily; for the first time in a long while the shadow of the past had lifted. Rachel found herself hoping that Gribardsun might forget his prejudices against coming between a man and his wife. She would file a divorce claim as soon as she was out of quarantine, and she would convince John that he did love her, that he had only suppressed his love because of his old-fashioned morality.
A few minutes before sunrise, John Gribardsun rose from the chair. He turned, pulled out a black recording ball, and placed it in a depression on the armrest of chair.
Time leaving now,' he said. 'You'll want to stow my pile of artifacts aboard as quickly as possible to replace my mass. Anything you want to know is in the ball. Please don't ask me anything now or try to hold me back. You can't do that; all three of you together aren't strong enough and you know it.