Time's Last Gift (16 page)

Farther north was another group which was a physical double of the pre-Romans. But these were far more advanced in technology and wore fur clothing skillfully sewn together and used fine stone, wood, and bone tools and weapons. Their language was related to that of the Tiber people.

Gribardsun had a theory that was, he admitted, mystical to some extent, and a modification of Jung’s. He believed that each group of people had its own particular soul or collective psyche. The factors creating this soul were unconscious but deliberate. That is, the collective mind determined, in some as yet unanalyzable manner, to fashion itself into a mode belligerent or pacifist, lazy or busy, poetic or practical, progressive or static or regressive. Some collective souls yearned for a place by the gods; others, by swine.

The two groups they had just left were examples of the difference of collective psyches in two similar groups. Both had picked up some Neanderthal genes, and isolation from Homo sapiens had enabled them to retain these genes. It was possible that the two had only recently been one, and that the split had taken place only a few generations before. But one seemed to be deliberately brutish; the other, quite human.

‘I don’t think your colleagues at the University of Greater Europe would accept that theory,’ von Billmann said.

‘I do not care. It’s only a theory, anyway, with no way to prove it, and I don’t intend to waste time trying to do so,’ Gribardsun said.

By early spring, they had entered that prong of land which took in the islands of Elba, Corsica, and Sardinia. These comprised one land mass connected with Italy and covered with firs and pines and filled with game, including elephants, cave bear and lions. Some of the tribes had Negroid skeletal traits, but they were definitely Caucasoid. Their hair was curly, but only loosely so, and their lips, though full, were not overly everted. There was a small minority of blonds among them.

By late April, the safari crossed the border-to-be between Italy and France. Gribardsun, having determined the border by astronomical and geodesic observations, was the first to walk across the imaginary line. Humming the Marseillaise, he strode along. His thick black hair was cut short straight across his forehead; the rest swinging shoulder-length. His face was shaven; he had not yet overcome his dislike of beards. He wore a yellow-brown lion-skin cape and a red deer loincloth and brown bearskin boots. The rifle was slung over his shoulder, and he carried a flint-tipped spear in one hand. His big steel hunting knife was in a sheath at his leopard-skin belt.

Behind him came Glamug, holding high at the end of a wooden pole a cave-bear skull. His face and body were painted with bright symbols, and he was chanting a protective ritual. Behind him came the chiefs and chief warriors of both tribes in their pecking order and then the Wota’shaimg. Behind them was the standard bearer of the Shluwg, holding on a pole a wildcat skull, and after him his tribe. The drummers and fluters and whistlers of both tribes were playing their own ‘national’ anthems, and their people were singing, respectively, the Song of the Father Bear and the Song of the Great Wildcat Mother. The only ones whose musical sensibilities were offended were the time travelers.

‘Lafayette, we are here!’ shouted Gribardsun in French. He seemed to be unusually exuberant that day. They had covered over 3,600 miles in nine months by taking their time at some places and making long forced marches between others. Gribardsun would have liked to stop off for about two weeks to rest at their starting point, the overhang in the Vezere River valley. After their strength was restored, they could go northwestward across France and cross the land bridge into England, following the Thames, which ran across the bridge and into Europe.

But when, at the end of their two-weeks’ rest, he suggested this plan, he found that the tribes refused to go. They had had enough of wandering. Now they wanted to settle down for the summer, hunt animals, pick berries, dig roots, tan skins, fish in the rivers for salmon, hold feasts, repair tents, and make new ones.

The chiefs and the doctors looked apprehensive when they said no to Gribardsun. But he did not threaten or shoot off the thunderstick. He replied, smiling, that he understood how very weary they must be and that they had to prepare for the winter in the short time they had. He thanked them for the great endurance and forbearance they had shown in following him around the great waters. It was true that he had shown them many strange lands and peoples and thus broadened their outlook and their knowledge. And he had strengthened them by bringing about the fusion of the two tribes. Nevertheless, they had shown much courage and patience in this great task, and he thanked them.

But he and his colleagues had their work, too. They would leave for a good part of the summer. But they would be back. And he would expect the tribes to be on their best behavior, as they were when he was present. The two tribes must continue to submit any disputes to the council, composed of the elders of each tribe. And they must continue to improve their mutual language, Galush. And they must continue to cooperate in every respect. When he came back he would ask how well the two tribes had behaved toward each other and also among themselves.

If, however, any individuals of either group wished to volunteer to go along with Gribardsun, then they must be allowed to go. He would overrule the tribal elders in this single matter. He needed carriers for the specimens that would be collected.

A number of juveniles volunteered, but their fathers overruled them. They could not be spared. Their absence would impose great hardships on their families.

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 Billmann said, ‘Are you running most of the way?’

‘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 Billmann said. ‘Twelve hundred miles round trip. And you’ll probably cover three hundred or so miles in England itself. To get back here in a month, you’ll have to average about fifty miles a day.’

‘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 Billmann showed signs of discontent. More and more he complained about the low chances of ever getting to Czechoslovakia.

‘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 Billmann for many years before the expedition and had never once seen him in a bad humor. Perhaps he was being affected by temporal dislocation. Though he had been more resistant than she or her husband, he was succumbing now. And she, instead of getting better, was feeling less and less attached to reality. She and von Billmann were weakening, she was sure, because their pillar of stability was gone. As long as Gribardsun was around, reality seemed more solid. He radiated strength and assurance.

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 tanned, cut, and sewn. An old man (about sixty) died. Ten babies were born, four of whom died at birth. Three mothers died. A hunter came too close to a mammoth which had fallen into a trap and was lifted up and dashed to death by the huge beast’s trunk. A youth fell off a cliff while hunting ibex, broke his back, and was eaten by cave hyenas before his companions could get to him. A man savagely beat his wife when he found her with another man behind a large boulder. She recovered but lost numerous teeth and an eye.

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

When thirty days had passed, Rachel and von Billmann began to look for Gribardsun. Every day thereafter they expected, or at least hoped, to see his tall, long-legged, broad-shouldered figure and handsome face appear down the valley. But two weeks went by, and they started to worry. They knew that he was not conforming to a timetable, and that he might have run across many interesting phenomena to detain him. But he was a man of his word, and if he said he would be back in a month, he would try to keep reasonably close to that time.

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 tunnel straight into his mind, into the chamber where the secret hid. Then she said, ‘All right. I promise.’

‘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 Longnors 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.

‘But the pressure from them suddenly and inexplicably eased off. And Moishe was given the go-ahead. Not only that; he was granted leave from his teaching duties and given more computer facilities.

‘Moishe said that this took place almost immediately after he had explained to Gribardsun what he was doing. Apparently Gribardsun had a grasp of Moishe’s theory that no one else had at that time. Moishe said it wasn’t because Gribardsun was such a great mathematician. But he seemed to have an almost intuitive comprehension. As if he spoke - or thought - in a language that had the same structure as Moishe’s mathematics. Moishe couldn’t explain what his impressions of Gribardsun were, but he felt a repressed force and something slightly unhuman - not inhuman - in him. As if the man had a somewhat non-Homo sapiens Weltanschauung.

‘Whatever Gribardsun was, he wanted Moishe to go full jets ahead. And Moishe was given everything he asked for. At the time he did not connect the Englishman’s visit with what followed. Gribardsun had not promised anything. But later, Moishe made a few investigations - after he became suspicious, that is; he could not prove it, but he suspected that Gribardsun had somehow pulled strings to get the project going. All of this was thirty years before construction on the vessel had started. Twenty-four years before the final project was approved.’

‘Moishe was always a very busy man. But he got several men interested in Gribardsun, men in the International Criminal Agency who, in the event, took a long time to find out little. But their findings were significant, though improvable. Mostly, they concluded that something was rotten, not in Denmark, but in England and in Time. And in Africa.

‘By using the facilities of the World Reference Bank, they learned that Gribardsun had been interested for a long tune in trying to analyze the structure of Time. Moreover, so had his father. Now, our John Gribardsun was born in Derbyshire in 2020, which makes him fifty years old - fifty-one by now. He looks as if he’s thirty, which is no miracle in this day of rejuvenation drugs. His father, who looked exactly like him, was born in 1980, and disappeared while sailing off the coast of Kenya. Apparently not much was known about his father. Though an English duke, he spent most of his life in East Africa.’

‘His father was born in vague circumstances in West Africa - exact location not known - raised in indeterminate circumstances in West Africa, and came into his ducal title only after some shenanigans on the part of a relative, who tried to bilk him out of it. This man lived most of his life in Africa and then disappeared in 1970, whereupon his grandson became Duke Gribardsun of Pemberley. But the grandfather was born in 1872.’

Rachel said, ‘What about it? What about any of this stuff? What’s the point?’

‘To start with, from John Gribardsun born in 1872, every Duke of Gribardsun spent most of his life in Africa. And though they served their country in war, they took no other part in public life. Moreover, their source of income was very shadowy. They were suspected of having a gold mine somewhere in Central Africa, and the original duke and his descendants had much trouble - if rumors could be believed - with criminals determined to find that mine. And if you think that is a fairy tale, let me tell you that every once in a while an eruption of gold onto the black market could be traced back to Africa. But never directly to the doorstep of the Gribardsuns. Money was abandoned everywhere in the early twenties, if you’ll remember. The economy of abundance was adopted worldwide. And at the same time the British peerage was abolished. So the Gribardsuns lost both title and their secret wealth at the same time. But our John went into the professions. He was a doctor and also an administrator of the World Reference Bank. He had access to the administrative records, and to the men who kept them, both as their doctor and as their supervisor. A strange double career, don’t you think? Especially in these days, when no man has to work if he doesn’t care to. Yet Gribardsun had two professions. And during his long and frequent vacations, he spent much time on the Inner Kenyan Sanctuary and the Ugandan Preserve. It was there he did his work for his MQA thesis on physical anthropology. And it was out of there, if you can believe the findings of the ICA, that some strange tales began coming - all about John Gribardsun: his great strength, his ability to live off the jungle, his singular ability to get along with animals. There were even rumors that he was ageless. The natives of the sanctuary and the preserve spoke of that. They claimed that he was several hundred years old and been given a magic potion when he was very young by a native witch doctor. These stories were discounted, of course. But then ICA came across some disquieting - or maybe just puzzling - things when they were checking out the World Reference Bank. There were indications - but nothing that could be proved - that the records had been tampered with.’

‘What in the world are you driving at?’ Rachel said. But her eyes were wide, her skin pale, and a pulse beat in the hollow of her neck.

‘Well, the ICA men were thorough, and very well trained, but not what you might call imaginative. They put together a picture and then refused to believe it. They did, however, check out the fingerprints, photographs, and biographical data of the John Gribardsun born in 1872 against each of his descendants. They did so, they said, as a matter of routine, but they were looking for something which I don’t think they expressed even to each other.

‘However, his descendants, though they looked much like him, had different fingerprints. And though the original John never had retinal or ear or brainwave prints, his descendants did. And theirs were unique. But then, false records can be made. And the lives of the later Gribardsuns, which should have been much more thoroughly documented and detailed, were almost as shadowy as that of the man born in 1872. The Gribardsuns did not even go to public school; they all had private tutors.’

‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Rachel said, but she did not look as if she were mocking him.

‘But the thorough investigation into our John turned up nothing that could be used against him. And so the investigation was dropped. But then the first experiments with time travel were made. And that strange block which extended from our time back to around 1870 was discovered. Of all the theories advanced - and there were some wild ones - the wildest was, I believe, the true one. You remember my commenting on it last year when we were talking about the early experiments? Perrault said that perhaps someone who had been born in the late seventies still lived. And the structure of Time was such that no object or person could be sent back to a time when anybody living then was still living in our time. He was scoffed at, of course, because that would mean that somewhere in the world was a man two hundred and some years old.’