Time's Last Gift (17 page)

She nodded and said, ‘I know. But with the drugs and techniques we now have, some day people will live as long as that - longer - and yet be young.’

‘Yes, but they didn’t have those drugs in the nineteenth or twentieth century.’

‘Somebody might have. Some backwoods witch doctor perhaps. You can’t say it’s beyond the bounds of possibility.’

He shook his head and hit his temple with the butt of his palm.

‘When Moishe heard this theory of Perrault’s, he was the only scientist who didn’t pooh-pooh it. At least, he made no statement whatever on it. But that 1872 date rang the gong, you might say. He began thinking about Gribardsun. Yet he didn’t want to do anything to antagonize the man. Gribardsun, he was sure, was responsible for time travel. He didn’t originate the theory or work out the physical techniques, of course. But if it hadn’t been for him, Moishe could never have gotten any place. He was certain of that - though, again, he couldn’t prove it.

‘But what was Gribardsun’s motive? If Gribardsun did have the elixir a hundred years or so before anybody eke, why was he so interested in time travel, why had he worked so hard to bring it about? Especially when it looked as if he wasn’t going to enjoy its benefits. He was only sixth in priority, and he had only gotten that high in some unaccountable manner.

‘And then, suddenly, he was second. One thing after another had happened to those in line ahead of him. Sickness, a sudden loss of interest or of courage. One man resigned without giving any reasons and took off for Tahiti. Very mysterious.

‘Moishe was very sick by this time then. He…’

‘Are you suggesting that Gribardsun poisoned him, too?’ Rachel said.

‘No. Moishe was never intended to go on the expedition. He was too old and besides, he didn’t have the qualifications. No, he got one of the rare incurable cancers - as you know - and he was dying. He hoped he’d live long enough to see the expedition off. It was his greatest wish, and he never got it. Moses before the Promised Land, he used to say, when he felt well enough to joke. Which wasn’t often. But Gribardsun worried him. He couldn’t see what sinister motive the man had, if his motive was sinister. Then de Longnors disappeared, and Moishe was certain that Gribardsun was responsible. But Moishe didn’t have long to live, and he did owe Gribardsun a great debt, and he did not want to make accusations which would result in the expedition being held up. A few days’delay would mean he’d die before the launching. As it turned out, he did die before the launching. Anyway, he told me the story. And he asked me not to tell anybody. But I was to keep an eye on Gribardsun, and, after I returned, if I felt it was justified, I was to reveal the whole story. Of course I promised, but I felt like a fool. The whole thing was so fantastic. Or so I thought then. Now I don’t think so at all. And when I get back…’

‘You still have nothing to tell,’ she said. ‘Moreover, you have been mentally sick, and your story would be hushed up to protect you more than John.’

‘Do you mean that you think it’s all nonsense?’

‘No, I don’t. I think that what you and Moishe suspected is true. But what can any of us do about it? Besides, I can’t believe that John would do anything dishonest or in any way evil.’

‘That’s because you’re still in love with him!’

‘Probably.’

Drummond clamped his teeth tightly and balled his hands.

Strange sounds came from beneath his teeth.

Rachel said, ‘Drummond! Don’t! I can’t help it! Please don’t get sick again! You have to face reality!’

He opened his fists and released the tension on his jaws and breathed out heavily. He said, ‘All right. I can face it. But I wish…’

‘There’s Robert!’ she said. ‘He looks worried. I wonder if anything’s happened to John!’

She ran toward him. Von Billmann said, ‘Laminak’s very sick. I need your help.’

The girl was lying on furs on the floor of the tent, the walls of which had been rolled up so that the cooling wind could pass over her. Amaga, her mother, and Abinal, her brother, squatted near her. Glamug was not present with his medicine paint, his spirit-scaring mask, his rattles and bull roarer and his baton de commandement. He was out hunting and, since game was scarce near the camp, was probably miles away.

Laminak’s skin was flushed but dry, and her fever was 101-6°F. She looked dully at the three as they bent over her, and then she mumbled, ‘Koorik?’

‘He’s not here, but I’m sure he soon will be,’ Rachel said.

She patted the girl’s hand, and then lifted her head to give her a drink from her canteen.

With Rachel’s help, von Billmann took saliva, skin, and blood samples into the little medical analyzer, together with their observations on her fever and other physical symptoms. The analyzer was able to detect every virus and bacterium and germ known to the twenty-first century, to define any type of cancer, and to interpret symptoms.

It took fifteen minutes to run through the samples from Laminak, and the coded result on the tape was: DISEASE UNKNOWN. POSSIBLE PSYCHOSOMATIC ORIGIN. Laminak’s fever rose to 102-1°F. and stayed there until late that night. She would drink water but had no desire to eat. She became delirious that evening, and she mumbled and groaned much.

Of the few words they could determine, Koorik was the most frequent.

‘She’s been pining away ever since Koorik left,’ Amaga said. ‘Then she brightened up when the time came for him to return. But as the days passed and he did not come, she became sick. Last night, she started to burn, and she will not stop now until she is dead, unless Koorik comes back. And there is not much time for that.’

‘I can’t believe that she could get so sick just grieving for John,’ Rachel said.

‘But she can,’ von Billmann said. ‘The tribe has stories of men and women, and children, who have made themselves sick, killed themselves, with grief at the loss or prolonged absence of a loved one. It’s a psychological mechanism, true, but it operates far too effectively.’

‘We don’t know that that is the cause of her sickness,’ Rachel said.

‘True. But until we have a better explanation, I’ll accept grief.’

Rachel stayed with Laminak even after Glamug returned and began to make the camp hideous with his howlings, shrill chantings, rattlings, bull roarings, and sudden shrieks. She did all she could to help the girl and at the same time stay out of Glamug’s way. She also kept a close observation of the progress of the illness for the expedition’s records.

The morning of the third day, just as the sun came up, Laminak breathed her death rattle.

Glamug stopped his shuffling and chanting, got down on his knees, and marked her forehead and breasts with red ocher.

Then he stood up, removed his mask, and looked at Rachel with tired eyes and drooping face.

‘For a little while last night, I rested,’ he said. ‘And I had a vision. I saw Koorik running toward us across a field with a high cliff ahead. And behind him bounded a lion. The lion was very close, and then Koorik was running through the shallow stream at the base of the cliff. This slowed him down, and the lion roared with triumph, and it seized Koorik. And then they were rolling in the water, and Koorik had only his shining gray knife to defend himself against the great lion. His thunder stick was empty; it had lost its death-dealing powers. And his spear was in the throat of a lioness, the mate of the lion that pursued Koorik.’

Rachel understood that Glamug had fallen asleep for a few minutes, though she could have sworn that his racket had gone on all night without a second’s break. He had had a dream and, as was the custom, he must tell the nearest person the dream as soon as possible.

‘Did Koorik get away from the lion? Or was he… ?’

‘Was he killed?’ Glamug said. ‘I do not know. The vision faded, and I was sitting outside the tent of Laminak and shivering with the cold. Not with the cold of the night wind, because that was warm. With the cold of the wind that blows death.’

Rachel told Drummond and Robert of Glamug’s vision. Drummond scoffed at it, saying that it was a wish on the part of the witch doctor, who must resent Gribardsun’s takeover of his role as healer. That was all there was to it. Von Billmann, who had experience with sanctuary people, was not so skeptical.

‘But if his dream was a form of telepathy, why didn’t I see John instead of Glamug? I’m much closer to John than that primitive quack!’

‘He’s no quack; he believes in what he does and practices to the best of his ability,’ von Billmann said. ‘As for why he received the message - if there was a message - well, he is a receiver, and you are not. He’s tuned in, on the proper wavelength.’

Rachel sneered, but she was worried. She would have laughed about the vision in her own environment, the towering many-leveled twenty-first-century megalopolis, but in this savage world it was as easy to believe in ESP and ghosts as it was to believe in mammoths and cave lions. It was summer and therefore hot. The huge deer flies and the smaller flies were numerous, and the tribe must not be kept too long from reaping the summer. The wake took place that day, and Laminak was buried at dawn the next morning. A hole five feet long and three feet wide and two feet deep was dug. A mammoth hide was placed in the bottom of the hole and on this bear hides were placed. Laminak, wrapped around the loins with the fur of a female bear cub, her body elsewhere daubed with red ocher, and a chaplet of bright saxifrage around her head, was carried by four men to the grave. There, while drums beat, flutes wailed, and a bull roarer boomed, she was placed on her right side. Her face was toward the rising sun. She wore a strand of sea shells around her neck, and a wooden doll with human hair, the doll she had put aside two years ago but kept with her few valuables, was placed by her side.

More bright saxifrage petals were strewn over her and two mammoth tusks were crossed over her. Then dirt was thrown over her with wooden shovels, and afterward large rocks were piled over the dirt to keep the hyenas and the wolves off.

Rachel wept as the dirt fell over the blue-gray, red-streaked face and the bright yellow hair. She had resented, even disliked the child, because of her love for Gribardsun and his obvious affection for her. But she was crying, and it may have been for both reasons. Even she did not know. But there was no doubt that in the death of the girl she saw more than one death. Perhaps she was reminded of the inevitability of the death of everyone who had been born and who was to be born. Of what use was life when it must end? Once you were dead, it did not matter if you had lived a hundred years, a happy hundred years. You did not know that you had lived, and you might as well never have lived.

Time had discarded Laminak, and Time would remove even the evidences of her burial. Rachel knew every inch of this area, because part of her training for the expedition had been an archeological survey of the territory. Every bit had been dug up, and there was no grave here in Rachel’s time. There was not even evidence that Laminak’s tribe had camped for generations under this overhang. Sometime in the postglacial age, storms, heavy rains, and floods would wash away everything from under the overhang down to the time when Neanderthals had lived here. And then the dirt deposited above the Neanderthal layers would be free of human traces. And Laminak’s grave would be washed out and her bones carried down the valley and lost somewhere in the river. The waters would come with such force they would roll away even the large stones piled above her.

When the last stone had been placed, Glamug danced nine times around the grave, shaking the baton to the north, east, south, and west. Then he abruptly quit the place, walking toward his tent, where his wife had prepared a broth of water and various boiled roots in a bowl made from the skull of a reindeer. He would drink that cleansing drink, and the ceremony would be over.

Two days later, Rachel saw John Gribardsun. She had been filing away the film pellets and specimens in the vessel. Her work completed, she left the vessel and at once saw the tiny figure far to the northwest. Even at that distance, it was obviously John. Using her binoculars, she was able to amplify him enough so that she could see the details of his face. Her heart began beating even more rapidly.

He recognized her and waved at her but did not increase his pace. He was trotting along at a rate that would have prostrated the other scientists and would have left even the strongest of the tribespeople far behind. Yet, when he stopped before her, he was not breathing overly hard.

He smiled and said, ‘Hello!’ and she came to him put her arms around him, and wept. She told him of Laminak and, with a cruelty she could not understand until later, told him that Laminak had died of grief for him.

Gribardsun pushed her away and said, ‘You don’t really know what killed her, do you? The analyzer isn’t infallible or panoramic in its coverage of diseases, you know.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that. But all of us thought that was why she died. It was so evident.’

‘I can’t be bound to one place or to one person,’ he said. ‘If what you say is true, then she would have been…’

‘Unsuitable for you?’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t have made a good wife for you after all? John, you must be out of your mind. She couldn’t have gone with you to our time. She would have died there, in an alien and completely bewildering world, and cut off from her tribe. If she died just because she thought you would never return, she surely would have died if she were separated forever from her own people. You know how these primitives are.’

‘I didn’t say I planned to marry her,’ he said. ‘I was very fond of her. And I feel - I feel…’

He turned away and walked around to the other side of the vessel. Rachel wept again, this time partly for her sympathy with him, because she was sure he was crying for Laminak, and partly for herself, because his grief for Laminak meant that he did not love Rachel. Or perhaps her tears were for everybody.

A few minutes later, his eyes red, he reappeared. ‘Let’s go to the camp,’ he said. ‘You tell me what’s happened while I’ve been gone.’

But Rachel insisted on knowing whether or not he had been attacked by lions. He was surprised, but when she told him of Glamug’s vision, he said, ‘He does have a form of ESP. Nothing too rare in that among preliterates. Yes, I had a run-in with a lion and his mate, and things went much as Glamug said.’