No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5)

by Clifford D. Simak

  Short of stature and slightly stooping of posture, the Neanderthaler was a model of awkward power. His head was thrust forward at an angle between his shoulders. His neck was thick as a tree boll. The long arms hung almost to the knees of the bowed legs and the body was completely covered with hair. The heavy bristle of hair on his enormously projecting eyebrows was snowy white and throughout the heavy coat of hair which covered the man were other streaks and sprinklings of gray and white.

  “An old buck,” said Yancey, half to himself. “Slowing down. Someday he won’t move quite fast enough and a cat will have him.”

  Conrad Yancey took another slow step forward and this time the Neanderthaler, bristling with terror, wheeled about with a strange, strangled cry of fear and ran, shuffling awkwardly, down the hill to plunge straight into a dense thicket.

  Back at the time-tractor camp Yancey told the story of the battle between the caveman and the cat, of how he watched and had finally stepped in to save the man’s life.

  But the others had stories, too. Cabot and Cameron, hunting together a few miles to the east, had been charged by an angry mammoth bull, had stopped him only after they had placed four well aimed heavy-caliber bullets into him. Pascal, remaining at the tractor, had scared off a cave bear and reported that a pack of five vicious, slinking wolves had patrolled the camp throughout the afternoon. He had shot two of them and then the rest had scattered.

  For here was a land that was teeming with game; a land where the law of claw and fang ruled and was the only law; where big animals preyed on smaller animals and in turn were preyed upon by still bigger ones. Here was a land without human habitation, with the few Neanderthalers who did live here hiding in dark, dank caves. Here was a land that had no human tenets, no softening hand of civilization.

  But here, in this primeval wilderness of what later was to become the British Isles, was the greatest hunting ground Cabot and Yancey had ever seen. They shot in self-defense as often as they shot to bring down marked game. They found that a cave bear would carry more lead than an elephant, that the saber-tooth was not so hard to kill as might be thought, that only superb marksmanship and the heaviest bullets would bring the mammoth to his knees.

  The flickering campfire, lighting up the gray, shadowy bulk of the time-tractor, was the only evidence of civilized life upon the darkening world as a blood-red moon climbed over the eastern horizon and lighted a land that growled and snarled, shivered and whimpered, hunted and was hunted.

  Yancey saw Old One-Eye lurking on the edge of the camp when he arose in the morning. He had just a glimpse of the old fellow, squatting in a clump of bushes, looking over the camp with his one good eye. He disappeared so quickly, so soundlessly that Yancey blinked and rubbed his eyes, hardly believing he had left.

  In the field that day Yancey and Cabot caught sight of him several times, lurking in their wake, spying upon them.

  “Maybe,” Cabot suggested, “he is trying to get up enough courage to thank you for saving his life.”

  Yancey grunted.

  “Hell, I had to do that, Jack,” he said. “He isn’t more than an animal, but he’s still a man. We got to play along with our own kind in a place like this. He was such a brave old cuss. Standing there, ready to go to bat with that cat with his bare hands.”

  Back at the camp, Pascal looked at it in a scientific light.

  “Just natural curiosity,” he said. “The first glimmering of intelligence. Trying to figure things out. With what limited brain power he has that old fellow is doing some heavy thinking right now.”

  “Maybe he recognizes you as one of his descendants. Great-grandson to the hundredth generation, maybe,” Cameron jibed at Yancey.

  “The Neanderthal race is not the ancestor of man,” Pascal protested. “They died out or were killed off by the Cro-Magnons, who’ll be moving in within another ten or twenty thousand years. The Neanderthaloids were just a sort of blind alley. An experiment that didn’t go quite right.”

  “Seems damn human, though,” protested Yancey.

  One-Eye became a camp fixture. He lurked around the tractor, trailed Yancey when he went afield. Degree by degree he became bolder. Meat was left where he could find it and he carried it off into the brush. Later he didn’t bother to drag it off. In plain view of the hunters he squatted on his haunches, ripping and rending it, snarling softly, gulping great, bloody mouthfuls of raw flesh.

  He haunted the campfire like a dog, apparently pleased with the easy living he had found. He came farther away from the encircling brush, squatted and jabbered just outside the circle of firelight, waiting for the bits of food tossed to him.

  At last, seemingly convinced he had nothing to fear from these strange creatures, he joined the campfire circle, sat with the men, blinking at the campfire, jabbering away excitedly.

  “Maybe he has a language,” said Pascal, “but if he has it’s very primitive. Not more than a dozen words at most.”

  He liked to have his back scratched, grunting like a contented hog. He begged for cubes of sugar.

  “Makes a nice pet,” Cameron declared.

  But Yancey shook his head.

  “Something more than a pet, Hugh,” he said.

  For between Yancey and the old Neanderthaler something akin to comradeship had developed. It was by Yancey that the old one-eyed savage sat when he came into the ring of firelight. It was at Yancey that he directed his chatter. During the day he haunted Yancey’s footsteps like a shadow, at times coming out openly to join him, ambling along with his awkward gait.

  One night Yancey gave him a knife, half wondering if One-Eye would know what it was. But One-Eye recognized in this wondrous piece of polished metal something akin to the fist ax that he and his people used to flay the pelts from the animals they killed.

  Turning the knife over and over, One-Eye slobbered in delirious glee. He jabbered excitedly at Yancey, clawed at the man’s shoulder with caressing paw. Then he leaped from his place by the campfire and slithered away into the darkness. Not so much as a breaking twig heralded his plunge into the night.

  Yancey rubbed his eyes.

  “I wonder what the damn old fool is up to now?” he asked.

  “Went off to try his new knife,” suggested Cabot. “Something like that calls for a little throat-slitting.”

  Yancey listened to the moaning of a saber-tooth in the brush only a short distance away, heard the bellow of a mammoth down by the river.

  He shook his head dolefully.

  “I sure hope he watches his step,” he said. “He’s slowing up. Getting old. That saber-tooth out there might get him.”

  But in fifteen minutes One-Eye was back again. He waddled into the circle of firelight so silently that the men did not hear his approach.

  Looking over his shoulder, Yancey saw him standing back of him. One-Eye was holding out a clenched fist, but within the fist was something that glinted in the flare of the campfire.

  Pascal caught his breath.

  “He’s brought you something,” he told Yancey. “Something in exchange for the knife. I would never have believed it. The barter principle.”

  Yancey rose and held out his hand. One-Eye dropped the shiny thing into it. Living flame lanced from it, striking Yancey’s eyeballs.

  It was a stone. Yancey rotated it slowly with his fingers and saw that within its center dwelt a heart of icy blue flame, while from its many facets swarmed arcing colors of breath-taking beauty.

  Cabot was at his elbow, staring.

  “What is it, Yancey?” he gasped.

  Yancey almost sobbed.

  “It’s a diamond,” he said. “A diamond as big as my fist!”

  “But it’s cut,” protested Cabot. “That’s not a stone out of the rough. A master jeweler cut that stone!”

  Yancey nodded.

  “Just what would a cut diamond be doi
ng in the old Stone Age?” he asked.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Broadcast in Time

  One-Eye pointed down into the throat of a cave and jabbered violently at Yancey. The hunter patted the hoary shoulders and One-Eye danced with glee.

  “This must be it,” Yancey said.

  “I hope so,” said Cameron. “It’s taken plenty of time to make him understand what we wanted. I still can’t understand how we did it.”

  Cabot wagged his head.

  “I can’t understand any of it,” he confessed. “A Neanderthaler lugging around cut diamonds. Diamonds as big as a man’s fist.”

  “Well, let’s go down and see for ourselves,” suggested Yancey.

  One-Eye led the way down the steep, slippery mouth of the cave and into a dimly lit cavern, filled with a sort of half-light that filtered in from the mouth of the cave on the ground above.

  Cabot switched on a flashlight and cried out excitedly.

  In cascading piles upon the floor of the cavern, stacked high against its rocky sides, were piles of jewels that flashed and glittered, scintillating in the beams of the torch.

  “This is it!” yelled Cameron.

  Pascal, down on his knees in front of a pile of jewels, dipped his hands into them, lifted a fistful and let them trickle back. They filled the cavern with little murmurings as they fell.

  Cabot swept the cave with the light. They saw piles of jewels; neat stacks of gold ingots, apparently freshly smelted; bars of silver-white iridium; of argent platinum; chests of hammered bronze and copper; buckskin bags spilling native golden nuggets.

  Yancey reached out a hand and leaned weakly against the wall.

  “My God,” he stammered. “The price of empires!”

  “But,” said Pascal, slowly, calmly, although his face, as Cabot’s torch suddenly lighted it, was twisted in an agony of disbelief, “how did this all come here? This is a primitive world. The art of the goldsmith and the jewel-cutter is unknown here.”

  Cameron’s voice cut coolly out of the darkness.

  “There must be an explanation. Some reason. Some previous civilization. A treasure cache of that civilization.”

  “No,” Pascal told him, “not that. Look at those gold bars. New. Freshly smelted. No sign of age. And platinum—that’s a comparatively recent discovery. Iridium even more recent.”

  Cabot’s voice held an edge of steel command.

  “We can argue about how it got here after we have it stowed away,” he said. “Pascal, you and Hugh go down and bring up the tractor. Yancey and I will start carrying this stuff up to the surface right away.”

  Yancey toiled up the throat of the cave. Reaching the surface he slid the sack of jewels from his shoulder and wiped his brow.

  “Tough work,” he told Cameron.

  Cameron nodded.

  “But it’s almost over now,” he comforted. “Just a few more hours and we’ll have the last of the stuff in the tractor. Then we can get out of here.”

  Yancey nodded.

  “I don’t feel too safe,” he admitted. “Somebody hid all this junk in the cave. How they did it, I don’t have the faintest idea. But I have a queer feeling it wouldn’t go easy with us if they caught us.”

  Pascal stagger out of the cave and slid a gold bar from his shoulder.

  He mopped his brow with a shirt sleeve.

  “I’m going down to the tractor and get a drink of water before I pack that a foot farther,” he announced.

  Yancey stooped to pick up his gunny sack. Pascal’s scream echoed.

  The hillside below the tractor before had been empty of everything except a few scattered boulders and trees. Now a machine rested there, a grotesque machine of black metal, streamlined, with stubby wings, suggestive of a plane. As Yancey caught his first sight of it, it was indistinct, blurred, as if he saw it through a shimmering haze. Then it became clear, sharp-cut.

  Like a slap in the face came the knowledge that here was the answer to those vague fears he had felt. Here must be the owners of the treasure cache.

  His hand slapped down to his thigh and his gun whispered out of its holster.

  A door in the strange machine snapped open and out of it stepped a man—but hardly a man. The creature sported a long tail, and it was covered with scales. Twin horns, three inches or so in height, sprouted from its forehead.

  The newcomer carried something that looked like a gun in his hand, but no gun such as Yancey had ever seen. He saw the weapon tilt up toward him and his .45 exploded in his fist. Even as flame blossomed from his gun, he saw a .45 come up in Cameron’s hand, in the second after the blast of his own gun, then heard the deadly click of a cocking hammer.

  The first of the scaly men was down. But others were tumbling out of the strange mechanism.

  Cameron’s gun barked and once again Yancey felt the comforting kick of the .45 against the heel of his palm, hardly knowing he had squeezed the trigger.

  From one of the guns carried by the scaly men whipped out a pencil of purple flame. Yancey felt its hot breath clip past his cheek.

  Before the time-tractor lay Pascal, stretched out, inert, like an empty sack. Over him stood Cabot, gun flaming. Another one of those purple flames reached out, hit a boulder beside Yancey. The boulder glowed with sudden heat, started to chip and crack.

  With mighty leaps, Yancey skidded down the slope, landing in a crouch beside Pascal. He grasped the old scientist by the shoulder and lifted him. As he straightened, he glanced at the strange machine in which the scaly men had come. Through the open door he could see a mass of machinery, with banks of glowing tubes.

  Then the machinery erupted in a thunderous explosion. The roar seemed to blot out the world. For one split second he glanced up and saw on Cabot’s face a baleful grin of triumph, knew that he had fired a shot which had wrecked the scaly men’s machine.

  The ground seemed to be weaving under Yancey’s feet. With superhuman effort he plodded toward the door of the time-tractor, dragging Pascal. Hands reached out to help him, hauling him inside.

  Slowly his brain cleared. He was sitting on the floor of the tractor. Beside him lay Pascal and he saw now that the scientist was dead. His chest had been burned away by one of the pencils of purple flame.

  Cabot swung down on the door-locking mechanism and stepped back into the room.

  “What are they, Jack?” Yancey asked, his mind still fuzzy.

  Cabot shook his head wearily.

  “Don’t you recognize them?” asked Cameron. “Horns, hoofs, tails. Today we’ve seen the devil in person. Those are the people who gave rise to the ancient legend of the devil.”

  Yancey got to his feet and looked down at Pascal.

  “Feel bad about that,” he whispered. “He was a regular guy.”

  Cameron nodded, stiff-lipped.

  From a port Cabot spoke.

  “Those devil-men are up to something,” he announced. “They’ll probably make it hot for us now.”

  He wheeled on Cameron.

  “Can you get us out of here, Hugh?”

  Cameron considered the question.

  “Probably could,” he said, “but I would rather not try it right now. I think we’re safe here for a little while. That time brain is a tricky outfit. I know its principle and given time I could figure it out so I could take a try at it. If worse comes to worse, I’ll do it. Take a chance.”

  He walked to the time-brain apparatus and snapped the switch. The brain glowed with a weird green light.

  “That must be a time-machine out there,” said Yancey. “Another machine would explain the treasure cache. I’ll bet those birds are robbing stuff through time and bringing it back here to cache it. Damn clever.”

  “And they landed up ahead to cache some stuff and found some of it missing. Then they came back through time to find out wha
t was wrong,” supplied Cabot.

  Cameron smote his thigh.

  “Listen,” he said. “It that’s right it means time-travel is well established up ahead in the future. We might be able to reach help there. Those fellows out there must be outlaws. If so, we’d rate some help.”

  “But how will we reach the future?” demanded Cabot. “How will they know we need help?”

  “It’s just a chance,” said Cameron. “A bare chance. If it doesn’t work I can always try to get us back to the twentieth century, although the chances are nine out of ten I’ll kill all of us trying it.”

  “But how?” persisted Cabot.

  “Pascal said the ‘time force’ or whatever the brain generates, is similar to electricity. But with differences. It is important just what those differences are. I don’t know, not enough, anyhow. The time mechanism is run by the force generated by the brain, but we have regular electricity for the tractor operation.”

  Cameron pondered.

  “I wonder,” he mused, “if the time force would be sufficiently like electricity to operate the radio?”

  “What difference would that make?” snapped Yancey.

  “Maybe we could broadcast in time,” Cameron suggested.

  “But that brain generates very little power,” protested Yancey.

  “We might not need much power,” Cameron told him. “It’s just a blind shot in the dark. A gamble—”

  “Sounds plausible,” Yancey asserted, “let’s take a long shot.”

  Cameron switched off the brain mechanism and with lengths of wire connected the radio to the mechanism. Then he switched the brain back on again. The sending set hummed with power.

  “Better start gambling,” said Cabot. “Those boys out there are beginning to ray us. Playing that purple flame on the tractor.”

  Cameron’s voice boomed out, speaking into the microphone.

  “SOS … SOS … party of time travelers stranded in the Thames valley, near the village of Aylesford, approximately seventy thousand years before the twentieth century. Attacked by beings resembling the devils of mythology. SOS … SOS … party of time travelers stranded in the Thames valley …”