Time's Last Gift - txt

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  Their numeral system went up to twenty, and past that they used the word for 'many.' But they could describe exactly each member of a group exceeding the number of twenty, some of them being able to list with all necessary distinguishing features each bison of a herd of forty.

  They all had a phenomenal ability for reciting long tales and certain common magical formulae. Wazwim, the singer, could chant four thousand lines of a poem without prompting. He did this three times over a period of two months for Gribardsun, and his lines seldom varied. However, whenever he thought of an improvement, he would promptly make it then and there.

  The chant was only roughly a poem. The feet were based on quantity, though far removed from the classical Latin or Greek quantity. The line was roughly composed of a sort of trochaic hexameter. There was no rhyme but much alliteration. Nor could the poem be called an epic in the true sense of the word. It was a loose collection of narratives of heroes and totem animals and evil spirits intermixed with magical formulae and folk wisdom. The closest parallel to the 'epics' that modern man knew was the Finnish Kalevala. Everything had taken place long long ago, starting, in fact, before the creation of the universe and continuing up until a dozen generations ago, when the last of the heroes had died. Men today were only ordinary men, according to the song, weaklings and poor-spirited. They didn't make men like they did in the old days.

  Gribardsun was surprised that such a small, technologically retarded society could have produced such a relatively sophisticated poem; and with, for all its serviceable flexibility, a nonetheless essentially primitive vocabulary. Its existence in such a society went against all, that he knew and had been taught. He said as much.

  'That's the frustrating thing about the limitations of time travel,' Drummond said. 'We can't go even farther back to check out the origin and the development of the so-called epic. Or of anything.'

  Gribardsun nodded, but he did not seem too unhappy about it. It was obvious that he was, in fact, very happy. He went out hunting with the others, or sometimes alone, and he always came back with meat. He seldom used his modern weapons but confined himself to using the tribal ones. He broke his own rule only when a big animal charged and made it necessary to use a rifle. Or when he went bird hunting. There were enormous flocks of ducks and geese settled around the lakes, and he went out happily dawn after dawn to hunt these. At first he killed them with a small spear or stones from a sling, or trapped them. But he occasionally took a shotgun and brought down dozens in one day.

  'This is a paradise!' he said one evening to the Silversteins. 'A world such as it should be! Damned few humans, and an abundance of wild life! And yet this place is barren compared to what Africa must be! We must go down there when spring comes!'

  Drummond sometimes felt like remonstrating with Gribardsun. He thought that the Englishman spent too much time hunting when he should have been doing his scientific work. But Rachel said that he was learning the inner intimate life of the tribe by participating in their activities - not just by observations. Moreover, could Drummond truthfully say that Gribardsun had neglected any of his scientific work?

  Every second day, von Billmann reported via their tiny transceivers. By the time the first snows came, he had recorded and noted enough of the language to keep him busy for years. He had also succeeded in gaining some fluency in the strange whispering speech.

  'I'll be coming tomorrow,' he said. 'Leaving here, that is. They're giving a big shindig for me tonight. We'll be eating mammoth and bison and horse meat, lots of duck, and plenty of berries and greens. And that fermented berry and fruit juice I told you about. It tastes like hell, but it sure packs a punch.'

  That was another unexpected discovery. It had not been suspected that alcohol had been made so early. But the knowledge of alcohol was apparently not extensive as yet. The Wota'shaimg, for instance, knew nothing of it.

  The main reason that von Billmann was returning, aside from his longing for civilized companionship, was that the Wotagrub were moving out.

  This was another discovery that went against the supposed facts. It had been assumed that they roamed during the warm seasons and holed up in caves or under overhangs during the winter. The arctic winters of middle Europe were surely too harsh to permit much movement by humans.

  But the Eskimos traveled over the arctic ice and lived off it during the winter. They were integrated with their environment. They had all the technology needed to enable them to cope with it. And so had the Magdalenians.

  Sometimes, the tribes did hole up in one place all winter, if there was enough game in the area to support them. But when the game became scarce, the tribe packed its tents and belongings and went wherever the herds went. The game was getting scarce around here, partly because of the strangers' magical weapons. Everybody had eaten very well indeed, and fewer babies had died. But the big animals, the mammoths and the rhinos, had been scared out. They were becoming scarcer every year, anyway. The bison and the horses had moved on to some other area. The ibex were scarce for some reason. Even the great predators, the cave bear and the cave lion, had been killed or decided that the area was unsafe for them. And the reindeer had cropped up all the lichen and fungi and moved on.

  Gribardsun solved the conflicting problems of remaining with the tribe to study them intensively and of exploring the land to the south.

  Knowing that the tribesmen talked much among themselves of their dreams, and that they depended much on Glamug to interpret their dreams for them, Gribardsun planted the idea of going south. He described how much easier life would be where the snows weren't so deep, and soon some people did dream of traveling far south. They discussed these dreams among themselves and then went to Glamug with them.

  Several had dreamed that Gribardsun led them south. Since the dreams were obviously wishes, and since they felt protected and provided for under Gribardsun, they wished him to conduct them into the paradise.

  Glamug came to the Englishman and told him of what his people had dreamed. Gribardsun agreed with Glamug's analysis. Yes, he would be happy to guide them into the unknown lands to the south. They should start as soon as the long gray vessel was hauled up to the top of the hill and secured.

  The ground was frozen, and a thin coat of ice had covered it after a partial snow. Even though they had gotten over most of their awe of the travelers themselves - though they retained all the original respect - they had never approached the vessel. Now, under Gribardsun's urgings, they poled over the vessel until they had it on wooden and bone sleds. Ivory and bone wedges were driven into the slots on top of the sleds to keep the vessel from rolling off.

  Meanwhile, other workers had chopped with reindeer antler picks through the ice and into the frozen earth. Stakes were driven into the holes. The long rawhide ropes were attached to the sleds and the other ends run several times around the stakes. The tribe, digging in their boots into the chopped-out steps along the slide, heaved on the ropes. The sleds and their three-hundred-ton burden moved slowly} oh, so slowly, upward.

  It took until past dusk to get the H. G. Wells I over the crest of the steep hill. The work was carried on by burning pine torches and by lights set up by the travelers. The air was cold; the breaths steamed; and their sweat froze on their faces and on their beards. But they had eaten well, and Rachel had made gallons of hot cocoa, which the tribe tasted for the first time and could not get enough of. Gribardsun kept up a stream of jokes and worked alongside them, pitting himself against Angrogrim, who tried to show that he was not only as big as a horse but as strong as one.

  By ten o'clock that night, without the death or injury of a single person, they had restored the vessel to its original position. Large boulders were rolled alongside to keep it from moving in any direction.

  'There's nothing to keep some wandering tribe from rolling it down again if they want to go to the trouble,' Gribardsun said. 'But I doubt that anybody will touch it. It's too frighteningly alien for these people.'

  The following morni
ng was bright and clear, though cold. The tribe packed their tents and other artifacts and piled them on travois-like poles. These had broad ends, somewhat like skis, which slid over the snow without sinking much. The women and the juvenile males pulled the travois while the men spread out ahead, behind, and on the flanks as guards. They all sang the Going-Away Song, taking farewell of the place which had protected them for three seasons and to which they would return - if they were fortunate.

  They also sang the Song of Shimg'gaimq, a legendary hero who had led the tribe from the far south in the far past. At the end of the song they substituted Gribardsun's name for Shimg'gaimq; the implication was that he was a new hero and even greater than the old.

  The trek southward was slow. Heavy snows began to fall, and there were days when they could do nothing but hole up. Rachel and Drummond tended to stay huddled up inside their foam hut, which had been transported on skis. Gribardsun and von Billmann went out with the hunters, and they used their rifles. To have restricted themselves to native weapons might have meant that the tribe would starve, or at least go very hungry for some time. The game just seemed to have disappeared. Yet they knew that the deep snows hid plenty of bison and reindeer. The behemoth mammoths and rhinoceroses should also be somewhere around, penned in by high walls of snow. If they could be located, they could be speared with little chance of their escaping.

  Gribardsun finally located a 'yard' which held a herd of thirty bison. He shot three males, and they butchered them while the other bulls pawed the snow-streaked grasses and snorted and made rumbling noises. But none charged, and presently the carcasses of the bulls were hauled away in many pieces. Then the big gray wolves appeared and devoured what the men had left behind. The last Gribardsun saw of them, they were slinking toward the herd. He doubted that they would dare attack in the 'yard' where the bulls had freedom of movement and the wolves could not get away swiftly.

  The tribe ate for three days and then set out again. They continued through the deep snows, with frequent rest stops, until they came to the foothills of the Pyrenees. The passes of the range were blocked with snow and ice. The tribe could either camp until after the spring thaws - and much of the snow never melted even in the summer - or go around the mountains by way of the sea.

  Here Gribardsun met his first serious resistance from the Wota'shaimg. They knew nothing of boats; they did not even know how to swim. When they learned what was expected of them, they refused. They would not set out on the ghastly gray seas even if they could stay dose to the shore. The very idea paralyzed them with terror.

  The travelers built a boat by hollowing out a log. (This far south there were some trees large enough to provide adequate trunks for dugouts.) The four worked energetically for three days, and on the fourth they launched the craft in the heavy-rolling bitterly cold surf of what would some day be called the Bay of Biscay. They paddled around for an hour to demonstrate to the tribe what could be done with a boat. Then they returned to the beach to still unconvinced observers. And that was all the people wanted to be: observers. Participation was unthinkable for them, or so they claimed.

  There were only two exceptions. Angrogrim volunteered to accompany them, since he felt that his reputation for courage must be upheld. The other was Laminak, who said she would go wherever Gribardsun went.

  The Englishman seized on this chance to hold up the others to scorn. Were they fearful to go where a twelve-year-old girl dared to go? Were the men of the Wota'shaimg really less brave than a girl-child?

  Gribardsun pressed this line and finally said that he would make up a song about the cowardly warriors of the Bear People if they did not show some guts very quickly. And so the men, and then the women, reluctantly agreed to build boats and set out along the coast. But it was two weeks before the people were able to handle the craft well enough, and several times a boat was capsized and the paddlers dumped. Three caught pneumonia but were brought quickly back to health with Gribardsun's medicine. Every person wore an inflatable preserver around their waist. These had been brought from the time-vessel stores. There were so many in the stores because Gribardsun thought they might come in handy if supplies and specimens were to be hauled by boat at any time. The floaters could support large heavy containers if they should chance to get dumped into the water. In the meantime some were used as stabilizers on the primitive craft.

  The fleet of ten large dugouts left the shores of what would some day be Gaul, and then France, and the boats, staying close to the shore, crept around the northern edge of the Iberian Peninsula. Near what would be the site of Lisbon, the boats put in for the last time and were dragged inshore and hidden. The Bear People were much relieved; at no time had they become fond of sea life, and they hoped never to have to endure it again.

  Gribardsun led them across the peninsula, angling southeastward most of the time. They crossed great plains and went through heavy forests. Here the animal life was somewhat different; red deer and wild pigs were numerous, and there were many shaggy forest horses. But there were also great brown mountains of bison and woolly rhinos and mammoths, though these were not as numerous as on the other side of the Pyrenees. Conditions were changing, and within a thousand years or perhaps even less, the behemoths would be extinct in Iberia. The forest elephant was replacing them. The cave bear and lion and hyena were numerous enough to require caution in hunting. And the tribesmen of Iberia were as hostile as their northern kinsmen. These, however, were easily dispersed with a few shots fired into the air or, if they persisted, were routed with a few hypodermic missiles containing a drug. The missiles were not harmless; they struck with considerable impact and left great painful bruises and sometimes broke ribs or arms. But they did not kill except once, when a hostile warrior, allergic to the drug, died in a seizure a few minutes after being shot.

  Gribardsun dissected the corpse thoroughly, taking photographs of every organ, analyzing the blood and other tissues and studying the genetic structure. In the meantime, von Billmann recorded the speech of three prisoners. By the time they were released, they had supplied him with a basic grammar and about six thousand vocabulary items. One of the prisoners, however, died a few hours before his fellows were given their freedom. He seemed to have nothing outwardly wrong with him; he just gave up the ghost and died. Gribardsun thought that the death was the result of an alarm syndrome. His dissection confirmed his diagnosis. The man had gone into a shock from which he could not recover. He had been terrified from the time he woke up to find himself in the hands of alien peoples. And he had, unfortunately, seen Gribardsun carry off parts of the first dissection into the woods where he left them for the wolves to eat. He expected a similar fate, no doubt.

  Von Billmann, however, was rejoicing. He was sure that his prisoners spoke a language which just might be the ancestor, or collateral ancestor, of Basque speech. It would be impossible to confirm it until the scientists made an extensive study after the vessel returned. In addition, of course, the evidence collected by the next expedition, planned for 8000 B.C., would have to be compared with von Billmann's. The glottochronology of a language over many thousands of years would show a considerable change. In fact, the stages of most languages separated by three thousand years would look like two entirely unrelated tongues to the layman and, indeed, to all but the most astute linguists. There were some tongues that resisted change more than others, such as Lithuanian and Russian; the stages of these did not show nearly as much mutation as, say, that between vulgar Latin and modern French.

  But 12,000 years changed any language so much that the untutored would doubt that there was any relationship among the various branches which had evolved from it. Thus, the nonlinguist finds it difficult to believe that English, Russian, and Hindustani sprang from the same parent tongue. And the parent was only 3,500 years old. How much more degeneration in 12,000 years?

  'The theory, which is entirely unbacked by evidence, is that the Basque tongues of our day are the last descendants of a vast superfamily which
once existed all over Europe and perhaps in North Africa and parts of Asia,' Robert said. 'But the rise of Indo-Hittite speakers swept away most of the Ur-Basque speakers. A small group, or small groups, of Indo-Hittites in the area near the Elbe River expanded. And through conquest and absorption imposed their dialects on other areas. And these changed, in time, to become the parents of the Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Italic, Hellenic, Hittite, Tocharian, Armenian, and Indie tongues, and God knows what others that history does not record. That is why I am so eager to go to that area and determine if I can find languages which could be pre-Indo-Hittite. Then the expedition in 8000 B.C. can get later specimens. Then we can establish some sort of glottochronology!'

  Von Billmann paced back and forth while his whole being glowed. His love for ancient languages was far more passionate, and enduring than any he could have had for a woman. Or so it seemed to Rachel who, however, was given to exaggeration. Von Billmann admitted that there were probably just as many tribes in France, and perhaps in any section of Europe, which used the pre-Basque languages, as there were in Iberia. But since one had been found here - or at least one had been found which might be pre-Basque - then it was likely that there were others in this area. Therefore, more speakers should be captured.