Six Bits

by Laurence Dahners

  Billy didn’t want to be a woman! Not in this day and age anyway He thought he wouldn’t mind living as a woman in modern times, but in prehistoric times, when might made right, he didn’t want to be a woman.

  He wanted some toilet paper… And a warm shower… And a beer…

  Billy took a moment to peer out at the landscape through Teba’s eyes. Teba had control of their body and he was riding along as if she were his autopilot. It was like when he got in his car thinking deeply about something else, then found himself driving into his own driveway a little while later without remembering the intervening trip. Billy wasn’t quite sure where they were going, but decided it didn’t really matter. As long as Teba was running their body, Billy could keep contemplating possible technological advances.

  A bow and arrow seemed an obvious choice. He would need some kind of springy wood. He knew that yew wood had been considered the best for bows back before the availability of glues that allowed the layering of different woods. He thought it was something to do with yew already having layers of wood in it that had different properties. However, Billy had no idea what a yew tree looked like. What he needed was some ordinary kind of springy wood.

  Bamboo would be great and Billy knew bows could be made out of it, but he thought he was in Europe somewhere. The people in the cave had all had pale skin and if he were truly somewhere in prehistory, he thought that Europe was the only place pale skinned people could be found back then. Billy felt pretty sure that bamboo didn’t grow in Europe until modern man transplanted it there.

  Billy opened his connection to Teba’s mind to see if she knew of a springy wood. To his frustration, the springiness of wood seemed to be something Teba had little or no interest in.

  Giving up for the moment on wood for the bow, he pictured a string, thinking that surely Teba used string of some kind to bind things together. In fact… he looked at the furs she had draped about her body and saw that they had been roughly sewn together with some kind of heavy thread.

  When he searched Teba’s mind to learn about that thread, he found that it consisted of strips of fiber pulled off of animal tendons. She would use flakes of sharp rock to cut the fine strands that bound the tendon together. It would be easy to strip out thicker pieces of tendon, but getting one more than twelve inches long would be problematic. When Teba wanted something longer than twelve inches, she tied pieces of tendon together. Billy’s exasperation surged. He didn’t think that short pieces of tendon, tied together, would make a decent bowstring.

  He couldn’t believe it could be this hard!

  Billy’s whole life, being kind of a technical guy, he’d assumed that the knowledge he had of how modern things worked would put him head and shoulders above anyone even a few decades back. Now the old saying about “standing on the shoulders of giants” rattled through his mind. He’d never considered just how complex even the simplest things he took for granted actually were. He knew how a wheel worked, but even if he had a use for one right now, he realized that it could take him weeks to make one with no better tools than Teba’s small hand axe. You need tools, to make tools, to make tools…

  “Standing on the shoulders of giants” usually referred to the scientific knowledge passed on by those proverbial giants. He’d never given thought to the fact that the modern manufacturing of even a simple object like a knife required first a miner who knew where iron ore was to be found and how to get it out of the ground. Then it required someone with the knowledge and equipment to smelt that ore and remove the iron from it. Next you needed people and furnaces and alloying materials to convert that iron into steel. Once you had the steel, ideally it needed to be worked to strengthen it, then shaped. Even if you had a piece of steel of the correct size and shape and all you wanted to do was put an edge on it, you would need the proper abrasives to do so and if you didn’t want it to be extremely labor-intensive you would want those abrasives mounted on a powered wheel!

  He realized that, starting from scratch, he didn’t even know how to make good strong string for the bow he’d thought he’d invent. He thought, I don’t even have a midget to stand on!

  Billy’d been trying to think of an even simpler technology that he could invent in order to impress Teba’s tribesmen when he realized they were arriving back at her cave.

  He hadn’t been paying much attention, but now observed that it was late afternoon. Although Teba had stopped to drink water at a couple of streams, she was gnawingly hungry. She was fervently looking forward to eating some of the wolf slung around her shoulders.

  When Billy wondered why she hadn’t eaten some of the wolf already, the knowledge flooded into his consciousness from hers. The women of the tribe were expected to share any food they obtained with the tribe. The men generally shared whatever they got on the hunt, but not always. No one would be surprised if the hunters brought down some small game like a ptarmigan and consumed it in the field without bringing any of it to the rest of the tribe.

  They thought of this as their right as hunters.

  On the other hand, a woman who ate some of the food she gathered before she shared it with the tribe could expect a beating at the very least. Teba might have gotten away with eating a couple of mealworms from under that tree, out there far from anyone else, but she would have been expected to bring them all back and share them.

  Billy, who’d never thought of himself as particularly socially aware, felt appalled. Not only that the men would treat the women in such a fashion, but that the women would stand for it.

  Teba reacted to his rebellious thoughts as if they were ridiculously naïve. She considered it simply asinine to think that she or any other woman could revolt against the men of her tribe and survive. As if Billy’s recollection of his/her casually brutal rape at the hands of Bant that morning weren’t enough, her memories began to flash up other events from her relatively short life. Beatings, bullying, rape, casual killing.

  The strong ruled the weak in this ferocious world and those who were the strongest ruled everyone else.

  The men were almost all stronger than any of the women and they ruthlessly took advantage of it!

  When Billy briefly considered the possibility that he/she should strike out on their own, leaving the tribe, Teba’s mind considered it impossible. First, they would have to leave her son Gano, something she could never do. Second, though they’d been lucky enough to kill a wolf today, and Teba knew she could gather some food, she felt sure they’d soon be starving without the rest of the tribe. And then there was the fear. Not just fear of the large predators that populated the landscape, but fear of the men in her own tribe who would track her down.

  And if those men didn’t find her, the men of another tribe would.

  Certainly no authority figure existed. No one who might punish the ruthless, cruel, vicious, and inhumane individuals of this pitiless society. Murder and rape were everyday facts of life, not occasional horrific occurrences that made the news. Billy considered himself to be a person who would stand up for the weak and downtrodden, but finding himself to be someone relatively frail shocked him. Even as he considered fighting back, memories of what had happened to him when he fought back against Bant surged back into the forefront of his consciousness.

  In dismay, he retreated from the forefront of their mind to let Teba handle their return to the tribe.

  Teba slipped Billy’s staff and club under the bushes about thirty feet short of the cave. Turning the corner into their area, she saw that the entire tribe was there. Eleven adults, of which six were women, plus three children. They’d started the winter with three babes as well, but, because hunting had been poor, none had survived.

  She strove for an intermediate demeanor. She didn’t want to appear cocky or the men would become angry, but she didn’t want to appear cringing or they would take advantage of her. A quick glance around showed no evidence the men had had a successful hunt.

  Her heart leapt with the knowledge that the wolf she’d brought w
ould be greatly appreciated. Selah, Bant and Gano were the only ones who looked up as she approached. All of them had wide eyes.

  If one of the men had brought in a kill by himself, the tribe would have had to listen to him bragging. Teba stepped to the center of the group, slipped the wolf from around her shoulder and laid it quietly on the ground in front of Selah. “A wolf pack attacked me. I killed this one,” she said simply.

  By then, everyone was staring. Teba could sense their joy as they anticipated full bellies. A glance under lowered brows showed consternation among the men that a woman had hunted successfully. And killed a carnivore! But for now, everyone waited in anticipation as Selah began deftly skinning and disjointing the wolf. Of course, she handed out the choicest bits to the men. They always got the choicest bits, claiming it as the hunters’ right for bringing it in.

  Billy considered the irony of Teba settling for a tough, bony shank when she’d been the one to bring in the food. However, Teba was just happy that the men weren’t being assholes. He felt revulsion as Teba began tearing into the raw meat, but the joy expressed by her body over the food it represented quickly overcame his distaste. With a shudder, he wondered, Am I going to get so hungry I like eating bugs?

  Selah laid out the liver and quickly cut it into small pieces, one for each of the members of the tribe. She murmured something over it, then handed the pieces out with a reverent attitude. Having always hated even the smell of cooking liver, Billy expected at least the children to reject it, but everyone consumed their piece with evidence of great pleasure. The same held true for other internal organs, heart, lung, kidney, brain. Teba consumed her portions with relish while Billy tried to think of something else.

  An older child was given the intestine to squeeze out and wash in the stream. Then, to Billy’s dismay, they ate that raw as well.

  Only after eating much more than Billy ever ate at one sitting, did Teba become full. But she kept eating, stuffing herself painfully. Billy worked some sums in his head, realizing that if the hundred pound wolf contained seventy pounds of edible material and you divided that among fourteen people it would average out to five pounds each! He knew from watching eating contests on ESPN that some competitive eaters ate substantially more than that at one sitting, but he’d once tried to eat a twenty ounce steak and hadn’t even come close to finishing it.

  As everyone, even the children, ate far more than Billy could believe, he realized that, with no refrigeration, this was how they stored their food.

  In their body’s fat.

  With a glance around, though their bodies were covered by furs, he saw in their bony faces that none of them had much body fat at the end of winter.

  Nonetheless, even after stuffing themselves with more than he could really believe, there was still some of the wolf left. Selah gathered it up and took it to the back of the cave. When Billy wondered why, Teba’s thoughts made it clear to him that having it far away from them preserved it by keeping it cold during nights like they’d been having. When he wondered why they didn’t keep it even cooler by putting it outside the cave her thoughts turned incredulously to all the small scavengers that would carry it away.

  Thinking about this, Teba worried that she and Gano would wind up on the outside of the tribe’s huddle that night, a cold location. She hoped that having brought the food would gain her a good position near the warmer middle, but worried that having Bant angry at her would force her to the periphery.

  As Teba worried about the cold, Billy started thinking about fire again. He’d picked up from Teba’s thoughts that one of the main reasons they’d struggled this winter and lost their babies was because their fire had burned out one night early in the season.

  They guarded their fires with great care because fire was so important to them and it could be so hard to get another fire if it burned out. Their last fire had come from a wildfire. Barso had been injured when he ran close to get a fire-brand. Then, one morning, despite stirring more and more desperately through the coals of the fire from the night before, they hadn’t been able to find an ember that could be blown back to life.

  Sometimes you could trade with another tribe for a start of fire, but tribes were superstitious that they might lose their own fire. If they did trade a fire start, they often demanded an unreasonable price. Even what might be considered by both tribes to be a reasonable trading value could still be beyond a tribe’s resources. They had tried to trade for a fire start with the Stillwater tribe, but didn’t have anything that the Stillwaters considered valuable enough to trade for.

  Billy became excited. Fire was a technology that didn’t require much in the way of pre-existing technology. Sure matches, or a lighter, or even a flint and steel would be great, but, in theory, all he needed was some wood and some friction. He’d given up on it this morning when he couldn’t find a dry straight piece of wood for a fire drill, but he/she was much more likely to start a fire than make a sword!

  Teba wanted to stay near the middle of the tribe, the better to position herself for the sleeping huddle. It would also keep her in the tribe’s mind as the one who’d brought food.

  However, Billy made Teba get up and they walked to the end of the tribe’s shallow cave where wood had been kept back in the days when the tribe had a fire. Squatting, Billy/Teba sorted through the few pieces of wood remaining. He didn’t know all that much about fires but he knew he didn’t want green wood. All this wood was deadfall and it had been dry long before the fire burned out early in the winter. Unfortunately, Billy still couldn’t find a straight piece suitable for a spindle or fire drill. Teba’s hands were calloused and, he thought, tough enough to roll a spindle between them, but he didn’t have any sticks straight enough to serve.

  Picking out the straightest of the small dry branches, he/she placed it against one of the logs and tried twiddling it between Teba’s palms, thinking that he might be able to do it even if it wasn’t completely straight. But it didn’t spin well, and the end he/she’d placed against the log tended to skitter around under the influence of the bend as it twirled.

  There was no way he/she’d generate enough heat to start a fire that way. Frustrated, he cast that stick aside and started looking through the wood some more.

  The lack of a good straight stick ruled out a fire bow too, even if he’d had good string and springy wood to make a fire bow out of. One thing that made him happy, despite the lack of a piece of wood for the fire drill was a log that split in half from dry rot when he tried to turn it over. The bottom half had turned to soft punk which he could easily tear apart into shredded bits. He thought the ragged punk would readily catch on fire. Even better, the top split of it was in pretty good shape. It was firm wood, he didn’t know what kind, but he could dig a fingernail into it so he didn’t think it was a hardwood.

  Billy/Teba picked through some of the small branches until he found one that seemed like it was harder than the split log. Experimentally, he/she rubbed its base on the split surface of the softer wood log, running it along the grain. After about ten passes he touched the end of the stick.

  It felt pretty hot!

  Though Billy couldn’t actually have a conversation with Teba’s part of their shared mind, he’d found that if he wondered about something that she should know, the answer would bubble to the surface. Now he wondered, If we could start a fire, what would be the best way to present it to the tribe?

  Her initial reaction was that, of course they couldn’t start a fire. When it became obvious from his thoughts that he intended to try to start a fire anyway, she very strongly hoped that he wouldn’t try to do it in front of everyone. First of all, she didn’t want him doing anything that looked crazy where everyone could see, because after this morning’s incidents, they thought she was weird enough already. Second, if, against all odds, he was able to start a fire, she wanted the method to be his/her secret.

  After giving this some thought, Billy knelt Teba with her back to the tribe. They placed the log with its
split surface up and its far end jammed up against a notch in the rock wall. Teba’s calloused knee settled onto the near end of the log to immobilize it. He/she tore off some of the punk and put it on the far end of the log. They scooped up a couple of handfuls of the leaf litter from the floor of the cave and put it nearby, as well as a couple more twigs and small sticks of old dry wood that looked like they would burn readily.

  Finally, taking a deep breath, Billy/Teba started rubbing the end of the stick on the split surface of the log. Pushing it away and dragging it back, pistoning it back and forth rapidly while pressing it hard against the split log.

  It made a little groove, and as a bonus piled up some little filaments of shredded wood at each end of the groove.

  As she knelt, pumping the stick vigorously back and forth hard and eventually starting to get a little tired, her son Gano showed up next to her and said, “What’re you doing?”

  Billy would have said, “Starting a fire,” but let Teba say, “Making something,” instead. Feelings their arms starting to ache, Billy began to wonder whether this piston motion would produce enough heat. He desperately wanted to stop and feel how hot the end of the stick was getting, but feared that he’d never have the stamina to pump it like this a second time.

  A small curl of smoke appeared at the end of the groove. Billy’d just been thinking of giving up, but Teba, now more excited than Billy could have imagined, found new life in her arms and continued pistoning the stick back and forth. To her horror, she heard Bant grunt behind her, “That jiggling looks good.” Bant knelt behind her and started pulling at her furs.

  Billy was infuriated, but Teba was transfixed by what was happening in front of her and perfectly willing to ignore what was happening behind. A small flame appeared in some of the little shavings the stick had lifted. Continuing to piston the stick back and forth with her right hand she pushed some of the punk onto the flame with her left.

  The punk caught on fire!