Dawn of Mammals (Book 5): Mammoth

by Lou Cadle

  Laina finished and took one of her hides in hand, a thin and supple one. She tucked it into the mold, and said, “Fill it with snow. Tamp it down as you go.” Three of them were able to work together, and when the recess was full, Laina said, “Lift it slowly by the edges of the hide.” Four people did that, and at first, the snow brick didn’t budge. But then it popped up. It broke in half as they lifted it out.

  But Hannah had been able to see what Laina had been going for. They had made a brick-shaped chunk of snow—larger than any clay brick you’d ever want to haul.

  “We need two hides,” Rex said. “One to carry the bricks over to where we’re building. Otherwise, they might fall apart.”

  “And you need to learn how to lift it out slower,” said Laina. “Don’t let it break.”

  Ted said, “I’ll go back to the supplies for another hide.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Claire said.

  Laina said, “Bring an armful of them. We’ll build another mold or two. It will go faster.”

  Hannah took a minute to sit on the pile of unused rocks and warm her feet. Her hands, she could keep warm by putting them in her armpits while she waited for the next thing to happen. Her feet in the moccasins were freezing after an hour of standing on the snow. By holding them in her warmer hands, she took the deep chill off one, then the other, as Laina explained the structure of the igloo to Rex.

  “What about a vent? For smoke?”

  “We probably won’t be able to make a fire. I don’t see any easy fuel. But it needs vents anyway.”

  “Why?” Rex answered his own question. “Right. Oxygen needs to get in.”

  “And moisture to get out. You remember how damp it was under the hides with all of us exhaling last night.”

  “Will it be warmer in an igloo?”

  “Even with me alone, yes, it was much warmer than outside. With all of us, I think it will get very warm. Too warm, maybe.”

  “How it that possible, to be too warm?” Rex said.

  “Snow melts, I meant. It drips into your face.”

  “There has to be a way around that,” Rex said.

  “It helps to keep the inside smooth. Every day, I would work at that. Bare hands are best. You smooth it every morning when it’s warmest. But even when it was as perfect as I could make it, it still dripped on me on the warmest days.”

  Hannah had her feet as thawed as they were going to get. If she was a contortionist, she’d stick them both under her armpits along with her hands, but that was well beyond her ability.

  Nari, looking at Hannah chafing her feet, said, “I need to work harder on clothes.” Nari was limping badly today. It’d be better if Nari stayed off her feet for a few days, but Hannah also worried that she should be doing some form of physical therapy to keep her injuries flexible. Without that, they’d be more likely to heal badly and lame Nari forever. But Hannah didn’t know anything about physical therapy. She made a mental note to ask Ted later. With all his athletic team experience, he’d probably know more than anyone here what the modern thinking on it was. “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Not bad,” Nari said. “Still weak. And I can only raise my arm to here.” She demonstrated, wincing as she reached the limit of her range.

  “It’ll get better,” Hannah said, hoping she was telling the truth. She turned to her next patient, Zach, who was bent over, coughing. “Zach, you okay?”

  He held up a finger and kept coughing for another half-minute. Then he spit out phlegm and took a deep breath. “Sorry.”

  “No, spit it out, whatever you cough up. Worry about your health, not about politeness.”

  “Man, coughing takes it out of me.” He sat. “And my feet are cold.”

  “Mine are too,” she said. “Can I feel your forehead?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  She felt his skin. It was cold, but then the air was cold. You’d probably have to be running one heck of a fever in order to feel warm to the touch today.

  “What are you thinking?” Jodi said, looking at Hannah and then back to Zach with a worried expression.

  Hannah didn’t hesitate to tell the truth. “People get pneumonia after going through what Zach did. But the problem is, I really don’t know if the bacteria that could make that happen are floating around here. Or if we’re all carrying them anyway. I’m too ignorant to know.”

  “What can we do for him?” Jodi said, reaching over to feel Zach’s forehead.

  “Just be honest about how you’re feeling,” Hannah said to Zach. “If you need to rest, rest. If you’re running a fever, mention it.”

  “But you can’t do anything for him, can you?” Jodi said.

  “No,” Hannah admitted. “Not much. The willow bark I brought should take a fever down. Willow bark tea and rest—that’s about the only treatment I can offer.”

  “It’s our only medicine.”

  “We also have the reeds we brought, the ones that Laina knew about with antibacterial properties. So we can do something for wounds.” Hannah felt inappropriately guilty about how little she could do. That she knew it was an inappropriate feeling did not ease the guilt.

  “I’ll be fine,” Zach said. “Don’t worry, Monkey. Or you, Hannah.”

  “I’ll try not to,” Hannah said.

  When Ted and Claire returned with the hides, they bent to work with a will. Soon, there were forty bricks piled up. Hannah’s job was to shave them all with a blade to make them uniform.

  Rex had them lie together in a close grouping on the planned site, trying to figure out the right size for the igloo. He shifted them a couple times. “No, over there, Claire. Yeah, that’s better. We’ll have to sleep like this, in a sort of square.”

  “Leave space so people can go out to use the latrine at night if they need to,” Bob said.

  That required more shifting, but finally Rex was satisfied. He marked the perimeter of the building and then let everyone stand up.

  Ted and Claire moved the first block of packed snow into place. They shoved it over to the line Rex had drawn, moving it slowly, trying to keep the block from cracking. The block reached the line.

  “No, that’s the inner circle,” Laina said. “Push it back out a few inches.”

  “Right,” Ted said. “Why is it a round shape? Couldn’t we build a square igloo?”

  “Wind, I suspect,” Rex said. “Laina?”

  “I did it that way because I’d seen it done that way,” she said. “I figured that someone knew more than me. Why redesign the wheel?”

  Rex said, “The wind would sort of skirt around a curved surface. And if there’s a lot of ice in the air, or sleet, and the wind is blowing hard, it wouldn’t get sanded away along one wall.”

  In teams of two, they laid the first course of snow bricks to Laina’s direction. When they were half done with the second course, Laina set Zach and Bob to packing snow in between the cracks of the bricks.

  She said, “Half of us should go back to making more. It’ll take a lot of them for something this size.”

  “How does it get round?” Nari asked. “Rather than a cylinder going straight up.”

  “I’ll show you.” Laina walked to Hannah and said, “Knife?”

  Hannah handed it over. Laina squatted beside a snow brick and shaved one side at an angle. When she was happy with it, she pointed at the angled side. “That’s for about the fourth row up. Every row, you do a cut like this, less for the third row, more for the fifth. The top bricks you shave a lot, at a steeper angle. Fewer bricks are needed for each row. That’s how the walls start to meet.” For the new Laina, it was quite a long speech.

  They kept working through the morning. At the sixth row of bricks, Laina said, “This is higher than I’ve ever built before.” Only Rex and Ted had the height to set the seventh row.

  “We need a ladder to finish it,” Rex said, backing up to look.

  Ted said, “We can put the lighter girls on our shoulders.”

  “Or build a snow-b
rick platform,” Bob said. “That’s probably easier than trying to balance a girl balancing a snow brick that might break apart.”

  “Sure,” Rex said. “Just pile up rocks and snow and whatever into a mound all around.”

  Laina said, “Don’t lean too hard on the walls. I collapsed a nearly-finished igloo that way once.”

  “There should be some structural integrity to it now,” Rex said. “But yeah, there’ll be more when it’s finished. How do you make the top brick, the last one?”

  “I’ll show you when we get there,” Laina said.

  Zach had slowed down, and Nari had bowed out of work an hour before. She rose to kick some snow into the mound they were building. Hannah said, “Medical decision, here. Bob, Nari, Zach, take a break. There are enough of us to finish it. If that’s okay with you, Claire, Laina.”

  “Totally,” Claire said. Laina nodded.

  “It’s colder sitting and not working,” Zach said.

  “You could go inside the igloo,” Claire said.

  “No, not until we know it won’t fall,” Laina said.

  “Yeah, that’d hurt,” Zach said, eyeing the structure.

  The igloo was almost six feet tall and growing. Hannah guessed that it’d end up being eight and a half feet tall. The tallest of them could stand upright in the center with ease.

  Zach crawled to the entrance and stuck his head in. “It’s going to be dark in here.”

  “If you shut out the cold, you shut out the sun,” Bob said. “Makes sense.”

  Laina said, “No, it’s not entirely dark. There’s a glow in the day.”

  Rex said, “I could make a small skylight too. Replace the brick at the top with ice molded to fit. Maybe freeze it in a bowl. That might work.”

  Jodi said, “Wouldn’t want to break a bowl to get it out. We can’t make more bowls if there’s no fire to bake them.”

  “I wouldn’t need to break it to get the skylight out,” Rex said. “Just hold it in my lap until it melts enough from my body heat to pop out.”

  Bob said, “I guess we should hope for continued cold weather. Too many days above freezing, and our home will melt onto us.”

  Ted said, “Snow forts last a good long time. They’re usually the last thing to melt in winter. This should last much longer.”

  “True,” said Bob. “I’m sure we could work it out. Density of snow. Temperature and time.”

  “Pencil and paper,” Rex said. He glanced over at Laina. “Except for our math whiz.”

  “I’m out of practice,” she said. “There’s no need for algebra or calc in this world. Maybe trig now and then.”

  “But you work on the timegate calculations.”

  “Not lately,” she said. “Remember, I was nearly a year in the last place. I’ve learned what I can with the data on hand. I’d need a team of people jumping every month for years to gather enough information to get more precise and learn more. And good timepieces, showing me tenths or hundredths of a second.” She touched Hannah’s old watch, now hers. “And supercomputers to crunch the numbers.”

  “Maybe you’ll get us back to supercomputers. Or ahead, to nanocomputing. Quantum computers. Biological ones,” Rex said.

  “I already have a biological one,” Jodi said, tapping her head. “This platform high enough yet for you two guys?”

  “Another foot should do it,” Rex said.

  Two hours later, the top piece was fitted onto the igloo, which wasn’t all that complicated a procedure, really. Laina guessed at its size, and then Rex took the knife up with him and carved away at the snow until it fit. The igloo hadn’t fallen. They had a warmer place to sleep tonight.

  They crawled inside, a group of three at a time, until everyone had the experience of sitting inside.

  Laina said, “This afternoon, before we lose the light, we’ll build the entrance.”

  “Let’s get our gear,” Bob said. “Move to the new house. Throw out the welcome mat.”

  Hannah said, “I’d rather you, Nari, and Zach stayed in here. Heat up the igloo for us.” She intended to bring back hides and sewing gear in the first load to give them something to do. And a pinesap candle so they could see what they were doing.

  Back at the pile of supplies, she was happy to see her socks were dry. Her boots were still going to need another couple days in the sun. She stuck her socks into her underwear to defrost them for a few minutes, and then she pulled them on. Her feet were still not warm, but this should help a little. She wished she had two extra pairs of socks for all of them. Layering them would help keep their feet warmer. She needed to do a mini-lecture on preventing frostbite and checking for it. Very mini, as she’d empty her brain of everything she knew in about two minutes flat. Maybe Claire or someone else knew more.

  Without a fire, though, it would be hard to warm up a frost-nipped nose. You’d have your own body heat to use and little else.

  Chapter 4

  The first night in the igloo was a new experience. Sometime in the middle of the night, she woke, found she’d shrugged the hide off her face, and realized cold water was dripping onto her. It was warm enough inside the igloo to melt the snow, and stuffy with humidity. She moved her head enough that the drip wasn’t hitting her and drifted back to sleep.

  The next morning, it was even colder outside than the previous two days, and no one wanted to leave the igloo. Low clouds had come in overnight, and something about that made everyone want to huddle indoors.

  But Claire wouldn’t let them linger. “Everybody who has our medic’s approval is hunting for food. Everyone who doesn’t do that, there’s plenty to do here, particularly in making mittens for everyone.” Nari had said making gloves wasn’t beyond her skill, but mittens would be far faster. “Laina, anything else you can think of that we should do?”

  “While the igloo is still warm, you three staying here smooth the inside with your hands. The smoother the inner curve is, the less dripping there will be. You want the melting water to flow easily down the sides. And you might drill another small vent hole or two. The air was damp last night, and when you want wet clothes to dry out, that’s not good. And if you’re up for it, gather enough of the plant to start a small fire later if we need to.”

  The drip next to Hannah had left her with a head of wet hair, and as they stood in the cold air outside, it began to freeze. She’d be wearing a helmet of icicles soon. Her boots were dry but stiff. She carried the moccasins with her in case someone in her party ended up with wet boots by the end of the day.

  They split into two groups to explore the world and find game. Everyone carried smoked meat enough to fuel them for a full day’s work. Laina said they could eat it on the march.

  Hannah’s group was herself, Laina, Dixie, and Rex. Laina pointed out the piles of rocks dotting the tundra. “I think glaciers left them.”

  Dixie said, “So this is a world that’s warmer than it just was? Whoa. I’m glad we didn’t land earlier.”

  The tundra was snow-covered, but in places the snow had been blown away, and reddish-brown plants poked through. Laina made for one patch, bent, and pulled a plant up. “I know this plant.”

  “Is it edible?” Hannah asked.

  “No. It burns well though. This is its fall color.” She crumbled the plant, and tiny seeds fluttered down. She tossed the plant to the ground. “Let’s make for that rise.”

  Hannah fell into step beside her. “Did you do okay last night, sleeping with so many people?”

  “It was hard on my brain but good for my body. Much warmer than being alone in an igloo.”

  “I can’t imagine how you survived alone during an ice age. You’ve been here how many times?”

  “Twenty. Thirty, maybe. Twice, I found a cave. Sometimes, there are pine trees and I had heat from a constant fire.”

  “What did you eat? What are we looking for?”

  “Big deer, like caribou. Foxes or weasels. Those are hard to see because their fur looks like the snow, but they leave tr
acks. There are saber-toothed tigers—real ones, not like the ones we saw back in the other time, the nimravids. A wolf once, a big one, but a loner. ”

  “How do we find them?”

  “First, we need to know if they’re here or not. Look for tracks and scat. Fresher snow would make it easier.”

  “Anything underground?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it hibernation season, do you think?”

  “I don’t know that. I only know what I can see. And right now, I see no sign of anything living.”

  “Birds,” Dixie said, pointing. “Over there.”

  “Where?” Hannah looked in the direction Dixie was pointing, but she didn’t see them.

  “About thirty of them, pecking around,” Dixie said.

  Hannah finally made out movement in the distance. “I wish I had your eyes, Dixie.” To Laina, she said, “Can we catch any?”

  “If they didn’t scatter before you came close. I tried to make a bow and arrows for about a year, but I didn’t know what I was doing and never succeeded. I can throw a spear a hundred yards, but I couldn’t hit something that small with it.”

  Rex said, “How about traps of some sort? Have you built any?”

  “I don’t know how to trap birds. It’s not like an animal walking along, sniffing for nuts or meat.”

  “I’ll think on it,” he said. “Or maybe. Hmm.” His eyes got that far-off look that meant he was designing something in his mind.

  “Let’s walk to the birds and see how close they let us get,” Hannah said. “Probably not very, but if we know their panic distance, we’ll know if we can net them. And I want to watch them take off, see if it’s a low-trajectory flight or not.”

  “All good ideas,” Laina said. “Especially as I’m seeing no sign of other animals to eat.”

  Dixie said, “Maybe the other group is having more luck with that.”

  They made for the birds, who didn’t notice them for some time. The birds had long legs and a long, sharp beak. Sandpipers, she’d call them, if they were anywhere near a beach or sand. They were active within their own little square of hunting ground, walking fast from spot to spot, heads lowered, intent on the ground. But eventually, one raised its head and caught sight of the humans. The birds spread out from one another and paused in their feeding.