Time's Last Gift (Wold Newton Prehistory) by Philip Jose Farmer

Author:Philip Jose Farmer [Farmer, Philip J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

The first paleness of dawn acted as alarm clocks on the Wota’shaimg. The light seemed to penetrate the skins of their tents. The light touched their eyelids, and their lids opened. They crawled out of their tents into the start of a light snowfall. They went into the woods and emptied themselves, and then the women poked the embers buried under deep ashes an d piled on wood shavings made by flint knives and then put on more wood. The fires were roofed and partially walled with boughs laid over each other in two layers. The snow was beginning to pile up on the fire huts, as they were called. The men gathered around the fire, hawking, blowing their noses, spitting and grumbling. They talked about the chances for hunting, which did not look good. Fortunately they had plenty of meat and the partially digested contents of bison and deer stomachs. They could afford to lie around the camp for a week, if they had to do so. By lying around they did not mean idleness. They would be repairing their spears and harpoons and working new flint and ivory and bone points, carving bone and ivory figurines of animals for use in magic, and figures of women to bring about increased fertility.

The three scientists ate their breakfast in a gloomy silence. Immediately afterward, Gribardsun said that he would go out and look for Drummond. The others volunteered to go with him, but he said that he could travel faster alone.

He put food, ammunition, and a small camera in his backpack and left. He carried collapsible snowshoes in the pack too, but would not use these until out of sight of the tribesmen. It was agreed that the explorers would not introduce any technological innovations to the Magdalenians. Snowshoes were according to the twenty-first century anthropologists, not known to the Europe of 12,000 B.C. But the explorers used them only when they were unobserved by humans.

Gribardsun thought that this was an unnecessary precaution. Obviously, since late Paleolithic Europe had not known snowshoes, then they would not be introduced by the time travelers. Thus, why worry? Use them in sight of the tribesmen. Teach the tribesmen how to make them. The knowledge would be lost because it had been lost.

However, the agreement had been made, so he would stick to it.

Once around a low hill and out of sight of the Wota’shaimg, he put on the snowshoes and set out swiftly on Drummond’s trail. The physicist had gone around the hill and cut on a straight line across the plain, which was about two miles wide. He had not, as Gribardsun had suspected he would, hung around to spy on him and Rachel. Evidently he wanted to get as far away as possible.

As the Englishman pushed across the flat and comparatively treeless plain, the snow began to fall more heavily. Before he reached the low hills at the other end of the plain, the tracks were completely filled in. Gribardsun stopped among the trees and considered.

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