Chapter 2: Event of the Century

The murdering bastard is dead and burned to past crisp.

Mother is buried.

Doll Baby is snuggled up to Rachael.

The hatch to the C46 is open.

I'm about to enter ... again, when something struck me.

'Rache, come hither, ' I thought. 'Kim? You come, too.'

And they did.

Wendy came too. I didn't call her.

'Ok, you two ... explain.'

'Damnitall!' thought Rache. 'You caught us off guard ... twice.'

'Yeah, ' Kim's turn. 'We weren't ready ... again.'

'So, ' thought Wendy. 'How long have you been able to... ?'

"Well," began Kim, "with us, it was just us ... in high school it was always just us, we never heard anyone else until that ... session ... up in the dustbowl."

Rache exclaimed, "that was the best sex ever. Thank you, David, Wendy. It was wonderful."

"We were so relaxed from it. Even the little demonstration with the Chief and his fake Shaman didn't take away from the euphoria," commented Kim.

"Then the excitement and confusion caused by the smoke trail and you and Wendy were broadcasting so loud it just felt ... natural ... to reply in kind," Rache continued. "Then nothing happened so we figured it was a fluke, an unconscious mental aberration. We kind of got caught up with the kid and we were getting along so well with her mom, even though we couldn't understand a word she said, that it slipped away."

"I just now remembered what happened." I confessed. "But looking back on the dustbowl incident ... none of us said a word out loud during that ... spectacular ... sex. But there was all kinds of talking going on."

"You're right," said Wendy. "I heard a lot of 'do' and 'don't' and 'yes' and 'like that' but I never heard it with my ears." She sighed, "I wonder if we'll ever do that again."

All three girls said various variations on the theme of, "I hope so."

Hey, things are getting complicated. Damned if I do and damned if I don't. I'll keep what I want out of this. They can decide.

'Yes, Daddy, let them figure it out.'

Everybody stopped in mid stride, so to speak. We all turned to the grinning 5 year old.

'I can't say the words yet ... but I can think them.' She looked at me, 'are you my new daddy?'

'Yes, Sweetie, yes I am. Who do you want for your new mommy?'

'That's easy, Daddy. They are all my mommy. I'm so lucky. I get to live.'

A little mental questioning of our five year old cutie revealed a lot.

Until we came falling out of the sky, females were the first to be abandoned in winter and the last to be fed at meals. Even so, there were two of three females to every male. Hunting was a dangerous business.

Women did all the work. They carried, hauled, lifted, gathered, butchered, collected, scraped, preserved, cooked, fed; anything that could be done with the eyes to the ground or on any menial task, women did it.

Men guarded the camp, made weapons, hunted, and fucked ... anyone they pleased. If the duty involved using the eyes to see what was coming next, men did it.

People with bad eyesight seldom lived past five or six; they couldn't see danger before danger saw them.

Asthmatics were killed out of hand; uncontrolled coughing told your enemy where the band was.

Babies were placed in packs and the pack hung from low branches. Continual criers were lunch for predators. Silence was bred in to the tribe.

Stupid children caused trouble; they were left behind. If a disobedient child managed to live past four or five, mother nature eventually caught up.

Living children did not play; every hand turned to the task before them.

Wandering children wandered away once, seldom returning. No one bothered to look for them. A wandering child that found the band never wandered again.

Got a bad heart? The tribe was better off without you.

Crippled young? Left behind.

The sooner you learned to be useful the longer you lived.

This world, the one we joined, like it or not, had more stringent rules than the worst dictatorship in the world we left.

Our five year old knew the rules, she knew where to look for edibles, and what food like things could kill you, she knew where the snakes hid, she knew what quicksand did and the dangers of rough water in rivers.

She knew what weather was coming by the shape of the clouds the day before.

She knew the dangers of deep snow. She even knew the dangers of black and white cute fluffy animals.

She knew all these things because she had watched people she knew die because of them. She knew some of them because she had escaped when others did not. The old saying, "I don't need to run faster than the bear, I only need to run faster than you," began HERE.

In this age, life's lessons were learned by the survivors ... if you didn't survive, your demise was a lesson to those who did.

She also knew what a hard cock was and where it went. She knew this because she was going to be a woman in a very few years and it was her duty to the tribe to reproduce.

There was so much danger to be lived through and so many who didn't, that sex was a responsibility not a joy. She knew what and where because she saw it any time a male felt the urge.

Men died on every hunt. If the dead had a woman she hoped that another man was attracted to her because men provided meat and meat made one strong and smart. The people who ate no meat withered and died.

The children of the dead were fed by the band until they died or survived, not so the mothers. They already knew the lessons of life.

Sometimes, so seldom that no one in her tribe could remember it for a fact, a woman survived alone. She knew how men made spears, she knew how men made traps. Maybe her mate taught her, maybe her father, but she knew.

If no other man wanter her or she wanted no man, such widows struck out on their own, to live solitary lives away from the band that had no use for her.

Maybe ... no one really knew, because such women were the stuff of legends and lessons.

The boogyman of fable might actually be the boogywoman of fact.

The stories were told to the children to keep them in the caves or huts at night.

People who wandered outside might not come back. Some times they came back, useless and cowardly for the short remainder of life, some struck dumb, some near blind, some drooling and dragging of limb.

Got by the evil in the dark ... or as good as.

But the Shaman, the real shaman, could do things impossible and go from place to place unseen. They could draw sickness out of an ailing body and hold it by the neck and throw it in the fire. The girl had seen it.

Every band had resident healers, they treated poison ivy and attended births, and performed minor healing. They knew the herbs of healing and how to draw off the tremors.

They also knew when the task at hand was beyond their minor powers.

The Shaman however, belonged to the tribe.

Your band healer might need assistance. They made smokes of supplication, cast spells of calling.

The next day, or that night, the Shaman strode into camp, set down his pack of magic and said, "just happened to be in the neighborhood, and thought I might drop in for a chat with the healer. See how he, or she, was doing. No, had no idea I was needed, just wandered in."

He would laugh and perform real magic, no tricks. He was never tired, his leathers never dusty, the soles of his moccasins were always new.

Every once in a while, a boy or girl was smart enough to collect information at the gathering of the bands, the assembling of the tribe, and confront the Shaman with the facts of hundreds of miles of travel with hours of time to do it.

Those smart kids became shaman apprentices. Our little cutie was a smart cookie and had plans of confronting the Shaman at the next gathering.