Chapter 27

Katherine didn’t bite; or, to be more precise, she didn’t bite my cock. She did leave bite marks on my shoulder when I pounded her through her fourth straight orgasm, while she lay under me with her tits jiggling with every thrust, on a bearskin that Clara had thrown down by the stream where the women had bathed me. I didn’t mind at all. Katherine’s biting me helped to keep her from disturbing the wildlife with her cries of pleasure. The woman was definitely a screamer.

I met with Rolf Anderson and his group the next day, speaking to them on the patio. Clara made certain that Carlos was in attendance. His fever had broken and his strength was returning, though he still would be laid up for several weeks due to his broken leg. Even with a crutch, which I would soon fashion for him to use, Carlos wouldn’t be able to do much outside the confines of the enclosure.

It didn’t mean I couldn’t employ the man. I had a few project ideas that I figured he could manage with a little assistance. His sister had made it clear that Carlos knew a little about metallurgy and he had an amateur interest in metal working. I was hoping he could help set up a smelting operation or maybe even a forge. It was one of the reasons I wanted him at the meeting. The other reason was to lay down the law.

“I know you all officially work for Quantum,” I told the group once they had settled in out at the patio where we ate in the summer, “but the reality is that Quantum doesn’t exist here, neither as an organization, nor as a legal entity. This world, while still Earth, is not our Earth and Quantum hasn’t any say over what happens here, or at least that’s my view on the topic. I no longer work for them, given what I’ve learned about what their intentions are for the here and now, and given the fact that they sent assassins to kill the mother of my child. Instead of working for them, I’m working against them. I just wanted to make that clear before we move on. To me, it is important that we are all on the same page and we are all working towards the same goal. For your information, that goal isn’t the downfall of Quantum and Ridgeway. That goal is our continued survival. Do you four follow me so far?

They all nodded their heads yes.

“Good,” I muttered in response to their acknowledgement, “because if you don’t understand what is going on here, then it is time for you to move on and figure things out for yourself. I’m not going to ask you to fight Quantum if they show up here, but I will ask that you don’t interfere with my efforts to ensure my survival, and the survival of everyone dependant on me. Can you all live with that?”

The answer once again was a resounding nod of the head by each and every one of the four people sitting across from me.

“All right then, we can move on,” I stated with a hint of finality in my voice. “I think it’s time we discuss what I expect out of you and for you to ask me any questions you might have. Believe it or not, I might be these people’s leader, but I’m not a dictator. I rule by their consent and with their assistance and guidance. You’ll pick that fact up once the four of you learn to speak the language.”

“What language?” Cora asked with a look of confusion on her face. “Most of the people I’ve listened to speak a mix of English and gibberish.”

“I’m certain that some of my people think that you speak gibberish when you four speak amongst yourselves,” I chided the woman, giving her a stern look. “I can assure you that these people do have a vocabulary, and they can converse intellectually. They’re not ape-men if that is what you are thinking. Right now my people speak what we call the ‘common tongue’. The fact is that my community is made up of four diverse cultures; and to get along, we had to develop a single uniform language that everyone understands. Thankful we had Gabby with us to help get that language started, and to help standardize it. It has taken three years to bring that about, but it is working for us. True, when we visit the Horse People or the Hilltop People we still fall back on their language when negotiating a trade, but I have noted that a few of their people have picked up some of our language as well. It helps that our common language uses a lot of words borrowed from those two cultures. In any case, until the four of you learn to speak the language, you won’t be of much use to us as you could be.”

“Why’s that?” Rolf Anderson asked cautiously. “What does speaking a language have to do with surveying this region for resources?”

I looked at the man and shook my head in disbelief. Amazingly the man had the brains to look suitably embarrassed.

“It’s actually very simple,” I told the man, trying not to sound too much like a father trying to teach a child something he should already understand. “This world is dangerous. You already found that out when Carlos got himself injured trying to hunt aurochs alone. Nobody in my community goes out alone. If the women need to go foraging, they take a hunter with them to watch their backs while they focus on their job. Even the hunters go out in pairs at the very least; so that no one is ever on their own if something happens. When I do send you out of this enclosure to survey for mineral deposits and hopefully to bring back ores like copper, zinc, tin, and iron; I’m going to have to send out a hunter with you to watch your backs, while you dig into the sides of cliffs and into the ground. For that to work, you need to be able to speak the language of the people working with you. If you don’t, then you become a liability, and I certainly won’t let that happen. Is that understood?”

It was definitely understood.

I took the second group of hunters and foragers down into the lower valley the next day. Once again we took all the ATVs with us, and as many pack animals as we could string together on a very long lead rope. I’d checked the wheat that we’d discovered the other day and I’d found that it was ready for harvesting. I silently thanked my grandfather for taking the time to teach me a thing or two about how to determine the moisture content of wheat and other grains, without the use of high tech measuring devices. It was one of the few things that I did remember from my summers on his farm. While my hunters and I bagged another half dozen aurochs to haul back to the enclosure and our smokehouses, the women gathered grain. Once the grain had been gathered, I sent Gort and his team in with the scythes to cut down the wheat stalks so we could haul that back as well; to be used in our barn either as bedding or as fodder for our animals. There was even a good chance that some of it would be woven into baskets. I saw a couple of the women trying it out while I walked about checking on everyone, after I’d had my bath in the stream and a roll in the bearskin with one of my women.

I made the decision that I needed to go back to the compound to check it out. We were now into September. If I didn’t head out soon, there would be no going at all. By that point it had been almost two weeks since I’d stumbled on the survey group and we’d run into no other party from Quantum. If they’d sent more people through the Gateway and back to the here and now, they weren’t on this side of the mountain. It left only one other place to check out.

Clara wasn’t happy about the idea of me taking off without Gabby and her tagging along, but she was forced to accept the reality once I presented the facts to her. Clara had to stay behind just in case Carlos had a relapse; and Gabby was five months pregnant, and in no condition to go galloping across a plateau, looking for a bunch of assholes that were hell bent on killing her. Besides that fact, Gabby was also busy teaching the survey group our language. Interestingly, it was coming along slowly for the four specialists. I found that funny since I’d really never been big on learning another language back when I’d been a kid on our own Earth, and in my own historical timeline, yet I’d been able to pick up the local languages with relative ease since coming here. True, we’d learnt the languages out of desperation, knowing full well that it was either that or die. Survival depended on it. It just didn’t seem to mean the same for Rolf, Katherine, Cora, and Carlos. Unfortunately, until they learned to communicate, I wasn’t going to let them out of the enclosure.

I did put a twist into everything later that day. I decided I was going to take the ATVs instead of horses on this trip. They were solar powered and each came with a recharging unit. The ATVs could make twenty miles an hour on open flat terrain and while we’d have to stop from time to time to recharge the vehicles, once we cleared the pass and were out on the plateau, it would be a two day trip at best to the compound. If I was lucky and we didn’t run into any problems I estimated that we could make the trip there and back in two weeks or less. It was a much better estimate than if we rode horses and took spare horses to switch mounts throughout our trip. My only real issue with the plan was training drivers to go with me.

I picked young people to come along. When I suggested taking the ATVs instead of horses I got a few really nasty looks from Rugar, Kobo, and Gabon. I also got a nasty look from Gogra. The older men weren’t up to the idea. The younger ones were. I picked Sygor, Tonko, Bogdi, and Gort to go with me.

Geeta wanted to go as well. I had to tell the young woman ‘no.’ I wanted her at the enclosure working alongside Gabby with the survey team, so that they would not only pick up the common tongue quicker, but so that they got used to working with Geeta. Geeta was my chief finder of anything I needed. If I described to her something that she’d never seen before, and I told her to find it, she would. More importantly Geeta could draw maps as well as read them. We still had the skin map that we’d used when we’d originally come to the valley. It was marked up with where stuff was. In fact, we had several versions of it, because we just couldn’t put everything onto one skin. I had also shown her the maps that Kim Woo had left me in the cache when I’d originally arrived in the here and now. Over the years, I’d shown Geeta how to read them and how to use a compass. If the survey team did get their act in gear over the next two weeks or so, and they learned the language, I wanted them out and looking for minerals. True, I would have their vehicles, but initially they could either walk or ride a horse. According to Katherine Winston, she could. Geeta didn’t like being told no, but she was a good kid and she knew how much I depended on her. It also flattered her, because when I explained my reasoning to her, I did so at our council meeting in front of all my leaders, most of whom were men. To be told I thought she was the best at finding resources was a very big compliment. She smiled broadly when I said it, and then agreed it would be best for her to stay.

I spent one day teaching Sygor, Tonko, Bogdi, and Gort the basics of driving an ATV. The hardest part was teaching them how to manipulate the controls so they knew how to accelerate and how to slow down. Fortunately for me, they were all bright and attentive students. By the end of the training day, they knew what to do.

We left bright and early the next morning. We packed well for the trip, not knowing what conditions would be like on the other side of the mountain range. It was still warm in our valley, but then we were getting warm winds off what I thought was the Adriatic Sea. Who knew if the weather conditions on the far side of the mountain would be the same or not?

We made it out of the valley the first day, making camp just inside the pass late in the afternoon. By then our battery power had dropped to only twenty-five percent. While the men made camp, I set up the solar power array that would charge each vehicle. Hopefully we’d have a full charge by bedtime.

We’d only taken three of them with us. I drove one by myself and the other four men were split up in the other two vehicles. It meant that they could easily spell each other whenever they needed to throughout the day.

We made it through the pass the next day. That pleased me a lot. The pass was roughly a hundred miles long. It did mean that when we did make camp that afternoon that our batteries were very low. The first third of the trip had been uphill and a lot rougher than the other two-thirds. Still we made the far side of the pass with enough daylight left that I figured that we’d be able to recharge our batteries completely before dark.

We lucked out the next day, in a manner of speaking. We ran into the Horse People shortly after we cleared the foothills and our presence on ATVs caused a great stir. Fortunately, the leader of the hunting party we encountered recognized me. It saved us from getting shot with an arrow.

Not getting shot was a good thing, however getting recognized didn’t mean that we got invited back to the Horse People’s encampment. Regrettably, when I decided to take the ATVs, I hadn’t given much thought to how other people might react to the ‘horseless’ wagons we were riding in. While the leader of the hunting party kept an eye on us, he sent a messenger back to the village to find out what Chief Mondo wanted to do about us. While we waited my people got out of the ATVs, stretched their legs, and at my insistence, armed themselves just in case Chief Mondo didn’t want anything to do with us. While my people did as I asked, I went over and chatted with the leader of the hunt.

I knew the man, but not well. I’d seen him in the Horse People’s encampment when I’d feasted with Agar whenever I visited, and I’d seen him on a hunt or two when he’d tagged along as part of Agar’s entourage. We certainly weren’t friends, but we weren’t enemies either. Still, it took me by surprise when the man remained standoffish towards me. He barely acknowledged my attempts to strike up a conversation with him, and when I pressed him on the question of whether he’d seen any strangers about, wandering the plateau, he told me that Chief Mondo would answer my questions if he deemed to grant me an audience.

I was actually pissed about it, but I tried not to let it show. I wanted intelligence before I headed off across the plateau with my group and speaking to the Horse People would hopefully provide me with it. Still, I wanted to put the leader of the hunting party on his ass.

Mondo showed up an hour later with a very large entourage trailing him. There was a shaman with him, but it wasn’t the old man that I’d met before in my visits to their encampment. The guy was younger than I was, looking to be in his early twenties at best. He was the first one to step down off his horse. He walked over to where our vehicles were parked and then he started praying over them. It didn’t take more than that to make me realize that the Horse People thought the vehicles were evil. I just sighed at that and shook my head. Even so, I didn’t say a word or interfere with the shaman. I let him do his thing which included him blowing some kind of dust all over the ATVs. When he was done he marched back to his horse and mounted up. Only then did Mondo ride forward to speak to me.

“What are you doing here, Jake?” Mondo asked gruffly and in a very authoritarian manner.

“My hunters and I are travelling north to where the plateau ends and the plains begin,” I told him bluntly and without any hesitation, trying to keep much of my annoyance out of my voice. “I’ve heard tales that there are strange people visiting there and I wish to see if they are any of my people.”

I had no intentions of telling Mondo the whole truth. I had no idea if Quantum was there or not, but from my perspective it would be best if no one outside my group knew how dangerous someone from Quantum could be. I just didn’t want the Horse People thinking that anyone at the compound was a threat to them, and have them ride in and get themselves killed. Even worse, I didn’t want the Horse People riding in and killing a bunch of innocent people if there were people there, and they weren’t much worse to the local population than what Rolf’s survey group had proved to be.

“I’ve heard of no tales of strange people, except now,” Mondo informed me coldly, “and I have found out that the strange people are you and your hunters. Why do you travel on wagons without horses? Are you without horses already in the distant valley you moved into? Are you here to trade for some more? If you are, then you should move on and go elsewhere for we have no horses for you.”

“We will move on, Chief Mondo,” I replied addressing the man formally. “We will travel to the lake and spend the night there. Then we will move on in the morning.”

I said this bluntly and in a matter of fact manner so the man understood that I wasn’t asking him for permission to do so. While the Horse People considered the plateau their sovereign domain, most people outside the Horse People did not, although they rarely challenged the Horse People openly about who was right. I just stared firmly into Mondo’s face when I said the words and waited for his reply.

“Very well,” Mondo muttered dismissively after a second. “Be gone in the morning and don’t come back.”

With that Mondo turned his horse about and he headed back towards his encampment. As he rode off, his entourage and then his band of hunters fell in behind him.

“He was very rude,” Gort noted openly when the group had moved off. “I thought we were friends.”

‘He was being a chief,” Tonko pointed out, though his voice didn’t hold much awe or enthusiasm in it as he explained what had just happened. “The Horse People prefer to not have friends.”

“Then it is good we are not Horse People anymore,” Bogdi interjected strongly, speaking up before anyone else could voice an opinion. “If we were, then we would be a very small tribe.”

I grunted my agreement at that point and then I told everyone to mount up. I wanted to get to the lake well before dark, so I could set up the solar power arrays and charge our vehicles. I certainly didn’t want to be in the neighbourhood for any length of time come tomorrow morning. If we were, there would definitely be trouble.

It took us two days to get to the compound. While it was just over a hundred miles away from the foothills that stood before the pass, we didn’t push it. Besides, before even thinking about checking the compound out, I turned our small convoy into our old valley and drove up it towards where our old cave stood. We found it with the enclosed walls still standing, although the gate was down. We stopped and had a look about. There wasn’t anyone human about, but there was plenty of animal sign in the dirt that stood between the two gate posts. From the look of it a pride of cats had moved back into the place. I didn’t spot them, and we didn’t stick around to find out where they were. Instead we drove up the valley for a bit until we spotted a hunting party out in the middle of the valley stalking a herd of bison.

This time we didn’t just drive over to where the hunters were. I left Sygor, Tonko, and Bodgi with the vehicles and I took Gort with me. We went fully armed and ready for any trouble. As we approached the hunters a familiar figure came running up to us. It was Zedak.

“Greetings Zedak of the Hilltop People,” I said cheerfully as I extended my forearm in greetings. “I hope the hunting has been good.”

“It has been good,” Zedak admitted once he’d clasped forearms with me. “Although I will admit, it is not as good as when Uttar hunted for our village. Is the old hunter with you?”

“No he is not,” I told him freely, smiling at the young man’s compliment. “He is back at my village leading hunts for aurochs. We’ve killed as many as four hands in the last week and our smokehouses are full of their meat. I will tell him that you asked about him.”

Zedak’s eyes grew large at the mention of hunting aurochs and the quantity that we’d killed. Seeing that the young hunter was still using a thrusting spear to bring down game, I knew that he could only dream of duplicating what Uttar had done the year Clara had sent him to his old village to trade for the wild oats that I had wanted. I also knew that it was really not that nice to prod the young hunter like that, particularly when I was still scouting out intelligence. Realizing this I decided to point out Gort who was standing by my side. While Gort was still only eleven years old, though nearer to twelve, he had grown considerably since the last time Zedak had seen him.