Chapter 50

Jean demanded, “Last question: what are the odds of my dying in childbirth? I have heard horror stories of such deaths in the 1700s and 1800s.”

John admitted, “Even the most modern hospital cannot give a 100 per cent guarantee, but usually far better odds than dying in a road accident. Here, you have two important factors: the medical nanites in your blood, and the stash of medical supplies we have found in the store room. The nanites are gradually spreading throughout the tribe, so every pregnancy should have a better outcome than before. I am lucky that the pheromone nanites are not so prone to spreading.

A third factor is little me: I took a course in midwifery in the British Army, so I have some expertise in the subject, and I expect to get a lot of practical experience as my pregnant wives start to give birth. You could trip and fall here, and kill yourself without really trying. All life is a risk; we merely decide what risks to accept for ourselves. Helpful enough?”

“Perhaps. You have one more test to convince me: take me to bed and show me what you know about pleasing a woman, or rather, pleasing me.”

“It is not exactly a bed, as you know, Jean, and I have to clear it with Chief Numa.”

Jean complained angrily, “You can’t even decide to bed a woman without Numa’s permission? She is still a teenager for fuck’s sake! We are both years older than her. What kind of a man are you?”

“A married man, Jean. Marriage is a lot more than just pleasuring your wife. You have to care for her in the long run, and in my case that means a whole bunch of ladies, but Chief Numa is the one who makes the final decision. If you had been my first wife, you would be in that position. Would you expect me to bed a woman without your prior permission?”

Jean had subsided somewhat and her reply reflected that.

“I suppose not. Everything in this stone age world is confusing, almost alien in nature, leaving me unsettled all the time. It has taken me an inordinate amount of thinking to get to the crazy position where I have asked a man with loads of wives to fuck me and convince me that to join his polygamous group would be the right decision.”

“It gets back to what your mind considers to be ‘normal’. We all arrived here bereft of essential memories, but our emotional standards are ingrained from a life in a monogamous society, so we automatically feel that multiple spouses are wrong. The society that we are now in views a man as more important if he has more than one wife, and conversely having more than one wife confers added social merit, even power, to the man. You also have to recognise that for many generations women have been regarded as second-class or third-class citizens. Such a situation is not unique: back in England a couple of centuries ago, when a woman married, her assets came under the control of her husband; she had no say in the matter, legally, even though it was her own inherited money or land. It took a long time to get that altered. Here I am trying to change a society in just a few years, so don’t expect your standards from your former life to apply here.”

“Why should you be in charge of society? What gives you the power to rule?”

“Have you not noticed, Jean? I don’t rule; I influence and try to argue my case for matters such as equality. I could impose my rules in this tribe, as it was my own new tribe, but in the Farfarers tribe I could only suggest to the Chief what might be of benefit to his tribe. Chief Mongo was coming around to seeing the merit of my ideas when he was brutally murdered, assassinated by his own Shaman.

Tradition here said that if you deposed a Chief – and that includes murdering him – you became the new Chief, so when I killed the murderer I automatically was regarded by the tribe as their new Chief. I didn’t want that job, so when I found out that the tribal Wise Woman was his younger sister, I pushed her to take on the Chiefdom. She did so, and some time later she asked me to impregnate her so she would have an heir to take over eventually. My Numa told me that in their tradition, fathering a child on a woman was tantamount to either marrying her or making her my concubine. I asked Maranga what she thought, and she opted for marriage, based on what she had seen of my other wives. Thus, she is also my wife.

So you see, I don’t rule, I advise. I admit that my advice is usually based on past experience so I can argue my case, but I never want to do anything that would be bad for my wives or for my tribe. That is one of the many reasons I am seeking to avoid war. I and my warriors are making pinpricks on the enemy in such a way as to frighten them, for they do not know who is attacking them or why.

To assist the enemy in making decisions favourable to me and my tribe, I am using diplomacy and misdirection to adjust the thinking of their leaders. The pinpricks merely reinforce the apparent logic they are using to assess the opposing forces.

Just like in social situations, you can manipulate the thinking of your enemy by giving him information – or by allowing him to collect it – that points in one direction, even though that information is inaccurate.

The Allies in world war two did the same thing about the invasion of France on D-Day: they convinced the Germans that the invasion would be at the Pas de Calais, thus making the real invasion in Normandy seem merely a diversionary tactic. As a result of all the misleading information, the Germans kept their strongest forces near the Pas de Calais until it was too late to stop the true invasion from succeeding.”

“You seem to view everything in terms of your soldiering background, John.”

“That is true to some extent. The regiment I belonged to, the SAS, believed in such non-standard tactics, so that fighting when it comes is slanted in your favour. Our smallest unit was only four soldiers, but each soldier had been trained in several disciplines so that if one was hurt another could take over his tasks and capacities. Thus we learned flexibility, not rigidity; which is why I learned basic midwifery and I have applied the same approach to what I do here.

I am building allies all the time.”

He paused, then asked, “What about you, Jean? Do you want to run our future police force? There is nothing in place at the moment, though I suspect our warriors could enforce some laws if we enacted some!”

“Well, that is the object of a police force; enforcing the law; but it is not the police’s job to stop people having fist fights, or slapping fights in the case of women; nor is it their job to tell people what they can or cannot do, except where a law has been enacted to say so. A law doesn’t change a person as a person: a bad driver or lazy husband is still a bad driver or lazy husband, no matter what laws you enact. It is actually far better to have social pressure enforce good behaviour than force it on people through laws and a police force. Enforcement tends to lead to resentment, particularly if the police make a mistake and harm an innocent civilian.

Anyway, police forces didn’t exist until the 19th century, so why should we need one in a stone age society? That is why I have my doubts about taking on such a responsibility: it seems superfluous.”

“Oh.” John had not realised such basic facts about policing. To him, police forces had always been around, and he had assumed that went backwards in his past as well as his present.

“But what about killers, such as the Shaman at the Farfarers? Who was supposed to deal with him, in the absence of a police force?”

“You answered that one yourself, John,” Jean answered. “As you said, you killed the Shaman for his crime. As a responsible, thinking, member of society, you observed his crime, judged him as guilty, and executed him, all in less time than it takes to talk about it. Were you wrong? Did anyone else see your action as wrong?”

“No. In fact the tribe were glad to see the Shaman get his comeuppance: he was not well liked except by a small coterie of sycophants. They quickly backed down when he died.”

“That what do you want a police force for?”

John was now stumped, as his assumed need had been demolished. He tried to divert the subject.

“What about a wise woman figure like Maranga was in her tribe, a sort of social welfare official, to help with family problems through guidance?”

“To do that job, you need to have a deep understanding of the tribal dynamics; know the personalities involved, and other factors that I am too new to know much about. No, that wouldn’t work either.”

“Then what do you want to do, to help the tribe?”

Jean’s reply was interrupted by Chief Numa, who had been attracted by the animated discussion.

“What are you two arguing about?”

John responded, “Nothing,” while Jean said, “He says he has to speak with you first.”

Numa regarded them both, and beckoned, “Come with me, the pair of you.” and marched towards the back of the cave, away from most of the tribe. They followed, sheepishly.

“Now, will you explain? You first, Jean.”

“I asked John to make love to me before I can decide if I want to marry him, and he said he would have to ask you first, for your approval.”

John tried to correct her: “I said permission, not approval!”

Numa glared at him, saying, “It is much the same. What was the problem?”

John explained, “I wanted to make sure you had no objections to the idea, my love.”

“Well, I don’t. So go ahead and fuck her, my husband. We have had enough of her quibbling: this should settle it for her.”

Jean beamed in delight, while John stood, stony-faced, then relaxed.

“All right, Numa. I can see that you have decided to add Jean to our family.”

“Correction, John, as you are usually quick to correct me in similar circumstances. I have decided to allow Jean to determine for herself if she wants to be added to our family. According to your own social rules of this tribe, she makes up her own mind. Right?”

“Quite right, Numa. I apologise for my assumptions.”

He turned to face Jean. “And I apologise to you as well, Jean. I should have simply gone and asked Numa, then we could have done what you wanted, instead of me talking about my self-imposed restrictions. You deserved better from me.”

Numa instructed him, “Take Jean away to our furs, and show her what you can do for a woman. Jean can let me know her decision afterwards.”

John did so, but found to his surprise that Jean had her own views about love-making. She wanted nothing to do with cunnilingus; in fact wanted nothing except his penis near her vagina, not even his fingers. Surprised, John asked about this, but she just insisted, “I don’t like that sort of thing, John. Please make love the way I want it.”

Suitably deterred, John did as he asked concentrating his hands on the rest of her body, then mounting her when she asked. She wanted the missionary position as her standard, so John fitted in. Once they had agreed on how to go about lovemaking, it went well. When Jean recovered from the loving, she told John with a satisfied smile on her face, “I will let Numa know that you will be acceptable as my husband.”

John smiled at this, and decided to say nothing about Jean’s eccentricities so as not to cause her any awkwardness among the other women.

He slept well that night, once the others had had their way with him.

Very little had been done in the way of house construction that day, so when Brando showed up the next morning he was scathing.

“None of you could manage to put some effort into house construction without me being here to hold your hand, it appears. Finally you have got a foundation laid for a larger home, but where are the panels we need?”

John was forced to explain that while some panels had been carried through to the front part of the cave, carrying them down to the building site was an awkward move downhill at an angle. “The panels are large and ungainly, so moving them is not simple, just using wheelbarrows. I worked out a possible means of wheeling them, but that would mean getting special wheels prepared and strapped to the bottom edge of the panels. That is where you come in, Brando.”

John went over the rationale behind his thinking, and the practical solution he had come up with.

He ended, “The technical aspects of making these wheels so that they can strap to the panels needs your cleverness to be applied, Brando. Once we have one functioning set of transporting wheels for a full panel, they can be used again and again for subsequent panels.”

Brando was amazed at how such a simple conversion could produce a new capability.

“John, is it normal for a simple invention, such as the wheel, to have a variety of new applications such as this?”

“Brando, the wheel is one of the greatest inventions ever! It can be adapted to all sorts of uses, in a variety of sizes from giant wheels to carry flexible pipes or cables to run under the ocean, all the way down to tiny toothed wheels you can hardly see, that transfer movement to another wheel of a larger size, moving at a slower speed.”

“Uh? What? Wheels changing speed through touching another wheel?”

“Oops. Sorry, I didn’t intend to mention that concept, but it can and does work. My mouth ran away with me. Using wheels whose edge is cut into at regular spacing, gives the impression of teeth sticking out, so we called it a toothed wheel or a cog. The teeth, fitting in between teeth on another wheel, make it easy for one wheel to interact with another, and when they are of different sizes, the second wheel moves faster or slower. You can try it out for yourself, but it will be a long time before we get practical machinery using them.”

“Leave it to me to think about, High Chief. In the meantime, I should be able to have what you need made in about two days. What do you want done here in the meantime? Can we put together another house?”

“A good suggestion. Let’s pull out the panels from the cave, and you will see how we need to improve the movement method to get them shifted faster and smoother.”

Brando glanced at the sky. “We might have rain before the day is out.”

John replied, “Can we get the roof on before the rain comes, and finish the internal bracing after that?”

Brando cast a look over the foundations that he could see. “Hmm ... I expect so, if we have enough bodies to work on it. There are more panels this time. Can you summon plenty of labourers to move things?”

“I’ll leave that to Chief Numa to sort out. Give me a moment or two to ask her.”

John hurried to Numa, and she raised an eyebrow as he approached. “Yes, John?”

“Can Brando and I have a squad of helpers to work on the next house, so that we can get the roof on before the rain arrives?”

Numa took a look at the sky, and sniffed the air. “Ah, yes. We have a few hours to get that done. I’ll organise some workers for you, but some may be pregnant, so don’t have them straining.”

“That is why I thought that the more people we have, the less effort each has to put in.”

“Right. On you go and tell Brando he can have his workers. What is the first job?”

“Moving wall panels down to the work site, but I want Brando to see how awkward it is at the moment. If we can get him to provide strap-on wheels, it should be easier in future.”

“That sounds sensible. Get him up here to observe how we shift them now.”

John did that, and Brando watched as the squad manhandled a panel onto two wheelbarrows. To move meant people making sure the panel sat securely on the barrow – not easy – while others held it upright, trying to steer it while moving it forward. It crawled slowly out of the cave, but when it got onto the grass slope, it tried to move faster; but the workers needed to keep it slow so that it wouldn’t topple over, for there no brakes, just hands on the panel. It took a lot of hands-on treatment to get the panel moving correctly.

John watched Brando’s face as he observed the manic maneouvres when every small gust of wind tried to topple it over, while the barrows wanted to run downhill. The handbrakes on the barrows were not intended for such strains, nor were they easily accessible while the tall panel was being carried, so these brakes were not used.

Brando got upset with his feeling of inadequacy, and rushed to assist in steering the panel downhill. John smiled to himself, and joined him. They soon got the panel to where Brando wanted it laid down flat, and they all cooperated in getting that done. The two wheelbarrows took the opportunity to slip off the panel and scoot further down the slope before overbalancing and turning onto their sides.

John declared to Brando, “Now do you see what we are faced with? We need a simpler way of doing this, Brando. What do you think of my proposal?”

Brando was too busy thanking the women helpers for their work. “That was great, ladies. Well done. We’ll see if we can organise a better way of moving these monsters.” The women thanked him for his consideration of them, for not every visitor knew that women here were emancipated and not subservient to their men.

John asked Brando if he wanted all the required panels brought down now or later. Brando looked over at the volunteers and asked them their opinion. Delighted, they offered to continue for now, as long as they could manage.

John added, “If any of the ladies get tired, we can ask for more volunteers, Brando.”

“Good,” he commented. “If the volunteers can go back for the next one, and let us know when we are need, John and I can start setting this panel in position. I presume you have the vertical supports handy, High Chief?”

“Over there, Brando,” he pointed. “We have piled all the parts we expect to need in nearby positions, so that we can fetch what we need when we need it.”

“Right. In that case, can we put the first pair of uprights in position and bashed in until each is firm. I would like two sets of these in their slots before we put the panel in the upright position between the two pairs. That will give it the basic ‘hold’. We can then add in more supports until the ladies ask for our help.”

With the two sets of constructors working this way, it did not take long to get all four walls erected. At that point the corners had to be connected with brackets or horizontal wooden L-plates. Both options were a two-man task, but Brando was delighted to use these ‘magic’ screws as fasteners, pushed and turned into their holes by a ‘screwdriver’ as he learned to call it. This mechanism was one of Brando’s first experiences of tools made as machines to accomplish a basic building task.

Once all the exterior walls were erected, a shorter panel was put up inside as a partition to divide the house into two rooms and add additional support to the overall structure.

Only then was the roof put on. The major difficulty was getting high enough to work at roof level to apply the fastenings on all four sides. The temporary solution was a tree trunk that was leaned against the house, but held securely by John while Brando went up to do the joinery.

Once they got that done, Brando decided that large stones deposited on the outside of the wall would help to keep the walls in position, so he and John went to the stream with two wheelbarrows to select large enough stone to do that job without overburdening the barrows. They got most of the stones up to near the house before the rain started, so so they switched to positioning the stones against the exterior walls, making sure a similar number of stones went to each wall. More could be added later, he thought.

With the rain getting heavier, they moved inside to put support brackets where the partition wall met the outside back wall, with the shorter panel leaving a gap to act as an internal doorway. Brando wanted a long strip of strong wood to go from the top of the partition to the front wall, as a support for the partition. He explained to John after putting in one support, “Without that, the partition would have no rigidity by the doorway and thus weaken the whole house.”

John looked at what he was talking about, and got the basic structural concept: every part of the structure should preferably act in support of the whole building. Unsupported sections were a disaster waiting to happen in the future.

“How did you know that, Brando? You haven’t designed houses before, have you?”

“No, but the idea of structural supports applies to everything that you make using wood or stone, John, from a simple box to a wheelbarrow. Once you see that simple idea, you can apply it everywhere you can see support being needed. That use of crossbeams in making the barrier for the Farfarers camp entrance was another example. The brilliant idea of two crosspieces linked together adds strength to anything. If I was making a large wheel I would probably brace it with similar crosspieces.”

“Brando, my friend, you have just devised the basic requirements for a large two-wheeled cart, which we can’t use until we have wide enough tracks going from place to place.”

“How wide?” Brando enquired.

“At least as wide as a man is tall,” said John, and if two carts are to pass each other, you need to at least double that width.”

“But if it is for passing, you only need a passing place at intervals along the route.” Brando argued.

“Only if you have a few carts, Brando, but what if it is many carts? You then need the route to accommodate carts in both directions the whole way.”

“That idea is sheer fantasy, John.”

“To you, Brando, but back in my original time, tracks were made in multiple lanes going in both directions for great distances, and huge numbers of carts, that propelled themselves, used such tracks all the time, both by day and by night. To my mind, it was not a good use of one’s time, rushing backward and forward inside such machines. We should try to avoid the same mistakes in future. Railways were much more efficient.”

“Pardon? What are railways, John?

“There I go again; talking about things that don’t exist here.”

“Still: the idea might be interesting to know, High Chief.”

“Well, let me see what I can say. A track tries to be a flat surface that you walk on, or you can run your wheelbarrow along on that surface. That clear?”

“Very simple. What do you propose to suggest then?”

“Instead of a flat surface, imagine two strips of wood, the width of a larger wheel. These strips would run continuously all the way between tribes, for instance. The strips would be fixed to cross members that held them a constant distance apart. So, a double line of strips that run continuously for a long distance. Okay so far?”

“I follow your word picture, but I fail to see any advantage. Your strips are only a tiny part of the flat surface of a track, so less useful to my mind.”

“Very well. Now, imagine a cart with an axle having two wheels the same distance apart as the wooden rails. The special trick this time is that all the wheels have a lip that holds the wheel to the trails. The lip – we called it a flange - is always on the inside edge of the wheel, and that means any time the cart pushes to one side or the other, the flange stops it from coming off the rail.

Now, you have a cart that most always stays on the rails, and in that case, another cart can be attached to the back of the first one. You can add more carts to make a long stretch of carts that we called a train. Whatever you use to pull the carts, the wheels turn easily, so a long train of carts will; move more easily than on a flat surface that doesn’t keep the carts on the track. The track and the wheels make the system more efficient and so run better and faster.”

“It all sounds terribly complicated, High Chief.”

The construction of all of that is indeed complicated, Brando, but once it is built, it runs very simply if you have a means of pulling the carts.”

“You mean a large animal that you can persuade to do the pulling? That is going to mean some animal training. I have heard of some tricksters who did things like that with animals, but some animal types are more suited than others.”

“That is true, and you would need several animals to pull a train of carts, so expect for the foreseeable future that it will be one animal per cart. You will need an animal trainer for that job; it is not like dogs herding sheep. Cattle should be a better option, or even oxen if you can find some. The animals have to be fairly docile to be useful for pulling a cart.”

“You are going on about animals pulling carts, John, and we don’t even have wide enough tracks for carts in the first place. You keep getting ahead of yourself, my friend.”

“Can I come in?” asked a plaintive voice from the external doorway. John went to see who it was, then gestured the teenager inside with the heavy load of fish on his back.

“Just stand for a while inside the door until most of the water drips off you, Ashoka – I have your name right?”

He nodded, causing a cascade of water from his wet hair, and took off his pack, allowing it to subside to the floor.

“Yes, sir, High Chief. I didn’t expect it to be so wet on this trip. You were due a supply of fish, and I had news to deliver too.”

“Oh? What’s the news?”

“A travelling merchant showed up this morning, and said that the invader army seems to be pulling back; at least that was what he said. We have nothing definite to back him up.”

John allowed his brows to crinkle in apparent puzzlement. “Why would the invader army be leaving? Do you have any idea?”

The teenager gave John a knowing grin. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with a night attack on an army camp, would it?”

John allowed his eyes to widen. “Do you really think so? That such an attack would make an entire army move back?”

Ashoka retorted, “I am not as daft as I may appear, High Chief. I can see where a few sharp jabs to the ribs can persuade your opponent to take a few steps back, in case there are more punches on the way. This looked to be another punch that was unexpected. Am I right in thinking that none of your warriors got so much as an arrow wound in that skirmish?”

“Well, one of my warriors got a wound to her foot, but it was more of an accident than a battle wound – though I have let her daughters view it as a battle injury. Anyway, Ashoka, that outing was officially a training exercise, not a skirmish or any sort of battle: get me?”

“Ah, yes, of course: it was a training exercise. It is purely coincidence it was on the night when the army camp got attacked?”

“Exactly: pure coincidence. If you have dripped enough, would you like to dash to the cave? I can give you a hand with that heavy basket.”

The grateful lad accepted the offer, and as soon as the rain had let up a bit, they grabbed the pack and took it up to the cave. There, they handed it over to the woman who looked after the food supplies. She took it away to check its contents.

John thought that the woman looked slightly embarrassed at John’s entrance with the carrier, but dismissed it as nothing. Leaving the lad to be attended to – dried down, warmed and fed, he returned to Brando to work on details of construction.

He was surprised how much they got done inside, though he regretted not leaving some support stakes inside. He had to go and fetch some in for extra reinforcement of the walls in their position, after Brando pointed out that with a larger house and bigger walls exposed to wind, the more support the better.

“If you can collect some more large stones and place them round the base of all the walls, John, that will prevent the wind from causing problems. I have noticed this when we have storms.”

John reminded him that sailing boats such as the fishers used worked on the same principle.

“The wind pushes against the sails, and that gives impetus to the boat to move forward. They just have to be careful when to have their sails up: the wind has to be blowing in the direction they want to go.”

Brando was amazed. “I have never seen boats; never been to the coast. It sounds like I should visit the fishers to see what I can learn from them.”

He paused, then added, “I was just about to suggest sails for moving the carts, but if the wind has to be going in the right direction, it will be no use for carts on trails, no matter how wide, as the wind keeps changing its direction. Your rail tracks would have the same problem of wind direction: these would only work if the track was almost straight and the wind almost directly behind. Damned awkward!”

John had been thinking of where to find large enough stones that could still be moved by wheelbarrow.

“Sorry, yes. There are ways of angling a sail to get the benefit of wind from the front, but there is a limit to how much you can tack and still get the use of the wind.”

Brando was finished.

Once you get the walls protected with heavy stones, John, we can start thinking about the next house. How many of these panels do you have? Enough to build some homes at the Farfarers?”

“Sorry, no, We only have a limited number of panels, probably not enough for all of our tribe, but you can take the general idea and make your own version of these houses. If you can manage to slice a tree trunk lengthwise at intervals of two fingers, you’ll end up with many small panels – what I called planks – then you need to decide how to link them side by side, standing up. The simplest solution is to have a lip at the edge, so that the planks overlap, then you can nail or otherwise fix them together to make the size of panel you want. The length of the plank will determine how high you can make the walls, unless you can make a very strong overlap at the ends of the planks.”