Chapter 2

“Do you happen to be able to speak English?”

John switched back to his native tongue. “I speak British English, but American English is fine by me, if that is your normal speech.”

“Good. That makes things simpler for me. I asked to speak with you, High Chief, as your exploits as I heard them were not compatible with local tribal norms, at any level. They exhibited thinking and actions that must come from the future; a long time in the future.”

“The future?” John queried. “How far into the future would you estimate? A hundred years?”

“No, a lot more than that. I would guess at thousands of years, if that was possible.”

John acknowledged, “That would indeed be possible, but only as a one-way street; no going back.”

“Ah,” the Captain said knowingly, “You have the same problem.”

“That sounds like you were sent here by a machine, with the same limitations. Is that so?”

“It is so. What date did you start from?” Grendel wanted to know.

“Two thousand and twenty nine, in our reckoning. And your people?”

“Two thousand and thirty six, probably by the same dating system, and so from the same or similar timeline. We were sent here under false pretenses, by a government military research group that told us we were part of a matter transmission project that was nearing completion. Some practical testing was required to check out how humans could use it for military purposes. All they had done so far was send small mammals; now they needed to be sure that humans could use the system satisfactorily, and more than one at a time if it was going to work for military purposes; and how much supplies and equipment could be sent as well, though they did not want to try with both at once. Humans first, equipment later. This all seemed plausible, as it was in line with military thinking as we expected it to be.

There was a promise of a large sum of money for us in recompense, or for our families if we came to any harm; not that they expected any harm to befall us, they said, but their lawyers had insisted on this protection as a guarantee of good will.

All of us volunteers came from low economic backgrounds, and were mainly black or Hispanic. It didn’t occur to us as strange that none of the volunteers for a military project were trained military personnel. Those men selected were all trades-persons; the type of people able to make things. We were sent in pairs, male and female, married couple preferred. We presumed this was to compare the effects of matter transmission on different genders. It turned out that this was in reality for genetic survival if we got stuck in the past; they were talking positive but planning negative. They at least were expecting us to survive the trip.

Before we entered the machine we had to dress in clothes that did not use any metal; woollen, cotton or linen material, horn buttons – no zips – and leather belts with horn buckles. It did seem like wise precautions before trying with metal objects, like a microwave cooker – or guns, in their minds. As if a microwave cooker would work where there was no electricity supply! Guns don’t need a power source, so they could work anywhere.

We were told the aim was to move us from the facility where the machine was sited to another one hundreds of miles away. That was the story, to keep us docile. Instead, we found ourselves here, or rather, now, for once we recovered some memory – and that took a long while – we reckoned we were in the distant past, with no sign of any substantial human construction around us. And you?”

John gave his story. “A hate group of the period, based on Nazi-type ideology, forcibly took over a research project on time travel that they had heard about through someone connected to the research program. They forced the technicians to send designated people back to act for them. Their plan was to make social changes back here that would result in their preferred social structure being established early and generation by generation continued to their present, making the world end up as they wanted it to be. They either brainwashed me in their ideology, or I was a plant to discover what was going on; I can’t remember which, but I was an ex-SAS man, so prepared for anything.

I was sent through naked, with only a wooden crossbow and bolts for armament; it turned out to be a good choice of protection, and more weapons and material were sent through later, when they became more convinced that metals could go through safely. My intervention in local affairs was supposed to start some sort of changes in the timeline, and more was expected as I went on influencing the locals.

However, this is not what transpired.

Nothing resulted in their time, nothing at all changed, no matter what they tried, according to certain women sent after me, so I have concluded that this present timeline is not the same one as their and our original timeline. What we do will produce our own future, not an alteration of theirs. Accordingly, I aim to go in the opposite direction, and encourage a hopefully egalitarian society for this future, as I think that is more productive both socially and economically. Damn their ideology of military force and pressure to get their ways!

What sort of society did you come from, and what are your own plans at this time period?”

Grendel explained, “Our homeland was relatively free of coercion, but the government had a military research arm that explored possibilities that were officially not believed to be practical, and so not forbidden. Lying to your test subjects is nothing new in government research; we were naive enough that we could not imagine we would be lied to by senior people in authority.

Matter transmission seemed as feasible to us as time travel must have seemed to you; not that time travel was ever mentioned. It was all scientific gobbledegook to me. We didn’t recognise that this timeline is no longer the timeline we came from, but it makes sense to believe your word on that matter. It should give us more freedom of action.”
John asked, “How long have you been here, that you are able to construct such large ships in an era of little more than small boats and rafts? You must rule the seas.”

“We have been here for about twenty years, at a guess. We did not all arrive together, but over several months. I have concluded that the scientists kept adjusting their machine and trying with another pair of subjects, but they probably never had any response to indicate what had happened to their subjects.

Someone must have concluded that we had ended up back in time or in another reality, and started sending us tools and equipment to enable us to survive wherever we happened to end up. They were getting no feedback, so they sent us more and more equipment that could run without an electrical power system. Someone must have told them about the earlier machine sending people into the far past, and decided the same had happened to us, despite their attempts to change it to movement in space rather than movement in time. They guessed wrong or got their technology skewed.

Gradually they sent us more useful stuff: diesel-powered generators, and tanks of diesel fuel, some battery-powered tools, and so on, but eventually they stopped sending supplies, through having nothing back to say what had happened to us; or they may have been ordered to stop what was seen as a wasteful operation, of no benefit to our masters. Instead of transmission through space, they had sent us through space and time to this era in whatever timeline this is, and that was useless to the military mind. Essentially they gave up on us.”

“So how did you manage to get a sawmill running, to produce timber for shipbuilding?”

“We used a diesel generator to run a motor to power a stone circular saw that we made, and that got us started. We improved the machinery and got a higher-powered saw in operation, after smelting unwanted items to make a circular saw in steel. We had to cannibalise other equipment to make improvements we needed, but it worked; we had men who knew how to make things.

That improved sawmill could cope with long tree trunks, and so could produce thick timbers for shipbuilding. The diesel won’t last for ever, so we are starting to use distilled alcohol from plant sugars to run the diesel engines: it seems to work.”

John started, as a memory came to him.

“Wait a minute: alcohol and diesel engines don’t mix, at least not for long. I was told that by an army maintenance guy during one of my S.A.S. courses. He said to me, if you can’t find diesel for your vehicle engine, look for vegetable oils instead. Avoid straight alcohol; it is bad for a diesel engine. I would take that advice, on the cautionary principle.”

“Ah. I will pass on that advice, thank you.

Did you not get anything like that sent through to help you?”

“I did, of sorts, but you should recall that the object was to install a military-style government controlling the people. Accordingly, I was sent a good number of hand-held weapons and ammunition, but the tools and equipment side were small-scale stuff suitable for building homes from wood; nothing large-scale.

I was sent a single rocket-propelled bazooka – a tube which fired a small rocket, but just a few of the rockets came with it. I used two of these to attack the ship that was under the control of pirates, so I have only one rocket left.”

“Do you want to come and visit our base?” Grendal enquired, ignoring the subject of a bazooka.

“How far away is it? On this continent, or another?” John wanted to know.

“We estimate it is in what will be the United States in our time, up a large river to the interior.”
“That sounds what to me would be the Mississippi. Do you have the same name for it?”

“Yes, it is the same; it comes from a native language. While your timeline and my timeline are most probably different ones, much of our past is probably the same, especially the geography. Our base, where we landed and settled, is up that river, before it gets very shallow, near what in our time was St Louis, but the machine that sent us was near Los Angeles, so we see no rationale for the destination.”

“I get you. There appears to be no pattern as to where we were sent through time either, for I started in the United States of America. However, I estimate this is somewhere in Central America, so we have been dumped more or less at random by our machines, it seems; but a consistent randomness as all subsequent materiel and personnel landed in the same spot.”

“So, to ask again, do you want to visit?”

“Too far away at the moment, sorry. I have a lot of commitments here that demand my presence; specifically a surprising number of wives, two tribes that I am the overall High Chief for, and a number of friendly tribes farther afield who expect to see me from time to time.

Another thing to think about: I developed a working relationship with one of the group of nobles who led an invading army that we had trouble with. They seem to originate in the south, but I don’t know where. They are of similar skin colouring to the natives here, so I have assumed them to be domiciled in this continent. We have chased them off for now, but who knows? We may need to build an army of our own to defend ourselves.”

“But from what I was told, there was an army coming down from the north of here. Can you not link up with them?”

“You mean, my imaginary army?”

“Imaginary? You mean there is no army there?”

“I invented it to scare off the invaders, and made a few fighting forays to persuade the invaders that the first scouting probes of the army of the north were attacking them.”
“But how?”

“My female warriors. I trained them in mass archery, and in fighting at night, both unheard of here. They were very effective. The most important training was in teaching them to shoot their arrows on command, then retreat into the darkness without any close encounters. We did not lose a single archer in our attacks that way.”

“Why female warriors? That goes against all the tribal traditions in this area and further afield. It is a male-dominated society.”

“WAS a male-dominated society,” John corrected. “My tribe started out as an equal-opportunity tribe, and the policy has spread to our associated tribe. In fact, the idea of women having equal but different talents is spreading. When your women can fight alongside your men, and just as effectively, you double your fighting force and make the tribe more powerful.

What’s not to like? And once women see that they can be trained to fight, they want to be equal in other ways too. It all enhances a tribe’s economy and ability to defend itself.”

“The locals have accepted this idea?”

“Slowly they are seeing the advantages, but it will take a long time to succeed fully. Both my tribes have a female Chief, and that helps spread the message. Visitors have to deal with a female Chief if they want to trade or make a diplomatic alliance, or whatever.”
“Interesting. We adopted a policy of our women pretending to be subservient to our men when dealing with local tribes, but acting normally within our own base area.”

“That must restrict your local relationships. What do you do if one of your men wants to marry a local girl?”

“That has happened occasionally. We integrate the girl into our group, gradually letting her see that our ‘tribe’ acts in a new way that she has to adapt to. She has to stay within our base until she is fully into our way to thinking, and warned that if she ever reveals how our women act at home, she will be completely restricted to the base. It is tough for these girls, but they slowly come round, once they see the advantages.”

“It sounds too much like apartheid existed in South Africa in my timeline. It didn’t work in the long term; it eventually collapsed. I think our way is better. We tell other tribes what we do, and why, and that the tribe benefits from the emancipation of women. You shouldn’t be afraid to bring the local tribes round to our modern way of treating women, as long as they are convinced of a benefit for themselves. Equality in marriage is a hard sell, but do-able, for the women are on your side at once!

The new Maker in our tribe is a woman, and she works well with the male Maker of the neighbouring tribe. They are working out the best way to construct huts with split logs, - much better than wattle and daub; tougher and more weather-proof.”

Captain Grendel smiled. “We could sell you sawn planks instead of you using split logs.”

“Or you could sell us a small sawmill to make our own planks; even better,” challenged John.

“Perhaps. What do you sell at the moment?”

“Mostly soap and hair shampoo, and ‘made to measure’ moccasins. They both trade well, and we are seriously considering entering the art market, starting with sculptures of the Earth Mother. Is she the normal deity in your location?”

“Why, yes, I believe it is. We have just ignored the local religion and the shamans, as of no interest to us.”

“Well, in addition to being High Chief, I am Shaman of John’s tribe, and a recognised shaman in the Farfarer’s Tribe. I am also on good terms with the Shaman of this fishing village. Making friends with the Chief and the Shaman is the best way of getting along with a tribe.”

“You certainly seem to have integrated well with the natives, High Chief. No difficulty with your skin colour being white, or at least very pale?”

“I am regarded as curiously coloured, but accepted as a man of power and ability, particularly as a powerful shaman. Such traits seem to be better regarded than skin colour. The fisherfolk here seem to think you are scary, Captain, viewed from a distance and by repute, according to your messengers, but whether that is your skin colour, your high position, or your method of control, I cannot guess.”
Grendel laughed at the reputation he was being given.

John continued, “Why such big ships? I assumed they were for ocean travel.”

“No, they are bulk carriers for trading, just as back in our time we had bulk tankers of immense size. It is cheaper to send a large ship that can supply any amount of specific goods at one time, rather than in small batches such as itinerant traders can manage. You want corn, we say, ‘how much?’ and supply accordingly, as long as you can do us a good trade in return.”

John asked out of interest, “Do you trade in metals?”

“Not yet. The demand is not there, and the cost in smelting is so high because of the high temperatures that are needed, so there is not good trading to be had. If you want some ores, we might be able to help. Copper ores are easily found, and I suppose we could smelt the ore and cast copper ingots if you want them for bronze daggers and such.”

John waved a finger at him. “No, we would also need tin to make bronze, and that is rarer, and arsenic would work, but is too dangerous to use. We have enough steel knives and such to do us for a long while. Copper would be good for casting small sculptures to make them more valuable. Yesterday we obtained a chunk of amber with a small ant preserved inside it. Do you have amber as part of your inventory?”

Grendel screwed up his face as he thought.

“I don’t have amber on this ship, and I haven’t heard of amber being traded. It comes from the Baltic, doesn’t it?”

“The bulk of it in our time did, but apparently there is a source somewhere in the Caribbean islands.”

“It is something I will look into, John. You want some if we can find that source?”

“I think we could make some jewellery or something out of amber, yes. What trades are you looking for, to take home?”

“Curiously enough, wood. We find it difficult to source enough timber of the right size and quality for ship-building. It has to be located near a river or the sea, to make it accessible. We also use it for housebuilding, so timber with few defects is valuable in that respect. We don’t mind taking it as raw logs. You just have to get it to the coast for us to collect.”

John wrinkled his nose. “That is no small problem. It means using a river to float logs down to the coast, and we don’t as far as I know have a deep enough and straight enough river in our territory for that. We shall have to see if we can do a deal to cut timber where there is a short decent river to use for transportation. Most tribes ignore the larger trees, for smaller ones are more easily cut and used for many purposes. We would also need to be able to corral the logs at the river mouth until a ship arrives; that could take months.”

“Okay. If you can arrange for a shipment of good logs at a river mouth, we will gladly take them for a good price, possibly in copper or amber or whatever you are looking for. Just leave word at any of the coastal villages as to where you and the logs are, and the first ship calling in will make a point of collecting your logs and settling on a trade for them.

Even if we didn’t have your requested goods aboard that ship, we would give your representative a promissory note, perhaps carved in wood or slate, or anything more durable than paper. We have a reputation as good traders, so our reputation is your true guarantee.”

John looked slightly embarrassed as he admitted to Grendel, “Talking about reputation, we used you to bolster our fairy tale of a northern army. We allowed the invader army to be told that ships had been sighted in the north, and that they looked like fighting ships. The idea was to suggest the Northern army had a naval component, making them stronger if they could be supplied by sea. I hope that does not cause difficulties for you elsewhere.”

Grendel snorted. “Those invaders lost our goodwill when they captured one of our trading ships, even if the pirates were renegades; they had been part of that army, and slaughtered our crew; that is enough for us. We will not trade with them, except at exceptional prices by way of their apology.”

John asked, “Please do not trade in slaves, as I regard slavery as inhuman.”

Grendel agreed, “No need to concern yourself about that. Enough of us blacks have slavery in our ancestry that we would not want to impose slavery on anyone else. Back in Africa, it was other tribes that cheerfully sold captured men and women as slaves for the European slave traders. If we can find a way to release slaves at any time, we will; such as refusing to trade with a tribe if they use slaves, and them killing the slaves will simply make it worse for them, we make sure to tell their leaders.”

“Good to hear. Thank you, Captain Grendel.”

“No. It is good to find such agreement on social matters. By the way, do you have a surname?”

“Oh, yes: Hunter. Is Grendel your surname?”

“It is. My forename is John, so we have something in common, but call me Grendel or Captain Grendel; it is easier that way.”

“Sorry, I had assumed at first that Grendel was your forename, derived from a surname, much the same as the forename Gordon started off as a surname, and that in turn originated from a place-name!”

“I see what you mean. My surname comes from French in some way, I think, but I haven’t looked into it. Not much point in doing so now, is there?”

John smiled his understanding. “We have to live as we find ourselves, Captain. Fortunately the girl I intended to marry got sent back here as an inducement for me to do what they wanted. It didn’t work for them, but I was glad to have her. She has accepted the other wives I have gathered as part of life in this era, so she is glad to be married to me at last.”

“You seem to have a lot of wives, John. Was that through your position?”

“Not as you would expect, but mostly through a stupid tribal tradition that a woman away from her tribe, if caught by a man, belongs to him, as servant, concubine, or wife if he thinks that way. Rescuing stolen girls turns out to have the same response from the tribe, so within one day I had five women at my beck and call, having saved them all one way or another. Others decided they wanted to be a wife to me, and one thought it would be diplomatically worthwhile to link our tribes, like a treaty. She now likes being a Chief, my wife, and bearing my children later.”

“As long as your women don’t fight, for that can be a problem in polygamous marriages I understand.”

“Captain, it astonished me at first that none of them fights with the others. It now appears to be linked with the nanomites, or nannites, that were injected into me to make sure I produced enough heirs to take over many tribes as we expanded their anticipated empire. The nanomites seem to be programmed to encourage close cooperation between spouses, to spur more procreation and child-rearing, and I get the benefit. I also seem to have medical nanites in me to keep me healthy, and they seem to spread to my wives and to other members of our tribe. I have been told I now have a reputation among other tribes as ‘the white healer’, as I tried to assist them over the diseases they got from the invaders. As I kept having to move on, they never got to know who I was, so I ended up almost as a legend.”

Grendel laughed, “Becoming a legend could be fun. Becoming a scary person is not to be recommended. I must work on my reputation, to be seen as tough but fair.

Do you live far from this fishing village?”

John ignored the sudden switch in topic, but became cautious. “Several hours walk inland from the village, but we are currently looking at the possibility of moving the tribe to a new site as we expand our population. We have attracted new people, and some of those we have rescued from slavers have decided to stay with us, especially those who have developed a romantic interest in one of the other residents. I am keen to have a diverse population in our tribe, as it will provide a wider range of genetic lines. Too many with my own line could be bad for the tribe, and I already have eight or nine children on the way.”

“Really? The patriarchy getting established? You must have something going for you with the ladies.”

“That may be down to a surfeit of pheromones. It seems that I have some sort of strong male perfume that the ladies find attractive. Another factor is that here females expect to be treated as a woman as soon as they start menstruating, and often have a baby on the way soon afterwards. It must have to do with the parental urge overcoming the need to learn to be an adult. In my time we frowned on early teens getting pregnant, for fatalities in childbirth are worse in very young girls. Here, having babies at a young age is seen as normal; at least among the male-centrist tribes. I have to cope with females expecting through social pressure to be mothers by fifteen or sixteen.

I wonder if it is the lifespan dynamic? You know, the shorter you expect your life to be, the more you want to have children to leave behind. By my time, we expected to live to seventy at least, so children were less of an urgent necessity for most couples.”

“It was still the same a few years later by my time, though if you are low in the economic scale, you are more likely to indulge in procreation; sort of, ‘What the heck? Sex is fun and if I have a baby, so what?’ The better-off families pushed their children to aim first for higher education, to become doctors, lawyers, and other well-paying professions. They expected to qualify, get a good job, then get married when they can afford a family that can follow in their footsteps.”

John agreed, saying, “Life is different here. The male-dominant society had one or more females if they were good hunters or chiefs, and in a way, it was the same as the lawyers and doctors: you could afford the cost of raising children to follow in your footsteps. The more assets and females you had, the more children; all if you could afford that lifestyle. Our rich men added mistresses where they could, instead of more wives as here.

I was pushed into it by a combination of events outwith my control, but I tried to combat the local conditions by starting my own tribe with my own rules of equality between men and women; all the rest stems from that decision. All my wives became my spouses because they wanted to be my wives, never because I forced them into it. My first wife, Numa, has the power of refusal of any potential wife, not me. It works well that way, for they all recognise her as the power in the family. She is now Chief of the tribe, and does it well, despite being only twenty. That is some girl!”

Grendel was amused.

“You seem to have got yourself entangled in women, John. Do you have plans for controlling a wider realm than a couple of tribes?”

“Plans, no, just a vision of a realm that grows by itself through building a society that is cohesive and outward-looking. I keep exploring new options, such as building better homes for my people, encouraging new products for trading, and doing my best to avoid conflict. Where conflict arises, my aim is to conclude it as fast as possible. I did a good stint in the British Special Air Service Regiment, where I learned that swift pre-emptive action to nip a problem in the bud was preferable to drawn-out fights on the battlefield. Our regiment has plenty of examples of that technique: set up a watch to gather intelligence, learn all the facts, prepare on the basis of the facts, and go in hard and fast before the enemy has a chance to think. You have less casualties on your side, and hopefully many casualties on the enemy side, such that the problem is swiftly resolved.”

“That assumes you have the forces available to hit hard. That seldom happens in this time.”

“Forces are what you make of them. We learned to use what you have, and turn it into a force multiplier, far more effective because of training in techniques and armament. When I made our second hit and run attack, I had previously spent many days teaching my warriors to be swift and accurate with their arrows, and more importantly, to follow my orders as a unit, not as individuals fighting on their own. I also had a man scouting the ground in advance of the attack, and reporting what we needed to know about the enemy, their disposition, and the land around them; the conditions where we would have to fight.

Then we used subterfuge, so that we were not seen as an effective force. My warriors spent a couple of days walking to where we could make our attack, but whenever we were seen by others, what were we? To onlookers of any kind, we were a bunch of women ambling along on a training jaunt, learning from a hunter how to use a bow and arrow in the field. Come nightfall, we switched to unit stealth mode, walking silently in single file along a forest path; not a word being said until we reached our attack positions. Even then, it was a few quiet commands that they had rehearsed and knew intimately.

We attacked silently, sending showers of arrows into the enemy forces, then when all our arrows were spent, immediately reversed our actions and left the battleground, heading away as fast as we could in silence, back to a rendezvous point where we could relax until morning. There we assumed our former identity as a modest training group, but using a different route home.