Chapter 14

John reckoned he had just enough time to get home before darkness fell, so said his farewells and set off.

It was almost dusk when he reached the cave, but no predator had interrupted his journey, and he strode to the cave accompanied by the perimeter guard who was due to be off duty and would leave things to the night guard. The man was tired and bored from standing watch for hours with nothing happening, but John reminded him that nothing happening was preferable to being attacked by animals or men. The guard accepted this stoic view of the job and bid John a good night’s sleep.

John was welcomed by a trio of his wives who were waiting for him to get back and pleasure them tonight, so he hurried to get a quick wash before bedtime. The ladies promised him some food once they were satisfied, so he went with them. He didn’t get his food in the end, but instead fell asleep with tiredness. His wives didn’t notice either, for they had fallen asleep just as quickly.

For the next two weeks, the bicycle making operation gradually speeded up as workers became more proficient at making their parts, and there was a regular trip every few days with another delivery of bicycles added to the storage unit at the fisher village. When the sea merchant ship finally arrived back at the fisher village, there was a minimum of twenty bicycles ready for them.

They expressed delight at this ready-to-go cargo, and before they went on their way home, they suggested that a continuing supply of the machines would be welcomed, as they believed they would have a ready market for them in the northern continent. There was no message left for them by John about future business opportunities, so they didn’t know what might appeal to High Chief John’s tribes, other than a further supply of bison leather, so they left that primary suggestion with the Headman to pass on.

Over the following month, several babies were born to John’s wives, among them Raka. The women expressed surprise at the early arrival of their babies, and John queried his nannites on the matter. It was not easy to understand what they tried to get over to him, but he got the impression that they had examined how the birth process worked, and decided that it could be speeded up a little by them, without harm to either baby or mother. They had reduced the time from getting pregnant to birth by two weeks or so; the timing was still not exact no matter what they did. It remained dependent on the mother’s physical condition, her size and shape; and the dimensions of the baby due to squeeze through the pelvic girdle. The nannites did not aim to make major changes to the body during pregnancy, as they were being cautious while they learned more about how the human body worked, while working to their own instruction manual inscribed, if that is the word for the attached data, on their very molecules.

The businesses that the tribes worked on all progressed rapidly after the new production methods were implemented. Even the making of art benefitted, as a worker could sand down edges of a wooden or stone piece, or could chip a flint to fit a designated spot in an artwork, or prepare a painting surface for the artist. It was at first surprising to John how often an artist could be helped by an assistant, until he checked the works on art in their library and found that even the great masters had assistants who did things like fill in patches of colour in a major work, to allow the great man to concentrate on details.

Numa’s tribe slowly expanded into huts outside the cave, as a variety of construction techniques were tried. The generally damp conditions year-round persuaded John that foundations were important for hut walls, to cut down rot, so a number of types of stone were tested for this purpose. John recalled the stone foundations used by Ferando at the fisher village, and made a short visit to ask him how well it had worked. He learned a few tricks from Ferando.

The main requirement for new huts was that the stone should not transmit dampness between the soil and the wall, and the other requirement was a simplicity of cutting into flattish blocks for a satisfactory foundation layer. It was not easy to find both in the same stone type, as higher density usually meant greater hardness, and the flatter stones came from sedimentary rock with lower hardness.

Then there was the question of the foundations supporting all the exterior walls, or simply having piers that supported load-bearing corners and similar points. The idea of a stone base for the entire building was dismissed as overkill for a simple house. There was a very simple idea for the tops of the piers; a slab of slate between the pier and the wall structure, for slate was impervious to water and was completely flat as a bonus.

The first group of huts made using native materials varied in these ways, and Raka had a regular rota of testing for dampness in the walls. The walls themselves were coated with a dense clay that resisted water penetration very effectively and allowed a range of internal construction materials from ‘wattle and daub’ to wood panels, but testing was ongoing.

Sales of art objects increased in volume and their quality commanded good values in trading, while the new moccasins in bison leather quickly took off, due to their hard-wearing properties. The soaps maintained their popularity, especially among women who liked the perfumed soaps available, so there was a steady demand from the soap makers for plant oils and wood ashes. Many of the younger teenagers of the tribe, along with a warrior as a protector, were sent farther afield to obtain dead wood for burning in safe places to produce ashes, and the cook-fires were raided for ashes with some regularity.

It all added to an increasing trading business, bringing back more goods that either added to the productivity, or added to the prosperity of John’s group of tribes. Before long, the fisher village asked to become part of his group, partly through a desire for mutual protection and partly through their own advancement after their human losses at sea dropped dramatically and their catches improved through their more stable craft.

Beyond that area of personal influence, reputation counted for a lot, and it showed in surprising ways.

As more and more single women and widows – some with children - turned up at the three tribes, asking to join and be respected, the tribes they left either had to suffer a steady population drain or adopt a regime that sought to match John’s tribal group. The extra women added to the workforce and enhanced further the production levels, and a steady stream of new bicycles made its way to the northern continent via the sea merchants, and closer to home every trader was eventually able to earn himself a cargo bicycle and increase the amount of goods a trader could offer to tribes within his trading routes. Business for traders became excellent.

Food production increased as well, as more land was turned from forest into growing ground for crops of herbs, amaranth, and potatoes. It took some years before potatoes were producing enough of an edible crop and of the right quality to become part of the staple diet of the tribes. The jicama plant was a vine that had to be trained up a tree, so was encouraged to grow in the preserved local forest. The bulbous root was the edible crop and was viewed much as John thought of it: as a turnip substitute. Other forest fruits continued to be naturally harvested, as that saved costs in what might be a futile effort at domestication. John was aware that tomatoes could be cultivated, but at this time picking the fruits from the wild was simpler and more cost-effective.

The crop of babies also increased, until all of John’s wives were mothers. Gana and Rana over the next few years became wives, happily joining their eldest sister Ranga as a wife of their hero.

Not a single wife was harmed by childbirth, thanks to the watchful nannites, and as similar events happened inside all his tribal group, John’s fame as a shaman spread widely, and tribes began to send expectant mothers to John’s tribes to give birth, treating these tribes almost like a maternity hospital group. Their success led to more ‘admissions’ for other medical cases, and once nannite-loaded hands were laid upon them, they slowly got better until they could go home and spread the word of these marvellous tribes that could heal so many ailments.

Such a reputation turned from its intended practical solution into being viewed as a magic source of healing, and as with tribal healers, a tribe sending a patient for curing began to send a payment in tribute along with the patient, and often a second tribute when the patient arrived back, cured.

Each patient was able to observe closely the social interactions in the host tribe, and quickly noted that men and women were treated as equals for most purposes, and that fathers were seen helping to care for their children and educating them in all things, whether they be boys or girls. It made no difference who was doing the educating, as long as they could do it, and women could be seen making things like weapons, and even practicing with them!

This observation, that John’s tribes had women who were training as warriors, boosted these tribes’ prominence as tough opponents should anyone dare to offend them, and so when any tribe came under threat of possible attack, they were quick to send a message to John’s group, asking for help. It was always answered; sometimes by a single squad of warriors arriving to train the local tribe in defensive measures such as preparing traps and in training locals in new fighting skills, learning about a ‘killing ground’ and organising them to fight as ordered bands supporting each other, shield to shield. The idea of a shield wall soon stuck, and on the odd occasion when an attack did happen, the attackers were swiftly repelled and destroyed, with any survivors recruited as slaves with an opportunity for freedom if they acted industriously on behalf of the tribe for a minimum of a year.

Most of these slaves eventually became willing members of the tribe. Any that did not fit in during the year were summarily killed rather than allow a criminally-centred man to continue living as a threat. Such executions concentrated the minds of other slaves towards succeeding in their transition to joining a successful tribe.

More importantly, slowly all the surrounding tribes became eager to form a mutual-defence pact with John’s group, so that an attack on one tribe was regarded as an attack on all, and warriors for other tribes in the group could be called upon to bolster the forces of the tribe under threat; and often the threatening tribe was told to move away or else ... Faced with such terms, they either buckled under and departed, or decided to attack. Deciding to attack was a fatal decision, for before long the attacking tribe was defeated and all the warriors who fought were slaughtered. The defeated tribe was absorbed into the mutual defence grouping and all the absorbed children were educated into the ethos of their new masters, while many of the women of the tribe, mostly widows of deceased warriors, often became wives of the victors. It was swiftly noticed that these women were not simply raped or enslaved, but were treated as useful members of society and able to make their own decision about becoming a wife to a victorious warrior. This made such a marriage a more enticing prospect.

This led to a more amicable absorption into the defence grouping, and so through time the grouping expanded farther and farther, taking its ethos with it. Inter-tribal warfare rapidly became history.

Contact with the sea merchants revealed that much the same thing was happening on the northern continent, where it was slowly being accepted that having a brown skin, a pale skin or a black skin made no difference to the kind of person you were, and intermarriage with those new technically advanced people emphasised this acceptance and so being an original native inhabitant or one of the arrivals from a mysterious future time did not prevent anyone from learning new skills or becoming part of this new society that was building wonderful things all the time.

The crews of the sea merchant ships speedily began to be made up of those local men who could adopt the needed talents of seafaring, then when it became clear that the tribes in the central part of the double continent were allowing women to take up occupations they had a talent for, the captains began to see that women need not just be cooks aboard ship, but could be crew members if they were able to do the job. Choosing single women as crew members might also end up with these ladies becoming a wife of another crew member, or simply have a great time being wooed by a number of men. As and when she became pregnant, she could select one of her admirers as the man who had officially fathered the baby and get him to marry her and then she would be faithful to him in future. The captain could only see one drawback; if the female crew member caused arguments among the men. That would be the time he would step in and tell her that if this continued, she would be dropped off at the next tribe they traded with and take her chances there.

The cargo from the north became more and more manufactured goods such as basic machines for grinding food or cutting wood with a bronze two-handed saw, or wooden frames they called sieves for sifting materials to allow the small items to go through and hold back the larger ones. Coastal villages found these useful for sifting beach sand to gather complete shells of various sizes, while giving them clean sand to mix with clays to form adobe. The merchants explained that the proportions needed to be about 70 per cent sand and 30 per cent clay to make this a useful building material; and this advice helped the trading of more sieves. They also advised washing the sand in fresh water to remove the salt before making adobe.

The coastal villages improved their production capabilities of the tasty sea salt they could make by evaporation of seawater. This was always superior in taste to the rock salt found in some places on land. The heat of the sun was sufficient for the task, but on cloudy and rainy days the process slowed down dramatically. For these days, the fishers had devised a channel to carry part-evaporated water to a drying kiln with a lipped flat top. This was protected from rain by a wide canopy made from local wood and standing a short distance above the evaporation roof of the kiln. The air could get to it, helping to carry away the steam, but the drying salt was protected. The fishers found a ready market for their high quality salt, either as direct delivery from the villages or via the traders who would fill their bicycle’s cargo basket with salt, once the basket was lined with leather and a close-woven cloth. Finally the basket was closed with a leather lid to keep moisture off it.

The sea merchants were keen on the cargo bicycles as a product to sell. As soon as the supply of cargo bicycles had made enough impact on the northern continent, the ships started trading some of their bicycle supply to tribes they encountered every time they stopped to trade. That way, they were in the market for more bicycles every time they came back to the fisher village where they first got them. So a steady stream of bicycles made by John’s tribes came to the fisher village for storage until the sea merchants arrived, and then all of these devices were taken aboard for their next stage in the trading journeys.

The merchants left in exchange a range of their own manufactures with a promise to supply more of those which John’s tribes found most to their liking. This worked well, for some of these devices could be adapted for improving the production of bicycles.

For the present, John’s collection of wives did not increase in numbers, only in size when they got pregnant. Since the nannites were involved, every single one of them wanted to have more children; even those like Jean who had at first been ambivalent about bearing offspring.

With other women in the tribes seemingly keen to have more children, aided by the promise of doing so in safety, the number of children increased far beyond what a native tribe naturally produced. Illnesses and minor accidents normally would lead to an early death of young children, but now each of these events became less and less dangerous.

Resulting from this abundance of children, the tribes soon had a need for a more structured education of the youngsters, and so a selection from the prized library of volumes stashed inside the dark storerooms were brought out and as the children learned the language used by John, Vicky, Sheila and Jean, they were taught to read the English language so that in a few years they could use this information resource to gain valuable knowledge in many subjects that had previously been unknown to the local tribes.

However, they also learned from their native mothers details of indigenous plants and animals, and products obtainable from this local ecology, as well as the codes of social behaviour expected of them.

Year by year, the women produced more children, and slowly more children gained a good all-round education; and learned more about social matters from all the adults around them. They absorbed the modernised social standards of the tribe, and found themselves proud to belong to a tribe that valued every member.

Ten years later, Chief Numa was still Chief, and slowly became aware that neither she nor John had aged; and neither had any other adult in the tribe, at least all those who had been here for long enough for their internal machines to start making the necessary changes. There was no sign of the debilities of aging either in muscular deterioration or ability to maintain the uses of their bodies in any of their regular duties and pastimes. They all were nowadays as mentally agile as before and the warriors and hunters were able to perform their tasks without any concern for a reduced ability to continue. There was none of that, only a dearth of prey for them to hunt.

Even more amazing, there was almost no social conflict between John’s wives. There was no jealousy, only a willingness to cooperate for the benefit of the family; and no-one seemed to regard this as anything other than normal, despite the fact that any normal family group of that size would be expected to squabble over even minor matters, and differ on the precedence of each mother’s children within the family. It was as if every child was equally loved by every other mother, and this was treated as normality despite it being an oddity in the time some of them had come from originally.

John reflected that if a child is brought up in a deprived household, as he grew, he or she did not regard himself as deprived, for life was just what it was. It was only when a deprived child encountered other more advantaged children that he or she realised that there was a difference. In this family’s case, it was the other way round; the new ways were regarded as normal. There was no difference between the child of one wife and the child of another wife, or the child of any other woman of the tribe. They were all the same, and all treated the same, no matter the parents. No-one was disadvantaged.

Even Numa, the tribal Chief, did not try to make her offspring more important than John’s children by other wives. The concept of primogeniture had not been ingrained in local tribes, though the occasional Chief tried to get his son into his position after him; but John did not see any advantage to be gained by that practice. Who your parents were did not make you any more fit to run a tribe than any other person with some managerial talent. Past history showed little evidence that being the son of a king made you good at ruling when it became your turn. It required training, just like any other occupation.

Neither did the practice of a strong man grabbing power, for that did not provide any better rule than another person. It was instead pot luck as to whether the strong man did a good job or a bad job, so John could only count himself lucky that Numa was doing such a good job as tribal chief. Probably it was because she was a woman and saw things with a more equitable view than a man would view things, looking at the same situation.

As he thought about other things, John’s nose told him that clothes were currently being washed. He had hardly noticed it before, so detecting faint aromas must be another of the ‘improvements’ made by the nannites. He wondered about it, as he was by now used to clothes being washed in the stream, but this aroma was reminiscent of a warm water wash back where he came from. His curiosity got the better of him, and he wandered back to find Numa.

When he found her, he asked, “Numa love, who is washing clothes in warm water? It has a unique aroma that I recognised.”

“Thank Vickie for that, darling. I never expected to appreciate your chosen woman from your previous time, but she came up with an idea that is good. Cleaning our babies’ clothing doesn’t work very well with cold water, so she devised a scheme to get hot water for the purpose. We have regular fires to produce ashes for our soap-making, so she suggesting using the heat of these fires to warm water. She persuaded some of our men to build two stone walls on either side of the fire, with a thin stone layer over the top between them. To make a container for water, she made a clay vessel; wide and long, but with edges that stuck up about a hand’s width all round. This sits on top of the stones that go over the walls. These get fairly hot from the fire underneath. You pour water from the stream into this ‘basin’, as she called it, and the fire underneath heats it up. Once the water is hot enough, you add liquid soap and the soiled baby clothing and let it boil for a while, then you fish out the clothes with a pair of sticks, and finish them off in the stream. It makes for a much cleaner result, we found.