Chapter 9

The first two tribes that knew of and remembered the impact could only offer a general direction but more specifically than his original line; and the third one related it to a distant mountain, saying the explosion was just to the left of that mountain. That pleased John, though he hoped it was not actually on the mountain’s sloping flank. His advisor was puzzled by the long delay between the explosion and John arriving to look for it.

John explained that when it occurred, he was a very long distance away and had only now been able to come to view this wonder. The other raised his eyebrows, saying, “But all that is there is a hole in the ground, and devastation, according to those who have seen the spot!”

John shrugged, saying, “To me, that is a wonder I want to see with my own eyes.”

The man perceived John as a weirdo, pushing around a funny contraption and asking silly questions, until John explained he was looking for wisdom from unusual happenings. The man now smiled, as he recognised this oddity was a bit soft in the head, but seemed harmless.

“Well, thanks to the Lord Father, you will get to see your wonder.”

John regarded the man with renewed interest and voiced, “Not thanks to the Great Mother?”

The man looked at John as if he was indeed crazy, and said, “The Lord Father is a male God, as everyone knows.”

“Interesting. Many tribes know the Creator as female, and call her the Great Mother, but here you call the same personage the Lord Father? Well, I suppose, why not?”

“What do you mean?” The guy queried.

“The Creator is truly unique; neither man nor woman, so does not care what title of address we use. Great Mother or Lord Father, it is all the same to the Creator, would you agree?”

“I suppose so. There is a certain truth in that,” he admitted. “What are you, a shaman or something?”

“Yes, I am a Shaman,” John told him. “I view our whole world as a wonder to be enjoyed. Some bits are more wonderful than others, and worth taking a look at.”

“If you think that way, it is fine by me,” the now less belligerent man agreed, and they parted.

John continued on his way, this time heading more directly to the site, and as he topped a small rise, he saw the devastation in the valley below. The was a rough circle of flattened trees, with them all radiating out from the impact point. There was indeed a hole, but it was not very large, merely about a hundred yards in diameter, his mind told him. He reflected that he should be thinking in metres, but his early childhood memories were based on the old measures and these had stuck. His early memories had risen more to the surface recently, he mused

He sat down to examine the site at a distance before venturing closer. The trees were not really in a true circle; more of an ellipse, suggesting the meteorite landed at an angle. The angle implied that any iron derived from the meteorite would be found a little farther in the direction of the longer part of the ellipse. He also wondered if there would be any nuclear radiation arising from the impact, then kicked himself for thinking that. Impact on this scale would be simple thermodynamics, and the radioactive content would be the same as for Earth rocks, so no extra radiation beyond the background radioactivity that existed everywhere. That still left the question of whether the object was an iron meteorite, a stony meteorite, or a carbonaceous chondrite, with no iron to speak of in the last two. He was aware that most meteorites were stony ones, with others being stony-iron and a few being iron, plus the mostly organic carbonaceous chondrites. Thus the odds of finding meteoric iron were actually very low.

He blinked as he reconsidered. Why did he think that, he wondered. A voice in his head replied, “You read it.”

The nannites had dredged this up from a long-ago memory, but this now meant that he would be wasting his time looking for meteoric iron at this site. He would have to be extremely lucky for there to be iron here at all.

As he was near a mountain anyway, John decided he might as well go higher and hunt around for signs of potatoes or any other mountain plants of interest. He first found a spot for a meal break and made himself comfortable. As he sat, he wondered about how cold it could get higher up. At low levels, the climate was fairly constant throughout the year, but height was a different matter. His supply pack did not include extra clothes for his upper body, so he wondered how it would feel at higher altitudes. He was no longer the fit SAS trooper he used to be.

Surprisingly, his internal guide informed him that they could persuade his muscles to create extra warmth if necessary. He thanked the cloud of machines inside him, and set off towards the mountain. He had no intention of going beyond the tree line, as it was unlikely in the extreme for there to be potatoes growing beyond that level.

It took him several hours of forward movement and then a slow ascent to the higher slope beyond. The trees became smaller, thinner and more twisted at these higher levels. He recalled reading about a pine tree that was found near the tops of some mountains, wind-blasted and almost dead from cold and dehydration, but many hundreds of years old at a minimum. He thought that the oldest had been cored and found to be several thousand years of age. This mountain did not appear to be that high and was unlikely to have the bristlecone pines. His nannite-infused memory had suddenly supplied the name of the pines and the fact that they were found in mountains in California – thousands of miles from here.

From his higher vantage point he had a good view of the countryside surrounding the mountain. In many places there were tendril of smoke drifting up from tribal fires, showing that the population distribution was much the same as elsewhere. Wherever there was good hunting, fruit and nut trees, and useful herbs, there were people.

He went on, and was rounding a small ridge when he faintly heard voices – men’s voices.

Odd, he thought, unless they were hunters; but what would they hunt up here? He moved cautiously to find out without being noticed. A little farther on there was a massive boulder where he could shelter and observe what was going on, so he crept there very slowly, for a slow movement does not catch the eye.

Once in position, he edged round to get sight of the source of the voices. In a hollow down in a little valley there was a group of men having a heated discussion. Only the louder voices conveyed any meaning, only some of the words were distinct. He strained to pick them up.

It appeared these were men who had been banished from several former tribes for unnamed antisocial acts, and had banded together for mutual support. They were discussing what they could do to benefit from the situation.

There was the occasional mention of small tribes and these tribes having few fighters. To John, that was stating the obvious, but he listened on. He gradually found the words easier to hear, and suspected that this was the nannites making improvements to his hearing ability.

As the argument continued, it was more and more clear that what was being proposed was an attack on a small tribe to kidnap teenagers to sell as slave to distant tribes, but there was a dispute about how hard it would be to effect the kidnaps and what reward they could expect from the possible buyers. No-one was certain of any of this, so there was an unease among some of the group. John could make out only about three of four voices, so sneaked a glance round the boulder for a quick count. He made it out to be nine men in total. Clearly the stronger ones were doing the talking and making their opinions felt. His mind corrected him: eight men; one had moved and had been counted twice.

“Thank-you, nannites,” he mentally spoke, but there was no response. They supplied information to him when needed, but seldom indulged in human chit-chat, for they were not human.

What to do? He asked himself. Returning his mind to his SAS days, he assessed that remaining in listening mode while out of sight was advised. As they were all criminals in his terms, they might not take kindly to an appearance by John. He took his own professional advice and waited.

All of them were not very high up the mountain, so the temperature was not very low; just enough to want to wrap your outer clothing around you a bit tighter to avoid the chill breeze that wafted around the rocks. He cooried in to the underside of the round boulder. A great Scots word, coorie, he thought; to snuggle in close out of the weather. Unfortunately he had no-one to coorie with, this time.

He crouched there for a long while. Crouching meant keeping his bum from getting cold from the rocks, yet was still a relatively comfortable stance. He leaning against the boulder, shifting slightly from time to time.

At last the men came to a conclusion. They agreed to tackle a single tribe, and if all went well, they could repeat their raid elsewhere. They had nothing to lose, they had decided. John disagreed with that assessment, for they still had their lives to lose. He concluded that he should follow them and later decide what to do. He couldn’t deter them as one man face to face, but he could ambush the group and take them out one by one using his stealth knowledge, if they carried out their plan.

Decision made, the group got up and made their way back down the mountain, still talking about what tribe they would target. They seemed to imagine that their plan would go off without a single miss-step. John knew that no plan ever goes according to plan.

Before moving to follow them, John checked what his footing would be like, because if he caused some rocks to tumble at his feet, the noise would carry and attract their attention over the muted sound of their chatting. He spotted signs of an animal track further down the slope, and cautiously edged over to make use of it. It went in the same general direction as the men, and would offer stable footing because the animals had made it so.

As it happened, the men inadvertently knocked some loose stones about, thus if John’s feet disturbed more stones, it would probably be heard as themselves once more, so he relaxed and concentrated on not being noticed. They were so intent on their footing, and not expecting anything coming from above, that none of them looked backwards, but John maintained his cautious movement and crouched as much as possible, to remain a small target if anyone looked back uphill. A small target hundreds of yards away could be expected by them to be a white-tailed deer, common on hillsides in these parts.

At their slope pace it took them at least half an hour to get down to the forested levels, but then it became more difficult to follow them without getting closer. John slid among the trees minutes later than they had done so, and had to hunt around for signs of their passage.

Eventually he spotted their trail and that made it easier. All he had to do was walk softly until he heard their voices, and then move among the trees until they had gone beyond his hearing. At that point he could resume following their trail.

Some considerable time later he realised that they had stopped moving, for the talking remained consistently from the one place. John slipped between the trees away from the trail and slowly made his way towards where they had stopped.

The matter was clarified when he spotted the group halted in a small clearing. They were gathered round what had been a former fire hearth and some were watching while a couple of them gathered sticks for restarting their camp fire and others gathered larger wood for maintaining the fire. They were practised at this task, he could see. John eased away so as not to be spotted by the firewood collectors.

Expecting them to stay put for a good while, John moved away into the trees and found a thicket where he could enter and relax to nibble his trail food and sip from his water gourd. No fire for him, unfortunately.

He was still close enough to hear when one of them laughed loudly, so he made himself comfortable for the night ahead, only sneaking out and farther away to shit and pee, then cover the sign with some decayed brushwood, not that the men would likely come anywhere close.

The weather stayed mild overnight, so John got a decent sleep and woke with the dawn. The men obviously did as well, for by the time he crept to near the clearing, they were up and gone on their way.

He followed, using the same techniques as yesterday, until they came close to a tribal clearing with a dozen huts built round a central meeting area. The locals were busy doing all the things a tribe did every day, the women setting up a cooking area round the day’s fire that had been lit an hour ago at least, for it was blazing strongly. Children played their own games on the flat central ground while a few old men sat outside their huts smoking some kind of local weed. It was a scene of tribal tranquility that most people enjoyed.

It was broken by shouts as the mob of men charged into the encampment, demanding that everyone stand where they were. The fearful noise did that without the words needing to be declared. In moments the group of terrorists were in the village, carrying wooden weapons to threaten any would-be resistance. There was none.

The criminals quickly rounded up the women and children, and ordered the old men to stay where they were. In bemusement, they just sat and stared. The invading group now checked each hut for others still inside, finding only the sick and invalid, so these were ignored.

Having established control, the men looked over the folk they had collected, and grimaced at how many were neither fit nor good-looking. They found a handful of comely teenage women and swiftly tied their hands together, then found a longer rope and linked them together in a stretch.

Demands for the whereabouts of young men, they were told that the teenage men were out in the forest hunting with the male hunters of the tribe.

The group held a quick discussion and agreed to go with their captives, and try for another tribe to supplement their gains. Within two hands of minutes they were leading their captives into the forest with dire warnings should they make any sound that could give away the presence of the group.

John watched the whole event but made no attempt to intervene as no assault had been made on those left behind. He had time to do his own thing without unnecessary complications. Instead, he followed the crowd at his own leisurely rate of movement.

It took several minutes before the leader realised they had no tribe to target next, so he stopped to ask the young women about other tribes of a similar size within walking distance. Getting a satisfactory reply, he amended their angle of walk to take them in the direction indicated by the young women.

John followed fairly closely, as none of the party were being quiet, just not very noisy. It enabled him to keep a close eye on them, watching for any opportunity to make his move. He noted that one of the men was delegated to be tail-end Charlie, bringing up the rear and making sure that last young woman kept up with the rest. John saw no point to it, as they were strung together and had to stay in place or fall down. Perhaps the laggard’s task was to make sure she stayed on her feet and not impede progress.

As it went on, the last man allowed himself to dawdle and drift further back. This suited John, for everyone was facing to the front, and at times the last man was temporarily out of sight round a bend in the trail. John moved up and silently moved out from the trees behind the man, grabbing him with a hand over his mouth and slipping his long knife round to the front and into the guy’s heart, leaving the knife on place to stop bleeding. The victim collapsed without a sound, and John dragged him into the trees, then pulled him from beneath the armpits for another dozen yards and dropped him behind a thick tree. There, he removed his knife, wiped it clean on the man’s clothes, and put it away in its sheath.