Chapter 2

When we ran upon a Yew wood forest we harvested some of the smaller wood. We cut enough bow staves for a long time, even though it took ages for them to cure. We also harvested larger ones for Bo sticks. Once the women learned Bojitsu the incidence of rape went to zero. the women took care of that. The screams were very hard to forget. The screams of rage and the screams of agony It served the bastards right.

Asking to frolic was a compliment.

Demanding was an insult.

The warrior teams practiced ducking and freezing, tracking and freezing, isolating game and attacking from all sides.

The techniques of the black folk made us confident and deadly.

We forged Asseigi-- long bladed spears and Roman Pilum that would bend after one throw. We were ready for any race that would seek to test us. We still hadn't seen any Cougar and they could be big mothers if they took down buffalo.

We found a great field of wheat and stopped to harvest it.

Upon the third day we were attacked by a young troop of centaur males armed with clubs. None escaped.

We watched the sky, looking for signs of others. We found the smoke from a village.

We dragged the corpses of the young centaurs into their village and left their disheveled bodies behind in the sun. We said nothing, simply walking away.

I heard a high screaming voice as we left, blaming us for her son's death. I had no idea that I knew their language until then.

I replied to her, "death for death, life for life. They left us no choice."

I lowered my gazed and trudged out of their camp, ashamed of the waste.

We sat listening to a guitar that night. Silent visitors crept up to listen as well. Ancient irish songs of useless deaths filled the night, to reach up and touch the stars.

An old grey stallion met me while greeting the sunrise.

"We lose much in our pride. We grow fewer each year."

"We come as those who renew. Come dance the spring dances.

Come dance with us. Adoptions cross both ways.

Come live forever."

"Can we live together?"

"There is a simple test. Your children with our children Their trust and laughter will shame us all."

We taught the children many songs before we let them run free.

The centaur children found ours and were fascinated by the songs. They danced together. Together they ran like the wind.

Together they danced and laughed to the sun and clouds. the hidden folk rejoiced.

We taught them how to make bent-wood rakes and flails, and how to use a sickle It took a couple of seasons to get the techniques down, but before we left they had linen and we had some supplies. We left the secret of clay lamps with everyone we met, the centaurs being the first. It took a little time to perfect, but pan pipes can be made by splitting reeds, hollowing them out and gluing them back together. We gave them music.

The seasons were subtle, but there. Basically they were rain patterns. The ring rotation against the stars was a sure sign of their turning. They taught us of what each season would bring. All storms came from dawnward.

We marched on with our wagons, always heading into the dawn.

We grew stronger with each meeting with others.

We stopped weary in mind and exhausted in body near a lowland.

The song of the frogs reminded us of home. Many wept.

The frogs were not frogs. the damp folk were secretive and narrow in their ways. It took many days, many talks, many songs to convice them that we not there to burn them but to nurture them.

The had adopted the cattail as a new food. We showed them how to weave mats from the fronds and pull strands from the rushes for string to spin. We drummed with them and sang until we were hoarse.

They were a clannish, judgemental race. They had been injured many times. It was hard for them to trust. We agreed to agree. An agreement was forged to dance a bloody dance if it were called for from either side. We agreed for the children.

They had simple homes of woven reed at the edge of the river. We experimented with wickiups and soddies, cutting squares of turf and building more solid dwellings that could not be burned down around them by attackers. They hunted fish with net and spear.

They kept some reed houses for the drying of the catch.

We travelled many months after that without meeting any others. We stopped and harvested the grain we found, relishing the bounty of the land.

We stayed several seasons before we resumed our trek. We heard the thunder in the night and knew it for what it was--the buffalo were back.

There were only a few hundred. I asked the hunters to hold off harvesting them, as they could kill entire bloodlines in a single day's hunt. We needed to wait a few years before we could hunt them indiscriminately.

Deer were more prolific. The suckers breed like rats. Besides, deer skins are easier to tan. It wasn't as if we had winters heavy enough to warrant huddling under buffalo robes.

We found saltbush, cattail and firetree. We harvested without taking everything. We took a note from the old wagon trains and strung dried green hides beneath the wagons for storage. We had buckets set aside for processing salt. We would crush the saltbush roots and soak them in water, then pour the water into a common bucket to evaporate.

Scraping out the crystallized salt was simple. The roots were rinsed twice to avoid wasting the salt, then burned for fuel. We saved firetree wood for blacksmithing. We wove cattail mats for our own comfort. We kept large rolled mats of willow and cattail beneath the wagons. If we ever got stuck in bogs they could get us out.

We had to look ahead.

We cut across streams and rivers from the mountains with regularity.

I began tracking these cuts and compared them to the map in the encyclopedia.

It took a long time to find our position by the rivers and ox-bows.

It was over 584 million miles around the ring. The map had several overlays, showing lake depths, sites of old cities and ring structure management points, where the engineering staff would access the under-ways. Those were closed off to us.

Then I found a section of the encyclopedia that was different-- it had real-time observation capabilities! I spotted our wagons and started planning our routes better. I looked for signs of cultivation and civilization such as fires at night or anything cut in straight lines. There was very little close to us.

We came upon the remains of an old city built on the bank of the river, at the confluence of a local feeder and the great river.

We decided to stay for a while.

The walls were opaque ceramic, as were the streets, floors and ceilings. any power was long gone and anything not nailed down had been scavenged thousands of years before.

We set up in what appeared to be an old shopping district near the water.

With crops already growing on the plain dawnward from the city we had food available. We needed to cycle our vegetable seed before it went bad. We started a big garden. We plowed with the oxen. It is mind- numbingly dull to watch the ass-end of an ox all day. We got it done, though, and hand-cast the seed. The rains did not fail us and we had seedlings. We put up blinds and took out many, many opportunistic deer.

Our presence was noted by someone. We found billets of copper and tin as well as iron rod and sheet near the waterfront on several occasions where there had been nothing but empty paved squares the day before.

We hunted out and found several board-trees, harvesting the largest.

We made a large two-chamber bellows for the blacksmith and pegged together a sailboat with a bit of draft to haul stores. With a linen sail and hemp rope we were in business. We sent two parties to sail about the lake that was formed from the great river segment. It took two seasons to circumnavigate. We could always define seasons by the stars. They came back with salt, firetree and many tales.

Something looking like giant otter were out there. An island populated by sheep was found and marked.

We fished with nets. There were some damned strange fish we caught that way. Those frog people were braver than we thought, diving and spearing them. We smoked fish and made metates out of fired clay and lime for grindig corn. We practiced making bentwood furniture until we were proficient. With wheels cut from the largest board-trees we made wheelbarrows. We all donated time to the blacksmith, either to swing a hammer, pump a bellows or hold tongs. We soon had small batches of folded and welded steel-iron, made into hand axes, knives and chisels.

From the ends of the rod stock I asked that they make thick, angle-cut chisel-headed spear heads. If we found bear or its ecological equivalent I wanted us to have the upper hand. Brass went into lanterns, reflectors, dinnerware, cups and buttons. Some brass balls went into bolos. We still didn't have the skill, equipment or raw materials to make clear glass.

I started a long-term breeding project. The hemp was superior for producing cordage but had a terrible buzz. I collected the seed of the best we ran across, watching for health, pungency and resin production. Once every few years a superior plant would show up and it was meticulously harvested for seed. When we camped for a period, the selected seed was planted and cross-pollinated. The best of those isolated samples were collected.

I had several competing strains at any one time. Tom knew what I was doing.

He was a good old boy from Georgia and grew up on a farm himself. He was ex-Army as well. Not every G.I. stationed in Vietnam was a head, but everyone knew the score.

We'd sample a little every now and then. We had a rating system going from 0-oregano to 1-ditchweed to 2-Detroit ripoff to 3-teenybopper date rape to 4-Smilin' jack (The stuff sneaks up on you from nowhere. Big grins and munchies) to 5-Hawaiian sunshine, (always light green, always tastes of pine, never reproduces the same), to 6-Yukon Gold (a standard to strive for) to 7-Thai stick. Nuff said. to 8-killer bud ( resin everywhere, beautiful structure. A botanical masterpiece) to 9-"wasted days and wasted nights" (serendipitous THC enhancement) to 10-Dutch Wunderbar. ( God's answer to cocaine)

Anything rating higher than that we figure'd we'd just lay back and smile at each other.

Our garden hunting blinds netted us plenty of meat to smoke and several hundred hides to tan.

We set out over fifty hollowed-out tree trunk segments in hopes of catching a bee hive or two. I guess hollow trees are pretty rare in nature. We caught a LOT of bees. We had to phase them into different fields as they were competing with each other. We harvested honeycomb for honey and wax, always leaving enough to support the hive and not drive them away. Honey makes an excellent antibiotic with zero side effects. It became part of our trading goods along with beeswax for waterproofing, lubricating and candles.

We built spinning wheels and looms for the linen that we could take apart and take with us. Spinning hemp rope is quite similar to spinning linen thread but you keep doubling up. We sheared the sheep once a year and wove good doubled high-twist wool whipcord cloth from the trimmings. We had hundreds of yards of wool and linen stored befor we left. We made hundreds of good high-carbon firesteels to trade and gift to whomever we would meet. Chert was available from asteroid impacts. We sought them out as we found them on the satellite map, looking for impact craters. We found more nickel-iron that way and some small diamonds from the carbonaceous impacts. We used the diamonds for sharpening and polishing. We rejuvenated our seed and cached spices such as garlic, onion, pepper, anise, bay laurel, mustard, sage, rosemary and celery seed. We got dill to sprout but it was iffy. It didn't like something in the environment. We'd have to watch that one and use cold frames next time. We dried tomatoes because we couldn't can them and they had an amazingly short shelf life. I missed catsup. Maybe when we found apples we could make apple vinegar and start from there?

The carts could barely move from the weight of trade goods and harvested food when we left. We had to use doubled teams of oxen. We left the boats behind hoping someone would have a use for them.

We had carts full of potatoes. We had meat and potato stews every night for a while until we lightened the load, as they were the heaviest stocked goods.

Celery, onions and carrots made the stews seem familiar.

The chickens were producing eggs like crazy on a good corn diet. We had to rake up and crush small mollusc shells to put into their feed so that the eggshells would not collapse. The chickens loved to pick insects from the grass each night as we came to camp, and came back to their nests as it became dark.

Our goats treated them as if they were ambassadors, making sure none got into trouble.

We came around a bend in the river and were confronted by a dense forest. It was nothing but pines for as far as I could see. A band of nut trees covered the river shoreline. The map showed several hundred miles of forest ahead of us. We searched out a shallow bar and prepared to cross over to the other shoreline, where the grasslands continued. We harvested all the nuts we could before we crossed and cut some good wood for tool handles. We boiled pine bark for resin and turpentine, then loading up some of the dryer pine trees.

Anything else would have been wasteful, profligate and stupid.

We lost several young oxen and goats to something huge under the water on the first pass of carts crossing the shallows. We chummed the water and braced with fish-hooks the size of an adult's palm anchored by hemp rope, driven deep within lumps of flesh. It was bigger than a cart and had survived by eating whatever came over the overflow from the next upstream lake. We pulled it to shore with six oxen. It was nasty, oily and smelly. There was no way in hell anyone was going to get me to eat it, carnivore be damned.

We left it on the bank for fertilizer.

We had to use all our oxen to pull the wagons across the bar as the wagons were so full. It was only twenty miles across the river or so. We passed over it within a day. We rested for three days and continued on. the map showed a promising area of cultivation ahead of us. We all wondered what race we may face next.

It was weeks before we reached the territory we were interested in. When I saw the first native from that culture I sat down hard and said "Oh, shit." They were eight-foot tall raccoons. If they were anything like Earth raccoons we were about to be handed our asses as they stole us blind. I passed the word back to hide anything shiny and watch the chickens.

I was much relieved and not a little chastised when we found that the Chen were not avaricious little thieves, though they did like to gamble. We taught them checkers and brassmaking. When they handed me my ass at checkers I broke out the chess pieces. When they stomped me 5 out of 5 at chess I made some noises about destroying their culture with dice and distillation. My wives made me promise to shut the hell up or I'd never get laid again. Hmph. Somebody had been reading Greek again.

They had a written language, used fire and cultivated crops. We opened their eyes to using bentwood for furniture and tools. They saw a bentwood rake for the first time and sat there in awe at the concept.

I couldn't help but feel for them. They tried so hard but didn't have the resources. We turned them on to boat-building and how to harvest, prepare and weave flax. They had a huge territory that they covered, comprising some seventy villages. We taught them about bees, honey and candles. They'd wondered about the 'stinging flies'. They taught us where white sand was. We got a couple of them involved with their version of morse code using candles and brass reflectors. Since the ring curved up, not down, only the clarity of the air would govern the distance a signal lamp would cover. That got us into trigononometry and how to build a simple sextant.

This last bit made our bug-eyed-monsters all excited. They asked that we leave one of the wagons behind with an encyclopedia. I shrugged why not? we had 119 more of 'em. When we got down to 60 we'd ask for a re-supply. I left them with a word list to start with on the encyclopedia. Fresnel lenses, magnesium, arc-light and calcium lime-lights topped the list

Our kids and theirs had a blast together, climbing, fighting, fishing and running around. Theirs ran faster but ours used bolas. Monkey pile means monkey pile in any language. So does kickball. They were starting soccer leagues before we left.

Just before we packed out and left I and my family were invited to a dinner. The meal was fine, but the end comprised some sort of ceremony. An old male and three females sat down with us to drink tea at a special table brought in for the purpose.

It had a feathery-white low plant on it as a centerpiece. The tea burned down my throat and I almost stopped after the first sip, but their anxious posture and gaze made me continue. When we finished they had to help us back to our rooms, saying all the while 'sleep three or four now, then much better.' I passed out with the girls on either side of me.

I woke up alone looking at a doctor.

The girls were in their beds in the same wagon.

I stretched and sat up.

"What's wrong? Why would a doctor need to attend me?"

"Oh, a three-week session of suspended animation, that's all."

Suspended animation. Practical jokers, they were.

"They said 'sleep three or four, then much better'."

"Damn. You weigh more than your wives by a significant fraction. They'll probably be out for most of a month."

"They seemed to know what they were doing. Don't bury anybody yet."

I spotted a small box made of bone on the bedside table.

"Anyone know where that come from?"

The general consensus was no. I opened the box and smelled the same etherial scent that I smelled during the tea ceremony. It was a third full of black seeds the size of a grapefruit seed. I closed the box and tucked it away without telling anyone my guesses.

"How am I other than joining the Van Winkle clan?"

"Oh? er, fine, just fine. Muscle tone looks good, skeletal muscle tone, and your knee joints seem to have lost crepitus."

"Speak english, doc."

"Your knees stopped degenerating. How's your fingers?"

I'd gotten in the way of a mis-swung hammer in the forge and two fingers had blown joints.

They were perfect. I examined my hands carefully. Manual labor always leaves some damage. They were perfect. The fingernail I'd lost was back. The scars were gone. I was starting to think that someone had a 'do-over' button hidden away somewhere. Hmm.

Don't ask, don't tell. Life as a lab rat couldn't be appealing. I had to clue the girls in, too. So that's why they wanted a family I wondered how 'much better' it would get?.

Life was getting interesting.

I had a 'kitchen cabinet' of my wives, Tom, four hunter/scouts, the two doctors and four open positions that rotated thru any of the wives that wanted to complain or had any issues. We met around our encyclopedia table and tried to plan a strategy for the next few years. We really needed to educate the kids, and we hand't taken advantage of the horses at all. The goats acted like dogs, being tribal, territorial, possessive and protective. They demanded and received attention in the form of petting and scratches, sometimes accompanied by tidbits of food. The pigs were dumb, but domesticated. The chickens were reproducing like crazy. We'd have to keep an eye on them so that they didn't become a problem like rabbits had for Australia. The map showed the structure of a river-spanning city within 600 miles dawnward, at the confluence of three feeder rivers and the main spine river. Perhaps it was time to stop for a while. If the promised DC feeder points were anywhere, they should be in or near an ancient city.

The white sand and clay banks were ahead of us. When we found them we would mark them for later digging and recovery as raw materials for glass and pottery.

We had to figure out how to create carbon or carbon-clay electrodes for an arc furnace to heat a kiln.

We had the kids writing papers on what they discovered. They had developed a game out of flipping the encyclopedia open at random, picking keywords out of the air.

Filtering the roses from the crabgrass, they came up with a few good finds that earned them bunny points. Ancient methods of steel production brought up a Wootz process that involved shaking a sealed jar of pounded leaves of iron and charcoal packed in wool, heated and shaken until it sounded 'wet'. Then is was forged at a low temperature into the finished product. When quenched in oil and polished it would then exhibit the swirled patterns upon its surface characteristic of the finest steel weapons of the time--Toledo steels never came close, and only the master-smiths of ancient Japan equaled it.