Chapter 13: The Voice From the Dark Continent

The next period of time was relatively uneventful and spanned a couple of weeks. During that time, my little community flourished under my leadership and an occasional dose of Hogat's wise assistance. There had been a small part of me that had worried that perhaps Hogat, Nomat or Jonab would try to take over, but Hogat and I had a talk one day that told me exactly how they felt about me. I was sure that Malok's charm was working on them, but it really went a lot deeper than that.

All three men were incredibly grateful to me in their own way. Hogat confided that after his disgrace, he was ready to take his own life, but I had helped him to understand that his life had meaning and that my friendship had meant the world to him.

Nomat was grateful. From listening to Irani's description of Fumar's behavior at isolating her with Kala and his understanding of the power of "The Taint", he had put two and two together and added it up to the understanding that he owed me his life and for saving the sanity of his beloved first wife. Like Hogat, Nomat was a good man. He worshiped his mates and treated them with kindness. He could not think of a more terrible scenario than him lying dead in a field, unable to stop his beloved Irani's perversion. He told me that he had owed me a debt of gratitude he never could repay.

Jonab was grateful to be with his childhood sweetheart. Additionally, he had a couple of older women he had desired since he was a boy. Now these motherly figures doted on him by day and spread their legs for him at night (especially Ruga, who to this point, still burned for him due to the effects of "The Taint"). While he had mixed feelings about me mating his mother (whom he had embraced per my dictate about the preservation of family ties), he understood why his father had renounced her. He was glad that she was happy as my mate though. Likewise, he was happy that I had fixed and preserved his father's reputation. Additionally, I had shown each man respect for their talents and I had been rewarded.

As the days moved on Jonab and Nomat, had become good shots with the bow (thanks to Soya's teaching). Our hunting parties had become more efficient and we needed to hunt less often thanks to our ability to refrigerate food and preserve it with the smokehouse.

I had also made good on my promise to gain one more bison cow. My little blanket trick worked again (this time with Bessie's scent). I called my new cow "Elsie" and soon she was turning out a gallon a day (both Bossie and Bessie were up to more than two each). By the third day, we had almost six gallons. Our pasteurization process went into overdrive, as Rona worked with Stina and Looki to teach them how the equipment worked. Once the milk was pasteurized, it was poured into clean, reused milk jugs and refrigerated. The emptied milk buckets were then thoroughly cleaned and were put back into rotation for a future milking session (we had six).

As far as our chickens, we now had thirty-four hatchlings to go along with the two dozen hens and one rooster. After carefully "venting" the chicks it appears that we would have twenty-six new egg layers and only eight roosters. We would not get any eggs until later in the year and will need to wait until later in the winter before we eat any males. Still, I was happy that we were on our way. For now, we continued to ration eggs. I realized that now that we were collecting for the purpose of eating, we could probably have one or two breakfasts of eggs a week (now that my earth eggs had all been used up by this point). I figured we would need another chicken coop that would fit in the pen. Then to provide adequate space, we would need to increase the size of the pen itself. It would be a good project for when the rainy season ended.

When it came to my sex life, I had noticed that my stamina had continued to increase. I discovered that I could satisfy all of my mates in one night, though I could only really climax three or four times during these sessions. Typically, I would only try to take all of them once every few days. Instead I focused on three or four girls on any given night. I tried to concentrate my efforts on mates who had been exposed to "The Taint", as their bodies burned for me the most, but each girl admitted that after a couple of weeks, the effects had reduced enough not to make them priorities any longer.

It has been said that "on every life a little rain must fall." Well, for me, that saying came in two different iterations. First came the actual rain. The rain came and it came hard. As I had been warned by Malok, we had cut down a fair amount of trees from the woods. While most of it was still pretty green, I had still had a some of seasoned wood left and had managed to scrounge some more from fallen, dead or dying trees. To facilitate the extra wood, I built a small woodshed right behind the house (out of some of the alien materials). This allowed me to store most of the green wood in a dry place to season. I would also supplement my supply of seasoned wood with a small amount of green wood. It smoked like hell, but Malok's friends did a great job of venting smoke from the fire, so it did not bother us too much.

Once the rain came however, we needed to change a number of our philosophies.Despite the overhang of the house over the patio, it became impossible to keep the fire burning for the fire pit for any significant length of time. We did most of the cooking indoors, so we had to fire up the second large cook stove. Fortunately, we had plenty of leftovers and I still had an immense amount of canned, boxed and frozen foods. Likewise, we had gone on a real bison hunt to the big herd and managed to bag a large bull. With all the venison, fish, fowl and pork, our freezer and smokehouse were stuffed. Also, it was fortunate that we had built the big barn. I shivered when I thought about having to milk the cows in the pouring rain. Good thing for the milking stalls in the barn. My only real fear was how our crops would survive. So far, everything seemed to be holding out okay.

The second kind of rain came in the form of an unwelcome interview.

"Mike?" came Malok's voice, as I was stacking some additional wood in the kitchen.

"Yeah." I thought back, as there were others around.

"I just wanted to let you know that I received an offer from the overseer of your African counterpart. He wants to talk with you."

"I have no desire to see that asshole," I muttered under my breath, but knew Malok could hear me.

"You won't have to. You will just talk to him ... well think to him."

"You mean he'll hear my thoughts?" I went back to thinking.

"No. The conversation will really just be between me and his overseer. We will relay your thoughts to each other. I will relay yours to his overseer and the other will do the same to me. Then I will relay them to you."

"Seems like a cumbersome process."

"Nope. Our technology will almost make it seem like you are talking directly to each other on a phone. There will only be a tiny delay. As far as your thoughts, I will filter them to ensure that you don't reveal too much information about yourself."

"Okay, that works for me," I smiled, hoping that the fool and his overseer would not be so careful.

After asking my wives and friends to be left alone in my room so I could concentrate, I lay back on my bed and soon heard a voice in my head.

"So you're the asshole, who shit on me," came the crude voice.

"You enter another man's bathroom, be prepared to be shit on, asshole!" I countered.

I heard an unfamiliar laugh in my brain. "I usually take over other men's houses, so I don't normally have that problem."

"Well, you'll find that won't be so easy with me."

"We'll see about that."

"What the fuck? Why are you so fucking aggressive?"

"What do you think makes most men aggressive? Pussy of course," I could almost see his leer over his voice. "There aren't very many white women here. Mostly, blacks and A-rabs. Also most of the Neanderthals have died off down here already. Most of their hot pussy is further north."

"In other words in my backyard."

"Well, yours for now, at least."

I was tired of this little pricks threats. "Look. Asshole, from what I understand, you can't do jack shit to me right now."

"I can't in person perhaps, but I have ways of fucking you up."

"The Taint?"

"Let's just say that I have some powerful friends who live relatively close to you, who are pretty grateful."

My thoughts were trying to determine what group he meant when I heard a different reply emanate from my brain. "And how do you hope to reach them without a boat?"

"I have my ways," I heard a smugness in his voice that made me want to pound him.

"You think I'm going to just roll over and die? I know what you did in Africa. Most likely, you teamed up with the other experiments and then you stabbed them in the back. I know what you're capable of and I'll be ready."

"You will be greatly outnumbered and surrounded. So you killed Bogent and Nahla or stole my boat so they could not return. Knowing them and their loyalty to me, they gave their lives to ensure that you will be unable to survive two villages bent on your destruction."

I heard Malok's voice. "He's fishing."

"I know," I thought back.

"It also seems that he's either overestimated his control and the loyalty of Nahla or underestimated your intellect and cunning. Or maybe he's engaged in wishful thinking. He's an arrogant little prick, who could not imagine that you would have been able to take control of Nahla."

"Agreed. I think I'll play along with his threat and make him think he is right about Nahla being dead."

"That will work. Just think your response and I'll frame it," replied Malok.

I went back to my conversation with my foe. "Okay, you may have me concerning being outnumbered and surrounded. Out of curiosity, what terms would you give me for my surrender?"

"I'm not an unreasonable man," he said, imitating every "B movie" villain who ever spoke a piece of crappy dialogue. "I'll let you keep a Cro-magnum woman or two. I want all your Neanderthal pussy. You would also give me all of your guns and technology. Then you will leave and never return. I might let you keep some spears," he laughed.

"I hate this little prick," I thought to Malok.

Of course Malok knew how I wanted to respond. "I will need to think on this."

"You only have two weeks to decide," he responded.

"Okay." I thought back.

I then heard Malok's voice in my head. "He's disconnected."

"That little prick is up to something. Two weeks is an overly generous time frame for someone making an ultimatum," I said out loud.

"Agreed," replied Malok. "You let him perceive he was in a position of power. I also put a little artificial quiver and some stutter in your voice when you proposed to consider surrendering."

"I noticed that," I laughed.

"I guess I'm just a frustrated actor."

"Or a ham."

"Oh, you wound me good sir!" laughed Malok.

Both of us kept laughing for a while, before Malok got serious. "So what do you think he's up to?"

"To me, the two weeks sounds like a stall. From what you've told me and what I've observed, he's a paranoid son-of-a-bitch. He would never trust me turning over 'my guns' to anybody except him."

"That would make sense. Of course you only have one."

"Speaking of which, I need more."

"That might be a bit risky, if you decide to try to bluff him."

"I thought you said that the terms of my experiment were private."

"In theory, they're supposed to be. Still, it might be possible for some information to leak out."

"True," I replied with disappointment. "Why do you think he's stalling?" I asked.

"I'm not sure. His experiments account is still frozen. He's not capable of getting another boat. He was the only experiment in Africa with one."

"How do you know?"

"The other experiments had to be canceled, due to the fact that the Earthmen leading them had been destroyed or banished. Their records are now considered fair game. Additionally, I've audited all of his resources."

Then I realized something. "The bastard is building his own boat!"

Malok sighed. "That could be possible. He has more than a hundred followers, so he has a good source of untrained labor. He could be constructing an old style wooden warship. Of course, it could be made of same material your house is made of, though if he used that material he would need to have a suitable ballast, based upon the density of the material he's using. It might not be as easy as he thinks when he actually gets the boat in the water."

"I'm guessing your right about that," I grinned imagining a "Three Stooges go sailing" scenario. A mind reading Malok caught that and we both began to crack up again. Eventually we got back to the meat of the conversation.

"Regardless of how he builds his boat, the Mediterranean on this world is not quite as large as it was on Earth in this era, so it would make an easier journey. Still, it would be no easy task for an amateur to build such a boat. I could audit the records a little more closely to see what plans or schematics he's downloaded to his node."

"Good. Is there any way he could get to me by land on this world?"

"Not without crossing some body of water. The Med would be the largest, but it is also the most direct, as he would have to go thousands of miles out of the way to find a shallower water crossing."

"So, my guess is that he thinks his ship may be ready in less than two weeks."

"And it will carry an invasion force of about fifty men that he would have to ferry over, while making separate trips. By adding the Cro-magnons on this side of the Med, he will have about ninety men from the south. He also assumes that he will have forty or so Neanderthals from Hogat's old village to the north in his service."

"He just might. Fumar is an ambitious man and a snake. I may have no choice but to kill him."

"Mike that would create a power vacuum..."

"That I may just have to fill."

"You mean you wish to lead the Neanderthals?"

"I may have no choice. It might mean leading them or killing them. As it turns out, I might need to take over the Cro-magnon camp to the south too."

"I guess you'll be needing more guns after all," sighed Malok.

"It looks that way," I responded grimly.

Malok changed his tune after a brief pause. "Now that I think of it, based upon your Stooges comment, I wouldn't worry about more guns just yet. Building a ship that is capable of crossing the Med would not be an easy task. To be honest, I'm rather doubtful he'll succeed so quickly. I'll see if I can follow his progress, though his overseer may cry foul if I try to look directly at his experiment."

"Works for me," I smiled, happy at the thought that I would not have to resort to a gun battle anytime soon.

All of a sudden, Malok became agitated. "I hate to say this, but a Neanderthal man is approaching. He's about fifteen minutes away from the clearing. From the activity in their village, I sense that something is going on."

"What do you see?"

"Fumar is positioning warriors in different strategic positions at the Neanderthal village."

"In other words, he's setting a trap."

"It looks that way."

I took Hogat, Jonab and Nomat with me to greet our visitor. Soon the man came into view and approached us.

"It's Ganor. He is friendly towards us," whispered Nomat.

"Greetings from Fumar," stated Ganor, as he approached.

"I do not accept any greetings from him, but you are welcome," I replied.

"Our leader needs to speak to you. It is urgent. Only you must come."

I laughed. "Your leader must think I am a fool. Perhaps I should just dispatch you now and send you back to him in pieces."

A look of extreme terror crossed the man's face. "Please ... you must come..."

Hogat looked at the man and before I could respond, he uttered four simple words. "What is wrong, Ganor?"

I could not explain it. The look Hogat gave him was the look a parent might give a child who had stolen a cookie that the child was not due.

"Fumar has Wala, my mate. He threatened to make her an extra mate if I did not do this for him," he cried.

Clearly, Fumar had some cunning, but lacked the cleverness to implement his plan in a way that I would find believable. I, on the other hand, was a sneaky bastard and had already formulated a plan if I needed to attack the Neanderthals. I looked at the frightened man, sympathetically. "Never fear, Ganor. Fumar cannot make Wala an extra mate. We have taken away all the evil medicine. I tire of Fumar's evil ways. He and all who want to follow him will die today. We will make sure no harm comes to you or Wala."

"But I tried to trick you."

Hogat jumped back in. "Mike is a fair man. He understands that you acted to save your mate."

"Thank you, Mike!" cried the happy man. "What would you have me do?"

"Go back to Fumar, but walk slowly. Tell him that it was hard to convince me, but in the end you were successful. Tell him, I told you I would arrive when the sun is in the middle of the sky.