Rachel was 'furious but controlling herself. She said, 'Are you hinting that John might have had something to do with de Longnors' disappearance and his amnesia? That he was abducted and drugged?'
'No, I'm not hinting that John had anything to do with it. As you must know by now, I have nothing but the greatest admiration for John Gribardsun. I'm glad that he, and not de Longnors, was picked. All I'm saying is that something strange was going on at the time. And that, a year before the vessel was launched, John Gribardsun had little chance of being on it.
'It's a tremendously important thing to be chosen as one of the crew of the H. G. Wells,' von Billmann continued. 'This is a unique voyage. There will be other trips into time, but none this far back again. We are indeed fortunate. I've thanked whatever gods there are that I was one of the four chosen out of thousands who qualified. And that brings up another thing. John once told me that he started training for this trip over twenty years ago, when it was first proposed that the theory of time travel might be made a reality. He was already a cultural anthropologist; he had a Ph.D., though he had never taught. So he figured out what type of man would be needed on an expedition into the past, and he became an M.D., and then got a doctor's degree in archeology and botany and several master's degrees in related fields.
'Now, a man that determined to get a berth on the time ship, one who sets out twenty years before it is established that there will be a ship - that man isn't going to let a kidnapping and a drugging get in his way.'
'You make me furious!' Rachel said. 'First you tell us all these sinister bits of information. Then you say they're just guesses, and you worship Gribardsun, and then...'
'I admire and respect him very much. I didn't say anything about worshipping him. You must understand. I don't want to think any ill of John. I like him too much for that. But I am a scientist, and I have to consider certain theories. Especially when certain facts start to build up a certain picture. But nothing is proved anyway. Or probably ever will be.'
'Well, I wouldn't blame him if he had played a dirty trick on de Longnors,' Drummond said.
Rachel looked surprised. Her husband said, 'Nor would I have blamed de Longnors if Gribardsun had been in his place and he was the one who did the abducting and drugging. The crew of the H. G. Wells I will be famous forever.'
'I think that it won't be good to have this kept among us three,' von Billmann said. 'We should bring it out in the open; talk it over with Gribardsun. I don't want you to think I'm talking behind his back. Nor would I want him to think that. So why don't we tell him about this conversation?'
'That would at least be honest,' Rachel said.
'But not womanly,' Drummond said.
'What do you mean by that?'
'Just a thought,' Drummond said. 'It doesn't apply to you, of course, since you're so outspoken.'
'I don't know,' she said. 'Perhaps we should reconsider. If he felt that we suspected him of underhandedness - of, in fact, criminal behavior - wouldn't that make things difficult? It's bad enough as it is, being forced into intimate contact for four years, never seeing any other human beings. Real human beings, I mean,' she said, as von Billmann opened his mouth to protest.
Drummond laughed.
'You know what I mean!' she said. 'Civilized men, then! People who think as we do! But, really, what good will it do? You don't expect him to admit anything dishonest, do you? And what if he did? Or didn't, for that matter? What then? What good would it do? I've changed my mind. I think we ought to keep such suspicions to ourselves.'
'I don't,' von Billmann said. 'John isn't the kind who likes festering secrets. He'd rather bring them out in the open.'
'I think it should be discussed,' Drummond said, looking strangely at Rachel.
The funeral rites took most of one day. The dead men were placed side by side in a single shallow grave. They were placed on their right sides, knees drawn up against their bellies and arms down their sides, the fingers touching the ankles. They were clad in full skin suits, their necks hung with chains of perforated stones and pierced bear teeth and claws. Their stones and wooden weapons were placed beside them and pieces of mammoth and rhino meat were placed near the mouths. The bodies were then covered with bearskins and more bear teeth strewn over the skins. Dirt was piled over the skins while the widows and their children, along with Thrimk's parents, circled the grave widdershins. They wailed and wept and beat their breasts with their fists and sometimes called on Wota'aimgkrimq, the Great She-Bear. Later, Rachel would ask them what they thought about the afterlife. But they, like the civilized and savage people of the time-travelers own period, had only a vague and often contradictory concept of what happened after they died.
The adult men and women then piled rocks on top of the dirt until there was enough to discourage bears and hyenas from digging them up. Glamug danced around shaking a baton and chanting from behind his bear mask. When the last rock was piled on, the tribe walked slowly back to the shelf under the overhang. And there they had a big feast.
The scientists stood around at a respectful distance and filmed the entire ceremony.
On the way home that evening, Rachel said, 'I wonder what happened to that burial site? I know that very spot was dug up sometime in 1980, and nothing was found there.'
Drummond shrugged and said, 'I suppose very few graves survived. They were dug up eventually by animals or washed away. And many must have been removed during the building of houses and other constructions in the early days when people didn't pay much attention to such things. And, of course, there must be thousands of burial sites which just haven't been discovered yet because there was no apparent reason to dig. In any case nothing but the stone implements and beads would remain.'
'When we get back, I'm going to look this spot over,' Rachel said. 'There might be something they overlooked, even if it's only a fossilized bear tooth or a flint spear head.'
'A lot can happen in 14,000 years,' he said.
Two more days passed. Rachel fretted until she got on Drummond's nerves. He told her to quit worrying, or at least keep it to herself. And he added that he doubted that she would worry as much if he were gone that long. This led to another quarrel, which they tried, unsuccessfully, to keep from von Billmann, who guessed its origin correctly. He said nothing to either of them; he did not care to get involved, especially in an affair which he disapproved of. They were scientists and so should have left their less worthy emotions behind them in A.D. 2070. He could understand why Rachel had fallen for Gribardsun, since he did in fact, despite his earlier protestation to her, come as close to worshipping the man as he would allow himself to. But she should repress her feelings and not permit them to interfere with their work.
He did not tell them this, of course. But they knew him well; they could almost read his thoughts.
On the fifth day, John Gribardsun walked into camp. With him he brought two strangers. At a distance, bis colleagues would have had trouble recognizing him if he had not still been clean-shaven.
His two companions were almost as tall as Gribardsun and fully as broad-shouldered. One had reddish hair and the other yellow-brown. Their eyes were blue. Their bones were large, and their supraorbital ridges were prominent. Though they were Caucasian, they had slight epicanthic folds, indicating, perhaps, some Mongolian genes.
Gribardsun strode into camp as if he owned it which, in a sense, he did. The strangers hung back until he turned and gestured for them to join him. They put their spears and atlatls and boomerangs on the ground and climbed up to the ledge. Their wooden-handled flint knives were still in their sheaths, however.