Moreover, the sperm and eggs of humans were in the cryogenic tanks. These would be united and implanted in human females, and the children would be brought up by their foster parents. In everything except physical structure, they would be twenty-first centurians. But they would be studied by scientists. And their children, hybrids of Magdalenians and modern, would be studied.
To compensate for the mass of the specimens, parts of the vessel had to be removed. Everything was removed except the files and those devices needed to keep the specimens from decay. Everything had been carefully weighed before the vessel was launched, but everything was weighed again. The day before the vessel was to be retrieved, the weighing apparatus was removed, and its mass was replaced with artifacts from thirty tribes, each of which had been weighed. It was Gribardsun who suggested that each member of the four should also be reweighed.
'If something should happen to one of us, and he wasn't able to get aboard, his weight should be replaced by something valuable.'
'For heaven's sake, John!' Rachel said. 'What could happen? We're not leaving the vicinity of the vessel except to go to the farewell feast tonight. And if somebody got sick or fell and broke his neck, we'd still take him along.'
'True, but I feel that we should take no chances. You know how serious a deviation in weight can be when the tracers'll be searching for us. Let's take no chances whatsoever.'
The 'reserves,' as von Billmann called them, were artifacts reluctantly discarded because there just was not enough room for them. Four piles were carefully selected, each representing the weight of one of the four. Whatever additions or subtractions had to be made were done with mineral specimens.
The celebration that night was long and exhausting and often touching. The tribes, carrying pine torches, followed them to the vessel and then each member of the Wota'shaimg and the Shluwg kissed each of the explorers. And then, wailing and chanting, they retreated to a distance of a hundred yards. There they settled down to wait for the dawn, since the departure retrieval was set for shortly after sunrise.
The four made no attempt to sleep. They sat in their chairs and talked and now and then looked at the screen showing them the outside. The tribespeople were all awake too, except for the babies and small children.
The four talked animatedly and even gaily; for the first time in a long while the shadow of the past had lifted. Rachel found herself hoping that Gribardsun might forget his prejudices against coming between a man and his wife. She would file a divorce claim as soon as she was out of quarantine, and she would convince John that he did love her, that he had only suppressed his love because of his old-fashioned morality.
A few minutes before sunrise, John Gribardsun rose from the chair. He turned, pulled out a black recording ball, and placed it in a depression on the armrest of chair.
Time leaving now,' he said. 'You'll want to stow my pile of artifacts aboard as quickly as possible to replace my mass. Anything you want to know is in the ball. Please don't ask me anything now or try to hold me back. You can't do that; all three of you together aren't strong enough and you know it.
'I'm sorry to be so abrupt. You're very shocked. But I don't like long goodbyes or arguments, and I knew that that was what I'd get if I told you ahead of time.'
He paused, looked at their pale faces, and said, Tm staying here. I prefer this world to the one we left. That's all.'
He turned and pressed the button that opened the vault-like door and stepped outside. As he did so, the tribespeople cried out and some raced toward him. They must have guessed that he had decided to stay with them, and they were happy. At least, most of them were. No man ever lived that was one hundred per cent popular.
Rachel cried out, 'Stop him! Stop him!'
'With what?' Drummond said. He had recovered swiftly from his shock and seemed almost as joyous as the tribesmen. "We don't have any guns, and he wouldn't pay any attention to them if we did. And, as he said, he could take all three of us on and not even get up a sweat.'
He ran to the pile that was to be Gribardsun's substitute and picked up a bag of artifacts. 'You two had better help me, and quick!' he said. 'We haven't got much time!'
Rachel was weeping by now and she looked as if she would like to run after Gribardsun. But she picked up a bag, too, and walked to the vessel after Drummond. Von Billmann followed her with two sacks. He lowered them to the floor by the entrance and blocked her as she tried to get out again. Drummond pressed the button, and all three were quickly shut in again. They got into their chairs and strapped themselves in and waited.
On the screen they could see Gribardsun standing before the tribe. He lifted a hand in farewell.
Sixty-three seconds passed. And they were back in the twenty-first century. The vessel was forty yards from the edge of the hill, and the walls around the buildings of the project towered over them. Then figures clad in white helmets and suits, carrying tanks on their backs and hoses in their hands, stepped out of a small building on their right. The first phase of the quarantine had started.
Von Billmann answered the chief administrator. The eyes of the entire world were on them; everyone of the nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine channels were devoted to the time vessel. But Rachel was paying no attention to the outside. She had dropped the recording ball, no larger than a child's marble, into the machine, and she was listening to John Gribardsun's voice.
Seven days later, the three were allowed to leave. The first thing they did was to go to the valley below, where the overhang still existed. Here they saw the hole in the back wall, broken open by the archeologists and project scientists. Behind six feet of rock was the chamber Gribardsun had promised they would find. And they also found the great stacks of artifacts and records that he said he planned to leave there, if he lived long enough.
Most of the records were in the form of John's handwriting on vellum and then on paper. But his last message, made in 1872, was recorded in a ball in one of the machines he had taken from the vessel.
'To you three, Robert, Drummond, and Rachel, it's only been a week, but to me, almost 14,000 years have passed. I have lived for more than that; I have lived far longer than seems right.'
'I did not think, the day I said goodbye forever to you, that I would live nearly this long. I am completely unafraid of death - which makes me somewhat nonhuman. I'm not afraid - but I also have a very strong will to live. Yet the mathematical probabilities of my living this long were very low. So many accidents can happen in 14,000 years; so many people and beasts would try to kill me. But they failed, and though I came near dying a number of times, I still live.'
'I still live. But for how long? Today is January 31, a Wednesday. Tomorrow, or sometime in the next few days, I'll be conceived.'
'Will Time tolerate two John Gribardsuns?
'Is there something in the structure of Time which win kill me? Or will I be erased from the fabric of Space-Time?
'I'll know only if I am spared. If I am killed or erased, I will be conscious one second and unconscious, because dead or obliterated, the next.
'Whatever happens, I can't explain. I have lived as no other man has lived, and for longer than any other man has lived.
'As you know now, I was fortunate enough to be given an elixir by a witch doctor who was the last man of his tribe. He belonged to a family the original head of which, some generations before, had discovered how to make the elixir, a vile-tasting devil's brew, from certain African herbs, blood, and several other constituents I will not even hint at. He had a high regard for me because I saved his life and also because he thought I was some sort of a demigod. He knew of my rather peculiar upbringing.