The Broken Cycle - A. Bertram Chandler [44]
"And," said Grimes, "without a resident obstetrician on the premises we shan't be."
"You can say that again, Buster." She pulled a stem of grass, nibbled it between her strong, white teeth.
"If we are, somehow, being watched," said Grimes, "it might be as well to—er—go through the motions now and again."
She said, her voice pleading, "Don't tempt me, John. Please don't tempt me. I've been thinking on the same lines as you have—but the risk is far too great. It's a risk I wouldn't want to take even if there were a fully equipped and staffed maternity hospital here. Do you want me to take that risk, to bear a child in these primitive conditions with only you to bumble around uselessly, trying to help and only making things worse?"
Grimes shuddered away from a vision of a future that might be. In his mind's eye he saw Una sprawled on her rough bed of dried grasses, writhing in agony, her belly grossly distended. He envisaged, with frightening clarity, the whole bloody business of parturition, without anesthesia, without analgesics, without instruments, without even a supply of boiling water . . . . He had read, somewhere, that certain primitive peoples use their teeth to cut the umbilical cord. A spasm of nausea tightened his throat.
And what if Una should die, leaving him literally holding the baby?
To hell with that, he told himself roughly. Stop thinking about yourself. Think about her for a change. What if she dies? There'd be a very good chance, too good a chance, of that.
She said, "We have to think of some way of getting back to our own Universe, John. If that Zephalon is as bloody marvelous as Panzen tries to make out he should be able to arrange it. I doubt if Panzen'd be much help. He's strictly from Nongsville. Tell Zephalon that we have no intention of multiplying, that he'll have to find somebody else for the Adam and Eve act."
"How do we get in touch with him?" murmured Grimes, more to himself than to her. He added, half facetiously, "Smoke signals?"
She laughed. "You still haven't gotten around to making a fire." She got gracefully to her feet. "Come on, get off your fat arse! There's work to do."
For the remainder of the day she helped Grimes with his primitive thatching.
Chapter 23
It rained again that night, but Grimes and Una stayed each in his own humpy.
It rained the following night, but the newly thatched roofs were practically watertight.
The third night there was hail instead of rain, driven by a bitter wind, but Grimes had added sod walls to the shelters and reduced the size of the doorways, so that body heat kept the interiors quite warm.
On the fourth night it did not rain, and the only precipitation was of a most unusual kind. Grimes was awakened from a crudely erotic dream by what sounded like the whirring of wings, a noise that was definitely mechanical. When he opened his eyes he thought at first that it was already morning; light was streaming through his low, narrow doorway. He realized then that it was not sunlight but some sort of harsh, artificial illumination. He got up from his bed, crawled cautiously to the entrance, poked his head outside. Somebody—or something—had switched on the headlamps of the two bicycles, had moved the machines so that the beams fell directly on to a small, gleaming object on the grass.
It was a prosaic enough article—but here, in these circumstances, it was a not so minor miracle. It was an artifact. It was a bottle.
Grimes emerged from his humpy, walking slowly and carefully. He looked down at the almost cylindrical flask. Glass! he wondered. If it were glass it could be broken, and the shards would make cutting tools. He would be able to fashion firesticks, and once he had fire to play with, to work with, he would be able to make life in the garden so much more comfortable for Una and himself. Cooking would be possible. He thought of baked fish,