The Unkillables (14 page)

Chert reflected that if Veela’s people, with all their magic, had been no match for the undead, then it really did behoove them to find some way to the other side of that white air-biting thing, and flee the monsters.

He said, “I suppose your people built this white air-biting thing before the no-dies killed them?”

Veela couldn’t make out the words “air-biting,” but it was plain what Chert meant. She held up the communicator, pointing at it, and said, “No. He build. He build.”

Chert and the Jaw gaped in stupefaction at the small strange nut that enclosed the tiny man.

The Jaw said, “You said you had other skills. What are your skills?”

“Me skill is, tongues-speaking.”

Once they’d deciphered that, Chert and the Jaw laughed even harder than they had at her attempt to make a spearhead. They clapped each other on the backs and for a moment nearly forgot the undead and all their dead friends. Veela laughed, too.

They moved from the corridor of ash into the shade of the trees, and the men taught Veela some rudiments of stonework. Actually, Chert let the Jaw do it, since he didn’t have the patience to mollycoddle the ignorant, possibly retarded woman. But watching the rapport develop between the two, he began to regret leaving her to the Jaw. Maybe it would be a good thing, having her as a link to whatever powerful force it was that had built the white air-biting thing. For some reason, though, the sight of them laughing together made him uneasy.

As they worked, the Jaw told Veela he was sorry he’d roared in her face when they’d first met.

Veela, her hands bruised and dirty and bleeding a little, finally made a passable spearhead. The pleasure of success washed away the pain in her hands, and she gave a cheer.

The Jaw laughed, and cheered too. Still grinning at her, he put his big palm on her knee.

Veela’s laughter trickled out, but she didn’t stop smiling. She looked at his big, grinning head.
Is he making a pass at me?
she wondered.
Is this big Neanderthal going to kiss me?

It wouldn’t be so bad, she figured; not so bad at all. He was kind of cute in a rough, exotic way—his breath was terrible, but she’d had worse dates. And she vastly preferred him to his more conventionally handsome but occasionally creepy older companion, who might or might not be his father.

But it would definitely complicate things here below, in her dealings with these two. And she sensed that it would also complicate things with Dak. Not that he would be sexually jealous. But, as he’d made clear in their earlier conversation, he would consider her sexual relationship with one of the natives as a new resource, that he should be able to exploit.

While she was trying to decide whether a physical relationship with the Jaw would be wise, or desirable, or neither, or both, his grip on her knee tightened, and his grin got dreamier. With sudden trepidation, it occurred to her that he might not necessarily consider that it was up to her. The guy was a fucking Neanderthal, after all.

But he took his hand off her knee and sat back. Though he let the moment pass, he regarded her with a friendly, satisfied smirk, as if he’d seen something responsive in her face that pleased him.

Veela let her eyes slip from the Jaw to Chert and shuddered. He did not look nearly so pleased.

The Jaw seemed not to notice his father’s displeasure. Pointing at the spearhead she’d made, getting back to business, he said, “We taught you something. Now you teach us something.”

Veela made the stupid mistake of saying, “You want learn, what?”

“The strong tight fire,” said the Jaw immediately.

“Yes,” said Chert. “The strong tight fire.”

Dammit. Veela tried to think of a way to squirm out of having to produce a laser just yet. “Long time will need,” she said.

“Of course it may take a long time,” said Chert scornfully. “Who knows, it may take us even longer to learn the strong tight fire than it did you to fashion a spearhead about as skilfully as could a child of the People, still at its mother’s teat.”

Veela didn’t catch all that, but she got the gist. Realizing there was no way she could make a convincing excuse, she decided to come clean about this as well. Holding up the communicator, she pointed at it. “
He
, strong tight fire holds,” she said. “Him give it, not yet. I, other things can teach, maybe.”

Chert ignored that last sentence. Baring his teeth at the strange nut, leaning forward so that the tiny man could see him through the air holes, he shouted, “You’ll give me that strong tight fire, damn you, or I’ll swallow you whole!”

“What’s that?” asked Dak in his and Veela’s tongue. Veela hadn’t thought he was even listening. “What’s he yelling about all of a sudden?”

“He’s yelling at you, because I just told them you wouldn’t teach them the secret of lasers yet.”

“Yelling at
me
?! Oh!” And Dak started to laugh.

The sound drove Chert crazy. “Is he laughing at me?!” Without waiting for an answer he snatched the strange nut from Veela, put it on the flat surface of a nearby stone, and began hammering it with one of Veela’s practice rocks.

Dak must have been watching on the sensors, because he laughed even harder. That drove Chert to new heights of fury—he screamed and beat the communicator as hard as he could.

“Stop!” shouted the Jaw. “Don’t kill him, we need him!”

He was about to try to physically restrain Chert, but Veela grabbed his elbow to stop him. Although the Jaw couldn’t know, as she did, that Chert’s chances of damaging the communicator were close to nil, he nevertheless trusted her enough to let her touch hold him back.

Dak was still laughing. He sounded almost crazy, the hilarity had taken such hold of him. “Stop it, Dak!” shouted Veela.

Dak gasped and spluttered, trying to get hold of himself as Chert continued to bash the communicator. “I’m sorry,” he managed, “it’s just so funny—I mean, he thinks I’m
in the communicator
.”

“Yes. He does,” said Veela. “Which means he’s in the middle of a homicidal rampage, as far as he’s concerned.” Every time Chert brought the rock down again, Veela imagined what it would look like if, instead of the communicator, it were a face he was hitting. “We need these people, Dak! These are our only allies in the whole world, remember?”
And I’m the one down here with them
, she silently added, yet again.

“Oh, all right, all right. Tell him I apologize, will you?” Veela translated for Chert. But the two paleolithic men could hear the smug mockery in Dak’s voice.

Chert stood, breathing hard, the rock still in his hand. He glared down at the strange nut that protected Veela’s friend. He said to the Jaw, “I have a score that needs settling with that little man.”

The Jaw nodded, and turned to Veela. “I like you,” he said. “But if your tiny friend doesn’t look out, I may help my father kill him someday.”

Chert advanced on Veela. “You must teach us something,” he warned, “or otherwise prove your worth. So far you’re dead weight. You don’t ever explain any of these mysteries, you just appear alongside them.”

“True, Chert’s saying,” admitted Veela. She tried to think of some point that might qualify this admission, but nothing came to mind.

“Veela,” said the Jaw. He sounded both gentle and anxious, as if her safety depended on her producing something, and he was afraid she wouldn’t pull it off. “You must give my father something. If you can bring your own meat to the circle, my father and I will hunt alongside you. But you must bring something. Something besides questions, strange garb, and an evil little man in a nut.”

Veela nodded. She didn’t think of anything to say, though.

The Jaw took a step towards her. Almost pleadingly, he said, “Veela. Just the first step. What is the first thing one must do, when making the magic of the strong tight fire?”

Veela hoped she was managing to keep her fear hidden. She had no clue how to go about making a laser gun, much less making one out of mud, wood, and stone....

Then a crazy inspiration hit her:
All he’s asking for is the first step....

What was the first step of engineering, of physics, of everything? 

With great solemnity, she said, “Teach you this magic, I can. From path’s first step. But path is long. Long, long, long. Want you it do?”

“Yes,” said the Jaw.

“Of course we want to do it,” said Chert.

“Long time. More long than hundred times the time for me to learn spear. More long than thousand times.”

When she said this, she had to use the words for “hundred” and “thousand” from her own native language. Not only did she not know those words in the People’s tongue, but, as she had anticipated, the People’s tongue did not even have such words. Chert and the Jaw both twisted up their faces in confusion. “What’s ‘hundred’?” asked the Jaw. “What’s ‘thousand’?”

“Ah!” said Veela. “That question, first step is. First step, of magic path.”

She sat down again. Chert and the Jaw followed suit, watching her uncertainly. She gestured out at the forest. “Trees,” she said. “How much?”

“Very much,” replied Chert, in a tone that said he was still listening, but his patience would soon run out.

Fortunately, Veela had chanced upon a word meaning something like “exact” during an earlier session, so she was able to say, “No—how much, with exactness?” Even if she had known the language perfectly, she would not have been able to ask “how many,” because they had no word for “many.” While they did have the rough concept of numbers, it wasn’t developed enough for them to need much vocabulary related to counting or exact quantifications.

The Jaw frowned at the trees. “How can anyone say how much, exactly?”

“And what does it have to do with the strong tight fire?” pressed Chert.

“Do this,” said Veela, and held up two lightly closed fists. “Do this.”

The Jaw obeyed. So did Chert, reluctantly.

Veela poked up the index finger of her right hand. “What this, you call? Word for this, there is?”

The People did have words for counting up to ten, though the word list ran out along with their fingers. Even so, Veela’s question was confusing, because when they did count they started with their thumbs.

“Finger,” ventured Chert.

But the Jaw got it. “One?” he said.

Veela ran through all ten fingers. When she tried moving on to toes, they looked at her like she was crazy. So: they only counted up to ten.

She decided to go ahead and teach them her own words for the first ten numbers, figuring that things would ultimately be less confusing if she imported her own mathematical vocabulary wholesale.

Then she taught them the numbers eleven through twenty. That was harder. The way she did it was to have the Jaw hold up his two fists while she did the same. Once again she cycled through her ten fingers, then touched the Jaw’s fingers. For the first finger she touched on his hand, she said, “Eleven.”

“No,” he said. “One. You said that was one.”

Veela shook her head and repeated the new word: “Eleven.” Quickly she counted to ten again on her fingers, then touched the Jaw’s finger and said, “Eleven.”

“The bitch can’t even count!” shouted Chert.

The Jaw ignored his father, face straining toward Veela, trying to understand. “That’s my one,” he insisted. “Why should my one be different from your one?”

Veela counted to twenty on their hands again, but this time she started with his hands, and designated her own fingers as eleven through twenty.

The Jaw tried to understand what she was doing but couldn’t. Unlike his impatient father, though, he sensed there was
something
she was trying to explain to him, something real and new.

“Sometimes your finger is ‘one,’” he said. “Sometimes my finger is ‘one.’ Why? What decides whose finger gets to be ‘one’? What changes? I can’t see any change. And I still don’t understand why sometimes it’s ‘one,’ and sometimes ‘eleven’. Why is ‘two’ sometimes ‘twelve’?”

“‘One,’ different from finger,” Veela said. “Even if no finger is, ‘one’ is existing.”

She got up and ran to a tree. She ran from one to another of them, touching each one and when she touched it counting from one to twenty. She scooped up a handful of pebbles and sat back down with the two men and counted out a little pile of twenty pebbles.

“This is stupid,” said Chert. “Let’s kill her.”

“Number
is
.” Veela slapped the pile of twenty pebbles. They clattered into the underbrush. “Before rock, number is. Before finger, number is. Before world, number is. In darkness, is number. Number is power. Number is
only
power.”

“What is she talking about?” demanded Chert.

“Shut up,” said the Jaw, without tearing his eyes from Veela. “Shut up.” He was concentrating so hard, beads of sweat popped from his forehead.

“Number is bones of the world. Number is the magic language.”

“But,” began the Jaw, then had so many questions he couldn’t find the sentence. Desperately, he said, “But how can you keep track of the numbers? If you don’t use your fingers? If there are more numbers than there are fingers?”

Veela grabbed a twig and jumped up, gesturing for them to follow her out to the ash. They did.

They sat together. Veela held out her hands and again cycled from one through ten. Then, in a column in the ash, she wrote the Arabic numerals for one through ten, saying each number as she went.

Then she held up both hands, leaving the fists closed, and said, “Zero. Zero.” She kept doing it until the Jaw, still confused, mimicked her. Chert refused to.

Then she took her stick again and wrote a zero in the ash atop her column of numerals. “Zero,” she said again. She faced the two men and held up her closed fists again and again said, “Zero.”

The Jaw noticed that the circle she’d drawn to represent a zero was also half of the two-part mark she’d made to represent “ten.” Then he noticed that the other half of the mark was that which represented “one.”

“Zero, hidden number is,” she said. “But most powerful number is.”

“Powerful things have no need to hide,” said Chert.