temptation to use an anvil stone at this early stage, for that tends to create an opposing force on the opposite side, resulting in an unpredictable fracture of the boulder. Now, keep striking until you wind up with a nicely flattened end, that is to say a striking platform—it should form a right angle with the sides of the boulder. All quite obvious, when you think about it. Now, here comes the most crucial part....”
Two hours later, Veela had two bleeding, dusty, bruised hands, one serviceable spearhead, and no more clear idea than before of how to secure it to a wooden shaft. “You’re going to need to do better than that,” said Dak, disapprovingly.
“So I’ll practice,” she said. “Anyway, what about you? How good are you at this? Have you been floating around up there, knocking pieces of chert together?”
“Oh, I’m sure once I get to the planet surface I’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”
Veela trudged to a relatively flat stone and lay on it on her back, face basking in the sun. “Let me know if there are any zombies or humans or big animals approaching, please, Dak.”
“Of course.”
She tried to let some of the tension melt in the sun and ooze out of her like butter, with limited success. “We need allies,” she muttered. “We need friends.”
“Perhaps you should go after your two renegades,” advised Dak. “I can tell you where they’re headed and you can meet them at the wall. Perhaps by the time you catch them I’ll have finished setting the trap at the hill; perhaps it’ll even be sprung.”
“I don’t know,” she said, hoping to hide her yearning behind a casual tone. “They didn’t seem too eager to hang around with me.”
“Well. They retreated in the face of that marauding zombie deer, not from you, per se. Hardly chivalrous, but I wouldn’t take it personally. Besides, whether they know it or not, they do need us if they ever want to get beyond the perimeter wall. So you’ll be doing them a favor, if you go hunting for them.”
That was true. Veela continued to brood on that runaway pair. The younger one she missed (she was thinking of him as being roughly her age, early thirties—it had not occurred to her that that hardened, weathered hulk of a man, with his eyes that were sometimes innocent and sometimes world-weary, almost deadly, could be only fifteen). The older one gave her the creeps. Also, he’d been the one to run off and leave her for the zombie deer. Then again, he had clearly done it for the not completely unlaudable purpose of saving the Jaw (she was pretty sure his name included their version of a definite article, though she had no clue why). “Do you suppose they could be father and son?”
Veela couldn’t be sure without seeing his face, but she thought she heard a smirk in his voice. “I highly doubt that’s the nature of the bond between them. You’re looking at the situation through anachronistic prejudices. People in this time period don’t form that kind of kinship bond—they don’t even understand the father’s role in conception.”
“How do you know?”
“I told you, I’ve been perusing our anthology books.”
“Yeah, well, I’m the one actually down here on the surface.”
“And which of us is the one who knows how to make a spearhead?”
Veela kept her mouth shut, despite being tempted to retort that while she might not yet know how to make a spear perfectly, she did know how to sit in a comfortable spaceship and read instructions on how to do it to someone else. During their long trek back from the Cantor-Gould Collider, she’d come to feel there was something so cold about Dak—it wasn’t that he’d been unfriendly—in fact, part of what had unnerved Veela was that he’d been almost cheerful, as if it was a shame about the extinction of the human race but the bright side was that he got to commandeer the Collider for an experiment that he would never have been able to get approval for otherwise.
Two hours later, Veela had two bleeding, dusty, bruised hands, one serviceable spearhead, and no more clear idea than before of how to secure it to a wooden shaft. “You’re going to need to do better than that,” said Dak, disapprovingly.
“So I’ll practice,” she said. “Anyway, what about you? How good are you at this? Have you been floating around up there, knocking pieces of chert together?”
“Oh, I’m sure once I get to the planet surface I’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”
Veela trudged to a relatively flat stone and lay on it on her back, face basking in the sun. “Let me know if there are any zombies or humans or big animals approaching, please, Dak.”
“Of course.”
She tried to let some of the tension melt in the sun and ooze out of her like butter, with limited success. “We need allies,” she muttered. “We need friends.”
“Perhaps you should go after your two renegades,” advised Dak. “I can tell you where they’re headed and you can meet them at the wall. Perhaps by the time you catch them I’ll have finished setting the trap at the hill; perhaps it’ll even be sprung.”
“I don’t know,” she said, hoping to hide her yearning behind a casual tone. “They didn’t seem too eager to hang around with me.”
“Well. They retreated in the face of that marauding zombie deer, not from you, per se. Hardly chivalrous, but I wouldn’t take it personally. Besides, whether they know it or not, they do need us if they ever want to get beyond the perimeter wall. So you’ll be doing them a favor, if you go hunting for them.”
That was true. Veela continued to brood on that runaway pair. The younger one she missed (she was thinking of him as being roughly her age, early thirties—it had not occurred to her that that hardened, weathered hulk of a man, with his eyes that were sometimes innocent and sometimes world-weary, almost deadly, could be only fifteen). The older one gave her the creeps. Also, he’d been the one to run off and leave her for the zombie deer. Then again, he had clearly done it for the not completely unlaudable purpose of saving the Jaw (she was pretty sure his name included their version of a definite article, though she had no clue why). “Do you suppose they could be father and son?”
Veela couldn’t be sure without seeing his face, but she thought she heard a smirk in his voice. “I highly doubt that’s the nature of the bond between them. You’re looking at the situation through anachronistic prejudices. People in this time period don’t form that kind of kinship bond—they don’t even understand the father’s role in conception.”
“How do you know?”
“I told you, I’ve been perusing our anthology books.”
“Yeah, well, I’m the one actually down here on the surface.”
“And which of us is the one who knows how to make a spearhead?”
Veela kept her mouth shut, despite being tempted to retort that while she might not yet know how to make a spear perfectly, she did know how to sit in a comfortable spaceship and read instructions on how to do it to someone else. During their long trek back from the Cantor-Gould Collider, she’d come to feel there was something so cold about Dak—it wasn’t that he’d been unfriendly—in fact, part of what had unnerved Veela was that he’d been almost cheerful, as if it was a shame about the extinction of the human race but the bright side was that he got to commandeer the Collider for an experiment that he would never have been able to get approval for otherwise.
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