CHAPTER SIXTEEN – FIRE!

It's not recorded whether Neanderthal man used fire, but here are two that did!

It has already been recorded in this history that Umbaga and his people knew something about fire. They had to because it sprang up seemingly at random all around them in summer when the sun baked the Earth and rain was scarce. Much of the world became tinder-dry and the mysteries of fire teased the minds of people too soon on the evolutionary ladder to know much about it.

It even put in appearances of a more terrifying nature during thunder storms when lightning strikes on dry timber burst into a blaze of fire before the accompanying rain extinguished it. They even knew how to control it.

And close examination of the lightning fire and nature’s methods taught them how to put it out, too, with water to douse it, although it didn’t cross their minds that the water starved the flames of oxygen and thus denied them the breath of fiery life. They knew nothing of scientific facts but a great deal about the shapes of what they saw.

And the shape of fire changed when it was washed with water.

And more. They knew how to extend the burning life of fire by feeding it with dried sticks and piles of dehydrated grass and moss. They knew how to carry a lighted f****t to their own caves and make a fire outside, to frighten Old Man Tiger amongst others, maybe … and cook their food on it.

But they did not know how to create fire if there was none around.

Therefore when there was no wild fire anywhere near there was no cooking. That much was part of their lives.

Enter the two stranded space travellers.

They much preferred to have their food cooked and they thought they knew all about fire, especially how to create it. They had special lighters back on their pace vehicle for igniting the few things they had that needed igniting. They had been schooled in the art of self-preservation should they land on a planet similar to the one occupied by Umbaga and his Neanderthal friends. They had been taught the basics of fire-building and cooking. They knew quite a lot.

And they even knew how to create fire from scratch without using any of their fancy aids and lighting paraphernalia.

They knew all of the theory.

Yet knowledge without practice and practical experience might get to look most unlike knowledge, and this was a lesson they were about to learn.

Melvin was reasonably well recovered and Juju’s salve seemed to have prevented infection. After a couple of days he found that he could stand, walk about and moan, which was something he seemed to do incessantly.

He was particularly adept at moaning, and Aurora spent a great deal of time impatiently clicking her tongue and warning him against stupidity.

“We are guests here, Melvin,” she would say sharply, “and it isn’t exactly kindly if guests set out to be offensive to their hosts.”

But Melvin felt like being offensive. These primitives, for goodness sake, were Neanderthal, a species that had been born and died long before their own species had evolved, probably on a much different planet, how was he to know where?

“If we share some of the same DNA as Umbaga and Juju then our two species evolved on this planet,” she said, irritably because it all made sense to her. The natives here, in her mind, must be the same race as those who had first made it to the stars, her own forefathers, but over time since then must have regressed to be the primitive people they were, had become echoes of a long-distant evolutionary past.. Their Neanderthal DNA had taken control as the years had passed and produced the people that they were, and she rather liked them.

So any friction that story, rainy season wasn’t between the two very different peoples but between Aurora and Melvin.

Aurora was becoming reasonably competent at making herself understood in Umbaga’s language, for Juju had been a remarkably patient teacher and had encouraged her using the gift of humour if misunderstandings occurred. And what annoyed Melvin more than anything was when Aurora told him off in the strange primitive language of the Neanderthal cave-people, with the mocking support of Juju, who seemed to understand more than a cave-woman should.

“Melvin, you need not moan,” she remonstrated in Juju’s tongue, when he got to be offensive to his hosts, “When rain stops we go back to ship and go home.”

“If we can,” Melvin would respond in his own language, but the response from him proved he could understand the Neanderthal tongue but chose not to.

“Meanwhile we make fire,” said Aurora, looking distastefully at the semi-raw meat that was to be her meal for the day.

Her problem was the rain. It had been falling continuously for three days and she was reluctant to go out into it. It wasn’t the prospect of cold that filled her with reluctance but the worry about getting wet.

She wasn’t used to anything but the antiseptic and fragrant shower-water of her spaceship, preferring it to the natural rainwater that was falling incessantly and opting not to think how many times her preferred water had been recycled aboard ship and how many undesirable pollutants had been extracted from it. To her the very processes of artificial purification meant it was safe. And irrationally, in her opinion rain water couldn’t possibly be as clean and she didn’t want to be soaked by it. Anyway, Melvin was hardly fit enough for a long march in the rain. His injuries might not have been as serious as they had at first thought and Old Man Tiger had failed to break through his clothing, but he was still pale and drained, which made him even more of a moaner than he might otherwise have been.

So they were stranded for the time being, and she needed better food.

And she decided to teach Umbaga and Juju how to create a fire to cook it on.

But all did not go well. She knew the principles, all right, the fact that friction can create enough heat to ignite dry tinder and that the whole process is simple. She knew that last bit because the instruction program back on her home planet had stressed the point. And she knew that if two dry sticks were rubbed together eventually there would be enough heat to cause a flame to spring into being.

In all fairness to her she was fraught with obstacles.

There were no dry sticks, and how could she dry any without fire? So she searched around and eventually found a few that were only slightly damp.

“We rub sticks and make fire,” she said to Juju, and started rubbing them together.

Nothing happened. And then, when she was on the brink of giving up a small spiral of smoke actually rose from the dryer of the two sticks.

“Look! Smoke!” she cried, and rubbed her sticks together all the harder.

The smoke caused a feeble spark to shoot into nothing, and went out. But she had demonstrated how to make a stick warm and put her failure down to the all-pervading damp on a world that seemed to be dominated by rain.

She wasn’t the sort to give up, though, and it crossed her mind that she might need some tinder, some dried grass or combustible something.

She looked around.

There was a pile of furs in one corner.

“May I?” she asked, and pointed at the furs. “Just a tiny scrap,” she added.

“What for?” asked Juju, ferreting in her pile of winter furs. “This big?” she asked, holding up a scrap.

Aurora nodded. “Need stuff to start fire,” she said quietly, and resumed rubbing her sticks with the sort of violence that made Melvin fear for his life should he go too far upsetting the woman.

This time the spiral of smoke came much more quickly and Aurora held some of the dry fur against it, blowing gently.

It didn’t take long for a reluctant flame to attach itself to the fur with a burst of foul smoke accompanying it.

“Fire,” she sighed, smiling.

“Fire!” exclaimed Juju, and Umbaga sat down and thoughtfully frowned as he tried to work out possibilities.

The brand new flame flickered out, but Umbaga wasn’t going to forget it. Not now, and not in a long time!

© Peter Rogerson 31.10.16