CHAPTER TWENTY – OF HOMO SAPIENS

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

In which mankind shows he's not the great master iof himself that he thinks he is, but maybe women are....

Umbaga listened impatiently to the outburst from Gornley before deciding to do something about it. He’d had enough. He was quite capable of working out that bad was bad, and bad had no place in his world.

In addition he knew that the man Gornley’s body language represented a threat. Every twitch of his muscles and every harsh tone underlying his words suggested it. And Umbaga knew there were ruffians around who could try to impost their will on others. His own people would never do that but on one of his more distant expeditions whilst hunting he had met some who would, some savage people who would do anything and break any accepted convention to get their way. They were a new group of bearded strangers who had wandered from the South, who knew how to make little spears fly from wooden bows and who killed other men without compunction. He had already had dealings with a small group of them and been fortunate to get away without any serious injury. And he’d been careful to ensure that he’d left no trail they could follow that would bring them to his home. If they should chance on the peaceful river valley where he lived they might greedily try to steal their homes, and that would never do.

And this Gornley was very much like them. Oh, he had trimmed the hair from his face and was without beard, he wore spectacularly different clothing created from a woven material that was so fine and smart that Umbaga had never seen anything remotely like it before, but there was something about him, a look in his eyes, a contempt on his face, that was familiar, and Umbaga didn’t like it. And over all there was an arrogance, a deceitful hauteur that implied a mental strength he clearly didn’t have.

“Where woman?” Umbaga asked, quickly.

When Melvin had been shot (and Umbaga was surprisingly glad to see that he’d been wrong when he’d thought him dead) there had been a woman with the young stranger. She had reminded him of Aurora, who he found himself beginning to worship in his own Neanderthal way. But he’d seen nothing of her since the angry man had arrived, bristling with what he saw as unfounded wrath and, thankfully, unarmed.

“Yes,” said Aurora, “Where is your senior officer? Who was it? Stardust?”

“That b***h?” asked Gornley with a sneer, “She rebelled and I had to sort her out once and for all. It’s against common sense, having women rebelling!”

“I asked where is she?” demanded Aurora.

“Dead. She’s dead as a very dead thing, and no messing,” sneered the young man arrogantly. “I had to put up with her and her ways all the way here, and when we whipped round that black hole … she didn’t want to do it, she said it would take us too far out of our way, but I insisted, and I was the man. She was in a mood after that even though you’ve never had as much fun as you get from whipping at three times the maximum possible speed round a small black hole! I mean, it doesn’t make sense, does it? Three times the maximum speed, as if that was possible! But we did it and when we get back I’ll have it put in the records.”

Aurora fixed him with her beautiful but piercing eyes, and they seemed to penetrate to somewhere deep inside him and he didn’t like it.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he muttered, looking down as if to avoid the kind of weapon he suddenly knew that couldn’t abide.

“She’s dead?” asked Aurora. “Are you trying to tell me you killed her? Is that what you’re so proud of?”

“Woman dead?” asked Umbaga, who had somehow managed to distil the truth from a language he couldn’t begin to understand. “He kill woman?” he said, his voice both questioning and flat. In Umbaga’s world a man didn’t kill a woman. He didn’t kill anyone, not even Old Man Tiger because you can’t eat old cats, but least of all did he harm women.

“He says,” nodded Aurora.

“We find,” snarled Umbaga, and he grabbed hold of Gornley and held him in the kind of hold designed to keep a man prisoner for as long as possible whilst squeezing his testicles with one vicious hand. Gornley grated his teeth and howled like a wild wolf, but to no avail. Umbaga wasn’t going to release his hold and in actual fact the more noise the other made the more he tightened his grip.

“Take,” he demanded, and that one word was enough for Gornley to know exactly what was expected of him. In a grip that almost prevented any movement at all he managed to lead Umbaga, followed by Aurora Melvin, into a deeply overgrown part of the forest. He thought he was being clever as he eyed the most impenetrable growth and tried to force a way through it

Umbaga knew almost immediately that this couldn’t be the way for there was no sign that anyone and certainly not a clumsy stranger had come that way. But he could see signs of a trail leading off to his right, a signpost that was clear as day to him that someone had beaten his way along, severing brambles and bending willow saplings as he went. And there were the traces of footmarks, especially in places where the water from the recent downpour hadn’t quite soaked away and had left muddy puddles. To Umbaga the way was clear and he forced his captive to go that way.

They came to the pissing stump and it was all Umbaga could do to stop himself from urinating on it, but to do so would most likely have been folly, so regretfully he pushed on past it and onto the mushroom clearing.

He had never seen such a sight! A magnificent shining thing (he might have used words like spaceship or machine had he known them) stood almost dead centre, the sunlight gleaming on it and its size tremendous. Had he known it, this was just a small space explorer, one that only had a crew of two and that could quite easily have been manned by a single person. But his attention was soon diverted by the sight of a figure lying prone and lifeless midway between where he was standing and the mighty machine.

“Stardust!” yelped Aurora, and she ran towards the prone figure. When she got there she couldn’t help weeping at the sight of a woman, slightly older than her self one that would have been beautiful had she not had half her face blown off. She lay still and was most obviously dead, and no matter how advanced humanity might get on the long evolutionary ladder or how clever he thought himself to be, he would never be able to return life to the dead.

“You did this?” demanded Aurora turning angrily towards Gornley, “you shot a defenceless woman, you killed her?”

“She would not obey the orders of a man,” replied the youth, “and we all know the first rule of spacemanship is a woman must always be subordinate to a man!”

If looks could kill then the look that Aurora gave to Gornley would have reduced him to his constituent chemicals and they would have soaked in a once-living slime into the fertile soil of the mushroom clearing. But as it was, looks couldn’t kill.

“She might have been a woman but she was superior to you in every way I can think of,” snarled Aurora. “She had more intelligence than you, more knowledge, more integrity and above all more seniority! She was your superior officer, your boss and in command in every possible way! And you murdered her!”

“So what?” sniggered Gornley, and with a wrench that could only do one thing Umbaga released his genitals with an extra crucifying squeeze, and before he could recover and react, he savagely broke his arm in one simple and very convincing movement.