CHAPTER THIRTY – THE DESTRUCTION

With DNA from the future safely gurgling in Aurora's child, a space vessel returns

On one particular morning the winds blew harshly as though blown by a mighty deity living on the mountain tops or in the skies themselves, and the air roared with the sound of a thousand wolves all howling in unison, and Umbaga knew that the end of the world must surely be nigh.

“World’s ending,” he whispered to Mirumda, the daughter he was striving to nurture even though he had no local woman to help him, because all the other women in the tribe had run scared when it was suggested they help turn a stupid man into a mother. And it wasn’t Umbaga that they reacted against, but his infant and who had borne her. They were in fear for their lives because the child was a gift from the gods, and they didn’t trust gods.

It was a good job that there was one creature, the mad maid called Ursa who lurked and lived way down the valley from where he and Juju and then he and Aurora had lived before the women died one after the other. She was only too willing to help him and she had plenty milk in her vast tits, so much milk it would have fed half a dozen Mirumdas. So he had moved himself, lock stock and barrel if he’d had one, to be close to her and that milk, and he shared her cave with her because there were no spare caves under the shadows of the mountains where you’d think there might be plenty. Hers was a deep cave with passages off where the bones of previous occupants, bears and wolves in their turn over the years, were littered. She didn’t mind those bones though he hated them and steered well clear from the tunnels where they lay in the darkness where the only light was from a glowing seam of mineral in the black walls.

Now Mirumda was past her baby months and milk mattered less to her, and the roaring had come to torment them all.

He had heard its like before. It had been when the man Melvin had left. He had once been in that strange shining craft of his, before it had risen into the heavens all by itself, and had gone on a noise like that until there was neither sound nor whisper of it left behind.

“World’s ending,” replied Mirumda seriously, and she winked at him.

He loved Mirumda because she was not like other babies, though he would have been equally fond of her if she had been. She looked more like her mother than Umbaga would have thought possible in a new born, and she learned quickly. Everyone else in his world had a nice dark skin, like terracotta, and Mirumda was pale like her mother had been.

Then he saw it, the silver thing in the skies, and he started shivering with fear. He knew what it was all right, he’d seen it before, been on it even, when he’d been ill enough to die and Aurora had saved him, but he was still terrified of the sight and the sound of it.

He might have expected it to come down slowly in a kind of reversal of the way it had gone, but it didn’t. It came down from the blue heavens swiftly, roaring and screeching and to any post-Neanderthal observer it would have been defined as out of control. To Umbaga it was just a deafening noise and all he wanted was for it to go away.

Long ago, when Mirumda had been a tiny scrap of bawling meat, he had made a sling to carry her in. It hadn’t been his own invention, for other men, luckily not so many, also had offspring to rear on their own until they could find a willing woman to share the burden, and they made slings so they could hunt and not have to leave their infant behind unsupervised. Women sometimes died in childbirth like Aurora had, and that was sad but part of the cycle of life and death, and Neanderthal man knew that.

So Umbaga gathered Mirumda to him and swathed her in a skin before plonking her into his home-made sling and sloping off into the deepest part of the forest with her.

He hadn’t gone far when the world was rocked by an explosion the like of which he hadn’t heard before, and, with Mirumda safely in his sling and crying fit to waken the dead herself he made his way as slowly and carefully as he could towards where it must have been. He was scared stiff, but curiosity, the need to know, spurred him on. He felt a kinship with that vessel, for it had brought Aurora to him in the first place.

It was a long way, and before he got there he saw the plume of smoke piling high into the skies, and he knew where to aim for. It was in the direction of what Aurora had called the Clearing and what he knew as the Forbidden Territory. It was the field where the mushrooms grew

“Thing from other world,” he whispered to Mirumda.

“Mummy,” sighed the tiny infant once she had stopped bawling, and he marvelled at how she had associated the terrifying explosion with a mother she had never known.

“Clever girl,” he whispered back.

Mirumda cooed and giggled, and then remained silent.

The mushroom field, when he got there, was a mess. In its centre was a tangled mess of shiny metal smoking and burning, and on the ground, barely moving, struggled a bedraggled Melvin, doing his best to crawl away from the ship with two shattered legs. His shiny craft had obviously smashed into the one that was already there, the one that had been there since it had landed and its woman been shot by its shallow young male co-pilot.

It wasn’t part of Umbaga’s character not to help, so he laid his burden down as safely as he could and whispered “Mirumda stay” before racing off to see what he could do to help the crippled man who was fighting to get away from his burning craft.

When Melvin saw him as he approached he reached one had towards him.

“Quick,” he said, a word he knew was shared in the vocabulary developed by Aurora with Juju, then: “before the bloody thing goes up!”

There was urgency in the few words that Umbaga didn’t understand, but he got the meaning all right. He sensed urgency, and sprang into action.

He grabbed the other by both arms and heaved. Melvin was no light weight, but Umbaga was strong, used as he was to dragging the carcases of his prey great distances back home after a hunt, and he tugged Melvin back to where he’d left Mirumda. By then the man from the stars was barely conscious and was moaning. But he saw the child and his eyes opened wide as he exclaimed “Aurora...”

“Mummy,” cooed Mirumda.

“No time for talk,” Umbaga told her, and she gurgled at him. Umbaga laughed back. His child was a huge joy to him and he didn’t mind who saw it.

It was quite a task dragging Melvin back towards the cave he shared, with Ursa off the clearing and into the dense forest, one made especially difficult by his infant, who, though not a burden, needed him to take extra care as he struggled through thickets and past curling brambles. But he knew how to take care of her, and after what seemed ages he had Melvin far enough from the clearing to be, he hoped, safe. He himself was exhausted and needed a rest.

Melvin lay back, moaning. He was in extreme agony. His shattered legs were excruciating and all he wanted to do was pass into a pain-free unconsciousness.

“Gornley … dead,” he managed to splutter out. “Bad man….” he added.

Umbaga nodded.

“This Mirumda, Aurora’s baby,” he said, seriously. Then realising the man didn’t know, “Aurora dead,” he added.

“Mummy dead!” whispered Mirumda.

Melvin nodded, then closed his eyes. Then: “Take me,” he begged, “Help me...” and unconsciousness touched him with its soothing balm, and he knew no more, nor even stirred when a titanic explosion in the clearing rocked the world and winds from Hell bent the trees all around them, and debris rained down from the torn and brooding skies.

© Peter Rogerson 15.11.16