Chapter 11
Refugee
The Peterbilt
September 19, 1005 CE
Lomhar and Fazel left the next morning, well before daybreak. As with their arrival in Jabir, they wanted their departure to go unnoticed by anyone except the people they’d met with.
The young girl did not go with them, however. She was a problem left behind that promptly got dropped onto the Americans. Before daybreak, someone rapped on the driver’s side door of the Peterbilt. It turned out to be Kasni and it soon became clear that none of the three American adults had a good enough facility with the emergent creole language to follow everything she was saying.
So, Shane was assigned to translate.
“They want to know if we’re willing to keep that young girl with us. Here in the Peterbilt, I mean. She’s one of the nieces of one of the top chiefs in Hocha and the priests have singled her out as a soon-to-be sacrificial lamb.”
Alyssa nodded. “Makes sense. My guess had been that the priesthood was using the threat of sacrificing members of high-ranked families as a way to keep them in line.”
“They’re that blatant about it?” demanded Michael.
“It’s been done all through history, Michael—and, yes, it’s usually blatant because the people doing it wield the whip.” Alyssa’s expression became stony. “Do you know what the biggest risk factor was for a black man getting lynched during the Jim Crow era? I’ll give you a hint: it had nothing to do with white women, although that was often the public excuse presented.”
Michael and Melanie shook their heads. “No. What was it?” asked Melanie.
“Being a successful businessman and pissing off your white competitors. I was told by a colleague of mine at SIU—she was a professor of European history, especially the seventeenth century—that the same pattern characterized the witch hunts that were so prominent and frequent in that era. Accusing someone of being a witch and getting them executed was a way to settle scores with political or commercial rivals.”
She was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck and swiveled so she could point an accusing finger to the north. “I’m willing to bet that’s what’s happening in Hocha. The priests use the threat of sacrifice—which they carry out, too—as a way of intimidating the chiefs.”
Michael scratched his jaw. “Well, that certainly would go a long way to explain why some of these chiefs have been so friendly to us. ‘Hey, look at the great big demon and its people we found.’”
“It also explains why they’re so keenly interested in Christianity,” said Alyssa, swiveling back. “I’m also willing to bet—okay, smaller stakes, a lot of this is pure speculation—that the natives’ religion before the advent of the priests was pretty formless. Animism and pantheism, for the most part, interpreted by shamans who often disagreed with each other. Then the priesthood gets rolling, with a much more sophisticated and coherent pantheon of deities, and people start gravitating toward them. It’s hard for those who are skeptical to resist, because they don’t have a coherent alternative. Then—”
She chuckled, but there wasn’t much humor in the sound. “Voila. It turns out the Peterbilt people have a much more impressive religion to offer, which includes motion pictures on a TV screen, singing, this amazing way of freezing words and ideas into fixed written forms—and to top it all off, a really simple but impressive symbol for all of it.”
“That’s right,” said Shane. “They usually call Jesus the god of the cross or just the cross god. Some of them are starting to get tattooed with crosses, too.”
“All right—but we’ve got to make a decision. Do we take the girl into the truck? And why do they want that, anyway?”
Shane provided the answer. “Kasni says the priests have spies everywhere and they’re bound to have some in Jabir—they can even name one of them, that nasty old shaman Priyak. By now, she says, at least one or two have to have gotten a place for themselves in this settlement. They have to keep Zara—that’s the girl’s name—hidden until they’re ready to challenge the priests openly. Kasni didn’t give a time period for that, but—”
“We’re talking months, at a minimum,” said Michael.
His daughter nodded. “That’s what I think, too. Anyway, Kasni says the one place they can be sure no one will spot Zara is if”—here, Shane grinned cheerily—“she’s inside the belly of the demon.”
Melanie grimaced. “It’s already pretty crowded in here.”
“There’s an easy solution to that,” said Alyssa, “which I’ve been thinking about anyway. We make a deal with Kasni. Zara gets to hide in the truck if she’s willing to provide me and my kids with a big enough area in that triple-sized hut they’d built for her.”
Michael and Melanie stared at her. “Are you . . . sure about that, Alyssa?” asked Melanie. “I mean, I’m willing to bet the bunk you share with your kids is a lot more comfortable than anything Kasni can provide you with. The natives sleep on what amounts to grass and reed pallets.”
She made a face. “Probably got bugs in them.”
Alyssa’s chuckle, this time, had quite a bit of humor in it. “Actually, they do a pretty good job of keeping their quarters clean and pest-free. But let’s face it, come winter we’re all going to have it rough.” She glanced into the cab. “Yeah, you’ll be able to keep the truck warm—but you got neither a toilet nor a shower in here, and no way to cook food. Right now, that’s not a big problem. Come the winter solstice, we’re all going to be freezing our butts off.”
“I’m trying not to think about it, thank you very much,” grumbled Michael.
“Look, let’s face facts. A few months from now—no more than a year—we’re going to be caught up in what amounts to a civil war.” Alyssa’s expression got stern. “We have got to improve our language skills, especially we three adults—and we have to do it as quickly as possible. Having me and my two children immersed in Kadlo culture is the best and fastest way I can think of to do that.”
There was silence for a little while. Then Michael shrugged and said, “I can’t argue with that.” He glanced out the driver’s side window. Kasni was still out there, waiting patiently. To his daughter, he said, “So go cut the deal, kiddo.”
* * *
After Shane left the truck Melanie turned to Alyssa and said, “Has it struck you that what we founded and are now following is not the Christian religion that you and I grew up in?”
Alyssa laughed. “Yes, that and more. Jesus Christ Superstar is hardly a blanket endorsement of Christianity. It was written in the nineteen sixties and raises a number of questions about the truth of Christianity. Heck, Judas is its second lead. It paints Christ as a man torn by indecision.”
“But also a man that sacrificed himself so the rest of us wouldn’t need to,” Michael said.
“Sure, but if you start with Jesus Christ Superstar you’re going to end up with a lot of doubters in the congregation,” Alyssa insisted. “I’ve been getting secondhand questions like was Judas damned for all time and was he doing what Christ or God wanted him to. Both of which are right out of songs in the movie.”
“I grant that,” Melanie agreed, “but one clear message is ‘if you turn someone over to the Pharisees to be sacrificed, you’re going to end up hanging yourself.’ And that’s a message that clearly resonates with these folks.”
Michael nodded.
* * *
Shane knocked on the window and told them about the deal she’d made.
It tied in with the new town that they were now working on, the medieval keep. Alyssa and the kids would move into Kasni’s hut but only temporarily. They were going to build a new hut with a fireplace and a stone chimney, which would be for Alyssa and the kids.
“They get to learn what a fireplace and a chimney are, and I figure we can use some of the metal from the sliced car to make a top for the fireplace so that the heat will stay in the house while the smoke goes out.”
Over the next few days, the design of the Jefferson house was formalized. It would include a bedroom, a main room and a lab for Alyssa. But it was going to take a while to finish, and in the meantime the full-immersion language and culture lessons could commence.
The Peterbilt
September 22, 1005 CE
Melanie Anderle was driving the Ram truck. Michael was in back with half a dozen of the villagers from Jabir on a contraption. “This is taking backseat driving to new heights,” Melanie complained over her phone, only half joking. Her phone was tied into the truck by Bluetooth and Michael’s was in his pocket and hooked into the Peterbilt’s Wi-Fi hub, and Michael was telling her in detail how fast to go and when and where to turn. That was because the six villagers from Jabir were manhandling a device that they already had or at least had used. Hocha collected taxes or tribute in the form of labor from outlying towns, including Jabir. That labor was used to make the mounds and streets of Hocha. A lot of it was done with men carrying baskets of earth from one place to another, but some was done with large groups of men pulling not quite plows that cut up the ground so that it might be moved more easily.
With the Ram truck to pull the device, it had been modified in the village not to just cut up the ground but to load it into a sliding scoop contraption. It wasn’t a fresno scraper but it performed something close to the same function of moving a great deal of earth in a comparatively short time. Compared to a bulldozer, it was slow and wasteful. Compared to a bunch of guys with baskets, it was incredibly fast. And that didn’t even include the fact that the truck didn’t get tired. The drivers did and so far today Alyssa, Michael, Melanie and even Shane had taken at least one turn. Melanie was on her second turn. But a great deal of earth had been moved enough to make the road under construction between Fort Peterbilt and Jabir wider and more solid, solid enough to take the full weight of the Peterbilt.
* * *
Over the fall, using the pickup truck and the Peterbilt as tractors pulling plows made from what was left of the Honda and copper that the people already worked, they cut a new town out of the earth. Ditches were emptied and mounds were built. Plots were dug out so that the houses’ floors were three feet below ground level so that they would leak less heat. Rocks and clay were made into chimneys to keep the heat in while guiding the smoke away. Trees were pulled up by their roots using the pickup or the Peterbilt, then split with copper wedges. Wattle-and-daub walls were built and the glass from the country store was used to make windows for several homes. What would have taken two hundred people to do by hand was done by twenty, using the truck for pulling and hauling. The weak point was the gate that was big enough to let the Peterbilt out and the stretch of flat ground right in front of it where there was no trench to delay an attacker. But even that was less a weak point than a trap.
But building the town wasn’t all they were doing. Language lessons and religious education were ongoing both in Fort Peterbilt and the village of Jabir.
The children played together and learned each other’s languages, shared games and toys.
And full immersion worked. By late fall Alyssa understood the local language quite well. She didn’t speak it nearly as well, but she understood. She was also teaching the locals English, but not just English. She was teaching them chemistry and the germ theory of medicine. And Alyssa wasn’t the only one. Shane had her slate computer. Mostly it had games, but it also had PDF copies of her books from her last year of school. The sixth grade didn’t go deep into any fields, but it gave a decent overview of English, math, general science and geography. Geography included, for instance, a map of North America that was much more accurate than anything that the locals had. Shane found herself teaching what she’d learned in the sixth grade to teenagers and grown-ups.
Fort Peterbilt
November 5, 1005 CE
As it turned out, Alyssa was wrong about how long it was going to take the locals to produce the wire screens necessary for paper making. They had examples of metal screens in the engines of the cars and Alyssa’s Honda was scrap anyway. The locals already had copper, though not brass or bronze. They were already making copper wire, if slowly and by hand. But combining the knowledge the Peterbilt people brought with what they already knew, they made a pedal-powered wire puller on their own, and started making screens.
The motivation for this wasn’t to make paper. No, it was a complaint Shane had made about the lack of screens to keep out flies. The locals weren’t any fonder of flies than the Peterbilt people, and a way of keeping them out of the house really appealed.
Besides, they had the money to buy the copper. Their plates and bowls were selling well all up and down the Talak River.
Of course, once they had the screens, making finer screens to make paper became an option.
The Peterbilt
November 11, 1005 CE
“What’s this word?” Zara asked and Shane rolled her eyes. She couldn’t help it. For over a month now Shane had been Zara’s teacher, companion, and the only person who spoke a language she could understand.
When Zara had questions, she had only one person to ask. And Zara always had questions. Shane looked. The word was “outcomes” and it was in Shane’s sixth grade math book, so she tried to explain what an outcome was and how it differed from a result like the result of two plus two. The most irritating thing about Zara was how fast she learned. Zara had grown up with no written language. Everything she’d learned in her life, she’d learned by memorizing it. She memorized the alphabet in about an hour and her numbers in about five minutes.
Not that the people of Hocha didn’t have numbers, but math and, especially, dates were the province of the priesthood in Hocha. It was part of the secret knowledge of the priests that, according to the priests, let them tell the farmers when to prepare the ground, sow the seeds, water the crops, and harvest the crops all at the right time of year.
This is vital information for farmers. It wasn’t that the farmers didn’t notice when the days got longer or that the stars in the sky were in different places at different times of the night and the year. But the precision that the standing pillars in Hocha provided was important as a proof of divine knowledge.
Now, though, full information on how to determine the date easily and consistently was in Shane’s sixth grade textbooks.
The Peterbilt people’s calendars were, in their way, more of a revelation to the locals than the cell phones that held them. There are 365.2422 days in a year. One leap year every four years would keep things consistent for the next hundred years.
Zara thought that the decimal point was sheer genius.
“There can only be one result, two plus two is always going to be four. But there can be different outcomes. If you spin a wheel it might stop on one or two or three.” She pointed to the page of the book which showed a spinning arrow on a wheel divided into thirds.
“Outcomes,” Zara said, “outcomes, outcomes, outcomes.”
Then she went back to struggling through the math book, and two minutes later she was asking Shane what another word meant.
Gada’s house, Fort Peterbilt
November 12, 1005 CE
Today Shane’s slate computer was in Gada’s house as she showed him the earth science textbook. And there on a page was a picture of the near side of the moon and right next to it a picture of the far side.
Gada looked at the picture, then simply stared. Shane didn’t get it. Shane was just at that point where she was young enough to learn Kadlok but old enough to actually know something about the tech knowledge of her world, so she spent a lot of time explaining things to grown-ups.
On the whole, she wished she was back in the Peterbilt explaining things to Zara. She could tell by Gada’s expression that it was important to him, but she didn’t get it. It was just a photo of the far side of the moon, taken by a satellite she guessed, or maybe one of the Apollo missions. And it couldn’t be the slate computer. He was used to that, by now.
* * *
Finally Gada managed to look away from the image of the far side of the moon and look at Shane. He realized that she didn’t understand why he should care. And he had no idea how to explain it. Not a big thing in itself, it was the back side of the moon after all, but profound in the way it impressed the shaman. He also learned math that he’d never imagined and the shape of North America. He learned the shape of all the continents, but it was North America that interested him most. He learned that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. He learned so much so quickly that he thought his mind might explode.
* * *
It wasn’t all one way. The Peterbilt people learned which animals were common to the area, which were dangerous, which were good to eat. They learned which plants had medicinal value, which were poisonous and which were good to eat, how to dry and smoke meats and fruits, where the clays for making pots were located. In exchange, the Peterbilt people introduced the potter’s wheel, turning a job that had taken hours into one that took minutes.
A discussion of the way the Honda Civic’s body had been made led one of the villagers to invent stamps for shaping small clay items. And every innovation made the priests in Hocha seem weaker and less knowing in comparison.
Zara was seen. Not immediately, but no one can spend all their time in a Peterbilt. It wasn’t that Zara didn’t want to. She was quite reasonably terrified of the priests of Hocha. And the Peterbilt was fascinating, but not as fascinating as Shane with her schoolbooks and games on her slate computer.
In spite of all that, you can’t spend all your time in a small room with no place to go to the bathroom. It was only a few weeks after she moved in that she was spotted. It took another month before word filtered back to Hocha and even then the priesthood did nothing.
The first attack on the Peterbilt people had been a disaster and by the time Zara’s location was learned, the demon was surrounded by a ditch and a wall. A ditch and a wall that the people of the village of Jabir shouldn’t have been able to build. So the priesthood waited, indecisive but growing angrier by the day.
* * *
Alyssa discussed it with Michael and Melanie after treating wounds of the hunters of Jabir. “Neolithic societies, according to my archaeologist friends, were very violent and were characterized by endemic warfare. My friends say, based on excavated skeletons, that as many as thirty percent of the males either died of violence or suffered major and possibly mortal wounds.” She grimaced. “And from the things we’ve seen, they were right.
“But if the societies were very violent, the individual battles were not—largely because they weren’t battles to begin with. They were raids, like the attack that caused the building of Fort Peterbilt, but even smaller, with usually no more than ten men fighting on either side. The twenty or so guys that attacked us were an army. By local standards anyway.
“Remember, the fighting was mostly held at a distance. The weapons principally used were javelins and bows and arrows. Usually no more than two or three men died in such fights, and it was not unusual for there to be no fatalities at all.
“That means that the body count when they attacked us probably sent shockwaves through the whole society. I think it’s going to be very hard for the priests of Hocha to assemble large bodies of warriors, and will take a lot of time.
“Assuming they can manage it at all.”
Gada’s house, Fort Peterbilt
December 25, 1005 CE
Gada opened the door to his house and looked out at a snow-covered field. Fort Peterbilt was looking awfully festive as Christmas morning rolled around. There was a Christmas tree near the Peterbilt. It had brightly colored strings tied to the limbs and little sacks filled with nuts and sweet treats. It made Gada smile.
Shane, Miriam, and Norman had told the locals all about Christmas and Santa Claus. Gada had questioned the parents about the celebration. The thing was, none of the Peterbilt people had been of the “don’t celebrate Christmas because it’s a pagan holiday” sort.
“It’s mostly an excuse to have a nice feast and give presents to the children,” Alyssa explained.
“And each other,” Michael added, with a grin at his wife. “Good food and good fellowship.”
As it happened, the priests of Hocha also had a celebration held on the shortest day of the year, but that celebration involved the sacrifice of young women in order to persuade the gods to change their minds and bring back summer.
Yes, Gada thought. This is much better than what they will be doing in Hocha in a few days. First, it doesn’t involve killing teenage girls.
In a little while Santa Claus would be welcomed into Fort Peterbilt and the jolly old elf was bringing all sorts of presents to good little girls and boys.
He smiled again at the snow-crowned Christmas tree and went back inside to get into his Santa outfit.
* * *
Over the next four hours, Gada went around the homes in Fort Peterbilt and delivered presents and treats to every house. And every house was decorated, including Christmas trees and Christmas feasts. All in celebration of Jesus deciding to be born into a human body to end forever the practice of human sacrifice.
He reached the Peterbilt and noted the rumble as its engines idled, keeping the interior warm and powering the lights and other stuff. The first Christmas since the arrival of the Peterbilt people was a white Christmas.
The most popular present was a carved and painted Peterbilt truck with wheels that actually spun. And, of course, a pickup truck. But there were also scarves and shirts, because knitting—or maybe it was crocheting—had been developed by the folk of Jabir.
He gave Melanie the scarves.
* * *
Melanie smiled and shook her head. All she’d been able to tell the locals was that there were little hooks on long sticks and women could use them to make cloth of a sort. That had been enough, as it turned out. The locals had brought her several examples of hooks and she’d approved the ones that looked most like what she’d remembered. Then the women had gone off with thread and experimented. Melanie wasn’t at all sure what they’d come up with was either knitting or crocheting, but it seemed to work.
Melanie got half a dozen knit scarves. They used a hemp thread that the locals had had before the Peterbilt people had arrived.
Then they all went back to Gada’s house, where there was a Christmas feast laid out, turkey and yams, but also venison and fish, and every sort of treat the locals could come up with.