We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

It took almost a month to get ready. The trek to the best village site would be long and arduous. From discussion with Moses, it seemed that it was one of the first villages to be abandoned, and unfortunately it was the one with the best supply of flint.

Moses wasn’t clear on why it hadn’t been better defended. He apparently had been a young cub at the time, and most of his information from that era was second-hand. He’d been one of the last Deltans to be trained to knap flint before they were forced to leave.

In any case, Marvin had surveyed the route that they would have to take. It would not be easy or quick. A mountainous spine ran down the center of this continent, and there were only a couple of passes that were low enough to be useful. During that part of the trek, there would be no local food unless the tribe got very lucky.

I didn’t know if the Deltans had lost the techniques for food preservation or if they’d never developed them. Before they could leave, I had to teach them how to preserve meat. The Deltans understood the benefit right away and took to it with enthusiasm.

The Deltans worked to build up a larder for the journey. Once the decision had been made, everyone got on board, and with the immediate gift of knowledge that I’d brought, they began to trust that I was steering them in a good direction.

Gorilloids were spotted on a number of occasions, hanging around the edge of the Deltan territory. They might have been hoping for targets of opportunity, but they seemed to have had the stuffing knocked out of them in our last encounter. They didn’t challenge any of the Deltan hunting parties. Of course, the sight of an occasional drone floating about might have had a little something to do with that, as well. I was quite happy to put the fear of bawbe into them.

While I waited for the Deltans to finish their preparations, Marvin and I made sure we built some more busters. They were hardly an ideal weapon—about equivalent to fishing with dynamite—but they were better than nothing. Besides, they made up for their lack of precision with an abundance of theatrics.

We also faced a breeding issue. Deltans, it turned out, had an annual breeding cycle, and a large number of mothers-to-be were coming up on their due date. The Deltans were rightly reluctant to move before the latest generation arrived.

Archimedes’ stock continued to soar with the other juveniles. He was, for all intents and purposes, now a member of the tribal council, something that even Arnold couldn’t claim. I also noted in passing that Archimedes was now showing a lot of signs of Deltan puberty. Likely the next few years would see a whole bunch of mini-Archimedeses running around.