A few brave souls had actually been aboard the Twist of Fate, but they hadn't ventured inside, and they had done very little damage. One had put a steel fishhook through his hand, but didn't seem angry about it. He seemed to treasure the bright, shiny new thing hanging there.
Howard kept his finger on the trigger, and he and Andrea both smiled a lot, and nodded, and showed open palms, and got into their Zodiac and—startling everyone when they started the engine—motored back out to the Twist.
Establishing themselves as White Gods didn't take long. They had a practically unlimited supply of miracles to offer. Soon everyone was friendly and eager to see new things. When Howard and Andrea went back to the tar pits and set up a tent, part of the tribe went with them to protect them, and the rest moved their village three miles north to guard the Twist and to fish, which was their main livelihood.
Howard waited.
To pass the time, he read. His computer memories held much of the future worlds' libraries, most of it absolutely useless but some incredibly valuable to them, from the Boy Scout Handbook to paleontology and anthropology texts. Year One passed, meticulously marked off by the internal clock in Howard's computer.
They never called the next one Year Two. When it came to an end, it was the Year of Building. Things just... happened.
Howard wasn't capable of just sitting and waiting, and neither was Andrea. They got involved in the affairs of the tribe. He was never going to be able to give them automobiles or rifles, hell, he would never even be able to smelt iron. But he could teach them things. Andrea picked up the language like a sponge, and he learned it almost in spite of himself.
And he began to change things. At first, it was for his own comfort. The food in the Twist ran out, and he was sick to death of fish. Howard longed for beef. The People trapped and hunted small game and picked wild fruit and vegetables. They lived in huts made of sticks and the bones of mammoths that had died a natural death. Southern California was a lot cooler now than it would be in Howard's time; the wind blew right through the flimsy things, and his tent had big rips in it and was miserable in the rain.
He taught them to build better shelter.
Andrea had a baby, and they named him Adam. Howard found out how elephants had been hunted and killed before gunpowder, and taught them to do that.
HOWARD couldn't even remember what the year was when he finally abandoned his vigil at the tar pits. There was too much else going on in his life by then. He was a part of the community, the leader, the shaman, the medicine man.
Andrea had a third baby and this one lived, and a fourth, and she lived, too. Dear Howie, beloved Daphne.
The People became the most powerful tribe on the coast for as far as a man could walk in many days. They were the ones who slew the mammoths, who had the white gods, and the sticks that killed at a distance. (Well, they used to. The ammo was gone now.) Howard knew the names of every person living within miles of him, all part of his tribe, his people, his family.
Then came the year that he realized... he was happy. He was happier than he had ever been in his life.
That's it! I remember now....
WHEN their first grandchild was born, Howard began to feel a restlessness.
He had thought much about time travel. He had improved the lives of the People, gave them new technology. They still lived in the Stone Age, but it was a cleaner, healthier, more prosperous Stone Age. They used to fight with other tribes, but Howard had put an end to that, first with the guns, later with improved weaponry. He gave them the bow and arrow. But there was a big conundrum. Was he changing the future? Or was what had happened fated to happen?
It occurred to him that he, Howard Christian, may have been the reason mammoths became extinct in North America. The thought did not please him... and he eventually dismissed it. Someone else would have doped it out soon enough. Some genius in Europe or Asia had learned to do it without his help.
He had taught the People primitive agriculture because he never grew to like one of their dietary staples, ground acorns. They had found desiccated tomatoes and potatoes in the larder and nurtured them, and Howard once more enjoyed fries and ketchup. Where had they gone? No book in his library mentioned a native California species of tomato. Lost knowledge, or was he changing the future? He had thought of doing more. He knew where to find copper ore. Why not make metals?
But... why? He had revolutionized his old world, and it brought him very little real satisfaction. He spent his billions on toys, or on dominating others, or in meaningless games with money. The People didn't even have money, didn't need it. He had revolutionized their lives, too... and his satisfaction was enormous. He had real respect among the people, instead of ass-kissing, fear, or envy. Sure, being a white god didn't hurt when it came to gaining respect, but as the years went by, as his family became their family, he one day came to the realization that he had one thing he had never had before in his entire life. He had friends.
Would he jeopardize that by inventing copper or bronze tools? What if he changed history and it turned out that he never came back here, never had his children, his family, his People? It was a thought too awful to contemplate.
And he didn't think it would work that way, that it could not work that way. Andrea had learned medicine, surgery, had saved the life of many a child who would have died without her help. The first time she did it he worried, they discussed it... and decided that anyone who could stand by and watch a child die simply because saving his life might alter the future, or destroy the universe... was not somebody either of them wanted to know.
The conviction grew in him that it would all work itself out in the way it had to be. The tomato and potato plants would die out. His technological innovation would either be forgotten, or the People would be conquered by a more aggressive tribe and some of their skills lost. The mammoths would still go extinct, and he didn't need to concern himself about whether it was his fault; the future would be as he remembered it.
But if that was so, he had some obligations.
AS the snow continued to fall, Howard dug the time machine out from where he had wedged it near his legs. How many hours had he wasted staring at the thing, trying to make it work? It was one of his few regrets, that wasted time. He rubbed his thumb over the hole he had patched with tar, the hole punched when Fuzzy had almost killed him. Then he fumbled a flint arrowhead from a pocket with a hand grown numb from the cold. His left hand, because his right was trapped beneath his beloved Andrea. He smiled again. Of course, being right-handed there was no possibility in the world that, one day, he would recognize his own handwriting. He began to scratch a message on the bottom of the battered aluminum case.
HE started his mission by domesticating mammoths.
He had a head start by his spying on Susan, preparing for his great coup of finally displacing Susan in Fuzzy's affections. He learned how they did it in Sri Lanka and Burma. He got the People to build the necessary surrounds and pens, to hobble the mammoths and break them to the ankus. He and his family and friends learned to ride them. And they set off across the southwest: his family, some of the best and brightest among the People, and six docile mammoths.
Oh, my, the saga he could have written about that mighty journey. Across country that would one day be home to Apache, Navajo, Zuni, Anasazi, much more hospitable now than it would be then but still harsh, still daunting. The tribes they met stood in awe of the People Who Rode Mammoths. There was never any question of fighting.