***
It took Archimedes a couple of days to find the flint. We had dropped the nodules where we figured he’d happen upon them, but it’s not as if he had a regular route. He wandered like any normal kid and was just as likely to walk in circles or sit on a rock for half a day, playing with something.
As soon as Archimedes saw the nodules, he jumped forward and picked them up. He then put them down, did a little jig, and searched the immediate area for any more. When he was satisfied that he had found all there were to find, he came back, grabbed them, and headed back toward his camp.
He got maybe fifty feet, then stopped and looked down at his load. Marvin and I glanced at each other, perplexed. After a few moments, Archimedes headed off at an angle toward an outcropping that was one of his favorite hangouts. Once there, he hid all of the nodules except one in a crevice, then covered it with dead branches.
“Eden, you said?” I laughed. “Looks like we’ve invented greed.”
Marvin grinned. “Or caution. I bet flint is valuable. He might be worried about being mugged.”
Taking a single flint nodule, Archimedes walked back to camp, and took a circuitous route to get to his mother. When he arrived, he set up with a couple of rocks to try to split the flint. We chuckled at the deliberate, studied casualness that he was trying to affect. It was so overdone that he might as well have been wearing a hat with a flashing red light. Before he’d even struck the first blow, several adult Deltans had come over. There was a loud exchange, and one of the adults tried to grab the nodule. Archimedes’ mother jumped in, and the discussion got heated. Within seconds, a dozen or so Deltans were involved. At least half of them were yelling at any time, and pointy sticks were being waved. However, the floor seemed to be about evenly divided between those who wanted to take the nodule and those who suggested it would be over someone’s dead body. Archimedes huddled at his mother’s feet, while she showed her teeth to anyone who got too close.
Finally, things calmed down. Deltans stood around eyeing each other while another individual was fetched. I could see that he was older—it looked like age was age, whatever planet you lived on. His fur was going gray, and he was stooped. His muscle tone was poor, so he moved slowly.
Another point for these people. They care for their elderly.
The elder unwrapped some tools from a leather skin, sat with Archimedes, and patiently showed him how to split the flint. Now that was interesting. There was existing flint technology that hadn’t been lost. This contraction of Deltan populations had to have been quick and recent.
Many of the Deltans who had been involved in the yelling match went running off. They soon came back with items such as extra pointy sticks, dead animals and chunks of meat, something that looked like some kind of tuber, and other less identifiable things. With a start, I realized they were prepared to trade for the flint. I put both hands to my face and started to laugh. We’d just made Archimedes rich.
***
The trading frenzy was over, and people had left with flints of various sizes. Archimedes’ mother was going over the spoils. She had an expression involving wide eyes and erect ears that I tentatively identified as a smile-analogue. Looks like they’ll be eating well for a few days.
Archimedes had a haul of his own. He’d gotten several pointy sticks, a flint knife that had lost its edge, and all the flint flakes that were too small to be usable. Most importantly, the elder had shown him how to knap the flint.
I watched him examine his treasures, and I could just hear the gears turning.
Archimedes spent most of the rest of the day trying to put a new edge on the flint knife he’d received in trade. From the look of it, he didn’t do a half-bad job. The kid was a quick learner, for sure. He took his prize to the elder, who I decided to name Moses for no good reason that I could think of. Moses looked at the result and nodded in approval. Okay, he actually did kind of a circle thing with his head, but it had the same meaning. He spent an hour showing Archimedes how to get the last bits sharpened.
The next day, Archimedes snuck out to his stash and pulled out one of the other flint nodules. He had the knapping tools that the elder had given him. He turned the nodule over and examined it for almost a half hour without actually doing anything with it. It was pretty obvious that he had something in mind and didn’t want to screw it up. I watched with great interest, and I sensed Marvin watching over my shoulder, VR-wise.
Finally, Archimedes got to work. It took maybe ten minutes before we could see what he was trying for. He had split the nodule left of center, then right of center on the bigger half. He was trying to extract the biggest flake he could. I decided he was probably going for a hand-axe.
Over the next several hours, Archimedes slowly and deliberately converted the large core into a quite workable hand axe. He then cleaned up his area, carefully hiding all the useful flint pieces in his stash, and headed off with his new tool.
It turned out the point of the axe was to cut more saplings for pointy sticks. It made sense, once I thought about it. Green wood, or whatever this stuff was, wouldn’t be easy to cut without something hard and sharp. It was beginning to look like the loss of their flint source had been a major blow for the Deltans, perhaps one they hadn’t thought about at the time, or they would have protected that site more aggressively.
While cutting the third sapling, Archimedes had a misfire and attempted to chop the tree with his hand instead of the axe. The hopping around and verbalizations were really very human-looking, and to my shame I laughed a little. Afterward, Archimedes kicked the tree and said something monosyllabic. I marked that as an F-Bomb-analogue, and I don’t mean maybe.
Archimedes finished cutting down the third sapling, but I could see that his heart wasn’t in it. His swings were tentative, and he hesitated on each one. As soon as he had it down, he took the three saplings back to his work area, set them down, and went back to camp.
The next day, he was back in his work area. He had brought some of his twine with him. I watched in fascination and mounting excitement as he proceeded to split one of the saplings and tie the hand-axe into it. Once he was done, he tried it out on a nearby tree.
The first attempt was spectacularly unsuccessful—the axe acted like one of those tennis ball launchers you buy to throw a ball for your dog, with the axe blade playing the part of the tennis ball. Archimedes threw the now-empty stick down, reinforced my conclusion about the F-Bomb-analogue, and stomped off to look for his blade.