The Mantooth Part 9

Again he smiled. 'You have done very well. I will make a hunter of you yet.' She put out her arms to embrace the wolf, who pulled away, though gently. Akar went again to the entrance.

'How did it go with you?' she asked Kalus.

'Your friend is very clever, though his heart is not in it. He drew away the beavers while I took the poles. The female---' He laughed.

'She was so angry. I think she would have killed me if she got the chance.'

'Killed you? A little two-foot long beaver?'

'Two feet?' he winced. 'Perhaps the beavers of your world are only that long, but I promise you, these were larger than any wolf.'

She studied him, disbelieving. A bizarre thought had just occurred to her. 'Are you telling the truth?'

'Why would I lie?'

She threw back the upper fold of the fur, searched among the books. She quickly found what she was looking for: PREHISTORIC EARTH, ESSAYS AND ILl.u.s.tRATIONS. She checked the index, thumbed the yellowed and clumping pages.

Her mind fell back into itself. Sure enough, sketched there in relative detail against the background of a large den, was the figure of a great prehistoric beaver, '.....eight to twelve feet in length.'

Recovering herself, she moved hastily to sit beside him.

'Do they look like this?'

'Yes, more or less.'

She flipped through the stiff, distending pages---Mammals of the Pleistocene. She stopped at a pair of saber-toothed cats, lurking hungrily near a tar-pit. 'What about these?' Have you seen them?'

'Yes, but it is not a good likeness.'

Her mind raced so that she hardly heard him. Was it possible? Had life reverted to its primitive, violent stages before Man, evolution in reverse? Her scientific education told her no, it couldn't happen.

But was anything impossible here? She doubted it. She turned the pages again, stopped at the ill.u.s.tration of a lesser species of cave-bear.

Again she showed him the book.

'Yes, I have seen them, though they live mostly to the north and west. But it is not a good likeness.'

Exasperated: 'Why, Kalus? Why isn't it a good likeness?'

'Because the bear is standing---in life a bear only stands when it is going to fight---and still he is only a head taller than the tribesman.

I tell you, the bears of the north are much larger.'

'Tribesman?' In her haste she had failed to note the two fur-clad Neanderthals which stalked it, spear in hand, from behind a group of rocks. The face of the nearer was hard and set, with swept-back cheekbones and heavy, prominent brow. Eyes animal, and yet not animal.

The caption said something about, EARLY MAN IS BELIEVED TO HAVE SUCCESSFULLY HUNTED.....

'No. It can't be.' Her eyes went wide. 'Your people look like this?' This time he had no reservations.

'Yes.'

She sat there numb. The realization of the truth had quite overwhelmed her. Mindless, soulless animals returning to the form of their primitive ancestors were one thing. Men..... But it was more than even that. For the first time in her life she knew, really knew, that Man had once been caught in between, neither fully instinctive nor rational, animal nor human, left to cross the tenuous bridge alone, and for thousands of years. The intensity of their fear, and answering determination, must have been terrifying.

And at what point did he develop a clear mind, and immortal soul? She nearly wept at the thought: Man's immortal soul. As opposed to the mortal, unfeeling animals. What a sad and sorry farce. She looked first to Kalus, then at the wolf---who stood regarding her from the entrance, feeling, but not understanding her pain. She turned again to Kalus. One last hope.

'But you don't look anything like that.'

'And I don't look like my people. It is the greatest mystery of my life, and the reason they mistrust me.' She rocked herself a little, beyond the point of tears. The man-child waited.

'What is wrong?'

She found she could not answer with words, though the thoughts had come easily enough: too easy, like vague fears taking shape and becoming familiar from the smokes of a half-remembered past. He seemed to sense this, or something like it, and to know that whatever it was she was feeling, he could not help her now. Not yet.

He continued his work, notching the poles with hard strokes from the side of his stone knife, as she moved bewilderedly back to her place.

But often as he worked he would look over at her, stirred strangely by her dismay at simple truths he had long since been forced to accept. He thought of this, and it puzzled him. At length he said:

'I cannot always let myself feel things. I hope you understand that.

Perhaps, you must feel them for me.'

She glimmered softly with marble eyes and said, 'Yes,' but her mind was far away. One phrase only kept echoing inside it, gathering deeper a.s.sociations as it fell, like a leaf, into place.

THE LIFE OF AN ANIMAL.

Night came, and they slept.

Chapter 10

Morning came slowly, as it will in a cave facing westward, and Sylviana stirred to find her companions long since wakened. The wolf remained on his guard by the door, while Kalus continued work on a spear. He had labored far into the night preparing the shaft, the narrowest and straightest of the poles he had brought. He was just fitting his stone knife into the etched groove at the top, to serve as a spearhead, when he became aware of her.

'Did you sleep well?' he asked without sarcasm.

'Yes.' She rose from the fur, pushed back her hair and took a long drink from the steel flask, which Kalus had filled. She felt safe and rested as she brought it down again, no longer oppressed by the curving, serrated walls and close proximity of her friends. A deeper, and more necessary sleep she had not known for days uncounted. 'Thank you.' She screwed back the cap, set down the flask and went outside.

Kalus held the long point in his hand, adjusted it several times in the slot. When he had marked the best fitting in his mind, he withdrew it and placed one edge against a flat rock on the floor, then drew out his round hammer-stone and carefully chipped away at either side of the base. It was delicate work. One mistake, one overzealous stroke, would render it useless as a spearhead. He did it well, refitted the point in the groove.

Lastly he took the long strand that had dangled for weeks from his wrist, the hide of a buffalo, poured water over it, and wrapped it as tightly about the shaft as his strength and its thickness would allow.