Gateways (32 page)

“Spen is dream-painting again!” shouted Wal from his place beside the firepit. Morn roared with laughter.

Spen jerked awake. The vision faded. To cover his annoyance, he ignored the taunt and instead turned to face his brother. “How long will we stay here?”

“Not long.” Ourse shrugged. “Only until the meat is dry. The herds are restless with the early warmth. They’ll be moving north soon.”

“There won’t be time enough to finish a painting, then.”

“There’s never enough time for you to finish. You spend so much time on each animal,” said Wal, “putting in useless details.”

“It’s the details that bring the animals to life! The look in the eye, the arch of the back, wind ruffling the coat—”

“Not so,” said Wal. “I can catch the spirit of an animal with just a few lines.”

“You mean those scratches you make on bones?”

Wal bristled. He was a little younger than Spen, and hadn’t been recognized as an artist. His clan name, Wal, meant “carver,” but the whittlers who made spears were often called that too. “It’s too subtle for you, Spen,” he shot back. “You have to have imagination to carve. And it’s a lot harder than just slapping colors on a wall.”

“Painting is not easy! For one thing, you have to make the right colors. You don’t just
find
them, you know.”

Wal rolled his eyes. “How hard can that be?”

“I’ll tell you. First you have to know what you need, then search out the pigments and prepare them. Blend the colors. Mix them with the right binder so they stick to the wall. And all that time you carry the pictures in your head.” Spen was beginning to heat up.

“Mmmm. Messy, maybe, but skill? I don’t know.”

“All
you
need for carving is a sharp blade like the ones we all carry. Where’s the skill in that?”

“Huh. Painting’s so easy, even the Uglies do it,” said Wal.

“True. I’ve been in plenty of caves with handprints and dots and black streaks,” said Ourse, weighing in.

“That’s not painting!” said Spen. “It’s . . . scribbling. What children do.”

“But Uglies
don’t
carve,” continued Wal. “You have to have a brain to carve. You have to see the animal in the bone before you start, then make a few good lines to bring it out.”

“Even if they were smart enough,” said Ourse, “their blades aren’t good enough.”

Spen touched his bandaged leg gingerly. “Seemed sharp enough to me.”

“How could those scavengers do art?” said Wal. “They don’t even talk. They’re
animals
.”

Crom coughed and stirred the ashes in front of him. “Hmmmm . . . I found some things you should see.” He pointed to a boulder beyond Spen. “Grandson, as long as you’re standing, bring some of those mammoth tusks over here.”

Spen limped over and looked behind the boulder. About a dozen very large tusks and a pile of pieces were carefully stacked in the shadow. He picked up several of the pieces and brought them back to Crom.

Crom passed them around to the hunters, giving the biggest piece to Spen. “Now look at these in the light of the fire.”

Spen looked down with amazement at the length of huge tusk. Carefully carved into the ivory were about a dozen animals, each sketched with a few lines, but instantly recognizable. Lifelike horse, bison, deer with great branching antlers. And a large animal that could only be the legend, a mammoth. Spen had never seen this style of workmanship before.

“This one is good,” said Wal. “It really catches the life of the animals.”

“And something else.” Spen paused, looking at how the lines seemed to lead his eyes off to things unseen, implied. “It’s . . . different.”

Wal nodded. “The lines seem to show things that aren’t there.” He stared at the ivory, frowning.

“Who . . . did this?” demanded Spen.

“I don’t know for sure,” said Crom. “You saw where they came from. The others are the same.”

“Who could do this work?” wondered Wal. “We know all the carvers in the tribe, even the clans from outside the valley. No one does anything like this.”

“And . . . why hide it?” asked Ourse.

“Wait a minute,” said Morn, weighing in for the first time. “This is the first time we’ve hunted here on the plain. There are no songs about here.”

There was a brief silence. Known as Mouse for his quiet ways, Morn rarely took part in group conversations, preferring to watch and listen. But when he did talk, he often added an interesting new point.

Ourse said slowly, “Yes. The ice has been too close before for the deer to find food.”

“You found these just lying behind that rock, Grandfather?” asked Spen.

“They were half buried,” said Crom. “I almost didn’t see them. There may be more under the sand.”

“So they’ve been here a long time, then,” said Wal.

“Looks like it,” said Crom.

“It must’ve been another tribe, then,” said Ourse.

“No. We were the First Band,” replied Crom firmly. “When we found the valley this cave was at the edge of the ice. None of our kind could’ve lived here.” He hesitated, then said quietly, “But the Uglies were here already.”

“Uglies? You think the Uglies could have done this?” demanded Ourse. “They’re no more than brutes. Stupid brutes.” He spat into the fire.

Spen was stunned. In his mind he saw clearly the Ugly he had killed. Could something more animal than human have carved these wonderful pictures?

“It’s impossible,” continued Ourse. “They haven’t the brains.”

“Their tools are too crude,” protested Wal.

“They can’t even talk,” said Ourse disgustedly.

Crom coughed and pulled his fur around his shoulders. “One time when I was a boy,” said the old man in a thin voice, “we had a hunting camp by the bluffs, across the big salt pan. It was colder then and the salt pan was a lake, always full of water. We caught small oily fish with a sweet taste there. There were thick banks of reeds around the edges, and flocks of storks fed in the shallows. The storks laid their eggs in nests in the reeds. Good eggs!—tasty. I hurt my foot one day, so my father and uncle left me in camp to collect eggs. I brought the eggs back to the cave and it was still early so I took my spear and followed an old trail at the base of the bluff. After a while I heard wailing coming from a cave nearby. I hid behind a bush and slowly worked my way forward so I could look in without being seen. Some Uglies were putting a mother and baby into a shallow grave in the floor of the cave. They put small objects in with the bodies, maybe they were blades, and then they scattered armloads of flowers on top. There was a lot of wailing and sobbing, and they were saying things that I couldn’t understand.”

“Uglies can’t talk!” broke in Ourse.

“That’s what I’d been told, too,” said Crom, “but I heard them that day. They were talking, all right. Singing.” His voice seemed to fill the cave. “Uglies aren’t animals—they’re men!”

“We kill them as if they’re animals,” said Spen. “And we enjoy it.”

“If we show people these tusks everyone will know the truth,” said Morn.

“What truth? People like us in another band did these. It had to be another band,” insisted Wal.

“But that’s impossible,” said Spen. “You heard the old man. There were no other bands before.”

“It’s impossible that the Uglies could carve like this!” said Wal. “It’s better than anything
we
can do.”

“It could only have been the Uglies. The carvings—see how yellow the ivory is? They were in this cave a long time, longer than our kind have been here,” said Crom. “That’s why I wanted to come on this trip—to see a fresh cave. In the early years some of the young men whispered about seeing ceremonies the Uglies did. Some of us didn’t think the Uglies were animals. The Elders told us to stay away or be speared. They were afraid we’d mix with them, and be changed. Maybe even mate! When their women are young they aren’t so ugly.” He sighed. “We hate them because they’re different, and we tell ourselves that they’re not human.”

“So when we kill them it’s okay,” said Spen bitterly.

“When people find out the Uglies are human, what’ll happen?” asked Morn.

“We’ll have to stop killing them, that’s sure,” said Ourse.

They fell silent, sobered.

“They’ll be allowed to stay in the valley,” said Spen.

“They’ll take our women!” burst out Morn. The others looked at him. In the flickering glow his face was tense and twisted. Shy and taciturn, he’d lost his mate to a brash young hunter from a clan closer to the foothills. He never talked about it.

“That could happen, all right,” agreed Crom. “A woman from the forest clan ran off with one of them once. When her relatives finally found her and the Ugly, they were living with some other Uglies, and . . . she was carrying a child.”

“Ugh. Half-animal children,” said Ourse disgustedly.

“What did they do?” asked Morn.

“They killed her, of course, and her Ugly mate.”

Morn leaned forward. “A big fight?”

“They got all the rest of the bunch.”

“Good.” Morn smiled.

“But two of the People died.”

A silence descended over the group. They stared sullenly at the carvings in their lap or into the fire.

“Why do other People have to know?” asked Wal finally. His hands were moving gently over the tusk in his hands.

Spen looked up at him quickly, a faint smile on his face. The artist in Wal was coming out.

“They’ll find the tusks, same as we did. There will be more hunting parties around here from now on,” said Ourse.

Another silence.

“We could hide them,” suggested Wal. “We could just cover them up again. . .”

“We should
burn
them,” said Ourse firmly.

The hunters looked at each other, their faces wavering in the dance of the flames. The old man stared at the ground. He seemed suddenly shrunken.

“No one would ever know what we’d found,” said Morn, slowly.

“Maybe that would be best,” agreed Wal.

“But they’re wonderful,” said Spen. “We can’t just destroy them!”

“You’re too soft,” growled Ourse, gesturing with a carved tusk. “I’d sooner burn this than admit those brutes are my equals. Wal? Morn? What about it?”

They nodded their assent, faces set.

Spen looked at Crom. The Eldest could stop them. “Grandfather, you know it’s
wrong
to destroy these.”

The old man sat hunched in his furs, looking small and wizened. “It would be best,” he said in a quiet voice. “If we say nothing about this, the Uglies will be gone soon. There are so few of them now. The Elders of the First Band were wise to keep the two kinds apart. Who knows what would have happened otherwise?”

“But what if there are carvings in other caves?” said Spen. “Are we going to destroy everything we find?”

“If we have to,” snapped Ourse.

“I wonder if we’re the first to find their art?” said Morn, running his fingers over the piece of tusk in his hand.

“If we aren’t, what happened to the other pieces?” asked Wal.

“Same thing we’re going to do,” growled Ourse.

“The Elders of the First Band must’ve known the truth,” mused the old man. “They would’ve found pieces in many of the caves and destroyed them. They never told any of us young men when we became Elders, though. They thought they were protecting us. They just didn’t know the ice would melt and open up more caves.”

Ourse stood up. “Enough talk.” He threw his carving onto the coals. They all watched, attention riveted, as it began to scorch on the edges, browning, finally catching fire.

Morn scrambled to his feet then and tossed his piece of tusk on top of Ourse’s. Then some more branches.

Wal got to his feet slowly, hesitated, then cast his carving into the flames. He looked at his empty hands, snorted, turned and stalked away from the fire.

“Yours too, Spen,” ordered Ourse.

Spen looked at Crom, withered and silent. “Grandfather?”

“It is best,” said the old man simply. He shared a long look with Spen. “To go forward you must leave some things behind.”

Spen looked at the exquisite carving he cradled in his hands, vibrant with the power of the artist’s skill. For a moment he could not move. Then he flipped it toward the fire.

The piece of tusk arced out of his hands and landed in the flames in a crunch and a shower of sparks. Today he had killed, not an animal, but another man. Maybe an artist like himself. And now he was destroying the work of such . . . men.

He would carry these regrets the rest of his life. But it had to be if his kind was to continue and prosper.

“Let’s get the rest of them,” he said.

They worked in silence, moving the cache of carvings from behind the boulder to the firepit. As they dropped tusk pieces into the snapping fire the cave warmed.

“That’s all of them,” said Ourse finally.

Fed by the ivory, the fire blazed up, became an enormous pyre sending light into every revealed cranny. The hunters moved back from the heat and stared sullenly into the crackling blaze. Light from the flames flickered on their faces and in their eyes. They all shared the gravity of their actions.

Across the walls of the cave leaped huge, vivid shadows. Spen imagined the souls of the artists fleeing from the tusks, into a timeless and eternal darkness.

The idea for this story came to me in 1996, triggered by a conversation with Greg, the subject of which is now lost. The story arc came in a flash—a twist on the presumed but still unknown relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans in early postglacial Europe.

As I couldn’t sell it, I asked Bob Silverberg for comments, and I’m ashamed to say his detailed response sat in my files for years. When the request for a story for this volume arrived, I asked Greg to consider the suggestions, and to write a new version.

I taught human evolution at University of California, Irvine, some years ago, and have long thought that Neanderthal culture is underestimated. Certainly we cannot know the minds of these early humans, but we do know they had aesthetic abilities, and seem to have envisioned an afterlife for their dead. Their DNA may or may not have mingled with ours, but their culture must have.