Finally, she neared the light at the end of the tunnel and saw several figures seated in a circle. From some well of caution buried deep in her drug-clouded mind, she stopped short of the last mesmerizing flames and hid behind a stone pillar. In their lighted chamber, the ten mog-urs were deeply involved in a ritual. They had begun the ceremony that included all the men of the Clan, but left their acolytes to conclude it and retreated to the inner sanctum alone to conduct rites too secret even for acolytes.
Each man, cloaked in his bearskin, sat behind the skull of a cave bear. Other skulls adorned niches in the walls. In the middle of their circle was a hairy object Ayla couldn’t identify at first. But when she did, only her drug-induced stupor kept her from crying out. It was the severed head of Gorn.
She watched with fascinated horror as the mog-ur of Norg’s clan reached for the head, turned it over, and with a stone enlarged the foramen magnum, the great opening of the spinal column. The pink-gray jellied mass of Gorn’s brain lay exposed. The magician made silent gestures over the head, then reached into the opening with his hand and tore out a piece of the soft tissue. He held the quivering mass in his hand while the next mog-ur reached for the head. Even in her stupor, Ayla felt a deep revulsion, but she was held spellbound as each magician dipped into the grisly head and withdrew a portion of the brain of the man who had been killed by the cave bear.
A whirling, spinning vertigo brought Ayla to the brink of the deep emptiness. She swallowed to keep from being sick. Desperately, she clung to the edge of the void, but when she saw the great holy men of the Clan move their hands to their mouths and eat Gorn’s brain, she let go. The act of cannibalism drove her into an abyss of black space.
She screamed soundlessly, unable to hear herself. She was unable to see, unable to feel, devoid of any sensations, but she knew it. She hadn’t escaped into a mind-blanking sleep. The void had another quality, a terrifying, empty quality. Fear, all-encompassing fear, gripped her. She struggled to return, screamed silently for help, but was only drawn deeper. She sensed movement she could not sense as, faster and faster, she fell into the deep black infinity, into the endless cold void.
Suddenly, her motionless motion slowed. She felt a tickling sensation inside her brain, inside her mind, and a counterpull that slowly drew her back over the edge, out of the infinite hole. She sensed emotions alien to her, emotions not her own. Strongest was love, but mixed in was deep anger and great fear, and then, a hint of curiosity. With a shock, she realized Mog-ur was inside her head. In her mind, she felt his thoughts, with her emotions, his feelings. There was a distinctly physical quality to it, a sense of crowding without its unpleasantness, more like a touching that was closer than physical touching.
The mind-altering roots from Iza’s red bag accentuated a natural tendency of the Clan. Instinct had evolved, in Clan people, into memory. But memory, taken far enough back, became identical, became racial memory. The racial memories of the Clan were the same; and with perceptions sensitized, they could share their identical memories. The trained mog-urs had developed their natural tendency with conscious effort. They were all capable of some control over the shared memories, but The Mog-ur was born with a unique ability.
Not only could he share the memories, and control them, he could keep the link intact as their thoughts moved through time from the past to the present. The men of his clan enjoyed a richer, fuller ceremonial interrelationship than any other clan. But with the trained minds of the mog-urs, he could make the telepathic link from the beginning. Through him, all the mog-urs shared a union far closer and more satisfying than any physical one—it was a touching of spirits. The white liquid from Iza’s bowl that had heightened the perceptions and opened the minds of the magicians to The Mog-ur, had allowed his special ability to create a symbiosis with Ayla’s mind as well.
The traumatic birth that damaged the brain of the disfigured man had impaired only a portion of his physical abilities, not the sensitive psychic overdevelopment that enabled his great power. But the crippled man was the ultimate end-product of his kind. Only in him had nature taken the course set for the Clan to its fullest extreme. There could be no further development without radical change, and their characteristics were no longer adaptable. Like the huge creature they venerated, and many others that shared their environment, they were incapable of surviving radical change.
The race of men with social conscience enough to care for their weak and wounded, with spiritual awareness enough to bury their dead and venerate their great totem, the race of men with great brains but no frontal lobes, who made no great strides forward, who made almost no progress in nearly a hundred thousand years, was doomed to go the way of the woolly mammoth and the great cave bear. They didn’t know it, but their days on earth were numbered, they were doomed to extinction. In Creb, they had reached the end of their line.
Ayla felt a sensation akin to the deep pulsing of a foreign bloodstream superimposed on her own. The powerful mind of the great magician was exploring her alien convolutions, trying to find a way to mesh. The fit was imperfect, but he found channels of similarity, and where none existed, he groped for alternatives and made connections where there were only tendencies. With startling clarity, she suddenly comprehended that it was he who had brought her out of the void; but more, he was keeping the other mog-urs, also linked with him, from knowing she was there. She could just barely sense his connection with them, but she could not sense them at all. They, too, knew he had made a connection with someone—or something—else, but never dreamed it was Ayla.
And just as she understood Mog-ur had saved her and was still protecting her, she knew the profound sense of reverence with which the magicians had indulged in the cannibalistic act that had so revolted her. She hadn’t realized, she had no way of knowing, that it was a communion. The reason for the Gathering of the clans was to bind them together, to make them Clan. But Clan was more than the ten clans here. They all knew of clans that lived too far away to travel to this meeting; they went to Clan Gatherings closer to their own caves. They were still Clan. All Clan people shared a common heritage, and remembered it, and any ritual performed at any one Gathering had the same significance for all. The magicians believed they were making a beneficial contribution to the Clan. They were absorbing the courage of the young man who was journeying with the Spirit of Ursus. And since they were mog-urs, with special abilities within their brains, it was they who were capable of dispersing the courage to all.
That was the reason for Mog-ur’s anger, and his fear. By long tradition, only men were allowed to share in the ceremonies of the Clan. The consequences of a woman viewing even an ordinary ceremony held by a single clan meant that the clan was doomed. This was no ordinary ceremony. This was a ceremony of great significance for the whole Clan. Ayla was a woman; her presence could mean only one thing—irreversible, irredeemable misfortune and calamity to them all.
And she was not even a woman of the Clan. Mog-ur knew that now with a surety he could no longer deny. From the moment he became aware of her presence, he knew she was not Clan. He understood, as quickly, the consequences of her presence, but it was already too late. They were implacable and he knew that, too. But her crime was so great, he wasn’t sure what to do about her; even a death curse was not enough. Before he decided, he wanted to know more about her, and through her, more about the Others.
He was surprised he felt her cry for help. The Others were different, but there had to be similarities, too. He felt he needed to know for the sake of the Clan, and he had a curiosity greater than normal for his kind. She had always intrigued him; he wanted to know what made her different. He decided to try an experiment.
Forcing his way into deeper recesses, the powerful holy man—controlling the nine brains that matched his and willingly acquiesced and, separately, another that was similar and yet different—took them all back to their beginnings.
Ayla tasted the primordial forest again, then felt it turn to warm salt. Her impressi
ons were not as clear as the rest—it was new to her, this feeling of being and remembering the dawn of life, and her memories of it were subconscious and vague. But her innermost, earliest levels matched. The beginnings were the same, Mog-ur thought. She felt the individuality of her own cells and knew when they split and differentiated in the warm, nurturing waters still carried within her. They grew and split and diverged, and motion had purpose. Again a divergence and soft pulsations of life became hard and gave shape and form.
Another divergence, and she knew the pain of the first explosion of air breathed by creatures in a new element. Diverge, and rich loamy earth and the green of a young verdancy and burrowing to escape crushing monsters. Diverge, and security in reaching a limb across a chasm, and suddenly heat and dryness, and drought driving her back to the edge of the sea. Diverge, and traces of a missing link lost in the sea that enlarged her form and stripped her fur and changed her contours—and left cousins behind to revert to an earlier, more streamlined shape, but still air-breathing and milk-nursing.
And now, she walked upright on two hind legs, leaving forelegs free to manipulate, and eyes to see a farther horizon, and the beginnings of a forebrain. She was veering away from Mog-ur, starting a different path, yet not so far apart that he couldn’t track it with his own, almost parallel one. He broke contact with the others, but they were far enough along to continue their own way. It was nearly time to break it anyway.
Just the two of them remained linked, the old man of the Clan and the young woman of the Others. He was no longer guiding, but he still tracked, and not only did he track her course, she tracked his. She saw land change from warmth to ice, even deeper and more bone-chilling than the ice of their own times. It was a land far away in space as well as time, far to the west, she sensed, not far from a great sea many times larger than the sea that surrounded their peninsula.
She saw a cave, the home of some ancestor of the great magician, an ancestor who looked much like him. It was a hazy picture, seen across the chasm that separated their races. The cave was in a steep wall that faced a river and a flat plain. At the top of the cliff, a large boulder stood out distinctly. It was a long, slightly flattened column of rock that tilted over the edge, as though caught in the act of falling and frozen in place. The stone was from a different location, of a different material, an erratic, moved by raging waters and shifting earth until it lodged at the edge of the cliff that housed the cave. The picture wavered, but the memory of it stayed with her.
For a moment she felt an overwhelming sorrow. Then she was alone. Mog-ur could follow no more. She found her own way back to herself, and then a little beyond. She had a fleeting glimpse of the cave again, followed by a confusing kaleidoscope of landscapes, laid out not with the randomness of nature, but in regular patterns. Boxlike structures reared up from the earth and long ribbons of stone spread out, along which strange animals crawled at great speeds; huge birds flew without flapping their wings. Then more scenes, so strange she couldn’t comprehend them. It happened in an instant. In her rush to reach the present, there was a slight overshoot, a small spike beyond her time, just to where she might have diverged again. Then her mind was clear, and she looked out from behind a pillar at ten men seated in a circle.
The Mog-ur was looking at her, and she saw in his deep brown eye the sorrow she had felt. He had forged indelible new paths in her brain, paths that let her glimpse ahead, but he could not forge new paths in his own. While she looked beyond, he caught a glimpse, not of the future, but of a sense of future. A future that was hers, but not his. He grasped the concept imperfectly, but he understood the potential of it, and quailed before it.
Creb could make almost no abstractions. He could count, only with great effort, to just beyond twenty. He could make no quantum leaps, no intuitive strokes of genius. His mind, he knew, was more powerful than hers by far; more intelligent perhaps. But his genius was of a different nature. He could identity with his beginnings, and hers. He could remember more and better than any of his own ancient Clan. He could even force her to remember. But in her, he sensed the youth, the vitality of a newer form. She had diverged again, and he had not.
“Get out!” Ayla jumped at his sharp command, surprised he had spoken so loud. Then she realized he hadn’t spoken at all. She had felt, not heard him. “Get out of the cave! Hurry! Get out now!”
She sprang from her hiding place and ran down the passage. Some of the stone lamps had burned through the moss wicks, other were sputtering and dying. But there were enough to guide her way. No sound emerged from the inner caves where all the men and boys now slept the dreamless sleep. She came to the torches, some of them guttered, too, and finally dashed out of the cave.
It was still dark, but the faint glimmerings of a new day were beginning. Ayla’s mind was clear, no trace of the powerful drug remained, but she was completely spent. She saw the women sprawled out on the ground, purged and drained, and lay down beside Uba. She was still naked, but noticed the morning chill no more than the other naked, sleeping women.
By the time Mog-ur reached the mouth of the cave after following behind her more slowly, she was in a deep, dreamless sleep. He hobbled up to her and looked down at her tousled blonde hair, as distinctly different from the rest of the women’s hair as Ayla was herself, and a great heaviness descended on his soul. He should not have let her go. He should have brought her before the men and had her killed outright, then and there, for her crime. But what good would it do? It would not undo the catastrophe her presence had wrought, it would not cancel the calamity the Clan must bear. What good would it do to kill her? Ayla was only one of her kind, and she was the one he loved.
25
Goov walked out of the cave, blinked at the morning sunlight, rubbed his eyes, and stretched. He noticed Mog-ur sitting hunched over on a log, staring at the ground. So many lamps and torches are out, he thought, someone could make a wrong turn and get lost. I’ll ask Mog-ur if I should refill the lamps and put up new torches. The acolyte strode purposefully toward the magician, but stopped when he saw the old man’s drawn face and the despondent slump of his shoulders. Maybe I won’t bother him, I’ll just go ahead and do it.
Mog-ur is getting old, Goov thought, walking back into the cave with a bladder of bear grease, new wicks, and extra torches. I keep forgetting how old he really is. The trip here was hard on him, and the ceremonies take a lot out of him. And there’s still the journey back. Strange, the young acolyte mused, I never thought of him as old before.
A few more men wandered out of the cave rubbing sleepy eyes and stared at the naked women scattered on the ground, wondering, as they always did, what made them so exhausted. The first women to wake up ran for their wraps, then began to wake the others before too many more men came out of the cave.
“Ayla,” Uba called, shaking the woman, “Ayla, wake up.”
“Mmmmfff,” Ayla mumbled, and rolled over.
“Ayla! Ayla!” Uba said again, shaking her harder. “Ebra, I can’t get her up.”
“Ayla!” the woman said louder, shaking her roughly. Ayla opened her eyes and tried to signal an answer, then closed them again and curled up in a tight ball.
“Ayla! Ayla!” Ebra said again. The young woman opened her eyes once more.
“Go into the cave and sleep it off, Ayla. You can’t stay out here, the men are getting up,” Ebra commanded.
The young woman stumbled toward the cave. A moment later she was back out, wide awake, but drained of color.
“What’s wrong?” Uba motioned. “You’re white. You look like you’ve seen a spirit.”
“Uba. Oh, Uba. The bowl.” Ayla slumped to the ground and buried her face in her hands.
“The bowl? What bowl, Ayla? I don’t understand.”
“It’s broken,” Ayla managed to gesture.
“Broken?” Ebra said. “Why should a broken bowl bother you so much? You can make another.”
“No, I can’t. Not like that one. It’s Iza’s bowl, the on
e she got from her mother.”
“Mother’s bowl? Mother’s ceremonial bowl?” Uba asked, her face stricken.
The dry, brittle wood of the ancient relic had lost all its resilience after so many generations of use. A hairline crack had developed but went unnoticed beneath the white coating. The shock of dropping from Ayla’s hand to the hard stone floor of the cave was more than it could take. It had split in two.
Ayla didn’t notice Creb look up when she ran out of the cave. The knowledge that the venerable bowl was broken put a grim note of finality on his thoughts. It’s fitting. Never again will the magic of those roots be used. I will never again hold any ceremony with them, and I will not teach Goov how they were used before. The Clan will forget them. The old cripple leaned heavily on his staff and pulled himself up, feeling twinges of pain in his arthritic joints. I have sat in cold caves long enough; it is time for Goov to take over. He’s young for it, but I’m too old. If I push him, he can be ready in a year or two. He may have to be. Who knows how much longer I’ll last?
Brun noticed a marked change in the old magician. He thought Mog-ur’s depression was caused by a natural letdown after the excitement, especially since this would be his last Clan Gathering. Even so, Brun worried how he would weather the trip back and was sure he would slow them down on the way home. Brun decided to take his hunters on one last foray, and then exchange the fresh meat for some of the host clan’s stored provisions to supplement their supply for the return trip.
After the successful hunt, Brun was in a hurry to leave. A few clans had left already. With the festivities over, his thoughts returned to the home cave and the people left behind, but he was in good spirits. The challenge to his position had never been greater; it made the victory all the more satisfactory. He was pleased with himself, pleased with his clan, and pleased with Ayla. She was a good medicine woman; he had seen it before. When someone’s life was threatened, she forgot everything else, just like Iza. Brun knew Mog-ur had been instrumental in persuading the other magicians, but it was Ayla herself who proved it when she saved the young hunter’s life. He and his mate were going to stay with the host clan until he was well enough to travel, probably wintering with them.