Grotto of the Dancing Deer

by Clifford D. Simak

  With her fingers grasping the book, she hesitated for a moment, then slowly drew it out. It was bound in an expensive black leather that was dulled with age. The edges were cracked and split and the leather worn from long usage. The gold edging of the leaves was faded.

  Hesitantly, she opened it and there, upon the flyleaf, in old and faded ink, was the inscription:

  To Sister Ellen

  From Amelia

  Oct. 30, 1896

  Many Happy Returns of the Day

  She felt her knees grow weak and she let herself carefully to the floor and there, crouched beside the chair, read the flyleaf once again.

  Oct. 30 1896—that was her birthday, certainly, but it had not come as yet, for this was only the beginning of September, 1896.

  And the Bible—how old was this Bible she held within her hands? A hundred years, perhaps, more than a hundred years.

  A Bible, she thought—exactly the kind of gift Amelia would give her. But a gift that had not been given yet, one that could not be given, for that day upon the flyleaf was a month into the future.

  It couldn’t be, of course. It was some kind of stupid joke. Or some mistake. Or a coincidence, perhaps. Somewhere else someone else was named Ellen and also had a sister who was named Amelia and the date was a mistake—someone had written the wrong year. It would be an easy thing to do.

  But she was not convinced. They had said the name was Forbes and they had come straight here and Paul had spoken of a map so they could find the way.

  Perhaps there were other things inside the bag. She looked at it and shook her head. She shouldn’t pry. It was been wrong to take the Bible out.

  On Oct. 30 she would be fifty-nine—an old farm-wife with married sons and daughters and grandchildren who came to visit her on weekends and on holidays. And a sister Amelia who, in this year of 1896, would give her a Bible as a birthday gift.

  Her hands shook as she lifted the Bible and put it back into the bag. She’d talk to Jackson when she went down stairs. He might have some thought upon the matter and he’d know what to do.

  She tucked the book back into the bag and pulled the tab and the bag was closed. She set it on the floor again and looked at the boy upon the bed. He still was fast asleep, so she blew out the light.

  In the adjoining room little Ellen slept, baby-like, upon her stomach. The low flame of the turned-down lamp flickered gustily in the breeze that came through an open window.

  Ellen’s bag was closed and stood squared against the chair with a sense of neatness. The woman looked at it and hesitated for a moment, then moved on around the bed to where the lamp stood on a bedside table.

  The children were asleep and everything was well and she’d blow out the light and go downstairs and talk with Jackson, and perhaps there’d be no need for him to hitch up Nellie in the morning and drive around to ask questions of the neighbors.

  As she leaned to blow out the lamp, she saw the envelope upon the table, with the two large stamps of many colors affixed to the upper right-hand corner.

  Such pretty stamps, she thought—I never saw so pretty. She leaned closer to take a look at them and saw the country name upon them. Israel. But there was no such actual place as Israel. It was a Bible name, but there was no country. And if there were no country, how could there be stamps?

  She picked up the envelope and studied the stamp, making sure that she had seen right. Such a pretty stamp!

  She collects them, Paul had said. She’s always snitching letters that belong to other people.

  The envelope bore a postmark, and presumably a date, but it was blurred and distorted by a hasty, sloppy cancellation and she could not make it out.

  The edge of a letter sheet stuck a quarter inch out of the ragged edges where the envelope had been torn open and she pulled it out, gasping in her haste to see it while an icy fist of fear was clutching at her heart.

  It was, she saw, only the end of a letter, the last page of a letter, and it was in type rather than in longhand—type like one saw in a newspaper or a book.

  Maybe one of those new-fangled things they had in big city offices, she thought, the ones she’d read about. Typewriters—was that what they were called?

  do not believe, the one page read, your plan is feasible. There is no time. The aliens are closing in and they will not give us time.

  And there is the further consideration of the ethics of it, even if it could be done. We can not, in all conscience, scurry back into the past and visit our problems upon the people of a century ago. Think of the problems it would create for them, the economic confusion and the psychological effect.

  If you feel that you must, at least, send the children back, think a moment of the wrench it will give those two good souls when they realize the truth. Theirs is a smug and solid world—sure and safe and sound. The concepts of this mad century would destroy all they have, all that they believe in.

  But I suppose I cannot presume to counsel you. I have done what you asked. I have written you all I know of our old ancestors back on that Wisconsin farm. As historian of the family, I am sure my facts are right. Use them as you see fit and God have mercy on us all.

  Your loving brother,

  Jackson

  P.S. A suggestion. If you do send the children back, you might send along with them a generous supply of the new cancer-inhibitor drug. Great-great-grandmother Forbes died in 1904 of a condition that I suspect was cancer. Given those pills, she might survive another ten or twenty years. And what, I ask you, brother, would that mean to this tangled future? I don’t pretend to know. It might save us. It might kill us quicker. It might have no effect at all. I leave the puzzle to you.

  If I can finish up work here and get away, I’ll be with you at the end.

  Mechanically she slid the letter back into the envelope and laid it upon the table beside the flaring lamp.

  Slowly she moved to the window that looked out on the empty lane.

  They will come and get us, Paul had said. But would they ever come? Could they ever come?

  She found herself wishing they would come. Those poor people, those poor frightened children caught so far in time.

  Blood of my blood, she thought, flesh of my flesh, so many years away. But still her flesh and blood, no matter how removed. Not only these two beneath this roof tonight, but all those others who had not come to her.

  The letter had said 1904 and cancer and that was eight years away—she’d be an old, old woman then. And the signature had been Jackson—an old family name, she wondered, carried on and on, a long chain of people who bore the name of Jackson Forbes?

  She was stiff and numb, she knew. Later she’d be frightened. Later she would wish she had not read the letter, did not know.

  But now she must go back downstairs and tell Jackson the best way that she could.

  She moved across the room and blew out the light and went out into the hallway.

  A voice came from the open door beyond.

  “Grandma, is that you?”

  “Yes, Paul,” she answered. “What can I do for you?”

  In the doorway she saw him crouched beside the chair, in the shaft of moonlight pouring through the window, fumbling at the bag.

  “I forgot,” he said. “There was something papa said I was to give you right away.”

  The Grotto of the Dancing Deer

  Winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards, “Grotto of the Dancing Deer” originally appeared in the April 1980 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. The story demonstrates yet again Clifford Simak’s perennial interests in immortality, prehistoric man, and cave paintings—but it also explores his recurring theme of loneliness.

  —dww

  1

  Luis was playing his pipe when Boyd climbed the steep path that led up to the cave. There was no need to visit the cave again; all the
work was done, mapping, measuring, photographing, extracting all possible information from the site. Not only the paintings, although the paintings were the important part of it. Also there had been the animal bones, charred, and the still remaining charcoal of the fire in which they had been charred; the small store of natural earths from which the pigments used by the painters had been compounded—a cache of valuable components, perhaps hidden by an artist who, for some reason that could not now be guessed, had been unable to use them; the atrophied human hand, severed at the wrist (why had it been severed and, once severed, left there to be found by men thirty millennia removed?); the lamp formed out of a chunk of sandstone, hollowed to accommodate a wad of moss, the hollow filled with fat, the moss serving as a wick to give light to those who painted. All these and many other things, Boyd thought with some satisfaction; Gavarnie had turned out to be, possibly because of the sophisticated scientific methods of investigation that had been brought to bear, the most significant cave painting site ever studied—perhaps not as spectacular, in some ways, as Lascaux, but far more productive in the data obtained.

  No need to visit the cave again, and yet there was a reason—the nagging feeling that he had passed something up, that in the rush and his concentration on the other work, he had forgotten something. It had made small impression on him at the time, but now, thinking back on it, he was becoming more and more inclined to believe it might have importance. The whole thing probably was a product of his imagination, he told himself. Once he saw it again (if, indeed, he could find it again, if it were not a product of retrospective worry), it might prove to be nothing at all, simply an impression that had popped up to nag him.

  So here he was again, climbing the steep path, geologist’s hammer swinging at his belt, large flashlight clutched in hand, listening to the piping of Luis who perched on a small terrace, just below the mouth of the cave, a post he had occupied through all the time the work was going on. Luis had camped there in his tent through all kinds of weather, cooking on a camper’s stove, serving as self-appointed watchdog, on alert against intruders, although there had been few intruders other than the occasional curious tourist who had heard of the project and tramped miles out of the way to see it. The villagers in the valley below had been no trouble; they couldn’t have cared less about what was happening on the slope above them.

  Luis was no stranger to Boyd; ten years before, he had shown up at the rock shelter project some fifty miles distant and there had stayed through two seasons of digging. The rock shelter had not proved as productive as Boyd initially had hoped, although it had shed some new light on the Azilian culture, the tag-end of the great Western European prehistoric groups. Taken on as a common laborer, Luis had proved an apt pupil and as the work went on had been given greater responsibility. A week after the work had started at Gavarnie, he had shown up again.

  “I heard you were here,” he’d said. “What do you have for me?”

  As he came around a sharp bend in the trail, Boyd saw him, sitting cross-legged in front of the weather-beaten tent, holding the primitive pipe to his lips, piping away.

  That was exactly what it was—piping. Whatever music came out of the pipe was primitive and elemental. Scarcely music, although Boyd would admit that he knew nothing of music. Four notes—would it be four notes? he wondered. A hollow bone with an elongated slot as a mouthpiece, two drilled holes for stops.

  Once he had asked Luis about it. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he had said. Luis had told him, “You don’t see many of them. In remote villages here and there, hidden away in the mountains.”

  Boyd left the path and walked across the grassy terrace, sat down beside Luis, who took down the pipe and laid it in his lap.

  “I thought you were gone,” Luis said. “The others left a couple of days ago.”

  “Back for one last look,” said Boyd.

  “You are reluctant to leave it?”

  “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  Below them the valley spread out in autumn browns and tans, the small river a silver ribbon in the sunlight, the red roofs of the village a splash of color beside the river.

  “It’s nice up here,” said Boyd. “Time and time again, I catch myself trying to imagine what it might have been like at the time the paintings were done. Not much different than it is now, perhaps. The mountains would be unchanged. There’d have been no fields in the valley, but it probably would have been natural pasture. A few trees here and there, but not too many of them. Good hunting. There’d have been grass for the grazing animals. I have even tried to figure out where the people would’ve camped. My guess would be where the village is now.”

  He looked around at Luis. The man still sat upon the grass, the pipe resting in his lap. He was smiling quietly, as if he might be smiling to himself. The small black beret sat squarely on his head, his tanned face was round and smooth, the black hair close-clipped, the blue shirt open at the throat. A young man, strong, not a wrinkle on his face.

  “You love your work,” said Luis.

  “I’m devoted to it. So are you, Luis,” Boyd said.

  “It’s not my work.”

  “Your work or not,” said Boyd, “you do it well. Would you like to go with me? One last look around.”

  “I need to run an errand in the village.”

  “I thought I’d find you gone,” said Boyd. “I was surprised to hear your pipe.”

  “I’ll go soon,” said Luis. “Another day or two. No reason to stay but, like you, I like this place. I have no place to go, no one needing me. Nothing’s lost by staying a few more days.”

  “As long as you like,” said Boyd. “The place is yours. Before too long, the government will be setting up a caretaker arrangement, but the government moves with due deliberation.”

  “Then I may not see you again,” said Luis.

  “I took a couple of days to drive to Roncesvalles,” said Boyd. “That’s the place where the Gascons slaughtered Charlemagne’s rearguard in 778.”

  “I’ve heard of the place,” said Luis.

  “I’d always wanted to see it. Never had the time. The Charlemagne chapel is in ruins, but I am told masses are still said in the village chapel for the dead paladins. When I returned from the trip, I couldn’t resist the urge to see the cave again.”

  “I am glad of that,” said Luis. “May I be impertinent?”

  “You’re never impertinent,” said Boyd.

  “Before you go, could we break bread once more together? Tonight, perhaps. I’ll prepare an omelet.”

  Boyd hesitated, gagging down a suggestion that Luis dine with him. Then he said, “I’d be delighted, Luis. I’ll bring a bottle of good wine.”

  2

  Holding the flashlight centered on the rock wall, Boyd bent to examine the rock more closely. He had not imagined it; he had been right. Here, in this particular spot, the rock was not solid. It was broken into several pieces, but with the several pieces flush with the rest of the wall. Only by chance could the break have been spotted. Had he not been looking directly at it, watching for it as he swept the light across the wall, he would have missed it. It was strange, he thought, that someone else, during the time they had been working in the cave, had not found it. There’d not been much that they’d missed.

  He held his breath, feeling a little foolish at the holding of it, for, after all, it might mean nothing. Frost cracks, perhaps, although he knew that he was wrong. It would be unusual to find frost cracks here.

  He took the hammer out of his belt and, holding the flashlight in one hand, trained on the spot, he forced the chisel end of the hammer into one of the cracks. The edge went in easily. He pried gently and the crack widened. Under more pressure, the piece of rock moved out. He laid down the hammer and flash, seized the slab of rock and pulled it free. Beneath it were two other slabs and they both came free as easily as the first. There were others a
s well and he also took them out. Kneeling on the floor of the cave, he directed the light into the fissure that he had uncovered.

  Big enough for a man to crawl into, but at the prospect he remained for the moment undecided. Alone, he’d be taking a chance to do it. If something happened, if he should get stuck, if a fragment of rock should shift and pin him or fall upon him, there’d be no rescue. Or probably no rescue in time to save him. Luis would come back to the camp and wait for him, but should he fail to make an appearance, Luis more than likely would take it as a rebuke for impertinence or an American’s callous disregard of him. It would never occur to him that Boyd might be trapped in the cave.

  Still, it was his last chance. Tomorrow he’d have to drive to Paris to catch his plane. And this whole thing was intriguing; it was not something to be ignored. The fissure must have some significance; otherwise, why should it have been walled up so carefully? Who, he wondered, would have walled it up? No one, certainly, in recent times. Anyone, finding the hidden entrance to the cave, almost immediately would have seen the paintings and would have spread the word. So the entrance to the fissure must have been blocked by one who would have been unfamiliar with the significance of the paintings or by one to whom they would have been commonplace.

  It was something, he decided, that could not be passed up; he would have to go in. He secured the hammer to his belt, picked up the flashlight and began the crawl.

  The fissure ran straight and easy for a hundred feet or more. It offered barely room enough for crawling, but, other than that, no great difficulties. Then, without warning, it came to an end. Boyd lay in it, directing the flash beam ahead of him, staring in consternation at the smooth wall of rock that came down to cut the fissure off.

  It made no sense. Why should someone go to the trouble of walling off an empty fissure? He could have missed something on the way, but thinking of it, he was fairly sure he hadn’t. His progress had been slow and he had kept the flash directed ahead of him every inch of the way. Certainly if there had been anything out of the ordinary, he would have seen it.