Neanderthal

by John Darnton

  These three confederates were outfitted in garments made from the skins they had gathered. It had been a long hard job, first to make them and then to convince the hominids to wear them. Matt used strips of gut to tie the hides together, threading it through holes Susan made with a sharp stone. One hide fit over the head like a poncho, hung loose, and was bound around the waist with more gut, while another was used to make crude leggings. As well as they could recall, this was the way the renegades had dressed. The garments weren’t firmly fastened but they didn’t have to be; their only purpose was camouflage.

  At first the three hominids refused to put on the skins. The hides were stiff with blood in patches and smelled of animal, and the idea of wearing them was repellent. Matt and Susan demonstrated how they were worn but made little impact. Finally Matt took the ibex hide and mimicked a hunt, draping it on a bush, stalking it, and tossing his spear at it. Then he ceremoniously presented it to Lancelot, draping it across his shoulders the way a courtier would adorn a king with a robe. Lancelot gravely donned it, and soon the others accepted the skins, moving awkwardly and staring at their bodies and at each other.

  They were also given weapons. Lancelot had the spear that had made him a hunter, and Susan made clubs for Hurt-Knee and Leviticus, choosing heavy branches that were tapered and using a stone ax to fashion a rounded top and a smooth handle. She labored for hours over these, surrounded by a circle of hominids who watched her every move in silence.

  In his rucksack, Matt tucked away a coil of rope and some crude stone tools. The flashlight would have been invaluable but it had been left in the cave; instead, they would use torches made from branches and straw. Matt had been awake worrying much of the night before they left. There were so many unknowns. What if the renegades’ power to perceive them from afar was more sophisti­cated than he anticipated? What if it operated like a radar system, registering any new presence the moment it presented itself? What if the renegades spotted them, drew them deeper into their lair, and used their superior communication to close off every avenue of escape?

  At the edge of the village Matt and Susan turned to peer back. Their scraggly band, waddling uncomfortably in their skins, would have looked comical under other circumstances. A few villagers watched them depart. In the distance, standing next to a tree, so still that he seemed part of it, was Dark-Eye. Susan waved to him, knowing he wouldn’t return or even understand the gesture, and he did not.

  When they came to the periphery of the burial ground, the hom­inids refused to set foot upon it. Susan tried to indicate that their intent was simply to cross it, but the hominids were adamant and would not budge. She looked ahead. A spiral of three vultures cir­cled in the sky and others stared down from bare branches nearby, the black-and-white tuft of bristles spreading under their bills like whiskers. Then Susan was startled; two grave tenders, ghostly fig­ures all in white, squatted not thirty feet away, the whites of their eyes matching the chalk smeared over their bodies. There was an unearthly quiet, save for the distant sound of insects buzzing. Nothing stirred inside that zone of death, as clearly delineated as if the River Styx flowed beside it, except for the carrion-eating birds above them lazily riding the air currents.

  “Hopeless,” said Matt. “They won’t cross it.”

  “We could go ahead and hope they meet us. Or we could go with them the long way around.”

  “Best to go around.” He took her hand and they set off, keeping the burial ground to their right. The hominids gave it a wide berth and eyed it suspiciously, as if the earth itself might open up at any moment and swallow them. Matt was kicking himself; he should have foreseen the possibility that the hominids would balk, especially after that first visit weeks ago. The detour would add hours to their approach and wear them out before they even reached the cave entrance.

  They stopped three times to rest. The hominids didn’t appear to be tired, and looking at them as objective specimens, Matt was again struck by their superior physiques—the squat legs as strong as columns, the low-slung torsos, the huge shoulders and thick hands, the brows that served as anchors for their massive jaw mus­cles. They’re made for combat, he thought, and if all those many centuries earlier, Neanderthal had acquired the lust to spill blood that has possessed mankind, they would surely have pushed us aside long ago. All they needed was a little bit of original sin. He looked at Hurt-Knee, whose cut brow had largely healed, turning into a twisted, ugly red scar that ran from his scalp line to one eye­brow. Could it be the mark of Cain? Matt kicked himself; this was no time to turn into a half-baked philosopher.

  The cave was set vertically in the cliff, a gigantic breach in the rock facade some twenty feet high. They approached it from the side with Matt leading the way and Susan bringing up the rear behind the hominids, in case they showed signs of bolting. If they did, she had no idea what she would do to stop them, but she felt it was wise to keep an eye on them. She knew how anxious they were; Leviticus was reading her often and wildly.

  Man crept up to the mouth of the cave cautiously. Total blackness. He looked down and saw small piles of rocks scattered at the entrance; perhaps this was a good sign, for surely the debris would have been pushed aside if it was a major thoroughfare. Just their kitchen door, he thought, used whenever a creature wanted to raid the tribe for a wife or a slave. He felt fear creep up on him from be­hind; he hated the blackness and felt claustrophobic at the prospect of going underground, a phobia that had been well stoked by the terror of their narrow escape only a few weeks before. Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside.

  The others came after him one by one, almost as if they were fol­lowing a drill. A good start, he thought, as he felt the darkness as­sault his eyes. They lingered at the mouth for a moment to get their bearings. In the half-light, Matt scrutinized Hurt-Knee; his face seemed expressionless—either that or Matt could not decipher whatever expression was there—but he seemed under control. The impulse to flee harm must be universal, Matt figured; if so, then Hurt-Knee appeared to be a cool customer. But he also guessed that the hominids must be using their faculty to scout the passage­way before them, the way as a child in the New England winter he used to test a lake for thin ice by tossing ahead rocks. How would they react if one of their rocks struck danger?

  Once their pupils dilated, Matt and Susan realized with relief that they were not in total darkness after all. At first the cave had ap­peared pitch black, but thirty feet ahead it curved to the left; now they could see that the opposite wall ahead flickered faintly with reflected light, presumably from torches beyond the bend. The tunnel was enormous, like a mammoth borehole penetrating di­rectly into the innards of the mountain. They made sure that Hurt-Knee went first, hoping he would adopt naturally his role as their guide.

  “So far, so good,” Matt whispered.

  “Yeah, so far,” she replied, her voice shaky.

  When they came to the bend, Hurt-Knee walked around it without a flicker of hesitation. It led into a large cavern lit with torches and rimmed with shimmering icicle-shaped deposits of lime car­bonate built up over millennia. The middle ground was open under a roof that stretched upward in the center as if it were a cir­cus tent. The rocks above them stirred with furry life: bats, nestling in the crevices, fluttering around in a frenzy, and sweeping down at the intruders in abortive dive-bomb attacks. Matt and Susan began to shiver and could see their own breath. The unnat­ural warmth of the crater valley, blanketed by its geothermal air streams, was behind them, and once again their bodies were prey to the coldness of the altitude. They lit the torches they brought from those in the cavern.

  Crossing the open space, they came to a wall with three tunnels. The labyrinth was beginning in earnest and they could only hope that Hurt-Knee would negotiate it and lead them to the burrow of the Minotaur. He chose the middle tunnel. It soon narrowed and then rose precipitously, which made sense since the innermost sanc­tum that they were aiming for was high inside the mountain. But the incline made the going roug
h; rocks had accumulated at the bottom, and at times it was like climbing up a chute filled with coal. What was even worse for Matt was that the height of the passage began to shrink so that he was forced to bend. He felt claustropho­bia clutch his heart with a vengeance, and it took all his strength of will to keep going. At last the passage leveled out and they could stand upright again. Their torches were burning but low; the oxygen was thin.

  Suddenly, fifteen minutes later, the hominids froze. They looked ahead uncertainly, then turned to face them, and this time Matt had no trouble reading the emotion of fear written upon their broad features. Clearly something was approaching, but, straining to listen, they could hear only the distant whoosh of wind.

  “We passed a cutoff a little while back,” Matt whispered. “We better go back there and hide.”

  “How about these guys?”

  “It’d be better to split up. If we’re all together it’s easier for the renegades to read us. They’ll be protected by their disguises.”

  “Okay.”

  Retreating, they found the tiny cutoff. A little beyond was an out-of-the-way chamber where they left the three hominids with the torches, praying that they would appear inconspicuous enough to avoid arousing suspicion. Matt and Susan pulled up their blindfolds and waited, their bodies fitting together snugly in the tight space. They did not have long to wait; soon they heard the telltale loping shuffle of the creatures.

  Susan closed her eyes underneath the blindfold and tried to wash her mind clear. Matt put his arms around her and held her tightly as the sounds grew louder, until the creatures were only a couple of feet away, just around the rock face. Susan could hear the wheeze of their breathing and the plodding of their heavy tread on the cave floor. She squeezed Matt tighter. Finally the sounds subsided as the creatures passed them and kept going, moving toward the hom­inids. Susan removed her blindfold. Their smell invaded her nos­trils. They were so close that we could have reached right out and touched them, she thought. Another sensation crowded into her mind, that familiar filling up; Leviticus, she knew, was making con­tact in the moment of his terror, just as Matt had. She kept her eyes open and received him fully, standing motionless for long seconds while Matt held her body, until finally she relaxed and said. “It’s okay. They’re safe.” Matt gave her a long searching look.

  Reunited, the group continued up the passageway with Hurt-Knee still in the lead. They climbed for half an hour; passing small chambers and alleys leading to cubbyholes that contained hearths and hides spread out for sleeping, but luckily encountered no other creatures. Then the soft whine of breezes gave way to the eerie bustling that they had heard weeks ago, like the hum resounding from a thousand wings inside a beehive.

  Hurt-Knee stopped for a moment, frozen to the spot while he concentrated, then crouched and ducked inside a tunnel so small that he had to crawl. For Matt it was a tomb. It curved upward like a chimney, so that they ascended it by using footholds and handholds, until finally they emerged on a ledge overlooking the central mammoth cavern. Below them was the beehive.

  Everywhere, on the open cavern floor and in every nook and cranny, the creatures moved about in a tumult of activity that took their breath away. They were cooking, curing hides, making tools, chopping meat, fornicating, brawling, sleeping, eating—a self-sufficient colony of primordial men, women, and children. Matt saw squealing toddlers chasing each other around a hearth. To one side, a woman squatted before a cured hide, holding it in both hands and tearing at it with powerful jaw muscles. She seemed to be making skin bags for water. Another woman nearby pounded a stone, then tossed it onto a pile of other stones. Susan was right, he thought. There are more women here than in the valley; I bet they’ve been kidnapped in raids.

  Sealed in, the noise was formidable; the smoke from a dozen fires brought tears to their eyes, and it was as hot as a pressure cooker. Staring down upon it all, no more than thirty feet above the manes of matted hair; Matt felt that they were witnessing the birth of civilization, the moment in which our ancestors turned from the brutish existence of solitary apes to the splendor and rigors of community and industry. But in another respect the colony was still steeped in savagery. Rising up in the center of the huge cavern was the malevolent god sculpture shaped like a bear’s head, and next to it was the wall of human skulls.

  There was a new addition on the wall, the head of a Caucasian male. Matt forced himself to examine it, his first thought being that it might be Van, but even from a distance he could tell that the physiognomy was different, the nose too long.

  “We don’t have much time,” he whispered to Susan. “We’ve got to find Van before they sense us.”

  She did not reply, apparently lost in the incredible sight before them. Matt followed her stare and zeroed in on the figure she was looking at. How could he have missed him? Kee-wak was at the heart of the throng, a full head taller than the others, and as he moved through them a path opened up before him; the other creatures fell back like whipped dogs, lowering their heads and adopt­ing unmistakable postures of subordination. There was no doubt about it: He was an extraordinary figure, born to rule. His upper torso was adorned with wavy red and black lines that circled around his muscles in fingerprint patterns, his hair hung in long braids decorated with beads, and his mouth was ringed with red dye that looked like blood. As he walked, his head waved slowly from side to side in that curious lizard motion that was seared into Matt’s memory from the confrontation in the snow with Rudy.

  “Look,” Susan whispered, “he’s got Van’s gun around his neck!” Sure enough, there was the holster hanging down to the abdomen, gently slapping the ridged muscles.

  Kee-wak raised his gaze and began staring at the upper reaches of the cavern. Quickly Matt and Susan slipped on their blindfolds and moved back, lying flat on the ledge. Susan felt Leviticus fill her and knew some seconds later that the danger had passed. She lifted the blindfold and peeked over the edge; Kee-wak had left the cavern. She watched the hubbub of ac­tivity for only a moment before coming to a decision.

  “Matt, I’ve got to find the sacred chamber. I want to see the Khodzant Enigma again.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I have to. Don’t you see? It’s got to mean something. I don’t know why, but I feel strongly that there’s some clue there, something we need to figure out.”

  “Susan, there’s no time. You’ll never make it back.” He thought of half a dozen other objections and was about to voice them when Hurt-Knee suddenly crouched behind him, placed his fingers on Matt’s temples, and roughly turned his head, forcing him to look over in one corner. At the far end of the cavern was a pit, and in it he saw Van’s head appear briefly, disappear; then appear again. He was pacing in a circle like a caged animal. Even from this distance Matt could detect a bizarre, ritualistic jerkiness to the man’s move­ments that made him worry for Van’s sanity.

  He sized up the situation. Two creatures with clubs squatted not far from the pit; they could be guards, since it looked as if the hole was not so deep that Van couldn’t get out if he tried hard. Along the rock face to the left was a huge slab that might be the outer wall of a passageway; at the least it could provide some cover if Matt could find his way to it. He had a six-foot length of rope tied in knots every two feet which he could lower down to Van. But if he were to have any hope at all of succeeding, he would have to take care of the guards. What he needed was some sort of diver­sion; otherwise he had little prospect of escaping their paranormal powers. He felt lucky to have gotten this far.

  Matt moved slowly backward along the ledge and realized, with a gasp that sent his heart into his throat, that Susan had gone. He was so startled that he barely registered the disappearance of Leviticus.

  * * *

  Having traipsed through the snow on their way to the lower reaches of the mountain, the five creatures carrying animal skins came upon a mound of rocks and were immediately attracted by the shine of metal. They approached the rock pile suspicio
usly, as if it were a trap, stopping every few steps to throw their inner eyes in all directions. They found no sign of life.

  Slowly and cautiously, one of them touched a rock. Nothing happened. He pulled it off the pile and took another rock until the mound shrank, revealing Van’s NOMAD. The creatures peered at the black box with metallic edges that glinted in the sunlight. Never before had they seen such a strange object.

  They feared it because they knew about bait; long ago the hunters in their tribe had discovered how to lure animals to their destruction. One of the creatures leaned over and smelled the object, then backed away quickly, as if he had been slapped; it gave off the acrid scent of the enemy.

  Another creature raised a club high in the air and brought it down in a sweeping arc, smashing the computer on one side and sending it flying off its pedestal and careering across the rocky ridge. A third went over; picked the object up, held it away from his body, and carried it twenty feet to the edge of a ravine. He leaned over and let go and it fell for a long time, until finally they heard a distant crash below.

  In the sacred chamber Susan stood transfixed before the pictograph. She was shivering with terror. What was more interesting, and what she did not at first perceive, was the other sensation; it counteracted the fear and poured a strange balm through her sys­tem, a kind of ecstasy brought on by the sheer power of the shapes and colors spread before her on the cave wall.

  She had seen many cave paintings before, renderings of antelope, boar; and musk oxen, often brilliantly done. She had been among a handful of scholars permitted inside the crumbling caves of Altamira in the Cantabrian mountains of northern Spain, and had even sketched the chamber of painted bison, the so-called Sis­tine Chapel of Quarternary Art. She had been deeply moved by the drawings, but mixed in with the aesthetic appreciation had always been the kick of anthropological wonderment: to imagine the Pa­leolithic soul who felt compelled to mix natural pigments with an­imal fat and then give the vision permanent shape by tracing this bit of curved horn or that arching back. The power came from ex­periencing contact with that soul across 25,000 years. This was different. This painting was masterful in its own right. She mar­veled at the unknown hand that had so perfectly used charcoal to outline the figures in black, had seized upon the natural bulges in the rock to give depth to body shapes, and had made movement and lightness out of a material so inert and heavy. This was the product of artistic greatness, a prehistoric Michelangelo. But what was the subject that inspired such genius?