West of Eden e-1

by Harry Harrison

  They all seemed satisfied by this first contact and talked among themselves in low murmurs, reaching some decision. The newcomers turned and started back towards the grove. The first hunter pulled at Kerrick’s arm and pointed to the others. His meaning was obvious; they wanted him to accompany them. Should he go? Perhaps all of this had only been only a ruse to capture or kill him. But they seemed so natural about it, the two spearmen even picking up their spears as they went and continuing on without looking back.

  This convinced Kerrick. If it were a trap of some kind they would not have gone near the spears; other armed hunters could easily have been waiting among the trees. He had to act as if he believed their innocence. He must not show them his fears. But he was not leaving his own spear behind. He pointed back to it and started that way. The first hunter ran ahead of him and picked the spear up. Kerrick had a single pang of fright as he trotted back, spear held ready. But he merely handed it to Kerrick, then turned his back to follow the others. The tension eased a bit; perhaps they really were as peaceful as they acted. He took a deep breath; there was only one way to find out. They stopped at the edge of the grove and turned back to look at him.

  Kerrick let the breath out slowly, then followed after them.

  Their path took them over the top of the hill and down the other side. There was a gorge here and Kerrick realized that it had been made by the river they had been following, which looped out through the hills and back again. They followed a clearly marked path now down towards the river, until they were walking along its bank.

  With each turn the rock walls rose higher, the river beside them rushed faster. They walked along a narrow bank of rock and sand that would surely be covered by the high waters of spring. Parts of the rock wall had broken loose here and the water splashed and broke into spray over giant boulders in the stream. They had to climb up an ever larger slide of tumbled stone that must have filled the deep ravine for the river now roared over and among the rocks, foaming high against the vertical rock face on the other side. The climb was getting more difficult. Kerrick looked up — and stopped suddenly.

  Dark-haired, spear-armed hunters were looking down at him from above. He called out to the hunters climbing ahead of him and pointed. They looked up and understood, shouting orders that sent the others back out of sight. Kerrick went on then to the top and stood, panting, looking back the way they had come.

  The mounded boulders fell away from him to the dark waters of the river, far below. High cliffs rose from the river on both sides. This natural barrier could be easily defended by the armed hunters who had drawn aside to let him pass. It was a perfect defensive position — but what was it guarding? Curiosity now replaced fear as he clambered down the inner face of the barrier and hurried after the others.

  As they walked the landscape changed. The rock walls receded and sandy mounds appeared beside the river, dotted here and there with vegetation and stunted trees. After a short distance the land became flatter and greener, with low shrubs stretched out in even rows. Kerrick wondered at this regularity until they passed a group of men digging at one of the rows.

  He marveled then at two things: the rows had been planted that way on purpose. And there were hunters working among the plants, doing woman’s work. It was most unusual. But the Yilanè had planted fields around their city; there was no reason that Tanu could not do the same, that men should labor in them as well as women. His eyes followed the green rows to the rock wall of the valley beyond, up to the dark openings in the stone.

  They passed a group of women next, all of them wrapped in the soft white substance, pointing at him and chattering in high-pitched voices. Kerrick knew that he should be feeling fear here in this valley, among these dark strangers, but he did not. If they had wanted to kill him they would certainly have done it long before this. He might still be in danger, but his curiosity was overwhelming any fears he still had. There was smoke from fires ahead, children running, the cliffs were closer — and he stopped with sudden realization.

  “A city!” he said aloud. “A Tanu city, not a Yilanè one.”

  The hunters he had been following stopped and waited while he looked about him. Notched beams of wood, they must have been entire treetrunks, reached up the cliffside to the openings above. The beams could be climbed for he saw faces peering down at him. There was a rush and bustle here, also like a Yilanè city, with many activities he could not understand. Then he noticed that the hunter he had first met was waving him forward, towards a long, dark opening in the base of the cliff. Kerrick followed him inside and looked up at the rock wall that slanted back above. He blinked at it in the gloom, barely able to make out details after leaving the bright sunlight outside. The hunter was pointing at the rockface above.

  “Waliskis,” he said, the same word he had used when he pointed at the water vessel.

  Kerrick looked up at the tracings in the rock and began to understand something of what the hunter was trying to say.

  There were beasts there, marked out in color upon the rock, many of them like the deer that he recognized. In pride of place above them all, almost life-size, was a mastodon.

  “Waliskis,” the hunter said again and bowed his head towards the representation of the great beast. “Waliskis.”

  Kerrick nodded in agreement without understanding the significance of the painting at all. It was a good likeness, as was the black mastodon on the bowl. All of the paintings were most realistic. He reached up and touched the deer, saying deer aloud at the same time. The dark-haired hunter did not seem interested. Instead he stepped back into the sunlight and waved Kerrick after him.

  Kerrick wanted to stop and look at all the fascinating activity taking place, but the other hurried him along to one of the notched logs that stretched up the cliff face. He clambered up to the ledge above, then waited for Kerrick. The climb was an easy one. There was a dark opening behind the ledge with a chamber of some kind beyond. They had to stoop to enter. There were pots and other articles on the stone floor, a heaped pile of skins to the rear. The white-clad hunter spoke and a thin voice answered from the skins and furs.

  When Kerrick looked more closely he saw that someone was there, a slight figure that lay under the coverings with just the head visible. A seamed and wrinkled face. The lips worked in the toothless mouth and the whispering voice spoke again.

  “Where do you come from? What is your name?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the chamber, Kerrick saw that the old one’s skin, though dark with age, was as fair as his, the eyes blue. The hair that might once have been light was now gray and sparse. When the thin voice spoke again he listened and could understand most of the words. Not Marbak as he knew it, but more like that spoken by Har-Havola’s sammad from beyond the mountains.

  “Your name, your name,” the order came again.

  “I am Kerrick. I come from beyond the mountains.”

  “I knew it, yes I did, your hair so light. Come closer so Huanita can see you. Yes, you are Tanu. See, Sanone, did I not tell you I could still speak as they do?” The weak voice rustled with dry laughter.

  Kerrick and Huanita talked then, Sanone, for that was the dark hunter’s name, listening and nodding approval though he could not understand a word. Kerrick was not surprised to discover that Huanita was a woman, captured by hunters when she had been a young girl. Everything that she said was not clear and she tended to ramble. Many times she fell asleep while talking. Once when she awoke she talked to him in Sesek, the language of the Sasku, as these dark-haired people called themselves, and grew angry when he did not respond. Then she called for food and Kerrick ate as well. It was late afternoon by the time Kerrick broke off.

  “Tell Sanone I must return to my sammad. But I will be back here in the morning. Tell him that.”

  Huanita fell asleep then, snoring and muttering, and could not be aroused. But Sanone seemed to have understood what Kerrick was going to do because he walked w
ith him back to the rock barrier, then called out orders to the two spearmen on guard there.

  Once past the barrier Kerrick ran most of the way back to the encampment by the river, trying to reach the tents before dark. Herilak must have been concerned about his day-long absence for there were hunters in the hills waiting for him, calling out eager questions. He waited until he was back among the tents and had drunk deep of the cool water before he spoke. Herilak, Fraken, and the sammadars sat close, the rest of the sammads in the circle around.

  “First you must know this,” Kerrick said. “These dark Tanu are called the Sasku. They are not going to fight us or drive us away. They want to be of help, even give us food, and I think that this is because of the mastodons.”

  There was a murmur of surprise at this and he waited until they were quiet before he went on.

  “I feel just as puzzled by this as you do since I do not understand them completely. There is an old woman there who speaks in a way that I can understand, but what she says is not always clear. The Sasku do not have mastodons. But they know of them, you can see the mastodon on the bowl here, and they have a large painting of a mastodon and other animals in a cave. Again the meanings are not that clear, but something about mastodons is very important to them even though they do not have any. They have seen ours, seen that the mastodons obey us, so therefore they will aid us if they can. They do not wish to harm us. And they have many important things like stores of food set aside for the winter, bowls like this, too much to remember all at once. In the morning I return to them with Herilak. We will talk with them, with their sammadars. I do not know exactly what will happen but there is one thing that is certain. We have found a safe place for the winter.”

  It was more than just a refuge from the winter; it promised to be safe haven from the storms of the world that had engulfed them. The Yilanè had never been here — nor had the Sasku ever heard of them; they could understand little of what had happened to the hunters since the old woman dozed and forgot to translate such complex thoughts. What was important was that they wanted the newcomers to stay close by. This had something to do with the Harwan, the dark hunters to the north, who had always been a constant bother with their raids. The barrier in the river had begun as a natural landslide, but the Sasku had been levering boulders and rocks into it for years to construct the massive barrier that now barred access to the valley from the north. The valley beyond the rockfall widened out between its high walls and contained wooded hills, flat pastureland as well. Further to the south the high rock walls closed in again, constricting the water’s flow so that the river became narrow and fierce, filled with rapids, so that no boat could pass that way. Despite these barriers the Harwan still caused trouble, coming into the valley at places where the rim was low so that the Sasku had to stay on guard at all times. None of this would happen if the sammads stayed close by; the Harwan would keep their distance then. The Sasku would be happy to supply them with food. It was an arrangement that suited everyone.

  The sammads stayed in their tents by the river, for the grazing was good enough there and in the wooded highlands above. The hunting was not good, and it would have been a hungry winter had it not been for the Sasku. They were free with their food for they seemed to have an abundance of it, all grown in their fields beside the river. They asked nothing in return, though they were grateful for fresh meat after a successful hunt. If they did ask anything, it was only the privilege of seeing the mastodons, for coming close to them, for the ultimate favor of being permitted to reach out and touch their wrinkled; hairy skins.

  Kerrick’s pleasure was even greater than theirs since he found every aspect of the Sasku’s life fascinating in the extreme. The other hunters took no interest at all in the Sasku, even laughing at the males who grubbed in the dirt like women. Kerrick understood the Sasku better, saw the relationship between their work in their fields and the pastured animals of the Yilanè, understanding the security that was guaranteed by a food supply that did not move about with the seasons. Since there were more hunters than game, the hunters of the sammads were pleased to see him spending so much time with the Sasku. He stayed many nights in the rock-carved rooms and in the end brought Armun and all their furs and goods to the rock chambers in the cliff. They were made welcome, the women and children gathering around in admiration of her fair looks, hesitantly touching her shoulder-length hair.

  Armun proved to be very quick at picking up the language spoken by the Sasku. Kerrick went often to the old woman, Huanita, and learned some of the Sasku words from her and their way of speaking. Armun was eager to learn these as well and practiced them on the other women when he was away. They laughed and covered their mouths when she spoke, and she smiled because she knew that there was no malice in their laughter. When they finally understood what she was trying to say they would speak the words correctly, over and over for her, as though she were a child, and she would repeat after them. In a short time she was the one who was teaching Kerrick and he no longer had to rely on the old woman and her senile vagaries.

  With Armun working hard to learn the new language, Kerrick could devote all of his time to investigating the fascinating activities and skills of the Sasku. He discovered that the hard bowls were really made from soft clay found in a thin layer in one particular hillside. The clay was molded and shaped while still wet, then put in an immensely hot oven to dry, an oven shaped from stones and more of the clay itself. Wood burned beneath it day and night and the heat worked a change that turned clay to stone.

  Of even greater interest were the fibers they used for ropes and cord, that they wove into cloth to be made into clothing. These came from a little green plant called charadis. The seeds were not only good to eat, but when hammered and pressed produced an oil with many uses. However it was the stems of the plant that were of most value.

  The charadis stalks were put into shallow ponds and heavy rocks were placed on top of them to hold them under water. After a certain time the soggy stalks were removed and dried in the sun, then beaten on stone slabs. Special wooden tools with prongs were used to rake out and separate the fibers, which the women then twisted and spun into strong lengths. Many of these lengths could be wound together to make cords and ropes, which were then knotted into nets for fishing and catching animals. Best of all, the thin lengths were stretched on wooden frames, many of them, close together. Then the women wove other threads back and forth between them to make the white fabric that Armun so greatly admired. She soon discarded her skins and furs and dressed as the other women did in the soft charadis cloth.

  Armun was happy among the Sasku, happier than she had ever been in her life before. Her baby would be born soon and she was grateful that she was warm and comfortable here and not spending the winter in a cold tent. She had no desire, big as she was, to climb the barrier of stone to go back to the sammads by the river for the birth. But this was not the important reason. Her sammad was here, Kerrick her sammadar. She dated the beginning of her real life from the moment he had looked into her face and had not laughed. The Sasku did not laugh at her either, taking no notice of her divided lips at all, lost as they were in admiration of her fair skin, her hair as pale as charadis. That is what they called it, for it was almost as white as the cloth itself. She felt at home among them, talking easily now in their language, learning to spin and cook the crops that they grew. The baby would be born here.

  Kerrick did not question the decision, was pleased by it if anything. The cleanliness of the stone caves, the soft luxury of the woven cloth, was far superior to the windy tents and vermin-ridden furs. Life with the Sasku was, in many ways, like the bustle of life in a Yilanè city, though he did not often make this observation consciously. He did not like to think of the Yilanè at all, and let his thoughts slip away from them whenever some chance resemblance brought them to mind. The mountains and desert were a barrier: the Yilanè could not find them here. That was the way it should be. He had responsibilities now and they took prece
dence over everything. The birth was the important thing. Though only to him and Armun. Another birth was of greater importance to the Sasku and it was all that they could talk about.

  The mastodon cow, Dooha, was also giving birth. This would be her fourth calf so that she and the sammads accepted it as a natural occurrence.

  Not so the Sasku. Kerrick was beginning to understand some of the reverence that they had for the mastodons. They knew many things about the world that the Tanu did not, in particular they knew about the spirits of the beasts and rocks, about what lay beyond the sky, where the world had come from and what the future would be like. They had special persons called manduktos who did nothing except pay attention to such matters. Sanone was first among them and led them, just as the manduktos led the rest of the Sasku. His powers were very much like that of a Yilanè eistaa. Therefore, when he sent for him Kerrick went at once to the cave. Sanone sat before the image of the mastodon and waved Kerrick to sit beside him.

  “You have journeyed a great distance to reach this valley,” Sanone said. Like the Tanu the Sasku came slowly to the subject at hand. “And you battled with the murgu who walk like men. We have never seen murgu like this so you must tell me of them.”

  Kerrick had told him often about the Yilanè but he did so once again knowing that this was a step along the way to whatever reason Sanone had for this visit.

  “Such killing, such creatures!” Sanone trembled when he thought about the evil the Yilanè had done. “And they killed not only Tanu but mastodon as well?” There was unconcealed horror in his voice when he said this.