Grotto of the Dancing Deer: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  Then a thought came to him and slowly, with some effort, he began to turn himself around, so that his back rather than his front, lay on the fissure floor. Directing the beam upward, he had his answer. In the roof of the fissure gaped a hole.

  Cautiously, he raised himself into a sitting position. Reaching up, he found handholds on the projecting rock and pulled himself erect. Swinging the flash around, he saw that the hole opened, not into another fissure, but into a bubblelike cavity, small, no more than six feet in any dimension. The walls and ceiling of the cavity were smooth, as if a bubble of plastic rock had existed here for a moment at some time in the distant geologic past when the mountains had been heaving upward leaving behind it as it drained away a bubble forever frozen into smooth and solid stone.

  As he swung the flash across the bubble, he gasped in astonishment. Colorful animals capered around the entire expanse of stone. Bison played leapfrog. Horses cantered in a chorus line. Mammoths turned somersaults. All around the bottom perimeter, just above the floor, dancing deer, standing on their hind legs, joined hands and jigged, antlers swaying gracefully.

  “For the love of Christ!” said Boyd.

  Here was Stone Age Disney.

  If it was the Stone Age. Could some jokester have crawled into the area in fairly recent times to paint the animals in this grotto? Thinking it over, he rejected the idea. So far as he had been able to ascertain, no one in the valley, nor in the entire region, for that matter, had known of the cave until a shepherd had found it several years before when a lamb had blundered into it. The entrance was small and apparently for centuries had been masked by a heavy growth of brush and bracken.

  Too, the execution of the paintings had a prehistoric touch to them. Perspective played but a small part. The paintings had that curious flat look that distinguished most prehistoric art. There was no background—no horizon line, no trees, no grass or flowers, no clouds, no sense of sky. Although, he reminded himself, anyone who had any knowledge of cave painting probably would have been aware of all these factors and worked to duplicate them.

  Yet, despite the noncharacteristic antics of the painted animals, the pictures did have the feeling of cave art. What ancient man, Boyd asked himself, what kind of ancient man, would have painted gamboling bison and tumbling mammoths? While the situation did not hold in all cave art, all the paintings in this particular cave were deadly serious—conservative as to form and with a forthright, honest attempt to portray the animals as the artists had seen them. There was no frivolity, not even the imprint of paint-smeared human hands as so often happened in other caves. The men who had worked in this cave had not as yet been corrupted by the symbolism that had crept in, apparently rather late in the prehistoric painting cycle.

  So who had been this clown who had crept off by himself in this hidden cavern to paint his comic animals? That he had been an accomplished painter there could be no doubt. This artist’s techniques and executions were without flaw.

  Boyd hauled himself up through the hole, slid out onto the two-foot ledge that ran all around the hole, crouching, for there was no room to stand. Much of the painting, he realized, must have been done with the artist lying flat upon his back, reaching up to the work on the curving ceiling.

  He swept the beam of the flashlight along the ledge. Halfway around, he halted the light and jiggled it back and forth to focus upon something that was placed upon the ledge, something that undoubtedly had been left by the artist when he had finished his work and gone away.

  Leaning forward, Boyd squinted to make out what it was. It looked like the shoulder blade of a deer; beside the shoulder blade lay a lump of stone.

  Cautiously, he edged his way around the ledge. He had been right. It was the shoulder blade of a deer. Upon the flat surface of it lay a lumpy substance. Paint? he wondered, the mixture of animal fat and mineral earths the prehistoric artists used as paints? He focused the flash closer and there was no doubt. It was paint, spread over the surface of the bone which had served as a palette, with some of the paint lying in thicker lumps ready for use, but never used, paint dried and mummified and bearing imprints of some sort. He leaned close, bringing his face down to within a few inches of the paint, shining the light upon the surface. The imprints, he saw, were fingerprints, some of them sunk deep—the signature of that ancient, long-dead man who had worked here, crouching even as Boyd now crouched, shoulders hunched against the curving stone. He put out his hand to touch the palette, then pulled it back. Symbolic, yes, this move to touch, this reaching out to touch the man who painted—but symbolic only; a gesture with too many centuries between.

  He shifted the flashlight beam to the small block of stone that lay beside the shoulder blade. A lamp—hollowed-out sandstone, a hollow to hold the fat and the chunk of moss that served as a wick. The fat and wick were long since gone, but a thin film of soot still remained around the rim of the hollow that had held them.

  Finishing his work, the artist had left his tools behind him, had even left the lamp, perhaps still guttering, with the fat almost finished—had left it here and let himself down into the fissure, crawling it in darkness. To him, perhaps, there was no need of light. He could crawl the tunnel by touch and familiarity. He must have crawled the route many times, for the work upon these walls had taken long, perhaps many days.

  So he had left, crawling through the fissure, using the blocks of stone to close the opening to the fissure, then had walked away, scrambling down the slope to the valley where grazing herds had lifted their heads to watch him, then had gone back to grazing.

  But when had this all happened? Probably, Boyd told himself, after the cave itself had been painted, perhaps even after the paintings in the cave had lost much of whatever significance they originally would have held—one lone man coming back to paint his secret animals in his secret place. Painting them as a mockery of the pompous, magical importance of the main cave paintings? Or as a protest against the stuffy conservatism of the original paintings? Or simply as a bubbling chuckle, an exuberance of life, perhaps even a joyous rebellion against the grimness and the simplemindedness of the hunting magic? A rebel, he thought, a prehistoric rebel—an intellectual rebel? Or, perhaps, simply a man with a viewpoint slightly skewed from the philosophy of his time?

  But this was that other man, that ancient man. Now how about himself? Having found the grotto, what did he do next? What would be the best way to handle it? Certainly he could not turn his back upon it and walk away, as the artist, leaving his palette and his lamp behind him, had walked away. For this was an important discovery. There could be no question of that. Here was a new and unsuspected approach to the prehistoric mind, a facet of ancient thinking that never had been guessed.

  Leave everything as it lay, close up the fissure and make a phone call to Washington and another one to Paris, unpack his bags and settle down for a few more weeks of work. Get back the photographers and other members of the crew—do a job of it. Yes, he told himself, that was the way to do it.

  Something lying behind the lamp, almost hidden by the sandstone lamp, glinted in the light. Something white and small.

  Still crouched over, Boyd shuffled forward to get a better look.

  It was a piece of bone, probably a leg bone from a small grazing animal. He reached out and picked it up and, having seen what it was, hunched unmoving over it, not quite sure what to make of it.

  It was a pipe, a brother to the pipe that Luis carried in his jacket pocket, had carried in his pocket since that first day he’d met him, years ago. There was the mouthpiece slot, there the two round stops. In that long-gone day when the paintings had been done the artist had hunched here, in the flickering of the lamp, and had played softly to himself, those simple piping airs that Luis had played almost every evening, after work was done.

  “Merciful Jesus,” Boyd said, almost prayerfully, “it simply cannot be!”

  He stayed there, frozen
in his crouch, the thoughts hammering in his mind while he tried to push the thoughts away. They would not go away. He’d drive them away for just a little distance, then they’d come surging back to overwhelm him.

  Finally, grimly, he broke the trance in which the thoughts had held him. He worked deliberately, forcing himself to do what he knew must be done.

  He took off his windbreaker and carefully wrapped the shoulder blade palette and the pipe inside, leaving the lamp. He let himself down into the fissure and crawled, carefully protecting the bundle that he carried. In the cave again, he meticulously fitted the blocks of stone together to block the fissure mouth, scraped together handfuls of soil from the cave floor and smeared it on the face of the blocks, wiping it away, but leaving a small clinging film to mask the opening to all but the most inquiring eye.

  Luis was not at his camp on the terrace below the cave mouth; he was still on his errand into the village.

  When he reached his hotel, Boyd made his telephone call to Washington. He skipped the call to Paris.

  3

  The last leaves of October were blowing in the autumn wind and a weak sun, not entirely obscured by the floating clouds, shone down on Washington.

  John Roberts was waiting for him on the park bench. They nodded at one another, without speaking, and Boyd sat down beside his friend.

  “You took a big chance,” said Roberts. “What would have happened if the customs people …”

  “I wasn’t too worried,” Boyd said. “I knew this man in Paris. For years he’s been smuggling stuff into America. He’s good at it and he owed me one. What have you got?”

  “Maybe more than you want to hear.”

  “Try me.”

  “The fingerprints match,” said Roberts.

  “You were able to get a reading on the paint impressions?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “The FBI?”

  “Yes, the FBI. It wasn’t easy, but I have a friend or two.”

  “And the dating?”

  “No problem. The bad part of the job was convincing my man this was top secret. He’s still not sure it is.”

  “Will he keep his mouth shut?”

  “I think so. Without evidence no one would believe him. It would sound like a fairy story.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Twenty-two thousand. Plus or minus three hundred years.”

  “And the prints do match. The bottle prints and …”

  “I told you they match. Now will you tell me how in hell a man who lived twenty-two thousand years ago could leave his prints on a wine bottle that was manufactured last year.”

  “It’s a long story,” said Boyd. “I don’t know if I should. First, where do you have the shoulder blade?”

  “Hidden,” said Roberts. “Well hidden. You can have it back, and the bottle, any time you wish.”

  Boyd shrugged. “Not yet. Not for a while. Perhaps never.”

  “Never?”

  “Look, John, I have to think it out.”

  “What a hell of a mess,” said Roberts. “No one wants the stuff. No one would dare to have it. Smithsonian wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. I haven’t asked. They don’t even know about it. But I know they wouldn’t want it. There’s something, isn’t there, about sneaking artifacts out of a country …”

  “Yes, there is,” said Boyd.

  “And now you don’t want it.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said let it stay where it is for a time. It’s safe, isn’t it?”

  “It’s safe. And now …”

  “I told you it is a long story. I’ll try to make it short. There’s this man—a Basque. He came to me ten years ago when I was doing the rock shelter …”

  Roberts nodded. “I remember that one.”

  “He wanted work and I gave him work. He broke in fast, caught onto the techniques immediately. Became a valuable man. That often happens with native laborers. They seem to have the feel for their own antiquity. And then when we started work on the cave he showed up again. I was glad to see him. The two of us, as a matter of fact, are fairly good friends. On my last night at the cave he cooked a marvelous omelet—eggs, tomato, green pimentos, onions, sausages and home-cured ham. I brought a bottle of wine.”

  “The bottle?”

  “Yes, the bottle.”

  “So go ahead.”

  “He played a pipe. A bone pipe. A squeaky sort of thing. Not too much music in it …”

  “There was a pipe …”

  “Not that pipe. Another pipe. The same kind of pipe, but not the one our man has. Two pipes the same. One in a living man’s pocket, the other beside the shoulder blade. There were things about this man I’m telling you of. Nothing that hit you between the eyes. Just little things. You would notice something and then, some time later, maybe quite a bit later, there’d be something else, but by the time that happened, you’d have forgotten the first incident and not tie the two together. Mostly it was that he knew too much. Little things a man like him would not be expected to know. Even things that no one knew. Bits and pieces of knowledge that slipped out of him, maybe without his realizing it. And his eyes. I didn’t realize that until later, not until I’d found the second pipe and began to think about the other things. But I was talking about his eyes. In appearance he is a young man, a never-aging man, but his eyes are old …”

  “Tom, you said he is a Basque.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Isn’t there some belief that the Basques may have descended from the Cro-Magnons?”

  “There is such a theory. I have thought of it.”

  “Could this man of yours be a Cro-Magnon?”

  “I’m beginning to think he is.”

  “But think of it—twenty thousand years!”

  “Yes, I know,” said Boyd.

  4

  Boyd heard the piping when he reached the bottom of the trail that led up to the cave. The notes were ragged, torn by the wind. The Pyrenees stood up against the high blue sky.

  Tucking the bottle of wine more securely underneath his arm, Boyd began the climb. Below him lay the redness of the village rooftops and the sere brown of autumn that spread across the valley. The piping continued, lifting and falling as the wind tugged at it playfully.

  Luis sat cross-legged in front of the tattered tent. When he saw Boyd, he put the pipe in his lap and sat waiting.

  Boyd sat down beside him, handing him the bottle. Luis took it and began working on the cork.

  “I heard you were back,” he said. “How went the trip?”

  “It went well,” said Boyd.

  “So now you know,” said Luis.

  Boyd nodded. “I think you wanted me to know. Why should you have wanted that?”

  “The years grow long,” said Luis. “The burden heavy. It is lonely, all alone.”

  “You are not alone.”

  “It’s lonely when no one knows you. You now are the first who has really known me.”

  “But the knowing will be short. A few years more and again no one will know you.”

  “This lifts the burden for a time,” said Luis. “Once you are gone, I will be able to take it up again. And there is something …”

  “Yes, what is it, Luis?”

  “You say when you are gone there’ll be no one again. Does that mean …”

  “If what you’re getting at is whether I will spread the word, no, I won’t. Not unless you wish it. I have thought on what would happen to you if the world were told.”

  “I have certain defenses. You can’t live as long as I have if you fail in your defenses.”

  “What kind of defenses?”

  “Defenses. That is all.”

  “I’m sorry if I pried. There’s one other thing. If you wanted me to know, you took a long chan
ce. Why, if something had gone wrong, if I had failed to find the grotto …”

  “I had hoped, at first, that the grotto would not be necessary. I had thought you might have guessed, on your own.”

  “I knew there was something wrong. But this is so outrageous I couldn’t have trusted myself even had I guessed. You know it’s outrageous, Luis. And if I’d not found the grotto … Its finding was pure chance, you know.”

  “If you hadn’t, I would have waited. Some other time, some other year, there would have been someone else. Some other way to betray myself.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “Cold, you mean?”

  “That’s what I mean. I would not have believed you, of course. Not at first.”

  “Don’t you understand? I could not have told you. The concealment now is second nature. One of the defenses I talked about. I simply could not have brought myself to tell you, or anyone.”

  “Why me? Why wait all these years until I came along?”

  “I did not wait, Boyd. There were others, at different times. None of them worked out. I had to find, you must understand, someone who had the strength to face it. Not one who would run screaming madly. I knew you would not run screaming.”

  “I’ve had time to think it through,” Boyd said. “I’ve come to terms with it. I can accept the fact, but not too well, only barely. Luis, do you have some explanation? How come you are so different from the rest of us?”

  “No idea at all. No inkling. At one time, I thought there must be others like me and I sought for them. I found none. I no longer seek.”

  The cork came free and he handed the bottle of wine to Boyd. “You go first,” he said steadily.

  Boyd lifted the bottle and drank. He handed it to Luis. He watched him as he drank. Wondering, as he watched, how he could be sitting here, talking calmly with a man who had lived, who had stayed young through twenty thousand years. His gorge rose once again against acceptance of the fact—but it had to be a fact. The shoulder blade, the small amount of organic matter still remaining in the pigment, had measured out to 22,000 years. There was no question that the prints in the paint had matched the prints upon the bottle. He had raised one question back in Washington, hoping there might be evidence of hoax. Would it have been possible, he had asked, that the ancient pigment, the paint used by the prehistoric artist, could have been reconstituted, the fingerprints impressed upon it, and then replaced in the grotto? Impossible was the answer. Any reconstitution of the pigment, had it been possible, would have shown up in the analysis. There had been nothing of the sort—the pigment dated to 20,000 years ago. There was no question of that.