“Suppose,” she began again, slowly, haltingly, “Suppose we really could do it… grow grain the way you said. Suppose we stayed here in this valley — all the time, winter and summer. We could grow the grain; we could pen up the animals against the cliffs. We wouldn’t have to go out each day and hunt. We could stay here and live much more easily.”
I nodded. The transition from hunting and gathering to a settled agricultural life had begun, at least in the mind of one Neolithic woman.
“But suppose the grain didn’t grow?” she asked me.
“It grows every year, doesn’t it? It’s always here when you return to this valley.”
She agreed, but reluctantly. “It begins to grow when we are away. If we stayed here all the time, would the grain still grow the way it does now?”
“Yes,” I said. “You will even find ways to make it grow better.”
“But doesn’t the grain’s spirit need to be alone? Won’t the grain die if we stay here always?”
“No,” I assured her. “The spirit of the grain will grow stronger if you help that spirit by tending the grain, by killing the weeds that choke it, by spreading the seed to new parts of the valley, where the grain does not yet grow.”
She wanted to believe me, I could see. But the old superstitions, the ingrained ways of thought, the stubborn fear that change — any change — would bring down the anger of the gods, all were struggling within her against the bright promise of this new idea.
“I’m going to take a walk,” I said, with a sudden inspiration. “Will you come with me?”
She agreed and I started out across the waist-high field of golden grain, toward the cliffs that the glacier had scooped out on the far side of the valley.
We talked as we made our way to the base of the cliffs, Ava going over the whole idea of agriculture and herding, again and again, trying to find out where the weak points were, where there might be a hidden flaw in the scheme, a trap that could bring ruin to the clan.
I could have told her that once the clan stopped its roaming and gave up hunting, it would lead to settled farming villages, to an hierarchical society of peasants and kings, to class divisions between rich and poor. I could have told her that the occasional tribal clashes she was familiar with would escalate into wars between villages, then between cities, and ultimately wars in which all the world was bathed in blood. I could have told her about teeming cities and pollution and the threats of overpopulation, nuclear holocaust, environmental collapse.
But I said nothing. Here in the bright morning of human civilization, I remained silent and let Ava examine the new idea for herself.
We reached the base of the cliffs. I squinted up toward their top, outlined against the bright summer sky.
“I think I’ll climb up to the top. Want to come with me?”
“Up there?” She laughed. “No one can climb up those cliffs, Orion. You are teasing me.”
“No, I’m not. I think we can make it to the top.”
“It’s too steep. Dal tried it once and had to give up. No one can climb these cliffs.”
I shrugged. “Let’s try it together. Maybe the two of us can get to the top, whereas one man alone would fail.”
She gave me a curious stare. “Why? Why do you want to climb where no one has climbed before?”
“That’s just it,” I said. “Because no one has done it before. I want to be the first. I want to see how the world looks when I’m standing in a place where no one has ever stood before.”
“That sounds crazy.”
“Haven’t you ever done something simply because you wanted to do it? Haven’t you ever had the desire to do something that no one has ever done before?”
“No,” she said. But not very convincingly. She looked up the face of the cliffs and her gray eyes were filled with wondering. “We always do things the way they have always been done. That’s the best way, just as our fathers and their fathers did, it.”
“But somewhere, sometime, one of them must have done a thing for the first time. There has to be a first time for everything.”
She looked sharply at me. I was challenging the safely ordered routines of her world, and she was not altogether happy about it.
But her expression softened and she asked, “Do you really think we could reach the top?”
“Yes, if we work together.”
She turned back to look at the cliffs again. They were steep, all right, but even an amateur climber could handle them, I knew. With utter certainty within me, I was sure that Ormazd had programmed me with much more than an amateur’s strength and skill.
Ava tore her gaze away from the looming cliffs and turned to look back at the golden fields of grain we had crossed. The afternoon breeze sent a swaying wave through them. She grinned at me.
“Yes!” she said eagerly. “I want to see what’s at the top of the cliffs, too!”
We used vines for ropes, and our bare, travel-hardened feet had to do without climber’s boots. But the cliffs were nowhere near as forbidding as they had seemed at first glance. It was a two-hour struggle, but we reached the top at last, panting, sweaty, weary.
The view was worth it.
Ava stood puffing, grinning broadly, and wide-eyed, as we looked far to the east and west and saw valley after valley, river after river, all running southward through golden fields. Above us loomed Ararat, towering high into the cloudless, brilliant sky, its snowy cap glistening in the sun, a thin stream of smoke climbing from the higher of its two peaks. And beyond, farther to the north, the land dazzled with ice, glittering like a vast diamond that hurt the eyes if you stared at it too long. That vast glacier still covered most of Europe, I knew, although it was retreating northward as the Ice Age surrendered to a more humane climate.
“There’s so much to see!” Ava shouted. “Look at how small our valley seems from here!”
“It’s a big world,” I agreed.
She gazed down into the valley again and slowly her face lost its exultant happiness. She began to frown again.
“What’s wrong, Ava?”
Turning toward me, she said, “If we lived away from the others, if we found a valley for ourselves where no other clan lived… just you and I together…”
I felt my jaw go slack. “What are you saying?”
There were no words in her language for what she was feeling.
“Orion,” she said, her voice low, trembling, “I want to be with you; I want to be your woman.”
I reached out to her and she fled into my arms. I held her tightly and felt her strong, lithe body press against mine. For an eternity we stood there, locked in each other’s arms, warmed by the summer sun and our own passionate blood.
“But it cannot be,” she whispered so softly that I could barely hear her.
“Yes, of course it can be. This world is so large, so empty. We can find a valley of our own and make our home in it…”
She looked up at me and I kissed her. I didn’t know if kissing had been invented yet by these people, but she took to it naturally enough.
But when our lips parted there were tears in her eyes.
“I can’t stay with you, Orion. I am Dal’s woman. I can’t leave him.”
“You can if you want to…”
“No. He would be shamed. He would have to organize the men of the clan to hunt us down. He would have to kill you and bring me back with him.”
“He’d never find us,” I said. “And even if he did, he’d never be able to kill me.”
“Then you would have to kill him,” Ava replied. “Because of me.”
“No, we can go so far away…”
But she shook her head as she gently disengaged herself from my arms. “Dal needs me. He is the leader of the clan, but how could he lead them if his woman deserts him? He is not as confident as you think; at night, when we are alone together, he tells me all his fears and doubts. He fears you, Orion. But he is brave enough to overcome that fear because he sees that you can be helpful to the clan. He places his responsibility to the clan above his fear of you. I must place my responsibility to the clan above my desire for you.”