“Yes, I do see. This has all been explained to me.” She sat mute for a space. When once more she looked squarely at him, her voice was calm.
“It’s more than my science, Manse. I fear for the We—for my Tulat. They’re dear people. Primitive, often childlike, but good. Boundlessly kind and hospitable to me, not because I was a wonder and powerful, but because that’s their nature. What’s going to become of them? What did? Their kind was lost, forgotten. How? I am afraid of the answer, Manse.”
He nodded. “Corwin reported his opinion, confidentially, after he’d interviewed you. He seconded the recommendation that your assignment in Beringia be terminated, because he feared you might succumb to … temptation, the temptation to interfere. Or, at least, untrained, unsupervised, you might do so without knowing it. Don’t think he’s a bastard. He has his duty. He did suggest you could transfer to an earlier period.”
Tamberly shook her head. “That’s no use. As rapidly as conditions were changing in the interstadial, I’d essentially have to start over from scratch. And what I found out would not be much help in the era of human migration that the Patrol is interested in.”
“Yeah. The suggestion was vetoed on those grounds. But give Corwin credit.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Her words quickened. “I’ve been thinking hard. And this is what I’ve come up with. My work is worth finishing—the rough sketch that’s all we can ever hope for, but that will be mighty useful. And maybe I could help the Tulat, just a little, very carefully, under supervision, not to change their destiny or anything but just to take some pain out of those few insignificant individual lives. Dr. Corwin hinted—we went out to dinner—At the time, I dismissed the notion out of hand, but since then I’ve been thinking. What if I didn’t go back to Aryuk, to the Tulat, but joined him among the newcomers?”
It thudded in Everard’s head. He laid his pipe down and built his poker face. “Unconventional,” his mouth said.
Tamberly laughed. “One thing I’ll ask you to do is tip the word to the good doctor that he’s not my type. I wouldn’t want him disappointed. Besides, we’ll both have a whopping lot of work to get done in a short time, or we really might affect those people too much.”
She grew altogether serious. Did he see tears sparkle in her lashes? “Manse, that’s what I need you for. Your advice, for openers, but then, if you decide I’m not totally out of my gourd, your influence. I asked my immediate superior what he thought, and he told me to get lost. As you say, unconventional; he’s no prude, but in his mind the policy has been set and nobody should bother him about it. Ralph Corwin, too. He’ll probably be taken aback when something he said over his second cocktail rises up and hollers, ‘Boo!’ You’ve got the authority, the prestige, the connections in this outfit. Please, won’t you at least think about it?”
He did, stormily at first. They talked and talked. Before he agreed, the sun was down. When he had invited her into the Patrol, she whooped for joy. Now she was too tired for more than a whispered “Thank you, thank you.”
They both revived, though, when they went out to dinner. He’d arrived sufficiently well dressed for the Empress of China, and she already was. Afterward they did some pub crawling. They talked and talked. When he bade her goodnight at her parents’ door, she kissed hirn.
13,211 B.C.
I
Days dwindled away into winter, blizzards laid snow thick over earth frozen ringingly hard, the brown bear shared dreams with the dead but the white bear walked the sea ice. We spent most of the enormous nights in their shelters.
Step by step, slow at first but faster and faster, the sun returned. Winds mildened, drifts melted, streams brawled swollen, floes ground each other to bits, calves of horned beasts and mammoth tottered newborn over steppe where flowers burst forth as many as stars, the migratory birds were coming home. For Us it had always been the happiest of seasons, until now.
They dreaded the trackless interior, its wolves and ghosts, but cross it they must. In fall the hunters had come along to show the way and made them pile up cairns to mark it. Thereafter they went by themselves, bearing the gifts required of them. Once snow was on the ground they were free until spring. But during the warmer time, between every full moon and full moon, men from each family would make the journey. So did the hunters command.
Heavily burdened, Aryuk and his sons took three days. He knew the return would need less than two. Some homes were farther off than his, some not so far, but these absences weighed upon all, for while traveling you could not hunt, gather, or work for your household. Having come back, you would spend more days getting together the next load. Not much time or strength was left to take care of your own livelihood.
There had been talk of meeting so as to fare in a single band. Against the protection and consolation of that you must set the still more days it would cost most people. In the end, We decided groups should go by themselves. Perhaps they would do differently later, when they had learned more about this new order of things.
Thus Aryuk made the first springtime trek with his sons Barakyn, Oltas, and Dzuryan. Behind them they left Aryuk’s and Barakyn’s women and small children. They carried long, stout pieces of wood, such as they had been told to bring, and food to keep them going. Wind and rainshowers harried them, often mud caught at their feet, always the loads bore downward. Howls and distant roars haunted their nights. By day they trudged on over the rising land. At last they reached the hunter camp.
From a height they looked across it. The site lay not far below them, a broad flat ground where soil was well-drained. From still higher hills northward, a brook ran through the middle of it.
Awe smote Us. On their last visit in fall, they had thought the steep-sided leather shelters were many, surely more than all the Tula dwellings put together. Aryuk had wondered if they would be warm enough for winter. Today he saw that the strangers had since made themselves great huts of stone, turf, and hides. Tiny at their distance, people moved among them. Smoke from fires rose into an afternoon gone calm and sunny.
“How did they do this?” marveled Oltas. “What powers are theirs?”
Aryuk remembered certain remarks of Her Who Knows Strangeness. “I think they have tools we do not,” he answered slowly.
“Just the same,” Barakyn said, “so much work! How could they find time for it?”
“They kill large beasts,” Aryuk reminded him. “One of those will feed them for many days.”
Tears of weariness and pain coursed down Dzuryan’s cheeks. “Then why n-need they take from Us?” he stammered. To that his father had no reply.
He led the party downslope. On the way they passed a long, gravelly hillock. Beneath it, where a spring ran forth, hidden from the settlement and hitherto from them, stood something that brought them up short. For a moment darkness whirled through Aryuk’s head.
“She,” Barakyn croaked.
“No, no,” wailed Oltas. “She is our friend, she would not move here.”
Aryuk took hold of his spirit, lest it flutter from him. He might have cried out too, were he not so numbingly tired. Staring at the round gray shell, he said, “We do not know, but perhaps soon we shall. Come.”
They plodded onward. Folk spied them. Children dashed out, shouting, skipping, fearless. Several men followed at a lope. They carried spears and hatchets—Aryuk had learned those words—but smiled. He supposed the rest were off hunting. Women and more children seethed around as We reached the huts. Again he noticed persons who were wrinkled, toothless, bent, blind. Here the weak need not go off to die. The young and strong could feed them.