Mists of Dawn

by Chad Oliver

  What could he say to this silent man, who worked all alone under the earth, fumbling, unsure, reaching out through the darkness for the beauty that he saw within him? How could he tell Tloron that the work he was laboring over would be cherished by all men for a longer period than any other art that would ever be created by man until the end of time?

  He could not say anything. He nudged Tlaxcan, and, picking up a small dish of red pigment that Tloron had discarded, he started back the way he had come. He knew that Tloron did not wish to be disturbed, nor did he wish to chatter his time away. Tloron was doing something great, and Mark had no ill-bred tourist wish to interfere or hinder him in any way.

  “Tloron is a very holy man,” Tlaxcan said, pleased that Mark had not disturbed him. “He makes the game plentiful and the hunting good.”

  Mark nodded, remembering some of the things that Doctor Nye had told him about magic on their tramps through the mountains of New Mexico. There were two basic types of magic, black and white—the black used for evil, and the white for good. Whether the magic was black or white for you depended, of course, on which side you happened to be at the time. Among the types of white magic, ritual magic to insure the success of the hunt held a high place. The idea was that you painted an animal on the cave wall, and just as it appeared there so it would appear in the fields, ready for the kill. So it was that the first great art in human history was in part magic—as, in a sense, all great art has been ever since.

  Toward the entrance to the cave, but still well-protected and far underground, Mark stopped and asked Tlaxcan to hold the torch for him. Tlaxcan smilingly obliged, and Mark took a flat stone about a foot and a half in diameter and began to draw on it.

  “A little magic of my own,” he explained to Tlaxcan, who did not laugh at him. He had seen the results of Mark’s magic before.

  With the pointed end of a rock, Mark carefully sketched a jet aircraft in red dye. He took his time, and made it accurate enough so that its identity was unmistakable. Underneath that, he slowly lettered a famous equation: E = MC2. This was the formula worked out by Albert Einstein, to the effect that energy equaled mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light, an idea that was instrumental in the development of atomic energy.

  When he had finished, Mark took the rock and very carefully placed it behind a large boulder high on a ledge in an out-of-the-way corner of the cave. He smiled to himself when he had finished, knowing that he now had proof of a sort, in case he should ever need any, that he had actually been back in space-time to the land of the Danequa. He started on toward the entrance of the cave with Tlaxcan. He could tell them about that stone, and he could take them to it, and there it would be, fifty-two thousand years old with a drawing of a jet plane and one of Einstein’s equations on it. Of course, everyone would claim that it was a fake—but then you never could prove anything to people who had decided in advance not to believe your evidence.

  What would happen, he wondered, if some anthropologist or archaeologist dug up that stone before he got back to it? He knew for certain that it hadn’t been discovered before he left in the space-time machine in 1953, but what about after that if he never got back? He could well imagine the absolute dumfounded confusion of the man who found that stone associated with Cro-Magnon culture! Even with his layman’s knowledge of the profession, Mark strongly suspected that the hypothetical anthropologist would promptly bury the stone again and forget about it, rather than attempt to prove that his find was a genuine one and that someone had evidently known about Einstein and jet airplanes during the Ice Age.

  As they walked back out of the limestone caverns into the open air and saw the preparations for the war party all around them, Mark was strongly tempted to try to tell Tlaxcan something about himself and where he had come from. He gave up the idea, however, after a moment’s reflection. There were no words in the Danequa language, nor concepts in the Danequa mind, by which he could explain the space-time machine and the world of the future to Tlaxcan. The cultures and customs and beliefs they had each known since childhood, stood between them—and yet Tlaxcan was one of the best friends that he had ever had, and

  Mark hated to leave him without a word of good-by or an attempt at explanation.

  Mark toyed with the idea of taking Tlaxcan back with him in the space-time machine, but he could see that it would never work out. Tlaxcan would be far more out of place in Mark’s time than Mark was in his; he would be regarded as a freak, a Cro-Magnon in modern times, a newspaper sensation. And Tlaxcan was no freak; he was a human being, and entitled to a life of his own.

  Mark looked around him at the Danequa, with the odd feeling of one who sees his own infinitely remote ancestors walking before him. Time travel played some funny tricks occasionally, and this was one of them. He knew the Danequa were in every respect his own ancestors. They were the people who had developed into the modern populations of Europe and England, and thus those who had largely colonized America. There probably were not very many of them at this relatively early time, and it was entirely possible that Mark was very distantly related to all of them, as their extremely distant descendant.

  His mind stuck on the subject for a moment; it was difficult to figure it out to his own satisfaction. Even when you yourself had become the first real time traveler, time travel posed some unanswerable questions. For example, what would have happened if he had gone back in time only two years? He then could have looked up himself at the age of fifteen, and talked to himself. But if he had done that, wouldn’t he have remembered it at seventeen before he had started back?

  Or . . .

  But this was no time for idle speculation. Mark threw himself into the work that was to determine the future course of his life with energy and enthusiasm, all the time conscious of the booming waterfall and the lovely valley of the Danequa that he would soon be leaving forever.

  The days rushed by, and at last the war party of the Danequa moved out across the whispering plains in search of the lurking half-men who stood between Mark Nye and his destiny.

  Chapter 20 Battle in the Dawn

  Westward marched the Danequa, across the flowered plains that skirted the blue hills beyond, around the emerald green lakes carved out of solid rock by the retreating glacial ice, toward the dark and shadowed valley where the half-men waited. Westward and ever westward they marched—westward into the setting sun . . .

  The Neanderthals, Mark thought, were truly a people of the setting sun. They had been spawned in fitful darkness, and they had lived in the dawning gray twilight of man. And now their pale sun was setting, setting in the eyes of the Danequa who were inexorably taking their world away from them forever.

  It was possible even to pity the doomed Neanderthals, horrible as they were to modern eyes. And, certainly, it was possible to respect them too. The half-men had roamed the fields and ice sheets of Europe for perhaps one hundred thousand years. Modern man, counting the Danequa now marching at his side, had barely existed for half that time. All of man’s recorded history, all of his empires and literature and famous names, had taken place in a tiny fraction of the time the Neanderthals had owned the earth. All the long years since the birth of Christ represented less than one-fiftieth as long a period as the one hundred thousand years the half-men had flourished.

  Pity the Neanderthal, Mark thought, pity him but remember that you yourself have not equaled his record. How long would “modern” man last? Would he destroy himself with his unleashed technology? Was it just egotism that he fancied himself to be the end product of the evolution of intelligence? What future species might one day coldly replace humanity, even as humanity now was replacing the half-men?

  But the Neanderthals were not gone yet, Mark reminded himself grimly. They were there, they were deadly, and they barred his way back to the space-time machine. Mark could predict, with some certainty, the outcome of the coming battle. The Dane qua, surely, would win. They were more intelligent, they had better weapons, and they had the a
dvantage of surprise. The Neanderthals had no chance in the long run, even as the American Indian had had no chance against repeating rifles and disciplined armies. But predicting the general outlines of future events was not the same thing as predicting what would happen to the individuals involved in them. The Indians had lost, but they had taken many a white man into the shadows with them. The half-men would lose, but how many Danequa would die by their side?

  During the night, the Danequa deployed their men. They had decided against a headlong charge into the valley of the half-men, preferring a plan that would enable them to take full advantage of the superior range of their bows and arrows. They could see that the ideal situation would be to deploy the Danequa archers just within arrow range, but too far away for the Mroxor spears to be effective. Theoretically, they could thus destroy the half-men without losing a man of their own.

  Theories, however, have an unpleasant way of not working out under actual conditions. The Danequa leaders knew that a plan had to be flexible in order to function under battle conditions, and they knew too that the Neanderthals were not so stupid that they would permit themselves to stay in an impossible position. They would either charge the archers or they would retreat into their caves, where they would be safe as long as their food supply held out. Therefore, with quite remarkable skill, the Danequa had planned their movements to take the best possible advantage of the situation and the terrain.

  One small party of Danequa archers filtered down to the head of the mountain pass and hid themselves among the rocks and pines. The other warriors stationed themselves along the high sides of the valley, where their bows could command the entrances to the Mroxor caves. Mark and Tlaxcan were high on the mountainside behind a boulder, the silent Fang lying quietly between them.

  Night passed and the dawn came. Mark looked down into the valley before him and could not repress a shudder as the bestial half-men shuffled out of their dark caves and prepared to go about the day’s activities. He remembered all too well the hours of horror he had experienced in that desolate pass, and he knew that only a miracle had saved him from death at the hands of the half-men. Had he come so far, dared so much, only to meet death at their hands at last?

  Cutting clear through the babbling growls below them, the voice of Nranquar shouted a signal. Fang barked fiercely and Mark and Tlaxcan leaped to their feet. The Neanderthals were caught without a warning of any sort; the cold valley air was filled with a cloud of whizzing arrows before they even had time to arm themselves.

  The squat Mroxor, their legs bent and their powerful bodies covered with pelts of dirty, matted hair, dropped like flies. Their screams and the cries of their women and children made the air hideous with sound. Half-men or not, their deaths were tragically horrible.

  Mark took no part in the killing, for the good and simple reason that he had no bow and arrows and his spear was of no use at long range. He was saving his one precious shot for an emergency, and the emergency was not yet. Looking down from the heights, the Mroxor below looked like crumpling toys, gruesome miniature monsters falling on the valley floor.

  But the half-men knew something about fighting themselves. They certainly had no lack of courage, and they rallied admirably under the storm of arrows. There was no panic-stricken retreat, no hysteria. Determined to make the best of things, the ugly creatures dashed into their caves and armed themselves with spears and axes and knives. Then, seeing all too well that they could be driven out of the caverns by hunger eventually, they regrouped and shuffled at full speed across the valley floor, trying to get out of the trap and into the open where they could fight man-to-man. It was not altogether an admirable plan, but no men think too clearly when their friends are dropping on all sides of them under a rain of death.

  The Neanderthals did what they could, knowing that the battle was lost before it had ever started. They retreated across the valley floor, snarling and growling their hate, and they took their women and children with them. Only the very young who were too small to run were left behind. Even in the dawn of man, war was not a pleasant business.

  The warriors of the Danequa, sensing victory and remembering the cold bodies of their own friends murdered by the hideous Mroxor, swarmed down from the sides of the mountain, driving the half-men across the valley floor. Mark and Tlaxcan ran side by side, with Fang yelping and barking ahead of them. The air shook with sounds and the shouts of men, and the Danequa ran unheeding over the still-warm corpses of the Neanderthals they had slain.

  Quite suddenly, the rout stopped. Without any warning of any sort, six of the half-men stopped short, turned, and charged their attackers. The rest cut off down a hidden trail out of the valley, neatly evading the trap that had been set for them in the mouth of the valley where more Danequa bowmen waited.

  Mark and Tlaxcan, a moment before trotting along in the flush of victory, found themselves fighting for their lives in the twinkling of an eye. The six Mroxor, swinging their stone axes in vicious circles around their bestial heads, plunged into their midst with snarls and cries that were more than animal-like in their ferocity. Savagely, they lashed out around them, and the Danequa line crumpled and stopped.

  Tlaxcan threw away his bow and went after a Mroxor with his knife. Mark jabbed one half-man with his lance, and then fell flat on his face to get out of the way of a whistling stone ax wielded by another. Fang jumped the monster, sinking his strong white teeth into his throat, and old Roqan stepped coolly back and pierced the shrieking Mroxor with an arrow. Mark got up and turned to help Tlaxcan, but there was no need. Tlaxcan had downed his antagonist, although he himself was smeared with blood that was not entirely his enemy’s.

  It was all over in seconds. The six Neanderthals lay dead on the field, and four of the Danequa were seriously injured. The Mroxor suicide attack had failed, as they, of course, had known it would. But the heroic rear guard action had served its purpose. During the milling confusion, the rest of the half-men had made good their escape from the valley.

  Mark’s heart sank within him. The Mroxor had fled out of the valley to the north, out across the great plains. They were doubly dangerous, maddened as they were by the loss of their friends, and they were still between Mark and the space-time machine.

  “Come on!” shouted old Roqan, his eyes blazing. “Are the Danequa women that they will let the Mroxor slip through their fingers? After them!”

  A roar of approval went up from the assembled warriors, and they charged in a mass out of the valley to pursue the fleeing half-men. Once more, however, the Mroxor had fooled them.

  They were not all fleeing.

  As the Danequa raced through the mouth of the valley, huge boulders pounded down on them from the hills above. There were not many of them, and the few half-men who had stayed behind promptly ducked back out of sight, but even a few boulders bouncing down into a pass choked with men are no joke. The shattering explosions of the smashing rocks threw the Danequa into momentary confusion again, and two warriors were crushed like bugs under the murderous barrage.

  When they had recovered, the escaping Neanderthals had a good lead on them, and even as they watched, the half-men split into three groups, fanning out across the great plains and each group taking a different direction. With grim urgency now, the Danequa reorganized. A large party of warriors ran off at full speed to intercept the Mroxor bearing toward the east. They had to be stopped at all costs before they reached the almost unprotected valley of the Danequa, where the Danequa women and children were. A smaller group charged after the Mroxor heading west, and another party ran out across the plains directly toward the north.

  Mark, Tlaxcan, and Nranquar were in the center group, with Fang racing at their side. The Neanderthals were running for their lives, snarling like elusive animals through the tall grass of the plains. The Danequa charged after them, trying desperately to get within arrow range. The pell-mell race settled down into a trotting run as it rapidly turned into an endurance contest.

  For hou
rs they forced themselves on through the tall grasses and the brilliant flowers, while the sun marched sedately through the blue sky, and the gentle breezes played unconcernedly across the earth. Mark was strong and hard now, but he was tiring speedily and nearing complete exhaustion. He could not run forever, and evening would be upon them soon, forcing them to turn back from their grim hunt. He forced himself to go on, however, knowing that every step took him closer to his long-awaited goal. The space-time machine, if only nothing had happened to it!

  You’ll never get another chance, his straining mind whispered, urging him on.

  They were gaining on the half-men now. The Mroxor, hampered by their women and children, were losing ground. Determined to hold out until the saving night, the Mroxor suddenly split up again into still smaller groups. At an unspoken command, the Danequa peeled off their own units to follow them across the plains. Mark and Tlaxcan were left alone, two of the Danequa against two of the cornered Mroxor.

  On and on they went, these four creatures playing out the most deadly game of all across the plains of the Ice Age. Fang’s tongue lolled with weariness, and now the sun was dangerously low in the western sky. Mark forced every last ounce of strength into the race, every single atom of his being concentrated on catching those shambling half-men ahead of him. Unless they caught them before night, they would have to turn back or run the certain risk of ambush in the tall grass. And the space-time machine was so near—surely it was just ahead of them!

  They were drawing nearer, the gap was closing. They were gaining, but could they make it in time?

  The long shadows of evening began to creep across the plains . . .

  Chapter 21 Fifty-Fifty Chance