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But only in the treift fully developed Creb, gentle shy Creb, whose -ur, learned to use the power of that brain to fuse the separate entities seated around him into one mind, and direct it He could take thee, to beco-ur His was a true power, not li-induced euphoria That only set the stage and enabled them to accept his direction

In that still, dark night, lit by ancient stars, a few men experienced visions impossible to describe They did not see them, they were them They felt the sensations, saith the eyes, and res From the depths of their minds they found the undeveloped brains of creatures of the sea floating in their warm, saline environment They survived the pain of their first breath of air and beca both elements

Because they venerated the cave bear, Mog-ur evoked a primordial mammal—the ancestor who spawned both species and a host of others—andThen down through the ages they becaenitors, and sensed those that diverged to other forms It made them aware of their relationship with all life on the earth, and the reverence it fostered even for the animals they killed and consumed formed the basis of the spiritual kinship with their totems

All their minds moved as one, and only as they neared the present did they separate into their immediate forebears and finally themselves It seemed to take forever In a sense it did, but little actual tiot up and left to find his sleeping place and a deep dreamless sleep, his dreams already spent

Mog-ur was the last In solitude he meditated on the experience and after a time felt a familiar uneasiness They could know the past with the depth and grandeur that exalted the soul, but Creb sensed a limitation that never occurred to the others They could not see ahead They could not even think ahead He alone had a bare inkling of the possibility

The Clan could not conceive a future any different from the past, could not devise innovative alternatives for to they did, was a repetition of so food for seasonal changes was the result of past experience

There had been a ti before, when innovation caave soe, when the warer just to see hoar and enlarging the storage capacity of their brain, changes came harder There was no more room for new ideas that would be added to their e Wo birth; they couldn’t afford neledge that would enlarge their heads even more

The Clan lived by unchanging tradition Every facet of their lives from the time they were born until they were called to the world of the spirits was circumscribed by the past It was an attempt at survival, unconscious and unplanned except by nature in a last-ditch effort to save the race froe, and resistance to it was self-defeating, antisurvival

They were slow to adapt Inventions were accidental and often not utilized If so new happened to the of inforreat effort, and once it was forced on the the new course It caain But a race with no rooer equipped for an inherently changing environ in a different way That would be left for a newer form, a different experiment of nature

As Mog-ur sat alone on the open plain watching the last of the torches sputter and die, he thought of the strange girl Iza had found, and his uneasiness grew until it became a physical discomfort Her kind had been , and not s had been pleasant Where they had come from was a mystery—her people were newcos had been changing They seee with them

Creb shrugged off his uneasiness, carefully wrapped the cave bear’s skull in his cloak, reached for his staff, and hobbled to bed

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The child turned over and began to thrash

“Mother,” she ain, louder, “Mother!”

Iza held her,undertone The war sounds penetrated the girl’s feverish brain and quieted her She had slept fitfully through the night, awakening the wos The sounds were strange, different from the words spoken by Clan people They flowed easily, fluently, one sound blending into another Iza could not begin to reproducethe finer variations But that particular set of sounds was repeated so often, Iza guessed it was a name for someone close to the child, and when she saw that her presence coirl, she sensed who the someone was

She can’t be very old, Iza thought, she didn’t even kno to find food I wonder how long she’s been alone? What could have happened to her people? Could it have been the earthquake? Has she been wandering by herself that long? And how did she escape froh e cat Powerful spirits must protect her, Iza decided

It was still dark, though daas approaching, when the child’s fever finally broke in a drenching sweat Iza cuddled her close, adding her warirl woke shortly afterward and wondered where she was, but it was too dark to see She felt the reassurance of the wo into a more restful sleep

As the sky lightened, silhouetting the trees against its faint glow, Iza crept quietly out of the warm fur She stoked the fire, added more wood, then went to the small creek to fill her bowl and peel bark off atree She paused for a moment, clutched her amulet, and thanked the spirits forShe always thanked the spirits for , for its ubiquitous presence as well as for its painkilling bark She couldn’t remember how many times she had peeledbark for a tea to relieve aches and pains She knew of stronger painkillers, but they also dulled the senses The analgesic properties ofjust dulled the pain and reduced fever

A few other people were beginning to stir as Iza sat hunched over the fire adding small hot stones to the bowl of water andbark When it was ready, she carried it back to the fur, carefully rested the bowl in a sround, then slid in beside the child Iza watched the sleeping girl, noting that her breathing was norued by her unusual face The sunburn had faded to tan except for a little peeling skin across the bridge of her small nose

Iza had seen her kind once, but only from a distance Women of the Clan always ran and hid fros of chance encounters between the Clan and the Others, and Clan people avoided them Women, especially, were allowed little contact But the experience of their clan had not been bad Iza re with Creb about thebefore, nearly out of his head with pain, his arm badly broken

He had learned a little of their language, but his ere strange He liked to talk to woreat respect, al the respect of thethe child as the sky grew lighter

While Iza was looking at her, a shaft of sunlight

fell on the child’s face froirl’s eyelids fluttered She opened her eyes and looked into a pair of large brown eyes, deep set below heavy brow ridges in a face that protruded somewhat, like a muzzle