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Finally, she neared the light at the end of the tunnel and saw several figures seated in a circle Fro-cloudedflahted cha-urs were deeply involved in a ritual They had begun the ceremony that included all the men of the Clan, but left their acolytes to conclude it and retreated to the inner sanctum alone to conduct rites too secret even for acolytes

Each man, cloaked in his bearskin, sat behind the skull of a cave bear Other skulls adorned niches in the walls In the middle of their circle was a hairy object Ayla couldn’t identify at first But when she did, only her drug-induced stupor kept her fro out It was the severed head of Gorn

She watched with fascinated horror as the ’s clan reached for the head, turned it over, and with a stone enlarged the foraray jellied estures over the head, then reached into the opening with his hand and tore out a piece of the soft tissue He held the quivering -ur reached for the head Even in her stupor, Ayla felt a deep revulsion, but she was held spellbound as each risly head and withdrew a portion of the brain of the man who had been killed by the cave bear

A whirling, spinning vertigo brought Ayla to the brink of the deep e sick Desperately, she clung to the edge of the void, but when she saw the great holy men of the Clan move their hands to their o The act of cannibalism drove her into an abyss of black space

She screamed soundlessly, unable to hear herself She was unable to see, unable to feel, devoid of any sensations, but she knew it She hadn’t escaped into asleep The void had another quality, a terrifying, eripped her She struggled to return, screamed silently for help, but was only drawn deeper She sensed movement she could not sense as, faster and faster, she fell into the deep black infinity, into the endless cold void

Suddenly, hersensation inside her brain, inside her e, out of the infinite hole She sensed eest was love, but reat fear, and then, a hint of curiosity With a shock, she realized Mog-ur was inside her head In her s There was a distinctly physical quality to it, a sense of crowding without its unpleasantness,

Theaccentuated a natural tendency of the Clan Instinct had evolved, in Clan people, into h back, became identical, became racial memory The racial memories of the Clan were the same; and with perceptions sensitized, they could share their identical -urs had developed their natural tendency with conscious effort They were all capable of so-ur was born with a unique ability

Not only could he share the memories, and control thehts h time from the past to the present The men of his clan enjoyed a richer, fuller ceremonial interrelationship than any other clan But with the trained -urs, he could h hi-urs shared a union far closer andof spirits The white liquid frohtened the perceptions and opened the -ur, had allowed his special ability to create a symbiosis with Ayla’s mind as well

The trauured man had impaired only a portion of his physical abilities, not the sensitive psychic overdevelopreat power But the crippled man was the ultimate end-product of his kind Only in him had nature taken the course set for the Clan to its fullest extreme There could be no further develope, and their characteristics were no longer adaptable Like the huge creature they venerated, and many others that shared their environe

The race of h to care for their weak and wounded, with spiritual awareness enough to bury their dead and venerate their great totereat brains but no frontal lobes, who ress in nearly a hundred thousand years, was dooreat cave bear They didn’t know it, but their days on earth were numbered, they were doomed to extinction In Creb, they had reached the end of their line

Ayla felt a sensation akin to the deep pulsing of a foreign bloodstreaician was exploring her alien convolutions, trying to find a way to mesh The fit was imperfect, but he found channels of siroped for alternatives and made connections where there were only tendencies With startling clarity, she suddenly coht her out of the void; but -urs, also linked with hi she was there She could just barely sense his connection with them, but she could not sense them at all They, too, knew he had —else, but never dreamed it was Ayla

And just as she understood Mog-ur had saved her and was still protecting her, she knew the profound sense of reverence hich the ed in the cannibalistic act that had so revolted her She hadn’t realized, she had no way of knowing, that it was a co of the clans was to bind theether, to make them Clan But Clan was more than the ten clans here They all knew of clans that lived too far away to travel to this s closer to their own caves They were still Clan All Clan people shared a coe, and re had the saicians believed they werea beneficial contribution to the Clan They were absorbing the courage of the youngwith the Spirit of Ursus And since they were -urs, with special abilities within their brains, it was they ere capable of dispersing the courage to all

That was the reason for Mog-ur’s anger, and his fear By long tradition, only men were allowed to share in the cere even an ordinary cerele clan meant that the clan was dooreat significance for the whole Clan Ayla was a wo—irreversible, irredeemable misfortune and calamity to them all

And she was not even a wo-ur knew that noith a surety he could no longer deny From the moment he became aware of her presence, he knew she was not Clan He understood, as quickly, the consequences of her presence, but it was already too late They were ireat, he wasn’t sure what to do about her; even a death curse was not enough Before he decided, he wanted to know h her, more about the Others

He was surprised he felt her cry for help The Others were different, but there had to be similarities, too He felt he needed to know for the sake of the Clan, and he had a curiosity greater than norued him; he wanted to knohat made her different He decided to try an experiment

Forcing his way into deeper recesses, the powerful holy ly acquiesced and, separately, another that was sis

Ayla tasted the priain, then felt it turn to warm salt Her impressi

ons were not as clear as the rest—it was new to her, this feeling of being and re the dawn of life, and her ue But her inners were the saht She felt the individuality of her own cells and knehen they split and differentiated in the warrew and split and diverged, and ence and soft pulsations of life becaave shape and form

Another divergence, and she knew the pain of the first explosion of air breathed by creatures in a new ele verdancy and burrowing to escape crushinga liht driving her back to the edge of the sea Diverge, and traces of a ed her fored her contours—and left cousins behind to revert to an earlier,and

And now, she walked upright on two hind legs, leaving forelegs free to innings of a forebrain She was veering away fro a different path, yet not so far apart that he couldn’t track it with his own, almost parallel one He broke contact with the others, but they were far enough along to continue their oay It was nearly time to break it anyway

Just the two of the wo, but he still tracked, and not only did he track her course, she tracked his She saw land change fro than the ice of their own times It was a land far away in space as well as tireat sea er than the sea that surrounded their peninsula

She saw a cave, the hoician, an ancestor who looked much like him It was a hazy picture, seen across the chasm that separated their races The cave was in a steep wall that faced a river and a flat plain At the top of the cliff, a large boulder stood out distinctly It was a long, slightly flattened coluht in the act of falling and frozen in place The stone was from a different location, of a differentearth until it lodged at the edge of the cliff that housed the cave The picture wavered, but the memory of it stayed with her

For asorrow Then she was alone Mog-ur could follow no more She found her oay back to herself, and then a little beyond She had a fleeting gli kaleidoscope of landscapes, laid out not with the randoular patterns Boxlike structures reared up fro which strange ani their wings Then e she couldn’t comprehend them It happened in an instant In her rush to reach the present, there was a slight overshoot, a sht have diverged again Then her mind was clear, and she looked out from behind a pillar at ten men seated in a circle

The Mog-ur was looking at her, and she saw in his deep brown eye the sorrow she had felt He had forged indelible new paths in her brain, paths that let her glie new paths in his own While she looked beyond, he caught a glimpse, not of the future, but of a sense of future A future that was hers, but not his He grasped the concept imperfectly, but he understood the potential of it, and quailed before it

Creb could reat effort, to just beyond twenty He could enius His mind, he kneas ent perhaps But his genius was of a different nature He could identity with his beginnings, and hers He could remember more and better than any of his own ancient Clan He could even force her to remember But in her, he sensed the youth, the vitality of a newer forain, and he had not

“Get out!” Ayla jumped at his sharp command, surprised he had spoken so loud Then she realized he hadn’t spoken at all She had felt, not heard him “Get out of the cave! Hurry! Get out now!”