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NEANDER-TALE

Artificial fire!? Waddya mean `artificial fire'? What the hell is artificial fire?" Ug scowled down from beneath heavy close-knit Neanderthal brows at the tangle-haired, bearskin-clad figure squatting in front of him. Og was leaning forward to peer intently into the pile of sticks and twigs that he had built between two stones in the clearing where the trail from the stream widened on its way up toward the rock terrace fronting the caves. He seemed unperturbed by Ug's pugnacious tone; Ug was standing with his club still slung across his shoulder, which meant that, for once, he was not in a trouble-making mood that day.

"It's the same as you get when lightning hits a tree," Og replied cheerfully as he began rubbing two sticks vigorously together in the handful of moss which he had placed underneath the twigs. "Only this way you don't need the lightning."

"You're crazy," Ug declared bluntly.

"You'll see. Just stand there a couple of seconds longer and then tell me again that I'm crazy."

A wisp of smoke puffed out from the moss and turned into a blossom of flame which quickly leaped up through the twigs and engulfed the pile. Og straightened up with a satisfied grunt while Ug emitted a startled shriek and jumped backwards, at the same time hurriedly unslinging his club.

"Now tell me again that I'm crazy," Og invited.

Ug's gasp was a mixture of terror, awe, and incredulity.

"Holy sabre-cats, don't you know that stuff's dangerous? It can take out a whole block of the forest in the dry season. Get rid of it for chrissakes, willya!"

"It's okay between those rocks. Anyhow, I don't want to get rid of it. I was wondering if we could figure out how to use it for something."

"Like what?" Ug continued to stare nervously at the crackling pile and kept himself at a safe distance. "What could anybody do with it, besides get hurt?"

"I don't know. All kinds of things. . . ." Og frowned and scratched his chin. "For instance, maybe we wouldn't have to kick people out of the caves and make them trek a half mile down to where the hot springs are whenever they start to smell bad."

"How else are they gonna clean up?"

"Well, I was thinking . . . maybe we could use this to make our own hot water right there in the caves and save all the hassle. Think what a difference that would make to the girls. They wouldn't—"

"WHAT!" Ug cut him off with a shout that echoed back from the rocks above. "You wanna take that stuff inside the caves? You are crazy! Are you trying to get us all killed? Even the mammoths take off like bats outa hell if they catch so much as a whiff of that stuff. Anyhow, how could you make water hot with it? It'd burn through the skins."

"So you don't put it in skins. You put it in something else . . . something that won't burn."

"Such as what?"

"Hell, I don't know yet," Og yelled, at last losing his patience. "It's a brand new technology. Maybe some kind of stone stuff . . ."

The sounds of running feet and jabbering voices from just around the bend in the trail above interrupted them. A few moments later Ag, the Vice-Chief, rushed into the clearing, closely followed by about twenty of the tribespeople.

"What's going on down here?" Ag demanded. "We heard shouting . . . ARGH! FIRE! There's fire in the valley. FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES! FIRE IN THE VALLEY!" The rest took up the cry and plunged back into the undergrowth in all directions. The trees all around reverberated with the sounds of colliding bodies and muffled curses, while Og continued to stare happily at his creation and Ug watched nervously from a few paces back. Then silence descended. After a while bearded faces began popping one by one out of the greenery on all sides. Ag re-emerged from behind a bush and approached warily.

"What's this?" he enquired, looking from Ug to Og and back again. "There hasn't been a storm for weeks. Where did that come from?"

"Og made it," Ug told him.

" `Made it'? What are you talking about—`made it'? This some kinda joke or sump'n?"

"He made it," Ug insisted. "I watched him do it."

"Why?"

"He's crazy. He says he wants to take it inside the caves and—"

"INSIDE THE CAVES?" Ag clapped his hand to his brow and rolled a pair of wide-staring eyes toward Og. "Are you outa your mind? What are you trying to do? Haven't you seen what happens to the animals that get caught when the forest goes up? We'd all get roasted in our beds."

"Nobody's saying you have to sleep on top of it," Og said wearily. "You keep it out of the way someplace. Water pulls up trees when the river floods, but you can still take water inside without having to flood the whole goddamn cave. Well, maybe we can make our own fire and learn to live with it in the same sort of way."

"What's the point?" Ag challenged.

"It could be useful to have around," Og said. "The animals don't like it. It might stop the bears from trying to muscle into the caves every time the snow comes. Things like that . . . all kinds of things. . . ."

Ag sniffed and remained unimpressed. "All the people would have taken off for the hills, too, so it wouldn't do much good," he pointed out.

"What about the smoke?" a voice called out from the circle of figures that had started to form around the edge of the clearing.

"What about it?" Og asked.

"You can't breathe it. How could people live in a cave full of smoke?"

"You fix it so the smoke goes outside and not inside," Og shouted in exasperation.

"How?"

"For Pete's sake, I don't know yet. It's a new technology. What do you want—all the angles figured out in one day? I'll think of something."

"You'd pollute the air," another voice objected. "If all the tribes in the valley got into it, there'd be smoke everywhere. It'd black out the sun-god. Then he'd be mad and we'd all get zapped."

"How do you know it isn't a she?" a female voice piped up from the back, only to be promptly silenced by a gentle tap on the head from the nearest club.

At that moment the circle of onlookers opened up to make way for Yug-the-Strong, Chief of the tribe, and Yeg-the-Soothsayer, who had come down from the caves to investigate the commotion. Yeg had been a great warrior in his youth and was reputed to have once felled an ox single-handed by talking at it nonstop until it collapsed in the mud from nervous exhaustion; hence Yeg's nickname of `Oxmire.' For the benefit of the two elders Ag repeated what had been said and Ug confirmed it. Yeg's face darkened as he listened.

"It's not safe," he pronounced when Ag had finished. The tone was final.

"So we learn how to make it safe," Og insisted.

"That's ridiculous," Yeg declared flatly. "If it got loose it would wipe out the whole valley. The kids would fall into it. On top of that, the fallout would foul up the river. Anyhow, you'd need half the tribe to be carrying wood up all the time, and we need the resources for other things. It's a dumb idea whatever way you look at it."

"You've got no business screwing around with it," Yug said, to add his official endorsement.

But Og was persistent and the arguing continued for the next hour. Eventually Yeg had had enough. He climbed onto a rock and raised an arm for silence.

"How this could be made safe and why we should bother is still unclear," he told them. "Everything about it is unclear. Anyone who still wants to mess around with unclear energy has to be soft in the head." He turned a steely gaze toward Og. "The penalty for that is banishment from the tribe . . . forever. The law makes no exceptions." Yug and Ag nodded their mute agreement, while a rising murmur of voices from the tribe signaled assent to the decision.

"Throw the bum out!"

"I don't want no crazy people collecting free rides outa my taxes."

"Let the Saps down the end of the valley take care of him. They're all crazy anyway."

Og lodged a plea with the appeal-court in the form of Ag, who passed it on to Yug.

"Beat it," was Yug's verdict.

An hour later Og had drawn his termination pay in the form of two days supply of raw steak and dried fish, and was all packed up and ready to go.

"You'll be sorry," he called over his shoulder at the sullen group who had gathered to see him on his way down the trail. "It won't do you any good to come chasing after me and telling me you've changed your minds when winter comes. The price to you will have gone out of sight."

"Asshole!" Ug shouted back. "I told you you'd blow it."

Over the months that followed, Og traveled the length and breadth of the valley trying to interest the other tribes in his discovery. The Australopithecines were too busy training kangaroos to retrieve boomerangs as a result of not having got their design calculations quite right yet. The tribe of Homo erectus (famous for their virility) were preoccupied with other matters and didn't listen seriously, while A. robustus declared that they had no intention of becoming A. combustus by being ignited and becoming extinguished at the same time. And so Og found himself at last in the remote far reaches of the valley where dwelt the H. saps, who were known for their strange ways and whom the other tribes tended to leave to their own devices.

The first Sap that Og found was sitting under a tree, staring thoughtfully at a thin slice of wood sawn from the end of a log that was lying nearby.

"What's that?" Og asked without preamble. The Sap looked up, still wearing a distant expression on his face.

"Haven't thought of a name for it yet," he confessed.

"What is it supposed to do?"

"Not sure of that either. I just had a hunch that it could come in useful . . . maybe for throwing at hyenas." The Sap returned his gaze to the disk of wood and rolled it absently backward and forward in the dust a couple of times. Then he pushed it away and looked up at Og once more. "Anyhow, you're not from this end of the valley. What are you doing on our patch?" Og unslung an armful of sticks from his pack for the umpteenth time and squatted down next to the Sap.

"Man, have I got a deal for you," he said. "You wait till you see this."

They spent the rest of the afternoon wheeling and dealing and ended up agreeing to joint management of both patents. The Sap had got a good deal, so it followed that Og must have got a wheel—which was what they therefore decided to call it. The chief of the Saps agreed that Og's trick with the sticks constituted a reasonable share-transfer price, and Og was duly installed as a full member of the tribe. He was content to spend the remainder of his days among the Saps and never again ventured from their end of the valley.

* * *

The winter turned out to be a long one—over twenty-five thousand years, in fact. When it at last ended and the ice sheets disappeared, only the Saps were left. One day Grog and Throg were exploring far from home near a place where the Neanderthals had once lived, when they came across a large rock standing beside a stream and bearing a row of crudely carved signs.

"What are they?" Grog asked as Throg peered curiously at the signs.

"They're Neanderthal," Throg said.

"Must be old. What do they say?"

Throg frowned with concentration as he ran a finger haltingly along the row.

"They're like the signs you find all over this part of the valley," he announced at last. "They all say the same thing: OG, COME HOME. NAME YOUR OWN PRICE."

Grog scratched his head and puzzled over the revelation for a while. "So what the hell was that supposed to mean?" he mused faintly.

"Search me. Must have had something to do with the guys who used to live in the caves behind that terrace up there. Only bears up there now though." Throg shrugged. "It might have had something to do with beans. They were always counting beans, but they were still lousy traders."

"Weirdos, huh? It could have meant anything then."

"Guess so. Anyhow, let's get moving.

They hoisted their spears back onto their shoulders and resumed picking their way through the rocks to follow the side of the stream onward and downward toward the river that glinted through the distant haze.

 

 

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