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man who had attacked the Dark One with reckless courage, and thereby saved my life.
CHAPTER 28
The next few weeks were peaceful enough. Three more clans filtered into the valley, a total of a hundred
and six additional people. Roughly two-thirds of them were adults, the remainder children ranging from
nursing babies to gawky pre-adolescents. In this Neolithic society where life was so short, teen-agers
became adults as soon as they reached sexual maturity. Twelve-year-olds bore children. Forty-year-olds
were often too feeble and toothless to hunt or eat and were tenderly slain by their clansfolk.
"We stay here in the valley," Ava told me, "until the grain turns to gold. Then we harvest it and carry it
with us for the winter." Frowning, she added, "Unless the snows come before the grain ripens."
And in a flash of understanding I knew why Ahriman was here and what he planned to do.
This was another of the crucial nexus points in human history. These clans, these ragged, dirty,
wandering hunters, were going to make the transition from hunting to farming. They were going to create
the Neolithic Revolution, the step that turned humankind from nomadic savages to civilized city-builders.
Ahriman was going to try to strangle that development, prevent it from happening.
If he could keep these primitive hunters from taking that step, he could eventually wipe out all of the
scattered human tribes who wandered across this Neolithic landscape. I had no doubt of that. He could
annihilate the human race, clan by clan, tribe by tribe, until the Earth was scoured clean of the last human
being. Then he would be triumphant.
But if humankind made the transition to agriculture, if humans began the vast population explosion that
led to the civilizations ofEgypt , Sumeria, theIndusValley andChina , then not even Ahriman with all his
powers could hope to wipe out the entire race. Humankind would be on the path toward mastery of this
planet, no longer a few scattered half-starving tribes of nomadic hunters, but settled prosperous farmers
with a steeply growing population.
Would agriculture be invented here, in this valley where Dal's clan and his allies spent the summer? I
could not believe that if Ahriman prevented that invention here, it would not occur elsewhere, in some
other clan, at some other favored spot. But then I realized that, with his mastery of time, Ahriman could
visit each and every spot where the invention was about to take place and stamp out the idea each and
every time it arose. With a growing weariness hanging like a heavy weight around my soul, I realized that
Ormazd would send me to each of those times and places, to do never-ending battle against the Dark
One.
Contemplating that was more than I could bear. Almost. I consoled myself with the thought that since
Ahriman washere , this must be the place where the idea of agriculture truly originated. If I stopped him
here, there would be no need to fight him elsewhere in this era. Obviously we had met at least once
more in an earlier time. Perhaps during The War that he referred to.
Dal's new suspicion of me quickly spread to the rest of the clan, and the other clans that joined us in the
valley stayed well clear of me. I was regarded as something between a god and a human, feared and
respected. They all knew that I could teach them wonderful things, but although they came to learn how
to make bows and arrows and spear-throwers, and even how to pen game animals against the cliffs and
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begin herding them instead of simply killing them immediately, they still kept me away from their
day-to-day social lives.
All except Ava. She spent long hours with me, learning whatever I could teach her about the stars, about
spinning and weaving the wool from goats and sheep, about simple rules of cleanliness and infection.
But each evening she would return to Dal's hut and cook his supper. She invited me to join them often
enough, but Dal made it clear that he was uncomfortable with me and more than a little jealous of the time
Ava spent with me. I usually ate alone, outside my rebuilt hut, cooking the meat and vegetables the
clanspeople gave me in exchange for my lessons on tool-making and animal husbandry. It would have
been funny if it hadn't been so tragic, to think of these primitives learning from me. Actually, all I did was
expose them to ideas that had not occurred to them. Once the basic idea got into their minds, they went
off and did things much better than I ever could have. They taught themselves to make accurate arrows,
to build corrals, to spin wool. I merely planted the seeds; they cultivated them and reaped the harvest.
Life in the valley was pleasant and easy. The days lengthened into golden summer, but without
oppressive heat and humidity. The grain grew tall and ripened, filling the valley with golden fronds that
swayed in the gentle summer breezes. The color of Ormazd, I thought, and realized that it was good. The
nights were cool and often tossed by sighing winds. I spent hours showing Ava the phases of the Moon,
the paths of the planets, the rise and fall of the constellations. I pointed out the Summer Triangle of stars
high in the night sky: Deneb, Altair, and Vega. She learned quickly, and the questions she asked showed
that she was eager to learn more.
Dal accompanied us during those nights. At first it was because he did not trust me alone with Ava, and I
could hardly blame him for that. But despite himself he began to grow interested in the lore of the sky.
"Do you mean you can tell when the seasons will changebefore the change really begins?" He was
skeptical.
"Yes," I replied. "The stars can tell you when to plant seed and when to harvest the grain."
He frowned in the moonlight. "Plant seed? What do you mean?"
That brought us to long nights of talk about how plants grow. I think I might have been the first human
being to explain the similarity between the birds and bees, plant growth and human sexuality. But I did it
in reverse of the way twentieth-century parents gave the explanation to their children: I used human
sexuality which Dal and Ava understood perfectly well to explain how plants grew from seeds.
Like children, they found the idea difficult to accept. "Do you mean that if we put some tiny seeds into
the ground, a whole field of grain would grow there?"
When I said yes, Dal merely shook his head in disbelief. But Ava looked thoughtful, her gray eyes
focused on the future.
Except for that one blood-crazed night of the hunting ritual, Ava and I had hardly touched each other.
Not that I did not want her. But she was Dal's woman, and her interest in me was the kind for which a
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