Mists of Dawn (59 page)

Tlaxcan’s
wife
greeted
Mark
shyly,
touching
her hand
to
his
shoulder
in
greeting.
She
was
attractive
in a
clean,
healthy
way,
and
obviously
devoted
to
Tlaxcan.
Her
name,
Mark
learned,
was
Tlaxcal,
which
was the
Danequa
feminine
form
of
Tlaxcan.
This
seemed curiously
wrong
to
Mark,
and
for
a
moment
he
was at
a
loss
to
understand
why.
Then
he
had
it.
In
English,
“Al”
was
a
man’s
name,
while
“Ann”
was
a woman’s.
It
seemed
funny
to
hear
them
reversed,
but no
funnier,
he
knew,
than
the
English
version
would have
seemed
to
the
Danequa.

Tlaxcan
had
a
son
too.
He
was
a
hearty,
handsome child
of
three,
and
his
name,
with
wonderful
economy of
logic,
was
Tlax.
He
toddled
fearlessly
up
to
Mark and
tried
to
reach
up
to
place
his
small
hand
on
Mark’s shoulder.
Mark
bent
over
to
accommodate
him,
and grinned.
As
a
rule,
he
was
not
overly
fond
of
young children,
but
Tlax
was
one
in
a
million.
He
was
thoroughly
cute,
and
Mark
fell
for
him
at
once.

They breakfasted on roasted meat and berries. The meat was pungent with strong flavor, and Mark guessed that it was bison. The berries, he noted ironically, were the same red variety that he had passed up when he was so hungry before, because he had feared that they might be poisonous. They were delicious.

When they had eaten, Mark sat back and talked as best he could. He felt very much at home, and joined heartily in the good-natured laughter at young Tlax, who was industriously trying to pull back the string on his father’s bow, which was almost as big as he was. It was hard to reconcile Tlaxcan, the happy family man, with the grim-eyed savage, ready to kill, that Mark had first met on the grassy plains. It showed, if nothing else, that first impressions were apt to be very misleading. Mark felt that he had known Tlaxcan all his life; and he knew with sudden certainty that he would never have a better friend, nor a finer one, anywhere.

Tlaxcal, while avoiding looking at Mark directly, had been examining his clothes with some interest. Mark was uncomfortably aware that they were very dirty, as well as being ripped and torn from the rough wear he had given them. Tlaxcal whispered briefly to Tlaxcan, and Tlaxcan smiled his approval. Mark did not have to be a mind reader to figure out that he was going to get a new suit of clothes, and once more he determined to learn how to say “thank you” in Cro-Magnon. He did the best he could with his eyes, and felt that he had succeeded in getting the idea across.

They left the cave finally, Mark smiling his farewell to Tlaxcal and little Tlax. Tlax tried to follow them down the rocky trail, and his mother came out and
pulled
him
back,
scolding
him
for
all
the
world
like a
modern
mother.
Mark
thought
of
his
own
mother,
the mother
he
had
hardly
had
time
to
know.
And
his
uncle —where
was
he
now?
What
did
“now”
mean—when was
“now”?
Was
his
uncle
as
yet
thousands
of
years unborn,
or
was
he
still
talking
on
the
telephone
to White
Sands?

Mark
walked
among
the
Danequa,
and
he
kept
his eyes
open.
It
was
entirely
possible,
he
knew,
that
he was
destined
to
spend
the
rest
of
his
life
with
these people.
The
thought
did
not
dismay
him,
for
it
was plain
enough
that
the
Danequa,
with
their
skin
clothing
sewn
together
by
ivory
needles,
their
artistic
weapons,
and
their
robust
good
humor,
were
a
remarkable and
gifted
people.
Mark
had
lived
in
this
hard
dawn-world
long
enough
now
to
begin
to
appreciate
the
accomplishments
of
the
Danequa.
True,
their
camp
in the
valley
with
the
foaming
waterfall
was
simple
and crude
enough
by
the
standards
of
the
twentieth
century.
There
were
no
towering
skyscrapers,
no
great electric
generators,
no
theater
but
the
clean
show
place of
nature.
But
things
are
seldom
what
they
seem,
and this
was
no
exception.
Which
was
the
greater
accomplishment,
to
invent
for
the
first
time
a
bow
and
arrow, or
to
develop,
with
all
the
resources
of
thousands
of years
of
technology
behind
you,
atomic
energy?
It
was not
an
easy
question,
and
Mark
was
far
from
sure
how he
would
go
about
answering
it.