Clifford Simak - Grotto of the Dancing Deer - And Other Stories

“All right, Cro-Magnon,” said Boyd, “tell me how you did it. How does a man survive as long as you have? You do not age, of course. Your body will not accept disease. But I take it you are not immune to violence or to accident. You’ve lived in a violent world. How does a man sidestep accident and violence for two hundred centuries?”

“There were times early,” Luis said, “when I came close to not surviving. For a long time, I did not realize the kind of thing I was. Sure, I lived longer, stayed younger than all the others—I would guess, however, that I didn’t begin to notice this until I began to realize that all the people I had known in my early life were dead—dead for a long, long time. I knew then that I was different from the rest. About the same time others began to notice I was different. They became suspicious of me. Some of them resented me. Others thought I was some sort of evil spirit. Finally I had to flee the tribe. I became a skulking outcast. That was when I began to learn the principles of survival.”

“And those principles?”

“You keep a low profile. You don’t stand out. You attract no attention to yourself. You cultivate a cowardly attitude. You are never brave. You take no risks. You let others do the dirty work. You never volunteer. You skulk and run and hide. You grow a skin that’s thick; you don’t give a damn what others think of you. You shed all your noble attributes, your social consciousness. You shuck your loyalty to tribe or folk or country. You’re not a patriot. You live for yourself alone. You’re an observer, never a participant. You scuttle around the edges of things. And you become so self-centered that you come to believe that no blame should attach to you, that you are living in the only logical way a man can live. You went to Roncesvalles the other day, remember?”

“Yes. I mentioned I’d been there. You said you’d heard of it.”

“Heard of it. Hell, I was there the day it happened—August 15, 778. An observer, not a participant. A cowardly little bastard who tagged along behind the noble band of Gascons who did in Charlemagne. Gascons, hell. That’s the fancy name for them. They were Basques, pure and simple. The meanest crew of men who ever drew the breath of life. Some Basques may be noble, but not this band. Not the kind of warriors who’d stand up face to face with the Franks. They hid up in the pass and rolled rocks down on all those puissant knights. But it wasn’t the knights who held their interest. It was the wagon train. They weren’t out to fight a war or to avenge a wrong. They were out for loot. Although little good it did them.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It was this way,” said Luis. “They knew the rest of the Frankish army would return when the rearguard didn’t come up and they had not the stomach for that. They stripped the dead knights of their golden spurs, their armor and fancy clothes, the money bags they carried and loaded all of it on the wagons and got out of there. A few miles further on, deep in the mountains, they holed up and hid. In a deep canyon where they thought they would be safe. But if they should be found, they had what amounted to a fort. A half mile or so below the place they camped, the canyon narrowed and twisted sharply. A lot of boulders had fallen down at that point, forming a barricade that could have been held by a handful of men against any assault that could be launched against it. By this time, I was a long way off. I smelled something wrong, I knew something most unpleasant was about to happen. That’s another thing about this survival business. You develop special senses. You get so you can smell out trouble, well ahead of time. I heard what happened later.”

He lifted the bottle and had another drink. He handed it to Boyd.

“Don’t leave me hanging,” said Boyd. Tell me what did happen.”

“In the night,” said Luis, “a storm came up. One of those sudden, brutal summer thunderstorms. This time it was a cloudburst. My brave fellow Gascons died to the man. That’s the price of bravery.”

Boyd took a drink, lowered the bottle, held it to his chest, cuddling it.

“You know about this,” he said. “No one else does. Perhaps no one had ever wondered what happened to those Gascons who gave Charlemagne the bloody nose. You must know of other things. Christ, man, you’ve lived history. You didn’t stick to this area.”

“No. At times I wandered. I had an itching foot. There were things to see. I had to keep moving along. I couldn’t stay in one place any length of time or it would be noticed that I wasn’t aging.”

“You lived through the Black Death,” said Boyd. “You watched the Roman legions. You heard first hand of Attila. You skulked along on Crusades. You walked the streets of ancient Athens.”

“Not Athens,” said Luis. “Somehow Athens was never to my taste. I spent some time in Sparta. Sparta, I tell you—that was really something.”

“You’re an educated man,” said Boyd. “Where did you go to school?”

“Paris, for a time, in the fourteenth century. Later on at Oxford. After that at other places. Under different names. Don’t try tracing me through the schools that I attended.”

“You could write a book,” said Boyd. “It would set new sales records. You’d be a millionaire. One book and you’d be a millionaire.”

“I can’t afford to be a millionaire. I can’t be noticed and millionaires are noticed. I’m not in want. I’ve never been in want. There’s always treasure for a skulker to pick up. I have caches here and there. I get along all right.”

Luis was right, Boyd told himself. He couldn’t be a millionaire. He couldn’t write a book. In no way could he be famous, stand out in any way. In all things, he must remain, unremarkable, always anonymous.

The principles of survival, he had said. And this part of it, although not all of it. He had mentioned the art of smelling trouble, the hunch ability. There would be, as well, the wisdom, the street savvy, the cynicism that a man would pick up along the way, the expertise, the ability to judge character, an insight into human reaction, some knowledge concerning the use of power, power of every sort, economic power, political power, religious power.

Was the man still human, he wondered, or had he, in 20,000 years, become something more than human? Had he advanced that one vital step that would place him beyond humankind, the kind of being that would come after man?

“One thing more,” said Boyd. “Why the Disney paintings?”

“They were painted some time later than the others,” Luis told him. “I painted some of the earlier stuff in the cave. The fishing bear is mine. I knew about the grotto. I found it and said nothing. No reason I should have kept it secret. Just one of those little items one hugs to himself to make himself important. I know something you don’t know—silly stuff like that. Later I came back to paint the grotto. The cave art was so deadly serious. Such terribly silly magic. I told myself painting should be fun. So I came back, after the tribe had moved and painted simply for the fun of it. How did it strike you, Boyd?”

“Damn good art,” said Boyd.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t find the grotto and I couldn’t help you. I knew you had seen the cracks in the wall; I watched you one day looking at them. I counted on your remembering them. And I counted on you seeing the fingerprints and finding the pipe. All pure serendipity, of course. I had nothing in mind when I left the paint with the fingerprints and the pipe. The pipe, of course was the tip-off and I was confident you’d at least be curious. But I couldn’t be sure. When we ate that night, here by the campfire, you didn’t mention the grotto and I was afraid you’d blown it. But when you made off with the bottle, sneaking it away, I knew I had it made. And now the big question. Will you let the world in on the grotto paintings?”