"But doesn't the grain's spirit need to be alone? Won't the grain die if we stay here always?"

"No," I assured her. "The spirit of the grain will grow stronger if you help that spirit by tending the grain, by killing the weeds that choke it, by spreading the seed to new parts of the valley, where the grain does not yet grow."

She wanted to believe me, I could see. But the old superstitions, the ingrained ways of thought, the stubborn fear that change-any change-would bring down the anger of the gods, all were struggling within her against the bright promise of this new idea.

"I'm going to take a walk," I said, with a sudden inspiration. "Will you come with me?"

She agreed and I started out across the waist-high field of golden grain, toward the cliffs that the glacier had scooped out on the far side of the valley.

We talked as we made our way to the base of the cliffs, Ava going over the whole idea of agriculture and herding, again and again, trying to find out where the weak points were, where there might be a hidden flaw in the scheme, a trap that could bring ruin to the clan.

I could have told her that once the clan stopped its roaming and gave up hunting, it would lead to settled farming villages, to an hierarchical society of peasants and kings, to class divisions between rich and poor. I could have told her that the occasional tribal clashes she was familiar with would escalate into wars between villages, then between cities, and ultimately wars in which all the world was bathed in blood. I could have told her about teeming cities and pollution and the threats of overpopulation, nuclear holocaust, environmental collapse.

But I said nothing. Here in the bright morning of human civilization, I remained silent and let Ava examine the new idea for herself.

We reached the base of the cliffs. I squinted up toward their top, outlined against the bright summer sky.

"I think I'll climb up to the top. Want to come with me?"

"Up there?" She laughed. "No one can climb up those cliffs, Orion. You are teasing me."

"No, I'm not. I think we can make it to the top."

"It's too steep. Dal tried it once and had to give up. No one can climb these cliffs."

I shrugged. "Let's try it together. Maybe the two of us can get to the top, whereas one man alone would fail."

She gave me a curious stare. "Why? Why do you want to climb where no one has climbed before?"

"That's just it," I said. "Because no one has done it before. I want to be the first. I want to see how the world looks when I'm standing in a place where no one has ever stood before."

"That sounds crazy."

"Haven't you ever done something simply because you wanted to do it? Haven't you ever had the desire to do something that no one has ever done before?"

"No," she said. But not very convincingly. She looked up the face of the cliffs and her gray eyes were filled with wondering. "We always do things the way they have always been done. That's the best way, just as our fathers and their fathers did, it."

"But somewhere, sometime, one of them must have done a thing for the first time. There has to be a first time for everything."

She looked sharply at me. I was challenging the safely ordered routines of her world, and she was not altogether happy about it.

But her expression softened and she asked, "Do you really think we could reach the top?"

"Yes, if we work together."

She turned back to look at the cliffs again. They were steep, all right, but even an amateur climber could handle them, I knew. With utter certainty within me, I was sure that Ormazd had programmed me with much more than an amateur's strength and skill.

Ava tore her gaze away from the looming cliffs and turned to look back at the golden fields of grain we had crossed. The afternoon breeze sent a swaying wave through them. She grinned at me.

"Yes!" she said eagerly. "I want to see what's at the top of the cliffs, too!"

We used vines for ropes, and our bare, travel-hardened feet had to do without climber's boots. But the cliffs were nowhere near as forbidding as they had seemed at first glance. It was a two-hour struggle, but we reached the top at last, panting, sweaty, weary.

The view was worth it.

Ava stood puffing, grinning broadly, and wide-eyed, as we looked far to the east and west and saw valley after valley, river after river, all running southward through golden fields. Above us loomed Ararat, towering high into the cloudless, brilliant sky, its snowy cap glistening in the sun, a thin stream of smoke climbing from the higher of its two peaks. And beyond, farther to the north, the land dazzled with ice, glittering like a vast diamond that hurt the eyes if you stared at it too long. That vast glacier still covered most of Europe, I knew, although it was retreating northward as the Ice Age surrendered to a more humane climate.

"There's so much to see!" Ava shouted. "Look at how small our valley seems from here!"

"It's a big world," I agreed.

She gazed down into the valley again and slowly her face lost its exultant happiness. She began to frown again.

"What's wrong, Ava?"

Turning toward me, she said, "If we lived away from the others, if we found a valley for ourselves where no other clan lived... just you and I together..."

I felt my jaw go slack. "What are you saying?"

There were no words in her language for what she was feeling.

"Orion," she said, her voice low, trembling, "I want to be with you; I want to be your woman."

I reached out to her and she fled into my arms. I held her tightly and felt her strong, lithe body press against mine. For an eternity we stood there, locked in each other's arms, warmed by the summer sun and our own passionate blood.

"But it cannot be," she whispered so softly that I could barely hear her.

"Yes, of course it can be. This world is so large, so empty. We can find a valley of our own and make our home in it..."

She looked up at me and I kissed her. I didn't know if kissing had been invented yet by these people, but she took to it naturally enough.

But when our lips parted there were tears in her eyes.

"I can't stay with you, Orion. I am Dal's woman. I can't leave him."

"You can if you want to..."

"No. He would be shamed. He would have to organize the men of the clan to hunt us down. He would have to kill you and bring me back with him."

"He'd never find us," I said. "And even if he did, he'd never be able to kill me."

"Then you would have to kill him," Ava replied. "Because of me."

"No, we can go so far away..."

But she shook her head as she gently disengaged herself from my arms. "Dal needs me. He is the leader of the clan, but how could he lead them if his woman deserts him? He is not as confident as you think; at night, when we are alone together, he tells me all his fears and doubts. He fears you, Orion. But he is brave enough to overcome that fear because he sees that you can be helpful to the clan. He places his responsibility to the clan above his fear of you. I must place my responsibility to the clan above my desire for you."

"And me?" I asked, feeling anger welling up inside me. "What about me?"

She looked deep into my eyes. "You are strong, Orion, with a strength that no ordinary man has. You were sent among us to help us, I know that. Taking me from Dal, from the clan, would not be a help. It would destroy Dal. It could destroy the clan. That is not why you have come among us."

I could have replied. I could have simply picked her up and carried her off. But she would have run back to her clan the instant I relaxed my hold on her. And she would have hated me.

So I turned away from her and glanced at the sun, low on the western horizon.

"It's time to start back," I mumbled. "Let's go."

CHAPTER 29.

The grain grew taller than my shoulders, and the people of all the clans grew more excited and impatient to harvest it with each passing day.

I stayed aloof from them. I had taught them all I could. Now I waited, just as they did. But not for the time of harvesting. I waited for Ahriman. He would return; he was planning his attack on these people, on me, on the whole future existence of the human race. I waited with growing impatience.

I combed the valley, poked into the caves among the rocky cliffs, seeking the Dark One. All I found were snakes and bats, clammy, cold dampness and dripping water. And one cave bear that would have crushed my skull with a swipe of its mighty paw if I had not been fast enough to duck out of its way and scramble out of its cave before it could get to me.

I knew he was there, somewhere, biding his time, picking his point of attack. All I could do was to wait. Ormazd did not appear to me again to give me more information or even the slight comfort of showing me that he still existed and still cared that I existed. I was alone, placed here like a time bomb on a buried mine, waiting to be triggered into action.

Ava kept her distance from me. And the less I saw of her, the more I did of Dal. He came by my hut almost daily now. At first I thought he was trying to work up the nerve to pick a fight with me. But gradually, as he tried to strike up a conversation in his halting, pained way, I realized that he was trying to work up the nerve for something else, something that was far more difficult for him than merely fighting.

"The grain will be ready to cut soon," he said, late one afternoon. I was sitting on the ground in front of my hut, fitting a new flint blade to the stone hilt of my knife. One of the clan's elders was an artist when it came to making sharp flint tools; that was why he was allowed to remain with the clan even though he was too old and slow to hunt.

Dal squatted down on his haunches beside me, forcing a smile. "If it doesn't rain in the next two days, then we can cut the grain."

"That's good," I said.

"Yes."

I looked up at him. "What's troubling you, Dal?"

"Troubling me? Nothing!" He said it so sharply that it was clear he was deeply bothered.

"Is it something that I've done?" I asked him.

"You? No, of course not!"

"Then what is it?"

He traced a finger along the dirt, like an embarrassed schoolboy.

"Is it about Ava?" I asked.

His glance flicked up at me, then down to the ground again. I tensed.

"It concerns her," Dal said, "and the things you've been telling her. She thinks we should stay here in this valley... all the time."

I said nothing.

"She claims that you said we could pen the animals against the cliffs and stay here even when the snows come," he gushed out rapidly, as if afraid of stopping, "and next spring we can plant seed from the grain all across the valley and make more grain than anyone has ever seen before."

He looked at me almost accusingly. "I told you these things, too," I replied. "I told you both."

Dal shook his head. "But she really believes them!"

"And you don't."

"I don't know what to believe!" He was honestly confused. "We live well here, that's true. We could move into caves when the snow comes. As long as we have fire we can stay in the caves and keep them warm and dry."

"That's true," I said.

"But our fathers never did this. Why should we stop living the way our fathers have always lived?"

"Your fathers have not always lived this way," I told him. "Long ages ago your ancestors lived far from here, in a land where it was always warm and they could pick fruit from the trees and live a life of ease and happiness all year long."

His eyes showed that he did not want to believe me. But he asked, "Why did they leave such a paradise, then?"

"They were driven out," I replied, "by a change in the climate. The trees withered. The land changed. They had to move elsewhere. They began to roam the land, as you do, following the herds of game."

"But each year the herds get smaller," Dal said, his mind focusing on the present and dismissing old legends that he only half believed. "Each year we must travel farther and our kills are harder to make."

I gestured toward the fields. "But the grain grows high. And there are enough game animals here to feed all the gathered clans, if you keep them penned up and let them breed. They will provide you with all the meat and milk and wool you need, if you learn how to take care of them."

He was truly perplexed. It was a gigantic hurdle for him.

"The grain is good," he admitted slowly. "We make food from it-and a drink that makes you feel as if you're flying."

Bread and beer, the two staples of farming. I wondered which offered the bigger lure in Dal's mind and swiftly decided that beer would be more important to him than bread.

"Then why not stay here, where the grain grows so well? You can store it in the caves after you've cut it. If you grow enough grain, you can even feed some of it to the animals you keep."

With a deepening scowl, Dal wondered aloud, "But what would the spirits of our fathers do if we stopped following the game trails? How would they feel if we turned our backs on their ways?"

I shrugged. "They will probably rejoice that you have found a better way to live."

"The elders say that the grain won't grow if we stay here all year long."

"Why wouldn't it grow?"

"Its spirit would wither if we watched the fields all the time."

I wondered if the elders were groping toward the idea of environmental pollution. But I said, "The grain grows just as the sun shines and the rain falls. It is all completely natural, and it will happen whether you are here to watch it or not."

"Hunting is good," Dal muttered. "Hunting is our way of life."