It was the first time he had really cried-as opposed to sobbing or whimpering or moaning-since the night he had arrived. It was the very familiar cranky bawling of a very tired child who had been pushed too far. Miss Fef-lowes was glad to hear it, though she was astonished at how wide his mouth could get when he opened it to its full extent, how his nose suddenly seemed even bigger than it already was, how far those strange heavy ridges of bone over his eyes protruded when he scrunched his eyes closed the way he was doing now. With his face distorted like this in anguish, he looked almost terrifyingly alien.
And yet, and yet-that wailing sound, that ululating outpouring of emotion-if she didn't look at him, she could easily believe that the child who was thumping his heels against the floor and screaming his heart out was simply any ordinary four-year-old having a severe attack of impatience.
"What did I do that upset him like that?" Mclntyre asked.
"You outlasted his attention span, I imagine," said Miss Fellowes. "You wore out your welcome. He's only a little boy, Dr. Mclntyre. He can't be expected to put up with an endless amount of chivvying and probing. -A little boy who's very recently been through a highly traumatic separation from anything and everything that he can understand, I ought to remind you."
"But I wasn't chivvying and-well, perhaps I was. I'm sorry about that. -Here, Timmie-here, see the hair? See the bright hair? Do you want to play with my hair? Do you want to pull my hair?"
Mclntyre was dangling his golden forelock practically in Timmie's face. Timmie took no notice. His screaming grew even louder.
Disgustedly Miss Fellowes said, "He doesn't want to play with your hair right now, Dr. Mclntyre. And if he does decide to pull it, I think you'll regret it. Best to let him be. There'll be plenty of other opportunities to examine him."
"Yes. So there will." The paleoanthropologist stood up, looking abashed. "You understand, Miss Fellowes, this is like being handed a sealed book containing the answers to all the mysteries of the ages. I want to open it and read it right away. Every page of it."
"I understand. But I'm afraid that your book is hungry and cranky and I think he'd like to go to the bathroom, besides."
"Yes. Yes, of course."
Mclntyre hastily began to gather up all of his testing equipment. As he started to put the spools and spindles away, Miss Fellowes said, "Can you leave one of those here?"
"You want to test his intelligence yourself?"
"I have no need to test his intelligence, doctor. He seems quite intelligent to me. But I think he could use a few toys, and this one already happens to be here."
Color came to Mclntyre's cheeks once again. He seemed to blush very readily, Miss Fellowes thought.
"Of course. Here."
"And-speaking of open books, Dr. Mclntyre, do you think you could arrange to get me some material about Neanderthal Man? Two or three basic texts, something that might provide me with a little of the fundamental information that nobody has bothered to supply me with up till now? -They can be fairly technical. I'm quite capable of reading scientific prose. I need to know things about the Neanderthal anatomy, their way of life, the sort of foods they ate, whatever has been discovered up to this point. Could you do that for me?"
"I'll have everything you'll need sent over first thing tomorrow. Though I warn you, Miss Fellowes, that what we know about Neanderthals now is next to nothing, compared with what we're going to find out from Tim-mie as this project unfolds."
"All in due course." She grinned. "You are eager to get at him, aren't you?"
"Obviously."
"Well, you'll have to be patient about it, I'm afraid. I won't let you wear the boy out. We've subjected him to too much intrusion today, and that isn't going to happen again."
Mclntyre looked uncomfortable. He managed a rigid little smile and headed for the door.
"And when you pick out the books for me, doctor-"
"Yes?" Mclntyre said.
"I particularly would like to have one that discusses Neanderthals in terms of their relationship to humans. To modern humans, I mean to say. How they differed from us, how they're similar. The evolutionary scheme as we understand it. That's the information I want most of all." She looked at him fiercely. -"They are humans, aren't they, Dr. Mclntyre? A little different from us, but not all that much. Isn't that so?"
"That's essentially so, yes. But of course-"
"No," she said. "No 'but of courses.' We're not dealing with some sort of ape, here, that much I already know. Timmie's not any kind of missing link. He's a little boy, a little human boy. -Just get me some books, Dr. Mclntyre, and thank you very much. I'll see you again soon."
The paleontologist went out. The moment he was gone, Timmie's wailing tapered off into a querulous uncertain sobbing, and then, swiftly, to silence.
Miss Fellowes scooped him into her arms. He clung tightly to her, shivering.
"Yes," she said soothingly. "Yes, yes, yes, it's been a busy day. Much too busy. And you an? just a little boy. A little lost boy."
Far from home, far from anything you ever knew.
"Did you have brothers and sisters?" she asked him, speaking more to herself than to him. Not expecting an answer; simply offering the comfort of a soft voice close to his ear. "What was your mother like? Your father? And your friends, your playmates. All gone. All gone. They must already seem like something out of a dream to you. How long will you remember anything about them at all, I wonder?"
Little lost boy. My little lost boy.
"How about some nice warm milk?" she suggested. "And then, I think, a nap."
Interchapter Three. The Place of Three Rivers
IN THE NIGHT Silver Cloud dreamed of the sea.
He was young again, in his dream. He dreamed that he was only a boy, just a summer or two older than the boy Skyfire Face who had been taken by the Goddess in a whirl of light. He stood by the edge of the sea, feeling the strange wet wind blowing against his lips. His father and mother were with him, Tall Tree and Sweet As A Flower, and they were holding his hands and leading him gently toward the water.
"No," he said. "It's cold. I'm afraid to go into it."
"It can't hurt you," Tall Tree said.
But that wasn't true. No one went into the sea, no one, not ever. Every child learned that as soon as he was old enough to learn anything. The sea killed. The sea would drain your life away m an instant, and cast you back up on the shore, empty and still. Only last year the warrior Speared Five Mammoths had slipped on a snowy cliff and fallen into the sea, and when he washed ashore a little while later he was dead, and they had had to bury him in a little cavern in the rock near the place where he fell, chanting all night and burning a strange-colored fire.
Now here were his own father and mother urging him toward the sea. Did they want him to die the way Speared Five Mammoths had died? Were they tired of him? What kind of betrayal was this?
"The sea will make you strong," Sweet As A Flower told him. "The sea will make you a man."
"But Speared Five Mammoths died in it!"
"It was his time to die. The sea called to him and took him. But your time to die is far away, boy. You have no reason to be afraid."
Was it true? Could he trust them?
They were his mother and his father. Why would they want him to die?
He held their hands tighdy and stepped forward with them, toward the brink of the sea.
He had never been this close to it before, although his tribe had always lived in the coastal plain, wandering up and down along the shore following the game animals. Now he stared at the water in wonder and fear. It was like a great powerful flat beast lying before him, dark and shining. A roaring sound came from it, and along its edges a part of it was rippling and surging with white foam. Here and there a piece of the sea would rise up high into the air and come crashing down against the rocks along the edge. Sometimes, standing on cliffs much like the one where Speared Five Mammoths had fallen to his death, Silver Cloud had looked far out into the sea and had seen graceful animals moving about in it, moving among the floating blocks of ice. They were different animals from the mammoths and niusk oxen and rhinos of the land- slim, sleek, shining things that moved through the sea as though they were flying through air.