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"I know that," Deyv said. Then, seized by impulse, he said, "Give me your egg."
"Why?"
He was afraid if he told her, she'd refuse.
"Never mind! Give it to me!"
While she removed the cord from her neck, he took his off. He dangled the eggs high so that all could see them, but he had to wait until the tribes had ceased their uproar before he spoke.
"The ancestors told me many things before they went on their journey! One was that we really don't need our eggs! They had their use in this world, but they're not needed in the next!"
Vana cried, "No, oh, no! Don't!"
"You know they're not necessary," Deyv said fiercely to Vana. "We've both known that for a long time but didn't want to admit it to ourselves. We have to throw them away! Then the tribes won't be so angry when they find that there are no soul-egg trees there."
Then he shouted, "Look! I leave these here!"
He cast the eggs out into the air, and they fell to the base of the tree. Despite his brave words, he felt a pang of loss.
"A very good idea," The Shemibob said. She removed her Emerald and, after Deyv had called everybody's attention to the act, she dropped it onto the ground.
"Now, Archkerri, your prism!
"But it might be useful there! I may be able to speak to the plants there! If s true that they might not have the capability that the plants have here, but I won't know until—!"
"If s necessary, Archkerri! Do it!"
After Sloosh had reluctantly thrown the prism, Deyv cried, "See! The Shemibob and the Archkerri have discarded their magical devices, too! Your ancestors required this as a token of their friendship and good faith!"
"I hope they don't look into the logic of that," Sloosh buzzed.
"They won't," the snake-centaur said. "They're too upset to think straight."
Deyv flung his hands straight up.
"Now! I go to follow your ancestors to a better world!"
He turned with his eyes shut. Following Vana's instructions, which she gave quaveringly, he advanced to the edge of the bridge, stopped, and bent his knees. Though he wanted desperately to turn and walk away, he leaped.
47
HE fell into a bright light, was aware of trees around him and long grass below him, and he landed. His knees bent, he fell, rolled, and was up on his feet. They hurt but not so much that he couldn't walk.
Beyond were the statue and their weapons. Sloosh had cast them as far as he could so the jumpers wouldn't land on them.
He was near the edge of a cliff. If the gateway had been ten feet further to one side, it would have admitted him to a fatal drop to the rocks at the base. Beyond that was a belt of trees and a beach of white sand and a blue sea that sent its rollers thundering onto the land.
In the other direction was a forest populated mostly by tall trees unlike any he'd ever seen. They were conical, and instead of leaves the branches had a heavy needlelike growth.
The sky was blue. Near its zenith was a yellow blaze that was impossible to look at long. It was that that gave the light and the heat.
If what Sloosh and The Shemibob had said a young Earth would look like was correct, he was on a young Earth.
He'd been counting while observing. At one thousand, he stood beneath the gateway and forced himself to look almost directly at it. But it was a dark spot in the air, a strange but undreadful phenomenon, like the gateway in the tu
"Are you all right?"
"Yes. Are you?"
The Shemibob, holding the screaming baby, came through next. Her forty feet flattened out under the impact, and her legs bent far under her weight. But she was unhurt She handed Keem to Vana, saying,
"Here. She knows the difference between my nipple and yours."
Sloosh shot through and landed squarely but still fell forward. He got up complaining that he must have sprained his upper spine.
"We Archkerri are unusually subject to backaches, anyway."
Though he was to move around slowly and carefully for some time, he was not by any means totally incapacitated.
Tsi'kzheep was set up where the next to come through, if there were any, could see it at once. It had been decided that the statue should be kept as a focal point, a rallying and sustaining symbol, for the tribes.
Though it wasn't the direct ancestor of any but the Chaufi'ng, it was the brother of the five other founders. They would tell the tribes that Tsi'kzheep had sent the others ahead to look for a home for their children. In the meantime, it would shepherd the six tribes. The Chaufi'ng dialect would become the common speech of all. And Deyv would be the chief of all.
The people were going to be shocked by the idea that a nonshaman would lead them. And the shamans were going to make trouble; there'd be a power struggle. This, however, was only one of many problems in the merging of the six groups into one.
Deyv wanted to go exploring at once. Instead, he had to pitch in to help make a great pile of grass.
Otherwise, there would be many hurt or even killed. They pulled the long grass and threw it down beneath the gateway and then cut off branches to make a barrier along the sides of the mass. Once these were placed, they formed a simple but effective windbreak.
The yellow glaring light in the sky, the sun, crossed the heavens. Deyv saw his first sunset, a frightening but beautiful sight. They ate some nuts and berries they'd collected around a fire. The sound of the surf came faintly to them, interspersed by calls of night birds and, twice, a coughing roar. The air became chilly, causing them to regret the loss of the vessel. They took turns feeding the fire while the others slept.
The sun rose, draped in many colors. Deyv went hunting and returned when the sky-light had just dropped down from the zenith. He carried the back leg of a large animal.
"The rest was too much for me or even you, Sloosh, to carry. And it's too far away for us to go get it. It would be eaten by then by some beasts that look like wolves. I'd have liked to bring back the head, but it would've been too much. It has six knobs on top of its head and two long curving tusks sticking down from the upper jaw. Yet it eats plants. I saw some beasts which resembled some we know and some which are very different."
Vana started to cut up the leg while Deyv made forked uprights and trimmed down a thick branch to make a spit The Shemibob came ru
Below, walking on the beach, were a dozen bipeds.
"Hairy, bent-necked, slanting foreheads, heavy brows, outthrust jaws, chins not well developed," Sloosh said. "They are precursors of the fully human or something like the fully human. Poor devils! If our tribespeople do come through, those half-humans are doomed."
"Their kind would be doomed anyway when a higher type evolved," The Shemibob said.
"I wonder," Sloosh said, "if something similar happened when our Earth was young. That is, did full humans come through a gateway from an older and perishing universe? And did they wipe out their lesser ancestors? Or perhaps I should say, cousins?
"I speculate this because there is nothing in the memory of the plants about intermediates in the evolution of the prehuman to human. Full man appeared suddenly, and he ousted the preman. Through violence, of course."
"If that is a fact instead of theory," The Shemibob said, "then humankind is far older than we thought."
The bipeds stopped now and then to dig up shellfish in the shallows. They also did not refuse to eat a large dead fish that floated in.
When they'd disappeared around the bend of the beach, the watchers went back to their meal. The sun sank; the stars came out. Then black clouds came up, bearing thunder and lightning. Soon a cold rain fell, forcing them to take cover under the trees. They spent a miserable sleepless night and had difficulty starting the fire in the morning.