Points of Departure by Pat Murphy Page A

She circles me in the tall grass, her shaggy body sometimes blocking out the sun.
    As I work,I chant in the Old Tongue, asking why she is here. She does not answer; but when she looks at me, her red-rimmed eyes are expectant: something is coming.
    She swings her heavy head to look across the meadow, and on the path from the Outside I see two spots of color, moving slowly. A shout echoes across the valley—“Hello, Sam!” and I recognize the deep voice. My blood brother, Marshall, has returnedto the valley. When I look back to the spirit, she dissolves into a gray mist that vanishes in the afternoon sun.
    Setting aside my tools, I stand and bare my teeth in a smile, just as Marshall taught me long ago. The barrels of the rifles lashed to Marshall’s pack gleam in the sun as he strides across the meadow toward me.
    He has gained weight since last we hunted together. He is still a largeman—broad-shouldered and muscular—but his muscles have become soft. Three claws—taken from the bear that he and I killed—hang from a chain around his neck.
    He stands before me, grinning. “You’re smart not to venture out of the Preserve, Sam,” he says. “I’m glad to be back.” Beneath his smile is a tension that had not been there when I saw him two years before. He swings his pack to the groundand shakes back his hair. “I need to get clear of civilization again.”
    The woman at his side is young, scarcely more than a girl. Her hair is the color that Marshall’s was before it turned gray—the golden brown of the meadow grass in the summer. Though she is taller than I am by more than a hand’s breadth, she would be considered thin and weak by the standards of my people. She has delicate featureslike the rest of the humans: pointed chin, small nose, no protecting brow ridges.
    “This is my daughter, Kirsten,” Marshall says, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Kirsten, this is Sam, the last of the Neanderthals.”
    She holds out her hand to me.
    I know that by human standards I am a curiosity: broad-shouldered and stocky, my face too broad, my nose too flat. Some humans have judged mestupid because my brow slopes back where theirs rises in a high forehead. I am not stupid. The rich fools who brought me from the past to serve as keeper in their game preserve trained me in English. Though my voice is gruff, I speak the language well. I spoke well in my case before the World Court. The final judgment ruled me human and granted me the Preserve to repay me for being taken from my owntime.
    Kirsten’s touch on my hand is cool, and her eyes meet mine. She is young, but she has the eyes of a shaman. A feeling of power surrounds her.
    “We are here to hunt,” Marshall says. “I want to hunt the cave bear.” His eyes are troubled, and I know that he too remembers when we first met—two young warriors from different ends of time and he said, “I want to hunt the cave bear.”
    Now I understandthat the she-bear spirit has been waiting for the hunt and I wonder at the anticipation that I saw in her eyes. “The omens are bad for hunting, brother,” I say. “See how tall the grass is. It is too late in the spring to hunt the bear—she will be awake and alert.”
    “We hunted before in late spring.” The tension beneath Marshall’s smile has increased.
    “We were younger and more foolish then.”
    “We can be young and foolish again.”
    “We can be foolish,” I say.
    “We must hunt.” There is an undercurrent of fear in his voice. “If you don’t hunt with me, I’ll hunt alone.”
    I frown, but I do not ask why—the mood that is on him leaves no room for argument. “The moon’s full tonight,” he says. “We can roll the bones and let the spirits decide.”
    I know that Marshall does not believe in the spirits;he wears the bear claws around his neck as a courtesy to me.
    He believes in what he calls the laws of probability—and I know that he hopes that the laws will bend in his favor tonight.
    “We