Chapter 1

Perhaps it was that same day or perhaps it was only that same summer or perhaps even it was another year.... When Ish looked up, he saw, very clearly, a young man standing in front of him. The young man wore a neat-enough pair of blue jeans with copper rivets shining brightly, and yet over his shoulders he wore a tawny hide with sharp claws dangling from it. In his hand he held a strong bow, and over his shoulder was a quiver with the feathered ends of arrows sticking from it.

Ish blinked, for in his old eyes the sunshine was strong.

"Who are you?" said Ish.

The young man answered respectfully, "I am Jack, Ish, as indeed you yourself well know."

The way he said "Ish" did not indicate that he was trying to be unduly familiar with an old man, thus calling him by a nickname, but rather it carried something of great respect and even of awe, and as if "Ish" stood for much more than merely the name of an old man.

But Ish himself was confused, and he squinted, peering more carefully, because at short distances he no longer saw clearly. But he was sure that Jack should have dark hair, or perhaps turned somewhat gray by now, and this one who called himself Jack had long wavy yellow hair.

"You should not make jokes with an old man," said Ish. "Jack is my oldest son, and I would recognize him. He has dark hair, and he is older than you."

The young man laughed, but politely, and said, "You are talking, Ish, of my grandfather, as indeed you yourself well know." Again the way in which he said "Ish" had a certain strange sound to it, and now Ish noticed also the strangeness of his other repeated words, "as indeed you yourself well know."

"Are you of the First Ones?" Ish asked. "Or of the Others?"

"Of the First Ones," he said.

Then, as Ish still looked, he was puzzled that the young man, who was certainly not a child, was carrying a bow instead of a rifle. "Why do you not have a rifle?" he asked.

"Rifles are good for playthings!" the young man said, and he laughed, a little scornfully perhaps. "You cannot be sure of a rifle, as indeed you yourself, Ish, well know. Sometimes the rifle works, and it makes the big noise, but other times you pull the trigger, and it only goes 'click.'" Here he snapped his fingers. "So you cannot use the rifles for real hunting, although the older men say that this was not so in the long past years. But now we use the arrow because it is sure, and never refuses to fly and besides," here the young man held himself proudly, "besides, it is a matter of strength and skill to shoot with the bow—but anyone, they say, could shoot with a rifle, as you yourself, Ish, well know."

"Let me see an arrow," said Ish.

The young man took an arrow from the quiver, and looked at it, and then handed it across.

"That is a good arrow," he said. "I made it myself."

Ish looked at the arrow and felt the weight of it. This was no plaything for a child. The shaft was nearly a yard long, split cleanly from a billet of flawless straight-grained wood, and then rounded and smoothed. It was well feathered, with pinions of some kind, although Ish could not see well enough to know what bird had yielded the feathers. By feeling, however, he could tell that they were arranged carefully so that the arrow in flight would spin like a rifle-bullet, and thus keep its true course and carry farther.

Then he observed the arrowhead, again more by feel than by sight. The arrowhead was very sharp both at the point and along the edges. Ish nearly pricked his thumb. It had the bumpy yet slick feel which told him that it was of hammered metal. Though he could not see very clearly, he made the color out as silvery-white.

"What is that made of?" he asked.

"It is from one of the little round things. They have faces on them. The old men have a name for them, but I do not remember exactly. It is something like corns."

The young man paused, as if to be told the right word, but when he had no reply, he went on again, being obviously eager to show off his knowledge about arrowheads.

"We find these little round things in the old buildings. Often there are many—many—of them in the boxes and drawers. Sometimes they are rolled up together in bundles like short round sticks, but heavier than sticks. Some are red and some are white, like this one, and there are two kinds of the white. The one kind of white—the one that has the picture of the hump-backed bull—we do not use those because they are harder to pound."

Ish considered, and thought that he understood.

"And this white one here?" he asked. "Was there a relief—picture—on this one?"

The young man took the arrow from Ish, and looked at it, and then handed it back.

"They all have pictures," he said. "But I was looking to see if I could still make out what picture was on this one. It has not quite all gone because of the hammering. This was one of the littlest ones, and it had the picture of the woman with the wings growing out of her head. Some of them have pictures of hawks—but not real hawks." The young man was talking very happily. "Others have men; at least, they look like men—one with a beard, and one with long hair hanging behind him and another with a strong-looking face, without a beard and with short hair, and heavy-jawed."

"And who—who do you think—were all these men?"

The young man glanced both ways, as if a little nervous.

"These—oh, these—yes! These, we think—as you yourself, Ish, well know—these were the Old Ones that were before our Old Ones!"

When there was no thunder from heaven and when the young man could see that Ish was not displeased, he went on:

"Yes, that must be it—as you yourself, Ish, well know. These men, and the hawks, and the bull! Perhaps the woman with the wings growing from her head sprang from the marriage of a hawk and a woman. But, however it is, they do not seem to mind our taking their pictures and hammering them up for arrowheads. I have wondered about it. Perhaps they are too great to care about little things, or perhaps they did their work a long time ago and have now grown old and weak.

He stopped talking, but Ish could see that he was pleased with himself, and liked to talk, and was thinking quickly of something more to say. He, at least, had imagination.

"Yes," the young man continued, "I have an idea. Our Old Ones—they were the Americans—made the houses and bridges and the little round things that we hammer out for arrowheads. But those others—the Old Ones of the Old Ones—perhaps they made the hills and the sun, and the Americans themselves."

Then, though it was a cheap trick to play on the young man, Ish could not resist talking in double meaning.

"Yes," he said, "I have heard it said that those older Old Ones produced the Americans—but I rather doubt that they made the hills and the sun."

Though he could not have understood, perhaps the young man caught the irony in the tone, and so said nothing.

"But, go on," Ish continued then. "Tell me more about the arrowheads themselves. I am not interested in your cosmogony." He used the last word in good-humored malice, knowing that the other would not understand it, but would be impressed by its length and strange sound.

"Yes, about the arrowheads," the young man said, hesitating a moment, and then regaining confidence. "We use both the red and the white. The red are good for shooting cattle and lions. The white are for deer and other game."

"Why is that?" Ish asked sharply, for he felt his old-time rationalism stirring at the thought of all such magic and hocus-pocus. The question, however, seemed only to surprise and confuse the young man.

"Why?" he asked. "Why? How could anyone know why? Except you yourself, Ish! This matter of the red and white arrowheads is merely something that is. It is like—" He hesitated, and then the sunlight seemed to catch his attention. "Yes, it is like the sun that keeps on going round the earth, but naturally no one knows why, or asks why. Why should there be a why?"

Having said these last words, the young man was obviously very pleased with himself as if he had propounded some great philosophical dictum, although undoubtedly he had spoken only in great simplicity. But when Ish turned the matter over in his mind, he was not sure. Perhaps even in this simplicity there was a depth. Was there ever an answer to "why"? Did not things just exist in the present?

Yet, Ish was certain, a fallacy lurked somewhere in the argument. A sense of cause-and-effect was necessary for the life at the human level, and this matter of the different-colored arrowheads was a proof of it, not the contrary. Only, the sense of causation here was faulty and irrational. The young man was maintaining an absurdity—that cattle and lions could be better killed with copper arrowheads hammered from pennies, whereas deer were better killed with silver ones hammered from dimes or quarters. Yet there could obviously not be enough difference in hardness or sharpness to matter. Only, in these primitive minds, the secondary matter of color had in some way come to be considered—this was rank superstition!—the determining factor.

Deep within him, Ish again felt his old hatred of loose thinking boil up. Though he was an old man, still he might do something.

"No!" he said, so sharply that the young man started. "No! That is not right. The white arrowheads and the red! One just as well as...."

Then, slowly his voice trailed off. No, he thought, that was not the way it was destined to be. He heard a rich contralto voice saying to him, "Relax!" Perhaps he might persuade this young man named Jack, who was undoubtedly a remarkably intelligent and imaginative young man, possibly even somewhat like that little one named Joey. But what would it accomplish? Only, perhaps to make the young man confused and ill at ease among all the others. And what was really the difference? At least, copper arrowheads were not less effective against lions, and if the bowman thought them more effective, the thought gave him courage and steadied his hand.

So Ish said nothing more about the matter, and smiled at the young man reassuringly, and looked again at the arrow. Another thought came to him, and he asked:

"Can you always find plenty of those little round things?"

The young man laughed merrily, as if this were a strange question.

"Oh, yes," he said. "There are so many that if all of us spent all our time pounding out arrowheads, still we should never run short."

Ish considered. Yes, that was probably true. Even if there were a hundred men in The Tribe by now, there must be thousands and thousands of coins readily to be found in tills and cash-boxes, even in this one corner of the city. And if the coins should be exhausted, there would be thousands of miles of copper telephone wire. When he had first made an arrow, he recollected, he had imagined that The Tribe would revert to stone arrowheads. Instead they had taken a short-cut, and were already fashioning metal. So perhaps The Tribe, his own descendants, had already passed the turning-point, were no longer forgetting more old things than they were learning new things, and were no longer sinking toward savagery, but were maintaining a stable level or perhaps gradually beginning to win new security. By showing them how to make bows, he had helped, and he felt greatly comforted.

Then, having finished looking at the arrow, Ish handed it back. "It seems to be a very good arrow," he said, although he did not really know much about arrows.

Nevertheless the young man smiled with great happiness at this praise of his arrow, and Ish noted that he made a mark on it before he put it back into the quiver, as if he wished to know it and distinguish it from other arrows after what had happened. Then, as he still looked at the young man, Ish felt a sudden great love for him, and he had not been so moved for a long time since he had been sitting as an old man on the hillside. This Jack, who was of the First Ones, must be Ish's great-grandson in the male line, and he was also Em's great-grandson. So, as Ish looked, his heart yearned outwards, and he asked a strange question:

"Young man," he said, "are you happy?" The young man named Jack looked startled at this question, and he glanced in both directions before answering, and then he spoke.

"Yes, I am happy. Things are as they are, and I am part of them."

Ish began to think of what this might mean and to wonder again whether the words had been spoken only in simplicity or whether there was some deep philosophy behind them, but he could not decide. At his trying to think, the fog seemed again to move in at the corners of his brain. But still he recollected vaguely that the words—strange as they were—had a ring of familiarity about them. He had not perhaps ever heard those exact words before, but they were words that someone whom he had once known might well have spoken. For in his words the young man had not questioned, but had accepted. Ish could not recall this person exactly, but he remembered softness and warmth, and warm feelings flowed through him.

When he came out of his reverie and looked up again, no one was standing in front of him. In fact, Ish would have been unable to say surely whether the young man named Jack had been there that same day, or whether this was now some other day, or perhaps even another summer.