the BEGINNING
By HENRY HASSE
In the purely cerebral sense,there was no particular point-of-sequenceat which Gral couldhave been said to Know. Thevery causality of his existencewas a succession of brute obedienceto brute awareness, for itwas only thus that one survived.There was the danger-sense onthose days when the great-toothedcats roamed the valley,and the males-who-will-bring remainedhuddled and sullen in thecaves above the great ledge;there was the hunger-sense whenprovender was low, and Gor-wahdrove them out with grunts andgibes to hunt the wild-dogs andlizards and lesser beasts; andnot infrequently there was theother sense, the not-hunger,when the bring had been exceptionaland there was somnolenceafter the gorging.
Gral could not remember whenhe had experienced the latter, forit was the dictate of Gor-wah,the Old One, that who did notbring did not eat—not until theothers had gorged. Gral wassmall, and weakest of all themales. Not often did he bring.Once on a spurious moment hehad scaled the valley-rim, andcame out upon the huge plainwhere it was rumored the littlethree-toed horses roamed. Andhe had seen them, he had seenthem! He pursued, armed onlywith blunt shaft and a few ofthe throw-stones such as Otahused; but he was less swift thanthe tiny horses, and his throw-stonesfell wide, and it was rumoredthat here roamed thelong-tusked shaggy ones thatwere larger than the very caves... trembling, Gral had retracedhis way, to arrive at theledge and meekly await Gor-wah'sword that he could partakeof the sinews that night.
... Point of sequence. Causalityin action. An atom is dissected,a belly rumbles in hunger,a star blooms into briefnova; a bird wheels in futile escape,an ice-flow impacts, anequation is expressed in awesomemushrooming shape. Theseare multitudinous, apocalyptic.They are timeless and equal.These are things whereby sunswheel or blossom or die, a tribevanishes, a civilization climbs ora world decays.
Or an earlier sun, hot andsoft-stroking against leaves. Ora Pleistocene man, smallest ofall the males, whose supine acceptancehad devolved into laziness....
Gral would not have called itlaziness; his crude synapsescould not have contained thethought, much less given it relevance.Even later—as Gral-the-Bringer—hisonly point of relevancewas to the Place where thegreat thing happened.
The Place was a small rockycleft above the river, not easilyaccessible.... Gral found it oneday because he dearly loved toclimb, though all to be foundhere were the lizards, stringyand without substance. But thisday he found more. It waswarmth, a warmth immeasurablymore satisfying than thecaves-above-the-ledge. Here forperhaps an hour the late sunstroked directly in, soft and containing,setting the narrow wallsaglow with bright-brushed patterns.
To Gral it was an hour apart.He gathered leaves and placedthem here, and here he paused inthe lateness of each day thoughhis bring was frugal and hisbelly would rumble that night.But to that he was accustomed,and this was pleasurable.
It was the time of the thaw.Gral huddled in his Place andwelcomed t