“Well, I know a lot of people who…”

“But they could, if they’d stop and think about it.”

“You don’t know these people,” Rod said with an astringent smile. “But I get your point. Believing it is another matter. You’re trying to tell me that you don’t understand the words you’re saying to me right now—even if you stop to think about each word separately.”

Yorick nodded. “Now you’re beginning to understand. Most of them are just noises. I have to take it on faith that it means what I want it to mean.”

“Sounds pretty risky.”

“Oh, not too much—I can understand the gist of it. But most of it’s just stimulus-response, like a seeing-eye parrot saying ‘Walk’ when he sees a green light.”

“This is a pretty complicated explanation you’ve just been feeding me,” Rod pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s all memorized, like playing back a recording.” Yorick spread his hands. “I don’t really follow it myself.”

“But your native language…”

“Is a few thousand sound effects. Not even very musical, though—musical scales are basically prefrontal, too. Manipulating pitches is like manipulating numbers. I love-hearing music, though. To me, even ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ is a miracle.”

Tuan butted in, frowning. “Doth he say that he is a blinking idiot?”

“Hey, no, now!” Yorick held up a hand, shaking his head indignantly. “Don’t sell us short. We’re smart, you know—same size brain as you’ve got. We just can’t talk about it, that’s all—or add and subtract it either, for that matter. We can only communicate concrete things—you know—food, water, stone, fire, sex—things you can see and touch. It’s just abstractions that we can’t talk about; they require symbols. But the intelligence is there. We’re the ones who learned how to use fire—and how to chip flint into weapons. Not very good tools, maybe—but we made the big breakthrough.”

Rod nodded. “Yeah, Tuan, don’t underestimate that. We think we’re smart because we invented the nuclea—uh…” Rod remembered that he wasn’t supposed to let the Gramaryans know about advanced technology. It might disrupt their entire culture. He opted for their version of the weapon that endangered civilization. “The crossbow. But taming fire was just as hard to figure out.”

“Good man.” Yorick nodded approvingly. “You sapiens have been able to build such a complicated civilization because you had a good foundation under you before you even existed; you inherited it when you evolved. But we’re the ones who built the basement.”

“Neanderthals had the intelligence,” Rod explained. “They just couldn’t manipulate symbols—and there’s just so far you can go without ‘em.”

Yorick nodded. “Analytical reasoning just isn’t our strong suit. We’re great on hunches, though—and we’ve got great memories.”

“You’d have to, to remember all these standard responses that you don’t understand.”

Yorick nodded. “I can remember damn near anything that ever happened to me.”

“How about who taught you English?”

“Oh, sure! That’s…” Then Yorick gelled, staring. After a minute, he tried the sickly grin again. “I, uh, didn’t want to get to that, uh, quite so soon.”

“Yes, but we did.” Rod smiled sweetly. “Who did teach you?”

“Same guy who gave me my name,” Yorick said hopefully.

“So he had a little education—and definitely wasn’t from a medieval culture.”

Yorick frowned. “How’d you make so much out of just one fact?”

“I manipulated a symbol. What’s his name?”

“The Eagle,” Yorick sighed. “We call him that ‘cause he looks like one.”

“What? He’s got feathers?” Rod had a sudden vision of an avian alien, directing a secondhand conquest of a Terran planet.

“No, no! He’s human, all right. He might deny it—but he is. Just got a nose like a beak, always looks a little angry, doesn’t have much hair—you know. He taught us how to farm.”

“Yeah.” Rod frowned. “Neanderthals never got beyond a hunting-and-gathering culture, did you?”

“Not on our own, no. But this particular bunch of Neanderthals never would’ve gotten together on their own anyway. The Eagle gathered us up, one at a time, from all over Europe and Asia.”

Rod frowned. “Odd way to do it. Why didn’t he just take a tribe that was already together?”

“Because he didn’t want a tribe, milord. He wanted to save a bunch of innocent victims.”

“Victims?” Rod frowned. “Who was picking on you?”

“Everybody.” Yorick spread his arms. “The Flatfaces, for openers—like you, only bigger. They chipped flint into tools, same as we do—only they’re a lot better at it.”

“The Cro-Magnons,” Rod said slowly. “Are your people the last Neanderthals?”

“Oh, nowhere near! That was our problem, in fact—all those other Neanderthals. They’d’ve rather’d kill us than look at us.”

Suddenly, Rod could place Yorick—he was paranoid. “I thought it worked the other way around.”

“What—that we’d as soon kill them as look at them?”

“No—that you’d kill them when you looked at them.”

Yorick looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes, the Evil-Eye thing—that was the problem. I mean, you try to cover it up as best you can; you try to hide it—but sooner or later somebody’s gonna haul off and try and whack you with a club.”

“Oh, come on! It wasn’t inevitable, was it?”

“Haven’t lived with Neanderthals, have you?”

“Oh.” Rod cocked his head. “Not very civilized, were you?”

“We lived like cavemen,” Yorick confirmed.

“Oh. Right.” Rod glanced away, embarrassed. “Sorry—I forgot.”

“Great.” Yorick grinned. “That’s a compliment.”

“I suppose it is,” Rod said slowly. “But how come your quarrels had to turn violent?”

Yorick shrugged. “What can I tell you? No lawyers. Whatever the reason, we do tend to clobber—and you can’t help yourself then; you have to freeze him in his tracks.”

“Purely in self-defense, of course.”

“Oh yeah, purely! Most of us had sense enough not to hit back at someone who was frozen—and the ones who didn’t, couldn’t; it takes some real concentration to keep a man frozen. There just ain’t anything left over to hit with.”

“Well, maybe.” Rod had his doubts. “But why would he want to kill you, when you hadn’t hurt him?”

“That made it worse,” Yorick sighed. “I mean, if I put the freeze on you, you’re gonna feel bad enough…”

The clanking and rustling behind Rod told him that his soldiers had come to the ready. Beside him Tuan murmured, “ ‘Ware, beastman!”

Yorick plowed on, unmindful of them. “But if I don’t clobber you, you’re gonna read it as contempt, and hate me worse. Still, it wasn’t the person who got frozen who was the problem—it was the spectators.”

“What’d you do—sell tickets?”

Yorick’s mouth tightened with exasperation. “You know how hard it is to be alone in these small tribes?”

“Yeah… I suppose that would be a problem.”

“Problem, hell! It was murder! Who wants you around if you can do that to them? And there’s one way to make sure you won’t be around. No, we’d have to get out of the village on our own first. Usually had a lot of help…”

“It’s a wonder any of you survived.” Then something clicked in Rod’s mind. “But you would, wouldn’t you? If anyone got too close, you could freeze him.”

“Long enough to get away, yes. But what do you do when you’ve gotten away?”

“Survive.” Rod stared off into the sky, imagining what it would be like. “Kind of lonely…”

Yorick snorted. “Never tried to make it on your own in a wilderness, have you? Loneliness is the least of it. A rabbit a day keeps starvation away—but a sabertooth has the same notion about you. Not to mention dire wolves or cave bears.”

Rod nodded thoughtfully. “I can see why you’d want to form a new tribe.”

“With what?” Yorick scoffed. “We weren’t exactly over-populated, you know. It was a long way between tribes—and not very many Evil-Eye espers in any one of ‘em. You might have one in a hundred square miles—and do you know how long a hundred miles is, on foot in rough country?”