“I don’t know what a pathfinder can see,” said Wheaton. “But what I need is a time and place where Neanderthals were hunting bulls. Aurochs, probably, the giant Ice Age bovine.”

“But they weren’t entirely prehistoric,” said Deborah. “The last of them died in Poland in 1627. They seem to be ancestral to modern cattle. Both Asian zebus and Western taurines.”

“A fount of knowledge,” said Wheaton.

“I’m telling him that we’re not looking for cows,” said Deborah. “We’re looking for this.” She held out a tablet with a photo of an aurochs skeleton. “Note that the horns bend forward. That’s what led Father to guess that—”

“Hypothesize,” said Wheaton.

“Take a wild stab-in-the-dark guess,” Deborah recorrected him, “that the ancient Cretan depictions of bull-leaping show a sport that would have made far more sense with aurochsen rather than taurine bulls. You need to have those forward-­reaching horns if you’re going to grab them and leap onto the creature’s back.”

“The real source of the hypothesis,” said Wheaton, “is the fact that Neanderthals seem to have made no projectile ­weapons. Their spears were useful only for stabbing. And the terrain they lived in didn’t lend itself to open running, the way Erectus hunted. I don’t care how stealthy you are, you can’t sneak close enough to an aurochs to jab it between the ribs. The last distance has to be crossed in a run, and then the Neanderthal had to jump on its back and stab it at the base of the skull, severing the spinal column.”

“And the aurochs held still for this,” said Ram.

“It bucked and ran like a son-of-a-bitch,” said Wheaton. “But Neanderthals are strong. They gripped with their thighs long enough to ram that spear into the spine and bring the beast crashing down.”

“Though Father’s guesswork,” said Deborah, “doesn’t explain how you jump onto a bull’s back over the horns and somehow end up facing forward.”

“They were very agile,” said Wheaton.

“Let’s go find out,” said Noxon. “Perhaps you can get me to a place where you know that aurochses were hunted.”

“Not aurochses,” said Deborah. “ ‘Aurochs’ is singular and plural.”

“But Deborah uses the pseudo-Germanic plural ‘aurochsen’ when she wants to show off,” said Wheaton.

“Like ‘ox’ and ‘oxen,’” she said.

“A place where you know they were eating aurochsoto,” said Noxon, using a plural from the trade language of the Stashi riverlands. “Then I can hunt for paths with a reasonable hope of success.”

The place turned out to be in Slovenia, a tiny nation. But it had one of the better Neanderthal settlement sites, occupied for thousands of years. What Noxon quickly realized was that it was actually occupied six times for a single season each. But there was no way the anthropologists could have seen the discontinuities.

Noxon found paths that seemed to be hunters returning from a large kill—their arrival was followed by a feast and then a lot of meat-smoking—and then sensed where they had acquired their kill. That first attempt was a dead end, though—the hunters had found a dead aurochs, brought down by a combination of dire wolves and disease.

But his second try brought the hunters back to the path of a living aurochs, and Noxon could sense that one Neanderthal’s path did indeed take him onto the aurochs’s back while it was still alive. Then he looked over the map, fitting the paths onto it as best he could. “No roads take us any closer than we already are,” he said. “So we’ve got about ten kilometers of walking to do.”

“How old is the event?” asked Wheaton.

“It’s the oldest group that spent a season here,” said Noxon. “Isn’t there already a date? Carbon 14, at least?”

“The oldest fire built here dates from ninety thousand years ago,” said Wheaton.

“That sounds about right,” said Noxon. “My view of the paths doesn’t come with a calendar. But that ninety-thousand-year figure gives me a benchmark.”

“Ten kilometers,” said Ram wearily.

“You walk almost as far changing planes at the airport,” said Noxon.

“Not even close,” said Ram.

“Then stay here,” said Noxon. “You can watch over the stuff we don’t need, so we don’t have to carry it all with us.”

“We’ll lock that in the boot,” said Ram. “I’m not going to miss this.”

“No, you’re just going to complain the whole way. Those Neanderthals, so thoughtless—hunting uri where they happen to be, instead of hoping they’ll wander closer.”

“Uri?” asked Deborah.

“The Latinized plural of the root word ‘urus,’” said Noxon. “I think it’s a better name than aurochs anyway.”

“See, Father?” said Deborah. “There are worse language wonks in the world than I am.”

“He’s not from this world,” said Wheaton.

The hike was difficult—lots of ups and downs, scrambling into ravines and out again, and scraping their way through thickets. But they had dressed for hiking and when they got to the site, they were tired but not exhausted.

“If Neanderthals were careful hunters,” said Noxon, “there’s no chance we could suddenly appear without their noticing us. So I’m thinking that I bring us to that time behind this rise, and then I slice us forward as we climb the hill. I won’t slice us very fast, so we’ll see their actions speeded up but it won’t be a blur.”

“Will my camera be able to record the images?” asked Wheaton.

“If our eyes can see, the camera can record it,” said Noxon. “Images move quickly enough not to lose coherency when we time-slice. Not like sound, which turns into meaningless ragged waves.”

“Then that sounds like an excellent plan,” said Wheaton.

With the clarity that his facemask brought him, Noxon easily brought them to the moment that he chose and then sliced them with precision as they moved up the rise to perch on the crest. It was close enough for a good clear view, but not so close that they’d have to worry about Neanderthals walking through them.

The hunting was a long, slow process, and several times Noxon sped up the time-slicing so it didn’t get too uncomfortable waiting there on the crest. It wasn’t just about boredom: Somebody would need to empty bladder or bowel if it took too long.

The four Neanderthals approached the grazing herd with infinite patience. It was incredible how slow their movements were, how utterly still they could remain while holding awkward poses. Each Neanderthal man—two seeming to be in their ­twenties, two in their teens—had a short spear strapped to his back, stone tip near the man’s head. Their hands were empty.

Unlike wolves and hunting cats, they had not sought out an old, ailing, or especially young aurochs. Instead, they had chosen the most powerful male. Apparently they liked a challenge—or they figured that if they were going to take the time to hunt, they should bring home enough meat for it to be worth the effort.

Finally the hunters got near enough that the aurochs began to get nervous. If there was some signal among the hunters, it had to be by sound, because there was nothing visible to the party of Sapient watchers. But the hunters all leapt up at once. The three that were not directly in front of the aurochs pulled their spears as they ran and prepared to jab at the animal’s sides. But the one in front kept his hands empty and open as he ran directly at the great horned head, waving his arms and, judging from his open mouth, shouting.

The other members of the aurochs herd began to move away nervously; some of them broke into a run. But the big bull turned to face the shouting man rushing toward him; the bull lowered its head and began to move forward, clearly intending to catch the man on its horns and gore him or toss him out of the way.

The lead hunter’s gaze never left those horns. At the last moment, the horns went down and the head turned slightly, to point one horn directly at the hunter. He caught that horn with one hand and then, as he vaulted upward, caught the other horn with the other hand.