Authors: Chad Oliver
Startling?
That
was
hardly
the
word
for
it,
for
Mark had
seen
the
painting
before.
He
had
seen
it
almost fifty-two
thousand
years
in
the
future.
When
he
had
visited
France
with
his
uncle,
he
had been
in
this
same
cave,
seen
this
same
painting,
the colors
faded
by
the
drift
of
years,
but
still
remarkably well-preserved.
This
painting
now
before
his
eyes
was the
first
great
art
in
all
the
history
of
mankind;
it
was the
oldest
of
the
masterpieces
of
man.
Mark
had
seen the
painting
in
1949,
when
he
was
thirteen
years
old. Now
he
was
seeing
it
painted
before
his
very
eyes when
he
was
seventeen
years
old,
and
almost
fifty-two
thousand
years
younger
in
time!
What
could
he
say
to
this
silent
man,
who
worked all
alone
under
the
earth,
fumbling,
unsure,
reaching out
through
the
darkness
for
the
beauty
that
he
saw within
him?
How
could
he
tell
Tloron
that
the
work he
was
laboring
over
would
be
cherished
by
all
men for
a
longer
period
than
any
other
art
that
would
ever be
created
by
man
until
the
end
of
time?
He
could
not
say
anything.
He
nudged
Tlaxcan, and,
picking
up
a
small
dish
of
red
pigment
that
Tloron had
discarded,
he
started
back
the
way
he
had
come. He
knew
that
Tloron
did
not
wish
to
be
disturbed, nor
did
he
wish
to
chatter
his
time
away.
Tloron
was doing
something
great,
and
Mark
had
no
ill-bred tourist
wish
to
interfere
or
hinder
him
in
any
way.
“Tloron
is
a
very
holy
man,”
Tlaxcan
said,
pleased that
Mark
had
not
disturbed
him.
“He
makes
the
game plentiful
and
the
hunting
good.”
Mark
nodded,
remembering
some
of
the
things
that Doctor
Nye
had
told
him
about
magic
on
their
tramps through
the
mountains
of
New
Mexico.
There
were two
basic
types
of
magic,
black
and
white—the
black used
for
evil,
and
the
white
for
good.
Whether
the magic
was
black
or
white
for
you
depended,
of
course, on
which
side
you
happened
to
be
at
the
time.
Among the
types
of
white
magic,
ritual
magic
to
insure
the success
of
the
hunt
held
a
high
place.
The
idea
was that
you
painted
an
animal
on
the
cave
wall,
and
just as
it
appeared
there
so
it
would
appear
in
the
fields, ready
for
the
kill.
So
it
was
that
the
first
great
art
in human
history
was
in
part
magic—as,
in
a
sense,
all great
art
has
been
ever
since.
Toward
the
entrance
to
the
cave,
but
still
well-protected
and
far
underground,
Mark
stopped
and
asked Tlaxcan
to
hold
the
torch
for
him.
Tlaxcan
smilingly obliged,
and
Mark
took
a
flat
stone
about
a
foot
and a
half
in
diameter
and
began
to
draw
on
it.