The Lost World MEGAPACK®. Lin Carter

to me on more than one occasion, but as I could not understand a word of her speech, or she a word of mine, expressions and gestures were the most we could exchange.

      I have heard it said that curiosity is the vice of women. Well, if so, I presume her curiosity must have gotten the better of her, because Darya, no longer able to endure my inability to answer or even understand her questions, promptly took the obvious course of action, and began to teach me hers.

      I have always enjoyed a natural-born knack for picking up foreign tongues, which has amply served me during my travels, so it did not prove too difficult to pick up Cro-Magnon. What made it so remarkably easy was the simple fact that Darya’s language was an extremely simple one, a stark matter of the verbal necessities—all nouns and verbs, with just enough adjectives to lend it tang. A language uncluttered with all the complicated tenses more sophisticated languages seem to have.

      As we walked along, the cave-girl gave me lessons in the one universal tongue spoken the length and breadth of Zanthodon. She did this with a direct simplicity that I found refreshing—pointing to a bush, she enunciated the word for “bush,” for example, and made me repeat it back to her until I got the pronunciation to please her. In a single day we got through the items visible in the landscape immediately around us, and progressed to the parts of the body. On the next day we moved on to verbs, and I memorized the words for “jump” and “walk” and “run” and “stand” and “sit” and “lie down” and “sleep,” “eat,” “drink,” and so on.

      Each morning when we awoke, she made me repeat back to her the words she had taught me the day before, correcting me when it was necessary. But it was seldom necessary. As a matter of fact, learning her primitive tongue came so swiftly and easily that I was impressed myself—I had always been good at picking up a smattering of things like Arabic or German or Swahili, but never this good.

      It was almost…almost like remembering a language you once knew but had since forgotten, if that makes any sense.

      Well, it made quite a lot of sense to the Professor, who, being tied to the chain gang right behind me, was near enough to overhear our language lessons. In fact, he became absolutely livid with excitement.

      “…Did you hear that, my boy?” he burbled, awe-struck. “The word for ‘father’ is vator…amazing!”

      “What’s so amazing about it?”

      “Because the ancient Sanskrit word for ‘father’ is very, very close to it in sound: pitar.…I have been noticing how very many of the words your little lady has been teaching you are remarkably similar to the words in our own language of the Upper World…and I have always had a theory about the common source of all languages.…”

      “Well, why not?” I grinned, shaking my head. “You seem to have a theory about nearly everything.”

      Darya listened uncomprehendingly to this exchange, her head tilted a little to one side and a quizzical expression on her sweet face.

      Paying me no attention, the Professor rambled on excitedly.

      “You must know, my boy, that English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and many other modern languages stem from the decay of the ancient Latin tongue…well, Latin, Greek, Hindi and other of the languages of antiquity derive from a common source, Sanskrit.…Sanskrit itself descends from Proto- Sanskrit, which came from the almost-forgotten Aryan tongue, and that language can be dated back nearly twenty thousand years, to the last of the great Ice Ages.

      “…Suppose that the original of Aryan, let us call it ‘proto-Aryan’ was the language spoken before history began by our own direct ancestors, the Cro-Magnon men of 50,000 B.C. Which is about when I imagine this young lady’s ancestors began drifting into Zanthodon, having fled from the endless winter of the glacial period…if my theory proves correct, we are learning earth’s first and oldest tongue, my boy—what a sensational chapter for my book!”

      “What does he say?” inquired Darya, impressed by the monologue. I shook my head.

      “No matter,” I grinned. “Old men talk a lot!”

      She giggled at the Professor’s glare of frosty reproof.

      Just then, our captors came down the line with sticks and clubs; urging us to greater speed. So we wisely decided to save our breath for running.

      * * * *

      When our language lessons had gotten to the point where we could make each other understand what we were saying, Darya wasted no time in asking me about myself. In particular, she was fascinated by the clothing I was wearing—or what was left of it by this time, for my khaki shirt was ripped to rags and my whipcord breeches equally the worse for wear. I awkwardly tried to explain the secret of weaving cloth to the savage girl, but with minimal success.

      She was also curious about my people—my “tribe” as she thought of it. I think she was fascinated by the differences between myself and all the other men she had ever known or seen.

      The Neaderthal men, you understand, are brown-haired or red-headed, and the Cro-Magnons are almost always blonds. But I happen to have curly black hair. Another difference was my eyes, for they are of a shade of pale gray rare even in the Upper World (I was beginning to think of it that way, in caps, by this point).

      I tried to explain to Darya that my “tribe” consisted of very many millions of men and women who control an entire continent, and live in enormous cities connected by airlines and railways and bus routes…well, you can see the problems I had. Darya could count to a hundred, but the concept of “a million” was beyond her; and the Stone Age tongue lacked words for “continent” and “city.”

      I think she thought me a colossal fibber as I tried to describe New York City and airplanes and subway trains. Her eyes were frosty and her manner became noticeably cool; after a time, she tossed her head, turned her back and ignored me for about an hour.

      “Just like a woman,” the Professor observed, with a chuckle, at my obvious embarrassment and distress.

      CHAPTER 10

      WE STRIKE FOR FREEDOM

      With time my familiarity with the Stone Age language of Zanthodon became such that I was able to talk to my fellow captives, and through these brief exchanges of conversation I learned much that I had not known before.

      The beautiful blond girl, Darya, for example, came from a country called Thandar. At least, I assume it to be a country: it might be a city or village for all I know, since the Stone Age language does not seem to differentiate between such political divisions.

      She was the only daughter of the chief of that country, whose name was Tharn. The Apemen had captured her while she had been on a hunting expedition with some of her people.

      Among these was a handsome, sturdily built young Cro-Magnon hunter named Jorn whom I instantly conceived a liking for. He had been the fellow who had helped me along while I was still unconscious from the blow on the head which One-Eye had given me with his stone axe. He had a fearless glint in the eye and I rather liked the firm set of his jaw. And I could not help noticing his courtesy and solicitude toward Darya, how he helped her over rough country and tried to shelter her from the mistreatment dealt out at random by the Apemen. I got to know Jorn pretty well, because he was tethered at my left, while Darya was tied to the rope directly ahead of me in line, and to her left was a fellow called Fumio.

      While I took an instant liking to Jorn, I must admit my dislike and distrust of this Fumio were equally swift and instinctive. He was a magnificent specimen of primitive manhood, it’s true—taller than I by half a head, and with the most impressively muscular arms and breadth of shoulder I had yet seen. He was also remarkably handsome, in a slick, oily sort of way—all in all, Fumio was a bit too “pretty” for my taste. And he had a sly glint in his eye that made me instantly distrust him. In all honesty, I have to admit my dislike for Fumio may have been shaped by bias, for Jorn asquainted me with the fact that back in Thandar, Fumio was a great chieftain, a rival of Darya’s father for the chiefship of the whole country, and also a suitor for Darya’s