Departures

Madyu pulled one out, dusted it off, held it close to his nose to read the title on the spine: Collected Numbers of the Journal of American Veterinary Medicine. That looked as if it might be interesting. But when he opened the volume, the collected numbers flaked to pieces under even the gentlest touch.

“Pox-ridden paper!” Madyu growled. So many books from Old Time were like girls who teased but wouldn’t deliver; instead of giving up the precious information they contained, they crumbled away to nothingness.

Scowling at yet another such betrayal, the shaman pulled out another volume, this one also labeled Collected Numbers. He opened it even more cautiously than he had the first. All at once, he grinned in startled pleasure. The numbers collected here were not what the title claimed. Bound inside the spine were half a dozen copies of an Old Time magazine with which he was already familiar, one whose pictures displayed not only incomprehensible ancient artifacts like cameras, CD players, and Toyotas, but also a good many perfectly comprehensible ancient pretty girls in various interesting states of undress.

He closed this volume with the same care he’d used to open it, then stowed it in his leather sack. He had more than a little hope that he would be able to get it safely back to the encampment. Unlike the real Journal of American Veterinary Medicine, the magazines that had hidden behind the lying binding were made from a shiny, coated paper that was better at withstanding the ravages of time than was the more common kind.

The shaman plucked out more books, searching for others printed on the coated paper. He found a couple and put them into the sack. Several others, made from the ordinary variety, disintegrated as soon as he opened them. He murmured a prayer of regret at having destroyed so much irreplaceable wisdom, but did not know what else he could have done.

He picked up the heavy sack, closed the office door behind him, and left the ruin by the window through which he’d entered. He was surprised to note how far the sun had crawled across the sky; he hadn’t paid attention to the shadows as he ransacked the Old Time office.

He hallooed for Jorj, and felt a good deal of relief when the chief hunter hallooed back a moment later. Jorj had the knack for moving quietly through the undergrowth; in a couple of minutes, he simply seemed to appear in front of Madyu out of thin air. He pointed to the bulging leather sack. “Ha! No demons, eh?”

“None that I saw, anyhow,” Madyu answered. He’d only meant to be strictly accurate, but saw he’d also succeeded in frightening Jorj. Well, that wasn’t such a bad thing. Hiding a smile, he went on, “No snakes, either.”

“Good, good. What do you have in there, anyway?”

“Some little knives of good steel, some hollowed needles, glass and metal junk, and some books.”

“Books,” Jorj’s voice informed the word with scorn. “Why bother bringing out books, shaman? What good are they?’’ Like almost everyone else in the tribe, the chief hunter was illiterate.

“You’ll like some of them. Pictures from Old Time.” Madyu’s hands shaped curves in the air. As they did so, he thought again of Neena.

Jorj’s eyes lit up. “You’ll trade some?”

“Why not?’’ Madyu said. “I see you’ve also done pretty well for yourself.’’

More than a dozen dead songbirds, their little yellow legs bound together with twine, hung head down from Jorj’s belt, along with a possum and a couple of chipmunks. “Could be worse,” the chief hunter allowed. “I just wish there was more meat to each one. But as long as I do even this well, we won’t be down to eating grubs and grasshoppers the way we had to a couple of years ago.”

“The gods be praised for that,’’ Madyu said, and meant every word of it. Grasshopper stew was vile; no matter how long the insects cooked, they crunched horridly between the teeth. And Chief Raff had been about to run him out of the tribe for weak magic before the famine finally broke. Madyu never had figured out why the gods got so angry at him, or why they finally decided to relent.

Shaman and chief hunter walked back to the encampment in companionable silence, each well enough pleased with his day’s work. Thanks to his tasty burden, Jorj got the big half of the wishbone’s worth of greetings, but Madyu created some enthusiasm among the men when he told them about the pictures of Old Time girls he’d found.

Neena happened to be standing close by just then, and let out a sniff loud enough to make him regret for a moment having come across the volume with pictures. Soon enough, though, thoughts of profit ousted regret. It wasn’t, worse luck, as if Neena were his woman.

After supper but before sunset made reading impractical, Madyu settled down with the other two books he’d brought back from the ruin. One of them, its title page proclaimed, was about the diseases of cats. He read three or four pages, then put the book down with a grunt of disgust. It was as incomprehensible as the one with which the other shaman had cheated him.