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Late that night, Cha-Ka suddenly woke up. Worn out by the day's exertions and disasters, he'd been sleeping more soundly than usual, yet he was instantly alert at the first faint scrabbling down in the valley.
He sat up in the wretched darkness of the cave, straining his senses out into the night, and fear crept slowly into his soul. Never in his life---already twice as long as most Pakuni could expect---had he heard a sound like this. The great cats approached in silence, and the only thing that gave them away was a rare slide of earth, or the occasional cracking of a twig. Yet this was a continuous crunching noise that grew louder and louder. It was as if some enormous beast was moving through the night, making no effort at concealment, and ignoring all obstacles. Once Cha-Ka heard the unmistakable sound of a bush being uprooted; the elephants and dinotherium did this often enough, but otherwise they moved as quietly as the cats.
And then there came a sound which Cha-Ka could not possibly have identified, for it had never been heard before in the history of the world. It was the clank of metal upon stone.
Cha-Ka came face to face with the Pylon when he led the tribe down to the river in the first light of morning. He had almost forgotten the terrors of the night, as nothing had happened after that initial noise, so he didn't even associate this odd thing with danger or fear. There was, after all, nothing in the least alarming about it.
It was a small truncated square pyramid-like structure, tall (three times his height) and narrow (enough to span his arms), and its surface was polished to a mirror-like precision. As Cha-Ka had never encountered gold or even diamonds, there were no natural objects to which he could compare this apparition. It was certainly rather attractive, and though he was wisely cautious of most new things, he did not hesitate for long before sidling up to it. As nothing happened, he put out his hand, and felt a cold, hard and extremely smooth-to-the-touch surface.
After several minutes of intense thought, he arrived at a brilliant explanation. It was a rock, of course, and it must have grown during the night. There were many plants that did this---white, pulpy things shaped like pebbles. It was true that they were small and round, whereas this was large and sharp-edged; but greater and later philosophers than Cha-Ka would be prepared to overlook equally striking exceptions to their theories.
This really superb piece of abstract thinking led Cha-Ka, after only three or four minutes, to a deduction which he promptly put to the test. The white round pebble-plants were very tasty (though there were a few that produced violent illness); perhaps this tall one....?
A few licks and attempted nibbles quickly disillusioned him. There was no nourishment here; so like a sensible Paku, he continued on his way to the river and forgot all about the golden pylon, during the daily routine of shrieking at the Others.
The foraging today was very bad, and the tribe had to travel several miles from the caves to find any food at all. During the brutal heat of noon one of the frailer females collapsed, far from any possible shelter. Her companions gathered round her, twittering and weeping sympathetically, but there was nothing that anyone could do. If they had been less exhausted they might have carried her with them, but there was no surplus energy for such acts of kindness. She had to be left behind, to recover or not with her own resources. They bypassed the spot on the homeward trek that evening; there was not a single bone to be seen.
In the final light of day, looking around anxiously for early hunters, they drank hastily at the stream and started the climb up to their caves. They were still 100 yards from the Pylon when the sound began.
It was barely audible, yet it stopped them dead, so that they stood paralyzed on the trail with their jaws hanging slackly. A simple, maddeningly repetitious vibration, it pulsed out from the Pylon; and hypnotized all who came within its spell. For the first time---and the last, for three million years---the sound of drumming was heard in South America.
The throbbing grew louder, more insistent. Presently the Pakuni began to move forward, like sleepwalkers, toward the source of that powerful sound. Sometimes they took little dancing steps, as their blood responded to rhythms that their descendants would not create for ages yet. Totally entranced, they gathered round the Pylon, forgetting the hardships of the day, the perils of the approaching dusk, and the hunger in their bellies.
The drumming grew louder, the night darker. And as the shadows lengthened and the light drained from the sky, the Pylon started to grow.
First it lost its golden shine and began suffused with a pale, milky luminescence. Tantalizing, ill-defined phantoms moved across its surface and in its depths. They coalesced into bars of light and shadow, then formed intermeshing, spoked patterns that began to slowly rotate.
Faster and faster spun the wheels of light, and the throbbing of the drums accelerated with them. Now totally hypnotized, the Pakuni could only stare slack-jawed into this astonishing display of pyrotechnics. They had already forgotten the instincts of their forebears and the lessons of a lifetime; not one of them, normally, would have been so far from his cave so late in the evening. For the surrounding brush was full of frozen shapes and staring eyes, as the night creatures suspended their business to see what would happen next.
Now the spinning wheels of light began to merge, and the spokes fused into luminous bars that slowly receded into the distance, rotating on their axes while doing so. They split into pairs and the resulting sets of lines started to oscillate across each other, slowly changing their angles of intersection. Fantastic, fleeting geometrical patterns flickered in and out of existence as the glowing grids meshed then unmeshed; and the Pakuni watched, mesmerized captives of the shining Pylon.
They could never guess that their minds were being probed, their bodies mapped, their reactions studied, their potentials evaluated. At first, the whole tribe remained half crouching in a motionless tableau, as though frozen into stone. Then the Paku nearest to the Pylon suddenly came to life.
He did not move from his position, but his body lost its trancelike rigidity and became animated as if it were a puppet controlled by invisible strings. The head turned this way and that; the mouth silently opened and closed; the hands clenched and unclenched. Then he bent down, snapped off a long stalk of grass, and attempted to tie it into a knot with clumsy fingers.
He seemed to be a thing possessed, struggling against some spirit or demon who'd taken over control of his body. He was panting for breath, and his eyes were full of terror as he tried to force his fingers to make movements more complex than any that they had ever attempted before.
Despite all his efforts, he succeeded only in breaking the stalk into pieces. As the fragments fell to the ground, the controlling influence left him, and he froze once again into immobility.
Another Paku came to life, and went through the same routine. This was a younger and more adaptable specimen; it succeeded where the older one had failed. On the planet Earth, the first crude knot had been tied!
Others did stranger and still more pointless things. Some held their hands out at arm's length, and tried to touch their fingertips together---first with both eyes open, then with one closed. Some were made to stare at ruled patterns in the Pylon, which became more and more finely divided until the lines had merged into a gray blur. And all heard single pure sounds, of varying pitch, that swiftly sank below the level of hearing.
When Cha-Ka's turn came, he felt very little fear. His main sensation was a dull resentment, as his muscles twitched and his limbs moved at commands that were not entirely his own. Without knowing why, he bent down and picked up a small stone. When he straightened up, he saw there was a new image on the golden Pylon. The grids and the moving, dancing patterns were gone. In their place was a series of concentric circles, surrounding a small black disk. Obeying the salient orders in his brain, he pitched the stone with a clumsy, overarm throw. It missed the target by several feet.
"Try again, please," said a voice that seemed to be coming out of the Pylon. He searched around until he had found another pebble. This time it hit the slab with a ringing, bell-like tone. He was still a long way off, but his aim was improving. At the fourth attempt, he was merely inches from the central bull's eye. A feeling of indescribable pleasure, almost sexual in its intensity, flooded his mind. Then the control relaxed; he felt no impulse to do anything, except stand up and wait.
One by one, each Paku was briefly possessed. Some succeeded but most failed at the tasks they had been set, and all were appropriately rewarded by spasms of pleasure or of pain.
Now there was only a uniform featureless glow in the great Pylon, so that it stood like a cone of light superimposed on the surrounding darkness. As if waking from a sleep, the Pakuni shook their heads, and presently started to move along the trail to their place of shelter. They did not look back, or wonder at the strange light that was guiding them to their home---and to a future unknown, as yet, even to the stars.
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