Climate of Change

CLIMATE of CHANGE

 

TOR BOOKS BY PIERS ANTHONY

 

THE XANTH SERIES
Vale of the Vole
Heaven Cent
Man from Mundania
Demons Don't Dream
Harpy Thyme
Geis of the Gargoyle
Roc and a Hard Place
Yon Ill Wind
Faun & Games
Zombie Lover
Xone of Contention
The Dastard
Swell Foop
Up in a Heaval
Cube Route
Currant Events
Pet Peeve
Stork Naked
Air Apparent
Two to the Fifth
Jumper Cable

 

THE GEODYSSEY SERIES
Isle of Woman
Shame of Man
Hope of Earth
Muse of Art
Climate of Change

 

ANTHOLOGIES
Alien Plot
Anthonology

 

NONFICTION
How Precious Was That While
Letters to Jenny

 

But What of Earth?
Ghost
Hasan
Prostho Plus
Race Against Time
Shade of the Tree
Steppe
Triple Detente

 

WITH ROBERT E. MARGROFF
The Dragon's
Dragon's Gold
Serpent's Silver
Chimaera's Copper
Orc's Opal
Mouvar's Magic

 

The E.S.P. Worm
The Ring

 

WITH FRANCES HALL
Pretender

 

WITH RICHARD GILLIAM
Tales from the Great Turtle

(Anthology)

 

WITH ALFRED TELLA
The Willing Spirit

 

WITH CLIFFORD A. PICKOVER
Spider Legs

 

WITH JAMES RICHEY AND ALAN RIGGS
Quest for the Fallen Star

 

WITH JULIE BRADY
Dream a Little Dream

 

WITH JO ANNE TAEUSCH
The Secret of Spring

 

WITH RON LEMING
The Gutbucket Quest

PIERS ANTHONY

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK · NEW YORK

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

CLIMATE OF CHANGE

Copyright © 2010 by Piers Anthony Jacob

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-2353-8

First Edition: May 2010

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Introduction

  
1.
Hero's Dilemma

  
2.
Haven's Curse

  
3.
Craft's Strategy

  
4.
Rebel's Dream

  
5.
Keeper's Quest

  
6.
Hunt

  
7.
Ambush

  
8.
Revelation

  
9.
Decision

10.
Language

11.
Legend

12.
Special Child

13.
Princess

14.
Hunger

15.
City Island

16.
Botany Bay

17.
The Vision

18.
Sacrifice

19.
Musa Dagh

20.
Bounty Hunt

Author's Note

In school I hated history classes. This was ironic, because the study of human history has been a hallmark of my later life. So what was the problem in school? It was that a school's idea of history was lists of the names and dates of kings, the dates of battles, and maybe some lists of products of the times. Things to memorize. I was never good at memorization.

So the kind of history I liked was ancient, before there were names and dates. The problem was that there were no classes in that. So I had to research it myself. But there were huge gaps. Here is a typical example: modern man emerged from Africa about 100,000 years ago. Then he expanded throughout the rest of the world about 50,000 years ago. What happened in between? It was a mystery. It aggravated me.

Now at last we have a hint: it was the climate. Mankind was spreading, but then came the Mt. Toba volcanic eruption, 74,000 years ago, of a scale we have never seen in historic times. It blotted out the sunlight and obliterated perhaps 99 percent of human life, and I think all of it outside of the home territory of Africa. Mankind had to recover and start over after that setback, from a far smaller base. This time there was no eruption of that magnitude, and he succeeded in colonizing the world, though constantly affected by the weather.

I also have a broader idea of history than conventional texts do. I see it as a process dating from when mankind separated from the apes,
several million years ago. When he left the trees, walked on two feet, learned to use tools, started wearing clothing, and learned to talk. I believe that the phenomenal tool of language powered his explosive increase in brain size. That brain made it possible for him to conquer the world, once he learned how to use it.

There were other mysteries. Why did he lose his fur, so that he had to replace it with clothing? Why did human women, alone of all mammals, develop permanent breasts that weren't needed for feeding her babies?

Okay, such things have been addressed in the prior volumes, but here's a spot summary. That burgeoning brain needed to be kept cool, especially when people insisted on going out in the equatorial African sun at noon. They went out, in significant part, because few other animals could; they would die in the heat. Thus foraging was better, because of reduced competition. Walking erect helped by diminishing the amount of the body exposed to the sun, but it wasn't enough. So the loss of fur and the development of copious sweating made the skin the most efficient cooling system in the animal kingdom.
That's
what air-conditioned the brain. At night or in winter clothing was used to keep the body warm; it was easier to do that, than to cool an active furry body.

And breasts. When people walked on two feet, it was a special challenge for the youngest children, because of the constant delicate balancing act required. It would take a couple of years for them to get the hang of it, and longer to become really fleet. But a hungry lion would not wait two years before pouncing. So the mother had to carry her baby. That meant she could not run as fleetly herself, and it inhibited her foraging for food. She needed help, such as by a man. In the normal animal scheme, a male sees a female as good for only one thing. It takes a minute or so, and then he goes on about his business. How could the human female get him to stay close longer than that one minute?

Well, she found a way. She did it through sex appeal. She made herself seem perpetually breedable, so that he was constantly attracted to her, wanting to spend his minute not just once a year but several times a day. Men are hardwired to want to breed any available breedable
woman, often. She concealed her estrus—that is, when she was fertile and could become pregnant, so that he could not cherry-pick his time.

But what about her breasts? Mammals use them to feed their infants, and once the baby stops nursing, those mammaries shrink back to token size and the female is breedable again. Full breasts are a turnoff, because she can't be bred while nursing. The human woman couldn't get rid of her breasts to make herself look sexy, because her unfed baby would die. Here was perhaps the most significant challenge: to convert that turn-off signal to a turn-on signal, so as to conceal her time of nonfertility—which was obvious as long as those big breasts were evident—and to make the man desire not the absence of breasts but the presence of them. A 180-degree turn.

Somehow she managed it. Maybe it was that those women who did not attract the constant attention of at least one man did not survive. So surviving boys were the sons of fathers who liked full breasts, contrary to their former self-interest. Men who bought into the fiction of breedability, though they had to know better. Thus breasts became potent sexual lures, and women used them freely to keep men close. You will see it throughout this novel: when a woman flashes her breasts, the man notices and is drawn to her. This is true right up to the present time. Men want to look at women's breasts, to feel them, to kiss them, and to have sex with bare-breasted women. The reason is historical.

But how many school history texts have that discussion? They seem to prefer to keep breasts out of sight and out of mind. I concluded that if I wanted a book to show my kind of history, I would have to write it myself. Thus this GEODYSSEY series, concluding with this volume. Oh, sure, there are some dates and places and names, but generally only to help set the scene. The essence is in the stories. I am a storyteller, and this too is part of the development of the species: storytellers kept children close and quiet during dangerous times, and helped them increase their vocabularies and their imagination, and to learn the nature of their culture. Storytellers were always historians as well as entertainers. So I am merely returning to our origins.