Hope of Earth (5 page)
Authors: Piers Anthony
They took rocks and bashed at the joints connecting the bones, breaking them apart. They collected all the best bones, wrapped their arms around bundles of them, and carried them toward the nearby river. That was safer, because most predators did not like to fight in the water, especially when there were crocodiles there. But staffs would drive away crocodiles too, if the animals weren’t too hungry. They had a large cache of stones there, making it far more defensible. The whole business was somewhat chancy, but the reward was great: an excellent meal that would invigorate them for days. Jes knew that Flo, especially, appreciated it, because the first meal of marrow had strengthened her enormously, and she had lived and slept better after it.
They carried the bones to the river, where they drank deeply and set up the stones to crack them open. All of them worked at it, though the two youngest children weren’t able to do it by themselves, and needed help. The inner meat was delicious; they all had rapidly developed a taste for its richness.
At last, sated, they marched back to their home cave, following their marked path so that there were no missteps. There they lay down and slept, though it was not yet night. They rarely ate here, because it was too much work to haul food all the way back from the plain. But they did have a pile of stones by its entrance, and a number of staffs inside. They felt secure here.
Jes was especially pleased. Their experiment with the vultures was a success; they had located a fresh kill, and gotten all the marrow from it. Animals were always getting killed, so there were likely to be more such opportunities on other days. In between they could forage, as they always had. Their situation had improved. Because Ned had figured out that there was good food in bones.
Jes woke when Flo got up early and left the home cave. Jes, sensitive to her sister’s condition, got up and followed her. Flo had evidently thought to go alone, because of what she had to do, but seemed to be glad to have her younger sibling along. Flo was heavy on her feet, and the descent from the high cave was precarious despite the clear path they had made. Paths were good, very good, but if they made the one to their lair too easy, other animals might use it. Like hyenas. But with Jes helping her, Flo made it down without mishap.
“Baby come,” Jes said as they walked out onto the plain, holding their staffs.
“Baby come,” Flo agreed. “Keep no.”
Jes was surprised. “Keep no?”
“Need man,” Flo said.
Because a baby was just too much to handle alone, Jes realized. Flo might die trying to maintain it, and the baby would die too. But if she threw it away, Flo could grow strong again, and live. Jes understood another reason Flo didn’t really want to keep the baby: it had been put in her by the rape. It seemed to take a man to put a baby in a woman, and the baby of a bad man was not worthwhile.
They followed the path to the dying place, where old people were left when they stopped walking and breathing, safely away from their normal sleeping and foraging regions. This distance stopped the smell, and allowed the dead to be forgotten quickly. Jes didn’t see any bones lying around, but she wasn’t looking for them. The hyenas and dogs would have scattered them anyway. She didn’t much like death when it happened to people.
Flo found a by-path leading to a forested section, and within that region was a pleasant grassy glade. This was suitably private and comfortable. She put her hands on the trunk of a small tree at the edge of the glade, and held on to it, supporting herself. She spread her feet wide, straddling a declivity between two large roots. She squatted, letting her hands slide down the tree. Then she began to breathe deeply and push her breath out slowly under great pressure.
Jes stood somewhat awkwardly, not knowing what to do. This process frightened her, but she wanted to know about it. She knew that babies came out of people, but had never actually seen it happen. Was it like defecating? It did seem to be the same general region of the body. That was where the bad man had put it in.
For some time, nothing seemed to happen. Flo continued to squat and breathe, facing the tree. Then she started pushing harder, and the cleft between her legs widened.
Suddenly there was a rush of fluid from her, splashing on the ground. Alarmed, Jes stepped forward, but Flo didn’t seem to be concerned. Her eyes were closed, and she was still breathing heavily, bearing down. It didn’t seem to be blood, so maybe it was all right.
Flo began to groan, and the groans rose in pitch to become small screams, but still Jes didn’t know what to do. She stood on one foot and then on the other, as if she could walk to wherever she needed to be to help.
The screams faded. Flo opened her eyes. “Moss,” she said, as if this were routine.
Jes ran around the glade, gathering up handfuls of the spongy moss that grew at the bases of trees. She brought back an armful. “Where?” she asked.
“Under.”
So she dumped it under Flo’s spread bottom, and straightened it, realizing that it was to cushion the fall of the emerging baby. The baby would be left here to die, but maybe Ho didn’t want to hurt it directly. Jes could understand that; the idea of hurting a baby appalled her.
As Jes finished, Flo started breathing deeply again. Jes remained on her knees, not knowing whether to retreat. Flo bore down, screaming—and her cleft widened into a circle. Something dark appeared in it, pushing through. It was the baby’s head! Jes reached out to catch the baby, so it wouldn’t fall headfirst on the ground. Flo screamed again, and heaved, and the head pushed slowly through. It seemed impossible that the hole could open wide enough for a whole baby to pass, but it was happening. Then, much faster, the rest of the baby came, dropping into Jes’s hands. It was so warm and wet and slippery that she almost dropped it; she grabbed harder, and must have hurt it, because it shuddered and then gulped and began to cry.
“Cut,” Flo gasped, still holding on to the tree.
Now Jes saw the cord extending from the baby’s belly back up into Flo. She laid the baby down in the damp moss and brought out her bit of sharp stone. She sliced it across the cord several times until the cord separated. Then, remembering what she had heard, she looped the length of cord around and knotted it near the baby’s little belly.
Flo, meanwhile, hauled herself up, took a few steps to another tree, then strained again. More was coming out of her, and now it looked like blood. Jes started to get up, but Flo cried, “No!” So Jes took some dry moss and used it to mop and clean the baby, wiping the blood and waxy smears off it. Now she realized that it was a girl, tiny but perfectly formed. How awful to leave her here to die! But she reminded herself why: Flo had no mate, and their band was weak, and so they could not support a child. If she kept it, the baby would die, and Flo might die too, trying to nurse it when she was unable to forage enough to feed herself. That would hurt them all. So it had to be left here. Jes hoped they would not be able to hear its crying, from the home cave.
Jes cleaned the tiny feet, and saw a mark between the first and second toes of the left foot. It looked like a bit of leaf caught there, and she tried to clear it out, but it was actually a discoloration of the skin. Well, no one would notice it, there. Not that it mattered, in a baby destined to die. But it was sad, somehow, to think of trying to hide a baby’s blemish, and it not living long enough for it to matter. Jes felt her tears starting. She wished that she could take the baby, but knew that it would be even worse for her to try, because she had no breasts and couldn’t nurse it.
Flo finished her business, and cleaned herself off with some other moss. She came over to look once at the baby. She was crying too. Then she turned around and walked away, back along the path.
Jes took one more longing look at the baby, then got up and followed Flo. They cried together as they returned to the cave. As they came in sight of it, Flo paused to wipe her fur and face clean. Then she put a neutral expression on her face and marched on. Jes did the same.
But as they were about to enter, Flo stopped. Her tears flowed again. “Can’t,” she said, and turned.
Jes didn’t argue. She followed Flo back to the glade, secretly relieved. Maybe she could help forage for the baby. Maybe it would be her child too. At least it wouldn’t die. Not right away.
But when they came up to the place, the baby was gone. The stained moss remained, but there was no sign of the tiny girl. Someone or something had already taken her.
Flo uttered a muted sob and searched all around the glade, but there was nothing. That meant that a person must have taken the baby, because an animal would have devoured her, leaving blood and bones. So maybe the little girl would live after all, having a mother who could support her.
At last Flo gave up her fruitless search and turned again for the cave. She was crying, but not in quite the same way as before. There was a tinge of hope in it. Jes hoped that hope was justified.
Homo habilis had made a fundamental shift of lifestyle. He had found a more reliable source of high-energy food, but it required special abilities. He needed to spot fresh carcasses, and to reach them promptly enough to get whole bones, and to crack those bones open. This meant fighting off some of the other predators, and represents the first consistent use of tools we know of: the stone used on the bones. Probably stones were the least of his technology, as noted before; wooden tools and weapons would have been far easier to make and use. Would a sharp stone actually have been used to cut an umbilical cord? That is a stretch, but a creature smart enough to carve meat might do it. Scavenging also meant carrying, so as to be able to complete the operation safely. Because bipedalism freed the hands for such things, it was possible; but more intelligence was needed for such organization. There was now a greater premium on brains. That meant the body’s mechanisms for cooling body and brain had to become stronger. Thus sweating increased, and fur thinned further, as it could afford to do as long as the species remained vertical, catching the wind while avoiding the noon sun. The prior “Geodyssey” volumes assumed the validity of the Aquatic hypothesis, wherein a period in water caused mankind to shed his fur and develop subcutaneous fat; this one does not Mankind appears to have become furless in order to cool his burgeoning brain. But there were further complications of both bipedalism and loss of fur, leading to other remarkable developments.
T
RIPLE
P
LOY
When mankind became bipedal, he surely didn’t anticipate the chain of consequences. A major one related to the female of the species. A baby takes perhaps twice as long to learn to walk on two feet as it would for four feet, and this extends the time it is dependent on its mother. She had to carry it much of the time, nursing it as she held it in the crook of her arm. The larger brain and slower development of the child extend that time of extreme dependency further. This places a burden on the mother. As the species progressed, this burden increased—and eventually human women started having babies at shorter intervals than other species did, so that there could be several children dependent on one mother. Nursing drained her physically, and she had to take in more nourishment herself to provide for her baby, while having such a family restricted her from going out to forage. At the same time, Homo habilis progressed, about two million years ago, to Homo erectus, with a division of labor occurring. The male went out to hunt and fight; the female foraged and took care of the children. It was no longer possible for a mother to raise her child by herself She had to have the regular help of a male, for protection and food for herself and her children. She may have needed a monogamous relationship, or at least a way to be sure of the regular presence of a male, in addition to the support of the tribe. While it made reproductive sense for a father to facilitate the survival and progress of his children, this was not a notion that came naturally to the average male. His reproductive strategy had always been to sow his seed as widely as possible, sniffing out the fertile females, and leave the care of the offspring to their mothers. But it made little reproductive sense to sire many offspring who died because the mothers were unable to support them. Thus it was necessary for the woman to find a way to compel the man’s constant attention despite his polygamous instinct, and necessary for the man to modify his ways somewhat. This was, in its subtle fashion, the onset of a battle of the sexes that continues today. Men and women are not really at war, but they do have fundamentally different strategies of survival and reproduction, and compromise is essential. For this engagement, the woman set aside the compulsion of periodic pheromones and developed perhaps the most formidable arsenal of visual, emotional, and behavioral devices any species has seen. It was the triple ploy.
New evidence is pushing the dates of Homo erectus much further back, as far as 1.8 million years ago in China and southeast Asia. Scavenging may have led naturally to hunting—why wait for your carcass?—and hunting enabled mankind to obtain food anywhere he went, as long as there were animals who could live on vegetation that human beings couldn’t eat. So this change of strategy may have opened much of the rest of the world to mankind. However, those groups that lacked the numbers or ability to hunt effectively could still have done well enough by scavenging, the old stand-by, so probably Erectus did both. If the forward fringe of settlement advanced just one mile per decade, in a hundred thousand years it would extend 10,000 miles. Thus Homo erectus could have colonized virtually all of habitable Asia in that time, and may have done so. The setting is Java, 1,500,000 years ago.