The Scattering (17 page)

I unscrewed the lid of my coffee flask and, though the remains were cold, I drank the liquid down. As I now had the day, and therefore the requisite presence of UV, I decided that this was as good a time as any: I would open the vial, release its contents then immediately return to the POD, hopefully without being intercepted by any member of this group, or others, though it hardly mattered, I reasoned, if I was. All the years of planning, the years put into the invention of and enactments with the POD, the meetings with world experts, all our predictions and conclusions on the modern world's predicament – that humankind had brought its own planet to the brink of destruction – would culminate in this single act. (One release and it was done. The earth would be free of us. There would be no ‘man'. These early Homo sapiens would be wiped out. Whatever had brought about their leap in evolution, most likely the receding of the ice, would never again matter to archaeologists because there would
be
no archaeologists, no humans, no such concept, even, as evolution as consciousness itself would not exist.) I readied myself.

The sun rose magnificently. A hawk-like bird flew overhead. I had observed it come and go a few times and presumed it came for the remains of the meat in the valley. It was in tracing the bird's slow circular path that I noticed the intense brightness of the sky. It had so little sea to reflect off that it was as white as the ice beneath it, and the pale light dazzled my eyes. All the summits were the same giddying white, barely discernable from the vast opalescence above, except that here and there were thin lines of green, which were the trees. The winds had eased by morning, and the air was again full of the sweet minty smell. In this new light I could see also that horses ran wild from one end of a further-off valley to the other. A small, thickset species, mostly piebald, a couple of tans. But nothing else stirred in the valley of the tribe. The tall male's body had been removed, and I could not help but wonder what way the group would mark this, if at all. I cleared up my things. As I made a crude attempt to clean my teeth in the new snow, I saw a female walking with a couple of pitchers – adapted from gourds of some description – in my direction. I quickly leaned in against the bank of cold earth. She climbed only a short way up then was gone from view. I heard splash sounds. I edged closer, not far from where she was, just a ledge or two above her on the mountainside, and the thunderous sound I'd heard the night before, that I'd supposed was a nearby ice storm, was, I realised now, a river, a waterfall, white and heavy with ice.

As the female left the gushing river, I heard activity once more in the valley. I looked down and saw a crowd gathering. One of the group's elders led a small dappled-grey horse, tethered to what appeared to be a rope made from plaited grass. He brought the horse to the cave where the females had interred the tall male's body. Two males carried the corpse, placed it across the horse and fastened it to the horse's belly with more of the grassy rope. The elder yanked the horse and slowly walked it in the direction of a lower valley, and the small crowd followed as if in a funeral procession. Well, it was a funeral procession. What had I expected? We knew that many ages of hominids had held funerals of sorts; but this was so easy to recognise, so close to my own experience of funerals, i.e. following the dead to some place of rest, that, again, I found myself quite stirred by this group. Just as I watched the last of them leave their circle of caves and stones (the female who had drawn the water, children with dogs), intending then to turn to the vial, I heard something rustle behind me. I did not have time to see what thing or beast it was, for a jagged, coruscating piece of quartz flashed slantwards across my eyes. I felt the warm trickle of blood fall to my tongue and everything went black.

*

When I awoke I saw that I was inside a cave. The ceiling and walls were lined with leaves, straw and wood. In the gaps I could see a thick mud, a kind of adobe. Skins of various animals hung from the walls, together with an assortment of gourds (some of which seemed to be dyed or painted), and many bunches of pungent herbs and dried flowers. I could hear a fire crackling, the slow patter of the snow. I moved my head towards my body and saw that I lay on a bed of pelts – bear, goat, fox. Across me was a large fur – soft – perhaps from a big cat or bear. I went to put my hand to my face and saw that both my wrists were tied to pieces of flint impaled into the ground. I raised my head and saw the flickers of a fire at the place I had seen the beast roasting.

I was naked under the furs. Some ointment with a herby, sage smell was on my forehead and eye. I reeked of it. As the fire outside spasmodically lit up the cave, I saw to my right a stone mortar where I supposed the herby ointment had been prepared. I suddenly thought of my backpack. I looked around as much as I was able but could not see it. I began to fret. Over and over the same thought: what if someone, one of these beings, had opened the bag and found the vial. Of course, it occurred to me then that if that were the case my work here would be done: the virus would be released and within forty-eight hours this tribe and I, and eventually all the tribes of the earth, would perish (though the plants and animals would survive). This was all well and good except that I had not yet fully decided upon certain things – whether to return if I could, how to release the virus exactly, and when. So that the disappearance of the bag and the vial now did not at all strike me as convenient. I began to panic. I felt shame. Shame that they would intercept such a poison, and not when I intended. And that I should feel such things now also began to trouble me.

I seemed to be raving, could feel myself flailing about. I saw shadows move inside the cave and huddled figures gather at the mouth of the entrance. Something rustled constantly inside. It sounded at times like the fluttering of wings. And once, I thought I saw the shadow of a winged demon on the wall. Time seemed to converge into one interminable sweat. I awoke and slept, awoke and slept. One night I heard birdsong – a full and haunting sound. It caused a momentary break in my fever as I was suddenly brought back to a happier, more certain time. I recognised the song from recordings I'd once listened to, for this species of bird had been wiped out long before my time: it was the strange and splenitive song of nightingales.

A cool hand pressed down on my forehead, a cold, wet cloth placed on my neck. I looked up and saw the young female the taller of the two males had been trying to protect that first night. She went to the mortar, crushed and pounded herbs with a pebble; she mixed the powder with water and warmed it with her breath. After spreading the mixture on my forehead, she lifted my head and squeezed a liquid from a sponge into my mouth. It tasted sweet; like a diluted honey or sap. I saw that her limbs were long and sallow, her hair dark and plaited, her eyes, green. I dozed slowly off to sleep and had no thought of the whereabouts of my backpack or the vial. For some inexplicable reason I thought only of my mother.

*

What seemed like a few hours later, though it may have been days or even weeks, I was awakened by the creature. I could hear its light, erratic walk across stones and implements within the cave. When it squawked and flapped its wings I was relieved, glad at least that it wasn't a wolf or worse. It was tawny with some white through its chest, and stared with pewter-coloured eyes straight at me. It seemed tame enough. The female who had nursed me sat in a corner huddled up under fur. She had fallen asleep, and not even the loud cry of the bird had woken her. It was then I saw my clothes – my jacket and trousers, on top of which seemed to rest my gun, lying up against where she slept. I wondered where the other gun had gone, and hoped it was still inside the backpack – wherever that was. I struggled against the two shards of flint fixing my arms to the earth. I felt stronger than the previous time I'd awoken and, bending my neck towards my right wrist, bit myself free and untangled my other bind – which was a mixture of wool and grass, and very tough.

It was freezing outside the furs and my thoughts raced. I crept to the pile of my things. My neck and shoulders ached, though there was a numbness in the upper-left part of my torso, which, I deduced, was as a result of the herbs the female had applied. In two or three swift movements I retrieved the pile without waking her. I quietly dragged on my shirt and trousers. I found my boots close to the furs where I'd lain and put these on. Finally, as I went to put on my jacket, the bird, which I saw now was a hawk by its size and imperial poise, flew to the corner where the female slept. It rested on her shoulder and eyed me. Suddenly, the female dived out of the corner and I was thrown back. She pointed a long (and rather sharp-looking) piece of rock straight at me. She indicated to sit back on the bed, which I did, then picked up the one thing I had not yet taken up from the furs. I whispered, forcefully: ‘please, no!' She laughed and, seeing my alarm at the sight of the gun in her hand, passed it from one hand to the other then tried to goad me by swinging it close to my face. I repeated: ‘please, please, no.' I immediately saw that she was not young but an adult of perhaps twenty or twenty-five years. I kept my silence and made no further attempt to leave. Evidently puzzled by my new calm, she thrust the gun onto me and sat back. I was shocked, though damned glad, too, that the gun had not fired in the ruckus. I soon saw why: somehow the barrel and nose had been beaten down, rendering the piece useless. My heart sank as I realised I was now among these beings without a weapon (at least until I could find my bag). I tucked the battered gun into my pocket. As I zipped up my jacket the female gasped, evidently transfixed by the two pieces of fabric becoming conjoined. She came towards me but I pushed her aside, not wanting to leave the cave gunless
and
with a broken zip (and so risk dying of the cold). I shooed her as if she were a small animal and she backed off into her furs, afraid. With enormous effort, I got to the mouth of the cave, moved aside the large pelt that covered it. The moon was pear-coloured and full, the sky clear and immense with stars. I felt my head swoon. A new, stronger sweat broke, and I felt as hollow as the gourds that hung from the ceiling and walls of the cave. Then a sudden coil of hunger in my lower legs, and I fell over, weakly, back onto the bed of furs.

*

At first she fed me with crushed pistachios and a kind of sweet date. Later, she gave me flat, unleavened bread made from a cereal, perhaps wild wheat. As I gained strength there was meat – bitter, rough, gamey. As soon as I could move she bade me sit outside my dark asylum each day to take in the light and air. From here I would watch the tribe. Often I would see groups of males return with dead beasts; usually deer, boar, a bear once, two seals. And I remembered that the wide lake, huge as a sea, was not far away, maybe nine or ten miles east. I kept the backpack and the vial to the fore of my mind. That I and the others were still alive was a sign at least that the vial had not been found and tampered with, and was probably under several inches of snow somewhere. But where?

*

Sitting outside the cave, as weak as I was I quickly came to consider that perhaps we, my peers and I, had been wrong in our studies of these early Homo sapiens. They were as graceful as any man or woman I knew. Their facial bone-structure was wider than my own, and though the terrain I had arrived in was an ice-mass which, by my time, would become the hot and arid Middle East, they resembled, especially around the eyes, Inuits, or some tribe from the North, from Lapland perhaps. There were times I would look out at this tribe of snow-dwellers and consider that I was among a tribe very close in ways and appearance to my own. As they would pass, the tribes-people would acknowledge me, as if they were aware of how I'd come to be there. I did not see again the short, thickset male I'd seen fight with the tall male who, I now believed, had been my nurse's brother, though I could not be sure of this. (It was just that the older female who'd cried that first night seemed to be my nurse's mother by her absolute likeness and attention to me.) She (the older female) would work close by me as I sat snug in my bearskin outside the cave (usually scanning the sky for birds and wondering about migratory patterns), keeping her eyes on me like a sentinel as her quick hands skinned some animal, the entrails of which would gush a carmine-coloured river across the white snow. There were many females in the area of the valley in which I was domiciled, including my nurse, (though the males kept close account of my convalesence). Each day the women would comb down pelts, and from these make clothes and the caves' furnishings.

I was taken one day from my study of the sky above the valley when the younger female pressed firmly on my shoulder, as if urgently seeking my attention. One of the elders stood beside her, his face markedly wizened. He stared down at me with bright, suspicious eyes. He touched my head, examined the healing gash. I did not react or resist for I was well aware of my weakness, that my limbs were heavy and thin. The elder pulled my head from side to side, and somehow I knew he meant me no harm. He turned to the female and spoke. It was some miracle of language
*
, as fluent as my own. We had supposed language the last of the major transitions towards modern man, and here it was, passing between these two primitive beings, perfectly musical and structured. It was as far as could be from the sound of apes and chimps (with their unorganised squeals and cries), and was rich and detailed, rather like the sound of Korean or Japanese with similar drawls and drags and, to my English-attuned ear, had irregular silences. It seemed to be a language that was rarely resorted to (each time I would hear them speak it I would be thrown by its strangeness and would be reminded of something William Burroughs had once said, that ‘language is a virus from outer space'). For it was as if this tribe preferred physical action, as I myself had witnessed here. But this was different. The female and elder were trying to explain something to each other and, I realised, to me. (I could not help but feel sad that whatever language they spoke, it was lost now to my world, like an unheard symphony or story.) ‘Mayga,' the elder said to me, over and over, while pointing to my gashed skull. He walked in front of me carrying a stick, and stabbed it into the snow. He drew a circle, and within it an elementary map of the valley. Outside the circle he drew a shape, as common in my world as a symbol of evil and danger as it seemed to be in his. It was the body of a man with a maze of horns – antlers – on his head. He went from my head to the figure in the snow. His message was clear: someone was outside the tribe, and this someone had gashed my head open. Quite likely the squat figure I had seen kill the tall male that first night.