The Scattering (18 page)

*

I began to gain weight and take walks to build up my strength, sometimes to the edge of the valley. This would also give me time to go over in my mind who I was and why I was here at all: I'd been elected to my task by my peers, the modern world's leading scientists – ecologists, paleontologists, biologists, environmentalists. In the end, the premise for our decision (which we, as a group, had made unilaterally, without the consent of corporations and governments) had been simple. By 2320 the earth's population had swelled to over thirty billion. Apart from polar regions, most rural areas had been urbanised. The world was dying from man's relentless anthropocentricity, and our conclusion was that if the modern world must die then best it not be born at all. Extinction at this point of the tribe's development would mean that a far lesser number of humans would perish, by some billions. (Because those billions would not have been born.) And with the combined invention of the virus
^*
 
and the Personal Odyssey Drive® system, we had finally found a way to ensure the
earth
would survive. (Whereas, in my time, we were taking the earth with us.) The task had fallen to me to come back to the snow and ice from which mankind had emerged, to Qal'at Jarmo, on the edge of the Fertile Crescent, from where we had begun our journey towards the destroyed planet I'd left behind. In these very mountains, modern archaeologists had found advanced implements – sickles, cutters. The tribes at Jarmo were considered the first sustained settlements on earth. Around them other tribes would watch and develop. Our hope was that from Jarmo the virus would circulate as coldly and quickly as an ice stream, with eventual global impact.

Had I doubts about the project? None. I had watched the most sophisticated societies on the modern earth implode. I'd visited extinguished cities as my forbears had visited Pompeii, walked their silent streets. (I'd seen the Hudson myself, the morning of the New Jersey chemical spill, had travelled by helicopter to see it from the air: a huge film of dead fish had covered the entire surface of the water so that it appeared like a vast bright Jello, stiff and unmoving.) As important animal species began to die out, it did not take my peers and I long to work out what would happen next: catastrophe, not just for humans but for the whole earth. And there was another, rather unpalatable, realisation: that we as a species were not unlike a virus ourselves in our modus operandi, one that could not conceive of its own toxicity. We believed we were divine, which was our trick; how we convinced ourselves to continue. In my age we had at last seen through to that trick. Therefore, throughout my trip I had been completely
convinced
of my task. I had seen the bee species die out from complex mites and plagues; observed with my own eyes the last of the Pine Island Glacier turn to meltwater. The world had not heeded the warnings of previous generations and was about to expire. I knew what needed to be done, and like some kind of Prometheus in reverse, I was prepared to do it.

But I was a suicide bomber without a bomb: I needed to find the vial. I had begun to wish that I'd shaken the virus loose when I'd had the chance. If the earth was to have a future, I knew I had to do what I'd come to do, and soon: destroy this tribe and the tribes of the earth before Homo sapiens made their speedy and terrific leap forwards, which they were about to do. Soon, the tundra would leave much of the earth, now a great glacial plain. In a thousand years hence the New Stone Age would begin here and in Egypt. In less than four thousand years Mesopotamia would give rise to numerous towns and cities, Newgrange would welcome the winter solstice, Stonehenge would be erected and, soon after, the Pyramids would be built. Then the Chaldeans would map the skies. And all that came after would furiously devour the planet. Once I had cast the contents of the vial into the day, the earth would survive, though mankind would not.

I had lost time. Those I had left behind in the world would see it continue its rapid descent into a new dark age, and they would wonder why I had not put an end to it all; why they could not close their eyes on the devastated world and wake as atoms and molecules in the morning. Now they would awaken as they had always done, my beloved mother, those friends of mine – good people, scientists, lab technicians, cleaners, actors, poets. It had become obvious to them and me that hope had died for human beings, that the most dignified thing we could do was let the earth have the earth and exit gracefully, and that it would have been better for the planet if modern man had not been born, had not developed at all. Yet here I was, weak and doubtful in an ancient valley; my days spent watching young birds make their first flights across the spring sky. I could, if I tried hard enough, forget that the modern world awaited its ending, its swift unbirthing. I could. But I would not.

*

The air was milder than it had been, and across all the mountains I saw that the snow had melted in places. Patches of saffron-coloured gorse began to emerge across the hills.

I called the younger female Dara. It sounded like the name I'd heard others in the valley call her. It seemed to suit her. Whenever I would wander away from the cave she would emerge from her own and watch me, her eyes beaming with pride in my growing strength. Once, catching me following the hawk's lofty movements, I thought she might have seen something of my plans to leave the valley (one way or another). She called to the bird with pursed lips; a loud, shrill sound. The hawk was her own bird and answered her immediately, landing on her outstretched arm. She brought it to me. The bird's speckled feathers heaved and vibrated as it beheld me with a familiarity that made me feel strange – as if I belonged here in some way.

A short while after the day of the snow-drawing, Dara urged me to walk with her into the mountains. We climbed slowly. As the air thinned, my legs felt weak and we rested on top of a hill. Below us I could see tribe members hunting, some gathered wood or plants, and the valley seemed to me as busy as any modern town. I saw, too, that where upland fields had begun to thaw, wild grain grew in abundance. Also emmer and einkorn and a primitive kind of barley. Goats and their kids roamed freely around the summits, and I realised that these animals were not yet farmed – merely killed from time to time for meat, or occasionally milked. This tribe was just at the beginning of its farming genesis; they took only what they needed. They buried their dead, danced and sang, had a primitive kind of art – but had not yet been so numerous in number that they would turn to the earth and command it to feed them. This had not yet happened. And with the (dark) plans I had for this place, I was loath to assist them with any kind of encouragement or instruction in animal husbandry.

We walked further into the mountains. The range was long and extended southwards for hundreds of miles, as far as the landmass known in the modern age as Iran. Dara let the hawk fly off and it circled above us making cackling sounds. She had a wide smile, and clearly saw the land she looked upon as precious and beautiful. She seemed to alter up here, became more contemplative and private, and this surprised me as I had not expected a break, a gradation, in the emotions of this tribe. I had already seen their pain and grief – why should I be surprised at this female's sense of repose? She caught my look, a strange mixture, I suppose, of surprise and admiration. (I could feel everything inside me opening up, like a ripening fruit. I was, bizarrely, coming alive in this place. In this place that was the cold, less-developed past, filled with a savage but also more innocent, child-like people, with their stones and fires and fur and herbs, and, I realised, feeling dead – as my world had more latterly caused me to feel – had had its uses. Now was not a good time for my heart, my – for the sake of argument – ‘soul' to open, to thaw: because whenever I would find the vial I planned to use it.)

Our happy excursions into the mountains did not, however, last. One late-spring morning, the hawk having left us for its own fun and privacy, we heard below us in the valley an explosion of cries. Dara clung to me and I dragged her, weak as I was, to the ground. I gestured to her to be quiet as I peered over the bank. A group of about twenty males with blue and ochre markings on their faces and pelts, wielding axes and what looked like spears made from sturdy lengths of pinewood, had made their way down the mountainside. At the helm was a familiar figure: the short squat male, adorned now in beads, and necklaces of bones and teeth. There were antlers on his head. He was the male I'd seen the night I'd first arrived, and clearly the figure from the snow-drawing and, I realised, probably the same male who had gashed my head open. He led his group of marauders into the valley. We watched as the snow below us turned all shades of crimson. The antlered male searched where the women were. He looked perhaps for me, perhaps for Dara, whom he had fought over that first night. Some of the males threw stones – violently – in all directions. Then Dara let out an aching, breathless cry, as a burst of long, speckled feathers floated on the air, and the body of her hawk fell to the valley floor with a low but devastating thud.

*

Eventually, the invaders began to leave in the direction from which they came. I looked down to see nine or ten bodies lying scattered on the snow. I could feel Dara wriggle from my grasp and dart for the top of the ditch. When I pulled her down she began to cry and I urged her to be still. The floor of the ditch was soft and I saw that an oily, dark-red substance trickled underfoot. Even in the middle of all this mayhem, the environmentalist in me observed that the earth here was rich in fuel, and that this tribe had thankfully not yet learned to burn it. As I bent down to touch the resinous substance, I made my next extraordinary discovery: my backpack. I dragged it from its oily burrow and checked inside: the vial was still in the flask, and still inside its compartment was my gun – wet, but very much intact.

As members of the tribe began to return to the valley, howls of grief, loss, confusion echoed throughout the hills. Such sounds might have hailed from any modern war-scene: women and men screaming, long confusing silences, inappropriate laughter from children and the mad. As we approached, we saw that Dara's mother lay with the dead. Dara ran and flung herself down onto the bloody heap. More than ever, I could see the need to complete my mission here; our violent story had already begun. If there had ever been an Eden-like time on this earth, I was convinced it was not now and not here. Perhaps such a time had never existed on earth, at least not when hominids had been on it. It was clear that I needed to complete my task. I resolved to turn back and climb to the top of the mountain and release there the contents of the vial into the air. The day was bright and windy. The most perfect day on which to have found my backpack (and the vial). But I did not turn back.

The males of the tribe were gathering. They were pointing to the hills opposite. Dara was cradling her dead mother and hawk, her salty tears such that the ice around her had begun to melt. The males collected numerous long sticks procured from oak and pistachio trees, which they now flaked and made sharp. I thought they looked pathetic. The group who had come, led by the antler-headed male, was wilder, savage, far less domesticated, and so had less to lose. There was no match. Quickly, I had an idea. It was as if my modern self with all his cold clear thinking had suddenly awoken. I grabbed an oak branch, and, with a strand of grassy rope, I quickly made a crude-looking bow. The young males looked on, curiously. I took a smaller branch, sharpened its tip with flint – and this was now an arrow. I fired my crude bow-and-arrow at the snow and it went through at speed. The tribe quickly got to work. The females joined in, their deftness (as was evident from their work with the skins) bringing skill to the task, and production gathered pace. Within half an hour the invaders began to make their way once more into the valley. The tribesmen fired their crude arrows at the approaching gang. It was no use. Suddenly, the antlered male lunged at Dara. I did not think. I unzipped my bag, pulled out the gun, took aim and fired. The antlered male fell to the ground, his flesh desiccated onto the ice. One of the other invaders ran towards him. I fired again, and he too was blown aside. I fired two, three, possibly four more times. The gang rapidly dispersed, some on horseback. Others were captured by tribe-members and crushed with stones about the head, or impaled on their own spears. I ran towards Dara. She seemed dazed. The tribes-people flocked towards me, happy, elated, as if I was now their guardian or hero. I had interrupted a skirmish, something they had probably seen many times before (and which, without my interference, was likely to have resulted in far less carnage), and I should not have done. I felt sick. Surely it would have been better to have released the virus than to have shown them the gun and its power? But wasn't I going to release it anyway? (The truth was, I was confused. I had broken the number one rule in the mercenary's handbook and had become profoundly caught up, emotionally and otherwise, with ‘the mark'.)

Dozens of bodies, blood, dead animals: I had brought this.

A group of males gathered from the tribe; I heard them speak in their primitive singsong language and knew by its tempo (and the males' physicality) that their anger was fierce, their intent equal to it. They split off into smaller groups and followed the last of the invaders. My standing amongst the tribe was different now. Old males and females bowed their heads; hunters met me with suspicion, as if I had somehow usurped their power. Dara sat sobbing with the hawk. Before dark, I walked her to her own cave. When she had fallen asleep, I took the bird and buried it up by the ditch with the harebells and wild violets and the melodious song of the nightingales for company.