CHAPTER 23
Erectids
They had learned a few things from their experience with the Neanderthals. Once Noxon identified which paths belonged to Erectids, he chose an apparent settlement site that was just over a low rise from a very comfortable hotel. The only thing separating them was a hundred meters and a million and a half years.
It was April at the hotel—the rainy season, so there were plenty of rooms available and not a lot of observers. It was a simple matter to leave the hotel, cross a little-used road, follow a walking path over a rise till they were in sight of the little river, and then, when they were out of sight from the hotel, link hands and jump back to the exact time they chose.
They chose to visit the Erectids during the dry season, so even if they arrived wet with rain, they were dry soon enough.
Erectids built no permanent structures, and because they still had a considerable amount of body hair, they did not particularly seek out shade. They knew better than to live right beside the stream—too many animals gathered there to drink, day and night, but especially at dawn and dusk. Better to be a little ways off.
The Erectids organized themselves for protection, and they needed it constantly. Hyenas, savage and relentless, arrived at different times and from different directions, but they did not miss a day. Their favorite prey was untended babies of any mammal species—enough meat to be worth catching, yet small enough to grab and carry off for later dining.
That meant that Wheaton got to observe them in defensive action all the time. When the men were in camp, they used stones and sharpened sticks—not stone-headed spears, not yet—to repel the hyena incursions. But when the young, strong hunters were gone, the adult women, the old folks, and the older children were fierce and savage in defense of the babies.
Noxon loved to watch the babies and toddlers. Walking was already a skill the little ones aspired to from a very early age; Wheaton said that it was a necessity because Erectid arms were already too short to walk on all fours the way chimps and gorillas did.
The little ones crawled and then walked as soon as they could, exploring farther and farther from their mothers—their sole source of food, when they were so young, so they never quite lost sight of her. No wonder the hyenas, watching from a distance, grew hopeful. The little ones weren’t exactly fearless, but what they had were monkey fears—spiders bothered them more than animals that were trying to eat them.
But the alertness of the adults and older children never flagged. The Erectids had somehow marked out just how far a child could be allowed to roam before someone swooped in to carry it back to safety, and by the time a child was walking, he or she knew just how far was considered safe. This didn’t mean that they never crossed over that invisible line—but as soon as they approached it, they would begin checking to see if any adult was watching them. For the surest way to get adult attention was to stray beyond the line. But the children themselves had no desire to cross the line and actually get away with it—that would be dangerous. They knew that they should only “go too far” when someone older would be sure to notice and rescue them.
The babies also tussled with each other, the males constantly practicing for later struggles—warfare with other tribes, contests with animals, but, most importantly, battles for supremacy within the tribe.
For this Erectid tribe was still divided between alpha and non-alpha populations. They were on the verge of the forest, where dry dead trees showed that the wooded land had once reached much farther out into the savannah. The dead trees provided the savannah-dwellers with fuel for their fires and sticks for their prodding weapons; yet it wasn’t so very far to walk into greener woods, where the leaf-eating branch of the tribe still lived with the alpha male and his harem of closely-watched females.
But it was the group that lived fulltime on the savannah, in the grassland, dealing with predators, walking upright all the time, hunting for their food, twisting grasses into twines and weaving them into baskets—they were the ones that Professor Wheaton insisted they must watch. “Because these are the ones heading toward becoming humans.”
“Not because they want to,” said Deborah. “It just happens when they aren’t paying attention.”
“Less than two million years till the tee shirt,” said Ram Odin. “And starflight.”
“But right now they don’t have the slightest interest in either,” said Deborah. “They just want to eat, pee, get laid, and keep the babies alive.”
“My little girl,” said Professor Wheaton. But he didn’t look at her. He only watched the vids they had taken of camp life.
They only visited the camp while slicing time—invisibility was essential. But they set up video cameras and changed out the memory cards several times a day.
“I don’t see the point,” said Ram. “You can’t show them to anybody. You can’t use them to prove anything you might write about.”
Wheaton didn’t even bother to answer.
“Father’s already at the peak of his profession,” Deborah explained to Noxon later. “He doesn’t need to publish this stuff. It just makes him happy to know it. He and I will watch these vids later. He’s already told me to erase them when he dies.”
They did not visit sequential days. From the Erectids’ paths, Noxon knew that this encampment remained for three years, before prey animals grew too sparse and they moved on. So each day, they visited a different point in time, noticing how the children had grown, how courtship patterns had changed.
“Not monogamous yet,” said Wheaton. “But it’s starting. Repeated pairings between the same couple. And because females have to be larger and stronger to defend against hyenas, they’re also strong enough to resist being kidnapped and sequestered.”
“Raped,” Deborah corrected.
“‘Raped’ carries criminal connotations,” said Wheaton. “Because of the progress the Erectids are making, we can afford to criminalize it now, must do so. But they inherited chimplike behavior patterns in which rape was one of the few ways around the dominance of the alpha male. It was the only way non-alphas could get their genes into the next generation.”
“And now we still can’t expunge that old pattern,” said Deborah to Noxon. “Even though ‘kidnap-and-sequester’ has been criminalized in most cultures for thousands of years.”
“Civilization only became possible as monogamous pair-bonding emerged,” said Wheaton, “which it’s only just starting to do in this tribe. The females are getting a real advantage from being larger, and in a while they’ll be in a position to start objecting and making their objections stick. Besides, alpha males can tolerate a little genetic insertion by stealthy beta males, but an uxorious male has only one mate, and he can’t afford any genetic imposition from other males. Our Erectids are just taking their first steps on the road to sapience and civilization.”
“And even then, alphas and stalkers and rapists still keep popping up.”
“Because those behaviors still succeed, reproductively, often enough to keep the genes active.” Wheaton held out his hands, as if asking for something. “Give ’em a break. These kids are still sixty or seventy thousand generations away from equal treatment of the sexes.”
“‘These kids,’” said Ram.
“Kids with a new car. Just learning how to pilot this upright body.” Wheaton turned away, finished with discussion of an issue he must have resolved in his own mind decades ago. “Noxon, we’ve observed and recorded nearly their whole time at this site. Can we please follow them on a hunt?”
“They run for a living. We can’t keep up with them, especially not if we’re slicing time, which makes them faster, us slower. None of us is fit enough to stay with them on a hunt.”
“Pick a short chase,” said Deborah. “We’ll saunter to the kill site, and then you’ll bump us back in time to when the prey arrives with our friends in hot pursuit.”
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p; “So all you want is to be there for the kill,” said Noxon.
“They always leave the females behind. I’ll be the first woman to witness their triumph. See if the stories they tell about it are true.”
“They don’t tell stories,” said Wheaton.
“They move their mouths,” said Deborah. “They’re anthropes. They must be lying.”
There was no sound in sliced time, so as long as they remained invisible, they couldn’t tell whether the sounds the Erectids made were anything like language.
“There’s one kill site we could drive to,” said Noxon. “It’s near a public parking lot.”
“Even better,” said Ram. “We astronauts are so out of shape, after sitting around in a starship for a few years.”
“You should see the shape your twin is in, after going in and out of stasis for eleven thousand years.”
“He’s still alive,” said Ram. “Good for him.”
The next morning they drove to the parking lot early. It was at a ranger station, and it was also a jumping-off point for photographic safaris. So there were plenty of other people. But they were all gathered around the hovercars that would carry them out into the savannah. Only one ranger noticed that the Wheaton group was heading out on foot.
“Not safe,” said the ranger. “The lions stay away from the station but not very far away. And they aren’t the only dangerous animals.”
“We aren’t going far. Just wanted a brief glimpse without a car around us.”
“There’s a reason we send people out in cars,” said the ranger.
“An excellent reason, and more than just one,” said Deborah. “I assure you I’m a coward, and I’ll have us back in ten minutes.”
“I won’t be keeping track of time,” said the ranger. “No matter how long before you come back, we will not send anyone out to search for you. With luck, we’ll find your bodies while your passports are still legible.”
Noxon smiled. “Now she’ll hold my hand very tightly, sir. Thank you.”
The ranger shook his head and moved away.
“He was really making sure we weren’t armed,” said Wheaton. “There are still people who think ‘safari’ requires that you bring home trophies from animals you killed yourself.”
“Whereas we only want to watch our ancestors bring down a . . . something,” said Ram. Then, to Noxon: “Do you know what the prey is?”
“Not sure,” said Noxon. “I mean, I can see glimpses of it. Might be ancestral to a gnu. Large grazer from a smallish herd, anyway.”
“And is it a weak one? An old one?” asked Wheaton.
“I don’t think so,” said Noxon. “They don’t go for the old and sickly, or the babies. Since they know how to smoke the meat to preserve it, it’s worth the extra work to bring down large, healthy prey. They have enough men to carry home most of the meat.”
“It’s pretty remarkable,” said Wheaton. “Males hunting cooperatively. Wish we could hear whether they talk to each other during the hunt.”
“I’ll jump us back without slicing,” said Noxon. “To five minutes or so before they arrive. If we hide, we can hear if they’re calling out on the approach.”
“Will you know if it’s language?” asked Wheaton. “I mean, the ability to translate that you got from the Wall on Garden—will it work?”
“I don’t know,” said Noxon. “If it’s a human language, then I’m supposed to be able to make sense of it. But who knows where that line is drawn?”
“It’s a good plan,” said Ram. “As long as we all remain very still, and hold hands continuously so that when we need to go invisible, Noxon can carry us along.”
“It’s more than that,” said Noxon. “When I start slicing, we have to move. We only become invisible if we’re in motion.”
“We’ve done this about ten times now,” said Deborah. “We know that.”
Noxon shook his head. “You know it, but it’s not a reflex for you, the way it is for me. I’ve had to drag you to get you moving several times.”
“Once,” said Deborah.
“She thinks because she has no eyes, she’s already invisible,” said Wheaton.
“Maybe I did when I was little,” said Deborah, “but I can see now.”
“The kill happens right over there. At that time, there must be a little gully, because the prey goes down a little and they take it on the uphill slope on the other side. Nothing deep, but it slows the prey down enough.”
“Where should we be watching as they approach?” asked Wheaton.
“The prey comes from over there,” said Noxon. “The wing men are there and there. The followers form a U shape right behind the prey. Most of the way, the prey kept leaving them behind, then stopping to breathe and rest and recover while they just kept jogging along. But the wing men—they’re real runners. Fast and steady, so the prey can never turn very far out of the direct line of the hunters behind them.”
“And where will we hide?” asked Ram. “Right now this is pretty open land.”
“Well, first we’ll hide by ducking down in the grass,” said Noxon, “so safari tourists won’t take a vid of us simply vanishing. And I won’t know for sure where we can hide from the Erectids till we’re in that time. Trees and bushes don’t leave clear enough paths for me to see them after five hundred years, let alone a million and a half.”
A minute or so later, holding hands, facing toward where Noxon could see the path of the approaching prey, they all sank to the ground and Noxon jumped them back in time.
It was almost a relief not to be slicing—to hear normal sounds and not be in that state of eerie deafness that Param had spent so much of her life in. Noxon had gotten used to it when he and Param were practicing together constantly, but since then it had grown strange and uncomfortable again. Now, in the million-year past, they could hear insects, could hear each other’s small noises.
“We don’t have to keep particularly silent right now,” said Noxon. “There are no predators near us, and no Erectids, either.”
“How long?” asked Wheaton.
“Getting impatient?” asked Ram.
“Father was born impatient,” said Deborah. “With everything and everybody except me.”
“Except you,” said Wheaton, right along with her. “She says that, but of course I was impatient with her all the time. What a little brat.”
“As bad as the disobedient little Erectids?” asked Deborah.
“Much worse, because you had such a mouth on you, and if you ever were getting the worst in an argument, you’d act extra blind. What a cheater.”
“How does a person act ‘extra blind’?” asked Deborah.
“Deliberately reaching out toward me but in a direction where you knew perfectly well I was not standing,” said Wheaton. “Deliberately tripping a little when you walked. Bumping into the furniture—but I noticed you always chose upholstered or lightweight items.”
“The real question,” said Noxon, “is whether ‘extra blind’ kept working for very long.”
“It worked every time,” said Wheaton. “Every single time.”
“That’s a lie,” said Deborah. “I never got my way.”
“But I felt horribly guilty about it,” said Wheaton.
“I didn’t want you to feel guilty, I wanted you to give in.”
“That wasn’t one of the options,” said Wheaton. “If I ever let you win you would have become a monster.”
“Instead, I thought I was being raised by one,” said Deborah.
Noxon could see that they meant what they were saying, to a point. But under it all was the clear message that they loved each other, that they had loved each other even then.
The conversation ended abruptly when they began to hear shouts from far out on the savannah.
“Shouldn’t we hide now?
” asked Deborah.
“Shhh,” hissed Noxon. “Let me hear their shouting.” He noticed that Wheaton was holding up a camera—vid with sound, Noxon assumed. So he could study their utterances later.
Not language, or at least not a language Noxon could understand. The cries were so short.
But then, as he watched, he could see how the men responded to the shouts—the wing men beginning to close in from the sides, the chasers sprinting. And then some of the cries began to have meanings. The leader—one of the chasers, the one with a bit of grey in his hair—was saying a word that meant “gully” and others that meant “run” and “catch.” Nothing like sentences, no syntax. Just commands, all of them. Even “gully” was a command.
“They know this land,” said Noxon softly. “They all know that there’s a gully up here, and they know they’ll catch the !a! there.”
“Catch the what?” asked Ram.
“Click tones,” said Wheaton. “It’s a language, and it uses clicks.”
“It’s words,” corrected Noxon. “No syntax. All commands. Time for us to hide. They’re moving pretty fast.”
He had been thinking about what he was hearing and seeing and it was already too late to keep from being seen. The nearest wing man had spotted them and had veered toward them. Now he would see them disappear. Noxon wondered what he would think he saw—a shape like what he would think of as “people,” but mostly hairless, and wearing fabrics. And Deborah’s artificial eyes. Now you see us, now you don’t.
Except that the wing man kept heading right toward them, looking at them instead of looking back at the prey animal. Was he merely remembering where they had been?
No. Deborah was fumbling with her sound recorder. She was not holding Ram’s hand. She was not slicing with them. She was completely visible to the wing man.
And while Noxon was focused on Deborah, the wing man brought up an arm. Noxon finally saw it because the facemask saw it and forced his attention from Deborah to what the Erectid hunter was doing. He had a fist-sized stone in his hand and he was bringing back his arm and before Noxon could come out of sliced time to shout at Deborah the stone was already in the air, moving faster than any bird—though not so quickly that the facemask could not bring every moment of its flight to Noxon’s attention.
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