Genus Homo

by L. Sprague De Camp

  Table of Contents

  1 Cold Awakening

  2 Wilderness

  3 Blodgett's Gas

  4 After a Million Years

  5 . . . Of Men and Beasts

  6 Mandate of the People

  7 Reception Committee

  8 "Genus Homo"

  9 Tkluggl's Men

  10 Orientation

  11 Quiz Session

  12 The Gorillas' World

  13 Invasion

  14 The Pfenmll

  15 The Charge of the Pig Brigade

  16 The Sthog-Mith

  GENUS HOMO

  BY

  L. SPRAGUE de CAMP

  AND

  P. SCHUYLER MILLER

  Twenty-five men and women against a world of evolution gone mad! Here is the vivid story of their adventures and terrors - the monster in the forest - the city of giant beavers - and the secret of the incredible race that had supplanted mankind.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-232-7

  Copyright © 1950 by L. Sprague de Camp and P. Schuyler Miller

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  http://www.baen.com

  First Printing, June 1961

  1

  COLD AWAKENING

  Henley Bridger woke up.

  Stone was crashing on a sheet-metal drum, six inches from his ear. After a while it subsided to a crackling rivulet of gravel, and finally to silence.

  The lean chemist lay with his eyes closed. His brain felt muzzy and clogged, and there was a musty odor in his nostrils that shouldn't be there. He was on his back, with his right arm buckled under him. Something soft and heavy was sprawled across his thighs. Bridger opened his eyes.

  It was dark, but not so dark as he remembered. He was lying in the groove between a curving metal wall and a steel grating whose pattern was deeply imprinted in his back. He dragged at the arm under him, but it refused to move. Then he tried to sit up.

  A stab of pain made him grunt, and a wave of dizziness dropped him back hard against the wall. As it died away he lifted himself carefully on his good elbow and pulled his right arm out. He bent it experimentally and tried to twiddle its numb fingers, but they were as unresponsive as so many blobs of clay. In a moment, however, he felt the fiery ache of returning circulation. Hitching himself higher against the steel wall, Bridger poked at the thing across his legs.

  It squealed, and dropped with a thump into the darkness below. It lay there whimpering, its sniffles broken by the renewed rattle of gravel overhead. Bridger hauled his legs up and hugged his shins. His feet were asleep too. He felt light-headed as the devil, but little bits of memory were beginning to arrange themselves in some kind of order in his mind. He had been in a bus with a lot of other people, and the bus was in a tunnel. There had been an earthquake, or a landslide, or something. The bus had gone wild and climbed the tunnel wall. And then there had been a smell—a damned queer smell—like nothing he knew about. And he thought he knew smells.

  One thing more: "it"—the thing that had squealed—must be the fat, pink blonde from the seat ahead.

  By now Bridger's body was feeling more or less normal, but his face itched abominably. He reached up to scratch, and involuntarily jerked his hand away. He had a beard—a vast, muzhik-style beard that rippled down his vest for a good six inches. He wagged his head, and his hair swung down over his eyes in a long, ragged fringe like the mane of some Magyar poet. He felt the back of his neck, and visions of Buffalo Bill popped into his mind. Whatever had happened hadn't added to his social appeal. All that hair meant that a lot of time had passed. How fast does hair grow, he wondered? The rate of growth probably wouldn't remain constant, of course. Maybe you could integrate . . . He gave it up and tried to peer through the surrounding darkness. Those grey patches should be the windows of the bus.

  "Hey!" he called.

  The blond's voice quavered, "Wha—who's there?"

  "Are you all right?"

  "I—guess so." Then, "My hair's long!"

  "Um. Anybody with you?"

  "Oh!" Silence again, then another squeal and a tragic stage-whisper: "There's a leg! A m-man!"

  Bridger grunted. "Look out, I'm coming down." He swung his legs over the edge of the steeply-canted luggage rack, felt for a foothold on the back of a seat, and lowered himself stiffly to the floor. He came down on the blonde's plump leg and she jerked it from under him. He grabbed at the darkness and brushed a soft, bare cheek. Another woman! He found her wrist and felt a feeble, fluttering pulse.

  "Come here," he commanded. "Look after this woman. Wait—where's this leg you found?"

  Bridger didn't like the way the blonde giggled when they had to crawl over each other to exchange places. He turned his back on her and found the man, slumped down in his seat with a suitcase on top of him. Both hands were clasped over the valve of a small compressed-gas cylinder. The fingers were cold and rigid. The man was dead.

  Something stirred toward the front of the bus. "Hello!" Bridger called. "Who's there?"

  A high-pitched man's voice answered: Pilly—the ichthyologist. "Is that you, Bridger? What's happened?"

  "I don't know; some kind of accident." The chemist began to work his way forward along the slanting floor of the bus, hanging to the luggage rack. Twice he stumbled over bodies; one moved. Bridger didn't stop. One thing at a time was all he could manage now.

  Pilly was crouched in his seat, too terrified to move. Scherer, the big mammalogist, was huddled against him. Scherer was alive; at least, his heart was beating as strongly as it ever had. Bridger climbed around them and tried the front door of the bus.

  "Jammed," he said over his shoulder. "Here, help me get some of these windows open."

  The air in the bus had an unpleasant metallic tang that he couldn't place and didn't like. The first window opened with a protesting groan, but the rest wouldn't budge. Bridger started back along the aisle. The man he had stumbled over was sitting up, holding his head in his hands. He had been sick. The two women were huddled together on the floor, holding each other's hands and tittering hysterically. Bridger heaved hard and got up another window. "Pilly!" he called. "Slide outside and give me a hand with these people. We've got to get 'em out of here."

  It was all very awkward and not at all chivalrous. The damned women were all legs and arms and loose garments, that slipped and ripped when he tried to get hold of them. The blonde stuck fast in the window, and Bridger had to haul her back and peel off her fur coat before he could squeeze her through. Aroused by her indignant yells, the second man came stumbling through the darkness, and with Bridger's aid began to explore the bus.

  There were people everywhere, mostly women of all conceivable shapes and sizes. They had to be untangled from themselves and from each other, rubbed, slapped, and shaken into some semblance of consciousness, and shoved outside. At last they were done: Bridger dragged the last limp form down the aisle and hoisted it through the nearest open window. He followed, head first, his helper behind him.

  Light filtered through a ragged hole in the roof of the tunnel, ten feet above. Bridger counted noses. Twenty-four—twenty-five with himself. Pilly he knew, and Scherer, and one or two of the others. Like him, they had been bound for the AAAS meeting in Columbus. All the men were bearded like Biblical patriarchs, and the women had tangled hair down to their waists. What a sweet-looking crew, he thought. Dirty faces—fingernails like claws—

  The scrawny Ichabod with the orange halo was Abne
r Barnes, the Smithsonian archeologist. He had been sitting with the corpse. Bridger beckoned.

  "Barnes," he said, "who was the man with you? He's dead. Do you know what was in that cylinder he had?"

  The archeologist shook his head. His voice had a sharp Yankee twang. "That's Blodgett—the British biologist, you know. Came over to Johns Hopkins this fall. I met him last summer at Ann Arbor—he was up there consulting Bloomquist—but he was close-mouthed as sin—wouldn't say yes or no to anything—and he hung on to that cylinder like the Nobel Prize. Something he was going to spring on us at Columbus." He stared reflectively through the bus window at the body, scratching his hairy cheeks. "He had a brief-case with him. Did you get it? Well—time enough for that later."

  "What do you remember?" asked Bridger. "About what happened, I mean."

  "Nothing at all. I was asleep. The bus jumped like a skittish mare and there was that deuced queer smell. D'you suppose that was Blodgett's gas? Some kind of anesthetic?"

  "I don't know. Professor McCandless was on the committee that scheduled the papers, and he showed me an advance program. Blodgett was down for something like 'A Revised Theory of the Vital Processes,' but that's all I know." He turned back to the crowd. "Our first job is to get out of this hole. Who drove the bus?"

  "I'm him." A bulky man in uniform edged forward. "Toomey's the name."

  The chemist put out his hand. "I'm Henley Bridger. This is Professor Barnes. What can you tell us about what happened?"

  The driver scratched his head. "We'el—it's pretty hard to say. This tunnel we're in is on the new road between Pittsburgh and Wheeling. There's never been no one could figure why it was dug except to keep the WPA off people's lawns. Anyway, all I remember is a kind of swingin' feeling, like rockin' in a hammock. It yanked the wheel out of my hands, and we sideswiped that old Chevy and smacked into the wall. Then there was a funny smell, and that's about all I can remember."

  "What Chevy?" demanded Bridger.

  "I dunno," growled Toomey. "He was way over on my side. We socked his rear end."

  Followed by the others, Bridger strode to the rear of the bus. The Chevrolet was half buried in the rubble that closed the end of the tunnel, its top crushed under a huge arched slab of concrete shaken from the roof. Bridger squeezed into the space between the car and the wall and tugged at the door handle. It stuck. "You try," he said to Toomey.

  The driver grunted and heaved, and the door scraped open with a tinkle of broken glass. Bridger reached in and pulled out a small, fat man who was slumped down behind the wheel. The man stirred and groaned.

  "Ai!" he moaned. "Ai! Mama!"

  There was an answering wail from the back seat. Bridger swore under his breath. He crawled out of the hole, pulling the man after him. The crowd gave way a little and stood gaping at them. Bridger spotted a brawny youth with a scallop of yellow fuzz under his chin. "You!" he barked. "Get this man out of here and see if he's hurt."

  The youngster picked up the fat man as if he were a bag of meal and shambled off toward the light. Bridger beckoned to Barnes and Scherer. "There's a woman in there," he explained. "Barnes, you're long and thin—see if you can get at her."

  The archeologist disappeared feet first into the blackness. They heard him moving about; then there was a sudden scramble of feet, a thud, and Barnes yelled in fury. Something small and savage burst screaming from the hole and rammed Bridger amidships. Scherer grabbed it and hung on with both hands, despite an onslaught of fists and teeth. Its cries became intelliigible.

  "Mama! Pappa! Mam-ma!"

  Barnes' muffled voice sounded out of the darkness. "Strangle that kid and give me a hand with this woman. She weighs enough to sink a battleship. Consarn the consarned . . ."

  Bridger crawled into the hole. Getting the blonde through the window had been a picnic compared with this. Hauling at a fat ankle, Bridger wondered if Toomey hadn't a jack in the bus that they could use.

  When at last they got the woman out of the car and had stretched her out on a pile of coats, Scherer took charge. "I know the rudiments," he said. "You have to on collecting trips. Damn the light—stand back, everybody—please!" His big fingers explored her body skillfully. "She's got a bad bruise on her head, but she seems all right otherwise. If that slab from the roof hadn't been curved the way it is, they'd all have been mashed fiat. She'll come around before long; it's the shock, and that same sleep we all had. Where's the husband?"

  The little fat man came forward, leaning on the blond youth's arm. The child stalked truculently behind them. The man peered eagerly into their faces.

  "Which is the doctor? You? You are sure she isn't hurt bad? She is so delicate, my Rachael! Ai—what have I done that this should happen to me?" He began to rock from side to side. Bridger took his arm. "Listen," he said gently, "your wife isn't badly hurt. Dr. Scherer is only a Doctor of Science, but he can tell that much. We must get her out of this tunnel, so we can get a real doctor for her. Now then, what's your name?"

  The little man looked up at him pleadingly. "You are sure it isn't bad? You will get a real doctor soon?" He fumbled in his vest pocket, bringing out a crumpled card. "Take it, please. Julius Aaronson, ladies' and gents' fine clothing. The address is on the card." His arm went lovingly around the child's shoulders. "This is my son, Irving. He will be like his papa, a couturier of distinction!"

  Bridger looked doubtfully at the boy, who seemed to have inherited his parents' imposing girth as well as their cast of features. Irving glared back with pop-eyed insolence and, as Bridger turned away, thrust out his tongue and gave the chemist a well-basted bird.

  Bridger ignored him and spoke to the crowd. "We'll have to concentrate on getting out of here and locating the nearest town. Where were we when we cracked up?"

  "We oughta be a couple miles from West Alexander," Toomey volunteered. "There's a gas station down the road a ways where you can phone."

  "Good. If you ladies will collect whatever you want to take with you, the men will try to find a way of getting out. Toomey, will you get whatever ropes or chains you have?" He clambered to the roof of the bus. There was still a good six feet between him and the edge of the hole. He beckoned to the blond youth. "You look husky. Can you give me a leg up?"

  "Maybe we oughta make a pyramid." The young man pointed to Pilly, whose white hair showed up in the gloom like a patch of fox-fire. "He's not very big—he could be on top."

  "This is no gym show!" Bridger snapped. He was growing impatient with the trivial delays. "If you won't do it, let someone else get up here."

  He came, grumbling, but the rest was not as easy ;is Bridger had expected. The youngster was strong enough, with shoulders like a bull, but the chemist's athletic days were long past. Twice he lost his footing and came down with a crash. On the third try he went up with a rush and caught a gnarled root that stretched across the hole. Sand and gravel showered in his face. When the landslide stopped, he opened his eyes and chinned himself on the root, wriggled slowly up until he could heave his body across, got one knee up, and shoved hard. He felt his coat tear, and then he was lying half in and half out of the pit, in the open air.

  Someone shouted at him from below, but Bridger wasn't bothering himself with people at the moment. Clean, fresh air was tingling in his nostrils and golden sunshine slanted down through the branches of a great tree. Lush green grass waved above him. He rolled over and lay for a time staring at the long streamers of cirrus which stretched across the sky before he got wearily to his knees and peered down into the hole. His eyes had had become adapted to the daylight, and he could see only a vague blur of upturned faces.

  "Throw me a rope," he shouted. "And send up something to dig with. That hole is too damn narrow for comfort!"

  He caught the rope on the twentieth try, and hauled up thirty feet of oily hemp. A short-handled shovel and a Boy-Scout hatchet were tied to the other end: somebody was using his head down there. Bridger set to work to enlarge the hole to dimensions which might conceivably accomm
odate the blonde or Mama and Papa Aaranson. Finally the way seemed reasonably clear. "Toomey!" he yelled.

  "Huh? Me?" answered the darkness.

  "Yes. Got any chains? If you can fasten the ends together, we can use 'em for a ladder."

  Silence. Then: "Nope, we ain't got no hains."

  "Okay, then they'll have to shinny. I'll tie this end of the rope around the tree, here. How many of you can climb?"

  Silence again, then the voice of the young Atlas: "Got her tied? I'm coming up. And up he came, hand over hand, the rope creaking alarmingly under his weight. Bridger grabbed his hand as it came poking out of the hole, and heaved him out.

  "Good stufT!" he approved. "I'm putting you in charge of getting the others out. What's your name?"

  "Zbradovski—Mike Zbradovski. Senior at Chicago U. Look—aren't you the Stanford Bridger, the enzyme guy?"

  "Yep. D'you play football?"

  "Sure, but you don't read about me in the paers. Us poor linemen don't get the publicity like we should. Hey, look—here comes another one."

  A ham-like hand appeared at the edge of the hole, followed by the head and shoulders of a man. They dragged him out, no easy task, for his body was as big as Zbradovski's. He sat down with his back against the tree, puffing and red-faced.

  "Name's Macdonald," he panted. "Pittsburgh cop. Next guy coming up is Ronnie Franchot. He's a hoofer—night-club stuff—seen him just last week. Half them dames down there is his—girls in his act, I mean. He stinks. He—say, where the hell are we, anyway?"

  "I don't know," Bridger told him. "I'm going up on the hill to see what I can see. Suppose you help Zbradovski here get the others out."

  The rope creaked again, and a slightly built man of medium height swarmed out without assistance. Lank, dark hair grew thinly around a bald-spot. He might have been handsome without his sparse beard.