Evolution

by Stephen Baxter

  But what most caught her eye was the necklace he wore around his neck. It was a simple chain of pierced shells. But in the central shell, below his chin, was fixed a lump of something that shone bright yellow, catching the light of the low sun.

  Cahl was watching her. He let the young man go on ahead to the beer maker’s hut. In her own tongue he said to her silkily, “Like him, do you? Like the gold around his neck? Think you’d prefer his slim cock to mine? He’s called Keram. Much good that will do you. He’s from Cata Huuk. You don’t know where that is, do you? And you’ll never know.” He grabbed her between the legs and squeezed. “Keep yourself warm for me.” And he pushed her away and walked off.

  She had barely noticed his latest assault. Keram. Cata Huuk. She repeated the strange names to herself, over and over.

  For she thought that — just for a moment, just before he turned his back to walk to the beer maker’s — the young man had looked at her, and his eyes had widened in a kind of recognition.

  It was three months before Keram traveled out from Cata Huuk to the town again.

  He’d actually put off the call. As the youngest son of the Potus, he routinely got the worst jobs, and checking on the tribute collection from these outlying towns at the fringe of the city’s hinterland was about as bad as it got.

  “And this place,” he told his friend Muti, “is the worst of them all. Look at it.” The riverbank town was just a huddle of dung-colored huts, eroded to shapelessness by rain, stinking smoke curling up from their roofs. “You know what they call this place? Keen” The word meant “Heart” in the language the two young men spoke, a language that was used throughout a wider belt of colonization spreading back from this place far to the east.

  Muti grinned. “Keen I like that. Can this be the heart of the world? Why does it look so much like its arsehole, then?” The two of them laughed together, their necklaces of shell and gold nuggets tinkling softly.

  Cahl came up to them. The trader joined in with their laughter, his gaiety forced, his dim, piglike eyes darting from one to the other. The guards behind Keram moved subtly, showing their alertness, tilting the tips of their pikes.

  Cahl said, “Master Keram. It is a pleasure to see you. How fine you look, how your clothes shine in the sunlight!” He turned to Muti. “And I don’t believe—”

  Muti introduced himself. “A second cousin of Keram. Cousin and ally.”

  Keram was amused to see the naked calculation in Cahl’s eyes as the trader added Muti’s name and position to the tentative map he was so obviously making of the power structures within Cata Huuk. Cahl began to flap and fuss as he led them into the town. “Come, come. Your tribute is ready, of course, piled in my hut. I have food and beer for you, fresh from the country. Will you stay the night?”

  Keram said, “We have many more places to visit before—”

  “But you must enjoy our hospitality. Your men too. We have girls, virgins, who are ready for you.” He eyed Muti and winked. “Or boys. Whatever you desire. You are our guests, for as long as you choose to be with us.”

  As they walked delicately over the muddy, shit-strewn ground, Muti leaned closer to Keram. “What a repulsive fat slug.”

  “He’s just trying his chances. He isn’t even the chief of this little band of dirt-grubbers. And he has some interesting weaknesses, notably for fat women. Perhaps they remind him of the pigs who are no doubt his real loves. But he is useful. Easy to manipulate.”

  “Will he ever get to Cata Huuk?”

  Keram snorted. “What do you think, cousin?”

  Now they were approaching Cahl’s hut — one of the grander in the town, but still a heap of mud in the eyes of the young men.

  Keram asked Muti, “Do you want to stay awhile?” He nodded toward the four guards. “I usually let the dogs out of their pen for a while. And Cahl’s usefulness does include digging out the more attractive sows from this sty. Sometimes their mud-hole desperation makes them — interesting. It’s fun, in a strenuous sort of way. But you have to be prepared for a little filth—”

  Muti, distracted, asked, “What’s this?”

  A girl had come out of Cahl’s hut. She was quite unlike the dark, dumpy women of the town. Though scrawny and obviously careworn, she was tall — as tall as Keram, in fact — slender, and had blond hair that shone strikingly gold, despite the dirt tangled in it. She might have been sixteen or seventeen.

  Cahl looked outraged at the girl’s approach. He slammed his meaty fist into her temple, knocking her down in the dirt. “What are you doing? Get back in the hut. I will deal with you later.” And he made to kick the girl as she lay helpless on the ground.

  Smoothly, Muti grabbed Cahl’s pudgy arm and twisted it behind his back. Cahl howled, but he quickly subsided.

  Keram took the girl’s hand and helped her to her feet. A bruise was already gathering on her temple. He saw now that her legs and arms were discolored by bruises. She was trembling, but she stood straight and faced him. He said, “What is your name?”

  Cahl snapped, “Sir, don’t talk to her—” Muti twisted his arm harder. “Ow!”

  “Juna.” Her accent was thick and unfamiliar, but her words were clear. “My name is Juna. I am from Cata Huuk,” she said boldly. “I am like you.”

  Keram laughed at that, disbelieving — but his laughter died as he studied her. Certainly her height, her grace, her relatively good condition did not speak of a life with the pigs of Keer. He said carefully, “If you are from the city how did you end up here?”

  “They took me as a child. These people, the people of Keer. They raised me with the dogs and the wolves, and so I don’t speak as you. But—”

  “She is lying,” Cahl breathed. “She doesn’t even know what Cata Huuk is. She is a savage from the tribes to the west, the animal people I have to deal with. Her mother is a fat slut who sells her body for beer. And—”

  “I should not be here,” Juna said steadily, her eyes on Keram. “Take me with you.”

  Uncertain, Keram and Muti exchanged glances.

  Enraged, Cahl twisted away from Muti. “You want to lie with her? Is that it?” He ripped at Juna’s simple shift, tearing it away from her swollen belly. “Look! The sow is full of piglets. Do you want to hump that?”

  Keram frowned. “The child. Is it Cahl’s?”

  She trembled harder. “No. Though my belly excites him, and he uses me. The child is a man’s from Cata Huuk. He came here. He used me. He did not tell me his name. He promised me—”

  “She is lying!” Cahl raged. “She was with child when I found her.”

  “I am not for this place,” said Juna, gazing at the town with faint disgust. “My child is not for this place. My child is for Cata Huuk.”

  Keram glanced again at Muti, who shrugged. Keram grinned. “I can’t tell if you’re speaking the truth, Ju-na. But you are a strange one, and your story will amuse my father—”

  “No!” Again Cahl broke away. The troops moved forward. “You can’t take her!”

  Keram ignored him. He nodded to Muti. “Organize the collection of the tribute. You — Ju-na — do you have any possessions here? Any friends of whom you want to take your leave?”

  She seemed to puzzle over his meaning, as if she wasn’t quite sure what “possessions” were. “Nothing. And friends — only Gwerei.”

  Keram shrugged; the name meant nothing to him. “Make your preparations. We leave soon.” He clapped his hands, and Muti and the troops proceeded to carry out his orders.

  But Cahl, restrained by a guard, continued to beg and plead. “Take me! Oh, take me!”

  III

  It would take them three days to cover the ground to Keram’s mysterious home, to Cata Huuk.

  The grain and meat, what Keram called the “tribute,” was briskly collected. Juna had no idea why the townsfolk — hardly well-off themselves — should wish to hand over so much of their provisions to these strangers. They didn’t even get beer back in return.

  But
now was not the time for her to inquire into such matters. The speech she had rehearsed for so long, since first seeing Keram, had paid off. Now was the time for her to keep quiet and follow where she was led.

  The party formed up into a loose line. Keram and Muti took the lead. Their four squat guards followed, two of them with hands free to deploy weapons, the others loaded up with the tribute. Juna, carrying nothing but the spear with which she had arrived here, approached one of the guards, expecting to be given a share of the load.

  Keram rebuked her. “Let them do their job.”

  Juna shrugged. “In Cahl’s town, it would be my job.”

  “Well, I am not Cahl. You must do as we do, girl. It is our way.”

  “I was taken as a child from—”

  “I remember what you told me,” Keram said, his eyebrows raised in good humor. “I’m not sure I believe a word of it. But listen now. In Cata Huuk, the word of the Potus is law. I am the son of the Potus. You will obey me. You will not question me. Do you understand?”

  Juna’s folk were egalitarian, like most hunter-gatherer folk; no, she didn’t understand. But she nodded dumbly.

  They set off. The young men, unburdened, strode ahead easily enough — as did Juna, despite her pregnancy and the four months she had endured of poor diet and hard labor. But the guards puffed and complained of their weary feet.

  It was a great relief for Juna to be out of the squalid town and in the open country once more, a great relief to be walking rather than bending her back over some dusty field — even if, as they headed steadily east, she was entering countryside that was increasingly remote from the place where she and her ancestors had always lived.

  They stopped each night in small towns, no more or less impressive than Cahl’s had been. The guards were plied with beer and girls. Keram and Muti kept themselves to themselves, spending their nights quietly in huts. They let Juna stay with them, huddled in a corner.

  Neither of them touched her. Perhaps it was her pregnancy. Perhaps they were just not sure of her. Part of her, glad to be free of the grubby attentions of Cahl, relished not having to share her body with anybody else. But part of her, more calculating, regretted it. She had no real understanding of what this place, this Cata Huuk, would be like. But she suspected her best chance of surviving was to bind herself to Keram or Muti.

  So she made sure that each evening and morning, as she cast off her shift, she showed them her body; and she was aware of how, when he thought she was not looking, Keram’s gaze followed her.

  As they walked on, the landscape became more crowded with fields and towns. No trees grew here, though there were stumps and patches of burned-out forest. There was no open land at all, in fact, save for worthless rocky land or marshes. There were only fields, and patches of land that had clearly once been plowed but were now abandoned, useless, exhausted. Soon there was scarcely a footfall she could make without stepping into the track of somebody who had been here before. The extent to which these swarming people had remade the world oppressed her.

  And at last they reached Cata Huuk itself.

  The first thing Juna saw was a wall. Made of mud bricks and straw, it was a great circular barrier that must have been as high as three people standing on each other’s shoulders, and it bristled with spikes. Outside the wall there was a great ring of shabby huts and lean-tos made of mud and tree branches. The wall was so wide it seemed to cut the land in half.

  A broad, well-trodden path led up to the wall itself, a path which Keram’s party followed. But as they approached people came boiling like wasps out of the huts, yelling, plucking at Keram’s robes, holding up meat and fruit and sweetmeats and bits of carved wood and stone. Juna shrank back. But Keram assured her that there was nothing to be concerned about. These people were simply trying to sell things; this was a market. The words meant nothing to her.

  A great gate made of wood had been set in the wall. Keram called out loudly. A man on top of the wall waved, and the gate was hauled open. The party walked through.

  As she walked into strangeness, Juna found herself trembling.

  The huts: that was the first thing that struck her. There were many of them, tens of tens, strewn in great masses across the kilometers-wide compound inside the walls. Most of them were no better than Cahl’s dwelling, simple slumped mounds of mud and wood. But some, toward the center of the city, were grander than that, tottering structures of two or three stories, their frontages walled with woven yellow grasses that shone in the sun. The clusters of huts were cut through by lanes that sliced this way and that, like a spider’s web. Smoke hung in a great gray cloud everywhere. Sewage ran down channels cut into the center of each street, and flies buzzed in great linear clouds over the sluggishly flowing waste.

  And people swarmed, the men walking together, the children running and yelling, the women burdened with heavy loads on their heads and backs. There were animals, goats and sheep and dogs, crowded in as tightly as the people. The noise was astonishing, an unending clamor. The smells — of shit, piss, animals, fires, greasy cooked meat — were overwhelming.

  This was Cata Huuk. With ten thousand people crammed within its walls, it was one of Earth’s first cities. Even Keer had been no preparation for this. To Juna, it was like looking into a great murky sea full of people.

  Keram smiled at her. “Are you all right?”

  “What trickster god made this teeming pile?”

  “No god. People, Juna. Many, many people. You must remember that. No matter how strange all this appears, it is the work of people, like you and me. Besides,” he said with mock innocence, “this is where you were born. This is where you belong.”

  “This is where I was born,” she said, unable to project much conviction. “But I am afraid. I can’t help it.”

  “I’ll be with you,” he murmured.

  With calculation she slid her hand into his. She caught Muti’s eye; he was smirking, knowing.

  They walked down a radial avenue toward the great structures at the center of the city. Now Juna was truly stunned. Three stories high, these buildings were great blocks that loomed like giants over the rest of the city. The buildings were set in a loose square around a central courtyard, where grass and flowers grew thickly. Men armed with barbed pikes stood at every entrance, glaring suspiciously. Women moved with bowls of water, which they sprinkled on the grass.

  Muti grinned at Juna. “Again she is staring. What is so strange now?”

  “The grass. Why do they throw water on it?” She struggled to express herself. “Rain falls. Grass grows.”

  Muti shook his head. “Not regularly enough for the Potus. I think he would command the weather itself.”

  They walked into the largest of the buildings. Juna had never been in such a huge enclosed space. Stairways and ladders connected the mezzanine-like floors above. Despite the brightness of the day, torches burned smokily on the walls, banishing shadows and filling the palace with yellow light. People dressed in shining clothes walked through all the levels, and some of them waved down to Keram and Muti as they went by. It was like looking up into the branches of a great tree. Even the floor was extraordinary, made of wood cut so smoothly it felt slippery under her feet, and oil or grease had been worked into it until it shone.

  They came to the very center of the building. Here was a platform, raised to shoulder-height above the ground. And on the platform, sitting on an ornately carved block of wood, was the fattest man Juna had ever seen. His breasts were larger than a nursing mother’s. His belly, glistening with oil, was like the Moon. And his head was a ball of flesh, completely devoid of hair; his scalp was shaved, and he had no beard, moustache, or even eyebrows. He was naked to the waist, but he wore finely stitched trousers.

  This fat creature was the Potus, the Powerful One. He was one of mankind’s first kings. He was talking to a skinny corpselike man at his elbow, who thumbed through lengths of knotted string with intense concentration.

  Keram and Muti waited
patiently until the Potus’s attention was free.

  Juna whispered, “What are they doing with the string?”

  “Tallies,” Muti whispered. “They record, umm, the workings of the city and the farms: how many sheep and goats, how much grain can be expected from the next harvest, how many newborn, how many dead.” He smiled at her wide-open eyes. “Our stories are told on those bits of string, Juna. This is how Cata Huuk works.”

  Keram nudged him. The man with the string had withdrawn. The Potus’s great head had swiveled toward them. Keram and Muti immediately bowed. Juna just stared, until Keram dragged her down.

  “Let her stand,” said the Potus. His voice was like riverbed gravel. His eyes on Juna, he beckoned her.

  Hesitantly Juna walked forward.

  He leaned over her. She could smell animal oil on his skin. He pulled at her hair, hard enough to make her yowl. “Where did you get her?”

  Keram quickly explained what had happened at Keer. “Potus, she says she was born here — here, in Cata Huuk. She says she was stolen as a baby. And—”

  “Take your clothes off,” the Potus snapped at Juna.

  She glared back, repulsed by his smell, and did not obey. But Muti hastily ripped her skin shift from her, until she stood naked.

  The Potus nodded, as if appraising a hunter’s kill. “Good breasts. Good height, good posture — and a pup in the belly, I see. Do you believe her, Keram? I never heard of a child like this being stolen — what, fifteen, sixteen years ago?”

  “Nor I,” said Keram.

  “They say the wild ones beyond the fields grow like this: tall, healthy-looking, despite their appalling way of life.”