Evolution

by Stephen Baxter

  Hesitantly Athalaric touched the old man’s arm. “But even if that is true, even if we are governed by the legacy of an animal past, then it is up to us to behave as if it were not so.”

  Honorius smiled bitterly. “Is it? But everything we build passes, Athalaric. We are seeing it. In my lifetime a thousand-year-old empire has crumbled faster than the mortar in the walls of its capital buildings. If all passes but our own brutish natures, what hope do we have? Even beliefs wither like grapes left on the vine.”

  Athalaric understood; this was a concern Honorius had rehearsed many times. In the last centuries of the empire, educational standards and literacy had fallen. In the dulled heads of the masses, distracted by cheap food and the barbaric spectacles of the coliseums, the values on which Rome had been founded and the ancient rationalism of the Greeks had been replaced by mysticism and superstition. It was — Honorius had explained to his pupil — as if a whole culture was losing its mind. People were forgetting how to think, and soon they would forget they had forgotten. And, to Honorius’s thinking, Christianity only exacerbated that problem.

  “You know, Augustine warned us that belief in the old myths was fading — even a century and a half ago, as the dogma of the Christians took root. And with the loss of the myths, so vanishes the learning of a thousand years, which are codified in those myths, and the monolithic dogmas of the Church will snuff out rational inquiry for ten more centuries. The light is fading, Athalaric.”

  “Then take the bishopric,” Athalaric urged. “Protect the monasteries. Establish your own, if you must! And in its library and scriptorium have the monks preserve and make copies of the great texts, before they are lost—”

  “I have seen the monasteries,” Honorius spat. “To have the great works of the past copied as if they were magical spells, by dolts with their heads full of God — pah! I think I would rather burn them myself.”

  Athalaric suppressed a sigh. “You know, Augustine found comfort in his faith. He believed that the empire had been created by God to spread the message of Christ, so how could he allow it to collapse? But Augustine concluded that history’s purpose is God’s, not man’s. Therefore in the end the fall of Rome did not matter.”

  Honorius eyed him wryly. “Now, if you were a diplomat, you would point out to me that poor Augustine died just as the Vandals swept through northern Africa. And you would say that if he had devoted more attention to worldly matters than spiritual, he might have lived a little longer, and managed a little more studying. That is what you should say if you want to persuade me about your wretched bishopric.”

  “I am glad your mood is improving,” said Athalaric dryly.

  Honorius tapped his hand. “You are a good friend, Athalaric. Better than I deserve. But I will not take your uncle’s gift of a bishopric. God and politics are not for me; leave me to my bones and my maundering. We are nearly there!”

  They had reached the cliff’s edge.

  To Honorius’s frustration the path he remembered was overgrown. It was anyhow little more than a scratch in the cliff’s crumbling face, perhaps made by goats or sheep. The militiamen used their spears to clear some of the weeds and grass. “It is many years since I came here,” Honorius breathed.

  Athalaric said sternly, “Sir, you were younger when you were here — much younger. You must take care as we descend.”

  “What do I care of the difficulty? Athalaric, if the path is overgrown it has not been used since I was last here — and the bones I found are undisturbed. What matters compared to that? Look, the Scythian has already started his descent, and I want to see his reaction. Come, come.”

  The party formed up into a line and, one by one, they stepped with care down the crumbling path. Honorius insisted on walking alone — the path was scarcely wide enough to allow two to walk side by side — but Athalaric went first, so at least he would have a chance of saving the old man if he fell.

  They reached a cave, eroded into the soft chalk face. They fanned out, the militiamen probing at the walls and ground with their spears.

  Athalaric stepped forward carefully. The floor near the entrance was stained almost white by guano and littered with eggshells. The walls and floor were worn butter smooth, as if many creatures, or people, had been here before. Athalaric detected a strong animal scent, perhaps of foxes, but it was stale. Save for the seabirds, it was evident nothing had lived here for a long time.

  But it was here that a younger Honorius had found his precious bones.

  Honorius hobbled around the cave, peering at anonymous bits of the floor, kicking aside dried leaves and bits of dead seaweed. Soon he found what he was looking for. He got to his knees and cleared away the debris, carefully, using only his fingertips. “It is just as I found it — and left it — for I did not want the bones to be disturbed.”

  The others crowded around. Athalaric absently noticed that one of the young Romans, a man of Galla’s entourage, was pressing peculiarly close behind Honorius. But there seemed no harm, nothing but eagerness in the boy.

  And everyone was impressed when Honorius gently lifted his osteoid treasure from the dirt. Athalaric could immediately see that it was the skeleton of a human — but this must have been a particularly stocky human, he thought, with heavy limb bones and long fingers — and that the skull was distorted. In fact, it appeared to have been broken from behind, perhaps by a blow. Beneath the bones was a litter of shells and flint flakes.

  Honorius pointed to features of his find. “Look here. You can see where he has eaten mussels. The shells are scorched; perhaps he threw them on a fire to make them open. And I believe these flint chips are waste from a tool he made. He was clearly human, but not as we are. Consider that skull, sir Scythian! Those massive brows, the cheekbones like ledges — have you ever seen its like?” He glanced at Athalaric, his rheumy eyes shining. “It is as if we have been transported back to another day, lost unknown centuries in the past.”

  The Scythian bent down to scrutinize the skull.

  That was when it happened.

  The young Roman behind Honorius took one step forward. Athalaric saw his flashing arm, heard a soft crunch. Blood splashed. Honorius fell forward over the bones.

  The people, startled, scrambled out of the way. Papak squealed like a frightened pig. But the Scythian caught Honorius as he fell and lowered him to the ground.

  Athalaric could see that the back of Honorius’s head had been smashed. He lunged at the young man who had stood behind Honorius, and grabbed his tunic. “It was you. I saw it. It was you. Why? He was a Roman like you, one of your own—”

  “It was an accident,” the young man said levelly.

  “Liar!” Athalaric slapped his face, drawing blood. “Who put you up to this? Galla?” Athalaric made to strike the man again, but strong arms wrapped around his waist and pulled him away. Struggling, Athalaric gazed around at the others. “Help me. You saw what happened. The man is a murderer!”

  But only blank stares met his entreaties.

  It was then that Athalaric understood.

  It had all been planned. Only the terrified Papak, and, Athalaric presumed, the Scythian, had known nothing of the crude plot — aside from Athalaric himself, the barbarian too unschooled in the ways of a mighty civilization to be able to imagine such poisonous plotting. With his refusal to accept the bishopric, Honorius had become an inconvenience to Goth and Roman alike. The planners of this foolish, vicious conspiracy had cared nothing for Honorius’s miraculous old bones; this jaunt to the remote seashore had been seen merely as an opportunity. Perhaps poor Honorius’s body would be dumped in the sea, not even returned for inconvenient inspection to Burdigala.

  Athalaric struggled free and hurried to Honorius. The old man, his ruined head still cradled in the Scythian’s bloodstained arms, was still breathing, but his eyes were closed.

  “Teacher? Can you hear me?”

  Remarkably Honorius’s eyes fluttered open. “Athalaric?” The eyes wandered vaguely in their soc
kets. “I could hear it, an immense crunch, as if my head were an apple bit into by a willful child…”

  “Don’t talk—”

  “Did you see the bones?”

  “Yes, I saw.”

  “It was another man of the dawn, wasn’t it?”

  To Athalaric’s shock, the Scythian spoke in comprehensible but heavily accented Latin. “Man of the dawn.”

  “Ah,” Honorius sighed. Then he gripped Athalaric’s hand so hard it was painful.

  Athalaric was aware of the silent circle around him, the men from the east, the Goths, the Romans, all save the Scythian and the Persian complicit in this murder. The grip slackened. With a last shudder, Honorius was gone.

  The Scythian carefully laid Honorius’s body over the bones he had discovered — Neandertal bones, the bones of a creature who had thought of himself as the Old Man — and the pooling blood soaked slowly into the chalky ground.

  The wind changed. A breeze off the sea wafted into the cave, laden with salt.

  CHAPTER 16

  An Entangled Bank

  Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. CE 2031.

  I

  At Rabaul, the sequence of events followed an inevitable logic, as if the great volcanic mountain and its pocket of magma beneath were some vast geological machine.

  The first crack opened up in the ground. A vast cloud of ash towered into the smog-laden sky, and red-hot molten rock soared like a fountain. With the bulk of the rising plume of magma still some five kilometers underground, the stress on Rabaul’s thin upper carapace had proved too great.

  In Darwin, the quakes worsened.

  It was the end of the first day of the conference. The attendees, returning from their disparate dining arrangements, filed into the hotel bar. Sitting on a sofa with her feet up on a low stool, Joan watched as people got their drinks and reefers and pills and gathered in little clusters, chattering excitedly.

  The delegates were typical academics, Joan thought with exasperated fondness. They were dressed every which way, from the bright orange jackets and green trousers that seemed to be favored by Europeans from Benelux and Germany, to the open sandals, T-shirts, and shorts of the small Californian contingent, to even a few ostentatiously worn ethnic costumes. Academics tended to joke about how they never planned what they wore, but in their “unconscious” choices they actually displayed a lot more of their personalities than blandly dressed fashion victims — the Alison Scotts of the world, for example.

  The bar itself was a typical slice of modern consumerist-corporate culture, Joan thought, with every wall smart and pumping out logos, ads, news, and sports images, and everybody talking as loud as they could. Even the coasters on the table in front of her cycled through one animated beer commercial after another. It was as if she had been plunged into a clamorous bath of noise. It was the environment she’d grown up in all her life, save for the remote stillness of her mother’s field digs. But after that eerie interval on the airport apron — the whining of the jets, the distant popping of guns, grim mechanical reality — she felt oddly dislocated. This continuous dull roar was comforting in its way, but it had the lethal ability to drown out thought.

  But now the images of the worsening eruption at Rabaul filled the bar’s smart walls, crowding out the sports and news channels, even a live feed of Ian Maughan’s toiling Martian probe.

  Alyce Sigurdardottir handed Joan a soda. “That young Aussie barman is a dish,” she said. “Hair and teeth to die for. If I was forty years younger I’d do something about it.”

  Sipping her soda, Joan asked Alyce, “You think people are scared?”

  “Of what, the eruption, the terrorists?… Excited-scared right now. That could change.”

  “Yeah. Alyce, listen.” Joan leaned closer. “The Rabaul curfew the police imposed on us” — officially the line was that the ash from Rabaul, mixed with forest fire debris from further away, was mildly toxic — “it’s not the full story.”

  Alyce nodded, her lined face hard. “Let me guess. The Fourth Worlders.”

  “They have planted smallpox bombs around the hotel. So they claim.”

  Alyce’s face showed exquisite disgust. “Oh, Jesus. It’s 2001 all over again.” She sensed Joan’s hesitant mood. “Listen to me. We can’t give up because of those assholes. We have to go on with the meeting.”

  Joan glanced around the room. “We’re already under pressure. It took an act of courage for most of the participants to come here at all. We were under attack even at the airport. If the attendees get wind of this smallpox scare… Maybe the mood is too flaky for, you know, the Bull Session to start tonight.”

  Alyce covered Joan’s hand with her own; her palm was dry and callused. “It’s never going to get any easier. And your Bull Session is the whole point, remember.” She reached out and took Joan’s soda away from her. “Get up. Do it now.”

  Joan laughed. “Oh, Alyce—”

  “On your feet.”

  Joan imagined Alyce jollying some timid student of chimps or baboons into the dark dangers of the bush, but she complied. She kicked off her shoes. And, with Alyce’s help, she clambered on to a coffee table.

  She was overwhelmed by a self-conscious absurdity. With her conference literally under attack, how could she think she could get up on her hind legs and lecture an audience of her peers about how to save the planet? But here she was, and people were already staring. She clapped her hands until a quorum was turned her way.

  “Guys, I apologize,” Joan began, hesitantly, “but I need your attention. We’ve worked hard all day, but I’m afraid I’m not going to let up on you now.

  “We’re here to discuss mankind’s impact on the world against the background of our evolutionary emergence. We’ve assembled here a unique group, cross-disciplinary, international, influential. Probably nobody alive knows more about how and why we got into this mess than we do, here tonight. And so we have an opportunity — maybe unique, probably unrepeatable — to do something more than just talk about it.

  “I’ve had an additional purpose, a covert purpose, in calling you together. I want to use this evening as an extra session — an unusual session — if it goes the way I hope, a session that may spark off an entirely new thread. A new hope.” She felt embarrassed at this unscientific language, and there were plenty of pursed lips and raised eyebrows. “So charge your glasses and vials and tubes, find somewhere to sit, and we’ll begin.”

  And so, in this nondescript hotel bar, as the conference attendees settled on dragged-over chairs, stools, and tabletops, she began to talk about mass extinction.

  Joan smiled. “Even paleontologists, like me, understand cooperation and complexity. Papa Darwin himself, toward the end of Origin of Species, came up with a metaphor that sums up the whole thing.” Feeling awkward, she read from a scrap of paper. “It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by the laws acting around us…”

  She put down the paper. “But right now that entangled bank is in trouble. You don’t need me to spell it out for you.

  “We are undoubtedly in the middle of a mass extinction. The specifics are heartbreaking. In my lifetime the last wild elephants have disappeared from the savannahs and forests. No more elephants! How will we ever be able to justify that to our grandchildren? In my lifetime, we have already lost a quarter of all the species extant in the year 2000. If we keep going at the current rate, we will destroy some two-thirds of the species extant in 1900 by the end of this century. The event’s severity already puts it up there with the previous big five of Earth’s battered history.

  “Meanwhile human-induced climate change has already turned out to be much more severe than any but a few scientists predicted. A
frica’s major coastal cities, from Cairo to Lagos, have been partially or completely flooded, displacing tens of millions of people. Bangladesh is almost totally inundated. If it wasn’t for billion-dollar flood defenses, even Florida would be an archipelago. And so on.

  “The fault is all ours. We have become overwhelming. About one in twenty of all the people who have ever existed is alive today, compared to just one in a thousand of other species. As a result we are depleting the Earth.

  “But even now the question is still asked: Does it really matter? So we lose a few cute mammals, and a lot of bugs nobody ever heard of. So what? We’re still here.

  “Yes, we are. But the ecosystem is like a vast life-support machine. It is built on the interactions of species on all scales of life, from the humblest fungi filaments that sustain the roots of plants to the tremendous global cycles of water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Darwin’s entangled bank, indeed. How does the machine stay stable? We don’t know. Which are its most important components? We don’t know. How much of it can we take out safely? We don’t know that either. Even if we could identify and save the species that are critical for our survival, we wouldn’t know which species they depend on in turn. But if we keep on our present course, we will soon find out the limits of robustness.

  “I may be biased, but I believe it will matter a great deal if we were to die by our own foolishness. Because we bring to the world something that no other creature in all its long history has had, and that is conscious purpose. We can think our way out of this.

  “So my question is — consciously, purposefully, what are we going to do?”

  She ground to a halt, impassioned, uncertain, standing on her coffee table.

  Some people were nodding. Others were looking bored.

  Alison Scott was the first to stand up, long legs unfolding languidly. Joan held her breath.