“She’s not a slave-beast,” Barbara objected. “She’s a . . . I don’t know—a beast, a creature, a near-human, a person, a something that has been used for a slave. My ancestors were used for slaves—does that make us slave-people?”
“Let’s not get too riled up there,” Livingston said. “The australopithecines dropped out of sight for a million years. And even before that, we know next to nothing about them. A few scraps of bone, that’s all. No real idea of their behavior. Then somewhere in the last few thousand years, these Utaani got hold of them somehow. Maybe in the last century, maybe in the time of the Pharaohs. We don’t know. How do we know they haven’t been bred for slavery? We bred wolves into dogs, and you could make an argument that dogs are pretty slavish. Thursday here seems incredibly docile. How long have the Utaani and their ancestors being killing all the tranka that showed any spunk? Certainly they’ve bred them, domesticated them. We’ve domesticated a lot of animals. Doing it to australopithecines is different, somehow, yes, but why, and how, and by how much? But as far as your question, Clark, I can’t quite see how one australopithecine is going to contaminate Western civilization. Rupe, what do you think?”
Rupert had been whispering a translation of the conversation to Ovono and listening to Ovono’s whispered comments. He looked up and said “Mmmm? I don’t know. There’s a great deal to learn here, but I’d say we’ve got our hands more than full already. For the record, M’sieu Ovono wants to get the hell out, but says we paid for Thursday, she’s ours, and we should keep her. He says it’s nonsense to think of releasing her to the wild. She has lived with men, and would not know about fending for herself. She would die if left behind, or else be captured and put back to slavery. Ovono says he would shoot a dog rather than be so cruel as to let it suffer that way. He’s got a few points, and I’d say they all cloud the moral issues just a bit more.”
“Hold it here, just a second,” Livingston said. “Let’s assume we’re all agreed that we have to take her along—for ethical as well as scientific reasons. But has anyone thought about the logistics? We can’t just stroll into Makokou with her—we’d cause a riot. And what, exactly, are the export rules for removing a hominid from Gabon?”
Clark raised his eyebrows for a moment and nodded. “Mmmph. You’ve got a point. Requires a bit of thought.”
“I’ll say one more thing. Thursday can go with us—but only if she wants to,” Barbara said. “She can’t possibly be made to understand moving to a new place, and how different it will be, but at least we can give her the free choice to stay or go. I can accept that we’d have to restrain her for part of the trip—during the flight home, say—but whenever we leave here, if she follows us, fine. If not, no one is to try to compel her in any way. Is that understood? If she comes, she comes of her own accord.”
Rupert chortled. “‘Look Dr. Grossington,’” he said in a little boy’s voice. “‘She followed us home, can we keep her?’”
“Shut up Rupert, I’m serious. But before we plan how to leave, we have to decide how long to stay,” Barbara went on. “And I still say we need to stay and learn more. I don’t like the Utaani any more than you do, but surely we can save some time and learn more by staying here.”
“But we’re not equipped for that sort of study, Barb,” Liv protested. “This was all put together in a hell of a hurry, and I don’t know that anyone really considered what exactly we were to do at this end—but this is a small survey team. We’re not prepared to wade in and study a whole culture. And do you really think the Utaani will tolerate us hanging around all day watching their slaves? How would you learn more? What would your procedure be?”
“I don’t know yet,” Barbara said hotly. “I haven’t had time to think it through. But we can’t lose this chance.”
“Barb, I guarantee this isn’t our last chance,” Rupert said. “Once the scientific community knows about this place, the Utaani and their tranka are going to spend the rest of their lives up to their wazoos in anthropologists. And I for one would be happy to leave these bastards to the eternal torture of being studied—as long as I don’t have to do the studying. We’re not abandoning the quest if we head back now.”
Barbara said nothing more, but sat, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the fire. Her companions looked at each other, and reached an unspoken agreement. There was no real point in arguing further tonight. One by one, they bedded down.
<>
Monsieur Ovono insisted that they stand watches in the night, and Barbara drew the last shift. Liv poked her awake a little after three in the morning, and she spent the last hours before dawn watching the darkness, and watching the dark, huddled form that slept next to her.
Thursday woke up once, opening her eyes abruptly and sitting bolt upright, the very picture of a disoriented child waking up in the wrong bed, confused by strange surroundings. Barbara watched her intently, wondering what she would do, and instantly resolved that she would not prevent Thursday from running away. Maybe she would die in the wild, but she at least had the right to die free. If the morning came and the others woke to find the australopithecine gone, Barbara could claim she had dozed off. Barbara watched eagerly for some sign that Thursday would run, make a bid for freedom, but instead, the australopithecine grunted and scratched her crotch as she looked around. After a moment, she seemed to remember where she was, and lay down and went back to sleep.
The incident depressed Barbara, and left her with a sense of obligation to her new charge—she could not, would not, use the word ‘slave’. The moment made it clear that Thursday had decided she trusted Barbara, and chose to stay with her rather than make a bid for freedom.
What was the old Chinese idea? If you saved a man’s life, you were responsible for that life, that person, from then on. Something like that. So what claim did a near-human have on a person who accidentally freed her? And what claims went the other way? Barbara didn’t want any part of those obligations, but it was too late to refuse them now.
She gave it up and stared into the jungle. The jungle at night was not the best place or time to try and resolve such things.
<>
The next morning snapped into existence with the usual disconcerting speed of dawn in the tropics. It seemed to Barbara that she blinked once and the sun was up. She looked up to see what sort of day it was going to be. Directly above their trailside camp, a tiny patch of sky peeked through the trees, startling blue and bright to eyes used to nothing but grey and dark green. One by one the humans woke up to the new morning. Thursday managed to sleep later than any of them. It made sense, Barbara decided. This was probably the first time in her life that the poor thing hadn’t been jolted awake by her keeper.
It was well past seven before Thursday stirred. By that time the rest of the camp had long been up and about. It was a beautiful morning, the air clear and bright, the humidity down, and there was a freshening, almost cooling, breeze. Everyone woke up in a good mood, and the baffled gloom that had hung about the night before seemed forgotten, as unthreatening as a nightmare that hadn’t come true.
The coffee was on the fire, the birds were singing, and all seemed right with the world. Rupert even managed to get the BBC World Service on the short-wave, and picked up a music program.
Finally, Thursday woke up, coming alert very quickly. She stood up, stretched and shook herself, getting the kinks of the night out. Then she turned and walked out of camp, hurrying just a bit, disappearing into the wall of forest. Every eye in the camp was on her, wondering if they had just witnessed an escape. One by one, they all turned to look at Barbara. Should they go after her? Should they let her go?
Suddenly, there was the sound of a small, fast stream of water striking the ground. The men got it first, of course, and roared with laughter. Then Barbara understood, and found herself blushing—and that set her laughing. Thursday was answering a call of nature, not escaping to it.
The sound ended, and a moment or two later Thursday reappeared
from the trees. She stopped at the edge of the trail and looked at the humans, all of them still laughing out loud. She hesitated, looking just a bit alarmed, and even stepped back a foot or two.
“Thursday,” Barbara said. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”
Thursday looked at Barbara and cocked her head. “Come here, Thursday.”
The australopithecine raised her arm and pointed to herself. It was an unmistakable gesture. Who, me?
“Jesus, she’s learned her name already,” Rupert said. “And no one even tried to teach it to her.”
“Let me try something,” Barbara said. “Yes, Thursday, come,” she said, gesturing for Thursday to approach. She spoke slowly and carefully, enunciating each word. With only the slightest hesitation, Thursday walked toward her. Barbara raised her hand and put it on her own chest. “Barbara.” Livingston was standing nearest to her, and she needed to point to someone else, to show “Barbara” wasn’t the word for human. “Livingston,” she said, and then pointed to the others. “Rupert. Clark. Ovono.” Thursday followed her pointing finger, looking to the person indicated, and not instead staring at the tip of the finger, the way a cat or dog might. Then Barbara put her hands at her side and said “Thursday?” Barbara looked from side to side, as if looking for her.
Thump. Thump thump. Thursday patted herself on the chest, solidly, confidently. She had no doubt who she was. There was something eager in her face and her bearing, something that looked most proud and pleased. Barbara understood. Thursday had something she had never had before—a name, a symbol for herself. For the first time in her life, in a strange way, she was something.
Barbara walked toward her, reached out and touched her on the shoulder. “Thursday—yes.” She kept her hand on the warm, furry shoulder and said “Barbara—no.” She put her hand on herself again. “Thursday—no. Barbara—yes.”
“Es.”
Everyone in the camp froze, stunned once again. She had said it, most emphatically, if not clearly.
Barbara tried it again, another way. She touched herself again and said, “Thursday.”
“‘O.”
Barbara touched the australopithecine again. “Thursday.”
“Es, es.” Thursday rocked excitedly back and forth on her feet for a moment, and the fur on her neck stood straight up. She snorted happily and did it again, pounding herself in the chest. “Es. Es. Ur-ay.”
Thursday looked around to their faces again, worried that she had done something wrong. “Good! Yes, yes!” Barbara said anxiously. “My God, she’s quick.”
Rupert sat down slowly next to the fire, reached out for the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. “Great,” he growled. “It isn’t as if we didn’t have enough to think about already.”
<>
They settled down to eat after a bit. Barbara was eager to continue the language lessons, but once Thursday got it into her head that the food was for her, too, she wasn’t much interested in words anymore. She gulped down the freeze-dried glup and bland canned food as if she was starving. Livingston couldn’t help thinking she’d be a big hit in the no-fresh-food hotel restaurant at Booué.
Barbara got the radio and set it down next to Thursday, expecting her to be fascinated by the music coming out of it, but she seemed to have no real interest in it.
“It makes noise, so what?” Rupert said. “So does the wind and rain and fire. What’s she’s supposed to do, recognize Beethoven’s Fifth?”
“She likes voices,” Barbara said. “Maybe she’ll respond when someone starts talking. Pass the coffee, will you?”
Not long after, the music did end, and the BBC news reader came on. Barbara, watching intently to see what Thursday did, wasn’t really listening to the words herself at first—until she heard her own name in the lead story.
“—ara Marchando and her colleagues are reported to be in the west African nation of Gabon, possibly in search of living examples of the species. As Dr. Grossington noted at that news conference, the first fossil of Australopithecus boisei was discovered by the famous paleontologist, Dr. Louis Leakey, a native of Kenya, the son of a British missionary and graduate of Cambridge. . . .”
“How do they know about us?” Rupert demanded.
“Oh my God, it got out,” Barbara said. “The story got out. Now we have to get back. They’ll eat Jeffery alive back there.”
Thursday didn’t notice the commotion. She was too fascinated with the box that had begun talking. She picked it up and shook it, tried to find a place to peek into it.
The radio, quite unimpressed with being shaken, went on. “Despite the impressive nature of the evidence offered in the form of the skull called Ambrose, several experts at the British Museum of Natural History expressed grave doubts that such a creature could have survived into historical times.”
“Now they tell us,” Rupert muttered. “Someone want to tell Thursday?”
Interlude
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Thursday. Thursday. Her mouth and throat could not form the sound clearly, but she could hear it, and recognize it, and know that it meant her, and no one and nothing else. There was magic in that.
There was magic, too, in her new people—in the foods they had and the things they did and the way they acted.
On the day after her first night with them, there was a great flurry of activity. All of them got upset suddenly, for no reason that she could see. At first she thought it might be because of something she had done, but none of them seemed angry at her. If anything, they ignored her a bit in the big rush of activity. After their morning food, which they seemed to eat in a great hurry, they packed up all their belongings, put them in bags that hung on their backs, and started walking down the path, away from the village. Then she thought she understood. They had to get away from the village, from the bad men there. But none of them looked back at her, not once, not at all, as if they had made a rule not to look at her. She chased after them, and ran fast until she was alongside Barbara, walking with her. Barbara looked at her with a face so happy and sad at the same time that once again Thursday feared they would not let her come with them. But they did let her come—and didn’t even make her carry anything.
They walked all that day, and another, and another, sleeping at nights, until at last they came to a place where there was a very large and strange box, unlike anything Thursday had ever seen before. The humans seemed to know what it was, and they knew how to make parts of it swing open and shut. They seemed to play with it for a while, climbing in and out of it, and the small dark one—Ovono?—seemed to put some small thing into the front part of it. She tried to stick her head in the box through a hole in the side, and bumped her head on it, and so discovered that the clear parts of the box were there, even if they were invisible. Barbara, who was always telling her words, more words than Thursday could dream of remembering, told her the box was called a car, and the clear parts were called glass or window. Thursday did not remember that for long, but somehow it helped even to know a thing had a name, even if she did not know what it was.
They watched the men play with the car-box for a while, and then, after a time, Barbara led Thursday a long ways away from the car-box and stood there with her, watching it.
The other humans climbed into the car-box and sat down in it. Suddenly the car-box made a terrible roaring noise, and let out a horrible-smelling puff of smoke. It frightened Thursday very much, but Barbara held her hand and made soothing sounds. Then the box began to move, not walking, but going about in a strange way without lifting its feet at all. It moved around and around the clearing, and the men inside leaned out of the windows, smiling and waving at her. Thursday, in a burst of understanding, realized that they were all trying to show her not to be afraid of it. Barbara led her toward the box-thing, and Thursday understood that she was to get into the thing, and ride in it as well.
It was almost too much for her, but her trust in Barbara made her fight her fear. With her heart racing, and every tuft of fur standing
erect, her fingers trembling with fright and excitement, she got into the—yes, it took a moment, but she recalled the name, and felt very proud of that—she got into the car. The car moved again, this time with her in it, and for the first time in her life, Thursday moved without doing the work of moving for herself. It was a scary thing, and exciting.
For days they drove that way, until they came to a place where a huge swath of the jungle was not there anymore. In its place were men—many, many men— huge, noisy, frightening machines, trees fallen down, and endless sights and sound and smells she could not understand. The one called Ovono made the car move fast past there, and the humans tried to hide Thursday from view, as if they were afraid of her being seen. Perhaps these men would want to take her away from Barbara, just as Barbara had taken her away from the others. Thursday did not want that, and so she let them hide her, even though she was curious about all the things they were moving past.
On and on they went, until they came to a big place, like the old village grown and grown and grown bigger and bigger, with the huts made of strange things, and the air full of odd smells. Again Barbara and the others tried to hide her, and again she let them. They came to a broad, open place near the big village, with many strange machines standing about on it.
Thursday began to notice new words that sounded alike in the conversation—airplane, airport, airline. She wondered what they meant. She wanted to see everything, but they kept her hidden under a blanket in the back of the car. It was hot there, but there was a hole in the blanket she could peek through, and Barbara stayed with her. Peeking through the blanket, she saw Clark talk to a man, and give him some flat things that the man folded up and shoved in a pocket.
Orphan of Creation Page 27
