CHAPTER EIGHT
DOG
Dog leaned against Luke’s leg, wanting to be stroked down his back and sides. Instead Luke scratched between Dog’s ears, which was nice but not completely satisfying. The touch was too light. Luke was not really paying attention to Dog. Instead he was watching and talking to his new friends, the male and female. The female, who was talking back, had just recently realized that Luke was also Lucia. The male lay on the ground holding his stomach. That male had known about Lucia for a long time although he did not want to mate with her—wanting only to mate with the other female. Dog growled to himself and also to anyone who happened to be listening. Luke behaved differently around these humans, less willing to play games, less interested in Dog.
The female was asking Luke about Dog, and Luke was explaining that Dog was like any other direwolf, only tame. That Dog didn’t mind being with humans because he had imprinted on Luke when he was young. That direwolves were social animals and Luke had become Dog’s pack leader. The female asked if there was something different or unusual about their communication, the receiving and sending, and Luke said no. He could sense what Dog thought and felt, not all the time, but some of the time, just like he could with any Paleo.
Dog pushed at Luke’s hand. Scratch-harder. Luke did. Dog thought that Luke could be really stupid. Luke didn’t seem to know how much Dog had entered into his thoughts, how much Dog understood about his work in the lab, how much Dog was now Luke/Lucia. Dog remembered being a pup in his mother’s den, but he also remembered being a girl/boy and hiding away in a small room to examine herself. Himself. Not quite sure what to do. He remembered a wedding cake (what was a wedding cake?) and Brad’s father—the male was called Brad—and the crunch of a clay pot under a man’s foot. He remembered wheelboarding down a corridor in the lab (what was a corridor?) and feeling scared because this was so much against the rules. Maybe he didn’t know all the words. Maybe he didn’t remember everything or everything in the right order. But he still knew and remembered a lot.
He understood what the humans were saying now, for example. Brad lay curled on the ground, whispering, “Don’t look at my TOES. Stop looking at my TOES.”
“I think it’s started,” Luke said.
“Listen to the music,” Clare told Brad. “Close your eyes. Listen to the water.”
Dog smelled the peyote on Brad and in the clay pot on the ground. Guanine, guanine, cytosine, cytosine. The plant’s DNA was new to Dog, and he crept closer to the man with the peyote curling like smoke in his veins. The peyote was a collapsed biohologram, no longer matter/energy/consciousness combined, zipping, unzipping, receiving, sending. Even so, the power of the molecules and the spirit of the plant began to re-form, absorbed now into living cells, receptors open, chemicals snuggling—an unexpected embrace. Fitting and locking.
“Where’s the water?” Brad asked, his eyes shut.
“Put your hand into the stream,” Clare coaxed. “Feel the coolness?”
“Don’t look at my TOES.”
“Let’s take off his shoes,” Luke suggested.
“Let’s get him interested in the water,” Clare said.
Brad opened his eyes, sat up, and looked at Dog.
Molecules traveled into Brad’s brain, molecules crossing the brain barrier, quantum bilocality, sparking, connecting, opening, joining. Signals, messages. Synapses. Opening, closing, zipping, unzipping, opening, closing. Dendrites pruned. Dendrites blooming. Flowers blossoming. Dog smelled equations, the rich heat of blood, the sharpness of fox, tannin in oak. The numbers had smells, and Dog was dizzy because numbers were like stars: they had no DNA, they were real and not real, they were small and not small, they were still and not still. They made him feel like Dog and not Dog. The stars were water. He was spreading away from himself, dissolving in water.
Dog whined, but Luke couldn’t hear him because this was not happening now, in present time.
Brad heard him. Brad whispered, “Don’t be afraid.” Brad held his hand like his mother had held his hand after his father had left to go hunting. His mother who died of cancer. Suddenly she was gone. Dog wept.
“If it’s too much, shut your eyes,” Clare said. “Lie down. Close your eyes.”
Dog wanted to give Brad a gift. This was new.
Sometimes he brought sticks to Luke so that Luke could grab the other end and try to get the stick away from him. Sometimes he brought the carcasses of small animals and the bones of bigger animals just to show Luke he was a good hunter even if he was really only a scavenger. He brought Luke the bodies of animals and bones and sticks, but they were not gifts. He loved Luke. He loved Luke like he loved rolling in the dirt and shaking his fur and sleeping in the sun. He felt anxious when he was away from Luke for more than a day. He couldn’t sleep that perfect extinction if Luke were not nearby. He would die for Luke if his genes would let him.
But he had never wanted to give Luke one specific thing like he wanted now to give Brad. What could that thing be?
Oh, Dog spoke to Brad. I know. And Dog thought about the peyote plant, and he saw the right frequency, the right amplitude, cosine and sine, and he gave Brad that image/sound/color, the whirling double helix, guanine, cytosine, adenine, thymine, how the helix opened and sent out waves and opened and received and how the biohologram of peyote unfolded in space, waxy skin, puckered indentions, plump roundness, respiration, transpiration. Dog had never seen it so clearly before. How the organization of matter/energy/consciousness was turned on by DNA.
Dog barked. Holograms were produced through interference, two or more waves passing through each other to create a pattern, the consciousness of the universe—waves and frequencies and interferences—projecting what was experienced as the physical world. The holographic principle. Einstein had disagreed. (Who was Einstein?) He had argued against it. But he was wrong. The great Einstein. The consciousness of the universe—waves and frequencies and interferences—projected as the unique consciousnesses of each plant and animal, turned on and organized by DNA. The universe holographically fractal. Dog barked again. Rocks and viruses! They didn’t have DNA! How did they organize?
“Dog is the peyote god,” Brad yelled.
“Listen to the water,” Clare coaxed.
“He’s in my head,” Brad explained.
Luke reached out to grab Dog’s ruff.
“Maybe you should take Dog away,” Clare suggested.
“No!” Brad shrieked. “He stays with me!”
Dog had to laugh although no one heard him, and that’s how it went for the rest of the afternoon and into the night. Brad played in the water. Brad smelled music. Brad took off his shoes. Clare and Luke took Brad to see the sunset. Brad was so happy. Brad lay down in his animal skins and stared up at the stars while Clare, Luke, and Dog sat around the campfire keeping watch. Brad looked at the three of them, each in turn, and felt such love—such compassion. The left and right sides of Brad’s heart opened and closed, sending and receiving. The valves opened and closed, letting the world in, letting the world out.
At sunset, especially, Brad looked at Clare, her skin reflecting the last rays of light. The joy of love leaked from his eyes. Partly this was Dog’s love for Luke, pure, unshakable, undying love, so that Brad made a noise of pleasure, a dog’s noise, and Clare patted him on the shoulder. “Yes, it’s very beautiful,” she said. Brad put out his hands and cupped her face. “You are beautiful,” he said, knowing for the first time what beauty was. Clare glowed in the raiment of her sweetness and goodness, her courage and humor, her smell of skin and sweat and menstrual blood. She glowed with her unique DNA, her unique consciousness, guanine, cytosine, and Brad wept for her and for his mother, weeping over their graves. The smell of dirt. Clare said nothing, letting him have this experience. “I love you so much,” Brad said, and she nodded. She understood. The arc of the Milky Way, water and stars. George Fox. (Who was George Fox?)
And then earlier, before the sunset.
Brad loo
ked across the stream and saw a glowing stick of light. The light floated above the sandy bank, horizontal, three meters long, topped by a composite of small flowers. The stick separated into three lines, one above the other. A Chinese ideogram. A symbol for something. Brad didn’t know what. So many of the Pleistocene scholars had been Chinese, as well as Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, from all over the world. No one had heard from China for a hundred years. Two billion people gone. And now they were trying to speak to him.
“Do you see that, Dog?” Brad asked.
Dog laughed. Dog cupped his hands around Clare’s face.
CHAPTER NINE
BRAD
Brad and Clare were having sex outside in a bed of grass away from the camp. Brad climaxed after Clare climaxed and then they dressed and lay together, holding each other until it became too cold and uncomfortable. The thorns of goathead pricked Brad’s arm even through the leather shirt, and he felt a rock under his thigh. He didn’t want to leave, yet he was the one who finally suggested it. Clare agreed a little too quickly.
They walked together to where Luke had built a shelter of willow saplings pulled together at the top and interwoven from top to bottom with other branches, strong enough to discourage any hyena who might come sniffing. At night, Brad, Luke, and Dog slept comfortably inside. Dog warned them of intruders, and Luke was good with his spear when he could jab close. Despite some scares, this had been better for Brad than crowding into one of the bachelor tents in the larger camp, sharing the other men’s bad jokes and smells. Especially recently, Brad avoided any place where he might meet Jon, who was prone to glaring at him—a serious glare, the prelude to spontaneous action. Brad had dealt with this kind of jealousy before in the lab, but he had never felt so physically threatened. Even Clare was surprised and kept protesting that Jon was such a gentle man.
They passed the isolated tent where the bushkie had been kept a prisoner. He was gone now, and Brad thought of him alone in the peyote fields. Perhaps the spirit of the peyote plant would be of some comfort to him before he died of thirst or madness. Brad had to smile—remembering the peyote plant.
“Tomorrow the tribe moves to our winter camp,” Clare was saying. “And I’ll take you back to the lab.”
She continued with the details of their five-day trip, what route they would travel, how fast they would go, what food and water they might find. Meanwhile, the tribe would begin the journey east and south to a larger valley near another stream. Herds of animals grazed these grasslands and browsed the forest edge—elk, camel, antelope, horse—with saber-toothed cats, lions, humans, and wolves competing for the meat. The glyptodont could be seen with its armor and poisonous spikes, which the tribes sometimes used for darts and arrows. Giant sloths and giant beavers were also common. The piñon pines were full of nuts. Some of the oak trees had edible acorns. Wild onion and garlic flavored their winter food. Clare boasted of bounty. Botany. Brad hardly listened.
“Just stay for the solstice,” he insisted again. “If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
“I know I won’t like it. And I’ve done my service in the lab.”
Brad thought that he could talk to the Council and get them to request Clare’s service again. Many adults came twice or even three times to the lab, helping with the work, building the solarcomps, monitoring the satellites. Clare had avoided that just as he had avoided the quest, but the right word to the right person—all done discreetly, of course. Clare would never know.
Brad grunted. Sex was making him stupid. How could she not know? The timing would be too suspicious. Clare took his hand, not understanding. Her fingers squeezed his.
Just before they reached the shelter, he said her name and touched her shoulder so that they stopped and turned toward each other. Brad pulled her close into an embrace. He kissed her standing up, yellow grass flowing around them, water flowing around a rock in the stream. “I want you to live with me,” he whispered and kissed her again.
“It’s …” Clare murmured. “I don’t know how we can.”
“Stay with me at the lab until solstice. Stay through the winter. Then we’ll come back to the tribe and I’ll stay with you.”
“You,” Clare pushed him away, looking toward the camp. Their relationship was not a secret. Still she didn’t want anyone to see. “You hate living with the tribe. You can’t wait to leave.”
That was true, Brad thought. It was partly Jon. Who wanted to live with a great glowering stallion pawing at the ground? But more to the point, almost everything about tribal life annoyed him. It wasn’t to his taste—all that physical labor and singing around the campfire. He didn’t have the right skills. His hunting was marginal. He hurried too much when he skinned animals. He was awkward with children. Of course, he could carry things and cook simple food. But that didn’t get him much praise. And those little lightweight solarcomps! They were dreadful! He missed his computer in the lab. He missed his work.
Besides, Luke and Dog were also leaving tomorrow, and then Brad would be friendless but for Clare. No, he couldn’t imagine staying with the tribe much longer, traveling to their next camp, hauling all those supplies, setting the tents up again. He couldn’t imagine coming back to live with them in the summer, either.
“Stay for the solstice,” he repeated, drawing in Clare so her body fit against his. The tall yellow grass rustled and sighed. Clare smiled into his shoulder and rested her head. Habitually she touched the leather bag around her neck.
Brad knew he was losing her, the arc of their love already descending. In the distance, a condor flapped across the sun. Above the flank of a nearby hill, vultures circled, patiently waiting. Other scavengers hurried to join them as some animal lay dead or dying, and Brad thought of Dog, who might be hurrying to the site as well. He thought of Luke/Lucia, her hormones confused, all those years a woman in the lab wanting to be a man. People were born that way. Fertility was a concern for the tribes. And then—Brad marveled at the coincidence, the interlocking patterns—Lucia had become his mother’s friend. She had watched over Brad when he was a baby and his mother was eager to be alone with her husband. Now, at Brad’s urging, in their shelter at night, Luke became Lucia again, telling stories about the lab in a soft, high voice. She said Brad looked like his father. She said his father had been a great hunter.
Brad held Clare close. “Just stay for the winter.”
“This isn’t working,” Clare said, referring to their sleeping arrangements. Brad had a bed in a small room in the lab, a very nice room with a window overlooking the enclosed inner courtyard. But Clare had been complaining that the room was stuffy at night because Brad insisted on closing the window. She said the bed was too small for the two of them. And the bed was too hard, not like the softer beds in camp made of grass and animal skins.
Clare wanted to make a tent for herself in the courtyard. Brad wanted her to sleep with him. Clare said he could sleep with her in the tent. Almost everything, Brad thought, was an argument. Even the winter solstice the next day had become a debate. Clare disapproved of the lab’s preparations.
Now he pointed out the obvious. “You can’t put out your tent until after tomorrow. We’ll be playing games in the courtyard. There’s the tree and the food.”
Clare stared out the window. “It’s like a sacrifice,” she said. “You’re cutting down and killing a living thing. For no reason.”
Brad wanted to scream. “We’ve talked about this,” he spoke carefully. “You cut willow branches for baskets. You cut saplings for spears. We all eat plants and animals. We consume the world, and the world consumes us.”
“But we are careful about what we kill,” Clare spoke with that insufferable righteousness of the tribes. “The solstice is a time of gratitude and thanksgiving. We eat our favorite winter foods and tell our favorite winter stories. We have races and spear throws. We try to have children who will be born in September.”
“We do the same thing.” Brad noticed he was grinding his teeth.
“And this tree?” Clare pointed out the window and looked grim.
“I’ve explained that,” Brad began but it seemed hopeless. Every year, the lab chose and cut down a pine tree and placed it in their courtyard before the day of the solstice, decorating it with gewgaws, pieces of painted metal, curved nails—not just scavenged things but crafted ornaments made from scavenged material. The tree was like the lab, rooted in the past, but also reworked. Remade. The tree was silly and playful and that was the point. Not to be too serious on the shortest day of the year. Not to take themselves too seriously. Not to be like the tribes, Brad thought, but did not say out loud.
Clare looked at him—perhaps he had made a noise, perhaps he had groaned—before shrugging and putting up her hand, the signal to stop. The solstice tree was just one more bone of contention. They had a pile of bones between them.
She changed the subject. She was having trouble with her students, she said. Some of them had stopped emailing, and soon she would have to contact the elders in their tribe. She disliked doing that. In some subtle way, during the quest and with her move to the lab, she had lost control of the class.
Working hard, as hard as he ever had, Brad acted as if he cared. He asked some questions, and Clare seemed pleased with the effort, and they left the room together, the issue of sleeping unresolved. Outside in the courtyard, two children stood before the cut pine tree, admiring its ornaments. Clare looked at them but said nothing. Brad was relieved when she picked up her spear by the wall. A day of hunting would put her in a good mood.
They held hands for a moment before parting. Clare opened her mouth, and Brad was afraid of what might come out: This isn’t working. So he covered her mouth with his, even though he knew people could be watching from the rooms three stories high that surrounded the courtyard, each room with its own small window. People could be watching from the corridor that led to the main lab to the east and from the doorways of the communal eating room to the west. People could be watching, and he was glad. He wanted everyone to see.
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