Hope of Earth

by Piers Anthony

  For some time, nothing seemed to happen. Flo continued to squat and breathe, facing the tree. Then she started pushing harder, and the cleft between her legs widened.

  Suddenly there was a rush of fluid from her, splashing on the ground. Alarmed, Jes stepped forward, but Flo didn’t seem to be concerned. Her eyes were closed, and she was still breathing heavily, bearing down. It didn’t seem to be blood, so maybe it was all right.

  Flo began to groan, and the groans rose in pitch to become small screams, but still Jes didn’t know what to do. She stood on one foot and then on the other, as if she could walk to wherever she needed to be to help.

  The screams faded. Flo opened her eyes. “Moss,” she said, as if this were routine.

  Jes ran around the glade, gathering up handfuls of the spongy moss that grew at the bases of trees. She brought back an armful. “Where?” she asked.

  “Under.”

  So she dumped it under Flo’s spread bottom, and straightened it, realizing that it was to cushion the fall of the emerging baby. The baby would be left here to die, but maybe Ho didn’t want to hurt it directly. Jes could understand that; the idea of hurting a baby appalled her.

  As Jes finished, Flo started breathing deeply again. Jes remained on her knees, not knowing whether to retreat. Flo bore down, screaming—and her cleft widened into a circle. Something dark appeared in it, pushing through. It was the baby’s head! Jes reached out to catch the baby, so it wouldn’t fall headfirst on the ground. Flo screamed again, and heaved, and the head pushed slowly through. It seemed impossible that the hole could open wide enough for a whole baby to pass, but it was happening. Then, much faster, the rest of the baby came, dropping into Jes’s hands. It was so warm and wet and slippery that she almost dropped it; she grabbed harder, and must have hurt it, because it shuddered and then gulped and began to cry.

  “Cut,” Flo gasped, still holding on to the tree.

  Now Jes saw the cord extending from the baby’s belly back up into Flo. She laid the baby down in the damp moss and brought out her bit of sharp stone. She sliced it across the cord several times until the cord separated. Then, remembering what she had heard, she looped the length of cord around and knotted it near the baby’s little belly.

  Flo, meanwhile, hauled herself up, took a few steps to another tree, then strained again. More was coming out of her, and now it looked like blood. Jes started to get up, but Flo cried, “No!” So Jes took some dry moss and used it to mop and clean the baby, wiping the blood and waxy smears off it. Now she realized that it was a girl, tiny but perfectly formed. How awful to leave her here to die! But she reminded herself why: Flo had no mate, and their band was weak, and so they could not support a child. If she kept it, the baby would die, and Flo might die too, trying to nurse it when she was unable to forage enough to feed herself. That would hurt them all. So it had to be left here. Jes hoped they would not be able to hear its crying, from the home cave.

  Jes cleaned the tiny feet, and saw a mark between the first and second toes of the left foot. It looked like a bit of leaf caught there, and she tried to clear it out, but it was actually a discoloration of the skin. Well, no one would notice it, there. Not that it mattered, in a baby destined to die. But it was sad, somehow, to think of trying to hide a baby’s blemish, and it not living long enough for it to matter. Jes felt her tears starting. She wished that she could take the baby, but knew that it would be even worse for her to try, because she had no breasts and couldn’t nurse it.

  Flo finished her business, and cleaned herself off with some other moss. She came over to look once at the baby. She was crying too. Then she turned around and walked away, back along the path.

  Jes took one more longing look at the baby, then got up and followed Flo. They cried together as they returned to the cave. As they came in sight of it, Flo paused to wipe her fur and face clean. Then she put a neutral expression on her face and marched on. Jes did the same.

  But as they were about to enter, Flo stopped. Her tears flowed again. “Can’t,” she said, and turned.

  Jes didn’t argue. She followed Flo back to the glade, secretly relieved. Maybe she could help forage for the baby. Maybe it would be her child too. At least it wouldn’t die. Not right away.

  But when they came up to the place, the baby was gone. The stained moss remained, but there was no sign of the tiny girl. Someone or something had already taken her.

  Flo uttered a muted sob and searched all around the glade, but there was nothing. That meant that a person must have taken the baby, because an animal would have devoured her, leaving blood and bones. So maybe the little girl would live after all, having a mother who could support her.

  At last Flo gave up her fruitless search and turned again for the cave. She was crying, but not in quite the same way as before. There was a tinge of hope in it. Jes hoped that hope was justified.

  Homo habilis had made a fundamental shift of lifestyle. He had found a more reliable source of high-energy food, but it required special abilities. He needed to spot fresh carcasses, and to reach them promptly enough to get whole bones, and to crack those bones open. This meant fighting off some of the other predators, and represents the first consistent use of tools we know of: the stone used on the bones. Probably stones were the least of his technology, as noted before; wooden tools and weapons would have been far easier to make and use. Would a sharp stone actually have been used to cut an umbilical cord? That is a stretch, but a creature smart enough to carve meat might do it. Scavenging also meant carrying, so as to be able to complete the operation safely. Because bipedalism freed the hands for such things, it was possible; but more intelligence was needed for such organization. There was now a greater premium on brains. That meant the body’s mechanisms for cooling body and brain had to become stronger. Thus sweating increased, and fur thinned further, as it could afford to do as long as the species remained vertical, catching the wind while avoiding the noon sun. The prior “Geodyssey” volumes assumed the validity of the Aquatic hypothesis, wherein a period in water caused mankind to shed his fur and develop subcutaneous fat; this one does not Mankind appears to have become furless in order to cool his burgeoning brain. But there were further complications of both bipedalism and loss of fur, leading to other remarkable developments.

  Chapter 3

  TRIPLE PLOY

  When mankind became bipedal, he surely didn’t anticipate the chain of consequences. A major one related to the female of the species. A baby takes perhaps twice as long to learn to walk on two feet as it would for four feet, and this extends the time it is dependent on its mother. She had to carry it much of the time, nursing it as she held it in the crook of her arm. The larger brain and slower development of the child extend that time of extreme dependency further. This places a burden on the mother. As the species progressed, this burden increased—and eventually human women started having babies at shorter intervals than other species did, so that there could be several children dependent on one mother. Nursing drained her physically, and she had to take in more nourishment herself to provide for her baby, while having such a family restricted her from going out to forage. At the same time, Homo habilis progressed, about two million years ago, to Homo erectus, with a division of labor occurring. The male went out to hunt and fight; the female foraged and took care of the children. It was no longer possible for a mother to raise her child by herself She had to have the regular help of a male, for protection and food for herself and her children. She may have needed a monogamous relationship, or at least a way to be sure of the regular presence of a male, in addition to the support of the tribe. While it made reproductive sense for a father to facilitate the survival and progress of his children, this was not a notion that came naturally to the average male. His reproductive strategy had always been to sow his seed as widely as possible, sniffing out the fertile females, and leave the care of the offspring to their mothers. But it made little reproductive sense to sire many offspring who died because the mothers
were unable to support them. Thus it was necessary for the woman to find a way to compel the man’s constant attention despite his polygamous instinct, and necessary for the man to modify his ways somewhat. This was, in its subtle fashion, the onset of a battle of the sexes that continues today. Men and women are not really at war, but they do have fundamentally different strategies of survival and reproduction, and compromise is essential. For this engagement, the woman set aside the compulsion of periodic pheromones and developed perhaps the most formidable arsenal of visual, emotional, and behavioral devices any species has seen. It was the triple ploy.

  New evidence is pushing the dates of Homo erectus much further back, as far as 1.8 million years ago in China and southeast Asia. Scavenging may have led naturally to hunting—why wait for your carcass?—and hunting enabled mankind to obtain food anywhere he went, as long as there were animals who could live on vegetation that human beings couldn’t eat. So this change of strategy may have opened much of the rest of the world to mankind. However, those groups that lacked the numbers or ability to hunt effectively could still have done well enough by scavenging, the old stand-by, so probably Erectus did both. If the forward fringe of settlement advanced just one mile per decade, in a hundred thousand years it would extend 10,000 miles. Thus Homo erectus could have colonized virtually all of habitable Asia in that time, and may have done so. The setting is Java, 1,500,000 years ago.

  FLO FOLLOWED THE PATH EVERY day to the glade, but there was never anything. Jes went with her, understanding her need. But in time they had to give it up. The baby was gone.

  Sam brought meat and shared it with the others, and Flo recovered her strength. She put more time into foraging, and the foraging was good, and they all did well. Still, she knew that they would not have done well if she had kept her baby; she would have been weaker, and would have needed more, and it would have put an unconscionable strain on the band. She felt guilty for their success, purchased at the price of her baby.

  But they were too small in number to be a band. They were six band siblings who had gotten separated from their original band, and now they had their own cave in the vicinity of several other bands. Their time spent struggling to survive on their own had bound them together in a way they had not been before. Sam and Flo were grown, and Ned and Jes were growing, while Bry and Lin remained children. They were like a large family, and they all looked out for each other, and they didn’t want to separate.

  In some bands, the males went out to seek females in other bands, and joined those bands. In others, females went out to the other bands. But the six of them had resolved to remain together, bringing both males and females in, if they could. They had a good location, with adequate foraging and hunting, and they knew how to crack open the bones to gain the most from the animals they killed. But they needed more members, so that no other band could come and drive them off.

  Sam was big and strong, and had gotten more so recently, but he had a problem. He believed he was cursed to mate with an ugly female, because he had seen ugly animals mating. So he wasn’t eager to find a woman. But Flo knew that there had to be mates, because they could never be a true band without couples and children. One day when she was foraging for roots with the others, while Sam was out searching for a carcass to scavenge, she brought up the subject. They were of course busy eating what they found and dug out, but since more time was spent in searching and digging than in eating, there was time for words.

  “Sam need woman,” she said, speaking each word carefully so that they could understand. When anyone spoke too rapidly, the words ran in together and became incomprehensible, so time had to be taken.

  Little Lin put her fingers in her mouth, stretching it wide. The effect was exaggerated because of her deformed hand. “Ugly woman,” she said.

  “No,” Flo said firmly. “No ugly.”

  Ned agreed. “Sam fear ugly. No mate.”

  “Tell Sam,” Lin said.

  That was the problem. Sam believed his vision, and did not listen when Flo or anyone else tried to tell him that he didn’t have to mate with an ugly woman.

  “Flo need man,” Ned said.

  “Man no mate Flo,” Flo said with resignation. She knew that she was cursed, because she had been raped and then lost her baby. What man would want her after that?

  “Man mate Flo,” Ned said.

  “Tell Flo,” Bry said, imitating Lin’s tone, and the two laughed.

  “Man no,” Flo repeated.

  Ned faced her. “Tell man baby no,” he said seriously. “Man know no.”

  Flo was astonished. It had never occurred to her that the people of other bands wouldn’t know of her problem. But smart Ned was right: How would a man know, if she didn’t tell him? If the others didn’t tell him? Her body had resumed its early form, and her cleft had narrowed, so that there was no sign that a baby had passed through it. “Tell no?” she asked, looking at each of the others. This was a phenomenal new concept: that of pretending to what wasn’t true. Always before, what wasn’t true had no meaning; could it now have benefit?

  “Tell no!” they chorused. That meant that none of them would tell. She would seem to be an ordinary woman, without the curse of a lost baby. Ned had found the way.

  They discussed it further, as they completed their foraging, and decided that Sam and Flo should go out together to look for mates from another band. Sam should have no trouble, because of his evident size and strength, but even without the curse, Flo would surely find it difficult, because she wanted to bring a man back here. So she was resigned to likely failure. But she would make the effort, because it was a pretext to make Sam come with her, so he could find a woman. He wouldn’t go alone; despite his size and power, he lacked certainty by himself, and was largely helpless. Some woman might talk him into joining her tribe.

  As they returned from their foraging, with a few extra roots to share with Sam, they saw him approaching the cave with an armful of bones. He had found a carcass, and brought back the leg bones for them to crack open and share. So it would be a good evening.

  Flo broached the subject after they had eaten all the marrow. “Sam find woman. Flo find man. Sam Flo go.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes!” all the others cried.

  Sam was physically strong, but had trouble with intellectual debate. So he shrugged.

  Next day the two of them set out. Ned was left in charge of the cave; he was clever at finding ways to make it difficult for any stranger to enter. He could balance rocks so that they fell at the slightest touch, landing on tender feet, and he was adept at putting sharp thorns in unexpected places. He would make any foreign raid during their absence awkward. Even so, Flo didn’t like leaving the four children alone, but she saw no alternative. They had to remain to maintain possession of the good cave.

  They took a devious path, and walked on past the territory of their nearest neighbor band, because they knew that there were no suitable mates there, and the others knew too much about them. They needed to approach an unfamiliar band. Their band’s path linked to the neighboring band’s path, becoming less familiar, but it was all right because all people had a common interest in connecting to others. Otherwise how would mates ever be found? As long as they stayed on the path and kept moving, they would probably not be molested.

  They did not encounter anyone. That wasn’t surprising, because there were not many bands. Their own had come from another place, moving into new territory, and others had closed in around them similarly. The other bands were larger, so could hunt more effectively, and got the best animals first, which was why their own band had to scavenge more often than not. Where the elder generation had come from they didn’t know, but Flo’s impression was that it was far away. Whenever things got crowded, some people moved; it had always been that way.

  Of course the other bands would be aware of their passage. Every band kept watch over its territory. Little Bry had sharp eyes and was always alert for motion or traces; he kn
ew when strangers passed near, but never showed himself. It would be the same with any band. Foreigners were not to be trusted; only when they became sufficiently known were they accepted, grudgingly. That was why mating was difficult; it was not fun for a woman to join an unfamiliar and tacitly hostile new band. Especially at first, when she could be sexually tried by any or all males who desired her, before one decided to make her his own. But it had to be done, if she wanted to breed.

  And Flo was making it even more difficult for herself, seeking to make a man come to her band. Yet such a thing was not unknown, if there was a man who wanted to move, or a woman who was uncommonly appealing. Was Flo appealing enough? Her body had matured with the experience of having the baby, and now her breasts were large and her hips wide; she was well fleshed. She remembered seeing adults like that, before the six of them got separated from their original band, and they had attracted the interest of many men. She had learned to walk in a way that accentuated her qualities, attracting male eyes. She had practiced it, before the curse of the rape and lost baby, and Sam had said that if she hadn’t been his band sibling he would have found her matable. She had had to cover her head to garner that opinion, because otherwise Sam could not even entertain the notion. Band siblings were family. She knew how it was, because when Sam covered his head, she could see that he was a good mating prospect, but otherwise the question never entered her mind.

  She thought again of her lost baby, as she tended to do when not actively distracted by something else. She had had to leave the baby girl to die, then changed her mind, but someone else had taken her. Not anyone in the immediately neighboring bands; it was generally known when a woman had a baby, and all new children were accounted for. But a traveling woman from a more distant band could have taken her. So Flo’s eyes were open; maybe she could find her daughter while visiting farther bands. Then—