By what they thought was the approach of autumn, the last of the women had given birth and those who had produced the first children were well and truly pregnant again, including Mia, who was heading the field.
Glyn impressed on all that it was their duty to teach the children all they could remember from the ship days, as there were no books or other means of keeping a record of what had happened. The writing materials in the backpacks didn’t last long, and although they could be cleaned off and written on again, there was a limit as to how many times this could be done, and it was doubtful if the flimsy material would stand the test of time anyway, as far as permanent records were concerned.
Winter was hardly winter, it just got a little cooler in the evenings, and then they were into spring again, which was the point at which the great adventure had begun when they were forced to leave the ship, or was it? No one was sure, and few cared.
Glyn and Arki worked incessantly to make sure that everyone had a skill which contributed to the overall good of the group, and where possible, two skills were encouraged.
The occasional new item of food was added to their menu, and a large area of forest had been cleared using fire, the idea being to plant fruit bearing trees close to the compound, just in case something unpleasant was found in the forest and it curtailed their foraging until it could be handled.
The months went by, the seasons, such as they were, came and went, and the group steadily grew in numbers.
Glyn was still obsessed by what he considered to be a very rapid gestation period, and this was further compounded when he realized that the children were growing up at an apparently accelerated rate as well. Arki couldn’t or wouldn’t shed any light on the subject, although he had his own ideas on the matter.
As there had been no overt attacks from sea monsters for some time, an expedition set off to go along the coastal waters to see what else there might be a little further away.
They returned in due course with two new fruits and cuttings from the plants which had produced them, safely tucked away in a bed of damp moss and ready for propagation in the new cleared area at the back of the compound.
Although they were not strictly farmers, everyone grew something, and most had a skill which produced goods other members of the group needed.
By the time of the third round of births, the first was well developed and mimicking most things their parents were doing, apart from reproducing, as yet.
Mia’s third child was a girl, and it was then that the normally hard nosed Glyn melted a little, and became a great favourite among the children of the group.
He had wondrous tales to tell, most containing a nugget of information which would aid their survival in later years. He was still hell bent on education, in one form or another.
One expedition brought back several pieces of the shiny metal, which after being tested by Glyn’s radiation device, were seized upon by Arki whose cutting blade was getting thinner by the day, and new blades were fashioned complete with sturdy handles and a scabbard for protection.
A few more years went by, and the first generation were ready for partnering off to produce young of their own.
‘I wish I knew how the medic worked out the pairing for spreading the genes correctly.’ Glyn said to Arki one day.
‘Shouldn’t worry, if I were you,’ Arki replied, somewhat disinterested in the subject, ‘there’s enough of us now for nature to sort it out. I think you should let the youngsters chose among themselves, as long as it’s not between brother and sister.’ And the matter was closed for the last time.
There were several deaths among the oldest of the group over the next year or so, and it drove home the point to Glyn and Arki that although they were not among the oldest, their time for departure was coming up.
The group was now too big for the comparatively small compound which had been their starting place, and an expedition along the coast had found another suitable site only a few kilometres away which could easily take half the group to begin a new colony.
Glyn decided that it would be best for all if Arki took charge of the new group, and established it on the newly found site along the coast.
They would split the people down the middle on a voluntary basis, so that each group would have an equal mixture of young and old, and so it was done.
After the split, Glyn missed Arki more than he ever thought he would. There was no one else quite like him, no one else would stand up to his more outrageous ideas, and no one else had the ability to dust him off and stand him on his feet after taking a mental tumble.
Over the years, they did meet, taking it in turns to visit each other’s compounds and exchanging ideas, but it wasn’t quite the same again, and Glyn missed his old friend deeply.
It wasn’t that long before both groups needed to split again, and new clearings in the forest had been prepared and shelters erected in anticipation of the event.
Glyn now had to be carried around in a wicker chair on two poles, and it irked him terribly. He and Mia had produced fourteen children, the youngest five now having children of their own and just as keen as their father to make their mark on the world.
He still couldn’t reconcile the fact that gestation and the growing up process of the children took so little time, and as he didn’t have anyone to argue with now, he had to keep his thoughts to himself.
One thing he did do was to keep a record of the average heights of the children when fully grown, and the data he had accumulated caused him even more concern. Each generation was a little shorter and stockier than the previous one, but as the difference was only small from one generation to the next, it didn’t become apparent to the others.
Great efforts had been made to discover some means of making cloth, but there didn’t seem to be a plant with the right kind of fibres anywhere in the forest.
Some plants produced fibres which made very strong cords and ropes, but they were too course for fabrics, as the prospective wearers very soon found out.
Eventually the old clothes wore out, but by then everyone had got used to roaming about as naked as the day they were born, only the most elderly clinging to the remnants of the old fabrics to cover their dignity and anything they considered shouldn’t be on public view.
A few years on, and he was very frail indeed, and had to be waited on for all his needs. Just before his demise, Glyn sent a message to Arki about his latest discovery.
Using help from many eager hands, but keeping the information gathered thereby to himself, he had found that not only were the generations getting shorter each time, but they were also growing a little more body hair. It was very fine and toned in well with their golden brown sunburn, but it was there nevertheless.
Glyn died in his sleep one night, a contented smile on his face as if he had solved some great mystery, sadly it was before the message came back from an equally aged Arki that he had noticed the same thing.
The human population of earth was taking off again, the groups splitting and penetrating further into the forest, while some preferred to stay close to the coastline.
Without Glyn and Arki banging the education drum, as it were, the urge to educate the young had weakened more than somewhat, and the recipients of such teaching as there were, found it difficult to relate the little their parents taught them to the facts of surviving in the forest.
Forest lore went down well, was easily understood and could be applied to life. If you got it wrong, you usually didn’t get a second chance. Spaceships which weren’t what they seemed to be, and stories of an old earth long gone by were irrelevant, and didn’t stay in the memory for very long, and so the old tales died out, except for a very few persons who did seem to enjoy them.
The creatures of the forest hadn’t been exactly standing still while all this was going on, and some very strange and unpleasant ones had wandered in from afar, seeking a better environment or a new supply of food.
Unfortunately, some particularly nasty ones mov
ed into the vicinity of one of the new groups, and they were ill equipped to deal with the new threat.
A frantic messenger broke into the old base camp early one morning with the news, and a veritable army of knife and spear carriers set forth at great speed to even up the odds a little, which they did admirably.
It was a pity that the creatures of the forest didn’t have the gift of speech, for if the story of the massacre had gone the rounds, they wouldn’t have troubled the humans again, but they didn’t, and they did, if you see what I mean.
As the years rolled by, the new generations had to move further into the forest, but this posed a problem.
The deeper into the forest they went, the darker it got at ground level, so there was a natural limit to the degree of penetration that was viable, until some bright spark suggested an alternative, that they move up into the levels just below the canopy.
The trees deeper in the forest were truly giants, and the massive branches which linked each tree to its neighbour made a very efficient highway for the new forest dwellers to travel on. Any threatening predators were quickly despatched and each new enclave kept in communication with its neighbours via the linking branches.
They didn’t have it all their own way. The forest was developing its own brand of life forms, and these migrated hither and thither as space and food supplies dictated, and occasionally there were clashes and casualties on both sides, but usually the humans won.
As each new generation matured, and the strongest members took up the senior positions in each group, the racial memory of their beginnings began to fade as survival necessities became of prime importance, only a few dedicated people passed on the old stories down to the next generation, and that was only to those who were interested.
The metal cutting blades so painstakingly wrought by Arki so long ago, began to wear out and eventually became useless, odd pieces of metal were found but the method of converting them into useful devices was long forgotten, and the finds became objects of mysticism, adding to the tales told by the elderly of bygone ages to entertain the young or anyone else who would listen.
The radiation detector lasted for a very long time, but what it detected and the significance of its signals were forgotten long before the solar powered regeneration and power storage system failed, which was a pity, as several groups wandered into areas of high radiation and subsequently suffered massive radiation burns and genetic damage, which led to their demise.
Any form of clothing had been discarded long ago, as the temperate climate suited the unclad figure, and was less restrictive of movement.
A few artefacts survived and were added to by finds from the old ruins of the pre destruction period, but their uses were beyond the comprehension of those who found them, and generally they were relegated to the safe keeping of the Story Tellers, which most groups seemed to have acquired.
The Story Tellers performed a useful service to the groups, as they studied the use of herbs and other useful gifts of the forest for the treatment of ailments and accidents, worked out methods of combating the more deadly invaders of a group’s area, and generally kept an eye on the mores of their enclaves.
The forest grew and gradually took over most of the land masses, new species appeared from time to time adding to the continual diversity of life on Earth, and a kind of stability was achieved.
Nature, for want of a better word, rested for a while, allowing her new creations to find their own niches in the rich panoply of life which now pervaded the shattered remains of what so-called civilized man had wrought upon the Earth, and although it would never be the same as before, it was surviving well, despite the differences.
As always, she would take her time before the next great thrust forward to populate the universe with sentient beings, whatever form they might take.
But generally speaking, those which survived the best seemed to be equipped with two arms, two legs, a trunk and a head, although what went on in the head was not always as predictable or reasonable as she might have hoped for.
Nature had one invaluable thing in her favour, time, and there was plenty of that.
* * *
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