Darwin's Radio d-1

by Greg Bear

  The young hunter who had pushed a stick into his woman’s belly was dead. He had beaten that one to the ground and made him writhe and moan, then stamped on his neck, but too late, there was blood and his woman was hurt. The shamans came into the crowd and tried to push the others away with guttural words, choppy dark singing words, not at all like the watery light bird noises he could make now.

  He took his woman into their hut and tried to comfort her, but she hurt too much.

  The snow came down. He heard the shouting, the mourning cries, and he knew their time was up. The family of the dead hunter would be after them. They would have gone to ask the permission of the old Bull-man. The old Bull-man had never liked masked parents or their Flat Face children.

  It was the end, the old Bull-man had often murmured; the Flat Faces taking all the game, driving the people farther into the mountains each year, and now their own women were betraying them and making more Flat Face children.

  He carried his woman out of the hut, crossed the log bridge to the shore, listening to the cries for vengeance. He heard the Bull-man leading the charge. The chase began.

  He had once used the cave to store food. Game was difficult to find and the cave was cold, and he had kept rabbit and marmot, acorns and wild grass and mice there for his woman when he had been on hunting duty. Otherwise she might not have gotten enough to eat from the village rations. The other women with their hungry children had refused to care for her as she grew round-bellied.

  He had smuggled the small game from the cave into the village at night and fed her. He loved his woman so much it made him want to yell, or roll on the ground and moan, and he could not believe she was badly hurt, despite the blood that soaked her furs.

  He carried his woman again, and she looked up at him, pleading in her high and singing voice, like a river flowing rather than rolling rocks, this new voice he had, too. They both sounded like children now, not adults.

  He had once hidden near a Flat Face hunting camp and watched them sing and dance around a huge bonfire in the night. Their voices had been high and watery, like children. Maybe he and his woman were becoming Flat Faces and would go and live with them when the child was born.

  He carried her through the soft and powdery snow, his feet numb Hke logs. She was quiet for a time, asleep. When she awoke, she cried and tried to curl up in his arms. In the twilight, as the golden glow filled the snow-misted high rocky places, he looked down on her and saw that the carefully shaved furry parts on her temples and cheeks, where the mask did not cover, and all the rest of her hair, looked dull and matted, lifeless. She smelled like an animal about to die.

  Up over rocky terraces slippery with new snow. Along a snow-covered ridge, and then down, sliding, tumbling, the woman still in his arms. He got to his feet again at the bottom, turned to orient himself to the flat walls of the mountain, and suddenly wondered why this seemed so familiar, like something he had practiced over and over again with the hunter-trainers in the mountain goat seasons.

  Those had been good times. He thought of those times as he carried his woman the final distance.

  He had used the rabbit atlatl, the smaller throwing-stick, since childhood, but had never been allowed to carry the elk and bison atlatl until the itinerant hunter-trainers had come to the village in the year his balls had ached and he had spewed seed in his sleep.

  Then he had gone with his father, who was with the dream people now, and met the hunter-trainers. They were lone and ugly men, unkempt, scarred, with thick locks of hair. They had no village, no laws of grooming, but went from place to place and organized the people when the mountain goats or the deer or the elk or the bison were ready to share their flesh. Some grumbled that they went to the Flat Face villages and trained them to hunt in one season, and indeed, some of the hunter-trainers might have been Flat Faces who covered their features with matted beard and hair. Who would question them? Not even the Bull-man. When they came, everyone ate well, and the women scraped the skins and laughed and ate irritating herbs and drank water all day, and all pissed together in leather buckets and chewed and soaked the skins. It was forbidden to hunt the big animals without the hunter-trainers.

  He came to the mouth of the cave. His woman whined softly, rhythmically, as he carried and rolled and pushed her inside. He looked back. The snow was covering the drops of blood they left behind.

  He knew then that they were finished. He hunkered down, his thick shoulders barely fitting, and rolled her gently onto a skin he used to cover the meat while it froze in the cave. He slid and pushed and then pulled her back into the cave, and went out to get moss and sticks from an overhang where he knew they would be dry. He hoped she would not die before he came back.

  Oh, God, let me wake up, I do not want to see.

  He found enough sticks for a small fire and carried them back to the cave, where he lined them up and then spun the stick, first making sure the woman could not see. Making fire was man’s stuff. She was still asleep. When he was too weak to twirl the stick anymore, and still there was no curl of smoke, he took out a flint and chipped it. For a long time, until his fingers were bruised and numb, he struck the flints into the moss, blew on the moss, and suddenly, the Sun Bird opened its eye and spread little orange wings. He added sticks.

  His woman moaned again. She curled up on her back and told him in her watery squeaky voice to go away. This was woman’s stuff. He ignored her, as was sometimes allowed, and helped her bring the baby.

  It was very painful for her and she made loud noises, and he wondered how she had so much life left in her, with so much blood gone, but the baby came out quickly.

  No. Please, let me wake up.

  He held the baby, and showed it to the woman, but her eyes were flat and her hair was stiff and dry. The baby did not cry or move, no matter how he kneaded it.

  He put the baby down and slammed his fist on the rock walls. He screamed hoarsely and curled up beside his woman, who was quiet now, and tried to keep her warm as smoke filled the top of the cave and the embers began to gray and the Sun Bird folded its wings and slept.

  The baby would have been his daughter, supreme gift from the Dream Mother. The baby did not look so very different from other babies in the village, though its nose was small and its chin stuck out. He supposed it would have grown up to be a Flat Face. He tried to stuff dry grass into the hole in the back of the baby’s head. He thought maybe the stick had punched the baby there. He took his neck skin, the finest and softest, and wrapped the baby in that and then pushed it to the back of the cave.

  He remembered the dumb man’s groans as he had stamped on his neck, but it did not help much.

  Everything was gone. Caves had been proper places for burial since the times of story, before they had moved to wooden villages and lived like the Flat Faces, though everyone said the People had invented wooden villages. This was an old way to die and be buried, in the back of a cave, so it was okay. The dream people would find the baby and take it home, where it would have been missing for only a little while, so maybe it would be born quickly again.

  His woman was growing as cold as the rock. He arranged her arms and legs, her tousled furs and skins, pushed back the loose mask still stuck to her brows, peered into her dull and blind eyes. No energy to mourn.

  After a while he felt warm enough not to need the skins, so he pushed them off. Maybe she was warm, too. He pushed the skins off his woman so she would be almost naked, easier for the dream people to recognize.

  He hoped the dream people of her family would make an alliance with the dream people of his family. He would like to be with her in the dream place, too. Maybe he and his woman would find the baby again. He believed the dream people could do so many good things for you.

  Maybe this, maybe that, maybe so many things, happier things. He grew warmer.

  For a little while, he didn’t hate anyone. He stared at the darkness where his woman’s face was and whispered flint words, words against dark, as if he could st
rike up another Sun Bird. It was so good not to move. So warm.

  Then his father strolled into the cave and called his true name.

  Mitch stood in his shorts in front of the trailer and stared up at the moon, the stars over Kumash. He blew his nose quietly. The early morning was cool and still. The sweat on his face and skin dried slowly and made him shiver. He was covered with goose bumps. A few quail rustled in the bushes alongside the trailer.

  Kaye pushed open the screen door with a squeak and a hiss of the cylinder and walked out to stand beside him in her nightgown.

  “You’ll get cold,” he said, and put his arm around her. The swelling on his tongue had gone down in the last few days. There was a peculiar ridge on the left side of his tongue now, but talking was easier.

  “You soaked the bed with sweat,” she said. She was so round, so different from the small, slender Kaye he still pictured in his head. Her heat and her smell filled the air like vapor from a rich soup. “Dream?” she asked.

  “The worst,” he said. “I think it was the last one.”

  “They’re all the same?”

  “They’re all different,” Mitch said.

  “Jack’ll want to hear the gory details,” Kaye said.

  “And you don’t?”

  “Uh uh,” Kaye said. “She’s restless, Mitch. Talk to her.”

  87

  Kumash County, Eastern Washington

  MAY 18

  Kaye’s contractions were coming regularly. Mitch called to make sure the clinic was ready and Dr. Chambers, the pediatrician, was on his way from his brick house on the north end of the reservation. As Kaye put the last toiletry items in the dopp bag and found a few pieces of clothing she thought might be nice to wear after, Mitch called Dr. Galbreath again, but the answering service picked up.

  “She must be on her way,” Mitch said as he folded the phone. If the deputies would not let Galbreath through the checkpoint off the main road — a real possibility that infuriated Mitch — then Jack had arranged for two men to meet her five miles south and smuggle her in on a wash road through the low hills.

  Mitch pulled out a box and dug for the small digital camera he had once used to record site details. He made sure the battery was charged.

  Kaye stood in the living room holding her stomach and breathing in small huffs. She smiled at him as he joined her.

  “I am so scared,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Goo; you ask why?”

  “It’s going to be fine,” Mitch said, but he was pale as a sheet.

  “That’s why your hands are like ice,” Kaye said. “I’m early. Maybe it’s a false alarm.” Then she made a funny grunt and felt between her legs. “I think my water just broke. I’ll get some towels.”

  “Never mind the damned towels!” Mitch shouted. He helped her to the Toyota. She pulled the seat belt low around her stomach. Nothing like the dreams, he thought. The thought became a kind of prayer, and he repeated it over and over.

  “Nobody’s heard from Augustine,” Kaye said as Mitch pulled onto the paved road and began the two-mile drive to the clinic.

  “Why would we?”

  “Maybe he’ll try to stop us,” she said.

  Mitch gave her a funny look. “That’s as crazy as my dreams.”

  “He’s the bogeyman, Mitch. He scares me.”

  “I don’t like him either, but he’s no monster.”

  “He thinks we’re diseased,” she said, and there were tears on her cheeks. She winced.

  “Another?” Mitch asked.

  She nodded. “It’s okay,” she said. “Every twenty minutes.” They met Jack’s truck coming from the East Ridge Road and stopped long enough to confer through the windows. Sue was with Jack. Jack followed them.

  “I want to have Sue help you coach me,” Kaye said. “I want her to see us. If I’m okay, it will be so much easier for her.”

  “Fine with me,” Mitch said. “I’m no expert.”

  Kaye smiled and winced again.

  Room number one in the Kumash Wellness Clinic was quickly being converted into a labor and delivery room. A hospital bed had been rolled in, and a bright round surgical lamp on a tall steel pole.

  The nurse midwife, a plump, high-cheeked, middle-aged woman named Mary Hand, arranged the medical tray and helped Kaye change into a hospital gown. The anesthesiologist, Dr. Pound, a young, wan-looking man with thick black hair and a pug nose, arrived half an hour after the room was prepared and conferred with Chambers while Mitch crushed ice in a plastic bag in the sink. Mitch put ice chips into a cup.

  “Is it now?” Kaye asked Chambers as he checked her.

  “Not for a while,” he said. “You’re at four centimeters.”

  Sue pulled up a chair. On her tall frame, her pregnancy seemed much less obvious. Jack called to her from the door, and she turned. He tossed her a small bag, stuffed his hands in his pockets, nodded to Mitch, and backed out. She placed the bag on the table next to the bed. “He’s embarrassed to come in,” she told Kaye. “He thinks this is woman stuff.”

  Kaye lifted her head to peer at the bag. It was made out of leather and tied with a beaded string.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “All sorts of things. Some of them smell good. Some don’t.”

  “Jack’s a medicine man?”

  “God, no,” Sue said. “You think I’d marry a medicine man? He knows some good ones, though.”

  “Mitch and I thought we’d like this one to come naturally,” Kaye told Dr. Pound as he brought in a rolling table with his tanks and tubes and syringes.

  “Of course,” the anesthesiologist said, and smiled. “I’m here just in case.”

  Chambers told Kaye and Mitch there was a woman living about five miles away who was going into labor, not a SHEVA birth. “She insists on a home delivery. They have a hot tub and everything. I may have to go there for a while this evening. You said Dr. Galbreath would be here.”

  “She should be on her way,” Mitch said.

  “Well, let’s hope it works out. The baby’s head down. In a few minutes we’ll attach a fetal health monitor. All the comforts of a big hospital, Ms. Lang.”

  Chambers took Mitch aside. He glanced at Mitch’s face, his eyes tracking the outline of the skin mask.

  “Fetching, isn’t it?” Mitch said nervously.

  “I’ve delivered four SHEVA second-stage babies,” Chambers said. “I’m sure you know the risk, but I have to spell out some complications that might happen, so we can all be prepared.”

  Mitch nodded, gripped his trembling hands.

  “None of them were born alive. Two looked perfect, no visible defects, just…dead.” Chambers stared at Mitch with a critical expression. “I don’t like these odds.”

  Mitch flushed. “We’re different,” he said.

  “There can also be a shock response in the mothers if the delivery gets complicated. Something to do with hormone signals from a SHEVA fetus in distress. Nobody understands why, but the infant tissues are so different. Some women do not react well. If that happens, I’m going to do a C-section and get the baby out as quickly as possible.” He put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder. Chambers’s pager beeped. “Just as a precaution, I’m going to take extra care with spilled fluids and tissues. Everybody will wear viral filter masks, even you. We’re in new territory here, Mr. Rafelson. Excuse me.”

  Sue was feeding Kaye ice and they were talking, heads together. It seemed to be a private moment, so Mitch backed out, and besides, he wanted to sort through some difficult emotions.

  He walked into the lobby. Jack sat in a chair by the old card table there, staring at a pile of National Geographies. The fluorescent lights made everything seem blue and cold.

  “You look mad,” Jack said.

  “They’ve almost got the death certificate signed,” Mitch said, his voice trembling.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Sue and I think maybe we’ll have the birth at home. No doctors.”

  “H
e says it’s dangerous.”

  “Maybe it is, but we did it before,” Jack said.

  “When?” Mitch asked.

  “Your dreams,” Jack said. “The mummies. Thousands of years ago.”

  Mitch sat in the other chair and put his head on the table. “Not a happy time.”

  “Tell me,” Jack said.

  Mitch told him about the last dream. Jack listened intently.

  “That was a bad one,” he said. “I won’t tell Sue about it.”

  “Say something comforting,” Mitch suggested wryly.

  “I’ve been trying to have dreams to help me figure out what to do,” Jack said. “I just dream about big hospitals and big doctors poking at Sue. The white man’s world gets in the way. So I’m no help.” Jack scratched his eyebrows. “Nobody is old enough to know what to do. My people have been on this land forever. But my grandfather tells me the spirits have nothing to say. They don’t remember either.”

  Mitch pushed his hand through the magazines. One slid off and hit the floor with a smack. “That doesn’t make any sense, Jack.”

  * * *

  Kaye lay back and watched Chambers attach the fetal health monitors. The steady beep and pulse of the tape on the machine by the bed gave her confirmation, another level of reassurance.

  Mitch came back with a Popsicle and unwrapped it for her. She had emptied her cup and took the sweet raspberry ice gratefully.

  “No sign of Galbreath,” Mitch said.

  “We’ll manage,” Kaye said. “Five centimeters and holding. All this for just one mother.”

  “But what a mother,” Mitch said. He started working on her arms, pushing the tension out, and then moved to her shoulders.

  “The mother of all mothers,” she muttered as another contraction hit. She bore down into it, held up the bare Popsicle stick. “Another, please,” she grunted.

  Kaye had become acquainted with every inch of the ceiling. She got off the bed carefully and walked around the room, gripping the metal rolling stand that held the monitoring equipment, wires trailing from beneath her gown. Her hair felt stiff, her skin oily, and her eyes stung. Mitch looked up from the National Geographic he was reading as she duck-walked into the rest room. She washed her face and he was by the door. “I’m fine,” she said.