Evolution

Between the domains of Mother’s mind — and in the minds of those who followed her — the ancient walls were coming down at last. No longer was her full awareness restricted to dealings with other people, while hands and legs and mouths worked independently of thought; no longer was consciousness restricted to its old function of a model of others’ intentions. Now she could think about an animal as if it were a person, a tool as if it were a human to be negotiated with. It was as if the world were populated by new kinds of people — as if tools and rivers and animals, even the sun and the Moon were people, to be dealt with and understood as any other.

After millennia of stasis, consciousness had become a powerful multipurpose tool, reflected in the multiple layers and meanings of the art pieces, like mirrors of a new kind of mind. For the high-browed people this was a time of intellectual ferment.

And Mother wasn’t the only catalyst. Scattered throughout the human range were many others like her. Each of these genius-prophets — if she were not quickly killed by her suspicious fellows — was similarly serving as the focus of a new kind of thinking, new ways of life, a new kind of fire. It was the beginning of an explosive change in the way people interacted with the world around them.

It was the instability of the climate that had driven the development of this new type of mind. The savagely fluctuating environment of this Pleistocene age, like nothing seen in later times, was an unforgiving filter: Only exceptional individuals survived the exceptional harshness, to pass on their genetic legacy. And, not only was the average mind improving, exceptional individuals like Mother were becoming more common — like the prescient technologists who had given the river folk their advanced tool kit. From the point of view of the species it was useful for the mind to be able to produce occasional geniuses. They might wither in the dirt — or they might invent something that would transform human fortunes.

And when such an innovation was made, the roomy heads of their fellows were ready for it. It was as if they longed for it. For seventy thousand years the people had had the necessary hardware. Now Mother, and others like her, supplied the software.

This new way of thinking about the world was already bringing Mother’s people unprecedented new rewards. The encampment, save for its adornment, was the usual jumble of lean-tos. But this latest camp was large; there were twice as many people here now compared to the time before Mother’s awakening. And it was a long time since anybody had suffered the sunken cheeks and swollen belly of hunger. Mother’s ways were successful.

Mother saw the girl Finger sitting alone in the shade of a giant baobab. Finger, just fourteen, was working carefully at some new sculpture, whittling gently at a bit of ivory. She had her legs crossed and a scrap of leather over her lap; Mother’s eyes, still sharp, could make out the gleam of waste bits of the ivory on the ground around her. It was she who had made the exquisite elephant-head shell carving Sapling had given to the river folk.

Finger wore the spiral-design cheek tattoo that had become the badge of those privileged to be closest to Mother: the insignia of her priesthood. But Finger was second generation. She was the daughter of Eyes — who was long dead now, killed by the infection of that first crude tattoo. Finger had been marked with the spiral insignia when she was still an infant; you could tell that by how much the tattoo had distorted and faded as she had grown, a mark of special honor.

But the girl was growing fast. Soon, Mother knew, she would have to find her a partner — just as she had selected partners for her mother, Eyes. Mother had several candidates in mind, boys and young men among her priesthood; she would trust her instincts to make the right choice when the time came.

A shadow passed across her. A woman approached Mother, hesitantly, gaze fixed on the dusty ground. She was young, but she walked stooped over. She had brought a haunch of deer meat; she laid this token on the ground before Mother. "Sore," said the woman feebly, her head downturned. "Back sore. Walk head up, back hurt. Lift baby, back hurt."

Mother knew she was only in her early twenties, but this girl had been plagued with problems with her back since foolishly engaging in a wrestling match with her brother — much older, much heavier — some years back.

Mother turned down almost all such requests. It would do her no good to be seen to grant miracles on demand, whether they worked or not. But today, having watched the small genius of Finger at work, warmed through by the sun, she was in an expansive mood. She snapped her fingers. She gestured for the girl to take off her skin wrap and kneel with her back turned.

The girl complied eagerly, bowing naked before Mother.