Evolution

CHAPTER 12 Raft Continent

I Indonesian Peninsula, Southeast Asia. Circa 52,000 years before present.

The two brothers pushed the canoe out from the riverbank. "Careful, careful — to my left. All right, we’re clear. Now if we head to the right I think we can get through that channel." Ejan was in the prow of the bark canoe, his brother Torr in the stern. Aged twenty and twenty-two respectively, they were both small, slim, wiry men with nut dark skin and crisp black hair.

They maneuvered their boat through water clogged with reeds, tangled flood debris, and stranded trunks. The trees lining the banks were cheesewood, teak, mahogany, karaya, and tall mangrove. A tremendous translucent curtain of spiderwebs hung over the forest, catching the light and dimming the intensity of the green within. But the heat lay over the river like a great lid, and the air was drenched with light. Already Ejan was sweating heavily, and the dense moist air lay thick in his lungs.

It would have been hard to believe that this was the middle of the latest glaciation, that in the northern hemisphere giant deer roamed in the lee of ice caps kilometers’ thick.

At last they reached the open water. But they were dismayed to see how crowded it was.

There was a dense traffic of bark canoes and dugouts. Some families were using two or three canoes lashed together for stability. Between these stately fleets scuttled cruder craft, rafts of mangrove and bamboo and reed. But there were also fisher folk working without boats or rafts at all. One woman waded from the shore with a pair of sticks she clapped around any fish that foolishly swam near. A group of girls were standing waist-deep, holding a series of nets across the river, while companions converged on them, with much splashing, to drive fish into the nets.

It was all a great divergence of technology from the simple log floats once used by Harpoon’s people. Spurred on by the great riches available from the coasts, rivers, and estuaries, inventive, restless human minds had come up with a whole spectrum of ways to work the water.

The brothers maneuvered through this crowd.

"Busy today," growled Ejan. "We’ll be lucky to eat tonight. If I was a fish I’d be far from here."

"Then let’s hope the fish are even more stupid than you."

With a flick of his wooden paddle Ejan casually splashed his brother.

There was a cry from further down the river. The brothers turned and peered, cupping their eyes.

Through the murky cloud of sunlit insects that hovered over the water, they made out a raft of mangrove poles. Three men stood on this platform, slim dark shadows in the humid air. Ejan could see their equipment, weapons and skins, lashed to the raft.

"Our brothers," said Ejan, excited. He took a chance and stood up in the canoe, relying on Torr to keep the little craft stable, and waved vigorously. Seeing him, the brothers waved back, jumping up and down on their raft and making it rock. Today the three of them were going out into the open ocean on that raft, attempting a crossing to the great southern land.

Ejan sat down, his concern outweighing his evaporating elation at spotting his brothers. "I still say that raft is too flimsy," he murmured.

Torr paddled stoically. "Osa and the rest know what they are doing."

"But the ocean currents, the way the tide surges—"

"We killed a monkey for Ja’an last night," Torr reminded him. "Her soul is with them."

But, Ejan thought uneasily, it is me who bears the ancient name of the Wise One, not any of them. "Perhaps I should have gone with them."

"Too late now," said Torr reasonably. And so it was; Ejan could see that the three brothers had turned away and were paddling evenly downstream, toward the river’s mouth. "Come, Ejan," Torr said. "Let’s fish."

When they had reached an open stretch of deep water the brothers took their net of woven flax and slipped into the water. The brothers swam apart until the net was stretched out, then Ejan hooked his big toe into the net’s lower margin to open it out vertically. They had turned the net into a fence across the current; it was about fifteen meters long. The brothers began to swim forward, sweeping the water.

Languidly flowing, the water was warm on Ejan’s skin, muddy, murky with green life.

After about fifty meters they swam together, closing the net. Their haul was not great — the fish had indeed been scared off today — but there were a few fat specimens that they threw into the canoe. They took care to release the smallest, most immature fish; nobody would eat a morsel when he could wait and take a fat adult in a few months. They pulled the net taut and prepared to swim upstream once more.

But now a cry went up from the shore, an eerie wail.

Ejan turned to Torr. "Mother."

"We must go back."