Evolution

At last the animals started to rush out of the blazing forest pocket. There were kangaroos, possums, lizards, and many marsupial rats, all terrified. They ran in all directions. Some, blinded and bewildered, came dashing straight toward Jo’on. He ignored the small, fast-moving creatures. But here came two large animals, a pair of red kangaroos bounding with extraordinary speed toward him. He took his spear, lodged it in his grandfather’s spear-thrower. He waited; he would get only one chance.

At the last moment the kangaroos saw him and veered away. His spear sailed uselessly into the smoky air.

Yelling his frustration he ran to retrieve his weapon. Cursing Leda’s stubbornness and his own foolishness, he set his spear in the thrower and settled down to wait once more. But he knew that his best chance was already gone. He would have to make do with his pitiful pile of possums and lizards, because there were no large animals left to kill.

The goanna Jo’on had trapped was a relative of the giant lizard carnivores that had once stalked the red center of the continent. This hapless wretch had been a fraction of the size of those immense ancestors; the giants had all gone, hunted and burned to extinction. The red kangaroos he had tried to trap were similarly diminished echoes of mighty lineages. All the big ones had been killed off. Those that survived now were the small, fast-moving, fast-breeding creatures able to outrun fires and the hunters’ spears.

Since Ejan’s arrival, fifty-five species of large backboned animals had gone into the dark. Across the continent, in fact, every creature larger than a human had disappeared.

Eventually Jo’on reached the sea. He had come to the eastern coast of Australia, not far from the place that would one day be called Sydney. The light here, so much brighter than inland, dazzled his eyes, the stinks of salt and seaweed and fish overpowered his nose, and the restless grumbling of the sea filled his ears. After his trek across the dusty red center he wasn’t accustomed to so much sensory clamor.

As he descended to the shore he made out people working the sea, in canoes and on rafts. In the bright light off the sea, they were slender upright figures working with their lines and nets and spears. These people stuck to the coast, and their main food resource was fish, which was why they were open to trading for meat from the interior.

Jo’on approached the people, his hands empty save for his bits of meat, yelling greetings in his few words of the local language.

The first locals he met were women with nursing infants. They were methodically eating their way through a pile of oysters. They watched him incuriously. As he walked toward them he found himself crunching over oyster shells, all broken open, a layer that grew thicker as he approached the women. Eventually, he saw with amazement, he was walking on top of a midden of shells taller than he was, the deposit of centuries of uninterrupted gathering. The midden was outside one of the scores of sandstone caves that lined the shores of this harbor. Some of the cave entrances were covered by crude sheets of woven bark. In the shade of the nearest cave, children played with heaps of ancient shells.

The women showed little interest in him. He walked on.

At last an elderly woman came limping out of one of the caves. Her hair was gray, and her naked skin hung on her like an empty sack. She said something incomprehensible, glanced at his wares dismissively, and beckoned him into the cave.

The floor was littered with flint chips, middens of shells, bone points, and charcoal. Where his feet disturbed this detritus he saw deeper layers of garbage beneath — even human turds, dried up and without odor. Like his own people, these fisher folk were not enthusiastic about tidying up their garbage, and would just walk away when a camp became unlivable, trusting in the invisible forces of nature to take care of the mess for them.

But he could see a great pile of flints piled up at the rear of this cave, an enviable treasure. It was said that there were caves on another coast to the south where you could just pry such flints out of the wall. But people of the interior like Jo’on understood little of the provenance of the valuable stones, and had to trade with those who did.

The fisher folk were hospitable enough, in the interest of future relations. They gave him food and water. In their mutually incomprehensible languages, they tried to talk over what he had seen on his journey, what new features of the land he had noticed. But they were not eager to trade. They took his ocher and what poor scraps of meat he had. But it was clear that this was valued at only a handful of flints. Better than nothing, he thought gloomily.

The fisher folk let him stay the night.