Evolution

He lay down on a pallet of dried seaweed. It stank of salt and decay. He found himself peering by the dying firelight at paintings on the roof, pictures in charcoal, ocher, and a purplish dye that, it turned out, came from a sea creature. There were vivid images of wombats, kangaroos, and emus; the people shown hunting them loomed over the fleeing animals.

But — he peered more closely to see better — these pictures were laid over still stranger images: Giant birds, lizards, even kangaroos towered over the humans who hunted them. These images must be older than those he had first made out, he thought, because they lay underneath. But he was confused about what they showed. He supposed they meant nothing. Perhaps they had been drawn by a child.

He was wrong, of course. It was a peculiar tragedy that Jo’on’s generation had already forgotten what had been lost.

Jo’on lay down and closed his eyes, settling himself to ignore the noisy lovemaking of a couple in the corner, and waited for sleep. He wondered what Leda was going to say to him when he returned home with just a handful of flints. Meanwhile, over his head, the ancient, vanished birds, the giant kangaroos and snakes and diprotodons and goannas, all danced mournfully in the firelight.

CHAPTER 13 Last Contact Western France. Circa 31,000 years before present.

I

Hiding the carved mammoth in her fist, Jahna approached the bonehead girl.

The sullen creature looked up at Jahna, baffled, dimly frightened. She sat in the frosty dirt, filthy, ragged, doing nothing.

Jahna sat on her ankles and peered straight into the creature’s eyes. They were dark globes hidden under the great bony browridge that gave her kind their name. Jahna was twelve years old — and so, as it happened, was this bonehead cow. But the similarities ended there. Where Jahna was tall, blond, slender, and supple as a young spruce, the bonehead was short and squat and fat — strong, yes, but as round and ugly as a boulder. And where Jahna wore close-fitting clothes of stitched leather and plant fiber, with straw-stuffed moccasins, a fur-lined hood and woven cap, the bonehead cow wore simple wraps of filthy, well-worn leather, tied on with bits of sinew.

"Look, bonehead," Jahna said now, raising her fist. "Look. Mammoth!" And she opened her fingers to reveal the little trinket.

The bonehead squealed and stumbled back, making Jahna laugh. You could almost see the cow’s slow mind working. The boneheads just couldn’t hold it in their heads that a bit of ivory could look like a mammoth; to them an object could only be one thing at a time. They were stupid.

Now Millo came running up. Jahna’s brother, eight years old, was a little bundle of energy and noise, wrapped up in an ill-fitting sealskin coverall. On his feet he wore the skins of gulls turned inside out, so that their feathers kept his feet warm. Seeing what she was doing he grabbed the mammoth out of Jahna’s hand. "Me, me! Look, bonehead. Look! Mammoth!" He jabbed the little carving at the bonehead cow’s face.

Piss trickled down the cow’s legs, and Millo squealed with delight.

"Jahna, Millo!" Both of them turned. Here came their father, Rood, tall and strong, arms bare despite the chill of this early spring day. Wearing his well-loved boots of mammoth skin, he was striding strongly. He looked exhilarated, excited.

Responding to his mood the youngsters forgot their game and ran to him. While Millo hugged his legs as he always did, Rood bent to embrace them. Jahna could smell smoked fish on his breath. He greeted them formally, according to their names. "My daughter, my mother. My son, my grandfather." Then he reached around Millo’s waist and efficiently tickled his son; the boy squealed and writhed away. "Last night I dreamed of seals and narwhal," Rood said now. "I talked to the shaman, and the shaman cast his bones." He nodded. "My dream is good; my dream is the truth. We will go to the sea and hunt for fish and seals."

Millo jumped up and down, excited. "I want to ride the sled!"

Rood peered into Jahna’s face, searching. "And you, Jahna? Will you come?"

Jahna pulled back from her father’s embrace, thinking carefully.