Evolution

Though their language abilities were hugely advanced, the people were reaching out to distant and unknowable gods. And so they fell back on older instincts. As Pebble had once known, communication in a situation where you had no or limited language had to be simple, exaggerated, repetitious, unequivocal — that is, ritualistic. And, as Pebble had once tried to convince his father he spoke the truth about approaching strangers, so the shaman now labored to make his indifferent gods hear, understand, and respond. It was hard work. Nobody resented him sleeping late.

Millo and Jahna reached the hut they shared with their father, mother, infant sister, and aunts. Mesni, their mother, was here in the gloom. She was smoking megaloceros meat, scavenged from a lion kill a few days earlier.

"Mesni, Mesni!" Millo ran to his mother and grabbed her legs. "We’re going to the sea! Are you coming?"

Millo hugged her son. "Not today," she said, smiling. "Today it’s my turn to fix the meat. Your poor, poor mother. Don’t you feel sorry for her?"

"Bye," Millo snapped, and he turned tail and ran out of the hut.

Mesni humphed, pulling a pretend-offended face, and continued patiently working.

Most of the megaloceros carcass had been stored in a pit dug into the permafrost. Mesni used a stone knife to slice the meat paper-thin, then hung it up on a wooden frame beside the hearth. In a few days’ time the slices would be perfectly preserved; they were a source of protein that could be stored for many months. But Jahna’s nose wrinkled at the smell of the meat. Only in the last month had the spring opened up enough to enable them to hunt and forage and to bring home fresh meat; before that, they had all endured a long winter consuming the dried remnants of last season, and Jahna had grown thoroughly sick of the leathery, tasteless stuff.

She stroked her mother’s back. "Don’t worry. I will stay with you and smoke meat all day while Millo rides the sled."

"I’m sure you would love that. You’ve done your duty by offering. Here." Mesni gave Jahna a bundle of meat wrapped in skin. "Don’t let your father starve his wretched bonehead runners. You know what he’s like. And I wouldn’t trust him with these." She gave Jahna a handful of dried eulachon.

These were sardinelike fish, so rich in fat you could stand them on end and burn them like a candle. More parochially you could boil out the grease to use as a sauce, medicine, and even mosquito repellent — or in a pinch you could just eat the fish; the fatty flesh would sustain you for a long time. These precious items were an emergency kit.

Jahna took the fish solemnly and tucked them into a fold of her jerkin. It was quite a responsibility she had been given — but the soul of her grandmother, riding in her heart, gave her the confidence to accept that responsibility. She kissed her mother. "I’ll look after everybody," she promised.

"I know. Now go help get ready. Go on."

Jahna grabbed her favorite harpoon and followed Millo out of the hut.

The hunting party briskly loaded up the sled with nets, harpoons, lines, sleeping bags made of reindeer hide, and other provisions. The sled was a sturdy affair, already ten years old, a wooden frame mounted on long runners of mammoth ivory. The lashing and lines were made from tough sealskin, and the reins that would control the bonehead haulers were made of mammoth leather. The sled was useful only in the early spring or late autumn, when the ground was frozen or snow-covered; in the late spring and summer, the ground grew too boggy for the sled’s runners. Still, in a world where the wheel had yet to be invented and the horse yet to be tamed, this sled of wood and ivory was the height of transportation technology.

Meanwhile, Rood had stalked into the boneheads’ camp, looking for haulers.

The camp was a shanty on the edge of the human village. The huts and shacks were as squat and misshapen as the boneheads themselves. They just sat on the tundra like huge turds, with adults and grotesque kids lumbering everywhere. In places like this, wherever they survived across the Old World, the robust boneheads made their simple tools and built their ugly huts — just as they had for half a million years, all the way back to the time of Pebble and long before. Unlike the cultural explosion of the humans, there had been no significant variation in the boneheads’ industry across huge swaths of space and time.

With a tap of his whip handle Rood selected two powerful-looking young bucks. Passively the bucks followed him, and allowed themselves to be harnessed to the sled.

All too soon the sled was loaded. It took only a touch from Rood’s whip to encourage the boneheads to begin their hauling. The first heave, to free the sled’s runners from the hard earth, took some effort. Boneheads were bandy-legged and clumsy, their frames built for strength, not speed. But soon the two bucks had the sled hissing along at a little over walking pace. The hunters followed with whoops and hollering.