Evolution

Peas were another early success. The pods of wild peas would explode, scattering the peas on the ground to germinate. People preferred the occasional mutants whose pods failed to pop because they were easier to gather. In the wild such peas would fail to germinate, but they flourished under human attention. Similar nonpopping varieties of lentils, flax, and poppies were also favorites.

And so, by spreading the seeds of their preferred plants and eliminating those they did not favor, the people had begun to select. Very quickly the plants began to adapt. Within just a century, fatter-grained cereals, like rye, had begun to emerge. Some plants were favored for the large size of their seeds, like sunflowers, and others for the smallness of their seeds, like bananas, which became all fruit and no seed. Some genes that would once even have been lethal were now favored, like those for the nonpopping pea pods.

The first rye growers had not settled down immediately. For a time they had still collected their wild staples alongside their thin harvests. The new fields had served as dependable larders, a hedge against starvation in difficult times: As with all innovations, farming had grown out of the practices that had preceded it.

But the new cultivation had proved so effective that soon they devoted their lives to it. Most of what grew wild was inedible; nine-tenths of what a farmer could grow could be eaten. That was how these people were able to afford so many babies; that was what fed the great anthill heaping of the town.

It was the most profound revolution in hominid living since Homo erectus had left the forest and committed themselves to the savannah. Compared to this phase shift, the advances of the future — even genetic engineering — were details. There would never be so significant a change again, not until humans themselves disappeared from the planet.

But the farming revolution did not make Earth a paradise.

Farming meant work: endless, bone-cracking drudgery every day. As the ground was cleared of everything except what people wanted to grow, humans had to do all the work that nature had once done for them: aerating the soil, fighting pests, fertilizing, weeding. Farming meant the sacrifice of your whole life — your skills, the joy of running, the freedom to choose what you would do — to the toil of the fields.

It was not even that the food they so laboriously scraped from the ground was rich. While the old hunter-gatherers had enjoyed a varied diet with adequate amounts of minerals, proteins, and vitamins, the farmers took most of their sustenance from starchy crops: It was as if they had exchanged expensive, high-quality food for nutrition that was plentiful but poor in quality. As a result — and because of the relentless hard work — they had become significantly less healthy than their ancestors. They had worse teeth, and were plagued by anemia. Women’s elbows were wrecked by the constant work of grinding. Men suffered vastly increased social stress, resulting in frequent beatings and murders.

Compared to their tall, healthy ancestors, people were actually shrinking.

And then there were the deaths.

It was true that the mothers here did not have to sacrifice their babies. Indeed, the women were encouraged to have children as rapidly as possible, for children fulfilled the endless demand for more laborers for the fields: By the age of thirty, many of the women were exhausted by the endless drain of nursing and caring for weaned infants.

But where many were born, so did many more die. It did not take long for Juna to see it. Disease was rare among Juna’s folk, but it was not rare here, in this crowded, filthy place. You could almost see it spreading, as people sneezed and coughed, as they scratched weeping sores, as their diarrhea poisoned the water supply of their neighbors. And the myriad afflictions targeted the weakest, the oldest and youngest. Many, many children died, far more than among Juna’s folk.

And there was barely a handful of people her grandmother’s age. Juna wondered what happened to all the wisdom when the old died so cheaply and so early.

The days wore by, identical, meaningless. The work was routine. But then everything here was a routine, the same thing, day after day.

Cahl continued to use her, most nights. He seemed to lack vigor, though. Sometimes he would come at her hard, pushing her down and ripping aside her shift, or pushing her on her face to take her from behind. It was as if he had to work himself up, to excite himself. But if he had taken too much beer, his pisser would not rise at all.

He was a weak man, she realized. He had power over her, but she did not fear him. In the end even his taking of her had become routine, just part of the background to her life. She was relieved, though, that she couldn’t become pregnant with his brat — not while Tori’s child continued to grow inside her.