Evolution

Ahmed seemed utterly dismayed — as well he might, thought Snowy, for if Moon was gone, taking their only hope of procreation with her, all his grandiose plans were ruined before they had started. "But why would she go?" he moaned. "Why be alone? What would be the point?"

Snowy said, "What’s the point of any of it? We’re all going to die here. It was never going to work, splot. All the bog iron in the world wouldn’t have made any difference to that."

Sidewise managed a grin. "I don’t think Bonner is worried about the destiny of mankind right now. Are you, Bon? All he cares about is that the only pussy in the world has vanished, without him getting any of it—"

Bonner roared and swung again, but this time Snowy managed to hold him back.

Ahmed sloped back to his shelter, coughing.

When relative calm was restored, Snowy went to the rack where they had hung a row of skinned rabbits, and started preparing a meal.

Before the first rabbit kebab was cooked over the fire, Bonner had made up a pack. He stood there, in the gathering twilight, facing Sidewise and Snowy. "I’m pissing off," he said.

Sidewise nodded. "You going after Moon?"

"What do you think, shithead?"

"I think she has good land craft. She’ll be hard to track."

"I’ll manage," Bonner snarled.

"Wait until morning," Snowy said reasonably. "Have some food. You’re asking for trouble, going off in the dark."

But the reasoning part of Bonner’s head seemed to have switched off for good. He glared at them out of his mask of mud, every muscle tense. Then, his clumsy pack bumping on his back, he stalked away.

Sidewise put another bit of rabbit on the fire. "That’s the last we’ll see of him."

"You think he’ll find Moon?"

"Not if she sees him coming." Sidewise looked reflective. "And if he tries to force her, she’ll kill him. She’s tough that way."

The rabbit was nearly done. Snowy pulled it off the fire, and began to push bits of it off the spit and onto their crude wooden plates. Every night he had divided up their food into five portions. Now, with Bonner and Moon gone, he divided it into three.

He and Sidewise just looked at the three portions for a while. Ahmed was back in his shelter. Out of sight, out of mind. Snowy picked up the third plate and, with the blade of his knife, scraped off the meat onto the other two plates. "If Ahmed gets better, he can look after himself. If not, there’s nothing we can do for him."

For a time they chewed on their rabbit.

"I’ll leave tomorrow," Snowy said eventually.

Sidewise didn’t reply to that.

"What about you? Where will you go?"

"I think I’d like to explore," Sidewise said. "Go see the cities. London. Paris, if I can get across the Channel. Find out more about what’s happened. A lot of it must have gone already. But some of it must be like the ruins of the Roman Empire."

"Nobody else will ever see such sights," Snowy said.

"That’s true."

Hesitantly, Snowy said, "What about after that? I mean, when we get older. Less strong."

"I don’t think that is going to be a problem," Sidewise said laconically. "The challenge will be to pick how you want to go. To make sure you control at least that."

"When you’ve seen all you want to see."

"Whatever." He smiled. "Maybe in Paris there will be a few windows left to smash. Thousand-year-old brandy to drink. I’d enjoy that."

"But," Snowy said carefully, "there will be nobody to tell about it."

"We’ve always known that," Sidewise said sharply. "From the moment we clambered out of the Pit into that ancient oak forest. It was obvious even then."

"Maybe to you," Snowy said.

Sidewise tapped his temple, where a healthy bruise was developing from Bonner’s punch. "That’s my big brain working. Churning out one useless conclusion after another. And all of it making no damn difference, none at all. Listen. Let’s make a pact. We’ll pick a meeting place. We’ll aim to rendezvous, every year. We may not make it every time, but you can always leave a message, something."

They picked a site — Stonehenge, on the high ground of Salisbury Plain, surely still unmistakable — and a time, the summer solstice, easy to track with the timekeeping discipline Ahmed had instilled in them. It was a good idea. Somehow it was comforting to Snowy, even now, to think that his future would have a little structure.

When they had done eating, the dark was closing in. It wasn’t cold, but Snowy fetched himself a blanket of crudely woven bark and wrapped it around his shoulders. "Hey, Side. Was he right?"

"Who?"

"Bonner. Did you pork Moon?"

"Too right I porked her."

"You fucking dark horse. I never knew. Why you?"

"Atavistic urges, mate. I think she was responding to my smarter than the average brain."

Snowy mulled over that. "So our big brains are good for one thing, then."

"Oh, yes. They were always good for that. Probably what they were for in the first place. All the rest was bullshit."

"You fucking dark horse."

IV

Snowy followed the ape people.