Evolution

There were trees here — twisted, stubborn-looking trees — and termite mounds, and broad, low ant colonies, scattered like statues over an otherwise dry and lifeless plain. It was not a forest — it wasn’t crowded enough for that — it was more like an orchard, with the individual trees well spaced, surrounded by their little gardens of termite mounds and ant nests. These were borametz trees, the new kind. The orchard stirred deep, instinctive feelings of unease in Remembrance. Something inside her knew that this was not the kind of landscape within which hominids had evolved.

But this stark landscape of trees and termites was another barrier across her path, stretching to left and right as far as she could see. And, as the sun began its swift descent to the horizon, she was growing ever thirstier and hungrier.

Tentatively she walked forward.

Something tickled her foot. She yelped and jumped back.

She had disturbed a double line of ants. They were walking to and from a nest — she could see the holes in the ground — along a trail that led to the broad roots of one of the trees. She crouched down and began to swipe at the ants with her cupped palms. She scooped up more dust than insects, but she managed to cram a few of the ants into her mouth and crunched the gritty goodies. More ants clambered around her feet, intent on their task, oblivious to the sudden fate of their fellows.

The tree that was the destination of these ants was unspectacular: It was low and squat, with a thick, gnarled trunk, branches coated with small round leaves, and broad roots that spread across the ground before plunging into it like digging fingers.

Remembrance walked up and inspected the borametz tree skeptically. No fruit clung to its low branches. There were what looked like hard-shelled nuts growing in clusters from the base of the trunk, close to the roots of the tree. But there were very few of the nuts, less than a dozen. When she tried to prize them off, she found they were bound too strongly for her fingers, and the shells were too tough for her teeth. She pulled off a few leaves and chewed them experimentally. They were bitter and dry.

She gave up, dropping the last of the leaves, and made her way to a more promising food source. The nearest termite mound was as tall as she was, a great rough cone of hardened mud. She went back to the tree to look for a twig. She’d done a little termite-fishing in the past, though she was not as good as Capo had been. She was not even as expert as chimps had been in the age of man. But she might be able to get enough of the squirming goodies to allay her hunger -

She glimpsed a lunging head, incisors like blades scything through the air. Rat. She leapt upward, reaching for the branches of the borametz. The branches were narrow, tangled, and hard to grasp. But she forced her way into them, for they were all the cover she had.

It was a mouse-raptor: one of the colony that had herded the posthuman elephantines to the lake. Squealing its high-pitched rage the raptor reared up on its huge hind legs, slashed at the lower foliage with its blood-stained incisors, and rammed the borametz’s trunk with its massive skull.

Young, restless, inquisitive, the raptor had never hunted this kind of animal. Tracking Remembrance this far had been a good game. But now the raptor had played enough, and had become curious about how she would taste.

The borametz’s gnarled bark scraped Remembrance’s skin painfully. The raptor couldn’t reach up into the branches. But under the battering of its huge head the whole tree shook, and Remembrance knew she would soon fall, like a piece of fruit. Growing frantic, she squirmed through the branches, trying to get further away from the raptor.

But the branches of the borametz were fragile and easily snapped. They had evolved that way, to discourage birds, bats, and climbing mammals from trying to make a living here.

The branch under her belly gave way suddenly. She fell through the air and hit the ground, but the dirt collapsed under her in a cloud of dust.

Shocked, she fell through a further body-length, landing hard. Winded, she lay on her back. She looked up at a patch of sky and the head of the raptor, framed by a ragged, broken roof of packed earth.

And then the surface beneath her gave way in turn. She fell again, followed by dust and chunks of earth. She landed hard, once again, deeper still. Rubble fell across her face, clogging her mouth and nose and eyes.

There was a smell like milk: milk laced with urine and feces. Something swarmed over Remembrance’s belly — something small, but heavy and hot and hairless. She grabbed blindly. She found herself clutching a torso, naked, slithery, moist. Arms and legs beat at her feebly. It was like holding a hairless baby.

But now one of those little hands reached her chest, and claws sliced into her skin. She yelled and hurled the creature away. She heard it land with a thump, and slither away into the dark.