Evolution

Noth could recognize others of his species, could distinguish them as male or female, and as kin or not kin. But he could not recognize himself, for his mind did not contain the ability to look inward. All his life he would feel threatened by any such chance reflection.

A sleek form burst from the water itself and came lurching up on clumsy flippered limbs onto the rocky platform. Noth and Right stumbled back. Over a snout like a crocodile’s the newcomer gazed at the two baffled primates.

This ambulocetus was a relation of the hyena-like mesonychids. Like an otter, it was covered in sleek black fur, and it had large, powerful back legs equipped with toes ten centimeters long. Ages ago this animal’s ancestors had returned to the water, seeking a better living, and selection had begun its relentless molding. Already the ambulocetus looked more aquatic than terrestrial.

Soon its kind would take permanently to the oceans. Its skull and neck would become shorter, and the nose migrate backward, while its ears would close so that sound would have to pass through a layer of fat. Its legs would morph at last into fins, with more bones added, the fingers and toes becoming shrunken and useless, at last disappearing. When it reached the vast spaces of the Pacific and Atlantic, it would begin to grow — ultimately becoming as large compared to its present form as a human was to a mouse — but those mighty seagoing descendants would still retain within their bodies, like fossils of bone and molecular traces, vestiges of the creatures they had once been.

The walking whale stared uncomprehendingly at the two timid primates. Deciding this crowded shore wasn’t such a good place to bask after all, it flexed its spine and swam gracefully away.

As the light faded, Noth and Right retreated to the shelter of the trees. But the branches were now all but bare, and cover was hard to find. They huddled in a branch’s crook.

The herbivores splashed out of the water, family groups calling to each other. And the predators began to call, harsh doglike barks and leonine growls echoing through the sparse forest.

As the chill settled deeper Noth felt torpor steal over him. But he felt cold, stuck here like this with only his baby sister, cold away from the huddle of his troop.

And then, to his surprise, he was startled awake by a powerful musk scent.

Suddenly there were notharctus all around. They were on the branches above and below him, huddled shapes with their legs drawn up beneath them and their long, fat tails dangling. Their scent told him this was his kind, but not his kin. He had not detected their scent markings before; in fact the markings were sealed in by layers of frost. But the strange notharctus had noticed him.

Two powerful females gathered closely, drawn by the scent of an infant. One, who he thought of as Biggest, pushed aside the other — who was merely Big — to get a closer look at Right.

Noth’s mind churned. He knew that it was vital that they be accepted by this new group. So he reached for the female closest to him, Big, and began, tentatively, to dig his fingers into the fur at the back of her legs. Big responded to his grooming, stretching out her legs with pleasure.

But when Biggest saw what was going on she hooted and slapped them both. Noth cowered, trembling.

Noth was bright enough to understand his own place on the social ladder — in this case, down on the bottom rung. But his social mentality had its limits. Just as he could not detect the beliefs and desires of others, so he was not smart enough to form judgments about the relative ranking of others in a group. He had got it wrong: Biggest outranked Big, and she expected this new male to pay her attention first.

So Noth waited as Biggest played with the drowsy Right. But at least she did not drive him away. And at length Biggest let Noth approach her and groom her own dense, rank-smelling fur.

III

Every day was shorter than the last, every night longer. Soon there were just a few hours of bright daylight, and the intervals between the darknesses were lit only by a pink-gray twilight.

The forest was all but silent now. Most of the birds and the large herbivore herds had long gone, migrated south to warmer, easier climes, taking their dinning cries with them. The buzzing insect swarms of high summer were a memory, leaving only larvae or deep-buried eggs, sleeping dreamlessly. The big deciduous trees had already dropped their broad leaves, which lay in a thick litter on the ground, welded together by the persistent frost. The bare trunks and leafless branches would show no signs of life until the sun returned in a few months’ time. Beneath them, plants like the ground fern had died back to their roots and rhizomes, soon to be sealed into the earth under a lid of frost and snow.