Tribes, clans, pacts. Africa the cauldron, Africa the crucible. Olduvai Gorge. Serengeti Plain. The Great Rift that circled the planet, a giant baseball seam, splitting, twisting, churning the dry, dusty plains of Africa. Earthquakes and volcanoes that forced migration and pushed the hunter onward in search of game.
Here is where ritual began, some said: the great peace that comes of doing a thing over and over again, every step spelled out in fine detail. The numbing, reassuring chant, the prescribed steps of the dance—creating a system where all is certain, all is regular, a substitute pocket universe for the uncertain and unpredictable world outside.
A dry rattle of turning pages cut the silence of the room as he read. He skimmed through an analysis of ritual as the social cement. Running living leaping soaring. Nigel made a small bitter laugh. Only once and all together. Joyful singing love forever.
He grimaced.
The birthplace: a dry, straw-colored plain with scattered bushes, dark green clumps near swamps and water holes, the long winding ribbon of green that lines the course of a small river. The language of fur, horns, claws, scales, wings. The serene logic of sharp yellow teeth and blunt clubs. A creature who walks upright, leading a ragged troop behind. Jaw and mouth thrust forward, a trace of muzzle. Low forehead and flattish nose. He climbs trees, he seeks water, he learns and remembers.
Reason and murder. The rich, evil smell of meat.
The women, who stayed behind during the hunt to gather roots and berries, now prefer vegetables and fruits and salads. In a man’s restaurant the menu is thick steaks and roast beef, rare.
A skull, three hundred millennia old, showing clear signs of murder. But with such built-in tension, such rivalry, how did men ever come to cooperate? Why did they erupt from the bloody cradle of Africa, products of an entirely new kind of evolution? Ramapithecus to Australopithecus africans to Homo erectus to Neanderthal to Walmsley, the litany which should explain everything and said nothing, really, about the great mystery of why it all happened.
Genes, the brute push of circumstance, Darwin’s remorseless machine. Flexibility. The complexity of uncommitted structures in the brain, they said. Nerve cells with subtle interconnections not fixed at birth, but patterned by the stamp of experience.
Hands, eyes, upright gait. An excited male chimp snaps a branch from a tree, brandishes it, rears up on two feet and drags it away. Other chimps follow, chittering among the trees, tearing away branches and waving them. They jump through the green leaves and land in the clear, scampering out a few meters into the withered grass. It is some form of display, a celebration of the troop.
Inference, deduction, circumstantial evidence. A boy about sixteen years old lies on his right side, knees slightly drawn up and head resting on his forearm in a sleeping position. He seems small at the bottom of the dark trench. A pile of chipped flint forms a stone pillow beneath his head and near his hand is a beautifully worked stone axe. There are roasted chops and antelope legs, wrapped in leaves; the boy will need something to eat in the land of the dead.
Circles and animals drawn on the walls, colored clay smeared on faces and pebbles. Art follows religion, at least a hundred millennia old. Domesticated animals, the client allies of dogs and cats and cattle. And always the restlessness, the outward thrust, aggression, war.
Man would rather kill himself than die of boredom. Thus—novelty, gambling, exploration, art, science…
“Wamm ymm doing?” Nikka said. She peered at him drowsily.
“Studying up. Looking for clues.”
Nikka threw back the covers and lay gazing at the low ceiling. She took a deep, cleansing breath and sat up. Her black hair curled and tumbled slowly in the low gravity. “That was exceptionally fine.”
“Ummmm.”
“It’s never really been this way for me before, you know.”
He looked up. “How?”
“Well, I’m just a lot more easy about it. I guess… there are love affairs and then there are love affairs.”
“Indeed,” Nigel murmured, distracted. “Sex is God’s way of laughing at the rich and powerful, as Shaw or Wilde or somebody said.”
“And we’re neither.”
“Yes.” Nigel went on reading.
“Well, I suppose I don’t really know how to say…” Nigel put his papers aside, and smiled. “You don’t have to. See, it’s simply too early to assess things. And you learn more by plowing through life, sometimes, rather than dissecting it.”
“I… oh.”
“Does that make any sense to you?”
“Some.”
“Ummm. Good.” He picked up his notes.
“Don’t you have an off button that’ll stop you working?”
“Yup,” he murmured absently. “Directly on the tip of my cock.”
“I’ve already tried that.”
“Um. Love me, love my fanaticism.”
“Very well.” She sighed elaborately. “I see there’s not going to be very much more done about romance. I’ve never seen anyone drive himself this way. The others don’t—”
Nigel snorted. “They haven’t a clue about what matters.”
“And you do.”
“Perhaps. There’s a lot I’m still trying to cram into my grizzled synapses. Look.” He rocked forward, threading his hands together. “It’s clear whoever flew this ship knew a bloody huge lot about our ancestors. They must’ve had some kind of operation going here, else why learn so much? And why not study the dolphins, too— they’re intelligent. Though in a vastly different way, of course.”
Nikka pulled on one of his shirts and came to sit beside him. “Okay, I’ll play your game. Maybe we were easier to talk to.”
“Why?”
“Well, they must have been somewhat like us. There are many things about this wreck we can understand. Their technology isn’t totally mysterious. They must have had some of the same social forms. They even had war, if that’s what their defensive screen and attack system means.”
Nigel nodded slowly. “Someone picked up the survivors of this wreck, too, or we would have found some traces of their bodies.”
