CRO-MAGNON (27 page)

“
I am thinking,” Calder said. “About little green men with skinny necks and big heads.”

“
The people with the new lateralization gene could make the discoveries, and the RGHT people could develop them.”

“
If it worked that way, and you didn’t run up against the law of unintended consequences. Plus, I don’t like the idea of a gaggle of Laszlo Salomons running loose.”

“
Well, you don’t have to worry yet.” Blaine went back to her laptop. “I have to do more work before I’ll know anything.”

“
Let me be sure I’ve got this straight,” Calder said. “You’re talking about splicing a mental lateralization gene into the current human genome?”

“
We can’t do that directly, because there are other genes involved and we don’t know how it would all fit together. As you pointed out, Murphy’s and Merton’s laws.”

“
So, what’s next?”

“
I’m going to sniff the same locus in the boy, see what genes he has. Maybe he has a complementary set.”

“
That sounds even riskier, fooling with a whole suite of genes. We’re dealing with the human race, here.”

“
I’m not ‘fooling.’ I also need to appraise the Cro-Magnons’ and Neanderthals’ strong and weak points in order to deduce what benefits each side might contribute if a melding were possible.”

“
Deduce, or conject?”

“
Please bear with me, Ian. I promise I won’t do anything rash. I need a more explicit picture of these prehistoric people’s lives in order to get an idea of their respective abilities.”

“
Which means uncovering more paintings.” Calder nodded. “I’m with you there, for anthropological reasons.”

“
Good. Before I go to bed I need your assessment of the latest cave paintings, so my subconscious can go to work.”

#

Later, after Calder had given his interpretation of the latest batch of the Cro-Magnon woman’s paintings, Blaine lay in the bunk, which Ayni had insisted she take. She twisted and turned, trying to make sense of it all.

The Cro-Magnon woman had fled from the scar-faced man of her own tribe and had wound up with a group of Neanderthals. The man with the broken nose was acting as her friend, as was the older woman. But the gap-toothed man desired her for sex, and apparently was first in line.

Blaine could hear the snores of the two men. She tossed restlessly. She and Calder had argued about just what the latest panel of four paintings meant, and she had gradually come around to his view. Certainly, she thought, the woman’s facial expression, as the man copulated with her in the first painting, did not indicate willingness.

As in primitive societies almost everywhere, Neanderthal men apparently were not shy about enforcing their wills on women. So, regardless of exactly how their brains worked, they acted fundamentally like the new invaders of their territory. And that might mean that the different lateralization gene had no fundamental effect. But, then again . . .

The analytical thoughts faded as the paintings took over her mind. She felt herself drifting off, her senses responding to the Cro-Magnon woman’s predicament. Whatever was left of the young woman’s virginity had been plundered, and a Neanderthal seed planted . . .

Chapter 12

For Leya, “soon” arrived a few nights later.

The days following her rescue from the river were filled with activity. The next morning, the men departed for their hunting camps, leaving the women and the half-crippled Ull to guard the home base. As her leg, which now felt bone-bruised but not broken, was still too stiff for her to accompany Kam, Em, Jym, and the older children on plant-gathering expeditions, Leya stayed behind each day with Wim and the youngsters. She decided to make herself useful to the Flatheads by demonstrating various commonplace skills of the People.

On that first day, after both the hunters and the gatherers had left, she tried to show Ull how to cut deer meat into thin slices for smoking, but he seemed interested mainly in staring at her body. She went back to cleaning the camp.

When the women returned that afternoon, she noticed they had gathered only cattail shoots. She wondered if their diet was broad enough. In her own tribe, Sugn advocated a variety of foods, particularly certain plants and almost any kind of fish.

The small proportion of spined skeletons in the refuse heap suggested that the clan caught fish by hand, one by one. Sometime when the men stayed home, she thought, she’d show them how to make a weir. Meanwhile, she started other projects.

Mornings were spent digging ventilation channels for the two hearths, gathering and burying pieces of seasons-old refuse, and organizing the camp into functional areas for drying meat, storing food, making tools, curing hides, and fashioning garments. Each afternoon, Kam and the others inspected her improvements. Leya thought she detected a trace of annoyance in the head woman, but attributed it to inbred conservatism.

The other women, particularly Em, seemed especially interested in some strips of thin sinew that Leya had separated from the deer carcass and spread to dry in the southern exposure outside the windbreak. Leya had seen that the clan used pine pitch and thick strands of sinew to haft their spear points. But they employed clumsy strips of rawhide for fastening skins, probably because their lack of needles forced them to lace their garments instead of stitching them. This crude technique made the garments less snug, and the resulting exposure obviously contributed to the clan’s prodigious need for food.

After that first day’s supper—cattail shoots and grilled deer meat again—she heated some stones and showed the women how to pack them around their sleeping-skins. There were so many techniques she would have to teach these people, she thought—and was surprised to realize she no longer quite thought of them as “Flatheads.”

The next afternoon she showed the women how to use a side-scraper to fashion a needle from a sliver of hard bone cut from the center section of a deer’s foot. That evening, after the usual meal of meat and shoots, she pressure-chipped the scraper until it was sharp enough, borrowed a burin that Kam used for poking holes in skins, and bored an eye in the thick end of the needle. The finished product, after polishing with a chunk of pumice, was passed among the women, who immediately understood its potential. Leya wondered why they hadn’t thought of it themselves.

The following day proved too rainy for foraging, and most of the women busied themselves with their hand axes, chopping the juniper branches that served as the camp’s principal firewood. Leya noticed they were much stronger and more tireless than the women of the People, particularly in their hands.

In late morning, she advised them via Wim to move the current refuse heap outside the cave. Sugn had explained to her own tribe that garbage seemed to increase the incidence of sickness, perhaps because it harbored the spirits of dead animals. But Kam explained, in words and signs, that the clan did not want to attract wild animals—which did not worry Leya’s tribe, because their large numbers kept animals away—and that the refuse was less obvious when kept inside the windbreak. Leya resolved to convince the men to dig a deep trash pit in the ravine and cover it with removable boulders.

Having demonstrated her usefulness over the past few days, at least in her own mind, she spent that afternoon scraping, chewing, and shaping the fur scraps that Kam had given her. The next morning she sewed them together to make a sleeping fur. The Flathead women seemed intrigued by the idea that skins could be sewed, instead of merely being hacked into rough shape and used singly, or laced into a not-very-warm garment. Apparently, Leya reckoned, they were focused on the needs of the moment, and not on the future.

Her leg healed slowly. She wished it would hasten so she could accompany the women on their foraging. She had picked up a large number of words and signs and was becoming adept at formulating thoughts in the clan’s language, and she wanted to see why the foragers kept bringing home cattail shoots to the exclusion of other edible plants. With her newfound fluency, she described the dark yellow flowers of mountain arnica and asked the women to be on the lookout.

She spent the afternoon and the following day smoking her new sleeping-skin and supplementing the running stitches with time-consuming but stronger whipstitches in order to upgrade it into a rather ragged but serviceable hooded cloak, with slits for the arms and a bone-and-sinew clasp at the throat. Again, the women were impressed at what to Leya seemed an obvious use of Ki’s bounty.

Em brought back a handful of arnica plants, which Leya gratefully accepted. Mashing the tough rootstocks, she made a tincture in a bowl appropriated from a deer’s pelvis. After applying it to her injured leg, she thought she could see improvement in the purple and yellow bruise.

When the hunting party returned the next afternoon, Bor took Odd, Puk, Caw, and Gar around the camp, expounding on Leya’s improvements. Leya saw that they realized the benefits of the air channels she had dug for the hearths, the fur-wrapped sleeping-rocks, and above all, the hooded cloak. She noted that Gar seemed pleased for her, and saw more than a little respect light Bor’s blue eyes, although Cam merely looked matter-of-fact.

Leya noticed that the hunting party brought no large animal home this time but only a deer foal, an ibex, and an assortment of badgers, otters, and hares. They must have visited the river to the south, she thought when they might better have ranged north to the spring migration routes of the herd animals.

To make matters worse, it was the spawning season, and their failure to bring home any fish confirmed her earlier notion that they neglected to make proper use of this important resource. No wonder the Tribe of the Twin Rivers was out-surviving these people, she thought. The People used their heads to exploit nature, while the Clan used their muscles.

That night as she lay wrapped in her new cloak, heated stones turning her bed into a snug haven, she tried to turn her mind away from her personal problems by considering what she had so far learned of the People of the Clan, as she now thought of them. She felt exasperated by their ignorance of technology that had been handed down among her own People since time immemorial. She could see that the women were intelligent, because they picked up new skills as fast as she could demonstrate them—faster, it seemed, than her own people.

But they failed to make connections on their own that, to her, seemed obvious. Didn’t they realize that rocks held heat? They must, since the cooking hearth was lined with them. And couldn’t they reason that heated rocks wrapped in skins and placed against their bodies at night would keep them warm, with no need to huddle by the fire?

And didn’t the men notice the abundant fish in the waterways? Why weren’t they utilizing everything the earth provided? She vowed again to show them how to trap fish by the dozen, or at least to spear them with a javelin tied to a line, for she had seen them clumsily trying to scoop trout from the stream in the nearby ravine. Tomorrow, she would show them how to
braid birch branches into a weir and how to anchor it with stakes and rocks.

She was sleeping comfortably when a draft of cold air awakened her and she looked up to see Caw’s face in the alpenglow of the banked fire, his gap-toothed mouth stretched into a lascivious grin. She glanced around for Gar and Puk, and saw only huddled lumps around the hearth. If anyone was watching, they gave no sign.

With a sinking feeling, she realized that Bor must have decided she was sufficiently healed. She had hoped against hope that the knowledge she had demonstrated, which had gotten the other women coming to her for advice, would show the leader that she would be wasted as the mere mate of a hunter. But apparently he was as unimaginative as the others.

Having no recourse, she obeyed Caw’s gesture to kneel upright, face the other way, and lift the hem of her cloak.

“
Help me, KI.”

That night’s unpleasant activity not only ripped away the tatters of her virginity but started her on the way, she later reckoned, to becoming a
mator.

#

Cessation of womanly bleeding constituted the first sign of Leya’s pregnancy.

“
Caw bothers me every night he’s in camp,” she told Wim. It was summer now, and she spoke the language fluently, though she had not fully mastered the clan’s elaborate system of gestures. Her spoken vocabulary had expanded to scores of words, and she had become adept at casting her message in the clan’s language, albeit with an accent, while retaining the thought in her own.

The crone looked sympathetic. “Often?”

“
Usually two or three times,” she said. “Until I’m sore down there.”

“
All young men do that.”

“
In between sessions he likes to squeeze my breasts.”

“
They be bigger than ours.”

“
They’re beginning to feel tender.” Leya looked at the men huddled around the fire, picked out Caw, and looked away as his head began to turn. “I asked him to ease up, but he just smiled and squeezed harder.”

“
He would.” Wim peered at her. “Okay otherwise?”

Leya yawned. “I can’t seem to get enough sleep. And every morning I feel sick.”

The old woman looked glum. “Wim hate to say, but see hard birth.”