Chip ran up the nearest ramp and jumped over. Dirk came to the ramp, sniffed it, and then slowly climbed on it. He reached the top, peered over, and stopped. “I’d land on my snout,” he said.
“So would the crocodile,” Chip pointed out.
Dirk nodded gravely. “So it would. This is a good defense. But how did you make it?” He reached out and took hold of a post, pushing against it. “This is firm.”
Bry explained how they all had worked so hard on it.
“With your ribs bruised,” Dirk said, looking at him, seeing the way he favored that side. Dirk knew about bruised ribs.
“We had to get it done,” Bry said.
“So you did.” He seemed impressed.
“Where are your parents?” Lin asked Chip, and the boy explained about that.
Dirk looked at Flo. “We can’t take Bry yet; he hasn’t finished his commitment here. The other boat won’t be back for some time. We’d better camp here until the parents return.”
Flo nodded, looking at Bry. “We know what it’s like to survive without parents.”
“You can stay in our house,” Chip said eagerly. “There’s room.”
Flo and Dirk exchanged another glance. “They surely do have room,” Dirk said. “While the parents are away. Let’s use their house, and return what favors we may.”
So it was done. Dirk and Flo took the section where Hugh and Anne normally slept, and Lin found room at the edge, with the children scrambling to fashion a bed for her. It would be crowded, but could be managed.
Bry was much relieved. He hadn’t realized how much tension he had had, until it dissipated. He hadn’t known for sure that the rest of his family had survived, or that they would find him. It seemed that the boats had been carried far south, and the others had no idea where he had gone ashore—or if he had. He could tell by the way that Lin was letting go that §he had been under similar tension. Now it was all right, and all of them could relax.
The next morning Dirk got serious about return favors. “That crocodile—we are going to take care of it,” he said grimly.
They went about it methodically. The spear fishing that had been such an adventure for Bry and the children was inconsequential for Dirk; he quickly speared several fish, and cut them to pieces with his stone knife, and tossed the pieces back into the water. Before long that summoned the crocodile. Then Dirk stood back and let the children lure it out. When it was well up on the beach, Dirk cut it off from the water and went after it with two spears. The reptile that had been so bold against children found it another matter against a competent grown man who had killed crocodiles before. He poked it in the tail, and when it whirled around to snap at the spear, he poked it in the snout. He kept poking it, confusing it, until it stopped reacting and tried to charge him. Then he jammed the spear hard at its face, so that its own momentum added to the power of the thrust. Soon it had been stabbed through eye and belly, and was thrashing on the sand. Dirk looped its snout with a loop, and Bry held the rope taut while Dirk carved open the reptile’s throat with a stone blade. Slowly the beast died.
Then came the work of carving it up. Crocodile meat was good, and so was the tough hide; they were not going to waste any of it. By the end of the day sections of crocodile were hanging from the branches of nearby trees. They made a big fire and roasted enough for an excellent meal. They would dry as much of the remaining meat as possible in the sun, and keep it for Hugh and Anne to use when they returned.
The day after that they took the children out for a boat ride. Though Chip and Mina were part of the boat culture, as all people were, their family’s boat was small, and used only when they traveled to a new home base, or when on tour. Normally they lived on the shore, in protected houses like the present one. They never went far out to sea; they hugged the shore, so that if any storm or creature threatened they could immediately get to land. So it was a real experience for them to go far out in the big boat with oars.
Dirk rowed and Flo steered, as usual; Dirk and Sam were always the rowers, having the most brute power. Because the rower faced backward—another novelty to the children—and the one with the rudder was at the back of the boat, a young person normally perched in the prow to watch forward. Lin did that, taking the children up by turns to be awed by the prow cutting swiftly through the water.
Bry sat in the middle with the other child and Baby Flint. He faced back, watching the rear and side. “We have to watch all the time,” he explained, “because we are crossing deep water and don’t want to be surprised by anything.”
Chip, with him for the moment, peered over the edge of the boat, down through the water, and then turned his head quickly back to the boat. He looked a bit dizzy. “It’s so deep!”
“Yes,” Bry agreed. “You can see things down there. Big fish, big turtles, sometimes seaweed, looking like a dark forest. It’s peaceful.”
“And you even sleep in the boat?”
“Yes, usually. We take turns lying down in the center, with one or two people always alert, even when we’re not moving. Our boat is the safest place we can be—except when there’s a storm.”
“I thought I’d be scared,” the boy confessed. “But you’re right: it does feel safe. It’s so big and steady.”
“The outrigger steadies it, just as it does on your boat,” Bry said. It was nice being the expert on things.
Then Mina crawled to the center. “Your turn,” she announced. “There’s even a wind up there.”
The boy crawled forward, and Mina made herself comfortable between Bry and the baby, facing back. Like girls of any age, she was intrigued by babies.
“It moves so fast,” she said.
“That’s because of the rowing,” Bry explained, nodding back at Dirk right behind him. “He pulls hard with both arms, instead of pulling with one and pushing with the other, the way you do with a paddle. But we paddle too, when we need to.”
Baby Flint got bored or uncomfortable, and started fussing. Mina pulled him on to her lap, and he was quiet.
“You have the touch,” Flo said appreciatively.
“Yes. The spirits are with me.”
“I wish you were mine.”
There was a silence. Then Bry became aware of something. They were all in the boat, and the boat was bearing south, toward a likely rendezvous with the family’s other boat. They could just keep going. The children couldn’t get off.
Had Dirk and Flo planned this? Bry was alarmed.
Mina lifted her head and looked at Flo. Bry saw only the glossy back of the little girl’s head, but somehow realized that she was crying. There was no sound, no motion, but surely there were tears.
Then Flo’s eyes changed, and tears came from them. She turned the rudder, and the boat began to turn. They were going back to the children’s house.
Bry realized that there had been a tacit contest of wills, and the little girl had won. Mina loved her present family and didn’t want to leave it. Flo wanted her baby back, but couldn’t take her by force. No one could take anything from Mina by force. The spirits wouldn’t allow it.
No further words were spoken. The issue had been decided. Dirk surely understood, and was keeping silent. Bry would keep silent too.
They resumed foraging and fishing, and Dirk explored the nearby forest. They were passing time until the parents returned.
When the moon was done, the small boat reappeared, from the opposite direction; they had completed their circuit, portaging inland to reach another stream.
Chip and Mina rushed out, joyfully welcoming their parents back. Dirk, Flo, Bry, Lin, and Baby Flint waited by the fence. The children would introduce them soon enough.
They did. It took a while for everything to be explained, including the crocodile and the fence, but it got done. Then, as abruptly as Hugh and Anne had done, Dirk and Flo made ready to depart. “We came for our brother,” Flo explained. “We have found him. Now we will take him back, and rejoin the rest of our family. We thank you for re
scuing him.”
“But he rescued us!” Anne protested. “Without him, we couldn’t have done the tour alone. We see that he did an excellent job.” She glanced meaningfully at the fence. “You must stay and let us repay you for all the trouble you have taken.”
But Flo shook her head. Bry realized that she wanted to get quickly away, before she revealed something she thought was best left secret. It was better that Anne not know. So he made a suggestion. “They can reward us with a song and dance. It won’t take long. Then we’ll go.”
Dirk looked perplexed, but shrugged agreeably. So they sat in the sand, and Hugh brought out his flute, and Chip his drum, and the woman and the girl did a dance to music that quickly made Dirk discover the point of it all. Bry was glad to see his impression verified: this was a thing awesome to grown men.
He looked at Flo, and saw her fascinated too, but in a different way. She was seeing how well integrated her baby was in this nice family, learning to be a dancer, bound to become attractive as a woman in a way Flo, who was now fairly fat, was not. Mina belonged where she was; this was now quite clear.
When it was done, they moved to the boat. “Will we meet again?” Hugh asked.
“I think not,” Flo said firmly. “We are going far north, looking for new shores. It is our way.”
Bry knew that meant that Flo intended to put herself well away from temptation. He knew that was best. But it was sad to think he would never be with the children again. This had been, despite the pain of his ribs and uncertainty of separation, as good an experience as he could remember. He had been, for half a moon, the man of a wonderful little family.
Mina ran to hug Bry one last time. She kissed him on the cheek. “Never forget me,” she said.
“I never will,” he agreed sadly, knowing how true that was. And he knew she would never tell their true relationship.
Thus the boat folk may have explored all the coasts of the Americas, proceeding south along the west, circling the tip of South America, and moving north back to North America. Whether they had advanced to the level of oar locks and backward-facing rowing may be in doubt, but certainly mankind had boats capable of such excursions, because Australia was colonized 40,000 to 50,000 years ago by boat. There is some marginal evidence of their presence in South America as long as 35,000 years ago, at sites like Monte Verde in modem Chile and Pedra Furada in Brazil, where radiocarbon dates as far back as 32,000 years ago have been obtained. Cave art there has been dated as 17,000 years old. The site of Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania, USA, dates to circa 17,000 years ago. The significance of such discoveries is this: Prior wisdom sets a limit for the colonization of America from Asia of about 12,000 years ago. This is because before then the way was blocked by glaciers across part of Alaska and all of Canada, extending to the sea on either side of the continent. Only when the ice retreated could a land crossing have been made. The evidence of the stones suggests that this was the case; the distinctive fluted Clovis points date from this time.
If, however, the continents were settled 20,000 years before the ice cleared, by people in boats, why is there so little evidence of their presence? Why did the pattern of extinctions of large game animals, commence only 12,000 years ago? Why wasn’t America already full of millions of settlers, repelling the newcomers from the Asian side of the ice? Well, there is some evidence that when the glaciers retreated, mankind moved north to Alaska from the region of the western United States, rather than the other way. But this is controversial as yet, with archaeologists having some trouble getting such a politically incorrect thesis published in reputable journals. It also does not address the question of why the limited evidence suggests a far earlier colonization of South America than North America. If the boat folk circled the southern continent as described in this setting, what happened to them? Surely they couldn’t simply vanish after 20,000 years.
But they may have done just that. The boat folk may have been limited by their life-style to the coast, seldom moving far inland. Culture has strong continuity, especially when buttressed by the economics of survival. They depended on the water for their food, and never penetrated the enormous continental interiors where their home-boats couldn’t go. Their numbers were limited, and they came not as a single massive invasion, but as a long series of trickles. Their tribal and band numbers may have been insufficient to enable them to expand their population significantly, as discussed in Chapter 5, so they were always thinly spread. Storms would have been a constant danger, because of the vulnerability of their boats. Then two things could have finished them and their works: a massive invasion of landbound folk 12,000 years ago, displacing or absorbing them without remaining genetic trace in the course of several thousand years, and the waters of the seas rising with the melting of the ice, covering or washing out most of the physical traces of their presence. So they were gone so completely that they were thought never to have existed. Until little bits of evidence appeared, widely scattered. Such as the chipped stones at the sites mentioned, and the genetic evidence of a tribe living eight thousand years ago in Florida: related to none of the three main Native American groups, but to folk now living in Japan. In short, a remnant of coastal folk. They were the true first Americans.
Chapter 7
BONE HOUSE
One frontier was that of the cold northlands. The great glaciers of the arctic had not yet retreated. Much of Europe was covered, but less of Asia; apparently the most massive ice formed downwind from the oceans. Between the ice and the tropic was the vast panorama of Siberia, where bison and mammoths roamed. Here life could be lean indeed, and people were dependent on big animals for food, clothing, and shelter. One indication of the times is the art they left behind: the “Venus” figurines, generally the torsos of naked women, often hugely fat. They might be missing heads and feet, but they had breasts and genitals, making clear what was important. Why so corpulent? Probably because when food was scarce, or available only intermittently, it was a significant advantage to be able to store it on the body, where its energy was always available. Especially for women, who had children to bear and nurse. Thus the feminine ideal became fat. In times of plenty, in contrast, the ideal becomes slender. Today in North America, the land of affluence, the Perfect Woman is supposed to be anorexically thin. However, there is doubt that historically many women could become even moderately fat, so there may have been one in a band who was truly corpulent: the wet nurse. Her huge breasts could feed the children of mothers who died in childbirth, thus preserving lives that would otherwise be lost, and so strengthening the group. Perhaps she would also feed any young children of the group, so that they could be healthy even when their mothers were not quite adequate. Such a service would probably have been very much appreciated, leading to veneration of this type of female body; it enabled the group to preserve its children.
But there was another innovation, similarly striking, in housing. The place is Siberia, 20,000 years ago.
FLO WAS DESPERATE. BRY WAS ill and rapidly getting worse. He had gotten his ribs bashed in a river accident, had been lost for a time, but survived nicely with a neighboring family. Now they had him back—and he had forgotten caution, tried too hard on a hunt, and re-injured himself. He had been able to walk, but it hadn’t stopped there; now the boy was feverish. She knew how to care for him, but lacked the facilities.
Normally when they traveled to a new hunting site they cut sturdy saplings to make a framework for a conical house. The poles were tied together at the top, and spread out to form a circle; then the band’s cache of hides was stretched over the pole framework and tied tight with cords. Stones anchored the base of the hides, making a nice tight shelter they could heat with a fire at its entrance. Two days of a warm shelter and a steady healing chant would drive out the boy’s illness, and he would begin recovering.
But this new territory was a harsh windswept plain. No trees were near, and no natural shelter. That wind was tearing into Bry’s clothing, pulling away the
heat of his body, draining his vitality when he needed it most. If they had to spend a cold night on the ground, he would be finished. They could wrap him in hides, and lie close around him, but he would still be breathing the chill air. That was no good. The spirits were hovering near him, and they would take him if he did not find physical and magical protection.
She looked around. Maybe they could gather rocks, and make a circle high enough to serve as an effective windbreak, and stretch the hides over the top. They had done that on occasion when wood wasn’t sufficient. But she didn’t see any rocks; there were surely some scattered around, but clearly not enough to do the job in the time they had. In any event, Sam and Dirk were out hunting, so weren’t here to haul the heavy stones. Ned was here, but he was a lean young man, not powerful, not made for heavy physical labor. Jes was very similar to him, though she was a young woman. She was a good forager and a hard worker, but no rock hauler. Flo herself was way too fat for that sort of thing, and Wona too skinny and disinterested in hard work. So rocks were out.
She looked at Bry. He was sitting on the ground, hunched together. Lin was trying to help him, but was plainly inadequate. No, they had to have a good shelter. And there was none to be had.
“We’ll camp here,” Flo decided, determined to be decisive. There were, after all, the others to see to. They would have to eat and get through the night, hoping that tomorrow would bring the men with fresh meat. Their success had not been great recently, so that the berries and roots foraged by the women served as the main sustenance. Flo had been able to gain weight on that diet, but not the others. Thus Flo was an ideal figure of a woman, with the evidence of her survivability layered on her body. She came closest of her generation to matching the standard of the goddess dolls which for as long as any tale-teller remembered had represented the pinnacle of the female form. But she was lucky; the others needed animal flesh to feed them, as well as foraging.