Climate of Change (5 page)

He pulsed inside her, transported. He had done it. She had actually done most of it for him, but perhaps it counted.

They relaxed together. “And never again will I resist you,” she murmured in his ear.

“Never again will I force you,” he said. He suppressed a foolish laugh.

“We are married.”

He hesitated. “Crenelle, this is not the way I—”

She cut him off with another kiss. “It is the way we do it.”

In due course they disengaged, got up, dressed, and made their way
back to the house. Haven was standing by the fire, which she had built up to flare more brightly. “What happened?”

“He raped me,” Crenelle said.

Haven stared at her. “He what?”

“He threw me down and hit me and stifled my scream. I couldn't stop him.”

Haven looked at Hero. He averted his gaze. She knew that he would never force a woman, but she didn't understand what was going on.

“I tried to fight. See, I scratched his back.” Crenelle pointed to the place she had scraped him.

“So what does this mean?” Haven asked cautiously.

“So now we're married,” Crenelle concluded.

Haven looked again at Hero. This time he had to speak. “She says she will join our family, and help us look for good land.”

“But what of your brother?” Haven asked.

“Now he can rape his own woman, and bring her here. Before someone else gets her. There is one who wants him. She has held out about as long as she can, hoping he'd come. Now he will. They should be happy.”

“That's nice,” Haven said noncommittally. “Now we need to get some sleep.”

“Now you can join me inside,” Crenelle said to Hero. “It's more comfortable there.”

“I can sleep outside,” Haven said.

“No, you can be in with us. If you don't mind what we do.”

Haven looked once more at her brother. Hero shrugged. She knew about sex, and was figuring out that Crenelle was not an unwilling partner. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“He also saved my life,” the girl said.

Haven's lips quirked. “That too?”

“Yes. From the leopard. He fought it and drove it off. Just before he raped me.”

She kept insisting on the rape, and that kept restoring his doubt. He was willing to marry her, but not to do it by a lie.

Haven nodded. “He is thoughtful about things like that.”

They went inside, and Hero joined Crenelle on her mat. He had thought to sleep, but she embraced him and kissed him repeatedly, and summoned his desire again. This time she made no mock resistance. She was showing him all that she had to offer, to solidify his resolve to marry her.

It turned out to be a long night, for Crenelle was endlessly ardent. But Hero didn't mind it at all. At last she tired, and remained asleep, and he was able to sleep too.

In the morning Haven was up first, tending the fire. Hero got up and went out to urinate, leaving Crenelle sleeping. He was somewhat bemused by his new state of companionship, but not regretful. Crenelle had excited more than his passion; he believed that she would be a good wife. But the idea of calling it rape repelled him.

“You didn't really rape her,” Haven murmured as he joined her by the fire. “You wouldn't, and anyway, no victim would be that passionate.”

“Her culture requires rape, so we played at it,” he said. “But we must not say that openly.”

“She seems competent. But you know it's not binding by our culture. What made you decide to have sex with her?”

“She wanted me so much, it made me want her. And she does have a good body.”

“I saw her showing you her cleft. I know that's pretty exciting for you.” She was alluding to an episode with another girl, who had exposed her genital region and let him penetrate her while others watched, in a kind of game. She was right: even as a game, it was immensely compelling. Women might mock the reactions of men, but the reactions were nevertheless real, and women took free advantage of them to get their way. Women never showed more than they were prepared to have touched, because of the force of male reactions. “Well, go and have at it again, before we have to travel.”

“But I don't know if I should marry her. How could I let our people think I raped her?”

Haven pursed her lips. “I see the problem. Maybe she'll agree to shut up about that aspect.”

“I'm not sure. She's very insistent.”

“Well in any event, you can have her now without rape. You had better do it, lest you lose the chance.”

He smiled, and went inside. Crenelle was stirring. He lay down beside her and stroked her flung hair.

“I was afraid you would run away and desert me,” she said. “I know you have doubts.”

“Not without telling you.”

“You didn't come back just for more sex?”

He was embarrassed. “Not just for that.”

She laughed. “Take it.”

He did, half afraid she would protest or resist, but she was fully cooperative. She had evidently meant it when she promised never to resist him again.

“West,” she said as she embraced him. “Across the mountains and the lakes. I have heard there is land there that no one occupies. Wide land, so far across that no one knows its end. Much game. I know a route.”

That was not what she had said before. But he could not blame her for not telling everything to strangers. “How can you know it, if you haven't traveled?”

“My father went there once, and told us all about it. I know I can guide you there.”

His passion was spent, but something new was rising in him. “Thank you, Crenelle,” he said, kissing her again.

“Well, I said I would be good for you.”

She had indeed. “But this business of saying it was rape—”

“You and I know the truth, Hero. Does it matter what others think?”

“Why not let them think there was no rape, then?”

She shook her head. “Please, Hero. My people will not recognize it as marriage otherwise. They will say I wantonly wasted myself, and am unfit for marriage.”

He appreciated her point, but still could not admit to the lie. She had indeed been somewhat wanton, but it was in her effort to persuade him to marry her.

They went outside, where they ate more of the roast. Then Crenelle prepared to go. “I will leave a message for my brother,” she said. “So he will know.”

“A message?”

She went inside, and emerged with two cunningly made doll figures. One was male, with a little stick for a penis; the other was female. She set them together, facing each other, and looped a length of tendon around them so that they would stay that way. She arranged them so that the male doll's arms were clasping the other close, while the female's arms were stretched out at wild angles, as if helpless to defend herself. She laid them on her mat. That seemed clear enough.

But it reminded him once again of the lie. “Crenelle, I can't—”

Crenelle faced him, her face crumpling. She was going to cry, and he couldn't stand that, as she surely knew. But this, too, was effective even when understood as a ploy. Yet how could he face his brothers Craft and Keeper, or his fiery sister Rebel, if he confessed to raping a woman?

Haven interceded. “Can you tell your people it was rape, and we tell our people it was not? If you come with us now, Crenelle, our people and yours will not meet.”

Crenelle considered. “I suppose so. For a marriage this good. If Hero agrees.”

They turned to Hero, awaiting his decision. He had no idea what to say.

The twin engines driving the migrations of mankind were surely population and climate. When folk found a good location, such as the fertile basin of the Lake Victoria region, they were fruitful and multiplied, filling their ecological niche. Then the climate would change, making their homeland less fertile while promoting other regions. The people had to move or starve, as their homelands could no longer support them. First they spread all over Africa, then across the rest of the world. Their exact routes across Africa are unknown, and probably there were many migrations over the millennia crisscrossing
given territories. Most of the species remained in Africa; there is more human genetic diversity there than in all the rest of the world.

Mankind was considered to have been a hunter/gatherer for most of his existence. But this did not necessarily mean that he lacked houses. It would have been more comfortable to sleep in a covered, protected place, and to have supplies there for convenient use. Such structures might have been dismantled and moved to new sites periodically, or simply allowed to deteriorate when deserted, so that only the hearths would remain for archaeologists to find. It is also possible that most tribesmen traveled, while some remained in houses. We just don't know.

Did any cultures practice rape as a mechanism for marriage? They surely did, because some do today. Yes, we frown on it, as we do on sex with fifteen-year-old girls, but in the past nubility was the signal for sexual availability, regardless of the girl's preference. We try to impose a veneer of modesty and caution, but teen girls are still getting pregnant.

The place of music in human development is largely unknown, because sound leaves no fossils. But a 60,000-year-old bone flute was found in southeast Europe in 1995, suggesting that music was indeed part of mankind's heritage. There may have been many other musical instruments that left no traces because they were made of wood or leather. It is conjectured that music and language are closely connected, and the continuing popularity of songs of all kinds endorses this. Music may be one of the ways men can impress women, leading to sexual selection for it, but surely women can also impress men with it, especially when they dance to it. As described in a prior
GEODYSSEY
novel, the arts, especially music, probably enabled larger groups of people to assemble peacefully, contributing to tribal strength. But it surely started on the individual and couple level, facilitating relationships, as shown here.

One mystery is why modern mankind, having emerged from Africa to Asia Minor circa 100,000 BPE, took so long to move on into Europe, as well as remained relatively primitive in technology. The answer is probably that southern Asia was far more inviting, being warmer and closer to the African climate in which the species had evolved. Europe was cold and forbidding, and was already occupied by a formidable competitive species, Neandertal man. So the advanced mainstream human culture proceeded eastward. (Another answer is discussed in the afternote.) But there were some contacts to the north.

The prior novels of this series followed one or more characters through history, their seeming reincarnations similar in description and relationships. This novel differs in one respect: while the relationships of five siblings to each other remain constant, their connections outside the family differ. They are not really the same people, but descendants many generations removed. They may make fundamentally different decisions at the critical turning points. It is as if reality is played over, so that alternate bypaths may be explored. Thus a person who marries in one chapter may not be married in another, depending on a key decision. Or one who is undecided in one chapter may, by this device, get to live through the consequences of each side of a decision. The differences, as time passes, may become formidable.

The setting is southern Anatolia. The time is circa 74,000 BPE, not long after a savage global winter decimated human and animal populations.