Hope of Earth (4 page)

J
ES WALKED BESIDE NED, FOLLOWING
their two elder band siblings. Sam was in the lead, as always, and Flo following.

Flo had a baby in her belly. At first it hadn’t seemed so, but now she was fat in the middle, and she tired easily. She was always hungry, too, because by the time she reached a berry patch, the others had already picked it over. Sometimes Sam took her with him to a good patch, and growled off the others so that she could eat, but usually he didn’t think of it. He was too worried about how they would survive since being cursed with isolation, and about the vision he had had of warthogs copulating, suggesting that he was destined to mate with an ugly woman. Jes knew about all this, having seen it happening and overheard it being told. The elders thought she didn’t understand, but she had seen the ways of things in the tribe, and knew what was what. She had heard Sam’s awful vision, and she had seen Ro get raped by the hostile foreign band chief.

When they had first been separated from their band, and had to forage alone, Flo had tried to help the younger ones. Now the two youngest children were trying to help her. Ned was still not a man, small for his age and not aggressive, but he was smart and quick with his hands. Jes was big for a girl, and homely, and knew it; she would not be popular when she became a woman. The two of them tended to stay together, neither snubbing the other; they might have mated when grown, if they hadn’t been band siblings. Jes knew that no other band would treat her as well as this group of band siblings did. As well as Flo had. They had known each other all their lives, and looked out for each other. So when Flo’s form and strength diminished, Jes saw her as closer to herself in nature, and associated more frequently with her. Flo was a woman, and Jes was a large child, but Flo was not in a position to protest.

On this day they traveled far in the heat, following the best animal paths and marking their trail so there would be no hesitancy on their return, only to discover that the good berry patch had been savaged and was useless. Saber-toothed cats had made a kill here, dragging down a beast, and in the process flattening the berries. They had come here for nothing. What the cats hadn’t eaten, the scavenging hyenas had; a hyena skulked away as the band approached. Obviously it was a laggard, and largely sated, or it would have stood and fought them. Not even the berry squishings remained; the ants were finishing them off.

But the siblings made what they could of it. The good meat was gone, but there were still some bits of flesh sticking to the joints and tendons. Ned had a small stone with a sharp edge he carried with him; now he used that edge to cut away some of the meat left by the animals’ teeth. The two smallest children simply put their faces down and chewed directly on the bones, gleaning what little they could.

Ned handed Flo a small string of meat he had severed. She thanked him with a smile and took it. Jes knew it was tough, but Flo had good teeth, and it was clearly much better than nothing. Flo had helped the rest of them so much when she could, that it was natural for them to help her when they could.

Ned picked up a bone and looked at it. Jes followed his gaze. This bone had been crushed, probably by the powerful jaws of the hyena, so that it had split open. Jes smiled; that animal must have been really hungry, to chew on a bare bone. What sustenance was there in bone?

But Ned wasn’t satisfied. He poked a finger into the split bone. It was damp inside, and reddish. He sniffed it. Jes watched, having nothing better to do at the moment.

“Hyena,” Ned said. “Food.”

Maybe a bare bone was food for the hyena, but it wasn’t for people. Their teeth were not nearly as strong as those of the hyena, or any other predator. They would merely get aching teeth if they tried to eat that bone.

But Ned still wasn’t satisfied. “Why chew?” he asked.

“Meat in?” Jes asked.

Flo laughed. Of course the meat was on the outside, not the inside. But Ned didn’t laugh. “Inside,” he repeated, shaking the bone. A bit of reddish stuff fell out.

Jes snatched it up and put it in her mouth. She chewed, smiling. There
was
something edible in the bone. The taste was strange, but it seemed to be like meat.

Now Ned got serious. He looked around until he found a large rock with a flat surface. He found a smaller rock, the kind good for throwing, and hefted it in one hand. He put the bone on the large rock, then smashed the small rock down on it. What was he trying to do?

The bone bounced off the rock. Ned put it back, and bashed it again. Of course it bounced off again, so this time Jes grabbed it by the end and held it in place for him. She didn’t know what he had in mind, but he was their smartest member, so she might as well help him do it. Ned smiled, thanking her, and bashed it once more. Jes felt the shock, but it didn’t hurt, and the bone stayed in place. So Ned bashed again. And again. Finally he managed to crush it so that the split in the end widened. He wedged with a narrower stone, until the bone opened into two parts.

They peered in. There was more of the reddish stuff. Ned pulled at it with his fingers, and it came out in a soft muddy mass. He put it to his mouth. He chewed. Then he smiled, and offered it to Flo. She was doubtful, so he offered it to Jes.

Jes already knew it was edible, though odd. She took it and bit into the softness. She took another bite, liking it better. It was definitely food. Then, catching Ned’s warning glance, she paused. He didn’t want her to eat it all.

Jes handed the rest of it to Flo, because she was plainly hungry too, and needed food more than any of the rest of them. The woman tasted it, bolder now that she had seen Jes eat it with evident pleasure. Then she ate it slowly, becoming reassured. They had indeed found food in the oddest place, inside the bone. Jes had never imagined anything like that. Only someone as smart as Ned would ever have thought of it.

Flo got up and went to Sam, who had been chewing on a joint, not paying attention. Sam was their strongest member, and a good guy, but not the smartest person. “Food in,” she said, pointing to another bone. But he looked blank.

Ned got a larger bone and put it on the rock. He smashed at it with the smaller rock, but it was too tough to crack. So Jes got help. “Sam,” she said. “Do.”

It took a while to make Sam understand, and Jes and Ned had to demonstrate several times with smaller bones, but finally Sam took the rock from Ned and smashed it down hard on the bone. The bone cracked open, and the reddish stuff showed inside. Ned pried it out and gave it to Sam. Sam tasted it, and his face lighted. “Food!”

After that they cracked open all the bones they could, and all of them ate the stuff inside. It was their first really good meal in several days.

The next several days they traveled and foraged as usual, following their familiar paths, but now they had a new awareness: there was good food to be had at predator kill sites. They had ignored or avoided such sites before, but now they looked for them. The best early indication was the vultures; if they were circling, there was a carcass below. They were easy to see in the sky. So when the gross birds signaled a find, within striding range, the six of them set out in that direction. This time, knowing that they could encounter predators, they carried staffs. These were long poles fashioned from sapling trees, handy for support when walking became tiresome, and more useful when baboons attacked. Stones were good, but there might not be enough good ones in the vicinity. They had caches of stones in convenient places, but they could not anticipate exactly where the kills would occur, and stones were too heavy to carry along with them all the time. A carried staff, however, was an effective weapon.

It turned out to be a wise move, because the kill was recent and a small pride of big tusked cats was still there. Sated cats seldom attacked, but the people didn’t care to risk it. So they settled down to wait for the cats to finish and depart, keeping their staffs ready in case a cat decided to rout them. This was a region with tubers, so they found smaller sticks to use to dig the tubers out of the ground. Ned used his sharp-edged stone to make points on the ends of their digging sticks, so that they worked better. Then, thoughtfully, he started carving a point on the end of his staff. Jes, seeing that, had him sharpen hers too.

Several hyenas appeared, and settled down to wait similarly, on the opposite side of the carcass. They knew better than to try to drive the cats off, because it seemed that hyenas did know the difference between one and several, but they would fight any lesser creatures for the rights of first scavenging.

Fortunately the cats soon moved on without attacking. Now the party of people walked in on the carcass. But so did the hyenas. There were six of them, so they were a force equivalent to that of the people.

This was where the staffs came in. They were good for fending off such creatures. Normally it was just a matter of holding the staff out ahead, crosswise, so that it was hard for a creature to pounce and bite without getting blocked. But they could be swung hard to deliver painful blows. And now, Jes saw, Ned was holding his staff with the sharpened end pointing forward, like a tusk of a saber-toothed cat. That could be more effective. She pictured what it would feel like, if she were a hyena, trying to spring at a pointed staff, and maybe getting stabbed in the snout. She winced. She would surely back off. But animals weren’t as smart as people; they might see it differently.

The hyenas prowled around, considering. They were hungry; they wanted those bones. They were formidable fighters. But they didn’t like fighting aggressive creatures, and they didn’t understand the staffs. So they were cautious.

The people advanced on them in a tight formation bristling with staffs. One hyena decided that staffs were not lions, and charged. This was the test.

It came right at Jes. Before she knew it, her staff was thrusting out, striking the creature on the nose and drawing blood. Then Sam’s staff came down on its head, hard. The hyena scrambled back, hurting.

But another moved forward. Again Jes’s staff thrust out to intercept it, knocking it on the ear, scraping the fur. It snarled and backed off. The staffs were working!

Finally the hyenas lost their nerve, and loped away, leaving the bones to the seemingly stronger force.

Jes felt weak with relief. Had the animals realized that the group consisted of four children, one weak woman with a baby in her belly, and only one strong man, they would have charged and perhaps prevailed. Staffs were good, but not that good. For one thing, if a staff got knocked to the side, a hyena could get in a good bite without penalty. One bite would be more than enough; their jaws were horribly strong.

Yet during the actual fight, she had not been very much afraid. Her weapon had led the way, striking as if of its own volition. She had been thrilled to feel the contact with the flesh of the enemy, and feel the shock of the blow in her hands. Sam had fought more effectively, having far more mass and muscle, but Jes had done her part. She was a fighter too.

They had won the carcass. But this was an exposed place, and a stronger force could come at any time. More hyenas could appear, augmenting the original group, making them bold again, or a large pack of dogs could spy them. The dogs couldn’t crack open the bones, but they could scatter them widely as they chewed on them for their external bits of meat. So it wouldn’t be smart to settle down to crack open the bones and eat the marrow here, because trouble was bound to come before they got into many of the tough ones. They had known this when they set out for this site.