Michael Bishop - Ancient of Days

All that was left was for the males to mate with human women. Ironically, Adam had pioneered that option with results that had persuaded him and RuthClaire not to try again. Hector was old and blind. Toussaint and Alberoi might one day seek Haitian brides, but their fear of the human world—their experiences with Tontons Macoutes, plantation overseers, fortune hunters, and Marxist revolutionaries—argued against their doing so. Their people were universal victims. Even others who wished to protect them often endangered them by shining upon them the light of sincere concern. Adam, a habiline himself, had inadvertently done that. So it was unlikely that the anxious Toussaint or the feral Alberoi would ever venture down from their village to woo the sloe-eyed daughters of men.

I asked Adam why he had limited our first contact with his people to these stiff, serial meetings. He said it was simply to give them a chance to get used to our presence. They were suspicious, and shy. Erzulie had had some experience with outsiders, but the other habilines were innocents with soft ego structures. They had threaded their lives into the elemental natural beauties and terrors of the island, but latter-day humankind totally confounded them. Tomorrow, and the next day, we would see more of them. Meanwhile, we must let them think about our first meetings with us. In the darkness of the caves—I began to realize there were caves higher up the mountain—they would begin to weave us into the psychic patterns tying them to Montaraz and their immemorial family past. Or so, at least, Adam hoped.

That night, we lit candles in the houngfor and shared a rude picnic near its center post. We included Brian and made nervous jokes about the couleuvre coming to join us. Afterward, Brian asked questions about Blair’s visit to the cottage, and Caroline told him about her tapes of the Great Man’s conversation with Adam. Since we had brought our equipment with us, Brian insisted on hearing them. RuthClaire and I told Caroline she’d be crazy to let Brian eavesdrop on a privileged interview, especially before it saw print in Popular Anthropology , but Adam, having surrendered once, saw no reason to hold firm on this point, either. Besides, he wanted to hear the tapes. Up here in Prix-des-Yeux, what other entertainment did we have?

We listened to the tapes. Brian, like a man praying at an altar, leaned forward in the candlelight. Although he laughed aloud during Blair’s attempt to persuade Adam that Homo zarakalensis was a better species designation than Homo habilis , he was respectful through the latter two thirds of the interview. Only when Adam claimed to be the “last of my tribe” did Brian raise his eyebrows and let his gaze travel around the shadowy circle of our faces. The concluding section of the tape about the soul, the ego, and God, he listened to raptly, without criticism or censure.

“Good stuff, Caroline, but incomplete. You ought to do another interview like that—with me as the third participant.”

“No,” said Adam clearly. “No way.”

We spread out our sleeping bags in the tonnelle . The serpent in the rafters made me uneasy, but RuthClaire swore it coveted only small rodents, birds’ eggs, and vaudun offerings. No need to fear waking up as a paralyzed lump in its throat. We slept.

During the night, all the other habilines but Hector returned from the caves to the village. Alberoi and Erzulie had one of the Shantytown huts, Dégrasse and Toussaint the other. All four were up and about by the time we rubbed sand out of our eyes and pushed our creaky selves off the ground. The men had donned walking shorts, and Dégrasse was a vision of yellow and brown in a floral-print chemise whose pattern reminded me of nursery-school wallpaper: groups of baby ducks swimming through stands of graceful reeds. From hidden larders, the habilines had produced a small black cauldron of red beans and rice that they were heating over a fire not far from the houngfor . We emerged to the pleasing aroma of this stew. Alberoi stirred the pot, Erzulie ladled globs into chipped porcelain mugs, and Dégrasse passed out tin spoons to those walking by to be fed. Seated on the log by the temple, Toussaint was already greedily eating.

After breakfast, Brian declared it was time for the habilines to hold free elections.

“For what?” RuthClaire asked. “Five people don’t need a president.”

“To see what they want to be called!” Nollinger replied. “As Alistair Patrick Blair himself pointed out, even the scientific community will be bound by their decision. Let’s round them up so we can propose alternatives to Homo habilis and Homo zarakalensis and have them vote.”

“Adam,” RuthClaire said, “this is preposterous.”

But Adam had entered into the spirit of Brian’s early-morning madness. “I like it because it is preposterous. And because Dr. Nollinger recognizes the egotistical absurdity of his eminent colleague’s campaign for Homo zarakalensis .”

“Does it have to be a Latin term?” I asked.

“The habilines are the sole arbiters,” Brian said. “It can be anything they want.”

The habilines were sitting on the rosewood log beside the village houngfor . When Hector came into the clearing a moment later, Adam escorted him to a place on the log beside Erzulie. Every member of the Rutherford Remnant was on hand, and Brian, speaking alternately in English and French, explained the significance of this morning’s election.

“Adam, stop him,” RuthClaire said. “You’re betraying your own kind.”

“Only if you suppose Erzulie and the others incapable of deciding what they wish to be called. I give them more credit.”

“So do I,” said Brian. He looked at me. “Any suggestions, Mr. Loyd?”

“Well, they’re about the size of a singing group. How about the Ink Spots?”

Brian translated this for the habilines. “Les Taches de l’encre?”

“Lord!” RuthClaire shook her fists at shoulder level and stormed off into a hut to escape an outbreak of silliness that she regarded as low and pernicious.

“That really dates you,” Caroline told me. “Criminy, the Ink Spots!”

“How about the Jackson Five? Is that any better?”

“Singing-group names,” Adam said, deadpan, “are disqualifyingly frivolous.”

“Then how about the Dodgers?” I said. “The Rutherford’s Port Dodgers?”

“The Society for Self-Perpetuating Anachronism?” Caroline said.

“ Homo nollingeri? ” Brian said.

“The Survivors?”

“Friends of the Earth?”

“Adam Montaraz and the Voodoo Vagabonds?”

“Old and Young Republicans?”

“Stop,” Adam said. “I have a final proposal, Les Gens . I now demand the choices be put and the vote recorded.”

Les Gens —the People—won hands down. (Well, hands up.) And no one charged ballot stuffing or any other election fraud.

“It’s not that original,” Brian said after the count. “But it does have the force of tradition behind it.”

“Exactly,” Adam said. “Now RuthClaire can write Dr. Blair and tell him of my people’s decision.” He went into Erzulie’s hut to tell her. A moment later, the sounds of RuthClaire and Adam’s argument drifted out to all eight of us in the clearing.

I was frightened. Exploring caves, even in the company of a knowledgeable guide, strikes me as the physical equivalent of exploring the teeming darkness of the id. You have no idea what you will find. And there is no guarantee that once you confront this darkness, you will find the strength to overcome it and reemerge a saner person than you first went in. There is no guarantee that you will reemerge at all.