Julian May - The Many-Coloured Land

Richard came back to the group and tucked map, note-plaque, and quadrant back into his pack. “We’re near as damn all,” he said. “If we really hump this afternoon, we might get there fairly early tomorrow.”

“Sit down and have some fish,” Martha said. “Doesn’t the aroma drive you wild? They say that salmon is just about the only fish that’s nutritionally complete enough to serve as a steady diet. Because it has fat as well as protein, you see.” She licked her lips, then gave a strangled squeak. “Don’t… turn… around.” Her eyes were wide. The rest of them were sitting on the side of the fire opposite her. “Right behind you there’s a wild rama.”

“No, Felice!” Claude hissed, as the athete’s muscles automatically tensed. “It’s harmless. Everybody turn very slowly.”

Martha said, “It’s carrying something.”

The little creature, its body covered with golden-tan fur, stood a short distance back among the trees, trembling noticeably but with an expression of what could only be called determination upon its face. It was about the size of a six-year-old child and had fully humanoid hands and feet. It carried two large warty fruits, greenish bronze streaked with dull orange. As the five travelers regarded it with astonishment, the ramapithecine stepped forward, placed the fruits on the ground, then drew back.

With infinite caution, Claude rose to his feet. The little ape backed up a few paces. Claude said softly, “Well, hullo there, Mrs Thing. We’re glad you could stop by for lunch. How’s the husband and kiddies? All well? A little hungry in this drought? I’m not surprised. Fruit is nice, but there’s nothing like a bit of protein and fat to keep body and soul together. And the mice and squirrels and locusts have mostly migrated into the upper valleys, haven’t they? Too bad you didn’t go along with them.”

He stooped and picked up the fruits. What were they? Melons? Some kind of papaya? He carried them back to the fire and took two of the larger salmon and wrapped them in an elephant-ear leaf. He put the fish down in the exact spot where the fruit had been and withdrew to his place by the fire.

The ramapithecus stared at the bundle. She reached out, touched a greasy fish-head, and put the finger into her mouth. Giving a low crooning call, she everted her upper lip.

Felice grinned back. She drew her dirk, hefted one of the fruits, and sliced it open. A mouth-watering sweet smell arose from the yellowish-pink flesh. Felice cut off a tiny slice and took a bite of it. “Yum!”

The rama clucked. She picked up the package of fish, everted her lips over her small teeth once again, and ran away into the trees.

Felice called out, “Give our regards to King Kong!”

“That was the damnedest thing,” Richard said. “Smart, aren’t they?”

“Our direct hominid ancestors.” Claude stirred up the tubers.

“We had them for servants in Finiah,” Martha said. “They were very gentle and cleanly little things. Timid, but they would work conscientiously at the tasks given them by torc wearers.”

“How were they cared for?” Claude asked, curious. “Like little people?”

“Not really.” Martha said. “They had a kind of barn adjacent to the house, where they lived in partitioned stalls, almost like the small cave rooms filled with straw. They were monogamous, you see, and each family had to have its own apartment. There were community areas, too, and dormitory nooks for the singletons. The childless adults worked for about twelve hours, then came home to eat and sleep. The mothers would care for their young for three years, and then put them in charge of ‘aunties’, old females who acted for all the world like schoolteachers. The aunties and other very old males and females played with the children and cared for them when the parents were absent. You could see that the parents were unhappy at having to leave the little ones, but the call of the torc couldn’t be denied. Still, the rama-keepers told me that the auntie system was a variant of one used by the creatures in the wild. It generally produced well-adjusted individuals. The Tanu have raised ramas in captivity for as long as they’ve lived on this planet.”

“Those sounds they make,” Claude said. “Could ordinary bare-necked people such as yourself communicate with them?”

Martha shook her head. “They answered to their names, and there were perhaps a dozen simple voice commands they’d respond to. But the principal means of communicating with them was through the torc. They could grasp very complex mental commands. And of course they were trained with the pleasure-pain circuitry so that they required little supervision for routine tasks such as housework.”

Madame shook her head slowly. “So close to humanity, and yet so far away from us. Their life span is only fourteen or fifteen years in captivity. Probably less in the wild. So fragile, so helpless-seeming! How did they ever survive the hyenas, the bear-dogs, the sabertooth cats, and other monsters?”

“Brains,” Richard said. “Look at that one who came to us. Her family won’t be hungry tonight. There’s natural selection working right in front of us. That little ape is a survivor.”

Felice looked at him with a wicked expression. “I thought I noticed a family resemblance… Here you go, Captain Blood. Have some of your great-great-et-cetera grandmother’s fruit for dessert.”

They left the Danube behind them and walked. It felt like the temperature was over forty in the September sun, but their adapted bodies could take it. Over the sunburnt grass, through thickets of brittle maquis, over boulders in the dry watercourses they walked. Richard had set their goal, the notch between two long hills that lay due north beyond slowly rising land with hardly a patch of shade and no water at all. They stripped to shorts, backpacks, and broad-brimmed hats. Madame passed a precious squeeze-bottle of sunburn cream. Richard led and Felice took the rear, the athlete ranging out tirelessly to be sure that no animal stalked them and to search, without luck, as it turned out, for some spring or other source of water. Between the two marched Claude and Madame, supporting Martha between them. The engineer became weaker as the hot hours of hiking accumulated; but she refused to let them slow down. None of them wanted to stop, in spite of the fact that there seemed to be nothing ahead of them but the dry stubbly upland reaching to the undulating horizon. Above it hung a pale-yellow, pitiless sky.

At last the sun dropped low and the sky turned to a light green. Madame called a halt near a rock-choked ravine where they could at least relieve themselves in privacy. Madame led Martha off and when the two returned, the old woman’s face was grim.

“She is hemorrhaging again,” she told Claude. “Shall we stop here? Or shall we make again a litter from one of the cots?”

They decided upon the lifter. While there was still daylight, they wanted to press on. Just a few kilometers farther and they would reach the brow of the hills.

They continued on as they had done earlier in the journey, one at each corner of the modified cot Martha lay with her lower lip clamped between her teeth, twin spots of bright rose on her pale cheeks the badges of her mortification. But she said nothing. The heavens turned to ultramarine and then to indigo, and the first stars appeared. However, they could still see well enough to walk and so they kept going, higher and higher, closer to the notch.

At last they were at the summit. The four of them set the litter down and helped Martha to her feet so that she could stand with them and look northward. About five kilometers away and just slightly below the pass where they rested was a long rampart. It reared up from the countryside behind the line of hills in a virtual jungle of spiny maquis scrub and curved away on both sides in a great arc that eventually melted into the northern horizon. The bare lip of the crater gleamed pale in the dusk.