Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

This would lead to a species that hated crowds, strangers, general alienness. Nature, then, did not produce a natural liberal.

Bands of less than ten were too vulnerable to disease or predators; a few losses and the group failed. Too many, and they lost the concentration of close breeding. They were intensely loyal to their group, identifying each other in the dark by smell.

Because they had many common genes, altruistic actions were common. This meant even heroism — for even if the hero died, his shared genes were passed on through his relatives.

So it was actually helpful to develop smoldering animosity to outsiders, an immediate sense of their wrongness.

Even if strangers could pass the tests of difference in appearances, manner, smell, grooming — even then, culture could amplify the effects. Newcomers with different language or dress, or habits and posture, would seem repulsive. Anything that served to distinguish a band would keep hatreds high.

Each small genetic ensemble would then be driven by natural selection to stress the noninherited differences — even arbitrary ones, dimly connected to survival fitness — and so they evolved culture. Diversity in their tribal intricacies avoided genetic watering down. They heeded the ancient call of aloof, wary tribalism.

Does this chimp scenario fit us? Some resemblances are striking.

After all, we still resemble the common chimps and pygmy chimps. We’re just bigger and with less hair, walking upright. The visible differences between us and chimps were far less than, say, between Great Danes and Chihuahuas. Yet dogs interbreed. We and chimps do not.

In nature, genocide occurs in wolves and chimps alike. Murder is wide-spread. (Further afield, ducks and orangutans rape, ants have organized warfare and slave raids. The Walt Disney world never existed.) Chimps in the field have at least as good a chance of being murdered as did humans.

Of all the hallowed human hallmarks — speech, art, technology, and the rest — the one that comes most obviously from animal ancestors is genocide. Human tribes may well have evolved as a group defense — clubbiness against clubs.

Luckily, today’s worldwide instantaneous communication blurs distinctions between Us and Them, blunting the deep impulse to genocide.

Our biological baggage of dark behaviors includes delight in torture, and easy exterminations of other species for short-term gain. Against such Darwinian imperatives, willed to us by vast time, we can muster only our intuitive values.

Avram knew this, and so framed his story as a quiet affirmation of solidarity with the Other. A noble sentiment, and one which may well have eventual positive effects upon our own evolution. For we cannot go on as super-chimps, pacing restlessly upon a shrinking globe.

Still less can we think of the galaxy itself as a great veldt, ready for our primate passions. We need something more. Art and artifice, fiction among them, are our ways of confronting our troubling selves.

APINK-SKINNED YOUNG CADET ran past Harper, laughing and shouting and firing his stungun. The wind veered about, throwing the thick scent of the Yahoos into the faces of the men, who whooped loudly to show their revulsion.

“I got three!” the chicken cadet yelped at Harper. “Did you see me pop those two together? Boy, what a stink they have!”

Harper looked at the sweating kid, muttered, “You don’t smell so sweet yourself,” but the cadet didn’t wait to hear. All the men were running now, running in a ragged semi-circle with the intention of driving the Yahoos before them, to hold them at bay at the foot of the gaunt cliff a quarter-mile off.

The Yahoos loped awkwardly over the rough terrain, moaning and grunting grotesquely, their naked bodies bent low. A few hundred feet ahead one of them stumbled and fell, his arms and legs flying out as he hit the ground, twitched, and lay still.

A bald-headed passenger laughed triumphantly, paused to kick the Yahoo, and trotted on. Harper kneeled beside the fallen Primitive, felt for a pulse in the hairy wrist. It seemed slow and feeble, but then, no one actually knew what the normal pulse-beat should be. And — except for Harper — no one seemed to give a damn.

Maybe it was because he was the grandson of Barret Harper, the great naturalist — back on Earth, of course. It seemed as if man could be fond of nature only on the planet of man’s origin, whose ways he knew so well. Elsewhere, it was too strange and alien — you subdued it, or you adjusted to it, or you were perhaps even content with it. But you almost never cared about the flora or fauna of the new planets. No one had the feeling for living things that an earth-born had.

The men were shouting more loudly now, but Harper didn’t lift his head to see why. He put his hand to the shaggy gray chest. The heart was still beating, but very slowly and irregularly. Someone stood beside him.

“He’ll come out of it in an hour or so,” the voice of the purser said. “Come on — you’ll miss all the fun — you should see how they act when they’re cornered! They kick out and throw sand and”—he laughed at the thought—“they weep great big tears, and go, ‘Oof! Oof!’ ”

Harper said, “An ordinary man would come out of it in an hour or so. But I think their metabolism is different… Look at all the bones lying around.”

The purser spat. “Well, don’t that prove they’re not human, when they won’t even bury their dead?… Oh , oh! — look at that!” He swore.

Harper got to his feet. Cries of dismay and disappointment went up from the men.

“What’s wrong?” Harper asked.

The purser pointed. The men had stopped running, were gathering together and gesturing. “Who’s the damn fool who planned this drive?” the purser asked, angrily. “He picked the wrong cliff! The damned Yahoos nest in that one! Look at them climb, will you—” He took aim, fired the stungun. A figure scrabbling up the side of the rock threw up its arms and fell, bounding from rock to rock until it hit the ground. “ That one will never come out of it!” the purser said, with satisfaction.

But this was the last casualty. The other Yahoos made their way to safety in the caves and crevices. No one followed them. In those narrow, stinking confines a Yahoo was as good as a man, there was no room to aim a stungun, and the Yahoos had rocks and clubs and their own sharp teeth. The men began straggling back.

“This one a she?” The purser pushed at the body with his foot, let it fall back with an annoyed grunt as soon as he determined its sex. “There’ll be Hell to pay in the hold if there’s more than two convicts to a she.” He shook his head and swore.

Two lighters came skimming down from the big ship to load up.

“Coming back to the launch?” the purser asked. He had a red shiny face. Harper had always thought him a rather decent fellow — before. The purser had no way of knowing what was in Harper’s mind; he smiled at him and said, “We might as well get on back, the fun’s over now.”

Harper came to a sudden decision. “What’re the chances of my taking a souvenir back with me? This big fellow, here, for example?”

The purser seemed doubtful. “Well, I dunno, Mr. Harper. We’re only supposed to take females aboard, and unload them as soon as the convicts are finished with their fun.” He leered. Harper, suppressing a strong urge to hit him right in the middle of his apple-red face, put his hand in his pocket. The purser understood, looked away as Harper slipped a bill into the breast pocket of his uniform.