Peter Dickinson - A Bone From a Dry Sea

‘All right. I’m going to go and lie down, Dad. It’s too hot for me. Listen, I’ve made another sort of shell-shape. It’s out here.’

‘Let’s have a look.’

He climbed out, studied the pattern with his head on one side and grunted.

‘OK, I’ll show Joe,’ he said.

‘I thought there might be some of those little middle bits still in the bucket.’

‘OK, we’ll put it through a sieve. Well done. I suppose.’

Wearily, Vinny went down the hill.

THEN

THE TRIBE WERE still straggling out of the water in answer to Presh’s bellows of Come when he limped along the beach to confront the strangers. There was a code for such a meeting. Although nothing like this had happened before in their memory, deep in their instincts, inherited through tens of thousands of generations, was a knowledge of what happened when ape-group met ape-group at the edges of adjoining territories.

The grown males went forward, their leader at the centre. The females and young watched from behind, screaming defiance. The males displayed at each other, fangs bared, manes bushed, bellowing not their ritual challenge-calls, but older ones, a hoarse repetitive bark which till now they had not known they knew. All this happened, much as it once had happened in the forest.

Li had come down with Presh from the rock from which they’d first seen the strangers and had joined the females as they’d gathered behind the line of males. Then, because it was difficult in the crush to see what was happening, she had gone aside and, much as she had done at the shark-hunt, had climbed a little way up a gully behind the bay till she reached a point from which she could watch everything. The two groups of males were confronting each other, Presh with a whole line of them supporting him, but the other leader with only three and those barely fully adult. The leader, though, looked bigger and stronger than any male Li had ever seen.

What would have happened in the forest was that the smaller group, seeing they were outnumbered, would have been cowed and so retreated, and the larger would, if they’d wanted, have followed them until they began to feel they were getting uncomfortably far from their known territory, and stopped. A new frontier would have been established.

This was not how it went on the shingle beach. The three younger strangers indeed looked uncertain, and their manes began to flatten, but their leader gave a louder bellow and took a pace towards Presh with his left arm raised into the fighting-grip but his right swinging loose and low, as if he couldn’t use it. The movement and pose made Li recognize him. He was Greb.

Instantly she was sure he had come for her. Terrified, she turned and scrambled further up the gully, which was still streaming with water after the downpour. The yells from below changed note. She stopped and looked over her shoulder.

Presh had limped forward to face Greb, also in the fighting-pose, both hands raised. They were barely a pace apart. Greb moved a half-step to the left and struck with his raised hand. Presh seized him by the wrist and struck with his other hand to grasp Greb’s neck. Greb swayed away, but as he did so his dangling arm swung back and round. He had kept it till now with its back facing his opponent, concealing the rock he was holding. The blow caught Presh full force on the side of the skull. His head jerked violently away. He staggered half a pace back and toppled over. He didn’t rise.

A moment’s silence. Out of it Greb’s bellow of triumph rose echoing round the bay. He stood punching the air, his right hand still grasping the rock. His three followers moved forwards, their manes fully bushed out once more, and now Li saw that they too each held a rock. This was something that didn’t happen. The whole ritual of challenge and contest was deep in the instincts of the males, preventing the kind of fighting to the death which might leave even the winner too badly hurt to survive, or at least to become a useful leader. But Presh was dead.

The sheer shock overwhelmed the tribe. Even unarmed there were more than enough males to overcome Greb and his small group, but when Greb, still in his triumph-posture, stepped forward to face Kerif, Kerif’s mane at once went flat and he backed away. Greb paraded along the line facing them down in turn, daring them with threatening little movements of his rock to show the least sign of challenge. His followers copied him but stayed close behind him, not risking confrontation with the larger males of the tribe alone. Still further back, the small group of females who had come with him watched apathetically. They looked cowed and miserable. They had no small young with them. Memories of ancient instinct told Li that Greb, somehow taking over the leadership of such a group, would have seen to it that any babies they carried died. This was how it happened in the forest long ago, though it didn’t in the tribe.

As their males retreated in front of them the females of the tribe began to scatter in alarm. Some hurried for the water, others into the caves, others along the shore. Li saw Ma-ma below, with the baby clasped protectively against her and Hooa beside her. She called, and again, and again. Ma-ma heard her, stared around bewildered and at last looked up and saw her. Li beckoned, saw Ma-ma begin to climb, and immediately turned to scramble further up the gully. The nightmare certainty that Greb had deliberately come for her, to take her over and own and control and mate with her as soon as she was ready, filled her mind. She had no idea where she was going, or of what lay above the cliffs. No-one had ever been up there before.

It wasn’t at first a difficult climb, but so steep that soon she was gasping and despite her terror was forced to stop and rest. Ma-ma and Hooa weren’t far below, with others behind. Pursuers? Greb? No, he was still on the beach. He had begun to organize a kind of triumph-ceremony, with his own followers and as many of the tribe as he had managed to round up lined along the shallows and himself getting ready to parade in front of them. Presh’s body lay where it had fallen.

Seeing Greb thus occupied, Li was able to climb on more calmly until she reached a place where the gully ended in a cliff face down which the rain-fed stream fell in a veil of spray. Beside the waterfall hung a mat of gourd-vine. Li climbed the side of the gully with difficulty and found that the cliff face extended either way, almost sheer, without handhold or foothold. By now Ma-ma and Hooa had reached the foot of the waterfall and were looking around, still bewildered with shock. Li joined them and saw Goor coming up the gully behind. She looked at the mat of vine.

Sometimes young members of the tribe would play swinging-games at the bottom of vines, though their mothers discouraged them because it was impossible to be sure how strong the strands were, and there were many falls. Occasionally adults would use the vines as a means of reaching birds’-nests, but always tested them carefully before they did so. It didn’t happen often, as birds along that coast had mostly learnt not to nest in such places. The vine by the waterfall looked skimpy. Li tested it and it stayed firm. Gingerly she climbed. There were occasional jerks when a strand gave under her weight, but the mat as a whole held and she reached the top, panting.

Ma-ma came next, with the baby clinging round her neck. As soon as she was clear of the bottom Hooa tried to follow, but Li barked Stop to her and Goor echoed the call and pulled her back. Ma-ma was in any case a good deal heavier than Li. When she was almost up, strands began to give and the mat swayed in towards the waterfall. Li grabbed at the tangle and managed to cling on till Ma-ma came over the lip and lay gasping.