Shame of Man (14 page)

And saw the water of the lake almost up to their shelter. What had happened?

They stared out across the lake. There were the shelters, but strangely small. They had been flooded out!

Now they saw the water folk swimming toward the shore. They had heard the sudden silence of the end of the storm, and come out immediately. But it must have been terrible in the shelters. Worse than on the beach.

They got the story in scattered bits: The rain had continued unremittingly, and the water had risen. At first the folk had simply drawn their feet
back, having experienced such rises before; the shelters were made so that some rise could be accommodated. But this rise was worse than any they had ever encountered. The water crept across their sleeping places. At first they had to share the highest ones, but then these too flooded. They dared not let the water touch them long, for fear of the thunder-kill. So they took sticks from the domes and made higher platforms. These were uncomfortable, but they had no choice. Still the water rose. They had to keep building, until the domes began to collapse because of the weakening of their structure. By dawn their houses had become a cluster of islands, each crowded with shivering people.

At last the storm passed. As soon as they thought it was safe, they plunged into the water and swam for shore. Hue recognized Joe and Bil and Itt, Lee and Ember, and many others. They had lost their shelters, but at least there had been no deaths. Now most of them just wanted to find safe places to rest and sleep, for they had managed little of either during the night.

Hue exchanged a glance with Ann. They had thought they had been badly off, but they had survived the night in more comfort and a good deal more pleasure than the others had.

But something needed to be said. Hue approached Joe. “Hue Ann mate,” he said.

Joe, distracted by other concerns, only glanced at Ann, who nodded. “Good,” he said, and moved on.

So much for their fancied public ceremony. They had picked the wrong time.

Things were in sad disarray. Many people were badly fatigued from discomfort and fright, and stood somewhat dazedly, not knowing what to do. Some had been injured. One woman was about to birth her baby. And the storm was coming back.

Bil approached. “Joe enemy look,” he said. That made sense, as the water folk were highly vulnerable now, being confined to the shore. They would have to hide if there were any enemy tribes raiding. “Bil island lead.” So he knew of a new island the tribe could use for protection and residence; once he got the water folk there, they could afford to rest. “Hue food move.”

Just like that, Hue was working directly for the tribe, with a responsible task. That hippo meat should not be wasted; they would need it to eat while they built new domes. “Where?”

“Island. Ann know.” Bil looked at Ann. “Peninsula.” He went on, seeing to other business.

Ann nodded. “Peninsula low neck,” she said. “Water high, island.”

Oh. Of course the water folk knew all the bypaths of the shoreline. They would simply float the carcass to the island. It would be a slow job for one man, but it was important.

But as the weary water folk followed Bil along the path around the expanded lake, the storm darkened and the rain resumed. Thunder crashed
nearby. Ann cringed, and so did a number of the others. “Go go go!” Bil cried, not letting them dive for cover. He knew that the thunder wouldn't hurt them on land, but that enemies could. Their first priority was to get to the new island.

Bil was the actual leader of the tribe, Hue realized. Joe was the nominal one, but he wasn't as smart as Bil, so the key decisions were made by Bil. It seemed to work well enough, because Bil always made a show of consulting Joe and deferring to his judgment.

But now Hue had his own chore to handle. They couldn't enter the water while the thunder was threatening, but the hippo carcass was too massive to carry on land. What were they to do?

Hue pondered, and decided that a rope would do it. He foraged for vines, tied them together to make a long rope, tied it to the carcass, and shoved it into the water. Then he walked along the shore, hauling on the vine. It wasn't easy, because the carcass tended to snag on things, and there was no path here, but he did make slow progress. The thing also tended to swing back in toward land, until Ann got a long stick and kept shoving it out while Hue pulled. That helped a lot.

Ann told him the way, though she ran for the cover of a tree every time the thunder pealed. Hue did not comment; she was doing well to restrain her fear enough to guide him. Of course he might be able to find the island by himself, just by following the shoreline far enough, but this way he was able to skip inlets that she knew were wrong. There were streams flowing into the lake, and they had to gamble by forging across these, hoping the thunder would not strike when they were in the water. Ann was terrified, but did it when she had to. He grabbed her, held her, and kissed her, in this way shoring up her courage.

It was hard to tell in this unfamiliar terrain, but it seemed to Hue that the water was still rising. Certainly it wasn't sinking, because he saw no water marks on the tree trunks above the level of the lake. But there were a number of trees now growing out of the swirling brown water.

Late in the day they reached the island. It was hard to believe that it had ever been anything else, because it was separated from the land by a fair amount. But its central portion rose well above the lake, so it was in no danger of being flooded out of existence.

The rain eased off, and the thunder retreated, so they were able to swim across to the island, dragging the carcass behind. Ann was a real help here, because though she lacked Hue's strength, she was a much better swimmer. They heaved it onto the shore, and looked around.

The island was wooded, though there were no large trees. There was a crude dome shelter at the top of the hill, under which a number of women and children were sleeping. Men were building other domes around it, hauling bundles of sticks in from the mainland, floating them across the intervening lake. Women were plaiting roof material from prepared brush.
A small sheltered fire was going, and clams were being roasted. The woman had birthed her baby and was nursing it, while her prior child watched. The baby's head was huge, but that seemed to be normal for these folk. Overall, the situation was looking good.

Soon men came to work on the hippo carcass. They were smiling; there would be a good meal tonight.

Bil came down to them. “Hue Ann shelter,” he said, pointing to a small open-sided dome. “Do.”

“Work much,” Hue said, looking around. “Hue Ann help.” He was tired from his labor of the day, but much remained to be done.

“Shelter,” Bil repeated firmly, seeming amused.

Ann caught Hue's hand and drew him toward the shelter. Then he understood: their mating. It was time to clarify it for the tribe. Then there would be no question.

They went to the shelter. They sat under it, and Ann brushed back her long dark hair and smiled at him, and he wondered that he could ever have thought her to be odd in appearance. Now her bare skin and full breasts seemed natural, and her chin gave her face distinction. After all, her face was small, and needed that extra brace of bone to keep it firm. Her broad hips were so she could birth a bigheaded baby. Everything made sense, and he was acquiring a taste for it.

He kissed her, and then lay with her, and it was wonderful to be close to her. The initial urgency of sex had been abated during the prior day and night, so there was no hurry, and he enjoyed it perhaps more. At length it was finished, and they separated and sat up.

The rest of the tribe was seated in a circle, watching, smiling. Lee was there, and she did not look jealous, while beside her Ember looked amused. This was their entertainment for a day that had not had much else to recommend it. Then, having seen that the couple had seen them seeing, they got up and returned to their various endeavors. And Hue and Ann returned to theirs: hauling bundles of sticks up to the shelters that were under construction. There needed to be shelter for all by nightfall, for the rain was coming back once more.

The fire increased, and the smell of meat spread. They went for their meal, and Hue realized that it was their first of the day. They had been so busy that they had never paused to eat—and there hadn't been much food available anyway. He saw Ember carrying wood; she was as usual delighted to be able to help tend the fire.

And there was Lee, carving out portions of hippo for the others with her uninjured arm and hand. She worked beside Vik, and there was something about the way the two related to each other that suggested that another couple was forming.

The rain continued intermittently for several more days, gradually easing. But the lake continued to rise even when the sun was shining. The island grew smaller, but the center was high enough so that it could not be overwhelmed. Hue realized that Bil had required the people to build shelters high for this reason, so that rising water would not wash them out either. The island had become their shelter base, and if the water rose enough, they would be as before, with only the tops of the domes showing above the surface.

The neighboring enemy tribes did not attack. In fact there was little sign of them anywhere in the area. This was suspicious, and finally Bil decided to investigate it. Bil always anticipated problems, and tried to prepare for them in advance. Thus he had known where the tribe could be safe, if the waters rose; there had been no hesitation when he took them to the new island. Now he was concerned.

So Joe, Bil, and Hue left their women behind and went to where the nearest enemy tribe lived. It was a sunny day, so they were able to use the water when they got close, silently wading or swimming. They had reeds to breathe through, in case they needed to submerge. Hue knew that their pace was slower because of him, but Bil wanted him along because he knew more about the hairy folk, being one himself. He might recognize some aspect that the full water folk would not.

The region was strangely quiet. No raiders were out foraging near the shore. Of course they normally foraged away from the water; still, it was odd that there were none by the lake. But there was a fire some distance back from the shore. That would mark their camp.

The three moved quietly toward that fire, alert for enemies, for this was approaching the heart of raider territory. It was extremely unusual to have so little activity here. There did not even seem to be guard patrols.

Finally they came to the fire itself, peering cautiously out of the shelter of thick brush. And were amazed.

The fire was in a glade, and the glade was filled with hairy raiders. Most of them were lying on the ground. A few were afoot, but even those ones did not look lively. What were they doing?

“Sick,” Hue whispered.

The other two nodded. That was why there had been no raids since the flood. Some terrible illness had come upon the raiders, and was wiping them out.

They retreated as quietly as they had come. But once they were away from the camp, they used land trails to return to the island. It was obvious that there would be no pursuit, no ambush party. The raiders had trouble of their own.

But Hue was worried. “Sickness—sometimes,” he said, straining to remember what he had heard about it. “People die. Some live. Many no. All tribes.” He had no idea why this happened, just that it did, every so often.

Joe shook his head. “Water folk sickness no,” he said, and Bil agreed. Mass dyings were unknown among them.

None of them could fathom why this should be so. But it was. No sickness came to the water folk.

The water continued to rise, until the island was small. Itt had to supervise changes in their activity to keep their supplies secure. But they were safe there—and on the shore too, for there were now too few raiders to raid. They made their traps by the new shoreline, but never needed to use them. They began to expand their hunting and foraging territory beyond the lake, because the protection of the water was no longer critical. They accepted the new and better order.

Perhaps only Bil and Hue wondered why the lake had grown, and why the illness had so weakened the raiders. The others simply accepted it as the destiny of their kind, which was obviously the best fitted to survive and prosper.

And prosper they did, expanding in the course of thousands of years out from the fringe of Lake Victoria until they had taken over all of Africa, and then the rest of the world. But why
did
fate take such a turn, so that one of the seemingly weakest subgroups of mankind came to dominate and replace all the others?

Some questions are readily answered, in retrospect. The lake expanded because one of the frequent earthquakes caused a landslide that blocked the lake's northern drainage
—
today known as the river Nile. When heavy rains came, the lake filled, and this continued when the rains stopped because of the drainage into the lake from the entire area. Thus the territory of the land dwellers was flooded and diminished, while that of the water dwellers was increased. In time the river cut a new channel, and the lake drained and dwindled, but by then the balance had shifted, and the water folk were numerous and powerful, while the land folk were less populous and not well organized.

What happened to the
Home erectus
tribes? Perhaps fleas. Erect man was thickly furred, which meant he had fleas, impossible to obliterate. On occasion the fleas carried disease, and thus spread plague. The only people free of this liability were those who did not have fleas: the hairless ones. Modern man. Of course we Moderns do have body hair, but it is relatively slight, so that we do look bare, and fleas cannot survive on us. Hairlessness was originally an adaptation for the water, but it turned out to have survival value on the land too. On occasion Modern man did live in such dense communities, using clothing never changed or cleaned, and associated so closely with animals, that fleas could attack him, and so the pattern of plagues returned. The plagues of medieval times suggest what Erect man suffered in earlier millennia. But that later time there was no variant species waiting to take over, and mankind survived, pretty much by chance. The original change probably did not happen in just one siege; it may have taken tens of thousands of years for repeated sieges to weaken Erect man so that Modern man was able to displace him. The
flooding of the Lake Victoria basin could have caused disruption as tribes were driven back, crowding them into smaller territories and making them more vulnerable to flea infestations and disease. Some survivors might have mated with the increasingly numerous water folk, as Hue did with Ann, but most furred tribes would have become slowly extinct. First in Africa, then in Eurasia, as the Moderns became overwhelmingly numerous.

There was another aspect of the change in woman's body. Her great amount of time in the water made odor a poor sexual signal, so the emphasis became visual instead of olfactory. Her breasts became high and full, to be seen and used when she was chest deep in the water. With mankind's increasing intelligence came his awareness of the connection between sex and babies, and neither man nor woman always wishes to have babies. Thus nature conspired to conceal the woman's key time, so that it was never possible to be sure when she could conceive. The fact that a woman's breasts no longer shrank when she was fertile meant that she was continuously alluring and, as far as vision went, continuously impregnable. The risk of conception could not be avoided, if there were sexual activity. This led to chronic population pressure, and the evidence is that the Moderns did outbreed Erect man.

Breasts seem to be modified sweat glands, and sweating is something that only mankind and horses do for cooling
—
a dangerous mechanism, unless replacement water is freely available. But effective, enabling mankind to handle hotter climate, and to exercise longer without overheating. This was another powerful mechanism for survival, thanks to water.

The retention of pubic hair is more difficult to explain. Why did all the rest of the body go bare except parts of the head and the pubic region? The head needed hair to protect the valuable brain, and the hair on the face differentiated the males from the females. But both sexes grow pubic hair at maturity, and it really isn't needed to differentiate that section of the body. Hair can help spread odor, and this may be the case with genital hair, but could hardly have done so when women spent much of their time waist deep in water. Yet nature does not do things without reason. There had to be a survival advantage for genital hair. Perhaps it serves as additional protection of that region when the male's sperm cells are activated and possibly vulnerable to mutation or damage by temperature or the penetrating radiation of the sun. It may not be coincidence that only the brain and genitals remain protected by fur.

Modern mankind's head had modified. As his mouth and jaws got smaller and more nearly square, structural strength was lost, and some additional buttress was needed. Thus extra bone at the chin helped survival. The skull, too, changed shape. Modem man did not necessarily have more brain tissue than Erect man, but its distribution differed. This may have been because mankind's adaptation to life in the water, while not entirely leaving the land, required additional mental processes. People had to learn how to use the knowledge and reflexes developed for survival on the land to survive in water. This dual
ability may seem elementary to us
—
but we represent the end result. It surely was not at first simple for mankind, who had evolved almost entirely away from the water. So some of the prior brain tissue at the rear of the brain faded in importance, and new tissue was added at the front. This is surely an oversimplification, but it may be that comprehensive memory gave way to better analytical ability. That turned out, later, to be a critical shift. Modern mankind not only looked different, he thought differently.

And, lest there be any confusion: though Ann may have looked odd to Erect Man, because of her swollen breasts, small waist, broad pelvis, thick thighs, furlessness, and even to her own tribes-people because of her bony chin, she represents physically the final human form. Today we appreciate breasted women, and males too have chin braces. For our tastes, she would appear to be absolutely lovely. She just might be the species template, Eve of Eden, the ancestor of all mankind today.