Shame of Man (7 page)

CHAPTER 5

GIANT

About one million years ago, mankind's then-variant
Homo erectus,
Upright Man, found an avenue past the barrier of the Sahara Desert and moved into the continent of Eurasia. He was now close to modern humans in height, and more muscular. Soon enough he spread across the world as it was then available, in the process fragmenting into many subcultures and, in time, subspecies. He was probably somewhat xenophobic, fearing or hating all cultural variants differing in any way from his own. This was actually an asset to the species as a whole, for it promoted more rapid evolution in the small groups, enabling new traits to become established
instead of being submerged by the much larger gene pool of the species as a whole.

Some bands came to a strange region, southeast Asia, where a specialized grass grew very large and useful: bamboo. There they also encountered unusual creatures, such as the panda and the largest ape ever:
Gigantopithecus.
This was a cousin of the orangutan standing ten feet tall, whose ancestors diverged from ours perhaps ten million years ago.

Note: bamboo is a grass, not a tree
—
but to the people of the time who had migrated recently from forested land, it seemed like a tree.

H
UE hefted his bamboo spear. Fae and the other women were grinding grain for gruel, but he was hungry for meat. It had been many days since they had caught any animal of good size. Maybe today they would have success.

Bil gestured. “See print,” he said.

Hue and Joe looked, astonished. It looked like a crude human footprint, but it was twice the size of any they had ever seen. What giant had made that?

“Man big,” Hue said, awed, making a gesture indicating a height twice theirs. “Hide.” His signal indicated retreat from superior force.

Joe disagreed. “Kill,” he said, making a thrust with his spear. “Enemy hunt men.” He wanted to make a pre-emptive strike, to take out the monster before the monster learned of their existence and came after them.

“Big man smash,” Hue pointed out, pantomiming getting struck and hurled back by a more powerful opponent. He didn't want to go up against a man who could surely destroy him with one blow.

They looked at Bil, the smart one. He would decide whether to pursue the monster and try to kill it, or to try to avoid it. “Follow, find,” he decided. “Hide, see.”

With this both Hue and Joe could agree. They would follow the giant tracks and try to spy on the huge man, keeping themselves hidden so that the man did not see them. Then they would know more about it, and be in a better position to decide.

The trail was not hard to follow, because of the size of the prints. It paralleled the river by which the band of people had camped. Hue noted another disquieting sign: where the tracks went, the bamboo was broken off. The small bamboo trees had been cropped close to the ground, and larger ones higher up. What remained were scattered stalks shorn of twigs and leaves, with teeth marks on the stems. The giant was eating the bamboo—and what he ate was as big in diameter as the spear Hue carried. How could they even hope to prevail against that?

There was a sound ahead. All three men paused in place, alertly focusing on it. Something was there, in the small bamboo by the bank of the river. Something big.

They advanced toward it, low and quiet, using the larger bamboo trees as cover. They came to a thicket and settled in the brush, staring out.

There were several giant apes foraging, the males twice the height of men and many times as massive. They were eating bamboo, breaking it off with their powerful hands and chewing it up with their similarly powerful teeth. Their fur was reddish yellow, or golden, perhaps silvery on their backs. They did not walk erect, but put their arms down so that their knuckles took much of their weight. Even on all fours, their heads were as high as those of men, and much larger. Their mouths were enormous, making the rest of their heads look smaller than they were. Their teeth were truly gigantic.

There was a stir of wind that ruffled those bamboo leaves that were out of range of the creatures.

One of the monstrous males sniffed the air suspiciously. He peered around as if searching for something. Then he stepped directly toward Hue. The giant smelled him! Hue was upwind, and the random gust had carried his odor to the ape.

His mind raced. Should he get up and flee before the thing reached him? But he feared the giant could outrun him. Should he stay in place, hoping the wind faded and the ape lost the smell? But the creature was already so close it could probably see Hue. Should he stand up and fight, trying to drive his spear into the thing's gross belly? That might merely madden it.

Yet the ape did not seem hostile. It was not baring its teeth or growling or waving its fists. It was just walking forward as if curious. So Hue compromised by doing nothing. He remained where he was squatting, unmoving.

The ape sniffed him out. It stood on its hind feet, lifted its torso, put its giant hands on the bamboo shoots masking Hue and snapped them off as if they were twigs. Its muscular power was frightening. But still Hue didn't move, and neither did Joe or Bil. Everything depended on what the monster did.

The ape parted the bamboo stems immediately before Hue, then broke them off and tossed them to the side. It peered down at Hue, an unfinished bamboo stem in its mouth. Like an animal, it seemed to focus on just one thing at a time, so it was forgetting to chew. Yet it looked a great deal like a huge man.

Hue looked up at it, and his gaze met that of the ape. Then the ape reached out with one big hand. It touched Hue's head with one finger, stirring his hair. It was indeed curious—and seemed curiously innocent.

Hue did something that surprised himself. Slowly he lifted one of his own hands. He touched the ape's hand, which dwarfed his. For a moment the two hands were together, like those of a parent and a child.

Then Joe jumped up, a short distance away. “Haaa!” he cried, hurling his spear at the ape. It was deflected by a bamboo shoot, and missed, but it spooked the ape. The creature reared back, then turned and ran four-legged
away. The others did the same, and in a moment all of them were gone.

“Why Joe jump?” Hue demanded.

“Ape eat Hue,” Joe said, going to recover his spear.

“No. Ape touch head. Hue touch hand. No eat.”

“Ape eat bamboo,” Bil agreed, joining them. “Chew teeth, no bite teeth.”

A grazer of bamboo, Hue realized. Not a predator. The ape was like a panda bear, but larger. So he had not been in the danger he had feared. Unless the ape decided to smash his head with that giant fist.

They returned to camp, as there was no chance of having a successful hunt at this stage. But their news was exciting enough to make up for the meal of grain-gruel and soup made from bamboo tree shoots and boiled rat tails.

“Big, big!” Joe said enthusiastically, gesturing to show the creature's height. “Ape break big bamboo.” He broke a thin twig to demonstrate. The others listened politely, for he was a man, but it was clear that they did not really believe, even when Bil and Hue endorsed Joe's description. They suspected that it was a joke, to make up for the bad hunt. That made Joe angry. “Tomorrow band see!” he said. “Hunt apes. Big meat.”

The others were happy to agree. This meant that the women and children could in effect go on a hunt, and they delighted in the opportunity. The prospect of fresh meat was appealing too.

But Hue was ill at ease about it. He knew that Joe wanted to hunt the giant apes, and certainly such creatures would provide a great deal of meat. But Hue's brief contact with the one ape, the sharing of glances and touches, had impressed him with the creature's man-ness. This was perhaps not a real man, but it was also not an animal. It was a cousin-creature who meant no harm and should be left alone.

His mate Fae became aware of his distraction. She tried to tempt him to repeated copulations, but after the first two he lost interest. Seeing that, his young stepdaughter Lee came across to him, to see if he merely craved variety. Lee was his little sister's friend, and both of them were on the verge of nubility. His sister Bee would mate elsewhere, but Lee evidently thought Hue was a suitable prospect despite his lack of interest. She stood before him, bent over, and wiggled her rear, offering, but he merely turned his back. Still hopeful, she circled him and lay on her back in front of him, lifting and spreading her legs enticingly. He turned his back again. He wouldn't hit her unless she became too much of a nuisance, but he simply wasn't interested. She was too much like his sister. Finally she gave up, and departed.

Fae sniffed with satisfaction. It was not her place to say when or with whom he should mate, but she preferred to keep him to herself as much as
possible, now that his first mate Lil had become too old to be alluring. A man was entitled to all the women he could handle, but it appeared that Lee was not just available for spot diversion; she hoped to become his regular mate. So Fae stayed fairly close to him, in that way not only being ready, but keeping clear of other males. Any female had to yield to any male who desired her, except when with a proprietary male. Thus Lee had succeeded in avoiding mating with any others, despite her growing desirability. She pretended that Hue wanted her, and others honored that pretense despite the fact that Hue denied it. Because Hue was one of the dominant males, and just might be biding his time with Lee. It was not wise to annoy a dominant male, even in some potential manner.

Hue walked away from the shelters of the band, seeking his own counsel. The females knew better than to follow him. They thought he was just going out far enough to defecate without having the smell bother the camp. And he did that, but it was incidental. He could not get the big apes out of his mind. He could not decide how to relate to them.

He passed a female who had made herself a separate shelter somewhat apart from the others. This was Ann, who belonged to the band because she had been born in it, but who made others uncomfortable because she had a defect of her fur. It was uncommonly thin, and parts of her torso looked almost bare. This meant that she had to wear a blanket much of the time, not just when the air was cold. She got cold much sooner than others did, though in the heat of day she did well enough. She was, overall, a rather pitiful figure.

Hue paused, scratching at a flea. Ann looked almost as different from regular folk as the big apes did. They were huge but fully furred; she was human in size and body, but awkwardly naked. He did not want to hunt either type.

The woman was about Hue's own age. He hadn't really been aware of her as a child, but thought she had been around. That might be because others teased her about her deformity, so she had mostly remained apart, always on the fringe of the group. So he knew of her, but had never really interacted with her. Yet now he realized that he felt a slight affinity, because he, too, was different, in his fashion: he wielded his club and stone with the wrong hand. Had he not had friends who didn't care about that, and had he not become a dominant male, he could have suffered ridicule or exclusion, as this woman had. He had a notion how she felt.

Ann remained still, neither fleeing him nor reacting to him, apart from watching him. She was wary of other members of the band, who might hurt her if she annoyed them. But perhaps she knew that Hue did not hurt people just because he was able to. So she waited to see what he wanted with her, not knowing that he had not sought her. He had just happened to take the path by which she camped.

He became aware of something else. Ann was not scratching. That was another oddity. He thought back, and realized that he could not remember ever seeing her scratch. Didn't the fleas bother her, as they did all normal folk? The only times a regular person wasn't scratching was when he was hunting and had to be motionless lest he alert the nearby prey, and when he was asleep—and many did scratch in their sleep. The fleas were a perpetual nuisance. The members of the band had to spend much time grooming themselves and others, picking out the fleas and eating them.

He peered more closely at her, in the dusk. He could see the surface of her skin clearly in many places, because of her defect. And discovered to his surprise that she didn't have fleas. Apparently they didn't like her taste.

Then, realizing that Ann might have misunderstood his attention, thinking he wanted to mate with her, he tried to make it right. He dug a finger into the bag he wore tied around his body, where he had stored a smoked piece of panda meat, a reserve for the time he might be on a long hunt and unable to forage when hungry. He dug it out and gave it to her.

Ann accepted it eagerly. She seldom got to eat meat. But she hesitated, holding it before her mouth. Was he giving it for sex? Actually he could have sex from her without any gift, because he was a grown male, but often men did feed women at the same time. So his gesture had been taken the opposite way intended.