"Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

• BIOSPHERE

Nelson Grayson had arrived in the Ndebele canton of Kuwenezi with two changes of clothes, a satchel of stolen Whatifs, and an inflated sense of his own importance. All were gone by the time, nine months later, he gathered his tools by the Level Fourteen Ape-iary and stepped through the hissing airlock into a bitter-bright, air-conditioned savannah. By then, of course, it was far too late to regret the reckless way he’d spent the profits from his smuggled software. Too late to seek another career path.

By then, Nelson felt irrevocably committed to shoveling baboon shit for a living.

It was not a highly regarded occupation. In fact, the keepers would have assigned robots the job, if not for the monkeys’ annoying habit of nibbling plastic. As yet, robots lacked the kind of survival instincts Nelson had been born with — courtesy of a million years of frightened ancestors.

At least, each of those ancestors had survived long enough to beget another in the chain leading to him. In his former life Nelson had never given much thought to that. But of late he’d grown to appreciate the accomplishment, especially as his employers reassigned him from habitat to habitat — catering to one wild and unpredictable species after another.

Most of his first months had been spent in the sprawling main ark — Kuwenezi Canton’s chief contribution to the World Salvation Project, where scientists and volunteers recreated entire ecosystems under multi-tiered, vaulting domes, where gazelles and wildebeest ran across miniature ranges that looked and felt almost real. Nelson’s first task had been to carry fodder to the ungulates and report when any looked sick. To his surprise, it wasn’t all that hard. In fact, boredom made him ask for a more demanding job. And so they named him dung inspector.

Great. I had to open my mouth. If I ever make it home to Canada, you can bet I’ll tell them what kind of hospitality you can expect in South Africa, these days.

It was apparently no different here in ark four — a tapered wedge of steel and reinforced glass two miles from Kuwenezi’s main tower, sitting atop the canton’s long-abandoned gold mine. Ark four was the gene-crafters’ lab, where new types were sought that might endure the sleeting ultraviolet outside or adapt to the creeping deserts and shifting rains.

Nelson had nursed a fantasy that his reassignment here was a promotion. But then the director had handed him the familiar electroprod and sampler, and sent him to face more baboons.

I hate baboons! I can feel them lookin’ at me. It’s like I can tell what they’re thinking.

Nelson did not like what he imagined going on in the minds of baboons.

These monkeys were different at least. He could tell soon after pushing into sight of a copse of grey-green acacia trees, their leaves drooping in the dusty heat. Clustered beneath those gnarled limbs were about forty creatures, darker than the tawny beasts he had known in the main ark, and noticeably larger, too. They moved lazily, as sensible creatures would under the noon sun — even moderated by the expanse of reinforced glass overhead. Only idiotic humans like Dr. B’Keli insisted on work in conditions like these;

Procrastinating, Nelson looked the troop over. Perhaps they weren’t completely natural baboons at all. Nelson had heard rumors about some experiments…

His nostrils flared as fickle air currents wafted his way. They sure smelled like baboons. And when he shuffled through the sharp savannah grass toward them, Nelson soon knew that any genetic differences had to be minor. They still moved about on four feet, tails flicking, stopping to pry open nuts or groom each other or snarl and cuff their neighbors, jockeying for status and dominance within the stepped hierarchy of the troop.

Oh, they’re baboons, all right.

As soon as he came in sight, the troop rearranged itself, with strong young males taking posts at the periphery. Grizzled, powerful elders rose up on haunches to watch him nonchalantly.

Nelson knew these creatures lived mostly as vegetarians. He also knew they ate meat whenever they could. Until the collapse of the planetary ozone layer and the accompanying weather changes, baboons had been among the most formidable wild species in Africa. It had amazed Nelson when he first overheard, a month ago, one scientist commenting that mankind had evolved alongside such adversaries.

I’ll never call a caveman stupid again, he vowed as one of the creatures lazily bared impressive fangs at him. Paranoid, yes. Cavemen must’ve been real paranoid. But paranoia ain’t so dumb.

At least the troop appeared calm and well fed. But that was deceptive. Back in the main ark Nelson had come to compare life in a baboon troop with an ongoing — often violent — soap opera without words.

He saw one senior male rock on his haunches, watching a pregnant female seek tasty grubs under nearby rocks. Rhythmically smacking his lips, the patriarch pulled in his chin and flattened his ears, exposing white eyelid patches. The female responded by ambling over to sit by him, facing away. Methodically, he began picking through her fur, removing dirt, bits of dead skin, and the occasional parasite.

Another female approached and began nudging the expectant mother to move over and share the male’s attention. The screeching fit that ensued was brief and inconsequential as such things went. In a minute the two had been cuffed into silence and all three monkeys turned away, minding their own business again.

Nelson’s job was to sample monkey droppings for a routine microflora survey — whatever that was. As he approached, he recalled what Dr. B’Keli had told him after his first, unpleasant encounter with baboons.

“Don’t ever look them in the eye. That was exactly the wrong thing to do! The dominant males will take it as a direct challenge.”

“Fine,” Nelson had answered, wincing as the nurse sutured two narrow bites on his posterior. Wow you tell me!”

But of course, it really had all been in the introductory tapes he was supposed to have watched, back when his funds first ran out and he found himself willing to take a job, any job. Those painful bites reinforced the then startling revelation that tape learning might actually have practical value, after all.

Tutored by experience, he now kept the electroprod ready, but pointed away in a nonthreatening manner. With his other hand, Nelson pushed the sticklike dung sampler into a brown mass half hidden in the grass. Buzzing flies rose indignantly.

I don’t like Dr. B’Keli. For one thing, despite his “authentic” sounding name, the biologist’s caramel features were suspiciously pale. He even had light-colored eyes.

Of course whites could legally work in all but two of the Federation’s cantons. And nobody else, from the director on down, seemed to care that a blanke held high position among the Ndebele. Still, Nelson nursed resentment over the subtle discrimination his settler parents used to suffer from whites, back in the Yukon new town of his birth, and had imagined the tables would be turned here, where blacks ruled and even U.N. rights inspectors were held at bay.

Now he knew how naive he’d been, expecting these people to welcome him like a long-lost brother. In fact, Kuwenezi was a lot like those boom town suburbs of White Horse. Both seethed with ambition and indolence, with rising and falling hopes… and with authority figures insisting on hard work if you wanted to eat.

Hard work had turned his parents’ filthy refugee camp into bustling, prosperous Little Nigeria — commercial center for the new farming districts scattered across the thawing tundra. Little Nigeria’s immigrant merchants and shopkeepers turned their backs on Africa. They sang “Oh, Canada” and cheered the Voyageurs on the teli. His folks worked dawn to dusk, sent money to his sister at that Vancouver college, and politely pretended not to hear when some drunkard patronizingly “welcomed” them to a frontier that belonged as much to them as to any beer-swilling Canuck land speculator.

Well, I didn’t forget. And I won’t.

The sampler finished digesting its bit of dung and signaled. Nelson shook loose the brown remnant. After the initial sensation of his arrival the baboons had settled down again. Calm prevailed. Momentarily, at least.

Strange, how over the last few weeks he had grown so much more confident in his ability to “read” the moods of his animal charges. Behaviors that had been opaque to him before were now clear, such as their never-ending struggle over hierarchy. The word was used repeatedly in those dreary indoctrination tapes, but it had taken personal contact to start seeing all the ladders of power running through baboon society.

The males’ struggles for dominance were noisy, garish affairs. Their bushy manes inflated to make them seem twice their size. That, plus snarling displays of teeth, usually caused one or the other to back down. Still, over in the main ark Nelson had witnessed one male savannah baboon spilling a rival’s entrails across the gray earth. The red-muzzled victor screamed elation across the waving grasses.

It had taken a bit longer to realize that females, too, battled over hierarchy… seldom as extravagantly as the males, and involving not so much simple breeding rights as food and status. Still, their rancor could be longer lasting, more resolute.

The troop’s dominant male stared at him, a huge brute massing at least thirty-five kilos. Scars along the creature’s grizzled flanks sketched testimony of former battles. Wherever he moved, others quickly got out of his way. The patriarch’s expression was serene.

Now there’s a bloke who gets respect.

Nelson couldn’t help thinking of his own triumphs and more frequent failures back in White Horse, where the flash of a knife sometimes decided a boy’s claim to the “tribal pinnacle” — or even his life. Girls, too, had their ways of cutting each other down. Then there were all the power pyramids of school and town, of work and society. Hierarchies. They all had that in common.

Moreover, not one of those hierarchies had appeared to want or value him. It was an uncomfortable insight, and Nelson hated the baboons all the more for making it so clear.

Nelson’s sweaty grip on the electroprod tightened as a pair of young adults, maybe twenty kilos each, settled down a few meters away to pick through each others’ fur. One adolescent turned and yawned at him, gaping wide enough to swallow Nelson’s leg up to his calf. Nelson edged away some distance before resuming with another pile of turds.

“I think I might like to work with animals,” he had told them when he first arrived at Kuwenezi, his one-way air ticket used up and his supply of bootlegged Whatifs spread across the placement officer’s desk.

Shortly before making the fateful decision to come here, Nelson had seen a documentary about the canton’s scientists — Africans fighting to save Africa. It was a romantic image. So when asked what work he’d like to do as a new citizen, the first thing to come to mind had been the Ark Project. “Of course I’ll want to invest my money first I may prefer to work part-time, y’know. ”

The placement officer had glanced down at the software capsules Nelson had pirated from the White Horse office of the CBC. “Your contribution suffices for provisional admission, ” he had said. “And I think we can find you suitable work.”

Nelson grimaced at the recollection. “Right. Shoveling monkey shit. That’s real suitable.” But his money was gone now, lavished on instant new friends who proved stylishly fickle when the juice ran out. And back in Canada the CBC had sworn out a local warrant for his arrest.

The sampler beeped. Nelson wiped its tip and glanced back at the two young males. They had been joined by a small female carrying a baby. As he moved on in search of more dung, they followed him.

Nelson kept them in sight while he probed the next pile. The young female looked fidgety. She kept glancing back at the troop. After a couple of minutes, she approached one of the males and held out her baby to him.

After six months in the arks, Nelson had a pretty good idea what the young mother was trying to do. Adult baboons were often fascinated by babies. Top-rank females, tough mamas Nelson called them, used this to their advantage, letting others help care for their infants, as if granting their inferiors a special favor.

Other females feared uninvited attention to their offspring. Sometimes the one taking the baby never gave it back again. So a low-status mother sometimes tried to recruit protectors.

Still, this was the first time Nelson had ever seen the attempt so direct. The infant cooed appealingly at the big male, and its mother made grooming gestures. But the male only inspected the baby idly and then turned away to scratch after insects in the soil.

Nelson blinked, suddenly experiencing one of those unexpected, unwanted moments of vivid recollection. It was a memory of one Saturday night two years ago, and a girl he had met at the New Lagos Club.

The first part of that encounter had been perfection. She seemed to dial in on him from across the room, and when they danced her moves were as smooth as a rapitrans rail and just as electric. Then there were her eyes. In them he was so sure he read a promise of enthusiasm for whoever won her. They left early. Escorting her home to her tiny coldwater flat, Nelson had felt alive with anticipation.

Meeting her elderly aunt in the kitchen hadn’t been promising, but the girl simply sent the old woman off to bed. He remembered reaching for her then. But she held him off and said, “I’ll be right back. ”

While waiting, he heard soft noises from the next room. The rustle of fabric heightened his sense of expectation. But when she emerged again, she was still fully dressed, and in her arms she held a two-year-old child.

“Isn’t he cute?” she said, as the infant rubbed his eyes and looked up from Nelson’s lap. “Everyone says he’s the best-behaved little boy in White Horse. ”

Nelson had shelved his sexual hopes at once. His memory was vague about what followed, but he recalled a long, embarrassed silence, punctuated by fumbling words as he maneuvered the child off his lap and worked his way toward the door. But one image he recalled later with utter clarity — it was that last, unnerving, patient expression on the young woman’s face before he turned and fled.

Nelson realized later she’d been worse than crazy. She’d had a plan. And for some reason he came away from that episode feeling he was the one who had failed.

The little mother baboon turned to look directly at him and Nelson shivered at a strange moment of deja vu. Summoning B’Keli’s injunction against direct eye contact, he found much to do, searching for more piles to check.

The expanse of superhard glass overhead might keep out the ultraviolet, but it hardly eased the savannah heat. Artificial mimicry of the greenhouse effect made it stifling, in spite of the blowing fans. As he had been doing for a few weeks now, Nelson took humidity and temperature readings from his belt monitor and noted the direction of the desultory breeze. Slowly, he was coming to recognize the way even a man-made environment had its “seasons,” its “natural” responses to unnatural controls.

His sampling path soon took him toward the edge of the habitat where slanted panes met the rim wall. Trays of cables circuited the habitat two meters high. Through the transparent barrier he could see the dun hillsides and sunburnt wheat fields of a land once called Rhodesia, then Zimbabwe, and several other names before finally becoming Ndebele Canton of the Federation of Southern Africa.

It wasn’t like any “Africa” Nelson had seen while growing up, lying prone in front of the B-movie channel. No elephants. No rhinos. Certainly no Tarzan here. At least he’d had enough sense not to flee Canada for his parents’ lamented homeland. Everyone knew what had become of Nigeria. The rains that had abandoned this land now drenched the Bight of Africa, engulfing abandoned cities there.

Deserts or drowning. Africa just could not get a break.

Closer in view were the sealed chambers below this one, a series of glistening ziggurat terraces leading step by step toward the dusty ground, each sheltering a different habitat, a different midget ecosphere rescued from the ruined continent.

The coterie of curious baboons in his trail had grown by the time Nelson came closest to the glassy wall. They went about their business — eating, grooming, scuffling — but all the time watching him with a nonchalant fascination that drew them in his wake. Each time he finished sampling a pile of feces, several monkeys would poke at the disturbed mass, perhaps curious what he found so attractive about ordinary turds.

Why are they following me? he wondered, perplexed by the monkeys’ behavior, so unlike that of their cousins in the main ark. Once, the alpha male stared directly at Nelson, who was careful not to accept the implied challenge.

Nervously, he realized the entire troop now lay between him and the corridor airlock.

The little mother and her baby remained his closest adherents. Nelson noticed her anxiety grow as five larger females approached, several of them clearly high-status matriarchs, whose sleek infants rode their backs like lords. One of the newcomers handed her baby to a helper and then began sidling toward the solitary mother.

The young one screeched defiance, clutching her infant close and backing away. Her eyes darted left and right, but none of the creatures nearby seemed more than vaguely interested in her plight. Certainly none of the big, lazy males offered any succor.

Nelson felt a twinge of sympathy. But what could he do? Rather than watch, he turned and hurried several meters to another set of droppings. He wiped his brow on his shirtsleeve and put his back to the blazing sun. In the muggy heat daydreams transported him back to his own room in the cool northlands, with his own bed, his own teli, his own little fridge stuffed with icy Labatts, and his mother’s pungent Yoruba cooking wafting upstairs from the kitchen. The reverie was pleasant beyond all expectation, but it shattered in an instant when he felt a sudden sharp tug on his pants leg.

Nelson swiveled, holding the stun-prod in both shaking hands. Then he exhaled an oath. It was only the little female again — now wide-eyed and sweat-damp, wearing a grimace of fear. Still, she did not back away when he shook the rod at her. Rather, she edged forward, trembling and awkward on two feet, clasping her infant with one paw while in the other she held forth something small and brown.

Nelson broke into nervous laughter. “Great! That’s all I need. She’s offering me shit!”

Flies buzzed as she shuffled another step, extending her piquant gift.

“G’wan, beat it, eh? I got enough to sample. And it’s supposed t’be undisturbed shit, get it?”

She seemed to understand at least part of it. The rejection part. With some retained dignity she spilled the feces onto the dry earth and wiped her paw on grass stems, all the time watching him.

The other monkeys had backed away when he shouted. Now they returned to their affairs as if nothing had happened. At first glance, one might guess they were content, foraging and lazing in the warm afternoon. But Nelson could sense undercurrents of tension. The patriarch’s nostrils flared as he sniffed, then resumed grooming one of his underlings.

This is one troop of insane monkeys, all light. Nelson wondered if there were still openings hauling hay to giraffes. With a resigned sigh he moved on, calculating how many more piles of crap he had to cover before at last he could get out of here, shower, and go nurse a beer or two — or four.

Screams suddenly erupted behind him, shrill peals of panic and fury. Nelson turned, his nerves finally tipped over into anger. “Now I’ve had enough …”

The words choked off as a small maelstrom of dark brown landed in his arms. Flailing for balance, he nearly fell over as a screeching creature clawed at his dungarees, scratching his shoulders and arms. Nelson staggered backward swearing, trying to protect his face and throw the baboon off. But the creature only scrambled around behind his shoulders, enclosing his neck in a fierce constriction.

Nelson wheezed. “Damn stupid crazy…” Then, just as suddenly, he forgot all about the small monkey on his back. He gaped at the entire troop, now arrayed in a half circle around him.

Moments ticked by, punctuated by the pounding of his heart. Most of the dark animals merely watched, as if this were great entertainment. The lead male licked himself lazily.

But facing Nelson directly now were five large, grimacing beasts who appeared to have something much more active in mind. They paced back and forth, turning and barking at him, tails flicking expressively.

The troop’s dominant females, he knew quickly. But why were they angry with him? The matriarchs’ band moved forward. Nelson did not like the gleam he saw in their eyes.

“Stay… stay back,” he gasped, and brandished the stunner-prod. At least he thought it was the prod, until a second glance showed it to be the sampler. Where had the damned prod gone!

He saw it at last several meters away. The biggest male was pressing his broad, multicolored snout against the white plastic, sniffing it. Cursing, he realized he must have dropped his only weapon in that initial moment of panic.

Nelson had more immediate problems than recovering Kuwenezi Ark property. Less savagely intimidating than adult males, the females nonetheless growled impressively. Their teeth shone saliva-bright, and he knew why even leopards and hyenas did not dare attack baboons in a group.

It wasn’t hard to figure who it was cowering on his back, pressing her infant between them. In desperation, the little mother had apparently decided to enlist his “protection” whether he offered it or not. He stepped sideways, in the direction of the exit, speaking soothingly to the angry females. “Now… take it easy, eh? Peace an’ love… uh, nature is harmony, right?”

They didn’t seem particularly interested in reason, nor in slogans borrowed from the Earth Mother movement. They spread to cut him off.

I heard they can be pretty mean in their fights between females… I even saw one kill the baby of another. But this is ridiculous! Don’t they care I’m a man? We feed them. We made this place, to save them!

He realized with a sinking sensation that only one of these monkeys had any respect for him. And that shivering creature had turned to him only because nobody more important gave a damn.

Nelson looked around. One of the outer airlocks was just thirty meters away, opening onto the roof of the habitat below. He had no sun hat or goggles, but could easily stand the harsh daylight long enough to dash to another entrance. He began sidestepping that way slowly, maintaining a soothing monologue. “That’s right… I’ll just be goin’, then… no need for trouble, eh?”

He was halfway to his destination when the following monkeys seemed to grasp his intent. In a blur, two of them moved quickly to cut off that escape. Together, the pair of irate females blocking his path didn’t even equal his mass, but their tough hides looked all but impervious while Nelson’s own skin, already throbbing and bleeding from his little passenger’s unintended damage, seemed tender and useless against those savage, glistening canines.

Both airlocks were out, then. A utilities tray circuited the wall at about man height — the only conceivable refuge in sight. Nelson dropped the sampler and ran for it.

Their angry screeches amplified off the reflecting glass. His pursuers’ rapid footfalls paced the pounding of his heart as Nelson poured everything he had into reaching the wall. The sound of snapping jaws triggered a jolt of adrenaline. He took two final strides and leaped for the conduit tray, his fingers tearing for a hold on the slippery metal mesh. Fangs snagged his pants and laid a bloody runnel along his right calf as he swung his legs up at the last moment.

As soon as he was wrapped around the tray, his little passenger scrambled over him to clamber onto the cluster of pipes and cables. One foot squashed his nose as she hoisted her infant onto a nearby stanchion, but Nelson was too exhausted to do more than just hang there while the creatures below leaped and snapped at him some more, missing his rear end by inches. Inside, he had left only enough energy to curse himself for an idiot.

They gave me a chance! he realized. The matriarchs had waited after the young female leaped on him, to see what he’d do. He could have rejected her then — could have pried her loose and put her down.

Hell, all I’d have had to do was sit down… she’d have had to run for it.

Of course, the conclusion was inevitable anyway. The little monkey didn’t have a chance. But at least it wouldn’t have involved him. Now Nelson understood the other baboons’ anger. He’d violated his own neutrality. He had taken sides.

When he finally caught his breath, he wriggled and puffed his way atop the narrow platform. Seated a meter away, his unwelcome charge licked her baby and watched him. When he moved to sit up, she backed off a bit to give him room.

“You,” he panted, pointing at her, “are a lot of trouble.”

To his surprise she turned her back on him in a motion he recognized. She was asking him to groom her!

“Fat chance o’ that,” he muttered.

Morosely, he looked around. The troop seemed content simply to observe for a while. The big male examining Nelson’s stunner hadn’t found the trigger — worse luck — but he had dragged it halfway to the acacia grove before losing interest and abandoning it. Now the nearest exit was much closer than his weapon.

The cabal of high-status females sat calmly on their haunches, looking up at him. One by one they left briefly to check on their own infants — in “day care” with lower-status monkeys — then quickly rejoined the impromptu posse-lynch mob.

Nelson turned and pounded the thick pane of barrier glass behind him in frustration. A low hum was the only response… that and bruised knuckles. The Bangkok crystal sheeting was incredibly tough. He didn’t even contemplate trying to break it.

Beyond lay lower terraces of the ark tower, each sheltered beneath still more tightly-sealed glass. Nelson could make out forest growth within the ecosystem just below this one. In addition to preserving a patch of jungle, it provided part of the passive atmosphere regeneration that made ark four all but self-sufficient.

Movement caught his eye. Along the treetops below he saw people walking through the forest canopy, along a catwalk skyway. Nelson squinted, and recognized both the dark face of the ark director and the coffee features of Dr. B’Keli. They were showing off the new artificial ecosphere to a white woman, small and frail and quite elderly. From their expressions, they seemed eager to make a good impression. She nodded, and at one point reached out to pluck a leaf and rub it between her hands.

“Hey! Up here! Look up here!” Nelson beat the glass — an effort that seemed required given his circumstances, though he had no real hope of being heard.

Sure enough, the group strolled on, oblivious to the drama unfolding over their heads.

Damn them. Damn the arks. Damn the Salvation Project… and damn me for ever getting myself into this mess!

At that moment Nelson loathed everybody he could think of — from twentieth-century humanity, who had wrecked Earth’s delicate balance, to the voters and bureaucrats of the twenty-first, who spent fortunes trying to save what was left, to his caveman ancestors, who had been stupid enough to grow big, useless brains that everybody was always trying to cram with book learning, when what a guy really needed were claws, and big teeth, and skin as tough as old leather!

He remembered the leader of the Bantus, a “youth club” he had tried to join back in White Horse. It wasn’t supposed to be run like an old-style urban gang, but that was how it turned out anyway. For months Nelson had come home from an endless series of “initiations,” each time more bruised than the last — until it finally dawned on him that he just wasn’t wanted… that his only use to them was as an outlet for their “organized group activity” — the tribe strengthening its internal bonding by beating up on someone else.

He glanced across the prairie at the top male baboon, so serene and in charge, yawning complacently and ferociously. Nelson hated the patriarch and envied him.

If I had a hide like that… If I had fangs…

His attention was drawn back by the shaking of his unsteady platform. Nelson turned to see that the little female was hopping up and down, grimacing, tugging at his sleeve. “Stop that!” he cried. “This thing isn’t built to take that kind of…” Then he looked beyond and saw what had her so upset.

Her foes must have found one of the access ladders. Or maybe they had boosted each other, forming a multimonkey pyramid. However they managed it, three of the largest were now picking their way along the cable tray, heading in this direction.

“Oh hell,” he sighed. The young mother backed against him. Her infant’s dark eyes were wide with fear.

Nelson glanced down at the ground, and saw with surprise that the way was clear below! As he watched, the head male and his followers cleared a path, cuffing other baboons aside. The alpha male looked up at Nelson then, and tilted his head.

With uncanny insight, Nelson suddenly understood. He had only to jump, and he could run all the way to the airlock unmolested before the crazy females caught up with him!

Perhaps. But he’d never make it encumbered. He exchanged a look with the bull. That, it seemed, was part of the bargain. He was not to interfere in the natural working out of their social order. Nelson nodded, comprehending. He waited till the small female next to him was fully engaged, all her attention given to answering the threatening grimaces of her stalkers. At that moment Nelson slipped over the edge.

It was a bad landing. He came to his feet gasping at a sharp twinge in his ankle. Hurriedly, though, he hopped away several meters before pausing to glance back.

Nobody was following him. In fact, the troop mostly faced the other way, watching the drama reach its climax on the ledge overhead. The bull appeared to have dismissed him completely now that he was leaving the scene.

Burdened by her infant, though, the small mother could not follow him. She stared after him instead, blinking with a mute disappointment he could read only too well. Then she had no time for anything but immediate concerns; with her infant on her back, she turned to bare her teeth at her assailants.

Nelson backed away another two steps toward the safety of the exit, now beckoning only twenty or so meters away. Still, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. He was captivated by the small baboon’s stand, grimacing final defiance at her foes, holding them back with brave lunges. It was an effort she could not keep up for long.

From experience, he knew the other females did not seek her death, only the baby’s. It was a bit of savagery he had not questioned until today. Now though, for the very first time, Nelson wondered… why.

It was so cruel. So awful. It reminded him of human nastiness. And yet, in all the time he had been here, he had never asked the experts about this or any other matter. It had been as if… as if to do so would be to admit too openly the ignorance he had nurtured for so long. His frail, rigid facade of cynicism could not bear curiosity. Once he started asking questions, where would it stop?

Nelson felt a pressure building in his head. It couldn’t be restrained…

“Why?” he demanded aloud, and felt his voice catch at the sound.

Protecting her child, the mother backed away awkwardly, shrieking at her enemies.

“Why’s it like this!” he asked, to no one present save himself.

Barely aware of what he was doing, Nelson found himself limping forward. He felt eyes track him as he held up his arms.

“Hey, you!” he called. “I’m back. Come on down…”

He had no need to repeat himself. The mother monkey grabbed her baby and launched herself from the doomed redoubt, landing in his arms as a taut bundle of scrawny brown fur, clawing for purchase on his already bleeding shoulders. Nelson hurriedly stepped away, fully resigned that now there was no way he’d reach the airlock in time. Sure enough, when he glanced back a crowd of angry baboons were catching up fast. The original pursuers had now been joined by several more irate monkeys, at least two of them large, pink-faced males, all dashing his way, screaming.

Nelson did not bother trying to run any further. He turned and scanned the ground for anything — anything at all — until his gaze fell upon a white rod.

His dung sampler.

Sighing that it wasn’t even the inadequate shock-prod, Nelson snatched it up, carrying the motion through just in time to catch a leaping baboon in the snout. The creature screamed and tumbled whimpering away.

The females scattered, dispersing on all sides. Dark eyes peered at him through the tall grass.

Panting, blinking in surprise, Nelson wondered. Was that it? Hey, maybe all it takes is the right bluff!

Then he saw why the females had given up so easily. They were moving aside to make room for a new force.

Rumbling with a low rage, the patriarch and his entourage arrived. Nine big males, their manes fully inflated, ambled with patient assuredness toward him and his frightened, weary charge. Their pace might be confident, but flecks of saliva dripped from their curled lips. Nelson read their eyes, and knew them for killers.

And yet, in that same suspended moment, Nelson had time to feel something he had never before imagined… a strange, crystal calm. As if this was all somehow familiar. As if he had been in this place, in this very predicament, many times before.

We were all like this, once, he realized, feeling the weight of his makeshift cudgel. White, black, yellow… men, women… our ancestors all shared this, long ago…

Back when Africa was new…

Human beings had changed the world, for well and ill. Would their efforts now save what was left? Nelson couldn’t begin to guess.

All he knew for sure was that for the first time he cared.

Nelson and the little mother shared communion in a moment’s eye contact. Leaving her baby clinging to his shoulder, she slipped down to stand beside his left knee, guarding his flank.

The pack slowed and circled. The bull shook his head, as if reading something different in Nelson’s stance, in his eyes. But Nelson suddenly knew the creature saw only part of it.

We humans almost wrecked the whole world. Humans may yet save it…

You don’t mess with guys who can do shit like that.

“Okay, it’s nine against two,” he said, hefting his rude club, smacking its reassuring weight in the palm of his left hand.

“That sounds about right.”

When at last they charged, Nelson was ready for them.