Genus Homo Page 4

  By noon some of the group were really suffering from lack of water. Scherer and some of the women had developed muscular cramps which liberal doses of salt from the Aaronson's picnic kit did very little to allay. The rest stops grew longer and at more frequent intervals. At this rate, Bridger reflected, they were going to have to set up some kind of permanent camp and send out scouting parties before people began to break down completely.

  About two in the afternoon the sky became overcast; by three a distant mutter of thunder was heard, and by four the rain was coming down in bucketsful. They huddled under the trees and shouted at each other between crashes of thunder. Nearby a giant hemlock came loose from its moorings and fell with a resounding smash, carrying several smaller trees with it. They kept fairly dry for about fifteen minutes; then the water began to trickle off the ends of the branches. But nobody really minded; the whole party was running around with cupped hands, looking for the fattest trickle to furnish them with a drink. By spreading out the red plastic raincoat belonging to Alice Lloyd in a fairly open place, they were able to accumulate a pool of rain water which filled the Aaronsons' thermos bottles and left a little for everyone to drink besides.

  As the setting sun began to cast long shafts of light through the trees. Bridger led his waterlogged crew to the top of a slight rise. "This place may drain off a little quicker than the rest," he told them. "No, I'm sorry, Miss Friedman, I haven't any idea when we're going to eat again. Bananas don't grow on pine trees, you know. Maybe we'll meet another batoid. Now, if anybody has any dry matches we'll start a fire."

  Matches appeared from pockets and handbags. All more or less wet. Even the fishermen were no help. When several matches had been ruined by trying to strike them on damp books, Bridger said, "Here, we can't afford to waste any more."

  "You can make a fire by rubbing sticks together," Zbradovski pointed out.

  Although Bridger doubted it, considering the dampness, he had no intention of discouraging the young man. Barnes whittled out a bow, spindle, and bearing from a fallen branch, shyly admitting that he had practiced wood-carving as a hobby in his youth in Vermont. One of Morelli's rawhide boot-laces was commandeered as a bowstring.

  Zbradovski went about his twirling with grim determination. He twiddled and twiddled; the sun went down; the stars come out, and still there was no result. A cool wind added to no one's comfort.

  "This Boy Scout business is a lot of hooey!" Alice Lloyd complained. "We need a full-blooded Indian along with us to do it."

  "You said it!" the Hooper girl agreed. "These big he-men—ah-choo!—are getting on my nerves."

  Zbradovski grunted as he straightened up. "I quit! Somebody else want to try?"

  Scherer said, "Abner, you take it—you've been in the field."

  "Yeah," replied Barnes, "but I always had sense enough to bring a match-safe along."

  He twirled for a while with no better success. Scherer followed with equal futility. Then a voice wheezed, "May I please—ic!—try next?"

  "Aren't you sober yet?" cried three voices at once. Wilson, with a trace of wobble in his walk, marched over to the apparatus, fumbled with it, got the bowstring looped around his thumb instead of the spindle, but finally had the device buzzing merrily. He sawed away; then Toomey exclaimed with awe in his voice, "Mother of God, if he hasn't got a fire there after all!"

  Wilson twirled harder than ever. "Tinder, you guys!" he demanded.

  "What's tinder?" asked a feminine voice. But Bridge was carefully poking shredded birchbark at the drill hole. Wilson twirled and blew and twirled some more. With his hair and whiskers still uncut he looked in the faint red glow like a gnome out of the Niebelungenlied. The first little yellow flames appeared and grew. Nobody said a word. Soon a real fire was crackling under the trees. It sputtered dismally and sent off clouds of black smoke, but who cared?

  Bridger and Scherer, comfortably warmed, walked up the granite ridge that rose behind the camp. "If we don't get these folks some food there's going to be trouble," said the chemist "The men aren't so bad, but some of the women are beginning to kick already."

  "I could do with a couple of steaks and a quart of good old Milwaukee beer myself," Scherer replied.

  "That where you're from?" Scherer nodded. "I'm a native of St. Louis, myself," Bridger told him. "I could give you an argument as to which place produces the better beer. Learn anything from the paper?"

  "Paper? Oh, you mean Blodgett's. I've been meaning to tell you. It clicks all right.

  "It seems he'd been working on the aestivation process in Protopterus and Lepidosiren. As you may or may not know, the whole lungfish family has a screwy metabolism. For instance, during aestivation they get a urea concentration one per cent of which would kill most vertebrates. Also, while they're asleep in their holes in the mud, the katabolic process drops off asymptotically. There doesn't seem to be any limit to the time they can aestivate, or if there is it hasn't been found experimentally.

  "Well, Blodgett was hunting for the regulating agent that controls the rate of katabolism, and he found it. He wasn't able to get the stuff pure, but he did learn something about it. It seems to be related to a family of obscure organic compounds, the hexyl-amino—amino—hell, I give up. My chemistry's not so good any more. Anyway, they're those things that fellow Kanzaki found back in '35."

  "Yes, I know them," Bridger said. "Just another of the nine million groups of useless organics that chemists amuse themselves by inventing every year. Go on."

  "Well, Blodgett fiddled around with these gunks, and he found that with certain ones he could inhibit the katabolism of almost any vertebrate to a greater or lesser extent. One in particular which he calls Number 34, seemed to induce indefinite aestivation with asymptotically decelerating katabolism in Rattus and Cavia. Not only that, but it had a lot of unlooked-for effects on the rate of a lot of inorganic reactions. Which is probably why our clothes and stuff haven't fallen apart.

  "Number 34 is the stuff he had in that flask. At normal temperatures it's not a gas, but a liquid with a high vapor-pressure. I don't know whether he opened the valve on purpose when he saw the crash coming, or whether the crackup did it, but he certainly did us a good turn. The stuff naturally evaporated like nobody's business and saturated the bus, and eventually the tunnel too—that's why we smelled it. Anyway, here we are!"

  "I see," said Bridger. "Then, for one thing, all bets are off as to how long we were asleep. The rate of growth of hair and nails would drop off asymptotically like everything else. But why didn't they dig us out? You'd think—no, I have an idea coming. Everything points to an earthquake and a severe one."

  "I didn't know there were any active faults within hundreds of miles of here," objected Scherer.

  "Neither did I; an inactive one must have suddenly decided to do its stuff. Those things have happened—there was a tremendous 'quake in the lower Mississippi valley in 1811. If our 'quake was sufficiently catastrophic, people would be so busy digging themselves out that they wouldn't have time to worry about one bus lost somewhere in the hills. And when they did get around to such things, they wouldn't take the trouble." He stopped short. "Say, Emil—do you see anything funny about those stars?"

  The ridge was fairly bare of trees, giving a good view of the sky. Scherer stared up. "I see what you mean; I'm no astronomer, but I've slept out enough to have a pretty good idea of what they ought to look like. Let's see—where's the Dipper and the North Star?" He turned slowly through a full three hundred and sixty degrees. "I can't see it—or anything that looks like it," he agreed. "That constellation looks something like Libra, but it's too long, and a couple of the bright stars are missing. Say—let's see if any of the gang know about stars."

  Some of the group were still awake. Ruth Pierne said that she knew a little, "Because heaven knows I've spent enough time trying to explain them to my sixth graders."

  Julius Aaronson, surprisingly, turned out to be an amateur astronomer of some standing. "I was the third man to
report a new comet last year," he stated proudly. When he had climbed to the top of the ridge he announced at once that he had never seen an array of stars, either in charts or through the home-made telescope in his back yard, that looked anything like those above them. The teacher confirmed his opinion.

  Scherer smacked his fist into his palm. "That clinches it!" he exclaimed. "It all fits. In just a few hundred or thousand years the constellations might be somewhat distorted, but they'd still be recognizable. But after a million years or more the stars would have shifted around so that you couldn't recognize a thing. And it would take at least that long for our familiar gophers, bats, and what-not to evolve into the animals we've been seeing. Probably the larger mammals of our day are mostly extinct. Same old story—a phylum gets too big and over-specializes, a change of climate or something wipes 'em out, and an order of smaller, less specialized animals grows up to take its place. Folks, we're an awfully long way from home!"

  It took a little time for the news to penetrate. Aaronson was the first to speak. "You mean the world—our world—is gone?" he said timidly. "We can't get back again, never? And all our friends and relations should be dead?"

  "Looks that way," Bridger told him gently. "I didn't have any family of my own, but my brother-in-law was a good egg, and—hell, I'd sort of like to have seen him again before—before this happened."

  "I'd like to have seen my kids again," said Scherer. "My wife's dead—that's a dumb thing to say; they're all dead; have been for ages. Funny, when you come to think of it—those kids must have grown up and had kids of their own—and they had kids too. I probably have descendants running around the earth now who are removed from me by a hundred thousand generations. Come to think of it, everyone on earth ought to be my direct descendant—and, for that matter, a descendant of everyone else in the crowd who left kids behind. We'll be a grosser Spektakel, like a lot of Java ape-men come to life."

  "Speaking of people," Ruth Pierne said, "where are they all? I should think the air would be full of people's private autogyros. This doesn't look much like an H. G. Wells utopia to me!"

  "Can't tell yet," Bridger replied. "Might be a wildlife preserve or something. Besides, with synthetic foods and hydroponics and such they'd be able to let marginal land go back to woods. Still I admit we ought to have seen some sign of human activity by this time. That is, if there are any people left."

  "What a horrible idea!" the girl exclaimed. "What can we do if we're the only people in the world? Just think of crawling around in this endless forest the rest of our lives!"

  "It's not a pleasant prospect," Bridger admitted. "However, we'll know more after we've been traveling a little longer. I doubt that we've come more than fifteen miles in the two days, if we've done that. Don't say anything to the others until tomorrow—and let me break the news gently. We don't want any nervous breakdowns."

  4

  AFTER A MILLION YEARS

  Next morning the four took the others aside, one at a time, and explained their discoveries. Reactions varied. Ronald Franchot said, "Hell—if I pulled a gag like that in the club, the manager'd tear up my contract!"

  Morelli said, "You scientific guys give me a pain. I think you're making all this up just to cover up that you're lost."

  Marjorie Tremblay said, "Oh, isn't it divine? Just think of being off in these wilds and creating new lives for ourselves!" Scherer, who was not a sweet-tempered person, suppressed his urge to strangle the woman.

  Toomey, after Ruth Pierne had explained the thing three times, walked off scowling in an effort to understand. Elizabeth Friedman threw a fit of hysterics and had to be sat on. Miss Hansen merely said, "Well, Mr. Aaronson, I'm glad to see that you're not making a fool of yourself about this the way some of us seem to be doing. You'd better help me get some more wood for the fire."

  There was a little gopheroid left, but they made a cold and gloomy breakfast. This world of giant trees and strange beasts had grown very empty. It was a silent group that picked up its duffel and straggled away through the trees.

  Wilson, sober at last, volunteered to carry the "sacred fire." They had gone about half a mile when he yelled, dropped his precious bundle, and did a war dance around it with his thumb in his mouth.

  "I told you it would burn through," Barnes told him dryly. "If you'll all wait while I whittle a holder, I think we won't have any more trouble."

  Bridger, slogging along at the head of the straggling column, thought, I never did so many pound-miles of baggage-toting in my life; I ought to be able to get a job as a porter come the next depression. And I'd like to choke the next one who says: "Aren't we ever going to find a stream?" It must be one hell of a dry summer; every ravine we've found has been bone dry. Wish Emil would quit whistling that Victor Herbert thing: doesn't he know anything else? Wait a minute—wai-it a minute! Do I hear water ahead, or am I getting delirious?

  He quickened his pace, but said nothing; then behind him someone whooped: "Water!" The crowd stampeded, Bridger with the rest. Packard and Morelli were rummaging furiously among their belongings for their fishing tackle. They raced ahead, and by the time the Aaronsons—in the rear as usual—reached the bank, they were whipping the stream with their lines.

  The brook was a good twelve feet across, shallow rifts alternating with long quiet stillwaters, and the fish fairly fought for the flies. Most of them were troutlike, though Pilly pronounced them "rather more like landlocked salmon." The unfortunate little man had become pretty well unstrung and limped along at the tail of the procession with the Aaronsons, chattering uselessly to himself or weeping silently, but he still knew his fish. He scrambled happily along the bank from one to the other of the fishermen, examining each new catch. It was with difficulty that Bridger dissuaded him from floundering into the stream to fish with his bare hands, but he was able to identify a catfishoid and some smaller fry related to the minnows and sticklebacks of his own day. While the fish seemed not to have developed the gigantism of the mammals they had seen, they had changed in other ways which puzzled and delighted the little man. When Packard, trying his luck farther downstream, caught a hellbender which bit his fingers savagely when he tried to dehook it, Pilly and Scherer dissected the ugly creature with ghoulish glee.

  Dry wood was gathered, the coals Wilson carried were gingerly uncovered and blown into flame, and soon the fish were roasting over the fire. The smell of charring skin was wafted down the breeze, but nobody seemed to mind. Presently, with stomachs full, everybody became more genial. Franchot appointed himself master of ceremonies; he tap-danced, hugged an imaginary microphone, pretended to croon, told stories of all ages and degrees of propriety, and led the party in song. A passing beast the size of a grizzly bear, attracted by the smell of fish, sat up in wonderment at the sound of "Danny Deever" wafting, not improved by distance, through the forest.

  Little Irving, who had been rather subdued, began to take an interest in life again. The first manifestation was his stealing one of Morelli's precious trout flies, sneaking up behind Toomey, hooking a large ear and giving a sharp yank. The resulting riot ended with Irving, a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth, held by Zbradovski while Macdonald spanked him and Scherer and Toomey warded off Mrs. Aaronson.

  Bridger had been consulting with Barnes and Scherer. It was obvious that the time had come to set up some kind of camp where they could get rested, put a few solid meals under their belts, and plan their future campaign. Wandering on as they had been, from day to day, was getting them nowhere—if there was anywhere to get. They had water, there seemed to be plenty of fish in the stream, and there was an open glade among the trees where they would get the sun. He announced that the time had come to cut stakes and build a fence around the camp.

  At once there were protests. Franchot, lying on his back beside the fire, said, "Aw, have a heart, guy. I'm so tired I can hardly move. Nothing's going to eat us—these animals run if you throw a stick at them."

  Ascherer bristled. "You'll cut those stakes and
like—" he began, but Bridger cut in: "Let me handle this, Emil. I admit I should have thought of it before, but I've been too worried about food and water. Maybe Ronnie's right about these animals being harmless, but this would be the first fauna I've ever heard of without carnivores. Sneeze's coon would be pretty nasty company in the middle of the night, if he was hungry and not too choosy about his supper. Anyway, I don't intend to let anybody be eaten in his sleep if I can help it."

  It took a little more argument and persuasion, but by assigning turns with Toomey's axe and the few pocket knives they had, the chemist got a kind of brush-fence of fair-sized saplings cut and placed around the clearing. The barrier didn't look very strong, but Scherer reassured them.

  "Most animals haven't sense enough to push through even a weak fence," he said. "They snuffle up and down looking for an opening, and if they don't find one they get discouraged and go away."

  Bridger saw to it that the fire was kept up and the regular watch stationed. During the night there was a certain amount of stealthy coming and going in the forest and along the stream, and eyes stared at them out of the darkness beyond the fence, but nothing big enough to be dangerous came near them. Next day they loafed and nursed sore feet, while the fishermen explored the stream for more pools and Barnes whetted down one of the Aaronson's six table knives on a stone. By noon he had a fair point. With this, a cut sapling, and a strip of gopheroid hide he put together a very effective looking spear. Others admiringly tried to imitate him, but made little progress before darkness fell.

  The archeologist smiled his shy Yankee smile and said, "Too bad the rest of you didn't have the advantage of being brought up on a fa'am." With his help, the next day saw the addition of six useful weapons to the armory.

  That night the men were taking it easy beside the stream while the women busied themselves with makeshift repairs to their garments. "I'm sorry, Ronnie," Bridger said, "but we need all the utensils right now for supper. If you have to shave, you can wait till later or use the creek. You look all right with a beard anyway."