Evolution

This fat creature was the Potus, the Powerful One. He was one of mankind’s first kings. He was talking to a skinny corpselike man at his elbow, who thumbed through lengths of knotted string with intense concentration.

Keram and Muti waited patiently until the Potus’s attention was free.

Juna whispered, "What are they doing with the string?"

"Tallies," Muti whispered. "They record, umm, the workings of the city and the farms: how many sheep and goats, how much grain can be expected from the next harvest, how many newborn, how many dead." He smiled at her wide-open eyes. "Our stories are told on those bits of string, Juna. This is how Cata Huuk works."

Keram nudged him. The man with the string had withdrawn. The Potus’s great head had swiveled toward them. Keram and Muti immediately bowed. Juna just stared, until Keram dragged her down.

"Let her stand," said the Potus. His voice was like riverbed gravel. His eyes on Juna, he beckoned her.

Hesitantly Juna walked forward.

He leaned over her. She could smell animal oil on his skin. He pulled at her hair, hard enough to make her yowl. "Where did you get her?"

Keram quickly explained what had happened at Keer. "Potus, she says she was born here — here, in Cata Huuk. She says she was stolen as a baby. And—"

"Take your clothes off," the Potus snapped at Juna.

She glared back, repulsed by his smell, and did not obey. But Muti hastily ripped her skin shift from her, until she stood naked.

The Potus nodded, as if appraising a hunter’s kill. "Good breasts. Good height, good posture — and a pup in the belly, I see. Do you believe her, Keram? I never heard of a child like this being stolen — what, fifteen, sixteen years ago?"

"Nor I," said Keram.

"They say the wild ones beyond the fields grow like this: tall, healthy-looking, despite their appalling way of life."

"But if she is wild, she is a clever one," Keram said carefully. "I thought her tale would amuse you."

Juna said, "It is the truth!"

The Potus barked laughter. "It speaks."

"She speaks well. She is clever, sir, with—"

"Dance for me, girl." When Juna stared back at him, mute, the Potus said with a quiet hardness, "Dance for me, or I will have you dragged from here now."

Juna understood little of what was happening, but she could see that her life depended on how she responded now.

So she danced. She recalled dances she and her sister Sion had made up as children, and dances she had joined as an adult, following the capering of the shaman.

After a time, the Potus grinned. And then he, as well as Keram and Muti, began to clap to the rhythm of her bare feet as they slapped against the floor of polished wood.

Naked, stranded in strangeness, she danced, and danced.

From the beginning Juna saw very clearly that if she wished to remain healthy, well-fed — and free of the scourge of endless, repetitive, back-breaking work — then she had to stay as close to the Potus as she could.

And so she made herself as interesting as possible. She rummaged through her memories for skills and feats that had been commonplace among her own people, and yet would seem marvelous to these hive dwellers. She organized long-distance races, which she won with stunning ease, even heavily pregnant. She made spear-throwers, and showed her skill at hitting targets so small and distant most of the Potus’s court couldn’t even see them. She would take random bits of stone, wood, and shell, and, starting with no tools at all, knap out blades and carve ornaments, a process that seemed charming and miraculous to these people, so remote were they from the resources of the Earth.

Her baby was born. He was a slender boy, who might grow up to look like Tori, his now-lost father. As soon as she could she began to train him to run, to dance, to throw as she could.

And when at last she coaxed Keram into her bed — when he forgave her the lies she had told to persuade him to bring her here — and when a year later, wearing his gold-studded shell necklace, she gave birth to his child, she felt her place at the heart of this nest of people was secure.

As for the city, it didn’t take Juna long to see the truth about this cramped hive.

This was a place of layers, of rigidity and control. The mass of the people here slaved their days away to feed the Potus, his wives, sons, daughters, and relatives, and those who served him, and the priesthood, the mysterious network of shamanlike mystics who seemed to live an even grander life than the Potus himself.

It had to be this way. With the taming of the plants, the land had become much more productive. The natural checks that had held back the growth of populations were suddenly removed. Human numbers exploded.

Suddenly people no longer bred like primates. They bred like bacteria.

The new, dense populations made possible the growth of new kinds of communities: large centers of population, towns, cities, fed by a steady flow of food and raw materials from the countryside.