Climate of Change Read online

  CLIMATE of CHANGE

  TOR BOOKS BY PIERS ANTHONY

  THE XANTH SERIES

  Vale of the Vole

  Heaven Cent

  Man from Mundania

  Demons Don’t Dream

  Harpy Thyme

  Geis of the Gargoyle

  Roc and a Hard Place

  Yon Ill Wind

  Faun & Games

  Zombie Lover

  Xone of Contention

  The Dastard

  Swell Foop

  Up in a Heaval

  Cube Route

  Currant Events

  Pet Peeve

  Stork Naked

  Air Apparent

  Two to the Fifth

  Jumper Cable

  THE GEODYSSEY SERIES

  Isle of Woman

  Shame of Man

  Hope of Earth

  Muse of Art

  Climate of Change

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Alien Plot

  Anthonology

  NONFICTION

  How Precious Was That While

  Letters to Jenny

  But What of Earth?

  Ghost

  Hasan

  Prostho Plus

  Race Against Time

  Shade of the Tree

  Steppe

  Triple Detente

  WITH ROBERT E. MARGROFF

  The Dragon’s

  Dragon’s Gold

  Serpent’s Silver

  Chimaera’s Copper

  Orc’s Opal

  Mouvar’s Magic

  The E.S.P. Worm

  The Ring

  WITH FRANCES HALL

  Pretender

  WITH RICHARD GILLIAM

  Tales from the Great Turtle

  (Anthology)

  WITH ALFRED TELLA

  The Willing Spirit

  WITH CLIFFORD A. PICKOVER

  Spider Legs

  WITH JAMES RICHEY AND ALAN RIGGS

  Quest for the Fallen Star

  WITH JULIE BRADY

  Dream a Little Dream

  WITH JO ANNE TAEUSCH

  The Secret of Spring

  WITH RON LEMING

  The Gutbucket Quest

  CLIMATE of CHANGE

  PIERS ANTHONY

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK · NEW YORK

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  CLIMATE OF CHANGE

  Copyright © 2010 by Piers Anthony Jacob

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-2353-8

  First Edition: May 2010

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  1. Hero’s Dilemma

  2. Haven’s Curse

  3. Craft’s Strategy

  4. Rebel’s Dream

  5. Keeper’s Quest

  6. Hunt

  7. Ambush

  8. Revelation

  9. Decision

  10. Language

  11. Legend

  12. Special Child

  13. Princess

  14. Hunger

  15. City Island

  16. Botany Bay

  17. The Vision

  18. Sacrifice

  19. Musa Dagh

  20. Bounty Hunt

  Author’s Note

  INTRODUCTION

  In school I hated history classes. This was ironic, because the study of human history has been a hallmark of my later life. So what was the problem in school? It was that a school’s idea of history was lists of the names and dates of kings, the dates of battles, and maybe some lists of products of the times. Things to memorize. I was never good at memorization.

  So the kind of history I liked was ancient, before there were names and dates. The problem was that there were no classes in that. So I had to research it myself. But there were huge gaps. Here is a typical example: modern man emerged from Africa about 100,000 years ago. Then he expanded throughout the rest of the world about 50,000 years ago. What happened in between? It was a mystery. It aggravated me.

  Now at last we have a hint: it was the climate. Mankind was spreading, but then came the Mt. Toba volcanic eruption, 74,000 years ago, of a scale we have never seen in historic times. It blotted out the sunlight and obliterated perhaps 99 percent of human life, and I think all of it outside of the home territory of Africa. Mankind had to recover and start over after that setback, from a far smaller base. This time there was no eruption of that magnitude, and he succeeded in colonizing the world, though constantly affected by the weather.

  I also have a broader idea of history than conventional texts do. I see it as a process dating from when mankind separated from the apes, several million years ago. When he left the trees, walked on two feet, learned to use tools, started wearing clothing, and learned to talk. I believe that the phenomenal tool of language powered his explosive increase in brain size. That brain made it possible for him to conquer the world, once he learned how to use it.

  There were other mysteries. Why did he lose his fur, so that he had to replace it with clothing? Why did human women, alone of all mammals, develop permanent breasts that weren’t needed for feeding her babies?

  Okay, such things have been addressed in the prior volumes, but here’s a spot summary. That burgeoning brain needed to be kept cool, especially when people insisted on going out in the equatorial African sun at noon. They went out, in significant part, because few other animals could; they would die in the heat. Thus foraging was better, because of reduced competition. Walking erect helped by diminishing the amount of the body exposed to the sun, but it wasn’t enough. So the loss of fur and the development of copious sweating made the skin the most efficient cooling system in the animal kingdom. That’s what air-conditioned the brain. At night or in winter clothing was used to keep the body warm; it was easier to do that, than to cool an active furry body.

  And breasts. When people walked on two feet, it was a special challenge for the youngest children, because of the constant delicate balancing act required. It would take a couple of years for them to get the hang of it, and longer to become really fleet. But a hungry lion would not wait two years before pouncing. So the mother had to carry her baby. That meant she could not run as fleetly herself, and it inhibited her foraging for food. She needed help, such as by a man. In the normal animal scheme, a male sees a female as good for only one thing. It takes a minute or so, and then he goes on about his business. How could the human female get him to stay close longer than that one minute?

  Well, she found a way. She did it through sex appeal. She made herself seem perpetually breedable, so that he was constantly attracted to her, wanting to spend his minute not just once a year but several times a day. Men are hardwired to want to breed any availabl
e breedable woman, often. She concealed her estrus—that is, when she was fertile and could become pregnant, so that he could not cherry-pick his time.

  But what about her breasts? Mammals use them to feed their infants, and once the baby stops nursing, those mammaries shrink back to token size and the female is breedable again. Full breasts are a turnoff, because she can’t be bred while nursing. The human woman couldn’t get rid of her breasts to make herself look sexy, because her unfed baby would die. Here was perhaps the most significant challenge: to convert that turn-off signal to a turn-on signal, so as to conceal her time of nonfertility—which was obvious as long as those big breasts were evident—and to make the man desire not the absence of breasts but the presence of them. A 180-degree turn.

  Somehow she managed it. Maybe it was that those women who did not attract the constant attention of at least one man did not survive. So surviving boys were the sons of fathers who liked full breasts, contrary to their former self-interest. Men who bought into the fiction of breedability, though they had to know better. Thus breasts became potent sexual lures, and women used them freely to keep men close. You will see it throughout this novel: when a woman flashes her breasts, the man notices and is drawn to her. This is true right up to the present time. Men want to look at women’s breasts, to feel them, to kiss them, and to have sex with bare-breasted women. The reason is historical.

  But how many school history texts have that discussion? They seem to prefer to keep breasts out of sight and out of mind. I concluded that if I wanted a book to show my kind of history, I would have to write it myself. Thus this GEODYSSEY series, concluding with this volume. Oh, sure, there are some dates and places and names, but generally only to help set the scene. The essence is in the stories. I am a storyteller, and this too is part of the development of the species: storytellers kept children close and quiet during dangerous times, and helped them increase their vocabularies and their imagination, and to learn the nature of their culture. Storytellers were always historians as well as entertainers. So I am merely returning to our origins.

  Each volume has its own cast of characters, usually a particular family and its romantic associations as it struggles to survive the challenges of existence. This one has a family of five siblings, three boys and two girls, who relate to a family of two siblings, boy and girl. What’s different is the ambiguity of relationships: which boy of the three marries the girl, and which of the two family girls does her brother marry? Different chapters have different combinations, which may be confusing at first, but it seemed the most feasible way to explore alternative prospects. So much of human history is what might have been. We all do wonder on occasion: If only we had gone with this partner instead of that one, how much better life might be. So in this novel we explore them all.

  One other thing. This time I have five settings, following five specific peoples from the time of their first awareness as separate entities to the present. These are the Xhosa (pronounced Kosa) of Africa, the Basques of Europe, the Alani of the near east, the Aborigines of Australia, and the Maya of Central America. All were eventually overtaken by the globally advancing Europeans and largely suppressed, but all retain some fraction of their original cultures. World history is not just about the Europeans, despite the impression some historians seem to have.

  Thus my version of human history, here sampled for the past hundred thousand years.

  1

  HERO’S DILEMMA

  The precise chronology of the development of modern mankind is obscure. We are “primates,” because we fancy we have a prime position in the animal kingdom, but only recently—within the past million years or so—have we demonstrated much of that. Climate drove our development throughout; millions of years ago we were rain forest creatures, but when the climate changed and the forests shrank, we had to change too, or lose. So as dryness changed our habitat, we adapted to handle it. This adaptation took the usual evolutionary form: anyone who couldn’t handle dryness died.

  We became more flexible in gathering food, drawing on a greater variety of edible things, including scavenging meat. To get meat, including nutritious bone marrow, we had to use tools, and that made us use our brains more. Tools enabled us to manipulate our environment, to an extent, rather than being manipulated by it. Tools helped us compete with specialized animals, including predators. But it took time.

  Australopithecus started walking on two feet about five million years ago; two and a half million years ago Homo habilis showed an expanded brain and a smaller gut. These were related: it seemed we faced a choice whether to develop a more versatile digestive system, or a more versatile brain. Some primates chose the gut and huge teeth; we chose the brain. Homo erectus moved into Asia well before the moderns evolved, and was a sophisticated hunter. Spears have been found dating to 400,000 years ago, well made and balanced; Erectus knew what he was doing. But he seems to have lacked the fine breathing control needed for modern speech. He could probably talk, just not as readily as we do.

  Meanwhile back in Africa an even more sophisticated variant was evolving. Nothing less had any chance to displace Erectus, who had already conquered as much of the world as he cared to. For the purpose of this novel, it is assumed that modern man evolved in the Rift Valley and the region of Lake Victoria, in Africa. When the climate changed, constricting the plant and animal resources there, the growing human population could not be sustained. Some people had to move out, or all would starve. Thus a significant portion of mankind had to leave the Garden of Eden and travel elsewhere, searching for sustenance. They were not entirely pleased, as their subsequent legends suggested.

  The setting is the southern merging of the divided Rift Valley, north of Lake Malawi. The time is 100,000 BPE (Before Present Era). It should be remembered that at this time the human species was virtually identical to what it is today, in everything except numbers, technology, and information. The culture may have been primitive, but a man of that day was just about as smart as a man of today, and just about as competent with his hands and language. Subsequent small changes in aspects of the brain were to make a big difference, however. There is some evidence that there were startlingly elegant harpoons and knives in this region at this time, but it is inconclusive; more likely these date from 50,000 years ago, matching the level elsewhere in the world. So “conventional” technology is assumed for this story.

  It was the twentieth day of their journey south: both hands spread twice, in the gesture dialect. The end of the world was near, for ahead loomed the huge range of mountains that bordered it. If they did not find suitable land here, they would have to turn back, their mission failed.

  Hero shook his head. He had said he was confident, but he wasn’t. People and tribes much like their own occupied all the territory they had traversed, and all were crowded and hungry. The drought had impoverished the entire region. None wanted newcomers hunting or foraging in their lands. They were courteous to the travelers, but made it plain: Not Here.

  They were following the trading trail, which was marked by widely spaced piles of rocks and scraped earth and specially twisted trees. Travelers were allowed to hunt, forage, or fish along this route, but could be considered enemies if they strayed from it. Every so often they spied others watching them from a distance, so they knew that the restrictions would be enforced. It was bad luck to kill a traveler, for the spirits of the dead could be vengeful, but there were sharp limits to tolerance when times were tough.

  Haven sniffed. “Smoke,” she said. She was his sister, one year younger than he at seventeen years—three hands and two fingers—but a full-bodied woman who knew her mind. Her senses were sharp; she could spot a ripe fruit or hear an odd sound before Hero could. She was the apt forager, and that really helped on this mission.

  Now he smelled it too. “A hearth,” he said.

  “A cooking hearth,” she agreed. “We may have lodging for the night.”

  They moved on toward it, feeling better. They were used to t
raveling, but this was the end of the day, and they were tired and ready to rest. A native home could be very nice.

  In due course they saw it. At the base of a southern mountain was the house, formed of poles and brush, thatched over with woven branches. The hearth was in front, its open fire licking modestly up, roasting a leg of animal.

  There was a young woman by it, focusing on her cooking; her gender was made evident by her employment and her bare breasts. She had long hair, worn loose, just as Haven did, as an indication that she was unmated. But there was surely a man in the house, for lone women did not hunt large animals.

  Hero cupped his hands around his mouth. “Ho!” he called.

  The girl looked up. She spied them, and jumped to grab a spear, holding it defensively before her. The gesture was more to show that strangers were not trusted than to indicate any actual fighting ability. She had surely been aware of them, but preferred to pretend innocence. It was part of the protocol.

  Haven opened her hide cloak, spread her arms wide and stepped forward several paces, then stopped. She was showing her gender by her own bared breasts, and offering to come in alone, unarmed. That was the main reason she had come with Hero: to facilitate lodging with families. It had worked well enough so far.

  The girl paused, then beckoned with her free hand. Haven walked on in, while Hero stood where he was. He watched her go right up to the hearth and talk with the girl. Then Haven reached into her pack and brought out a small object, and gave it to the girl. That would be one of their brother Craft’s wooden carvings. They were marvelously intricate curiosities, linked circles cut from a larger piece. Anyone could bend a small branch around and tie it to itself to make a ring, and link another such ring to it, but to link always-solid circles was a novelty that intrigued just about anyone. So these artifacts were another key to hospitality, for there was no one who didn’t have some curiosity about oddities. That was part of what made a person human.