It looked as if he had lied about the honey. But Noth was incapable of telling genuine lies — planting a false belief in the minds of others — for he had no real understanding that others had beliefs at all, let alone that their beliefs could be different from his, or that his actions could shape those beliefs. The peekaboo game played with human infants — if you want to hide, just cover your eyes; if you can’t see them, they can’t see you — would have fooled him every time.
Noth was one of the most intelligent creatures on the planet. But his intelligence was specialized. He was a great deal smarter concerning problems about the others of his kind — where they were, their potential for threat or support, the hierarchies they formed — than about anything else in his environment. He couldn’t, for example, associate snake tracks with the possibility that he might stumble on a snake. And though his behavior looked complex and subtle, he obeyed rules as rigidly as if they had been programmed into a tribe of robots.
And still the notharctus spent much of their lives as solitary foragers, just as Purga had. It was visible in the way they moved: They were aware of each other, avoided each other, huddled for protection, but they did not move together. They were like natural loners forced to cooperate, uncomfortably imprisoned by necessity with others.
As Noth worked the forest floor, a troop of dark little creatures scurried by nervously. They had ratlike incisors, and a humble verminous look compared to Noth and his family, their black-and-white fur patchy and filthy. These little primates were plesiadapids: all but identical to Purga, even though she had died more than fourteen million years before. They were a relic of the past.
One plesi came too close, snuffling in its comparative blindness; Noth deigned to spit a seed at it; the seed hit the scuttling creature in the eye, and it flinched.
A lithe body, low-slung, slim, darted from the shade of the trees. Looking like a hyena, this was a mesonychid.
Noth and his family cleared off the ground quickly.
The plesi froze. But it was hopelessly exposed on this open forest floor.
The mesonychid hurled itself forward. The plesi squirmed and rolled, hissing. But the meso’s teeth had already taken a chunk out of its hind leg. Now more of the meso’s pack, scenting blood, came jostling toward the site of the attack.
The mesonychid was a kind of condylarth, a diverse group of animals related to the ancestors of hoofed animals. The meso was not an expert killer or a meat specialist but, like a bear or wolverine, it was an opportunistic feeder. All the condylarths were doomed to extinction ten million years before the age of mankind. But for now they were in their pomp, top predators of the world forest.
The other inhabitants of the forest floor reacted in their different ways. The lorislike adapid had a shield of thickened skin over bony bumps on its back, beneath which it now tucked its head. The big, dull barylambda concluded it was under no threat even from a pack of these small hunters; like the hyenas of later ages, the mesos were primarily scavengers and rarely attacked an animal much bigger than themselves. The taeniodont, however, decided that caution was called for; pompously it trotted away, its gaping mouth showing its high teeth.
Meanwhile the plesi fought on, inflicting scratches and bites on its assailants. One of the mesos was left whining, the tendons of its right hind leg badly ripped, blood leaking from torn flesh. But at last the plesi succumbed to their teeth and weight. The mesos formed a loose circle around their victim, their slim bodies and waving tails clustered around their meal like maggots around a wound. The rising stink of blood, and the fouler stench of panic shit and stomach contents, overwhelmed Noth’s sensitive nose.
Though some of the ancient plesiadapids had specialized, learning how to husk fruit like opossums or to live off the gum of trees, they remained primarily insect eaters. But now they faced competition from other insectivores, the ancestors of hedgehogs and shrews — and from their own descendant forms like the notharctus. Already the early-form plesis had become extinct across much of North America, surviving only in fringe areas like this marginally habitable polar forest, where the endless days did not suit bodies and habits shaped during the nights of the Cretaceous. Soon the last of them would be gone.
Noth, high in the cathedral calm of the trees, could see the family as they climbed up toward him, their lithe limbs working smoothly. But something disturbed him: a shift in the light, a sudden coldness. As clouds crowded past the sun, the great forest-spanning buttresses of light were dissolving. Noth felt cold, and his fur bristled. Rain began to falclass="underline" heavy misshapen drops that clattered against the trees’ broad leaves and pounded like artillery shells into the mud below.
It was because of the onset of the rain, and the overwhelming stink of the bloody deaths below, that Noth did not detect the approach of Solo.
Hidden in a patch of shadow, his scent blowing downwind, Solo saw the notharctus troop scurrying to safety.
And he saw Noth’s mother with her infant.
She was a fertile, healthy female: that was what the presence of the infant told him about her. But there was a mate with her, and since she already had a pup, she was unlikely to come into heat again this season. Neither of those factors were an obstacle to Solo. He waited until Noth’s family had settled on a branch, calming down, out of immediate danger.
Solo, at three years old, was a mature, powerful male notharctus. And he was something of a freak.
Most males roamed the forests in small bands, seeking out the larger, more sedentary troops of females where they might find a chance to mate. Not Solo. Solo preferred to travel alone. He was larger and more powerful than almost all the females he had encountered in his travels in this polar forest. Again, in this Solo was unusual; the average adult male was smaller than the average female.
And he had learned to use his strength to get what he wanted.
With a lithe swing Solo dropped down to the branch and stood upright before Noth’s mother. He looked unbalanced, for his hind legs were comparatively massive, his forearms short and slender, and he held his long tail up in the air so that it hooked over his head. But he was tall, and very still, and very intimidating.
Noth’s mother could smell this huge stranger: not kin. She immediately panicked. She hissed and pushed Left behind her.
Noth’s father came forward. He raised himself up on his hind legs and faced the intruder. Moving with fast jerky gestures he rubbed his genital glands against the foliage around him, and swept his tail over his forearms so that the horny spurs above his wrist glands combed through his tail fur and impregnated it with his scent. Then he waved the lustily stinking tail above his head at the intruder. In the scent-dominated world of the notharctus, it was an awesome display. Get away. This is my place. This is my troop, my young. Get away.
There was nothing sentimental in the father’s behavior. Producing healthy offspring that survived to breeding age was the only purpose of this father’s life; he was preparing to take on the intruder solely through a selfish drive to see his own heritage preserved.
Usually this game of malodorous bluff would have continued until one or the other of the males backed down, without physical contact. But again Solo was unusual. He did not respond with any form of display, save for a cold stare at the other’s feverish posturing.
Noth’s father was unnerved by the newcomer’s eerie stillness. He faltered, his scent glands drying, his tail drooping.
Then Solo struck.
With teeth bared he lunged at Noth’s father, slamming into his chest. Noth’s father fell back, squealing. Solo dropped to all fours and fell on him, biting into his chest through a layer of fur. Noth’s father screamed and scurried out of sight. He was only slightly injured, but his spirit was broken.