This would have been in Patch’s interests too. Her swelling was there to advertise Patch’s fertility to as many males as possible. For one thing, the resulting competition kept the quality of her suitors high without requiring any effort from her. And if all the males in the group mated with her at some time, none of them could be sure who exactly was the father of an infant — so any male tempted to murder an infant to speed up a female’s fertility cycle ran the risk of killing his own offspring. The swellings, her very public estrus, were thus a way for Patch to control the males around her at minimal cost to herself, and to reduce the risk of infanticide.
But on this tiny raft there was only one adult female, and Whiteblood wasn’t about to share. Crest and Left looked on, sitting side by side, chewing on leaves, their comical erections sticking out of their fur. They could stare all they liked at Patch’s refulgent swelling. But every time either of them approached Patch, let alone touched her for the most tentative grooming, Whiteblood would fly into a fury, displaying and attacking the perpetrator.
As for Roamer, she would always be subordinate to Patch, always a stranger. But in these stripped-down conditions she had quickly grown as close to Patch as to one of her own sisters.
While Whiteblood and Patch were coupling, Roamer would often take Scrap. After the first few days Scrap had accepted Roamer as an honorary aunt. The infant’s tiny face was bald and her fur was olive-colored, quite different from her mother’s; it was a color that triggered protective feelings in Roamer, and even in the males. Sometimes Scrap would play alone, clambering clumsily over the matted branches, but more often she wanted to cling to Roamer’s chest or back, or to be held in Roamer’s arms.
Sharing the load of child rearing was common among anthros — although it was usually only kin who would be allowed to serve as child minders.
Anthro infants grew much more slowly than had the pups of Noth’s era because of the time it took their larger brains to develop. Though they were well developed at birth compared to human infants, with open eyes and the ability to cling to their mothers’ fur, anthro pups were uncoordinated, weak, and utterly dependent on their mothers for food. It was as if Scrap had been born prematurely and was completing her growth outside her mother’s womb.
This put a lot of pressure on Patch. For eighteen months an anthro mother had to juggle the daily demands of survival with the need to care for her infant — and she had to keep up grooming time with her sisters, peers, and potential mates. Even before her stranding on this raft, all these pressures had left Patch exhausted. But the society of females around her provided her with a ready supply of would-be aunts and nannies to take the infant away and give her a break. Roamer’s amateur aunting was helpful to Patch, and besides it gave Roamer a lot of pleasure. It was a kind of training for her own future as a mother. But also it let her indulge in a lot of grooming.
They all missed grooming. It was the most difficult thing about this oceanic imprisonment. Even now Whiteblood was showing signs of overgrooming by his two acolytes; parts of his head and neck had been rubbed raw. So Roamer was happy to indulge the infant with long hours of gentle fur pulling, finger combing, and tickling.
But as the days went by the infant, perpetually hungry and thirsty, became increasingly unhappy. Scrap would wander around the raft, and even pester the males. Sometimes she would throw tantrums, tearing at the leaves or her mother’s fur or racing precariously around the raft in her tiny fury.
All of which served to wear out Patch further, and irritate everybody else.
So it went, day after long day. The anthros, trapped together on this sliver of dryness in an immense ocean, were continually, intensely aware of one another. If there had been more space, they could have gotten away from the infant’s annoying scampering. If there had been more of them, the younger males’ jealousy of Whiteblood would not have mattered; they could have easily found more receptive females, and relieved their tension with furtive matings out of Whiteblood’s sight.
But there was no larger group to soak up their tensions, no forest into which to escape — and no food but dry leaves, no water but the ocean’s brine.
One featureless day it all came to a head.
Scrap threw yet another tantrum. She hurled herself around the raft, coming perilously close to the patiently waiting ocean, ripping at leaves and bark, making throaty cries. She had grown skinny, the flesh hanging off her tiny belly, her fur bedraggled.
This time, the males did not slap her away. Instead they watched her, all three of them, with a kind of calculation.
At last Patch retrieved Scrap. She clutched the infant to her chest and let her suckle, though there was no milk to be had.
Whiteblood moved toward Patch. Generally he approached her alone — but this time the bigger of the brothers, Crest, followed him, the spray of fur over his eyes gleaming in the harsh sun. With Whiteblood sitting alongside him, Crest began to groom Patch. Gradually his fingers worked their way toward her belly and genitals. It was a clear precursor to an attempt at mating.
Patch looked startled and pulled away, Scrap clinging to her belly. But Whiteblood stroked her back, soothing her, until she settled and let Crest approach her again. Though Crest continually cast nervous glances at him, Whiteblood did not intervene.
Slumped against the crook of a branch, Roamer stared at the males, baffled by their behavior in a way Noth could never have been. As the minds of the primates became steadily more elaborate, it was as if a sense of self was diffusing outward, from the solitary Purga to her increasingly social descendants. All this enabled the anthros to develop new, complex, subtle alliances and hierarchies — and to practice new deceptions. Noth had had a firm understanding of his own place in the hierarchies and alliances of his society. The anthros could go one step beyond this: Roamer understood her own rank as junior to Patch, but she also understood the relative ranking of others. She knew that a senior like Whiteblood should not be allowing Crest to behave like this, as if encouraging him to mate with “his” female.
At last Crest moved behind Patch and placed his hands on her hips. Patch gave in to the inevitable. Presenting her pink rump to Crest, she pulled the sleepy pup from her chest and held her out to Roamer.
But Whiteblood leapt forward. With the precision of the tree-dwelling primate he was, Whiteblood grabbed the infant from Patch’s hands. Then he scampered over to Left, carrying the infant by her scruff, quickly followed by a nervous Crest.
Patch seemed baffled by what had happened. She stared at Whiteblood, her rump still raised to her vanished suitor.
The males had formed a tight huddle, their furry backs making a wall. Roamer saw how Whiteblood cradled Scrap, almost as if nursing her.
The infant kicked her tiny legs and gurgled, gazing up at Whiteblood. Then Whiteblood put his hand over her scalp.
Suddenly Patch understood. She howled and hurled herself forward.
But the brothers turned to meet her. Both of these immature males outsized Patch. Though they were nervous about showing hostility to a senior female, they easily kept her at bay with slaps and hoots.
Whiteblood closed his hand. Roamer heard the crunch of bone — a sound like a potbelly biting into a crisp leaf. The infant kicked convulsively, and then was limp. Whiteblood looked down on the little body for a heartbeat, his expression complex as he stared at the olive-colored face, now twisted in final pain. And then the males fell on the tiny body. A bite at the neck and the head was soon severed; Whiteblood pulled the limbs this way and that until cartilage snapped and bones cracked. But it was not meat the males wanted most but blood, the blood that poured from the child’s severed neck. They drank greedily of the warm liquid, until their mouths and teeth were stained bright red.