Capo knew how it would go. It would not be an all-out war. The strongest would go first, the males and senior females; the infants would probably provide some sweet flesh for the bellies of these strangers. One by one. It would be a slow, bloody killing, but it would continue until it was complete. Such systematic slaughter was a horror new to the world, a horror only these apes, of all the Earth’s animals, were smart enough to conceive of and see through.
They couldn’t stay here, Capo knew. Maybe they could go on, resume the trek across the plain; maybe Capo could yet lead his troop somewhere empty, somewhere safe.
But in his deepest gut he intuitively knew the truth. In this world of shrinking forests, the surviving animals had already crammed themselves into all the remaining islands of the old vegetation. And that was why the others would fight so hard to exclude them. There were already too many of them for this dwindling patch — and they had nowhere else to go either.
There was nowhere safe to go, but no choice but to leave.
With much foot scuffing and branch waving, he began the subtle dance that indicated he wanted to lead his troop away from this place — back to the edge of the forest, back to the savannah. One or two of the females responded. Intimidated by these ferocious others, realizing how hopeless their situation was, Leaf and the others gathered up their infants and prepared to follow. Even Frond, one of the defiant young males, turned in confusion.
But Finger would not accept it.
He had been slamming a hammer-stone against an exposed root, adding its powerful noise to his display. Now, with a sudden, terrifying surge, he turned away from the others and launched a ferocious assault on Capo. He slammed into Capo’s back, knocking him flat, and he pounded his leader’s head with his fists. Then he rolled away and threw himself with equal vigor at the largest of the others’ males. Suddenly the noise, already high, became cacophonous, and the air filled with the stink of blood and panic shit.
Capo rolled on to his back and sat up, his neck aching. The other males subtly moved away, even as they hooted and yelled.
Finger was not faring well. He had managed to pin the big male to the ground. But now more of the others were throwing themselves into the melee. Soon they had hold of Finger. They hauled him away from his opponent, holding his limbs and head as if he were a hunted monkey; already blood streamed from bite-inflicted gashes in his skin. And then they threw him to the ground. But his cries soon became gurgles, drowned in blood, and Capo heard the grisly rip of flesh, the cracking of bone, the snapping of ligaments.
But Finger’s attack had had a profound effect. If anyone was going to attack these others, it should have been Capo. Capo knew he had already lost. He would be lucky to survive the day: If these others did not kill him, then his own former subordinates would.
Capo, though shamed and beaten, resumed his calling dance, trying to get his troop to come away. There was nothing else he could do.
They didn’t all respond, even now. Some of them, spitting fear and defiance, dispersed into the forest to seek their own destinies. He would never see them again.
The young female Howl glanced at her troop with wide, fearful eyes — and then made directly for the others. She would suffer a beating at the hands of the females, but maybe she would be attractive enough to the other males to be allowed to live, especially if she managed to become pregnant quickly through the hard matings she would have to endure.
Those who remained with Capo at last began moving, back toward the fringe of the forest — but only when Frond echoed Capo’s dance.
Capo understood, of course. They were following Frond, not him.
They came back to the fringe of the forest. They were not pursued, not for now. They picked at leaves and scraps of fruit, dismayed, uncertain.
Capo was depressed to be back where he had started. He could even see the corpse of that infant gomphothere, still lying on the ground. He clambered into a tree away from the others, and built an impromptu nest.
Now that Finger was dead, he wasn’t sure who would emerge as his main challenger. Frond, perhaps? It was possible Capo could continue to maintain a powerful position by forming an alliance with one male against the other. He might no longer be the boss of bosses, but like a kingmaker his backing would be crucial, and he would continue to enjoy many of the privileges that came with power, notably mating privileges. Maybe he could even work his way back to the top that way. His subtle mind thought further, considering shifting alliances, treacheries…
His thoughts dissolved. He felt overwhelmed by the journey he had made, the crashing disappointment that had waited at the end of it. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, not even the intricate political games that had won him so much in the past.
The others seemed to sense his mood. They avoided him, not coming to groom, not even looking at him. His gruesome defeat had been postponed by the death of Finger, but its sad process was still under way. Capo’s day was done, his life nearly over. All his swagger was gone.
But now Leaf came to him. She clambered into his nest alongside him, and, gently, began to groom him, as she had when they were both young and the world was bright and rich and full of possibility.
Frond wasn’t interested in Capo, one way or the other. He had something else on his mind.
He knuckle-walked a few paces out into the sunlit green. There he got to his hind legs once more. As always he was unsteady on his feet. But the elevation of his head gave him a platform from which to view the land, check on any predators or other dangers around.
Frond ducked back into the grass, and made his way cautiously to the gomphothere corpse. As he approached, carrion birds screeched their protest but flapped away. The scavengers had done their work welclass="underline" The body looked as if it had exploded, with limbs and ribs lying scattered on the ground, bloody bone gleaming, and an eyeless, fleshless head peering back at him accusingly, spadelike tusks lying broken and gnawed. He rooted through the scraps of skin and bits of hyena-chewed flesh, but there was little to be had; the scavenging machinery of the savannah had worked thoroughly to consume the proboscidean’s flesh. The hyenas had even destroyed the soft ribs. But he found a thigh bone, long, thick, terminating at either end in huge, bulging lumps. It was unbroken. He tapped it experimentally against another bone; it sounded hollow.
He found a cobble in the dirt, the right size to fit into his fist. He raised the cobble and smashed it into the bone. The bone split, and rich, delicious marrow began to leak out. It was a resource that had been beyond the reach of the dogs and carrion birds, beyond their teeth and beaks. But now it was not beyond Frond. He raised the bone and began to suck down the marrow greedily.
The others who had driven Capo and his troop out of the forest would stay there, clinging to what they had. Such groups would eventually give rise to the chimpanzees, who would differ little from this ancestral stock. They would survive, even prosper: As the desert spread and the forests retreated to their last redoubts around the equator, the great rivers would provide corridors for the chimps to use to migrate into Africa’s interior.
But the descendants of Capo’s troop were now marching toward a very different destiny. This unremarkable troop of apes, stranded by the disappearance of their forest, would find there was a way to make a living out here. But leaving an ecology to which they had been adapting for millions of years was hard: As long as the apes couldn’t walk or run over long distances, while they couldn’t sweat, while they couldn’t even digest meat, many, many would die. But some would survive: just a few, but that was enough.