They had not come far. Two red bodies barely three feet tall sprawled
near each other face down in the grass. Paul noticed oval bulges
between shoulder blades modified to accommodate them, the pathos of
fingers--seven-fingered hands--holding earth in a final grasp. The
male wore a loincloth of black fabric and a quiver almost full of
arrows; the female had a grass skirt, and her hand was tight on a
stone-headed spear longer than herself. A bow of carved wood lay some
distance away; one could see how the little man had crawled in his
agony after the bow was lost. Wright turned them over gently--bald
skulls, no trace of body hair on skin of a rich copper color exciting
to a painter's vision, green eyes with no visible whites in human
faces heavily tattooed, wide-open eyes, accusing no one. The bodies
were in rigor, a shaft in the man's neck, the woman pierced by an
arrow in the side. Blood colored the grass, dry but eloquent.
"War too," said Wright, and pulled out the arrows, showing Paul the
stone heads, the intricate carving of the wood, thin-whittled wooden
vanes taking the place of feathers. "Stone Age war...."
The male pygmy was the smaller of the two, and softer, his shape not
feminine but rounded and smooth. Both seemed mature, so far as age
could be guessed at all. The woman was rugged, with a coarser skin and
the scar tissue of old wounds; her two pairs of breasts were scarcely
more prominent than the ridged muscles of her midget chest.
Wright mulled it over, kneading his wrinkled throat. "Physical
refinements of evolution as far along as our own. Straight thigh and
neck, perfect upright posture; there was no slouch or belly sag when
they were on their feet. Human jaw, big brain case. That furry giant I
saw in the woods had complete upright posture too. Oh, it's natural,
Paul. You stick fins on an ocean vertebrate, turn him into a
four-legged land animal, give him a few hundred million years. Almost
bound to free his front limbs if they've stayed unspecialized." In the
gaunt face, sadness and pity struggled with a bitter sort of mirth.
"The brain gets large, boy, and away you go, to--ach--to the
Federation versus the Asian Empire--Lincoln, Rembrandt, the state
papers of Abraham Brown. And to you and Dorothy and the baby." Wright
stood erect, brushing bony knees, calm again. "I'm almost pleased to
find it this primitive. I don't think it can have gone further
anywhere on the planet, or we'd have seen cities, farms, roads, in the
photographs. Unless----"
"Unless what, Doctor?"
"Oh--unless there might be forms with no Earth parallel. In the
forests perhaps--even underground. Thought of that? But that's
speculations, and our little soldiers here are fact. They have a
civilization--arrows say so, tattooing, garments. Rigid,
tradition-bound--or maybe not, depending on how much language they've
developed to tie 'emselves in knots with."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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