of these dreams I dreamed that first day (for undoubtedly some of these dreams came later), but the upshot of all my dreaming was that every episode came to generate its own context and to coexist with every other—so that each moment I lived was a reenactment of every moment that had preceded it. I became my own history. I became myself.
* * *
Someone touched me. I opened my eyes and saw her. Acting on its own, my hand went to my hip and unbuttoned the flap on my .45’s leather holster. The lady who had prompted this reaction—by every appearance a protohuman creature—retreated a step or two into the shade of the acacias, but did not bolt like the skittish australopithecines I had met earlier. My stomach flip-flopped, and I tried to get to my feet.
She watched me. How, two million and six years after our first meeting, to describe her? Well, even as my forefinger fumbled for my automatic’s trigger, I noticed that she had uncanny self-reliance and poise. The fact that she was carrying a hefty club in one fist underscored this observation, but did not occasion it. She appeared to be about four inches shy of five feet tall and too lithe of build to throw her weight around effectively—a diminutive, sinewy Black Beauty. Her beauty was to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore . . .
This poem crossed my mind, I think, because Babington had recited it repeatedly during our last two or three weeks together in the Lolitabu National Park. From the first, then, I called the creature who had awakened me in the prehistoric woods Helen—not so much after the Helen of Homeric legend as after the enduring passion of an old Wanderobo warrior who had once been married to a woman by that name. This distinction is important, for although I recognized the individuality of Helen Habiline’s beauty almost from the outset, I saw it in an African rather than a Western European context.
She appeared to be clad in the creation of a horny furrier. A girdle of fur covered her lower abdomen and loins, but her breasts and upper thighs were so lightly haired that the ebony smoothness of her flesh shone through. The hair on her head was hyacinth, wiry, and flyaway, almost as if she had grabbed an uncombed fright wig from a department store mannequin—but her eyes sparkled like ripe black olives and her nose was fierce and generous. Her everted upper lip curled backward over a set of prodigious uppers, teeth like unpainted casino dice. In brief, her face and figure commanded my attention, focused my admiration and awe.
The heat of the day and the suety animal smell of Helen told me that I was not dreaming. There was precedent for what was happening to us, too, for I recalled that on the only occasion that Lemuel Gulliver permits himself to go skinny-dipping in the land of the Houyhnhnms, a female Yahoo throws herself lustfully into the water after him. Although Helen was less brash than that libidinous Yahoo and I more modestly attired than the startled Gulliver, our meeting otherwise seemed to parallel that of our fictional counterparts.
Helen scrutinized my clothes with intent interest—from the red bandanna about my neck to the rubber-soled chukkas encasing my feet. When she cocked her head to one side, I had the unnerving impression that, with an effort of superhabiline concentration, she was mentally disrobing me. What kind of body did I have under the strategically arrayed skins cloaking my back and loins? Although she had never met a fop before, Helen clearly understood that my togs were accessories rather than outlandish extensions of my person. She tried to see through them to me.
I took off my bandanna and held it out to her. “Here. If you want it, it’s yours.”
Her eyes widened at the sound of my voice, but she did not accept the bandanna, merely studied the way it dangled between my fingers. Then she retreated another step or two.
“Joshua Kampa at your service. I’ve come in peace for all mankind. Womankind, too, as far as that goes.”
At this point Helen raised her club, showed me her enviably powerful teeth, and erected the short hairs on her shoulders and upper arms. This response nonplused and frightened me. I gestured placatingly with the bandanna, but she pivoted, glanced at me over one muscular shoulder, and, imparting