way to keep the fire going was to add more fuel to the tiny conflagration at my feet.
“Here we go,” I crooned. “Here we go now. Gonna barbecue up some ribs for every little Minid.”
I began nudging the heart of my fire across the hilltop to the ledge of eroded boulders overlooking New Helensburgh. I charred the toe of one of my chukkas doing this, but the habilines, fuddled, parted to give me passage, then closed again and followed me to the lip of the granite wall. Directly below me was one of the four habiline huts. Crying “Banzai!” I kicked the pitiful remains of my fire over the ledge and onto the topknot of dry grass roofing that shelter. The hut ignited almost at once, sending a shower of sparks back up the hillside and illuminating our citadel, no doubt, for miles across the outlying steppe.
Several of the Minids began singing, pouring out arias of praise or lamentation to the youthful night. Your heart would have leapt or broken to hear them, and mine, I think, did both. In my hands, though, was the stick on which I had spitted the remaining meat, and I lifted this load into the air with both hands, presenting it to Ngai, Who dwells on Mount Tharaka. The fitful singing of the habilines faded in my ears.
“Preheat to four hundred fifty degrees!” I shouted. “Then roast until a tender cinnamon-brown throughout and bubbling with natural juices! Serve with pineapple slices, parsley sprigs, and side dishes of fresh spinach salad!”
I hurled the warthog haunch into the burning hut, where it collapsed a section of thatching and disappeared into an angry roar of flames. The smell of the roasting meat was heavenly. The habilines left off lamenting the ruin of the hut to peer down into the conflagration. I half expected to see the soul of that poor suid ascending to the realm of spirits on blistered pig’s feet. Helen, who had crowded forward, was suddenly at my elbow.
“You don’t have to roast the rafters with the repast,” I announced to all and sundry. “But it’s a time-honored technique. Invented by a Chinese nitwit descended, I assume, from Peking man. Read all about it. Read all about it in . . . in ‘A Dissertation on Roast Lamb’ by one Charles Pigg—for of all the delicacies in the entire mundus edibilis, my friends, this one is the princeps. Hallelujah. Step right up, brothers, sisters; step right up for a succulent taste of heaven.”
The fire did not spread to the other huts. Twenty or thirty minutes later, when the ashes were smoldering and a few acacia boughs crumbling into crimson coals, I worked my way down the hillside to New Helensburgh with Alfie, Helen, Genly, Emily, Mister Pibb, and several of the smaller children. With a stick I rolled the burnt warthog haunch out of the ashes and onto a rock to cool. Later, I gave a taste to everyone who wanted one. The habilines all appeared to enjoy what they ate, but I have since begun to doubt if their taste buds were sufficiently developed to permit fine discriminations. A pity, if true. Why were our ancestors so late to harness the random lightning to the cooking of their foods? Perhaps because they had no incentive in their mouths . . .
Following dinner the Minids wrestled, raced, and cut capers, the curmudgeons along with the kiddies. There was not much order to these postprandial festivities, only enthusiasm and a high level of tolerance for juvenile mischief, no matter how old the perpetrators. I had recovered from both my dizziness and my irrational fears of coming down sick. And although the bloated feeling that springs from overindulgence now plagued me, I bore it stoically. I did not care if I ever returned to the present. The moon, looking little or no different from the way it looks today, spilled its ghostly lantern sheen across the vast savannah. The Minids and I were Children of Eve together, Sons and Daughters of the Dawn. With Genly and Roosevelt as sentries, we lay down like siblings on the hilltop.
I was happy; supremely, unconditionally happy.
But I dreamt that night, a dream of my adolescence many thousands upon thousands of years into the future of the planet. No Alka Seltzer in the Pleistocene, you see, not even in the first-aid kit of an Air Force chrononaut . . .
Chapter Thirteen
Van Luna, Kansas
April 1964
AS SOON AS WINTER HAD GIVEN WAY to the