Michael Bishop -.Ancient of Days

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"Bishop's thoughtful, sensitive portrayal represents

a major achievement in speculative fiction .... A

disturbing and sober reflection on what it means to

be human." --Library Journal

"ANCIENT OF DAYS is a solid narrative of

anthropological fiction, treating human culture,

religion, and alienation in ways that bring into

question who is the More alien: twentieth-century

Americans, or the (perhaps) last survivor of a

pre-human species of hominid. It's real stuff. The

right stuff." --Ed Bryant

"Bishop continues to deliver solid, memorable

novels that move the emotions, intrigue the mind,

and still keep your hands turning the pages."

-----Gregory Benford

"This is a fine, engrossing novel, certainly one of

Bishop's best, and with the most believable, likable

set of characters he has created yet. Bishop has

very quietly become one of the major talents in the

field." --Science Fiction Chronicle

"Michael Bishop is becoming the best SF writer in

the world." --A. E. van Vogt

TOI

A TORN DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

FOR DAVID HARTWELL,

who has ridden to the rescue More times

than the U.S. cavalry.

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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed

in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people ,or incidents is purely coincidental.

ANCIENT OF DAYS

or portions thereof in any form.

First Tot printing: September 1986

A TOR Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

49 West 24 Street

New York. N.Y. 10010

Cover art by Christopher Zacharow

ISBN: 0812531973

CAN. ED.: 0812531981

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 8428324

Printed in the United States

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I

CONTENTS

Her Habiline Husband I

His Heroic Heart 87

Heritor's Home 277

Part One

HER HABILINE

HUSBAND

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Beulah Fork, Georgia

RUTHCLAmE LOYD, my ex-wile, first ca

trespasser from the loft studio ofher barn-

Beulah Fork. Georgia. She was doing one

ings for a series of subscription-order por(

would feature her unique interpretations of

orders and the Holy Trinity (this particu

entitled Thrones), but she stepped away if

look through her bay window at the intru(

had caught her eye.

Swart and gnomish, he was moving

shadowy grass in the pecan grove. His

bined an aggressive curiosity with a kind

as il' he had every right to be there

someone--the property's legal owner, a

bor--to call him to accounts. Passing fr

September sunlight into a patch of shad,

one of the black boys who had turned

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creek into the skinnydipping riviera of Hot

He was a little far afield, though, and

limning his upper body made him look to

ught sight of the

sized house near

of twelve paint:elain

plates that

'the nine angelic

lar painting was from the easel to

Jer. His oddness'

through the tall

novements com- if placid caution,

Jt still expected

buttinsky neigh'om

a dapple of

e. he resembled

Cleve Synder's

hlepoya County.

the light briefly o haiJ3' for most

Michael Bishop

ten-year-olds, whatever their color. Was the trespasser

some kind of animal?

"He's walking," RuthClaire murmured to herself. "Hairy

or not, only human beings walk like that."

My ex is not given to panic, but this observation worded

her. Her house (I had relinquished all claims to it back

in January, primarily to spare her the psychic upheaval of

a move) sits in splendid-spooky isolation about a hundred

yards from the state highway connecting Tocqueville and

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Beulah Fork. Cleve Synder, meanwhile, leases his adjacent

ninety acres to a cotton grower who does not live

there. RuthClaire was beginning to feel alone and vulnerable.

Imperceptibly trembling, she set aside her brushes and

paints to watch the trespasser. He was closer to the house

now, and a rake that she had left leaning against one of the

'pecan trees enabled her to estimate his height at a diminutive

four and a half feet. His sinewy arms bespoke his

maturity, however, as did the massiveness of his underslung

jaw and the dark gnarl of his sex. Maybe. she

helplessly conjectured, he was a deranged dwarf recently

escaped from an institution populated by violence-prone

sexual deviates ....

"Stop it," RuthClaire advised herself. "Stop it."

Suddenly the trespasser gripped the bole of a trec with

his hands and the bottom of his feet; he shinnied to a

swaying perch high above the ground. Here, for over an

hour, he cracked pecans with his teeth and single-mindedly

fed himself. My ex-wife's worry subsided a little. The

intruder seemed to be neither an outright carnivore nor a

rapist. Come twilight, though, she was ready f)r him to

leave, while he appeared perfectly content to occupy his

perch until Judgment Day.

RuthClaire had no intention of going to bed with a

skinnydipping dwarf in her pecan grove. She telephoned

me.

"It's probably someone's pet monkey," I reassured her.

"A rich Yankee matron broke down on the interstate, and

her chimpanzee--you know how some of those old ladies

from Connecticut are--wandered off while she was trying

to flag down a farmer to unscrew her radiator cap."

ANCIENT OF DAYS

"Paul." RuthClaire said. unamused.

'What'?"

"First of all "she replied, evenly enough. "a chimpan2 zee isn't a monkey, it's an ape. Secondly, I don't

know

anything at all about old ladies from Connecticut. And,

thirdly, the creature in my pecan tree isn't a chimpanzee or

a gibbon tlr an orangutan."

"I'd forgotten what a Jane Goodall fan you were."

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This riposte RuthClaire declined to volley.

"What do you want me to do'?" I asked, somewhat

exasperated. My ex-wife's imagination is both her fortune

and her folly: and at this point, to tell the truth. I was

thinking that her visitor was indeed an out-of-season skin-nydipper

or possibly a raccoon. For an artist RuthClaire is

remarkably nearsighted, a fact that contributes to the almost

abstractional blurriness of some of her landscapes

and backgrounds.

"Come see about me," she said.

IN BEULAH Fork I run a small gourmet restaurant called

the West Bank. Despite the incredulity of outsiders (as, for

instance, matrons from Connecticut with pet chimpanzees),

who expect rural eating establishments in the South

to serve nothing but catfish, barbecue, Brunswick stew,

and turnip greens, the West Bank offers cosmopolitan fare

and a sophisticated ambience. My clientele comprises professional

people, wealthy retirees, and tourists. The proximity

of a popular state park, the historic city of Tocqueville,

and a recreational area known as Muscadine Gardens keeps

me in paying customers: and while RuthClaire and I were

man'ied, she exhibited and sold many of her best paintings

right on the premises. Her work--4mly a Ikw pieces of

which I still have on my walls--gave the restaurant a kind

of muted bohemian elegance, but. in turn, the West Bank

gave my wife a unique and probably invaluable showcase

'" · 6 Michael Bishop

for her talent Until our split, I think, we both viewed the

relationship between her success and mine as healthily

symbiotic.

Art in the service of commerce. Commerce in the service

of art.

RuthClaire had telephoned me just before the dinner

hour on Friday. The West Bank had reservations from More than a dozen people from Tocqueville and

the Gardens,

and I did not really want to dump the whole of this

formidable crowd into the lap of Molly Kingsbury, a

bright young woman who does a better job hostessing than

overseeing my occasionally highstrung cooks, Hazel

Upchurch and Livia George Stephens. But dump it I did. I

begged off my responsibilities at the West Bank with a

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story about a broken water pipe on Paradise Farm and

drove out there lickety-split to see about my ex. Twelve

miles in ten minutes.

RuthClaire led me to the studio loft and pointed through

her window into the pecan grove. "He's still sitting there,"

she said.

I squinted. At this hour the figure in the tree was a mere

smudge among the tangled branches, not much bigger than

a squirrel's nest. "Why didn't you shoot off that .22 i

gave you'?" I asked RuthClaire, a little afraid that she was

having me on. Even the spreading crimson sunset behind

the pecan grove did not enable me to pick out the alleged

trespasser.

"I wanted you to see him, too, Paul. I got to where I

needed outside, confirmation. Don't you see'?"

No, I didn't see. That was the problem.

"Go out there with me," RuthClaire suggested. "The

buddy system's always recommended for dangerous enterprises."

"The buddy I want is that little .22, Ruthie Cee." She

stood aside while I wrested the rifle out of the gun cabinet,

and together we went back down the sairs, through the

living and dining rooms, and out the plate-glass doors opening onto the pecan grove. Beneath the

intruder's tree

we paused to gape and take stock. The stock I took went

into the cushion of flesh just above my right armpit, and I

ANCIENT OF DAYS

sighted along the barrel at a bearded black face like that of

a living gargoyle.

RuthClaire was right. The trespasser wasn't a monkey;

he More near]y resembled a medieval demon, with a small

but noticeable ridge running fore and aft straight down the

middle of his skull. He had been on the cusp of falling

asleep. I think, and the apparition of two human beings at

this inopportune moment greatly startled him. The fear

showed in his beady, obsidian eyes, which flashed between

my ex-wilE and me like sooty strobes. His upper lip

moved away from his teeth.

From above the mysterious creature I shot down a dangling

cluster of branches that would have eventually fallen,

anyway. The report echoed all the way to White Cow

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Creek, and hundreds of foraging sparrows scattered into

the twilight like feathered buckshot.

"I swear to goodness, Paul!" RuthClaire'shouted, her

most fiery oath. She was trying to take the rifle out of my

hands. "You've always-been a shoot-first-talk-later fool but

that poor fella's no threat to us! Look!"

i gave up the .22 as I had given up Paradise Farm,

docilely, and I looked. RuthClaire:s visitor was terrified,

almost catatonic. He could not go up, and he could not

come down; his head was probably still reverberating from

the rifle shot, the heart-stopping crash of the pecan limb. I

wasn't too sorry, though. He had no business haunting my

ex.

"Listen," I said, "you asked me to come see about

you. And you didn't object when I brought that baby down

from the loft, either."

Angrily, RuthClaire ejected the spent shell, removed the

.22's magazine, and threw the rifle on the ground. "I

wanted moral support. Paulie, not a hit man. I thought the

gun was vottr moral support, that's all. i didn't know you

were going to try to murder the poor innocentwretch with

it."

"'Poor innocent wretch,'" I repeated incredulously.

"'Poor innocent wretch'?"

This was not the first time we had found ourselves

arguing in front of an audience. Toward the end it had

Michael Bishop

happened frequently at the West Bank, RuthClaire accus

ing

me of insensitivity, neglect, and philandering with my

female help (although she knew that Molly Kfngsbury was

having none of that nonsense), while I openly rued her i

blinkered drive lor artistic recognition, her lack of regard i

of my inborn business instincts, and her sometimes mad

deningly

rigorous bouts of chastity. The West Bank is :

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small--a converted doctor's office wedged between Glo-

ria's Beauty Shopand Ogletree Plumbing & Electric, all in

the same red-brick shell on Main Street--and even arguing I

in the kitchen we could give my customers a discomfiting i

earful. Only a few tolerant souls, mostly locals, thought i

these debates entertaining: and when my repeat business

from out of town began falling off, well, that was the last

.straw. I made the West Bank off limits to RuthClaire.

Soon thereafter she began divorce proceedings.

Now a shivering black gnome, naked but for a see-through

leotard of hair, was staring down at us as my ex

compared me to Vlad the lmpaler, Adolf Hitler. and the

government of South Africa. I began to think that he could I

not be too much More bewildered and unconffortable than I .

"What the hell do you want me to do'?" i finally

blurted.

"Leave me alone with him," RuthClairc said. "Go

back to the house."

"That's crazy," I began. "That's--"

"Hush, Paulie. Please do as I say, all right?"

I retreated to the sliding doors, no farther. RuthClaire

talked to the trespasser. In the gathering dark she crooned

reassurance. She consoled and coaxed. She even hummed

a lullaby. Her one-sided talk with the intruder was interminable.

I, because she did not seem to be at any real risk,

went inside and poured myself a powerful scotch on the

rocks. At last RuthClaire returned.

"Paul," she said, gazing into the pecan grove, "he's a

member of a human species--you know, a collateral human

species--that doesn't exist anymore."

"He told you that, did he'?"

"I deduced it. He doesn't speak."

ANCIENT OF DAYS

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"Not'English, anyway. What do you mean, 'doesn't exist

anymore"/He's up in that tree, isn't he'?"

"Up in the air, More like," RuthClaire said. "It reminds

me of that Indian, lshi."

"Who-shiT'

"A Yahi Indian in northern California whose name was

!shi. Theodora Kroeber wrote a couple of books about

him." RuthClaire gestured at the shelves across the room

from us: in addition to every contemporary best seller that

came through the B. Dalton's in Tocqueville Commons

Mall. these shelves housed art books, popular-science volumes,

and a "feminist" library of no small proportions,

this being RuthClaire's term for books either by or about

women, no matter when or where they lived. (The BrontE

sisters were next to Susan Brownmiller; Sappho was not

far from Sontag.)

I lifted my eyebrows: '"P'

"Last of his tribe," RuthClaire explained. "lshi was the

last surviving member of' the Yahi; he died around' nineteen

fifteen or so, in the Museum of Anthropology in San

Francisco." She mulled this bit of intelligence. "It's my

guess, though, that our poor wretch comes from a species

that originated in East Africa two or three million years

ago." She mulled her guess. "That's a little longer than

lshi's people were supposed to have been extinct before

Ishi himself turned up, I'm afraid."

"There goes your analogy."

"Well, it's not perJi, ct, Paul, but it's suggestive. What

do you think'?"

"That you'd be wiser calling the hugger in the tree a

deranged dwarf instead of an Indian. You'd be wiser yet

.just calling the police."

RuthCtaire went to the bookshelf and removed a volume

by a well-known scientist and television personality. She

had everything this flamboyant popularizer had ever written.

After flipping through several well-thumbed pages, she

found the passage pertinent to her argument:

"'Were we to encounter Homo habilis---dressed, let us

say. in the latest fashion on the boulevards of some modern

metmpolis--:-we would probably give him only a pass

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Michael Bishop -.Ancient of Days

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