Tophero Son of Smilodon

By WW Ni

“I felt a sense of familiarity with this creature in my racing heart. Suddenly, I felt myself a stranger in a foreign land, overtaken by troublesome thoughts: Why did I, the most fearsome cat of the jungle, look not so much like his brothers but like this outlandish two-legged creature with a bewildering fair golden mane? And those haunting emerald green eyes--why do they reflect the romantic mystery of a bottomless lake?

Who am I?”

Tutored by his sabertooth siblings, young Gora learns to master the prehistoric world of Opalon, with its smoldering volcanoes, dueling dinosaurs, and treacherous tar pits. But the discovery of a computer in a hidden cave changes Gora’s world: he is able to teach himself English. Gradually, he internalizes the moral lessons to be found in the greatest literature and poetry of the planet Earth. He masters military strategy and trains himself in the martial arts. Upon realizing that he is a human being, he vows to uphold the highest values of humankind. He names himself Tophero (To’-Pha-raoh). His magnificent physique and sterling intelligence do not help to stave off loneliness; Tophero longs to meet others of his kind. But when they come, they bring love as well as destruction, and Tophero must use the primitive ways of the jungle to battle high-tech invaders. At stake: the survival of his home planet . . . the love of his life, an Earthling . . . and his very identity.

The interstellar romance and Tophero's quest for his roots play out against Powlo-Varkiss, the Opalonian master sorcerer of prehistoric beasts, the evil agenda of billionaire Derek Cole, also aboard the expedition in search of Opalon's fabled diamond mines; the machinations of the enemies of Tophero's human parents; and the unexpected discovery of the besieged Opalonian kingdom of Xandria, whose beautiful ruler, Princess Nya, desires Tophero for her own...

Tophero is an action-packed science fiction adventure that is a 21st century amalgam of Tarzan, Jurassic Park, and King Solomon’s Mines—the first volume of a trilogy of the Opalonian saga. Tophero: Son of Smilodon is a story of triumph over tragedy, one that celebrates the power of lexis and the ability of love and brotherhood to conquer and thrive in an exotic, uncharted world.

The book showcases the masterful talent of Lloyd’s fantasy art. Stunning, evocative, and meticulous, Lloyd’s images and W.W. Ni’s words combine the visual power of a fantastic graphic novel with the opulence of classical literature. Herein, Opalon and its denizens come alive.

Editorial Reviews

A heady blend of Conan the Barbarian, science-fiction archetypes, monstrous prehistoric beasts, and intrigues among fictional billionaires (who live in Montecito!), Tophero, Son of Smilodon: Jungle Lord of the New Millennium might just be the most action-packed entertainment you will find outside a movie theater. --The Independent

The author tapped into an ancient yearning for the wild part of ourselves to find expression and release... W.W. Ni has imagined this world so thoroughly, his powers of description are formidable, and his research is outstanding. When I wasnt reading the book, I found myself daydreaming about the characters, and felt a constant tickle of curiosity about what would happen next. This is a fascinating story, and I congratulate this talented writer. --Lois Gilbert is the author of River of Summer (Penguin-Putnam, 1999), Without Mercy (NAL Dutton, 2000,) and Returning to Taos (Five Star, 2006). Her work has been translated into German, Russian and Italian.

...A terrific idea. Part Tarzan, part space odyssey, part medieval epic, part crime novel, and part love story, it has something for everyone. Again, you have a very fruitful concept in Tophero--a yarn that mixes the prehistoric past, the present, and a space-age future--and you deliver it with obvious excitement and energy. --Peter Gelfan, Editor, Editorial Department, Inc., New York

• Language: English
• Publisher: WW Ni
• Release date: Jan 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466132788

WW Ni

W.W. Ni, 45, is a retired CFO. After two decades at the financial helm of various emerging businesses, Mr. Ni decided to pursue writing full time, something he has dreamed of doing ever since he was four years old. Mr. Ni currently resides in Santa Barbara, California. Tophero is his debut novel. His mission is to make Tophero the Top Hero of the new millennium. “The world needs a new Jungle Lord to fill the dreams of the young at heart. I was raised by the jungle...now the jungle lives in me.”

Book preview

Chapter I: Pinnacle of Carnivory

Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,

Offer no angles to the wind.

They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes

Less than themselves.

—A.S.J. Tessimond (1902-1962)

By the time the torrents of spring lifted, they had changed the tapestry beyond Tyra’s doorstep from canary yellow to emerald green.

As the searing temperature of the day gradually subsided, a gentle breeze spread the sweet perfume of flora mingled with the light stench of a great feline. The scent wafted from the edge of the jungle to the feet of the imposing cataract. An opalescent prism of sunlight cast a shimmering, fleeting rainbow on the ceiling of magenta clouds. The reconfiguration of the landmasses from the ancient tectonic shifts had piled red-hot volcanoes on top of their siblings and cobalt-blue quartz trees above their rivals.

Feeling the sultry zephyr in her face, Tyra watched lazily as her mate, a majestic sabertooth, prowled in the tall-grassed savannah beneath the eagle-shaped cliff. The orange twilit sky camouflaged his golden fur in jaguaresque rosettes. His object was a foraging giraffid grazing behind a stand of jade shamrocks large enough to cover its stunning coat.

Stealthily the carnivore moved; the scent of his prey intermixed with a powerful whiff of the sprouting buffalo grass reluctantly accepting his passing. His padded paws silently flattened the meadow while his raised ears took in only the sound of his quarry’s grazing. He took his time until he was merely body-lengths from his prey. Then, with a devastating bound, his long saberteeth pierced its windpipe and the herbivore collapsed under his momentum.

Rearing up on his hind legs, the sabertooth gave a thunderous roar. He scouted the area for any scavengers or enemies, then hefted the carcass in his powerful jaws and headed toward Tyra at the edge of the grassland.

The expectant mother purred in the simple language of Opalonian felines, elated by her mate’s return. The two commenced to feed peacefully, enjoying the fleeting happiness of the moment. Suddenly, Tyra raised her bloodied snout and her ears twitched in alarm at the sound of the peculiar shuffling gait of a cave bear. There followed the unmistakable scent of a stalking predator. Reading the wind, her nostrils quivered as her eyes turned ruthless, and she stood.

The shaggy omnivore ambled into view, its appetite for meat awakened by the scent of the bloody carcass. With a roar, the cave bear reared to its full height, taller than a fully-grown mastodon’s shoulders. Tyra saw the juggernaut’s fearsome claws extend ominously from his mighty forearms. The spiky tools he normally used to spear flying fish from the nearby stream, he planned to use to slash open his challenger’s belly today.

Tyra growled a warning as her mate snarled ferociously. The brown bear replied with his own gruff, low-pitched bellow and maintained his lumbering, stern advance.

As Tyra’s fear overcame her desire to feed, she backed away grudgingly from the giraffid’s carcass. However, her mate stood his ground. To protect her lifeblood, he flashed his saberlike fangs, raised his hackles, and charged at the intruder.

With stunning velocity, the cave bear flicked his right paw at Tyra’s leaping mate. The deadly claws stung the airborne smilodon across his shoulders. As the badly injured sabertooth struggled to retreat, his enemy pounded him with his unforgiving front limbs. When the brutal assault ended, the merest thread of life remained in the once-fierce cat’s battered body.

Watching her mate die defending her, the half-dazed she sprang onto the cave bear’s back and buried her sabers into his short neck. Perhaps she was taking a suicidal revenge, but she would not die alone. Taken by surprise, the cave bear tumbled to all fours. In his death struggle, the giant dislodged Tyra with an enraged jolt, breaking one of her saber fangs a third of the way down, with the tip still embedded inside of his neck. The cave bear’s horrid cry of agony reverberated across the plains, and his enormous body collapsed into the overgrown buffalo grass.

Exhausted and grief-stricken, Tyra slowly limped away from the scene of three large carcasses. She settled in the grass as the settling sun glided behind the golden peaks it ignited in the south. Later she would return to feed; she still had her unborn cubs to nourish. But for now, her only appetite was for unremitting keening. Her mournful howls echoed long into the night.

As the leaves turned amber, Tyra had her first litter of four. Although dainty for her race, her shattered canine signaled her ferocity and made her easily recognizable to the inhabitants of the plains. The broken sabertooth caused her constant pain, but she refused to let it impede her hunting. Moments earlier, she had struck down a zebralike grazer.

The brown buffalo grass behind her rustled, and three cubs wobbled out one by one. Warily, Tyra looked around and saw a fourth cub straggling behind in the tall grass, playing with a brightly speckled butterfly. Koko! She gently picked up the distracted cub in her jaws and carried it, wriggling in dismay, all the way to the zebra’s still-pulsating flesh. The cub’s displeasure with her mom quickly evaporated when she tasted the warm chops. The cubs fed spiritedly, rolling one on top of another, constantly jockeying for position. They were heavily spotted, nature’s protective camouflage, and had not developed their saberteeth. They barked and grunted, shoved and pushed each other to seek dominance among themselves.

What is that strange scent? Tyra’s hunger was sated, but she opened her mouth wide, using the sensitive scent receptacles inside her mouth and throat to suck in the odor of a hyaenodon cub—and something else. Earlier that day she had thought of finding a little plaything for her cubs to run after and on which to practice the art of slaying, for the killer instinct must be honed early. It often meant the difference between life and death on the verdant plains.

The thirst for water after a big meal brought the single mother to the stream, leading her little family behind her. As she slowly approached, camouflaging her stunning fur in the tall brown grass, she could not believe what she saw. A young hyaenodon with a peculiar baby lemur dangling from her jaws ran across her path. Tyra had never seen anything like it. The strange scent had to have come from the hairless lemur covered in giraffid hide.

Not surprisingly, the hyaenodon froze the moment she saw Tyra’s imposing frame, and sat cowering in fear for her own life. The tiny lemur, however, remained unimpressed. He adamantly struggled to pet the hyaenodon’s heaving chest while flopping upside-down from the jaws of his captor. His curious fondling proved to be too nerve-racking for his captor in the face of a huge feline. The young hyaenodon dropped the lemur, backed away from Tyra, and disappeared into the dense foliage with her stumpy tail tucked between her legs.

The hyaenodon held no interest for Tyra; the little hairless cub was what she was looking for. He was soft and plump, his smiling face cuddly in a way not dissimilar to her own cubs. She picked him up gently, for she did not want to impede his ability to crawl away from her brood before they were ready to seize him and bury their tiny fangs into his flesh.

Reeoooar! Kobu, the oldest cub, gave a squeaky snarl as Tyra dropped the little lemur to the ground in front of her litter. But the hairless lemur was not perturbed. He promptly wiggled his way toward Kobu and grabbed the wrinkly skin on top of his neck with his little hands. He forcefully pulled Kobu toward him as Kobu’s snarl turned into a whining complaint. The lemur then placed himself in the center among Tyra’s cubs, petting Kota’s nose good-naturedly. Ooo… ooo… he cooed, tousling Kota’s ears while making curious baby sounds to his newfound chums.

His playful overtures did not go unanswered. Tyra’s cubs seemed equally fascinated with their new playmate, who was roughly their size. They sniffed and poked at him, and allowed his affectionate petting.

Suddenly Koko reared up and pushed the tiny lemur onto his back. This is it; say goodbye! Tyra murmured out loud. But the wobbly she-cub who loved butterflies merely sniffed the lemur’s body all over and then applied the finishing touch by gently licking his face. Even the normally shy Kody came over and rubbed his cheek on the lemur’s robust chest.

The harmony perpetuated, and at nursing time, much to Tyra’s consternation, the little plaything joined right in with her cubs to suckle on her engorged nipples. Go away! she snarled at him. He stopped and cried a little, and then he joined in again. He was relentless in getting the milk he wanted. This went on repeatedly until Tyra finally gave in to her nursing mother’s instinct and took him in as one of her own.

Okay, little plaything, you can stay as long as you survive.

After nursing, the cubs dozed off. Tyra, too, lay down for a moment of peace. As soon as the cubs woke up, the rough play commenced again. This time the five of them aggressively bit and slashed at each other. Moments later, the newcomer’s giraffid hide was completely torn into shreds and lay next to the bloody remains of the zebra. Tyra gazed in wonder at the cub. This was one strange lemur.

The smilodon family gradually included the hairless cub in all its daily functions. Tyra named him Gora, not because he was so different from her other cubs, but because like a rock, he was simply not edible. In the limited vocabulary of the smilodon language, Gora literally meant a mountain, not slayable, unstoppable. The little creature was well named: stubborn, indomitable, and lovable at the same time.

Chapter II: Sabertooth of Opalon

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? And what dread feet?

—William Blake (1757-1827) Songs of Experience, The Tiger

One spring morning, five years after Tyra had found the strange, hairless cub, the monsoon stopped its rampaging downpour in the night, and pearllike dewdrops sparkled in the morning’s glory. Tyra’s cavern traded gloom and thunderclaps for sunshine and birdsong.

The riotous profusion of colossal boulders that formed her abode, now coated in moss, was stacked in disarray as though tossed down from heaven in a heated storm. Attracted by the crystal-clear air accentuated by the perfume of blooming flowers, Tyra took a deep breath outside of her cavern. It had been hard to keep her lively cubs in line within the claustrophobic cave during the rainy season. It would be downright impossible now that the cubs had exhausted all the flesh left behind from their last quarry.

The sun was brighter than usual in the cloudless sky. Tyra methodically stretched her limbs, rolling her shoulders high into the thin air. Then, one by one, with Gora leading the pack, Kobu, Koko, Kota, and Kody trotted out of the cave, lackadaisical from a fortnight of inactivity. As soon as the fresh air filled his lungs, Gora was ready for an adventure. Tyra and Gora’s newfound energy was contagious, and the six smilodons set off to their hunting grounds.

As they passed the waterfall, Tyra’s hackles raised, for she smelled the fresh scent of a cave lion passing through her territory.

Stay close behind me. There’s danger ahead, she warned the cubs.

Okay, Mommy. Although Gora was the youngest of the litter, he answered for the pack. He had mastered the smilodon language long before the other four cubs. Sometimes he even made up new words.

Following the cave lion’s scent, Tyra tracked his spoor beyond her territory to a muddy waterhole where the opaque jungle ended and the lush grassland began. Tyra smiled and let out a deep breath. She had anticipated a deadly combat, for the feline carnivore might have intended to take over her territory. With five cubs, it would be impossible for her to grab another territory to make it her own, and her chance of triumphing over the full-grown male was slim, for she had no mate to fight for her.

Tyra turned to retrace her steps. Suddenly the ground beneath her gave way, and she tumbled into a tar pit that had been blanketed by a carpet of leaves and broken branches from the deluge of the monsoon. She struggled with all her might; but her body sank rapidly into the hungry pit of death.

Mother! Kobu cried desperately while trying to reach her with his short forelimb. He nearly fell into the pit himself.

Stay away! All of you! There is nothing you can do for me now, groaned Tyra. Go home and take care of yourselves, my dearest children. She wept hopelessly.

To her amazement, little Gora sprang up to grasp a stout branch nearby, breaking it with the leverage generated by his bodyweight. He then raced to the edge of the tar pit and pushed the branch toward her rapidly disappearing torso.

Bite the branch, Mommy! We will pull you out. Kobu, you bite this end. Gora, too, clamped onto the branch with his puny mouth, as well as his flexible paws.

Tyra locked her jaws onto the extending branch for dear life, and little by little her shoulders reemerged, covered fully in sticky black tar.

Gora! she exclaimed, dragging herself from the pit. The mother and son cried out their triumphant roars in harmony, letting their hearty bellows penetrate the surrounding plains. Incredulous, Tyra eyed the scrawny five-year-old lemur she had taken from the jaws of the hyaenodon. This cub of unknown origin was more cunning and fearless than her own much bigger cubs. In him she saw qualities incomprehensible to her, abilities that did not exist in any wild beasts she had ever known.

Thereafter, Gora no longer felt so timid or embarrassed as a young hairless smilodon. He discovered two contradictory elements in his unique character: insecurity and ingenuity. He may be weaker than his sleek, furry siblings; but if a simple tree branch turned into a life-saving tool in his hands, what couldn’t he create with the multitude of objects provided by nature? That day he glowed with a feeling of belonging and worthiness he had never felt before. Kobu, the eldest and strongest, had been the leader of the pack from the beginning; but after accomplishing the grand task of saving Tyra, Gora came up from behind, and the weakest, youngest, clawless brother became the leader.

Three more years passed like moving clouds. Ever since he could remember, in order to look and act more like his bigger, stronger brothers, Gora had smeared wet mud in the pattern of tiger stripes all over his face and body, and had crawled on all fours. Now he was facing all the usual problems of a young sabertooth: how to adjust to his changing body and how to fit in with his peers.

Although he was much smaller than the others, he made up the difference with his intelligence, inventiveness, and agility. His favorite pastime was to break open a rotted tree stump and feast on the termites within. These juicy little critters were delicious and seemed to provide even more nutrients than the massive quantity of flesh he consumed, for he always felt energized thereafter.

Hunting was the least of his tribulations. He had developed into a masterful hunter, along with his three brothers and sister. One hunting method that impressed his siblings was stone throwing. His uncanny marksmanship brought down giant birds and small herbivores without his having to reach them physically. Once, Gora’s well aimed stone blinded a colossal mammoth’s right eye and enabled Kobu to pounce and puncture its neck from that side.

No one can do that other than you, my brother! Kobu marveled.

Gora learned to repeat the technique and introduced the concept of hunting in coordinated teams to the sabertooth cats. Before, the cats had hunted alone and relied solely on the prowess of their front limbs and their gigantic neck muscles to pounce and puncture. After Gora’s success with the mammoth, a new era of pack hunting dawned for his smilodon family. Now the three brothers could chase down a herd of wooly mammoths and plant a surprise at the end, where Gora and sister Koko executed an assault. The strength of five smilodons made hunting and territorial defense an easy chore. Occasionally they even ventured together to challenge larger reptiles, perhaps a wildly unpredictable triceratops or a heavily armored ankylosaurus.

Besides playing roughhouse with his siblings, Gora’s favorite activity was to let them lick his back. A smilodon’s tongue felt delightfully rough to him, for it was covered with spines. He loved the feel of the raspy, comblike tongue cleaning away the dried mud or blood that always coated his jungle-worn skin. Grooming in the form of licking was an irreplaceable family activity for smilodons, and all family members spruced up the others with tender loving licks.

Many routines he’d performed as a young cub got tossed away as he grew older, however, as his ability to reason began to take hold. Like his siblings, he used to mark his territories by spraying trees with urine or by leaving his scat. But the most common method of scent marking was by scratching the bark of a tree. This process also sharpened the smilodons’ claws and prepared them for their next battle. Kody, the jealous one of the family who always tried to find ways to deflect Tyra’s attention from Gora, suggested one morning that the brothers have a contest to see who could scratch a tree and leave the strongest scent. He was well aware that Gora had the shortest and most inadequate claws. Tyra was asked to be the judge. The four brothers scratched away to the best of their abilities under their respective trees. Without any scent glands in his nails, Gora scratched long and hard until all his fingernails were broken. Kody smirked as he awaited his mother’s verdict. She declared Gora the winner by far. The blood he had smeared all over the tree trunk created the strongest scent.

Sabertooths ran on all fours and were capable of jumping up to several times their own body length. Young Gora pondered long and hard to figure out a way he could beat his siblings, given his own inadequate forelegs. His weakness merely gave him a challenging objective to conquer. He loved running. To have clouds racing over his head as he ran, to have plains lying flat before his feet—these joys liberated him from all his needs to understand his differences, if only temporarily.

In the dense Opalonian jungle, he first observed, and then copied, the lightning-fast travel methods of the giant lemurs. The adults were three of his foot-lengths taller than he was when erected. Tyra sometimes still called Gora my little lemur, but could he be one? These tree dwellers had bizarre toothcombs, and they groomed each other lovingly with these unique tools. Am I a lemur? No, Gora reasoned. I don’t have toothcombs. I don’t hibernate, and I don’t store fat in my tail. I don’t even have a tail. Once, he saw a magnificent male beating his chest proudly and roaring with anger while the others bowed timidly to his dominance. That’s a powerful gesture! he realized. He adopted chest-beating and roaring as a ritual whenever he triumphed over a formidable enemy.

Although missing a long tail, Gora jumped from tree to tree easily, swinging on the vines with his forelegs. His unrelenting quest for excellence made him a perfect tree-traveler, with skills even a real lemur would envy. With his vine-swinging secret weapon, he managed to keep up with his siblings in the jungle.

Another lazy summer afternoon, the five siblings raised the subject of who were the deadliest and the nimblest cats in the jungle. They crouched near the bedrock of the little stream where they drank and frolicked.

A jaguar could claim the fastest title, Kobu announced, his eyes slotted open the width of a single blade of buffalo grass. But any one of us could chase it away and force it to give up its quarry, unless it had the foresight to climb onto a skinny branch of a skyhook tree before we got to it.

Cave lions can pounce like lightning, but only for a short distance, Kody said while licking his paws and cleaning his face for the fourth time that day. He was obsessed with cleanliness.

Partially copying the demeanor of a giant lemur, Gora attempted to tame his recalcitrant long black mane from covering his face by brushing it backwards with his stalwart fingers. Hyaenodons are too slow, for they’re pack hunters, he said. There’s something to be said about the moment their ancestors decided to hunt in a pack. But apparently from that point forward, they lost the amazing speed they once possessed.

That leaves only us, the smilodons, said little sister Koko. The fastest among us would be the speediest demon in the jungle.

Upon hearing that insightful remark, a light sparked in Kody’s eyes. It might have been glee. He pushed to his feet, showing off his lanky body while stretching his long limbs. He was the leanest and the lightest of the family, except for the smaller Koko, who none of them considered a serious contender.

How far should we run to determine who’s the fastest? asked Kobu, the most powerful of the three male cats, his eyes suddenly open wide.

The uncharacteristically silent Kota chimed in to determine the marathon course. What if we commence at the bottom of our cave, pass the woodlands, cross the Zemootan River, race through the jungle, and meet on top of the giant pterosaurlike boulder at the foot of the Kanji Mountain range, by the waterfall?

Whoever gets there first wins the title? Gora asked.

That’s it, Kobu said, rubbing his front paws eagerly on some tree bark. Finally I can prove to all of you that the strongest smilodon is also the fastest one.

Mother Tyra announced the commencement of the race from the opening of her cavern high above the jungle floor. Ready. Get set. Go.

Kobu and Kody shot out in front of the pack and maintained their lead throughout the woodlands. Kobu fully relied on his powerful limbs, while Kody utilized his liquidlike torso to squeeze through the dense foliage. Gora and Kota stayed at their heels, and Koko remained last.

Plump. Kody was the first one into the rapid currents of the Zemootan River. But the mighty strokes of Kobu’s muscular limbs overtook him before they reached the other side of the bank. As the racing smilodons dashed into the thick jungle, streaming droplets from their wet coats, smaller creatures scattered for cover. Kobu maintained the lead, Kody dogging him in a close second. Kota was third, and Koko was a distant fourth. Gora had disappeared into the thick air of the tropics.

As soon as Kobu pounced his way toward the edge of the jungle, he saw the grand boulder at the foot of the Kanji Mountains, protruding proudly like a fully wing-spanned eagle ready to lift off. I’ll show them that I’m the all-around champion in both strength and speed, he roared with exhilaration. But to his surprise, just before he mustered all the power left in his exhausted giant muscles for the final bound onto the rock of champions, he heard an ominous whistle of the wind above his head. Raising his eyes, he saw Gora, laughing wildly; fly by on a long vine. Letting go at the last instant, he landed squarely on top of the forbidden rock.

Don’t be such a sour puss, Kobu! Gora called heartily. Kobu groaned in a bitter response, jealous of Gora’s cleverness and leadership but admiring nonetheless.

The Opalonian smilodons customarily gave a long booming victory roar after downing a prey, claiming a home range, finding a mate, or eliminating a competitor in the food chain. The roar could be heard across the savannah and seasonal marshland. The purpose was to scare away any potential encroaching scavengers. Although unequipped with a sabertooth’s thick vocal cords and flexible voice box, Gora could roar with the best of his siblings, for he practiced persistently whenever he was alone in the jungle. His victory cry had a bit less bass resonance than the cannonade roar of the giant felines, but was enthusiastic and exalting.

With all his efforts and competitiveness, Gora had become in every sense a true Opalonian sabertooth warrior. There was only one arena in which he couldn’t quite compete with his siblings. He could never feed as fast, for he didn’t have their serrated teeth, and his stomach wasn’t designed to generate a quick-digesting liquid to dissolve the partially chewed raw meat. But even with his smaller stature, he gained strength unparalleled by other creatures his size. He was growing up fast.

Chapter III: Boy Wonder

Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations;

Knaves, fools, and murderers they may be;

Men may have mean and meager faces;

But man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling,

Such a grand and glowing creature,

That over any ignominious blemish in him

All his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

—Herman Melville (1819-1891), Moby-Dick

As time stood still in the primeval land of Opalon, an eight-year-old boy riding on the back of a nearly full-grown smilodon stalked the jungle perimeter, casting a fearsome shadow on the herbivorous residents. But as a young smilodon, Gora still felt deficient in many ways. Lacking saberlike canines or big retractable claws, he depended on his cleverness to come up with various weapons. His first hunting tool was the canine from a dead smilodon’s skeleton he found buried in the jungle floor. He used the sabertooth as his extended claw, hacking away with his right hand.

One afternoon, Gora and Kobu went for a leisurely swim in the cool stream. Afterward, as the two shook the water droplets from their hides, a large structure nestled against the cliffside caught Gora’s eyes. He studied the strange sight. In the depth of the recess beneath a wide ledge of rock overhanging the towering cliff, he saw a dark, cavernous mouth, covered by an imposing barrier. He had no doubt that the cave-dam was made of wood—but the structure was unnaturally flat, made of planks sliced from the trunk of a tree and somehow fastened together. He had never seen anything like it before in the jungle: here was something nature’s hands could not have created.

His curiosity revivified him in the heat of the lazy afternoon. He scaled the upright cliff as swiftly as a giant lemur by grasping crevices between the rocks with his nimble fingers. Kobu clawed his way up as high as his weight would allow; then he retreated with his full stomach. Waiting below, he was too sluggish to try again.

Gora paused before the barrier. The wooden walls were held together in the center by a strange object that looked like a square tortoise shell. To his utter amazement, the object split open in the middle after he jiggled and yanked on the small protruding part on top of the shell. His instinct told him to push on the large wooden walls, for the shell appeared to be the only thing holding them together. The wooden barriers swung open slowly with a loud creak, revealing a large cavern.

Sunlight streaming through a maze of spiderwebs heavy with dust created a blinding mist, disturbed only by the light breeze from the sudden opening of the wooden walls. Through the web-mist, Gora saw colorful scenes decorating the interior walls of the cavern. They appeared to show figures—animals of some kind—but they, too, were as flat as the wooden walls, and as unmoving. He growled, but none of them responded. He drew closer and touched the vivid colors. He felt only cave wall. Ah, he realized, they were made of mud-paint.

One of the life-size murals depicted what appeared to be two hairless male lemurs and a female battling a ferocious hyaenodon. The lemurs were all dressed in giraffid hides—as he had been, Mother Tyra had told him, when he was found. In another painting, the taller male of the two struggled to slay a huge cave lion with what seemed like a strange tree branch, while a hyaenodon cub snatched his baby in its jaws. The figures all stood on two legs—as he sometimes did, without even thinking about it.

Why did the taller male’s face portrayed on the wall look faintly familiar? The female’s sorrowful face was beautiful and kind, and familiar as well. In another scene the other male cuddled and played with the baby as if it were his own. The painted walls not only amused Gora; they aroused his curiosity about his own origins, for he had never seen another creature like himself in the jungle. But he did not linger over the murals, for below Kobu was already calling, complaining about how long he was taking inside the cave.

As he moved through the cavern, Gora noticed several objects that could serve as the sharp claws and elongated teeth he lacked. He found the device the tall male used to kill the cave lion in the picture on the wall: a long, arched branch with a flexible strip of deer tendon fastened at both ends to maintain its curve. He also found several shorter branches with pointy tips that painfully poked his finger upon a light touch, and a long silvery tooth, much sharper than his splintered sabertooth. What big, effective canines, much finer, harder, and farther-reaching than a smilodon’s fangs, he thought.

As Gora danced around with his shiny new fang, he accidentally scraped his left elbow on the rock wall. He dropped the big tooth to the ground and started to lick his wound. The tooth fell with an unfamiliar clang, expelling thick layers of dust from its surface. Amazed, Gora saw his own reflection in the dust-free blade, more clear than any he’d seen in the rippling water. He grinned with delight, envisioning using the big canine to hunt with his brothers and achieving miraculous results. Thus armed, Gora would not think twice about struggling with a larger carnivore, for the only thing that had held him back before was his lack of effective teeth and claws.

This is a fascinating cave, he mused, tempted to linger and explore the place further. He wished that he could identify all its mysterious contents. Suddenly he sensed his inadequacy to comprehend. For the first time in his life, he felt that he was weaker than his brothers and dumber than the lemurs pictured on the cave walls. Intuitively he felt a bond with what he saw, yet he failed to understand it—and this