Across Primordial Landscapes

By Robert Turtle

In volume three of the Beasts of Instruction trilogy, prehistoric beasts are intrigued by civilization but aren't dependent on it because they eat grass and leaves the same as their less intelligent equine relatives. Like young Benjamin Franklin, beasts believe that freedom of thought is the foundation of wisdom. Their associates the water primates have less leisure and fewer opportunities to reflect on the world around them and their place in it. For beasts, being herbivorous is both liberating and limiting. They seek out and put up with water primates because they have hands and easily accomplish tasks beasts can't. Because of their lack of dexterity, the beasts realize that understanding how the world works requires skills in trades as well as in arts and letters. Parents of younger readers should review this book for violence and sexual content.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Turtle
• Release date: Dec 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463046081

Robert Turtle

I turned to writing ecological science fiction after helping design and build remote sensing instruments used to monitor environmental changes on earth from space. Thinking about the way the lives of animals are constrained by their environment fired my imagination. The characters in my novels were chosen partly in reaction to William Blake's aphorism "The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction," and I wondered what it would be like if animals felt remorse. Nama and Westwind's reflections are akin to those described by Mary Austin in her short story "The Walking Woman."

Book preview

Across Primordial Landscapes

By Robert Turtle

Across Primordial Landscapes is the third volume of the Beasts of Instruction trilogy. The two previous volumes are Beasts of the Open Space and Trekking On.

Copyright Robert Turtle 2018

Corrections in 2021

Smashwords Edition

For neighbors in far-off lands

and friends beyond the sea.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and you did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1--Iron and Salt

Chapter 2--Birdcatchers

Chapter 3--Nightfall at Highbanks

Chapter 4--Goings On

Chapter 5--Salvia and Lightfoot Pledge

Chapter 6--Tadpole

Chapter 7--A Departure and a Homecoming

Chapter 8--The Distant Storm

Chapter 9--The Banner Green-Blue-Green

Chapter 10--Something New

Chapter 11--Briza Steps Back

Chapter 12--Cloud Shadows

Chapter 13--They Stand on Guard

Chapter 14--Sound an Alarm

Chapter 15--Homeless

Chapter 16--Loose Ends

Chapter 17--The Cresting Wave

Chapter 18--New Directions

Chapter 19--A King Goes Down

Chapter 20--Healing Waters

Chapter 21--Najas

Chapter 22--Under the Moon Bead

Chapter 23--The Wealth of the River Lands

Chapter 24--Wag End

Chapter 25--In the City

Chapter 26--Keeping Secrets

Chapter 27--Serving the Crown Prince

Chapter 28--The Mysterious Stranger

Chapter 29--Where Waters Meet

Chapter 30--Bad Places of the Mind

Chapter 31--In the Canyon of Time

Epilogue--A Shadow on the Moon

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Iron and Salt

Millions of years ago, sparkling rivers flowed from snowy mountain ranges into a broad valley where they combined to form the Great River. Water primates were attracted to the valley wetlands, and the immense floodplain became their River Kingdom. This civilization faded in time, but its cultural achievements remained unequaled until long after the mountains wore down and the Great River drained away into the sea.

During periods when the River Kingdom was at peace, curious, horse-like beasts wandered away from arid hills and plains and moved in among the water primates. They carried loads and riders, and they offered advice that often proved useful.

Beasts and water primates lived and worked together with noteworthy success along a tributary called the Rushing River, which was named for how its waters churned along in a gorge it had cut upstream of an escarpment. Below the escarpment, the channel broadened, and water primate voyagers in canoes could drift downstream until clumps of rushes parted ahead of them and they floated on the restless flood of the Great River itself.

The Rushing River had cut its gorge into prairie land that was bordered on the north by tree-covered foothills. Water primates caught their food in the river. Beasts climbed down to drink but spent most of their time on the prairie south of the gorge, where they grazed and helped water primates with their transportation needs.

At the start of our story, a beast named Gur was pulling a wagon eastward across the prairie toward the brink of the escarpment. Just ahead, footprints and wagon tracks converged and merged into a single pathway that turned to the left as it disappeared over the edge. The floodplain of the Great River was coming into view, and Gur needed to focus his attention on where he was going. Gur's destination, the canoe landing at the head of navigation of the Rushing River, lay at the bottom of a steep, rough stretch of unpaved road that had been dug into the face of the escarpment.

At the canoe landing, the bags of iron nails in the wagon box would be traded for an order of salt brought from Branch Crossing, the town where the Rushing River joined the Great River. The exchange rate was one for one by weight. To Gur, this seemed like a lot to pay for crystals that grew by themselves in sun-drenched salt pans. In contrast, making nails took skilled work in a carefully orchestrated sequence of steps. However, the canoe journey from Branch Crossing to the landing at the foot of the escarpment was only a tiny part of the total distance salt was transported. Gur knew from his own experience how long a jar of salt might spend on its way up the Great River from the sea. He reckoned the value of salt based on his first memories of traveling with his parents in a caravan of pack beasts.

Gur was camel-colored, and except for multiple toes and a pair of thumbs, he pretty much resembled a feral horse. The difference would have been easy to overlook on account of the unusual appearance of the water primate riding on the wagon beside the bags of nails. He had the head of an otter but not the tail and was covered all over with dense gray fur. Even though he could stand and walk upright, his awkward webbed feet explained why water primates turned to beasts for help moving about on land. He rode with his knees tucked against his chest and held onto the side of the wagon box with one hand.

It's unfortunate the fossil record contains no trace of the intelligent, horse-like beasts of the Pliocene or of the web-footed water primates with whom they sometimes lived and worked. These two species are unique in the history of the earth because the relationship between Gur and his passenger wasn't like the one between a human wagon driver and a horse. They both understood the goal of the trip, and each would benefit from it in his own way. Gur had difficulty picking up objects, so being friends with a water primate with dexterous hands allowed him to participate in a complex culture in a way beasts on their own could not.

Because Gur was more or less an equal partner with the water primate, he wasn't wearing blinkers or even a bridle.

There's a sharp turn just ahead, his passenger warned. It's too steep to go straight down the other side.

I remember, Lepus, Gur replied. I'll be careful where the wagon wheels go.

Sure enough, a drop-off lay beyond the crest. Gur pressed sideways against the wagon shafts to make a left turn onto the narrow roadway that descended the face of the escarpment. It had been hacked out of the rocks along the up-thrust side of a fault. The rocks on the other side were buried somewhere below the sediments of the broad floodplain now spread out before Gur and his passenger.

Lepus hung on with both hands as they rounded the turn. The inside front wheel swung back, and its rim scraped briefly against the wagon box. The pivot at the center of the front axle allowed all four wheels to remain firmly on the ground, and not being in a hurry helped, too.

Gur's fear of heights made the track down the face of the cliff seem alarmingly narrow even though its width was more than sufficient for the wagon. He leaned back into his harness to slow down and checked that both outside wheels tracked well in from the edge.

As Gur guided the wagon downhill, he imagined what a bird flying overhead might see. At the bottom of the steep stretch, the wagon route ended where the Rushing River emerged from its gorge. Downstream was the reed-lined channel extending to the Great River, a day's canoe journey away. Upstream and out of sight, the Rushing River earned its name by tumbling along in a rocky bed.

At the bottom of the roadway, Lepus climbed from the wagon, took Gur by the mane and led him across marshy ground toward huts and shelters on the riverbank.

It's easy to break a wagon if a wheel sinks into mud, Lepus said. You can snap an axle right off trying to get it unstuck.

Gur didn't need to be told. He was wary of becoming mired and followed Lepus carefully until bundles of reeds provided sure footing the rest of the way to a firm, sandy beach. From there Gur could look upstream into the gorge and see water foaming over rocks in the final stretch of rapids.

Opposite them, something resembling a waterlogged tree trunk floated low in the water and appeared to drift with the current. Gur knew it wasn't a tree trunk at all and in fact something much more dangerous.

As expected, two water primate paddlers were waiting beside their beached dugout canoe with a big clay jar. Their eyes were on the crocodile, and they had spears close at hand. The shafts were pushed into the sand so the points stuck straight up toward the sky. Their sharpened edges glistened in the sun.

Lepus called to them, and the crocodile moved on as Gur pulled the wagon close to the water. Then it was time to check out the salt they had come to purchase. Gur could see that the pot was both container and tax receipt, for it had been stamped with an official seal and a year number before being fired. The pot was between one and two years old. That was good. Salt in older pots invariably attracted the attention of tax officials.

One of the voyagers lifted the lid off the pot to show that it was filled almost to the top with translucent fragments of salt that looked as if they had been scooped from a muddy brine pond and transferred directly to the jar.

Lepus tried a speck. Umm! Salty, he said. We want to buy it all, please.

Would you like some? Gur was offered a taste, too.

Gur declined politely. I like salt, but I know where beasts can graze on saltbush. It's no use to water primates, so I'd better leave the good stuff for you.

It was Lepus' turn to show off his wares. He opened a bag and proudly displayed wrought iron nails with round heads, square shanks, and chisel points.

Look, here's how they're used, Lepus said.

He took scraps of hand-split shingles left over from repairing one of the huts and laid them on the sand in the form of an X. With the help of a rock, he hammered one of the nails through where the pieces of wood overlapped. Then he turned them over and pounded down the protruding part of the nail so the bent tip penetrated back into wood. Lepus lifted the roughly made wooden cross and handed it to his customers so they could find out for themselves how firmly it was held together.

That's how we make wagon wheels, only it takes more boards and a lot of nails, Lepus concluded.

I hear it's how they make plank canoes, too, one of the voyagers said. It's becoming more and more difficult to find a tree trunk that's large enough to hollow out and make a dugout like ours.

Any doubts about the quality of the nails were gone. The three water primates improvised an equal-arm balance consisting of one board set across the edge of another teeter-totter fashion. The jar with the salt was set on one end, and bags of nails were added until the end with the salt lifted off the ground. The lid was sealed in place with moist clay, and the pot was tied down in the wagon bed beside the bags of nails left over from the transaction.

Gur wasn't certain that the big clay pot holding the salt was worth its weight in iron nails the same as its contents. He decided it was a detail that could be passed over, since the water primates all looked pleased.

Lepus helped carry the nails to the canoe. Remember to spread them out in the sun and dry them after you arrive, so they don't rust, he urged.

The voyagers took netting and secured the bags so they would stay with the canoe if it swamped and rolled over. Gur thought that was a good sign. He remembered other water primates he had worked with and passed favorable judgment on this pair.

Next the spears were placed in the canoe where they would be close at hand in case of need. The paddlers bade farewell, took their positions at bow and stern, and pushed off.

Lepus helped Gur steer the wagon backward along the reed bundle causeway onto solid ground and climbed on for the trip home after it was safely turned around. Beyond the top of the escarpment, they started across a level expanse where only an occasional shrub relieved the monotony of sparse green grass fading to yellow. Rather than a well-defined roadway like the one going down the escarpment, the route across the prairie was an irregular strip of bare ground. It was called the Trace, and because it was seldom scraped or graded, Gur skirted around deep wheel ruts or crossed them at an angle to keep his own wheels from getting caught.

The trading had gone smoothly, and Lepus was relaxed and talkative. Water primates needed less salt when we lived mostly on fish, he said.

It's because of all the seeds and roots you have to eat these days, Gur replied. Only a few plants concentrate salt, and it's in the foliage rather than the parts you like most.

Just why raw fish satisfied a craving for salt and most plants didn't was something for Gur to wonder about.

After a while Lepus stopped chatting. He settled down on a mat in the wagon bed for a nap and left it to Gur to find the way, which wasn't much of a challenge. At the slow pace they were going, the large diameter of the wagon wheels kept jolting to a minimum despite the springless suspension. From time to time, Gur glanced back to check that Lepus was safe and that the pot with the salt and the leftover bags of nails were still in place.

The land they were crossing was divided into portions or holdings, and every so often Gur passed a cluster of shelters made of mud and thatch. Each holding was shared by an extended family of water primates living in association with several beasts. The water primates had strong territorial attachments, and they referred to themselves as housebands because they held land and buildings in common. Their beast associates valued property and improvements less and friendships and family ties most of all.

Water came from the Rushing River at the bottom of its gorge. The primates hunted and fished there. They also ate seeds, berries, and tubers, but only the beasts could graze the abundant prairie grass.

Beasts and water primates lived together partly as a response to dangers they faced. Crocodiles hunted water primates, and wandering bison sometimes attacked beasts without any clear motive. Packs of wild dogs had been a threat to both species until water primate archers learned to shoot their arrows from the backs of galloping beasts. Then the tables were turned, for beasts were eager to help attack animals that could threaten their young. After the dogs and bison were taught their place, the mounted archers became the core of a new aristocratic class of water primates, and their leader became the king of the river lands, whose realm extended on both banks of the Great River from the sea to far inland.

Even though they benefited from bringing bison and roving packs of dogs under control, the Rushing River housebands had been reluctant to acknowledge a central authority working from a capitol that was months away from their peaceful valley. Now they were learning what an error this had been and playing catch-up in an attempt to regain royal favor.

West was the way home, and Gur shook his head so his mane would settle over his eyes and shield them from the glowing orb that was slowly slipping down the afternoon sky ahead of him. He judged his progress by noting familiar hills north of the river as he passed them. The outline of a peak in the distance seemed to change hardly at all. South of the trace, open prairie extended to the horizon.

Gur lived with his mate Briza on a portion of pastureland and river bottom called Highbanks because the houseband's sheds and shelters were located on an open patch of prairie close to the brink of the Rushing River gorge. He had courted Briza as a stranger before being accepted by her family and by the Highbanks water primates.

Briza would soon give birth, and she had remained at Highbanks while Gur and Lepus were working. Gur was eager to get home to her, but trotting was out of the question because only a couple of mats protected his passenger and their valuable cargo from damage.

Jolting was bad for the wagon, too. The wheels were fragile because water primate blacksmiths weren't able to forge iron tires big enough to shrink on wheel rims and pre-stress spokes in compression. Instead, wheels were built up from boards that were split from logs and fastened together in the way Lepus had demonstrated to the voyagers.

Even if their capabilities were limited, water primate smiths and their beast advisors deserved credit for their accomplishments. They knew the secret of surface hardening and made tools with hard, sharp edges and strikers to use with flint for starting fires. In the Rushing River Valley, these skills were tested every year when the time came to pay the annual tribute of iron arrowheads demanded by King Breaker, the monarch of the river lands.

Chapter 2

Birdcatchers

Gur stuck to a walk and snatched mouthfuls of grass from time to time while he thought about the events that had led him to the Rushing River Valley.

Beasts traditionally lived thinly dispersed over a wilderness landscape, so their youngsters were often paired up with potential life partners at an early age. When suitable friendships formed, colts were taken in and raised by the parents of fillies.

Gur's parents Acacia and Shadow had grown up together and roamed far and wide before separating from Acacia's parents. Bold and curious, they chose to explore the River Kingdom. Gur was born while Acacia and Shadow were working for merchants who traded along the banks of the Great River. He was raised on stories about his parents' adventures, and he formed exciting memories of his own even though his experiences weren't as diverse as theirs.

One of Gur's earliest recollections was when Acacia and Shadow were towing a canoe upstream along the riverbank and he was put on board to be kept out of trouble. That worked until he became restless and hungry for milk and jumped into the water to swim ashore. No, Gur! Acacia called, but it was too late. He was swept away from the canoe and ever farther downstream. By the time Gur swam to the overhanging bank, he was by himself. At first he couldn't reach the bottom, and the current pushed him along until he came to a sloping stretch of shore where he climbed back toward the tow path just as Acacia came running. She reached down, grabbed him by the mane with her teeth, and helped him up over the last steep part and onto level ground.

Instead of scolding their foal, the relieved parents congratulated him for keeping his head above water and swimming to safety. However, boat rides for Gur were over, and afterward his place was beside his parents on the tow path.

Unlike his father Shadow, Gur stayed with his parents until he was old enough to carry packs for merchants and then set out to search for a mate on his own. At first, he was politely turned away by several attractive mares. He didn't become discouraged, but his luck took a turn for the worse when a squad of mounted archers caught his employer smuggling copper bars on which the royal duty had not been paid. It was a repeat offense, and the merchant was tied to a tree and shot full of arrows to make a point. The dead merchant's pack beasts carried the copper to a guardhouse, and then they were turned loose to look for work.

Gur found himself alone and without a former employer to vouch for his good disposition and steady work habits. The fear he felt after witnessing the merchant's fate lingered. Before that, dismissal from service for cause had been the worst punishment he could imagine.

Gur had lost touch with his parents Acacia and Shadow, and it wasn't safe to wander alone in search of them. Travel along the banks of the Great River was best done in groups because of crocodiles in the water and packs of fierce wild dogs that sometimes roamed the riverbanks in search of easy meals. If Gur tagged along with a royal patrol, he could expect to be ridden by an officer, and he was afraid of the ugly mood shifts officers were known for. He elected to explore the banks of a minor tributary of the Great River where he saw a canoe descending the current with some sort of cargo. Gur knew how to make friends with merchants and thought there might be work for a pack beast where the canoe had come from.

Gur had found the Rushing River, and when he reached the escarpment and the rapids that marked the limit of canoe traffic, water primate voyagers who were busy loading and unloading canoes told him beasts were welcome to graze and visit farther upstream. He took their advice, climbed the escarpment for the first time,