Chapter 2 Chapter 1 The Road to Extinction

The drought has lasted for 10 million years, and the era of terrible reptilian rule has long since ended.Along the equator, on the continent that came to be called Africa, the struggle for existence reached a new and murderous climax, and victory was not yet in sight.In this barren, cracked land, only creatures that are small, swift, or ferocious have any hope of multiplying, or even just surviving. The apes of the steppes, being neither small, nor swift, nor ferocious, did not multiply; indeed, they were quite far along the road of extinction.Perched high above a small sun-burnt valley, about fifty orang utans occupy a cluster of caves.Two hundred miles to the north, the snow on the high mountains melted into a stream that ran awkwardly across the valley floor.In bad seasons, the stream dries up completely, and this group of orangutans have to suffer from thirst.

This group of orangutans never had enough to eat, and there was even more famine at this time.As the twilight of dawn entered the cave, Mochizuki discovered that his father had died during the night.He didn't know that the "dead" was his father, because the relationship between father and son was a concept he couldn't understand at all, but looking at the withered corpse, he still felt uneasy. The babies were already sobbing for food, but fell silent when Mochizuki growled at them.The mother of a baby, protecting her offspring who could not feed enough, yelled back at Mochizuki; for her rudeness, Mochizuki wanted to slap her, but felt powerless.

It was light enough to come out of the cave.Mochizuki dragged the withered corpse, bent and drilled out of the low-hanging exit at the top of the cave.When he got outside the cave, he carried the body on his shoulders.Stand upright in this world, only this animal can stand. Mochizuki was a big man for his kind, nearly five feet tall.Although very undernourished, he still weighed over a hundred pounds.He is hairy, muscular, half human, half ape, but in terms of head, he is more like a human than an ape.His forehead was low and his brows protruded above the eye sockets, yet he undoubtedly had the genes to be a man.When he looked around at the glacial world full of worries, his eyes already shone with a quality that surpassed the intelligence of apes.In those dark, deep-set eyes there was a germ of perception--a germ of wisdom which may take ages to ripen, and which at any moment may soon fade away forever.

No sign of danger.So Mochizuki began to climb down the almost straight steep slope outside the cave, and the weight on his shoulders didn't affect him much.Seemingly waiting for his signal, the fellow orangutans emerged from their low dwellings on the rock face and began to hurry to the muddy stream for their first sip of water in the morning. Mochizuki looked across the valley to see if "those ape-men" had appeared, but there was no sign yet.Maybe they haven't left the cave yet, maybe they've gone to feed far away on the side of the mountain. Since they were not in sight, Mochizuki also left them behind; he only had one thing to worry about at this time.

First of all, he had to get rid of the "dead," but that was a no-brainer.Quite a few apes had died this season, and when the moon was winding, a newborn baby died in his hole, and he just had to put the body where the dead baby had been dropped, and the hyenas would take care of it. In the opening of the little valley to the steppe a pack of hyenas was already waiting, almost as if they knew he was coming.Mochizuki left the body under a clump of bushes—the bones that had been left behind were gone—and hurried back to the apes of his family.He never thought about his father again.

His two mates, the adults in the other caves, and most of the juveniles foraged among the dry, withered trees in the depths of the valley, looking for berries, juicy roots and leaves, and chance encounters such as lizards or rodents. A delicacy that cannot be asked for.Only the infants and the weakest of the elderly remained in the hole; if there was some surplus in the day's searching, they might be fed some.Otherwise, the hyena will soon be lucky again. Not a bad day, though—though Mochizuki, with no real memory of the past, can't really compare different times.He found a swarm of bees in the stump of a dead tree, and thus enjoyed the best food that the apes had ever tasted; and at dusk, when he led a group of apes back to the cave, he licked his fingers from time to time.Of course he was stung quite a few times too, but he didn't pay much attention to it.He was contented then, and perhaps never more than in his life; for, though he was not full, he was no longer weak with hunger.This is the highest hope that the apes can achieve.

He walked to the edge of the stream, and the contentment disappeared. "Those apes" are on that side.They're on that side every day, but they're still annoying. There were about thirty of them, and they seemed indistinguishable from Mochizuki's own clan. When they saw him coming, they began to dance and scream across the brook; and the Moon-Watchers returned the same. The confrontation lasted about five minutes; the show ended just as abruptly, and everyone took a gulp of the muddy water.Honor was preserved; both sides claimed their own claim to the collar.Having completed this business, the family departed along their own side of the creek.The grazing ground was now more than a mile from the nearest cave, and had to be shared with a herd of great antelope-like beasts, who were only slightly tolerant of them.The big beasts all had fierce knives on their foreheads—natural weapons that the apes were not born with—so they couldn't get rid of them.

So Mochizuki and his companions chewed on leaves and wild fruits to satisfy their hunger - but they didn't realize that these were the potential sources of food that they didn't dare to hope for.However, the thousands of tons of delicious meat that roamed the grasslands and groves were not only beyond their physical strength, but also beyond their imagination. There should be more than enough, but they are slowly starving to death. In the twilight, the group of orangutans returned to the cave safely.The wounded female ape who stayed in the cave clucked happily when she saw Mochizuki brought back a branch full of berries, and eagerly swallowed it.Although there is not much nutrition in it, it can help her survive until the leopard's bite wound heals and she can go out for food again.

Mochizuki was half-awake from the screams and howls from a cave at the bottom of the steep slope, and he didn't need to hear the occasional roar of the leopard to know exactly what was going on. In the dark lower place, old "White Hair" and his family were struggling and dying, but Mochizuki never once thought that he could try to rescue them.The ruthless logic of existence rules out such fantasies.There was not a single protest, though screams and yells could be heard all over the hillside.Every cave is silent, lest it bring disaster. The noise had just passed, and Mochizuki could hear the sound of the corpse being dragged on the stone.

Only a few seconds passed; then the leopard took its prey.With the victim in its mouth, it walked away slowly without making a sound. Mochizuki climbed out of the cave, climbed to a boulder at the entrance of the cave, and squatted there to inspect the valley. Now he looked at the valley, now at the moon, but he kept his ears open.He dozed off once or twice, but when he fell asleep he was so awakened that the slightest sound would alert him.Although he was twenty-five years old, his organs were still in good condition; if he continued to be lucky and avoided accidents, diseases, wild animals, and hunger, he might live another ten years.

The night was getting darker, cold and clear.No more alarming incidents.The moon is rising, and some constellations are invisible to the human eye due to equatorial horizon parallax.During the intermittent sleep and wake up in the cave, and the worry-free waiting, I entered the dream that later generations called nightmares. A beam of dazzling light, brighter than any star, passed slowly across the sky twice, rose to the zenith, and passed away eastward.