Word Dreams…

Here are samples of my writing. My non-fiction is from my education roots and the fiction, my passion. The former is available for purchase, but the latter–not yet. Be patient. I’m still working on it.

Non-Fiction:

BUILDING A MIDSHIPMAN: HOW TO CRACK THE USNA APPLICATION

Chapter One

Who You Are

I am an American. I serve in the forces which

guard my country and our way of life.

I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command,

I will never surrender the members of my command

while they still have the means to resist.

— USNA Code of Conduct

Your name is Maggie Clara Schmidt, a freshman at the local public high school. You’re a muscular 5’6”, 135 pounds, with wavy auburn hair—permed once, but never dyed. You resisted the childhood fad of piercing ears or other body parts (lucky for you because the USNA now requires a waiver for all piercings and tattoos). Freckles pepper the bridge of your nose and high cheekbones declare your European ancestry. Dimples decorate your face every time you crack an unsolvable math problem, unravel the physics of an everyday event, or enjoy the humor of your friends. Clear eyes sparkle with a menacing intelligence that demands honesty and forthrightness from those who draw their focus. You value principles and hard work—which might make you an oddity on the high school campus if not for the similar group you’ve found. You can smell the rancid scent of disingenuouty, deceit, and posturing on those around you, like spoiled food.

For your entire life, you lived (past tense now that your official residence has become the Naval Academy)  in a middle-class two-story California home with a younger brother, two Labrador retrievers (bed Labs of course), and two parents. Across the street stretches a park where your AYSO and Club soccer teams practiced dribbling, where you perfected martial arts kenpos for competitions, where you struggled with the flexed arm hang for the USNA Physical Aptitude Examination, and sometimes where you just sat amidst nature to study.

It took seven years before your parents bought living room furniture, the couch so old even the Salvation Army refused it. Instead, they spent the money on music lessons and sports—and then tutoring when the full force of high school hit. You redecorated your bedroom once in soft pinks and purples, but never again because you stopped noticing the walls and bed covers. The room shrunk to the Desk—a compact space with books, papers, pencils—the accoutrements of a student.

Your heritage is imbued with the scent and feel of the military. Your Uncle spent twenty years in the Navy—starting as NROTC at New Mexico State University. One grandpa served as a Navy seaman during WWI and the other survived three wars as a proud Marine. Several cousins tried military life, but, like coraframs (USNA dress shoes) that you can’t wait to kick off of tired feet, it didn’t fit. You spent thousands of hours preparing for your Shaolin kenpo black belt with a Master Sergeant in the Marines. Test day, his military rigor and toughness brought both of you through. His son—a fellow martial artist—followed him into the Marines and you attended his boot camp graduation at the San Diego Marine Corps Recruiting Depot.

Between sports, music and studies, your life resembles the tightly woven fabric of the Navy’s dress blues. Since elementary school, your days have been a balancing act of physical activities, concerts, martial arts (what your mom calls a ‘life skill’), church and academics—a pentagonal foundation for life. Somehow, busy-ness replaced the popularity contest other girls spent hours a day pursuing. You tried only once to be “fashionable”—in sixth grade—but couldn’t quiet your outspoken tongue. It became clear that perspicacity soothed your spirit like comfort food, even as it charted new waters.

You practiced karate four to six hours a week, violin ten hours a week, spent at least five hours in church activities, and ten to fifteen hours in soccer. Not to mention studying. And if you had free time, you gravitated toward family activities. Your dad has a sharp sense of humor, his quick wit defusing many tense situations. You learned that trait from him—the value of jest in social interactions.

Both of your parents pursued careers in addition to parenting, until your brother’s fourth grade. That providential year, your mom retired to manage his learning difficulties, as well as maintain various and sundry bumps and potholes along childhood’s path—until your dad “retired” four years later. Though you didn’t understand it at the time, that confluence of events—an at-home parent just as your cerebral characteristics emerged—changed your life.

Unexpectedly, long-term parental unemployment produced few changes in your life.  In fact, you barely noticed it. You had already learned parsimonious lessons. No one in your family buys new clothes just to be in style, so you don’t feel denied. The important activities remain, like music lessons, academic tutoring, and sports. You never went to school hungry (you still struggle to control your weight, especially as you bulk up with muscle), although now the family eats what’s on sale. Boxed breakfast cereal almost disappears from the menu. Hardier and healthier food starts the morning—yoghurt, homemade granola, fruit, oatmeal. Mom cooks many meals from scratch—breads, candies, baked spaghetti. That makes you a hit with your friends. Your Dad begins cooking, too, and what a cook he turns out to be! Bar-b-ques, crock pot meals, Julia Child casseroles. Over time, you find that you despise fast food.

Sometime during high school, well into the unemployed years, you begin wondering how the family has enough money for everything. Your mom explains that they purchased the house fifteen years ago out of foreclosure, and now live on the equity. They husband their funds: nothing wasteful, but nothing lacking. This becomes your first real lesson in budgets, as you come to understand the trade-off made on a daily basis in balancing a finite amount of money against infinite wants and needs. And you learn to accept the hand dealt you by fate and God.

Truly, you are too busy to shop the malls, redo your wardrobe, or participate in parties and movies that other teens take for granted. Even if you had the money. Your parents put the family income (and eventually savings) into keeping the children busy, knowing that experiencing success results in self-confidence. The breadth of activities that fill your days and weeks means one always excels, even as another founders. Sometimes you win a karate competition. Sometimes, you score a hat-trick. And other times, you get the A in math you worked against all odds to get. In the end, you feel self-assured and in control.

Family vacations end up the mandated travel accompanying childhood. You sweat through a week in Ontario California competing in the American Youth Soccer Organization International Tournament (you lost). The death of your Grandma takes you to Wisconsin for four days. You and your brother spend nine days in a summer orchestra camp playing Grieg and Shostakovich. In high school, you participate in the Naval Academy and USAFA Summer Seminars, followed by three weeks at the University of Notre Dame’s summer science workshop.

But most summers, you attend summer school, either at the high school or the local community college, retooling weak classes and working ahead in other subjects. As do most of your friends.

Your family hates quitting. Anything. No matter how inconsequential, quitting requires a seminal decision. Success shadows tenacity, like Sonny and Cher, or deposits and withdrawals.

One doesn’t work without the other. ‘Tenacity’ is the patent ingredient to success, like the formula for Coke or the secret to aspirin. Everything just works better with tenacity. Though some people succeed by skill or brilliance, the more dependable route is persistence. Working hard, though the inspiration to many for quitting, is why you succeed more often than those around you.

You never quit. Well, once you did. At the age of seven, you took ball  et for one month and quit. You were never allowed to ballet again.

If a good reason to quit evolves, the corollary to “Never Quit” takes over: You begin another activity. Shaolin-kenpo karate replaced ballet. You studied this martial art for seven years, until you completed all the dojo’s classes and belt levels. It evolved to tae-boxing, kick-boxing, and finally boxing. Martial arts had become a part of you. You started violin in fourth grade. Even when many friends dropped music in favor of parties or hanging out in seventh and again in tenth grade, you continued.  Ultimately, your persistence brought excellence. Years of dedication and constant practice have made you one of the best violinists in the area.

You played soccer for nine years, and then took up cross country. Model United Nations in ninth grade became Academic Decathlon in tenth grade, which segued to the International Baccalaureate degree program as a junior. This constant activity distilled to a Life Lesson:  Diversity and doggedness equates to success. If you struggled with grades, you excelled with music. If your music mired, you won karate competitions. You never felt failure, because as one endeavor waxed, another waned. Over time, this engendered a positive personality and inability to admit defeat—characteristics that serve as pointmen in navigating high school’s minefields.

And you learned one of life’s guiding rules:  Never never never give up.

Your parents believe in God, but not blindly. You received First Communion and Confirmation, and participate in church youth activities. Your weekly agenda includes the church’s moral guidance and sometimes subjective opinions. The drive home on Sundays serves as a debriefing of the priest’s instructions. Pros and cons are debated, often with no clear resolution. But respect for God envelopes all conversations.

One church sermon woven into the fabric of family life taught, “Wherever you are, be there till you leave.” Whatever consumes you at a particular moment in time, give it 100%, enjoy it, and don’t wish for what isn’t.

Another one of life’s guiding lessons.

And then one Sunday, during senior year, the priest traded the sermon for a presentation on the benefits of on-line dating—and that was the last mass attended. Ultimately, it didn’t matter that Sundays no longer started with church because by that time, organized religion had metamorphosed into a way of life, a concept, a moral judgment. A reverence that required no human homily to reinforce.

Your family stresses achieving to your potential, but not the straight A’s; trying your hardest, but not the win; and finishing the race, but not the first place. You got B’s in AP Physics and AP Calculus. That categorized as a success, as did the A in Math Analysis, because you’d done your best. You learned the true joy of pushing yourself to a breaking point, to see—where do your personal limits lie? How much can you accomplish if you must? The USNA PAE (Physical Aptitude Examination requires you to hang from a bar (chin over the bar, palms out) for eighteen seconds. You started at zero seconds. You thought that represented the best you could do, but your Dad knew you weren’t trying your hardest. To this day, you hear his words…

“If you were hanging from a window outside a burning building, you’d be able to hold on longer than zero seconds—or eighteen seconds.”

That didn’t make a lot of sense at first, but gradually, slowly, yes—you came to understand what that concept meant: No excuses. Just do it.

You have followed the Honors path since elementary school, embracing the commitment required to accomplish the accelerated demands. Sometimes your hold on this scholastic label slips, like that bar you so precariously grasp. You find yourself safeguarding your time in an effort to balance the many pivotal events against insufficient minutes. Sometimes, you achieve an unsteady equilibrium, and other times you can’t seem to find the fulcrum.

But, when all USNA applications have been reviewed and selections made, you embody proof that the United States Naval Academy doesn’t select students based on a formula. You don’t have 1600 SAT’s, or the highest GPA—nor the penultimate. You struggle for the grades you get, which means you know how to work through difficult challenges.

You aren’t an All-State athlete or a CIF star with six Varsity letters like some of the applicants you meet. But, you doggedly worked your soccer skills until you won a spot on the Varsity team. You trained in Shaolin kenpo karate until you secured a Second degree Black Belt and instructor certification, and successfully represented your dojo in Martial Arts competitions nationwide. And, you were nervy enough to join cross country your senior year as preparation for the paradoxical dream/nightmare of Plebe Summer.

You received B’s in AP Physics and AP Biology (and an A in Chemistry), but you’re considered a star in science. You won the coveted Academic Achievement Award in Science (awarded by the high school science department), and merited semi-finalist in the Siemens Westinghouse science competition (a three-year-long independent research project on phenotypic and genotypic differences between plants on two tectonic plates). Additionally, you participated in the University of Notre Dame’s three-week hands-on biology seminar.

Yes, even as you struggle with its puzzling convolutions, you love science.

You aren’t an ASB leader—you don’t like its popularity focus, and it takes too much time from academics. Sports and music have always been critical activities, and you’re pretty good at them. You served as president of the Young Musician’s Guild, concertmaster in several orchestras, IB Group leader, as well as an active community service participant.

By the end of high school, you’ve developed a passion for achieving and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. No school better values these characteristics than the United States Naval Academy.

In the words of Dr Martin Luther King…

“… if there is not something so important, so dear to a man’s heart that he is willing to die for it, then he isn’t fit to live.”

Who are you?

Take the space below to talk about yourself. Your goals, dreams, what you enjoy doing. Then read it. Does it fit the United States Naval Academy?

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

55 TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS FOR THE DIGITAL CLASSROOM

Everything you need to integrate computers into K-8 classes

V.I

Sample Lesson

V.II

View this document on Scribd

Fiction:

TO HUNT A SUB

Excerpt

Chapter 4

The only person who’d had Zeke Rowe’s back more often over the years than Bobby James was Duck Peters, and Duck was a Brother. But now, in the fallow years since Zeke’s fiancée died and the SEALs kicked him out, Bobby’s loyalty made Zeke think of his anthropology professor’s description of Other People as “quixotic mutations of tarradiddling genes”. This cynicism, which Zeke had rejected as an undergrad and embraced as his own after the truck called life crippled him, was why Zeke now spent so much time in archaeological wastelands: People sucked.

Except for Bobby. There had never been a tarra in that man’s diddle. The two met on a Joint Task Force charged with stopping internet auctions of American weapons, Bobby had just been promoted to Captain in the LAPD and Zeke was the SEAL’s top Intelligence agent. Within a month, they arrested the ring leader. When the courts released him on a technicality, Bobby was so disgusted, he quit. Later, when the Navy medically retired Zeke, Bobby offered him a job. Zeke refused, preferring to lick his wounds and hide in academia, the career he’d foresaken to become a SEAL. Since then, Zeke had never looked back. Being a paleoanthropologist was safe and predictable. The zeitgeist of life had become subtle, but satisfying.

Bobby must have known Zeke wouldn’t be returning his call this time.

“A grant competition? I’d rather go out with my ex-girlfriend.” Zeke couldn’t believe he’d fallen for the old Disguised Caller ID trick. He stretched his legs down the half-finished steps and sipped a warm beer.

“The one who dumped you for a woman?”

Zeke growled, but said nothing, hoping Bobby would go away. He needed to repair his porch before going to Israel or the Homeowners Association would fine him. The problem with this house—other than the deferred maintenance which had gotten him a great purchase price—was it broke faster than he could fix it.

He rubbed his hands on a tattered t-shirt.  The slogan—SEAL: Often mistaken for the wrath of God—had faded from washing, but he owned ten more like it. Some days, his favorite was I don’t need a weapon. I am one. Other days, If I weren’t supposed to kill people, God wouldn’t have made me so good at it. It depended upon his mood.

“Bobby. I’m retired. Use the young studs who want to prove themselves.”

Zeke spent every spare minute in the Israeli badlands researching the theory that had earned him a PhD in Paleoanthropology: Early man left Africa not via the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, but by following the Rift Valley into Israel. Despite a valiant sustained effort, he found few fossils to support his theory. Still, the absence of evidence was not evidence of absence, or some such cliché. In five days, Zeke headed out again.

“So why’d you keep the phone?”

“Because you pay the bill.”

“Why’d you leave it on?”

Zeke sighed and agreed to meet Bobby at a local Mexican cantina.

****

“What’s on your mind, Bobby?”

The smell of peppers and beer saturated the air as Zeke popped a tortilla chip into his mouth. Bobby grinned and swatted a handkerchief over the booth before sitting.

“Good to see you, too. You never call. Never write.”

Bobby looked younger than when he’d been LAPD, more relaxed. His suit said better paid.

“Does your jacket have the same red as your shirt?”

“Magenta.” Bobby corrected. “It’s Ralph Lauren Purple Label. My personal shopper picked it. Not too much, right?”

Zeke couldn’t think of an answer, so he pointed to Bobby’s shoes. “What happened to the Blahnik’s you were so proud of?”

“People said I wore them because of that TV show, Sex and the City. You like these?” Bobby waggled his foot. “GQ gives them better style marks.”

The only magazine Zeke read on a regular basis was the American Journal of Archaeology, and it didn’t cover fashion. He shrugged. “Do they get you where you’re going?”

They dropped into silence as they waited for their food. The thick adobe walls and overhead fans provided a welcome chill from the heat. The lunch crowd had finished and dinner guests were still in the bar. Dishes clattered in the background, punctuated by Spanish phrases Zeke didn’t understand. When the waitress—Hola! Mi nombre es Marie!—dropped off the last of the sauces and condiments, Bobby got down to business.

“It’s one day. You’re the only guy I know with a PhD in—what’s it called?”

“Paleoanthropology. How I pay my bills these days.”

Zeke patted his pockets for a cigarette before he remembered smoking was one of the habits he’d given up this past year. Another was doing stuff he didn’t want to do.

“You always were the odd duck.”

“You’re thinking of Duck Peters.” Zeke stared through Bobby. After Duck saved Zeke’s life in Iraq, they lost track of each other. Zeke’s fault. He mentally shook and returned his attention to Bobby.

“I need you undercover in that paleo area, to find out why intel chatter about submarines mentions this NSA competition. It doesn’t make sense. The entries are all theoretical research, not even prototypes. Even if they’re a good idea, they wouldn’t be useful for years.”

“I can’t.” Before Bobby could interrupt, Zeke continued, “I’m going to Israel next week.”

Bobby sputtered something, and then covered it with a slurp of coffee. Zeke expected a grimace from the battery acid flavor, but Bobby didn’t seem to notice. His gaze had latched onto an Hispanic family. It seemed to be a birthday party. Both parents wore uniforms—the dad for a security company and mom a local pastry shop—and had the tired but happy faces of so many working families. The man’s blue-black hair was prematurely gray, but his eyes sparkled as he watched his brood. Despite the faded look of hand-me-downs, their clothes were clean and pressed, the youngest in a frilly yellow dress and paper crown with crayon stars along the edges. When she caught Bobby staring, she broke into a beatific smile.

Zeke had to look away. This nameless man was living the life Zeke wanted, and lost. Happiness had nothing to do with money or fancy restaurants or new clothes, and everything to do with who traveled with you.

Bobby gave a finger wave and switched his attention back to Zeke.

“ELINT—electronic intelligence, for those who’ve forgotten—intercepted a flurry of communiqués connecting an NSA Request for Proposal on Trident Subs to Columbia University, the sale of American secrets and primitive man.”

It was all Zeke could do to hide his surprise. Not because of the Columbia connection. Academes habitually financed research with government grants. Nor was it the sale of intel. Oft offered, rarely delivered, still there were the infamous traitors like FBI agent Robert Hanssen and the CIA’s Aldrich Ames.

But why primitive man? Zeke chewed his eggs and menudo in silence. He could feel Bobby watching, waiting for a response. He finally shrugged, slouched down with his mug of coffee and met Bobby’s gaze. That’s all his friend needed.

“We’re interested in two presentations. One by—” Bobby pulled a notebook from his breast pocket and thumbed through it, “Catherine Stockbury, no PhD. She says she can disable a sub by infecting it with a DNA virus.”

“DNA virus, like Ebola? How can that infect a machine?”

“It can’t, according to my cryptologists. If it could, America’s enemies would have come up with it before a grad student.  The hackers I talked to swear nothing organic or inorganic can get through government cyber security. Ms. Stockbury contends it’s that type of ‘ill-conceived gnomic maxim from the flibbertigibbet old guard’—her words, not mine—that will be our downfall. She says existing firewalls offer no defense against organic attacks, and once someone gets past the ‘ephemeral barrier of historic technologic patterns’—whatever that means—they’ll crack our secrets like a prison break.”

Zeke scratched his head. Stockbury had no qualms about speaking her highly-intellectual mind. He respected that.

“Is it possible?”

“Prototype DNA computers exist, but their code is incompatible with silicon computers.” He flipped through his notebook again. “The second presentation, by Kalian Delamagente, also no PhD, uses 3D modeling to imitate the logical thinking of the human brain. She designed it for teachers, but morphed it to intel for this grant.”

“How’s it work?”

“Otto—that’s what she calls her AI—collects everything available from the datasphere.” When Zeke frowned, Bobby added, “The internet, old man. Otto sorts through it and draws conclusions based on pre-programmed parameters.”

“How’s that different from current traffic analysts?”

“She contends that too often, people see what they want to rather than what is, and report information in their comfort area. Otto disregards emotion and experience. Plus, he reports in video format rather than text. She asserts people pick up more using a combination of senses.”

Zeke grunted. It didn’t take an NSA grant to prove that. “What’s she need the grant for?”

“Refinements. She wants to enable Otto to interact, answer questions, access government satellite information not in the public datasphere.”

That sounded benign enough. The intercepted chatter must apply to Stockbury’s research, except for that last detail.

“So where’s ‘primitive man’ come in? You didn’t mention it with either presentation.”

“Delamagente created Otto to unravel man’s roots. She asserts if he can sort through the incongruent and minimal remains of mankind’s past and draw reasoned conclusions, he can do the same for the hodge-podge of data-mined intel.”

Before Zeke could respond, Bobby held a hand up. “I know. Seems pretty thin, but her proposal is the only lead we have that includes every term on my list. The Conference lasts a day. Surveil. Take pictures. If you find corroboration, we’ll assign—” Bobby straightened in his seat, cocked his head to the side and smiled, “—a qualified operative.”

Zeke threw a handful of chips at him.

BORN IN A TREACHEROUS TIME

Excerpt

Chapter 6

Blending in

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison

—Albert Einstein

It didn’t take long to realize she would never fit in, but in the end, what did it matter if she made friends? She was here for her child. She’d have happily melted into the background if not for Baad’s mate Falda. Sometime during that first night, while the group gathered to groom each other and murmur about the day’s excitement, Baad must have told his young pairmate the story of Eagle. From that point on, she stayed with Lyta. When Lyta couldn’t discourage her attention, she gave in and followed Falda’s waddling steps through the Group’s foraging areas to Snarling-dog’s dens and Eagle’s nests. In her soft voice, Falda taught Lyta about her new homeland—which savanna noises meant food and which danger, how to distinguish when Cat’s scratch marks in tree bark meant he might be waiting overhead to pounce or when he just sharpened his claws and went on his day’s business, and on and on.

One day, as they rested under a baobab, shadows deepening as Sun made its way to the horizon to rest, Lyta asked about Kelda’s reaction that first day. A light breeze rippled the air and carried the sweet scent of water from the near-by river. Falda stuffed a fistful of grubs found under a flat river rock into her mouth and chewed as she rubbed a raw spot on her arm.

“Kelda is always difficult unless fat with child.” Falda patted her stomach and scratched deeper, drawing a line of blood on her forearm. “This time, I bring a child to the group!”

As far as Lyta could tell, Kelda woke each day angry at everyone and went to sleep sure the day proved her anger righteous. She avoided Vorak’s mate whenever possible.

“Until you arrived, it was just me she made miserable. Now…” she pointed toward Lyta’s expanding girth, “she has you.”

Kelda’s whining had escalated one evening when Lyta showed up with the mangled carcass of Cat. Though gnawed by hyaena and stripped of most of the thick outer muscle and fat by raptors, the bone marrow provided a good meal for the group. For some reason Lyta couldn’t fathom, this made Kelda angrier than ever.

Kee, on the other hand, was like a warm rock slab on a cold day. Many evenings, as the group groomed each other, she joined Kee staring into the night sky. The elder, like Garv, watched Lights-that-cross-like-arms, always floating somewhere above the gray horizon line. She showed Lyta other star groups that wove through Night Sun’s homeland much like Cat traveled its domain. Some tilted more or less, some brightened and some disappeared to reappear later during Night Sun’s travels. As Cousin Chimp visited fruit trees exactly when they bore food, Kee claimed there were relationships between these changes and when animals were born, bushes berried, and trees fruited. Garv, too, had made these connections.

To Raza and Kelda and everyone else in the band, this friendship was odd. To Lyta, it felt as comfortable as knowing her feet walked and her hands carried.

Night Sun waxed and waned over and over as Lyta foraged and cracked nuts and watched the children of the Group. She did as females must, but what she wanted was to hunt. Food from the earth stopped Lyta’s stomach from growling only until more could be found, but food from animals gave her time between meals to knap tools and show children how to track. The males hunted well, but not as well as Lyta, and the hominids were always just a bit hungry.

She tried to explain this to Falda one day, but Kelda overheard.

“You endanger a child of the Group!” Kelda’s face twitched as she bobbed from one foot to another, jabbing at Lyta’s stomach and crowding forward with each frantic bounce. Her eyes slitted and spittle spewed from her mouth. “Males hunt. You are here for breeding! Why does Raza keep you?”

She brandished a leafy limb dangerously close to Lyta before pivoting and clomping off. Falda leaped to her feet and chased after Kelda while Lyta sat frozen, until the only sound was the shrill chatter of a squirrel defending its meal and the tinny notes of a water bird hunting fish.

“Is that true? Is this why Raza brought me here?”

“He brought you because we need you.”

Lyta jerked and silently chastised herself. She’d missed Ma-g’n’s approach.

“Look around you, Lyta. If every member of the Group stood together, they would just fill the shade under Lone Baobab. We have too few females to provide mates to our males or children for our future. Kelda is wrong. You are cherished by this group.”

Ma-g’n dropped into silence, and Lyta had no idea what she should say, so she too sat wordlessly. A chorus of birds called in the trees and the hum of insects laced the air. A snake slithered past her feet, it scales gleaming an iridescent green in the sunlight as it whisked itself to the safety of thicker vegetation. A dragonfly slapped into Ma-g’n’s shoulder and darted past a spiral of flesh hanging from the side of his head.

Why hadn’t she noticed that before? It couldn’t be missed, hanging in shreds from his ear like pond stems gone to decay. He carried his damage with a quiet confidence. She carried hers where none could see and still trembled with fear that her secret would come out.

Something inside of her broke loose. She started talking and couldn’t stop, telling him about her life back home, how the males had been killed by her carelessness and more died when her hunting efforts failed. She told him of Garv, how they scavenged together and were to be mated. How life had seemed so full and rich once, but now, she couldn’t get rid of the ache in her chest and tightness in her throat every time Garv’s memory, or smell, or image entered her head.

“Is he who makes you full with Baby?”

Lyta clamped her lips into a tight line, too shaken to speak. How could he know?  Ma-g’n continued. “Raza cares for the group, but he suffers, as you do, for someone long gone. You must be more than Raza’s mate. You must be his strength.”

“He is so sure…”

“As are you, Lyta. Look what you have done. I am in awe of you.”

Despite his words, Lyta saw a deep-seated anguish in Ma-g’n’s eyes. When he was ready, he would share its reason. She, too, kept secrets.

***

This land was always hot. The shady coolness of the forest was only a short jog away, but the group chose to inhabit the sweltering grassland with its worn trails and baked black-and-brown rocks. The thick heat of morning left the scrub brush scratchy and dry and the leaves on the few trees limp and dismal, wrapping Lyta’s body in a damp humid hide. No wonder Cat slept during the day, atop a termite mound where it could catch the errant breeze.

Since sleeping in the open wasn’t an option, Lyta dumped pond water over her fur and shook from toes to prognathic snout to fluff her fur before dragging from chore to chore. She panted constantly, her face ashen. Kelda carped nonstop about her weakness, saying her slender build might suit a forest life but not the toughness of the savanna. Every night when darkness settled on the land bringing cooler temperatures, and the band came together to talk about where food could be found and what hunters had seen, Lyta pretended she was home.

Her body adjusted faster than her mind. Night Sun came and went and came again before she could finally sit on her heels harvesting the dried-out sun-shriveled roots and tubers even rat wouldn’t eat without wondering what Feq was doing. It took all of her strength to remember this was about protecting her child. This Group had never known a time when the males didn’t protect them, when the band became too small to frighten predators, when food couldn’t be found to feed the children. Lyta couldn’t forget.

Wouldn’t forget. She let the memories eat at her thoughts. When Sun crested the invisible-mountains and even the sturdy grasshoppers refused to fly in the sweltering heat, everyone rested except Lyta. This was the only time she could be alone, away from Falda’s ever-presence. She memorized the insects’ light footsteps, the prints of prey and predator, and the different scents and tastes left by Cat’s stalking and wandering. She pawed through scat to identify an animal’s size and health, what food it ate, and when it fled in mortal fear. She could even distinguish between Cat’s cousins by how they cached their kill.

***

The wind had blown itself out overnight and the gray sky of dawn hid Sun’s comforting presence. Birds called greetings and Mammoth lowed its pleasure at the world. The bigger Lyta’s stomach grew, the more Kelda harangued her, and this morning had been worse than most. Lyta finished her chores and escaped to the wilderness.

When she got far enough from home base that the voices were lost in the swish of poacea, she turned her eyes to the ground. She held no hope that she could cure the sickness in her spirit, but she did need to replenish her healing plants. As she picked a familiar thick-stemmed plant from the tall tussock grasses along the river, she froze. Cheetah’s prints. Judging by the stride, Cheetah was hunting. A bird cawed to a mate, and Cousin Chimp chattered from some corner of the forest as Lyta inched her eyes over the worn path and along its shadowy edges. The morning dew on the plant leaves was smudged and dried into dirty whorls; Cheetah passed long ago.

She glided after Cheetah like a wraith, tracking her as Cat might. The steps deepened as she studied Cat’s prey—a gazelle—waiting for the moment the animal dipped its head to nibble roots. There! Lyta found the deep impressions where Cheetah sprang, and then her wide strides as she ran like the wind. Gazelle sprinted with long light strides, but no animal escaped Cheetah. Lyta smelled the great Cat’s sweat and Gazelle’s fear as Cheetah gained ground. She need only draw close enough to extend her dew claw, trip Gazelle and pounce. Cheetah couldn’t eat the entire animal and Lyta found no signs of Vulture or Snarling-dog. The scavenge would feed the entire group, if she could explain why she had been hunting.

But Cheetah’s strides shortened and froze, before beginning again in a trail of slow staggering prints, close together as though she took her time. Gazelle had escaped. White foam dripping from Cat’s mouth spotted the leaves. Lyta felt her disappointment.

What happened?  Surely a muscular animal like Cheetah never became tired.  Lyta experienced no fatigue, no shortness of breath or overheating. She turned back onto the traveled trail, planning to retrace her steps to where she had been collecting herbs. To her surprise, Raza appeared, his face ashen as he crushed her body to his.

“Lyta! Cheetah stalks.” His agitated hands continued, “You are in danger!”

“Cheetah-that-is-tired is gone.” She pushed Raza’s finger into a pile of Cheetah’s scat. It was dry and cool, without the steamy softness of fresh dung.

“It is old.” Raza’s face relaxed and she told the story of Gazelle’s stamina and Cheetah’s failure. The next day, Raza included Lyta in the hunt.

Chapter 7

Homo habilis as Scavenger

“In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.”

—Charles Darwin, discussing his ‘dangerous idea’.

Every hunt had that pivotal moment when the wait became the chase. Today, Sabertooth would decide when that would happen. If Raza missed that moment, Snarling-dog and Eagle would eat and Raza’s band would go hungry.

But Raza wouldn’t miss it. He could wait, patient and unmoving, longer than any other mammal alive. Years of being prey had honed his skill. He had reached that defining point of his life when physical and mental coalesced, allowing him to accept tremendous responsibility for his band. Unlike the ageless landscape around him, Raza would be old in fifteen years, and dead in twenty. If the art of painting stories on the damp walls of underground caves had been invented, he would be memorialized as a noble leader who challenged fate for the good of his group. Instead, the generation’s greatest hunter would be remembered only by the children he left behind.

But Raza knew the truth. Lyta was by far the better hunter. No male, not even his hunting partner Vorak, could read predators as Lyta did. It was as though she were inside their heads. The duo never returned to Camp empty-handed, even when game was sparse and searing heat drove herds far from their natural hunting grounds.

Because females weren’t accepted as hunters, the better Lyta did at hunting, the worse the band’s females treated her. They followed rigid cultural norms, like every other herd in the grassland. Lyta’s tree-bound band must have been more open-minded, or hungrier, and she seemed unable to compromise, even for the worthy goals she’d set when she left her homeland. When it would all fall apart, Raza wasn’t sure, but he knew it would.

Sabertooth lazed on the bristled earth, head between her paws and snout buried in the bloody remains of Oryx. She ignored Lyta and Raza, Snarling-dog and Eagle as she devoured her meal. Raza wasn’t surprised. Before setting out today, he’d rubbed dirt and decaying plants over his skin so Sabertooth would confuse his scent with a bush and his color with the grass around him. In all likelihood, if Raza didn’t move, Cat would never see him until she finished.

Nature’s face creased into a childish grin.

“Though imposing to the point of intimidation, Sabertooth’s brain is too small and its mind too dumb. It solves problems with brute force. I ask you, Lyta, are claws and canines mightier than your brainpower? Can mental strength defeat physical prowess? You understand your environment and Cat rules it. You can adapt and Cat has no idea it should. Still, its confidence has made it ruler.”

Lyta squatted, her expanding girth hidden by waist-high reeds, not moving despite the tickle of tiny feet on her skin. Only her nose quivered, testing the air.  Cat’s golden eyes closed as razor-sharp teeth tore another hunk of meat from the bone.

“Nngh.” Lyta grunted as a mouse scampered over her bare foot, and then stilled her muscles when a gentle wind rustled the grass, concealing her twitch.

“Shh,” Raza hissed He planted one hand into the hardscrabble ground while the other rested on his damaged knee. Lyta flexed her foot, eased her weight from one leg to the other, and then settled in to wait some more.

Nature puffed another breeze across the grasses, this time filled with Sabertooth scent.

“Every Pliocene animal believes Cat is supreme, Lyta, but you shouldn’t. Sabertooth will disappear long before your progeny vanish from this blue-green planet.”

Sabertooth stretched her huge jaws in a feline yawn wide enough to swallow the head of most prey. Weighing as much as the largest of the Great-chimps and standing as tall, this Alpha mammal won every fight she picked. Blood stained her tawny fur and darker ripples accented the undulation of her muscles. The perky ears lay flat as she concentrated on her meal. Her yellow eyes closed as she lingered over each bite, certain that Snarling-dog and Eagle and the hominids would wait until she finished. She felt no fear, for Nature endowed her with one of the finest defensive designs. Her sharp claws immobilized prey while her spiked canines pierced the brain-stem and turned a warm breathing animal into dinner.

No other animal possessed these weapons. The skinny, big-headed, hairless creatures, poorly hidden in the grass downwind, grew thin weak claws, and their V-formed jaw with the shovel-shaped incisors and flat molars frightened no predator. Certainly not Cat.

No, Sabertooth found nothing to fear from the two-legged mammals that had appeared in her habitat. Like Eagle and Rodent, they were just more scavengers who ate what she left. Cat had seen them eat roots, grasses, fruit, nuts, insects, when she left them no meat.  Cat had tried grass when Mother disappeared. The memory still lingered. ‘Distasteful’ seemed no criteria for the biped’s food selection.

Sabertooth paused, her stubby tail motionless on the prickled grass. She raised her head to sort through the olfactory scents. The herbal aroma of red oats overwhelmed her senses, but she’d learned as a cub to go beyond the first scent. She found the odor of Eagle and Snarling-dog, and the stink of the hominid pair waiting for her to finish, and another male behind them. She sniffed again—a whiff of old scat, days old, maybe from this same oryx. Somewhere, faintly, she inhaled moist green plants and humus-rich soil, and beyond all of these, the omnipresent tang of volcano. Her whiskers twitched, seeking a predator attached to any of the scents.

Nothing. Satisfied, she returned to her meal.

Nature shifted her position, just enough to catch a different angle on the hunt.

“What brought Man-who-Preys here?”

Nature blustered, but only succeeded in awakening a shrew. Shrew sniffed and caught the tantalizing whiff of scavenge.

“It is not time.”

Nature gusted Sabertooth’s scent toward a Hipparion, lazily grazing on dry shoots and trying to reach the succulent new growth buried beneath. The smell of blood and fear and death set off alarms throughout her skittish nervous system. She whinnied in panic.

Downwind of Lyta and Raza, too far to partake of Cat’s leftovers, Xha of the band Man-who-Preys flinched at the sound. He was solidly built, with a lean muscular body. His skin was already like pig’s hide from too much time under Sun’s searing rays, but few who looked into his close-set black eyes noticed. He exuded a dangerous quality, the sensation that the slightest mistake would unleash a maelstrom of retribution.

“Where did Hipparion come from?”

Xha posed the question to himself for he traveled alone, returning to his home base. His senses catalogued the smells—Sabertooth, the dead oryx, Snarling-dog. Nothing out of the ordinary. His wrist cords bulged as he clasped an obsidian cutter in one hand and his long-handled spear in the other. The bifacial tool was knapped to the sharpest of edges. What the spear brought down, the cutter could finish by the time the prey took its last breath. With them, he evened Nature’s odds. No Sabertooth canines, no Eagle claws, killed with more accuracy than these. This he knew, and with both, he felt safe.

Xha’s soundless steps padded through the grass, hugging the perimeter of the acacia thicket. As he combed the horizon for the paleo-horse Hipparion, an odd collection of colors caught his attention, out-of-place in their surroundings.

The bipeds. He scoffed. They were scrawny creatures with too many bones and not enough meat. He paused to watch them, hunkered into the bushes to await Cat’s left-overs. Something about the female looked familiar. Her flowing hair, straight and too-shiny, though she’d rubbed mud in it to tamp down the glow. Where had he seen that?

Xha mentally shook. It didn’t matter. Females were animals and Xha of the band Man-who-Preys was hungry. Despite their unsavory flavor, they provided easy food. He zeroed in on the broad spread of the large one’s back, aiming his spear at the soft indent beside the backbone and under the shoulder. His powerful arm drew back and his stance widened. All else disappeared from his sightline as he bored into his prey.

Another nicker. The frightened Hipparion cried for her herd as she pawed the ground. Xha’s head canted back, even as his spear maintained its target. The horse would be a tastier meal. Aware of his unwanted attention, Hipparion took off across the grasses.

“They will be here when next I hunt.”

One last look and Xha sprinted after Hipparion, leaving the unsuspecting hominids hoping the horse’s whinny hastened Sabertooth’s departure.