The Fountains of Youth - Brian Stableford [35]
“Crocodiles were around far longer than the other once-extinct species we’ve brought back,” she argued. “If any large-size species had security of tenure, it was them. They’d really proved their evolutionary worth, until we came along and upset the whole applecart. Anyway, they’re essentially lazy. They wouldn’t bother chasing people. Like most so-called predators they prefer carrion.”
I didn’t bother trying to challenge her admittedly eccentric view of ecological aesthetics; I’d learned from long acquaintance that it was much safer to stick to practical matters. “They could still bite,” I pointed out, “and I doubt if they’d be particular if anyone strayed too close to their favorite lurking places. They were somewhat given to lurking, weren’t they?”
“Nonsense,” she said. “You’re a historian and should know better. If you care to consult the figures, you’ll see that far more old humans were crushed by hippos than were ever chewed by crocodiles—but we love our hippos, don’t we? The hippopotamus was one of the first species we brought back out of the banks when we started rebuilding African river ecologies.”
I pointed out that we hadn’t brought the hippos back because they were harmless—after all, we’d also brought back lions, leopards, and cheetahs in the first wave of ecological readjustments—but because such danger as they posed was clearly manifest and easily avoidable. She wasn’t impressed.
“It’s just puerile mammalian chauvinism,” she said. “Childish fur fetishism. Putting crocodiles at the bottom of the list is just antireptilian prejudice.”
I didn’t bother to argue that the New Human fondness for birds gave the lie to the charge of mammalian chauvinism, because she’d simply have added feather fetishism to her list of psychological absurdities. Instead, I pointed out that we had been only too willing to resurrect cobras and black mambas. She was, alas, as happy as ever to shift her ground. “Once we were safely immune to their bites,” she scoffed. “Snakes are so much sexier than crocodiles—according to phallocentric fools.”
She didn’t say in so many words that the category of phallocentric fools was one to which I belonged, but the implication was there. It wasn’t that which drew us apart, though; we were just drifting. As ever, she was happy to shift her ground as a matter of routine, even in the water. I let her go. I didn’t want to continue the verbal contest, and I let her go.
On this occasion, she shifted and drifted too far. Although the surface seemed perfectly placid, the midriver current was quite powerful; once in its grip, even the strongest swimmer wouldn’t have found it easy to get out again.
When Grizel found that the current was bearing her away she could have called for help, but she didn’t. She assumed that the worst that could happen to her was that she’d be carried a few hundred meters downstream before she could get back to the shallows. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred she would have been right, but not this time. As well as being more powerful than it seemed, the midriver current was carrying more than its fair share of debris—including waterlogged branches and whole tree trunks that might have traveled all the way from Adamouwa.
When I became aware that Grizel was no longer near me she was still clearly in view. When I shouted after her, she just waved, as if to reassure me that all was well and that she’d rejoin me soon enough. I set out after her regardless. I didn’t have any kind of premonition—I just didn’t have enough confidence in the power of her arms and legs. I thought she might need my help to get back to the bank.
I never saw the piece of wood that hit her. I don’t suppose she did either; it must have slid upon her as quietly and as insidiously as a crocodile. Logs in water