Buck
knew that his quest was very dangerous; he would probably fail and
might well be killed. But he couldn't resist. He he was driven to
maximize his reproductive potential by fathering as many children as
possible.
The females on his own islands were all impregnated.
One option was to lie back and defend his own, leaving more offspring
as he mated with his girls when they came of age. But if he could take
over another island, if he could get lucky and kill the ruling male,
then there would be more girls to fertilize, and the prospect made him
smile as his loins stirred.
He could leave far more new
descendants, perhaps 5 times as many. So even though his chances of
dying were perhaps 50-50, he would on average leave more descendants by
taking the risk than playing it safe. He didn't think of any of that,
of course. But those were the evolutionary pressures that had shaped
him. He was descended from a line of males who had been inclined to
take the risk, and their genes had elbowed out those who like playing
it safe. Those men may have grown old rather than dying young, but that
didn't matter.
Those same genes were present in the other men on
islands surrounding his. From time to time one of them would land on
one of his islands and he would drive the intruder way or occasionally
kill him. He knew every inch of his islands well, and he got a little
help from his women -- not much, but so far it had been enough.
He
often dreamed of an expedition and the females he might find, but what
stirred him to act now was that he had just killed one such interloping
man two days before. He didn't know what island that man came from, but
no male would come from that particular island for quite some time; a
new man would have to establish his dominance there first. If he picked
the island that the man came from, his chances of dominating it were
excellent. What's more, none of the men on other surrounding islands
knew that the master of an island had just died, so the chances were no
higher than usual that they would make a play for one of his islands
just then.
He had to decide which island to visit. He decided on
the one to the east, just visible on the horizon. His own three islands
were close enough together that he swam from one to another frequently,
but this would be a long swim.
He set off with his weapons -- a
knife and bow and arrows -- in a harness on his back. After the daylong
swim he lurked offshore, keeping as low a profile in the waves as he
could. If he was spotted, he hoped he would be mistaken for some
floating debris. He scanned the island as the afternoon grew late,
trying to memorize the features. He saw only an occasional sentry,
which heartened him.
Soon after the tropical sun went down and
dark fell, he swam the last little bit of his journey. It was a
moonless night, also part of his timing decision. He didn't want to
land on a beach, nor did he want to land on a rocky point. The beach
was easy for a sentry to scan, and the point was obvious enough that it
would warrant special attention. Instead, he chose a rocky shoreline
not too far from the point. His heart pounded as he rode a wave in and
found a purchase on a rock. He clambered up over the rocks quickly,
earning a painful gash on his shin. He moved quickly to keep from being
pounded by another wave, but more importantly to reduce his exposure
time. On those rocks he was at his most vulnerable and he half expected
that a woman would be even now running back to the man of the island so
he could ambush Buck at a time and place of his choosing.
But he made it into some dense foliage, where he could rest and regain his strength after the long swim.
After a couple hours of rest, he started walking inland, trying to make as little noise as possible.
He saw her before she saw him, and that made all the difference.
The
forces that shaped her to maximize her fitness were very different from
Buck's. If she could raise the alarm without being killed herself, the
man of the island would very likely kill Buck or at least force him off
the island again. That would prevent Buck from killing some of her
relatives whose lives were in danger if he succeeded in his mission.
But if she herself was to die while sounding the alarm, that was a more
serious downside because she could then of course bear no further
children. She knew that with him this close he would kill her if she
shouted -- his genes were shaped to do that precisely to deter her from
sounding the alarm. Her hope was to follow him quietly so he could tell
she was not alerting anyone else, and he might let her live, for
instance for information she could give him.
Instead of shouting
or trying to run, she turned and stuck out her rear end to Buck,
showing she was available for mating whenever he wanted.
Buck
dimly made out her rear end in the starlight, but he had different
plans for her. There is genetic diversity. Many men would have let her
tag along behind him, and her genetic gamble was that he was one of
those men. But he was not. She still might give him away in some
fashion. He came up behind her and grabbed her hips as if to mate. Then
suddenly he put both hands around her neck and squeezed hard. Now it
was in her genetic interest to shout if she could. She herself was
doomed but by alerting the island she could save some of her sisters.
By the same token, it was vital to him that she not make any noise. She
thrashed, but he was much stronger. Within a couple minutes her feeble
movements ceased completely. He waited a little longer for good
measure, then turned her over onto her back and slit her throat. It was
the first of a great many killings to come.
Buck could have
tried to get her to answer some questions before revealing that he was
going to kill her, but that too had risks, a major one being that she
might lie.
He crept carefully along what seemed to be a path.
Soon he saw a glow not far ahead and heard the murmur of voices. He
moved forward even more slowly. He could glimpse the fire through the
trees, and worked off the path to one side. Surely a sentry would be
guarding the path. Shortly after he left the path he saw her right next
to the path -- she would have spotted him if he had gone forward
another twenty yards.
He crept to a spot thirty yards from the
center of the settlement with an unobstructed view; some women and
girls were around the fire. He now took out his bow and arrows. He had
spent a great deal of time choosing the materials for this bow and
crafting them -- it was vital to his reproductive chances at a moment
just like this.
After making sure he had room to draw the bow
and aim properly, he sat down to wait. Now he needed the man to appear.
As the hours went by, the women and girls headed off to bed. Buck was
sorely tempted to sleep, but he kept waiting. The fire burned low.
The approaching dawn shaded the sky from black to gray.
He
saw him then, emerging from a hut sleepily, a large man with a head of
graying hair. He was perhaps forty yards away. Buck felt a thrill. His
aim when firing this arrow could mean dozens more descendants for him
and dozens fewer for the man. The man yawned, shook his head sleepily,
and then stretched, raising his arms high in the air. His exposed chest
made a fine target. Sexual pleasure tingled within Buck as he fired.
His first shot missed, and the man came down out of his stretch,
perhaps having heard the arrow whiz by. But before he had time to
react, Buck's second shot caught him squarely in the chest. After
looking around in panic, the man fell with a groan.
The long wait was over, but now Buck had a great deal to accomplish in a short time.
The
sentry was almost certain to be one of the women he would want to kill,
and since she might conceivably be armed, he delivered his third arrow
into her as she dozed. She let out a little cry. He raced towards her.
Quickly unsheathing his knife, he turned her onto her back and slit her
throat.
From there he raced into the clearing. His first stop
was his rival, who lay looking at him groggily. There was no need to
give a victory speech or hear the man's last words. He simply slit his
throat and watched briefly as the blood gushed forth. If the man had
caught Buck on his own island, he would have done the same thing.
The first few women who appeared from their huts screamed when they saw Buck standing with his bloody knife.
Then
the carnage began. Some of the women and children raced out of camp. As
fast as he could get the arrows into his bow, he fired at the fleeing
women. He hit only a few women, but had a bit more luck with the
children.
Only some of the women left. Others, especially women
with young girls, stayed and approached him, and he was careful not to
shoot them. He was delighted to see girls as old as eight had stayed.
Buck's
emergence as the new man had complicated genetic consequences which
would take some time to sort out. But in general the women who had run
from camp were programmed by evolution to run because they knew that
death awaited them in the camp if they stayed. Buck himself could not
tell why, but the fact that they wanted to get away was itself a sign
that they needed to be killed if he was to maximize the number of his
offspring.
It was to their advantage to run because many of them managed their escape and might yet live.
The ones who stayed believed that Buck probably would spare them after he had examined them and pondered the situation.
The
fact that girls as old as eight remained was a good sign. It meant that
for whatever reason the old man had not mated with them yet. They were
virgins, and their reproductive potential was his for the taking. The
reason was simple and easily confirmed when he asked the women: the man
had been totally impotent for the past four years.
The social
structure of the islands had molded the behavior of men and women
alike, but it had also molded their physiology. Since there were very
few men and they killed each other frequently, sometimes years went by
with no virile male in sight. The women had evolved the ability to
store sperm for years. Whenever their bodies were ready to bear another
child, a hormonal signal awoke a small number of the sperm from
suspended animation, and they wriggled to the egg and fertilized it.
In
a parallel development, the men had evolved large testicles and ducts
to hold a great deal of sperm. Their bodies were adapted to produce
large quantities of the other components of seminal fluid very quickly.
Another
development of equal genetic interest to male and female alike was that
the man would mate with young girls, whose vaginas matured
correspondingly early. They could store his sperm as well as their
mothers could, and even if they wouldn't need any for years, the supply
would be ready when the time came. If no other man appeared in the
interim, it was very much to their advantage to have the sperm to
reproduce rather than remaining childless.
In that the interests
of male and female coincided, but in another way they did not at all.
An evolutionary battle raged within the reproductive tracts of the
females. The man's interest was to claim all of the woman's future
potential for himself, to arrange so future ejaculations inside the
woman's vagina could not compete with the sperm he had already
deposited. But while it was in the woman's interest for a man's sperm
to last a long time within her reproductive tract, it was very much in
her interest to allow a new man's sperm to compete or -- preferably --
supplant the earlier man's sperm. At the moment the battle favored the
males' interest, though not completely. The first ejaculation inside a
girl's vagina triggered biochemical changes that prevented further
sperm from taking hold.
As the usurping male, Buck at the moment
shared the genetic interest of the women. But it was the initial
ejaculation of the old man long before that had made the women's bodies
resistant to conceiving babies with fresh sperm.
A number of
factors influenced which females Buck would kill. Being pregnant was at
the moment bad for her. Not only would she give birth to a baby who was
not Buck's, he wouldn't even have the chance to try fathering a new
child with her for some time. The younger a girl who was not a virgin,
the worse for her. The previous man's sperm was copious and fresh, and
the biochemical defenses against his sperm being able to gain a
foothold were strong. As the women aged, the defenses wore down and
Buck's chances of impregnating them with his own sperm went up.
This
was one reason why some of the older women stayed in camp. Since Buck
would have a fair shot at impregnating them, he might not kill them.
The stronger reason was that they were the mothers or grandmothers of
the girls aged eight and under. It was in both their interest and
Buck's to protect and provide for those girls as they grew up and bore
their joint descendants.
As noted before, there is genetic
variability. Buck might have spared some of the women who fled, but
their gamble was that he would not. He might kill some of those who had
remained, if his calculus was a little different from the women's.
Shortly
all the women and girls had made their initial decision. Many had
chosen to flee, and some of those had been shot down and methodically
dispatched by Buck. Others had chosen to stay.
Buck's fitness
commanded that he begin his inseminations at once. His balls were full
of sperm. It was also in his interest for the women and girls to see
him mating with the girl, showing them that he was virile. If he had
been sickly or had trouble with performance, some of those girls and
their mothers might have slipped away into the woods to take their
chances.
If a man took a girl's virginity but did not impregnate
her properly, her future was dim. Another interloping male would be
likely to kill her instead of trying to plant his own seed, and if no
new man came at all she couldn't reproduce either. They did have some
hope, though.
One of the girls who remained was apparently in
that exact position and clinging to that hope. If Buck examined her and
determined that she was definitely past the age where she would have
borne her first baby and yet had no enlarged nipples, no stretch marks
on her belly and a tight upper vagina, it would suggest that the other
man had not been potent. His biochemistry might have locked the girl's
loins against impregnation by Buck -- but it might not. She would not
bear any of the other man's offspring, and she would either bear his or
bear none at all -- which was no big loss to him.
But Buck was
going to work first on the virgins. "I'm going to fuck her," he said,
pointing to the oldest of those girls who had not fled and stripping
off his homespun shorts. Blood pulsed into his penis and he was erect
in seconds.
"Good girl!" whispered her mother, who quickly
helped the girl out of her homespun dress, leaving her naked. "Be nice
to the man. Do everything he says, OK? Treasure the moment!"
The girl nodded, but looked anxious.
"Hands and knees!" Buck said.
He
knelt behind her and began by taking a very close look at her genital
region. He wanted to make sure she really was a virgin. It was harder
than one might think, because the girls had an enormous genetic
advantage in looking like virgins even if they weren't, and their
physiology was influenced accordingly. Just because she had not fled
was no guarantee she actually was; another route to her survival was
for him to conclude she was a virgin when she wasn't. By examining her
folds carefully, he was convinced that no penis had been there before.
This brought his cock to peak hardness, and with excitement he brought
himself up behind her and brought his cock to her feminine opening.
He
poked gently at her opening over and over, and her juices flowed. When
he sensed that her tract was lubricated, he slid inside. As he
penetrated her, he attended to the tightness on his penis to continue
his diagnosis of her virginity, and it confirmed his judgment she was.
She also gave a yelp. The fact that the penetration hurt was no concern
of his. Back and forth, deeper and deeper he pressed. Within a few
strokes the girl started sighing and gasping, obviously very happy.
That was no concern of his either.
Buck's penis was long, far
longer than was healthy for these young girls if fully inserted. He
carefully limited the depth of his intrusion to avoid damaging his
young girls. The length of his penis was for another purpose.
The
girl might never mate again. Her lifetime sexual pleasure might come
from this one act. Her orgasm started after a few strokes, and with
every movement of Buck's penis in and out it was prolonged. Her ecstasy
was indescribable, unlike anything she had felt before and anything she
would ever feel again.
He was about to do his very favorite
thing in the world. He felt his cock swell, felt his tubes and tracts
inside shifting, and then ecstasy took hold of him as he began his
ejaculation. His first three shots of semen rocketed into her upper
vagina, immediately starting to loosen her cervix. His physiology had
evolved so he didn't deliver his next shot right away. It was ten
seconds before his cock fired again, and more semen filled her female
tract. Her body needed time to absorb the first shots before it could
handle the later ones. From the start of his ejaculation he stayed
coupled to her for a full two minutes, every ten seconds another splat
of high-quality sperm delivered up the cunt of the girl who knelt in
the stupor of continuing orgasm.
One purpose of her continuous
orgasm was the uterine contractions. They were a significant help in
pumping all of Buck's sperm deeper into her body, The other purpose of
the orgasm was to provide the hormonal signals to awaken her sperm
storage system.
Finally, profoundly satisfied, Buck pulled out and lay back on the ground to catch his breath.
"Here, honey, lie on your back," her mother said after Buck uncoupled. "Keep as much of it up inside as you can."
Helped
by her contractions, the sperm swam up through her uterus and through
her Fallopian tubes. Most of it went and burrowed into her ovaries. As
Buck's organ kept pulsing, sperm swam through her entire body cavity.
There was no benefit to this, but evolution hadn't eliminated it --
Buck's sperm was relatively cheap in evolutionary terms. Most of it
flooded into her ovaries, where it became dormant.
When she
became fertile in a few years, some of the sperm would awaken at the
chemical signals given off by the egg, and they would fertilize it. She
would become pregnant with his baby. As soon as that one was born and
her body was recovered enough to produce the next egg, a little more
sperm would wake up for that one too. He was impregnating her for life.
She could bear twenty children, but would never have to have sex again.
This one act was all it took to meet her every reproductive need.
The
remaining women immediately began grooming their young daughters to
present them in the most alluring fashion possible. They vied to pamper
Buck. They served him delicacies and protein-rich food to help with his
sperm production. All were hoping their daughter would be next.
Buck
took another little girl the next morning, dipping into his sperm
reserves. He left time between matings to allow his fluids to achieve
full potency.
Then he went hunting. He would alternate hunting expeditions with fertilizations.
Buck's
ability to move silently through forest was key. The thoroughness of
his hunt would have a large impact on his genetic success.
His
first hunting session was productive. Many of the girls and women who
had fled were not very good at hiding. If he found a woman alone or
with children, he would charge her. She would run if she had any time.
He caught up to her, tackled her, and sliced her throat cleanly. He
then took off after her children. Their lower speed made it less likely
they could escape on foot, and their smaller size gave them a better
chance of hiding, so that is what they tried to do. Instead of wailing
for their mother, they were programmed to remain silent. But these
adaptations were a desperate measure. He generally found them and
killed them, one by one.
He was especially attentive when he saw
boys. Ordinarily the old man wouldn't have allowed any boys to survive,
but because of his impotence, he had been inclined to let a few live.
As long as he was virile, it was to his advantage to inseminate all the
females himself, but his sons also carried half his genes and could
mate with his daughters when they grew of age. Some other man such as
Buck was less preferable as a father because he shared none of the
man's genes, and in any event there was no guarantee that another man
would arrive soon. There would have been a gap when no mature male was
available to breed the females. In this case, the gap began with the
onset of his impotence. It would have ended when the first baby boy who
was allowed to live reached puberty and beyond. It wasn't good to have
this be too long a gap, so the old man had allowed a few boys to
survive. It was unlikely that it was a conscious decision -- that's
just what the old man's instinct told him to do. However, Buck's
arrival rendered all this planning moot.
After two days of
hunting and over twenty killings, he returned to his camp. The women
fed him more high-protein food, and he ejaculated his copious loads of
semen into the girls, one by one.
There was a reason he mated
with a girl once and gave her a large dose of semen instead of counting
on multiple matings. The very same mechanisms that deterred other men's
sperm from fertilizing the girl also made his own later ejaculations
largely ineffective. He had one main chance to impregnate her -- one
sexual act. He needed to deliver into her vagina many large blobs of
thick semen, all teeming with high concentrations of his sperm.
As
the days went by, Buck was delighted mating with the girls, pulsing his
seed deep up the pussies of dear little things as young as four years
old. Mating with girls younger than that wasn't to his advantage, since
the risk of damaging them was greater than the risk of their being bred
by another man. Chances were he could come back at least once a year
and breed them when they came of age, one by one.
Now Buck
examined the older girl who had stayed. He slid his finger into her
vagina and explored, as the girl presented herself with anxiety. Her
upper pussy was tight. Her nipples were small and unused; no baby had
nursed on them. The girl was visibly relieved when he fucked her
instead of killing her, delighted to get his massive dose of sperm. She
was happy for him to repeat it over and over. The alternative was death.
Finding
refugees in the hills was harder, though. The ones he had not found so
far were better at hiding, and his chances of finding them later if he
hadn't succeeded at first were low. In some cases they had escaped from
sheer luck, though, and he had a good chance of finding and dispatching
them.
He had one especially important encounter. From far off he
saw a person who looked bigger than a child. As he worked his way
closer, he caught sight of the person again. He was an adolescent boy!
He was a grave threat to Buck's reproductive success. If he achieved
adulthood, he could kill Buck as he tried to approach the island again.
When he came to produce semen himself, he could impregnate the little
girls that Buck might not get to this time. In time he might even start
killing off the girls Buck had just now mated with.
He put
himself in the shoes of an adolescent boy who had undoubtedly overheard
from the panicked women that the old man had been killed and a new one
had replaced him. This was bad news for the boy, who had had a strong
possibility of simply waiting until the old man died and then taking
over the island for himself. He should know instinctively that the new
man would be hunting him, so he would need to be vigilant, and
hopefully kill him before he was killed. His vigilance had been
ineffective to the extent that Buck had detected him.
Buck's
first reaction was to make a point of staying out of sight. The boy
would have weapons and if his genes were true he would try to kill him.
Having once demonstrated his virility, Buck didn't need to mate in
public. He hid in areas away from camp and got mothers to bring their
daughters out to him for their mating.
Where would such a boy
live? One side of the central hill had a small area of volcanic rock
that had been shattered, leaving boulders and caves. It looked to
afford the best hiding places. Buck spent two full days watching from a
distance, and was surprised to see a second boy appear briefly. Having
two adversaries made his job more difficult. These boys were
undoubtedly armed, and trying to invade the area of boulders and caves
was a high-risk proposition.
But he developed a plan. He
finished inseminating all the girls. Although he had plans for more, he
had done enough that the women would not think it was strange for him
to leave.
He announced his departure. A few of the women saw him
stash his weapons in his harness and swim off over the horizon. But
once he was out a mile or so, he stopped and waited. Under cover of
darkness, he approached the island again and came ashore at a different
spot. He silently approached the hillside where the adolescent boys
lurked, and he waited.
He expected that the two boys would have
learned of his departure by careful observation if nothing else -- the
women and girls in the village could now go roaming into the woods
without fear of being mistaken for Buck's genetic enemies and killed.
He hoped the boys would let their guard down and come to investigate.
He
smiled as he saw the two boys leave their refuge high on the hill. He
decided to go into their lair and wait for them to return, when he
could dispatch them at close range. He approached the lair carefully,
and it was a good thing. As he scrambled over a last boulder, he saw a
third boy! Had the boy detected his approach, Buck's life could well
have ended with an arrow in his chest. But Buck's stealth had been
enough to get him close to the boy before discovery. The boy lost
precious seconds stunned by the surprise appearance of the man. Had he
retrieved his knife from several feet away, it would have been riskier
for Buck. But as it was Buck was upon him, wrestling him to the ground,
pinning him, and then stabbing him in the back repeatedly before
slicing his throat open for good measure.
Had there been a
fourth boy, he probably would have dispatched Buck with his bow and
arrow. But Buck's entire venture was risky, and he got lucky. There
were only three boys.
The fact that there had been three boys
was interesting in itself. Eventually, one would kill the other two
unless they managed to leave the island. Perhaps evolution dictated
that the three of them working as a team could help each other enough
that it was not yet worth their while to kill the other two, but it was
obviously an unstable situation.
He then waited for the other
two boys to return. As it was, the two approached side by side,
laughing and joking. This lack of vigilance betrayed genes that would
be culled from the gene pool. Buck waited until they were 10 yards away
and launched an arrow straight into the chest of one of them. If the
other charged, Buck was prepared to drop his bow and take up his knife.
As it was, the second boy chose to run. Buck had time to fit another
arrow into his bow and shoot the boy in the back. The boy stumbled but
kept upright, and Buck needed a third arrow to bring him down. As
usual, he slit their throats to make sure they were really dead.
His
most serious rivals were out of the way, but his stealthy second
landing had another benefit. As he approached the main camp, he saw a
mother and two young sons who he didn't recognize. They had returned to
camp when they heard Buck had left. He shot the mother with an arrow
and the two boys of course had no chance.
"His" women were surprised to see him return. He would continue to hunt during the day, and he would resume his inseminations.
This
time he turned his sexual attention to the adult mothers. One by one he
took them and fucked them from the rear. He did them hard, and he made
sure to get the very deepest penetration he could. The women yelped and
cried. Roughing up their vaginas gave Buck a greater chance of
overcoming the previous man's barriers against his sperm. Buck didn't
know that -- he just had an impulse to fuck those women hard. Evolution
had selected for a long, hard penis for exactly this purpose. He used
shallow penetration with the tender young girls, deep penetration for
the women who had been previously inseminated.
Although the
women could see that the others were in pain from Buck's intrusions,
they still encouraged him to fuck them too. Any evidence they gave that
they did not want to bear Buck's babies was an invitation to be killed.
Vaginal pain, even if severe, was far better than death. Buck's rough
treatment increased the risk of infection or genital harm that would
make them infertile. That too was a risk they would have to take.
Buck mated with them over and over again, always aiming for that extra chance at impregnation.
After
he had spurted his semen where it had the greatest chance of fathering
a child, he took to a bit of recreational sex while his sperm supply
was low. He mated with his little girls again, pulsing their vaginas
with semen once more. It had a tiny chance of helping activate the
defenses in the girls against another man's sperm. It also just felt
awfully good. Not every aspect of human behavior has been shaped by
evolution.
He stayed two weeks after he killed the adolescent
boys. His hunting expeditions had bagged him no further human game, nor
any sign that other refugees remained. There was some chance that more
hunting expeditions would locate more refugees, but he had reached the
point of diminishing returns. Maximizing his fitness called for him to
move on.
Buck had engaged in a great deal of killing. The
population of the island was perhaps a quarter of what it had been. But
what mattered to Buck from a genetic perspective was that as the
population grew again, most of the new babies would carry his genes.
And
what did the women think of this slaughter? They were used to boys
being killed routinely in any event; that was just part of life. What
about the slaughter of their sisters, mothers, aunts, nieces, and
daughters? They were sad, of course. But they didn't take it out on
Buck. He was just doing what any male would do. Their genetic future
lay with cooperating with him and helping to replenish the island's
population. The new babies would bear Buck's genes, but they would also
bear their own.
Their chance at avoiding the slaughter had lain
in an effective sentry system to alert the old man when Buck first
landed. But vigilance every day and night for years at a time is
expensive too, in terms of lost time gathering food. The man's
impotence may also have contributed to less vigilance on the part of
the women.
Buck
had a strong temptation to return to his own islands at once. He had
been away for a long time and his domain lay open to attack.
But
he also had that urge to go on, to find more of those young girls. One
island was clearly visible on the horizon, and after his long swim Buck
approached at night as before.
He encountered no sentries.
Still, he approached the camp carefully. There was no man present. This
didn't surprise him especially -- if an interloper chose this period of
Buck's absence to invade one of his home islands he would find no man
there either.
When he made his presence known, the women were
very anxious. A few headed for the woods by instinct, and following his
own instinct he killed two as they tried to flee.
He was
surprised to see very few children. The youngest children were about
twelve years old, all girls. None of them were virgins, which meant his
instinct was to kill them, but something held him back. Soon a young
woman explained that the last man had been there eight years before,
and had as expected killed all the boys and all the older girls. The
only fertile females he left on the island were those between the ages
of about four and twelve; he also left a few older women. That was all
standard. What was highly unusual was that while the surviving girls
now ranged in age between twelve and twenty, none had become pregnant.
Although
driven by instinct, Buck also had reasoning power. He decided that the
man was infertile! While undoubtedly he had ejaculated gobs of semen up
inside the vaginas of all the girls, it hadn't done any good! Buck got
a description of the man, and it was clear it wasn't the same man Buck
had killed.
Why the man Buck had killed had not been to this
neighboring island as it sat open for the taking wasn't obvious.
Perhaps he had had a different survival instinct. Instead of
approaching and attempting to take possession of this island, he had
just sat back on his own -- which was admittedly a rather large and
fertile island. Another possibility was that through some combination
of age, injury, or genetic endowment he was not a great swimmer.
So
Buck fertilized all the females on the island, taking a couple weeks
for the process. Mostly they got rough treatment as he stabbed his
penis into them all the way and jabbed hard before ejaculating. The man
had been infertile, but he might well have had the chemical triggers it
took to shut out Buck's sperm. These were no longer little girls; a
vagina in a twelve-year-old was able to take more punishment than that
of a four-year-old.
Buck's hunting expeditions were much less
intense here and had a different purpose. When he found a couple young
women on his hunting expeditions, they were naturally terrified. But he
didn't kill them; he instead brought them back to the camp and mated
with them. Hunting was less important because while any girls he missed
wouldn't bear his children, they at least wouldn't bear those of any
other man either. And there couldn't be any other males on the island.
He
thought he could see an island on the horizon further east, but his
decision in this situation was clear. It had been a questionable move
to come to this island at all, but now his interest lay in heading back
west to his own islands. With his two new conquests he now had five
islands configured to his genetic advantage. His judgment, deriving no
doubt from natural selection in his past, was that he must try to
defend what he had. His expedition had taken him over two months. He
returned to the west, past his other newly conquered island to his main
three.
A tragedy had struck. A man had been to his northernmost
island in his absence, and the island was nearly depopulated. There
were only a dozen-odd girls under the age of six and half dozen older
women that the man had intended to leave. Naturally he had slaughtered
all the girls that he, Buck, had impregnated, and left only those that
had been too young for him to breed. But the intruder's hunting had not
been so thorough. Buck was heartened to see that another dozen women
and girls whose innards teemed with his sperm had survived.
Buck
spared the two three-year-olds the other man had impregnated. The other
man's calculus apparently called for breeding girls on the younger
side. This made sense if he thought he was unlikely to be back to breed
them. Perhaps he, too, had been marauding far from his home base. It
was possible that those girls were too young for his sperm to survive
at all and too young for his chemical signals to shut out future sperm.
Buck would be back to plant his seed when they were a little older.
There was also the fact that those girls were his daughters. Even if
the other man had bred them, they still carried a quarter of his genes.
Buck
swam among his islands. Now and then he decided a girl of around four
had gotten old enough to be bred. He killed all the baby boys, just as
everyone knew he would.
Two years passed.
Because of the
long swims required he didn't get to his easternmost island as often as
he would have liked. When he visited after a four months' absence, he
wasn't careful enough. Another man had arrived in the interim. Buck was
himself felled by an arrow from a man he never saw -- until he
approached and matter-of-factly slit his throat.
Trying to hold five islands was very perilous, and it was surprising Buck had lasted as long as he did.
Buck's
killer was halfway through the carnage when Buck arrived, and he of
course finished what he had started -- that was the way of the world.
Buck's
killer as a young man, barely out of adolescence. He had decided to
flee from his own island, where two other boys of roughly the same age
were trying to kill him as they fought to establish their dominance of
that island. The young man's judgment was that trying to take a new
island was less risky than staying. His gamble had paid off. Now his
interest lay in staying on the island as he grew to his full size and
strength. In the interim he would improve his archery skills and
equipment and practice swimming. Now and then a young girl would need
breeding. And there was plenty of time to mate with any of the women
who struck his fancy. He would not be rough with them, however, since
they already had his sperm and he was not trying to compete with
another man's seed.
On Buck's other islands, there would be a
time of change. Buck could no longer kill the baby boys. As a half
dozen years passed without another visit from Buck or another
enterprising intruder, the women would decide it was likely that the
new master of the island would come from among the boys of the island.
As the boys approached adolescence, a time of chaos would ensue. A few
mothers might surreptitiously murder each other's boys. As a
precaution, the camp would fragment for a time, each small group of
mothers protecting its own. When the boys reached adolescence, they
would engage in scouting trips and kill each other, as well as the
younger boys who were still being born to the women of the island. In
time one would kill all the others unless they chose to flee and try
their luck elsewhere.
The new young man coming into his own at
age 15 would inherit a world where all the girls under age 19 were
virgins, and he would have the pleasure of inseminating all of them.
The women who were 20 and above were all pregnant with Buck's children.
He would follow his instinct and brutally fuck them over and over,
hoping to overcome Buck's barriers. But he would not kill any. Their
children were at least his half-brothers and sisters, and some had
closer relationships.
After one male came to dominate each of
Buck's former islands, the pattern would repeat itself. The
between-island raids would begin. One young man might succeed in taking
over his neighbor's island; more likely he would be killed and the
surviving neighbor would then have a shot at the intruder's island.
Over
time, evolution would continue honing the instincts of the women and
men as they constantly strove to maximize their reproductive fitness.