“I don’t see the point,” said Ram. “You can’t show them to anybody. You can’t use them to prove anything you might write about.”

Wheaton didn’t even bother to answer.

“Father’s already at the peak of his profession,” Deborah explained to Noxon later. “He doesn’t need to publish this stuff. It just makes him happy to know it. He and I will watch these vids later. He’s already told me to erase them when he dies.”

They did not visit sequential days. From the Erectids’ paths, Noxon knew that this encampment remained for three years, before prey animals grew too sparse and they moved on. So each day, they visited a different point in time, noticing how the children had grown, how courtship patterns had changed.

“Not monogamous yet,” said Wheaton. “But it’s starting. Repeated pairings between the same couple. And because females have to be larger and stronger to defend against hyenas, they’re also strong enough to resist being kidnapped and sequestered.”

“Raped,” Deborah corrected.

“‘Raped’ carries criminal connotations,” said Wheaton. “Because of the progress the Erectids are making, we can afford to criminalize it now, must do so. But they inherited chimplike behavior patterns in which rape was one of the few ways around the dominance of the alpha male. It was the only way non-alphas could get their genes into the next generation.”

“And now we still can’t expunge that old pattern,” said Deborah to Noxon. “Even though ‘kidnap-and-sequester’ has been criminalized in most cultures for thousands of years.”

“Civilization only became possible as monogamous pair-bonding emerged,” said Wheaton, “which it’s only just starting to do in this tribe. The females are getting a real advantage from being larger, and in a while they’ll be in a position to start objecting and making their objections stick. Besides, alpha males can tolerate a little genetic insertion by stealthy beta males, but an uxorious male has only one mate, and he can’t afford any genetic imposition from other males. Our Erectids are just taking their first steps on the road to sapience and civilization.”

“And even then, alphas and stalkers and rapists still keep popping up.”

“Because those behaviors still succeed, reproductively, often enough to keep the genes active.” Wheaton held out his hands, as if asking for something. “Give ’em a break. These kids are still sixty or seventy thousand generations away from equal treatment of the sexes.”

“‘These kids,’” said Ram.

“Kids with a new car. Just learning how to pilot this upright body.” Wheaton turned away, finished with discussion of an issue he must have resolved in his own mind decades ago. “Noxon, we’ve observed and recorded nearly their whole time at this site. Can we please follow them on a hunt?”