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1NakedThis story begins late in the history of human evolution, when already apes had lost most of the thick hair on their legs and arms, on their backs and necks and bellies. Too many biting andburrowing insects had evolved to live in that fur—so many that the number of them an apecarried could mean the difference between sickness and health.The loss of habitat was hard on those bugs, so the King of Parasites went up to God—scuttled up to God, actually—and asked for an audience."God," he said, waving his two front legs, his voice whistling through his proboscis, "mypeople are starving. They have nowhere to hide during the day, they have nowhere to lay theirchildren. My only prosperous subjects are the biting flies and pubic lice. Help us."It's out of my hands, God said. What should I do, put the hair back? Things evolve the waythey evolve; My natural laws are My laws. Besides, God added, change is coming. Trust me.I'm hardly ever wrong.Alfred and Beth were the nakedest apes in two neighboring bands. The little hair they had

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2clung to their skin in tight little pills a half-inch apart. For unrelated reasons, hominids had bythis time also come to walk upright, and grown intelligent and social. Their thumbs worked, theyhad some crude tools, and while they could not yet speak a regular language, their larynxes weresoftening in that direction. Where their ape cousins had only managed sounds related toestablishing dominance or territory, crying an alarm, or keeping contact with the foraging-group,Alfred and Beth's clans had sounds for mothers to make to their babies and for mates to make atthe edge of sleep, something between a hum and a mutter. They had, in other words, a kind of sung vocabulary of tenderness.When Alfred reached puberty the adult males in his band drove him out, and he had to goalone across the veldt. Usually a teenaged male was solitary for many years or at best formed aroving gang with a few others like him, but Alfred got lucky. Not long after leaving his home hefound Beth by the river, where she'd gone by herself to drink. He hummed to her and stroked hersmooth back. She looked at his naked young body and thought about the shaggy old males in herband, those males whose every sound was harsh and guttural like a command. What he wasdoing with his hand and voice made her feel good, and she was not accustomed to feeling good.The savannah was wide and endless, and they had the river to guide them. She turned away fromher family and together they went up its bank.They walked for weeks. They had to put some distance between themselves and Beth'shome range, or her uncles would find them and force Alfred to give her back. They could makegood time, though, because they didn't have to spend too much of any day foraging. Back then

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3the world was still full of easy food: cresses from the river; insects under rocks and logs; lizardsin the crooks of trees, groggy in the cold of dawn. Neither of them had mated but they'd bothseen it done, and they stopped often to try it, with steadily improving results.Alfred and Beth followed the river up through the folds of a range of hills. Eventually theycame to a place where the river was braided from three streams, and they turned away from thewater, crossed the next ridgeline, and descended far more than they'd climbed, into a denseforest. It was hotter here than on the veldt, and wet. There were fruits in the trees and grubs bythe fat handful, and they made a nest of moss and leaves under some bushes and stayed.Years passed. They were blissfully alone. Beth learned how to touch Alfred's naked skin sothat fire ran down his spine and his forearms prickled, and he learned to do the same to her.Usually at their age apes started collecting their first ailments—rotten or broken teeth, wrenched joints that never healed, goiter, rickets, or scurvy—but somehow the food here kept their gumsfirm and pink and their organs in working order. They were even moving closer to language, astheir tender-sounds grew more and more supple and nuanced through constant use.First they learned to repeat the same notes for "yes," "no," and "more of that you're doingright there." Then they began to associate more complex melodies with particular situations andemotions: one song for waking and another for falling asleep curled together, a conciliatory songfor ending fights and a petulant one for starting them. Only after a long time did they get into thehabit of using the same songs for common foods and dangers.