CRO-MAGNON (11 page)

About two hundred feet in, the water was still silty and the passage jogged upward and narrowed to two feet.

The first slippage.

His pulse pounded in his ears and he willed himself to remain calm. His tank clinked against the right wall, the tinny sound reverberating in the close quarters, and he stopped finning. If his regulator got banged up, he thought, he’d be in trouble, since the octopus was meant for short-term emergencies. There didn’t seem room to turn around without slipping out of his harness, and if panic took hold . . .

The light from his headlamp reflected off a cloud of silt. He felt his pulse ebb. Stretching both arms backward and limiting fin motion to his ankles, he flapped forward. The bag holding his archaeology equipment snagged on the left wall. Twisting his shoulders, he felt the mesh fabric scrape free. He rocked forward and up, his tank clanging—
Careful with the regulator!—
as it scraped against the bumpy wall.

The stricture widened. He was through! He directed the more powerful beam of the flashlight, and saw that a few yards ahead the passage leveled and widened.

The silt-hazed beam stretched ahead, terminating in opaque reflections that receded with his approach. He finned forward, relieved that panic had not struck.

What happens, Ian, if you get in a real bind?
Behind, he heard Blaine’s tank clink and clink again.

At an estimated four hundred feet, the tunnel narrowed again. He hesitated, proceeding with small movements of his flippers. His tank scraped again, and this time there was no room to spare. He halted and probed with his beam. The water was still heavily silted, apparently from the previous diver’s test charge, but the tunnel seemed to end against a plug of rock.

So this was it. Time to go home and vie for tenure. A couple of days ago, the thought would have been welcome. Now, it cast an unexpected pall.

The glow from Blaine’s light flared, and he felt her gloved hand touch his ankle. He twisted, squinting in the sudden brightness, and saw her make a squirming motion.

He understood what she was suggesting—that he dismount his air tank and push it ahead. Wriggling forward, he saw that a slab of rock had dropped from the ceiling. Its edges were sharp, the rough texture showing no water wear. So the break was recent, probably caused when Salomon’s diver destabilized the rock with his seismic charge. Searching ahead, he could see a black shadow at top right.

Blaine squeezed his ankle.

He thought,
we’ve come all this way.
What kind of scientist are you? How can you be sure without checking?
He glanced upward. There was some room overhead.

Try!

Loosening his harness, he squirmed out of the straps. Holding the flash alongside the tank and clamping his mouthpiece, he rotated the steel cylinder—he’d e-mailed Baine to bring a steel tank—over his head, a basic emergency maneuver in open water but far from routine in these cramped conditions.

His pulse raced. He straightened the tank so that the butt preceded him
. So far, so good.
With tiny fin flaps he eased forward. His lungs began to constrict, his brain screaming at him to stop, but he wriggled forward until the blunt end of the tank clanked against the rock wall, the tinny echo damped by the water.

The wall seemed to extend straight across the tunnel, but the shadow at the upper right was still there. Pushing the tank butt-first, he inched upward and angled his beam into the dark corner. The right side wall seemed to recede. He butted the tank against the blockage, twisted his neck, and saw that the fault that formed the tunnel had narrowed, and was offset vertically by three feet and horizontally by two. It might just accommodate a human body.

I can’t do this.

A glow from Blaine’s lamp fell around him.

You will do it!

Pushing the tank and flashlight ahead, he squirmed into the diagonal opening. Blaine’s light fell away, and in the dimness his claustrophobia closed with a vengeance, threatening to paralyze his lungs.

You made it through Cosquer. You made it past the first jog here. If you panic now, you’re dead.

More in desperation than courage, he squirmed ahead, steering the tank by its regulator.

And eeled through the offset, scraping a knee against a jagged corner.

Ahead, the tunnel widened to four feet, the flashlight again lancing the darkness. There was no silt here and the beam shot ahead until it petered against walls once again rough but fairly regular. He felt the vise around his lungs ease and then loosen, and he straightened his body and finned ahead, trusting the smaller Blaine to follow. He kept the tank in front in case the tunnel should narrow again. A glow flickered around him disappeared. Pointing the flash back, he saw a glint of silver as Blaine’s tank maneuvered into the straightaway.

He played the beam forward again and saw nothing but a rocky tunnel receding into blackness. He would swim ahead a few more yards, he thought, and don the tank again. Although, unless the diver’s estimate was wrong, the cave couldn’t lie far ahead. Keeping his legs stiff and his movements small, he finned ahead.

The gravel floor shelved. He was adjusting his angle of attack when the tank grew heavy and clinked on the bottom. The glow from Blaine’s flashlight fell around him. He stopped kicking, the thought of what might lie just ahead overwhelming the residue of unease. He twisted the ring on his flash, broadening the beam.

Recalling his warning to Mathiessen and Blaine about the danger of radon gas, he checked the fit of his mouthpiece, turned and pantomimed to Blaine to do the same, and drew a breath of dry air. When his lungs were filled, he braced his fins against the bottom and thrust the tank up the incline. It scraped over rock, the sound more musical now that the air was partially depleted, and came to rest. He squirmed upward, twisting the flash’s ring farther. His head popped free of the water. Gathering his knees, he reared up and directed the broadened beam.

Even after years of unpredictable archaeology, and Mathiessen’s earnest tale of flesh-and-blood bodies, he was unprepared for the feast that greeted his eyes.

Chapter 5

Caitlin Blaine sensed the bottom rise as her flashlight limned Calder’s legs and hips but not his torso. She raised the beam and it bounced off the water’s surface, turning it to gold and reflecting back to brighten the rocks around her. A giddy feeling came over her, a line from
King John
running incongruously through her mind:
To gild refined gold . . .

Fear gripped her. Was the unaccustomed depth affecting her brain? She shook her head, gently so as not to dislodge her mask, and watched Calder knee-walk forward, his fins dragging like Mesozoic appendages.

Her head seemed to clear. Gliding forward, she shoved her dismounted air tank up the rock shelf, hunched forward, and kneeled upright, breaking the surface. Her light silhouetted Calder as he manhandled his dismounted air tank back over his head. Beyond, the beam reflected off a glistening surface, the glare blinding her. She twisted the focus and the light diffused, revealing a diorama that no museum had ever commissioned. She wanted to stay right there and drink it in.

First things first.
Scrambling out of the water, she crouched and unfolded the flashlight’s wire frame. Setting the light on the frosty floor, she diffused her headlamp. The ice-coated walls of the cave, reflecting vivid colors beneath a crystal surface, bowed to about ten feet before curving back together. In the surreal glare she could see fur-clad forms humped on the floor. Beyond, some kind of composite animal was wedged in the vee.

“
Remember the radon,” Calder said, his voice muffled by his facemask. “Don’t breathe the air.” She grunted a response and shuffled forward, clamping her mouthpiece and holding the tank in front.

Five feet beyond Calder’s backlighted figure, a fur-clad body lay face-up. Beyond, Blaine could see two other dark humps, their shadows lightening as Calder propped his own flash, illuminating the farthest body, his headlamp reinforcing the beam and highlighting a shock of shaggy yellow hair. Blaine saw that the tawny shape wedged into the crack at the rear had a smaller gray form hanging from it.

Her headlamp illuminated the nearest shape. Beneath a dusting of hoarfrost, dark hair framed an even-featured face with an upright forehead above high cheekbones, a narrow nose tilted at the tip, and a chiseled chin. In the diffuse yellow light, the eyes were shuttered but the olive skin seemed alive. The fur-lined parka and trousers looked tailored, though tattered as from hard use. The hooded parka lay open, revealing a bloodstained chamois tunic and part of the shell necklace the original diver had reported. Below the drawstring the leather was torn away. Gazing at what remained of the swarthy chest, Blaine could see that the victim was a willowy but well-endowed woman. She looked tall for a female, probably close to six feet.

She saw the beam from Calder’s lamp fuse with hers and heard his gasp. Unable to stand because of her prone air tank, she crouched to lift it. Her fins slipped on the uneven ice and she went to one knee. Calder turned, manhandled the air tank over her head, and fastened the harness. They both wiggled out of the cumbersome fins. While Calder bent to examine the woman, Blaine knee-walked to the next fur-clad body, which was smaller.

It lay on its side beside a bone-tipped javelin and a flint knife with an antler handle, a mop of sandy hair overlying a channel in the floor that led to a stone-ringed fire pit. Crouching, Blaine could see that it was a half-grown child. It was lighter-skinned than the woman, with a heavier-boned face that looked pulled-forward in the center. The fur-lined hood was open, and something about the shape of the head looked wrong. Inching around the fire pit, Blaine saw that the left jaw hinge was crushed. In the torn flesh she thought she could make out impressions of large teeth.

Sensing Calder behind her, she straightened and scuttled toward the rear where the cave walls narrowed. Lying on its back, its head turned to the side, was the other fur-clad body. Blond hair, bleached-looking in the beam of her headlamp, curled over extraordinarily broad shoulders. The fair-skinned face, lightly freckled, was more prognathous than the child’s, dominated by a projecting nose and swept-back cheekbones. The sloping forehead shelved into a heavy brow ridge, and icy blue eyes gave her a momentary start.

At first she thought the chin had been sheared away, but then she saw that it slanted back into a massive jaw. Bending closer, she saw that the throat was torn away. The destruction extended to the bloody rawhide shirt, partially baring a massive rib cage. Judging from the breadth of shoulder, barrel chest, and bulging pectorals, this was a male. One who, although perhaps half a foot shorter than the woman, would make the most rugged professional wrestler look puny.

Calder came up behind her again, and she moved a few feet toward the two animals at the rear of the cave.

She heard Calder mutter, “Classic Neanderthal. I was right about the complexion. The hair is blond instead of ginger, but that’s even better.”

She turned, careful to balance her tank air tank. “What do you mean?”

“
I believe this is where Northern Europeans got their blond hair and blue eyes.”

“
How could that be?”

He gestured at the man’s hair, which looked as light as the blondest Finn’s, though somewhat coarse. “Incoming European hunter-gatherers acquired the gene for fairness from the Neanderthals and retained it to help them make vitamin D from weak sunlight at high latitudes.”

“
You can’t know that,” she said, trying to enunciate clearly around her mouthpiece. “Only fragments of Neanderthal genes have been recovered.”

“
You can also see it in Northern Europeans’ prominent noses and facial prognathism.” He turned his head to stare at her. “Cro-Magnons interbred with Neanderthals.”

Multiregional Evolution again!
Despite her euphoria over what they had found, Blaine felt a touch of annoyance.

“
Then why don’t we see their genes?”

“
They’ve been swamped out,” his muffled voice said. “But their influence remains. Even I know that it doesn’t take much gene change to alter external characteristics. Modern humans, in all their apparent variety, differ from each other by only a few genes.”

“
It’s way too early to draw an interbreeding conclusion.” Blaine indicated the woman. “Even though she’s anatomically modern, with that narrow skull she hardly looks like a direct progenitor of Europeans.”

“
Why do you say that?” Even under Calder’s facemask, his quizzical expression was obvious. “She probably has a lower cephalic index than most moderns, even Europeans. But dolichocephalism alone—”

“
Look at the rest of her,” Blaine said. “She’s quite dark, tall, and muscular. Much more so than your typical European.”

She stepped toward the body, slipped again, and caught herself.
If I fall and break my regulator . . .
She felt Calder steady her shoulders.

“
She’s swarthy because her people migrated from Africa, where they needed protection from ultraviolet rays,” he said. “They probably sojourned in the Levant and the Caucasus, but not long enough to wipe out the effect.”