CRO-MAGNON (36 page)

Leya said, “See the one with the sour expression?”

“
Ay.”
Gar squinted in the weak sunlight, and signed: “Like spider bite rump.”

“
That’s just the way Jarv’s face is shaped. He’s mated to my best friend, Nola. The lanky one is Drem. He hunts with Mungo, but when they chased me he pretended to turn his ankle.”

Gar surveyed the two men. Even though they were closer now, it was still hard to tell their ages. The dour one was older, perhaps a score and a half, the lank man maybe five seasons younger. The fineness of their fur-trimmed garments made Gar’s own skins feel crude. Clearly, these people lived on a plane above the clan’s.

The man called Mungo had a scar on his left cheek that caused a natural sneer. Surveying the others, Gar could see that their faces were less expressive than his own people’s. He did not know how to gauge them.

He squinted at the last Shortface in line, stocky and not long out of boyhood. “Young man look like one you call Mungo only short-heavy.”

“
Hodr is Mungo’s younger half-
brator.
He and Mungo chased me off a cliff into the river.”

“
Half-
brut?
”

“
Same
mator,
different
fator.
”

Gar nodded. The clan did not bother with such fine distinctions. Beneath his fingers, Fel’s neck quivered again. He stroked it and glanced at Leya.

“
Leya be all right?”

“
I’m sure I will.” Leya shifted Brann on her hip. “Although it’s hard to say what they’ll think of a mixed child. Particularly Sugn. As shaman, he’s leery of outside influences.”

Gar focused on the scar-faced man, disliking him on sight. “What about Mungo?”

“
Let me deal with him.”

Gar saw the old man called Sugn shift his gaze to Leya’s
tot
. He focused on the gaunt shaman in the elegant robe, which he could now see was fashioned from a single piece of white leather, perhaps from an albino bison, and trimmed with fur from a winter fox. The necklace contained snake skulls, the curved fangs intact.

Gar glanced at his spear, propped against the rock a length away. If trouble broke, he would shove the two older men away, grab his spear and take out the one called Mungo, then try to outrun the others. It was well known that Shortfaces did not have good wind.

But, of course, their javelins . . .

He looked at Leya. “You sure they not attack?”

“
Yes,” she said, using the People’s word for
ay.

Gar wondered why she persisted in trying to teach him the Flathead tongue, as he would soon depart her life.

“
You are with me, and they are my people.” She shot him a stern look. “Let me do the talking, all right?”

Gar grinned. “Can not do other. Not speak Shortface.”

Chapter 15

Except for a scattering of horsetails high in the east, the early afternoon sky was a washed blue dome as the skiff forged across the mountain lake. Calder glanced sidelong at Blaine. She still seemed ruffled, probably because of his obstinacy last night concerning the brain-scanning part of her stated plan.

Zinchenko seemed to have repaired the engine, at least for now. Watching the big Russian steering the skiff toward the dive spot, he wondered if the man, apparently something of a jack-of-all-trades, had uncovered all of Teague’s work. He leaned forward and caught the camp master’s eye.

“
Fedor, are you certain there aren’t more bugs in the trailer? After all, your main focus was on fixing our generator.”

“
Can not know. After
ya
find bug, look in plugs and light fixes. Check table, chairs, toilet.”

“
So did Caitlin and I. But there could be other—”

“
Look under trailer, check walls. Not see more bugs.”

Calder nodded. Still, he thought, he and Caitlin had better conduct any meaningful discussions in Ayni’s hut and not in the work trailer. A thought struck him and he made a mental note to search the hut as soon as they returned this evening.

He glanced at Blaine, who was still avoiding eye contact. He knew that his skepticism had put a dent in their relationship. But someone had to look after the practical aspects of the mission.

Anyway, it wasn’t as if a real bond existed. In a couple days they’d be heading back to their individual careers—she to make great strides in her field, he to struggle for tenure in a job that now seemed stale.

To her, you’re an overcautious fuddy-duddy.
If only there was some way . . .

He shook his head. “I’m sorry I had to argue,” he said. “But this is a scientific expedition and I have to make sure our feet are on the ground, so to speak. Your reliance on cutting-edge capabilities . . .”

“
My team and I will need more time on mice before transferring the procedure to a human brain,” she said. “Equipment that is now in development should more than meet our requirements.”

“
Even so, renting time on top-of-the-line supercomputers and imaging machines for a project as demanding as scanning human brains will be inordinately expensive,” Calder said. “Only well-funded projects that truly benefit mankind would find financing—”

“
I assure you my idea will ‘benefit mankind.
’
” She glared at him, her blue eyes as chilly as the ice that rimmed the shoreline. “As soon as we get out of here, we’ll get Mathiessen to raise some money and we’ll put in for time at one of the National Science Foundation supercomputing centers.”

Zinchenko cut the engine, let the skiff drift above the submerged tunnel, and payed out the anchor line. Calder swiveled on the metal seat and hefted his scuba tank.

Slipping into the harness, he said: “Remember, we’ve only got this afternoon and tomorrow.”

Blaine deigned to look at him. “Then we’d better work fast.”

Despairing of resolving their disagreement, he slipped into the water, located the anchor line, and slid beneath the surface. On the way down, he noticed that a portion of mountainside had sheared away. He wondered if a tremblor had gone unnoticed during the night.

The tunnel entrance was murky with silt, and the interior proved even more so, forcing him to wrestle with his incipient claustrophobia. Reaching the first spot where the tunnel had shifted, he saw that the offset still looked navigable. Mentally pushing his phobia away, he went through the by-now routine procedure of dismounting his tank and shoving it ahead of him.

Given his newfound ability to squirm through tight spots, the second stricture also proved passable. He broke the surface with a feeling of relief and crawled up into the cave. In the yellowish light from his flash, the bodies lay as he and Blaine had left them. He felt slightly giddy. An old joke came to him, the punch line hovering just out of reach, and he wondered if carbon monoxide was seeping into his mask. It was too late to turn back now, he knew; Caitlin would not stand for it.

As soon as he had checked the mask’s seal and re-seated the air tank on his back, he padded to the rear of the cave and checked the quake sensor. Sure enough, a tremor had occurred.

He watched Blaine crawl out of the water, rotate her heavy tank, and seat it on her back. For a slim woman, she was surprisingly strong. Skirting the carcasses of the lion and wolf, he plodded back toward the man, woman, and boy. With only tomorrow remaining—if Fitrat allowed—he would have to step up his efforts to catalogue the artifacts in the cave and measure the most significant of the prehistoric people’s proportions.

He guessed that Blaine must feel the same urgency about getting sufficient genetic material, particularly since Teague or Fitrat’s vigilance might prevent them from smuggling the boy’s head. He had already decided to go along with her on that score, but had not yet told her. He was waiting for her pique to diminish, so that he might get a positive effect from his compliance.

Personal feelings aside, he felt it was important, both for their plan to use the discovery for the good of mankind and for their ultimate survival, that they be on cordial terms. When he first met Caitlin, at the conference in Albuquerque ,he had felt disgruntled by her ridicule of his espousal of Multiregional Evolution. Now, despite the indirect evidence in the cave that incoming Cro-Magnons had indeed pushed the Neanderthals back, he felt he had been vindicated by direct evidence of some degree of interbreeding
.

How much mingling would be necessary,
he wondered
, in order to carry archaic characteristics forward to the present day?
When they got back to the States he’d have to do some work with Eswaran’s model, maybe consult with the man himself and perhaps also with Professor Templeton, just as Caitlin would huddle with her own modern-day wizards.

He felt confident she was mistaken in her belief that Cro-Magnons had completely replaced Neanderthals, but she did seem to have some promising ideas in the genetic realm. He thought how, over the past three days, his resentment toward her had been replaced by . . . what? Something equally futile, he was sure.

He heard her come up behind him. Leaving the bodies for later, he padded to the wall opposite the previously uncovered panels and propped his flashlight in its wire frame. The catalytic heater had done its work. As Blaine crept alongside, he dug out his digital camera.

Peering at the display of natural pigments, he saw that the four new pictures carried forward the prehistoric account from the previous panel’s depiction of the young Cro-Magnon mother and her Neanderthal escort’s perilous journey to her tribe’s winter camp.

As if to confirm his thoughts, Blaine said: “These pictures seem to follow the others. We’re seeing the woman’s life unfold.”

Her voice sounded cool but equable, and Calder sensed that her annoyance was subsiding. He nodded agreement.

The first new painting depicted the Cro-Magnon woman and her Neanderthal escort being escorted downhill toward the camp by the grizzled man with the feather, the same who had originally bidden her to mate with the scar-faced hunter. The group included the hunter and three others, along with an ascetic-looking old man in a flowing white robe. Below, a tall woman with graying hair and a woman with a toddler were waving in the background. Calder marveled at the fineness of detail the painter had included while still managing to preserve perspective. Truly, she possessed a singular talent.

The next depiction was of three people eating in a wigwam-like tent: the Neanderthal, the Cro-Magnon woman with her baby, and the tall woman, obviously the younger woman’s mother from the first panel. The meal looked tasty and varied, seeming to include the modern food groups. The tent’s leather flap was parted and the woman’s former suitor was looking in, the jagged scar on his left cheek emphasizing his sneer.

The third picture, more of a drawing than a painting, showed the broken-nosed Neanderthal throwing two men to the ground where the scar-faced man already lay, while a fourth man stood by.

“
I bet that went over with a thud,”
Calder said, wincing at the double entendre.

“
You can see the result in the final picture,” Blaine said.

Maneuvering the camera for a better angle, Calder nodded. The flash lit the cave like a miniature sun as he photographed the Cro-Magnon woman and the Neanderthal man embracing atop the low pass overlooking the encampment, he holding his spear, she packing the baby in its pouch, the wolf with the yellowish ruff looking agitated. The scene projected a poignancy that Calder did not think was a trick of the light.

Finished taking photos, he scuttled to the Neanderthal and squatted beside the bloody body. He was glad that Caitlin’s pique over his doubts seemed to have abated, but he reminded himself that this was no place for personal feelings. Time enough for that when they were home safe.

If that ever came to pass, which was looking ever more questionable.

Rummaging in his kit for calipers, he began to measure the apical tuft, peculiar to Neanderthals, on the distal phalange of the great toe. He had a theory that these rounded bumps, which also occurred on the fingers, were an adaptation to prevent frostbite. And now that he had seen an example in the flesh, he intended to experiment with hydrated gel in the lab. Perhaps he would submit a paper to the Palanth International Journal of Paleoanthropology. Every publication would count toward a tenured paleo chair at the university, if Hannah Lamb hadn’t already sabotaged his chances.

A lifetime of secure teaching, of interaction with enthusiastic students, perhaps eventually of occupying Hannah Lamb’s chair. Adjusting the calipers, he moved to the next toe, experiencing an unaccustomed contentment at working in the field again.

But feeling something else, he realized, when he thought again of his former job. A lifetime of . . . what? And with whom?

#

Calder, watching Ayni lift a pot from the cast iron stove in the slanting light from the tiny west window, was again impressed by the man’s ability to whip up a delectable meal from the withered meat and vegetables in the wooden box outside his hut. Tonight’s supper began with a vegetarian soup of mung beans, brown rice, chopped turnip, carrots, and dried tomatoes, stewed with coriander and, he thought, cumin, and served with floating dabs of yogurt. The three of them ate out of the iron pot in the slanting light from the east window while the main course grilled, Ayni having hinged back the stovetop.