CRO-MAGNON (51 page)

If only . . .

Her eyes closed. She would follow the trail east until Mungo caught her. Then she would go down fighting.

Chapter 21

“
The ice has spread in the time we’ve been waiting,” Blaine said. She pointed to the gray film that now extended from shore.

Calder peered at the reflective layer. It was still thin enough to seem translucent even in the wan light of the three-quarter moon, but he knew that was temporary.

“
It’s thicker near the shore,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t keep us from diving.”

He felt Caitlin’s laser-like gaze bore into him.

“
We’re diving, Ian. Ice or no ice.”

They were crouched behind a pingo a hundred yards east of camp, waiting for Zinchenko to pick them up on his “engine check ride.”

“
I don’t hear the boat,” Calder said. “Fedor should have been here ten minutes ago.”

“
I hope Teague didn’t decide to incapacitate him, or worse.”

“
That would make our decision for us.”

“
Yours, maybe.” She eyed him appraisingly. “I’m diving, no matter what Teague or Zinchenko or anyone else does.”

“
What happened to the logical scientist? Dispassionate examination of facts. Cause and effect. Rational conclusions.”

“
I need those heads. The world needs them.” She faced him, her normally blue eyes glinting steel-gray in the moonlight. “I’m getting them, and you’re helping me.”

He returned her stare. “What did you mean in the cave, could you count on me being a bone guy?”

“
Don’t change the subject. We’re diving, if we have to walk around the lake.”

“
I hear you. I want a couple of things, too. The Neanderthal’s spear, the woman’s necklace, the boy’s chamois loincloth.”

She glanced at him curiously. “I understand the first two, but what’s this underwear fetish?”

“
The breechclout will be representative of sewn clothing thirty thousand years ago. The other garments are too bulky.”

The sound of an outboard engine sputtering to life traveled along the shore, settling into a tinny drone. They both peered around the pingo. The skiff was coming, its aluminum prow tinkling as it cleaved the scrim of ice. Soon, the bearded Russian steered it to shore, shifting to neutral but keeping the engine revved.

Calder steadied the gunnel while Blaine clambered aboard. “We were beginning to think you weren’t coming,” he said, stepping in.

“
Bad thing happen,” Zinchenko said, looking grim.

“
Teague?”

The camp master nodded. “When untie boat, see rope go down from dock. Pull on it. Heavy.”

He paused, his meaty features hardening.

Calder was almost afraid to ask. “What, Fedor?”

“
Gulnaz. Cement block from trailer.” He shifted position, the skiff sideslipping and breaking more ice.

“
How did she die?” Calder said.

Zinchenko pointed to his temple and made a stabbing motion. Calder heard Blaine gasp. He remembered the knife he had glimpsed at Teague's belt.

“
I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you two were close.”

Blaine said, “We liked her too. What did you do, Fedor?”

“
Pull up body, take to equipment hut, hide under tarp.”

“
Where’s Teague?” Calder said.

“
In room. Not come out.”

“
I don’t suppose you have a gun?” Calder said.

“
Keep shotgun.” Zinchenko gestured at the mountain behind the camp. “Food, bears.”

Relief washed over Calder. “Have you got it now?”

“
Nyet.
Look after you talk.” The camp master raised his hands. “Not find.”

Calder felt his spirits sink even deeper than before. “Did you complain to Teague?”

“
Nyet.
Not want him know we know.”

“
Good.” Calder scrubbed his scalp, which itched under his wool cap and neoprene helmet. “I understand, Fedor, why you wanted to move Gulnaz. But when you fail to return from your ‘engine check,’ Teague might come looking.”

“
Not see boat that far in dark.”

“
Probably not. But if he walks out to the dock, he may see that the rope is gone and he’ll know we’re onto him.”

The big Russian looked sullen. “Could not leave Gulnaz.”

“
And of course, he’ll check on Caitlin and me.” Calder peered across the moonlit ice at the ghostly bulk of the mountain “With both us and the boat gone, he might guess what we’re up to.”

“
Not get across lake.”

“
He could jog around the end and climb along the mountainside to the dive site.”

Zinchenko pointed at the eastern sky. “
Ya
see in moonlight, take boat on lake.”

“
With the night sight on the Glock Pro, he’d see you first. And with the laser spotter and Parabellum round, a marksman could pick you off from two or three hundred yards. And a man like Teague is bound to be skilled.”

“
Ya
go anyway.” Zinchenko peered at the two scientists. “If you not find, swim straight out under ice, try get to boat.”

Calder sighed. “It’s a plan, I suppose. But a nine-millimeter round fired from a long-barreled pistol could reach almost any place on the lake. At the very least, it could hole the boat.” He glanced at Zinchenko’s heavy coat. “And in water this cold . . .”

Blaine said, “It’s too late to circle around and put Gulnaz’s body back under the dock. Teague might investigate.”

“
I agree,” Calder said. He gazed into the darkness toward the two trailers. “We’ll just have to wing it.”

#

As the johnboat crunched through the surface ice, Calder saw the layer was thinning toward the center. But it would thicken again toward shore. He wondered if it could build up enough while they were in the cave to prevent them surfacing.

If need be, he thought, they could use their air tanks to break through. Assuming that this afternoon’s wave-inducing tremor had not closed the tunnel, Teague was the primary threat.

He checked a pocket of his dry suit for the cord and tenpenny nail he normally employed to mark grids when processing an archaeological site. Tonight he would use them to string the three heads. He’d considered one of Ayni’s flour sacks, but feared the bunched heads would hang up in one of the tunnel offsets.

He watched Blaine heft her tank and squirm into the harness. He didn’t think she looked particularly worried. He reckoned she was so determined to retrieve the frozen heads and to keep the Neanderthal’s DNA out of Salomon’s hands that she’d lost her objectivity.

That left it up to him to be the voice of reason. He still felt overwhelmed by the mind-bending technical requirements of Caitlin’s plan and the accompanying legal and moral issues. Even supposing that her team followed her out of Salomon’s employ, that the state-of-the-art equipment became available in time, and that enough money was raised, would her plan even work? She still hadn’t explained the process of uploading the stored brain contents into the cloned brains, which seemed to him the most critical part of the whole procedure.

Apparently, it had worked with mice. But
Mus musulus
was not
Homo sapiens.

This dive they were making tonight, in defiance of the diving charts and in opposition to Salomon’s plans, would place them in danger from several sources, both natural and human. One more tremor might close the tunnel. Or, now that Teague suspected something was up, he might catch them red-handed. It was clear now what that would mean.

And even if he didn’t confront them, if one or both of them got the bends by exceeding their allowable time at depth and then tried to smuggle the heads overland through narrow valleys and over high passes with Salomon and his hit man after them in an armed helicopter, they’d never make it.

No, the thing to do was to get out with their skins intact. He’d never be able to sell that to Caitlin, he knew. But if worse came to worst, he could hogtie her and try to tow her out.

He turned to her and opened his mouth, but no words came out. He tried again.

Nothing.

Why can’t I do this?
Was he compromising their survival because scuttling the rest of the mission would end any chance he might have of winning her personally?

Suddenly, he knew that wasn’t it. He didn’t
want
to give in to Salomon, regardless of the risk. He realized he never had, but had been allowing his head to dictate to his heart. What he really desired, what he’d probably wished all along without knowing it, was to break free of his sheltered existence as a university lecturer and be a field man. Yes, even a shovel bum if it came to that. And making this dive was a step in that direction. But was it truly justified?

They could try to escape right now. Caitlin could continue her brain-scanning work with some other employer and he could write papers or perhaps even a book about the expedition and probably position himself to get archaeological jobs.

But that felt too much like selling out. Would a real shovel bum turn away from the archaeological find of the century just because it was likely to get him killed? Maybe a few, he thought, but not most.

Notwithstanding, one thing was still paramount—his responsibility to ensure that they were not making this final dive for trivial motives. Unless retrieving the heads would actually benefit mankind, and not just allow Caitlin to write some groundbreaking papers, the risk was not worthwhile. Could she really bring the envisioned project to fruition? Scanning and cloning laboratory mice was one thing; humans, another. Plus, moral and ethical considerations aside, legal barriers or cost restraints could sink the endeavor.

And even if the project did get under way, he wondered if Caitlin’s overweening ambition was causing her to gloss over the technical problems of scaling up from mice to humans. He owed it to both of them to explore the practicality of her scheme, whether or not it ruined whatever personal chance he sensed he might have with her.

Finished donning his dive gear, he turned to her. “How are you planning to finesse the legal and technical problems of uploading the brain contents? As I said before, I’m certain that such a thing would not be allowed in the United States or any other industrialized nation.”

“
We won’t be in one. When we’re ready to clone and upload, we’ll find a supportive venue.”

“
Where?”

“
I don’t know.” She sounded annoyed. “Maybe some place in Oceania, like Nauru.”

“
Nauru? You mean that island made of bird crap?”

“
I believe they mined it all.”

“
They wouldn’t have advanced equipment.”

“
Won’t need it. We can grow the bodies any place we can provide nutrients and control the conditions.”

He looked at her incredulously. “Control . . . But won’t you need a supercomputer for the uploading?”

“
No. Inputting turns out to be a snap compared to mapping the original synaptic signals.”

Calder sighed. That was not the answer he’d been fishing for.

“
Caitlin, I want to help you. But I’m afraid you might be gulling yourself on this brain-loading stuff.”

“
Dr. Volker is the expert,” she said, “but let me summarize. We’ll upload the same way we do with mice.”

“
But higher thought must require different pathways—”

“
As far as memories are concerned, all sensory input to the brain except smell connects to the individual nuclei of the thalamus, be it for mouse or man.”

“
What about smell? If one thing’s different, maybe—”

“
That relates to the paleocortex, the ancient reptilian part of the brain. I admit we can’t include memories of smell yet, but Henrik and Peter are working on it.”

“
Getting back to the other senses, just how do you upload the information?”

“
As I implied before, it’s quite simple. So straightforward, in fact, that we don’t want others to know just yet.”

“
Simple.” He shook his head. “This is what I mean when I say you may be—”

“
I’m not. It’s no different really than passing bits of information from one computer to another over a series cable.”

“
A cable.” Calder tried a disparaging tone. “I suppose you just take a USB connector and jab it—”

“
Peter reverse-Fouriers the stored signals that constitute memory and Henrik feeds them sequentially into the thalamus via the optic nerve.”

“
But how does the brain—”

“
The thalamus sorts the signals and relays them to the cerebral cortex. The autonomic nervous system, hard-wired in the original brain and replicated in the clone, directs the associative cortex to accesses the ‘holographic’ pictures that constitute its new long-term memory.”

“
How?”

“
We don’t know.”

“
You don’t—”