Darwin's Children (40 page)

Eileen sat in the canvas seat of her camp chair and let out her breath in a sigh that was halfway to a shriek. But for them and the still-hidden bones, the excavation was empty. It was almost midnight. “I am
dead
,” she proclaimed. “I can’t take this anymore. Dig ‘em out, don’t dig ‘em out, keep your cool when the academics start to scrap about emergence violations. The whole goddamned human race is so
primitive
.”

Mitch cracked his can and tossed back a long gulp. The beer, almost tasteless but for a prolonged fizz, satisfied him intensely. He put down the can and picked up a slice of cheese, then prepared to peel back the wrapping. He turned it into a grand gesture. Eileen watched as he lifted the slice, rotated it on tripod fingers, and then, using his teeth, delicately lifted and pulled off the intercalary paper. He glanced at her with narrowed eyes and raised one thick eyebrow. “Expose ‘em,” he said.

“Think so?” Eileen asked.

“Give me that old-time revelation. I’d rather see them personally than trust future generations to do it better. But that’s just me.” The beer and exhaustion both relaxed Mitch and made him philosophical. “Bring them into the light. Rebirth,” he said. “The Indians are right. This is a sacred moment. There should be ceremonies. We should be appeasing their troubled spirits, and our own. Oliver is right. They’re here to teach us.”

Eileen sniffed. “Some Indians don’t want their theories contradicted,” she said. “They’d rather live with fairy tales.”

“The Indians in Kumash gave us shelter when Kaye was pregnant. They still refuse to hand their SHEVA kids over to Emergency Action. I’ve become more understanding of anybody the U.S. government has repeatedly lied to.” Mitch raised his beer in toast. “Here’s to the Indians.”

Eileen shook her head. “Ignorance is ignorance. We can’t afford to hang on to our childhood blankies. We’re big boys and girls.”

Mostly girls,
Mitch thought. “Are anthropologists any more likely to see what’s under their noses?”

Eileen pursed her lips. “Well, no,” she said. “We’ve already got two in camp who insist these can’t possibly be
Homo erectus
. They’re creating a tall, stocky, thick-browed variety of homo sap on their laptops even as we speak. We’re having a hell of a time convincing them to keep their mouths shut. Ignorant bitches, both of them. But don’t tell anybody I said so.”

“Absolutely,” Mitch said.

Eileen had finished assembling a Spam and American cheese sandwich, with two stalks of celery sticking out like lunate Gumby feet from the pressed layers of perfect crust. She bit into a corner and chewed thoughtfully.

Mitch wasn’t particularly hungry, not that he minded the food. He had eaten much worse on previous sites—including a meal of roasted grubs on toast.

“Was it another SHEVA episode?” Eileen mused. “A massive leap between
Homo erectus
and
Homo sapiens
?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Mitch said. “A little too radical even for SHEVA.”

Eileen’s speculative gaze rose beyond the rattling plastic roof. “Men,” she said. “Men behaving badly.”

“Uh-oh,” Mitch said. “Here it comes.”

“Men raiding other groups, taking prisoners. Not very choosy. Gathering up all the females with the appropriately satisfying orifices. Females only, whomever and whatever they might be.”

“You think our absent males were raiders and rapists?” Mitch asked.

“Would
you
date a
Homo erectus
? I mean, if you weren’t at the absolute bottom of any social hierarchy?”

Mitch thought of the mother in the cave in the Alps, more than a lifetime ago, and her loyal husband. “Maybe they were more gentle.”

“Psychic flower children, Mitch?” Eileen asked. “I say these gals were all captives and they were abandoned when the volcano blew. Anything else is pure William Golding bullshit.” Eileen was pushing the matter deliberately, playing both proponent and devil’s advocate, trying to clear her head, or possibly his.

“I suppose the
Homo erectus
members of the group might have been slaves or servants—captives,” Mitch said. “But I’m not so sure social life was that sophisticated back then, or that there were such fine gradations of status. My guess is they were traveling together. For protection, maybe, like different species of herd animals on the veldt. As equals. Obviously, they liked each other enough to die in each other’s arms.”

“Mixed species band? Does that fit anything in your experience with the higher apes?”

Mitch had to admit it did not. Baboons and chimps played together when they were young, but adult chimps ate baby baboons and monkeys when they could catch them. “Culture matters more than skin color,” he said.

“But
this
gap . . . I just don’t see it being bridgeable. It’s too huge.”

“Maybe we’re tainted by recent history. Where were you born, Eileen?”

“Savannah, Georgia. You know that.”

“Kaye and I lived in Virginia.” Mitch let the thought hang there for a moment, trying to find a delicate way to phrase it.

“Plantation propaganda from my slave-owner ancestors, my thrice-great grandpappy, has tainted the entire last three hundred years. Is that what you’re suggesting?” Eileen asked, lips curling in a duelist’s smile, savoring a swift and jabbing return. “What a goddamned Yankee thing to say.”

“We know so little about what we’re capable of,” Mitch continued. “We are creatures of culture. There are other ways to think of this ensemble. If they weren’t equals, at least they worked together, respected each other. Maybe they smelled right to each other.”

“It’s becoming personal, isn’t it, Mitch? Looking for a way to turn this into a
real
example. Merton’s political bombshell.”

Mitch agreed to that possibility with a sly wink and a nod.

Eileen shook her head. “Women have always hung together,” she said. “Men have always been a sometime thing.”

“Wait till we find the men,” Mitch said, starting to feel defensive.

“What makes you think they stuck around?”

Mitch stared grimly at the plastic roof.

“Even if there
were
men nearby,” she said, “what makes you think we’ll be lucky enough to find them?”

“Nothing,” he said, and felt hazily that this was a lie.

Eileen finished her sandwich and drank half her can of Coors to chase it down. She had never liked eating very much and did it only to keep body and soul together. She was hungry and deliberate in bed, however. Orgasms allowed her to think more clearly, she had once confessed. Mitch remembered those times well enough, though they had not slept together since he had been twenty-three years old.

Eileen had called her seduction of the young anthropology grad student her biggest mistake. But they had stayed friends and colleagues all these years, capable of a loose and honest interaction that had no pretense of sexual expectation or disappointment. A remarkable friendship.

The wind rattled the roof again. Mitch listened to the hiss of the Coleman lantern.

“What happened between you and Kaye, after you got out of prison?” Eileen asked.

“I don’t know,” Mitch said, his jaw tightening. Her asking was a weird kind of betrayal, and she could sense his sudden burn.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I’m prickly about it,” he acknowledged. He felt a waft of air behind him before he saw the woman’s shadow. Connie Fitz stepped lightly over the hard-packed dirt and stood beside Eileen, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“Our little stew pot is about to boil over,” Fitz said. “I think we can hold the lid down for another two or three days, max. The zealots want to issue a press release. The hardliners want to keep it covered up.”

Eileen looked at Mitch with a crinkled lower lip. All that was outside her control, her expression said. “Enslaved women abandoned in camp by cowardly males,” she resumed, getting back to the main topic, her eyes bright in the Coleman’s pearly light.

“Do you really believe that?” Mitch asked.

“Oh, come on, Mitch. I don’t know what to believe.”

Mitch’s stomach worked over the meal with no conviction. “You should at least tell the students that they need to expand the perimeter,” he said. “There could very well be other bodies around, maybe within a few hundred yards.”

Fitz made a provisional moue of interest. “We’ve talked about it. But everybody wants a piece of the main dig, so nobody was enthusiastic about fanning out,” she said.

“You feel something?” Eileen asked Mitch. She leaned forward, her voice going mock-sepulchral. “Can you read these bones?”

Fitz laughed.

“Just a hunch,” Mitch said, wincing. Then, more quietly, “Probably not a very good one.”

“Will Daney continue to pay if we dawdle and poke around a couple of more days?” Fitz asked.

“Merton thinks he’s patient and he’ll pay plenty,” Eileen said. “He knows Daney better than any of us.”

“This could become every bit as bad as archaeology in Israel,” said Fitz, a natural pessimist. “Every site loaded with political implications. Do you think Emergency Action will come in and shut us down, using NAGPRA as an excuse?”

Mitch pondered, slow deliberation being about all he was capable of this late, this worn down by the day. “I don’t think they’re that crazy,” he said. “But the whole world’s a tinderbox.”

“Maybe we should toss in a match,” Eileen said.

26

BALTIMORE

K
aye woke to the sound of the bedside phone dweedling, sat straight up in bed, pulled her hair away from her face, and peered through sleep-fogged eyes at the edge of daylight slicing between the shutters. The clock said 5:07 a.m. She could not think who could be calling her at this hour.

Today was not going to be a good day, she knew that already, but she picked up the phone and plumped the pillow behind her into a cushion. “Hello.”

“I need to speak with Kaye Lang.”

“That’s me,” she said sleepily.

“Kaye, this is Luella Hamilton. You got in touch with us a little while ago.”

Kaye felt her adrenaline surge. Kaye had met Luella Hamilton fifteen years ago, when she had been a volunteer subject in a SHEVA study at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Kaye had taken a liking to the woman, but had not heard from her since driving west with Mitch to Washington state. “Luella? I don’t remember . . .”

“Well, you did.”

Suddenly Kaye held the phone close. She had heard something about the Hamiltons being connected to Up River. It was reputed to be a very choosy organization. Some claimed it was subversive. She had forgotten all about her letter; that had been the worst time for her, and she had reached out to anyone, even the extremists who claimed they could track and rescue children.

“Luella? I didn’t—”

“Well, since I knew you, they told me to make the return call. Is that okay?”

She tried to clear her head. “It’s good to hear your voice. How are you?”

“I’m expecting, Kaye. You?”

“No,” Kaye said. Luella had to be in her middle fifties. Talk about rolling the dice.

“It’s SHEVA again, Kaye,” Luella said. “But no time to chat. So listen close. You there, Kaye?”

“I hear you.”

“I want you to get to a scrambled line and call us again. A
good
scrambled line. You still have the number?”

“Yes,” Kaye said, wondering if it was in her wallet.

“You’ll get a cute mechanical voice. Our little robot. Leave your number and we might call you back. Then, we’ll go from there. All right, honey?”

Kaye smiled despite the tension. “Yes, Luella. Thank you.”

“Sorry to ring so early. Good-bye, dear.”

The phone went dead. Kaye immediately swung her legs out of bed and walked into the kitchen to fix coffee. Thought about trying to reach Mitch and tell him.

But it was too early, and probably not a good idea to spread such news around when any phone call was risky.

She stood by the window looking out over Baltimore and thought about Stella in Arizona, wondering how she was doing, and how long it would be until she saw her again.

Something snapped and she heard herself making little growls, like a fox. For a moment, clutching the coffee cup in her trembling hand, Kaye felt a blind, helpless rage. “
Give me back my daughter,
you FUCKHEADS,” she rasped. Then she dropped back into the nearest chair, shaking so hard the coffee spilled. She set the cup on a side table and wrapped herself in her arms. With the thick terry sleeve of her robe, she wiped tears of helplessness from her eyes. “Calm down,
dear,
” she said, trying to copy Mrs. Hamilton’s strong contralto.

It was not going to be an easy day. Kaye strongly suspected she was going to be put at liberty. Fired. Ending her life as a scientist forever, but opening up her options so she could go get her daughter and reunite her family.

“Dreamer,” she said, with none of the conviction of Luella Hamilton.

27

ARIZONA

T
hey pumped a thick strawberry smell into the dorm at eight in the morning. Stella opened her eyes and pinched her nose, moaning.

“What now?” Celia asked in the bunk below.

The humans did that whenever they wanted to do something the children might object to. Shots, mass blood samples, medical exams, dorm checks for contraband.

Next came a wave of Pine-Sol, blowing in through the vent pipes slung under the frame roof. The smell came in through Stella’s mouth when she breathed, making her gag.

She sat on the edge of the bed in her nightgown, her stomach twisting and her chest heaving. Three men in isolation suits walked down the center aisle of the dormitory. One of the men, she saw, was not a man; it was Joanie, shorter and stockier than the others, her blank face peering through the plastic faceplate of the floppy helmet.

Joanie reminded Stella of Fred Trinket’s mother; she had that same calm, fated expectancy of everything and anything, with no emotional freight attached.

The suited trio stopped by a bed four down from Stella’s. The girl in the top bunk, Julianne Nicorelli, not a member of Stella’s deme, climbed down at a few soft words from Joanie. She looked apprehensive but not scared, not yet. Sometimes the counselors and teachers ran drills in the camp, odd drills, and the kids were never told what they were up to.

Joanie turned and walked deliberately toward Stella’s bunk. Stella slid down quickly, not using the ladder, and flattened her nightgown where it had ridden up above her knees. She hid her chest with her hands; the fabric was a little sheer, and she didn’t like the way the men were looking at her.

“You, too, Stella,” Joanie said, her voice hollow and hissy behind the helmet. “We’re going on a trip.”

“How many?” Celia asked.

Joanie smiled humorlessly. “Special trip. Reward for good grades and good behavior. The rest get to eat breakfast early.”

This was a lie. Julianne Nicorelli got terrible grades, not that anyone cared.

28

BALTIMORE

“H
eads up. Marge will be here in twenty minutes.” Liz Cantrera said. “Ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Kaye said, and took a deep breath. She looked around the lab to see if there was anything that could be put away or cleaned up. Not that it mattered. It was her last day.

“You look fine,” Liz said sadly, straightening Kaye’s lapels.

Marge Cross understood the messy bedrooms of science. And Kaye doubted that she wanted to check up on their housekeeping.

Around Kaye, Cross was almost always cheerful. She seemed to like Kaye and to trust her as much as she trusted anybody. Today, however, Cross was saying little, tapping her lip with her finger and nodding. She lifted her head to peer at the pipes hanging from the ceiling. She seemed to study a series of red tags hanging from various pressurized lines.

Only three people accompanied Cross. Two handsome young men in charcoal gray suits made notes on e-tabs. A slender young woman with long, thin blonde hair and a short, upturned nose took photos with a pen-sized camera.

Liz kept to the background, conspicuously allowing Kaye the point position. She gave them all a brief tour, well aware they were taking inventory in preparation for a transfer or a shutdown.

“We’ve lost,” Cross said. “Everything this company has been charged to do by the government and by the people has turned into a can of worms,” she added quietly, and chewed her lower lip. “I hear you did a good job on the Hill this week.” Cross regarded Kaye with a faint smile.

“It went okay.” Kaye shifted her eyes to one side and shrugged. “Rachel Browning tried to pull down my shorts.”

“Did she succeed?” Cross asked.

“Got them down to my curlies,” Kaye said.

The young men looked ready to appear shocked, should Cross be. Cross laughed. “Jesus, Kaye. I never know what I’m going to hear from you. You drive my PR folks nuts.”

“That’s why I try to keep my head down and stay quiet.”

“We’re not learning how to stop SHEVA,” Cross said reflectively, still examining the ceiling pipes.

“That’s true,” Kaye said.

“You’re glad.”

Once again, Kaye felt it was not her place to answer, that she had responsibilities to others besides herself.

“La Robert is failing, too, but he won’t admit it,” Cross said. She waved her hands at the others in the lab. “Time to go, kiddies. Leave us sacred monsters alone for a while.”

The young men filed through the door. The slender blond tried to remind Cross of appointments later in the morning.

“Cancel them,” Cross instructed her.

Liz had stayed behind, solicitous of Kaye. The way she twitched, Kaye thought her assistant might try to physically intervene to protect her.

Cross smiled warmly at Liz. “Honey, can you add anything to our duet?”

“Not a thing,” Liz admitted. “Should I go?” she asked Kaye.

Kaye nodded.

Liz picked up her coat and purse and followed the blond through the door.

“Let’s take the express to the top floor,” Cross suggested pleasantly, and put her arm around Kaye’s shoulder. “It’s been far too long since we put our heads together. I want you to explain what happened. What you thought you’d find in radiology.”

The Americol boardroom on the twentieth floor was huge and extravagant, with a long table cut lengthwise from an oak trunk, handmade William Morris–style chairs that seemed to float on their slender legs, and walls covered with early twentieth-century illustrative art.

Cross told the room what to do and two of the walls folded up, revealing electronic whiteboards. Sections of the table rose up like toy soldiers, thin personal monitors.

“If I were starting over again,” Cross said, “I’d turn this into a kindergarten classroom. Little chairs and wagons with little cartons of milk. That’s how ignorant we are. But . . . We do cling to our beauty and wealth. We like to feel we are in control and always will be.”

Kaye listened attentively, but did not respond.

Cross pushed another button and the whiteboards replayed long strings of scrawled notes. Kaye guessed these were a frozen record of several late-night and early-morning pacing sessions, Cross alone up here in the heights, wielding her little pen wand, moving along the boards like a sorcerous queen scattering spells on the walls of her castle.

Kaye could decipher very few of the scrawls. Cross’s handwriting was notorious.

“Nobody’s seen this,” Cross murmured. “It’s hard to read, isn’t it?” she asked Kaye. “I used to have perfect penmanship.” She held up her swollen knuckles.

Kaye wondered where Cross intended to go with this. Was it all some devious way of letting her go gracefully, with a hearty handshake?

“The secret of life,” Cross said, “lies in understanding how little things talk to each other. Correct?”

“Yes,” Kaye said.

“And you’ve maintained, from before the beginnings of SHEVA, that viruses are part of the arsenal of communications our cells and bodies use to talk.”

“That’s why you brought me to Americol.”

Cross dismissed that with a slight frown and a lift of one shoulder. “So you turned yourself into a laboratory to prove a point, and gave birth to a SHEVA child. Gutsy, and more than a little stupid.”

Kaye clenched her jaw.

Cross knew she had touched an exposed nerve. “I think the Jackson clique is right on the money. Experience biases you in favor of believing SHEVA is benign, a natural phenomenon that we’ll just have to knuckle under and accept. Don’t fight it. It’s bigger than all of us.”

“I’m fond of my daughter,” Kaye said stiffly.

“I don’t doubt it. Hear me out. I’m going somewhere with this, but I don’t know where just yet.” Cross paced along the whiteboards, arms folded, tapping one elbow with the remote. “My companies are my children. That’s a cliché, but it’s true, Kaye. I am as stupid and gutsy as you were. I have turned my companies into an experiment in politics and human history. We’re very much alike, except I had neither the opportunity—nor, frankly, the inclination—to put my body on the line. Now, we both stand to lose what we love most.”

Cross turned and flicked the whiteboards clean with the press of a button. Her face curled in disgust. “It’s all shit. This room is a waste of money. You can’t help but think that whoever built all this knew what they were doing, had all the answers. It’s an architectural lie. I
hate
this room. Everything I just erased was drivel. Let’s go somewhere else.” Cross was visibly angry.

Kaye folded her hands cautiously. She had no idea what was going to happen, not now. “All right,” she said. “Where?”

“No limos. Let’s lose the luxuries for a few hours. Let’s get back to little chairs and cookies and cartons of milk.” Cross smiled wickedly, revealing strong, even, but speckled teeth. “Let’s get the hell out of this building.”

A gray, drizzly light greeted them as they pushed through the glass doors to the street. Cross hailed a cab.

“Your cheeks are pinking,” she told Kaye as they climbed into the backseat. “Like they want to say something.”

“That still happens,” Kaye admitted with some embarrassment.

Cross gave the driver an address Kaye did not recognize. The gray-haired man, a Sikh wearing a white turban, looked over his shoulder.

“I will need card in advance,” he said.

Cross reached for her belt pouch.

“My treat,” Kaye said, and handed the driver her credit card. The cab pushed off through traffic.

“What was it like, having those cheeks—like signboards?” Cross asked.

“It was a revelation,” Kaye said. “When my daughter was young, we practiced cheek-flashing. It was like teaching her how to speak. I missed them when they faded.”

Cross watched her absorbedly, then gave a little start and said, “I learned I couldn’t have children when I was twenty-five. Pelvic inflammatory disease. I was a big, ungainly girl and had a hard time getting dates. I had to take my men where I found them, and one of them . . . Well. No children, and I decided not to reverse the scarring, because there was never a man I trusted enough to be a father. I got rich pretty early and the men I was attracted to were like pleasant toys, needy, eager to please, not very reliable.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaye said.

“Sublimation is the soul of accomplishment,” Cross said. “I can’t say I understand what it means to be a parent. I can only make comparisons with how I feel about my companies, and that probably isn’t the same.”

“Probably not,” Kaye said.

Cross clucked her tongue. “This isn’t about funding or firing you or anything so simple. We’re both explorers, Kaye. For that reason alone, we need to be open and frank.”

Kaye peered out the taxi window and shook her head, amused. “It isn’t working, Marge. You’re still rich and powerful. You’re still my boss.”

“Well, hell,” Cross said with mock disappointment, and snapped her fingers.

“But it may not matter,” Kaye said. “I’ve never been very good at concealing my true feelings. Maybe you’ve noticed.”

Cross made a sound too high-pitched to be a laugh, but it had a certain eccentric dignity, and probably wasn’t a giggle, either. “You’ve been playing me all along.”

“You knew I would,” Kaye said.

Cross patted her cheek. “Cheek-flashing.”

Kaye looked puzzled.

“How can something so wonderful be an aberration, a disease? If I could fever scent, I would be running every corporation in the country by now.”

“You wouldn’t want to,” Kaye said. “If you were one of the children
.
”

“Now who’s being naÏve?” Cross asked. “Do you think they’ve left our monkey selves behind?”

“No. Do you know what a
deme
is?” Kaye asked.

“Social units for some of the SHEVA kids.”

“What I’m saying is a deme might be the greedy one, not an individual. And when a deme fever scents, we lesser apes don’t stand a chance.”

Cross leaned her head back and absorbed this. “I’ve heard that,” she said.

“Do you know a SHEVA child?” the driver asked, looking at them in the rearview mirror. He did not wait for an answer. “My granddaughter, a SHEVA girl, is in Peshawar, she is charmer. Real charmer. It is scary,” he added happily, proudly, with a broad grin. “Really scary.”

29

ARIZONA

S
tella sat with Julianne Nicorelli in a small beige room in the hospital. Joanie had separated them from the other girls. They had been waiting for two hours. The air was still and they sat stiff as cold butter on their chairs, watching a fly crawl along the window.

The room was still thick with strawberry scent, which Stella had once loved.

“I feel awful,” Julianne said.

“So do I.”

“What are they waiting for?”

“Something’s screwy/ Made a mistake,” Stella said.

Julianne scraped her shoes on the floor. “I’m sorry you aren’t one of my deme,” she said.

“That’s okay.”

“Let’s make our own, right here. We’ll/ Like us/ join up with anyone else/ locked away/ who comes in.”

“All right,” Stella said.

Julianne wrinkled her nose. “It stinks so bad/ Can’t smell myself think.”

Their chairs were several feet apart, a polite distance considering the nervous fear coming from the two girls, even over the miasma of strawberry. Julianne stood and held out one hand. Stella leaned her head to one side and pulled back her hair, exposing the skin behind her ear. “Go ahead.”

Julianne touched the skin there, the waxy discharge, and rubbed it under her nose. She made a face, then lowered her finger and frithed—pulling back her upper lip and sucking air over the finger and into her mouth.

“Ewww,” she said, not at all disapprovingly, and closed her eyes. “I feel better. Do you?”

Stella nodded and said, “Do you want to be deme mother?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Julianne said. “We’re not a quorum anyway.” Then she looked alarmed. “They’re probably recording us.”

“Probably.”

“I don’t care. Go ahead.”

Stella touched Julianne behind her ear. The skin was quite warm there, hot almost. Julianne was fever scenting, desperately trying to reach out and both politely persuade and establish a bond with Stella. That was touching. It meant Julianne was more frightened and insecure than Stella, more in need.