Aaron Elkins: Uneasy Relations

Julie, who had been listening courteously until now, her head cocked, glanced at Gideon with her eyebrows raised, her forehead creased. “Is he reading, or what?” she whispered.

Gideon suppressed his laugh. “I’ve never been able to figure out how he does that.”

Still, it was, as always, an impressive performance. Not an uh, not an um, not a pause. Not for the first time he wondered if Vanderwater didn’t prepare these sermons ahead of time, knowing he’d have the chance to use them at some point.

The older man had leaned back in his seat now, and was orating, rather than merely lecturing, supremely confident that his seatmate, and anyone else within earshot, would be appreciative of the edification provided.

“But as the technology of warfare changed, you see, and this great rock that had stood guard over the entrance to the Mediterranean for so many centuries lost its value and sank into obscurity, a staunchly British outpost improbably tacked onto the southern extremity of Spain and notable, if it was notable at all, for the never-ending squabbles between Spain and Great Britain over access, duties, governance-”

“Folks,” said the pilot’s voice, “you’re not going to believe this, but a furniture lorry has broken down on the runway, so we’re going to be circling for a while to permit them to clean up and get it out of there. Shouldn’t be long.”

Frowning, Julie turned to Gideon. “What is a furniture van doing in the middle of the runway?”

“That’s a curious aspect of the Gibraltar airport,” Vanderwater answered for him. “You see-”

But the pilot, with a superior audio system, overrode him. “Now, folks, I know what you’re thinking: ‘What is a furniture lorry doing in the middle of an airport runway in the first place?’ Well, among the many unique aspects of Gib is the fact that it has the only international airport you’re likely to see whose runway is crossed by the main road into town. The only road into town, actually. As you’ll see as we circle past it, the runway extends crosswise across the entire isthmus and then some way out into the bay, so there’s no way for vehicles to get around it. They all have to drive over it. Sorry about the delay, but just settle back for a little longer and enjoy your VIP aerial tour of Gibraltar, courtesy of British Airways.”

“It’s hardly the only thing about the Gibraltar airport that’s unique,” came from 18B. “It’s closer to the city it serves than any other international airport in the world. A lot of people just walk into town from it…”

“Really,” said Julie, who was perhaps becoming just a little lectured-out. “That’s-”

“A five-hundred-yard stroll, and you’re at Casemates Square in the town center. An extremely interesting history there, by the way…”

Julie quietly sighed, closed her eyes, and settled back.

For the next half hour they circled, Vanderwater eventually running out of things on which to elucidate (not something that happened every day) and Julie running out of attention span, not in that order.

“Gideon,” she said quietly, when there had been a welcome silence from behind them for a few minutes, followed by what sounded suspiciously like a soft, tranquil snore, “I wanted to ask you something about this whole mixing-theory thing.”

“Ha. I knew you weren’t really awake at the Bella Italia. You were faking it.”

“No, I was paying strict attention. This is something you didn’t talk about. I get the impression that you don’t really buy into the admixture-theory idea.”

“Oh, it’s not that I don’t buy into it. Humans and Neanderthals coexisted in the same area for several thousand years, after all, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the occasional particularly cute human babe caught the eye of some horny Neanderthal caveman, or vice versa. Genetically, there really doesn’t seem to be that much difference between us. But I’m not about to jump on the bandwagon and declare it to one and all as Revealed Truth. I mean, there’s not that much difference between us and chimps either, but I haven’t heard of any hot romances lately, have you? Not that I’m definitively on the other side either. There are still plenty of uncertainties.”

“But you’re the one who did that analysis on the skeletons.”

“Well, one of the team, yes. Don’t forget, there were Lyle and Harvey too.”

“Don’t be modest. You were the senior author of the paper. And if the child is a hybrid between the humans and-”

“That’s the issue, Julie. We never used the term hybrid. We just described what we found.”

“You weaseled, in other words.”

“Precisely.” He laughed. “Well, no, not that I haven’t been known to weasel when the situation demanded it, but in this case the data just didn’t warrant anything more conclusive See, most of the differences between Neanderthal and human skeletons are really quantitative, not qualitative. Oh, there are some specific, pretty minor distinctions – Neanderthal jawbones have this space behind their molars, the retromolar gap, that we don’t have, and there’s a difference in the shape of the mandibular foramen – but essentially, we’re talking about matters of scale.”

“The Neanderthals were bigger? More rugged?”

“Not bigger overall, no. They did have thicker bones, bigger brow ridges, bigger occipital buns; but we have bigger chins, bigger foreheads. And there are differences in the relative proportions of long-bone lengths. It’s that kind of thing. So, sure, we all can agree that such and such an adult skeleton is Neanderthal, and another one is human, but when it comes to somebody like the First Kid, Gibraltar Boy, he’s still a child; you’re dealing with traits that haven’t yet reached their adult form. He looks a little like both. So, yes, he might be a hybrid, or maybe you’re simply looking at a Neanderthal that just happened to have a smaller brow ridge than his friends. Or maybe you’re looking at a human child who had a receding chin.”

“Well, what do you think? I mean, you personally, not professionally? ”

“I honestly don’t know. I certainly wouldn’t be bowled over if he is a hybrid. I also wouldn’t be bowled over if he isn’t. Could be human. Could also be Neanderthal.”

“Oh, that’s helpful.”

“Sorry, it’s the best I can do. The thing is, it’s not as if we have thousands of Neanderthal remains to look at and compare. At most there are only a few hundred in the entire world, and most of those are just fragments, and very few are children, so we’re still learning what their traits were. Anyway, the truth is, I was more excited about the pathology on the female’s skeleton. That was something you could hang your hat on. The earliest known case of ankylosing spondylitis in a human being. Until Gibraltar Woman, the first case we knew about was from the Egyptian Neolithic, a good fifteen thousand years later!”

“I remember how excited about that you were.” She smiled. “I can see how excited you are about it now. And wasn’t there some graduate student somewhere who was going to do her dissertation on it?”

“Yes, from Cal, I think. She contacted me a year or so after Europa Point. She was pretty sure she’d run across another case of it from about the same time period, at some little site in Portugal, or was it Spain? Spain, I think. She thought there might be a dissertation topic there, on genetic anomalies among early modern humans.”

“And was there?”

“I don’t know. She e-mailed me a couple of times with questions and then I never heard from her again. Which probably means there wasn’t. Maybe the case she’d come across wasn’t ankylosing spondylitis after all; maybe it was just advanced arthritis and she hadn’t been able to tell the difference on her own. She probably found something else to work on.”