Aaron Elkins: Uneasy Relations

“Well, the runway’s clear, folks,” the captain announced. “We’re on our way in.”

There was scattered applause, and then, after a thoughtful pause, Julie said, “Gideon, back to the hybrid issue, what about those specific traits you mentioned? That space behind the molars, that mandibular foramen thing? Did Gibraltar Boy have them or didn’t he?”

“Moot point. The jawbone’s missing. They’re both partial skeletons, remember, and pretty banged up at that.”

“Okay, what about DNA? Wouldn’t that tell if he was human, or Neanderthal, or a mix?”

“No DNA. It’s always pretty iffy with things that old. In this case the bones have lost too much collagen for a reliable test.”

“So I guess we’ll never know for sure.”

“I guess we won’t.” He smiled. “I can live with it. There are more important things to worry about.”

“The Rock itself,” said the donnish-looking, donnish-sounding gentleman to his huddled audience of four men and three women, “on the very crest of which we now stand, is, as most of you already know, not really a ‘rock’ in the sense of a single giant monolith, but a narrow, limestone spine running north-south for approximately, ah, mmm, three miles. The famous massive, perpendicular aspect that we know from photographs is simply its northern terminus. Now, to the west, behind us, it slopes less precipitously down to Gibraltar town, which you can see spread out approximately thirteen hundred feet below us – or rather four hundred meters, as the lords of Brussels now decree that I must say, ah-ha-ha.”

Donnish he might be, but in fact he was the only member of the group, other than Julie Oliver, who was not a teacher. Rowley G. Boyd, MA (Oxon), Gideon’s soon-to-be fellow author in Javelin’s Frontiers of Science series, was the director of the Gibraltar Museum of Archaeology and Geology. It was the museum that had arranged this visit to the Rock (including a complimentary three-course lunch) for this group of five scholars and two spouses who had arrived a day early for the Paleoanthropological Society conference, so as to be able to participate in this evening’s symposium for Ivan Gunderson. Rowley had thought that the distinguished assemblage would appreciate a recreational outing to the top of Gibraltar’s celebrated monolith, even though several had been there before. Part of the treat was to have been the breathtaking ride up by cable car, but they’d had to drive up in a stuffy, uncomfortable taxi van instead because the cable was shut down today on account of the strong winds at the top.

Which was also the reason that Rowley’s audience was huddled so tightly.

“Now then, to the south,” he continued, “across the straits, the dun-colored mountains are the, ah, er, Atlas Mountains of Morocco. To the west, across Gibraltar Bay, we have Algeciras, Spain, about which, heh-heh, there is an amusing saying…”

But they were not to learn what the amusing saying about Algeciras was, at least not yet. Rowley was somewhat of a mumbler – a hem-and-hawer – at the best of times (an impediment not helped by the small, ceramic-bit pipe that was forever clenched between his teeth, usually unlit), and this morning’s wind gusts sporadically plucked the words out of his mouth and whirled them, unheard, out over the strait.

“Can’t hear a damn thing, Rowley,” said Audrey Godwin-Pope, the Horizon Foundation’s director of Field Archaeology, whose metallic, incisive voice would have had no difficulty being heard above buffeting that was far stronger than this. “Too windy. And please make an effort not to swallow your words.”

Rowley, taking no offense (Audrey was Audrey; what could one do?), expanded his chest and attempted to raise his volume a tad, though he didn’t go so far as to take the pipe from his mouth. “Yes, this wind is a curious meteorological phenomenon, you know, and unique to the Straits of Gibraltar. The Spaniards refer to it the poniente, and it-”

“Far be it from me to correct a native, Rowley, especially you, but I’m afraid you’re in error there,” said Adrian Vanderwater. “The poniente is the westerly wind that comes in from the Atlantic. This one, coming from the east, out of the Mediterranean, would be the levanter…”

“The levanter?” echoed Rowley, removing the pipe and tapping it against his teeth. “Are you sure? You know, I always remember the difference by-”

“… which, might I add, would mean that the rain and fog are not likely to be very far behind.”

“Well, whatever the hell you call it, it’s getting pretty bad out here,” Audrey grumped, drawing her coat around her lean, spiky frame. “The fog’s starting to come in, all right, and I just got a spatter of rain on my glasses. And it’s getting cold.”

“Oh, now, Aud,” said her burly husband, Buck, standing beside her, “it’s not as bad as all that.” As he spoke, he swept off his jacket – he wore only a polo shirt underneath – and offered it to her.

Gideon, knowing Audrey (but not Buck), expected her to swat it irritably aside. Instead, he watched in amazement as she practically melted, allowing Buck to place it tenderly around her shoulders, from which it hung down to her knees. And all the while she looked up at him – he was a good foot taller than she was – the way a besotted teenager gazes at her lover.

Astounding. But it lasted no more than a few seconds. As soon as the jacket was settled comfortably around her, she was her old self again, assailing Rowley. “In any case, I’m ready to eat. It’s almost noon. Where do we get this lunch you promised? It better be indoors.”

Rowley chuckled. “Why, of course it’s indoors. There’s a charming little restaurant right in the cable car terminal building. I’ve booked the whole place for us. And yes, I suppose it would be best to straggle off to it before it gets any worse. It’s just up the path, no more than a five-minute walk.”

And off they straggled in twos and threes. They’d all had dinner together at the hotel the previous evening, renewing old acquaintances and making new ones. Among the old acquaintances for Gideon and Julie was Pru McGinnis, she of the short, flyaway red hair, the muscular washerwoman forearms, the thick, chapped, red wrists, and the overall build of a VW bus, big, square, and sturdy. Now a fellow at the august Franco-American Institut de Prehistoire in Les Eyzies, France, she’d been a student of Gideon’s in the very first graduate course he’d ever taught, although she was only a few years his junior. A jolly, animated, resourceful New York-born woman approaching forty, she’d gotten an MA in physical anthropology under Gideon, then – to Gideon’s disappointment – had switched to theoretical archaeology for her doctorate. He had been on her doctoral committee and had had to sit in on the defense of her dissertation: Post-processual, Structural, and Contextual Paradigms in Archaeology, Considered from an Epistemological Perspective. He hadn’t understood a word.

Before moving on to the Institut, she’d taught for a few years at the University of Missouri, where she’d picked up a Western accent, soon gone, and a penchant for Western garb, which had stayed with her. Today she was in a tailored plum-colored cowboy shirt, a flouncy denim-and-gingham square-dancing skirt (sans crinoline), and worn, lizard-skin boots.

As a student, she had been criticized by one of Gideon’s fellow instructors as being “insufficiently reverent,” but Gideon had found her to be a breath of fresh air in an otherwise hidebound department. He had liked her as a pupil, been proud of her as a protegee, and now considered her a friend, as did Julie.

Like most first-time visitors to the Rock, the Olivers were fascinated by the Barbary apes that scrambled around them or sat hunched and glowering along the edges of the path, grooming each other or moodily eating handouts given them by the mostly British tourists despite the prominent signs warning of a five-hundred-pound penalty for doing so. And the snacks they fed the animals were as bad as the snacks they fed themselves: sweets, sweets, and more sweets – candy bars, muffins, sugared biscuits, and packaged cakes, with the occasional bag of flavored crisps to break the monotony.