Aaron Elkins - Skeleton dance

He sounded positively offended at the idea, as if, were poor Charlie Caveperson to shamble unassumingly aboard at the Etoile metro station, he, Emile Grize, would personally boot him off at the next stop.

"Be that as it may," said Audrey Godwin-Pope in her usual no-nonsense manner, "I would think we might agree that the outward appearance of these beings is beside the point."

" Does this interminable discussion actually have a point?" Montfort asked. "It continues to elude me."

"It was my impression," Audrey said, standing up to him (no surprise there), "that it was their social organization that was under discussion, and there even you, Michel, have to admit the evidence is unambiguous. They had none-at least not on a human level. Everything we know about Neanderthal society tells us that it was on a par with that of a wandering troop of mountain gorillas, nothing more."

"Is that so?" Montfort snorted, leaning combatively forward. "Suppose you tell me then: when was the last time you encountered a wandering troop of mountain gorillas that made a practice of burying their grandfathers?"

Touche, Gideon thought. Montfort was on the wrong side of the argument, but touche all the same.

"I saw a study recently," Jacques Beaupierre piped up, "that suggests there is now good reason to believe that the morphological differences between Neanderthal Man-"

"Neanderthals," said Audrey with the stoic demeanor of someone who was making the same correction for the thousandth time and had no hope that it was going to take this time any more than it had before. Nice to see that she hadn't changed either. "Or Neanderthalers, if you prefer."

"Differences between Neanderthals," said Beaupierre without missing a beat-he was used to it too-"and modern humans are not evolutionary at all, but nothing more than the result of an iodine-deficient diet, due to their distance from the seacoast."

"Iodine deficiency is well-known to result in thyroid dysfunction and eventually, if severe and protracted enough, in cretinism," Emile observed in his surgical but long-winded fashion. "Are we therefore to assume that the position of this study that the Neanderthal population is not a separate race or species at all, but simply an assemblage of cretins?"

Beaupierre's brow furrowed. "Ah… well, yes, I suppose that would follow, yes."

It was enough to make people sigh, and shake their heads, and glance around the room, finally becoming aware of Gideon. Pru at once jumped up and strode to the door to welcome him, her hand outstretched and her lively gray eyes almost on a level with his own. He smiled, equally glad to see her, although he could have done without her bonecracking gorilla-handshake, which he saw coming but couldn't in decency avoid. Audrey, more restrained, merely said, "Hello, Gideon, it's nice to see you again," but her stern mouth softened and even curved upward a little at the corners. These, fellow-Americans, were the two people he knew best and liked most. Montfort, whom he knew less well, was his usual crusty self but went so far as to rise halfway, grunt, and shake hands somewhat absently (a relief after Pru's knuckle-grinder). Only Emile Grize limited himself to no more than a frugal nod, which Gideon accepted as a cordial welcome, considering the source.

Audrey and Pru made room for him between them, a cafe creme was brought for him, and the business part of the meeting was attended to. With the institute in its annual data-consolidation mode, archaeological digs had been suspended while members concentrated on interpreting the season's findings. Thus, the discussion concerned little more than the publication schedules of various institute proceedings and monographs, and these were quickly, almost cursorily, dealt with. The language of discussion was then mercifully switched to English as a kindness to the newcomer, and Beaupierre turned the floor over to "our old friend, Gideon Oliver, the Skeleton Detective of America."

Ignoring the raised hairs on the nape of his neck that this hated phrase invariably produced, Gideon began: "As you all know, I'm here in connection with the book I'm doing on errors and fallacies in the social sciences; anthropology in particular. The Old Man of Tayac-"

But the sudden sensation of wary, quivering antennae all about him produced by these few words told him that they did not all know-in fact that none of them, apart from Beaupierre, had known-anything about it. Surprised, Gideon turned inquiringly to the director. "I thought you said…?"

"Ah, I've told everyone that you would be coming here to interview them," Beaupierre said nervously. "But it may be, now that I think of it, that perhaps I neglected to mention, ah, the exact subject matter of your, ah, interest in, mm…" He closed his mouth, took a sip of coffee, and apparently lost interest, gazing tranquilly out the window, an earnest, cogitative look on his face. Beaupierre had a way of doing that-simply quitting in the middle of a sentence, giving the impression that it was still going on somewhere in the ether, only not out loud. It was as if a radio had been switched off in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes he'd flip the switch back on again in the middle of another sentence, which was equally disconcerting.

There was a polite interval, apparently to permit the director to continue if he wished, which he didn't, and then Audrey filled her water glass and looked at Gideon. "Is this a serious academic work, Gideon?"

Oh boy; not a question he'd been looking forward to answering. His throat began to get a little dry and he too filled his glass from one of the carafes. "Well, not exactly, no, Audrey. It's intended for a popular audience, but I do mean to treat the subject in a serious, scholarly way." Well, in as serious and scholarly a way as Lester would let him get away with.

"And what, may I ask," said Emile Grize, "is the title of this popular yet scholarly book?" As it often was with Emile, it was a toss-up as to whether or not he meant to be sarcastic.

" Wrong Turns, Dead Ends, and Popular Misconceptions in the Study of Humankind," Gideon said, figuring he was better off ignoring for the moment the less scholarly-sounding Bones to Pick part. Even so, it didn't do much to tone down the general air of mistrust. (Thank God he had held out against Lester's Bungles, Blunders and Bloopers.) Still, what could he expect? How happy could they be about dusting off a farce that had made them a public laughing stock only a few years earlier? The Tayac hoopla had even made it to the Jay Leno show for four nights running, surely a first for the field of Middle Paleolithic decorative technology.

"I do mean this to be as serious and scholarly a piece of work as I can make it," he said truthfully. "I've been over this with my publisher a hundred times. I'm not interested in cheap laughs or in making our field look as if it's full of charlatans and fools. Scientists have made mistakes plenty of times, sure, and sometimes-but not very often-they've been plain dishonest-villains, even."

Pru's hand flew to her heart. She gasped. "Good God, sir, surely you jest."

"And I don't intend to cover any of that up," Gideon went on. "But the story of almost every hoax and every mistake has a scientist as hero too, and it's the heroes that I mean to concentrate on."

The eminent Michel Montfort had had little to say since Gideon's arrival, preferring instead to sit staring out the window in one of his well-remembered, scowling silences, tapping his fingernails on the table, making inroads into the chocolate brioches, and presumably thinking great thoughts. Now his snuffling bass broke in again.

"And who is the 'hero' in the saga of the Old Man of Tayac?"

Gideon hesitated. "You are, sir."

Montfort was visibly startled. " I am! Thank you very much, no! You can leave me out of your damned book."