Aaron Elkins - Skeleton dance

"Is that so?" said Emile, growing interested. He might not like being taught anything by the younger Gideon, but he was a paleopathologist (a trained paleopathologist)-one of the best there was, Gideon was ready to admit-and this was new data. "And this would presumably be a byproduct of chronic pulmonary tubercular infection of the subjacent pleural tissue?"

"Exactly. The-"

"Chronic pulmonary tubercular infection of the subjacent pleural tissue," said Beaupierre. "My, my, the waters are growing deep for us mere archaeologists. Well, well, Gideon, it's been most interesting, but I think we ought to conclude now. It's almost noon, and I'm sure we all have some final preparations to make for the symposium."

"One thing more," Montfort said, re-emerging from the solitary, superior plane to which he'd retreated again. "In regard to your book, Dr. Oliver: I don't want-I'm sure none of us want-to see Professor Carpenter made to look ridiculous."

There were murmurs of assent around the table; heartfelt, as far as Gideon could tell. Carpenter had been a popular and-until the debacle that had ended his career-a respected director.

"I won't make him look ridiculous," Gideon said.

"Nor his scholarship either," added Beaupierre.

But that was a trickier proposition. "I'm not trying to make anything look ridiculous, Jacques, but I don't see how I can get around the fact that his scholarship is suspect. How else could he have been-"

Montfort interrupted. "Dr. Beaupierre refers not to the unfortunate episode of the Old Man of Tayac, but to the entire body of Professor Carpenter's work, the total thrust of his research. And mine," he added with unmistakable emphasis. "As unfortunate as his lapse of judgment in this case was, I hope you will make it clear that it has no bearing on the fact that other Neanderthals in other places do demonstrate beyond any possible doubt the existence of artistic proclivities."

"They do, do they?" said Audrey, her hackles rising. "Beyond any possible doubt?"

"Better duck," Pru breathed in Gideon's ear. "We're off again."

She was right. Montfort rounded on Audrey, his eyes glittering with the zeal of battle. "Doctor, I am at a loss to understand how you can continue to dispute the existence of art, legitimate art, in the Middle Paleolithic. We now have evidence of pigment traces-yellow, red, black, brown-applied to stone at well over two dozen Neanderthal sites. Are you seriously suggesting that this was all unintentional, the result of some kind of repeated accident?"

"Of course not," said Audrey, taking up the challenge, "but I hope you're not suggesting that the application of coloring materials to a surface is necessarily an artistic act."

"Not an artistic act?" put in Beaupierre. "But… but of course it's an artistic act. What else would you call it?"

"Any one of a hundred things: simple curiosity, or a primitive enjoyment of novel effects, or an instinct for play. In all these sites you mention, can you point to a single application of color that could be called a pattern, a meaningful design?"

"Oh… pouf," said Beaupierre weakly.

"Go ahead and pouf all you like, Jacques," Emile said, "but Audrey is clearly in the right. All these pigment traces of yours are no more than smears or formless dabs. Oh, at best I suppose they might represent a naIve form of aesthetic appreciation on the part of Neanderthal Man-"

"Neanderthals," Audrey said automatically.

"On the part of Neanderthals, but nothing to be confused with artistic intent as we use the term."

"Oh, yes?" said Montfort, warming to the debate, "and just how do you propose to separate the two? Is there really so obvious a difference between artistic appreciation and aesthetic appreciation-even 'naIve' aesthetic appreciation, as you choose to call it?"

"That's right," said Beaupierre. "Yes, very true. We all know, mm, ah…"

"Oh, come on, people, give me a break," Pru said. "Babies play with crayons. Give a chimp some finger paints and he's happy for hours. So what? Does that make him an artist?"

"But what about the incised stone, the worked bone?" said Montfort. "Do chimpanzees carve crosses in stone?"

Several voice responded, but Audrey's was the most penetrating. "For heaven's sake, Michel, are you back on that nummulite fossil from Hungary? One of the lines on that "cross" is a natural crack, you know that as well as I do."

"And the other?"

"The other," said Emile, "is an ambiguous mark that could easily have been caused by skinning, butchering, or any one of a thousand utilitarian, totally unaesthetic activities."

Montfort looked sadly at him. "Always and forever the ready answer."

"I may not be an archaeologist-" Emile said

Montfort muttered something inaudible.

"-but it hardly takes an archaeologist to see it's just a scratch , that's all, a simple scratch on a stone. To refer to it as an 'incision,' a term connoting human agency, is spurious and misleading. I don't mean this in a personal sense, of course, Michel."

Montfort snorted. "And do you also have an answer for the complexly incised-pardon me, the scratched -bone fragment from Peche de l'Aze?" He thumped the table, making empty coffee cups rattle in their saucers.

"Natural erosion," said Emile, uncowed, with his chin thrust out.

"-the perforated reindeer phalanges from La Quina-"

"Carnivore activity."

Montfort, shaking his head, gazed sadly at him.

"But… but the perforated wolf metacarpal from Bocksteinschmiede?" said Beaupierre, taking up the argument as well as he could. "What about that?"

"Not proven to be Middle Paleolithic, as opposed to Upper Paleolithic!" cried Audrey, partway to her feet.

Beaupierre and Montfort let fly at the same time. Oh, yes? How did she explain the artifacts from Bilzingsleben? What about Repolusthohle? Arcy-sur-Cure? Cueva Morin in Spain?

Gideon had been long forgotten. All of them, including even the usually mellow Pru were talking at once, or rather shouting; banging the table and waving their arms for emphasis. Through the open door of the room Gideon saw the cafe's proprietor, standing behind the bar, exchange smiles and wags of the head with a couple of his customers. These scientists!

"I guess I'll be going," he announced. "Thanks very much for your help."

He thought no one had heard him over the din, but as he rose from his chair Pru touched his elbow, smiled, and said in her fluent French:

"Bienvenue chez les fous. "

Welcome back to the madhouse.

Because Les Eyzies had neither a morgue nor a hospital, the bagged bones from the cave had been taken to the morgue-room of the hospital at St.-Cyprien, another ancient Perigord town five miles from Les Eyzies, this one clustered at the foot of an imposing twelfth-century abbey on the banks of the Dordogne. Having driven there in the compact, olive-green Peugeot that Julie had rented for them by e-mail from the United States, Gideon was told by the front-desk receptionist, a friendly, chatty woman who laughed at the end of every sentence, that he would find the morgue in the basement-right down those stairs, in the room at the end of the corridor.

"Will I need a key, madame?" he asked in French.

She chuckled good-naturedly. "No, you won't need one, monsieur, we don't usually lock the morgue. Not too many people try to get in-or out, for that matter. And besides, the other gentleman is there."

"Other gentleman?" he said, surprised. And then: "Oh, would that be Dr. Roussillot, the police pathologist?"

"I don't know, I didn't ask his name."

She didn't ask Gideon's name either, he reflected critically as he went down the stairs. Joly himself might run a tight ship, but this sort of evidence-storage would never pass muster under American chain-of-evidence requirements. Gideon was the second-at least the second-person to have access to the bones without having to provide identification. Aside from that, they'd been left unattended for who knew how long; that left a huge chink into which a defense attorney or a judge could toss a monkey wrench on the grounds that it could no longer be proven beyond a doubt that these bones really were the selfsame bones that had been removed from the cave. And it was on just such objections that many an otherwise solid case could-indeed, had-come apart at the seams.