Philip Kerr - Esau

The telephone rang. She ground out the cigarette and went inside to answer it. As soon as she heard the urgency and excitement in Stewart Ray Sacher’s gravelly voice, she felt her heart leap forward in her chest. Even before he told her the results of his geochronological tests, she knew that life would never be the same again.

Warren Fitzgerald, director of the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies and dean of the Faculty of Paleoanthropology at Berkeley, rubbed his poorly shaven chin ruminatively. A smile flickered on and off his well-chiseled face which, with the old man’s white hair and wire-framed glasses, looked to Swift almost beatifically wise. One of the world’s preeminent authorities on human evolution, Fitzgerald was best known to a wider audience as the host of the award-winning PBS science series Changes. A Boston man, Fitzgerald spoke with such an overabundance of vowels that he always reminded Swift of John F. Kennedy.

‘Well, if you and Sacher are even half right, Stella, I do believe that this might alter our understanding of the whole timeline of hominid evolution. At the very least it seems to restore the importance of Ramapithecus in the search for human origins. But I can certainly appreciate your caution, considering the proximity of our friends over at IHO.

‘Re-establishing the phyletic position of Ramapithecus is going to play havoc with the biochemists and their work in molecular phylogeny. They’ll spare no effort to discredit your data the minute you break cover. For years they had to withstand accusations that their biochemistry was wrong because it didn’t agree with the fossils. Now you’re saying that the fossils were right all along.’

‘I don’t think that’s exactly what I’m saying,’ said Swift. ‘At least not yet, anyway.’ She pushed her mane of red hair away from her face and looked thoughtful.

‘Look, all that the biochemical approach says is that the immunological dates for a divergence between man and the African great apes provide a separation date of four to six million years ago. Because hominids of the genus Ramapithecus date back to the late Miocene about fourteen million years ago, and because Sivapithecus — closely related to Rama — seems to be more closely related to the orangutan than to the African apes, it has been generally assumed that Ramapithecus is therefore disqualified from being a hominid.

‘But here we have a fossil that seems to have characteristics of both Rama’s ape and of Paranthropus robustus. A skull that appears to be a halfway stage between Ramapithecus and Australopithecus . Moreover, a skull that gives every indication of being considerably more recent in its apparent origins than any previously discovered ramapithecine.’

Swift stood up excitedly and stalked around Fitzgerald’s book-lined office as her theory began to be articulated.

‘All right,’ she continued. ‘We’ve always believed that Ramapithecus was around as late as fourteen million years ago. All this skull suggests is that the genus could have survived until much more recently than we had ever suspected before. Until only fifty thousand years ago.’

‘This is what I’m not at all comfortable with, Stella,’ grumbled Fitzgerald. ‘This idea of Sacher’s. The glacier corpse. His fifty thousand years is pure assumption. Why not assume a hundred? Or a hundred and fifty? But even then it’s a very long way short of fourteen million. Do you really think that some kind of ramapithecine could have survived for the best part of fourteen million years?’

Swift shrugged.

‘The dinosaurs survived for sixty-five million years. And that’s as nothing beside the coelacanth. The coelacanth was abundant in the world’s oceans as long as three hundred and fifty million years ago. We thought they had died out some sixty million years ago. And then a fisherman caught a living specimen as recently as 1938. Now why shouldn’t a ramapithecine have survived for a mere fourteen million years?’

‘Just how many assays did Sacher make, Stella?’

‘Several. And all with different results. He’s saying that there may be a number of reasons why there’s more natural radiation in the dental material than we expected. He’s tried carbon dating but that hasn’t been any more accurate.’

‘I see. And the rock sample you provided?’

‘According to Sacher, the rock sample shows that the specimen’s environment must have originally been deficient in Carbon-14.’

Fitzgerald sighed and shook his head.

‘All that money we waste on all that goddamn machinery of his and he says that there’s something wrong with the lousy samples. For the life of me, Stella, I’ve never seen why we should accept that the amount of radiocarbon produced in the atmosphere has always been constant. Did you know that Sacher once analyzed the amount of radiocarbon in a living snail and came out with the result that the creature had been dead for three thousand years?’

‘I’d heard that story,’ she admitted.

‘Anyway, you’d like a temporary release from your teaching obligations to do some fieldwork on this, right?’

‘That’s right. At this moment I’m preparing a grant proposal for the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society with the aim of going back to the Himalayas to study the site where the skull was found.’

‘I suppose you know I’m on the peer review committee for the National Science Foundation?’

In the world of academic scientific research, applications for grants were put up to the scrutiny of relevant experts in order that the merits of an application could be judged.

‘I know.’

‘Money’s generally a bit tight right now. So if I were you I’d try the people at National Geographic first. But if your grant proposal makes it, it could make your name, Stella.’

She nodded.

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

‘I bet it has,’ he grinned. ‘Yessir, it could make you as famous as Mary Leakey. This science could sure do with another woman making her reputation. Not to mention the kudos it could bring to Berkeley.’

Fitzgerald thumped his desk enthusiastically.

‘Might be the most important piece of anthropology done here since Vince Sarich’s time. Lord, I really hope so, Stella. I never did like those chemists much. I’m a fossil man, myself. Always have been, always will be. All the biochemistry in the world won’t change the fact that it’s bones, Stella. It’s bones that count.’

Swift came away from Fitzgerald’s office feeling that things were beginning to shape up quite nicely.

It was bones that counted. Too damn right. In the field of paleoanthropology, there were many more scientists than there would ever be fossils. But fossils were everything. Of course the trick was in getting hold of them. Until then all you had were theories and nearly all of them based on other people’s finds.

Not that theories couldn’t be rewarding too.

In search of some theories of her own she had spent the previous winter working with Byron Cody, helping him elaborate some of his ideas for his now best-selling book about gorillas. It was an experience she still remembered with pleasure.

There had been one particular moment that Swift believed she would always treasure, when she had been sitting in a cage with a young mountain gorilla. She had found herself looking deep into the animal’s eyes and instead of looking away, as normally happened, the gorilla had held her stare, leaving her with the most profound, albeit ineffable sensation. She had felt both question and assent, and the nearest comparison she could ever make was that it had been like meeting the unflinching gaze of a small child. Even now she could hardly recall ever feeling a greater sense of empathy for any other living creature.