Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

“They tell us you were involved in the theft of antiquities from the federal government, the skeletal remains of an Indian, called Pasco man, very old. Ten thousand years, found on the banks of the Columbia River. You refused to hand over these remains to the Army Corpse of Engineers.”

“Corps,” Mitch said softly.

“So they arrest you under an antiquities act, and the museum fires you because there is so much publicity.”

“The Indians claimed the bones belonged to an ancestor,” Mitch said, his face flushing with anger at the memory. “They wanted to bury them again.”

The inspector read from his notes. “You were denied access to your collections in the museum, and the bones were confiscated from your house. With many photographs and more publicity.”

“It was legal bullshit! The Army Corps of Engineers had no right to those bones. They were scientifically invaluable—”

“Like this mummified baby from the ice, perhaps?” the inspector asked.

Mitch closed his eyes and looked away. He could see it all very clearly now. Stupid is not the word. This is fate, pure and simple.

“You are going to throw up?” the inspector asked, backing away.

Mitch shook his head.

“Already it is known — you were seen with the woman in the Braunschweiger Hiitte, not ten kilometers from where you were found. A striking woman, beautiful and blond, observers say.”

The mountaineers nodded at this, as if they had been there.

“It is best you tell us everything and we hear it first. I will tell the police in Italy, and the police here in Austria will interview you and maybe it will all be nothing.”

“They were acquaintances,” he said. “She was — used to be — my girlfriend. I mean, we were lovers.”

“Yes. Why did she return to you?”

“They had found something. She thought I might be able to tell them what they had found.”

“Yes?”

Mitchell realized he had no choice. He drank another glass of water, then told the inspector most of what had happened, as precisely and clearly as he could. Since they had not mentioned the vials, he did not mention them, either. The officer took notes and recorded his confession on a small tape machine.

When he was finished, the inspector said, “Someone is sure to want to know where this cave is.”

“Tilde — Mathilda had a camera,” Mitch said wearily. “She took pictures.”

“We found no camera. It might go much easier if you know where the cave is. Such a find…very exciting.”

“They have the baby already,” Mitch said. “That should be exciting enough. A Neandertal infant.”

The inspector made a doubtful face. “Nobody says anything about Neandertal. So maybe this is a delusion or joke?”

Mitch was long past losing everything he cared about — his career, his standing as a paleontologist. Once more he had screwed things up royally. “Maybe it was the headache.

I’m just groggy. Of course, I’ll help them find the cave,” he said.

“Then there is no crime, merely tragedy.” The inspector rose to leave, and the officer tipped his cap good-bye.

After they were gone, the mountaineer with the peeling cheeks told him, “You are not going home soon.”

“The mountains want you back,” said the least snow-burned of the four, across the room from Mitch, and nodded sagely, as if that explained everything.

“Screw you,” Mitch muttered. He rolled over in the crisp white bed.

Lado and Tamara and Zamphyra and seven other scientists and students gathered around the two wooden tables on the south end of the main laboratory building. They all lifted their beakers of brandy in toast to Kaye. Candles flickered around the room, reflecting the golden sparkles within the amber-filled glassware. The meal was only halfway finished, and this was the eighth round Lado had led this evening, as tamada, toastmaster, for the occasion. “For darling Kaye,” Lado said, “who values our work…and promises to make us rich!”

Rabbits, mice, and chickens watched with sleepy eyes from their cages behind the table. Long black benches covered with glassware and racks and incubators and computers hooked to sequencers and analyzers retreated into the gloom at the unlighted end of the lab.

“To Kaye,” Tamara added, “who has seen more of what Sakarrvelo, of Georgia, has to offer…than we might wish. A brave and understanding woman.”

“What are you, toastmisrress?” Lado demanded in irritation. “Why remind us of unpleasant things?”

“What are you, talking of riches, of money, at a time like this?” Tamara snapped back.

“I am tamada\” Lado roared, standing beside the oak folding table and waving his sloshing glass at the students and scientists. Above slow smiles, none of them said a word in disagreement.

“All right,” Tamara conceded. “Your wish is our command.”

“They have no respect!” Lado complained to Kaye. “Will prosperity destroy tradition?”

The benches made crowded Vs in Kaye’s narrowing perspective. The equipment was hooked into a generator that chugged softly out in the yard beside the building. Saul had supplied two sequencers and a computer; the generator had been supplied by Aventis, a huge multinational.

City power from Tbilisi had been shut off since late that afternoon. They had cooked the farewell dinner over Bunsen burners and in a gas oven.

“Go ahead, toastmaster,” Zamphyra said in affectionate resignation. She waved her fingers at Lado.

“I will.” Lado put down his glass and smoothed his suit. His dark wrinkled face, red as a beet with mountain sunburn, gleamed in the candlelight like rich wood. He reminded Kaye of a toy troll she had loved as a child. From a box concealed under the table he brought out a small crystal glass, intricately cut and beveled. He took a beautiful silver-chased ibex horn and walked to a large amphora propped in a wooden crate in the near corner, behind the table. The amphora, recently pulled from the earth of his own small vineyard outside Tbilisi, was filled with some immense quantity of wine. He lifted a ladle from the amphora’s mouth and poured it slowly into the horn, then again, and again, seven times, until the horn was full. He swirled the wine gently to let it breathe. Red liquid sloshed over his wrist.

Finally, he filled the glass to the brim from the horn, and handed it to Kaye. “If you were a man,” he said, “I would ask you to drink the entire horn, and give us a toast.”

“Lado!” Tamara howled, slapping his arm. He almost dropped the horn, and turned on her in mock surprise.

“What?” he demanded. “Is the glass not beautiful?”

Zamphyra rose to her feet beside the table to waggle a finger at him. Lado grinned more broadly, transformed from a troll into a carmine satyr. He turned slowly toward Kaye.

“What can I do, dear Kaye?” Lado said with a flourish. More wine dripped from the tip of the horn. “They demand that you must drink all of this.”

Kaye had already had her fill of alcohol and did not trust herself to stand. She felt deliciously warm and safe, among friends, surrounded by an ancient darkness thick with amber and golden stars.

She had almost forgotten the graves and Saul and the difficulties awaiting her in New York.

She held out her hands, and Lado danced forward with surprising grace, belying his clumsiness of a few moments before. Not spilling a drop, he deposited the ibex horn into her hands.

“Now, you,” he said.

Kaye knew what was expected. She rose solemnly. Lado had delivered many toasts that evening that had rambled poetically and with no end of invention for long minutes. She doubted she could equal his eloquence, but she would do her best, and she had many things to say, things that had buzzed in her head for the two days since she had come down from Kazbeg.