Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

Then, from a small black purse on her arm, she withdrew a limp plastic package and unwrapped it with a practiced little sweep of her wrist. She slipped a surgical mask over her face. “Sorry,” she said, voice even smaller now. “You know how it is. The girls say this new flu cuts through everything — the pill, rubbers, you name it. You don’t even have to be, you know, nasty to get in trouble anymore. They say all the guys carry it. I got two kids already. I don’t need time off from work just to make a little freak.”

Dicken was so tired he could hardly move. She got up on stage and took a stance. “You like fast or slow?”

He stood, accidentally kicking the chair over with a loud clatter. She frowned at him, eyes narrowing and brows knitting over her mask. The mask was medicine green.

“Sorry,” he said, and handed her another twenty. Then he fled the room, stumbled through the smoke, tripped over a couple of legs near the stage, climbed up the steps, held on to the brass rail for a moment, taking deep breaths.

He wiped his hand vigorously on his pants, as if he were the one who could get infected.

Mitch sat on the bench and stretched his arms out in the watery sunshine. He wore a Pendleton wool shirt, faded jeans, scuffed hiking boots, and no coat.

The bare trees lifted gray limbs over a trampled field of snow. Student pathways had cleared the sidewalks and left crisscross trails over the snowy lawns. Flakes fell slowly from the broken gray masses of clouds hustling overhead.

Wendell Packer approached with a narrow smile and a wave. Packer was Mitch’s age, in his late thirties, tall and slender, with thinning hair and regular features marred only slightly by a bulbous nose. He wore a thick sweater and a dark blue down vest and carried a small leather satchel.

“I’ve always wanted to make a film about this quad,” Packer said. He clasped his hands nervously.

“What sort?” Mitch asked, his heart aching already. He had had to force himself to make the call and come to the campus. Mitch was trying to learn to ignore the nervousness of former colleagues and scientist friends.

“Just one scene. Snow covering the ground in January; plum blossoms in April. A pretty girl walking, right about there. Slow fade: she’s surrounded by falling flakes, and they turn to petals.” Packer pointed along the path where students slogged to their classes. He made a swipe at the slush on the bench and sat beside Mitch. “You could have come to my office. You’re not a pariah, Mitch. Nobody’s going to kick you off campus.”

Mitch shrugged. “I’ve become a wild man, Wendell. I don’t get much sleep. I have a stack of textbooks in my apartment…I read biology all day long. I don’t know where I need to catch up most.”

“Yeah, well, say good-bye to elan vital. We’re engineers now.”

“I want to buy you lunch and ask a few questions. And then I want to know if I can audit some classes in your department. The texts just aren’t cutting it for me.”

“I can ask the professors. Any classes in particular?”

“Embryology. Vertebrate development. Some obstetrics, but that’s outside your department.”

“Why?”

Mitch stared out over the quad at the surrounding walls of ochre brick buildings. “I need to learn a lot of things before I shoot my mouth off or make any more stupid moves.”

“Like what?”

“If I told you, you’d know for sure that I was crazy.”

“Mitch, one of the best times I’ve had in years was when we went out to Gingko Tree with my kids. They loved it, marching all over, looking for fossils. I was staring down at the ground for hours. The back of my neck got sunburned. I realized that was why you wore a little flap on your hat.”

Mitch smiled.

“I’m still a friend, Mitch.”

“That really means a lot to me, Wendell.”

“It’s cold out here,” Packer said. “Where are you taking me for lunch?”

“You like Asian?”

They sat in the Little China restaurant, in a booth by the window, waiting for their rice and noodles and curry to be brought out. Packer sipped a cup of hot tea; Mitch, perversely, drank cold lemonade. Steam clouded the window looking out on the gray Ave, so-called, not an avenue in actuality but University Street, flanking the campus. A few young kids in leather jackets and baggy pants smoked and stamped their feet around a chained newspaper rack. The snow had stopped and the streets were shiny black.

“So tell me why you need to audit classes,” Packer said.

Mitch spread out three newspaper clippings on Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia. Packer read them with a frown.

“Somebody tried to kill the mother in the cave. And thousands of years later, they’re killing mothers with Herod’s flu.”

“Ah. You think the Neandertals…The baby found outside the cave.” Packer tilted his head back. “I’m a little confused.”

“Christ, Wendell, I was there. I saw the baby inside the cave. I’m sure the researchers in Innsbruck have confirmed that by now, they just aren’t telling anybody. I’ve written letters, and they don’t even bother to respond.”

Packer thought this over, brow deeply wrinkled, trying to put together a complete picture. “You think you stumbled onto a little bit of punctuated equilibrium. In the Alps.”

A short woman with a round pretty face brought their food and laid chopsticks beside their plates. When she left, Packer continued, “You think they’ve done a tissue match in Innsbruck and just won’t release the results?”

Mitch nodded. “It’s so far out there, as an idea, that nobody is saying a thing. It’s an incredible long shot. Look, I don’t want to belabor…I don’t want to drag you down with all the details. Just give me a chance to find out whether I’m right or wrong. I’m probably so wrong I should start a new career in asphalt management. But…1was there, Wendell.”

Packer looked around the restaurant, pushed aside the chopsticks, ladled a few spoons of hot pepper sauce onto his plate, and stuck a fork into his curried pork and rice. Around a mouthful, he said, “If I let you audit some classes, will you sit way in the back?”

“I’ll stand outside the door,” Mitch said.

“I was joking,” Packer said. “I think.”

“I know you were,” Mitch said, smiling. “Now I’m going to ask just one more favor.”

Packer lifted his eyebrows. “You’re pushing it, Mitch.”

“Do you have any postdocs working on SHEVA?”

“You bet,” Packer said. “The CDC has a research coordination program and we’ve signed on. You see all the women wearing gauze masks on campus? We’d like to help shine a little reason on this whole thing. You know…Reason ?” He stared pointedly at Mitch.

Mitch pulled out his two glass vials. “These are very precious to me,” he said. “I do not want to lose them.” He held them out in his palm. They clinked softly together, their contents like two little snips of beef jerky.

Packer put down his fork. “What are they?”

“Neandertal tissue. One from the male, one from the female.”

Packer stopped chewing.

“How much of them would you need?” Mitch asked.

“Not much,” Packer said around his mouthful of rice. “If I was going to do anything.”

Mitch waggled his hand and the vials slowly back and forth.

“If I were to trust you,” Packer added.

“I have to trust your Mitch said.

Packer squinted at the fogged windows, the kids still milling outside, laughing and smoking their cigarettes.

“Test them for what…SHEVA?”

“Or something like SHEVA.”

“Why? What has SHEVA got to do with evolution?”