Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

“Where’d you get this feed?” Ripper asked Merton as he spread the camp’s battered Melmac plates on the bare pine table beneath the largest canopy.

“At the airport,” Merton said. “Only place I had time to stop. Bread, cheese, fish, wine — what more does one need? Though I could use a good pint of bitter.”

“I’ve got Coors in the trailer,” a burly, balding male intern said.

“Breakfast of diggers,” Mitch said approvingly.

“Spare me,” Merton said. “And pardon me if I tell everyone to dig in. Everyone has a story to tell.” He took a plastic cup of champagne from Ripper. “Of race and time and migration and what it means to be a human being. Who wants to be first?”

Mitch knew he had only to keep silent for a couple of seconds and Ripper would start in. Merton took notes as she talked about the three skeletons and local politics. An hour and a half later, it was getting bitterly cold and they moved closer to the fire.

“The Altai tribes resent having ethnic Russians dig up their dead,” Merton said. “It’s an indigenous revolt everywhere. A slap on the wrist to the colonial oppressors. Do you think the Neandertals have their spokespersons in Innsbruck picketing right now?”

“Nobody wants to be a Neandertal,” Mitch said dryly.

“Except me.” He turned to Eileen. “I’ve been dreaming about them. My little nuclear family.”

“Really?” Eileen leaned forward, intrigued.

“I dreamed their people lived on a big raft in a lake.”

“Fifteen thousand years ago?” Merton asked, raising an eyebrow.

Mitch caught something in the reporter’s tone and looked at him suspiciously. “Is that your guess?” he asked. “Or have they got a date?”

“None they’re releasing to the public,” Merton said with a sniff. “I have a contact at the university, however…and he tells me they’ve definitely settled on fifteen thousand years. If, that is,” and he smiled at Ripper, “they didn’t eat a lot of fish.”

“What else?”

Merton punched the air dramatically. “Pugilism,” he said. “Raging arguments in the back rooms. Your mummies violate everything known in anthropology and archaeology. They’re not strictly Neandertal, so claim a few in the main research team; they’re a new subspecies, Homo sapiens alpinensis, according to one scientist. Another is betting they’re late stage gracile Neandertals who lived in a large community, got less stocky and robust, looked more like you and me. They hope to explain away the infant.”

Mitch lowered his head. They don ‘tfeel this the way I do. They don’t know the way I know. Then he drew back and blanketed these emotions. He had to keep some level of objectivity.

Merton turned toward Mitch. “Did you see the baby?”

This made Mitch jerk upright in his folding chair. Merton’s eyes narrowed. “Not clearly,” Mitch said. “I just assumed, when they said it was a modern infant…”

“Could Neandertal traits be masked by infant features?” Merton asked.

“No,” Mitch said. Then, with a squint, “I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think so, either,” Ripper agreed. The students had gathered close around this discussion. The fire snapped and hissed and flung up tall yellow arms that grabbed at the cold, still sky. The river lapped the gravelly shore with a sound like a clockwork dog licking a hand. Mitch felt the champagne mellowing him after a long, tiring day of driving.

“Well, implausible as it might be, it’s easier than arguing against a genetic association,” Merton said. “The people in Innsbruck pretty much have to agree that the female and the infant are related. But there are anomalies, pretty serious ones, that no one can explain. I was hoping Mitchell might be able to enlighten me.”

Mitch was saved from having to feign ignorance when a woman’s strong voice called from the top of the bluff.

“Eileen? You there? It’s Sue Champion.”

“Hell,” Ripper said. “I thought she was back in Kumash by now.” She cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled upward, “We’re down here, Sue. We’re getting drunk. Want to join us?”

One of the male students ran up the trail to the top of the bluff with a flashlight. Sue Champion followed him back down to the tent.

“Nice fire,” she observed. Over six feet tall, slender to the point of thin, with long black hair arranged in a braid draped down the front shoulder of her brown corduroy jacket, Champion looked smart, classy, and a little stiff. She might have had a ready smile, but her face was lined with fatigue. Mitch glanced at Ripper, saw the fix in her expression.

“I’m here to say I’m sorry,” Champion said.

“We’re all sorry,” Ripper said.

“Have you been out here all night? It’s cold.”

“We’re dedicated.”

Champion walked around the canopy to be near the fire. “My office got your call about the tests. The chair of the board of trustees doesn’t believe it.”

“I can’t help that,” Ripper said. “Why did you just pull out all of a sudden and sic your attorney on me? I thought we had an agreement, and if they turned out to be Indian, we’d do basic science, with minimum invasion, then turn them over to the Five Tribes.”

“We let our guard down. We were tired after the mess over Pasco man. It was wrong.” She looked again at Mitch. “I know you.”

“Mitch Rafelson,” he said, and held out his hand.

Champion did not accept it. “You ran us a merry chase, Mitch Rafelson.”

“I feel the same way,” Mitch said.

Champion shrugged. “Our people gave in against their deeper feelings. We felt sandbagged. We need the folks in Olympia and last time we upset them. The trustees sent me here because I’m trained in anthropology. I didn’t do such a good job. Now everybody’s angry.”

“Is there anything more that we can do, out of court?” Ripper asked.

“The chairman told me that knowledge isn’t worth disturbing the dead. You should have seen the pain in the board meeting when I described the tests.”

“I thought we explained the whole procedure,” Ripper said.

“You disturb the dead everywhere. We ask only that you leave our dead alone.”

The women stared at each other sadly.

“They aren’t your dead, Sue,” Ripper said, her eyes drooping. “They aren’t your people.”

“The council thinks NAGPRA still applies.”

Ripper lifted her hand; no use going over old battles. “Then there’s nothing we can do but spend more money on lawyers.”

“No. This time you are going to win,” Champion said. “We have other troubles now. Many of our young mothers are ill with Herod’s.” Champion brushed the edge of the canvas cover with one hand. “Some of us thought it was confined to the big cities, maybe to the whites, but we were wrong.”

Merton’s eyes gleamed like eager little lenses in the flickering firelight.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Sue,” Ripper said. “My sister has Herod’s, too.” She stood and put her hand on Champion’s shoulder. “Stay for a while. We have hot coffee and cocoa.”

“Thank you, no. It’s a long drive back. We will not bother with the dead for a while. We need to take care of the living.” A slight change came over Champion’s features. “Some who are ready to listen, like my father and my grandmother, say that what you have learned is interesting.”

“Bless them, Sue,” Ripper said.

Champion looked down at Mitch. “People come and go, all of us come and go. Anthropologists know that.”

“We do,” Mitch said.

“It will be hard to explain to others,” Champion said. “I will let you know what our people decide to do about the illness, if we know any medicine. Maybe we can help your sister.” . “Thank you,” Ripper said.