Greg Bear - Darwin's Radio

Merton sensed his unease. “This meeting is completely private, and will be kept secret,” he said. “I don’t plan to report anything said here.”

“At my request,” Daney said, lifting his brows emphatically.

“I wanted to tell you that you must be correct in your judgments, the judgments you have shown by seeking out certain people, and learning certain things about our own researches,” Brock said. “But I have just been released from my responsibilities with regard to the Alpine mummies. The arguments have become personal, and more than a little dangerous to all our careers.”

“Dr. Brock believes the mummies represent the first clear evidence of a human speciation event,” Merton said, hoping to move things along.

“Subspeciation, actually,” Brock said. “But the idea of a species has become so fluid in past decades, has it not? The presence of SHEVA in their tissues is most evocative, don’t you think?”

Daney leaned forward in his chair, cheeks and forehead pink with the intensity of his interest.

Mitch decided he could not be reticent among such fellow travelers. “We’ve found other instances,” he said.

“Yes, so I hear, from Oliver and from Maria Konig at the University of Washington.”

“Not me, actually, but people I’ve talked to. I’ve been ineffectual, to say the least. Compromised by my own actions.”

Brock dismissed this. “When I called your apartment in Innsbruck, I had forgiven you your lapse. I could sympathize, and your story rang true.”

“Thank you,” Mitch said, and found himself genuinely affected.

“I apologize for not revealing myself at the time, but you understand, I hope.”

“I do,” Mitch said.

“Tell me what’s going to happen,” Daney said. “Are they going to release their findings about the mummies?”

“They are,” Brock said. “They are going to claim contamination, that the mummies are in fact not related. The Nean-dertals are going to be labeled Homo sapiens alpinensis, and the infant is going to be sent to Italy for study by other specialists.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mitch said.

“Yes, and they will not get away with this pretense forever, but for the next few years, the conservatives, the hardliners, will rule. They will mete out information at will, to those they trust not to rock the boat, to agree with them, like zealous scholars defending the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are hoping to see their careers through without having to deal with a revolution that would topple both them and their views.”

“Incredible,” Daney said.

“No, human , and we all study the human, no? Was not our female injured by someone who didn’t want her baby to be born?”

“We don’t know that,” Mitch said.

“I know that,” Brock said. “I reserve my own irrational domains of belief, if only to defend myself against the zealots. Is this not the sequence that you dream, in some form or another, as if we have these events buried in our very blood?”

Mitch nodded.

“Perhaps this was the original sin of our kind, that our Neandertal ancestors wished to stop progress, hold on to their unique position…By killing the new children.

Those who would become us. Now we do the same thing, perhaps?”

Daney shook his head, quietly growling. Mitch observed this with some interest, then turned to Brock. “You must have examined the DNA results,” he said. “It must be available for criticism by others.”

Brock reached down by his seat and brought up a briefcase. He tapped it meaningfully. “I have all the material here, on DVD-ROM, massive graphics files, tabulations, the results from different labs around the world. Oliver and I are going to make it available on the Web, announce the coverup, and let the chips fall where they may.”

“What we’d really like to do is make this relevant in the broadest way imaginable,” Merton added. “We’d like to present conclusive evidence that evolution is knocking on our door again.”

Mitch bit his lip, thinking this over. “Have you talked with Christopher Dicken?”

“He told me he can’t help me,” Merton said.

This shook Mitch. “Last time I spoke with him, he seemed enthusiastic, even gung ho,” Mitch said.

“He’s had a change of heart,” Merton said. “We need to bring Dr. Lang onboard. I think I can convince some of the University of Washington people, certainly Dr. Konig and Dr. Packer, perhaps even an evolutionary biologist or two.”

Daney nodded enthusiastically.

Merton turned to Mitch. His lips straightened, and he cleared his throat. “Your look says you don’t approve?”

“We can’t exactly go at this like we were college freshmen in a debating society.”

“I thought you were a rough-and-tumble fellow,” Merton said archly.

“Wrong,” Mitch said. “I love it smooth and by the book. It’s life that’s rough-and-tumble.”

Daney grinned. “Well put. Myself, I love to be on the ground floor.”

“How’s that?” Merton asked.

“This is a marvelous opportunity,” Daney said. “I’d like to find a willing woman and bring one of these new people into my family.”

For a long moment, neither Merton, Brock, nor Mitch could find the right words to reply.

“Interesting idea,” Merton said quietly, and glanced quickly at Mitch, eyebrow raised.

“If we try to kick up a storm outside the castle, we might close more doors than we open,” Brock admitted.

“Mitch,” Merton said, subdued, “tell us, then, how should we go about this…more by the book?”

“We put together a group of true experts,” Mitch said, and thought intently for a moment. “Packer and Maria Konig make a fine start. We recruit from their colleagues and contacts — the geneticists and molecular biologists at the University of Washington, NIH, and half a dozen other universities, research centers. Oliver, you probably know whom I’m referring to…maybe better than I do.”

“The more progressive evolutionary biologists,” Merton said, and then frowned, as if that might be an oxymoron. “Right now, that’s pretty well limited to molecular biologists and a select few paleontologists, like Jay Niles.”

“I know only conservatives,” Brock said. “I have been drinking coffee with the wrong crowd in Innsbruck.”

“We need a scientific foundation,” Mitch said. “An overwhelming quorum of respected scientists.”

“That’ll take weeks, even months,” Merton said. “Everyone has careers to protect.”

“What if we fund more research in the private sector?” Daney said.

“That’s where Mr. Daney could be helpful,” Merton said, looking from beneath shaggy red eyebrows at their host. “You have the resources to put together a first-class conference, and that’s just what we need now. Counter the public pronouncements from the Taskforce.”

Daney’s expression dimmed. “How much would that cost? Hundreds of thousands, or millions?”

“The former rather than the latter, I suspect,” Merton said with a chuckle.

Daney gave them a troubled glance. “That much money, and I’ll have to ask Mother,” he said.

”I let her go,” Dr. Lipton said, sitting down behind her desk. “I let them all go. The head of clinic research said we had enough information to make our patient recommendations and bring the experiments to a halt.”

Kaye stared at her, dumfounded. “You just…let them out of the clinic, to go home?”

Lipton nodded, jaw lightly dimpled. “It wasn’t my call, Kaye. But I have to agree. We were beyond our ethical limits.”

“What if they need help at home?”