Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Jonas nodded.

She took off her spectacles and rubbed her eyes. “When you’ve made up your mind, we’ll have to tell Russell. That’s only fair, but if your opinion is ‘yes,’ he’s not going to like it. He anticipated that something like this might happen.” She sucked the end of one arm of her spectacles. “Now that we have some teeth, that will help us decide what this creature ate. Arnold can help there. We have some skull bones, which will help us work out the size of his, or her, brain. Skulls are Jack’s speciality. A knee joint, some teeth, and some skull bones is quite a lot in paleontological terms, if it’s all one skeleton. This looks like a new species among man’s ancestors.” She looked around the table at each one of them. “If true, that’s big news.”

“Homo nelsoniensis , how does that sound?” Christopher looked at Natalie and smiled. “You found it, so it’s your right to name the thing.”

Natalie colored. “I think it’s a bit soon to be thinking of that, don’t you? In any case, how can you tell brain size from the few bones we have found?”

“By comparison with bones from the skulls of other discoveries, which are more complete.” Eleanor put back her spectacles. “I have the necessary books in my tent, so we can make a preliminary inspection tomorrow, once we’ve done all the measuring and photographing.”

She fixed Natalie with a glare. “If this discovery turns out to be what we think it is, and if your shelter idea stands up, you are going to be an overnight sensation—in the profession, I mean. And to think I was against you joining the dig, Natalie.” Eleanor smiled. “But surely you can see now how important the gorge is, how the situation is changing all the time. You’ve helped transform paleontology, my dear, in just a few weeks. This gorge is as much yours now as anyone’s.”

Eleanor’s words were meant as a compliment but they cut into Natalie, as both women realized. Natalie’s good fortune, in the discoveries she had unearthed, only made the threatened destruction of the gorge harder to bear.

“Shoo, Jack. Go away. I want to talk to Natalie.”

Dinner was over for the night, Jack had let Natalie choose some music, and they had planned to sit by the campfire for a few minutes listening to Schumann’s Carnaval .

It had been Jack’s idea. About three nights before, knowing that Natalie liked her late nights to herself, he had suggested a post-dinner music session, when they talked music, ate chocolate, listened to whatever that evening’s choice of entertainment was, and then went their separate ways. Christopher watched these encounters from a distance but made no attempt to get involved. He hadn’t approached Natalie in anything other than a professional manner since the evening she had been in bed and he had withdrawn in silence. If it had been him.

This evening, however, Eleanor made Jack move. “Go on,” she insisted. “Well away, please. I want to talk to Natalie—out of earshot, Jack.”

“Going, going,” he grumbled, but grinned. “Let me just put some logs on the fire.” Then he disappeared.

Eleanor sat down next to Natalie and for a moment neither spoke. They stared into the fire and listened to the Schumann to the end. One by one, the others drifted from the campfire, to their tents.

“I can’t help but notice, Natalie,” said Eleanor softly, “I can’t help but notice that you still receive next to no post. I can’t do anything about the man you split up with—a cellist, wasn’t he?—but what about your father? Are you still estranged? Is it something I could help with perhaps? Would you like me to write to him, tell him what a success you are being here?”

Natalie didn’t know what to say. These sudden lurches into intimacy on Eleanor’s part were disconcerting, to say the least.

“Am I being a success, Eleanor? Yes, I’ve made some discoveries but the Mutevu business puts everything under threat.” She paused. “I hope you are not suggesting a quid pro quo—that you will write to my father, if I change my mind over Mutevu?”

Eleanor pushed up a strand of her hair where it had fallen from her chignon. “No, my dear, that’s not my plan at all. I’m sure you are torn every day about whether to give evidence or not. I’m not raking over those old coals, not tonight anyway.”

She put her hand on Natalie’s knee. “But with your father I may have some real influence—”

“But what would you say, and why would you say it?”

“Oh, I would start by saying what a success you are being, how you have made three important discoveries. How much we all enjoy having you in Kihara. But then I would say you have stumbled into a dilemma and that you need the support of your family, that your father, as a religious man, a man of the church community, must know forgiveness, redemption, that he must find space in his heart to move past his ordeal, that unless he does he will be trapped in a cage forever.”

Natalie was shaking her head. “But why would you do this for me? Because I am a woman, because I am new in the gorge, alone, because you pity me? Would you do it for Jonas or Kees or Arnold? For Daniel?”

“I’ve done things for Daniel, lots of times, yes. I don’t know about the others. I don’t think they need my help. They all get lots of letters, even Arnold, even though his are from lawyers.” She grinned.

Despite herself, Natalie grinned too. But she wasn’t grinning inside. “No, Eleanor, I don’t like the way I am being singled out for help—for charity , that’s what it feels like. I told you about my father, about his reaction to my mother’s death, not … not to elicit your sympathy, your pity, but because you asked.” She shook her head again. “I don’t want to be treated differently from anyone else, or like I am some sort of invalide . Please. I don’t need …” She paused. “I don’t need a mother.”

Eleanor didn’t say anything for a moment. When she did speak, it was to murmur, “There’s a big age difference between us, Natalie, so—yes, I could be your mother.” She kicked the fire to make the logs burn better. “But you’re forgetting that I lost my own father. I see us—you and me—much more as sisters. But I have learned to put the guilt behind me. I have learned to live with the ambiguity of my father’s death. And that is what you must do, in regard to your mother, what your father must do. I could tell him all that, in a letter.”

“No!” gasped Natalie. “No, please, no!” She gazed into the fire. “I just don’t see why my personal life has to have anything to do with the gorge. I don’t need the help you think I do. Please don’t keep watching me, watching how many letters I do or don’t receive, thinking I have some great invisible wound that gnaws away at me.” She took a deep breath. “I may not have adjusted to the ambiguity, as you put it, yet, and as you have done, but I can compartmentalize my life. I know how to concentrate, to keep my mind clear to spot the man-made among the random in the gorge. Haven’t I proved that?”

Eleanor patted her knee again. “Yes, you have, my dear. Better than I ever imagined. But as I have warmed to you—and I have warmed to you—I have grown more concerned. Yes, you are ferociously efficient as a scientist, very much in my own mold, if I may say so. But at other times, at the dinner table when we are not talking about our work, or around this fire, listening to Jack’s music, you can look so sad, so twice-bereaved as you once described yourself to me. How can I not react to that? I see nothing like that on Jonas’s face, or Kees’s, or even Arnold’s.”