Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Another long gloomy silence around the table.

Then, very quietly, Eleanor said, “Jack has had an idea to get us out of this mess.”

All eyes turned to her.

“I’m in two minds about it myself, because it’s unscientific … but … well, Jack, you tell Henry—”

Jack drank some water. “My mother is right. We’ve had, we are having, a very successful season, and it’s not over yet.” He outlined his plan for a press conference, to publicize what they had unearthed and how it would counter the threat by the Maasai to reoccupy the gorge.

Radcliffe listened intently. When Jack had finished, he said, “When is Ndekei’s trial scheduled for?”

“Early to mid-February,” Eleanor replied.

“So your press conference would have to be before that.”

“Yes, of course,”

“Today is the twenty-first of November. You wouldn’t have time to publish your results, and your inferences, your interpretations, before the conference?”

“No!” snapped Eleanor. “That’s what I meant when I said it was unscientific. We would be acting like journalists!”

“But it might break the logjam,” said Jack, equably but forcefully.

“How, exactly?” queried Radcliffe.

“We would be facing the authorities—black Kenyans and white Kenyans—with what kind of country they are, or want to be. Do they cling to their old customs or … or look forward? The Second World War is long over, colonialism is coming to an end, the empire is being dismantled, air travel is growing, more and more people will have holidays abroad—why not Africa? Why not Kenya? Why not the gorge? The gorge is where mankind began, all of mankind. The gorge shows we are all one people. In some ways it’s the most precious location in the entire world—who would want to destroy it? The Maasai would have the whole world against them.”

Radcliffe nodded. “But what could the authorities do? Have troops occupy the gorge? I hardly think—”

“No! No! Nothing like that.” Jack was almost shouting. “But Chief Marongo has political ambitions. With a man like that there’s always the chance of a deal.”

Radcliffe wiped his lips with his napkin. “Eleanor, what do you think?”

“I don’t know what I think, that’s why I haven’t brought it up before. Jack first mentioned his idea a little while ago and I tried to put it out of my mind. It’s not science, the editors of Nature and Science and Antiquity would hate it, and might not publish our findings anymore. It’s … it’s show business! We’d be a laughingstock.” Her fingers grappled with her spectacles.

Radcliffe rubbed his eyes. “I’m not sure the foundation would be in favor. I don’t think we’d object to a press conference in itself, not if you timed it to coincide with publication in either Nature or Science or Antiquity . In fact, we’d approve. But if you went ahead before publishing and were then criticized, or shown to have got something wrong, and if the professional journals did turn against you, because you’d gone the show-business route, as you call it, I don’t think that would go down well—”

Jack slapped the table. “It’s exactly what my father would have done, in the circumstances.”

Radcliffe looked bemused. He wasn’t often spoken to like this, not in remote parts of the world where the foundation’s funding was the sole means of support. He looked across to Eleanor but Jack didn’t give him a chance to speak.

“This is a crisis, Henry. The usual rules don’t apply. We have a knee joint, a jaw, with teeth, and some skull bones, all from the first form of humanity that walked upright. These fossils exist whether they are reported in Nature or not. Together, they rewrite early history. Think what else we might find here.”

He slapped the table again.

“We also have a wall, mankind’s first construction. That’s a whole sensation in itself. Hardly the beginnings of high culture, but the beginnings of something and maybe something more important. If my father were alive, he’d grasp the dilemma instinctively. He never minded what my mother dismisses as the show-business side. A little show business—make that a lot of show business—has often been necessary in the past, to raise funds and attract attention to what we are doing here.”

He took a deep breath. “In my view it’s necessary now. If the future of the gorge is more important than Richard Sutton, then it’s more important than the niceties of where we publish our articles.”

“Yes, but—”

“I haven’t finished!” hissed Jack.

He pointed at Natalie.

“Two of the discoveries were made by Natalie here. It’s her first season in the gorge but obviously she has the eye. And she, of course, is the one who saw Mutevu Ndekei sneaking through the night on his way to …” he tailed off. “We owe it to her to … she’s been put in an impossible position and if we … if we take the fight to the authorities, broaden the context, it lifts some of the pressure off her.”

Another long silence followed. The only sound came from Naiva moving around, lifting plates, placing the fruit bowl on the table, refilling water glasses from the jug.

At length, Eleanor said quietly to the table in general, “Shall we take a breather, cool down, reconsider?”

Radcliffe shook his head. “I don’t need to. I can tell you what the foundation’s position will be right now. I understand Jack’s argument, and I can even see that what he proposes might make sense tactically in the circumstances. I also agree that Jock would have been up for a fight, ready to make a spectacle of the whole business.”

He drank some water. No one else spoke; he had the floor.

“But Jock’s been dead for however long it is—five, six years—and the world has moved on. Kenya is about to get independence and the new government, whoever it is, will no doubt want to make its mark. So who can possibly predict how they will respond to what you throw at them? I don’t know and you don’t know either.” He took a deep breath. “So I have to tell you that any departure—on your part—from regular scientific procedures will incur the censure of the foundation and the immediate cessation of all funds. In other words, and to make everything absolutely plain, if you go ahead with this press conference before you publish formally, in one of the foundation’s approved journals, the next tranche of your money, due on February 1, will be forfeited.”

He drank more water. He gulped at it as if it were something stronger. “Would you like to take a breather now, and reconsider that?”

Somewhere, a long way overhead, an airplane droned across the black sky. Natalie looked for its identification lights but could see only fathomless numbers of stars.

What a roller coaster dinner had been. No one had wanted a return to the fight at lunchtime so the conversation had been confined to science—to the discoveries they had made and what the implications were. And Eleanor had taken the lead in suggesting they have coffee next to the fire, listening to Jack’s records. So far, so good.

But then Jack and Christopher had started arguing over where else, in the Rift Valley, was the best place to dig if Kihara was taken away from them. Radcliffe’s advice had been sought—his foundation supported other excavations and he visited those sites—but that raised the question of funding and in no time the arguments of lunchtime were reheated.

Natalie had left in the middle.

She had never thought much about funding and mention of the February deadline at lunch had alarmed her. So much was happening so quickly. At least Radcliffe had been crystal clear in what he had said, however unpalatable his message was. How different from what Kees had told her. He didn’t know its significance but it had … well, it hadn’t so much alarmed her as perplexed her and that was just as bad. Had Richard been homosexual? Had he been in the storeroom with Ndekei for some bicarbonate of soda, or for some other reason? What was she thinking? That there was some sort of relationship—a sexual relationship—between Richard and Mutevu? And, if there was, did it have something to do with Richard’s murder? And if it did, how did that change her understanding of the upcoming trial? Had Mutevu killed Richard for personal reasons and was he now hiding behind Maasai traditions? If so, then she had all the more reason to give evidence.