Neanderthal Parallax 1 - Hominids

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “You have to let him go down there,” Jasmel said.

  But Dut just shook his head. “No. What I have to do is keep him from going down there.”

  Adikor thrust out his jaw. “How?” he said.

  “I—I beg your pardon?” replied Dut.

  “How? How are you going to keep me from going down there?”

  “By whatever means necessary,” said Dut, his tone even.

  “All right, then,” said Adikor. He stood motionlessly for a moment, as if thinking about whether he really wanted to try this. “All right, then,” he said again, and started walking purposefully toward the entrance to the elevator.

  “Stop,” said Dut, with no particular force to the word.

  “Or what?” said Adikor, without looking back. He tried to sound fearless, but his voice cracked, which didn’t really give the effect he wanted. “Are you going to stave in my [144] skull?” Despite himself, his neck muscles contracted, already preparing for the blow.

  “Hardly,” said Dut. “I’ll just put you to sleep with a tranquilizer dart.”

  Adikor stopped walking and turned around. “Oh.” Well, he’d never run up against the law before—nor had he known anyone who ever had. He supposed it made sense that they had a way to stop people without actually hurting them.

  Jasmel interposed herself between Dut’s dart launcher, which was now in his hand, and Adikor. “You’ll have to shoot me first,” she said. “He’s going down there.”

  “If you like. But I should warn you: you’ll wake up with an awful headache.”

  “Please!” said Jasmel. “He’s trying to save my father—don’t you understand?”

  For once Dut’s voice had some warmth in it. “You’re clutching at smoke. I know it must be very hard to deal with, but you have to face reality.” He gestured with his launcher for the two of them to start walking away from the mine. “I’m sorry, but your father is dead.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The genetics lab at Laurentian didn’t have the special equipment for extracting degraded DNA from old specimens that Mary’s lab at York did. But none of that would be needed. It was a straightforward matter to take the cells from Ponter’s mouth and extract DNA from one of the mitochondria; any genetics facility in the world could have done it.

  Mary introduced two primers—small pieces of mitochondrial DNA that matched the beginning of the sequence that she had identified years ago in the German Neanderthal fossil. She then added the enzyme DNA-polymerase, triggering the polymerase chain reaction, which would cause the section she was interested in to be amplified, reproducing itself over and over again, doubling the quantity each time. She would soon have millions of copies of the string to analyze.

  As Reuben Montego had said, the Laurentian lab did a lot of forensic work, and so had sealing tape that could be applied to the glassware. The tape was used so that geneticists could truthfully testify that there was no way the contents of a vial could have been tampered with while out [146] of their sight. Mary sealed the container in which the PCR amplification was happening and wrote her signature on the seal.

  She then used a web terminal in the lab to access her e-mail at York. She’d received more e-mails in the last day than she had in the preceding month, and many of them were from Neanderthal experts around the world who had somehow gotten wind of the fact that she was now in Sudbury. There were messages from Washington University, the University of Michigan, UCB, UCLA, Brown, SUNY Stony Brook, Stanford, Cambridge, Britain’s Natural History Museum, France’s Institute of Quaternary Prehistory and Geology, her old friends at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, and more—all asking for samples of the Neanderthal DNA while, at the same time, making a joke of it, as if, of course, this couldn’t really be happening.

  She ignored all those messages, but she did feel a need to send a note to her grad student back at York:

  Daria:

  Sorry to leave you in the lurch, but I know you can handle things. I’m sure you’ve seen the reports in the press, and all I can say is, yes, there really does seem to be a chance that he might be a Neanderthal. I’m running DNA tests right now to find out for sure.

  I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ll probably stay here a few more days at least. But I wanted to tell you ... to warn you really ... that I think a man was trying to follow me when I left the lab on Friday night. Be careful ... if you are going to work late, have your boyfriend come and [147] meet you at the end of the day or call for a walking companion to escort you back to the residence.

  Take care.

  MNV

  Mary read the note over a couple of times, then clicked “Send Now.”

  She then simply sat, staring at the screen for a long, long time.

  Damn it.

  Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

  She couldn’t get it out of her head—not for five minutes. She guessed that fully half her waking thoughts today had been devoted to the horrible events of—My God, was it really only yesterday? It seemed so much longer ago than that, although the memories of the horrible things he’d done to her were still scalpel sharp.

  Had she been down in Toronto, she might have talked it over with her mother, but—

  But her mother was a good Catholic, and there was no way to avoid unpleasant issues when discussing a rape. Mom would be worried about whether Mary might be pregnant—not that she’d ever countenance an abortion; Mary and she had argued about John Paul’s edict that raped nuns in Bosnia had to bring their children to term. And telling her mother that there was nothing to worry about because Mary was on the Pill would hardly be better. As far as Mary’s parents had been concerned, the rhythm [148] method was the only acceptable form of birth control—Mary thought it was a miracle that she only had three siblings instead of a dozen.

  And, indeed, she could speak to her siblings, but ... but ... but there was no way she could talk to a man—any man—about this. That left out her brothers Bill and John. And her one sister, Christine, had moved to Sacramento, and somehow this didn’t seem to be the sort of thing she wanted to talk about over the phone.

  And yet, she had to speak to someone. Someone in person.

  Someone here.

  There was a copy of the Laurentian calendar sitting on a table in the lab; Mary found the campus map in it, and located what she was looking for. She got up and made her way down the corridor to the stairs, crossed over from Science One to the Classroom Building, then headed down to what she’d learned Laurentian students called “the bowling alley”—the long ground-floor glass corridor that ran between the Classroom Building and the Great Hall. She walked down its length, afternoon sun streaming in, past a Tim Hortons donut stand and a few kiosks devoted to student activities. She finally turned left at the bowling alley’s far end, going past the liaison office, up the stairs, past the campus bookstore, and down a short corridor.

  Going to the rape-crisis center at York University would have been out of the question. The counselors there were volunteers mostly, and, although they all were doubtless supposed to keep things confidential, the gossip that a faculty member had been attacked might prove irresistible. Plus, she might be seen entering or leaving the facility.

  [149] But Laurentian University, small as it was, had a rape-crisis center, too. The sad truth was that every university needed to have one; she’d heard there was even one at Oral Roberts University. Nobody here knew Mary, and she hadn’t yet been interviewed on TV, although she doubtless would be once she had results of Ponter’s DNA tests. So, if she wanted any anonymity at all, this couldn’t wait.

  The door was open. Mary entered the small reception area. “Hello,” said the young black woman behind the desk. She stood up and walked over to Mary. “Come in, come in.” Mary understood her solicitousness. Many women probably made it to the threshold, but then scurried away, unable to give voice to what had happened to them.

  Still, the woman could probably tell that if Mary were a rape victim, it hadn’t just happened. Ma
ry’s clothes weren’t disheveled, and her makeup and hair were all fine. And the center must get visitors who weren’t victims: people coming in to volunteer, to do research, to service the photocopier.

  “Have you been hurt?” asked the woman.

  Hurt. Yes, that was the right approach. It was easier to admit you’d been hurt than to accept the R-word.

  Mary nodded.

  “I have to ask,” said the woman. She had large brown eyes, and a small jeweled stud in her nose. “Did it happen today?”

  Mary shook her head.

  For half a second, the woman looked—well, disappointed would be the wrong word, Mary thought, but things were doubtless much more interesting if it had just [150] occurred, if the rape kit was to be employed to gather evidence, if ...

  “Yesterday,” said Mary, speaking for the first time. “Last night.”

  “Was it—was it someone you know?”

  “No,” said Mary ... but then she paused. Actually, she wasn’t sure of the answer to that question. The monster had worn a ski mask. It could have been anyone: a student she’d taught; another faculty member; someone from the support staff; a punk from the Driftwood corridor. Anyone. “I don’t know. He—he had a mask on.”

  “I know he hurt you,” said the young woman, putting an arm through Mary’s and leading her farther inside, “but did he injure you? Do you need to see a doctor?” The woman held up a hand. “We’ve got an excellent female doctor on call.”

  Mary shook her head again. “No,” she said. “He had a—” Mary’s voice broke, surprising herself. She tried again. “He had a knife, but he didn’t use it.”

  “Animal,” said the woman.

  Mary nodded in agreement.

  They moved into an inner room, with walls painted a soft pink. There were two chairs, but no couch—even here, even in this sanctuary, the sight of a couch might be too much. The woman gestured for Mary to take one of the chairs—a padded easy chair—and she took the other one, sitting opposite her, but reaching over and gently taking Mary’s left hand.

  “Would you like to tell me your name?” asked the woman.

  Mary thought about giving a fake name, or maybe—[151] she didn’t want to lie to this sweet young person who was trying so hard to help; maybe she’d tell the woman her middle name, Nicole—that wouldn’t really be a lie, then, but it would still conceal her identity. But when she opened her mouth, “Mary” came out. “Mary Vaughan.”

  “Mary, my name is Keisha.”

  Mary looked at her. “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Nineteen,” said Keisha.

  So young. “Were you ... were you ever ... ?”

  Keisha pressed her lips together and nodded.

  “When?”

  “Three years ago.”

  Mary felt her own eyes go wide. She would have been just sixteen then; it might—my God, her first time might have been a rape. “I’m so sorry,” said Mary.

  Keisha tilted her head, accepting the comment. “I won’t tell you you’ll get over it, Mary, but you can survive it. And we’ll help you to do just that.”

  Mary closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She could feel Keisha gently squeezing her hand, transfusing strength into her. At last, Mary spoke again. “I hate him,” she said. She opened her eyes. Keisha’s face was concerned, supportive. “And ...” said Mary, slowly, softly, “I hate myself for letting it happen.”

  Keisha nodded and reached over with her other arm, taking and gently holding Mary’s right hand, as well.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Adikor and Jasmel walked back from the mine to Adikor’s home, the house he’d shared with Ponter. The lighting ribs came on in response to Adikor’s spoken request, and Jasmel looked around with interest.

  This was Jasmel’s first time visiting what had been her father’s residence; Two always became One by the men coming into the Center, rather than the women going out to the Rim.

  Jasmel was fascinated in a melancholy sort of way as she poked about the house, looking at Ponter’s collection of sculptures. She’d known he liked stone rodents, and had indeed made a habit of giving him such carvings every time there was a lunar eclipse. Jasmel knew Ponter particularly liked rodents made of minerals that weren’t indigenous to the animal’s own area—his pride and joy, judging by its place next to the wadlak slab—was a half-size beaver, a local animal, molded from malachite imported from central Evsoy.

  While she continued to putter around, Adikor’s Companion made a plunk sound. “Healthy day,” he said into it. “Oh, wonderful, love. Great news! Be patient a beat ...” He turned to Jasmel. “You’ll want to hear this; it’s my [154] woman-mate, Lurt. She’s got an analysis of that liquid I found in the quantum-computing lab after your father disappeared.” Adikor pulled out a control bud on his Companion, activating the external speaker.

  “Jasmel Ket—Ponter’s daughter—is with me now,” said Adikor. “Go ahead.”

  “Healthy day, Jasmel,” said Lurt.

  “And to you,” said Jasmel.

  “All right,” continued Lurt, “This should surprise you. Do you know what the liquid you brought me is?”

  “Water, I’d thought,” said Adikor. “Isn’t it?”

  “Sort of. It’s in fact heavy water.”

  Jasmel raised her eyebrow.

  “Really?” said Adikor.

  “Yes,” said Lurt. “Pure heavy water. Of course, heavy-water molecules do occur in nature; they make up about point-zero-one percent of normal rainwater, for instance. But to get a concentration like this—well, I’m not sure how it would be done. I suppose you could devise a technique to fractionate naturally occurring water, based on the fact that heavy water is indeed about ten percent heavier, but you’d have to process an enormous amount of water to separate out the amount you said you found. I don’t know of any facility that can do that, and I can’t think of any reason why someone would want to do it.”

  Adikor looked at Jasmel, then back at his wrist. “There’s no way it’s naturally occurring? No way it could have welled up from the rocks?”

  “Not a chance,” said Lurt’s voice. “It was slightly contaminated with what I eventually realized was the cleaning solution used on the floors of your lab; there must have [155] been a dried residue of it that dissolved in the water. But otherwise it was absolutely pure. Ground water would have minerals dissolved in it; this was manufactured. By whom, I don’t know, and how, I’m not sure—but it absolutely isn’t something that occurred naturally.”

  “Fascinating,” said Adikor. “And there was no trace of Ponter’s DNA?”

  “No. There was a little of your own—doubtless you sloughed off some cells while mopping up the water—but none of anyone else’s. No traces of blood plasma or anything else that might have come from him, either.”

  “All right. Many thanks!”

  “Healthy day, my dear,” said Lurt’s voice.

  “Healthy day,” repeated Adikor, and he pulled the control bud that broke the connection.

  “What is heavy water?” asked Jasmel.

  Adikor explained, then: “It must be the key,” he said.

  “You’re telling the truth about the source of the heavy water?” asked Jasmel.

  “Yes, of course,” Adikor said. “I collected it from the floor of the computing chamber after Ponter disappeared.”

  “It’s not poisonous, is it?”

  “Heavy water? I can’t imagine why it would be.”

  “What uses does it have?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “There’s no way my father’s body could have been—I don’t know—converted somehow into heavy water?”

  “I highly doubt it,” said Adikor. “And there’s no trace of the chemicals that made up his body. He didn’t disintegrate or spontaneously combust; he simply disappeared.”

  [156] Adikor shook his head. “Maybe tomorrow, at the dooslarm basadlarm, we can explain to the adjudicator why we nee
d to go down to the lab. Until then, I hope Ponter is all right, wherever he might be.”

  After getting Mary Vaughan set up in the genetics lab at Laurentian, Reuben Montego grabbed some lunch at a Taco Bell, then headed back to St. Joseph’s Health Centre. In the lobby he saw Louise Benoît, that beautiful French-Canadian postdoctoral student from SNO. She was arguing with someone who appeared to be from the hospital’s security department.

  “But I saved his life!” Reuben heard Louise exclaim. “He’d certainly want to see me!”

  Reuben walked up to the young woman. “Hello,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

  The woman turned her lovely face toward him, her brown eyes going wide with gratitude. “Oh, Dr. Montego!” she said. “Thank God you’re here. I came to see how our friend is doing, but they won’t let me go up to his floor.”

  “I’m Reuben Montego,” said Reuben to the security man, a muscular fellow with red hair. “I’m Mr. Ponter’s ...” Well, why not? “... general practitioner; you can confirm that with Dr. Singh.”

  “I know who you are,” said the security man. “And, yes, you’re on the approved list.”

  “Well, this young lady is with me. She did indeed save Ponter’s life at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.”

  “Very well,” said the man. “Sorry to be a pain, but we’ve [157] got reporters and curious members of the public trying to sneak in all the time, and—”

  At that moment, Dr. Naonihal Singh walked by, sporting a dark brown turban. “Dr. Singh!” called Reuben.

  “Hello,” said Singh, coming over and shaking Reuben’s hand. “Escaping from the telephone, are we? Mine has been ringing off the hook.”

  Reuben smiled. “Mine, too. Everybody wants to know about our Mr. Ponter, it seems.”

  “You know I’m delighted that he is well,” said Singh, “but, really, I would like to discharge him. We don’t have enough hospital beds as it is, thanks to Mike Harris.”

  Reuben nodded sympathetically. The tightwad former premier of Ontario had closed or amalgamated many hospitals across the province.