Hominids tnp-1

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Really?” said Mary. She looked quite earnest, Reuben thought. He nodded.

  “Your name is Mare,” said Hak, demonstrating the point. “Her name is Gillian.”

  “That’s—that’s amazing,” said Mary.

  “Is it?” said Reuben. “Why?”

  Mary took a deep breath. “There’s been a lot of debate over the years about whether Neanderthals could speak, and, if they could, what range of sounds they could have made.”

  “And?” said Reuben.

  “Some linguists think they couldn’t have made the ee phoneme, because their mouths would have been much longer than ours.”

  “So he is a Neanderthal!” declared Reuben.

  Mary took another breath, then let it slowly out. “Well, that’s what I’m here to find out, isn’t it?” She set down the small bag she’d been carrying and opened it up. She then pulled out a pair of latex gloves and snapped them on. Next, she removed a plastic jar full of cotton swabs and extracted one.

  “I need you to get him to open his mouth,” said Mary.

  Reuben nodded. “That one’s easy.” He turned to Ponter. “Ponter, open mouth.”

  There was a second’s lag—Hak, Reuben had learned, could convey the translation to Ponter without the others hearing it. Ponter rolled his continuous blond eyebrow up his browridge—quite a startling sight—as if surprised by the request, but did as he was asked.

  Reuben was astonished. He’d had a friend in high school who could stuff his own fist all the way into his mouth. But Ponter’s mouth went back so far and was so capacious, he probably could have stuffed in not just his fist but a third of his forearm as well.

  Mary moved in tentatively and reached her swab into Ponter’s mouth, swiping it across the inside of his long, angled cheek. “Cells in the mouth slough off easily,” she said, by way of explanation, apparently noting Gillian’s quizzical expression. “It’s the simplest way to take a DNA specimen.” She pulled out the swab, immediately transferred it to a sterile container, sealed, then labeled the container, and said, “Okay, that’s all I need.”

  Reuben smiled at Gillian, then at Mary. “Great,” he said. “When will we know for sure?”

  “Well, I’ve got to get back to Toronto, and—”

  “Of course, if you want,” said Reuben, “but, well, I called a friend of mine in Laurentian’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Laurentian’s a tiny university, but they’ve got a great lab that does contract DNA forensics work for the RCMP and the OPP. You could do your work there.”

  “Inco will certainly put you up at the Ramada,” added Gillian.

  Mary was clearly taken aback. “I …” But then she seemed to reconsider. “Sure,” she said. “Sure, why not?”

  Chapter 16

  Now that Jasmel had agreed to speak on Adikor’s behalf, the next step should have been for him to take her out to the Rim and show her the scene of the so-called crime. But Adikor begged Jasmel’s indulgence for a daytenth or so, saying there was one more errand he had to run here in the Center.

  Ponter, of course, had had Klast as his woman-mate; Adikor remembered her fondly, and had been very sad when she’d died. But Adikor had a woman of his own, and she, wonderfully, was still very much alive. Adikor had known the lovely Lurt Fradlo as long as he’d known Ponter, and he and Lurt had one son, Dab, a 148. Still, despite knowing her that long, Adikor had only occasionally been to Lurt’s chemistry lab; after all, when Two became One, it was a holiday and nobody went to work. Fortunately, his Companion knew the way, and it directed him there.

  Lurt’s lab was made entirely of stone; although there was only a small chance of an explosion in any chemistry lab, safety dictated making the structure out of something that could contain blasts and fires.

  The front door to the lab building was open. Adikor walked in.

  “Healthy day,” said a woman, doing, Adikor thought, an admirable job of hiding her surprise at seeing a man here at this time of month.

  “Healthy day,” replied Adikor. “I’m looking for Lurt Fradlo,”

  “She’s down that hall.”

  Adikor smiled and headed along the corridor. “Healthy day,” he called, as he stuck his head in the door to Lurt’s lab.

  Lurt turned around, a big grin on her lovely face. “Adikor!” She closed the distance between them and gave him a hug. “What a pleasant surprise!”

  Adikor couldn’t remember ever seeing Lurt during Last Five before. She seemed perfectly sane and rational—and so had Jasmel, for that matter. Maybe this whole Last Five thing was overblown in men’s minds …

  “Hello, beautiful,” said Adikor, squeezing her again. “It’s good to see you.”

  But Lurt knew her man well. “Something’s wrong,” she said, releasing him. “What is it?”

  Adikor looked back over his shoulder, making sure they were alone. He then took Lurt’s hand and led her across the room to a couple of lab chairs next to a chart of the periodic table; the only other animate entities in the lab were a pair of spindly robots, one pouring liquid between beakers; another assembling a structure out of pipes and glassware. Adikor sat down, and Lurt took the seat next to him.

  “I’ve been accused of murdering Ponter,” he said.

  Lurt’s eyes went wide. “Ponter is dead?”

  “I don’t know. He’s been missing since yesterday afternoon.”

  “I was at a flensing party last night,” said Lurt. “I hadn’t heard.”

  He told her the whole story. She was sympathetic, and never expressed disbelief in Adikor’s innocence; Lurt’s trust in him was something Adikor could always count on.

  “Would you like me to speak for you?” asked Lurt.

  Adikor looked away. “Well, that’s the thing. You see, I’ve already asked Jasmel.”

  Lurt nodded. “Ponter’s daughter. Yes, that would impress an adjudicator, I should think.”

  “That was my thought. I hope you don’t feel slighted.”

  She smiled. “No, no, of course not. But, look, if there’s anything else I can do to help …”

  “Well, there is one thing,” said Adikor. He pulled a small vial out of his hip pouch. “This is a sample of a liquid I collected at the site of Ponter’s disappearance; there were buckets of it on the floor. Could you do an assay on it for me?”

  Lurt took the vial and held it up to the light. “Sure,” she said. “And if there’s anything else I can do, just ask.”

  * * *

  Ponter’s daughter Jasmel accompanied Adikor back to the Rim. They went straight to the nickel mine; Adikor wanted to show Jasmel exactly where her father had disappeared. But when they got to the mineshaft-elevator station, Jasmel looked hesitant.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Adikor.

  “I—um, I’ve got claustrophobia.”

  Adikor shook his head, confused. “No, you don’t. Ponter told me how when you were little, you liked to hide inside dobalak cubes. And he took you caving last tenmonth.”

  “Well, um …” Jasmel trailed off.

  “Oh,” said Adikor, nodding his head, getting it. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “It’s just that … well, my father was the last person to go down there with you. And he never came back up.”

  Adikor sighed, but he could see her point. Somebody—some private citizen—had to accuse Adikor of the crime, or the legal proceedings could not continue. Why, if he now got rid of Jasmel and Megameg and Bolbay, perhaps there would be no one left to press the accusation …

  “We can get someone to go down with us,” said Adikor.

  Jasmel considered, but she, too, must have been thinking about how everything took on new significance during a time like this. Yes, she could ask for an escort—someone she really knew, someone she trusted implicitly. But that person might be called for questioning, too, if this went to a full tribunal. “Yes, adjudicators, I know that Jasmel is speaking on behalf of Adikor, but even she was too frightened of him to go down into the mine
alone with him. And can you blame her? After what he did to her father?”

  Finally, though, she managed a small smile—a smile that reminded Adikor a bit of Ponter’s own. “No,” she said. “No, of course not. I’m just edgy, I guess.” She smiled more, making light of it. “It is that time of month, after all.”

  But as they approached the elevator station, a particularly burly man emerged from behind it. “Stop right there, Scholar Huld,” he said.

  Adikor felt sure he’d never seen the man before in his life. “Yes?”

  “You’re thinking of going down to your lab?”

  “I am, yes. Who are you?”

  “Gaskdol Dut,” said the man. “My contribution is enforcement.”

  “Enforcement? Of what?”

  “Of your judicial scrutiny. I can’t let you go underground.”

  “Judicial scrutiny?” said Jasmel. “What’s that?”

  “It means,” said Dut, “that the transmissions from Scholar Huld’s Companion are being monitored directly by a living, breathing human being as they are received at the alibi-archive pavilion—and they will be so, ten tenths a day, twenty-nine days a month, until if and when his innocence is proven.”

  “I didn’t know you were allowed to do that,” said Adikor, shocked.

  “Oh, yes, indeed,” said Dut. “The moment Daklar Bolbay lodged her complaint against you, an adjudicator ordered you placed under judicial scrutiny.”

  “Why?” said Adikor, trying to control his anger.

  “Didn’t Bolbay transfer a document to you explaining this?” asked Dut. “An oversight, if she didn’t. Anyway, judicial scrutiny ensures that you don’t attempt to leave this jurisdiction, tamper with potential evidence, and so forth.”

  “But I’m not trying to do any of those things,” said Adikor. “Why won’t you let me go down to my lab?”

  Dut looked at Adikor as if he couldn’t believe the question. “Why not? Because your Companion’s signals won’t be detectable from down there; we wouldn’t be able to keep you under scrutiny.”

  “Marrowless bone,” said Adikor, softly.

  Jasmel crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I’m Jasmel Ket, and—”

  “I know who you are,” said the enforcer.

  “Well, then, you know that Ponter Boddit was my father.”

  The enforcer nodded.

  “This man is trying to rescue him. You have to let him go down to his lab.”

  Dut shook his head in astonishment. “This man is accused of killing your father.”

  “But it’s possible he didn’t,” said Jasmel. “My father might still be alive. The only way to find out is to repeat the quantum-computing experiment.”

  “I don’t know anything about quantum experiments,” said Dut.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” said Adikor.

  “My, you are a mouthy one, aren’t you?” said Dut, looking Adikor up and down. “Anyway, my orders are simple. Keep you from leaving Saldak, and keep you from going to your lab. And I received a call from the alibi-archive pavilion saying you were heading off to do precisely that.”

  “I have to go down there,” said Adikor.

  “Sorry,” said Dut, crossing his own massive arms in front of his massive chest. “Not only can’t you be monitored from down there, but you might try to get rid of evidence that hasn’t yet been found.”

  Jasmel did indeed have her father’s quickness of mind. “There’s nothing preventing me from going down to the lab, is there? I’m not under judicial scrutiny.”

  Dut considered this. “No, I suppose not.”

  “All right,” said Jasmel, turning now to Adikor. “Tell me what to do to try to bring my father back.”

  Adikor shook his head. “It’s not that easy. The equipment is very complex, and, since Ponter and I assembled it ourselves, half the control buds aren’t even labeled.”

  Jasmel was clearly frustrated. She looked at the big man. “Well, what if you went down with us? You’d be able to see what Adikor was doing.”

  “Go down there?” Dut laughed. “You want me to go to the one place my Companion can’t be monitored—and to do so with a person who may well have committed murder there previously? You’re ruffling my back hair.”

  “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 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 17

  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 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 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 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.