Deep Past

by Eugene Linden

  She knew that she had to get the find announced following strict scientific protocol or the bones would be marginalized to fringe science, no matter how revolutionary the implications. She didn’t want to change the course of her career only to find her work lumped with studies of Atlantis, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster.

  So, she went back to work. She had always liked puzzles. Claire used a variant of an approach described by Norbert Wiener, a pioneer of artificial intelligence who once remarked that solving a problem consisted of framing it in such a way that the answer became obvious. Then she would take one piece of the problem and work back to what it might imply. Pondering the array of bones, she assumed that it was unlikely that they ended up parallel by accident. Then the question became, why might someone or something arrange them like that? One obvious possibility (leaving aside the question of their extreme age) was that the ulnae were in fact weapons, and that the array was part of some ritual. But if they were weapons, who—what?—might have used them?

  Not our ancestors, she thought. She knew that chimps had been observed using weapons—sticks in this case—in the Impenetrable Forest of Uganda, and that Savannah chimps in Senegal fashioned sticks into spears to hunt small primates, so it was conceivable, though unlikely, that some hominin might have done the same. Still, she reminded herself, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But, again, there was no evidence of human ancestors making ritualistic arrangements of any artifacts for another few million years. Was it possible that something other than a hominin arrayed the bones? To reorient herself, she went back to her earlier ruminations about the global frenzy that the discovery of the hobbits had precipitated.

  Earlier, she had focused on the story because it illustrated how distinguished scientists could be driven to near-criminal behavior by the treasure fever of an important find. But there was another, more intriguing side story to this find.

  Claire wondered whether the hobbits were an example of a phenomenon called “the Island Rule.” This so-called rule came from the observations by a Canadian biogeographer named J. Bristol Foster. He showed that on islands, small animals tend to get bigger and large animals tend to get smaller. This is because islands are hard to get to and typically have fewer species. On the mainland, the greater diversity means that for any given ecological niche, something is there to fill it. On an island, this is not the case, and it opens the door for the existing animals to adapt and move into otherwise vacant ecological niches, particularly since there are fewer predators to pick them off.

  Mice might get bigger, for example. Claire remembered reading that Anguilla, the tiny island in the Caribbean, once supported a three-hundred-pound rodent. And with fewer predators, big animals could get smaller without losing the protection that size confers. In the extreme case, Crete sported a mammoth the size of a Great Dane. That was the magic of the Island Rule: a natural sorcery that could create a rodent larger than an elephant.

  Despite the publication of many studies of the Hobbit bones, they remained a mystery. They stood about three feet tall and had heads the size of a grapefruit. They lived until about fifty thousand years ago, but what energized the paleontological community was that their features suggested that they were a relic form of Homo erectus. While some speculated that the Hobbits were simply human dwarfs, Hobbit features like long, flat feet were characteristic of early bipedal hominins, and not modern humans whose feet evolved to be better suited for long-distance running.

  What caught Claire’s attention was that the diminutive Hobbits cohabited an island with an abundance of bizarre creatures, including a pony-size elephant. Claire looked off into the distance. Did it mean something that elephants kept turning up in unexpected places? Her thoughts kept wandering in new directions. Why shouldn’t the Island Rule apply to human ancestors as well as elephants and rodents? Could she connect this thought experiment to the matter at hand? If ecological isolation let the Hobbits get smaller, mightn’t it permit another, yet undiscovered hominin, to get larger?

  But the enormous Kazakh Steppe was about as far from an island as any geographic feature could get. That didn’t mean that in the sweep of history some Lost World might not have been isolated by eruptions or other events, but it didn’t make some application of the Island Rule the obvious choice. Then there was the showstopper: that 5.5 million years ago all known hominins were still bottled up in Africa.

  Claire decided this train of thought was one of her typical false starts. Trouble was, she had no alternative theory.

  9

  Tamerlan was just one of Claire’s problems. She was getting increasingly insistent emails from the Delamain Foundation asking for that overdue progress report. She could hardly tell them that she was on the verge of something momentous, but she could not put them off much longer. This made the agony of waiting that much harder. A line from a Colin Hay song floated through her mind: “Suddenly, nothing happened.”

  The first visitors, who arrived two weeks later, were not the ones for whom Claire had been hoping. Sauat, her newly acquired intern, appeared without prior notice in a three-car caravan, led by his uncle, the slippery Tamerlan, along with an impressive entourage from the Aliyev clan. The group included Sauat’s father, his weeping mother, who was apparently traumatized at the thought of her son leaving for a few weeks, Sauat’s pretty but sullen teenaged sister, and a few other relatives. No wife, Claire noted. She wished he’d brought one—even a girlfriend would have been welcome. The older men were wearing jackets and ties, the wrinkled old woman wore traditional dress, and the girl wore tight-fitting jeans and a revealing, almost peekaboo, T-shirt with the phrase “I Have Issues” stenciled on the back. When she saw Claire, disappointment registered in the girl’s expression. Apparently Claire’s desert chic didn’t pass muster even in the boonies of Kazakhstan. Since everyone was sizing everybody else up, Claire decided to take a closer look at Sauat.

  He was a nice-looking young man with bright eyes and the high cheekbones characteristic of the steppes. He was wearing outdoor gear, but it didn’t quite work. It was, Claire thought, the type of outfit a Martian might buy if he landed in Maine and visited an LL Bean outlet in an effort to fit in with the earthlings. The bright-blue work shirt and plaid golf trousers just didn’t go together. He seemed eager and shy, and Claire felt a momentary relief, if not tenderness. If he was to be Tamerlan’s eyes on the ground, he was the least likely spy Claire could imagine. Or maybe that was the point, she thought.

  Spy or nice young kid, this was a potential disaster given the scenario that she, Rob, and Sergei had worked out. They felt it best that she didn’t know when the bones would appear so that she could be as surprised as the rest of the camp when the truck showed up. If someone showed up now, she would have no trouble at all feigning surprise, if not outright panic.

  Controlling her frustration, she tried to think of a way to get rid of Sauat’s relatives as quickly as possible. They had come a long way, and hospitality was a big deal among the Kazakhs. Fortunately, most of the research team was out with remote sensing gear looking for evidence of ancient settlements, so Claire could beg off after a decent interval for introductions. She could offer them the tent set up for outside meals if they wanted a picnic before taking off. Even better, she could insist on taking Sauat with her so that he could see how things worked in the field.

  It was not to be. With his unerring instincts, Tamerlan homed in on the worst-case scenario. He asked in a way that left her no choice but to give them a tour of the camp, and then insisted that she join them for lunch, which the women unpacked and set up on the table under the tent. Sauat’s sister helped out sullenly but dutifully.

  They had brought a veritable feast. Using pantomime, Claire showed them where to find pans for heating the food. Once seated, the Kazakh equivalent of a smorgasbord lay before them with mutton, samosa-like stuffed pastries called kausyrma, drinks of fermented mare’s milk, and kurt, salted cheese balls. Claire briefly welcomed the group and the
n nodded to Tamerlan, who spoke in Kazakh, pausing to translate for Claire, about how wonderful it was that Sauat had developed an interest in Kazakhstan’s rich history.

  Claire sat next to Sauat’s father. Tegev Aliyev spoke broken but serviceable English and turned out to be everything his brother, Tamerlan, was not. A rough-looking man with a direct gaze, he was clearly steeped in Kazakh hospitality, offering her a piece of the traditional besbarmak, a meat taken from the pelvic bone and meant to be eaten by hand. He also turned out to be Claire’s salvation when she turned to him and asked where his family was from.

  “Oh,” he said with a wry smile, “we come from a small village, but near a famous place.”

  Tamerlan shot him a warning glance, which he ignored as Claire asked, “Where’s that?”

  “Perhaps you’ve heard of it, Semipalatinsk? Our village was just to the west.”

  “Was?”

  He nodded. “Yes, was. Our parents decided to leave in 1982 after the Russian usurpers exploded three hundred nuclear bombs in Semipalatinsk. After we left, they exploded another 150.”

  Tamerlan interrupted, “Tegev! As well you know, people working there had the highest pay of any workers in the country.”

  “Of course,” agreed his brother, again with a smile. “And there were many other benefits. For instance, there was no need to pay for electricity, because the village glowed in the dark.”

  “The Russians put food on our family’s table for many years. We should be respectful,” warned Tamerlan.

  “Oh yes, they were very nice. The Russians were like a beautiful blue butterfly we have in Kazakhstan.”

  “What’s that?” asked Claire.

  Sauat took this opportunity to say his first words since arrival. His English was excellent. “We learned about it in entomology,” he said diffidently, not noticing that Tamerlan was seething. “It’s a very beautiful large blue butterfly that lives near the desert. But it has an evil secret. It lives by fooling a particular type of ant into thinking that the butterfly’s larvae are the ants’ larvae. The ants take the caterpillar larvae into their nest, and then the butterfly larva feeds on the ants’ larvae until it’s ready to emerge. Taking advantage of hospitality in a big way,” he concluded with a shy smile. He then noticed his uncle’s expression, and the color drained from his face. Tegev, however, was smiling, proud of his son.

  Claire decided she liked the father, all the more because he didn’t seem to be the least bit afraid of his brother. She couldn’t resist the opportunity to say, “It sounds like the family did well after you moved. Tamerlan is an important man in the Ministry of Culture.”

  “Oh yes,” Tegev agreed, “Tamerlan is a big man by Astana’s standards.” He delicately left hanging the question of whether the standards of a dictatorship would be what an honorable man would choose to live by.

  Claire could see that Tamerlan was now smoldering, so she threw a few more logs on the fire. “Tell me what he was like as a little boy,” she asked innocently.

  At this, Tamerlan had had enough. “We’ve got a long drive back,” he said before his brother could reply, “and we have taken up too much of Dr. Knowland’s valuable time. Claire, if you would be so kind, could you show us where we should put Sauat’s bags?”

  At this, the women went in to a frenzy of cleaning up, tailed by Claire waving her arms and pantomiming that they needn’t bother. The clan was packed up and gone not thirty minutes later. Before they left, Tegev gave Claire his phone number to keep in case there was an emergency. Sauat waved sadly as they pulled out in a cloud of dust, his grief-stricken mother peering out for a last look. Claire looked at Sauat, whose only words had been his disquisition on the blue butterfly. He looked vulnerable. Her fear that he would be an agent in place was giving way to concern that she would be assuming the duties of a babysitter for the next two weeks.

  10

  claire needn’t have worried about the emissary arriving while Tamerlan’s clan was visiting. She had two more days to test her patience. She also had bigger worries. First an email from Delamain said that while they appreciated her willingness to step in and help with the project, they still needed a progress report in order to set funding priorities for the coming year.

  Then there were increasingly worrisome signs of defeatism among her research team as every probe turned up empty. She worried that their restiveness would make it even more difficult for her to announce the discovery of the elephant bones to the team. She had been proud of the esprit de corps of her research team in Florida and felt responsible for the morale of the project.

  One bright spot turned out to be Sauat. He was bright, inquisitive, and with an eagerness to learn about fieldwork that was endearing, if not a little exhausting. He seemed far more his father’s son than his uncle’s minion. Having tea with him one day, she asked him who was his favorite professor in archaeology. Sauat’s eyes lit up. “Oh, no question, Dr. Timur Tabiliev. He …” Sauat searched for a word “ … he becomes giant when he talks about the Botai. He becomes illuminated?”

  “Lights up?” Claire offered.

  “Yes, that’s it, lights up! He just loves to teach. And he is very brave—he once stood up to the president’s son-in-law when a favorite project was to be built near an important dig in Kyzylorda.”

  “Really?” said Claire with genuine interest. It dawned on her that Sauat might actually be helpful as events unfolded.

  And unfold they did. A grizzled man driving a Transteppe pickup truck showed up late that day asking for her. He handed her a large manila envelope, bowed, and took his leave. Everybody was curious, but she waved off the staff and took the envelope to a corner table. In it was a photo of one of the ulnae, as well as a picture of the lip Sergei had cut from the mesa, and which was now sitting in his warehouse. The picture had been taken from an angle that did not show the array. There was also a letter from Sergei, signed with his full name and title—chief geologist, Transteppe. The letter described Sergei’s “discovery” of the bone, gave its dimensions, where it was found in the strata, and its likely age. It went on to say that if it was five million years old, it might be a significant find, and Claire was hereby invited to oversee the testing and exploration of the artifact to make sure that they proceeded in a proper fashion. There it was. She had to act fast.

  She looked up into a sea of staring eyes. “OK, everybody, there may be something here for us,” she said, “but I need to check a few things out. I’m going to have to leave, but I’ll be back for dinner. I’ll explain then.” As she walked to the door of the mess, she was peppered with questions. Turning just before she left, she said to the group, “I promise you, if it’s good news, you’ll be the first to know.” That seemed to satisfy the group. She headed for her Quonset. She had a few urgent emails to send before heading for Transteppe.

  11

  The oligarch met with his government counterpart in a room impervious to electronic snooping deep in the interior of his yacht Iridium, then anchored off the French Riviera. In contrast to the elegance of the rest of the boat, this room was spare, furnished with a coffee table and a couple of chairs. There was no computer or any electronics whatsoever. Those who knew about what was referred to as “the Project” only spoke in person for fear of surveillance and never communicated by email or text. Andrei’s visitor was an up-and-comer in the Foreign Service, but also a cousin of Andrei’s wife, so anyone monitoring the comings and goings on the boat would simply assume that Andrei had extended an invitation to his in-laws.

  Arkady Surkov had come to deliver a timetable, and Andrei was not happy. “I know there are a lot of moving parts, but I need more information, information that will confirm the strategic aspects of the plan. And I need it before things start, because I won’t be getting any afterward—at least for a while. I need to know what I’m getting, and it has to look clean.”

  “Andrei, everybody knows that yours is a critical piece, but there are geopolitical considerations that impact the timeta
ble as well.”

  Andrei steepled his fingers and frowned. “Understood. I’ve got someone in place. As I’m sure you’ll understand, I need to know things that management doesn’t know …”

  “Is this man loyal?”

  Andrei laughed harshly. “He hates me.”

  Arkady cocked an eyebrow. “And you trust him?”

  “Of course,” Andrei said smoothly. “He hates me because I control him. He knows what will happen if he betrays me.” Andrei took a sip of tea. “And he has exactly the skills we need.”

  Surkov took a sip of vodka. “Probably best that I don’t know the details.”

  “Agreed, let’s rejoin the others before people start to wonder. Stay for dinner. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

  “Nope, I’m old-school, meat and potatoes.”

  Arkady raised his vodka. “To success!”

  Andrei raised his glass of Russian tea, and they clinked glasses. “To success.”

  12

  Claire drove the camp’s pickup to Transteppe. It took her well over an hour to make the forty-mile trip over the deeply potholed road. The security office was a formidable structure. A hard-looking man came out and waved her car to a stop with a gesture that brooked no argument. She rolled down her window and told the guard that Dr. Anachev had invited her. Without a word, the guard returned to his booth and picked up a phone. He spoke briefly and then handed her a visitor badge and a hard hat. “Wear both at all times. You can leave the pickup over there,” he said, pointing to a lot just inside the gates. “Dr. Anachev is coming out to escort you in.”