Claire dozed off. She found herself in an airy room in a magic land filled with brilliantly colored flowers, puffy white clouds against a deep-blue sky, and the song of many birds, a perfect dream marred only by the booming explosions from a howitzer that was lobbing shells into the meadow. After a minute she realized the howitzer was someone knocking on the door. Sitting up, she said, “Hello?”
“It’s Rob.”
She went to the door. She could have slept for eight more hours, but the half hour left her refreshed. She was smiling when she let Rob in. “Ready,” she said. “Ready for my real life to begin.”
He gave her a quizzical look.
“It’s from a song about my life, written by someone who doesn’t know who I am.”
“Got it,” he said, although he clearly didn’t. “Let’s collect the others and get going.”
Claire looked at Lawrence and then at Rob, arching an eyebrow.
Rob rolled his eyes. “Maybe. Later. Maybe. I’m a dog person.” But he petted Lawrence on the back when the cat rubbed up against his leg.
Claire put the cat outside. As Lawrence ran off after a dragonfly, Claire said, “He’s a wild desert cat. Orphan. We’re training him …” She saw Rob’s glance fall on the dishes of cat food. “Sort of—to take care of himself in the wild. He wouldn’t be much trouble.”
Rob smiled. “We’ll see.”
He loaded up Katie’s and Francisco’s bags. Claire could not resist stealing a glance at Rob to see his reaction upon meeting Katie. It might have been Marc Antony meeting Cleopatra for all the scrutiny Claire gave that introduction. Rob was cool as a cucumber, but was there a message in Katie’s brief second glance? She turned to the rest of the team to say goodbye.
“I’m coming back tomorrow to brief Benoit. I understand that Delamain has its rules, but I really do hope that he realizes that we should find a way to work together on this. It couldn’t be more important.” She trailed off, choking up, and hurried to the big SUV.
While the door of the SUV was open, Lawrence appeared, put his paws on the step below the door, and looked in, sniffing. Claire smiled and turned to Rob. “It looks like he’s made up his mind if you haven’t.” With that, Rob rolled his eyes again in mock exasperation and made a quick “bring him in” gesture with his hand.
26
At Transteppe, Claire introduced Katie and Francisco to Sergei, watching Sergei’s reaction to his new female colleague. Was there a tell—straightening up? Pulling in his stomach? Running a hand through his hair? But, like Rob, Sergei could have been meeting a Mother Superior. She wondered where these guys had learned their tradecraft—certainly not at the mining concession. Sergei offered to give Katie and Francisco a tour while Claire got ready to meet Fletcher Hayden. Humph, Claire thought.
She went to her room to freshen up and maybe steal a quick nap in the two hours she had before dinner. Compared to the austere furnishings of the camp, her room at Transteppe was the Mandarin Oriental. Each room had its own bathroom, its own refrigerator (stocked with juices and even a bottle of vodka), desks, even a couch. She had two hours. After a shower Claire lay down, setting an alarm for one hour. She hoped her subconscious got the message that she was ready to re-enter the land of enchantment.
No such luck. She fell into such a deep sleep, however, that she woke up disoriented, not knowing where she was or what time it was. After she figured that out, Claire faced the daunting task of deciding what to wear for this high-stakes meeting. She was sure Rob had meant the word sparkle in the intellectual sense, but she couldn’t be certain. As she rummaged around, she remembered her mother scolding her as a teenager as she headed off to the first day of school in cutoffs: “First impressions are like wild cards in poker—they can be anything you want but can’t be changed after you’ve chosen.”
Color choices seemed to be limited to various shades of khaki, and she decided it prudent to choose her ensemble using cleanliness (in these circumstances a relative term) as a gating criteria rather than style. She began digging through another duffel. She found a folded blouse that had apparently escaped usage and then, lo and behold, a skirt! Holding it up and giving it an appraising eye, she remembered that she had brought it on the off chance that she would be required to attend some official function. If this meeting didn’t work out, she mused, most likely the outfit she would need for her next official function would be something with stripes.
As Rob had explained it, the plan was to meet Hayden and Sergei at the warehouse at 6:30, which would give Hayden time to meet with Ripley, the project manager, first. Sergei and Claire would then show Hayden the bones and the rock lip, while Rob would take Katie and Francisco to the mess hall. Claire and Hayden would then have dinner alone in the VIP dining room, and then Rob and Sergei would join them for after-dinner drinks.
On the way to the warehouse, she passed Rob, who did a double take when he saw her. “Why, Dr. Knowland,” he said with a gallant bow, “you look beautiful.”
Claire blushed deeply. “Too much?”
“Absolutely not, it’s just that I haven’t seen you wear anything but desert gear.” He pointed to the warehouse. “Hayden’s already there, chatting with Sergei. By the way, he was charmed by Lawrence, who we’ve installed at the provisions warehouse—apparently they were looking for a mouser, and he can get outdoors.”
Claire nodded, thinking to herself that Lawrence was more likely to throw a birthday party than hunt any mouse he encountered. She took a deep breath. “Wish me luck.”
Rob smiled broadly. “You don’t need it, you’ve got the one thing he—and I, for that matter—can’t resist.”
Claire did a quick check of her outfit, blushing again despite herself. “What’s that?”
“A five-million-year-old mystery.”
¬
Fletcher Hayden was leaning against the worktable talking with Sergei when Claire arrived. What she saw was a man either in his late fifties or early sixties who looked remarkably fresh for someone who had just traveled sixteen hours. Then she reminded herself that he had probably come by private plane and slept for most of the trip. He was wearing khaki trousers, a crisp blue shirt, and a casual black jacket. He looked fit, probably one of those men who was within five pounds of his college weight, but not physically imposing. His hair, going to gray, was short and combed straight back. He had fine features, startlingly bright brown eyes, and a mouth that suggested a state of permanent amusement. He had the relaxed, confident posture of someone who had for a long time been used to giving, rather than taking, orders.
Hayden looked at Claire and then stepped forward before Sergei could make the introduction. “Fletcher Hayden,” he said. “You must be Dr. Knowland.”
“Please call me Claire,” she said demurely, “and thank you for disrupting your schedule to come here.”
“Call me Fletcher,” he said with the slightest trace of warmth. “Sergei’s been telling me some of the history, but he wanted to wait for you to arrive before showing me anything. So, now that you’re here …” He left the rest of the sentence hanging.
“Right,” said Sergei, “let’s have a look.”
He led them over to a sealed workroom with a newly installed lock. As they walked, Sergei sidled up to Claire and whispered, “You look very nice!”
Inside the workroom, laid out on the table were the bones they had brought back from Claire’s camp. Sergei had tried to arrange them as they had found them on the escarpment, with a cutout photo taking the place of the bone they had left for Benoit. Sergei had pinned to a portable bulletin board a number of photos of the array as it was in place in the escarpment as well as pictures of their operation to separate the array from the rest of the lip. Hayden looked intently at the two bones that were still arrayed in the sedimentary rock. He tapped one bone with his finger. His expression changed to one of rapt awe. No one said a word. Sergei handed him a magnifying loupe, and Hayden looked not at the bone but the sedimentary rock in which the bones were enc
ased. After another ten minutes, which seemed like an eternity, Hayden finally spoke. “Let’s take a look at the lip you told me about.”
As they headed over to that part of the warehouse, Sergei grabbed some photos from a desk. Hayden gave the lip a close inspection. Sergei told him that it came from the area where Rob had taken him on an earlier trip. Hayden peppered Sergei and Claire with questions—whether the bones could have moved through the sedimentary rock over time, tectonic movements in the area, volcanic activity between then and now. They answered what they could but didn’t try to guess when they didn’t know.
Hayden looked again at the ninety-ton lip and then at the picture of the lip in situ. He turned to Sergei and Claire. “So, if I have this straight, you mounted an expensive rogue operation on your own authority in my mining concession.” Sergei went pale, and Claire felt the blood drain from her face. Hayden laughed when he saw their stricken looks. “Don’t worry, given what I’m seeing, I would have done the same.” Claire felt a surge of relief. Hayden turned to Sergei. “I think your instinct was spot-on. Our counterparts would have seen this as nothing but trouble—the best way to make sure this discovery got proper attention was to get it to the point where it couldn’t be deep-sixed by some bureaucrat.”
Sergei looked at Claire and mouthed, “Deep-sixed?” with a quizzical look. She smiled, trying to suppress a laugh.
Hayden looked at his watch. He turned to Claire. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. I’ll meet you at the VIP dining room in twenty minutes.” With that he was gone.
Claire and Sergei looked at each other. “Hard to read,” said Claire, “but he didn’t say no.”
“Here’s an American phrase I know,” said Sergei. “He has all the cards, and he wants us, particularly you, to know that he does.”
So, wondered Claire, as she walked over to the VIP dining room, how do you win when one player has all the cards and you have none?
27
The dining room was a world apart from the rest of the mining concession. The walls were of blond wood, the floors covered with lush rugs made by Kazakh artisans. The room was dominated by a long cherrywood dining table, and there were comfortable armchairs and sofas scattered in corners, presumably so whatever group was using the room could break into private conversations. A bar was at the far end of the room. Hayden was standing by it holding a heavy crystal glass that the uniformed bartender was in the process of filling with Bunnahabhain single-malt scotch. He waved Claire over. Seeing her wide-eyed expression, he said, “Surprised? When we built this, we were advised that life would be much better if we had a room like this in case the president got it in his head to visit. What’s your fancy?” he said, glancing at an array of spirits that would have made the bartenders at Claridge’s envious. Claire ordered an amontillado neat, and Hayden pointed to two facing armchairs in the corner, saying, “I understand that you’ve been very much on the go. We can slow down a bit and enjoy our drinks before dinner.”
“We’re just talking here,” he said amiably once they were seated, “so don’t be afraid of saying the wrong thing.” He took a sip of his scotch. “And I understand it’s far too early to draw any conclusions.” Another sip. “But when you first realized that those bones might have been arrayed over five million years ago, how did you make sense of that?”
He could have taken any tack in opening the conversation, but, from Claire’s point of view, this was the best: he wanted to jump right in. She gathered her thoughts. “Well, I couldn’t make sense of it at first,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone who knows anything about human evolution could.” Hayden nodded. “But then I stepped back and thought that if the facts before me were what they seemed to be, then something intentionally arranged those bones, and if it was intentional, then whatever arranged those bones was probably intelligent.”
“Let’s think about that a bit,” said Hayden. “What is intelligence?”
“That one is easy,” said Claire, smiling. “No one knows.” Hayden looked at her with slight annoyance. “Well, it might be better put to say that no one agrees on what it is,” she continued hastily. “Various ideas have been put forward, but there is no standard theory as, say, there is in physics.”
“So what do you think it is?”
“Well, I tend to think that there are various kinds of intelligence—social intelligence or emotional intelligence, to name a couple—but I’m assuming that most people focus on quantitative intelligence, the ability to symbolically construct a model of the world and then manipulate that model through rules and laws in order to be able to predict or influence events.”
“That’s certainly how I think about it,” said Hayden a bit more warmly. “There’s more?”
“Yes,” Claire affirmed, nodding. “So I think about intelligence in evolutionary terms—what it does, rather than what it is.” She paused to let this sink in. “I’m not being modest when I say that I don’t think I’m going to be the one to define what philosophers and scientists have failed to do for four thousand years.”
“So what does intelligence do?” Hayden leaned forward. “By the way, I’m liking this,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the space between them so that she understood he was talking about the conversation and not his drink.
“When you think about it, the ability to build those models reduces the risk to actually trying out different strategies or what have you in the world. Instead of trial and error—which can be fatal in the real world—you can test or discard a lot of more different approaches to a problem if you’re doing it in the safe confines of a symbolic world, than you ever might in the real world.”
“That sounds reasonable. So why isn’t every animal intelligent?”
Claire paused before answering this one. She knew this was entering dangerous territory, and she didn’t want him to write her off as a nut. “That’s the heart of it, and I’m going to try to answer it as one of the great zoologists of our time did.” She took a breath. “I’m in Donald Griffin’s camp; I think almost every animal has some degree of intelligence—the stress here is on the word some.” She tried to read Hayden’s expression but couldn’t. “Let me explain, because this context is crucial to what I think is going on with those bones.”
“I’m listening,” said Hayden noncommittally.
“Griffin argued that nature could not hard wire every creature for every eventuality, that it was evolutionarily efficient to endow any creature with some degree of consciousness that might enable midcourse corrections as circumstances changed. There’s a whole literature on examples of this, ranging down to scientists at Princeton showing that honeybees exercise some degree of judgment when interpreting the dance that scout bees perform to show the hive the location and richness of sources of honey.” Claire thought a minute. “Want to hear how? It’s a bit of a digression, but it’s almost comical.”
“Sure, why not?”
“OK, bees send out scouts to locate sources of pollen. The scouts then return and, by what’s called a ‘waggle’ dance, tell the other bees how much and where the pollen is. Then they fly back along with a posse of other bees. Still with me?”
Hayden nodded.
“So, some evil scientists at Princeton brought some pollen and some bees out to the middle of Lake Carnegie in a rowboat and then released them. When these bees returned to the hive and did their waggle dance, almost no bees followed them. In effect, the bees were saying, ‘You can’t be serious. Pollen in the middle of a lake!’”
Hayden laughed.
“If, by their actions, bees indicated that they were weighing the credibility of information brought by other bees, Griffin argued that this implied that something more than a genetically wired response was at work.”
“So how does nature sort out which animals need more and which less of this magic ability?”
“Again, exactly the right question!” Claire knew she was laying it on—she was doing everything but batting her eyes—but it was the right question.
“Diverting energy to build and run a bigger brain inevitably involves a trade-off with an animal’s strength and speed. I think the principle of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ comes into play here.”
“So, in evolutionary terms, when the world changes for whatever reason,” said Hayden, “those with slightly more ability to assess tend to have an advantage over the dumber of their species. So the specialists die out and the generalists survive and breed.”
Claire looked at Hayden with genuine surprise. It had taken her years to develop her perspective on intelligence. “Do you by chance happen to have an advanced degree in evolutionary biology?”
Hayden laughed. “That’s just common sense—and I suspect it isn’t as simple as that.”
“Nothing ever is. Because change begets change, and changes that are derivative can have their own impacts that eventually become primary.”
“Better put that in plain English. I’m a simple geologist.”
“I don’t believe that for a second!” Claire said, “But here goes: let’s say change happens, maybe it’s the climate, maybe something else. And one species of animal discovers that those better equipped to form groups and work together have an advantage over those that go it alone. Well, as the group gets larger, those in the group better equipped to understand social dynamics tend to have an advantage. Maybe the clever ones discover that forming alliances neutralizes advantages in strength others might have; maybe they figure out that by coordinating they can kill bigger game than an individual can; maybe some figure out that they can fool others in the group for their own purposes. The point is that being in the group itself sets in motion a set of selective pressures for bigger brains that speed the evolution of intelligence more than simply reacting to the external change in the first place.”
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