Deep Past

by Eugene Linden

  Because the publication of Gwynne’s book was imminent, he had been asked to lead a panel discussion entitled “The Next Frontier: Unanswered Questions on the Elephant’s Past, Present, and Future.” It was the marquee event of the afternoon, and the auditorium was packed. As the discussion proceeded, Gwynne couldn’t have been more pleased. The panelists were prepared, with the conversation efficiently ticking off the many vexing questions facing elephants in the wild, how to treat the giant animals in captivity, and the unanswered questions about elephant communication and cognitive abilities. As the moderator, Gwynne had the last word, and he noted that, having just completed an omnibus survey of the fossil record, the evolutionary history of the elephant was, at last, coming in to sharp focus. There weren’t many people in the room who did not know that Gwynne had spent years on his upcoming book, and so there was some appreciative applause when he made this modest allusion to his own work.

  With that, he opened the discussion for questions. The first few came from eminent conservationists and focused on issues like poaching and conflicts between farmers and elephants in Africa and Indonesia. Gwynne didn’t want the discussion to be hijacked by the greens, and so peered out, looking for a zoologist. He recognized a face in the back of the room and pointed, nodding when the young man pointed to his own chest and said, “Me?” Gwynne gestured yes, and the scientist stood up, waiting while an attendant hustled over with a microphone.

  “Professor Gwynne,” the young man began, “in your closing remarks, you implied that we are close to having a complete evolutionary history of the elephant. Lately, I’ve heard rumors of a find of some new elephant ancestor in Kazakhstan—of all places—and dating to Messinian. Any thoughts on what such a discovery might do to that picture—if it turns out to be real?” There were chuckles throughout the room as the man sat back down.

  Gwynne thought furiously. It was the perfect group, and here was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, but the stakes gave him pause. On the other hand, he’d already embarked on this path and there was no turning back. He took a deep breath.

  “Well,” Gwynne began, “I can tell you that these are more than rumors.” He paused as a hush fell over the audience.

  “The bones exist. I’ve seen photographs.” The room buzzed. Gwynne chose his words carefully. “But what they are and where they came from remain very much open to question. It’s a long road from finding bones in Kazakhstan to proving that five point five million years ago some form of elephant was indigenous to Kazakhstan. Until we know more, the more likely hypothesis is that the bones fell off a caravan coming through in the recent past.”

  The buzz in the audience became a hubbub. Gwynne held up a hand. “Please, let me finish. There is also a long road between finding an ulna and positing that it comes from a new species. As many of you know, there have been many assertions of new species found in all sorts of mammals, only to later discover that the perceived anatomical differences were the product of disease, malnutrition or developmental anomalies. While no scientist worth his or her salt would rule out the possibility that a new elephant ancestor might be discovered, I’m not holding my breath. The odds are just too long, and there are just too many unprecedented assumptions we have to accept.”

  The room erupted again. Gwynne thanked the crowd, but his words were drowned out.

  59

  Claire was just getting out of the shower after her run when she heard her cell phone buzz. It was 7:30 a.m., a strange hour to be getting texts. It was Constantine, and the message was just one word, “Urgent.” She looked at the phone; she’d missed six calls. She was just about to scroll through to see who had called when the phone rang. It was Constantine. She decided to answer. Fatalistically, she thought she knew what this was about.

  “Let me guess—the whisper campaign continues.”

  Constantine chuckled, “Well, yes—if you can call the most eminent expert on elephant phylogeny trashing your supposed discovery at a major conference a whisper campaign.”

  Claire was stunned silent.

  “You still there?”

  Claire had known pushback was coming; hell, she’d predicted it. “Tell me.”

  “It was Gwynne. We had a stringer there …”

  Constantine had warned Claire, who tried to remember why she had ever thought Gwynne would take up her cause. She was seriously questioning her judgment. Two of the people she had sent pictures of the bones had turned on her—though Benoit was well on the path to rehabilitation.

  Constantine took Claire through what had happened and then innocently asked whether she had any comment.

  “C’mon, Adam, I’m supposed to comment on a secondhand remark concerning something we haven’t even announced? You can’t be serious.”

  “Just askin’ …”

  Claire thought a second. “We’re getting close …” She glanced at the emails on her laptop. There were eighty new messages, of which thirty weren’t spam. One was from the news section of Nature. Now that was something.

  “Adam, I may be able to advance the schedule, but let me make this absolutely clear: I’m not commenting on anything until we put out the initial description in a journal. Got that?”

  “I guess. Worth a shot. I’ll hold off on doing anything on this until you hear whether or not your paper is accepted. And remember, we have a deal.”

  “Yes, you’ve got the exclusive for the first nonscientific publication. Now I’ve got to go.”

  After hanging up, Claire wrote an urgent email to her team, warning them about loose lips.

  Claire got up from her desk, realizing that she hadn’t even finished drying off, much less gotten dressed. She was headed for her closet when her cell phone rang again. She was tempted to ignore it but grabbed the phone when she saw who was calling.

  It was Keerbrock, part of whose genius seemed to be an instinct for appearing when Claire was most vulnerable. He was going to hear about Byron’s black ops at some point, so Claire decided that he might as well hear it from her.

  Keerbrock listened as Claire took him through her conversation with Constantine. Then he chuckled. “So Byron’s gotten out over his skis on this. Don’t worry about him.”

  “If I were Willem Keerbrock, I wouldn’t worry about him, either. But I’m not.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  “At this point,” Keerbrock said, “I’d suggest that you get out something fast on the details of the find.”

  Claire told Keerbrock about being contacted by Nature and her plan to hustle out a bare-bones letter.

  Keerbrock took this in. “Look, Claire, I understand what’s going on. I know that you’d like me to join the letter as corresponding author. It’s not in any sense your fault, but the lack of the actual bones makes that very difficult for me. The array supports the interpretation of the cranium—as does the jadeite, which cannot be mentioned. I actually believe that this is an extraordinary find, but science doesn’t proceed on belief.” Keerbrock paused and took a breath. “Let’s use the analogy of a murder—no body, no murder charge; it’s the same in science. Unfortunately, the fact that the only accessible evidence for the array is digital won’t work for the most respected journals, who are paranoid about being suckered … Byron’s assault doesn’t help, either.”

  Claire, crushed, remained silent.

  “That said,” Keerbrock said, surprisingly gently, “keep going. Maybe something will turn up.”

  60

  In a perfectly timed pass, Samantha took the baton from Gwynne—at least that’s how it seemed to Claire. A day after hearing about Gwynne, Claire learned that Samantha had written a blog for a feminist forum sponsored by Oberlin. The thread was “When Women Are Bad Bosses,” and in Samantha’s contribution (helpfully forwarded by Waylon—“not that I agree, just thought you should see this”—to whom Samantha had sent a link and a request to like the post on Facebook), Claire, given the pseudonym “Hortense” (Claire got the juvenile inversion im
mediately—“tense whore”) was worse than any man. Blinded by ambition to be accepted by “the patriarchy that dominates archaeology and paleontology,” Hortense had capriciously abandoned the mission of the dig, jeopardized the local standing of her funding organization, insulted her noble Kazakh counterparts, and ignored every carefully thought-through protocol of how to conduct a dig, which led to the destruction of a priceless discovery (or worthless, because, at a different point in the post, Samantha questioned the provenance of the find). Hortense then abandoned her team altogether, leaving them at the mercy of the Kazakhs (who apparently weren’t so noble). Aside from the many internal contradictions, Claire admitted that there was a kernel of truth in each of the other accusations.

  If Gwynne had deftly planted a seed of doubt about the significance of the bones, Samantha had performed a clumsy but nevertheless effective job of character assassination. Claire knew that it would be useless to respond, which would only confirm that Hortense was Claire, not that anyone in the scientific community wouldn’t already know that. Even though most interested parties would recognize that Samantha was motivated by some personal animus, the combination of the two seeds of doubt would dampen the ardor of those in the scientific community who might otherwise be eager to hear more about the discovery.

  ¬

  It was at times like this when Claire most wished that Hayden was still alive. She imagined the conversation that might follow. “Well, there’s some good news, some truly weird news, and some very bad news. Which would you like to hear first?”

  “Might as well get the bad news out of the way.”

  “OK, you might as well hear it from me first. Congratulations! You’ve put your money behind a naÏve nut ball who’s an excellent candidate for boss from hell.”

  Hayden would digest the series of unfortunate events before replying. “You knew going in that you were going to have to have a thick skin. Don’t worry about it. I’m in mining and have heard worse said about me. Put everything into getting out that letter.”

  61

  The next week was a nightmare. The reverberations of Gwynne’s betrayal and Samantha’s frontal assault ricocheted around the web. Claire felt that the bones—and her career—were rapidly being relegated to fringe science before she had even had a chance to speak. She had replied to the reporter from the news section of Nature, and clearly their ardor had faded. After several days she got a perfunctory email saying that the editors had decided to wait for peer-reviewed validation before going ahead with a news item.

  Claire knew the stress was getting to her. She had stopped running. She had a sense that she was failing in every aspect of life, a feeling she hadn’t experienced since grad school. At least the letter was coming together and rapidly, but any warm vibes from this good news were tempered by her dread of the inevitable conversation with Katie about how to proceed in the investigation of the jadeite.

  She wasn’t sleeping well, and she wasn’t eating much, either. Parts of the day she had a metallic taste in her mouth. During a video chat with Sergei at Transteppe, Sauat showed up with Lawrence in his arms, and this cheered her up a bit, but as soon as the call ended, her anxiety returned. One day she woke up with some lines from “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” running through her head. Ordinarily, it would have signaled an upbeat mood, but then she realized the line “and it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out …” was in a continuous loop.

  There had been an avalanche of emails after Gwynne’s talk, but she had only responded to the few that she just couldn’t ignore. Her mother had called several times, but she wasn’t up to talking with her, either. Her mother had taken to leaving helpful messages: “I know you’re busy with this paper, honey. Call me when you can, and keep in mind: If you’re going to shoot for the king, make sure that all your ducks are in a row.”

  Friedl got wind of the rumors as well. He called her in to his office and asked her directly whether anything had gone on in Kazakhstan that he should be worried about, noting that he had to protect the reputation of the department and the university. Claire simply said that she was solely focused on producing a publishable description of the find and that she wasn’t going to respond to baseless rumors, as neither she nor any of her team had spoken to anyone about the find.

  Claire could see he wasn’t reassured, so she used her last card. “Keerbrock’s been offering a lot of moral support, which helps.”

  Friedl sighed. “Moral support is one thing, but I’d feel better about all this if Keerbrock formally endorsed your discovery.”

  Claire wanted to say, “I would, too,” but kept her mouth shut.

  Two weeks after the team’s first conference call, Claire had a draft of the letter they would submit. It was highly disciplined, even minimalist. It laid out the discovery of the bones and the arguments for why the bones were of a previously unknown species of proboscidean mammal that was indigenous to the area and survived at least until the peak of the Messinian. Benoit had contributed the climate backdrop as well as evolutionary context; Francisco made a powerful case that the bones and cranium were not representative of a known species at a different developmental stage or suffering from some disease (though he did stipulate that they did show the effects of malnutrition); Sergei provided the geological context; and Karil described the changes in vegetation. At every turn, Claire restrained interpretation, liberally using the phrase “This is a matter that bears further investigation.” So it was with the intriguing lush period, which the paper referred to but did not explain. And so it was with the jadeite, which was only referred to as “a contiguous object.”

  Dr. Tabiliev had written a paragraph on previous explorations of the area and generously agreed to add his name. Claire should have been elated but, except for Benoit, there was no one with any standing in any of the pertinent sciences affiliated with the paper. Worse, Claire realized with chagrin, the lead author was best known to the scientific community as the object of slanderous rumors in the blogosphere. She was loath to push the send button.

  As she soon discovered, she should have heeded her instinct.

  The answer from Nature was short and to the point. They could not publish on a find as potentially explosive as this when a significant part of the physical evidence that was crucial to the argument was unavailable. The one ray of hope was a concluding sentence, encouraging resubmission if such evidence could be provided.

  Then things got worse. Claire had felt duty bound to tell Constantine that there would be no letter to Nature, but she couldn’t bring herself to make the call. Nor did she answer his calls or emails. Members of the team emailed her, saying that Constantine was calling them for comment. Claire had simply said, “I’m not saying anything that might prejudice future prospects for publication, but follow your conscience.”

  The following Tuesday, she opened the New York Times to see the following headline in the lead article of the Science section: “Discovery of Relic Elephant Species in Kazakhstan Shrouded in Controversy and Ambiguity.” The article then went through the history of the find, with quotes from Gwynne. There was some small consolation in the sentence “Multiple efforts to reach Dr. Knowland and her team members were unsuccessful,” but then, anonymously, one source, described as “a scientist who had seen the submission to Nature,” noted that the bizarre goings-on in Kazakhstan and the disappearance of the bones created a barrier of skepticism that the submission simply could not overcome. “They found something” was the source’s most devastating quote. “But who knows what?” Finishing the article, Claire realized that she was well on her way to junk science. Worse, with a sob of anguish, she imagined the reaction of Helen and other members of Hayden’s family, who were being told that their revered father was a fool.

  Good job, Claire, she thought, First I get him killed. Then I ruin his memory. This is what you get when you put your trust in me.

  Through her despair, Claire realized that she still had responsibilities. She emailed the members of the tea
m, telling them that she was not sure of the next steps, but that she needed to take a break. She ended these emails with the sentence “Do what you think is right.”

  She emailed Katie, telling her the same but that Claire was giving her responsibility for the jadeite and she was welcome to continue her work. She got an immediate reply: “Wait! I’m coming over.”

  Claire responded, “Thank you Katie, but I won’t be here.” Then she headed for Friedl’s office.

  He was looking at the Times article when she entered.

  “I’m taking time off.”

  Friedl almost looked relieved. “Take as much as you want—the project’s funded for five years.”

  “In my absence Katie’s going to continue work. She can use my office.”

  Friedl thought about this for a second. “I guess that’s OK,” he said slowly. Clearly, he would rather this project disappeared entirely—leaving the money behind, of course.

  “That’s it then,” said Claire and left. So, she thought to herself, this is what rock bottom feels like.

  62

  Claire left Friedl’s office with the firm conviction that she had to disappear, but without any idea of where she was going. So she started driving west. She ended up on Interstate 88 in New York, and it was getting dark. She turned off at the exit for Schoharie, New York, a tiny town just north of the Catskills. She looked around the town. Population under one thousand and a sign saying “Schoharie” was a Mohawk word for floating driftwood. She smiled grimly—perfect! She found a derelict group of cabins and made a deal to rent one for $250 a week in cash.

  She had left her computer in her office and hesitated before tossing her phone in the lake. She knew that doing so would eliminate any chance of talking to Sergei, but she shuddered at the damage a conversation in her present state might do to their relationship. She was not the woman she was a month ago, or even a week ago.