Deep Past

by Eugene Linden

  Claire had to stop herself from cheering. She glanced up at the window to the kitchen. Zoe and Sergei seemed to be having a grand time. She was laughing and putting her hand on his shoulder.

  Katie continued with her new plan. “If it’s fossilized mud, we’d know they were once hollowed out. Means we’d have to sacrifice the bone, though.”

  “Even if we don’t possess them, we know there’s more bones out there,” said Keerbrock.

  Claire had not yet caught up. “Why is it so important to find out if they’re hollow that we need to sacrifice our one bone?”

  “When we first saw the ulnae, we thought they were weapons, or something ritualistic. Then Karil tells us that there was a thin layer of fossilized vegetation suggesting that the immediate area had been green in the years leading up to Bart’s demise. Then we discover this stone, which is shaped like a type of yam, and we know that yams are foods that people turn to during times of drought—when plants bury their carbohydrates underground. Then we find that the yam-like jadeite also has this bizarro energy field. Is it some freak of the stone, or was it somehow created by Bart and his buddies—and for what purpose? Religious? Nope, Flo answered the question when she drove the PVC into the ground. It looks like it was an instruction manual …” She paused. “On how to irrigate.”

  Keerbrock interrupted. “I wouldn’t get too wedded to that instruction-manual idea, though I think the connection with irrigation is spot-on.”

  Everyone was curious. “What are you saying?” asked Katie.

  “Just that Flo might have been imitating something she saw rather than following instructions. It’s a subtle but meaningful distinction. Maybe Bart’s peers knew that they were approaching the end and wanted to leave a record, a phonon diorama—to use your word—of who they were and how they survived. That’s also possible.”

  The penny dropped for Claire. “I get it! What Flo did with the PVC answered one big question for me. When I first saw the bones and how freakishly out of place these elephants were, I wondered whether we were looking at an example of the island rule.” She quickly reviewed how isolated populations tended to get smaller or bigger and why. “But the steppe is as far from being an island as anything that can be imagined.” She paused for effect. “Except … maybe not.”

  She had Keerbrock’s total attention. “That green patch Kiril uncovered emerged at the point at which the rest of the steppe was an uninhabitable hell. Once Bart’s ancestors started growing food, they couldn’t leave, as the drying intensified over tens of thousands of years they became addicted to farming. Obviously I’m guessing here, but given their biogeographic isolation, they could—or evolution could—divert blood from the muscles to the brain without cost. If they couldn’t get out, predators couldn’t get in. That’s how you get runaway evolutionary change.”

  Keerbrock looked truly excited. He turned to Claire, “The missing piece! This will never be published in a million years! But wouldn’t it be good to know for sure?”

  He turned to Katie. “Who’s the vegetation guy, Karil? I’d suggest having him look for evidence of bamboo in that green period, pollens.”

  Helen was fascinated. “Farming? Do other animals farm?”

  Claire jumped in. “Ants bring back leaves and use them as fertilizer to grow mushrooms; wasps turn other insects into livestock; I could go on. Oh, and tribes have been driving hollow sticks into the ground to bring up water for thousands of years.”

  Keerbrock turned to Helen and summed it up. “You see? We have a story. Somehow, an elephant ancestor has the bad luck to get isolated in the Kazakh steppes, and then the Messinian salinity crisis hits, starting several hundred thousand years of whipsawing climate, always trending toward the drier. Each violent shift in climate produces a crisis for the elephants, with the more adaptable ones surviving and the specialists dying out. Over time, the survivors find they need to cooperate to find food—who knows, maybe also to distribute it—and these social pressures also favor the smarter ones. If you were to look for a candidate to prove that intelligence is an ecologically surplus ability, you couldn’t find a better candidate than an elephant, with its extraordinary auditory processing facility and the exquisite control of its trunk.

  “So, on the one hand, as food dries up, they start looking for yams and other underground plants. Maybe it’s not enough to find them, so they figure out how to grow them. But still things get drier. They figure out how to use bamboo or some other hollow plant to bring up and collect water, but then the bamboo disappears, and they find they have to use hollow bones. But irrigation gets more difficult and complicated as the drought deepens and they have to communicate how to connect the bones as they need to go deeper. Ultimately, right around the time Bart lived, they run out of tricks—the climate is just too harsh. And …” Keerbrock snapped his fingers.

  A slot machine’s worth of pennies dropped for Claire. “Will, you had this figured out all along, didn’t you?”

  “I suspected it,” he admitted, “and much as I knew it was a lost cause proving anything, you just can’t shut down your mind—at least I can’t.”

  He pursed his lips. “And I’m happy I didn’t. What you’ve uncovered is so much richer than what I imagined. You know my history—first I worked on climate cycles, then I integrated evolutionary change, then I noticed correlations between climate crisis and jumps in brain size in the hominin record. As you remember, my question was: Why only us? If rapid environmental change is a driver of intelligence, why don’t we find a bunch of other smart animals? Now we know; they’ve come and gone. And—even better—we glimpse an entirely different intelligence. Bart is the missing piece”—Keerbrock smiled mischievously—“make that link, in a whole lot of developments.”

  Keerbrock was just getting warmed up. “And there’s a lot more that we haven’t even mentioned. When I first felt the jadeite, it occurred to me that maybe there was some extremely powerful interference pattern associated with the stone. But the ancient elephants could have made that discovery by chance. Now, thanks to Flo, we know that Bart or one of his pals somehow imbued that stone with an explicit message.” He turned to Katie. “What does that mean?”

  Katie thought a minute. “It means that they understood the wave properties of various materials?”

  “I’d put it more broadly. It means that they had an ability to model the world—even if the thrust of their intelligence was very different than ours.”

  There was no stopping Keerbrock now. “Think about the nature of Bart’s intelligence, assuming that his fellows ‘programmed’ that stone. He would have possessed an extraordinary facility with the wave properties of any number of materials. Bart would have understood quantum mechanics in a heartbeat. When I grew up, quantum mechanics was assumed only to apply to the invisible world and not reality in general. Now the conventional wisdom is that the wave function applies to everything, which would have made perfect sense to Bart. Today, everybody’s trying to figure out how to make a quantum computer—a machine that would use peculiar characteristics of the quantum world to compute all possibilities simultaneously. Bart could have helped us there.” Keerbrock broke off for a moment, then added, “Maybe the jadeite is some form of solid state computer … So it is a very good story, but it’s unfinished. And I have to say it again, it will never be published …” He looked at Claire and Katie. “At least not in our lifetime.”

  “Tell us again why not?” There was a challenge in Katie’s voice, which Claire caught even if Keerbrock didn’t.

  “I would have thought that would be obvious,” Keerbrock replied with a bit of edge. “The scientific community can handle the stuff on climate change because it’s data driven, but it cannot handle the assertions of intelligence, language sophistication, and agriculture abilities because they are not data driven and contain a mess of subjective inferences.” Keerbrock smiled. “Oddly, the public is ready to embrace animal intelligence, but not the notion that climate change is a killer. I suspect that
by the time the public realizes that climate change is a killer, it will be too late, since it already is too late … so maybe whoever survives us will publish this posthumously.”

  Nobody laughed at the melancholy Dane’s attempt at gallows humor.

  Claire was particularly unhappy. “So what do you envision in terms of future publications from this discovery?”

  “I think there’s a great deal to be published—a fuller description of Bart and his big brain, the biogeography and climate context. There’s a lot of straight science to be done. But the narrative that fits these pieces together? That’s a bridge too far.”

  This was the moment of truth for Claire. She turned to Helen. “As you might guess, one of my principal reasons for coming back was to honor my commitment to Fletcher Hayden’s memory. For better or worse, he backed me, and I’m going to decide what lines of inquiry we pursue going forward, and what gets published going forward. Moreover, the very things he says we can’t publish are the reason I got into this work. So, my plan is to pursue the science as well as the narrative. And I will write the narrative, even if you and Dr. Keerbrock and the team are the only ones who ever see it.”

  Helen, who had been listening intently, took a deep breath and spoke directly to Keerbrock. “My father chose to back Claire in this research, and while it goes without saying that we are honored that you have shown an interest, I have to say that my father would have insisted that Claire have the final say on how the research should proceed going forward.”

  Claire had trouble catching her breath. “If that’s unacceptable, all I can say is that we have done so much more than I could have ever hoped for. And Dr. Keerbrock, you turned my life around and I’m truly grateful.” Claire hoped that no one could see that she was crying.

  Katie came over and gave Claire a hug.

  Keerbrock was slow to respond. He was still trying to figure out this strange new world in which an ever-growing mob seemed to feel that they had the right to challenge him. After a moment he said, “I completely agree that Claire should make all decisions about lines of inquiry going forward. It is her discovery and her project. But, if asked, I will strongly advise against publishing inferences that go beyond the data, and which might jeopardize the credibility of all the work you’ve done.” He looked in turn at Helen and Claire. “I’m a scientist, and the integrity of science is built on rigor. I cannot put that aside after a lifetime of commitment to its principles and methods.”

  Only Sergei noticed that Katie had become extremely quiet, and an upbringing in a country where the wrong word could bring on a world of hurt had endowed him with an exquisite sense for dangerous moments.

  He stared hard at Claire to get her attention, and when she glanced his way, ever so slightly he shook his head—this was not a battle to fight that day. Claire exhaled, and Sergei quickly changed the subject. “You said it was too late to do anything on climate, why?”

  Keerbrock seemed happy to change the subject. “When you look at climate cycles, which is what I do, you see that the last ten-thousand-year span has been a rare span of good warm and relatively stable weather in a record of upheavals and ice ages that extends back to the dawn of our species. This blip has been an extraordinarily good climate for humans. So, the entire sweep of modern civilization has taken place within a blink of the eye in geological terms. People think the present weather is the norm. But it’s not. Who knows how long the good times would have lasted, but, thanks to fossil fuels, we’re not going to find out. Since the 1980s, the climate has become more and more unstable, and it’s only going to get worse. Imagine what Bart would have thought of us. He and his peers found out that climate was an ‘angry beast,’ as one of my colleagues described it, but they didn’t create the climate that killed them. Us? We’re poking it with sticks.” Now there was real fire in his eyes and his voice. “Can you imagine anything more stupid?”

  Nobody said anything.

  The conversation petered out. Katie said she was heading back to the motel.

  “I’ll come,” said Claire, “perhaps Sergei will come, too.” She noticed that Katie was chortling. “We have a lot of loose ends to go over,” she finished somewhat defensively.

  70

  It should have been an ebullient flight back to New England the next day, but it was not. Keerbrock’s memento mori for the planet and his downer about publishing had cast a pall over the group. What he had said was hard to digest but harder to dismiss.

  Helen surveyed the mood of the group and decided they needed a distraction. She broke out some cards and chips and a bottle of single malt and proposed a game of poker, seven-card high low. She set a limit on betting so that nobody could be wiped out on one hand. Everybody had some experience with cards, but they played a couple of hands for practice.

  Helen was clearly a practiced player. Sergei watched her for a few minutes and whispered to Claire, “What is the saying? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?” He himself was impossible to read, slow playing strong hands and pouncing when he sensed weakness. Claire held her own, but in the end it was Katie who had the most chips. When asked how she pulled that off, she said, “Dumb luck—I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.”

  Claire snorted, “I don’t believe that for a second.”

  Busted, Katie smiled. “OK, Dr. Keerbrock only looked at other people’s cards when he had a good hand; Sergei always looked first at the other cards showing to see if there was a play regardless of whether he had a good hand. If Sergei bet aggressively early with good cards showing, he didn’t yet have a hand; if Ms. Hayden stayed in when Sergei was betting, the best strategy was to figure out which way she was going and take the other side; Claire folded more than anyone else. If she stayed in, watch out! Claire was the most difficult to read because she never drove the betting, making it hard to figure her confidence level.”

  Keerbrock shook his head. “I’m that easy to read?”

  Claire thought back to Transteppe and her discussion of poker with Helen’s father. Katie was so much more than a pretty face.

  By the time they had landed at a private airport near the campus, the group had cheered up. Helen was going back to Vancouver Island, and so she stayed with the plane. Keerbrock told Claire that he would be in touch and then headed for his car. Claire told Katie that she would get Sergei sorted out and that they all would meet tomorrow. Katie suppressed a smile and said brightly, “Tomorrow it is.”

  Claire looked at Sergei. It was seven o’clock. “Let’s talk over dinner. Toss your bag in the trunk.” Claire popped the trunk and opened the doors of a used Honda that had seen better days. After Sergei dropped off his luggage, Claire took him to a bistro in town that supposedly had a terrific cassoulet.

  They didn’t talk much until they were seated. Sergei looked over the drinks list. “So, our first date! Maybe we should have champagne?”

  Claire blushed but said, “Go for it!”

  As they chatted about Transteppe and what it was like living amid the current eerie stalemate that had taken hold, Claire made a decision.

  Before she committed to it, however, she had to know something. “Sergei?”

  He sensed her change in tone. “Yes?”

  “I know you don’t like to talk about it, but I need to know more about what that creepy oligarch has on you.”

  Sergei was silent.

  “I promise you, nothing leaves this table … I’m serious, Sergei.”

  “Why?”

  One of Claire’s mother’s admonitions popped out. “Because it’s time to lay your cards on the table and step up to the plate!”

  This time Sergei looked genuinely confused. “What?”

  Claire was delighted. Score one for Mom!

  “Because I need to know that you are safe and that I can trust you.”

  Sergei looked at Claire sadly.

  “‘Trust me’ is the most dangerous phrase in Russia.”

  “But I’m not Russian, and we’re not in Russia.”
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  Sergei looked at the table for a long time before speaking. And then it all came out. He told her of his fit of arrogance in the chess match and the oligarch’s sadistic program of revenge. At first he’d used the laws to harass Sergei.

  “The laws?” Claire was confused.

  “Yes, remember I told you that nobody can be in perfect compliance with the law in Russia. Bezanov has deep ties in the Kremlin, and I don’t know at what level he organized the harassment, but I started getting threats of prosecution on various fronts, from tax evasion to fomenting dissent.

  “Then it stopped, and I thought he’d finally moved on.” Sergei leaned back and gave a short, bitter laugh. “I should have known better. He’d decided that I’d be more useful out of jail.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Let me give you a little background. What I should have realized when I played Bezanov in chess was that he knew that he could lose—he was a master, not a grandmaster, so he knew there were many players who could beat him—but I didn’t just beat him. I humiliated him in front of his girlfriend. Then—in his eyes—I stole his girlfriend.”

  Claire nodded, encouraging him to go on.

  “The worst thing that can happen to an up-and-coming oligarch, especially a beast of prey like Bezanov, would be to be made to look like a pathetic patsy. So, as I later came to realize, he didn’t just need to get revenge and get back Ludmilla, he also needed to break me.”

  Claire was missing something. “How does putting you here constitute breaking you?”

  “He made me his pawn. He liked the idea of making me take a job I had no interest in—this was before I met you, remember.” Sergei smiled. “And a game player and strategist like Andrei never does anything for just one purpose.

  “Bezanov knew of my skills in geology and decided that rather than continue to ruin my life, he might turn me to his purposes in Kazakhstan—we now know why. Clearly, he was one of the key plotters in the uprising. But, that’s another story … If I was to be his pawn here, he needed some lever to control me even though I was outside Russia, so he arranged that the state invite my younger brother, who was studying psychology, for special training at a facility outside Moscow. It’s all very subtle. Mikhail was a ‘guest,’ but he couldn’t leave.”