Neanderthal

by John Darnton

  By now all dates and sense of time had dropped away, and Kel­licut referred to himself in the third person. Matt found he was reading out a cryptic stream of consciousness, words tumbling out with tantalizing bits of description. But what did they mean? He flipped through the later pages. His eyes fell upon a passage in the center of a page:

  … a rustling in the crevice, the dark and the wind ... where is Cerebus? ... He enters the long tunnel, his elbows scraped so the blood spurts out—a signpost for the return trip if there is to be one ... the dark and more dark and sudden blinding light strikes ... I know their secret and the power they possess—enough to defeat the reaper, the true afterlife, eternal ... They know I know, they know I’m watching. They are watching me without look­ing ... extraordinary ... the valley of life, a whole world, a uni­verse, naked hairy children of God. Wrapped bundles up in the trees, cocoons from giant moths and bones scattered below ... oh, what a graveyard, and the eyes, the eyes are upon you.

  There followed a blank page and then the final entry. The tone was calm, rational.

  Base camp. April 7. I am going back to them. I am going to make myself known, to present myself to them.

  That was the entire text. The next page was blank, as were all the others.

  Matt closed the diary slowly. What he had read confirmed his fears and sent the adrenaline coursing through his body. Was it excite­ment or fear? He couldn’t tell anymore; his feelings were too jum­bled. So they were real, after all! Either that or Kellicut was stark raving mad. Matt thought of the outside world, so pervasive, so powerful. So many people, everywhere. All of it—cities, airports, television, cars, computers. That was reality. How could this anachronism, this little backwater of the past, continue to exist? A flood of skepticism flowed in like water breaking through dikes. But when he looked at the fire and the faces of those around it, and when he sensed the barren, isolated landscape of the Pamirs and felt the diary in his hands, a conviction swept through him that held back the flood. Inexplicably from nowhere, a stab of paranoia: Could this whole thing be some sort of elaborate trick, a setup?

  Everyone was silent for a moment. Susan held her hand to her forehead. Her chest was heaving, as if she were breathing with dif­ficulty. The display of emotion almost looked theatrical.

  Matt opened the book again. There was no map anywhere. He stared at the final blank page as if it held some kind of secret, then flipped the page back and looked at the date of the last entry. Two months ago. And he hadn’t come back since. What are the odds that he’s still alive? That he wasn’t pulled apart limb by limb? Or dead somewhere at the bottom of a ravine? Or collapsed beside a pile of rocks, having succumbed to cold or starvation? It’s a long shot for survival, Matt thought.

  “Well, something happened. He saw something,” he said finally.

  “Or something saw him,” said Susan. “What was all that about eyes?”

  “And a graveyard?” asked Rudy.

  “He is clearly close to the edge,” said Matt. “He went for days without enough to eat, all alone. He has a fever. Maybe it affected his mind. Maybe he’s delusional.” He was surprised to hear himself using the present tense. It didn’t seem suitable.

  “He wasn’t delusional,” said Van, finally speaking up. “He knew what he was writing about.”

  It’s strange how we all seem to be so delicate in our choice of words, thought Susan, tiptoeing around on eggshells. “How do you know?” she challenged.

  “It’s obvious,” replied Van, his condescension so blatant that it was offhand, almost inoffensive. “He found some way across to their world, some link. He looked for them and he found them. It’s all there—a passage of some sort, even a graveyard. Where the hell do you think your skull came from?”

  “And the eyes—what about that?” asked Susan.

  Van shrugged.

  “The problem is there’s no map,” Matt said. “He talks about one—he even gives coordinates—but we don’t have it. Without it, how can we follow his trail? We don’t have any idea where in the hell he went, just that it was up.”

  “Even if we did have the map,” said Susan, “you notice he didn’t give any position for this ... passageway, crevice, whatever. Why doesn’t he describe it?” She shook her head.

  “It’s exasperating,” said Matt. “Why does he persist in being so goddamned enigmatic? Typical—he always did have a perverse streak.”

  Susan was quiet for a while and then spoke slowly, as if she were reasoning it out. “So it seems he actually saw them, or at least in some way observed them before he found that skull. In which case he had much more concrete proof. He knew they existed; he didn’t merely speculate about it. So why be so mysterious? Why just send the skull with no letter? Why not communicate his great discovery? Not to do so poses too big a risk. What if it didn’t get through; what if we didn’t come? On something like this he’s not going to take any chances. It’s too important to him. To science. No one, and especially no one with his ego, would willingly keep silent about this.”

  One by one, they looked at Van. He stared into the fire, then stirred and wiped his face with his sleeve. When he spoke, it was without feeling or remorse.

  “There was a note, a brief one.” He fell silent again.

  “Go on,” said Matt. He was seething with rage but kept it hidden.

  “Not much to tell, really.”

  “Go on,” Matt repeated firmly.

  “It came with the package. One page. Looks like it was torn out of that diary—same kind of paper.”

  Matt flipped open the book. At the very end was the ragged tear of a missing page.

  “And?”

  “It was addressed to the two of you. He gave a brief description, or at least seemed to. It was raving like this one. It seemed to say he had encountered them and was going back for another look.”

  “Go on.”

  “We couldn’t be sure what he was saying. He didn’t mention that bit about ‘presenting himself,’ whatever that means. I don’t suppose he would have in a letter. Sounds a bit melodramatic.”

  “Go on.”

  “Not much more to say. We had it analyzed, of course, backward and forward: ink, paper, psychiatrists, you name it.”

  “What was the conclusion?”

  “No surprises. It was genuine.”

  “No surprises!” fumed Matt. “You mean to say you had just been informed about the existence of another hominid on this planet and you say there were no surprises?”

  “Well, doctor, I was never quite the skeptic that you were,” Van answered, wearing a little boy’s sneer. Matt felt like slugging him.

  “Did he say anything more?” pressed Susan. “Anything at all that wasn’t in the diary?”

  “Nothing I can think of.”

  “A map?”

  “Christ, no. If I had a map, I wouldn’t need you people along.”

  “Field notes?”

  “Nope.”

  “Nothing?”

  “There was no more information. It’s still not possible to say what he saw, or even if he saw anything beyond his fevered rantings—except, of course, we know he blundered into some kind of graveyard. At the end he said we should hurry. For God’s sake, come as quickly as you can; I think those were the exact words.”

  Matt and Susan exchanged looks in the fire’s glow. It sounded like the note Sharafidin had delivered.

  “Okay,” Matt said, with menace in his voice, “now tell us exactly why you kept it from us.”

  Van sighed. “Quite frankly, we didn’t think you’d believe it.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “You believed it,” said Susan.

  “Ah, yes, but you see, I’ve believed it for years.” Van gave a short laugh, more of a snort. “And there was another thing. I’m not sure he would have approved of my coming along. He never really trusted us, you know.”

  “No shit! I wonder why,” Matt said.

  Van ignored him. “He never really knew
what we were about.”

  “You say he was writing to us,” said Susan. “Did he say anything specifically about you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, Don’t trust them. Come alone if you possibly can.”

  “That’s pretty specific,” said Matt.

  They fell into silence. Matt was still angry, but Van had regained his equilibrium and was even smiling in a peculiar way, like a kid caught cheating.

  Susan leaned toward Van. “Tell me; what are you up to exactly? Who are you people?”

  “We’re like you, just like you,” Van answered. “We’re scientific explorers, more or less.”

  The mists were deepening now and it was late, but they were too excited to sleep.

  “We need Sharafidin,” Matt said suddenly.

  They looked around. The boy was gone. They spread out from the campsite and found him soon enough off by himself, wrapped in his woolen blanket. Maybe he was disturbed by their altercation, thought Susan.

  “Ask him if he ever saw a map,” Matt told Rudy. Rudy translated the question. The boy huddled in his blanket, shivering slightly, and spoke slowly.

  Rudy turned toward them. “He says there was one, but the Teacher kept it on him.”

  “Where did he put it when he went away?”

  “He always took it with him.”

  “Ask him if the Teacher always buried the book before he went away.”

  “He says he never saw him bury the book.”

  “Makes sense,” said Matt. “He buried it the last time. When he left he had some reason to think that he might not be coming back. And it’s obvious he had another fear—that something else might get to the camp before we did.”

  Van snorted. “Looks like he was right on both counts.”

  As the fire dimmed, Matt awoke from a light slumber and saw Susan sitting awake, hugging her knees and staring at the tiny flames.

  He got up, threw a few gnarled branches on the fire, and sat down next to her. She smiled at him, almost sadly.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  She nodded.

  “The diary get to you?”

  “The diary, Kellicut, the fact that they could be real, the whole thing.” She paused a second. “You.”

  “In that order?”

  Another half smile.

  “Matt,” she said solemnly, “do you realize we could be on the brink of the world’s greatest discovery? Black holes, outer space, the Hubble telescope—they’re all great steps in our knowledge outward. This goes inward. It’s like DNA—it’s about our origin as a species. Who would have imagined? Everything we’ve ever theo­rized may be blown up, and I’m glad, because it will be replaced by the truth.”

  He leaned over and picked up her hand. She let him hold it for a while, then gave his a squeeze and pulled away. “I’m going to turn in,” she said. She undressed and slipped into her sleeping bag.

  Matt couldn’t fall back asleep right away. He heard the others breathing and some sounds way off in the darkness. Finally he fell into a fitful doze, dreaming and then almost waking. He imagined a strange hulking figure walking around the camp. It skulked around the larder, leaning over it to pick out some bits of meat in the center. It rummaged through their backpacks and peered down at them. Once or twice he almost became con­scious. Mists streamed across the embers until finally the fire died away altogether, darkness took over, and he fell into a pro­found sleep.

  The next morning the mists were gone and the day was bright. They all awoke at the same time, as if a magic spell had been lifted.

  As they prepared breakfast, they noticed that Sharafidin was gone. They looked everywhere, but his blanket and few supplies were missing.

  “I could have told you,” said Van. He was furious. “He was spooked, all right. I knew it when we talked to him last night. I knew he’d run off.”

  “I don’t know,” said Rudy doubtfully, scratching his head.

  “I bet it had to do with that goddamn diary,” Van continued. “He knew more than he let on. He was hiding something.”

  Susan was crouching on her haunches where Sharafidin had bedded down. She stared at the ground, then lowered her hand, picked something up, and walked over to Matt, looking as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

  “He didn’t run off.” She opened her right fist; in it was the tiny Koran. Its worn leather surface glistened in the early morning sun.

  9

  “So what do we do now?” asked Rudy.

  No one answered. They had fallen silent after a morning of talk and disagreement over Sharafidin’s disappearance. At first each had dealt with it alone. Matt was quiet, Rudy busied himself with clean­ing up after breakfast, Van lounged about, ostensibly unruffled, and Susan wrote a long message for Kellicut, which she buried in the “mail drop,” as Matt called it, on the off chance that he might return.

  They had searched the campsite for signs of a scuffle or what they began euphemistically calling “visitors,” but had found nothing. Matt had checked the backpacks. Two were lying askew, on their sides, but it was hard to remember their exact placement the night before. He couldn’t say if they had been rifled or not. At the larder everything seemed to be in order. He did not tell anyone about his nightmare.

  “Look, I’m not saying he’s a coward or anything,” Van said. “He got us here. Maybe in his mind he fulfilled the terms of the deal, so there was no reason to stick around.”

  Susan turned on him angrily. “He wouldn’t just pick up and leave without saying a word. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Matt tried to defuse the tension. “What we do is we press on. From here on we would have been on our own anyway. Sharafidin couldn’t have helped us anymore. He couldn’t lead us any farther than he did.”

  “How do we know where to go?” asked Rudy.

  “We just keep going up,” replied Matt, with a confidence he didn’t feel. “We don’t have a map, but the diary tells us roughly what we’re looking for: first a ravine, then some kind of crossing, then a crevice. Finding the crevice is going to be the hard part.”

  They began to climb the slope at the far end of the camp. Halfway up to a ledge Susan turned around and looked back. She could see the path they had come on, the spot where Van had crouched with the gun. That was less than twenty-four hours ago, she reflected, but already it seemed like days. Kellicut’s diary had changed everything. The existence of a relic band of hominids was beginning to appear more and more likely. From up here his lean-to looked puny, little more than a pile of twigs and pebbles against a limitless expanse of rock and sky.

  The sun was out but when the wind stirred, the cold cut to the bone. They moved in single file, laboriously. The effort behind each step was costly, as if the altitude had saddled their feet with weights.

  Susan was confused about Sharafidin. What could have happened to him? Van was wrong; he would not just run off. She was sure of that. Of course there was another explanation, but it was too ghastly to dwell on and she tried to push it aside.

  They came around the side of the ridge to a spectacular view ahead. There was a gully, then a long sloping incline of rock with patches of crusted snow in the shadows; rising beyond it like a frozen wave was another summit, and in the distance still another. On the top of the farthest one a diamond crest of snow glistened. The world seemed to go on and on as far as they could see.

  Matt felt infinitesimal. Oddly enough, the sensation was not oppressive but exhilarating, even liberating in its first rush. But the feeling rapidly dissipated and soon gave way to gloom, born from the pragmatic realization that in all that space and majesty the prospect of finding what they were looking for was impossibly remote.

  As they reached the ridge’s crown, Susan caught up to him and they walked side by side. Her hair, tucked under a cap, hung down in strands that brushed her cheek.

  “There’s the haystack. Wonder where the needle is,” she said, thrusting h
er chin at the view ahead. “Let me ask you something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “At this point we could probably turn around and make it back, right? I mean, we could probably find our way down from here.”

  “Probably.”

  “But after another three or four days, maybe not.”

  “Right.”

  “So?”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “Maybe we should think this over and come to some sort of decision about what we want to do.”

  “Susan, you already know what you want to do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know you.”

  He was right, of course. There was no way she would not keep going, and if anyone else had suggested that they turn around, she would have fought like a tigress. Not for nothing was she the granddaughter of a Hungarian adventurer who had trekked across Canada. But she liked the idea of talking it over and finding strength in a consensus.

  “How about the others? Maybe they should have a say.”

  “Are you kidding? Look at Van. He’d run over his grandmother to keep going. He can barely breathe, but he’s not going to stop.”

  “And Rudy?”