Orphan of Creation

by Roger MacBride Allen

  Pete Ardley watched him go. Pete was a good guy, but he was also a newspaper reporter—a slightly devious breed Livingston Jones plainly had no experience with. And Ardley was curious about what could have gotten Jones excited about a newspaper one hundred thirty-something years old. He picked up the spare set of copies he had made and started reading.

  Interlude

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  “Food.” Now she knew that word; in fact, many words for “food.” She had listened and listened, straining to learn something, anything, in the noises the humans made, but they babbled on so fast, so incessantly, that it seemed impossible that any of it could truly be like hand-talk, and used to tell things.

  And then finally, one night, when she had all but forgotten her plan to learn the human talk, she noticed that the women calling the men from the fields to their meal were making one noise over and over. She pricked up her ears and listened at the call she had heard every day of her life.

  The sound stuck in her mind, and the next night the sound was the same—and the next, and the next. Then she noticed the call in midday was different from the call at night. Eagerly she listened to the human talk whenever she dared, and experienced, again and again, a thrill past anything she had ever known when she heard a word she knew. But even that thrill was surpassed when she watched and listened and learned the words for “plate,” “spoon,” “crop,” and many more. Eavesdropping on the unsuspecting humans, who would have thought it just as likely for a cow to be listening to them, she was learning more every day—learning how to learn, how to guess and make mistakes and try again, how to remember, and how to use what she had learned.

  In the midst of the new world she was finding, her meaningless life went on. Most of the work she did, she simply did, mindlessly, endlessly, emotionlessly—but always she had hated the task of going into the dark forests for firewood. The men did not trust their creatures so far from the village, and shackled their legs with heavy chains, making it painful to walk, leaving their ankles bloody and painful at the end of the day.

  And then she watched, and learned the words for “go” and “firewood.” When those words were spoken, she knew to shuffle to the back of the stockade, duck down out of sight of the overseer, try to vanish altogether.

  And she never had to go for firewood again. It was a tiny victory, the tiniest spark in the darkness that surrounded her—but it was a victory, and she had never had such a thing before.

  Chapter Ten

  “Jeffery, I don’t care what you say—down in the basement we have four examples of a hominid unknown to science. My numbers prove that.” Rupert got up from the kitchen table, went up to the window, and looked out at the excavation. Three of the interns were hard at it, dropping the work face to a new horizon. They were the newest kids, and Rupert wanted to keep an eye on them.

  Grossington glared at Rupert. “We argued about this until two in the morning last night, Rupert, so by now you might have registered that I believe what we have in that basement is Australopithecus boisei—a form which may be unknown to you, but which science has been aware of for some time. We simply did not know it was still extant. But Ambrose is A. boisei, beyond question.”

  “An empty taxon, Jeffery!” Rupert said, shaking his finger. “A name without a species to go with it. Boisei, or what you choose to call boisei, is merely a name for variant members of a highly variable species, good old A. robustus. This is a new type! Call them A. nova, or A. americanus, or A. gowrenus, or even A. marchando, but one look at the teeth tells you Ambrose and company are certainly not robustus—

  “Both of you! Take a break, please!” Barbara cut in. “The whole house heard this until the small hours; we don’t need to hear it again.” She shut her eyes for a moment, sighed, and went on in a gentler voice. “We have to settle this sooner or later, but we won’t do it by seeing who shouts the loudest.”

  There was a sudden noise from the front side of the house, the sound of a car swinging into the drive a little too fast. Rupert watched from the window as Livingston’s aged Dodge swung around the corner. He was out of the car before it had stopped moving, waving a paper over his head and running toward the house. A moment later he burst into the kitchen. “I have got it!” he announced triumphantly.

  He set the paper down in front of Barbara. “That’s the front page of the June 13, 1851 Gowrie Gazette. Read the ad at the bottom.”

  Rupert and Grossington stood up to read it over Barbara’s shoulder as Livingston stepped back, giving them room to examine his prize. Rupert peered closely at the narrow columns for a moment before finding the ad.

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  IMPORTANT NOTICE

  Captain Josiah Wembly, a native of Gowrie and a noted mariner, has returned here after completing a long and hazardous Expedition that took him across the perilous Atlantic and far up the course of the most mysterious and feared of the great African Rivers. He is offering for sale the fruits of that voyage, a new breed of African, superior in every respect to the breed offered heretofore. These creatures, imported to this country in full accordance with all Laws and Regulations regarding the Importation of Labor, were purchased by Captain Wembly directly from the Chief of the savage Yewtani Tribe in the far interior of The Gabon. Through solemn and secret agreements with the Chief of the Yewtani, Captain Wembly has become and will remain the Sole Agent for the Importation of these creatures. Captain Wembly has obtained and will display the Legal, Medical, and Scientific opinions of the most Learned men, who confirm that no Current or Proposed abolitionist law would prevent, or interfere with, the importation, purchase, or ownership of these Creatures. Fine specimens of this new Breed of Slave are available for inspection through enquiries with Captain Wembly, who is now resident at the Blue Star Hotel.

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  “Fantastic, Livingston, just plain fantastic,” Rupert said gleefully. “All of a sudden we have some hope of tracking these creatures down. You’ve given us a date, a name, a place to look—everything we could hope for!”

  Barbara picked up the paper and examined it closely without saying anything for a long moment. “This is wonderful, Livingston. It’s every bit as important as finding the skeletons was.”

  Grossington took the photocopied page from Barbara and read it over to himself again. “I am impressed by your determination, Mr. Jones,” he said at last. “Very few people would have stuck to the paper search long enough to find this.” He set the paper down carefully, and felt a slight twinge in his arm as he did so.

  He would never admit as much to the younger ones, but working in the excavation these last few days had been quite a strain. But aside from using long-unused muscles, the dig had been as easy as shooting ducks in a barrel. Grossington was used to the usual run of luck in paleoanthropology, where even in a promising site, rich in hominid fossils, you might have to take a whole season and move half a hillside to find a few teeth. Here, they now had four virtually complete skeletons in only a matter of a week or two.

  For Jeffery Grossington, the truly exhausting part had come in the basement lab, considering, measuring, comparing, thinking about their new prizes. He had been putting in some exceedingly long hours down there—many of them spent in fruitless arguments with Rupert Maxwell. Grossington blinked and forced his tired mind back to the matter at hand. “What you have found, Mr. Jones, is indeed immensely important. But I’m afraid we can’t act on it at the moment. There is simply too much work to be done here. We have just begun the job of measuring those bones, and comparing them to what casts we managed to bring with us. What analysis we’ve done has been back-of-the-envelope. We need to do much more, and much better.”

  Rupert slammed his chair back down onto all four legs with a loud banging sound. “What!? Are you nuts? We’ve got to follow this up! Ambrose very possibly has some live friends and relations scampering around in the jungle somewhere. This tells us where to look. We ought to go and find them. Live australopithecines have been a possibility since Barbara brought that hatb
ox into your office. Jeffery, we have to go after them. What’s the alternative? We just sit around for a few years staring at these bones and contemplating our scientific navels?”

  Grossington spoke. “Calmly, Rupert, calmly,” he said. “I’m afraid we may be forced into just a bit of ‘navel-contemplating,’ as you put it. Obviously, we should try and find these creatures in Gabon. There’s no need to bludgeon me with the point. However, we lack a few things needed for the job: time and money. Right at the moment, we’re tapped out. I have to go work the fund-raising circuit again. With what we’ve found so far, I’m sure we can raise funds—but it will take a little time. At least we’re close enough to the end of the year that people might be thinking about tax-deductible contributions. Plus, as I was saying, we need to study the material we have, and decide what it is. One last point: Does anyone here have more than the vaguest idea where Gabon is? And who and where are the Yewtani? Do they still exist? Are they actually inside the borders of modern-day Gabon?”

  Rupert drummed his fingers on the table and shifted in his seat. “You’ve got something there, Jeffery,” he admitted, backing down just a little. “I’ve been to Gabon, but I can’t give you any answers on the rest of your questions. We can find it out, sure—after all, we’re part of the Smithsonian’s anthropology unit. But I guess it will take time. We have to track down the West Africa experts, find out what they know, probably head back to D.C. and rummage around in the files a bit.” He brightened just a little. “Come to think of it, I know a guy in our embassy in Gabon. I visited a chimp research center there a while back and this guy Clark White was a big help. He seemed to know the interior pretty well.”

  Rupert paused for a moment. “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Jeffery. I think maybe we’ve all been working too hard. We’ve had disagreements before without their turning into shouting matches.”

  Grossington stretched his tired back out. “It’s me who should be apologizing. I haven’t behaved well either.” He turned toward Livingston and smiled. “I’m afraid you’re seeing the dirty side of paleoanthropology. Rupert and I have been tearing our hair out trying to make sense of the skeletons in the basement. There’s a lot of pressure on us, and I’m afraid none of us have been at our most civil. What makes it worse is that we know it will get worse once word gets out. It’ll be a madhouse. We’re all scared of that—and I think we’re all having trouble believing in Ambrose ourselves. The initial excitement has worn off, and now we’re sort of in a state of shock, I think. Those old bones in the basement turn our world upside down. I know I’ve had a few moments when I’ve stepped back and realized what a mess we’re making of paleoanthropology, and wondered if a few scraps of bone are really all you need to do that.”

  “But those bones are there,” Livingston protested. “They are real. They are true. They are hard evidence that has to be faced, and if the theory doesn’t fit, then the theory has to go!” he concluded with just a touch of sermonizing in his voice.

  “Hey, don’t tell us the rules,” Rupert said wearily. “We know the rules. But Liv, this is like we’ve just found out we’re adopted, that our mothers didn’t give birth to us. It takes some time to accept it. We were all trained to believe humanity was alone, that the last australopithecine died a million years ago. We’ve worked our whole adult lives believing that. We knew it the way you know who your parents are. So let us jaded old pros have some time so we can get used to what Ambrose does to our world view.”

  Livingston jumped in. “Even if that’s all true, Dr. Grossington, what about Gabon?” He stabbed a finger down on the photocopied page. “There it is, in black and white—right where we can go to find more of them, whatever they are. We’ve gotta go after them. This is the chance of a lifetime for me. Go or not, I’m going to postpone grad school to stick with this job—but we’ve got to go to Gabon!”

  Barb grinned. “Don’t blow a gasket, Liv. We’ll get there, sooner or later,” she said. “Come on, let’s talk outside. I could use some fresh air, and I want to check and see if they’ve had any luck on the sifting box. C’mon, grab your jackets.” The four of them collected their outdoor clothes and headed out toward the work site.

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  The sifter itself was simply an old screen window with wooden handles screwed onto it, lying atop a wooden frame. So far they had a fine collection of pebbles and rusty nails, but no metatarsals or phalanges. Still, the sifting was necessary. There were definitely a few hand and foot bones missing, and they weren’t going home with skeletons that were merely 99 percent complete if they could help it.

  Barbara shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and scrunched up her shoulders. Even Mississippi could get downright nippy in December.

  Grossington watched the dirt sifting down for a moments before turned to the interns. “Sally, Walter—why don’t you two take a bit of a break.” The two ‘terns dropped their shovels eagerly and hurried back to the house. It was a little too cold for that kind of work.

  Barbara watched them go, then picked up one of the abandoned shovels and started back at the job. “Rupert—you and Jeffery aren’t likely to agree on what species Ambrose and company are any time soon, are you?”

  Rupert grabbed the handles of the sifting box and started pushing them back and forth, encouraging the dirt to fall through the mesh. “Nope. I don’t think we are.” He gave the handles an extra-hard shove. “Not any time soon, anyway.”

  “Watch how hard you shake that thing, Rupe. You’re slopping some dirt over the side. I didn’t think so—but does it really matter if you two agree?”

  Grossington, still staring at the screen, spoke up. “How could it not matter, Barbara? Surely it’s important to decide the species of this find.”

  “Liv, don’t just stand there—grab a shovel.” Barb stabbed her shovel deep into the overburden dirt and puffed out her cheeks. It felt good to use her muscles. “Yeah, but who’s going to agree with either one of you? No matter who wins your argument, there’ll still be an unholy row when this comes out. Me, I can’t vote either way. I don’t think it’s possible to decide anything when we haven’t analyzed the data yet. So I’d be dead set against either of you winning. Right or wrong, you’d be judging on insufficient analysis. We’ve probably got a few months at best before this hits the papers, and that still won’t be enough time to do it right. I think it’s the time pressure that’s making you both so adamant, and that pressure is real, no doubt of that. We have to get ready fast.” She tossed another shovelful onto the screen, then leaned back on the shovel handle. “But maybe we can agree to disagree. We write a strictly descriptive paper, simply setting down the features of the skeletons—their very low age, their similarity to ‘classic’ australopithecines, their completeness, the strange place they were found. Get a coherent draft written fast and put it in the can, ready to release immediately if we’re forced to do that. Write that first, then the pressure eases a bit and we can all sit back and examine these bones properly.”

  Liv reached out with his shovel and spread the dirt out on the sifter. “What about my clue? What about Gabon?”

  Grossington cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “We’ll need time to get ready, but, yes, we should go soon. And I’ve been thinking about money. I can get it quietly—at the Geographic, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, maybe even at the Smithsonian. What we’ve got is big enough for me to go right to the Secretary and cut out all the middlemen. I can get it. We have to get clear of the holidays, of course, but you need to do your researches on these Yewtani first anyway. Let me wade through all the Washington Christmas parties and come out the other end with a check. I expect by the time you’re ready, I’ll have the money you need.” He looked at Rupert, looked him straight in the eye. “Maybe we were a little reluctant to accept the new facts,” he said. “Maybe I still am. But you’re right, and Livingston is right. We’ve no choice but to follow this wherever it goes.”

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br />   Pete Ardley had sensed something worth chasing in Livingston’s old newspaper, in Liv’s reluctance to explain himself. Besides, it was a slow day anyway, and the weather was nice. He finished up his routine assignments early, tidied up his desk, and left the newspaper office. Almost on impulse, he drove out to Gowrie House and parked out of sight of the house. He got out and pulled his camera case out of the trunk. Strolling casually back along the road toward the house, he noticed a few odd things. Three or four cars with out-of-state plates were parked in the driveway. That was rare in a small town, right there. He heard a noise and looked toward the rear of the house. There seemed to be a lot of activity in the backyard.

  Then he bent the rules a bit, and peeked into the roadside mailbox—an old reporter’s trick in rural areas, almost a standard operating procedure before interviewing anyone off the beaten track. You could learn a lot about a person from what sort of mail they got.

  Pete got his second surprise. There were a number of pieces of personal mail, including what looked like Christmas cards, forwarded from Washington, and two or three pieces from the anthropology department of the Smithsonian Institution, addressed to some guy named Grossington.

  That was enough to make him wonder about that activity in the backyard. He circled around to the back of the property to get a better look.

  Five minutes later, his trousers covered with burrs, Ardley was crouched down below the low, slat-wood fence that surrounded the old slaves’ burial ground, and reflecting on the absurd melodrama of the moment. Hiding in a graveyard, spying on a bunch of people digging a hole, his heart pounding for fear of getting caught—this was ridiculous. Ridiculous enough that he was tempted to call an end to the hide-and-seek, stand up straight, call out to the diggers and announce his presence—but he didn’t, because that wasn’t how the game was played. They were hiding something down there, something to do with a century-old newspaper, and he was a reporter, so he was supposed to find out what it was.