Darwin's Children d-2

by Greg Bear

  Around the room, she smelled the other girls on their bunks and heard them moving quietly in the bars and shadows of moonlight. Some of them moaned. One and then another coughed and softly called out her friends’ names.

  Celia rolled out of the bottom bunk and stood up beside Stella. Her eyes were large in the dim light, her face a moving blob of paleness framed by wild black hair. “Did you feel that?” she whispered.

  “Shh,” Stella said.

  Felice’s face joined Celia’s beside Stella’s bed.

  “I think it’s okay,” Stella said, almost too softly for them to hear.

  “We’re getting-KUK our first periods,” Celia said.

  “All together?” Felice asked, squeaking.

  Someone in another bunk heard and giggled.

  “Shh,” Stella insisted, wrinkling her face in warning. She sat up and looked along the rows of bunks. Some of the younger girls—a year or more younger—were still asleep. Then, her back tingling, Stella looked up at the video cameras mounted in the rafters. Moonlight reflected from the linoleum floor glinted in their tiny plastic eyes.

  Four girls left their bunks and padded into the bathroom, walking bowlegged.

  Useless to hide it, Stella thought. They’re going to know.

  And they would be even more frightened. She could predict that easily and with assurance. Everything different frightened the humans, and this was going to be very different.

  25

  OREGON

  Eileen set the Coleman lantern on a metal table and laid out the cold dinner: a nearly frozen loaf of white bread, Oscar Meyer bologna in a squat, rubbery cylinder, American cheese, and a chilled, half-eaten tin of Spam. A Tupperware box, yellow with age, contained cut celery stalks. She positioned two apples, three tangerines, and two cans of Coors beside this assortment. “Want to see the wine list?” she asked.

  “Beer will do. Breakfast of diggers,” Mitch said. The plastic roof of the hut over the long reach of the L-shaped excavation rattled in the wind rolling down the old riverbed.

  Eileen sat in the canvas seat of her camp chair and let out her breath in a sigh that was halfway to a shriek. But for them and the still-hidden bones, the excavation was empty. It was almost midnight. “I am dead,” she proclaimed. “I can’t take this anymore. Dig ‘em out, don’t dig ‘em out, keep your cool when the academics start to scrap about emergence violations. The whole goddamned human race is so primitive.”

  Mitch cracked his can and tossed back a long gulp. The beer, almost tasteless but for a prolonged fizz, satisfied him intensely. He put down the can and picked up a slice of cheese, then prepared to peel back the wrapping. He turned it into a grand gesture. Eileen watched as he lifted the slice, rotated it on tripod fingers, and then, using his teeth, delicately lifted and pulled off the intercalary paper. He glanced at her with narrowed eyes and raised one thick eyebrow. “Expose ‘em,” he said.

  “Think so?” Eileen asked.

  “Give me that old-time revelation. I’d rather see them personally than trust future generations to do it better. But that’s just me.” The beer and exhaustion both relaxed Mitch and made him philosophical. “Bring them into the light. Rebirth,” he said. “The Indians are right. This is a sacred moment. There should be ceremonies. We should be appeasing their troubled spirits, and our own. Oliver is right. They’re here to teach us.”

  Eileen sniffed. “Some Indians don’t want their theories contradicted,” she said. “They’d rather live with fairy tales.”

  “The Indians in Kumash gave us shelter when Kaye was pregnant. They still refuse to hand their SHEVA kids over to Emergency Action. I’ve become more understanding of anybody the U.S. government has repeatedly lied to.” Mitch raised his beer in toast. “Here’s to the Indians.”

  Eileen shook her head. “Ignorance is ignorance. We can’t afford to hang on to our childhood blankies. We’re big boys and girls.”

  Mostly girls, Mitch thought. “Are anthropologists any more likely to see what’s under their noses?”

  Eileen pursed her lips. “Well, no,” she said. “We’ve already got two in camp who insist these can’t possibly be Homo erectus. They’re creating a tall, stocky, thick-browed variety of homo sap on their laptops even as we speak. We’re having a hell of a time convincing them to keep their mouths shut. Ignorant bitches, both of them. But don’t tell anybody I said so.”

  “Absolutely,” Mitch said.

  Eileen had finished assembling a Spam and American cheese sandwich, with two stalks of celery sticking out like lunate Gumby feet from the pressed layers of perfect crust. She bit into a corner and chewed thoughtfully.

  Mitch wasn’t particularly hungry, not that he minded the food. He had eaten much worse on previous sites—including a meal of roasted grubs on toast.

  “Was it another SHEVA episode?” Eileen mused. “A massive leap between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Mitch said. “A little too radical even for SHEVA.”

  Eileen’s speculative gaze rose beyond the rattling plastic roof. “Men,” she said. “Men behaving badly.”

  “Uh-oh,” Mitch said. “Here it comes.”

  “Men raiding other groups, taking prisoners. Not very choosy. Gathering up all the females with the appropriately satisfying orifices. Females only, whomever and whatever they might be.”

  “You think our absent males were raiders and rapists?” Mitch asked.

  “Would you date a Homo erectus? I mean, if you weren’t at the absolute bottom of any social hierarchy?”

  Mitch thought of the mother in the cave in the Alps, more than a lifetime ago, and her loyal husband. “Maybe they were more gentle.”

  “Psychic flower children, Mitch?” Eileen asked. “I say these gals were all captives and they were abandoned when the volcano blew. Anything else is pure William Golding bullshit.” Eileen was pushing the matter deliberately, playing both proponent and devil’s advocate, trying to clear her head, or possibly his.

  “I suppose the Homo erectus members of the group might have been slaves or servants—captives,” Mitch said. “But I’m not so sure social life was that sophisticated back then, or that there were such fine gradations of status. My guess is they were traveling together. For protection, maybe, like different species of herd animals on the veldt. As equals. Obviously, they liked each other enough to die in each other’s arms.”

  “Mixed species band? Does that fit anything in your experience with the higher apes?”

  Mitch had to admit it did not. Baboons and chimps played together when they were young, but adult chimps ate baby baboons and monkeys when they could catch them. “Culture matters more than skin color,” he said.

  “But this gap… I just don’t see it being bridgeable. It’s too huge.”

  “Maybe we’re tainted by recent history. Where were you born, Eileen?”

  “Savannah, Georgia. You know that.”

  “Kaye and I lived in Virginia.” Mitch let the thought hang there for a moment, trying to find a delicate way to phrase it.

  “Plantation propaganda from my slave-owner ancestors, my thrice-great grandpappy, has tainted the entire last three hundred years. Is that what you’re suggesting?” Eileen asked, lips curling in a duelist’s smile, savoring a swift and jabbing return. “What a goddamned Yankee thing to say.”

  “We know so little about what we’re capable of,” Mitch continued. “We are creatures of culture. There are other ways to think of this ensemble. If they weren’t equals, at least they worked together, respected each other. Maybe they smelled right to each other.”

  “It’s becoming personal, isn’t it, Mitch? Looking for a way to turn this into a real example. Merton’s political bombshell.”

  Mitch agreed to that possibility with a sly wink and a nod.

  Eileen shook her head. “Women have always hung together,” she said. “Men have always been a sometime thing.”

  “Wait till we find the men,” Mitch said,
starting to feel defensive.

  “What makes you think they stuck around?”

  Mitch stared grimly at the plastic roof.

  “Even if there were men nearby,” she said, “what makes you think we’ll be lucky enough to find them?”

  “Nothing,” he said, and felt hazily that this was a lie.

  Eileen finished her sandwich and drank half her can of Coors to chase it down. She had never liked eating very much and did it only to keep body and soul together. She was hungry and deliberate in bed, however. Orgasms allowed her to think more clearly, she had once confessed. Mitch remembered those times well enough, though they had not slept together since he had been twenty-three years old.

  Eileen had called her seduction of the young anthropology grad student her biggest mistake. But they had stayed friends and colleagues all these years, capable of a loose and honest interaction that had no pretense of sexual expectation or disappointment. A remarkable friendship.

  The wind rattled the roof again. Mitch listened to the hiss of the Coleman lantern.

  “What happened between you and Kaye, after you got out of prison?” Eileen asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mitch said, his jaw tightening. Her asking was a weird kind of betrayal, and she could sense his sudden burn.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “I’m prickly about it,” he acknowledged. He felt a waft of air behind him before he saw the woman’s shadow. Connie Fitz stepped lightly over the hard-packed dirt and stood beside Eileen, resting a hand on her shoulder.

  “Our little stew pot is about to boil over,” Fitz said. “I think we can hold the lid down for another two or three days, max. The zealots want to issue a press release. The hardliners want to keep it covered up.”

  Eileen looked at Mitch with a crinkled lower lip. All that was outside her control, her expression said. “Enslaved women abandoned in camp by cowardly males,” she resumed, getting back to the main topic, her eyes bright in the Coleman’s pearly light.

  “Do you really believe that?” Mitch asked.

  “Oh, come on, Mitch. I don’t know what to believe.”

  Mitch’s stomach worked over the meal with no conviction. “You should at least tell the students that they need to expand the perimeter,” he said. “There could very well be other bodies around, maybe within a few hundred yards.”

  Fitz made a provisional moue of interest. “We’ve talked about it. But everybody wants a piece of the main dig, so nobody was enthusiastic about fanning out,” she said.

  “You feel something?” Eileen asked Mitch. She leaned forward, her voice going mock-sepulchral. “Can you read these bones?”

  Fitz laughed.

  “Just a hunch,” Mitch said, wincing. Then, more quietly, “Probably not a very good one.”

  “Will Daney continue to pay if we dawdle and poke around a couple of more days?” Fitz asked.

  “Merton thinks he’s patient and he’ll pay plenty,” Eileen said. “He knows Daney better than any of us.”

  “This could become every bit as bad as archaeology in Israel,” said Fitz, a natural pessimist. “Every site loaded with political implications. Do you think Emergency Action will come in and shut us down, using NAGPRA as an excuse?”

  Mitch pondered, slow deliberation being about all he was capable of this late, this worn down by the day. “I don’t think they’re that crazy,” he said. “But the whole world’s a tinderbox.”

  “Maybe we should toss in a match,” Eileen said.

  26

  BALTIMORE

  Kaye woke to the sound of the bedside phone dweedling, sat straight up in bed, pulled her hair away from her face, and peered through sleep-fogged eyes at the edge of daylight slicing between the shutters. The clock said 5:07 a.m. She could not think who could be calling her at this hour.

  Today was not going to be a good day, she knew that already, but she picked up the phone and plumped the pillow behind her into a cushion. “Hello.”

  “I need to speak with Kaye Lang.”

  “That’s me,” she said sleepily.

  “Kaye, this is Luella Hamilton. You got in touch with us a little while ago.”

  Kaye felt her adrenaline surge. Kaye had met Luella Hamilton fifteen years ago, when she had been a volunteer subject in a SHEVA study at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Kaye had taken a liking to the woman, but had not heard from her since driving west with Mitch to Washington state. “Luella? I don’t remember…”

  “Well, you did.”

  Suddenly Kaye held the phone close. She had heard something about the Hamiltons being connected to Up River. It was reputed to be a very choosy organization. Some claimed it was subversive. She had forgotten all about her letter; that had been the worst time for her, and she had reached out to anyone, even the extremists who claimed they could track and rescue children.

  “Luella? I didn’t—”

  “Well, since I knew you, they told me to make the return call. Is that okay?”

  She tried to clear her head. “It’s good to hear your voice. How are you?”

  “I’m expecting, Kaye. You?”

  “No,” Kaye said. Luella had to be in her middle fifties. Talk about rolling the dice.

  “It’s SHEVA again, Kaye,” Luella said. “But no time to chat. So listen close. You there, Kaye?”

  “I hear you.”

  “I want you to get to a scrambled line and call us again. A good scrambled line. You still have the number?”

  “Yes,” Kaye said, wondering if it was in her wallet.

  “You’ll get a cute mechanical voice. Our little robot. Leave your number and we might call you back. Then, we’ll go from there. All right, honey?”

  Kaye smiled despite the tension. “Yes, Luella. Thank you.”

  “Sorry to ring so early. Good-bye, dear.”

  The phone went dead. Kaye immediately swung her legs out of bed and walked into the kitchen to fix coffee. Thought about trying to reach Mitch and tell him.

  But it was too early, and probably not a good idea to spread such news around when any phone call was risky.

  She stood by the window looking out over Baltimore and thought about Stella in Arizona, wondering how she was doing, and how long it would be until she saw her again.

  Something snapped and she heard herself making little growls, like a fox. For a moment, clutching the coffee cup in her trembling hand, Kaye felt a blind, helpless rage. “Give me back my daughter, you FUCKHEADS,” she rasped. Then she dropped back into the nearest chair, shaking so hard the coffee spilled. She set the cup on a side table and wrapped herself in her arms. With the thick terry sleeve of her robe, she wiped tears of helplessness from her eyes. “Calm down, dear,” she said, trying to copy Mrs. Hamilton’s strong contralto.

  It was not going to be an easy day. Kaye strongly suspected she was going to be put at liberty. Fired. Ending her life as a scientist forever, but opening up her options so she could go get her daughter and reunite her family.

  “Dreamer,” she said, with none of the conviction of Luella Hamilton.

  27

  ARIZONA

  They pumped a thick strawberry smell into the dorm at eight in the morning. Stella opened her eyes and pinched her nose, moaning.

  “What now?” Celia asked in the bunk below.

  The humans did that whenever they wanted to do something the children might object to. Shots, mass blood samples, medical exams, dorm checks for contraband.

  Next came a wave of Pine-Sol, blowing in through the vent pipes slung under the frame roof. The smell came in through Stella’s mouth when she breathed, making her gag.

  She sat on the edge of the bed in her nightgown, her stomach twisting and her chest heaving. Three men in isolation suits walked down the center aisle of the dormitory. One of the men, she saw, was not a man; it was Joanie, shorter and stockier than the others, her blank face peering through the plastic faceplate of the floppy helmet.

  Joanie reminded Stella of Fred
Trinket’s mother; she had that same calm, fated expectancy of everything and anything, with no emotional freight attached.

  The suited trio stopped by a bed four down from Stella’s. The girl in the top bunk, Julianne Nicorelli, not a member of Stella’s deme, climbed down at a few soft words from Joanie. She looked apprehensive but not scared, not yet. Sometimes the counselors and teachers ran drills in the camp, odd drills, and the kids were never told what they were up to.

  Joanie turned and walked deliberately toward Stella’s bunk. Stella slid down quickly, not using the ladder, and flattened her nightgown where it had ridden up above her knees. She hid her chest with her hands; the fabric was a little sheer, and she didn’t like the way the men were looking at her.

  “You, too, Stella,” Joanie said, her voice hollow and hissy behind the helmet. “We’re going on a trip.”

  “How many?” Celia asked.

  Joanie smiled humorlessly. “Special trip. Reward for good grades and good behavior. The rest get to eat breakfast early.”

  This was a lie. Julianne Nicorelli got terrible grades, not that anyone cared.

  28

  BALTIMORE

  “Heads up. Marge will be here in twenty minutes,” Liz Cantrera said. “Ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Kaye said, and took a deep breath. She looked around the lab to see if there was anything that could be put away or cleaned up. Not that it mattered. It was her last day.

  “You look fine,” Liz said sadly, straightening Kaye’s lapels.

  Marge Cross understood the messy bedrooms of science. And Kaye doubted that she wanted to check up on their housekeeping.

  Around Kaye, Cross was almost always cheerful. She seemed to like Kaye and to trust her as much as she trusted anybody. Today, however, Cross was saying little, tapping her lip with her finger and nodding. She lifted her head to peer at the pipes hanging from the ceiling. She seemed to study a series of red tags hanging from various pressurized lines.